Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 69, No. 425, March, 1851
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Title: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 69, No. 425, March, 1851
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE, VOLUME 69, NO. 425, MARCH, 1851 ***
BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
NO. CCCCXXV. MARCH, 1851. VOL. LXIX.
CONTENTS.
THE DANGERS OF THE COUNTRY, 257
MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. PART VII., 282
LEGENDS OF THE MONASTIC ORDERS, AS REPRESENTED IN THE
FINE ARTS, 305
LAVENGRO, 322
THE ARTS IN PORTUGAL, 338
SOUTHEY, 349
THE MINISTRY AND THE AGRICULTURAL INTEREST, 368
EDINBURGH:
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, 45 GEORGE STREET;
AND 37 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.
_To whom all communications (post paid) must be addressed._
SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.
BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
NO. CCCCXXV. MARCH, 1851. VOL. LXIX.
THE DANGERS OF THE COUNTRY.
NO. II.--OUR INTERNAL DANGERS.
"The apparent contradiction," says the _Edinburgh Review_, "between the
vast amount of unrelieved misery in the country, and the vast amount of
energetic benevolence now existing in this country, which strikes so
many with despair, inspires us, on the contrary, with the most sanguine
hopes; because, in that benevolence, we see ample means of remedying
nearly all our social evils,--means heretofore impotent solely because
misapplied. We agree with the Socialists in holding that the world
can never have been intended to be, and will not long remain, what it
is. It cannot be that the same intellect which has wrung from nature
her most hidden secrets, which has triumphed over the most gigantic
material obstructions, which has 'exhausted worlds and then imagined
new;' which has discovered and described laws operating in regions of
space separate from us by a distance so vast that human imagination
cannot figure it and arithmetical language can hardly express it,
should not, when fairly applied to social and administrative science,
be competent to rectify our errors and to smoothe our path--unless,
indeed, society take refuge in the dreary creed, which shall never be
ours, that the problem before us is insoluble, and the wretchedness
around us inherent and incurable."[1]
[1] _Edinburgh Review_, January 1851, p. 23.
We entirely concur in these eloquent and just observations, though the
honest and candid admissions they contain sound rather strange when
coming from a journal which has, for nearly half-a-century, been the
most strenuous, and not the least able, supporter of the system which
has terminated in these woful results. We concur with this author in
thinking, that it never was intended by Providence that things in this
country should be as they now are; and that it is impossible they can
long continue so. Sooner or later, if the premonitory symptoms of
our diseased state continue to be disregarded by our rulers, and the
influential part of the nation who now determine our policy, as they
have been for a great number of years back, some terrible catastrophe
will arise, like that in Ireland by the failure of the potato crop
in 1846, which, amidst an appalling and perhaps unprecedented amount
of human suffering, is in course of rectifying many of the social
evils under which that ill-starred country has so long laboured. We
narrowly escaped such a catastrophe on occasion of the great monetary
crisis of October 1847, by far the most serious and widespread which
Great Britain has ever known; and so much was the nation in its vital
resources weakened by that calamity, and so wearing-out and grievous
are the causes of evil still operating amongst us, that it is much
to be feared that the catastrophe we anticipate will not be deferred
beyond the next of the periodical monetary crises with which the
country is now so regularly afflicted.
What renders our present social condition so alarming and depressing
to the contemplative mind is, that the evils which are so widespread
through society have only increased with the advance of the nation
in general industry, accumulated capital, and mechanical power; and
at a time when universal and unprecedented exertions have been made
both for the religious and moral education of the working-classes, the
improvement of their habits, and the extension of their information.
The most superficial observer must be aware what astonishing progress
we have made since 1815. Our exports and imports have tripled--our
shipping doubled[2]--our population advanced fully 50 per cent. Our
agriculture has kept pace with this astonishing increase, insomuch
that, down to the commencement of five bad years in succession, in
1836, followed by Free Trade in 1842 and 1846, our imports of wheat
and flour had sunk to a _hundredth-part_ of the food of our people.
At no former period, in England's or the world's history, were such
efforts made by energetic and philanthropic individuals to stem the
progress of public and private disaster, or such noble and even heroic
sacrifices made by the State to assuage, where it was most aggravated,
the intensity of private suffering. At one period Government gave
£20,000,000 to compensate the planters in the West Indies for Negro
Emancipation; at another £10,000,000, to relieve the effects of famine
and Irish improvidence. The efforts made in the cause of education,
religious instruction, church accommodation, the relief of pauperism,
the elevation of the standard of comfort, and the improvement of the
habits of the poor, have been innumerable, systematic, and unwearied.
[2]
| | EXPORTS. | IMPORTS. | SHIPPING. |
|Years.| Official Value. | Official Value.| Tons inwards.|
|------| | | |
| 1822 | 42,236,533 | 29,432,376 | 2,519,044 |
| 1823 | 43,803,472 | 34,591,260 | 2,506,760 |
| 1824 | 48,785,551 | 36,056,551 | 2,559,587 |
| | | | |
| 1836 | 65,926,702 | 44,586,741 | 3,002,875 |
| 1837 | 69,939,389 | 45,952,551 | 3,149,152 |
| 1838 | 73,831,550 | 49,362,811 | 3,149,168 |
| | | | |
| 1846 | 132,286,345 | 75,953,875 | 6,091,052 |
| 1847 | 126,157,919 | 90,921,866 | 7,196,033 |
| 1848 | 132,904,407 | 93,547,134 | 5,579,461 |
| 1849 | 164,539,504 | 105,874,607 | 6,071,269 |
--_Parliamentary Tables._
In Scotland, a new great sect of Presbyterians has grown up more suited
than the Establishment to the inclinations of a large part of the
people, and they have, in three years, built and provided for _eight
hundred_ new places of worship, at a cost of above £1,500,000. In
Glasgow alone, _thirty-two_ have been erected, at a cost of £107,000!
besides _fifteen_, erected a few years before, by subscription of
persons connected with the Establishment. The prodigious efforts
made by the dignitaries and pastors of the Church of England, to
extend the sphere and increase the utility of their Establishment,
are known to all the world, and have extorted the reluctant applause
even of the most inveterate of their opponents. All other religious
persuasions have done the same: Roman Catholics, Methodists, Wesleyans,
Dissenters of all sorts, have vied with each other in zeal and efforts
to extend their respective adherents, and augment the number and
respectability of their places of worship. Education has shared in the
general movement; and although Government has yet done little, the
number of voluntary schools established in most parts of the country
almost exceeds belief. At the same time, the average poor-rates of
England have for the last ten years been about £6,000,000. Scotland
has got a more efficient one than the cautious administration of the
old law had permitted, which already expends about £500,000 yearly
on the relief of indigence: and Ireland has got a new one, which at
its greatest distress expended above £2,000,000 in a year, and still
dispenses upwards of £1,500,000 annually. Yet, in the midst of all
this prodigious increase of national industry, religious zeal, and
philanthropic activity, the condition of the greater part of our
working classes has been daily getting worse, and was never perhaps, as
a whole, so bad as in this year, when, in consequence of Continental
pacification, Bank discounts at 2½ per cent, and a great influx
of Californian gold, prices of manufactured articles have risen 20
per cent, and the great manufacturing towns are in a state of general
prosperity. Ample evidence of all this will be brought forward in the
sequel of this essay.
Notwithstanding all this, we do not despair either of the human race
or of the fortunes and social condition of this country. We are firm
believers in the doctrine, derived equally from natural and revealed
religion, that the greater part of the evils, individual and social,
of this life are derived from the effects of human selfishness,
folly, or wickedness, and that it is sin which has brought death to
nations not less than individuals. Barring some calamities which are
obviously beyond the reach of human remedy--such as sickness, the
death of relations or friends, and external disasters, as famine or
pestilence--there is scarcely an ill which now afflicts mankind which
may not be distinctly traced to human selfishness or folly in the
present or some preceding generation. That God will visit the sins of
the fathers upon the children is indeed as loudly proclaimed in the
history of man as ever it was among the thunders of Mount Sinai. But,
assuming this to be the principle of the Divine government of mankind,
we are confident we are within bounds when we say that four-fifths,
perhaps nine-tenths, of the social and private evils which now afflict
humanity, are the direct consequences of selfishness or folly in this
or some recently preceding generation. Every attentive observer of the
fate of individuals or families around him must see that this is the
case in private life; and a very little attention alone is required
to convince one that to the same cause is to be ascribed four-fifths
of the social evils, great as they are, which all feel to be now so
overwhelming.
We propose, first, to establish the fact that, amidst all the boasted
and really astonishing increase of our national industry, the suffering
and misery of the working-classes has constantly, on an average of
years, gone on increasing; and then to consider to what causes this
most alarming and disheartening state of things is to be ascribed. To
prove the first, it is sufficient to refer to three authentic sources
of information--the records of emigration, of crime, and of pauperism,
for the last twenty-eight years.
From the table given below, it appears that while, in the year 1826,
immediately following the dreadful monetary crisis of December
1825,--by far the severest which had _then_ been felt--the total
emigration from the British Islands was under twenty-one thousand; in
the year 1849, being the fourth year of Free Trade, and in its last six
months one of great commercial activity, it had reached _the enormous
and unprecedented amount of_ THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND! In twenty-five
years of almost ceaseless Liberal government, and carrying out the
principles, social and political, of the Political Economists, the
number of persons driven into exile had increased _fifteen-fold_. So
extraordinary and decisive a proof of the progressive increase of
suffering in a people is perhaps not to be found in the whole annals of
mankind. The emigration-returns for 1850 have not yet been made up, but
that they will exhibit a result not less striking and woful than the
preceding years may be judged of by the facts, that the emigration from
Liverpool, which in 1849 was 154,400, had risen in 1850 to 174,260;
and that the emigrants who landed at New York alone, in 1850, were
212,796--of whom 116,552 were Irish, and 28,125 English subjects, the
remainder being chiefly Scotch and Germans.[3]
[3] _Times_, Jan. 21, 1851.
We say, and say advisedly, that this prodigious flood of emigrants
were, for the most part, _driven into exile_ by suffering, not tempted
into it by hope, and that its progressive increase is the most decisive
proof of the enhanced misery and suffering of the working classes. The
slightest consideration of the last column of the table below[4] must
demonstrate this. Every known and deplored year of suffering has been
immediately followed by a great increase in the number of emigrants
in the next, or some subsequent years. Thus, in the year 1825, the
total emigration was only 14,891; but the monetary crisis of December
in that year raised it to 20,900 in the next year. In the year 1830,
the last of the Duke of Wellington's administration, the emigration
was 56,907; but in the two next years, being those of Reform agitation
and consequent penury, these numbers were almost doubled: they rose
to 83,160 in 1831, and to 103,140 in 1832. With the fine harvests and
consequent prosperity of 1833 and 1834, they sank to 44,478; but the
bad seasons of 1838, 1839, and 1840 made them rapidly rise again, until
they became,
1840, 90,743
1841, 118,592
1842, 128,342
[4] EMIGRATION FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM DURING THE TWENTY-FIVE YEARS
FROM 1825 TO 1849.
| | North | | Australian | All | |
| | American | United |Colonies and | other | |
|Years | Colonies | States | New Zealand | places | TOTAL |
|------+------------| |-------------+--------+----------|
| 1825 | 8,741 | 5,551 | 485 | 114 | 14,891 |
| 1826 | 12,818 | 7,063 | 903 | 116 | 20,900 |
| 1827 | 12,648 | 14,526 | 715 | 114 | 28,003 |
| 1828 | 12,084 | 12,817 | 1,056 | 135 | 26,092 |
| 1829 | 13,307 | 15,678 | 2,016 | 197 | 31,198 |
| 1830 | 30,574 | 24,887 | 1,242 | 204 | 56,907 |
| 1831 | 58,067 | 23,418 | 1,561 | 114 | 83,160 |
| 1832 | 66,339 | 32,872 | 3,733 | 196 | 103,140 |
| 1833 | 28,808 | 29,109 | 4,093 | 517 | 62,527 |
| 1834 | 40,060 | 33,074 | 2,800 | 288 | 76,222 |
| 1835 | 15,573 | 26,720 | 1,860 | 325 | 44,478 |
| 1836 | 34,226 | 37,774 | 3,124 | 293 | 75,417 |
| 1837 | 29,884 | 36,770 | 5,054 | 326 | 72,034 |
| 1838 | 4,577 | 14,332 | 14,021 | 292 | 33,222 |
| 1839 | 12,658 | 33,536 | 15,786 | 227 | 62,207 |
| 1840 | 32,293 | 40,642 | 15,850 | 1,958 | 90,743 |
| 1841 | 38,164 | 45,017 | 32,626 | 2,786 | 118,592 |
| 1842 | 54,123 | 63,852 | 8,534 | 1,835 | 128,344 |
| 1843 | 23,518 | 28,335 | 3,478 | 1,881 | 57,212 |
| 1844 | 22,924 | 43,660 | 2,229 | 1,873 | 70,686 |
| 1845 | 31,803 | 58,538 | 830 | 2,330 | 93,501 |
| 1846 | 43,439 | 82,239 | 2,347 | 1,826 | 129,851 |
| 1847 | 109,680 | 142,154 | 4,949 | 1,487 | 258,270 |
| 1848 | 31,065 | 188,233 | 23,904 | 4,887 | 248,089 |
| 1849 | 41,367 | 219,450 | 32,091 | 6,590 | 299,498 |
|------+------------| |-------------+--------+----------|
| | 808,740 | 1,260,247 | 185,286 | 30,911 |2,285,184 |
Average annual emigration from the United Kingdom for the last
twenty-five years, 91,407.
The Railway Mania and artificial excitement of 1843 and 1844 brought
down these numbers to _one half_--they were 57,212 and 70,686 in these
two years successively. But the Currency Laws of 1844 and 1845, and
Free Trade of 1846, soon more than _quadrupled_ these numbers; and they
have _never since receded_, but, on the contrary, rapidly increased
ever since. The numbers were:--
Currency Acts, 1845, 93,501
Free Trade, 1846, 129,851
Irish Famine, 1847, 258,270
Free Trade, 1848, 248,089
Free Trade, 1849, 299,498
More convincing proof that emigration is, for the most part, the result
of general distress, and that the intensity and wide spread of that
distress is to be measured by its increase, cannot possibly be imagined.
In the next place, the criminal records for the same period, since
1822, demonstrate, in a manner equally decisive, that amidst all our
advances in civilisation, wealth, and productive industry, the causes
producing an increase of crime have been equally active; and that,
abreast of the distress which drove such prodigious and increasing
multitudes into exile, have advanced the social evils which have, in an
equal ratio, multiplied the criminals among those who remain at home.
From the table quoted below, it appears that, since the year 1822,
serious crime, over the whole empire, has advanced fully 300 per cent;
while the numbers of the people, during the same period, have not
increased more than 30 per cent, which of itself is a very great and
most surprising increase for an old state. It has advanced from 27,000
to 75,000. In other words, serious crime, during the last twenty-five
years, has advanced TEN TIMES as fast as the numbers of the people.[5]
[5] TABLE showing the commitments for Serious Crime in England,
Scotland, and Ireland, from 1822 to 1849, both inclusive:--
+------+---------+---------+---------+--------+
|Years | England |Scotland | Ireland | TOTAL |
|------+---------+---------+---------+--------|
| 1822 | 12,241 | 1,691 | 13,251 | 27,183 |
| 1823 | 12,263 | 1,733 | 14,632 | 28,628 |
| 1824 | 13,698 | 1,802 | 15,258 | 30,748 |
| 1825 | 14,437 | 1,876 | 15,515 | 31,828 |
| 1826 | 16,164 | 1,999 | 16,318 | 34,481 |
| 1827 | 17,924 | 2,116 | 18,031 | 30,071 |
| 1828 | 16,564 | 2,024 | 14,683 | 33,273 |
| 1829 | 18,675 | 2,063 | 15,271 | 36,009 |
| 1830 | 18,107 | 2,329 | 15,794 | 36,230 |
| 1831 | 19,647 | 2,451 | 16,192 | 38,290 |
| 1832 | 20,829 | 2,431 | 16,056 | 39,316 |
| 1833 | 20,072 | 2,564 | 17,819 | 40,453 |
| 1834 | 22,451 | 2,691 | 24,381 | 49,523 |
| 1835 | 20,731 | 2,867 | 21,205 | 44,803 |
| 1836 | 20,984 | 2,922 | 23,891 | 47,797 |
| 1837 | 23,612 | 3,126 | 14,804 | 41,452 |
| 1838 | 23,094 | 3,418 | 15,723 | 42,635 |
| 1839 | 24,443 | 3,409 | 26,392 | 54,244 |
| 1840 | 27,187 | 3,872 | 23,883 | 54,892 |
| 1841 | 27,760 | 3,562 | 20,796 | 52,118 |
| 1842 | 31,389 | 4,189 | 21,186 | 56,684 |
| 1843 | 29,591 | 3,615 | 20,126 | 53,332 |
| 1844 | 26,542 | 3,575 | 19,448 | 49,565 |
| 1845 | 24,303 | 3,537 | 16,696 | 44,536 |
| 1846 | 25,107 | 4,069 | 18,492 | 47,668 |
| 1847 | 28,883 | 4,635 | 31,209 | 64,677 |
| 1848 | 30,349 | 4,909 | 38,522 | 73,780 |
| 1849 | 27,806 | 4,357 | 41,982 | 74,162 |
The same table is equally valuable in another point of view, as
demonstrating, that it is to a general and progressive increase of
_distress_ that this deplorable result is to be ascribed. Every year of
great and general suffering has been immediately followed in the next
and the succeeding ones by a sudden start in crime, which has again
as regularly receded, when a returning gleam of prosperity has for a
time illuminated the prospects of the working-classes in the community.
Thus, the dreadful monetary crisis of December 1825 was followed next
year by a considerable increase of commitments: they rose from 31,828
to 38,071. The numbers again fell to 33,273 and 36,009 in 1829 and
1830, which were years of comparative comfort. The Reform agitation,
and consequent distress of 1831 and 1832, raised them again to 49,523
in 1834; while the Joint-stock mania and fine harvests of 1835 lowered
it to 44,803. The bad harvests, great importation, and consequent
monetary crisis of 1839 and 1840 raised them most materially; they
amounted to 54,244 and 54,892 in those years respectively. The fine
harvests and Railway mania of 1844 and 1845 lowered them to 49,565 and
44,536; but the Irish famine and Free-trade measures of 1846, followed,
as they necessarily were, by the dreadful monetary crisis of October
1847, raised them again to an unprecedented amount, from which they
have never since receded. In 1848, they were 73,780; in 1849, 74,162;
of which, last year, no less than 41,980 were in Ireland, being nearly
4000 more than 1848--albeit the harvest of 1849 was very fine, and the
preceding year had been the year of the Irish rebellion, and when that
country might be presumed to be still labouring under the effects of
the famine of autumn 1846.
The poor's rate from 1822 to 1849[6] affords an equally conclusive
proof of the steady increase of pauperism--varying, of course, like the
crime and emigration, with the prosperity and suffering of particular
years, but exhibiting on the whole a great and most portentous
increase. This appears even when it is measured in money; but still
more strikingly and convincingly when measured in grain--the true test
both of its amount and its weight, as by far the greatest part of it
is laid out in the purchase of food for the paupers, and the price of
that food is an index to the ability of the land to bear it. It is to
be recollected that the new Poor Law, which was introduced to check the
rapid and alarming increase in the poor's rates of England and Wales,
was passed in 1834, and came into full operation in 1835, and has since
continued unaltered. It certainly effected a great reduction at first;
but that it was not lasting, and was speedily altered by the Free-Trade
measures, is decisively proved by the following table, furnished by Mr
Porter. The in-door and out-door paupers of England since 1840 have
stood thus to 1848:--
1840, 1,199,529
1841, 1,299,048
1842, 1,427,187
1843, 1,539,490
1844, 1,477,561
1845, 1,470,970
1846, 1,332,089
1847, 1,720,350
1848, 1,626,201
--_Progress of the Nation_, 3d Ed. p. 94.
[6] TABLE showing the Poor's Rates of England and Wales, with their
Population, and the amount in Quarters of Grain in every year, from
1822 to 1849, both inclusive:--
| | | | | Amount in |
| | | Population | Prices of | Quarters of |
| Years | Poor's Rates | | Wheat | Wheat |
|-------+--------------| |-----------+-------------|
| | | | _s._ _d._ | |
|1822 | £6,358,702 | 12,318,310 | 43 3 | 2,940,440 |
|1823 | 5,772,958 | 12,508,956 | 51 9 | 2,231,091 |
|1824 | 5,736,898 | 12,699,098 | 62 0 | 1,850,612 |
|1825 | 5,786,989 | 12,881,906 | 66 6 | 1,740,447 |
|1826 | 5,928,501 | 13,056,931 | 55 11 | 2,983,221 |
|1827 | 6,441,088 | 13,242,019 | 56 9 | 2,269,987 |
|1828 | 6,298,000 | 13,441,913 | 60 5 | 2,084,855 |
|1829 | 6,332,410 | 13,620,701 | 66 3 | 1,911,671 |
|1830 | 6,829,042 | 13,811,467 | 64 3 | 2,125,772 |
|1831 | 6,798,888 | 13,897,187 | 66 4 | 2,049,916 |
|1832 | 7,036,968 | 14,105,645 | 58 8 | 2,398,966 |
|1833 | 6,790,799 | 14,317,229 | 52 11 | 2,566,601 |
|1834 | 6,317,255 | 14,531,957 | 46 2 | 2,736,717 |
|1835[7]| 5,526,418 | 14,703,002 | 44 2 | 2,502,528 |
|1836 | 4,717,630 | 14,904,456 | 39 5 | 2,393,723 |
|1837 | 4,044,741 | 15,105,909 | 52 6 | 1,540,853 |
|1838 | 4,123,604 | 15,307,363 | 55 3 | 1,492,684 |
|1839 | 4,421,712 | 15,508,816 | 69 4 | 1,275,494 |
|1840 | 4,576,965 | 15,710,270 | 68 5 | 1,336,340 |
|1841 | 4,760,929 | 15,911,725 | 65 3 | 1,459,288 |
|1842 | 4,911,498 | 16,141,808 | 64 0 | 1,534,843 |
|1843 | 5,208,027 | 16,371,892 | 54 4 | 1,917,665 |
|1844 | 4,976,093 | 16,601,975 | 51 5 | 1,935,595 |
|1845 | 5,039,708 | 16,824,341 | 50 10 | 1,976,354 |
|1846 | 4,954,204 | 17,032,471 | 54 8 | 1,801,528 |
|1847 | 5,298,787 | 17,426,321 | 69 9 | 1,513,939 |
|1848 | 6,180,764 | 17,649,622 | 50 6 | 2,423,436 |
|1849 | 5,792,963 | 17,862,431 | 44 3 | 2,633,166 |
|1850 | | | 40 2 | |
_Poor's-Rate Report_, 1849; and PORTER, 90, 3d ed.--The five last
years' prices are not from Mr Porter's work, where they are obviously
wrong, but from _Parl. Pap._ 1850, No. 460.
[7] New Poor-Law came into operation.
These are the results exhibited in England and Wales. The poor's
rates since 1837 have doubled in real weight, and we need not say
that they are calculated to awaken the most alarming reflections; the
more especially when it is recollected that the year 1849 was one
of reviving, and, during its last six months, of boasted commercial
prosperity. But the matter becomes much more serious, and the picture
of the social condition of the island much more correct and striking,
when the simultaneous measures, adopted during the last five years in
Scotland and Ireland, are taken into consideration.
We need not tell our readers that, prior to 1844, Ireland had no
poor law at all; and that although Scotland had a most humane and
admirable poor law on its statute-book, yet its operation had been
so much frittered away and nullified, by the unhappy decision of the
Court of Session, which gave no control to the _local_ courts over
the decisions of the heritors and kirk-sessions (church-wardens of
parishes), thereby in effect rendering them judges without control in
their own cause, that it, practically speaking, amounted to almost
nothing. But as the evils of that state of things had become apparent,
and had been demonstrated _luce meridianâ clarius_, by Dr Alison and
other distinguished philanthropists, an efficient statute was passed in
1845, which corrected this evil, and has since produced the following
results, which may well attract the notice of the most inconsiderate,
from the rapid increase which pauperism exhibits, and the extraordinary
magnitude it has already attained in Scotland--
| | | Number of Poor, | |
|Years | Sums raised | fixed and casual | Registered Paupers |
|------+-------------+----------------------+--------------------|
|1840 | £202,812 | | |
|1841 | 218,481 | | |
|1844 | 258,814 | | |
|1845 | 306,044 | 63,070 or 1 in 42 | 62,070 or 1 in 42 |
|1846 | 435,367 | 69,432 -- 1 -- 38 | 69,432 -- 1 -- 38 |
|1847 | 533,073 | 146,370 -- 1 -- 17.8 | 74,161 -- 1 -- 35.3|
|1848 | 583,613 | 227,647 -- 1 -- 11.5 | 77,732 -- 1 -- 33.7|
|1849 | | 202,120 -- 1 -- 12.96| 82,357 -- 1 -- 31.8|
--_Poor-Law Report, Scotland_, Aug. 1849.
In the year 1850, a year of unusual commercial prosperity, the sums
assessed for the relief of the poor in Glasgow alone, irrespective of
buildings and other expenses connected with them, was £87,637, and with
these expenses £121,000.[8]
[8] DR YOUNG'S _Report_, Jan. 1851
In Ireland, the growth of the Poor Law, from its first introduction,
has been still more rapid and alarming, as might have been anticipated
from the greater mass of indigence and destitution with which it there
had to contend. The sums raised for relief of the poor in that country,
the _nominal_ rental of which is £13,000,000, has stood thus for the
last three years--
| Year | | | | |
| ending | | |Indoor Paupers,| Outdoor |
|Sept. 29| Collected | Expended | August | Paupers |
|--------+-----------+-----------+---------------+---------|
| 1846 | £359,870 | £350,667 | | |
| 1847 | 585,507 | 717,713 | 75,376 | |
| 1848 | 1,559,248 | 1,732,597 | 150,000 | 833,889 |
| 1849 | 1,648,337 | 2,177,651 | 203,199 | 666,224 |
| 1850 | 1,561,846 | 1,274,125 | 264,048[9] | 141,077 |
--_Third Annual Report, Ireland_, p. 7.
[9] On 22d June, 1850.
On 3d July 1847, no less than _3,020,712 persons were fed by
the public in Ireland_, being about 40 per cent on the whole
population--certainly, at that date, under 8,000,000. Well may the
_Edinburgh Review_ say, in reference to this astonishing subject--
"The collection in the year 1847-8 is remarkable: three times
the amount of the collections of 1846-7, five times the amount
of the collections of 1845-6. A tax unknown in Ireland ten
years before was levied in the Year 1848 to the extent of
_one-ninth_ of the rateable property of the country, and that
in a period of unprecedented depression and embarrassment. In
the same year the expenditure had risen _150 per cent_ above
that of 1847, _and 500 per cent above the expenditure of 1846_.
The expenditure in 1848-9 exceeds that of 1847 by the large sum
of £445,054."[10]
[10] _Edinburgh Review_, Jan. 1851.
The diminished expenditure of 1850 is mainly owing to the reduction
in the price of provisions in that year, which has caused the cost
of an in-door pauper to decline from 2s. 2d., which it was in April
1847, to 1s. 2d., _or nearly a half_, to which it fell in autumn 1849,
which it has never since exceeded. Measured by quarters of grain, the
poor's-rate of Ireland, in 1850, was fully twice as heavy as it was in
1848, when the effects of the disastrous famine of 1846 were still felt.
After these broad and decisive facts, drawn from so many official
sources, and all conspiring to one result, it may seem unnecessary
to go further, or load these pages, for which matter abundant to
overflowing still remains, with any farther proof or illustration of
a thing unhappily too apparent. But as our present system is mainly
calculated for the interests of our great manufacturing cities, and, at
all events, has been brought about by their influence, and is strictly
in conformity with their demands, we cannot resist the insertion of an
extract from an eloquent speech of a most able, humane, and zealous
minister of the Free Church in Glasgow on the moral and religious state
of the working-classes in that vast and rapidly-increasing city, which
now has little short of 400,000 inhabitants within its bounds.
"I know," said Dr Paterson, "that many congregations, not
of the Free Church, both feel and manifest an anxious and
enlightened concern in this cause. I do not attempt to describe
their efforts, simply because I am not in a position to do them
justice. I hail them, however, as fellow-labourers. I rejoice
to know that they are in the field to some extent already, and
I shall rejoice still more to see their exertions multiplying
side by side with our own. Certain I am that nothing short _of
a levy en masse of whatever there is of living Christianity in
the city_, in all the branches of the Church of Christ which
it contains, will suffice to make head against the _augmenting
ignorance and ungodliness, and Popery and infidelity, with
which we have to deal_. My other observation is for the members
of our own church. Some of them will, perhaps, be startled
by this movement, simply because it in adding another to our
already numerous schemes--and because it may aggravate the
difficulty we already feel of carrying them on. Here, they
may say, is the beginning of new demands upon both our money
and our time. To such a complaint I have no other answer to
make but one--but it is one that seems to me to be decisive.
My answer is, that this movement, whatever it may cost, is a
matter of life and death. If we _do not destroy this evil, it
will destroy us_."
These are certainly strong expressions, but they come from one well
acquainted, from personal visitation in his parish, which is one of the
most densely peopled in Glasgow, and second to none in zeal and ability
to combat the enormous mass of destitution, crime, sensuality, and
civilised heathenism with which he has to deal. And that he does not
exaggerate the evil, and speaks from accurate information, not vague
imagination, is evident from the details which he gives.
"I begin with the Old Wynd, which is the western boundary of
the parish, and of which only the one side, therefore, is
in the Tron parish. That one side contains 102 families and
504 individuals. Among that population there are possessed
in all only 11 church sittings, or little more than 2 to the
100. Of the 102 families, only 14 profess to be in the habit
of going to any place of worship. In the New Wynd, there
are 350 families and 1976 individuals, possessing in all 66
church sittings, or little more than 3 to the 100. Of the 350
families, only 67 profess to be in the habit of attending any
place of worship. Lastly, the Back Wynd contains 137 families
and 752 individuals, who possess in all only 6 church sittings,
or less than 1 to the 100! Of these 137 families, only 13
profess to attend any place of worship. Here, then, in these
three Wynds, constituting but a section of the parish, we
have a population of 3232 individuals, with only 83 church
sittings, or little more than an average of 2½ to the 100.
Of the 589 families of which that population consists, the
enormous number of _495 families, by their own confession, are
living in habitual and total estrangement from the house of
God_. In these appalling circumstances, it will not surprise
the presbytery to learn, that in the whole of the three Wynds
there were found no more than 117 Bibles--in other words, that
scarcely _one_ family in _five_ were possessed of a copy of the
Word of God."
Again he says--
"During the first ten of the last thirty years--that is, from
1821 to 1831--the population increased at the rate of about
5000 a-year. During the second ten of these years--that is,
from 1831 to 1841--it increased at the rate of 8000 a-year.
During the third ten of these years--that is, from 1841 to
1851--it is believed, on good grounds, that the increase will
average 12,000 a-year. Let any man consider these facts, and
then, if he has courage to look forward at all, let him try _to
picture to himself the state of Glasgow when another thirty
years shall have run their course_. If the same ratio of
increase holds on--and I know of no good reason for doubting
that it will--we shall have in thirty years a population nearly
equal in numbers to that of Paris; and most assuredly, if the
Christian churches do not speedily arouse themselves, it will
be by that time like Paris in more respects than one. We may
have the numbers of the French capital, but we shall have
_their infidelity, their Popery, their licentiousness, and
their lawlessness too_. If our efforts did not keep pace with
a population growing at the rate of 5000 a-year, how are such
efforts to do alongside of a population growing at the rate of
from 12,000 to 15,000 a-year? If in the race of the last thirty
years we fell at least twenty years behind, how tremendously
and how ruinously shall we be distanced in the next thirty
years to come! 'If thou hast run with the footmen, and they
have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses! And
if in the land of peace, wherein thou trustedst, they wearied
thee, then how wilt thou do in the swellings of Jordan!'"
We select this as a picture of our great manufacturing towns, in which
the greatest and most unbounded prosperity, so far as mere production
goes, has prevailed, generally speaking, for the last thirty years; in
which the custom-house duties have increased, since 1812, from £3000
a-year to £660,000, and the river dues from £4500 to £66,000 in the
same period; but in which the sums expended in poor-rates and pauper
burials were, in round numbers,--
Poor Rates. Pauper Burials.
1848 £180,000 4042
1849 132,000 3577
1850 120,000[11] 2381
Indicating the deplorable destitution of multitudes in the midst of
this growing wealth and unparalleled increase of manufacturing and
commercial greatness. In the last year, out of 10,461 burials, no less
than 2381, or nearly _a fourth_, were at the public expense.[12]
[11] Including buildings £87,000; for poor alone.
[12] Dr STRANG'S _Report_, 1851.
Of the wretched condition of a large class of the operatives of
Glasgow--that employed in making clothes for the rest of the
community--the following striking account has been given in a recent
interesting publication on the "Sweating System," by a merchant tailor
of the city:--
"The _out-door_ or sweating system, by which the great
proportion of their work is produced, has had a fearful
debasing effect on journeymen tailors. Work is given out to a
person denominated a "middle-man." He alone comes into contact
with the employer. He employs others to work under him, in his
own house. The workmen have no respect for him, as they have
for an ordinary employer; nor has he the slightest influence
over them, in enforcing proper conduct or prudent habits. On
the contrary, his influence tends only to their hurt. _He
engages them to work at the lowest possible prices_--making
all the profit he can out of them. He ordinarily sets them
down to work in a small, dirty room, in some unhealthy part of
the city. They are allowed to work at irregular hours. Sunday,
in innumerable instances brings no rest to the tailor under
the sweating system; he must serve his slave-driver on that
day too, even if he should go idle on the other days of the
week. _No use of churches or ministers to him; his calling is
to produce so-called cheap clothes for the million_--Sunday
or Monday being alike necessary for such a laudable pursuit,
though his soul should perish. Small matter that: only let
_the cheap system flourish, and thereby increase the riches of
the people_, and then full compensation has been made, though
moral degradation, loss of all self-respect, and tattered rags,
be the lot of the unhappy victim, sunk by it to the lowest
possible degree."[13]
[13] _Modern System of Low-priced Goods_, p. 2, 3.
Such is the effect of the cheapening and competition system, in one
of our greatest manufacturing towns, in a year of great and unusual
commercial prosperity. That the condition of the vast multitude engaged
in the making of clothes in the metropolis is not better, may be judged
of by the fact that there are in London 20,000 journeymen tailors, of
whom 14,000 can barely earn a miserable subsistence by working fourteen
hours a-day, Sunday included; and that Mr Sidney Herbert himself, a
great Free-Trader, has been lately endeavouring to get subscriptions
for the needlewomen of London, on the statement that there are there
33,000 females of that class, who only earn on an average 4½d.
a day, by working fourteen hours. And the writer of this Essay has
ascertained, by going over the returns of the census of 1841 for
Glasgow, (Occupations of the People,) that there were in Glasgow in
that year above 50,000 women engaged in factories or needle-work, and
whose average earnings certainly do not, even in this year of boasted
commercial prosperity, exceed 7s. or 8s. a week. _Their number is
now, beyond all question, above 60,000_, and their wages not higher.
Such is the cheapening and competition system in the greatest marts
of manufacturing industry, and in a year when provisions were cheap,
exports great, and the system devised for its special encouragement in
full and unrestrained activity.
Facts of this kind give too much reason to believe that the picture
drawn in a late work of romance, but evidently taken by a well-informed
observer in London, is too well founded in fact:--
"Every working tailor must come to this at last, on the present
system; and we are lucky in having been spared so long. You
all know where this will end--in the same misery as 15,000 out
of 20,000 of our class are enduring now. We shall become the
slaves, often the bodily prisoners, of Jews, middle-men, and
sweaters, who draw their livelihood out of our starvation. We
shall have to fare as the rest have--ever decreasing prices of
labour, ever increasing profits, made out of that labour by
the contractors who will employ us--arbitrary fines, inflicted
at the caprice of hirelings--the competition of women, and
children, and starving Irish--our hours of work will increase
one-third, our actual pay decrease to less than one-half. And
in all this we shall have no hope, no chance of improvement
in wages, but even more penury, slavery, misery, as we are
pressed on by those who are sucked by fifties--almost by
hundreds--yearly out of the honourable trade in which we were
brought up, into the infernal system of contract work, which is
devouring our trade, and many others, body and soul. Our wives
will be forced to sit up night and day to help us--our children
must labour from the cradle, without chance of going to school,
hardly of breathing the fresh air of heaven--our boys, as
they grow up, must turn beggars or paupers--our daughters,
as thousands do, must eke out their miserable earnings by
prostitution. And after all, a whole family will not gain what
one of us had been doing, as yet, single-handed. You know there
will be no hope for us. There is no use appealing to Government
or Parliament."[14]
[14] _Alton Locke_, vol. i. p. 149-50.
We shall only add to these copious extracts and documents one
illustrative of the state to which the West Highlands of Scotland have
been brought by Free Trade in black cattle and barilla, the staple of
their industry:--
Price of the Estate, £163,779.
| | Expenditure on
Years.| Receipts. | Estate.
1847 |£4,134 0 0 |£7,305 0 0
1848 | 1,781 0 0 | 4,253 0 0
1849 | 1,109 0 0 | 1,294 0 0
1850 | 1,345 0 0 | 1,126 0 0
--_Inverness Courier._
Couple this with the facts that, in 1850, in the face of average prices
of wheat at about 40s. a quarter, the importation of all sorts of
grain into Great Britain and Ireland was about 9,500,000 quarters--of
course displacing domestic industry employed previous to 1846 in this
production; so that the acres under wheat cultivation in Ireland have
sunk from 1,048,000 in 1847, to 664,000 in 1849; and there will be no
difficulty in explaining the immense influx of the destitute from the
country into the great towns--augmenting thus the enormous mass of
destitution, pauperism, and wretchedness, with which they are already
overwhelmed.
* * * * *
Such is a picture, however brief and imperfect, of the social
condition of our population, after twenty years of Liberal government,
self-direction, and increasing popularisation, enhanced, during the
last five years, by the blessings of Free Trade and a restricted and
fluctuating currency. The question remains the most momentous on
which public attention can now be engaged. Is this state of things
_unavoidable_, or are there any means by which, under Providence, it
may be removed or alleviated? Part of it is unavoidable, and by no
human wisdom could be averted. But by far the greater part is directly
owing to the selfish and shortsighted legislation of man, and might at
once be removed by a wise, just, and equal system of government.
There is an unavoidable tendency, in all old and wealthy states,
for riches to concentrate in the highest ranks, and numbers to
become excessive in the lowest. This arises from the different set
of principles which, at the opposite ends of the chain of society,
regulate human conduct in the direction of life. Prudence, and
the desire of elevation, are predominant at the one extremity;
recklessness, and the thirst for gratification, at the other. Life is
spent in the one in striving to gain, and endeavouring to rise; in the
other, in seeking indulgence, and struggling with its consequences.
Marriage is contracted in the former, generally speaking, from
prudential or ambitious motives; in the latter, from the influence of
passion, or the necessity of a home. In the former, fortune marries
fortune, or rank is allied to rank; in the latter, poverty is linked
to poverty, and destitution engenders destitution. These opposite set
of principles come, in the progress of time, to exercise a great
and decisive influence on the comparative numbers and circumstances
of the affluent and the destitute classes. The former can rarely, if
ever, maintain their own numbers; the latter are constantly increasing
in numbers, with scarcely any other limit on their multiplication
but the experienced impossibility of rearing a family. Fortunes run
into fortunes by intermarriage, the effects of continued saving,
and the dying out of the direct line of descendants among the rich.
Poverty is allied to poverty by the recklessness invariably produced
by destitution among the poor. Hence the rich, in an old and wealthy
community, have a tendency to get richer, and the poor poorer; and
the increase of wealth only increases this tendency, and renders it
more decided with every addition made to the national fortunes. This
tendency is altogether irrespective of primogeniture, entails, or any
other device to retain property in a particular class of society. It
exists as strongly in the mercantile class, whose fortunes are for the
most part equally divided, as in the landed, where the estate descends
in general to the eldest son; and was as conspicuous in former days in
Imperial Rome, when primogeniture was unknown, and is now complained
of as as great a grievance in Republican France, where the portions of
children are fixed by law, as it is in Great Britain, where the feudal
institutions still prevail among those connected with real estates.
In the next place, this tendency in old and opulent communities has
been much enhanced, in the case of Great Britain, by the extraordinary
combination of circumstances--some natural, some political--which
have, in a very great degree, augmented its manufacturing and
commercial industry. It would appear to be a general law of nature,
in the application of which the progress of society makes no or very
little change--that machinery and the division of labour can add
scarcely anything to the powers of human industry in the cultivation
of the soil--but that they can work prodigies in the manufactories
or trades which minister to human luxury or enjoyment. The proof of
this is decisive. England, grey in years, and overloaded with debt,
can undersell the inhabitants of Hindostan in cotton manufactures,
formed in Manchester out of cotton grown on the banks of the Ganges
or the Mississippi; but she is undersold in grain, and to a ruinous
extent, by the Polish or American cultivators, with grain raised on
the banks of the Vistula or the Ohio. It is the steam-engine and the
division of labour which have worked this prodigy. They enable a girl
or a child, with the aid of machinery, to do the work of a hundred
men. They substitute the inanimate spindle for human hands. But there
is no steam-engine in agriculture. The spade and the hoe are its
spindles, and they must be worked by human hands. Garden cultivation,
exclusively done by man, is the perfection of husbandry. By a lasting
law of nature, the first and best employment of man is reserved, and
for ever reserved, for the human race. Thus it could not be avoided
that in Great Britain, so advantageously situated for foreign commerce,
possessing the elements of great naval strength in its forests, and
the materials in the bowels of the earth from which manufacturing
greatness was to arise, should come, in process of time, to find its
manufacturing bear an extraordinary and scarce paralleled proportion to
its agricultural population.
Consequent on this was another circumstance, scarcely less important in
its effects than the former, which materially enhanced the tendency to
excess of numbers in the manufacturing portions of the community. This
was the encouragement given to the employment of _women and children
in preference to men_ in most manufacturing establishments--partly
from the greater cheapness of their labour, partly from their being
better adapted than the latter for many of the operations connected
with machines, and partly from their being more manageable, and less
addicted to strikes and other violent insurrections, for the purpose
of forcing up wages. Great is the effect of this tendency, which
daily becomes more marked as prices decline, competition increases,
and political associations among workmen become more frequent
and formidable by the general popularising of institutions. The
steam-engine thus is generally found to be the sole moving power in
factories; spindles and spinning-jennies the hands by which their
work is performed; women and children the attendants on their labour.
There is no doubt that this precocious forcing of youth, and general
employment of young women in factories, is often a great resource to
families in indigent circumstances, and enables the children and young
women of the poor to bring in, early in life, as much as enables their
parents, without privation, often to live in idleness. But what effect
_must_ it have upon the principle of population, and the vital point
for the welfare of the working-classes--the proportion between the
demand for and the supply of labour? When young children of either
sex are sure, in ordinary circumstances, of finding employment in
factories, what an extraordinary impulse is given to population around
them, under circumstances when the lasting demand for labour in society
cannot find them employment! The boys and girls find employment in the
factories for six or eight years; so far all is well: but what comes
of these boys and girls when they become men and women, fathers and
mothers of children, legitimate and illegitimate, and their place in
the factories is filled by a new race of infants and girls, destined
in a few years more to be supplanted, in their turn, by a similar
inroad of juvenile and precocious labour? It is evident that this is an
important and alarming feature in manufacturing communities; and, where
they have existed long, and are widely extended, it has a tendency to
induce, after a time, an alarming disproportion between the demand
for, and the supply of _full-grown labour_ over the entire community.
And to this we are in a great degree to ascribe the singular fact, so
well and painfully known to all persons practically acquainted with
such localities, that while manufacturing towns are the places where
the greatest market exists for juvenile or infant labour--to obtain
which the poor flock from all quarters with ceaseless alacrity--they
are at the same time the places where destitution in general prevails
to the greatest and most distressing extent, and it is most difficult
for full-grown men and women to obtain permanent situations or wages,
on which they can maintain themselves in comfort. Their only resource,
often, is to trust, in their turn, to the employment of their children
for the wages necessary to support the family. Juvenile labour
becomes profitable--a family is not felt as a burden, but rather as
an advantage _at first_; and a forced and unnatural impulse is given
to population by the very circumstances, in the community, which are
abridging the means of desirable subsistence to the persons brought
into existence.
Lastly the close proximity of Ireland, and the improvident habits
and rapid increase of its inhabitants, has for above half a century
had a most important effect in augmenting, in a degree altogether
disproportioned to the extension in the demand for labour, the
numbers of the working classes in the community in Great Britain.
Without stopping to inquire into the causes of the calamity, it may
be sufficient to refer to the fact, unhappily too well and generally
known to require any illustration, that the numbers of labourers of the
very humblest class in Ireland has been long excessive; and that any
accidental failure in the usual means of subsistence never fails to
impel multitudes in quest of work or charity, upon the more industrious
and consequently opulent realm of Britain. Great as has been the
emigration, varying from 200,000 to 250,000 a-year from Ireland, during
the last two years to Transatlantic regions, it has certainly been
equalled, if not exceeded, by the simultaneous influx of Irish hordes
into the western provinces of Britain. It is well known[15] that,
during the whole of 1848, the inundation into Glasgow was at the rate
of above 1000 a-week on an average; and into Liverpool generally above
double the number. The census now in course of preparation will furnish
many most valuable returns on this subject, and prove to what extent
English has suffered by the competition of Irish labour. In the mean
time, it seems sufficient to refer to this well-known social evil, as
one of the causes which has powerfully contributed to increase the
competition among the working-classes, and enhance the disproportion
between the demand for, and the supply of, labour, which with few and
brief exceptions has been felt as so distressing in Great Britain for
the last thirty years.
[15] It was ascertained, from an accurate return obtained by the
Magistrates of Glasgow, that the number of persons who arrived at that
city by the Clyde, or the Ayrshire railway, in four months preceding
10th April 1848, was 42,860.
Powerful as these causes of evil undoubtedly were, they were not beyond
the reach of remedy by human means--nay, circumstances simultaneously
existed which, if duly taken advantage of, might have converted them
into a source of blessings. They had enormously augmented the powers of
productive industry in the British Empire; and in the wealth, dominion,
and influence thereby acquired, the means had been opened up of giving
full employment to the multitudes displaced by its boundless machinery
and extended manufacturing skill. Great Britain and Ireland enjoyed one
immense advantage--their territory was not merely capable of yielding
food for the whole present inhabitants, numerous and rapidly increasing
as they were, but for double or triple the number. The proof of this
is decisive. Although the two islands had added above a half to their
numbers between 1790 and 1835, the importation of foreign grain had
been continually diminishing; and in the five years ending with 1835,
they had come to be on an average only 398,000 quarters of grain and
flour in a year--being not _a hundredth_ part of the whole subsistence
of the people. Further, agriculture in Great Britain, from the great
attention paid to it, and the extended capital and skill employed in
its prosecution, had come to be more and more worked by manual labour,
and was rapidly approaching--at least, in the richer districts of the
country--_the horticultural system_, in which at once the greatest
produce is obtained from the soil, and the greatest amount of human
labour is employed in its cultivation; and in which the greatest
manufacturing states of former days, Florence and Flanders, had, on the
decay of their manufacturing industry, found a never-failing resource
for a denser population than now exists in Great Britain.
But, more than all, England possessed, in her immense and
rapidly-increasing colonies in every quarter of the globe, at once
an inexhaustible vent and place of deposit for its surplus home
population, the safest and most rapidly-increasing market for its
manufacturing industry, and the most certain means, in the keeping up
the communication between the different parts of so vast a dominion,
of maintaining and extending its maritime superiority. This was a
resource unknown to any former state, and apparently reserved for the
Anglo-Saxon race, whom such mighty destinies awaited in the progress
of mankind. The forests of Canada, the steppes of Australia, the hills
of New Zealand, the savannahs of the Cape, seemed spread out by nature
to receive the numerous and sturdy children of the Anglo-Saxon race,
whom the natural progress of opulence, the division of labour, the
extension of machinery, and the substitution of female and juvenile for
male labour, were depriving of employment in their native seats. In
the colonies, manual labour was as much in demand as it was redundant
in the parent state. No machinery or manufactures existed there to
displace the arm of the labourer's industry; the felling of the forest,
the draining of the morass, the cultivation of the wild, chained the
great majority of the human race to agricultural employments, for
generations and centuries to come. Even the redundant number and rapid
increase of the Celtic population in Ireland could not keep pace with
the demand for agricultural labour in our Transatlantic dominions. The
undue preponderance of the female sex, felt as so great and consuming
an evil in all old and wealthy cities, might be rendered the greatest
possible blessing to the infant colonies, in which the greatest social
evil always experienced is the excessive numbers of the male sex. All
that was required was the removal of them from the overburdened heart
to the famishing extremities of the empire; and this, while it relieved
the labour, promised to afford ample employment to the national navy.
The magnitude of this traffic may be judged of by the fact that the
212,000 emigrants who arrived at New York in the year 1850 were brought
in 2000 vessels. At the same time the rapid growth of the colonies,
under such a system, would have furnished a steady market for the most
extensive manufacturing industry at home, and that in a class of men
descended from ourselves, imbued with our habits, actuated by feeling
our wants, and chained by circumstances, for centuries to come, to the
exclusive consumption of our manufactures. What the magnitude of this
market might have been may be judged of by the fact that, in the year
1850, Australia and New Zealand, with a population which had not yet
reached 250,000 souls, took off in the year 1850 £2,080,364 of our
manufactures, being at the rate of £8 a-head; while Russia, with a
population of 66,000,000, only took off £1,572,593 worth, being not 6d.
a-head.[16]
[16] Parliamentary Return, 1851.
The social evils which at first sight appear so alarming, therefore,
in consequence of the extension of our manufacturing population, and
the vast increase of our wealth, were in reality not only easily
susceptible of remedy, but they might, by a wise and paternal policy,
alive equally to the interests _represented and unrepresented_ of
all parts of the empire, have been converted into so many sources
of increasing prosperity and durable social happiness. All that was
required was to adopt a policy conducive alike to the interests of
_all_ parts of our varied dominions, but giving no one an undue
advantage over the other; legislating for India as if the seat of
empire were Calcutta, for Canada as if it were Quebec, for the West
Indies as if it were Kingston. "Non alia Romæ alia Athenæ," should have
been our maxim. Equal justice to all would have secured equal social
happiness to all. The distress and want of employment consequent on
the extension of machinery, and the growth of opulence in the heart
of the empire, would have become the great moving power which would
have overcome the attachments of home and country, and impelled the
multitudes whom our transmarine dominions required into those distant
but still British settlements, where ample room was to be found for
their comfort and increase, and where their rapidly increasing numbers
would have operated with powerful effect, and in a geometrical ratio,
on the industry and happiness of the parent state. Protection to
native industry at home and abroad was all that was required to bless
and hold together the mighty fabric. So various and extensive were
the British dominions, that they would soon have arrived at the point
of being independent of all the rest of the world. The materials for
our fabrics, the food for our people, were to be had in abundance in
the different parts of our own dominions. We had no reason to fear
the hostility or the stopping of supplies from any foreign power. The
trade of almost the whole globe was to Great Britain a home trade, and
brought with it its blessings and its double return, at each end of the
chain.
These great and magnificent objects, which are as clearly pointed out
by Providence as the mission of the British nation--and which the
peculiar character of the Anglo-Saxon race so evidently qualified
it to discharge--as if it had been declared in thunders from Mount
Sinai, were in a great degree attained, though in an indirect way,
under the old constitution of England; and accordingly, while it
lasted, and was undisturbed in its action by local influences in the
heart of the empire, distress was comparatively unknown at home, and
disaffection was unheard of in our distant settlements. The proof of
this is decisive. The tables already given in the former part of this
paper demonstrate when distress at home and sedition abroad seriously
set in, when emigration advanced with the steps of a giant, and crime
began to increase ten times as fast as the numbers of the people--and
the poor-rates, despite all attempts to check them by fresh laws,
threatened to swallow all but the fortunes of the _millionnaires_ in
the kingdom. _It was after 1819 that all this took place._ Previous to
this, or at least previous to 1816, when the approaching great monetary
change of that year was intimated to the Bank, and the contraction of
the currency really began, distress at home was comparatively unknown,
and the most unbounded loyalty existed in our colonial settlements in
every part of the world. But from that date our policy at home and
abroad underwent a total change. Everything was changed with the change
in the ruling influences in the state. The words of the Christian
bishop who converted Clovis were acted upon to the letter--"Brulez ce
que vous avez adoré; adorez ce que vous avez brulé." The moneyed came
to supplant the territorial aristocracy, the interests of realised
capital to prevail over those of industry and wealth in the course
of formation. The Reform Bill confirmed and perpetuated this change,
by giving the moneyed class a decided majority of votes in the House
of Commons, and the House of Commons the practical government of the
country. From that moment suffering marked us for her own. Misery
spread in the heart of the empire; many of its most flourishing
settlements abroad went to ruin; and such disaffection prevailed in
all, that Government, foreseeing the dissolution of the empire, has
already taken steps to conceal the fall of the fabric by voluntarily
taking it to pieces.
Without going into details, unhappily too well known to all to require
any lengthened illustration, it may be sufficient to refer to three
circumstances which have not only immensely aggravated the internal
distress and external disaffection of the empire, but interrupted and
neutralised the influence of all those causes of relief provided for
us by nature, and which, under a just and equal policy, would have
entirely averted them.
The first of these, and perhaps the most disastrous in its effects
upon the internal prosperity of the empire, was the great contraction
of the currency which took place by the bill of 1819. By that bill the
bank and bankers' notes, which at the close of the war had amounted,
in Great Britain and Ireland, to about £60,000,000 in round numbers,
were suddenly reduced to £32,000,000, which was the limit formally
imposed, by the acts of 1844 and 1845, on the circulation issuable
on securities in the country. We know the effect of these changes:
the _Times_ has told us what it has been. It rendered the sovereign
worth two sovereigns; the fortune of £500,000 worth £1,000,000; the
debt of £800,000,000 worth £1,600,000,000; the taxes of £50,000,000
worth £100,000,000 annually. As a necessary consequence, it reduced
the average price of wheat from 90s. to 40s.; and the entire wages
of labour and remuneration of industry, throughout the country,
_to one-half_ of their former amount. The prodigious effect of
this change upon the real amount of the national burdens, and the
remuneration of the industry which was to sustain it, may be judged
of by the invaluable table quoted on the next page, which is stated
to be taken from Mr Porter's valuable work on the _Progress of the
Nation_, published in 1847, and furnished by that gentleman with his
wonted courtesy to the _Midland Counties Herald_, to the end of 1850.
Its import will be found to be correctly condensed in the following
statement, by that able writer Gemini, contained in the same paper of
January 30:--
S. D.
"The average price of wheat
from 1800 to the close of the
war, was, 90 7
The average price of wheat from
the passing of the Corn Law
of 1815 to 1827, each inclusive, 67 2
The average price of wheat from
the passing of the Corn Law
of 1828 to 1841, each inclusive, 58 10
The average price of wheat from
the passing of the Corn Law
of 1842 to 1849, each inclusive, 53 6
The average price of 1850 40 2
During the war the average quantity of wheat required to
be sold to pay one million of taxation amounted to 220,791
quarters. The quantity required to be sold to pay one million
of taxation, according to the prices of 1850, amounts to
497,925 quarters, or 56,343 quarters more than _double_ the
quantity required to be sold during the war. The enormous
increase in the burdensomeness of taxation may be thus clearly
estimated."
Comment is unnecessary, illustration superfluous, on such a result.
------+-------------+--------+-------------+--------------+---------+
| Amount of | Yearly | Revenue | Rent of 200 |Price of |
|revenue paid |average |estimated in | acres of |wheat at |
Years.| into the | price | qrs. of |land, at 30s. |a seven |
| Exchequer, |of wheat|wheat, at the| per acre, | years' |
| the produce |per qr. |average price| estimated in |average, |
|of taxation. | |of the year. |qrs. of wheat.| per qr. |
------+-------------+--------+-------------+--------------+---------+
| £ | S. D. | qrs. | qrs. bus. | S. D. |
| | | | | |
1800 | 34,145,584 |113 10 | 5,999,224 | 52 5 | ... |
1801 | 34,113,146 |119 6 | 5,709,313 | 50 1 | ... |
1802 | 36,368,149 | 69 10 | 10,415,698 | 85 7 | ... |
1803 | 38,609,392 | 58 10 | 13,125,005 | 101 7 | ... |
1804 | 46,176,492 | 62 3 | 14,835,820 | 96 5 | ... |
1805 | 50,897,706 | 89 9 | 11,342,107 | 66 6 | ... |
1806 | 55,796,086 | 79 1 | 14,110,706 | 75 6 | 84 8 |
1807 | 59,339,321 | 75 4 | 15,753,802 | 79 5 | 79 2 |
1808 | 62,998,191 | 81 4 | 15,491,358 | 73 5 | 73 7 |
1809 | 63,719,400 | 97 4 | 13,093,027 | 61 5 | 77 8 |
1810 | 67,144,542 |106 5 | 12,619,177 | 56 3 | 84 5 |
1811 | 65,173,545 | 95 3 | 13,684,383 | 62 7 | 89 2 |
1812 | 65,037,850 |126 6 | 10,282,604 | 47 4 | 94 5 |
1813 | 68,748,363 |109 9 | 12,528,175 | 54 3 | 98 10 |
1814 | 71,134,503 | 74 4 | 19,139,328 | 80 6 | 98 8 |
1815 | 72,210,512 | 65 7 | 22,020,994 | 91 4 | 96 5 |
1816 | 62,264,546 | 78 6 | 15,863,578 | 76 3 | 93 7 |
1817 | 52,055,913 | 96 11 | 10,742,406 | 61 7 | 92 4 |
1818 | 53,747,795 | 86 3 | 12,463,256 | 69 4 | 91 6 |
1819 | 52,648,847 | 74 6 | 14,133,918 | 80 4 | 83 4 |
1820 | 54,282,958 | 67 10 | 16,004,803 | 88 5 | 77 8 |
1821 | 55,834,192 | 56 1 | 19,911,153 | 106 7 | 75 1 |
1822 | 55,663,650 | 44 7 | 24,970,609 | 134 7 | 72 1 |
1823 | 57,672,999 | 53 4 | 21,627,374 | 112 4 | 68 6 |
1824 | 59,362,403 | 63 11 | 18,574,937 | 93 7 | 63 9 |
1825 | 57,273,869 | 68 6 | 16,722,297 | 87 4 | 61 2 |
1826 | 54,894,989 | 58 8 | 18,714,200 | 102 2 | 58 11 |
1827 | 54,932,518 | 58 6 | 18,780,348 | 102 4 | 57 7 |
1828 | 55,187,142 | 60 5 | 18,268,847 | 99 2 | 58 3 |
1829 | 50,786,682 | 66 3 | 15,331,828 | 90 4 | 61 4 |
1830 | 50,056,616 | 64 3 | 15,581,825 | 93 4 | 62 11 |
1831 | 46,424,440 | 66 4 | 13,997,318 | 90 4 | 63 3 |
1832 | 46,988,755 | 58 8 | 16,018,893 | 102 2 | 61 10 |
1833 | 46,271,326 | 52 11 | 17,488,375 | 113 3 | 61 0 |
1834 | 46,425,263 | 46 2 | 20,112,027 | 130 0 | 59 3 |
1835 | 45,893,369 | 39 4 | 23,335,611 | 152 4 | 56 3 |
1836 | 48,591,180 | 48 6 | 20,037,600 | 123 6 | 53 8 |
1837 | 46,475,194 | 55 10 | 16,647,830 | 107 3 | 52 6 |
1838 | 47,333,460 | 64 7 | 14,658,103 | 92 7 | 52 3 |
1839 | 47,844,899 | 70 8 | 13,541,009 | 84 7 | 54 0 |
1840 | 47,567,565 | 66 4 | 14,341,979 | 90 3 | 55 11 |
1841 | 48,084,360 | 64 4 | 14,948,505 | 93 2 | 58 6 |
1842 | 46,965,631 | 57 3 | 16,407,207 | 104 6 | 61 0 |
1843 | 52,582,817 | 50 1 | 20,998,129 | 119 6 | 61 3 |
1844 | 54,003,754 | 51 3 | 21,074,635 | 117 0 | 60 7 |
1845 | 53,060,354 | 50 10 | 20,876,204 | 118 0 | 58 8 |
1846 | 53,790,138 | 54 8 | 19,679,318 | 109 6 | 56 4 |
1847 | 51,546,265 | 69 9 | 14,780,291 | 86 0 | 56 10 |
1848 | 53,388,717 | 50 6 | 21,144,046 | 118 7 | 54 10 |
1849 | 52,951,749 | 44 3 | 23,932,993 | 135 4 | 53 0 |
1850 | ...... | 40 2 | ...... | 149 3 | 51 6 |
------+-------------+--------+-------------+--------------+---------+
--_Midland Counties Herald_, January 31, 1851. The prices of wheat here
given are the _average_ prices of the year.
In the next place, prodigious as was the addition which this great
change made to the burdens, public and private, of the nation, the
change was attended with an alteration at times still more hurtful,
and, in the end, not less pernicious. This was the compelling the bank
to pay _all_ their notes in gold, the restraining them from issuing
paper beyond £14,000,000 bond on securities, and compelling them to
take all gold brought to them, whatever its market value was, at the
fixed price of £3, 17s. 10½d. the ounce. This at once aggravated
speculation to a most fearful degree in periods of prosperity, for
it left the bank no way of indemnifying itself for the purchase and
retention of £15,000,000 or £16,000,000 worth of treasure but by
pushing its business in all directions, and lowering its discounts
so as to accomplish that object; and it led to a rapid and ruinous
contraction of the currency the moment that exchanges became adverse,
and a drain set in upon the bank, either from the necessities of
foreign war in the neighbouring states, the mutation of commerce, or
the occurrence of a large importation of grain to supply the wants of
our own country. Incalculable as the distress which those alternations
of impulse and depression have brought upon this great manufacturing
community, and immeasurable the multitudes whom they have sunk, never
more to rise, into the lowest and most destitute classes of society,
their effect has by no means been confined to the periods during
which they actually lasted. Their baneful influence has extended to
subsequent times, and produced a continuous and almost unbroken stream
of distress; for, long ere the victims of one monetary crisis have
sunk into the grave, or been driven into exile, another storm arises
which precipitates fresh multitudes, especially in the manufacturing
towns, into the abyss of ruin. The whole, or nearly the whole, of this
terrific and continued suffering is to be ascribed to the monstrous
principles adopted in our monetary system--that of compelling the
banks to foster and encourage speculation in periods of prosperity,
and suddenly contract their issues and starve the body politic, when a
demand for the precious metals carries them in considerable quantities
out of the country. A memorable instance of the working of that
system is to be found in the Railway mania of 1845 and 1846, flowing
directly from the Acts of 1844 and 1845, which landed the nation in
an extra expenditure of nearly £300,000,000 on domestic undertakings,
at a time when commerce of every kind was in a state of the highest
activity, followed by the dreadful crash of October 1847, which, by
suddenly contracting the currency and ruining credit, threw millions
out of employment, and strained the real capital of the nation to the
very uttermost, to complete a part only of the undertakings which the
Currency Laws had given birth to. And the example of the years 1809
and 1810--when the whole metallic currency was drained out of the
country by the demands for the war in the Peninsula and Germany, but no
distress was experienced, and the national strength was put forth with
unparalleled vigour, and, as it proved, decisive effect--proves how
easily such a crisis might be averted by the extended issue of a paper
currency not liable to be withdrawn, when most required, by a public
run for gold.
In the third place, to crown the whole, and as if to put the keystone
in the arch of public distress, Free-Trade in every department was
forced upon the country by Sir Robert Peel and his successors in
1846, 1847, and 1849, under the dictation of the Manchester school,
and to promote the interest of master-manufacturers by lowering the
wages of labour and of realised capital, by cheapening the price of
everything else, and raising the value of money. We see the effects
of this already evinced in every department to which the system has
applied; and we see the commencement only of the general ruin with
which it is fraught. In agriculture, Great Britain and Ireland, which
were, practically speaking, in ordinary seasons self-supporting, have
come already to import from _nine to ten millions_ of foreign grain
for the support of the inhabitants, besides sheep and cattle in an
equal proportion. At least fifteen millions yearly is sent out of the
country, for the most part in hard cash, to buy food, which formerly
was nearly all spent in it, and enriched all classes of its people.
The exchangeable value of what remains has been lowered by at least
£75,000,000 annually, and of course so much taken away from the means
of supporting domestic labour, and paying the national defences and
the interest of public and private debt. The West Indies, formerly the
right arm of the naval strength of England, and no small source of its
riches, have been _totally ruined_; and, as a necessary consequence,
the exports of our manufactures to those once splendid settlements,
which, prior to the commencement of the new measures in 1834, had
reached £3,500,000 a-year, had sunk in 1850 to £1,821,146! Canada has
been so much impoverished by the withdrawing of all protection to
colonial industry, which has annihilated its intercolonial trade with
the West Indies, and seriously injured its export trade in grain and
wood to this country, that the British exports to that country, which
in 1839 amounted to £3,047,000, had sunk in 1850, notwithstanding
the subsequent addition of above 50 per cent to its population, to
£2,280,386.
EXPORTS TO
Canada. West Indies.
1839 L.3,047,671 L.3,986,598
1840 2,847,970 3,574,970
1841 2,947,061 3,504,004
1850 2,280,386 1,821,146
In Ireland from four to five hundred thousand acres have gone out of
the cultivation of wheat alone; although the calamitous failure of the
potato crop in 1846, and the subsequent doubts as to the success of
that prolific esculent, should have tended to an _increase_ of cereal
crops as the only thing that could be relied on, and undoubtedly would
have done so, but for the blasting influence of Free Trade, which
deprived the farmer of all hope of a profitable return for agricultural
expenditure. As a necessary consequence, above 200,000 cultivators
have disappeared from the soil of the Emerald Isle in the four last
years; about 250,000 of them or their families are immured, idle and
miserable, in the Irish workhouses, and above 40,000 in its prisons;
while above 200,000 persons from that island alone, and 300,000 from
the two islands, are annually driven into exile! Lastly, as if Free
Trade had not worked sufficient mischief on the land, it has invaded
the sea also; no longer can the Englishman say--
"His march is on the mountain wave
His home is on the deep."
The ocean is fast becoming the home for other people, to the exclusion
of its ancient lords. One single year of Free Trade in shipping,
following the repeal of the Navigation Laws, has occasioned, under the
most favourable circumstances for testing the tendency of the change,
so great a diminution in British and increase in foreign shipping in
all our harbours, that it is evident the time is rapidly approaching,
if the present system is continued, when we must renounce all thought
of maintaining naval superiority, and trust to the tender mercies of
our enemies and rivals for a respite from the evils of blockade and
famine.[17]
[17] The following Returns from three seaports alone--London,
Liverpool, and Dublin--in 1849 and 1850, will show how rapidly this
ruinous process is going on:--
| | | |
| | 1849. | 1850. |
| I. LONDON-- | Ships. | Tons. | Ships. | Tons. |
| British, | 6,917 | 1,444,311 | 6,497 | 1,376,233 |
| Foreign, | 3,040 | 443,923 | 3,413 | 527,174 |
| |--------+-----------+--------+-----------|
| II. LIVERPOOL-- | | | | |
| British, | | | | |
| Foreign, | | 56,500 | | 124,800 |
| |--------+-----------+--------+-----------|
|III. DUBLIN-- | | | | |
| British, | 351 | 63,263 | 279 | 44,146 |
| Foreign, | 125 | 27,774 | 183 | 39,250 |
+------------------+--------------------+--------------------+
| |Decrease of British.|Increase of Foreign.|
| | | |
| | Ships. | Tons. | Ships. | Tons. |
| I. LONDON, | 420 | 78,078 | 373 | 83,251 |
| |--------+-----------+--------+-----------|
| II. LIVERPOOL, | | | | 78,300 |
| |--------+-----------+--------+-----------|
|III. DUBLIN, | 72 | 19,117 | 58 | 11,476 |
| |--------+-----------+--------+-----------|
| Total, | | | | 173,027 |
The vast emigration of 300,000 annually which is now going on from the
United Kingdom, might reasonably be expected to have alleviated, in a
great degree, this most calamitous decrease in the staple branches of
industry in our people; and so it would have, certainly, had a wise
and paternal Government taken it under its own direction, and sent
the parties abroad who really were likely to want employment, and
whose removal would at once prove a relief to the country from which
they were sent, and a blessing to that for which they were destined.
But this is so far from being the case, that there is perhaps no one
circumstance in our social condition which has done more of late years
to aggravate the want of employment, and enhance the distress among
the working-classes, than _the very magnitude of this emigration_.
The dogma of Free Trade has involved even the humble cabins of the
emigrant's ship: there, as elsewhere, it has spread nothing but misery
and desolation. The reason is, that it has been left to the unaided,
undirected efforts of the emigrants themselves.
Government was too glad of an excuse not to interfere: the constantly
destitute condition of the Treasury, and the ceaseless clamour
against taxation, in consequence of the wasting away of the national
resources under the action of Free Trade and a contracted currency,
made them too happy of any excuse for avoiding any payments from the
public Treasury, even on behalf of the most suffering and destitute
of the community. This excuse was found in the plausible plea, that
any advances on their part would interfere with the free exercise of
individual enterprise--a plea somewhat similar to what it would be if
all laws for the protection of paupers, minors, and lunatics, were
swept away, lest the free action of the creditors on their estates
should be disturbed. The consequence has been that the whole, or nearly
the whole, of the immense stream of emigration which general distress
has now caused to flow from the British Islands, has been sustained
by the efforts of private individuals, and left to the tender mercies
of the owners or freighters of emigrant ships. The result is well
known. Frightful disasters, from imperfect manning and equipment, have
occurred to several of these misery-laden vessels. A helpless multitude
is thrown ashore at New York and Montreal, destitute alike of food,
clothing, or the means of getting on to the frontier, where its labour
could be of value; and the competition for employment at home has been
increased to a frightful degree by the removal of so large a proportion
of such of the tenantry or middle class as were possessed of little
capitals; and had the means either of maintaining themselves or giving
employment to others. At least L.3,000,000 yearly goes abroad with the
emigrant ships, and that is drawn almost entirely from the lower class
of farmers, the very men who employ the poor. The class who have gone
away was for the most part that which should have remained, for it had
the means of doing, something in the world, and employing others;
that which was left at home, was that which should have been removed,
because they were the destitute who could neither find employment
in these islands, nor do anything on their own account from want of
funds. Hence above a million and a-half of persons in Great Britain,
and above seven hundred thousand in Ireland, on an average of years,
are constantly maintained by the poor-rates, for the most part in
utter idleness, although the half of them are able-bodied, and their
labour--if they could only be forwarded to the frontier of civilisation
in America--would be of incalculable service to our own colonies or the
United States.
The very magnitude of the trade employed in the exportation of the
emigrants, and the importation of food for those who remain, has gone
far to conceal the ruinous effects of Free Trade. Between the carrying
out of emigrants, and the bringing in of grain--the exportation of
our strength, and the importation of our weakness--our chief seaports
may continue for some time to drive a gainful traffic. The _Liverpool
Times_ observes:--
"The number of emigrant vessels which sailed from Liverpool
during the last year, was 568. Of these vessels, many are
from 1500 to 2000 tons burden, and a few of them even reach
3000 tons. They are amongst the finest vessels that ever were
built, are well commanded, well-manned, fitted out in excellent
style, and present a wonderful improvement in all respects,
when compared with the same class of vessels even half a dozen
years ago. Taking the average passage-money of each passenger
in these vessels at £6, the conveying of emigrants yields a
revenue of upwards of £1,000,000 sterling to the shipping which
belongs to or frequents this port, independent of the great
amount of money which the passage of such an immense multitude
of persons through the town must cause to be spent in it. In
fact, the passage and conveyance of emigrants has become one of
the greatest trades of Liverpool."--_Liverpool Times_, Jan. 10,
1851.
The number of emigrants from the Mersey and the Clyde, since the days
of Free Trade began, have been prodigious, and rapidly increasing. They
have stood thus:--
Year. Liverpool. Clyde.
1847 134,524 7,728
1848 131,121 10,035
1849 153,902 14,968
1850 174,187 14,203
It was precisely the same in the declining days of the Roman
empire--the great seaport towns continued to flourish when all other
interests in the state were rapidly sinking; and when the plains in
the interior were desolate, or tenanted only by the ox or the buffalo,
the great cities were still the abodes of vast realised wealth and
unbounded private luxury. We are rapidly following in the same path.
The realised capital of Great Britain was estimated in 1814 at
L.1,200,000,000; in 1841, Mr Porter estimated it at L.2,000,000,000;
the capital subject to legacy duty in Great Britain, on an average of
forty-one years, from 1797 to 1841, was L.26,000,000; in the single
year 1840 it was L.40,500,000. The increase of realised capital among
the rich has been nearly as great as that of pauperism, misery, and
consequent emigration among the poor--the well-known and oft-observed
premonitory symptoms of the decline of nations.
* * * * *
It is in the midst of these numerous and overwhelming evils, the
result mainly of theoretical innovation and class government in the
country--when above two millions of paupers in the two islands are
painfully supported by public assessment; when three hundred thousand
are annually driven into exile, and a hundred and fifty thousand more
are constantly supported in jails, one-half of whom are committed
for serious crimes;[18] when all classes, excepting those engaged in
the export trade of human beings and the import of human food, are
languishing from the decline of domestic employment, and the constantly
increasing influx of foreign goods, both rude and manufactured--that
we are assured by one benevolent set of philanthropists that all will
be right, if we only give the starving working-classes model houses,
rented at L.8 each, to live in; by another, that ragged schools for
their destitute children will set all in order; by a third, that a
schoolmaster in every wynd is alone required to remove all the evils
under which we labour; by a fourth, that cold baths and wash-houses
to lave their emaciated limbs, are the great thing; by a fifth, that
church extension is the only effectual remedy, and that, till there is
a minister for every seven hundred inhabitants, it is in vain to hope
for any social amelioration. We respect the motives which actuate each
and all of these benevolent labourers in the great vineyard of human
suffering; we acknowledge that each within a limited sphere does some
good, and extricates a certain number of individuals or families out
of the abyss of degradation or suffering in which they are immersed.
As to anything like national relief, or alleviation of distress in any
sensible degree, from their united efforts, when the great causes of
evil which have been mentioned continue in undiminished activity, it is
as chimerical as to expect by the schoolmaster or the washing-woman to
arrest the ravages of the plague or the cholera.
[18] Including the police committals, much more numerous than those for
trial.
Two circumstances of general operation, and overwhelming importance,
render all these various and partial remedies, while the great
causes which depress the demand for labour and deprive the people of
employment continue in operation, entirely nugatory and ineffectual, in
a general view, to arrest our social evils.
The first of these is, that these remedies, one and all of them, are
calculated for the elevation and intellectual or moral improvement of
the people, but have no tendency to improve their circumstances, or
diminish the load of pauperism, destitution, and misery with which
they are overwhelmed. Until the latter is done, however, all the
efforts made for the attainment of the former, how benevolent and
praiseworthy soever, will have no general effect, and, in a national
point of view, may be regarded as almost equal to nothing. The reason
is that, generally speaking, the human race are governed, in the first
instance, almost entirely by their physical sufferings or comforts, and
that intellectual or moral improvement cannot be either thought of or
attended to till a certain degree of ease as to the imperious demands
of physical nature has been attained. In every age, doubtless, there
are some persons of both sexes who will heroically struggle against the
utmost physical privation, and pursue the path of virtue, or sedulously
improve their minds, under circumstances the most adverse, and with
facilities the most inconsiderable. But these are the exceptions, not
the rule. The number of such persons is so inconsiderable, compared
to the immense mass who are governed by their physical sensations,
that remedies addressed to the intellect of man, without reference
to the improvement of his circumstances, can never operate generally
upon society. Even the most intellectual and powerful minds must give
way under a certain amount of physical want or necessity. Take Newton
and Milton, Bacon and Descartes, Cervantes and Cicero, and make them
walk thirty miles in a wintry day, and come in to a wretched hovel at
night, and see what they will desire. Rely upon it, it will be neither
philosophy nor poetry, but warmth and food. A good fire and a good
supper would attract them from all the works which have rendered their
names immortal. Can we expect the great body of mankind to be less
under the influence of the imperious demands of our common physical
nature than the most gifted of the human race? What do the people
constantly ask for? It is neither cold baths nor warm baths, ragged
schools nor normal schools, churches nor chapels, model houses nor
mechanics' institutes--"It is a fair day's wage for a fair day's work."
We would all do the same in their circumstances. Give them _that_, the
one thing needful alike for social happiness and moral improvement, and
you make a mighty step in social amelioration and elevation; because
you lay _the foundation_ on which it all rests, and on which it must,
in a general point of view, all depend--without it, all the rest will
be found to be as much thrown away as the seed cast on the arid desert.
In the next place, the intellectual cultivation and elevation which
is regarded by so large a political party, and so numerous a body
of benevolent individuals, as the panacea for all our social evils,
never has affected, and never can affect, more than a limited class
in society. We may indeed teach all, or nearly all, to read; but can
we make them all read books, or still more, read books that will do
them any good, when they leave school, and become their own masters,
and are involved in the cares, oppressed with the labours, and exposed
to the temptations of the world? Did any man ever find a fifth of
his acquaintance of any rank, from the House of Peers and the Bar
downwards, who were really and practically directed in manhood and
womanhood by intellectual pleasures or pursuits? Habit, early training,
easy circumstances, absence of temptation, a fortunate marriage, or
the like, are the real circumstances which retain the great body of
the human race of every rank in the right path. They are neither
positively bad, nor positively good: they are characters of imperfect
goodness, and mainly swayed by their physical circumstances. If you
come to a crisis with them, when the selfish or generous feelings must
be acted upon, nine-tenths of them will be swayed by the former. The
disciples of Rousseau will contest these propositions: we would only
recommend them to look around them, and see whether or not they are
demonstrated by every day's experience in every rank of life. We wish
it were otherwise; but we must take mankind as they are, and legislate
for them on their _average_ capacity, without supposing that they are
generally to be influenced by the intellectual appliances adapted only
to a small fraction of their number. And, accordingly, upon looking at
the statistical tables given in the commencement of this Essay, it will
be found that, while emigration, crime, and pauperism, have advanced
rapidly, despite all the efforts of philanthropy and religion, which
are _permanent_, but affect only a part of society, they exhibit the
most remarkable fluctuations, according to the prosperity or distress
of _particular_ years, because the causes _then_ in operation affected
the _whole_ of mankind.
The only way, therefore, in which the physical circumstances of the
great body of mankind can be ameliorated, or room can be afforded for
the moral and intellectual elevation of such of them as have received
from nature minds susceptible of such training, is by restoring
_the equilibrium between the demand for labour and the numbers of
the people_, which our late measures have done so much to subvert.
By that means, and that means _alone_, can the innumerable social
evils under which we labour be alleviated. Without it, all the other
remedies devised by philanthropy, pursued with zeal, cherished by
hope, will prove ineffectual. How that is to be done must be evident
to every person of common understanding. The demand for labour must
be increased, the supply of labour must be diminished. The first can
only be done, by a moderate degree of Protection to Native Industry, at
present beat down to the dust in every department by the competition
of foreign states, where money is more scarce and taxation lighter,
and consequently production is less expensive. The second can only be
attained by a systematic emigration, conducted at the public expense,
and drawing of annually an hundred or an hundred and fifty thousand
of the _most destitute_ of the community, who have not the means of
transport for themselves, and, if not so removed, will permanently
encumber our streets, our jails, our workhouses.
But money is required for these things; and where, it will be asked, is
money to be found in this already overtaxed and suffering community?
The answer is, the money-question is the easiest of all; for it
will be attained in abundance by the very means requisite to attain
the other objects. Protection, even on the most moderate scale, to
Native Industry, is not to be attained without the imposition of
import-duties; and that will at once produce the funds requisite
for the attainment of all these objects. Laid on the importation of
all goods, rude or manufactured, they would yield such a revenue as
would enable us to take off the Income Tax, and thereby let loose
L.5,500,000 a-year, now absorbed by it, for the encouragement of
domestic industry. Agriculture, manufactures of all sorts, would take
a renewed start from the exclusion, to a certain degree, of foreign
competition. Domestic industry would cease to languish, because the
ruinous competition of foreigners working at a third of our wages would
be checked. By these means an ample fund would be raised to enable us
to transport, at the public expense, and comfortably settle in their
new habitations, some hundred thousand annually of the most destitute
class of our people--that class who cannot get away themselves, and,
as they are thrown out of employment by Free Trade, now encumber our
hospitals, jails, and workhouses. We would convert them from paupers
into healthful and sturdy emigrants, doubling in numbers, with constant
additions from the parent state, every ten years; and consuming L.8
a-head worth of our manufactures. Property in the colonies would double
in value every five years, from the joint effect of domestic labour,
and the prolific stream of external immigration; and every acre cleared
in these fertile wilds would cause a wheel to revolve, or a spindle to
move, or a family to be blessed, in the parent state.
We can affix no limits in imagination to what the British Empire
might become, or the amount of social and general happiness it might
contain, with the physical advantages which nature has given it, and
the character which race, and consequent institutions, have impressed
upon its inhabitants. In the centre of the Empire stands the parent
state, teeming with energy, overflowing with inhabitants, with coal
and ironstone in its bosom capable of putting in motion manufactories
for the supply of half the globe. In the extremities are colonies
in every quarter of the earth, possessing waste lands of boundless
extent and inexhaustible fertility, producing every luxury which the
heart of man can desire, and one only of which could furnish the whole
staple required for its greatest fabrics.[19] With such providential
wisdom were the various parts of this immense empire fitted for each
other; so marvellously was the surplus, whether in animated beings
or rude produce, of one part adapted to the deficiencies and wants
of another, that nothing but a just and equal system of government,
alive to the wants, and solicitous for the interests, of every part
of its vast dominion, was requisite to render it the most united,
prosperous, growing, and powerful state that ever existed on the
face of the earth. The Roman Empire, while spread around the shores
of the Mediterranean Sea, affords but a faint image of what it might
have been. _The ocean was its inland lake_; the British navy its
internal means of communication; the foreign trade of the whole
earth its home trade. We obtained the empire of the seas precisely
to enable us to carry out this magnificent destiny; the victory of
Trafalgar presented it to our grasp. But a just and equal system of
government was essential to the existence and duration of so immense a
dominion; a sense of fair administration, a consciousness of protected
interests, would alone hold it together for any length of time. The
simple precept of the gospel, "to do to others as we would they should
do unto us," would, if duly carried into practice, have for ever
kept united the mighty fabric, and caused it to embrace in peace and
happiness half the globe. This object was practically attained by the
virtual representation of all classes, interests, and colonies, under
the old constitution; and thence the steady growth, vast extent, and
unvarying loyalty during many a severe contest, of this multifarious
dominion. The new constitution, by vesting the government in the
representatives of our manufacturing towns, and thence introducing the
rule of class interests, is visibly and rapidly destroying it. The only
remedy practicable--and even that is so only for a short season--is
the _extension to the colonies of a direct share in the Imperial
Parliament_; but that is far too just and wise a measure to permit the
hope that it will ever be embraced by the class interest who now rule
the state.
[19] "At present the native consumption of cotton in India is estimated
at from 1,000,000,000 lb. to 3,000,000,000 lb. annually; while the
export to Great Britain is only 60,000,000 lb., and to all the world
only 150,000,000 lb. In this state of things, the rough production that
suits the home market will, of course, only be carried on; while, if
sufficient means of conveyance existed to render the cotton that is now
grown in the interior, at 1¼d. per lb., remunerative for export,
increased care in its preparation would be manifested, as was the
case in the United States, just in proportion to the increased reward
that would result. In developing these views, Mr Chapman undertakes
to demonstrate, by well-arranged facts and tables, that the export of
cotton from India to England has risen exactly as the difficulties or
expense of its transmission have been diminished; and also that costs
and impediments still remain which are sufficient to account for the
smallness of the quantity we continue to receive."--_Times_, Jan. 1851.
Notwithstanding all the obvious advantages of the course of policy
which we have recommended--though it would at once furnish the
means, as we have shown in a former paper, of obviating our external
dangers and maintaining our national independence, and at the same
time relieve our internal distresses and extend and consolidate our
colonial dependencies--we have scarcely any hope that it will be
adopted. The Free-traders have got such a hold of the burghs--to which
the Reform Bill gave a decided majority in the House of Commons--and
their leaders so perseveringly pursue their own _immediate_ interest,
without the slightest regard to the ruin they are bringing upon all
other interests of the state, that the hope of any change of policy--at
least till some terrible external disaster has opened the eyes of
the nation to a sense of the impending calamities brought on them by
their rulers--may be regarded as hopeless, without a general national
effort. The imposition of a moderate import duty upon the produce,
whether rude or manufactured, of all other nations, but with an entire
exemption to our own colonies, is obviously the first step in the right
direction, and would go far to alleviate our distresses, and at the
same time replenish the public Treasury and avert our external dangers.
In taking it, we should only be following the example of America,
Prussia, and nearly all other nations, who levy a duty of 30 per cent
on our manufactures, and thereby make us pay half of their taxes. But
it is to be feared the mania of Free Trade will prevail over a wise and
expedient policy, calculated equally to advance the interests of all
classes in the state. We do not say, therefore, that any such system
will be adopted; but this we do say, and with these words we nail our
colours to the mast,--PROTECTION MUST BE RESTORED, OR THE BRITISH
EMPIRE WILL BE DESTROYED.
MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.
BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON.
BOOK IV.--INITIAL CHAPTER:--COMPRISING MR CAXTON'S OPINIONS ON THE
MATRIMONIAL STATE, SUPPORTED BY LEARNED AUTHORITIES.
"It was no bad idea of yours, Pisistratus," said my father graciously,
"to depict the heightened affections and the serious intention's of
Signior Riccabocca by a single stroke--_He left off his spectacles!_
Good."
"Yet," quoth my uncle, "I think Shakspeare represents a lover as
falling into slovenly habits, neglecting his person, and suffering his
hose to be ungartered, rather than paying that attention to his outer
man which induces Signior Riccabocca to leave off his spectacles, and
look as handsome as nature will permit him."
"There are different degrees and many phases of the passion," replied
my father. "Shakspeare is speaking of an ill-treated, pining, wobegone
lover, much aggrieved by the cruelty of his mistress--a lover who has
found it of no avail to smarten himself up, and has fallen despondently
into the opposite extreme. Whereas Signior Riccabocca has nothing to
complain of in the barbarity of Miss Jemima."
"Indeed he has not!" cried Blanche,
tossing her head--"forward creature!"
"Yes, my dear," said my mother, trying her best to look stately, "I am
decidedly of opinion that, in that respect, Pisistratus has lowered the
dignity of the sex. Not intentionally," added my mother mildly, and
afraid she had said something too bitter; "but it is very hard for a
man to describe us women."
The Captain nodded approvingly; Mr Squills smiled; my father quietly
resumed the thread of his discourse.
"To continue," quoth he. "Riccabocca has no reason to despair of
success in his suit, nor any object in moving his mistress to
compassion. He may, therefore, very properly tie up his garters and
leave off his spectacles. What do you say, Mr Squills?--for, after all,
since love-making cannot fail to be a great constitutional derangement,
the experience of a medical man must be the best to consult."
"Mr Caxton," replied Squills, obviously flattered, "you are quite
right: when a man makes love, the organs of self-esteem and desire of
applause are greatly stimulated, and therefore, of course, he sets
himself off to the best advantage. It is only, as you observe, when,
like Shakspeare's lover, he has given up making love as a bad job,
and has received that severe hit on the ganglions which the cruelty
of a mistress inflicts, that he neglects his personal appearance: he
neglects it, not because he is in love, but because his nervous system
is depressed. That was the cause, if you remember, with poor Major
Prim. He wore his wig all awry when Susan Smart jilted him; but I set
it all right for him."
"By shaming Miss Smart into repentance, or getting him a new
sweetheart?" asked my uncle.
"Pooh!" answered Squills, "by quinine and cold bathing."
"We may therefore grant," renewed my father, "that, as a general rule,
the process of courtship tends to the spruceness, and even foppery,
of the individual engaged in the experiment, as Voltaire has very
prettily proved somewhere. Nay, the Mexicans, indeed, were of opinion
that the lady at least ought to continue those cares of her person
even after marriage. There is extant, in Sahagun's _History of New
Spain_, the advice of an Aztec or Mexican mother to her daughter,
in which she says--'That your husband may not take you in dislike,
adorn yourself, wash yourself, and let your garments be clean.' It
is true that the good lady adds,--'Do it in moderation; since, if
every day you are washing yourself and your clothes, the world will
say that you are over-delicate; and particular people will call
you--TAPETZON TINEMÁXOCH!' What those words precisely mean," added my
father modestly, "I cannot say, since I never had the opportunity to
acquire the ancient Aztec language--but something very opprobrious and
horrible, no doubt."
"I daresay a philosopher like Signior Riccabocca," said my uncle,
"was not himself very _Tapetzon tine_--what d'ye call it?--and a good
healthy English wife, like that poor affectionate Jemima, was thrown
away upon him."
"Roland," said my father, "you don't like foreigners: a respectable
prejudice, and quite natural in a man who has been trying his best to
hew them in pieces, and blow them up into splinters. But you don't like
philosophers either--and for that dislike you have no equally good
reason."
"I only implied that they were not much addicted to soap and water,"
said my uncle.
"A notable mistake. Many great philosophers have been very great
beaux. Aristotle was a notorious fop. Buffon put on his best laced
ruffles when he sat down to write, which implies that he washed his
hands first. Pythagoras insists greatly on the holiness of frequent
ablutions; and Horace--who, in his own way, was as good a philosopher
as any the Romans produced--takes care to let us know what a neat,
well-dressed, dapper little gentleman he was. But I don't think you
ever read the 'Apology of Apuleius?'"
"Not I--what is it about?" asked the Captain.
"About a great many things. It is that Sage's vindication from several
malignant charges--amongst others, and principally indeed, that of
being much too refined and effeminate for a philosopher. Nothing
can exceed the rhetorical skill with which he excuses himself for
using--tooth-powder. 'Ought a philosopher,' he exclaims, 'to allow
anything unclean about him, especially in the mouth--the mouth, which
is the vestibule of the soul, the gate of discourse, the portico of
thought! Ah, but Æmilianus [the accuser of Apuleius] never opens
_his_ mouth but for slander and calumny--tooth-powder would indeed be
unbecoming to _him_! Or, if he use any, it will not be my good Arabian
tooth-powder but charcoal and cinders. Ay, his teeth should be as foul
as his language! And yet even the crocodile likes to have his teeth
cleaned; insects get into them, and, horrible reptile though he be,
he opens his jaws inoffensively to a faithful dentistical bird, who
volunteers his beak for a toothpick.'"
My father was now warm in the subject he had started, and soared
miles away from Riccabocca and "My Novel." "And observe," he
exclaimed--"observe with what gravity this eminent Platonist pleads
guilty to the charge of having a mirror. 'Why, what,' he exclaims,
'more worthy of the regards of a human creature than his own image,'
(_nihil respectabilius homini quam formam suam!_) Is not that one of
our children the most dear to us who is called 'the picture of his
father?' But take what pains you will with a picture, it can never be
so like you as the face in your mirror! Think it discreditable to look
with proper attention on one's-self in the glass! Did not Socrates
recommend such attention to his disciples--did he not make a great
moral agent of the speculum? The handsome, in admiring their beauty
therein, were admonished that handsome is who handsome does; and the
more the ugly stared at themselves, the more they became naturally
anxious to hide the disgrace of their features in the loveliness of
their merits. Was not Demosthenes always at his speculum? Did he not
rehearse his causes before it as before a master in the art? He learned
his eloquence from Plato, his dialectics from Eubulides; but as for his
delivery--there, he came to the mirror!'
"Therefore," concluded Mr Caxton, returning unexpectedly to the
subject--"therefore it is no reason to suppose that Dr Riccabocca is
averse to cleanliness and decent care of the person, because he is a
philosopher; and, all things considered, he never showed himself more a
philosopher than when he left off his spectacles and looked his best."
"Well," said my mother kindly, "I only hope it may turn out happily.
But I should have been better pleased if Pisistratus had not made Dr
Riccabocca so reluctant a wooer."
"Very true," said the Captain; "the Italian does not shine as a lover.
Throw a little more fire into him, Pisistratus--something gallant and
chivalrous."
"Fire--gallantry--chivalry!" cried my father, who had taken Riccabocca
under his special protection--"why, don't you see that the man
is described as a philosopher?--and I should like to know when a
philosopher ever plunged into matrimony without considerable misgivings
and cold shivers. Indeed, it seems that--perhaps before he was a
philosopher--Riccabocca _had_ tried the experiment, and knew what it
was. Why, even that plain-speaking, sensible, practical man, Metellus
Numidicus, who was not even a philosopher, but only a Roman Censor,
thus expressed himself in an exhortation to the People to perpetrate
matrimony--'If, O Quirites, we could do without wives, we should
all dispense with that subject of care, (_eâ molestiâ careremus_;)
but since nature has so managed it, that we cannot live with women
comfortably, nor without them at all, let us rather provide for the
human race than our own temporary felicity.'"
Here the ladies set up a cry of such indignation, that both Roland and
myself endeavoured to appease their wrath by hasty assurances that we
utterly repudiated that damnable doctrine of Metellus Numidicus.
My father, wholly unmoved, as soon as a sullen silence was established,
recommenced--"Do not think, ladies," said he, "that you were without
advocates at that day: there were many Romans gallant enough to blame
the Censor for a mode of expressing himself which they held to be
equally impolite and injudicious. 'Surely,' said they, with some
plausibility, 'if Numidicus wished men to marry, he need not have
referred so peremptorily to the disquietudes of the connection, and
thus have made them more inclined to turn away from matrimony than
given them a relish for it.' But against these critics one honest man
(whose name of Titus Castricius should not be forgotten by Posterity)
maintained that Metellus Numidicus could not have spoken more properly;
'For remark,' said he, 'that Metellus was a censor, not a rhetorician.
It becomes rhetoricians to adorn, and disguise, and make the best of
things; but Metellus, _sanctus vir_--a holy and blameless man, grave
and sincere to whit, and addressing the Roman people in the solemn
capacity of Censor--was bound to speak the plain truth, especially as
he was treating of a subject on which the observation of every day, and
the experience of every life, could not leave the least doubt upon the
mind of his audience.' Still Riccabocca, having decided to marry, has
no doubt prepared himself to bear all the concomitant evils--as becomes
a professed sage; and I own I admire the art with which Pisistratus has
drawn the precise woman likely to suit a philosopher."
Pisistratus bows, and looks round complacently; but recoils from two
very peevish and discontented faces feminine.
MR CAXTON (completing his sentence,)--"Not only as regards mildness
of temper and other household qualifications, but as regards the very
_person_ of the object of his choice. For you evidently remembered,
Pisistratus, the reply of Bias, when asked his opinion on marriage:
[Greek: Êtoi kalên hexeis, ê aischran; kai ei kalên, hexeis koinên; ei
dê aischran, hexeis poinên.]"
Pisistratus tries to look as if he had the opinion of Bias by heart,
and nods acquiescingly.
MR CAXTON.--"That is, my dears, 'the woman you would marry is either
handsome or ugly: if handsome, she is koiné, viz. you don't have her
to yourself; if ugly, she is poiné--that is, a fury.' But, as it is
observed in Aulus Gellius, (whence I borrow this citation,) there is
a wide interval between handsome and ugly. And thus Ennius, in his
tragedy of _Menalippus_, uses an admirable expression to designate
women of the proper degree of matrimonial comeliness, such as a
philosopher would select. He calls this degree _stata forma_--a
rational, mediocre sort of beauty, which is not liable to be either
koiné or poiné. And Favorinus, who was a remarkably sensible man, and
came from Provence--the male inhabitants of which district have always
valued themselves on their knowledge of love and ladies--calls this
said _stata forma_ the beauty of wives--the uxorial beauty. Ennius
says, that women of a _stata forma_ are almost always safe and modest.
Now Jemima, you observe, is described as possessing this _stata forma_;
and it is the nicety of your observation in this respect, which I
like the most in the whole of your description of a philosopher's
matrimonial courtship, Pisistratus, (excepting only the stroke of the
spectacles,) for it shows that you had properly considered the opinion
of Bias, and mastered all the counter logic suggested in Book v.
chapter xi., of Aulus Gellius."
"For all that," said Blanche, half-archly, half-demurely, with a smile
in the eye, and a pout of the lip, "I don't remember that Pisistratus,
in the days when he wished to be most complimentary, ever assured me
that I had a _stata forma_--a rational, mediocre sort of beauty."
"And I think," observed my uncle, "that when he comes to his real
heroine, whoever that may be, he will not trouble his head much about
either Bias or Aulus Gellius."
CHAPTER II.
Matrimony is certainly a great change in life. One is astonished not
to find a notable alteration in one's friend, even if he or she have
been only wedded a week. In the instance of Dr and Mrs Riccabocca
the change was peculiarly visible. To speak first of the lady, as in
chivalry bound, Mrs Riccabocca had entirely renounced that melancholy
which had characterised Miss Jemima: she became even sprightly and
gay, and looked all the better and prettier for the alteration. She
did not scruple to confess honestly to Mrs Dale, that she was now of
opinion that the world was very far from approaching its end. But,
in the meanwhile, she did not neglect the duty which the belief she
had abandoned serves to inculcate--"She set her house in order."
The cold and penurious elegance that had characterised the Casino
disappeared like enchantment--that is, the elegance remained, but the
cold and penury fled before the smile of woman. Like Puss-in-Boots
after the nuptials of his master, Jackeymo only now caught minnows and
sticklebacks for his own amusement. Jackeymo looked much plumper, and
so did Riccabocca. In a word, the fair Jemima became an excellent wife.
Riccabocca secretly thought her extravagant, but, like a wise man,
declined to look at the house bills, and ate his joint in unreproachful
silence.
Indeed, there was so much unaffected kindness in the nature of Mrs
Riccabocca--beneath the quiet of her manner there beat so genially
the heart of the Hazeldeans--that she fairly justified the favourable
anticipations of Mrs Dale. And though the Doctor did not noisily
boast of his felicity, nor, as some new married folks do, thrust it
insultingly under the _nimis unctis naribus_--the turned-up noses of
your surly old married folks, nor force it gaudily and glaringly on
the envious eyes of the single, you might still see that he was a
more cheerful and light-hearted man than before. His smile was less
ironical, his politeness less distant. He did not study Machiavelli so
intensely,--and he did not return to the spectacles; which last was an
excellent sign. Moreover, the humanising influence of the tidy English
wife might be seen in the improvement of his outward or artificial
man. His clothes seemed to fit him better; indeed, the clothes were
new. Mrs Dale no longer remarked that the buttons were off the
wrist-bands, which was a great satisfaction to her. But the sage still
remained faithful to the pipe, the cloak, and the red silk umbrella.
Mrs Riccabocca had (to her credit be it spoken) used all becoming and
wifelike arts against these three remnants of the old bachelor Adam,
but in vain. "_Anima mia_--soul of mine," said the Doctor tenderly, "I
hold the cloak, the umbrella, and the pipe, as the sole relics that
remain to me of my native country. Respect and spare them."
Mrs Riccabocca was touched, and had the good sense to perceive that
man, let him be ever so much married, retains certain signs of his
ancient independence--certain tokens of his old identity, which a
wife, the most despotic, will do well to concede. She conceded the
cloak, she submitted to the umbrella, she concealed her abhorrence of
the pipe. After all, considering the natural villany of our sex, she
confessed to herself that she might have been worse off. But, through
all the calm and cheerfulness of Riccabocca, a nervous perturbation
was sufficiently perceptible;--it commenced after the second week of
marriage--it went on increasing, till one bright sunny afternoon, as
he was standing on his terrace gazing down upon the road, at which
Jackeymo was placed,--lo, a stage-coach stopped! The Doctor made a
bound, and put both hands to his heart as if he had been shot; he then
leapt over the balustrade, and his wife from her window beheld him
flying down the hill, with his long hair streaming in the wind, till
the trees hid him from her sight.
"Ah," thought she with a natural pang of conjugal jealousy, "henceforth
I am only second in his home. He has gone to welcome his child!" And at
that reflection Mrs Riccabocca shed tears.
But so naturally amiable was she, that she hastened to curb her
emotion, and efface as well as she could the trace of a stepmother's
grief. When this was done, and a silent self-rebuking prayer murmured
over, the good woman descended the stairs with alacrity, and, summoning
up her best smiles, emerged on the terrace.
She was repaid; for scarcely had she come into the open air, when two
little arms were thrown round her, and the sweetest voice that ever
came from a child's lips, sighed out in broken English, "Good mamma,
love me a little."
"Love you? with my whole heart!" cried the stepmother, with all a
mother's honest passion. And she clasped the child to her breast.
"God bless you, my wife!" said Riccabocca, in a husky tone.
"Please take this too," added Jackeymo in Italian, as well as his sobs
would let him--and he broke off a great bough full of blossoms from his
favourite orange-tree, and thrust it into his mistress's hand. She had
not the slightest notion what he meant by it!
CHAPTER III.
Violante was indeed a bewitching child--a child to whom I defy Mrs
Caudle herself (immortal Mrs Caudle!) to have been a harsh stepmother.
Look at her now, as, released from those kindly arms, she stands, still
clinging with one hand to her new mamma, and holding out the other to
Riccabocca--with those large dark eyes swimming in happy tears. What a
lovely smile!--what an ingenuous candid brow! She looks delicate--she
evidently requires care--she wants the mother. And rare is the woman
who would not love her the better for that! Still, what an innocent
infantine bloom in those clear smooth cheeks!--and in that slight
frame, what exquisite natural grace!
"And this, I suppose, is your nurse, darling?" said Mrs Riccabocca,
observing a dark foreign-looking woman, dressed very strangely--without
cap or bonnet, but a great silver arrow stuck in her hair, and a
filagree chain or necklace resting upon her kerchief.
"Ah, good Annetta," said Violante in Italian. "Papa, she says she is to
go back; but she is not to go back--is she?"
Riccabocca, who had scarcely before noticed the woman, started at
that question--exchanged a rapid glance with Jackeymo--and then,
muttering some inaudible excuse, approached the Nurse, and, beckoning
her to follow him, went away into the grounds. He did not return for
more than an hour, nor did the woman then accompany him home. He said
briefly to his wife that the Nurse was obliged to return at once to
Italy, and that she would stay in the village to catch the mail; that
indeed she would be of no use in their establishment, as she could not
speak a word of English; but that he was sadly afraid Violante would
pine for her. And Violante did pine at first. But still, to a child
it is so great a thing to find a parent--to be at home--that, tender
and grateful as Violante was, she could not be inconsolable while her
father was there to comfort.
For the first few days, Riccabocca scarcely permitted any one to be
with his daughter but himself. He would not even leave her alone with
his Jemima. They walked out together--sat together for hours in the
Belvidere. Then by degrees he began to resign her more and more to
Jemima's care and tuition, especially in English, of which language at
present she spoke only a few sentences, (previously, perhaps, learned
by heart,) so as to be clearly intelligible.
CHAPTER IV.
There was one person in the establishment of Dr Riccabocca, who was
satisfied neither with the marriage of his master nor the arrival of
Violante--and that was our friend Lenny Fairfield. Previous to the
all-absorbing duties of courtship, the young peasant had secured a
very large share of Riccabocca's attention. The sage had felt interest
in the growth of this rude intelligence struggling up to light. But
what with the wooing, and what with the wedding, Lenny Fairfield had
sunk very much out of his artificial position as pupil, into his
natural station of under-gardener. And on the arrival of Violante,
he saw, with natural bitterness, that he was clean forgotten, not
only by Riccabocca, but almost by Jackeymo. It was true that the
master still lent him books, and the servant still gave him lectures
on horticulture. But Riccabocca had no time nor inclination now to
amuse himself with enlightening that tumult of conjecture which the
books created. And if Jackeymo bad been covetous of those mines of
gold buried beneath the acres now fairly taken from the Squire, (and
good-naturedly added rent-free, as an aid to Jemima's dower,) before
the advent of the young lady whose future dowry the produce was to
swell--now that she was actually under the eyes of the faithful
servant, such a stimulus was given to his industry, that he could think
of nothing else but the land, and the revolution he designed to effect
in its natural English crops. The garden, save only the orange-trees,
was abandoned entirely to Lenny, and additional labourers were called
in for the field-work. Jackeymo had discovered that one part of the
soil was suited to lavender, that another would grow camomile. He had
in his heart apportioned a beautiful field of rich loam to flax; but
against the growth of flax the Squire set his face obstinately. That
most lucrative, perhaps, of all crops, when soil and skill suit, had,
it would appear, been formerly attempted in England much more commonly
than it is now; since you will find few old leases which do not contain
a clause prohibitory of flax, as an impoverishment of the land. And
though Jackeymo learnedly endeavoured to prove to the Squire that
the flax itself contained particles which, if returned to the soil,
repaid all that the crop took away, Mr Hazeldean had his old-fashioned
prejudices on the matter, which were insuperable. "My forefathers,"
quoth he, "did not put that clause in their leases without good cause;
and as the Casino lands are entailed on Frank, I have no right to
gratify your foreign whims at his expense."
To make up for the loss of the flax, Jackeymo resolved to convert a
very nice bit of pasture into orchard ground, which he calculated would
bring in £10 net per acre by the time Miss Violante was marriageable.
At this, Squire pished a little; but as it was quite clear that the
land would be all the more valuable hereafter for the fruit trees, he
consented to permit the 'grass land' to be thus partially broken up.
All these changes left poor Lenny Fairfield very much to himself--at a
time when the new and strange devices which the initiation into book
knowledge creates, made it most desirable that he should have the
constant guidance of a superior mind.
One evening after his work, as Lenny was returning to his mother's
cottage very sullen and very moody, he suddenly came in contact with
Sprott the tinker.
CHAPTER V.
The tinker was seated under a hedge, hammering away at an old
kettle--with a little fire burning in front of him--and the donkey
hard by, indulging in a placid doze. Mr Sprott looked up as Lenny
passed--nodded kindly, and said--
"Good evenin', Lenny: to hear you be so 'spectably sitivated with
Mounseer."
"Ay," answered Lenny, with a leaven of rancour in his recollections,
"You're not ashamed to speak to me now, that I am not in disgrace. But
it was in disgrace, when it wasn't my fault, that the real gentleman
was most kind to me."
"Ar--r, Lenny," said the Tinker, with a prolonged rattle in that said
Ar--r, which was not without great significance. "But you sees the real
gentleman who han't got his bread to get, can hafford to 'spise his
cracter in the world. A poor tinker must be timbersome and nice in his
'sociations. But sit down here a bit, Lenny; I've summat to say to ye!"
"To me--"
"To ye. Give the neddy a shove out i' the vay, and sit down, I say."
Lenny rather reluctantly, and somewhat superciliously, accepted this
invitation.
"I hears," said the Tinker in a voice made rather indistinct by a
couple of nails which he had inserted between his teeth; "I hears as
how you be unkimmon fond of reading. I ha' sum nice cheap books in my
bag yonder--sum as low as a penny."
"I should like to see them," said Lenny, his eyes sparkling.
The Tinker rose, opened one of the paniers on the ass's back, took
out a bag which he placed before Lenny, and told him to suit himself.
The young peasant desired no better. He spread all the contents of
the bag on the sward, and a motley collection of food for the mind
was there--food and poison--_serpentes avibus_--good and evil. Here,
Milton's Paradise Lost, there The Age of Reason--here Methodist Tracts,
there True Principles of Socialism--Treatises on Useful Knowledge by
sound learning actuated by pure benevolence--Appeals to Operatives by
the shallowest reasoners, instigated by the same ambition that had
moved Eratosthenes to the conflagration of a temple; works of fiction
admirable as Robinson Crusoe, or innocent as the Old English Baron,
beside coarse translations of such garbage as had rotted away the youth
of France under Louis Quinze. This miscellany was an epitome, in short,
of the mixed World of Books, of that vast City of the Press, with its
palaces and hovels, its aqueducts and sewers--which opens all alike
to the naked eye and the curious mind of him to whom you say, in the
Tinker's careless phrase, "suit yourself."
But it is not the first impulse of a nature, healthful and still pure,
to settle in the hovel and lose itself amidst the sewers; and Lenny
Fairfield turned innocently over the bad books, and selecting two or
three of the best, brought them to the Tinker and asked the price.
"Why," said Mr Sprott, putting on his spectacles, "you has taken the
werry dearest: them 'ere be much cheaper, and more hinterestin'."
"But I don't fancy them," answered Lenny; "I don't understand what they
are about, and this seems to tell one how the steam-engine is made, and
has nice plates; and this is Robinson Crusoe, which Parson Dale once
said he would give me--I'd rather buy it out of my own money."
"Well, please yourself," quoth the Tinker; "you shall have the books
for four bob, and you can pay me next month."
"Four bobs--four shillings? it is a great sum," said Lenny, "but I will
lay by, as you are kind enough to trust me; good evening, Mr Sprott."
"Stay a bit," said the Tinker; "I'll just throw you these two little
tracks into the barging; they be only a shilling a dozen, so 'tis
but tuppence--and ven you has read _those_, vy, you'll be a reglar
customer."
The tinker tossed to Lenny Nos. 1 and 2 of Appeals to Operatives, and
the peasant took them up gratefully.
The young knowledge-seeker went his way across, the green fields, and
under the still autumn foliage of the hedgerows. He looked first at one
book, then at another; he did not know on which to settle.
The Tinker rose and made a fire with leaves and furze and sticks, some
dry and some green.
Lenny has now opened No. 1 of the tracts: they are the shortest to
read, and don't require so much effort of the mind as the explanation
of the steam-engine.
The Tinker has now set on his grimy glue-pot, and the glue simmers.
CHAPTER VI.
As Violante became more familiar with her new home, and those around
her became more familiar with Violante, she was remarked for a certain
stateliness of manner and bearing, which, had it been less evidently
natural and inborn, would have seemed misplaced in the daughter of
a forlorn exile, and would have been rare at so early an age among
children of the loftiest pretensions. It was with the air of a little
princess that she presented her tiny hand to a friendly pressure, or
submitted her calm clear cheek to a presuming kiss. Yet withal she was
so graceful, and her very stateliness was so pretty and captivating,
that she was not the less loved for all her grand airs. And, indeed,
she deserved to be loved; for though she was certainly prouder than
Mr Dale could approve of, her pride was devoid of egotism; and that
is a pride by no means common. She had an intuitive forethought for
others; you could see that she was capable of that grand woman-heroism,
abnegation of self; and though she was an original child, and often
grave and musing, with a tinge of melancholy, sweet, but deep in her
character, still she was not above the happy genial merriment of
childhood,--only her silver laugh was more attuned, and her gestures
more composed, than those of children habituated to many play-fellows
usually are. Mrs Hazeldean liked her best when she was grave, and said
"she would become a very sensible woman." Mrs Dale liked her best
when she was gay, and said "she was born to make many a heart ache;"
for which Mrs Dale was properly reproved by the Parson. Mrs Hazeldean
gave her a little set of garden tools; Mrs Dale a picture-book and
a beautiful doll. For a long time the book and the doll had the
preference. But Mrs Hazeldean having observed to Riccabocca that the
poor child looked pale, and ought to be a good deal in the open air,
the wise father ingeniously pretended to Violante that Mrs Riccabocca
had taken a great fancy to the picture-book, and that he should be
very glad to have the doll, upon which Violante hastened to give them
both away, and was never so happy as when mamma (as she called Mrs
Riccabocca) was admiring the picture-book, and Riccabocca, with austere
gravity dandled the doll. Then Riccabocca assured her that she could
be of great use to him in the garden; and Violante instantly put into
movement her spade, hoe, and wheel-barrow.
This last occupation brought her into immediate contact with Mr Leonard
Fairfield; and that personage one morning, to his great horror, found
Miss Violante had nearly exterminated a whole celery-bed, which she had
ignorantly conceived to be a crop of weeds.
Lenny was extremely angry. He snatched away the hoe, and said angrily,
"You must not do that, Miss. I'll tell your papa if you--"
Violante drew herself up, and never having been so spoken to before, at
least since her arrival in England, there was something comic in the
surprise of her large eyes, as well as something tragic in the dignity
of her offended mien. "It is very naughty of you, Miss," continued
Leonard in a milder tone, for he was both softened by the eyes and awed
by the mien, "and I trust you will not do it again."
"_Non capisco_," (I don't understand,) murmured Violante, and the dark
eyes filled with tears. At that moment up came Jackeymo; and Violante,
pointing to Leonard, said, with an effort not to betray her emotion,
"_Il fanciullo e molto grossolano_," (he is a very rude boy.)
Jackeymo turned to Leonard with the look of an enraged tiger. "How
you dare, scum of de earth that you are," cried he,[20] "how you
dare make cry the signorina?" And his English not supplying familiar
vituperatives sufficiently, he poured out upon Lenny such a profusion
of Italian abuse, that the boy turned red and white in a breath with
rage and perplexity.
[20] It need scarcely be observed, that Jackeymo, in his conversations
with his master or Violante, or his conferences with himself, employs
his native language, which is therefore translated without the blunders
that he is driven to commit when compelled to trust himself to the
tongue of the country in which he is a sojourner.
Violante took instant compassion upon the victim she had made, and,
with true feminine caprice, now began to scold Jackeymo for his anger,
and, finally approaching Leonard, laid her hand on his arm, and said
with a kindness at once childlike and queenly, and in the prettiest
imaginable mixture of imperfect English and soft Italian, to which I
cannot pretend to do justice, and shall therefore translate: "Don't
mind him. I dare say it was all my fault, only I did not understand
you: are not these things weeds?"
"No, my darling signorina," said Jackeymo in Italian, looking ruefully
at the celery-bed, "they are not weeds, and they sell very well at
this time of the year. But still, if it amuses you to pluck them up, I
should like to see who's to prevent it."
Lenny walked away. He had been called "the scum of the earth," by
a foreigner too! He had again been ill-treated for doing what he
conceived his duty. He was again feeling the distinction between rich
and poor, and he now fancied that that distinction involved deadly
warfare, for he had read from beginning to end those two damnable
tracts which the Tinker had presented to him. But in the midst of
all the angry disturbance of his mind, he felt the soft touch of the
infant's hand, the soothing influence of her conciliating words, and he
was half ashamed that he had spoken so roughly to a child.
Still, not trusting himself to speak, he walked away and sat down at
a distance. "I don't see," thought he, "why there should be rich and
poor, master and servant." Lenny, be it remembered, had not heard the
Parson's Political Sermon.
An hour after, having composed himself, Lenny returned to his work.
Jackeymo was no longer in the garden; he had gone to the fields; but
Riccabocca was standing by the celery-bed, and holding the red silk
umbrella over Violante as she sat on the ground looking up at her
father with those eyes already so full of intelligence, and love, and
soul.
"Lenny," said Riccabocca, "my young lady has been telling me that she
has been very naughty, and Giacomo very unjust to you. Forgive them
both."
Lenny's sullenness melted in an instant: the reminiscence of tracts
Nos. 1 and 2,--
"Like the baseless fabric of a vision,
Left not a wreck behind."
He raised eyes, swimming with all his native goodness, towards the wise
man, and dropped them gratefully on the face of the infant peace-maker.
Then he turned away his head and fairly wept. The Parson was right: "O
ye poor, have charity for the rich; O ye rich, respect the poor."
CHAPTER VII.
Now from that day the humble Lenny and the regal Violante became great
friends. With what pride he taught her to distinguish between celery
and weeds--and how proud too was she when she learned that she was
_useful_! There is not a greater pleasure you can give to children,
especially female children, than to make them feel they are already of
value in the world, and serviceable as well as protected. Weeks and
months rolled away, and Lenny still read, not only the books lent him
by the Doctor, but those he bought of Mr Sprott. As for the bombs and
shells against religion which the Tinker carried in his bag, Lenny
was not induced to blow himself up with them. He had been reared from
his cradle in simple love and reverence for the Divine Father, and
the tender Saviour, whose life beyond all records of human goodness,
whose death beyond all epics of mortal heroism, no being whose infancy
has been taught to supplicate the Merciful and adore the Holy, yea,
even though his later life may be entangled amidst the thorns of some
desolate pyrrhonism, can ever hear reviled and scoffed without a shock
to the conscience and a revolt of the heart. As the deer recoils by
instinct from the tiger, as the very look of the scorpion deters you
from handling it, though you never saw a scorpion before, so the very
first line in some ribald profanity on which the Tinker put his black
finger, made Lenny's blood run cold. Safe, too, was the peasant boy
from any temptation in works of a gross and licentious nature, not only
because of the happy ignorance of his rural life, but because of a more
enduring safe-guard--genius! Genius, that, manly, robust, healthful
as it be, is long before it lose its instinctive Dorian modesty;
shame-faced, because so susceptible to glory--genius, that loves indeed
to dream, but on the violet bank, not the dung-hill. Wherefore, even
in the error of the senses, it seeks to escape from the sensual into
worlds of fancy, subtle and refined. But apart from the passions, true
genius is the most practical of all human gifts. Like the Apollo,
whom the Greek worshipped as its type, even Arcady is its exile, not
its home. Soon weary of the dalliance of Tempé, it ascends to its
mission--the Archer of the silver bow, the guide of the car of light.
Speaking more plainly, genius is the enthusiasm for self-improvement;
it ceases or sleeps the moment it desists from seeking some object
which it believes of value, and by that object it insensibly connects
its self-improvement with the positive advance of the world. At
present Lenny's genius had no bias that was not to the Positive and
Useful. It took the direction natural to his sphere, and the wants
therein--viz., to the arts which we call mechanical. He wanted to know
about steam-engines and Artesian wells; and to know about them it was
necessary to know something of mechanics and hydrostatics; so he bought
popular elementary works on those mystic sciences, and set all the
powers of his mind at work on experiments.
Noble and generous spirits are ye, who, with small care for fame, and
little reward from pelf, have opened to the intellects of the poor
the portals of wisdom! I honour and revere ye; only do not think ye
have done all that is needful. Consider, I pray ye, whether so good
a choice from the Tinker's bag would have been made by a boy whom
religion had not scared from the Pestilent, and genius had not led to
the Self-improving. And Lenny did not wholly escape from the mephitic
portions of the motley elements from which his awakening mind drew
its nurture. Think not it was all pure oxygen that the panting lip
drew in. No; there, were still those inflammatory tracts. Political
I do not like to call them, for politics mean the art of government,
and the tracts I speak of assailed all government which mankind has
hitherto recognised. Sad rubbish, perhaps, were such tracts to you, O
sound thinker, in your easy-chair! Or to you, practised statesman, at
your post on the Treasury Bench--to you, calm dignitary of a learned
Church--or to you, my lord judge, who may often have sent from your
bar to the dire Orcus of Norfolk's Isle the ghosts of men whom that
rubbish, falling simultaneously on the bumps of acquisitiveness and
combativeness, hath untimely slain. Sad rubbish to you! But seems
it such rubbish to the poor man, to whom it promises a paradise on
the easy terms of upsetting a world? For ye see, these "Appeals to
Operatives" represent that same world-upsetting as the simplest thing
imaginable--a sort of two-and-two-make-four proposition. The poor have
only got to set their strong hands to the axle, and heave-a-hoy! and
hurrah for the topsey-turvey! Then, just to put a little wholesome
rage into the heave-a-hoy! it is so facile to accompany the eloquence
of "Appeals" with a kind of stir-the-bile-up statistics--"Abuses of
the Aristocracy"--"Jobs of the Priesthood"--"Expenses of Army kept up
for Peers' younger sons"--"Wars contracted for the villanous purpose
of raising the rents of the landowners"--all arithmetically dished up,
and seasoned with tales of every gentleman who has committed a misdeed,
every clergyman who has dishonoured his cloth; as if such instances
were fair specimens of average gentlemen and ministers of religion! All
this, passionately advanced, (and observe, never answered, for that
literature admits no controversialists, and the writer has it all his
own way,) maybe rubbish; but it is out of such rubbish that operatives
build barricades for attack, and legislators prisons for defence.
Our poor friend Lenny drew plenty of this stuff from the Tinker's
bag. He thought it very clever and very eloquent; and he supposed the
statistics were as true as mathematical demonstrations.
A famous knowledge-diffuser is looking over my shoulder, and tells
me, "Increase education, and cheapen good books, and all this rubbish
will disappear!" Sir, I don't believe a word of it. If you printed
Ricardo and Adam Smith at a farthing a volume, I still believe that
they would be as little read by the operatives as they are now-a-days
by a very large proportion of highly cultivated men. I still believe
that, while, the press works, attacks on the rich, and propositions for
heave-a-hoys, will always form a popular portion of the Literature of
Labour. There's Lenny Fairfield reading a treatise on hydraulics, and
constructing a model for a fountain into the bargain; but that does
not prevent his acquiescence in any proposition for getting rid of a
National Debt, which he certainly never agreed to pay, and which he
is told makes sugar and tea so shamefully dear. No. I tell you what
does a little counteract those eloquent incentives to break his own
head against the strong walls of the Social System--it is, that he has
two eyes in that head, which are not always employed in reading. And,
having been told in print that masters are tyrants, parsons hypocrites
or drones in the hive, and landowners vampires and bloodsuckers, he
looks out into the little world around him, and, first, he is compelled
to acknowledge that his master is not a tyrant, (perhaps because he
is a foreigner and a philosopher, and, for what I and Lenny know, a
republican.) But then Parson Dale, though High Church to the marrow,
is neither hypocrite nor drone. He has a very good living, it is
true--much better than he ought to have, according to the "political"
opinions of those tracts; but Lenny is obliged to confess that, if
Parson Dale were a penny the poorer, he would do a pennyworth's less
good; and, comparing one parish with another, such as Roodhall and
Hazeldean, he is dimly aware that there is no greater CIVILISER than
a parson tolerably well off. Then, too, Squire Hazeldean, though as
arrant a Tory as ever stood upon shoe-leather, is certainly not a
vampire nor bloodsucker. He does not feed on the public; a great many
of the public feed upon him: and, therefore, his practical experience
a little staggers and perplexes Lenny Fairfield as to the gospel
accuracy of his theoretical dogmas. Masters, parsons, and landowners!
having, at the risk of all popularity, just given a _coup de patte_
to certain sages extremely the fashion at present, I am not going to
let you off without an admonitory flea in the ear. Don't suppose that
any mere scribbling and typework will suffice to answer the scribbling
and typework set at work to demolish you--_write_ down that rubbish
you can't--_live_ it down you may. If you are rich, like Squire
Hazeldean, do good with your money; if you are poor, like Signor
Riccabocca, do good with your kindness.
See! there is Lenny now receiving his week's wages; and though Lenny
knows that he can get higher wages in the very next parish, his blue
eyes are sparkling with gratitude, not at the chink of the money, but
at the poor exile's friendly talk on things apart from all service;
while Violante is descending the steps from the terrace, charged by her
mother-in-law with a little basket of sago, and suchlike delicacies,
for Mrs Fairfield, who has been ailing the last few days.
Lenny will see the Tinker as he goes home, and he will buy a most
Demosthenean "Appeal"--a tract of tracts, upon the "Propriety of
Strikes," and the Avarice of Masters. But, somehow or other, I think
a few words from Signor Riccabocca, that did not cost the Signor a
farthing, and the sight of his mother's smile at the contents of the
basket, which cost very little, will serve to neutralise the effects of
that "Appeal," much more efficaciously than the best article a Brougham
or a Mill could write on the subject.
CHAPTER VIII.
Spring had come again; and one beautiful May-day, Leonard Fairfield
sate beside the little fountain which he had now actually constructed
in the garden. The butterflies were hovering over the belt of flowers
which he had placed around his fountain, and the birds were singing
overhead. Leonard Fairfield was resting from his day's work, to enjoy
his abstemious dinner, beside the cool play of the sparkling waters,
and, with the yet keener appetite of knowledge, he devoured his book as
he munched his crusts.
A penny tract is the shoeing-horn of literature: it draws on a great
many books, and some too tight to be very useful in walking. The penny
tract quotes a celebrated writer, you long to read him; it props a
startling assertion by a grave authority, you long to refer to it.
During the nights of the past winter, Leonard's intelligence had
made vast progress: he had taught himself more than the elements of
mechanics, and put to practice the principles he had acquired, not
only in the hydraulical achievement of the fountain, nor in the still
more notable application of science, commenced on the stream in which
Jackeymo had fished for minnows, and which Lenny had diverted to the
purpose of irrigating two fields, but in various ingenious contrivances
for the facilitation or abridgment of labour, which had excited great
wonder and praise in the neighbourhood. On the other hand, those
rabid little tracts, which dealt so summarily with the destinies of
the human race, even when his growing reason, and the perusal of
works more classical or more logical, had led him to perceive that
they were illiterate, and to suspect that they jumped from premises
to conclusions with a celerity very different from the careful
ratiocination of mechanical science, had still, in the citations and
references wherewith they abounded, lured him on to philosophers more
specious and more perilous. Out of the Tinker's bag he had drawn a
translation of Condorcet's _Progress of Man_, and another of Rousseau's
_Social Contract_. These had induced him to select from the tracts in
the Tinker's miscellany those which abounded most in professions of
philanthropy, and predictions of some coming Golden Age, to which old
Saturn's was a joke--tracts so mild and mother-like in their language,
that it required a much more practical experience than Lenny's to
perceive that you would have to pass a river of blood before you had
the slightest chance of setting foot on the flowery banks on which
they invited you to repose--tracts which rouged poor Christianity on
the cheeks, clapped a crown of innocent daffodillies on her head,
and set her to dancing a _pas de zephyr_ in the pastoral ballet in
which St Simon pipes to the flock he shears; or having first laid
it down as a preliminary axiom, that
"The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself--
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,"
substituted in place thereof Monsieur Fourier's symmetrical
phalanstere, or Mr Owen's architectural parallelogram. It was with some
such tract that Lenny was seasoning his crusts and his radishes, when
Riccabocca, bending his long dark face over the student's shoulder,
said abruptly--
"_Diavolo_, my friend! What on earth have you got there? Just let me
look at it, will you?"
Leonard rose respectfully, and coloured deeply as he surrendered the
tract to Riccabocca.
The wise man read the first page attentively, the second more
cursorily, and only ran his eye over the rest. He had gone through
too vast a range of problems political, not to have passed over that
venerable _Pons Asinorum_ of Socialism, on which Fouriers and St
Simons sit straddling and cry aloud that they have arrived at the last
boundary of knowledge!
"All this is as old as the hills," quoth Riccabocca irreverently;
"but the hills stand still, and this--there it goes!" and the sage
pointed to a cloud emitted from his pipe. "Did you ever read Sir
David Brewster on Optical Delusions? No! Well, I'll lend it to you.
You will find therein a story, of a lady who always saw a black cat
on her hearth-rug. The black cat existed only in her fancy, but the
hallucination was natural and reasonable--eh--what do you think?"
"Why, sir," said Leonard, not catching the Italian's meaning, "I don't
exactly see that it was natural and reasonable."
"Foolish boy, yes! because black cats are things possible and known.
But who ever saw upon earth a community of men such as sit on the
hearth-rugs of Messrs Owen and Fourier? If the lady's hallucination was
not reasonable, what is his, who believes in such visions as these?"
Leonard bit his lip.
"My dear boy," cried Riccabocca kindly, "the only thing sure and
tangible to which these writers would lead you, lies at the first step,
and that is what is commonly called a Revolution. Now, I know what that
is. I have gone, not indeed through a revolution, but an attempt at
one."
Leonard raised his eyes towards his master with a look of profound
respect, and great curiosity.
"Yes," added Riccabocca, and the face on which the boy gazed exchanged
its usual grotesque and sardonic expression for one animated, noble,
and heroic. "Yes, not a revolution for chimeras, but for that cause
which the coldest allow to be good, and which, when successful, all
time approves as divine--the redemption of our native soil from
the rule of the foreigner! I have shared in such an attempt. And,"
continued the Italian mournfully, "recalling now all the evil passions
it arouses, all the ties it dissolves, all the blood that it commands
to flow, all the healthful industry it arrests, all the madmen that it
arms, all the victims that it dupes, I question whether one man really
honest, pure, and humane, who has once gone through such an ordeal,
would ever hazard it again, unless he was assured that the victory
was certain--ay, and the object for which he fights not to be wrested
from his hands amidst the uproar of the elements that the battle has
released."
The Italian paused, shaded his brow with his hand, and remained long
silent. Then, gradually resuming his ordinary tone, he continued--
"Revolutions that have no definite objects made clear by the positive
experience of history; revolutions, in a word, that aim less at
substituting one law or one dynasty for another, than at changing the
whole scheme of society, have been little attempted by real statesmen.
Even Lycurgus is proved to be a myth who never existed. They are the
suggestions of philosophers who lived apart from the actual world,
and whose opinions (though generally they were very benevolent, good
sort of men, and wrote in an elegant poetical style) one would no more
take on a plain matter of life, than one would look upon Virgil's
_Eclogues_ as a faithful picture of the ordinary pains and pleasures
of the peasants who tend our sheep. Read them as you would read poets,
and they are delightful. But attempt to shape the world according to
the poetry--and fit yourself for a madhouse. The farther off the age is
from the realisation of such projects, the more these poor philosophers
have indulged them. Thus, it was amidst the saddest corruption of court
manners that it became the fashion in Paris to sit for one's picture,
with a crook in one's hand, as Alexis or Daphne. Just as liberty was
fast dying out of Greece, and the successors of Alexander were founding
their monarchies, and Rome was growing up to crush in its iron grasp
all states save its own, Plato withdraws his eyes from the world,
to open them in his dreamy Atlantis. Just in the grimmest period of
English history, with the axe hanging over his head, Sir Thomas More
gives you his _Utopia_. Just when the world is to be the theatre of
a new Sesostris, the dreamers of France tell you that the age is too
enlightened for war, that man is henceforth to be governed by pure
reason, and live in a paradise. Very pretty reading all this to a man
like me, Lenny, who can admire and smile at it. But to you, to the man
who has to work for his living, to the man who thinks it would be so
much more pleasant to live at his ease in a phalanstere than to work
eight or ten hours a day; to the man of talent and action and industry,
whose future is invested in that tranquillity and order of a state,
in which talent and action and industry are a certain capital;--why,
Messrs Coutts the great bankers had better encourage a theory to upset
the system of banking! Whatever disturbs society, yea, even by a
causeless panic, much more by an actual struggle, falls first upon the
market of labour, and thence affects prejudicially every department
of intelligence. In such times the arts are arrested; literature is
neglected; people are too busy to read anything save appeals to their
passions. And capital, shaken in its sense of security, no longer
ventures boldly through the land, calling forth all the energies of
toil and enterprise, and extending to every workman his reward. Now,
Lenny, take this piece of advice. You are young, clever, and aspiring:
men rarely succeed in changing the world; but a man seldom fails of
success if he lets the world alone, and resolves to make the best of
it. You are in the midst of the great crisis of your life; it is the
struggle between the new desires knowledge excites, and that sense of
poverty, which those desires convert either into hope and emulation,
or into envy and despair. I grant that it is an up-hill work that lies
before you; but don't you think it is always easier to climb a mountain
than it is to level it? These books call on you to level the mountain;
and that mountain is the property of other people, subdivided amongst
a great many proprietors, and protected by law. At the first stroke
of the pick-axe, it is ten to one but what you are taken up for a
trespass. But the path up the mountain is a right of way uncontested.
You may be safe at the summit, before (even if the owners are fools
enough to let you) you could have levelled a yard. _Cospetto!_" quoth
the Doctor, "it is more than two thousand years ago since poor Plato
began to level it, and the mountain is as high as ever!"
Thus saying, Riccabocca came to the end of his pipe, and, stalking
thoughtfully away, he left Leonard Fairfield trying to extract light
from the smoke.
CHAPTER IX.
Shortly after this discourse of Riccabocca's, an incident occurred
to Leonard that served to carry his mind into new directions. One
evening, when his mother was out, he was at work on a new mechanical
contrivance, and had the misfortune to break one of the instruments
which he employed. Now it will be remembered that his father had been
the Squire's head-carpenter; the widow had carefully hoarded the tools
of his craft, which had belonged to her poor Mark; and though she
occasionally lent them to Leonard, she would not give them up to his
service. Amongst these, Leonard knew that he should find the one that
he wanted; and being much interested in his contrivance, he could not
wait till his mother's return. The tools, with other little relics of
the lost, were kept in a large trunk in Mrs Fairfield's sleeping room;
the trunk was not locked, and Leonard went to it without ceremony or
scruple. In rummaging for the instrument, his eye fell upon a bundle
of MSS.; and he suddenly recollected that when he was a mere child,
and before he much knew the difference between verse and prose, his
mother had pointed to these MSS. and said, "One day or other, when you
can read nicely, I'll let you look at these, Lenny. My poor Mark wrote
such verses--ah, he _was_ a scollard!" Leonard, reasonably enough,
thought that the time had now arrived when he was worthy the privilege
of reading the paternal effusions, and he took forth the MSS. with a
keen but melancholy interest. He recognised his father's handwriting,
which he had often seen before in account-books and memoranda, and read
eagerly some trifling poems, which did not show much genius, nor much
mastery of language and rythm--such poems, in short, as a self-educated
man, with poetic taste and feeling, rather than poetic inspiration or
artistic culture, might compose with credit, but not for fame. But
suddenly, as he turned over these 'Occasional Pieces,' Leonard came to
others in a different handwriting--a woman's handwriting--small, and
fine, and exquisitely formed. He had scarcely read six lines of these
last, before his attention was irresistibly chained. They were of a
different order of merit from poor Mark's; they bore the unmistakeable
stamp of genius. Like the poetry of women in general, they were
devoted to personal feeling--they were not the mirror of a world,
but reflections of a solitary heart. Yet this is the kind of poetry
most pleasing to the young. And the verses in question had another
attraction for Leonard: they seemed to express some struggle akin to
his own--some complaint against the actual condition of the writer's
life, some sweet melodious murmurs at fortune. For the rest, they were
characterised by a vein of sentiment so elevated that, if written in
by a man, it would have run into exaggeration; written by a woman, the
romance was carried off by so many genuine revelations of sincere,
deep, pathetic feeling, that it was always natural, though true to a
nature from which you would not augur happiness.
Leonard was still absorbed in the perusal of these poems, when Mrs
Fairfield entered the room.
"What have you been about, Lenny?--searching in my box?"
"I came to look for my father's bag of tools, mother, and I found these
papers, which you said I might read some day."
"I doesn't wonder you did not hear me when I came in," said the widow
sighing. "I used to sit still for the hour together, when my poor Mark
read his poems to me. There was such a pretty one about the 'Peasant's
Fireside,' Lenny--have you got hold of that?"
"Yes, dear mother; and I remarked the allusion to you: it brought tears
to my eyes. But these verses are not my father's--whose are they? They
seem a woman's hand."
Mrs Fairfield looked--changed colour--grew faint--and seated herself.
"Poor, poor Nora!" said she falteringly. "I did not know as they were
there; Mark kep 'em; they got among his--"
LEONARD.--"Who was Nora?"
MRS FAIRFIELD.--"Who?--child,--who? Nora was--was my own--own sister."
LEONARD (in great amaze, contrasting his ideal of the writer of these
musical lines, in that graceful hand, with his homely uneducated
mother, who can neither read nor write.)--"Your sister--is it possible?
My aunt, then. How comes it you never spoke of her before? Oh! you
should be so proud of her, mother."
MRS FAIRFIELD (clasping her hands.)--"We were proud of her, all of
us--father, mother--all! She was so beautiful and so good, and not
proud she! though she looked like the first lady in the land. Oh! Nora,
Nora!"
LEONARD (after a pause.)--"But she must have been highly educated?"
MRS FAIRFIELD.--"'Deed she was!"
LEONARD.--"How was that?"
MRS FAIRFIELD (rocking herself to and fro in her chair.)--"Oh! my Lady
washer godmother--Lady Lansmere I mean--and took a fancy to her when
she was that high! and had her to stay at the Park, and wait on her
ladyship; and then she put her to school, and Nora was so clever that
nothing would do but she must go to London as a governess. But don't
talk of it, boy!--don't talk of it!"
LEONARD.--"Why not, mother?--what has become of her?--where is she?"
MRS FAIRFIELD (bursting into a paroxysm of tears.)--"In her grave--in
her cold grave! Dead, dead!"
Leonard was inexpressibly grieved and shocked. It is the attribute of
the poet to seem always living, always a friend. Leonard felt as if
some one very dear had been suddenly torn from his heart. He tried to
console his mother; but her emotion was contagious, and he wept with
her.
"And how long has she been dead?" he asked at last, in mournful accents.
"Many's the long year, many; but," added Mrs Fairfield, rising, and
putting her tremulous hand on Leonard's shoulder, "you'll just never
talk to me about her--I can't bear it--it breaks my heart. I can bear
better to talk of Mark--come down stairs--come."
"May I not keep these verses, mother? Do let me."
"Well, well, those bits o' paper be all she left behind her--yes, keep
them, but put back Mark's. Are _they_ all here?--sure?" And the widow,
though she could not read her husband's verses, looked jealously at
the MSS. written in his irregular large scrawl, and, smoothing them
carefully, replaced them in the trunk, and resettled over them some
sprigs of lavender, which Leonard had unwittingly disturbed.
"But," said Leonard, as his eye again rested on the beautiful
handwriting of his lost aunt--"but you call her Nora--I see she signs
herself L."
"Leonora was her name. I said she was my Lady's godchild. We called her
Nora for short"--
"Leonora--and I am Leonard--is that how I came by the name?"
"Yes, yes--do hold your tongue, boy," sobbed poor Mrs Fairfield; and
she could not be soothed nor coaxed into continuing or renewing a
subject which was evidently associated with insupportable pain.
CHAPTER X.
It is difficult to exaggerate the effect that this discovery produced
on Leonard's train of thought. Some one belonging to his own humble
race had, then, preceded him in his struggling flight towards the
loftier regions of Intelligence and Desire. It was like the mariner
amidst unknown seas, who finds carved upon some desert isle a familiar
household name. And this creature of genius and of sorrow--whose
existence he had only learned by her song, and whose death created, in
the simple heart of her sister, so passionate a grief, after the lapse
of so many years--supplied to the romance awaking in his young heart
the ideal which it unconsciously sought. He was pleased to hear that
she had been beautiful and good. He paused from his books to muse on
her, and picture her image to his fancy. That there was some mystery
in her fate was evident to him; and while that conviction deepened his
interest, the mystery itself, by degrees, took a charm which he was not
anxious to dispel. He resigned himself to Mrs Fairfield's obstinate
silence. He was contented to rank the dead amongst those holy and
ineffable images which we do not seek to unveil. Youth and Fancy have
many secret hoards of idea which they do not desire to impart, even to
those most in their confidence. I doubt the depth of feeling in any man
who has not certain recesses in his soul into which none may enter.
Hitherto, as I have said, the talents of Leonard Fairfield had been
more turned to things positive than to the ideal; to science and
investigation of fact than to poetry, and that airier truth in which
poetry has its element. He had read our greater poets, indeed, but
without thought of imitating; and rather from the general curiosity
to inspect all celebrated monuments of the human mind, than from that
especial predilection for verse which is too common in childhood and
youth to be any sure sign of a poet. But now these melodies, unknown to
all the world beside, rang in his ear, mingled with his thoughts--set,
as it were, his whole life to music. He read poetry with a different
sentiment--it seemed to him that he had discovered its secret. And so
reading, the passion seized him, and "the numbers came."
To many minds, at the commencement of our grave and earnest pilgrimage,
I am Vandal enough to think that the indulgence of poetic taste and
reverie does great and lasting harm; that it serves to enervate the
character, give false ideas of life, impart the semblance of drudgery
to the noble toils and duties of the active man. All poetry would not
do this--not, for instance, the Classical, in its diviner masters--not
the poetry of Homer, of Virgil, of Sophocles--not, perhaps, even that
of the indolent Horace. But the poetry which youth usually loves and
appreciates the best--the poetry of mere sentiment--does so in minds
already over predisposed to the sentimental, and which require bracing
to grow into healthful manhood.
On the other hand, even this latter kind of poetry, which is peculiarly
modern, does suit many minds of another mould--minds which our modern
life, with its hard positive forms, tends to produce. And as in
certain climates plants and herbs, peculiarly adapted as antidotes to
those diseases most prevalent in the atmosphere, are profusely sown,
as it were, by the benignant providence of nature--so it may be that
the softer and more romantic species of poetry, which comes forth in
harsh, moneymaking, unromantic times, is intended as curatives and
counter-poisons. The world is so much with us, now-a-days, that we need
have something that prates to us, albeit even in too fine an euphuism,
of the moon and stars.
Certes, to Leonard Fairfield, at that period of his intellectual life,
the softness of our Helicon descended as healing dews. In his turbulent
and unsettled ambition, in his vague grapple with the giant forms of
political truths, in his bias towards the application of science to
immediate practical purposes, this lovely vision of the Muse came in
the white robe of the Peacemaker; and with upraised hand, pointing to
serene skies, she opened to him fair glimpses of the Beautiful, which
is given to Peasant as to Prince--showed to him that on the surface
of earth there is something nobler than fortune--that he who can view
the world as a poet is always at soul a king; while to practical
purpose itself, that larger and more profound invention, which poetry
stimulates, supplied the grand design and the subtle view--leading
him beyond the mere ingenuity of the mechanic, and habituating him to
regard the inert force of the matter at his command with the ambition
of the Discoverer. But, above all, the discontent that was within
him finding a vent, not in deliberate war upon this actual world,
but through the purifying channels of song--in the vent itself it
evaporated, it was lost. By accustoming ourselves to survey all things
with the spirit that retains and reproduces them only in their lovelier
or grander aspects, a vast philosophy of toleration for what we before
gazed on with scorn or hate insensibly grows upon us. Leonard looked
into his heart after the enchantress had breathed upon it; and through
the mists of the fleeting and tender melancholy which betrayed where
she had been, he beheld a new sun of delight and joy dawning over the
landscape of human life.
Thus, though she was dead and gone from his actual knowledge, this
mysterious kinswoman--"a voice, and nothing more"--had spoken to him,
soothed, elevated, cheered, attuned each discord into harmony; and, if
now permitted from some serener sphere to behold the life that her soul
thus strangely influenced, verily, with yet holier joy, the saving and
lovely spirit might have glided onward in the Eternal Progress.
We call the large majority of human lives _obscure_. Presumptuous that
we are! How know we what lives a single thought retained from the dust
of nameless graves may have lighted to renown?
CHAPTER XI.
It was about a year after Leonard's discovery of the family MSS. that
Parson Dale borrowed the quietest pad mare in the Squire's stables,
and set out on an equestrian excursion. He said that he was bound on
business connected with his old parishioners of Lansmere; for, as
it has been incidentally implied in a previous chapter, he had been
connected with that borough town (and, I may here add, in the capacity
of curate) before he had been inducted into the living of Hazeldean.
It was so rarely that the Parson stirred from home, that this journey
to a town more than twenty miles off was regarded as a most daring
adventure, both at the Hall and at the Parsonage. Mrs Dale could not
sleep the whole previous night with thinking of it; and though she had
naturally one of her worst nervous headaches on the eventful morn,
she yet suffered no hands less thoughtful than her own to pack up the
saddlebags which the Parson had borrowed along with the pad. Nay, so
distrustful was she of the possibility of the good man's exerting
the slightest common sense in her absence, that she kept him close
at her side while she was engaged in that same operation of packing
up--showing him the exact spot in which the clean shirt was put, and
how nicely the old slippers were packed up in one of his own sermons.
She implored him not to mistake the sandwiches for his shaving-soap,
and made him observe how carefully she had provided against such
confusion, by placing them as far apart from each other as the nature
of saddlebags will admit. The poor Parson--who was really by no means
an absent man, but as little likely to shave himself with sandwiches
and lunch upon soap as the most commonplace mortal may be--listened
with conjugal patience, and thought that man never had such a wife
before; nor was it without tears in his own eyes that he tore himself
from the farewell embrace of his weeping Carry.
I confess, however, that it was with some apprehension that he set
his foot in the stirrup, and trusted his person to the mercies
of an unfamiliar animal. For whatever might be Mr Dale's minor
accomplishments as man and parson, horsemanship was not his forte.
Indeed, I doubt if he had taken the reins in his hand more than twice
since he had been married.
The Squire's surly old groom, Mat, was in attendance with the pad; and,
to the Parson's gentle inquiry whether Mat was quite sure that the pad
was quite safe, replied laconically, "Oi, oi, give her her head."
"Give her her head!" repeated Mr Dale, rather amazed, for he had not
the slightest intention of taking away that part of the beast's frame,
so essential to its vital economy--"Give her her head!"
"Oi, oi; and don't jerk her up like that, or she'll fall a doincing on
her hind-legs."
The Parson instantly slackened the reins; and Mrs Dale--who had tarried
behind to control her tears--now running to the door for "more last
words," he waived his hand with courageous amenity, and ambled forth
into the lane.
Our equestrian was absorbed at first in studying the idiosyncrasies of
the pad, and trying thereby to arrive at some notion of her general
character: guessing, for instance, why she raised one ear and laid down
the other; why she kept bearing so close to the left that she brushed
his leg against the hedge; and why, when she arrived at a little
side-gate in the fields, which led towards the home-farm, she came to a
full stop, and fell to rubbing her nose against the rail--an occupation
from which the Parson, finding all civil remonstrances in vain, at
length diverted her by a timorous application of the whip.
This crisis on the road fairly passed, the pad seemed to comprehend
that she had a journey before her, and giving a petulant whisk of her
tail, quickened her amble into a short trot, which soon brought the
Parson into the high road, and nearly opposite the Casino.
Here, sitting on the gate which led to his abode, and shaded by his
umbrella, he beheld Dr Riccabocca.
The Italian lifted his eyes from the book he was reading, and stared
hard at the Parson; and he--not venturing to withdraw his whole
attention from the pad, (who, indeed, set up both her ears at the
apparition of Riccabocca, and evinced symptoms of that surprise and
superstitious repugnance at unknown objects which goes by the name of
"shying,")--looked askance at Riccabocca.
"Don't stir, please," said the Parson, "or I fear you'll alarm this
creature; it seems a nervous, timid thing;--soho--gently--gently."
And he fell to patting the mare with great unction.
The pad, thus encouraged, overcame her first natural astonishment at
the sight of Riccabocca and the red umbrella; and having before been
at the Casino on sundry occasions, and sagaciously preferring places
within the range of her experience to bournes neither cognate nor
conjecturable, she moved gravely up towards the gate on which the
Italian sate; and, after eyeing him a moment--as much as to say, "I
wish you would get off"--came to a dead lock.
"Well," said Riccabocca, "since your horse seems more disposed to be
polite to me than yourself, Mr Dale, I take the opportunity of your
present involuntary pause to congratulate you on your elevation in
life, and to breathe a friendly prayer that pride may not have a fall!"
"Tut," said the Parson, affecting an easy air, though still
contemplating the pad, who appeared to have fallen into a quiet doze,
"it is true that I have not ridden much of late years, and the Squire's
horses are very high fed and spirited; but there is no more harm in
them than their master when one once knows their ways."
"Chi và piano, và sano,
E chi và sano và lontano,"
said Riccabocca, pointing to the saddlebags. "You go slowly, therefore
safely; and he who goes safely may go far. You seem prepared for a
journey?"
"I am," said the Parson; "and on a matter that concerns you a little."
"Me!" exclaimed Riccabocca--"concerns me!"
"Yes, so far as the chance of depriving you of a servant whom you like
and esteem affects you."
"Oh," said Riccabocca, "I understand: you have hinted to me very often
that I or Knowledge, or both together, have unfitted Leonard Fairfield
for service."
"I did not say that exactly; I said that you have fitted him for
something higher than service. But do not repeat this to him. And I
cannot yet say more to you, for I am very doubtful as to the success of
my mission; and it will not do to unsettle poor Leonard until we are
sure that we can improve his condition."
"Of that you can never be sure," quoth the wise man, shaking his head;
"and I can't say that I am unselfish enough not to bear you a grudge
for seeking to decoy away from me an invaluable servant--faithful,
steady, intelligent, and (added Riccabocca, warming as he approached
the climacteric adjective)--exceedingly cheap! Nevertheless go, and
Heaven speed you. I am not an Alexander, to stand between man and the
sun."
"You are a noble great-hearted creature, Signor Riccabocca, in spite of
your cold-blooded proverbs and villanous books." The Parson, as he said
this, brought down the whip-hand with so indiscreet an enthusiasm on
the pad's shoulder, that the poor beast, startled out of her innocent
doze, made a bolt forward, which nearly precipitated Riccabocca from
his seat on the stile, and then turning round--as the Parson tugged
desperately at the rein--caught the bit between her teeth, and set off
at a canter. The Parson lost both his stirrups; and when he regained
them, (as the pad slackened her pace,) and had time to breathe and look
about him, Riccabocca and the Casino were both out of sight.
"Certainly," quoth Parson Dale, as he resettled himself with great
complacency, and a conscious triumph that he was still on the pad's
back--"certainly it is true 'that the noblest conquest ever made
by man was that of the horse:' a fine creature it is--a very fine
creature--and uncommonly difficult to sit on,--especially without
stirrups." Firmly in _his_ stirrups the Parson planted his feet; and
the heart within him was very proud.
CHAPTER XII.
Lansmere was situated in the county adjoining, that which contained
the village of Hazeldean. Late at noon the Parson crossed the little
stream which divided the two shires, and came to an inn, which was
placed at an angle, where the great main road branched off into two
directions--the one leading towards Lansmere, the other going more
direct to London. At this inn the pad stopped, and put down both ears
with the air of a pad who has made up her mind to bait. And the Parson
himself, feeling very warm and somewhat sore, said to the pad benignly,
"It is just--thou shalt have corn and water!"
Dismounting therefore, and finding himself very stiff, as soon as he
had reached _terra firma_, the Parson consigned the pad to the ostler,
and walked into the sanded parlour of the inn, to repose himself on a
very hard Windsor chair.
He had been alone rather more than half-an-hour, reading a county
newspaper which smelt much of tobacco, and trying to keep off the
flies that gathered round him in swarms, as if they had never before
seen a Parson, and were anxious to ascertain how the flesh of him
tasted,--when a stage-coach stopped at the inn. A traveller got out
with his carpet-bag in his hand, and was shown into the sanded parlour.
The Parson rose politely, and made a bow.
The traveller touched his hat, without taking it off--looked at Mr
Dale from top to toe--then walked to the window, and whistled a lively
impatient tune, then strode towards the fire-place and rang the bell;
then stared again at the Parson; and that gentleman having courteously
laid down the newspaper, the traveller seized it, threw himself on a
chair, flung one of his legs over the table, tossed the other up on the
mantelpiece, and began reading the paper, while he tilted the chair on
its hind legs with so daring a disregard to the ordinary position of
chairs and their occupants, that the shuddering Parson expected every
moment to see him come down on the back of his skull.
Moved, therefore, to compassion, Mr Dale said mildly--
"Those chairs are very treacherous, sir. I'm afraid you'll be down."
"Eh," said the traveller, looking, up much astonished. "Eh, down?--oh,
you're satirical, sir."
"Satirical, sir? upon my word, no!" exclaimed the parson earnestly.
"I think every free-born man has a right to sit as he pleases in his
own house," resumed the traveller with warmth; "and an inn is his own
house, I guess, so long as he pays his score. Betty, my dear."
For the chambermaid had now replied to the bell.
"I han't Betty, sir; do you want she?"
"No, Sally--cold brandy and water--and a biscuit."
"I han't Sally either," muttered the chambermaid; but the traveller
turning round, showed so smart a neckcloth and so comely a face, that
she smiled, coloured, and went her way.
The traveller now rose, and flung down the paper. He took out a
penknife, and began paring his nails. Suddenly desisting from this
elegant occupation, his eye caught sight of the Parson's shovel-hat,
which lay on a chair in the corner.
"You're a clergyman, I reckon, sir," said the traveller, with a slight
sneer.
Again Mr Dale bowed--bowed in part deprecatingly--in part with dignity.
It was a bow that said, "No offence, sir, but I _am_ a clergyman, and
I'm not ashamed of it."
"Going far?" asked the traveller.
PARSON.--"Not very."
TRAVELLER.--"In a chaise or fly? If so, and we are going the same
way--halves."
PARSON.--"Halves?"
TRAVELLER.--"Yes, I'll pay half the damage--pikes inclusive."
PARSON.--"You are very good, sir. But," (_spoken with pride_) "I am, on
horseback."
TRAVELLER.--"On horseback! Well, I should not have guessed that! You
don't look like it. Where did you say you were going?"
"I did _not_ say where I was going, sir," said the Parson drily, for he
was much offended at that vague and ungrammatical remark applicable to
his horsemanship, that "he did not look like it."
"Close!" said the traveller laughing; "an old traveller, I reckon."
The Parson made no reply, but he took up his shovel-hat, and, with a
bow more majestic than the previous one, walked out to see if his pad
had finished her corn.
The animal had indeed finished all the corn afforded to her, which was
not much, and in a few minutes more Mr Dale resumed his journey. He had
performed about three miles, when the sound of wheels behind made him
turn his head, and he perceived a chaise driven very fast, while out
of the windows thereof dangled strangely a pair of human legs. The pad
began to curvet as the post horses rattled behind, and the Parson had
only an indistinct vision of a human face supplanting these human legs.
The traveller peered out at him as he whirled by--saw Mr Dale tossed up
and down on the saddle, and cried out, "How's the leather?"
"Leather!" soliloquised the Parson, as the pad recomposed herself.
"What does he mean by that? Leather! a very vulgar man. But I got rid
of him cleverly."
Mr Dale arrived without farther adventure at Lansmere. He put up at the
principal inn--refreshed himself by a general ablution-and sate down
with good appetite to his beef-steak and pint of port.
The Parson was a better judge of the physiognomy of man than that of
the horse; and after a satisfactory glance at the civil smirking
landlord, who removed the cover and set on the wine, he ventured on an
attempt at conversation. "Is my lord at the park?"
Landlord, still more civilly than before: "No, sir, his lordship and my
lady have gone to town to meet Lord L'Estrange."
"Lord L'Estrange! He is in England, then?"
"Why, so I heard," replied the landlord, "but we never see him here
now. I remember him a very pretty young man. Every one was fond of
him, and proud of him. But what pranks he did play when he was a lad!
We hoped he would come in for our boro' some of these days, but he has
taken to foren parts--more's the pity. I am a reg'lar Blue, sir, as
I ought to be. The Blue candidate always does me the honour to come
to the Lansmere Arms. 'Tis only the low party puts up with The Boar,"
added the landlord with a look of ineffable disgust. "I hope you like
the wine, sir?"
"Very good, and seems old."
"Bottled these eighteen years, sir. I had in the cask for the great
election of Dashmore and Egerton. I have little left of it, and I never
give it but to old friends like--for, I think, sir, though you be grown
stout, and look more grand, I may say that I've had the pleasure of
seeing you before.
"That's true, I daresay, though I fear was never a very good customer."
LANDLORD.--"Ah, it _is_ Mr Dale, then! I thought so when you came into
the hall. I hope your lady is quite well, and the Squire too; fine
pleasant-spoken gentleman; no fault of his if Mr Egerton went wrong.
Well, we have never seen him--I mean Mr Egerton--since that time. I
don't wonder he stays away; but my lord's son, who was brought up
here,--it an't nat'ral like that he should turn his back on us!"
Mr Dale made no reply, and the landlord was about to retire, when the
Parson, pouring out another glass of the port, said,--"There must be
great changes in the parish. Is Mr Morgan, the medical man, still here?"
"No, indeed; he took out his ploma after you left, and became a real
doctor; and a pretty practice he had too, when he took, all of a
sudden, to some new-fangled way of physicking--I think they calls it
homy-something--"
"Homeopathy!"
"That's it--something against all reason: and so he lost his practice
here and went up to Lunnun. I've not heard of him since."
"Do the Avenels keep their old house?"
"Oh yes!--and are pretty well off, I hear say. John is always poorly;
though he still goes now and then to the Odd Fellows, and takes his
glass; but his wife comes and fetches him away before he can do himself
any harm."
"Mrs Avenel is the same as ever?"
"She holds her head higher, I think," said the landlord, smiling. "She
was always--not exactly proud like, but what I calls gumptious."
"I never heard that word before," said the Parson, laying down his
knife and fork. "Bumptious, indeed, though I believe it is not in the
dictionary, has crept into familiar parlance, especially amongst young
folks at school and college."
"Bumptious is bumptious, and gumptious is gumptious," said the
landlord, delighted to puzzle a Parson. "Now the town beadle is
bumptious, and Mrs Avenel is gumptious."
"She is a very respectable woman," said Mr Dale, somewhat rebukingly.
"In course, sir, all gumptious folks are; they value themselves on
their respectability, and looks down on their neighbours."
PARSON, still philologically occupied.--"Gumptious--gumptious. I think
I remember the substantive at school--not that my master taught it to
me. 'Gumption,' it means cleverness."
LANDLORD, (doggedly.)--"There's gumption and gumptious! Gumption is
knowing; but when I say that sum un is gumptious, I mean--though that's
more vulgar like--sum un who does not think small beer of hisself. You
take me, sir?"
"I think I do," said the Parson, half-smiling. "I believe the Avenels
have only two of their children alive still--their daughter, who
married Mark Fairfield, and a son who went off to America?"
"Ah, but he made his fortune there, and has come back."
"Indeed! I'm very glad to hear it. He has settled at Lansmere?"
"No, sir. I hear as he's bought a property a long way off. But he comes
to see his parents pretty often--so John tells me--but I can't say
that I ever see him. I fancy Dick doesn't like to be seen by folks who
remember him playing in the kennel."
"Not unnatural," said the Parson indulgently; "but he visits his
parents: he is a good son, at all events, then?"
"I've nothing to say against him. Dick was a wild chap before he took
himself off. I never thought he would make his fortune; but the Avenels
are a clever set. Do you remember poor Nora--the Rose of Lansmere, as
they called her? Ah, no, I think she went up to Lunnun afore your time,
sir."
"Humph!" said the Parson drily. "Well, I think you may take away now.
It will be dark soon, and I'll just stroll out and look about me."
"There's a nice tart coming, sir."
"Thank you, I've dined."
The Parson put on his hat and sallied forth into the streets. He eyed
the houses on either hand with that melancholy and wistful interest
with which, in middle life, we revisit scenes familiar to us in
youth--surprised to find either so little change or so much, and
recalling, by fits and snatches, old associations and past emotions.
The long High Street which he threaded now began to change its bustling
character, and slide, as it were gradually, into the high road of a
suburb. On the left, the houses gave way to the moss-grown pales of
Lansmere Park: to the right, though houses still remained, they were
separated from each other by gardens, and took the pleasing appearance
of villas--such villas as retired tradesmen or their widows, old maids,
and half-pay officers, select for the evening of their days.
Mr Dale looked at these villas with the deliberate attention of a man
awakening his power of memory, and at last stopped before one, almost
the last on the road, and which faced the broad patch of sward that
lay before the lodge of Lansmere Park. An old pollard oak stood near
it, and from the oak there came a low discordant sound; it was the
hungry cry of young ravens, awaiting the belated return of the parent
bird. Mr Dale put his hand to his brow, paused a moment, and then,
with a hurried step, passed through the little garden and knocked at
the door. A light was burning in the parlour, and Mr Dale's eye caught
through the window a vague outline of three forms. There was an evident
bustle within at the sound of the knocks. One of the forms rose and
disappeared. A very prim, neat, middle-aged maid-servant now appeared
at the threshold, and austerely inquired the visitor's business.
"I want to see Mr or Mrs Avenel. Say that I have come many miles to see
them; and take in this card."
The maid-servant took the card, and half-closed the door. At least
three minutes elapsed before she reappeared.
"Missis says it's late, sir; but walk in."
The Parson accepted the not very gracious invitation, stepped across
the little hall, and entered the parlour.
Old John Avenel, a mild-looking man, who seemed slightly paralytic,
rose slowly from his arm-chair. Mrs Avenel, in an awfully stiff, clean,
and Calvinistical cap, and a gray dress, every fold of which bespoke
respectability and staid repute--stood erect on the floor, and, fixing
on the Parson a cold and cautious eye, said--
"You do the like of us great honour, Mr Dale--take a chair! You call
upon business?"
"Of which I have apprised you by letter, Mr Avenel."
"My husband is very poorly."
"A poor creature!" said John feebly, and as if in compassion of
himself. "I can't get about as I used to do. But it ben't near election
time, be it, sir?"
"No, John," said Mrs Avenel, placing her husband's arm within her own.
"You must lie down a bit, while I talk to the gentleman."
"I'm a real good blue," said poor John; "but I an't quite the man I
was;" and, leaning heavily on his wife, he left the room, turning round
at the threshold, and saying, with great urbanity--"Anything to oblige,
sir?"
Mr Dale was much touched. He had remembered John Avenel the comeliest,
the most active, and the most cheerful man in Lansmere; great at glee
club and cricket, (though then stricken in years) greater in vestries;
reputed greatest in elections.
"Last scene of all," murmured the Parson; "and oh well, turning from
the poet, may we cry with the disbelieving philosopher, 'Poor, poor
humanity!'"[21]
[21] Mr Dale probably here alludes to Lord Bolingbroke's ejaculation as
he stood by the dying Pope; but his memory does not serve him with the
exact words.
In a few minutes Mrs Avenel returned. She took a chair at some distance
from the Parson's, and, resting one hand on the elbow of the chair,
while with the other she stiffly smoothed the stiff gown, she said--
"Now, sir."
That "Now, sir," had in its sound something sinister and warlike. This
the shrewd Parson recognised with his usual tact. He edged his chair
nearer to Mrs Avenel, and placing his hand on hers--
"Yes, now then, and as friend to friend."
LEGENDS OF THE MONASTIC ORDERS, AS REPRESENTED IN THE FINE ARTS.[22]
Lovers of the Fine Arts--and they ought to be the whole civilised
world--owe an especial regard and reverence to the Monastic Orders,
without whom there would have been, and would be now, no Art at all.
Taking the Fine Arts at their lowest value, as a mere source of
pleasure, from the love of imitation or representation of agreeable
objects--the remembrancer of scenes of interest, the elegant
accomplishment by which homes are embellished and made more beautifully
homely--surely some little gratitude is due, where it has been the
fashion to be sparing of any praise, to those good and pious men who
in their convents prepared, improved, and invented colours as well as
implements of Art; were themselves the early painters, and by their
extensive patronage may be called the Fathers of the Arts. Had the
world derived from the monastic orders no other good, that one should
have insured them a perpetual respect.
[22] _Legends of the Monastic Orders, as Represented in the Fine Arts._
By Mrs JAMESON. 1 vol. Longman & Co., London. 1850
But the Arts do not stand alone--are themselves a sisterhood, if we
may so speak--many orders, but one religion; one bond binding them
together--the culture of humanity.
History has unfortunately too often been the work of infidel hands
and hearts. Whatever is of religion has been viewed with a prejudice;
the vices of mankind at large have been tenderly treated; while such
as could with truth or untruth be charged upon religious orders,
have met with little mercy, and have been exempted from the common
apology of the age. In this, little candour has been shown. It would
be fairer, speaking of any class of men, to inquire whether they were
worse or better than others--a benefit or a plague-spot on society;
and it would be fairer to see what efforts they made for their own and
for the general improvement, and rather to estimate their success,
where few but themselves struggled for amelioration, than to single
out every fault, every corruption, and of every age, and to bring the
accumulation to bear upon the head, as it were, of one generation. The
monastic orders have been the theme of general abuse by many a flippant
writer, as if they lived but at one particular period, and were but
examples of ignorance and vice--the encouragers of superstition for
their own selfish ends. The "dark ages" have been indeed dark to those
who have shut their eyes to the light which, small and glimmering
though it appeared from our broad and open way of life, might, if
followed with a gentle curiosity, have led into undreamt-of recesses,
found to contain great treasures; and as the bodily, so the mental
eye would have accommodated its vision to the degree of light given,
and would have seen distinctly both form and beauty, which would have
burst with a kind of glory upon them through the gloom, and met them as
goodness would meet willing seekers.
"Virtue makes herself light, through darkness for to wade."
"I know nothing," says one writer, "of those ages that knew nothing."
As it has been justly retorted--how did he, knowing nothing of them,
know that they knew nothing? It might be more easy to show that, if
he knew anything about anything, he was mainly indebted to those
very ages which kept within them the light of knowledge, preserved
and cherished from utterly going out with the sanctity of a vestal
fire. Turn where we will, we see the monuments of the labour of
the monastic orders--wonderful monuments. And surely if any age
may be said with truth to be dark, dark were those of the two last
centuries which, with the wondrous edifices before their eyes, saw
not their beauty mutilated, and with most unwarrantable conceit
thought they had improved upon them. Whose was the ignorance? Look
at our architecture. Great advancement has been made, and is making
daily; and what is the consequence of this revived taste? A proper
appreciation of the architecture of the "dark ages." Our best hope
is, to imitate successfully. Who were they who designed these miracles
of art? Devout men--the monastic orders! Who furnished every species
of decoration--the sculpture, the painted glass, the pictures, that
were a language? Men who themselves lived humbly and sparingly, that
they might devote themselves, their talents, and their possessions
to make an exalted and visible religion upon earth, as the one thing
needful for future generations of men. Such, undoubtedly, was the one
mind of the great religious orders--we speak of their purpose and of
their doings. It was their mission over every land: we say not that
corruption did not find them out, that there was no canker in their
fruit. The enemy knew where to sow his tares; but perverse people tore,
uprooted and cast from them the wheat, and loved to lay waste; and, as
is ever the case, hating whom they injure, they vilified _per fas et
nefas_; and, upon the plea of others' corruption, became themselves
robbers, plunderers, and, too often, assassins.
It has been charged against these orders, that from the extreme of
poverty they became rich. _Hinc illæ l
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