Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 67, No. 415, May, 1850

By Various

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Title: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 67, No. 415, May, 1850

Author: Various

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE, VOL. 67, NO. 415, MAY, 1850 ***

BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
NO. CCCCXV. MAY, 1850. VOL. LXVII.

CONTENTS.

FREE-TRADE FINANCE, 513
GREECE AGAIN, 526
THE MODERN ARGONAUTS, 539
MY PENINSULAR MEDAL. BY AN OLD PENINSULAR. PART VI., 542
GERMAN POPULAR PROPHECIES, 560
THE HISTORY OF A REGIMENT DURING THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN, 573
THE PENITENT FREE-TRADER, 585
TENOR OF THE TRADE CIRCULARS, 589
ALISON’S POLITICAL ESSAYS, 605
OVID’S SPRING-TIME, 621
DIES BOREALES NO. VII. CHRISTOPHER UNDER CANVASS, 622
LETTER FROM MAJOR-GENERAL SIR WILLIAM NAPIER, 640

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. CCCCXV. MAY, 1850. VOL. LXVII.

FREE-TRADE FINANCE.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer has brought forward the Budget, and the
Financial Measures of Government are before the public. It contains
matter worthy of the most serious consideration. It is hard to say
whether the admission it contains, or the measures it proposes, are most
condemnatory of the system of Class Government which the Reform Bill has
imposed on the country.

The statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in a few words, is
this:—“Last year, I calculated upon a small surplus of L.104,000 for the
year ending 5th April 1850, but that surplus has swelled to L.2,250,000,
by rise in the produce of the taxes, and reductions of the expenditure.
Of this sum L.1,500,000 is to be regarded as the real surplus to be
relied upon for the measures of this year.” Assuming this as the surplus
to be dealt with, he proposes to apply L.750,000 in reduction of the
last contracted part of the debt, and L.750,000 in reduction of
taxation; L.400,000 a-year being applied to the reduction of the duty on
bricks, and L.350,000 to that of stamps on conveyances. It is thus that
he proposes to alleviate the agricultural distress which, he admits,
prevails in the country.

Three things are especially worthy of observation in this statement.

In the first place, it affords another illustration, if another was
needed, of the present deplorable subjection of Government to the
pressure from without, which has so often and painfully been exhibited
since the new system of government began. It is well known that, during
the three disastrous years that preceded the present one, debt to a
large amount was contracted. To mention two items only: eight millions
were borrowed in 1847 to relieve the Irish famine; L.2,000,000 in the
succeeding year, to carry on the current expenses of the year; and in
1841 the deficiency had been such, that no less than L.5,000,000 was
borrowed to meet the ordinary expenses of the year. One would suppose,
that when a surplus arose in the year 1849, the natural course would
have been to have applied it, in the first instance, to extinguish, so
far as it would go, the additional debt so recently contracted. Has this
been done? Not at all. Only L.750,000 out of a real surplus said to
amount to L.1,500,000, is to be applied in this way; and L.750,000 is to
be devoted to reduction of taxes. L.10,000,000 is borrowed during two
years of distress; L.750,000 only has been devoted to its reduction, in
a year, we are told, of unparalleled commercial prosperity.

In the next place, to what object is the L.750,000 a-year of surplus
available to reduced taxation, discovered for the first time after three
years of deficit, to be applied? Is it to be devoted to remission of
taxes pressing upon the agricultural interest, whom the measures pursued
for behoof of towns have reduced to such a state of depression? Not at
all. It is to be applied to reduction of the duty on _stamps and
bricks_. The first may be admitted to be desirable, because, as so large
part of the landed property in the kingdom will soon, to all appearance,
change hands, it is an object to render the transfer as little costly as
possible. But of what use is the reduction of the duty on bricks to the
suffering cultivators? That it is a boon to the master-builders in
towns, may be conceded; though it may well be doubted whether it will
ever cause a reduction of price to the purchasers from them. But what
the better will the farmers and ploughmen, the landlords and yeomen, be
of the change? Additional houses are not wanted _in the country_; on the
contrary, there will in all probability not be inmates for those that
already are there, from the certain and experienced effect of Free-trade
in diminishing the demand for rural labour. It is in the towns and
villages that the building is going on; because Free-trade policy is
daily more and more forcing the rural inhabitants into the towns in
quest of employment or relief. In London, 200 miles of new streets, and
66,000 houses, are said to have been constructed, or to be in course of
construction, during the last two years. Is there any increase of houses
in the rural districts? Herein, then, lies the injustice of the present
measures of Government, that, though prefaced with professions of a
desire to relieve all parties, they in reality benefit one class only;
and that, introduced at a time when it is admitted the agriculturists
are in a state of extreme depression, and the manufacturers are asserted
to be in a state of unexampled prosperity, they are mainly calculated to
add to the prosperity of the latter, and take nothing from the
sufferings of the former. It is not difficult to see where the Reform
Bill has practically lodged the power of Government in the British
Empire.

In the third place, and what is most material of all, the speech of the
Chancellor of the Exchequer contains an admission in regard to the
present state and past direction of our finances, since we have fallen
under Liberal direction, of such moment, that we regard it as the most
important statement that has ever yet been given in regard to the effect
of the new measures on the national fortunes. It must be given in his
own words, as reported in the _Times_ of March 16:—

“If honourable gentlemen will refer to what has taken place during the
last twenty years—the sums which have been borrowed on the one hand,
and the amounts which have been applied to the reduction of the debt
on the other—I think they will see that there is good reason for not
being indifferent on this subject. In 1835 and 1836, a sum of
L.20,000,000 was borrowed for the emancipation of the West Indian
slave population; to defray the deficiency, in the year 1841,
L.5,000,000 were borrowed; I was obliged to borrow L.8,000,000 to meet
the necessities of the sister country in 1847; and when the House
refused to increase the income-tax in 1848, I was obliged to borrow a
further sum of L.2,000,000, to meet the extraordinary expenditure.
Since the period I have mentioned, then, a sum of L.35,000,000 has
been added to the national debt. When I turn to the other side of the
account, I find that all the money which has been applied from surplus
income to the reduction of debt, in the course of the last twenty
years, amounts to only L.8,000,000; so that, _in a period of profound
peace, an increase of debt of no less than L.27,000,000 has taken
place_. (Hear, hear.) When, in 1848, the House refused to accede to
the proposal I made for an increased tax upon income, I certainly did
hope that, when a turn took place in our financial affairs, they would
not, the moment there was a surplus of income, instantly press that
the whole of that surplus should be devoted to the reduction of
taxation. What should we think of a private individual who acted in
such a manner (hear, hear)—a man who, whenever he found his income
fall short of his expenditure, borrowed the money necessary to meet
his liabilities, but who never thought of paying off that debt when,
by a fortunate turn of affairs, he happened to be in receipt of an
excess of income? (Hear, hear.) I must say that it will be hopeless
for us to maintain that character as a nation which we think
indispensable in an individual, if, in a time of profound peace,
instead of reducing our public debt, we go on adding to it from year
to year.”

Here it is admitted, by the Whig Chancellor of the Exchequer, that after
twenty years of profound peace and unbroken Liberal government, (Sir
Robert Peel was essentially Liberal,) not only has there been no
reduction of the public debt, but AN INCREASE OF IT TO THE EXTENT OF
TWENTY-SEVEN MILLIONS. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that, if the
noble sinking-fund of L.15,000,000 a-year, which Mr Pitt’s policy left
to the Administration at the close of the war in 1815, had been
preserved unimpaired by keeping up the indirect taxes from which it
arose, the whole national debt would have been extinguished in 1845.
When the ruinous monetary act of 1819, and the increasing concession of
successive Administrations to urban clamour had rendered that
impossible, the semi-Liberal semi-Tory Governments from 1815 to 1830
still contrived to pay off L.82,000,000 of the public debt in fifteen
years; and when the Duke of Wellington resigned in November 1830, he
left, by the admission of all parties, a real sinking-fund, arising from
an excess of income above expenditure, of L.2,900,000 a-year to his
successors. But since that time, under his Liberal successors, not only
has that surplus on an average of years disappeared, but during twenty
years of profound peace L.27,000,000 has been _added_ to the total
amount of the debt. Well may Sir Charles Wood say, “What should we think
of a private individual who acted in such a manner?” Such is the rule of
the urban constituencies, to humour whose fancies, and appease whose
clamour, the whole efforts of Government for the last twenty years have
been directed.

The important thing in the statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
is, that it gives us the result of Whig government and Free-trade
finance during so long a period. Every successive quarter, during these
twenty years, we have been told by the Liberal press that the finances
were in the most flourishing condition; that any deficiency that
appeared was more apparent than real; and at any rate, in the most
unfavourable view, it was sufficiently explained by temporary causes,
and afforded no ground whatever for despondency in the future. Every
successive Session, the Ministers came down to Parliament with the most
flourishing accounts of the state of the country and of the public
finances, and demonstrated to the satisfaction of every reasonable man
in the nation that both never were in more hopeful and prosperous
circumstances. Even when a deficiency of one or two millions stared the
Chancellor of the Exchequer in the face, which was not unfrequently the
case, there was always some temporary or transient cause to which it was
to be referred. The China tribute had ceased, or some reduction of
duties had come into operation, or revolutions in Europe had diminished
our exports to the adjoining states. The Irish potato-rot was a perfect
godsend to the Liberal financiers. It constituted their stock in trade
for the next three years. The ruin of L.15,000,000 worth of agricultural
produce in Ireland, out of at least L.260,000,000 worth in the two
islands, explained the whole distress of the country and the exchequer
for the next three years; and, strange to say, the very men who paraded
so ostentatiously the ruinous effects of this comparatively trifling
deficiency in a single year, made a boast soon after of their having
destroyed L.90,000,000 of agricultural remuneration by the importations
they induced of foreign grain.

But nothing is more certain than that error and delusion cannot, by any
human effort, be prolonged for a very long period. With the advent of
the time when the interest to deceive has ceased, or a new generation of
deceivers has succeeded, the whole fabric falls to pieces. As certainly
and mercilessly as the vices or follies of preceding monarchs are
portrayed by those who have succeeded to the inheritance of their
results, are the ruinous consequences of former delusions in democratic
Governments exposed by succeeding Administrations who find themselves
hampered by their effects. Many a popular Nero is cast down from his
pedestal, almost before the vital warmth has left his body; many a
republican Necker is exposed by a republican Bailly, when he finds the
public finances rendered desperate by the measures which had been
pursued with the cordial approbation of the whole Liberal party in the
state. It is the same with our present Chancellor of the Exchequer. He
finds the public finances, in the midst of boasted commercial and
manufacturing prosperity, in so deplorable a condition, that he is fain
to lay the whole blame upon his predecessors; and, after deploring the
extraordinary fact, that during twenty years of profound peace, Liberal
government, and retrenching Administrations, we have not only made no
reduction whatever in the public debt, but added twenty-seven millions
to its amount, he very naturally and justly observes, “What should we
say to a private individual who should conduct his affairs in this
manner?”

We have been so accustomed, during twenty years of Liberal and popular
rule, to see every successive Administration live only from hand to
mouth, and to be content if they can get over present difficulties,
without bestowing a thought on the future, that the nation has almost
forgotten what it was to have a prudent and foreseeing Government at the
head of affairs: or rather, nearly the whole generations who have risen
to manhood have come to think that such a system of government is
impossible, and is to be ranked with the El Dorado of Sir Walter
Raleigh, or the Utopia of Sir Thomas More. To enlighten their minds on
this subject, we subjoin two Tables, showing what was done by the
corrupt old Tory Governments—even during the anxieties and expenditure
of a most protracted and costly war, or when the national finances were
slowly recovering from its effects—to put the finances on a good
footing, and lay, in present fortitude and sacrifice, a solid foundation
for future relief and prosperity.

TABLE I., showing the growth of the Money
applied to the reduction of the Debt, and
the Sums paid off from 1792 to 1815, being
twenty-three years of war.

1792, £1,558,504
1793, 1,634,972
1794, 1,872,957
1795, 2,143,697
1796, 2,639,956
1797, 3,393,210
1798, 4,093,164
1799, 4,528,568
1800, 4,908,379
1801, 5,528,315
1802, 6,114,033
1803, 6,494,694
1804, 6,436,929
1805, 9,406,865
1806, 9,602,658
1807, 10,125,419
1808, 10,681,579
1809, 11,359,691
1810, 12,095,977
1811, 13,073,577
1812, 14,098,842
1813, 16,064,057
1814, 14,830,957
1815, 14,241,397
————————————
£186,928,399

—PORTER’S _Parl. Tables_, i. 1.

It is a total mistake to allege, as is often done, that this immense and
growing sinking-fund was obtained entirely by borrowing with the one
hand what was paid off with another. The _funds_ thus applied to the
reduction of debt were obtained from the _indirect_ taxes set apart on
the contraction of each loan, in amount adequate not only to defray its
annual interest, but also to extinguish, within forty-five years after
it was contracted, the principal of the loan itself. That part of the
loan was applied in each year, especially during the latter years of the
war, to keep up the sinking-fund, is true, but is immaterial. That was
only because the taxes set apart for its support were absorbed, in great
part, by the necessities of the contest; and when _the contest and loans
ceased_, these taxes were amply sufficient to keep up the sinking-fund
without any extraneous aid. This appears from the following Table, also
taken from Mr Porter, exhibiting what was actually paid off of the
public debt during the next fifteen years of Tory peace-government:—

TABLE showing the Money applied to the
reduction of Debt, Funded and Unfunded, from
1815 to 1832.

1816, £13,945,117
1817, 14,514,457
1818, 15,339,483
1819, 16,305,590
1820, 17,499,773
1821, 17,219,957
1822, 18,889,319
1823, 7,482,325
1824, 10,625,059
1825, 6,093,475
1826, 5,621,231
1827, 5,704,766
1828, 4,667,965
1829, 2,559,485
1830, 4,545,465
1831, 1,663,093
1832, 5,696
————————————
£162,682,256

—PORTER’S _Parl. Tables_, i. 1.

But the Reform Bill, passed in 1832, has entirely put an end to the
reduction of the debt. Since that time, as Sir Charles Wood tells us,
the debt, so far from having diminished, has increased £27,000,000.

That there was a substantial reduction of debt going on during the
period included in the above table, and not a mere juggle, by
transferring debt from one denomination to another, though not to the
amount which these figures would indicate, is decisively proved by the
following Table, showing the general result of the financial operations
from 1816 to 1832, when the Whigs introduced the Reform Bill:—

Funded Debt on 5th Jan. 1816, £816,311,940
Unfunded do., 48,510,501
————————————
Total, £860,822,441

Total Debt on 5th Jan. 1832—
Funded, £754,100,549
Unfunded, 27,752,650
———————————— 781,853,199
————————————
Paid off in sixteen years, £82,969,242

—PORTER’S _Parl. Tables_, ii. 6.

In the next eighteen years, since the Reform Bill changed the
Constitution, it has been seen the debt was increased by £27,000,000.

So prodigious and fatal a change in our financial system would be wholly
inexplicable, considering the many able and patriotic men who, since
that period, have been intrusted with its direction, if we did not
recollect the vital change made since that time in the constitution of
the country, and the new class which was brought up in overwhelming
numbers to return representatives to the House of Commons. That class is
the borough and shopkeeping interest, with whom the main object is to
buy cheap and sell dear. Not only has this principle, since that time,
formed the sole regulator of Government measures in general or
commercial policy, but it has operated decisively on our finances, and
is the main cause to which their present hopeless condition is to be
ascribed. To cheapen everything became the great object; and this was to
be done, it was thought, most effectually by taking taxes off articles
of consumption. Under the influence of this principle, indirect taxes to
the following enormous amount have been repealed since the peace, the
magnitude of which renders it noways surprising that the sinking-fund
has disappeared:—

TABLE showing the Taxes, Direct and Indirect, Repealed and Imposed from
1816 to 1847, both inclusive.

REPEALED. IMPOSED.
Year. Direct. Indirect. Direct. Indirect. Year.
1816, £15,000,000 £2,547,000 £320,058 1816
1817, 36,495 7,991 1817
1818, 9,564 1,336 1818
1819, 705,846 3,094,902 1819
1820, 4,000 119,602 1820
1821, 471,309 43,642 1821
1822, 2,139,101 1822
1823, 1,860,000 2,190,050 18,596 1823
1824, 1,704,724 45,605 1824
1825, 3,639,551 43,000 1825
1826, 1,973,812 188,000 1826
1827, 4,038 21,402 1827
1828, 51,998 1,966 1828
1829, 126,406 1829
1830, 4,093,955 696,004 1830
1831, 1,598,536 627,586 1831
1832, 747,264 44,526 1832
1833, 1,526,914 1833
1834, 1,200,000 891,516 198,394 1834
1835, 165,817 75 1835
1836, 989,786 1836
1837, 234 3,991 1837
1838, 289 100 1838
1839, 66,258 1,783 1839
1840, 18,959 2,155,673 1840
1841, 27,176 1841
1842, 1,596,366 £5,529,989 1842
1843, 1843
1844, 1844
1845, 4,535,561 23,720 1845
1846, 1846
1847, 1847
———————————— ———————————— ———————————— ————————————
£18,060,000 £33,523,623 £5,529,989 £7,743,962
Imposed, 5,529,989 7,743,962
———————————— ————————————
Taxation reduced, £12,431,011 £25,779,661

Thus the balance of indirect taxation, reduced since the Peace, has been
above £25,000,000—of direct, above £12,000,000 annually; and till 1842,
it was £15,000,000 yearly. Had the sinking-fund been kept up at its
amount as it was in 1815—that is, at £15,000,000 sterling out of the
indirect taxes, there might have been repealed £15,000,000 of direct,
and £14,000,000 of indirect taxes, and still _every shilling of the
public debt would have been paid off by 1846_. Why has this most
desirable, most vital object for the national safety in future times,
not been gained? Simply because the mania of cheapening everything has
ruled the State. Successive Administrations, which have succeeded to the
helm of affairs, have endeavoured to gain a fleeting popularity, by
bidding against each other in the race for popularity, by the sacrifice
of the best interests of their country; and because Parliament—composed,
so far as its majority goes since 1832, of the members for boroughs—have
shut their eyes entirely to the ultimate consequences of their actions,
and looked only to the gratifying their buying and selling constituents
by the incessant reduction of the indirect taxes, and lowering the
remuneration of industry of every kind throughout the country.

In truth, the chasm made in the finances of the country by this
incessant, uncalled for, and ruinous reduction of the indirect taxes, in
pursuance of the mania to cheapen everything, under which the nation has
been labouring during the last thirty years, has been far greater and
more disastrous than the preceding figures, formidable as they are,
would lead us to suppose. The taxes repealed are of course set down at
the amount they were _at the time of their repeal_. But that is very far
from what they would have produced if they had been kept up; because, in
that case, of course they would have shared in the vast increase of
wealth and population which has since taken place. At the time when a
large part of these taxes were repealed, the British isles did not
contain above from 20,000,000 to 24,000,000 of inhabitants—now they
contain 29,000,000. Our exports and imports have more than doubled in
amount since the income-tax was taken off in 1816. Beyond all doubt, at
its original rate of ten per cent, it would now have produced, at the
very least, £20,000,000 a-year. The duty on spirits, so fatally lowered
in 1826, would now have produced, not £2,000,000, but £3,000,000 or
£3,500,000 annually. There cannot be a shadow of doubt that the taxes,
which in 1815 produced £72,000,000 a-year, would, if continued at the
same rates, have been now producing 50 per cent more, or £110,000,000.
There is no man in his senses who would think that the nation either
could have borne, or ought to have borne, such a load of taxation.
Relief, on the return of peace, was indispensable. But it is one thing
to give relief in a reasonable and prudent degree; it is another, and a
very different thing, to throw away the public revenue with a reckless
prodigality, without either principle or foresight, and for no other
reason but to win a temporary popularity for wasteful Administrations.

Indeed, the inevitable effect of the cheapening system, and especially
of the repeal of the Corn Laws, in rendering the taxes unproductive, and
payment of the interest even of the public debt ere long impossible, was
distinctly foreseen and foretold not only by ourselves in this Magazine,
but by the most decided apostles of the opposite set of opinions. Hear
Mr Cobbett on the subject, in Vol. LI. of his _Register_, No. 2, July
10, 1824—a quotation for which we are indebted to that able and
consistent journal, the _Standard_.

“‘The commercial world’ will, I believe, find it rather difficult to
persuade the landlords to ‘modify and alter the Corn-laws,’ much less
to ‘do away’ with those laws: but what now is to become of all the
pretty doctrine about the inseparable interests of manufacture and
agriculture? I trust we shall hear no more of that soft nonsense....

“Now mind, I do not say that the manufacturers ought not to be
permitted to get food from abroad; but I say—and what man in his
senses does not say, that in whatever degree this cotton body is
supplied with food from abroad, it must and will dispense with food
from our own lands....

“I would fain then see the two-legged animal who is quadruped enough
still to contend that the interests of the landlords and those of the
cotton-lords are inseparable. They are directly opposed to each other;
and opposed to each other they must be as long as this debt shall
last.

“It will be curious enough to observe how ‘the manufacturing mind’
will work upon ‘the agricultural mind.’ These two minds will now come
into direct contact with each other. It will be the business of the
cotton mind to convince the landlords that bringing in foreign corn
will not make their English corn sell cheaper; or, failing in this, to
convince them that wheat at 4s. a bushel will, ‘in the long run,’ be
better for the landlords than wheat at 8s. a bushel. A very long run,
I believe, indeed! In short, it is a question of rents or no rents.
With the present debt and taxes, and with wheat at 4s. a bushel, there
can be no rents; so that, when the cotton mind comes forward to get a
repeal of the Corn Bill, it comes in fact to pray that there shall no
longer be rents in England.

“The cotton-lords, and indeed all the lords of the loom and anvil, are
bestirring themselves, and collecting all their forces for a desperate
assault upon the jolterheads (the landlords) who cry aloud for
national faith. I wish them success. I will not absolutely join them;
but I wish them success; because that success would destroy the _whole
system_ (the system of paper-money, national debt, and oppressive
taxation) root and branch. The Corn Bill, the Small-Note Bill, the
laying out of public money in Ireland, the lending of money
occasionally to manufacturers and merchants, the Bank advancing money
upon big estates—all these shifts and tricks just keep the thing
agoing; but come a war, or repeal the Corn Bill, and you will soon see
what is to become of the system. Everything seems strained to its
utmost: and when that is the case, something must soon give way.”

The alleged advantage which the Free-trade party oppose to the obviously
calamitous effects of this incessant surrender of the public revenue,
and the now admitted abandonment of all attempts to pay off the public
debt, is, that commodities have been cheapened thereby, and the weight
which oppressed them taken off the springs of industry. We utterly deny
this advantage. What is the good of this constant cheapening, when
confessedly you cannot cheapen our debts and obligations? Is it anything
else but diminishing the funds from which the interest of these debts
and obligations is to be discharged, and running the nation into the
most imminent hazard of incurring a general bankruptcy, public and
private? Do not salaries and incomes fall, from the highest to the
lowest, in consequence; and if so, what good does the fall of prices do,
even to the individuals who apparently profit by it? Suppose we gained
our object, and rendered everything as cheap here as it is in Poland or
Norway—what should we gain by it, but that we should speedily become _as
poor as them_, and that the realised wealth of this nation, now for the
most part invested in situations where its interest is paid by the
industry of the people, would be lost by that industry having ceased to
receive a sufficient remuneration? And is that an object for which the
national security should be endangered, and the means of maintaining our
independence destroyed?

In truth,—with the exception of some manufactured articles, such as
cotton and calicoes, in which the fall of prices has been prodigious,
owing to the successive improvement of the machinery employed in their
formation,—we are at a loss to see that this immense remission of
indirect taxes, which has evidently been fatal to the national finances,
has been attended with the slightest benefit to the country generally.
We say the country generally—because there can be no doubt that it has
been a very great advantage to the _master-manufacturers engaged in the
trades affected by the taxes_, who have, in most cases, contrived to put
the whole tax lost to the public into their own pockets. That is the
real secret of the remission. Individual selfishness, the thirst for
gain, was in most cases the moving spring. The parties interested
besieged the Chancellor of the Exchequer with memorials, setting forth
the hardships they sustained from the tax affecting their branch of
industry, and the immense benefit the _public_ would derive from its
abolition; but the public was the very last thing they were really
thinking of. It was their own profits to which they were looking; and
but for that, they never would have stirred in the matter. The immense
fortunes made in many branches of manufactures, during the last quarter
of a century, have been in great part owing to the tax remitted having
been wholly gained to the master-manufacturers engaged in them. We pay
the same now for our shoes and beer as we did thirty years ago, though,
since its termination, the whole tax on leather and the war tax on malt
have been repealed.

There is no doubt that prices have declined in most articles of
consumption to a great degree during the last twenty-five years, and in
some to a most extraordinary extent. But where the decline has been
great—as, for example, in cottons or calicoes, which are now selling for
a fifth of what they cost during the war—it is not owing to the
remission of taxation, so much as to the extraordinary perfection to
which machinery and the division of labour have been brought. The proof
of this is decisive. The fall of price has been fully as great in
branches of manufactures in regard to which no remission has taken
place, or in a very slight degree, as in those in which it has been most
considerable. And in regard to all commodities, the effect of the
monetary bills of 1819, 1826, and 1844, must be taken into
consideration. Those bills, by contracting the currency to _one half_ of
what it previously had been in proportion to the industry and population
of the country, have effected a revolution of prices so great, that
nearly the whole reduction of the cost of articles prior to the last
year is to be ascribed to it. The great organ of the money interest, the
_Times_, boasts that recent legislation has doubled the value of the
sovereign. Unquestionably it has; and of course it has also doubled the
whole debt of the country, public and private. It has turned the
national debt of £800,000,000 into £1,600,000,000; it has made the
annual taxation of £52,000,000 as burdensome as £100,000,000 would have
been during the war. Prices have generally fallen; but it is the
contraction of the currency which has done that. As to the remission of
taxation, with the exception of a few articles, such as salt and
spirits, in which the remission, being very large, was immediately felt
by the consumer, the reduction of prices has not been greater than
necessarily flowed from the artificial scarcity of money, and would have
been the same though no reduction of public duties had taken place.
Generally speaking, the tax, lost to the public, has been entirely
gained by the master-manufacturer.

Had the system of cheapening, carried into effect by the contraction of
the currency on the one hand, and the extensive remission of duties on
the other, been attended by beneficial consequences to the people, and
resulted in general happiness and prosperity, there would at least have
been some set-off against the ruin of our financial prospects which it
has occasioned; and we might have consoled ourselves for the evident
imposition of the public debt as a hopeless burden upon the nation, by
the reflection that at least temporary wellbeing had resulted from the
change. Has this been the case? Alas! the fact is just the reverse; and
among the many mournful reflections which the present hopeless condition
of our finances awakens, it is perhaps the most mournful, that the price
paid for it has been, not public happiness, but general and
unprecedented misery. In the long and varied annals of English history,
there is beyond all question no period which has been marked by such
repeated and widespread suffering as the thirty years which have elapsed
since the cheapening system was begun, by the contraction of the
currency in 1819, and the present time, when it has been carried into
full effect by Sir R. Peel’s Free-trade policy in 1846. The three
dreadful monetary crises of 1825, 1839, and 1847, followed, as each of
them was, by several years of devastation and ruin to the trading
classes; the repeated recurrence of agricultural distress, especially
from 1832 to 1836, and in 1849; the unheard-of agonies of the Irish
famine of 1846, perpetuated by the fall of prices, which rendered
agriculture unremunerative over great part of that country,—are some of
the leading features of an epoch which will ever be regarded as at once
the most momentous and the most disastrous which the British Empire has
ever known.

It has left its traces deeply furrowed and for ever marked in English
annals. It has produced consequences which will never be forgotten, and
to which the historians of future times will point as the turning-point
of British story, an eternal warning to future ages. It has produced the
Revolution of 1832; disfranchised our whole Colonies; displaced the
government of property, talent, and intelligence in the ruling island,
and installed that of buying and selling in its stead. It has severed
the public policy from the protection of the Land and Native Industry,
the real inheritance and only sure patrimony of the nation, and anchored
it instead on the shifting quicksands of Commercial Prosperity. It has
destroyed the West Indies beyond the possibility of redemption, and
spread discontent so widely through our other Colonies, that it is
universally known they are all only waiting for some serious disaster to
the parent state, or the advent of a protracted and hazardous war, to
declare themselves independent. It has rendered every seventh man in
Great Britain and Ireland, taken together, a pauper. It has driven from
250,000 to 300,000 industrious citizens, for the last three years,
annually into exile from their native land. It has raised the poor-rate
in both islands to an unprecedented height, and, when measured by its
true standard, the price of subsistence to double what it ever was
before. It has implanted the seeds of ruin in our Mercantile Navy, by
the rapid growth of foreign shipping as compared with British in
carrying on our own trade. It has rendered our shores defenceless as
they were in the days of the Saxon Heptarchy; and made one of our first
admirals, Sir Charles Napier, thankful when the winter frosts closed the
Baltic harbours, and secured our capital from the insulting visits of
the successors of the sea-kings of the north. It has rendered our means
of raising a revenue so hopeless, that the “greatest bill-broker in the
world,” Mr Gurney, has declared that we must end in national bankruptcy;
and the leader of the Free-traders himself, Mr Cobden, has publicly said
that there is no resource but to disband our troops, sell our ships of
war, and trust the national security to the justice and moderation of
our enemies, and the total absence of envy in our rivals. Such, and not
public and passing felicity, is the price which the nation has paid for
the ruin of its finances, the abandonment of the sinking-fund, and the
imposing of the public debt _for ever_, as a burden, hopeless of
redemption, on the country.

The destruction of property which has taken place in the British Empire
during the thirty years that this cheapening process was going on,
exceeds probably anything recorded during a similar period in the annals
of mankind. It has much exceeded all that was produced by the
confiscations of the Convention, or the devastation of the wars of
Napoleon. Each of the three great monetary crises of 1825, 1839, and
1847, occasioned the destruction at once of two or three hundred
millions worth of mercantile property, and halved the fortunes of
persons to double that extent. The intervals between them were, with the
exception of a few brief gleams of perilous prosperity, periods of
anxiety, gloom, and depression, during which all persons engaged in
business, with the exception of the great capitalists, who were daily
getting richer, found their property melting away under the ceaseless
and progressive fall of prices. It was exactly the obverse of the vast
impulse given to industry over the whole world by the discovery of the
mines of Mexico and Peru, and the consequent rise of prices which
everywhere ensued. One class, and one only, flourished amidst the
general distress; but, unfortunately, in that class the government of
the nation for the time was vested, viz., the _moneyed interest_. So
immensely had this interest grown under the protective policy of the
preceding hundred and fifty years, that it was able to set all other
interests in the State at defiance, and to pursue the system of making
the sovereign worth two sovereigns, despite the evident ruin which that
system was bringing on all the industrious classes in the state. Future
ages will ask what were the devastating wars, the stunning calamities,
the loss of provinces, the severance of colonies, which inflicted such
deep and irremediable wounds on the British nation during these
memorable periods? and they will be answered, it was thirty years of
unbroken peace at home, a series of brilliant colonial conquests abroad,
and ONE SYSTEM.

But that one system was amply sufficient to break down the most
wisely-conceived system of finance, to ruin the most flourishing
revenue, to render beggarly the richest nation, to destroy the greatest
empire. It is the system, originating with the Roman empire, as a
necessary and just consequence of its universal conquest, of universal
free-trade—a system which ruined the empire. It is the more dangerous
that it recommends itself to the people in the first instance by the
alluring prospect of cheapening everything, of making money daily go
farther, rendering every one apparently richer and more comfortable than
he was before. It is readily adopted by the shopkeeping and trading
class, because it enables them, in the first instance, to purchase the
goods at a less cost; forgetting that if they buy cheap they must also
sell cheap, and that their customers’ means of payment are melting away
from the effects of that very cheapness. It is long, however, before
this truth, how obvious soever, is generally understood. It is by slow
degrees, and after much suffering only, that it is discovered that this
system of general cheapening does not stop short with people’s
_expenditure_; that it speedily comes to affect their _incomes_ also,
and that in a still greater degree; that, if shopkeepers buy cheap, they
must sell little or sell cheap also; that wages must fall with the
decline in the price of commodities; and that the last condition of the
people is worse than the first. But while this great and eternal truth
is in the course of being brought home to the nation by suffering, the
national pre-eminence is lost, the national security is endangered, the
national spirit is weakened. Multitudes become desperate in regard to
their own and their country’s fortunes, from the scenes of suffering and
distress which they perpetually see around them; the selfish feelings
acquire a fatal preponderance, from the general experienced
impossibility of indulging in the generous. Meanwhile the national
income melts away under the effects of the general cheapening of the
remuneration of industry—all steady or foreseeing system of finance is
abandoned, and every successive Government, like a needy spendthrift,
deems itself happy if it can get through the year without a financial
crisis, never bestowing a thought on the future, either as regards the
national security, its finances, or its means of defence.

One memorable instance of the way in which, under the cheapening system,
the public revenue has been recklessly and needlessly thrown away, is to
be found in the Penny Postage. It is well known that, prior to the
change, the Post-office income, after paying _the whole charges of the
Packet Service_, yielded a clear surplus revenue to the nation of
£1,500,000 or £1,600,000 a-year. The postage of letters, however, was
decidedly too high; a reduction was loudly called for by the public;
and, if cautiously and judiciously applied, the increase of letters
might have compensated the reduction of rates of postage, and a boon
have been conceded to the community, without any detriment to the public
service. A uniform 2d. or 3d., or even 4d., postage would have been
hailed with unmixed satisfaction by the people, who had been paying 10d.
or 1s. for their letters, and no material diminution of that important
branch of the revenue experienced. Instead of this, what did the
Government, urged on by the cheapening party, actually do? Why, they
reduced the postage at once to a penny for all letters, from all
distances within the two islands. We were told, that not only would
there be no loss, but a certain gain, after a few years had elapsed,
from the vast and certain increase in the number of letters that would
be transmitted. How have these expectations been realised? The revenue
set down as coming from the Post-office, immediately after the change,
was only £500,000 or £600,000 a-year; and, after having been nine years
in operation, it has only risen, in the year ending 5th April 1850, to
£803,000; much less than half of what it would have been under the
former system, when the increased population and transactions of the
country are taken into consideration, if either the old rates had been
continued, or a reasonable reduction to 2d. or 3d. had taken place. It
is to the embarrassment produced by this great defalcation that we are
mainly indebted for the renewal of the income-tax.

But this defalcation, great and serious as it thus appears on the face
of the public accounts, was little more than _a half_ of what really
occurred in consequence of the change. To conceal the effects of this
great innovation, the Free-trading party, who had now got entire
possession of the Government, had the address both to get the expense of
the Packet Service, _previously borne by the Post-office, thrown upon
the Navy_, and to keep that important change a secret among the
Government officials. In this way a double object was gained. The
disastrous effect of the reduction was kept out of view, and the
increased charges of the Navy afforded a plausible ground for demagogues
to assail the Government for alleged extravagance in that department.
But that which one demagogue had done, another demagogue brought to
light. Mr Cobden made so violent a clamour about the increase of
expenditure in the Navy since 1835, when it had been reduced, under the
pressure of the Reform mania, to its lowest point, that the Admiralty,
in their own defence, let out the important fact, that, since the
penny-postage system began, they had been saddled with the whole cost of
the Packet Service, which they never had been before; and, in the debate
on the Estimates, Lord John Russell stated that this cost now amounted
to £737,000 a-year. Thus the real Post-office accounts stand thus:—

Apparent surplus for year ending 5th April 1850, £803,000
Deduct cost of Packet Service, thrown on Navy, 737,000
————————
Real Post-office revenue, £66,000

And it has been raised to this level only during a year of extraordinary
manufacturing activity, when our exports turned £60,000,000. On the
whole, since the postage was reduced in 1841, the Post-office has not
yielded a farthing to the country, but, on the contrary, has occasioned
a loss of some hundred thousand pounds.

We have heard enough from the Free-traders of the disasters which
accumulated on the year 1848, and commencement of 1849, when a monetary
crisis, the Irish famine, the European revolution, the Irish rebellion,
and the Chartist sedition, combined to reduce the revenue to an
unprecedented degree. We have heard enough, also, of the unexampled
prosperity of the year 1849, when these extraneous disasters had ceased,
and the blessings of Free-trade and the cheapening system were still in
undiminished lustre. Be it so. Let us compare the public revenue of this
year of unprecedented disaster with that obtained in the next year of
unexampled prosperity, as appearing from the finance accounts of April
5, 1850:—

Year ending Year ending
5th April 1849. 5th April 1850.
Ordinary revenue, £48,490,002 £48,643,042
China money, 84,284
Imprest and other monies, 665,293 656,855
Repayment of advances, 427,761 553,349
——————————— ———————————
£49,667,430 £49,853,246
49,853,246
———————————
Increase in 1849, £185,816
—_Times_, April 1850.

So that the increase in a year of extraordinary and unprecedented
prosperity, as we are told, over one of unexampled and overwhelming
suffering, is _only_ £185,000, for £128,000 of which we are indebted to
an excess in the repayment of advances in 1849 over 1848. We care not to
what this extraordinary fact is to be ascribed, whether reduction of
duties, the continuance of distress, or any other cause. We rest on the
fact that Free-trade finance and the cheapening system have brought the
revenue of the country, _in a year of what the Free-traders call its
highest prosperity, to a level with what it had been in a year of its
greatest adversity_. History cannot, and will not, overlook these facts.
The leaders of the Free-traders say they live for posthumous fame. Let
them not be afraid. Posterity will do them full justice.

The financial problem of the Free-traders is—“Given a cheapened nation,
to extract an adequate revenue out of their unremunerated industry.” We
recommend this problem to the study of the Free-trading Chancellor of
the Exchequer. If he solve it, we shall assign him a place superior to
Archimedes in physical—to Bacon in political science.

What a contrast to this mournful decay of the national resources, and
ruin of the national strength, from the effects of a theory acted upon
by the Legislature under the influence of a class majority in
Parliament, would a truly catholic and national policy, protective alike
to all interests, have afforded! An adequate but not redundant currency,
cautiously administered, and relieved from the fatal liability to
abstraction from a great increase of imports in any particular year,
would at once have afforded free scope to national industry, and avoided
the frightful vicissitudes in the demand for labour, which the opposite
system of making the currency entirely dependent on the most evanescent
of earthly things—gold—of necessity occasioned. The terrible monetary
crises of 1825, 1839, and 1847, would have been unfelt. They would have
been surmounted, as that of 1810 had been, by an extended issue of paper
when the gold was for a time abstracted, without their existence being
known to the nation. Industry, protected in every department by adequate
but not oppressive fiscal duties, would have generally and steadily
flourished. Periods of extravagant speculation and exorbitant wages,
followed by commercial depression and general suffering, would have been
unknown. The national revenues, sustained by an adequate currency and
unbroken industry, would have afforded an ample surplus to Government,
both for the public service and the promotion of objects of general
utility, after providing for the maintenance of the sinking-fund.
Emigration, supported, so far as the destitute are concerned, by the
Government resources, and conducted in Government vessels, would have
poured a ceaseless and prolific stream into the Colonies, at once
vivifying their industry, and converting the paupers of England and
Ireland into consumers of our manufactures, at the rate of six or seven
pounds a-head per annum. Pauperism at home, relieved in the classes
where it originates by this wise and paternal policy, would have been
arrested. Crime itself would have been made to minister to the general
good: the jails of Great Britain would have been converted into
industrial academies for behoof of the Colonies. The industry of the
Colonies, encouraged by the protective policy of the mother country, and
supported by the ceaseless streams of its emigration, would have
advanced with rapid strides, and afforded a rising and inexhaustible
mart for domestic manufactures. The ocean would have become a British
lake: the navy of England, the floating bridge which at once united and
protected its distant dependencies.

Colonial discontent would have been unknown. The West Indies, Canada,
and Australia, would have been the most loyal and contented, because the
most flourishing and justly governed parts of the Empire. The foreign
trade of the world would have been to the British Empire what Adam Smith
justly called the most profitable of all trades, a home trade. We should
have raised the raw material for all our staple branches of industry
within ourselves; wool from Australia, cotton from the East and West
Indies, grain from the British isles and Canada. Agriculture at home and
abroad would have advanced abreast of manufactures; commerce and
shipping would have risen with the increase of their productions; the
Navy, fed by an ample and protected commercial marine, and sustained at
an adequate amount by a well-filled treasury, would have secured our
independence, and enabled us to attend to the interests and anticipate
the wants of our remotest dependencies. We should have been alike
independent of foreign nations for the materials of pacific industry,
and superior to them in warlike resources. Great Britain, though grey in
years of renown, would have retained for centuries the vigour of youth,
because she would have been continually renovated by the energy of her
descendants. The paternal hall would have been constantly cheerful and
happy, because it would have been always filled with children and
grandchildren, or enlivened by their exploits. Amidst general prosperity
and unceasing progress, the National Debt—constantly encroached on by a
sustained sinking-fund—would have disappeared. Before this time it would
have been all extinguished; and the taxation of the Empire, reduced to
£30,000,000 or £35,000,000 a-year, would have enabled us for ever to
maintain the national armaments on such a scale as would have qualified
us to bid defiance alike to the covert encroachments of our rivals, or
the open hostility of our enemies. Under the opposite or cheapening
system, the public debt has, on the admission of its ablest supporters,
been virtually doubled; the sinking-fund has, amidst general and almost
constant distress, disappeared; Colonial discontent threatens the Empire
with dismemberment; agricultural distress will speedily render it
dependent for its daily bread on its enemies; and the maintenance of the
national independence, if the present system is persisted in, has been
rendered, for any length of time, impossible.

GREECE AGAIN.

“If, Cassandra-like, amidst the din
Of conflict none will hear, or, hearing, heed
This voice from out the wilderness, the sin
Be theirs, and my own feelings be my meed.”
_Prophecy of Dante._

Greece is a most unfortunate country. She has only escaped the Turks to
be plundered by her rulers and ruined by her protectors. Seventeen years
ago, Lord Palmerston placed King Otho on his throne; he has since been
occupied in making that throne an uneasy seat. King Otho refuses to
answer Lord Palmerston’s letters; in revenge, Great Britain ruins a
number of Greek shipowners, and leaves the Greek ministers unpunished.
The Duke of Wellington has said that he never bombarded a town, and
never saw the necessity for committing such an act of cruelty; and the
saying does him even more honour than his long career of victory. We had
hoped that no Englishman would ever have forgotten this saying; yet Lord
Palmerston bombards the merchants of Greece for the faults of King
Otho’s ministers. We are irresistibly reminded, by this last display of
our Foreign Secretary’s warlike propensities, of Mr Winkle’s fight with
the small boy.

Though much has been written on the subject of this quarrel, both at
home and on the Continent, no clear statement of the exact relations
between England and Greece has been published; nor can it be gathered
even from the papers recently laid before Parliament.[1] We believe,
therefore, that our readers will thank us for devoting a few pages to a
serious examination of the political relations between the two
countries, which will tend to place the recent coercive measures in
their true light. This is the more necessary, because Ministers, both in
debates and Parliamentary papers, have it in their power to conceal
everything relating to the past; and the Opposition must hunt long
before they can spring a single truth in the thickets of official
deception. A view of the subject, under the guidance of truth and common
sense, free both from party views and national prejudices, has been
rendered necessary by the speech of Mr Piscatory, the late French
Minister in Greece. The spoken pamphlet of Mr Piscatory was prepared
with considerable skill; but it communicates hardly a single fact that
has not been perverted by being removed from its true context, or by
having only half its concomitant circumstances narrated. Indeed, Mr
Piscatory having been bellows-blower in the disputes between Sir E.
Lyons, the English envoy at Athens, and King Otho’s ministers, for four
years, is not a famous witness; he has his own secrets to conceal. His
oratorical display did not impose on the good sense of General
Cavaignac, who parodied Sylla’s speech to a wordy Athenian ambassador,
by hinting to the French ex-minister plenipotentiary, “that it seemed
France had sent him to Athens to study rhetoric, not to collect
information.”

The papers laid before Parliament prove the worthlessness of Mr
Piscatory’s diplomacy; but the conduct of Lord Palmerston cannot be
correctly appreciated, unless we trace the connexion of England and
Greece since the convention of 1832, appointing Prince Otho of Bavaria
King of Greece, under the protection and guarantee of England, France,
and Russia. That treaty, it must be recollected, was the work of Lord
Palmerston. King Otho was selected by Lord Palmerston; he was conveyed
to Greece by Lord Palmerston’s favourite diplomatist, Sir E. Lyons; and
it was under Lord Palmerston’s special protection that the
Anglo-Bavarian Regency was furnished with £2,400,000, and allowed to
destroy the institutions of the Greek nation. These facts embrace the
history of British connexion with Greece from 1832 to 1837. Great
Britain, or, to speak more correctly, our Foreign Secretary, is morally
responsible for the government of the Greek kingdom by Count Armansperg,
who ruled far more absolutely than King Otho has ever done, for the
simple reason that he had a better filled purse. Sir E. Lyons supported
him with vigour alike against Russian and French opposition, Greek
patriotism, and constitutional principles, as may be seen by a reference
to the papers laid before Parliament in July 1836.

In 1837, Armansperg was dismissed from office; but Greece is still
suffering from the loss of the institutions he destroyed, and the
political corruption he introduced. Coletti, it is true, imitated his
political system in the internal government with singular aptitude, but
with diminished funds and resources for corruption. Where Armansperg
could appoint an amnestied brigand a captain of infantry, Coletti could
only make some old friend a policeman, or peradventure a consul.

In 1837 the Government of Greece broke off its intimate connexion with
England, and the English Minister at Athens became involved in a
succession of quarrels with the court. It is not necessary for us to
prove that the Bavarian Administration from 1837 to 1843 was bad. All
parties agree that it was intolerable; and the Greeks were universally
applauded when they expelled the whole tribe of Bavarian officials. King
Otho had fallen into an error that might have been expected from a
Whig-created king; he had neglected all the real duties of royalty, and
transacted the business of his under-secretaries of state.

The circumstances that have determined the position of our relations
with Greece, since the Constitution of 1844, occurred in the preceding
period. Lord Palmerston’s first quarrel with the Greek court dates from
1837, and originated in the dissatisfaction then felt, because the
British Minister at Athens did not possess as much influence with King
Otho’s Government as he had possessed with Count Armansperg’s. The
avowed object of British diplomacy, at that period, was to force the
adherents of the English party into office; and King Otho incurred the
enmity of England for preferring the counsels of France and Russia. The
first pitched battle between Greece and England was fought about the
waistcoat of the British Minister’s groom. The question was, whether the
waistcoat worn by Sir E. Lyons’ groom in his stable dress, and in which
he had been carried off to prison for squirting water on a policeman,
was or was not a livery waistcoat. After several weeks’ deliberation,
the Greek court decided, that, although they did not consider the
waistcoat in question to be a livery waistcoat, yet, in consideration of
the fact that the British Minister called it his livery, the Government
of Greece was ready to make every concession that could be required to
heal the wounded honour of Great Britain. Parliament had a narrow escape
of seeing the waistcoat laid before both Houses. Now this is very silly.
Yet there is no doubt that the arrest of the groom was an intentional
insult.

This affair was enacted to lower the English minister in the eyes of the
populace, and compel the English Government to change him. Everybody in
Greece knew that the groom was sent to prison; few Greeks believed that
the Government had apologised for the insult; indeed, nothing but the
sight of a policeman chained before the British legation for twenty-four
hours could have reintegrated the name of England at Athens, so stoutly
did all Government officials declare that no apology was ever made.
Another scene was exhibited for the satisfaction of the court and the
_corps diplomatique_. At a private theatrical representation in King
Otho’s palace, the British minister was left without a chair in the
circle, and remained standing during a long comedy. Some ambassadors
would have been sorely distressed by this species of physical torture;
but the ambassador in question is said to have consoled himself, during
this public exhibition of the feelings of protected Greece to protecting
England, by the reflection that his turn came next.

A blow was shortly after inflicted on the royalty of Greece, from which
it can never recover; but Lord Palmerston is accused of tolerating the
use of forbidden weapons by some of his adherents, in his eagerness to
make the Greek monarch sensible of the impolicy of the conduct of the
Hellenic court. Attacks on the person of King Otho, more bold and
unsparing than the most malignant vituperation of Junius, appeared in a
London morning paper, then supposed to be allowed to imbibe some of its
inspiration from Downing Street. These communications pretended to come
from an anonymous correspondent in Athens, but it was evident the
unknown writer was aware of many things that could hardly be known
beyond the Bavarian court and the sanctuaries of Downing Street. At
least, King Otho drew this conclusion, and apparently on good grounds.
This correspondent informed the world, that his Hellenic Majesty, who
had been selected by Lord Palmerston, and supported with a loan of
£2,400,000, was nevertheless unfit to govern his kingdom; and that a
certificate to this effect had been signed by several officers, civil,
military, and medical, who were then at Athens in the service of King
Otho, and that this certificate had been placed in the hands of King
Louis of Bavaria. This strange communication would have passed unnoticed
in Greece, had it not been made the subject of conversation by all the
English officials, and the attention of Greek statesmen called to it by
the British legation and consulates. At last, it was publicly noticed by
the Greek press, and an outcry produced. Three of the Bavarians named as
having signed the certificate, published a declaration contradicting the
statement, in a document bearing date the 11th-23d June 1839, which was
printed in the Greek newspapers. The medical and military officers who
signed this counter-certificate were dismissed from all their places,
and immediately quitted Greece. Very little has been said on this
subject since. All parties seem heartily ashamed of their share in the
transaction, and the public never discovered the key of the mystery. It
is certain, however, that King Otho has given Lord Palmerston and Sir E.
Lyons good proof of the falsity of the certificate, if they were ever
led into the belief that such a document really existed; for, during ten
years, he baffled them both in every diplomatic move, and made their
vaunted constitutional policy tend more to the injury of their own
reputation than to the diminution of his power.

This episode of the certificate, whether its existence be a fact or a
fable, placed an impassable barrier between Lord Palmerston and King
Otho. Right or wrong, his Hellenic Majesty held the English foreign
secretary responsible for the publication, for he believed that the
English Government possessed the power of dragging the calumniator to
light, and that it would have used the power had the anonymous
correspondent not been protected by a powerful patron. Besides, the King
of Greece might well ask, who in England could have acquired the
knowledge which enabled this correspondent to attack the person of a
monarch under the special protection of Great Britain, without fear of
investigation or reply, unless the information came directly from some
high diplomatic authority. We need not wonder, therefore, when we find
that, from June 1839, hatred to England was the prominent feeling
displayed by the Greek court in all its relations with the British
cabinet. Lord Palmerston, finding all hope of acquiring influence in the
Greek court vain, changed his policy, and became the advocate of
constitutional government.

The revolution in 1843 afforded the British cabinet an opportunity of
putting our relations with Greece on a proper footing; but the
opportunity was lost. Instead of English influence being employed to
restore the national institutions destroyed by the Bavarians, it
supported the establishment of what is called the constitutional form of
government. One of those compilations of political commonplace which the
lawgivers of our age are ready, at a week’s notice, to prepare either
for Greenland or China, was translated from French pamphlets, and
entitled the _Constitution of Greece_. Lord Aberdeen, who was then
foreign secretary, committed as great a blunder in engaging Great
Britain to stand godfather to this constitution, as Lord Palmerston had
done in making Old England guardian to King Otho. The following are the
words in which the British Government thought fit to record its
approbation of this inane waste of time and paper,—“Her Majesty’s
Government have viewed with no less satisfaction the admirable temper
which appears to have generally prevailed in the Constituent Assembly,
throughout the whole of her deliberations on the deeply interesting and
important act on which they have been engaged. Such self-command in a
popular Assembly, convoked under very exciting and critical
circumstances, is highly creditable to the Greek nation. Nor is the
result of their labours, as a whole, less entitled to credit for the
general soundness of the constitutional principles therein established.”

This, being the deliberate opinion of a British statesman of high
character, not supposed to be infatuated by a blind love of
revolutionary doctrines, demands serious examination. Let us see,
therefore, what are the principles which received the sanction of the
British Government on this occasion. In our opinion, they are precisely
those principles that lead with certainty to political anarchy and
national demoralisation. This vaunted constitution revived no local
habits of business, re-established no parochial usages, improved no
provincial institutions, corrected no political immoralities, restored
no religious authority, and insured no education to the clergy. It
proclaimed universal suffrage to an armed people, and vote by ballot to
a mob that cannot write; and these are the principles held up to public
approbation for their _general soundness_! While, as to the proofs of
admirable temper and self-command displayed by this assembly, these
feelings were surely not expressed in the decree by which this
good-tempered assembly excluded all their countrymen, who had immigrated
to the Greek territory since the year 1828, from official employments.
There are, perhaps, some who may feel inclined to observe to us, as Rob
Roy did to his kinsman, Bailie Nicol Jarvie, when they met in the
Tolbooth of Glasgow, “Hout, tout! man, let that flee stick in the wa’;
when the dirt’s dry it will rub out.” Be it so; but there are political
blunders that leave a stain, which neither time nor repentance can
efface.

We believe that the source of Lord Aberdeen’s error arose from his wish
to treat Greece as an independent state. But Greece under the protection
of the three powers, and loaded with debt, could not be an independent
power. False appearances always produce evil consequences. Lord
Palmerston had been in too great a hurry to make the bantling monarchy
of the treaty of 1832 walk without a baby-jumper, and his rivalry with
Warwick the king-maker was not more glorious than his emulation of Mr
Winkle. He ought to have perceived that sundry Klephtopiratic
excrescences, like the protuberances on the body of a young bear,
required to be carefully licked into shape. Our Foreign Secretary
delayed the operation too long; and, when he perceived the dangers that
had resulted from his negligence, he erroneously fancied that a licking
of a different kind, applied by Admiral Parker to King Otho’s
Government, would set all right.

When the Greek monarchy was founded in 1832, it was the duty of Lord
Palmerston to have laid before Parliament detailed answers to the
following questions, as a justification of the course he had pursued in
engaging Great Britain to protect the new state, and furnish it with a
loan of £2,400,000. The questions, in perfect ignorance of which the
character of England was compromised, and the money wasted, were:—

1. What were the actual means of government in the country, and the
nature of the parochial, communal, borough, provincial and central
administrative institutions, which had enabled the Greeks to maintain a
war against Sultaun Mahmoud and Mahommed Ali for seven years? Enthusiasm
and patriotism are good words in a debate, and may explain the events of
a single campaign; but common sense tells every one that a people must
possess some administrative institutions, in order to persist in a
desperate struggle for many successive years. If Greece had no
institutions in 1832, she was clearly unfit to receive a king; and the
duty of the Three Protecting Powers was to frame a system of
administration, not to choose a monarch. But on the other hand, if the
foundations of political government already existed, it was especially
the duty of Great Britain to see that these foundations or local
institutions were improved, and not destroyed, by the new Government.

2. What were the land and sea forces necessary to maintain order on
shore, and guard the Grecian seas from piracy; and how could these
forces be immediately subjected to the system of discipline, which the
protecting powers might consider indispensable?

3. What measures were requisite, in order to enable the mass of the
population to turn their attention to profitable branches of industry
without loss of time?

And 4. What were the financial resources of the country? What was the
amount of the debts contracted by the Government during the
revolutionary war? What sum would be required to supply the deficit in
the annual expenditure for the first year of the new monarch’s reign;
and what sum would be required to be set apart annually for paying the
interest of the debts of the Greek state, now converted into a European
kingdom?

Strange as it may seem, there is not the slightest information on these
important questions in the papers laid before Parliament in 1832; and we
believe that, had Lord Palmerston taken the trouble to collect even the
limited information we have specified, before he involved Great Britain
in a guarantee of King Otho’s throne, he would have perceived that it
was not necessary to burden Greece either with a new debt or the
presence of a foreign army. Great Britain would then have prevented the
regency from destroying the existing institutions, and saved the country
from the administrative corruption that ruined the despotic royalty of
King Otho, and promises very soon to annihilate his constitutional
monarchy.

One advantage might have been obtained for Greece by the constitution of
1844, if either the Greeks or their sovereign had known how to profit by
it. The direct influence of the protecting powers in the internal
affairs of the country was greatly diminished. Unfortunately, Mr Coletti
did not avail himself of this circumstance to lead the Greeks to make
one single improvement in the interior. Not a road was made, or a packet
established. Coletti was, nevertheless, a favourite minister with King
Otho, for he fomented the King’s aversion to England, and carried on an
active warfare with Sir E. Lyons.

When Mr Wyse arrived at Athens last year, as British minister, he found
the train laid to the mine Lord Palmerston was about to spring. He tried
in vain to persuade the Greek ministers to make such concessions as
would prevent an open rupture. His conciliatory conduct misled the Greek
court into a belief that Lord Palmerston was afraid to come to blows,
and, in an evil hour, it deemed itself secure of victory. The only
alternative left to Great Britain, in King Otho’s opinion, was to
withdraw the English minister from Athens. But, even if Lord
Palmerston’s disposition had made him inclined to take this course, King
Otho ought to have remembered that the convention of 1832, which created
the Greek kingdom, bound England to watch over it. So infatuated was the
court of Athens at this time, that the modifications which it would be
possible to make in the Greek constitution, after the departure of the
English minister, became a subject of conversation. Yet when the hour
arrived, and Lord Palmerston’s demands were communicated, the Greek
ministers felt the folly of resistance; and they would have capitulated,
had the minister of the French Republic not availed himself of the
conjuncture to flatter King Otho’s private prejudices, and assumed the
direction of affairs. The Greek minister of foreign affairs, Mr Londos,
was a man utterly unfit for the place. His communications to the
Chambers, on the subject of the quarrel, are a tissue of erroneous
statements. M. Thouvenel persuaded this unlucky minister to brave Lord
Palmerston, and trust to the protection of France and the European
press. The French minister knew that he would gain for himself the star
and the broad blue ribbon of King Otho’s Order of the Redeemer, and he
knew equally well that he would inflict a serious injury on the commerce
and revenues of Greece, and that he would cause the ruin of many Greek
merchants. There can be no doubt, that ambassadors ought never to be
allowed to receive Orders from the sovereigns to whose court they are
accredited. The interests of nations are often sacrificed by honourable
men for stars and ribbons. In finally coming to an open rupture with
Greece, Lord Palmerston probably only did what any other minister who
had placed himself in a similar position must have done. But though we
believe that it was King Otho who made the cup run over, we have shown
our readers that Lord Palmerston had already filled it pretty full; and
we are far from approving of the measures he adopted for the coercion of
the Greek Government. In our opinion, it was cruel to punish the Greek
people for the faults of their rulers, since those rulers were selected
and protected by the Three Powers, of which England is one. The coercion
ought to have been confined to measures that would have directly
affected the King and the Government.

We have now laid before our readers the history of all the causes,
supposed and real, of Lord Palmerston’s war with Greece. It was neither
the livery waistcoat of Sir E. Lyon’s groom, the missing chair at the
royal comedy, Mr Pacifico’s furniture, Mr Finlay’s garden, no, nor the
constitutional policy of the English Government, that brought our fleet
to Salamis. It was the anonymous correspondent of the _Morning
Chronicle_ in 1839, be that individual who he may. Lord Palmerston’s
conduct to Greece since that period, it is true, has been generally
unwise, and often unjust; but that correspondence having been once
placed to the account of the British Cabinet by the King of Greece, he
consequently acted in such a spirit towards England, that we acknowledge
a collision became unavoidable, without a sacrifice of the dignity of
the British Crown. The papers laid before Parliament show, that the
communications of the English Government were left unanswered for years.

We are bound also to observe, that the conduct of King Otho has so
completely disorganised the finances of Greece, that his throne is in
imminent danger, and a great change in the government of Greece must
take place in the present year. In the year 1848, a serious rebellion
took place in Greece. The diplomacy of England was accused of
encouraging the insurgents, and, for some days, the flight of King Otho
from Athens was an event hourly expected. When the full extent of the
evil, and the anarchy which threatened the country in consequence of the
insane conduct of the Greek Opposition, was known in England, Lord
Palmerston frankly changed his policy, and sent our ablest and best
English diplomatist, Sir Stratford Canning, to save King Otho’s throne.
If a throne be of any value, the King of Greece owed some thanks to
England for the great services of Sir Stratford Canning, who had to
encounter a virulent and unfair opposition from the English officials at
Athens during his exertions to save Greece from anarchy.

We have no time to point out the connexion of the events we have noticed
with the general movement of European diplomacy since 1833. Our space
compels us to confine our observations to Greece; and we must now
hastily examine the state of society in the country, in order to enable
our readers to judge of the manner in which the civilisation of the
people affects the administration of public affairs. The Greeks
themselves think that their great political want is a good systematic
central administration. We believe, on the contrary, that their great
political deficiency is the want of municipal institutions, that would
admit of their making some exertions to improve their own condition.
Every one who has travelled much in Greece must have seen, that every
little town and island contains two or three individuals capable of
fulfilling the duties of a local magistracy with honour to their
country; while everybody who has had anything to do with the ministers
of King Otho, or with the members of his council of state, knows that
there is not a statesman in Greece capable of filling a ministerial
post, in a period of political difficulty, without disgracing his
country. It would be invidious to name respectable men as instances of
incapacity; but every one, who has followed the political history of
Greece, is aware that every Greek statesman has had opportunities of
disgracing it, and repeating the same blunders several times. The
despotic government of King Otho failed from the utter incapacity of his
ministers; the constitutional monarchy is hastening to ruin from the
same cause. In the present state of Greece, it is not possible to find
men capable of conducting the King’s Government with the necessary
ability. The people are greatly in advance of their rulers.

The conclusion of the revolutionary war left the nation divided into
several classes of society, as different in their ideas and habits of
life as if they had formed parts of different nations. These classes
were, first, the peasantry—for so the cultivators of the soil are
generally called, though a large portion of them are landed proprietors,
and often the only persons of substance in the provinces. Second, the
primates, or proprietors, who did not cultivate their own lands. These
men managed public business, and acted as collectors of the revenue
under the Turks: they frequent coffee-houses, and form political
societies under the centralised constitutional system of government.
This class, however, possesses some education, but its moral character
is vitiated by a firm conviction that it is entitled to be maintained in
a state of idleness at the public expense. It has gained considerable
political influence by means of the election law of 1844. Coletti, by
intimidating the weak, bribing the active, and creating innumerable
places, purchased this class wholesale, and rendered himself master of
nearly all the electoral districts in Greece. The third class is
composed of that numerous body of Greeks who have emigrated to the
Hellenic territory from different provinces of Turkey. This class
includes the greater part of the ablest and best educated men in the
country; but the abject principles of the Phanariotes, or Greeks
educated for the public service in Turkey, and the base avidity
displayed by this class in place-hunting, which is their principal means
of life, rendered them very unpopular, and enabled their rivals, the
primates, to exclude them from official employments by a decree of the
national assembly of 1844. The fourth class is the military. This class
is very numerous, as its ranks are swelled by crowds of individuals who
never served in a military capacity, but who have received military rank
as a payment for political services. King Otho makes generals of
secretaries, and colonels of commissaries; while farmers of the revenue,
muleteers, and officers’ servants, form about one half of the unattached
officers of an army which counts an officer for every two privates and a
quarter, if we can trust the Greek Budget and the Greek newspapers.

There is also a remarkable difference between the social condition of
the inhabitants of the country and of the towns; and this difference
must be taken into consideration in estimating the political state of
Greece. The principal towns contain as many persons of education, and as
high a degree of mental cultivation, as can be found in any towns of a
similar size in other countries; but in the rural districts, on the
contrary, there is a want of material civilisation, a degree of rudeness
in every process of industry, which places the agricultural population
far below the people of every other European country, even including the
Greek population in Turkey. The Hellenic peasant cultivates his
_zevgari_, or yoke of land, in a manner that only enables him to live,
to rear a family to replace his own, and to pay his taxes. No
improvements take place on his farm—nor, indeed, can any take place
under the system of taxation and administration actually in force. Fruit
trees are annually destroyed, and forests are burnt down, but none are
ever planted. The depopulation caused by the war of the revolution may
still admit of the location of some additional families on uncultivated
land; but no improvement has yet been commenced in agricultural industry
or transport, that will give one family the means or the time to
cultivate more land than its predecessors have cultivated, or that will
make the same extent of land to yield any additional produce.

Here, then, we find precisely the state of things which produced the
stationary condition of European society during the middle ages, and
which still keeps the greater part of the East in its immutable
condition. The land under the windows of King Otho’s palace, and the
fields around the university of Athens, are more rudely cultivated than
any other portion of the soil of Europe; yet neither king, senators,
deputies, nor professors, appear to have perceived that the turning
point of national civilisation is not marked by the splendour of court
balls, the regularity of the payment of official salaries, or the number
and quality of scholastic lectures, but by the creation of a state of
things in which capital is advantageously employed in augmenting the
produce of the soil. When this is not the case, generations of
agriculturists succeed one another for ages, treading in the footsteps
of their predecessors in the same numbers, and in the same state of
barbarism.

Coexistent with this rude peasantry, there is an educated class whose
numbers are also limited by the fixed amount of rent and taxes, on which
they depend for their support, and by means of which they perpetuate
themselves by the side of the rude agriculturists, giving the towns all
the appearance of civilisation. This unfortunate state of society is not
new in the history of the Greek nation: it has now existed for more than
1000 years, and it forms the prominent feature in the internal
organisation of the Byzantine empire. Judging from the records of that
government, it is a state of society that presents greater obstacles to
change than any social combinations which the history of the human race
reveals to the west of China. The cultivators of the soil cannot improve
their condition or increase in number; the educated classes are
interested in opposing change, and have influence enough to prevent it:
poverty in the country, and meanness in the towns, render the universal
moral degradation an element of stability in the political condition of
a nation whose social state is such as we have described.

There remains an important class of society in Greece, which we have not
yet mentioned, because it has been excluded from all political influence
since the formation of the Hellenic monarchy. This is the mercantile
class. Before the revolutionary war, and during the contest with the
Turks, it was the Greek merchants and shipowners who formed the
aristocracy of the nation; but this class is now almost null in the
movement of political affairs at Athens. The greater part of the able,
respectable, and wealthy merchants have quitted the country, and are to
be found at Odessa, Trieste, Marseilles, London, and Manchester, not in
King Otho’s dominions. A small fraction of shipowners remain, but the
small schooners that now compose the mercantile navy of Greece cannot be
compared with the fine ships that Hydra, Spetzia, and Psara formerly
sent out to engage the Turkish fleet; and the comparative increase of
the tonnage of the trading vessels of large size in Greece and Turkey,
since 1840, shows that the trade of the Levant is extending more rapidly
under the Turkish than under the Greek flag.

We have now described the state of society with sufficient accuracy to
enable us to examine the value of the measures adopted for founding a
monarchy in Greece. From what we have said, it must be evident that
constitutional government, as the Continental liberals and English
political lecturers understand the term, could not be an object of much
interest to those classes that were called upon to exercise universal
suffrage. It probably never engaged their attention more seriously than
the laws of gravitation or the number of the fixed stars. They felt that
they wanted permanent and systematic administration, in place of the
inconstant and arbitrary measures from which they suffered; they
demanded security of property, liquidation of the public debt, and
employment for labour, but they knew not how to arrive at the
consummation of their wishes. Instead of attending to these commonplace
matters, the British Government and its allies gave the Greeks a king, a
court, a regency less united than their own Capitani, civil wars,
additional debts, and an order of knighthood to corrupt foreign
diplomatists; but not a road, a bridge, or a ferry-boat, was introduced
into a country full of mountains and dangerous torrent-beds, and
consisting, in great part, of peninsulas and islands. King Otho, who has
spent £3,000,000 sterling on civil wars, and £1,000,000 on palaces, does
not possess fifty miles of road practicable for a donkey-cart, in his
whole dominions. There is not a carriage-road from Athens to Corinth,
nor a ferry-boat to the islands of the Archipelago. Need we wonder,
then, if the Greeks despise their own Government, and suspect the
intentions of the three protecting powers that support it in its evil
conduct? The consequence is, that fifteen thousand military and police
officials fail to preserve order in a population of nine hundred and
twenty thousand souls. The result of this political experiment, in the
foundation of monarchies, certainly reflects little credit on the
statesmen of England, France, and Russia.

We must examine the error that was committed, in giving the countenance
of Great Britain, as a protecting power, to the absurd constitution
established in 1844; and while we blame what was then badly done, we
shall point out what common sense, when not warped by party interests,
dictated ought to have been done. Of course, we can only offer the
suggestions urged by a wise minority at Athens. The nation, in making
the revolution in 1843, did not want a constitution, for they possessed
institutions which a written constitution is only valuable as a means of
attaining. The Greeks, as we have said before, sought to reform the
system of administration. The method of carrying on the executive
government, under the hourly control of an elective chamber, called
constitutional government, was forced upon them by accident, as France
lately became a republic. Without the assistance of this _pons asinorum_
of French politicians, the Greeks had saved the liberty of the press
from the attacks of Count Armansperg, and established trial by jury in
spite of Austria and Russia.

The constitutional system of government, as it has laid hold of the
public mind on the Continent, is a very imperfect political contrivance:
practically, it has proved a delusion—a mere form, figured in empty
space by a mass of thick clouds, impelled hither and thither by unseen
currents of wind, the precursor of an approaching storm, not the source
of beneficial showers. When examined in detail, with its tribunes; its
orators, pamphlet in hand; its galleries, and its ministers playing at
see-saw between social democracy and court corruption, what hope does it
hold out of establishing a sense of moral responsibility and firmness of
purpose in individual statesmen, or the deep conviction that creates
patriotic feeling, and the power of self-sacrifice, in a whole people?
What collection of men, chosen by a mob which can never hear the names
of the wisest and best in their immediate vicinity, can, in the actual
state of education, morality, and religion, either possess the
qualifications necessary to make laws, or the experience required to
control and direct the executive government? English institutions, or
what we call, in conversation, the English constitution, is even now
something totally different from this spawn of modern political
quackery. Yet even among men of education, at home as well as among
demagogues and itinerant orators, we now find some who pretend that our
political system would be improved by allowing Gregory the poacher, and
Herman the tinker, to take an active share in legislation, by the
adoption of universal suffrage, annual Parliaments, and the vote by
ballot. We doubt whether a British _Codex Gregorianus_ or
_Hermogenianus_, so framed, would do our country much honour. Things are
bad enough as they are. We already make laws faster than lawyers can
read them; and the electors care very little about the legislative
labours of the elected. They seem contented to know that the work has
been done in such a hurry, that half of it must be done over again next
year. The people of England, like the Continental constitutionalists,
are beginning to fancy that the proper function of our legislators is to
make themselves the real executive. A true constitutional chamber,
according to the modern theory of government, ought to use the king’s
ministers as its own head-clerks. The evil is manifest. Ministers know
that their masters, the chambers, have no administrative plans, and a
very defective memory, so they themselves remain without any settled
policy. This state of things is a vice of our age. It is as apparent in
the embryo constitutionalism of Greece, as in the premature decrepitude
of Liberalism in France.

Constitutional government, where no educated and independent class
exists in the provinces, must always turn out, as it has done in Greece,
to be injurious to the cause of liberty, unless it be neutralised by
powerful municipal institutions, and an able and disinterested monarch.
The prominent vices of the Greek constitution are, universal suffrage,
vote by ballot, and a servile, ignorant, and useless Senate, as a satire
on a House of Peers. Without entering into any general examination of
the value of similar measures in other countries, we shall show that
they are unsuited to the actual state of society in Greece. Universal
suffrage evidently supposes that the people intrusted with it is
entitled to self-government; yet the constitution of Greece, which gives
the people universal suffrage, does not allow them any practical
influence even in the affairs of their smallest towns and rural
districts. Every person in Greece is supposed to be capable of choosing
legislators, but not mayors, aldermen, and provincial councillors. The
Greeks possessed great power in the local administration under the
Turks. This power contributed in a high degree to the preservation of
their national existence, but it alarmed the weak-minded Bavarians; and,
under the shield of the three protecting powers, the Greeks were robbed
of their municipal institutions by the Regency. A system of local
oligarchies was introduced, which prevails at present.

The election of the mayor and aldermen is vested in an electoral
college, one half of which is composed of the persons who pay the
greatest amount of taxes. Here is an element of respectability; but in
order to dilute it with one of servility, a certain number of
individuals, decorated with crosses, is admitted. Even this respectably
servile body is not allowed to elect the mayor; it is only empowered to
name three candidates, from which the King chooses the individual who is
to direct the interests of the little community. The mayor so chosen
enjoys his office for three years, and receives a good salary from the
municipal funds. Let us now examine how this system is worked, in
conformity with constitutional principles, in the capital of the
Hellenic kingdom. Attica, it must be observed, sends four deputies to
the Legislative Chamber; and as these deputies receive two hundred and
fifty drachmas a-month, and have succeeded in making the sittings of the
Greek Chambers perpetual, the place of deputy is worth as much as the
best estates in Greece. Now, as these interminable sitters are chosen by
universal suffrage, but are required to support the minister, it became
absolutely necessary to job the elections, by means of the oligarchy
holding office in the municipalities. This was not very difficult, for
the number of persons who can read and write among the Albanian
population of Attica, which outnumbers the Greek, is very small. Even
among the Greek population of the city of Athens, the proportion of
government officials and street porters, who pay no taxes, exceeds the
number of the independent citizens. The middle classes, and the friends
of order, are excluded from all local influence, by being excluded from
any share in the municipal government. A town-council party is formed,
and this party is allowed to employ the whole local revenues of Attica,
amounting to between three and four hundred thousand drachmas annually,
in jobbing, on condition that they support the ministerial candidates at
the elections.

The constitutional system of political corruption, to make universal
suffrage profitable to the court, runs thus: The mayors are selected
from men without character or local influence. This is brought about by
naming the third candidate mayor, he being generally some insignificant
person, whom both the leading parties agree to admit on the list. This
individual, when appointed, is nothing more than a creature of the
prefect or of the court, which alone possesses the power of protecting
him in office, and in the receipt of a good salary for three years. The
duty of the mayor is to bribe the aldermen, by allowing them to arrange
with the municipal councillors how to divert the revenues of the city
into their own pockets, or that of their relations, by the creation of
places. The extent to which the court have brought jobbing, is testified
by the shifts and tergiversation employed to prevent the publication of
any regular accounts of the receipts and expenditure of the
municipalities; and the municipal revenues exceed the sum of two
millions of drachmas. Athens, with a revenue of three hundred thousand
drachmas a-year, would be the filthiest town in Europe, were nature not
kinder to it than its magistrates.

A single instance of how matters are carried on in the provinces, is
sufficient to describe the whole system. A rural commune, placed on an
important line of communication, wished to make a good mule road over a
mountain pass. It voted the sum of six hundred drachmas in its budget,
hoping, by its example, to produce similar votes in the neighbouring
communes. The central government was then invited to send an engineer,
to trace the best line of road. The deputy of the province was a
creature of the court; he and the minister of the interior put their
heads together, and sent down an inspector of the road, before it was
surveyed or commenced, with an order on the commune which had put six
hundred drachmas in its budget, to pay him a salary of fifty drachmas
monthly for a year. This ministerial exploit put an end to all projects
of road-making on the part of the municipalities.

The vote by ballot is converted into a constitutional method of
counteracting any evil effects that might otherwise arise to ministerial
candidates from the use of universal suffrage; for man is fallible, and
the Greeks felt inclined, in some places, to oppose the system of
Coletti. We recommend the plan adopted to the attention of an eminent
historian of ancient Greece, who has more faith in the wood of the
ballot-box than in the moral responsibility of the elector. When the
number of electors in a district was about five thousand, and it was
feared that three thousand might vote against the government candidates,
and only two thousand in their favour, the ballot-boxes were doctored
beforehand, by having one thousand votes placed in them before the
process of the public ballot commenced. Intimidation was resorted to, to
prevent at least one thousand of the real voters from attending, and it
was generally successful with the middle classes; but, in one unlucky
district, which contained only about four thousand voters, six thousand
tickets were found in the ballot-box. At times, the success of the
opposition was so great, that nothing could be done at the time of
voting. The persons charged to convey the ballot-box to the place
appointed for the scrutiny, were, in such cases, waylaid by armed bands,
and the ballot-boxes were destroyed. These scenes were enacted even in
Attica. We believe that, in order to secure free institutions to any
people, it is more necessary to create a feeling of moral
responsibility, than to protect the electors from the effects of
intimidation and fraud merely when they exercise the franchise. National
liberty cannot be protected by a wooden box; it must be fought for
boldly before the face of all mankind. The vote by ballot injures the
nation more than it protects the individual; and it can only cease to do
harm in a state of society where perfect equality reigns among the
electors themselves, and between the electors and the elected.

With regard to the Greek Senate, we have little to say. In a country
where not one single element of an aristocracy exists, and where it was
impossible to secure superior education in the members of a chamber
appointed for life, it was evident that one chamber would afford a
better guarantee against bribery and corruption than two. No nobles, no
independent gentlemen, no dignified clergy, no learned lawyers, can
enter the Greek Senate. The qualification of a senator is a certain
period of service in official appointments, which have been generally
held by men who can neither read nor write. The consequence is, that the
Senate is utterly useless as a legislative body, from the ignorance of
its members; while the nature of the materials from which it is
composed, render it a more servile instrument, in the hands of every
minister, than the elective chamber. It was yesterday a tool in the
hands of Coletti—to-morrow it may become one in those of Mavrocordatos.
It would be an object of contempt, were it not an expensive instrument
of oppression.

We have now shown what the constitution has effected; let us turn to
consider what measures Great Britain ought to have recommended to the
attention of the national assembly, when it was occupied in framing this
constitution. The first great national question was municipal reform.
Unless the people could be intrusted with the direction of the affairs
of their own districts, it was unwise to entrust them with a direct
control over the national legislation and expenditure. Men take a more
lively interest in the trifling details of their own households, and in
affairs that pass under their own eyes, and with which they are
perfectly cognisant, than they do about more distant though more
important matters. Had the people in Greece been allowed to administer
their local affairs, they would have drawn much of their attention from
party struggles about which they knew very little, to devote it to
business they perfectly understood. No guarantee for the permanent
existence of Greece, as an independent and free state, can exist, until
the present oligarchical constitution of the municipalities throughout
the country is destroyed. The mayors must be annually elected by the
people, and not removable by the minister of the interior. The accounts
of the municipal expenditure must be published quarterly.

The next step towards giving Greece some practical liberty is to abolish
universal suffrage. In a country where the election of provincial
councillors is regulated by a census, surely the same guarantee ought to
be required in the election of legislators. In Greece, everybody is
expected to know how to read and write except the national legislators
and the King’s ministers. Oligarchy prevails in the municipal
institutions, aristocracy in the provincial, democracy in the
legislative, and ignorance in the executive; and British statesmen,
under whose protection matters have arrived at this condition, express
surprise at the anarchy they have themselves nourished, instead of
blushing at their own negligence or political incapacity. The vote by
ballot had better be abolished, and the senate replaced by a
deliberative council of state, composed of men of education capable of
preparing laws. The actual representative chamber must only be allowed
to sit for two months annually, in order to put an end to the jobbing in
which its members have acquired an alarming degree of experience.

The question arises, How are the changes necessary to save Greece to be
effected? We believe that there is not moral force in the country to
produce the necessary reforms. Greece is now very much in the situation
in which England was during the reign of Charles II.; she is exhausted
with civil war and party struggles. Besides, she does not possess a body
of statesmen, or any statesman, of superior abilities or commanding
character. In the present state of things, any ministry that attempted
to clean the Augean stable of the administration, would create a degree
of opposition, on the part of the court and of the officials in Athens,
that would drive him or them from office in less than six months.

If Lord Palmerston desire to save Greece, and secure her a place among
independent states, he must lose no time in convoking a conference of
England, France, and Russia; and this conference must decide on a
practical scheme of administration for the Greek government, and impose
a budget on the ministers. The army must be reduced; a navy of packets
must be created; roads must be made; the taxes in kind must be gradually
commuted; and a field must be opened for the improvement of agriculture.
If this is not done, the first great convulsion in the East will put an
end to the monarchy created by Lord Palmerston in 1832, and Greece will
separate into a number of small cantons, like ancient Hellas and modern
Switzerland, or fall under the domination, direct or indirect, of some
foreign power. The reputation of Great Britain for political wisdom is,
throughout the East, connected with the growth and prosperity of the
monarchy she founded: hitherto she has gained very little honour by the
share she has taken in the affairs of Greece.

We cannot conclude without making a few observations on Lord
Palmerston’s attempt to conquer the islets of Cervi and Sapienza for the
Ionian republic. We never knew Lord Palmerston undertake a worse case,
nor conduct one in a worse manner. Whether the islands in question
belong to King Otho or Sir H. Ward, is a matter about which neither can
feel very positive, as it turns on the interpretation of obscure
treaties that make no mention of the thing in dispute; and these
treaties were in part framed before either of the states now appearing
as claimants had an existence.

The facts are, Greece is in possession of two islands. The Ionian
republic advances a claim to them. Greece takes no notice of this claim,
even when backed by the powerful intervention of England. Lord
Palmerston, considering the British Government is not treated with
proper courtesy by King Otho, gives orders to seize the islands and
deliver them to Sir H. Ward; but, before these orders are executed, he
receives an answer from the Greek Government, and recalls his orders.
Still he boldly tells the world that he had given these orders, as may
be seen in the last despatch printed in the Parliamentary papers. Now
this announcement was quite uncalled for, and has very naturally given
great offence to the Russian Government, for it was a gratuitous
violation of the diplomatic courtesy due to our allies, the joint
protectors of Greece. When England found that Greece was withholding
property supposed to belong to the Ionian republic, it was clearly her
duty, as protector of the Ionian republic, to lay the case before
Russia, France, and England, the three protectors of Greece. No want of
courtesy on the part of Greece, in leaving the communications of England
unanswered, could ever warrant England forgetting what was due to Russia
and France, and even to herself. England alone could not pretend to
decide whether Cervi and Sapienza belong to Greece or to the Ionian
republic. Russia, from her earlier connexion with the Ionian islands,
and her more intimate knowledge of Greek and Turkish affairs, was the
power best qualified to decide the question; and both Russia and France
had a right to take part in deciding it. Had the imprudent order of Lord
Palmerston been unfortunately carried into execution, it might have
seriously troubled our relations with Russia; even as it is, the
unnecessary publicity given to the fact that such an order had been
issued, has been viewed as an intentional slight.

These two islands, it must be remembered, have been in the possession of
the Greek Government ever since its formation. King Otho found them a
part of the Greek territory when it was delivered over to him by the
protecting powers in 1833; and as they are within cannon-shot of the
shores of Greece, he could hardly doubt that he was their lawful
sovereign. But, at all events, we cannot understand what object could be
gained by Great Britain taking forcible possession of these paltry
little islands, when it was evident that the final decision concerning
their property could only be given by Russia and France.

We hope Lord Palmerston has some better argument to plead before these
two powers than he has communicated to Greece in his despatch of the 9th
February last, as given in the correspondence presented to Parliament.
If not, his case is lost. The geography and the logic of this document
are equally defective. As a proof that these islands belong to the
Ionian state, he cites an act of the Ionian legislature dated in the
year 1804, in which they are enumerated as portions of the territory of
the republic. This act, however, does not even prove that they were ever
occupied by the Ionian government. The legislature of Great Britain,
when Lord Palmerston was a young man, was in the habit of enumerating
France as an appendage of the crown of England; the King of France used
to boast of himself as King of Navarre, without Europe attaching much
importance to the enumeration of territory in the possession of others.
The Sultan does not trouble his head about the pretensions of the Kings
of Sardinia and Naples to the kingdom of Jerusalem; so that King Otho
may be excused for not paying more attention to the Ionian claim to
Cervi and Sapienza, than he does to the Spanish claim to the Duchy of
Athens and New Patras.

Nor does Lord Palmerston strengthen his argument when he declares, that
no island belongs to Greece except those expressly enumerated in the
protocol of the 3d of February 1830. If this dictum of his lordship be
correct, neither Hydra, Spetzia, Poros, Ægina, nor Salamis, would belong
to Greece, which is manifestly absurd; unless, indeed, Lord Palmerston
supposes these islands are included under the name of Cyclades, which
would be still more absurd, for it is wiser to quarrel with King Otho
than with Strabo.

This imprudent attack on Greece lays the despatch open to reply; for
though Lord Palmerston is proved to be wrong when he says that no
island, except those expressly enumerated in the protocol of 3d February
1830, can belong to Greece, he is right in maintaining that the
legislative act of the Ionian republic in 1804 cannot advance a claim to
any island not enumerated in it. Now only one island of Cervi is
mentioned in that act, and that island will be found laid down on the
west side of Cerigo, with the Greek name of Elaphonisi, which is
identical with the Italian name Cervi, in the map of Greece published by
Arrowsmith, which we believe was the one used at the conference on the
3d February 1830. It corresponds in size, form, and value, with the
island of Dragonera, situated on the east side of Cerigo, which is
enumerated immediately before it in the legislative act of 1804. The
island of Cervi on the coast of Greece does not, therefore, belong to
the Ionian republic.

THE MODERN ARGONAUTS.

You have heard the ancient story,
How the gallant sons of Greece,
Long ago, with Jason ventured
For the fated Golden Fleece;
How they traversed distant regions,
How they trod on hostile shores;
How they vexed the hoary Ocean
With the smiting of their oars;—
Listen, then, and you shall hear another wondrous tale,
Of a second Argo steering before a prosperous gale!

II.

From the southward came a rumour,
Over sea and over land;
From the blue Ionian islands,
And the old Hellenic strand;
That the sons of Agamemnon,
To their faith no longer true,
Had confiscated the carpets
Of a black and bearded Jew!
Helen’s rape, compared to this, was but an idle toy,
Deeper guilt was that of Athens than the crime of haughty Troy.

III.

And the rumour, winged by Ate,
To the lofty chamber ran,
Where great Palmerston was sitting
In the midst of his Divan:
Like Saturnius triumphant,
In his high Olympian hall,
Unregarded by the mighty,
But detested by the small;
Overturning constitutions—setting nations by the ears,
With divers sapient plenipos, like Minto and his peers.

IV.

With his fist the proud dictator
Smote the table that it rang—
From the crystal vase before him
The blood-red wine upsprang!
“Is my sword a wreath of rushes,
Or an idle plume my pen,
That they dare to lay a finger
On the meanest of my men?
No amount of circumcision can annul the Briton’s right—
Are they mad, these lords of Athens, for I know they cannot fight?

“Had the wrong been done by others,
By the cold and haughty Czar,
I had trembled ere I opened
All the thunders of my war.
But I care not for the yelping
Of these fangless curs of Greece—
Soon and sorely will I tax them
For the merchant’s plundered Fleece.
From the earth his furniture for wrath and vengeance cries—
Ho, Eddisbury! take thy pen, and straightway write to Wyse!”

VI.

Joyfully the bells are ringing
In the old Athenian town,
Gaily to Piræus harbour
Stream the merry people down;
For they see the fleet of Britain
Proudly steering to their shore,
Underneath the Christian banner
That they knew so well of yore,
When the guns at Navarino thundered o’er the sea,
And the Angel of the North proclaimed that Greece again was free.

VII.

Hark!—a signal gun—another!
On the deck a man appears
Stately as the Ocean-shaker—
“Ye Athenians, lend your ears!
Thomas Wyse am I, a herald
Come to parley with the Greek;
Palmerston hath sent me hither,
In his awful name I speak—
Ye have done a deed of folly—one that ye shall sorely rue!
Wherefore did ye lay a finger on the carpets of the Jew?

VIII.

“Don Pacifico of Malta!
Dull, indeed, were Britain’s ear,
If the wrongs of such a hero
Tamely she could choose to hear!
Don Pacifico of Malta!
Knight-commander of the Fleece—
For his sake I hurl defiance
At the haughty towns of Greece.
Look to it—For by my head! since Xerxes crossed the strait,
Ye never saw an enemy so vengeful at your gate.

IX.

“Therefore now, restore the carpets,
With a forfeit twenty-fold;
And a goodly tribute offer
Of your treasure and your gold:
Sapienza, and the islet
Cervi, ye shall likewise cede;
So the mighty gods have spoken,
Thus hath Palmerston decreed!
Ere the sunset, let an answer issue from your monarch’s lips;
In the meantime, I have orders to arrest your merchant ships.”

Thus he spake, and snatched a trumpet
Swiftly from a soldier’s hand,
And therein he blew so shrilly,
That along the rocky strand
Rang the war-note, till the echoes
From the distant hills replied;
Hundred trumpets wildly wailing,
Poured their blast on every side;
And the loud and hearty shout of Britain rent the skies,
“Three cheers for noble Palmerston!—another cheer for Wyse!”

XI.

Gentles! I am very sorry
That I cannot yet relate,
Of this gallant expedition,
What has been the final fate.
Whether Athens was bombarded
For her Jew-coercing crimes,
Hath not been as yet reported
In the columns of the _Times_.
But the last accounts assure us of some valuable spoil:
Various coasting vessels, laden with tobacco, fruit, and oil.

XII.

Ancient chiefs! that sailed with Jason
O’er the wild and stormy waves—
Let not sounds of later triumphs
Stir you in your quiet graves!
Other Argonauts have ventured
To your old Hellenic shore,
But they will not live in story,
Like the valiant men of yore.
O! ’tis more than shame and sorrow thus to jest upon a theme
That, for Britain’s fame and glory, all would wish to be a dream!

MY PENINSULAR MEDAL.
BY AN OLD PENINSULAR.

PART VI.—CHAPTER XV.

Early in the morning I was surprised by a visit from Mr Chesterfield. He
had received information, which he wished to communicate. From other
British officers, then in the town, he had learned that the state of the
country through which we had to pass was far from satisfactory; and one
or two had even told him that, in the course of this day’s march, we
should certainly be attacked. Mr Chesterfield added that he had
attempted, under the circumstances, to obtain an addition to our escort,
but without success; there were but few troops in the place, and none
could be spared. He wished, therefore, to know what course I thought
preferable; whether to wait till fresh parties bound to headquarters
came up, or to proceed at once.

I was quite for proceeding. Begged to ask, Did he know what was the
character of the road we should have to travel?

Mr Chesterfield had inquired. It was for the most part through an open
country. “Any villages?”—If there were, no doubt parties of troops were
stationed in them, and their presence would be a check on the
population.

These replies confirmed my previous views; and, as my orders were to
conform to the written route, not only with regard to places, but with
regard to time, I gave my voice decidedly in favour of going on. If
plans against us were in process of concoction, delay on our part would
both give encouragement, and afford time for the mischief to come to a
head. With a convoy like ours, holding out so many temptations to
irregular enterprise, it seemed far better to pass quickly on, ere
reports could spread, and an attack be organised. Admitting that there
was danger if we proceeded, there was also danger if we remained
stationary. If we incurred any disaster by remaining, we incurred it by
a breach of orders; if by proceeding, we met it in the path of duty.

Fully concurring in these views, and agreeing that we should proceed, Mr
Chesterfield then suggested—might it not be proper to adopt some
precautions? He thought, as soon as we were out of the town, the men
should load.

This I fully concurred in, not only as a defence, but as likely to keep
the men steadier, by letting them see that we were preparing for
business in earnest. Here were two inexperienced youths, the one raw
from college, the other from school, thrown on their own resources, and
laying their heads together to meet an emergency, by the most prudent
measures their united stock of wisdom could suggest. Suffice it to say,
we both spoke with oracular gravity; and gave dignified evidence of our
perfect self-possession, by blowing copious puffs of fragrant smoke.

The conference between our two high mightinesses, though, was suddenly
interrupted. Enter Corporal Fraser, evidently in a little bit of a
flurry. The sight of Mr Chesterfield brought him at once to a halt. He
saluted, and seemed to check himself in something that he was going to
say. In short, he looked flushed and anxious—not altogether
himself—breathed hard between his clenched teeth—stood silent. The visit
being to me, Mr Chesterfield gave me a look; so I asked the corporal
what he wanted.

“I am sorry, sir,” said he, “to be the bearer of disagreeable
intelligence.”

“Well, corporal, out with it.”

“The men, sir, I regret to say, are in a state of beastly intoxication.”

The corporal, it was clear, wishing to shield the men, had come to my
billet, intending the information for my ears only. But finding Mr
Chesterfield with me, and not being at the time in the absolute
possession of his faculties, (for, though quite unconscious of the fact,
he was himself partially under the influence of liquor,) he had no
resource but to tell out all, though not by any means one of those petty
officers “as likes to get poor fellers into trouble.”

Beastly intoxication? What! at this early hour of the day? It was a
strange circumstance, and excited ugly apprehensions. How could they
have become so? Who made them drunk? Under other circumstances, I should
have applied to the corporal for an explanation forthwith; but I saw
indications, in the corporal’s eye, that it would not be kind to
question him at the moment before an officer—so proposed, instead, that
we should go and look for ourselves. We went. The case was much as
Fraser had stated it. We reached a large old house with a _porte
cochère_, within which was a court. On entering this court we found the
men—happily the infantry only, for the cavalry had quarters just by—all,
with one exception, more or less in a state of intoxication. Some were
laughing; others were wrangling; one or two were crying—maudlin drunk.
Some were making a show of cleaning arms and accoutrements, with
profound bows and sagacious nods. All tried, on our arrival, to look as
sober as they could. On any morning this would have been a serious state
of things, at the hour of mustering to start; but now, when we expected
hostility, it was worse than ever. Neither did I like the look of the
inhabitants. There was no exact throng, indeed; but parties were
standing near in groups, evidently cognisant of our present fix,
watching, and making their remarks among themselves. In that old house,
guarded by those drunken soldiers, were sixty mule-loads of silver and
gold! Things looked still worse, though, when we entered the quarters.
Three or four men, who were most overcome, had deliberately laid
themselves down again for a snooze. There they were, wrapped up in their
blankets, stretched and snoring on the floor; while Corporal Fraser,
himself a little “disguised,” flushed in the face, and in a high state
of indignation and excitement, was storming and kicking them up; and a
fellow, who found it easier to lean against the wainscot than to stand
upright, was expostulating—“You haven’t no business to kick a poor soger
in that ’ere way.”

To this general boskiness, I have said, there was one exception. It was
Jones. In fact, with all his faults, I never, on any one occasion, saw
Jones overcome with liquor; which was the more remarkable, because he
got more than any other soldier of the detachment. His own ration—all
that he could appropriate of mine—occasional contributions from
Coosey—all he could get from every quarter, (and he never missed an
opportunity,) all went down his throat without visible effect. In short,
he seemed brandy-proof. I never saw him affected, nor had he the
appearance of a hard drinker. Observing that he looked much as usual,
while all around were looking so different, I applied to him for an
explanation. “Why, Jones, what’s the cause of this disgraceful scene?
How did the men get it?”

“Please, sir, the fellers is very sorry for it, sir. Hadn’t no
intentions to get drunk _now_, sir.”

“Well, but how did it happen, man?”

“Please, sir, the jeddleham stood treat, sir; treated ’em all, sir.”

“What gentleman?”

“Please, sir, the same as treated me the night before last, sir: give me
a tumbler of hot punch what was all a-fire, sir; brought it out into the
inn-yard all of a blaze, sir. Told me the French soldiers got that twice
a day, sir. Said, if the Hinglish soldiers had their rights, they’d get
the same, sir.”

“The night before last? What gentleman treated you the night before
last?”

“Please, sir, it was the same jeddleham as aast to speak to you, sir;
the jeddleham what you went into the house to speak to him, sir.”

“Oh, that fellow! Why, you might have seen him again yesterday. Didn’t
you notice him among the people at the ferry?”

“Please, sir, when we come to the ferry, I was in the rear, sir; halted
there, and remained till we turned the hinnimy over the ford, sir.
Didn’t git a sight on him, sir. Only wish I had, sir.”

“Well, but how comes it some of the other men didn’t know him again?
They must have seen him yesterday, if you didn’t.”

“Please, sir, I s’pose it’s ’cause this morning he was dressed
different, sir. Had a large hat pulled over his eyes, sir; and muffled
up in a long cloak, sir. Shouldn’t not have knowed him myself, sir, only
if it hadn’t not a-been for his nose, sir.”

“Stood treat, though? How?—did he treat the whole party?”

“Please, sir, I won’t tell you no lie, sir. Jest after the fellers
turned out in the morning, sir—jest as I was a-washing my face in this
’ere horse trough, sir—there come along a man with a couple of barrils,
sir; which the barrils was slung on a-top of a donkey, sir. So he took
and stopped the donkey close to that ’ere gateway, sir, which some of
the fellers was standing at it, sir. So they knowed at once it was wine,
sir—in course they did, by the look on it, sir—so they got a-bargaining
with him for a drink, sir. So, jest as they was a-bargaining come along
that ’ere Nosey, sir; which, as soon as he see the fellers a-talking to
the man what belonged to the donkey, sir, he looked very pleasant, and
stopped and spoke to him, sir. Then he spoke to the fellers, sir, and
told ’em they might drink as much as they pleased, sir; might drink it
all, if they liked, sir; and he’d stand it, sir.”

“Did he speak English, then?”

“Yes, he did, sir; sitch Hinglish as they speaks here, sir; not sitch as
you and I speaks, sir. I won’t tell you no lie, sir.”

The case was too clear. Hookey was still on our traces. Disappointed in
his two previous attempts to turn us from our route, he meant to keep
near us, watch his opportunity, and act accordingly. Making the men
drunk just when we were about to start on a dangerous part of the road,
was as unquestionably part of some more extensive plot as it was
palpably Hookey’s doing. I briefly stated the matter to Mr Chesterfield,
adding, “We shall see that fellow again to-day.”

“If he comes once more within the range of a firelock,” said Mr
Chesterfield, “we must not let him get off so easily.”

Meanwhile, the immediate question was a practical one: What course was
best, under existing circumstances? In spite of the state of the men, I
was still for proceeding.

“Very well,” said Mr Chesterfield; “then let the packing commence. We
will take all the infantry who are fit to march when the mules are
loaded, and go on with them and the cavalry. Such as are too bad must
remain behind, and come up afterwards with other parties, as they can.”

Mr Chesterfield then went to see after his own men; the mules arrived,
and the muleteers began loading. Jones stepped up to me: he had
apparently overheard our conversation.

“Please, sir, none of the fellers won’t not stay behind, sir.”

“How do you know?”

“’Cause, sir, when the mules is ready, they’ll be ready, sir.”

“Ready? How ready, if they ’re beastly drunk?”

“Please, sir, they won’t be beastly by that time, sir.”

“How can you tell that?”

“Please, sir, ’cause I knows they won’t, sir; ’cause it’s only that ’ere
wine, sir. Please, sir, that ’ere hasn’t not got no varchy in it, like
the sperrits has, sir. ’Cause, please, sir, when a feller gets drunk on
sperrits, sir, they makes him rale drunk, sir; but that ’ere wine only
jest makes him drunkish-like, sir; ’cause it’s only jest for a time,
sir, and then it goes off again, sir; ’cause there’s no good in it, sir,
if you drink a butt of it, sir. Hope no offence, sir.”

“Common country wine, was it?”

“Please, sir, it was new wine, sweetish-like, sir. That’s what did it,
sir. Sitch new wine gits into a feller’s headpiece at once, sir; makes
him silly drunk directly instant, sir; but then he soon gits sober agin,
sir. Consickvent, I considers the fellers will all be sober agin in an
hour or two, sir; and then they’ll be able to fall in, sir. ’Cause I
knowed it was new, sir; ’cause it sparkled like cider do when it’s
drawed frish from the barril, sir.”

Jones’s prognosis, though not very clearly expressed, was verified by
the result. Ere the loading was completed, all the men had become either
sober or nearly so. Even those who had been most affected fell in, and
mustered with the rest; and though our rank and file displayed some set
and gummy eyes, only two or three of the worst betrayed the disaster by
their gait. Hookey had thus outwitted himself. By dosing the men with
new wine, (which, as all persons acquainted with the wine countries are
well aware, flies at once to the head, even if taken moderately,) he
had, indeed, succeeded in making them drunk at once; but not in making
them drunk for a continuance. “Let alone it’s new,” said Jones, “it
isn’t no wine, sitch as the fellers gits, as would make ’em rale drunk;
nayther Spanish wine, nor yit Frinch wine, except it’s the jinny-wine.”

The men having somehow discovered that they were likely to be put on
their mettle during the day’s march, were all, in appearance, truly
sorry for what had occurred. They became aware, through Jones, of
Hookey’s real character; saw through his contrivance to make them all
drunk; and, feeling that they had been in a measure his dupes, were
savage at the artifice, and burned for an opportunity to retrieve their
character in the course of the day. Mr Chesterfield now returned: he
glanced at the men, and afterwards took an opportunity of speaking to
me.

“That fellow with the nose,” said he, “according to your account of him,
must be a dangerous character. Should not steps be taken for his
apprehension?”

“If you like, I will go to the Mairie, and make inquiries about him.”

“I fear,” said he, “you will not be very cordially seconded in that
quarter, judging, at least, from my own last night’s experience, when I
applied for billets. However, it can do no harm.”

“Well, then, the sooner I go the better. I will take with me the Spanish
Capataz. As soon as we have gone in, be so kind as to keep an eye on the
entrance. If Señor Roque puts his head out, send me three or four
dismounted dragoons. We must see if we can’t teach those fellows good
manners.”

I took with me Señor Roque, and explained to him, by the way, what I
wished him to do. If, after we entered the bureau of the Mairie, I gave
him a look, he was to go down to the door, and bring up the dragoons.

We entered; and, as at a previous interview the night before, found
three gentlemen busily employed in writing, each at his desk. The
interval had wrought no improvement in their manners. When I saluted
them, neither of the three took the least notice—all went on writing. I
addressed the head man of the party.

“I have the honour of waiting on you, Monsieur, for the purpose of
soliciting your co-operation.”—Still he writes. Wait awhile. Try again.

“I must soon be leaving this place, Monsieur, and have duties which will
occupy me in the interval. May I claim a moment’s attention?”—Scribble,
scribble, scribble.

One or two similar attempts were similarly met. I then gave friend Roque
the concerted look; and he, nothing loath, went off to fetch the
dragoons. Meanwhile, no seat having been offered me, I took one, and
remained quiet. The three official gentlemen, though so dreadfully busy,
just before, that they could not notice my application, now began
jabbering amongst themselves upon some indifferent topic, as if no one
else had been in the room. When a Frenchman really wishes to treat you
with insolence, I must say he has a neat, quiet way of doing it, which
no other people on earth can equal. An Englishman, I admit, can beat him
in vulgarity; but for _elegance_ of execution, there is no intentional
rudeness like the rudeness of a Frenchman.

Presently was heard on the stairs a stumping—ha!—a hoof-like tread!—the
tramp of heavy feet! With it ascended the clatter of accoutrements! Four
scabbards were mounting the stairs, each scabbard marking each step by a
bang! The three officials started—exchanged looks—wrote on in silence
with redoubled energy, while their faces twitched.

The door opened! Four big fellows entered the bureau, with clattering
accoutrements and resounding steps. Señor Roque, his face burnished with
exultation—for he hated the French—followed, and closed the door. The
bold dragoons ranged themselves in line, with their backs to the wall.
Nay, more: their four right hands, probably by a hint from the Capataz,
moved simultaneously towards their left sides; four enormous swords
leaped from their scabbards, flashed in the air, and slumbered on the
bearers’ shoulders. The writing was now intense.

The display of arms in such a place, though, might compromise us with
our own authorities. I made a sign, and the swords were sheathed.

Having so often spoken in vain, I was determined that the civic
dignities should speak first. I therefore quietly took out a cigar.
Quick as lightning, my friend the Capataz whipped out his smoking gear,
and went to work with flint, steel, and junk. At the first click, my
three polite entertainers almost jumped from their stools. The twinkle
of the jolly old Spaniard’s eye, as he handed me a light, was worth a
dollar any day. The four dragoons, much to their credit, maintained the
most perfect gravity throughout. I lit, and blew a cloud.

The panic of the three writers increased. They were evidently
telegraphing. At length the chief turned round on his seat, and, with
alarm and courtesy comically mingled in his visage, begged to be
informed in what way he could be of service to me.

“I interrupt you, Monsieur. Pray, finish the business you have in hand.”

“Monsieur, I have no business so cherished as to expedite yours.”

I then told my object—that there had been in the place a suspicious
_sujet_, whom I described. Should he again make his appearance, he must
be apprehended _tout-de-suite_, and kept in safe custody, till he was
surrendered to the normal authorities. “Messieurs, has he presented
himself here?”

Three voices answered simultaneously—“Yes”—“No”—“Yes.”

“Do you know anything of him?”

“He is an Englishman—a courier from Madrid.”—“He bears despatches to the
British headquarters.”—“Nothing whatever.”

“He is neither an Englishman nor a courier; consequently, he must be
provided with a passport. Has he presented it HERE?”

“Viewing him as attached to the British service, we did not consider it
our affair.”

“Where is he now?”

“He is not here.”—“He didn’t state his intended route.”—“He has left
this place.”

“By what route?”

“We don’t know.”—“He went, within the last hour, towards St Sever.”

“Is that an ascertained fact?”

“Yes, Monsieur, yes,” they all answered; “he is gone in the direction of
St Sever.”

“If, Messieurs, what you have now stated should prove correct, and if I
find that you have told me all you know, I trust I shall not feel it
necessary to report the matter to our commander-in-chief.”

These gentlemen, I felt, could have told me more, had they chosen; and
I, with time at my command, could have extracted more. But in our case
it was touch and go. We could not, with such a charge, stop to pursue
investigations. So I took my leave, deeming it, at any rate, something
to have ascertained that friend Hookey, in accordance with my
anticipations, though not in accordance with his own statements, had
preceded us by the route which we were so soon to follow.

The civic trio were as courteous at my departure as they were rude at my
entry. First stumped out the cavalry—who had really done the business;
then followed the old unctuous Capataz; and I, with a horizontal
tripartite bow, closed up the rear. Ere I had fairly quitted the room,
the three were all at work again, intently scribbling. The “dressing” of
a _procèsverbal_, with formal and full details of the whole transaction,
was probably their occupation for the rest of the morning. I was sorry
that we had compromised ourselves by the exhibition of cold steel. But,
under all the circumstances, I felt little apprehension, to borrow an
expression from Jones, of their “telling that ’ere to my Lord
Valentine.”

The mules were loaded, the men fell in; and, though some of them were
still a little the worse for the disaster of the morning, we were quite
in a condition to lick any Frenchmen that might come across us, and made
a very respectable march of it to the outskirts of the town. There we
were again joined by Pledget and Gingham; and shortly after, Fraser, by
Mr Chesterfield’s direction, made the infantry load, and saw that each
had a supply of cartridges—a process which caused the muleteers to look
a little queer. We then proceeded on our march.

Passing through an open country, Mr Pledget and Mr Chesterfield rode on
side by side in conversation, at the head of the line; while Gingham and
I followed close, in similar guise. Suddenly was heard, in the rear, the
crack of a musket! A ball whistled close over our heads, and struck the
road, a few yards before us. Mr Chesterfield immediately called a halt
of the whole party; and he and I proceeded to the rear. As we were
riding back, Corporal Fraser came running forward to meet us, and soon
explained. Our Yorkshire lad, it appeared, had been larking with another
soldier, one of those whose early sobriety the wine had most disturbed,
and had got him into a scrape. The result was, that the musket of the
half-tipsy soldier had gone off, and had so nearly done execution
amongst us in front. It was evident our infantry were not yet in a state
to be trusted with loaded arms; it wouldn’t do. Mr Chesterfield gave
directions at once, that they should all draw their charges. And as our
route for some distance appeared perfectly level and open, so as to
afford no cover for a sudden attack, (it was that sort of country so
common in France, cultivated to the road-side, but totally bare of
hedges, copse, or trees,) it was settled that they should not load again
till circumstances rendered it necessary. The man whose musket had
caused the alarm looked stupid and bewildered—could give no explanation,
but that “it went off.” I observed, however, that Mr Chesterfield
quietly spoke a few words to the Yorkshireman. What they were, I did not
hear; but they certainly had the effect of making that worthy a
better-behaved, though not a merrier man, during the rest of our march.

CHAPTER XVI.

Finding no foe to fight withal, we began to suspect that Mr
Chesterfield, as a new-comer, had been hoaxed, in our last
halting-place, by some military wag; and Gingham and I fell into a long
conversation, which he commenced by reminding me of our arrangement to
campaign together, entered into a year before, at Falmouth. All
obstacles, he said, were removed; he hoped, therefore, the plan would
now be carried out. To this I readily consented; the advantages, indeed,
were all on my side. Gingham then, in his own way, introduced a
discussion respecting his plans and mine. Be it however premised, we had
dined together the night before; and I had shown him some methods—more
expeditious than those in common use, which were the only ones he
knew—of reducing one denomination of coin to another: _e. g._, dollars
to pounds sterling, pounds sterling to francs, &c. He expressed, as
before, his high gratification; and begged my MS. calculations “in the
strictest confidence,” depositing them in the recesses of his
writing-desk. He now, as we were riding along, commenced an important,
and, on his part, highly diplomatic conference, by a friendly
examination as to the nature of my official duties at Lisbon. I
described them, as I have described them to the reader a few chapters
back.

“Then, in fact,” said Gingham, “your last year has been employed to as
good purpose as it could have been in any London counting-house.” (That
was Gingham’s standard.) “You have had the keeping of a distinct
account, and that in all its parts, from the items to the account
current. Of course, it occupied your whole time.”

“Not the whole,” said I. “There was some to spare, for which I had other
employment.”

“Indeed!” said Gingham, with interest. “Will you, Mr Y—, as a particular
favour, permit me—confidentially of course—to make an inquiry?”

“Make any inquiry you like: I shall feel pleasure in answering it.”

“Would you, then,” said Gingham, “have the kindness to inform me—that
is, unless you feel it a violation of official confidence—what were your
other duties?”

“No violation whatever. I kept the letter-books; managed the
correspondence: not the whole correspondence of the department, but that
of the branch I belonged to—the account office.”

“Your duty, then,” said he, “was to arrange and enter all letters
received, and to keep copies of all letters sent?”

“Sometimes to copy, sometimes to make the draughts. A man soon gets into
the way, you know.”

“One entire account,” said Gingham, speaking to himself, “and one whole
branch of correspondence! What an excellent introduction!”

Not understanding in what sense he used the word “introduction,” I made
no reply.

“Of course,” he proceeded, “the correspondence was in English?”

“Almost exclusively. I should scarcely feel equal to any other, except
perhaps Portuguese.”

“Might I not,” said Gingham, “add Spanish and French?”

“Well, if I get a little polishing, perhaps you might. Italian I hope to
be able to add ere long; and, in due time, German.”

Gingham now turned half round in his saddle, and addressed me with great
gravity. “Mr Y—, my dear sir, I venture, as a friend, to offer one
suggestion. If a person, not older than yourself, applied for an
engagement in the corresponding line, I would say to him—that is, in the
strictest confidence, speaking as a friend—‘Say only three languages;
wouldn’t advise you to say more.’ The principal, however unjustly, might
suspect—excuse me, I speak candidly—might suspect a little romancing. In
short, if a person under eight-and-twenty or thirty said five languages,
it might prevent an engagement.”

Gingham, I should observe, talked just as he always did. There was still
the touch of mannerism, the quiet earnestness blended with courtesy. I
never viewed any man with more unfeigned respect and esteem; and yet
there were moments, in the course of our present conversation, when I
could scarcely refrain from laughing in his face. True, I was one year
farther removed from boyhood than when our acquaintance commenced; and
more than one incident had taught me, in the interval, the necessity of
respecting “time, place, and circumstances.” But the trial was great; a
gravity that even Liston could not shake, would have been shaken by
Gingham. Still there was his comical solemnity. Still there was his
politeness, touched off with formality. Still there were his green
barnacles, and his two little winky-pinky eyes. Still, still there was
his irresistible nose. Stand everything else, I would defy you to stand
that. Great, please to observe, was the difference between Gingham’s
nose and Hookey’s, though both arrested the beholder. When Hookey and
Gingham met on board the packet, each observed of the other that he had
a very odd nose. The first meeting of the two noses, and the look
exchanged by the two wearers, beat anything in Molière—so much more
comical is nature than fancy. Hookey’s, unquestionably the most marked
feature of a very marked countenance, did nevertheless so far maintain
the unities, that it perfectly harmonised with the rest of his
physiognomy. It was an eagle’s beak, and his whole face was aquiline.
Gingham’s, on the contrary, was conspicuous by contrast. It had no
appearance of belonging to his face. You might fancy him one of the
triumphs of Talicotius—a man (on which subject see Lavater) with a false
nose. Neither broad nor massive, yet prominent and conspicuous, it was
slightly crooked, flattened on one side; as if, when a baby, he had
slept too much on his right cheek, and his nose, from its thinness, had
got bent towards his left. This nose, I say, from its peculiar
expression, or rather want of expression, appeared no part or parcel of
the face in which it stood. And, what was unfortunate, its extraneous
appearance was most marked when Gingham was most in earnest; so that it
provoked you to laugh just at the time when a man is least disposed to
be laughed at.

Well, Gingham having thus accomplished his first object, by ascertaining
all that he wished to ascertain concerning myself, now went on, in the
second place, to develop his own plans.

“You are, I believe,” said he, “to a certain extent aware of the scheme
which brought me out from England. By the public prints, and still more
by my private correspondence, I am now led to conclude that Napoleon’s
day is near its close, and that the war will soon be terminated. In that
event, my plan falls to the ground. But should we carry on the war here
another twelvemonth, I shall have time to try it; and, if we go on
permanently, I mean to carry it out.”

“I have some general idea of your plan, and that is all. You wish to
meet the monetary difficulties connected with the operations of our
army, by a method which you have concocted; and which you intend to
start, for self and friends, as a private speculation. Don’t see how you
can make a beginning: where’s the opening?”

“An opening is afforded by the necessity of the case,” replied he;
“which necessity my plan will meet.”

“Don’t see how. Look here; the difficulty is just this: Here are certain
headquarters transactions, which require ready money; and that ready
money must be current coin. Credit will not do; bank notes will not
answer the purpose; no, nor yet bills, nor any kind of available
security. It must be specie, minted gold and silver, hard cash. For
example, the troops have hitherto been usually paid in dollars. When we
have got dollars in the military chest, the troops can be paid; when our
dollars are gone, they must wait till we get more. And though we had
power to draw at will on the British treasury, for three months’ pay to
the whole army, not a stiver can the army receive till we have more
dollars.”

“That’s just it,” said Gingham; “and I beg to ask, is such a state of
things desirable? The efficiency of our army depends, not on the
solvency of our Government, but upon the activity of money-dealers in
raking up specie in the four quarters of the globe. That is the state of
things which my plan proposes to remedy.”

“Do that, and you will effect a great object. The mode, though, is quite
beyond me.”

“I mean to do it, sir,” said Gingham, almost sternly, (for the little
man, as he sat on his splendid horse, swelled with the grandeur of his
conceptions)—“I mean to do it, sir, by a twofold method: not by two
independent methods, operating simultaneously; but by the united
operation of two systems combined in one.” His eyes looked full in mine;
but his nose pointed at Pledget, who was riding before. I didn’t
laugh—in face at least I didn’t—though suddenly seized with a dreadful
twitching of the intercostal muscles. “I shall effect my object, sir,
partly by paper, partly by hard cash. I shall issue notes payable at
sight; and I shall get all the dollars I can into my own keeping. You,
when you want dollars to pay the troops, come to me. I, on receiving
what I deem an equivalent, let you have them. What will be the result?
Instead of requiring a fresh supply of dollars from the coast every time
you give the soldiers their pay, you will pay them with the same dollars
twice over, nay, over and over again.”

“Why, that’s a bank! You will be banker to the British army!”

“Exactly,” said Gingham, subsiding all at once into his ordinary style
of speech: “I mean to establish a headquarters bank. Suggest a title.”

“Suppose,” said I, “as of course you will move with the army, you borrow
a suggestion from the military hospitals of the French, and call it “The
Ambulatory Bank.” No, that title doesn’t go well. Let me see. A good
title requires time and consideration.”

“To be candid, sir,” said Gingham, “you need not trouble yourself: the
title is already decided. I won’t tell it, I’ll show it you. Have the
kindness to draw up by the road-side.”

We halted, the convoy passed, the cart came on in the rear, and was
stopped by Gingham. He then dismounted, gave the bridle to Coosey,
stepped up into the cart, opened the tarpaulin at its back, raised a
lid, and exhibited a green baize frame fitting into the top of a box,
which frame contained a large and splendid brass plate.

“It wouldn’t exactly do,” said Gingham, “to borrow this title at home.
Here, though, I mean to make free with it.”

In bold, broad letters, excavated in the burnished brass, I read

“THE BANK OF ENGLAND.”

Really the largeness of Gingham’s plans was too much for my limited
capacities. We rode forward again to the head of the column; and I, for
a while, rode on in silence, digesting. At length, one idea leading to
another, I ventured to say something about “authority—concurrence.”

Gingham, big with his scheme, was now like a gladiator prepared for
every thrust. “At home,” said he, “I have all the concurrence, all the
authority I need, with many good wishes to boot; and, as to pecuniary
support, I can have whatever amount is required. All that I settled
before I left Falmouth, or have since arranged by correspondence. Here I
ask for countenance only so far as my plan is found, on trial, to aid
the public service. Let that once become manifest, and I doubt not we
shall find all the favour we want.”

“Only sorry your plan was not thought of before. It might have spared
our Commander much anxiety, and our soldiers many privations.”

Swelling with the plenitude of his anticipations, Gingham began to
dogmatise. “In London,” said he, “credit is equivalent to cash. Here, at
headquarters, the case is different. In London, so long as my banker
will honour my cheques, I have cash at command. Here, I may possess
unlimited power to draw bills, yet not be able to raise a rap. What
makes the difference?”

“Here, your resource is at a distance; there, your banker is close at
hand.” I was more disposed, though, to chew upon Gingham’s ideas than to
discuss them, and we again rode on in silence. At length I bolted out a
difficulty.

“Well, we make an issue in cash—say a hundred thousand dollars, for the
pay of the troops. These dollars are distributed, and spent; the whole
sum evaporates. How do you get them together again, for a second
payment?”

“I don’t expect to get them all,” said Gingham, scornfully. “But suppose
I can get a part of them, say half. That, I think, I shall manage; for,
observe, ten dollars are quite as many as you can carry about your
person without annoyance. Undoubtedly, then, many individuals, receiving
a payment in dollars, will be glad enough to lodge them in a bank, when
there’s a bank at hand. And when I have issued my paper, payable at
demand, many, I make no question, will much rather take it, than burden
themselves with a load of specie.”

The reasonableness of Gingham’s expectations was fully borne out, by
scenes which I afterwards witnessed, when accompanying the military
chest, as it moved from place to place with the headquarters of the
British army. A gentleman, say a Frenchman or a Spaniard, has a claim
for payment, on account of provisions, forage, or other necessaries,
supplied for the service of the troops—the amount, suppose, ten thousand
dollars. After long following headquarters from place to place, till he
is far distant from his own home, he has at length established his
claim: it’s all right, he has got a written order for payment, and
enters our office elated, bearing it between his finger and thumb, eager
to receive the cash. The cashier takes the bill, points to five deal
boxes, each containing two thousand dollars, and tells him, “There’s the
money.” I have seen a man, under such circumstances, knocked down in a
moment, perfectly dumfounded. He has not brought a horse and cart, and
every available conveyance has been impressed by the troops. One of the
five boxes is as much as a man can carry; two are a load for a mule. If
he has a lodging in the place, he possesses no means even of taken them
there; but probably he has none—the whole town is full of soldiers. But
to-morrow it will be worse: the army will have swept on; headquarters
will be three or four leagues in advance; and the troops will be
succeeded by stragglers, camp-followers, marauders, and all the lawless
tribe that close up the rear of an advancing host. Poor man! what an
alteration in his looks! He sees, in an instant, the full amount of his
difficulties. Two minutes ago, he was dying to realise; now, he has got
the cash, and doesn’t know what to do with it. I remember an instance
when an acquaintance of mine, a Frenchman, came to receive five thousand
dollars, which, with the aid of an attendant, he removed from the
office. Presently he reappeared at the door, caught my eye, intimated by
bows and simpers his request for a private interview. It was easy to
guess the subject of his communication, but I followed him out. He had
got his five bags in a cowhouse. His home was distant a two days’
journey. How was he to get them there? Could he have gold instead of
silver? Would gladly make any sacrifice in the way of _agio_. Couldn’t I
_arrange_ it?—How he managed at last, I never learned—whether he got his
dollars to a place of safety, or was robbed and murdered on the road.
Sometimes the claimants would come eagerly demanding their money, and,
the next moment, would most earnestly entreat permission to leave it in
our keeping. If a man so circumstanced, instead of hard dollars, could
have had paper securing him cash at demand, at a time more convenient
for receiving it—in short, Gingham’s plan just meets a case like this.
And Gingham, who knew headquarters well, especially in respect to
financial details and the attendant difficulties, had devised his scheme
as a practical remedy. The claimant gives his bill to Gingham, and takes
Gingham’s bank notes, or, if he prefers it, part notes and part specie.
Gingham, at his own convenience, gets the official dollars on the bill.
Then comes the other advantage. So much hard cash as has not been paid
away to the claimant remains at headquarters, available, by monetary
arrangements with the authorities, for the payment of the troops, or for
any other headquarters purposes. What an improvement from the state of
things when cash was so low, that, the commander-in-chief wishing to
communicate with a distant point, it was necessary to raise a private
loan for the expenses of the courier!

In short, twenty practical difficulties occurred to my mind, all which
Gingham took off, as fast as I started them. “After all,” said he, “the
only real difficulty will be this: that whereas now, at headquarters,
there sometimes is not a dollar disposable for public purposes, we shall
then, especially if the army is on the move, have more dollars than we
know what to do with.” His plan, indeed, contemplated a large concern,
for the cash transactions of headquarters were immense; but it was clear
he had viewed the scheme in every light, and was prepared to carry it
out. No question, Gingham would have made a good thing of it, both for
himself and for his backers in London. Yet it was a concern which
Government could not undertake; and which, if Government had undertaken
it, would have infallibly broken down. Private enterprise alone could
prosperously conduct the scheme.

Gingham had laid out our conference in three parts, and two were now
disposed of. First, he had ascertained the progress of my financial
education in the past year; secondly, he had developed his own plans;
but there yet remained the third topic of discussion, into which he now
led with all his usual elegance, straightforwardness, and good feeling.
The long and the short of it was this,—he had two gentlemen in London,
ready to come out to Bordeaux whenever he commenced operations; they
would arrive, like a letter, by return of post; but there was a question
respecting myself. Did I feel so far interested in his plan that I might
be willing, on due reflection, to relinquish my actual appointment, and
work with him? He asked it “in the strictest confidence,” and begged me
to consider all that now passed “as merely conversation.”

“Have the kindness to excuse me for a few moments. I’ll presently tell
you just exactly my own prospects and plans, and then we’ll talk the
matter over. In the mean time, accept my best thanks for this proof of
confidence.”

While listening with the profoundest attention to Gingham, I had, it
must be confessed, been taking a look, from time to time, at the country
round. Hitherto our route had been across an open level, and we had
always seen the road before us. Now, first, we reached a spot were we
could not discern what was in front. The table-land, over which we had
been marching, terminated in a brow or declivity. The road dipped, and
disappeared; where it led us there was no perceiving. The road itself
also became hollow—that is, it descended between two high banks, and
these were covered with underwood. This was the part of our way on which
we were now about to enter.

Just at this moment, while I was debating with myself whether we ought
to go on without a little exploration, Jones stepped up to me rather
hastily. “Please, sir,” said he, “I’m a-thinking Nanny siz something
as we doesn’t see.” I should mention that, in the course of our march,
when we approached any eminence that afforded a view of the road and
country in front, Nanny would trot off from the party, run to the
summit, and make her observations—in short, see all that was to be
seen. Goats, if you observe, never, unless compelled, venture on new
ground, till they have first halted, and taken a view of it. Even
sheep, if not over-driven, will not turn down a lane, till they have
stopped and turned their heads, for the purpose of taking a look with
_both_ eyes. Cows, on the contrary, look and advance at the same time;
and your nag, contenting himself with a _one-eyed_ view, appears to
advance without looking at all. Your dog, who has more sense than all
the others put together, when you come to a place where the road
forks—dear old Burruff!—_looks up in your face_. Well, Nanny, in the
present instance, had done as she always did. The ground rose to our
left, and the elevation _commanded_ the valley in front. On that
elevation Nanny was now standing, and Jones’s observation was
evidently correct. She saw something, or somebody, unseen by us. There
she stood—not, though, as on previous occasions, quietly taking a
survey of the road before us: her tail, the “upward curl” of which was
more than perpendicular—_retroussé_—from time to time vibrated
rapidly. She uttered, at intervals, a sharp, anxious bleat, and ever
and anon stamped with a movement so quick, the eye could scarce
discern it. “What d’ye think, then, she sees down there?” said I to
Jones—“other goats?”

“Please, sir,” said Jones, “I’m a-thinking it’s not goats, sir; ’cause
then she wouldn’t stop up there, sir. Please, sir, she’d come back at
once, and keep close, sir; ’cause she knows as how I’d protect her
varchy, sir; ’cause for fear the Billies should make too free, sir;
’cause, when the Nannies is in milk, sir, they doesn’t not pemit
hinnersint libbities, sir.”

Nanny now adopted a new style of attitude—rearing, as when at play, with
arched neck and combative front, still, at times, subsiding into the
quadruped; now bleating, now stamping, now wagging her tail with intense
vivacity; then walking back, stamping again, advancing; gazing all the
while on the low ground in front. “If Nanny takes a view, why shouldn’t
Sancho?” I cantered up, and speedily cantered down again. “Mr
Chesterfield, I think, sir, we had better halt.”

Indeed there was reason. In front was the enemy, drawn up to receive us,
in military array. The road, I must explain, led down to a lower level.
Just at the bottom, another road crossed it; and, where the two roads
cut, they spread out round a large pond. About this pond, but
principally in advance of it, appeared a large concourse of the rural
population. “_Tout Français est soldat._” I never felt the force of the
phrase as I did at that moment. They were armed, and stood in line;
their number formidable, their aspect decidedly pugnacious. Oh, you
plucky villains! won’t we be down upon you presently? I stated to Mr
Chesterfield what I had seen, and he immediately halted our whole party.
“If you will ride up with me,” said I, “you may see the whole lot of
them.”

I returned to Nanny’s look-out post, but Mr Chesterfield did not follow.
Had I known what he was about to do, I should certainly have
remonstrated. He chose to take a nearer look at the enemy, and for that
purpose rode forward alone. On the eminence on which I stood, I heard
the rattle of his horse’s hoofs in the hollow way; and presently I saw
him emerge below, at its further extremity. He then reined in his horse,
and sat viewing the foe, who greeted his appearance with shouts and
yells. Having quietly made his observations, he turned, and began to
come back at a walk. As he withdrew, three or four shots were fired
after him from below, but without effect. After he again disappeared in
the hollow road, though, on his way to rejoin us, I heard, with great
uneasiness, other shots fired—the report much nearer. They were
evidently from rascals ambushed in the underwood of the two banks,
between which he was passing. I rejoined the convoy just as he rode up.
His look was perfectly calm and self-possessed, but pale as ashes. He
held the bridle in his right hand, while his left hung helpless at his
side. Pledget at once tumbled off his mule, stepped up, and addressed
him with a tone and aspect of unfeigned concern—“Not serious, sir, I
hope?”

“Oh, nothing,” said he, his manner a little hurried; “a mere
graze—nothing. Corporal Fraser, the infantry must load immediately. Let
them fix bayonets, though. We must begin by clearing those two banks.”

Scarcely were the words out of his lips, when his face became ghastly
like death, his eyes half closed, his mouth half opened. His head
drooped; and speechless, almost fainting, he sank down gradually from
his saddle into Fraser’s arms. The corporal carried him to the
road-side—why, he was but a boy—and seated, or rather laid him upon the
bank. Pledget was promptly in attendance, got off the patient’s coat,
and examined the wounded arm, amidst the clatter of fixing bayonets and
ramming down cartridges. “Oh, ain’t we going at it in yarnest, though?”
said Jones.

“The system,” said Pledget, with all his usual deliberation—“the system
has received a severe shock; that is the cause of these alarming
symptoms—they will not last. So it often happens with gunshot wounds.
The wound itself is not dangerous. The ball has gone clean through the
arm, and at short distance too, but without fracturing the bone or
injuring any important vessel.”

Oh, had you seen that lad languishing on the sod, with the black blood
trickling from two holes at once, and joining in a sluggish stream which
went rippling down his arm, and dripped into the grass! I don’t know
what he thought of; I thought of his mother. Enough: the foe is in
front.

But affairs now assumed a new phase. While I was anxiously surveying our
wounded commander, Corporal Eraser stepped up to me, saluting in due
form, _à la militaire_! He stood waiting and looking at me, as if he
expected to receive directions.

The nature of the position in which I was so unexpectedly placed, broke
upon me in a moment. I’ll tell you just everything, exactly as it
occurred. Mr Chesterfield was _hors de combat_. Pledget, in discharge of
his professional duty, was wholly occupied in attending upon him. The
corporal, and, it was clear, the men also, looked to me for direction in
our present fix. Gingham, when the corporal approached me, backed his
horse. From many persons such an action might have gone for nothing. But
Gingham had a reason for all he did; and, from him, it seemed to say,
“Now, Mr Y—, take the management of this little business, and go through
with it. Don’t you see, my dear sir? It has devolved upon you.”

“The men are ready, sir,” said Corporal Fraser; “shall we now proceed to
clear the banks?”

It was evident I must direct, or nothing could be done. “Wait a minute,
Fraser.”

I beckoned to the cavalry sergeant, and desired him to place a few of
his men, with swords drawn, in the rear of the convoy, giving them
strict directions to suffer no one to fall behind, mule or muleteer. He
was then to divide the rest of our mounted force into two equal parties,
under his two corporals, who, when the infantry advanced, were to
descend along the top of the banks, and halt at its extremity. I then
gave the word to Corporal Fraser to move forward at once with the
infantry, and clear the underwood, but to halt where the cavalry halted,
and by no means to go beyond.

“Then, to prevent that,” said the corporal, “I will go first myself,
sir.”

He dashed forward, and the infantry followed, with a shout. Thus we
moved down to the extremity of the hollow road. The infantry led the
way, gallantly headed by General Fraser, and dislodged some ten or a
dozen fellows from the banks, who bolted successively, and cut away,
making good their retreat to their own party below. This movement was
not effected without some firing on both sides, but nobody was hurt on
either. The cavalry, supporting the infantry, walked quietly down the
two edges of the cutting: and I put the convoy in motion to follow. Mr
Chesterfield now rallied for a few moments, and was eager to remount.
But the faintness returned; it was evident he could neither ride nor
walk; so he was brought down in Gingham’s cart, with every attention
both from Gingham and Pledget.

While we were thus moving down through the hollow, I heard, close
behind, an angry shout from our dragoons on the banks above. Then
followed three shots in quick succession, one from the underwood, on the
side, two from the summit. A bullet whizzed by my head, and spat into
the opposite bank. A rustling was then distinguishable among the bushes,
and presently a peasant, in a blue gabardine, slid down stiff into the
road, and there doubled up. Eluding Fraser and the foot soldiers, he had
remained in ambush till we came along, when he had selected me for a
passing compliment, as the head of the party, intending no doubt to
climb up the bank, if pursued, and escape above. Just as he was taking
aim, though, he was seen by the dragoons, who, unheard by him, were
quietly moving down at a walk over the ploughed ground. Two of them
fired their carbines, and one or both of their shots taking effect,
prevented the effect of his.

Too green to know that it was unmilitary, I returned a few paces to take
a view of the dying foe. A Frenchman to the last, he must needs find
something to say, though life was now ebbing apace. Slowly, and with
apparent difficulty, he raised his eyes till they were fixed full on
mine; and then, with quivering features, and a strange snapping of the
jaw, began to speak. “_Ah, Monsieur —— j’ai pensé—vous._”——He was dead!

We now gained the extremity of the hollow way, and stood looking down on
the enemy ranged in order of battle at the pond. Fraser had drawn up the
infantry across the road, and the cavalry, with the exception of the
rearguard, formed on our two flanks. Our first movement was thus
effected. All our men were perfectly steady, but burning to fall to, and
savage on account of Mr Chesterfield’s casualty.

Gingham now suggested, as the enemy were so numerous—two hundred and
fifty at least, if not three hundred—that it might be prudent to wait a
while, in the hope that other parties, bound to headquarters, might come
up. But I happened to know that none were coming that day; and Gingham,
on hearing this, withdrew his motion. What, then, was our course? How
were we to deal with these Mounseers? No doubt we could lick them; and,
had fighting been our object, nothing would have given our men greater
satisfaction. But we had dollars in charge, and our first care must be
to get safe through, and deliver them safe at headquarters. My decision,
then, was taken. We must advance—we must continue our march—and we
mustn’t let those fellows hinder us; but we must, if possible, effect
our purpose, without coming to close quarters. A mêlée we must shun;
for, though the issue would be glorious—no doubt of that—yet, if once
mixed up with our convoy, the enemy, when they took to flight, might
persuade some of our mules to go with them. Our object, then, reduced
itself to this: we must disperse the foe, without coming to close
quarters with them. Gingham quite adopted this view of the subject, and
now prepared for further operations by drawing his pistols from the
holsters, and examining their priming. He next called to Coosey to get
him his sword out of the cart, girded it on, and drew it forth from the
scabbard—a formidable Andrea Ferrara, equally available for cut and
thrust. He bore it bolt upright, with great gravity, and with an air
half military, half civic, which, on his showy Spanish horse, would have
rendered him a highly ornamental addition to a Lord Mayor’s procession.

We were now immediately in front of the enemy; and I rode a few yards
forward, to take a full view of their position, previous to our advance.
They favoured me with a great deal of noise, and, on my turning, with a
few shots, which I acknowledged by taking off my hat. Many of them
returned the compliment; while others expressed their civility by a
courteous gesture, vernacular in most civilised countries.

The enemy, it was clear, had no idea that we marched with a Nanny-goat
in company, and had intended that we should walk into them unawares. In
that case, we should probably have come off second best. As matters
stood, our position was far more favourable: and theirs, less
advantageous in the same degree. The worst of it was, though, that to
the left of the main road—that is, on the enemy’s right—a wood came down
to within two hundred yards of them; which same wood, further on,
extended close up to the road we were to proceed by, and seemed to skirt
it for some distance. The danger was that, when we attacked the enemy,
and drove them before us, some of them, perhaps the greater number,
might escape into this wood; in which case we might afterwards find it
difficult to get rid of their agreeable company. These considerations,
then, indicated the plan of our attack. I desired the sergeant of
cavalry to select seven or eight of his steadiest men, and gain at once
the skirts of the wood, at the point nearest the enemy. He was to
advance at first as if intending to attack their right; but, when he got
nearer, was to quicken his pace, and make at once for the wood.
Immediately after, when he saw the general attack commence, his party,
also, were to advance and fire; but not to advance so far that
fugitives, escaping from the enemy’s rear, might be able to enter the
wood. The infantry were to advance, firing, down the road; and the
remainder of the cavalry was to spread out on our flanks, and act in
concert with us: our whole party pressing more on the enemy’s right than
left, in order that their retreat might be from the wood, not to it.
These matters I explained distinctly. One other point remained.

“Corporal Fraser, step this way. Your duty is the most responsible of
any.” I knew it would be a bitter pill for the corporal, so endeavoured
to gild it.

“I am ready for any duty you may assign me, sir,” said the corporal,
whose blood was up.

“You must take two or three of the infantry to the rear—we shall want
all the cavalry—and see that no muleteer loiters behind, or falls
out—bring all up.”

“As you please, sir,” said Fraser; “but in action, the rear is not the
place to which I have been most accustomed.” The poor fellow looked so
dismally blank, I really felt for him.

“Never mind that, corporal. Remember you have had your turn already, and
have done well. Depend upon this,” I added, with a consolatory wink,
“should there be any real business in front, though I don’t expect it,
you, if possible, shall have your share.” The clouds were now dispelled
from the corporal’s face, and he retired to his station in the rear.

Our preparations being thus completed, I forthwith sent forward the
cavalry sergeant with his party, to gain the wood. The movement was well
executed. They advanced steadily down upon the enemy’s right, without
answering his fire; then turned suddenly to the left, and trotted off to
the trees. Having reached the point assigned them, they pulled up, faced
round, and formed in line. Immediately upon this commenced our general
movement in advance, Fraser following the train of mules and muleteers,
and “keeping them up behind.” Infantry and cavalry marched down to the
attack; while both the contending armies maintained a brisk fusillade.
As far as I then discovered, none of the enemy’s shots took effect,
while some of ours appeared to tell. The foe stood his ground manfully
at first; but, as we got closer, some of them began to run from the
rear, and all soon joined in the flight. The retreat was as rapid as it
was general; and we, as the convoy could not be left, abstained from
pursuit. The cavalry advancing from the wood, though, got a little too
forward. The consequence was that a few of the fugitives, running down
the main road, attempted to escape into the wood. But a few carbine
shots soon turned them back on the main body; and the whole mass then
made their escape down the road to our right, which was just what I
wanted. Long after we had ceased to fire, they continued to run, without
stopping to look behind, alarmed probably by the apprehension of a
cavalry pursuit. Half a mile off, in remarkably short time for the
distance, I saw some of them, like a scattered flock of sheep,
scampering up a hill, and disappearing over its summit. What execution
was done by our fire, did not immediately appear. Some decamped slower
than others; one or two were carried. Some made their escape through the
pond; and of these, some fell over in the water, as if they had been
hit. One fell, the men said, and didn’t get up again. A few of the enemy
halted awhile to take a look, in their run down the cross-road, as if
they would like to make an attempt on the extremity of our convoy, which
probably appeared to them unprotected. But, receiving the fire of our
rearguard, they again took to flight. We assembled at the pond, and
there halted in a body, convoy and escort.

Mr Chesterfield had not yet recovered from the first shock of his wound;
and was obliged to remain in the cart, unable to sit up. Gingham
administered some brandy, with good effect. We had, however, one other
wounded man. I noticed several of our fellows, horse and foot, assembled
in a group, from which proceeded loud jeers, and shouts of laughter.
There was something in the midst of them, the occasion of their mirth,
which I could not see. Presently, however, I caught a sight of poor
Jones, the picture of woe. He was standing in a posture very far from
upright, and leaning with his elbows on the back of a spare mule—his
aspect cadaverous. Advancing, I heard the talk.

“Why, Taffy, old feller, how come ye to get hit there?” A roar of
laughter drowned Jones’s indignant reply.

“Taffy, my lad, why, I didn’t think you vos the chap as vould turn
tail.”

“It’s a lie,” roared Jones, in a voice of extreme agony and
exasperation. “I didn’t turn tail; nor I haven’t not never turned tail.
Only jest turned round to load, and felt all at wance jest as if
somebody had bin and give me a kick——” A universal roar drowned the
conclusion of the sentence.

“Mr Pledget,” said I, “there seems to be here another case, soliciting
your attention.”

The men made way. Pledget advanced with great seriousness; and the
laughter, though less vociferous, became tenfold in intensity, at the
rich idea of Pledget’s investigating and doctoring Jones’s wound. Jones,
at the sight of the doctor, in his alarm and anguish set up a regular
hullabaloo, almost running into a cry. The doctor, regardless of Jones’s
fears and lacerated feelings, began gravely to question him—made serious
attempts and approaches to ascertain particulars. Two or three of the
fellows, positively overcome with the scene, threw themselves down by
the road-side in an agony. One, I really thought, would have laughed
himself into a fit. He turned red, crimson, purple, almost black in the
face; still, in his bursts, casting his eyes, from time to time, towards
Jones and the doctor. Jones, leaning on the mule’s back, screwing and
twisting first this way then that, evaded and defeated all the doctor’s
approaches; while the men, taking a little extra freedom after our
glorious victory, renewed their vociferous merriment. Pledget, at
length, began to lose his patience. “Come, my good fellow,” said he;
“this won’t do, you know.”

He then looked round at the soldiers, and made a sign. Four of them
stepped forward, seized Jones by the arms and legs, and bore him off to
the road-side—struggling, fighting, kicking, roaring, screeching, his
agony increasing as he saw the moment at hand when he must be doctored.
Pledget humanely pointed to some bushes close by, and the men carried
Jones behind them. There the bullet was extracted at once. But how
Pledget proceeded, or what was the precise character of the wound, of
course we, who remained in the road, had no opportunity of perceiving.
The progress of the operation, however, was marked by occasional shouts
and yells from Jones; and in five minutes he hobbled forth with a rueful
aspect, but looking “as well as could be expected.” Pledget almost
immediately followed, and handed the bullet to Jones. “There, my man,”
said he; “put that in your pocket.”

There still was something, though, upon Jones’s mind. He limped down to
the edge of the pond with an eager, anxious look; and began prowling
about, examining among the reeds and bushes, right and left.

“Jones, hadn’t you better keep yourself quiet? Sit down, man.”

“Please, sir, if you’ve no objections, sir, I’m noways inclined to sit
down jest at present, sir, ’cause it would be rayther ill-colvelielt,
sir; rayther be excused, sir. Hope no offence, sir.” He continued on the
prowl.

“What are you looking for, Jones? Lost any part of your kit?”

“Please, sir, I’m a-looking for that ’ere Nosey, sir.”

“What! the man that stood treat this morning? You don’t expect to find
him here.”

“Please, sir, I see him here, sir; and I marked him too, sir. See him
drop somewhere hereabouts, sir.”

This intelligence was “important, if true;” and I also began to look.

There was nothing, however, on this part of the field of combat, to
indicate that a wounded man had fallen. Jones, though, was positive.

“Sure you were not mistaken, Jones?”

“No, sir; it wasn’t no mistake, I’m sartain, sir. I’m sartain as I see
him, and I’m sartain as I marked him, sir. Knowed him by his——Oh, there
he is, sir.”

Jones pointed to something in the pond that looked like a package or
bundle, half immersed in the water, at the edge of the reeds, a little
out from the side.

A soldier stepped in, and examined more closely. “It’s a dead man, sir.”

“Dead! Get him out, that’s a good fellow. Perhaps he’s only wounded, and
not past recovery.”

“He’s past that, sir,” said the soldier, as he turned him, face upwards,
on the bank.

The face had a mask of mud. The soldier knelt down, felt in the dead
man’s pockets, brought out a white handkerchief of French cambric—wiped
away the mud. Yes, it was Hookey! The features retained their general
expression—harsh by temperament, but composed to blandness. Oh, what a
look was that! Hookey shot through the neck! The brow was slightly knit;
the lips were parted; the teeth clenched. His perpetual smile had set
his face, at last, in a fixed, unmeaning smirk—the dead man’s simper!
The two corners of his semicircular mouth, drawn up high on the cheeks,
were flanked by two furrows, rigid and profound! It was the sort of look
which, seen but for a moment, stamps on the memory an impression that we
can recall at will, and that sometimes comes unbidden!

“Just hold up that handkerchief, my man. Spread it out, will you? Oh,
there’s the mark—_Christophe_.”

“Any papers?” said I to Jones, who was rummaging in the dead man’s
pockets.

“Only this here, sir,” said Jones, holding up an envelope, which had
been emptied of its contents. It was the cover of my letter, which
Hookey had undertaken to deliver at headquarters. The letter itself he
had probably sent in a different direction.

Jones, meanwhile, had found a leathern purse, which, without any
remarks, he was quietly secreting about his own person. The soldier,
though, who had landed the dead man, detected this act of conveyance,
and demanded “snacks.” A discussion arose, and a squabble seemed
inevitable. “Corporal Fraser,” said I, “just see all fair here.” I then
turned Sancho’s head, and withdrew from the scene. Sancho had more than
once brought down his nose, slowly and cautiously, into close proximity
with the object that lay stretched out before him. He now, ere he obeyed
the bridle, pawed, tossed his head, and snorted; as though fain to get
rid of the very air that he had just been inhaling, and to blow out of
his nostrils the smell of blood!

Mr Chesterfield, now considerably recovered, stood by the cart, with his
arm slung in a silk handkerchief. He thought he was able to sit his
horse—at any rate, wished to try. Pledget objected—wanted him to come on
in the cart. A discussion arose; and it was settled at last, that
Pledget should mount the horse, while Mr Chesterfield rode Pledget’s
mule. Gingham then gave directions to Coosey and Joaquim, who helped
Jones into the cart. Coosey had already been won upon by Jones. But now,
when Jones came out fresh from the field, with a memorial of the combat
that would follow him to the day of his death, Coosey’s admiration knew
no bounds. I saw him pass something to Joaquim, who took an early
opportunity of passing it to Jones. “You don’t think,” said I to
Gingham, “Coosey will give him more than will do him good?”—“No, no,”
said Gingham; “you may depend on Coosey’s discretion.”

It was time to be getting on again. First, however, Mr Chesterfield
deemed it advisable to see all right respecting the wood. For this
purpose, he sent forward Corporal Fraser with part of the infantry.
After they entered the wood, we heard a single shot. In about ten
minutes the whole party returned, the Corporal riding a clumsy French
cart-horse, with a rope bridle. They had found a horse and cart. The
shot was fired to bring up the driver, who had, however, got off. The
object of the horse and cart was pretty evident. It no doubt had
occurred to Hookey that, in case of his making a successful foray, and
securing part of our dollars, such a conveyance might do good service in
carrying off the “swag.” There was no convenient way of getting the cart
to us out of the wood; it appeared to have been brought from another
direction; so Fraser had taken out the horse, which he considered his
own lawful prize. All being now arranged, we proceeded on our march.

Jones rode on in the cart. He lay along at full length; not on his back,
though, but in the opposite position, which he preferred under existing
circumstances. I observed him—like a recumbent bull-terrier, with muzzle
protruding from his kennel—keenly watching as we proceeded—now forwards,
now right, now left, looking out for the _hinnimy_, and eager to have
another slap at a Frenchman.

With regard to the enemy’s position, it will probably occur to the
military reader, that they might have chosen a better. A more skilful
opponent, probably, would have concealed himself in the forest, and
attacked us in flank; and a bolder one might have ventured to occupy the
hollow way with all his forces—a plan which, if detected, would have
been attended with greater risk to himself, but, if successful, with
greater damage to us. As it was, the ambuscade was too far in front of
the main body, and we were able to deal with it before we were further
engaged. Still, I think, it must be admitted, on the whole, the
arrangements of the enemy were not badly made. Had we not kept a good
look-out—or rather, had not our four-legged attendant providentially put
us on our guard—we might not have discovered our opponents till it was
too late to avoid a conflict at close quarters, the probable consequence
of which would have been the loss of some of our mules; while the
crossroads afforded facilities for driving them off, with the choice of
four directions. And, some of their party being concealed in the two
banks between which we had to pass, we might have discovered an enemy at
hand only by finding ourselves under fire. On the whole, we had reason
to be thankful that our loss was so small.

With regard to our fallen opponent, Hookey or Christophe, in lately
turning over Colonel Gurwood’s volumes, I met with something which
appears, curiously enough, to identify him. In a letter from our
Commander-in-Chief, bearing date 2d January 1814, that is, two or three
months before our rencontre, I find that a person, calling himself
Christophe, had been arrested and sent to General Freyre, to be
forwarded to Madrid; that, in the November previous, this Christophe was
at Bilbao; that he had letters from King Ferdinand; that he showed a
draft or order on the Biscayan Provinces to pay him seventy thousand
dollars; that he was advised to present himself to the Government; and
that, as the opinion entertained of him was not very favourable, and he
remained at St Jean de Luz, he was at length arrested, and sent off.

Now, I am not prepared to assert that this was the same individual with
my Christophe or Hookey; but, supposing it so, we may give some such
sketch of his services as the following. In the early part of 1813, the
period of my voyage from Falmouth to Lisbon, the French authorities in
Spain, civil and military, were not a little perplexed as to our
Commander’s plans for the ensuing campaign. This mystery he solved ere
long, by breaking forth from the north of Portugal, advancing on the
line of the Douro, marching across the north of Spain, winning the
battle of Vittoria, investing San Sebastian and Pampeluna, liberating
the Peninsula, crowning the Pyrenees, completing the great circle that
was closing round Napoleon, and menacing the south of France. Precisely
when we may suppose the curiosity of the Gallic leaders to have been
most intense, that is, in the early spring of 1813, just previous to
Lord Wellington’s advance, Hookey—Christophe, said his cambric
handkerchief—came off to us in the Oporto boat, and, under the assumed
character of a courier, obtained a passage by the Falmouth packet from
Oporto to Lisbon—in other words, from the left to the right of the
position then occupied by the British troops. Subsequently, a Christophe
makes his appearance at Bilbao, in the November of the same year; and,
on account of his suspicious conduct there, and afterwards at
headquarters, is arrested, and delivered over to the Spaniards, for
transmission to Madrid. The Spaniards, of course, let him escape; and he
then returns to his old trade. He cannot, however, appear again at
headquarters, therefore hangs about the line of march on the look-out
for a job; falls in with a greenhorn in charge of treasure; gets out of
him all the information he can; tries to divert him from his route;
tampers with his personal attendant; opposes his passage of a river;
makes his escort drunk; and musters a rural force, with the aid of which
he hopes to realise more by ready cash, than he did by his cheque on the
“Biscayan provinces.” Thus he went on, prying, plotting, and meddling,
till he found his end.

We proceeded quietly on our march, Gingham and I riding side by side,
while Pledget and Mr Chesterfield preceded us.

“Yes,” said Gingham, resuming the thread of our conversation where our
rencontre with the enemy had broken it off; “I know that you have formed
schemes connected with military service; and those, I presume, are the
plans you allude to.”

I really did not understand, at the moment, what Gingham meant; and,
fancying he referred to our recent operations in the presence of the
foe, answered wide of the mark.

“No, no,” said he; “I was not speaking, sir, with regard to the little
affair which has just come off; though, give me leave to say, Mr Y—, you
acquitted yourself in a way that does you credit. I allude to what fell
from you within the last hour, when you mentioned some plans that you
had formed, and which, you were kind enough to say, you would
communicate for my information.”

We now resumed the conversation, which the “little affair” had
interrupted. I stated my plans, hopes, difficulties, without reserve;
and Gingham, in reply, from his own knowledge and observations, drew,
with equal force and feeling, a not very agreeable picture of the
discouragements, disappointments, toils, hardships, sufferings,
privations, wrongs, and snubbings, incidental to the life of a marching
officer on actual service. He was still eloquently descanting on these
topics, when we reached the termination of our day’s journey.

GERMAN POPULAR PROPHECIES.

LETTER FROM PROFESSOR GREGORY TO THE EDITOR.

DEAR SIR,—The following notice of certain popular prophetic
traditions, widely current in the country to which they refer, may
perhaps prove interesting to your numerous readers.

All widely-spread opinions, however apparently absurd, have, or have
had at some time, a foundation in nature or in historical fact; and it
cannot be uninteresting, with a view to the history of popular
traditions, to place on record those which I have here collected, even
although we cannot at present trace them satisfactorily to their
origin. The whole subject of trances, and the various phenomena
connected with them, including the second sight, is one hitherto very
imperfectly studied, and for that reason I have not entered into
detail on that part of the question; but I may possibly do so at a
future period.—Believe me, very truly yours,

WILLIAM GREGORY.

EDINBURGH, _April 16, 1850_.

It is well known that in all ages, and in most countries, prophetic
traditions have been said to exist; and although it may often have
happened that such traditions have arisen from spurious prophecies,
written after the event, and falsely said to have existed before it, yet
it would also appear that genuine prophecies have from time to time
appeared, and become traditions before the events took place. Of course,
we do not here allude to the Scriptural prophecies, but to such as have
no pretensions to a divine origin. There can be little doubt that the
Sybilline Books contained prophecies of the future fate of Rome; and
although we cannot now ascertain, even if this were the case, whether
they were accurate predictions, or merely sagacious guesses, nor whether
the event confirmed them, yet the tradition of their existence is in
itself curious. We cannot here enter into an enumeration of the various
prophecies which are said to have existed, in ancient or modern times,
before the events occurred, but on some future occasion we may return to
that subject: in the mean time we may allude, as a modern example of
popular prophecy in our own country, to the prediction of the extinction
of the male line of the house of Seaforth, in the person of a deaf
Caberfae—a prediction which Mr Morritt of Rokeby, the friend of Scott,
heard quoted in Ross-shire at a time when the last Lord Seaforth, who
became quite deaf, had several sons in perfect health. We have no doubt
our Highland readers are acquainted with many analogous cases.

Our present object is to direct attention to the fact, that in Germany,
more especially on the Rhine and in Westphalia, there exist many
remarkable popular prophecies concerning public events, of various
dates, and originating in various quarters, but exhibiting a remarkable
coincidence in many of the chief points. Many of these have been printed
at various times; others exist as traditions among the peasantry;
others, again, are said upon good evidence to have been in modern times
taken down from the lips of the prophets themselves, all or most of whom
are now dead. Yet they generally predict, and often with strange
minuteness of detail, events which were to occur about this time,—viz.
in 1848, 1849, and 1850. Political and religious convulsions, wars, and
finally peace and prosperity, form the burden of them; and we shall see
that the events of 1848 and 1849 supply apparently strong confirmation
of their truth, their previous existence being admitted.

Having spent some months in Rhenish Prussia during the summer of 1849,
we made many inquiries on the subject, and found everywhere, and among
all classes, a firm conviction of the _genuineness_ of many of the
popular prophecies; while it was admitted that they had long been known
and believed by the people. As the matter, considered under any point of
view, is a curious and interesting one, we procured the latest work on
the subject, which in fact appeared while we were in Germany. It is
entitled, “Prophetic Voices, with Explanations. A collection as perfect
as possible, of all Prophecies, of Ancient and Modern date, concerning
the Present and Future Times, with an explanation of the obscure parts,”
by Th. Beykirch, licentiate in Theology, and (R.C.) curate in Dortmund.
The worthy Curate is often too brief in his accounts of the prophecies
themselves, and very diffuse in his explanations, which, for the most
part, tend to extract from the predictions the comfortable assurance of
the complete reestablishment of the Roman Catholic religion, and the
utter discomfiture of Protestantism. He even treats his readers to a
disquisition, altogether out of place, on Scriptural prophecies, and an
interpretation, by Holzhaüser, of the Apocalypse, in which he applies to
Protestantism the same passages which Protestants apply to the Papacy,
and does so, apparently, very much to his own satisfaction. We shall not
touch on these parts of his work, but use it as a storehouse, from which
we may draw the predictions themselves, without regarding them through
the theological medium of the reverend author.

The first we shall mention is of an ancient date. It is the vaticination
of Brother Herrmann, a monk of the monastery of Lehnin, who flourished
circa A.D. 1270, and died in the odour of sanctity. It is written in a
hundred leonine hexameters, rhyming in the middle and end of each verse,
and was printed in 1723 by Professor Lilienthal, from what was said to
be an old MS. His prophecies chiefly concerned the future fate of his
own monastery of Lehnin in Brandenburg, and of the monastery of Chorin
in the Uckermark, a part of Brandenburg. But as that fate depended on
public events, more especially on the history of the princes of that
country, his vaticination assumes the form of a brief prophetic history
of the house of Hohenzollern, that is, the now royal house of Prussia.
Our readers will probably readily dispense with the whole of the
original hexameters of the good monk, but we shall give a few specimens:
he begins—

1. “Nunc tibi, cum cura, Lehnin! cano fata futura,

2. Quæ mihi monstravit Dominus, qui cuncta creavit,” &c.

“Now, oh Lehnin! I sing with sorrow to thee thy future fates,

Which the Lord, the creator of all, has shown to me.”

He proceeds to describe the prosperity of Lehnin under the race of Otto
I., and its decay after the extinction of this family, which took place
in the person of Henry III., 1320. These princes were from Anhalt, of
the race called the Askanier in German history.

At verses 14 _et seq._, he describes Brandenburg as becoming a den of
lions, while the true heir is excluded. After Margrave Henry III., the
Dukes of Pomerania, Mecklenburg, Brunswick, Anhalt, Electoral Saxony,
and Bohemia attacked the Mark, (Brandenburg,) and committed horrible
devastations. The Emperor Louis of Bavaria seized it for himself,
excluding the princes of Saxony, the nearest heirs to the former
princes.

After various details concerning the fate of Brandenburg, plundered by
robber knights and barons, who were to be put down by a strong emperor,
as happened under Charles IV. who died in 1378,—he comes to the
accession of the Hohenzollerns, and describes the first prince of that
family as rising to distinction by holding two castles or Burgen. The
Emperor Sigismund sold Brandenburg to Frederick, Burggraf of Nuremberg,
of the house of Hohenzollern. He belonged to the lower nobility, but now
became more important by the possession of two castles—those of
Nuremberg and Brandenburg. These examples are sufficient to give an idea
of that part of Brother Herrmann’s prophecy, concerning events which
preceded the printing of it in 1723, and in which he describes
_seriatim_, without giving the names, and very briefly, but in striking
language, the fate and character of the successive Margraves, Electors,
and Kings, till he comes to Frederick William I., who died in 1740,
seventeen years after the prophecy was printed, and whose character and
death he describes. Then follows Frederick the Great, whose career, with
its vicissitudes, is indicated with tolerable clearness. One line is
curious,

84. “Flantibus hinc Austris, vitam vult credere claustris.”

“When the south wind blows, he trusts his life to the cloisters.”

In fact, Frederick, when hard pressed by the Austrians, was once
compelled to conceal himself in a monastery.

_Auster_ signifies south wind, but is probably here used for Austria.

After his successor, Frederick William II., whom the good monk truly
describes as vicious, sensual, and oppressive, but not warlike, comes
this line—

89. “Natus florebit; quod non sperasset habebit.”

“The son shall flourish; he shall possess what he did not hope for.”

The application of this to the late king, Frederick William III., is
obvious. Under him, Prussia, after having been reduced to the lowest ebb
by Napoleon, became, unexpectedly, far more powerful than it had ever
been.

90. “Sed populus tristis flebit temporibus istis.

92. “Et princeps nescit quod nova potentia crescit.”

“But the sad people shall mourn in these times;

“And the King knows not that a new power is arising.”

These lines also apply well to Frederick William III.

93. “Tandem sceptra gerit, qui ultimus stemmatis erit.”

“At length he bears the sceptres, who shall be the last of his race.”

Now this is very remarkable. In line 49, he had said—

49. “Hoc ad undenum durabit stemma venenum.”

“This poison[2] shall last to the eleventh generation.”

The present king, Frederick William IV., is the eleventh from Joachim
III., the first Protestant prince of Brandenburg, in reference to whom
the above line is written. But why did the writer (even supposing the
prophecy not to have existed earlier than 1723, when it was printed)
stop at this point? We shall see that other prophecies coincide with
this one in predicting that the present will be the last King of
Prussia.

Then comes the remarkable line—

95. “Et pastor gregem recipit, Germania regem.”

“And the shepherd receives his flock, Germany a king.”

The worthy curate of Dortmund explains this as pointing out the
submission of Europe to the Pope, and of Germany to one sovereign.
Brother Herrmann goes on to predict peaceful times, and the restoration
of Chorin and Lehnin to their pristine splendour.

We have omitted many curious lines, but the reader will probably feel
satisfied that the brief and obscure vaticinations of Brother Herrmann
are worthy of notice, especially that part of them relating to the last
hundred and twenty years, bearing in mind that they were printed in
1723.

The next prophet mentioned by our author is Joseph von Görres, who died
in January 1848—that is, before the last revolution in France, which
shook the thrones of Europe. On his deathbed he lamented the misfortunes
about to come on Poland, described Hungary as appearing to him one huge
field of carnage, and wept over the approaching downfall of the European
monarchies. The events of February and March 1848, the insurrection in
Posen, the devastations committed by the Prussians in suppressing it,
and the war in Hungary, would appear to be the events to which he
referred. But he was a man deeply read in history, and there are some of
those prophetic hints which may possibly have occurred to him as
reflections on probable events, and have assumed a certain degree of
vividness in his mind.

We now come to a peasant prophet, namely Jaspers, a Westphalian
shepherd, of Deininghausen, near the ancestral seat of the Lord of
Bodelschwing. He was a simple-minded pious man. In 1830, soon after
which time he died, he publicly predicted as follows:—

“A great road (said he) will be carried through our country, from west
to east, which will pass through the forests of Bodelschwing. On this
road, carriages will run _without horses_, and cause a dreadful noise.
At the commencement of this work, a great scarcity will here prevail;
pigs will become very dear, and a new religion will arise, in which
wickedness will be regarded as prudence and politeness. Before this
road is quite completed, a frightful war will break out.”

These words, to the astonishment of the natives, have nearly all been
fulfilled. The railway from Cologne to Minden has, since his death, been
carried through the very district he mentioned in 1830, before the first
English railway had been opened, and when the primitive shepherds of
Westphalia were little likely to know anything about railways. The
scarcity took place at the time specified; and his remark as to a new
religion is supposed to apply to a deterioration of manners among the
simple natives, consequent on the opening up of their district. A
personal friend of Jaspers collected the following sayings, which the
author, after minute inquiry on the spot, considers as genuine.

1. “Before the great road is _quite finished_, a dreadful war will
break out.”

The railway has for a year or two been in operation; but, up to the end
of 1849, as we saw by advertisements, the second line of rails was not
laid down. It is probably still only in progress. Now in 1848 and 1849,
we have seen war in Schleswig-Holstein, Hungary, Italy, Posen, and
Baden.

2. “A small northern power will be conqueror.”

Probably the Danish war, and the success of Denmark, is here meant.

3. “After this another war will break out—not a religious war among
Christians, but between those who believe in Christ and those who do
not believe.”

Here we must remember that the simple and ignorant peasants of
Westphalia have strong religious feelings and prejudices, and are apt,
like some nearer home, to apply the term Infidel somewhat rashly.
Possibly Russia and the Greek church may be here alluded to.

4. “This war comes from the East. I dread the East.

5. “This war will break out very suddenly. In the evening they will
cry ‘Peace, peace!’ and yet peace is not; and in the morning the enemy
will be at the door. Yet it shall soon pass, and he who knows of a
good hiding-place, for a a few days only, is secure.”

The probability of a war, in which Russia shall take an active share,
cannot escape any observer of the signs of the times; and, with the aid
of railways, which were not known at the date of Jaspers’ death, the
sudden outbreak is quite possible, even in Westphalia.

6. “The defeated enemy will have to fly in extreme haste. Let the
people cast cart and wheels into the water, otherwise the flying foe
will take all carriages with them.

7. “Before this war, a general faithlessness will prevail. Men will
give out vice for virtue and honour, deceit for politeness.

8. “In the year in which the great war shall break out, there shall be
so fine a spring, that in April the cows will be feeding in the
meadows on luxuriant grass. In the same year, wheat may be harvested,
(in his district,) but not oats.” (This appears to be likely to apply
to 1850.—W. G.)

He seems here to hint that the harvest of oats will be interrupted by
the war; if so, the war occurs in autumn.

9. “The great battle will be fought _at the birch-tree_, between Unna,
Hamm, and Werl. The people of half the world will there be opposed to
each other. God will terrify the enemy by a dreadful storm. Of the
_Russians_, but few shall return home to tell of their defeat. Jaspers
described this battle as terrific.”

We shall by and by hear more of this birch-tree.

10. “The war will be over in 1850, and in 1852 all will be again in
order.

11. “The Poles are at first put down; but they will, along with other
nations, fight against their oppressors, and at last obtain a king of
their own.

12. “France will be divided internally into three parts.”

It is curious to notice, that at present, although the state of matters
in 1830 was very different, there are three parties in France, all of
them powerful: namely, the Buonapartists, (with at least a part of the
Orleanists,) and the moderate as well as the _pro tempore_ Republicans,
headed by Louis Napoleon; the party of the old Bourbons and the priests,
led by Falloux and the old nobility, such as Larochejaquelein and
Montalembert; and lastly the Red Republicans, Socialists, and
Communists. These three parties hold each other in check, and no one of
them can at this moment do much.

13. “Spain will not join in the war. But the Spaniards shall come
after it is over, and take possession of the churches.

14. “Austria will be fortunate, provided she do not wait too long.

15. “The papal chair will be vacant for a time.

16. “The nobility is much depressed, but in 1852 again rises to some
extent.

17. “When asked as to the future of Prussia, he maintained an
obstinate silence, saying only that King Frederick William IV. would
be the last.”

This agrees with Brother Herrmann, as formerly stated. A man named
Pottgiesser, in Dortmund, long since dead, drew up a genealogical tree
of the royal house, in which he says of the present king—to whom he
gives no successor—“He disappears.”

18. “There will be one religion. On the Rhine stands a church which
all people shall aid in building. From thence, after the war, shall
proceed the rule of faith. All sects shall be united; only the Jews
shall retain their old obstinacy.”

The dome at Cologne is obviously alluded to. We shall see, hereafter,
that Cologne is expected to become the seat of ecclesiastical rule by
other prophets.

19. “In our district priests shall become so rare, that, after the
war, people will have to walk seven leagues in order to attend divine
service.

20. “Our country will be so much depopulated, that women will have to
cultivate the soil; and seven girls shall fight for a pair of
inexpressibles.

21. “The house of Ikern shall be set on fire by shells.

22. “The soldiers shall march to battle (or to war) first, then
return, decked with the cherry blossoms. And only after that shall the
great war break out.”

In spring 1848, troops marched to Baden, at the time of the first
insurrection there, in which war General von Gagern was killed; and they
returned home decked with cherry blossoms.

23. “Germany shall have one king, and then shall come happy times.

24. “He spoke also of an approaching religious change, and warned his
children, when that time should come, to go to Mengede.”

When jeered on his prophetic powers, Jaspers often said—

“When I have long been in the grave, you will then often remember what
I have said.”

There is a prophet in Dortmund, who, among other curious things, said,
in 1840, “When the Prussian soldiers shall be dressed like those who
crucified our Lord, then war shall break out with great violence.” It is
worthy of notice that, since that time, the whole Prussian army, with
the exception of the Hussars, have been armed with helmets of Roman
form. Their new Waffenrock, or military coat, is also a short plain
surtout, buttoned to the throat, and probably not unlike a Roman tunic.

The predictions of Jaspers are curious—first, on account of their
minuteness; secondly, because they specify dates yet future. We shall
see that they coincide, in many of the chief points, with other popular
prophecies.

The next prophet is Spielbähn, a Rhenish peasant. “Spielbähn” signifies,
in the dialect of his countrymen, “the fiddler;” and this name was given
to him on account of his skill as a rustic performer on the violin. He
was employed as messenger and servant in the convents of Siegburg and
Heisterbach. His predictions have been published by Schrattenholz, and
widely circulated; but, as we could not procure this work, we can only
give such extracts as our author has selected.

Spielbähn died in 1783 in Cologne. He is said to have been rather
addicted to the wine-flask, and to have occasionally indulged in
predictions of doubtful authenticity, possibly from interested motives.
But he is thought, in the main, to have uttered what he really believed
to be true predictions, and he gave them out as visions. He predicted
the imprisonment of the Archbishop of Cologne, which took place a few
years ago, with many less interesting local occurrences, which our
author passes over. Speaking of the present time, (1848–50,) and of what
should follow, he said—

1. “In that time it will be hardly possible to distinguish the peasant
from the noble.”

In Rhenish Prussia, where the Code Napoleon prevails, there is hardly a
trace of the splendour of the old aristocracy to be found. The nobles of
old family who remain have lost all exclusive privileges, and are poor.

2. “Courtly manners and worldly vanity will reach to a height hitherto
unequalled. Yea, things will go so far, that men will no longer thank
God for their daily bread.

3. “Human intellect will do wonders, (or miracles,) and on this
account men will more and more forget God. They will mock at God,
thinking themselves omnipotent, because of the carriages, which shall
run through the whole world, (or everywhere,) without being drawn by
animals.

4. “And because courtly vices, sensuality, and sumptuousness of
apparel, are then so great, God will punish the world. A poison shall
fall on the fields, and a great famine shall afflict the country.”

In Nos. 3 and 4, railways and the potato blight seem meant.

5. “When a bridge shall be thrown across the Rhine at Mondorf, then it
will be advisable to cross, as soon as possible, to the opposite
shore. But it will only be necessary to remain there so long as a man
will take to consume a 7 lb. loaf of bread; after which (that is, in
less than a week,) it will be time to return.”

This coincides with Jaspers’ prediction of the shortness of the last
great struggle.

6. “Thousands shall conceal themselves in a meadow among the seven
mountains, (opposite Bonn.)

7. “I see the destruction of the heretics, with dreadful punishments;
of those who dared to think their puny minds could penetrate the
councils of God. But the long-suffering of God is at an end, and a
limit is put to their wickedness.”

The worthy curate dwells with peculiar satisfaction on this prediction.

8. “Observe well, thou land of Berg! Thy reigning family, which
proceeds from a Margraviate, shall suddenly fall from its high
station, and become less than the smallest Margraviate.”

The grand-duchy of Berg, on the Lower Rhine, of which Düsseldorf is the
chief town, was given by Napoleon to Murat, and was afterwards part of
the kingdom of Westphalia, but, since the peace, has formed part of
Prussia, the royal family of which, as we have seen, descends from the
Margraves of Brandenburg; but in 1783 all this was as yet in the womb of
time. See also Jaspers, No. 17, and Brother Herrmann, verse 93.

9. “The false prophets (heretic clergy?) shall be killed with wife and
child.

10. “The holy city of Cologne shall then see a fearful battle. Many,
of foreign nations, shall here be killed, and men and women shall
fight for their faith. And it will be impossible to avert from
Cologne, up to that time spared by war, all the cruel extremities of
war. Men will then wade in blood to the ankles.

11. “But at last a foreign king shall arise, and gain the victory for
the good cause. The survivors of the defeated enemy fly to the
_birch-tree_; and here shall the last battle be fought for the good
cause.”

See Nos. 9 and 33 of Jaspers’ sayings, as to the birch-tree and the
German king; also verse 95 of Brother Herrmann.

12. “The foreign armies have brought the ‘black death’ into the land.
What the sword spares the pestilence shall devour. Berg shall be
depopulated, and the fields without owners; so that one may plough
from the river Sieg up to the hills without being (Scoticè)
challenged. Those who have hid themselves among the hills shall again
cultivate the land.”

See No. 20 of Jaspers’ predictions.

13. “About this time France will be divided internally.”

See Jaspers, No. 12.

14. “The German Empire shall choose a peasant for Emperor. He shall
govern Germany a year and a day.”

The Archduke John, late regent of the empire, had long lived, banished
from court, as a Styrian peasant, adopting the costume and manners of
the peasantry. He also married a peasant girl. His regency lasted little
more than a year, and, indeed, after the year had expired, he only
returned to Frankfort in order to resign his power to the present
commission.

15. “But he who after him shall wear the imperial crown, he will be
the man for whom the world has long looked with hope. He shall be
called Roman Emperor, and shall give peace to the world. He shall
restore Siegburg and Heisterbach, (two convents, above mentioned.)

16. “Then shall there be no more Jews in Germany, and the heretics
shall beat their own breasts.

17. “And after that shall be a good happy time. The praise of God
shall dwell on earth; and there shall be no war, except beyond the
seas. Then shall the fugitive brethren return, and dwell in their
homes in peace for ever and ever.

“Men should heed well what I have said, for much evil may be averted
by prayer; and although people jeer me, saying I am a simple fiddler,
yet the time will come when they shall find my words true.”

See Jaspers’ predictions, Nos. 18 and 23. Brother Herrman, also, in
verses 96–100, prophesies happy times, and the restoration of the
convents of Chorin and Lehnin.

The next seer is Anton (Anthony), called the Youth of Elsen, a village
near Paderborn, in Westphalia. He had the gift of the “second
sight”—that is, he saw visions—and has a great reputation in that
country as a true seer. His predictions were first collected by Dr
Kutscheit, from whose work the author extracts as follows. The date is
not given by our curate.

1. “When the convent of Abdinghof is occupied by soldiers, armed with
long poles, to which little flags are attached, and when these troops
leave the convent, then is the time near.”

At this time (1849) Prussian lancers occupy the convent, which has been
converted into a barrack. This was not the case when the prediction was
made.

2. “From Neuhaus, houses may be seen on the Bock, (Buck,) and a
village is founded between Paderborn and Elsen. Then is the time
near.”

The Bock is a wooded eminence near Paderborn, where an inn was built. To
obtain a fine view from the inn, the wood was lately cut through, and
thus the buildings have become visible from Neuhaus. The village or
_dorf_ is a newly-founded country house, or rather farm-house, with its
appurtenances—_Scoticè_, a town.

3. “When people see, in the Roman field, houses with large windows;
when a broad road is made through that field, which shall not be
finished till the good times come, then shall come heavy times.”

In the Roman field, on the high road to Erwitte, the Thuringian Railway
was begun in 1847, and a terminus, the buildings of which have very
large windows, has been laid down on the spot. The works have been, from
the necessity of the times, suspended for the present. See Jaspers, No.
1, and Spielbähn, No. 3.

4. “When barley is sown on the Bock, then is the time close at hand.
Then shall the enemy be in the land, and kill and devastate
everything. Men will have to go seven leagues to find an acquaintance.
The town of Paderborn shall have eight heavy days, during which the
enemy lies there. On the last day, the enemy shall give up the town to
plunder. But let every man carry his most valuable property from the
ground floor to the garret; for the enemy will not have time, even to
untie his shoestrings, so near will succour be.”

In the summer of 1848, the first attempt was made to grow barley on the
Bock, a cold, high-lying district.

5. “The enemy will try to bombard the town from the Liboriberg, (a
hill close to Paderborn); but only one ball (or shell) shall hit, and
set on fire a house in the Kampe. The fire, however, shall soon be
extinguished.

6. “The French shall come as friends. French cavalry with shining
breastplates (cuirassiers) shall ride in at the Westergate, and tie
their horses to the trees in the Cathedral close. At the Giersthor,
(another gate) soldiers with gray uniforms, faced with light blue,
shall come in. But they will only look into the town, and then
immediately withdraw. On the Bock stands a great army, with double
insignia, (or marks—possibly the two cockades, Imperial German and
Prussian, now worn by the Prussians,) whose muskets are piled in
heaps.

7. “The enemy shall fly towards Salzkotten, and towards the heath. In
both places a great battle shall be fought, so that people shall wade
in blood to the ankles. The pursuers from the town must take care not
to cross the Alme bridge; for not one of those who cross it shall
return alive.

8. “The victorious prince shall enter, in solemn procession, the
castle of Neuhaus, which shall be repaired (for the occasion?)
accompanied by many people with green boughs in their hats. On the
Johannes Bridge, before Neuhaus, there shall be such a crowd that a
child shall be crushed to death. While this goes on a great assembly
shall be held in and before the Rathhaus (Town House.) They shall
hurry (or drag) a man down from the Rathhaus, and hang him on a
lamp-post before it.

9. “When all these things shall have come to pass, then shall there be
a good time in the land. The convent (of Abdinghof) shall be restored;
and it will be better to be a swineherd here, in our land, than a
noble yonder in Prussia (proper).”

Next comes an old traditionary prophecy concerning Münster.

“Woe to thee, Münster! Woe to you, priests, doctors, and lawyers! How
shall it be with you in the days of sorrow?

“For three days they shall go up and down thy streets. Three times
shall the city be taken and lost.

“Let every man keep in the garret; thus shall he be safe. A dreadful
fire shall break out in and destroy Ueberwasser, so that it may be
seen from the cathedral place to the castle.

“The enemy shall be beaten, and shall fly through Kinderhaus so fast
that they leave their cannon on the street. All this shall happen in
the same year in which an illustrious person dies in the castle.

“The conquering prince shall make his entry through the Servatii-Thor,
(a gate).”

Part of this prophecy has been spread over the district of Münster for
sixty years; part of it comes from the tailor at Kinderhaus, who also
prophesied much to Blucher. He was one of the seers, or, as they are
called in that country, “Spoikenkikers.” “Spoikenkikers,” in high
German, signifies ghost or spirit; “Spoikenkikers” is our Scotch word
“Keeker,”—in high German, “Spoikenkikers.”

The next is an old prophecy concerning Osnabrück.

“Osnabrück shall suffer much for fourteen days, and see a bloody
contest in her streets.

“Even the service of the Greek Church shall be performed in the
churches of Osnabrück.”

This is quite possible, should Russians enter Westphalia. See Jaspers,
No. 9.

“A violent contest shall arise between Catholics and Protestants. All
the churches shall be again taken possession of by the Catholics.

“A priest, in the act of carrying the most Holy (the Host) into the
Lutheran Church, shall be killed by a ball at the church door.”

The three preceding prophecies are very remarkable, from the minute
details which they contain, and which seem to indicate that the seers
described _what they saw_ in visions or in dreams. Of course, most of
these visions, referring to events yet future, cannot be at present
verified. But the signs given by Anton, to know when the time
approaches, have come to pass.

The following traditionary prophecy about Cologne, was found by Magister
Heinrich von Judden, pastor of the small church of St Martin, in the
convent of the brethren of the Holy Virgin of Carmel, (in Cologne?):—

“O happy Cologne! when thou art well paved, thou shalt perish in thine
own blood. O, Cologne! thou shalt perish like Sodom and Gomorrha; thy
streets shall flow with blood, and thy relics shall be taken away. Woe
to thee, Cologne! because strangers suck thy breasts and the breasts
of thy poor,—of thy poor, who therefore languish in poverty and
misery.”

Old tradition concerning Coblenz:—

“Woe! woe! Where Rhine and Moselle meet, a battle shall be fought
against Turks and Baschkirs, (Russians?) so bloody, that the Rhine
shall be dyed red for twenty-five leagues.”

Traditions of battles in Westphalia:—

“A prodigious number of people shall come from the east towards the
west.

“The whole west and south shall rise against them.

“The armies shall meet in the middle of Westphalia.

“A dreadful battle shall take place on the Strönheide, (a heath,) near
Ahaus.

“At Riesenbeck, a bloody combat shall be fought.

“At Lüdinghausen,” said a seer, “I saw whole hosts of white-clad
soldiers. (Austrians?)

“Ottmarsbocholt will have much to suffer.

“On the Lipperheide (a heath) a bloody battle is fought.

“Also in Rittberg, and the whole country round, a battle shall be
fought.

“But the chief engagement shall be _at the Birch-Tree_.”

Every one, says the author, who takes the trouble, can hear all this
from the mouths of the peasantry. In many places, the seers have even
described the positions of the troops, and the direction in which the
cannon are pointed.

Prophecy of a Capuchin monk in Düsseldorf, of date 1672:—

“After a dreadful war (Napoleon’s wars?) shall there be peace; yet
there shall be no peace, because the contest of the poor against the
rich, and of the rich against the poor, shall break out.

“After this peace shall come a heavy time. The people shall have no
longer truth nor faith.

“When women know not, from pride and luxuriousness, what clothes they
shall wear—sometimes short, sometimes long, sometimes narrow,
sometimes wide; when men also change their dress, and wear everywhere
the beards of the Capuchins,[3] then will God chastise the world. A
dreadful war shall break out in the south (Hungary?) and spread
eastward and northward. The kings shall be killed. Savage hordes shall
overflow Germany, and come to the Rhine. They shall take delight in
murdering and burning, so that mothers, in despair, seeing death
everywhere before their eyes, shall cast themselves and their
sucklings into the water. When the need is greatest, a preserver shall
come from the south. He shall defeat the hordes of the enemy, and make
Germany prosperous. But, in those days, many parts shall be so
depopulated, that it will be necessary to climb a tree to look for
people afar off.”

An old prophecy concerning the battle of the _Birch-Tree_:—

“A time shall come when the world shall be godless. The people will
strive to be independent of king or magistrate, subjects will be
unfaithful to their princes. Neither truth nor faith prevails more. It
will then come to a general insurrection, in which father shall fight
against son, and son against father. In that time, men shall try to
pervert the articles of faith, and shall introduce new books. The
Catholic religion shall be hard pressed, and men will try with cunning
to abolish it. Men shall love play and jest, and pleasure of all
kinds, at that time. But then it shall not be long before a change
occurs. A frightful war shall break out. On one side shall stand
Russia, Sweden, and the whole north; on the other, France, Spain,
Italy, and the whole south, under a powerful prince. This prince shall
come from the south. He wears a white coat, with buttons all the way
down. He has a cross on his breast, rides a gray horse, which he
mounts from his left side, because he is lame of one foot. He will
bring peace. Great is his severity, for he will put down all
dance-music and rich attire. He will hear morning mass in the church
at Bremen. (According to some traditions, he will read mass.) From
Bremen he rides to the Haar, (a height near Werl;) from thence he
looks with his spyglass towards the country of the Birch-Tree, and
observes the enemy. Next, he rides past Holtum, (a village near Werl.)
At Holtum stands a crucifix between two lime-trees; before this, he
kneels and prays with outstretched arms, for some time. Then he leads
his soldiers, clad in white, into the battle, and, after a bloody
contest, he remains victorious.

“The chief slaughter will take place at a brook which runs from west
to east. Woe! woe! to Budberg and Söndern in those days! The
victorious leader shall assemble the people after the battle, and
address to them a speech in the church.”

So runs the above prophecy, according to the concurring testimony of
many peasants of that country. It was long ago printed in a small
pamphlet, in the convent at Werl. But, at the removal of the convent,
all its books were lost or destroyed. The tradition, however, remained
among the peasantry, and has even penetrated into France; for when
French (troops?) came to Werl, they inquired for the Birch-Tree. In
Pomerania also, natives of Westphalia, when quartered there, have been
questioned about its position. It stood long between Holtum and
Kirch-Hemmerde, villages lying between Unna and Werl. When it withered,
a new one was, by royal order, planted on the spot. This proves that the
Government knew of the prophecy or tradition, and felt an interest in
it. The people believe so firmly in the prophecy, that the peasantry
near Werl even opposed the introduction of new hymn-books, under the
impression that they were the predicted _new books_. Bremen, Holtum,
Budberg, and Söndern are villages near Werl. A crucifix stands at Holtum
between two young lime-trees; and a brook there flows from west to east.

Another old prophecy of the battle of the Birch-Tree. This prophecy was
printed at Cologne in 1701, in Latin. The title, translated, is as
follows:—

“A prophecy concerning the frightful contest between South and North,
and a terrific battle on the borders of the duchy of Westphalia, near
Bodberg, (Budberg.) From a book, entitled, A treatise on the heavenly
regeneration (or restoration,) by an anonymous author, illuminated (or
enlightened,) by visions. With permission of the Officialate at Werl.
Cologne, 1701.”

It was translated and printed in German by the monks of Werl, but, as
already stated, their library was destroyed or dispersed.

“After these days shall dawn the sad unhappy time, predicted by our
Lord. Men, in terror on the earth, shall faint for expectation of the
coming events. The father shall be against the son and the brother
against the brother. Truth and faith shall no longer be found. After
the nations, singly, have long warred against each other, after
thrones have crumbled, and kingdoms been overthrown, shall the entire
South take arms against the North. (Auster contra Aquilonem.) Then
country, language, and faith shall not be contended for, but they
shall fight for the rule of the world.”

“They shall meet in the middle of Germany, destroy towns and villages,
after the inhabitants have been compelled to fly to the hills and the
woods. This dreadful contest shall be decided in Lower Germany. There
the armies shall pitch camps, such as the world has not yet seen. This
fearful engagement shall begin _at the Birch-Tree_ near Bodberg. Woe!
woe! poor Fatherland! They shall fight three whole days. Even when
covered with wounds, they shall mangle each other, and wade in blood
to the ankles. The bearded people of the seven stars (?) shall finally
conquer, and their enemies shall fly; they shall turn at the bank of
the river, and again fight with the extremity of despair. But there
shall that power be annihilated, and its strength broken, so that
hardly a few will be left, to tell of this unheard-of defeat. The
inhabitants of the allied places shall mourn, but the Lord shall
comfort them, and they shall say, It is the Lord’s doing.”

The two preceding prophecies, both old, and printed long since, have
probably a common origin, whatever that may be. The tradition has
probably come to the people from the monks of Werl.

Some predictions or visions, connected with the prophecy of Werl:—

A seer, named Rölink, of Steinen, who has been dead some time,
prophesied of three processions in Kirch-Hemmerde.

“The first shall be a funeral procession. The names of several men
shall be hung up on the church.”

This happened when, in the war of 1813–15, some brave men of this
district fell in battle.

“The second procession shall go from the old church to the new one.”

This took place when the Catholics of Kirch-Hemmerde built a new church;
and the Host was carried from the Simultankirche into the new edifice.

“The third shall be after a dreadful war. Then shall Catholics and
Protestants again go together in procession into the old church, and
have one religion.”

He said further,—

“When two towers are built between Söndern and Werl, then shall a
frightful war soon break out.”

The towers are now there, having been lately built. One is a chimney for
the Salt-Works; the other a Bohrthurm, (a tower over the pit whence the
salt spring is pumped up.)

Another seer, named Ludolf, saw the whole order of battle of both
armies, and pointed out in a corn-field near Kirch-Hemmerde the spot,
near the _Birch-Tree_, where he saw in his vision a colonel fall from
his horse, struck by a ball. The horse, he said, would run to a sheaf of
oats, (therefore late in autumn,) snap at it, and in the same moment
fall, also pierced by a shot.

A third seer, Hermann Kappelmann, of Scheidingen, near Werl, prophesied
as follows, thirty years ago (1819,) before a whole company.

“The times are yet good, but they shall change much. After many years
a frightful war shall break out. The signs shall be: When in Spring
the cowslips appear early in the hedges, and disturbances prevail
everywhere; in that year the explosion does not take place. But when,
after a short winter, the cowslips bloom very early, and all appears
quiet, let no man believe in peace.

“When great wisps of straw stand on the Bärenwiese, (Bear’s meadow,)
then shall the war break out.”

The Bärenwiese is a large common meadow at Scheidingen. Soon after the
French and Polish revolutions of 1830 it was divided, and on that
account wisps of straw were set up. The people believed the great war
was then at hand. Now there are once more wisps of straw set up, to mark
the line of the railway to Cassel, which is in progress.

“When you then hear cannon from the side of Münster, then hasten to
cross the Ruhr, and take bread (a loaf) with you sufficient for three
days. He who only puts his foot in the water shall be safe from harm.
Then you may return, but whether you shall find your posts (or poles)
again, I cannot say. (Probably marks of agricultural subdivisions.)
After a short contest shall follow peace and quiet. The peace shall be
announced at Christmas from all the pulpits.”

Numberless traditions speak of the burning of the town of Unna, round
which, and not through it, the armies will march, on account of the
conflagration. Others speak of the burning of Dortmund, on the east
side. Others, again, describe how the remains of the enemy fly to
Erwitte and Salzkotten, and are there totally cut to pieces. All the
towns and villages from Paderborn to the Rhine have similar traditions.
There is a very old one concerning the Marienheide, (a heath,)—namely,
that there the Whites shall drive the Blues before them, and through the
Lippe, in which many shall be drowned.

Traditions concerning the years 1846–1850:—

“1846, I would not be a vine.”

“1847, I would not be an apple-tree.”

“1848, I would not be a king.”

“1849, I would not be a hare, a soldier, or a gravedigger.”

“1850, I would not be a priest.”

In 1846, the crop of grapes was too heavy for the vines.

In 1847, the apple-trees broke under the weight of their fruit.

In 1848, as we know, kings were at a discount.

In 1849, the hares suffered from the suspension or abolition of the game
laws in Germany; the soldiers had much to suffer; and the gravediggers,
in consequence of war and cholera, were overwhelmed with work in many
places.

As to the priests in 1850, we heard from several quarters, of an old
prophecy that there shall be a fearful massacre of priests, against whom
the people shall be much embittered. One seer declares, that such will
be the hatred of the peasantry towards the priests, that a peasant,
sitting down to dinner with his family, and having just stuck a fork
into the fowl, shall, on seeing a priest pass by the house, lay down his
fork, rush out, beat out the priest’s brains with his club, and then
return to his meal with satisfaction.

Another tradition, of which we heard from several well-informed persons,
states that a pope shall come as a fugitive to reside at Cologne, with
four cardinals, and there exercise his ecclesiastical functions.

A prophecy, of date 1622, concerning certain months of a year not named.

“The month of May shall earnestly prepare for war. But it is not yet
time. June shall also invite to war, but still it is not time. July
will prove so cruel, that many must part from wife and child. In
August, men shall everywhere hear of war. September and October shall
bring great bloodshed. Wonders shall be seen in November. At this time
the child is twenty-eight years old, (the powerful monarch) whose wet
nurse shall be from the east. He shall do great things.”

Prophecies of the “Powerful Monarch:”—

One prophet says,—“He shall be of an ancient noble house, and descend
from the top of the rocks. His mother shall be a twin. He will be
Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, (the German Empire.) Holzhaüser
says, ‘He shall be born in the bosom of the Catholic Church;’ his name
shall be, ‘The Help of God.’”

See the preceding prophecies, _passim_.

We have now given a sufficient sketch of some of the more curious and
definite popular German prophecies. The curate of Dortmund adds a
considerable number of others, more vague, mystical, and in some cases
theological, which we omit, as not adapted to our present purpose; and
others not bearing on Germany, of some interest—especially a long one
concerning Italy, by the Franciscan monk, Bartolomeo da Saluzzi—which
want of space prevents us from discussing at this time.

Let us now consider the foregoing prophecies in general. We must admit,
as it seems to us, that there exist in Germany unfulfilled popular
prophecies, the authenticity of which is respectably attested and
generally admitted.

We further observe, that, taking the whole of them, as far as known to
us, we can trace the following points pervading the entire series, more
or less:—

1. A great war after a peace, about this time.

2. It is preceded by political convulsions, and lesser wars.

3. The East and North fight against the South and West.

4. The latter finally prevail, under a powerful prince, who unexpectedly
rises up.

5. The great struggle is short, and occurs late in the year.

6. It is decided by the battle of the Birch-Tree, near Werl.

7. After horrible devastations, and murders, and burnings, caused by
this war, peace and prosperity return.

8. Priests are massacred and become very rare; but

9. One religion unites all men.

10. All this takes place soon after the introduction of railways into
Germany.

11. The present King of Prussia is the last.

12. The “powerful prince” from the South becomes Emperor of Germany.

13. France is, about this time, inwardly divided.

14. The Russians come as enemies to the Rhine, the French enter Germany
as friends—without entering into further details.

We see moreover, that, admitting the genuineness of the prophecies,
partial fulfilment has in several cases taken place. Here it must be
noted, that our curate has chiefly confined himself to the unfulfilled
parts, and has avowedly omitted many fulfilled predictions. While we
attach considerable importance to the general impression among the
people of the truth of these prophecies, which in part depends on their
partial fulfilment in past times, our chief object has been to put on
record the more remarkable of the unfulfilled predictions, in order that
they may be compared with future events.

If we seek to form any idea of the origin of these prophecies, we find
that there are three sources, from which the people may have derived the
traditions.

1. They may possibly be, in some cases at least, derived from the
reflections of sagacious men. Even Napoleon predicted dreadful wars, and
that Europe must become either Cossack or Republican. But although some
things may thus be explained, we do not see how the minute details, in
other cases, can be thus accounted for.

2. Scriptural prophecies may have been applied to modern events, which,
indeed, are no doubt foretold in them, in a general way. We cannot avoid
observing the tolerably frequent occurrence of Scripture language in the
predictions; but this also does not account for all the details.

3. The seers or prophets may have had genuine visions, or dreams, in
which they saw what they describe; it has been seen that various
prophets use language implying this. And, while the general resemblance
of the different visions naturally leads us to suspect that the popular
traditions have a common origin; we can at most conclude from this, that
the original seer or seers lived long ago, which only increases the
difficulty. They were probably, like Brother Herrmann, monks and
ascetics, their imaginations exalted by religious fervour: in other
words they were nervous and excitable, and predisposed to visions.
Supposing their visions known to the people, the feeling of the
marvellous, if excited along with religious sentiments, may have led to
visions or second sight among the peasantry, and thus visions may have
been multiplied and expanded in details.

If we reflect on the many known instances of prophetic dreams, and on
the alleged and respectably attested cases of somnambulistic prevision,
we shall see reason to hesitate before we deny the possibility of the
occurrence, in certain individuals, of prophetic visions. We are far
from imagining that, if such have been the case with our German seers,
they have enjoyed direct communications from Heaven; on the contrary,
were we satisfied of the fact, we should regard it as a phenomenon
depending on some obscure physical cause, which may in time be
discovered and traced; and which, at all events, exists by Divine
permission.

Here we may allude to the remarkable prophecy of Monsieur de Cazotte,
who, some years previous to 1787, predicted to a large company of
persons of rank, science, and literature, with much detail, the
atrocities of the Reign of Terror. He likewise told many of those
present, both male and female, that they should perish on the
guillotine. To Condorcet he said, that he should die in prison, of the
effects of a poison which he should long, with the view of escaping a
public execution, have carried about his person—which happened. He also
predicted the fate of Louis XVI. and his Queen. This prophecy caused
much amazement, and soon became known. Persons are yet alive, both in
France and England, who heard it detailed before 1789. We have seen one
of them. Now, it might be said, that Cazotte merely exercised a rare
sagacity, in judging of the course of events, at a time when all France
was enthusiastically looking forward to the blessings of liberty, and
while yet no one dreamed of violence or bloodshed. But this would hardly
account for the details he gave. On the other hand, he often uttered
predictions; and it is very remarkable, although it has been too much
overlooked, that those who report his prophecies, including the above
one, always state that, when about to predict, he fell into a peculiar
state, _as if asleep_—yet not ordinary sleep. It can hardly be doubted
that this was a trance, in which he saw visions. That they were
fulfilled to the letter is surely, if only a coincidence, a most
wonderful one. If, again, it was merely the result of sagacious
reflection, how came it that Cazotte alone, of all the able thinkers
then in Paris, made these reflections, and was laughed at for his pains?

The laborious, minute, and conscientious researches of the Baron von
Reichenbach have proved, beyond a doubt, that we are far from being
acquainted with all the physical influences which surround us; and he
has even referred to a physical cause—_one_ source of the belief in
ghosts—by proving that luminous appearances are visible, to sensitive
persons, over recent graves. No one can fail to see the resemblance
between the Sensitives of Baron von Reichenbach, who are far from rare,
and the Spoikenkiker, or ghost seers, of the curate of Dortmund.

We consider it probable, therefore, that at different periods seers have
had visions, more or less distinct and detailed, of what appeared to
their minds likely to happen; that these visions have occurred in a
state of trance; that among ascetic monks, who may be regarded as liable
to such trances, it may often have happened that extensive knowledge of
history and of mankind has enabled them to foresee the probable course
of events; that their predictions, becoming known to the peasantry, have
given a tone to _their_ visions, in which the events are generally
localised in the immediate vicinity of the seer; and that thus, by
degrees, more detailed predictions have arisen. Considering the general
ignorance and superstition of the peasantry in all countries, it is not
wonderful that such predictions, generally bearing on violent political
convulsions, war, and religion, the subjects most interesting to their
minds, should acquire a hold over them such as is found to exist in many
parts of Germany, in reference to the prophecies above described. It is
even probable that the existence of the predictions may have had a
considerable influence in preparing the people for such sudden outbreaks
as those of 1848, and may thus, in some measure, have contributed to
their own fulfilment.

We must admit that these remarks do not much assist in explaining the
occurrence of minute details in these predictions, many of which are
said, on good authority, to have been fulfilled. But we do not feel
ourselves in possession of sufficient evidence to justify us in arguing
on the alleged fulfilment as certain; and we have therefore satisfied
ourselves with laying before the reader a brief sketch of these
predictions, the existence of which, as an article of belief with many
thousands of people at this day, is, under whatever point of view it may
be considered, very interesting.

W. G.

THE HISTORY OF A REGIMENT DURING THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN.[4]

The Russian Campaign of Napoleon is unquestionably the most wonderful
episode in the history of war. We are not only interested, but
astounded, by its study. It comprises a series of events gigantic and
unparalleled in the annals of human strife. From the note of preparation
to the final wail of despair, the reader’s imagination is continually on
the stretch to realise and comprehend the prodigious scale of its
circumstances. At the word of the great military magician,
half-a-million of men, levied from half Europe, mustered in arms for
aggression. From France they came, from Italy and Poland: Austria and
Prussia dared not refuse their contingents; Illyria and Dalmatia sent
forth their infantry; to their astonishment and dismay, Spanish and
Portuguese battalions were marched into the dreary north under the
banners of the man against whose generals their brothers and fathers
were at that moment contending on the mountains of their native
peninsula. The West was arrayed against the East. Since the birth of
discipline and civilisation, such an army had never been seen. The
events of its first and only campaign were in proportion to its
unprecedented magnitude. In six months the mighty armament returned, a
shattered wreck, having fought the most desperate battle the world ever
saw, having witnessed the self-destruction of a vast and wealthy
capital—suicide for the country’s salvation—and having endured
sufferings which may have been equalled on a smaller scale, but which
certainly never before or since fell to the lot of so numerous and
powerful a host.

After reading that delightful work of Count Ségur, which combines the
fascination of a romance with the value of history, few persons much
care to consult any other French account of the great campaign. It was
with something of this feeling, and with slender expectation of
interest, that we opened General de Fezensac’s recently-published
Journal. But its perusal agreeably disappointed us. Narratives of
personal adventure have a peculiar charm; and the unadorned tale of a
soldier’s hazards will often rivet the attention of those who would not
persevere through the more copious and important history of a great war.
M. de Fezensac has not attempted the history of the campaign. He
confines himself to his own adventures and those of the regiment he
commanded. At most does he include in his delineations the exploits of
the 3d (Ney’s) corps, (to which his regiment belonged,) at the time when
cold, famine, fatigue, and the sword had reduced it to little more than
the ordinary strength of a brigade, and, subsequently, to a mere handful
of jaded, frost-bitten warriors. By a few lines here and there, he
supplies, with true military brevity, that outline of the operations
necessary to connect and complete the interest of his journal. He avoids
controversy; he is slow to censure acts or impute motives; his style is
remarkably free from that fanfarronade into which many French writers
unconsciously run when recording the military achievements of their
countrymen. He tells only what he himself saw, and he tells it modestly
and well, without attempt at rhetorical adornment; rightly believing
that the events he witnessed and shared in are sufficiently remarkable
to need no factitious colouring.

M. de Fezensac commenced the campaign upon the staff. In the capacity of
aide-de-camp to Berthier, he joined the headquarters of the Grand Army
at Posen, and marched with them to Wilna. It was in the month of June.
Already, although the campaign had been opened but a few days, during
which the Russians had everywhere receded before the invaders, certain
ominous circumstances contradicted, to observant eyes and reflecting
minds, those anticipations of triumphant success so confidently and
universally entertained, a few short weeks before, at Dresden. The
fervent heat was succeeded by torrents of rain; mortality amongst the
horses commenced; the army, living upon the country, suffered from want
of food and forage; already the number of stragglers was great, and acts
of pillage and violence were frequent. As an instance of these, when the
Poles, with Napoleon’s approval, organised a civil government of
Lithuania, one of the sub-prefects, repairing to his post, was plundered
by the French soldiers, and arrived almost naked in the town he was sent
to preside over. The French Emperor’s seventeen days’ halt at Wilna, so
severely censured by historians, gave M. de Fezensac opportunity to
observe the details and composition of the monstrous staff and retinue
that attended Napoleon, of which he furnishes the following curious
account:—

“The Emperor had around him the grand marshal, (Duroc,) the master
of the horse, (Caulaincourt,) his aides-de-camp, his orderly
officers, the aides-de-camp of his aides-de-camp, and several
secretaries attached to his cabinet. The major-general (Berthier)
had eight or ten aides-de-camp, and the number of clerks necessary
for the great amount of work occasioned by such an army; the general
staff, composed of a vast number of officers of all grades, was
commanded by General Monthion. The administration, directed by Count
Dumas, intendant-general, was subdivided into the administrative
service properly so called, comprising directors, inspectors of
reviews, and commissaries; the service of health, including
physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries; the service of provisions in
all its branches, and workmen of every kind. When the Prince of
Neuchatel passed it in review at Wilna, it looked, from a distance,
like a body of troops ranged in order of battle, and, by an
unfortunate fatality, notwithstanding the zeal and talents of the
intendant-general, this immense administration was almost useless
from the very commencement of the campaign, and became noxious at
its close. Let the reader now picture to himself the assemblage, at
one point, of the whole of this staff; let him fancy the prodigious
number of servants, of led horses, of baggage of all kinds that it
dragged along with it, and he will have some idea of the spectacle
presented by the headquarters of the army. Also, when a movement was
made, the Emperor took with him but a very small number of officers;
all the rest set out beforehand, or followed behind. At a bivouac,
the only tents were for the Emperor and the Prince of Neuchatel; the
generals and other officers slept in the open air, like the rest of
the army.

“There was nothing irksome in our duty as aides-de-camp to the
major-general.... In his personal intercourse with us, the Prince of
Neuchatel exhibited that mixture of goodness and roughness which
composed his character. Often he appeared to pay no attention to us,
but, upon occasion, we were sure to find his sympathy; and during the
whole of his long military career, he neglected the advancement of none
of the officers employed under his orders. The best house in the town,
after that taken for the Emperor, was allotted for his accommodation;
and as he himself always lodged with the Emperor, the house belonged to
his aides-de-camp. One of these was charged with the household details,
whose regularity was a pattern; the Prince of Neuchatel himself, in the
midst of all his occupations, found time to give his thoughts to these
matters; he wished his aides-de-camp to want for nothing, and had often
the goodness to inquire whether such was the case.... We saw little of
him, having no duty to do under his immediate eye; he passed almost the
whole day in his cabinet, dispatching orders agreeably with the
Emperor’s instructions. Never was there seen greater exactness, more
complete submission, more absolute devotion. It was by writing during
the night that he reposed from the fatigues of the day; often he was
roused from his sleep to alter all that he had done on the previous day,
and sometimes his sole recompense was an unjust, or, at least, a very
severe reprimand. But nothing slackened his zeal; no amount of bodily
fatigue, or of assiduity in the cabinet, exceeded his powers; no trials
wearied his patience. In short, if the Prince of Neuchatel’s position
never gave him an opportunity to develop the talents essential to the
commander-in-chief of great armies, it is at least impossible to unite,
in a higher degree, the physical and moral qualities adapted to the post
he filled near such a man as the Emperor.”

The peculiar talents of Berthier, his patience, industry, and wonderful
habit of order, have been often admitted, but we do not remember to have
seen his character placed in so amiable a light as here by his former
aide-de-camp. M. de Fezensac continued upon his staff until after the
battle of Borodino, when he was promoted by the Emperor, on Berthier’s
recommendation, to the command of the 4th regiment of the line, vacant
by its colonel’s death in that murderous fight. He was doubly grateful
for this promotion, because it placed him under the orders of Marshal
Ney, with whom he had served some years previously. As to the regiment
itself, it was in no very flourishing state. Of 2800 men who had crossed
the Rhine, 900 remained, so that the four battalions formed but two upon
parade. The equipments, and especially the shoes, were in bad repair;
supplies of provisions were irregular; and constant change of place was
indispensable, for the troops ravaged within twenty-four hours the
country they traversed. The majority of the officers were raw youths
from the military schools, or old sergeants, whose want of education
should have retained them in the ranks, but who had been promoted to
sustain emulation, and to fill the enormous gaps occasioned by
destructive campaigns. For the 4th was an old regiment, formed in the
first years of the Revolution, and had fought through all the German
wars, and numbered Joseph Buonaparte amongst its colonels. Its present
shattered and unprosperous condition extended to the whole of Ney’s
corps, which was reduced to a third of its original numbers. The losses
were unparalleled, and so was the depression of the soldiers. Their
gaiety had disappeared; a mournful silence replaced the songs and
pleasant tales with which they formerly beguiled the fatigues of the
march. The officers themselves were uneasy; they served for duty and for
honour’s sake, but without ardour or pleasure. After a victory that
opened the road to Moscow, this universal discouragement was strangely
ominous.

With his regimental command commences the interesting portion of M. de
Fezensac’s journal, of which his staff experience occupies but a couple
of chapters. Often as it has been described, he yet contrives to give
freshness to his details of Moscow’s appearance after the terrible
conflagration, at whose flame was sealed the doom of the Grand Army.

“It was both a strange and a horrible spectacle. Some houses appeared to
have been razed; of others, fragments of smoke-blackened walls remained;
ruins of all kinds encumbered the streets; everywhere was a horrible
smell of burning. Here and there a cottage, a church, a palace, stood
erect amidst the general destruction. The churches especially, by their
many-coloured domes, by the richness and variety of their construction,
recalled the former opulence of Moscow. In them had taken refuge most of
the inhabitants, driven by our soldiers from the houses the fire had
spared. The unhappy wretches, clothed in rags, and wandering like ghosts
amid the ruins, had recourse to the saddest expedients to prolong their
miserable existence. They sought and devoured the scanty vegetables
remaining in the gardens; they tore the flesh from the animals that lay
dead in the streets; some even plunged into the river for corn the
Russians had thrown there, and which was now in a state of
fermentation.... It was with the greatest difficulty we procured black
bread and beer; meat began to be very scarce. We had to send strong
detachments to seize oxen in the woods where the peasants had taken
refuge, and often the detachments returned empty-handed. Such was the
pretended abundance procured us by the pillage of the city. We had
liquors, sugar, sweatmeats, and we wanted for meat and bread. We covered
ourselves with furs, but were almost without clothes and shoes. With
great store of diamonds, jewels, and every possible object of luxury, we
were on the eve of dying of hunger. A large number of Russian soldiers
wandered in the streets of Moscow. I had fifty of them seized; and a
general, to whom I reported the capture, told me I might have had them
shot, and that on all future occasions he authorised me to do so. I did
not abuse the authorisation. It will be easily understood how many
mishaps, how much disorder, characterised our stay in Moscow. Not an
officer, not a soldier, but could tell strange anecdotes on this head.
One of the most striking is that of a Russian whom a French officer
found concealed in the ruins of a house; by signs he assured him of
protection, and the Russian accompanied him. Soon, being obliged to
carry an order, and seeing another officer pass at the head of a
detachment, he transferred the individual to his charge, saying
hastily—‘I recommend this gentleman to you.’ The second officer,
misunderstanding the intention of the words and the tone in which they
were pronounced, took the unfortunate Russian for an incendiary, and had
him shot.”

The retreat commenced. After the affair of Wiazma, Ney’s corps relieved
the 1st corps as rearguard, and the 4th regiment, rearmost of Ney’s
corps, had to repel the repeated attacks of the Russian van and of the
swarming Cossacks. They were hard pressed; but still the Emperor’s order
was to march slowly and preserve the baggage. In vain Ney wrote to him
there was no time to lose, and that he risked being anticipated by the
Russians at Smolensko or Orcha. At Dorogobuje the marshal formed the
design of arresting the progress of the Russians for a whole day; but
the attempt was unsuccessful, and the French rearguard was driven
onwards. The cold had set in, and the sufferings of the troops were
terrible. Famine was superadded to their other miseries. The road
resembled a battle-field. Some, with frozen limbs, lay dying on the
snow; others fell asleep in the villages, and perished in the flames
lighted by their comrades.

“At Dorogobuje I saw a soldier of my regiment, in whom hunger had
produced the effect of intoxication. He stood close to us without
recognising us, inquiring for his regiment, naming the soldiers of his
company, and at the same time speaking to them as to strangers; his gait
was tottering, his look wild. He disappeared at the commencement of the
affair, and I saw him no more. In two days from Dorogobuje, we reached
Slobpnowa, on the bank of the Dnieper. The road was so slippery that the
ill-shod horses could hardly keep their legs. At night we bivouacked
amidst the snow in the woods. Each regiment in turn formed the extreme
rearguard, which the enemy unceasingly followed and harassed. The army
continued to march so slowly, that we were on the point of overtaking
the 1st corps, which immediately preceded us. The encumbrance on the
bridge over the Dnieper was extreme: for a quarter of a league beyond,
the road was still covered with abandoned carriages and
ammunition-waggons. On the morning of the 10th November, before crossing
the river, measures were taken to clear the bridge and burn all these
vehicles. In them were found a few bottles of rum, which were of great
service. I was on the rearguard, and during the whole morning my
regiment defended the road leading to the bridge. The wood through which
this road passes was full of wounded whom we were obliged to leave to
their fate, and whom the Cossacks massacred almost by our sides. M.
Rouchat, sub-lieutenant, having imprudently approached an
ammunition-cart that was to be blown up, was shattered to pieces by the
explosion. Towards night the troops passed the Dnieper; the bridge was
destroyed.”

It was important to delay the enemy’s passage of the river, and Ney
prepared to do so.

“That night he walked for a long time in front of my regiment with
General Joubert and myself. He pointed out to us the unfortunate results
of the failure at Dorogobuje. The enemy had gained a day’s march; had
forced us to abandon ammunition, baggage, wounded: all these misfortunes
would have been avoided had we held Dorogobuje for twenty-four hours.
General Joubert spoke of the weakness of the troops, of their
discouragement. The marshal replied quickly, that the worst that could
have happened was to be killed, and that a glorious death was too fine a
thing to be shunned. For my part, I contented myself with remarking that
I had not left the heights of Dorogobuje till I had twice received the
order.”

The “bravest of the brave” could see no terrors in death. His own
insensibility to it made him slow to sympathise with others. A few days
later, M. de Fezensac learned the death of M. Alfred de Noailles, who
had been one of his brother aides-de-camp to Berthier.

“He was the first friend I had lost in this campaign, and it caused me
very deep sorrow. Marshal Ney, to whom I spoke on the subject, told me,
for sole consolation, _that apparently it was his turn; and that at any
rate it was better we should have to regret him than if he had to regret
us_. In similar circumstances he always showed the same insensibility:
on another occasion I heard him reply to an unfortunate wounded man, who
begged to be carried away—‘_What would you have me do? You are a victim
of war_;’ and he passed on. Most assuredly he was neither cruel nor
devoid of feeling; but the frequency of the misfortunes of war had
hardened his heart. Penetrated with the idea that the fate of all
soldiers is to die upon the field of battle, he thought it quite natural
they should fulfil their destiny; and it has been seen in this narrative
that he prized not his own life more highly than the lives of others.”

The passage of the river was defended for twenty-four hours. Two days
later, those of the weary rearguard who were not prevented by frozen
limbs or the cold hand of death from rising from their ice-bound
bivouac, joyfully beheld, at half a league’s distance, the towers of
Smolensko. Joyfully, because they had long looked for that town as the
term of their misery. Repose and food, so greatly needed, were there
anticipated. But there, as on every occasion during the retreat where
alleviation was hoped for, disappointment ensued. Wittgenstein was
pressing southwards from the Dwina, Tchitchagoff northwards to Minsk,
the Austrians had retreated behind the Bug, and the French were in
imminent danger of being intercepted at the Beresina. A halt at
Smolensko was impossible, and orders were given to continue the march.
Smolensko contained large stores of provisions; but these availed little
to the famished troops, for the general disorganisation had extended to
the commissariat, and waste was the result. The Guard, which arrived
first with Napoleon, received abundant supplies of all kinds; but then
came pouring in stragglers and undisciplined bodies; the warehouses were
broken open and plundered, and rations for several months were
squandered in a day. When the 3d corps, after defending the approaches
to the town, entered in its turn, the work of destruction was at an end,
and Colonel de Fezensac could find nothing either for his regiment or
himself. But though they had nothing to eat, they were expected to
fight; for Ney, the indefatigable, prepared obstinately to defend the
town. On the 15th November, a severe combat occurred in the suburb, in
which the 4th regiment was alone engaged, and during which its colonel
received from Ney the order that daring leader was most rarely known to
give—namely, not to advance too far. M. de Fezensac records this order
with as much honest pride as he does the warm eulogium which his
regiment’s conduct elicited from the marshal. For three days Smolensko
was held, and then the 3d corps resumed its march. Meanwhile the
Emperor, Eugene, and Davoust, with the Guard, the 4th and 1st corps,
were hard pressed at Krasnoi, the two latter, especially, suffering most
severely.

“The Emperor, having not a moment to lose to reach the Beresina, saw
himself compelled to abandon the 3d corps, and precipitated his march to
Orcha. During the three days’ fighting (at and near Krasnoi,) no
information was sent to Marshal Ney of the danger about to menace
him.... On the morning of the 18th November, we set out from Koritnya,
and marched upon Krasnoi: on approaching that town, a few squadrons of
Cossacks harassed the 2d division, which headed the column. We attached
no importance to this; we were accustomed to the Cossacks, and a few
musket-shots sufficed to drive them away. But soon the advanced guard
fell in with General Ricard’s division, belonging to the 1st corps,
which had remained behind, and had just been routed. The marshal rallied
the remains of this division, and under cover of a fog, which favoured
our march by concealing the smallness of our numbers, he approached the
enemy until their cannon compelled him to pause. The Russian army, drawn
up in order of battle, barred our further passage; then only did we
learn that we were cut off from the rest of the army, and that our sole
chance of salvation was in our despair.”

We know not whence M. de Fezensac derives his statements of numbers, but
they frequently require correction. At Borodino, for instance, he gives,
as an exact detail of the French loss, 6547 killed, and 21,453
wounded—making a total of about 28,000. Alison and other historians rate
it nearly twenty thousand higher; and certainly nothing in the events of
the battle argues it as much less than that of the Russians, which M. de
Fezensac estimates at about 50,000—figures confirmed by other
authorities. In like manner, he states the entire strength of the 3d
corps, when it first entered the fire of the Russian batteries at
Krasnoi, as barely 6000 combatants, with six guns, and a mere picket of
cavalry. This is extraordinarily discrepant with other accounts, which
make Ney’s loss, in the immediately ensuing engagement, to be nearly as
great as the whole number of bayonets allotted to him by M. de Fezensac.
Doubtless it was most difficult to ascertain numbers correctly during
that confused retreat, where there can have been little question of
muster-rolls and morning-states, and many seeming contradictions may be
explained, by some writers estimating only the effective fighting men,
and others including the unarmed and stragglers who dragged themselves
along with the columns. But we attach no importance to differences of
this kind as regards the _Journal_, which we here notice, not as a work
of historical value—a character to which it makes no pretensions—but as
the interesting memoir of a brave gentleman and soldier, who has written
down, modestly and unaffectedly, his own and his regiment’s share in a
most extraordinary campaign.

“Hardly had Marshal Ney withdrawn his advanced guard from under the
enemy’s guns, when a flag of truce, sent by General Miloradowitsch,
summoned him to lay down his arms. All who ever knew him will understand
with what disdain the proposal was received.... For sole reply, the
marshal made the messenger prisoner; a few cannon-shot, fired during
this species of negotiation, serving as a pretext; and then, without
considering the masses of the enemy and the small number of his own
followers, he ordered the attack. The 2d division, formed in columns by
regiments, marched straight to the enemy. Let me here be allowed to pay
homage to the devotedness of those brave soldiers, and to congratulate
myself on the honour of having marched at their head. The Russians
beheld them, with admiration, marching towards them in the most perfect
order, and with a steady step. Every cannon-ball carried away whole
files—every step rendered death more inevitable; but the pace was not
for an instant slackened. At last we got so near to the enemy’s line,
that the first division of my regiment, crushed by the grape-shot, was
thrown back upon that which followed, and disordered its array. Then the
Russian infantry charged us in its turn, and the cavalry, falling on our
flanks, completely routed us. Some sharpshooters, advantageously posted,
checked for an instant the enemy’s pursuit; the division of Ledru
deployed into line, and six guns replied to the numerous artillery of
the Russians. During this time, I rallied the remains of my regiment
upon the high road, where the cannon still reached us. Our attack had
not lasted a quarter of an hour, but the 2d division no longer existed:
my regiment lost several officers, and was reduced to two hundred men;
the regiment of Illyria, and the 18th, which lost its eagle, were still
worse treated; General Razout was wounded, and General Lenchantain made
prisoner. The marshal now made the 2d division retire on Smolensko; at
the end of half a league, he turned it to the left, across country, at
right angles with the road. The first division, having long exhausted
its strength by sustaining the shock of the whole hostile army, followed
this movement with the guns and some of the baggage; those of the
wounded who could still walk dragged themselves after us. The Russians
cantoned themselves in the villages, sending a column of cavalry to
observe us.

“The day declined: the 3d corps marched in silence; none knew what was
to become of us. But Marshal Ney’s presence sufficed to reassure us.
Without knowing what he would or could do, we knew he would do
something. His self-confidence equalled his courage. The greater the
danger, the more prompt was his determination; and when once he had made
up his mind, he never doubted of success. Thus, in that terrible hour,
his countenance expressed neither indecision nor uneasiness; all eyes
were fixed upon him, but none dared question him. At last, seeing near
him an officer of his staff, he said to him in a low voice: _We are not
well._—_What shall you do?_ replied the officer.—_Pass the
Dnieper._—_Where is the road?_—_We shall find it._—_And if the river is
not frozen?_—_It will be._—_So be it_, said the officer. This singular
dialogue, which I here set down word for word, revealed the marshal’s
project of reaching Orcha by the right bank of the river, and so rapidly
as still to find there the army, which was making its movement by the
left bank. The plan was bold and ably conceived; it will be seen with
what vigour it was executed.

“We marched across the fields, without a guide, and the inexactness of
the maps contributed to mislead us. Marshal Ney, endowed with that
peculiar talent of the great soldier which teaches how to take advantage
of the slightest indications, observed some ice in the direction we were
following, and had it broken, thinking it must be a rivulet that would
lead us to the Dnieper. It really was a rivulet; we followed it, and
reached a village, where the Marshal feigned to establish himself for
the night. Fires were lighted and pickets thrown out. The enemy left us
quiet, expecting to have us cheap the next day. Under cover of this
stratagem, the Marshal followed up his plan. A guide was wanted, and the
village was deserted; at last the soldiers discovered a lame peasant;
they asked him where was the Dnieper, and if frozen. He replied, that at
a league off was the village of Sirokowietz, and that the Dnieper must
there be frozen. We set out, conducted by this peasant, and soon reached
the village. The Dnieper was sufficiently frozen to be traversed on
foot. Whilst they sought a place to cross, the houses rapidly filled
with officers and soldiers, wounded that morning, who had dragged
themselves thus far, and to whose hurts the surgeons could hardly apply
the first dressings; those who were not wounded busied themselves in
seeking provisions. Marshal Ney, forgetful alike of the day’s and the
morrow’s dangers, was buried in a profound sleep.

“Towards the middle of the night we crossed the Dnieper, abandoning to
the enemy artillery, baggage, vehicles of every kind, and those wounded
who could not walk. M. de Briqueville, (aide-de-camp of the Duke of
Placentia,) dangerously wounded the day before, passed the river on his
hands and knees; I gave him in charge to two sappers, who succeeded in
saving him. The ice was so thin that very few horses could pass; the
troops re-formed on the other side of the stream. Thus far success had
attended the marshal’s plan; the Dnieper was crossed, but we were still
fifteen leagues from Orcha. It was essential to reach it before the
French army left; we had to traverse a strange country, and to repel the
attacks of the enemy with a handful of exhausted infantry, unsupported
by cavalry or artillery. The march began under favourable auspices, with
the capture of some Cossacks, surprised asleep in a village. At dawn on
the 19th we were following the road to Liubavitschi. We were scarcely
delayed for a moment by the passage of a torrent, and by some Cossack
detachments which retired on our approach. At noon we reached two
villages situated on a height, and whose inhabitants had scarcely time
to escape, leaving us their provisions. The soldiers were giving
themselves up to the joy occasioned by a moment of abundance, when there
was a sudden call to arms. The enemy was advancing, and had already
driven in our pickets. We left the villages, formed column, and resumed
our march. But we had no longer to deal, as heretofore, with detached
parties of Cossacks; here were whole squadrons, manœuvring in regular
order, and commanded by General Platow himself. Our skirmishers made
head against them; the columns accelerated their march, making their
arrangements to receive cavalry. Numerous as these horsemen were, we
feared them little, for the Cossacks never ventured to charge home a
square of infantry; but soon a battery of several guns opened fire upon
us. This artillery followed the movements of the cavalry, upon sledges,
wherever it could be of use. Until nightfall, Marshal Ney never ceased
to struggle against all these obstacles, skilfully availing himself of
the least advantages the nature of the ground afforded. Amidst the balls
which fell in our ranks, and in spite of the Cossacks’ yells and feigned
attacks, we marched at the same pace. Darkness approached; the enemy
redoubled his efforts. We had to quit the road, and to throw ourselves
to the left into the woods fringing the Dnieper. But the Cossacks
already held these woods; the 4th and 18th regiments, under command of
General d’Henin, were directed to drive them thence. Meanwhile the
hostile artillery took position on the further brink of a ravine we had
to pass. There General Platow reckoned on exterminating us.

“I entered the wood with my regiment. The Cossacks retired; but the wood
was deep, and tolerably dense, and we had to face every way to guard
against surprise. Night came, we no longer heard anything around us; it
was more than probable that Marshal Ney was continuing his advance. I
advised General d’Henin to follow his movement; he refused, lest he
should incur reproach from the marshal for quitting, without orders, the
post assigned to him. At this moment loud shouts, announcing a charge,
were heard at some distance in our front; giving us the certainty that
the column was continuing its march, and that we were about to be cut
off from it. I redoubled my entreaties, assuring General d’Henin that
the marshal, with whose way of serving I was well acquainted, would send
him no order, because he expected commanding officers, thus detached, to
act according to circumstances; besides which, he was too far off to be
able to communicate with us, and the 18th regiment had assuredly moved
on long ago. The general persisted in his refusal; all I obtained from
him was to move us on to the place where the 18th ought to be, and unite
the two regiments. The 18th had marched, and in its place we found a
squadron of Cossacks. Tardily convinced of the justice of my remarks,
General d’Henin determined to rejoin the column; but we had traversed
the wood in so many directions, that we no longer knew our way. The
officers of my regiment were consulted, and we took the direction the
majority thought the right one. I will not undertake to describe all we
had to endure during that cruel night. I had but one hundred men left,
and we were more than a league in rear of our main body, which we must
overtake through a host of enemies. It was necessary to march quick
enough to make up for lost time, and in sufficient order to resist the
attacks of the Cossacks. The darkness, the uncertainty of our road, the
difficulty of making way through the wood, all augmented our
embarrassment. The Cossacks called to us to surrender, and fired
pointblank into the midst of us: those who were hit remained behind. A
sergeant had his leg broken by a carbine ball. He fell at my side,
saying coolly to his comrades—_Another man done for; take my havresack,
you will profit by it._ They took his havresack, and we moved on in
silence. Two wounded officers had the same fate. I observed with
uneasiness the impression our position made upon the soldiers, and even
upon the officers, of my regiment. Men who had shown themselves heroes
in the battle-field, now appeared anxious and troubled; so true is it
that the circumstances of danger have often greater terrors than the
danger itself. Very few preserved the presence of mind that was then
more necessary than ever. I needed all my authority to maintain order
and prevent straggling. An officer even ventured to say, that we should
perhaps be obliged to surrender. I reprimanded him aloud, and the more
severely that he was an officer of merit, which made the lesson more
striking. At last, after more than an hour, we emerged from the wood and
found the Dnieper on our left. We were in the right track, therefore;
and this discovery gave the men a moment’s joy, of which I took
advantage to cheer them up, and inculcate coolness, which alone could
save us. General d’Henin moved us along the river’s bank to prevent the
enemy from turning us. We were far from out of our difficulties; we knew
our way, but the plain over which we marched permitted the enemy to fall
on us in a large body, and to use their artillery. Fortunately it was
dark, and the guns were fired rather at random. From time to time the
Cossacks approached with loud cries; we stopped to drive them away with
musketry, and then set off again. This march lasted two hours over the
most difficult ground, across ravines so abrupt, that it required the
utmost efforts to ascend the opposite side, and through half-frozen
rivulets, where we had water to our knees. Nothing could shake the
constancy of the soldiers; the utmost order was preserved; not a man
left his rank. General d’Henin, wounded by a fragment of shell,
concealed his hurt in order not to discourage the soldiers, and
continued to command with unabated zeal. Doubtless he may be reproached
with too obstinate a defence of the wood, but in such difficult
circumstances error is pardonable; and what cannot be disputed, is the
bravery and intelligence with which he led us during the whole of this
perilous march. At last the enemy’s pursuit slackened, and on an
eminence in our front fires were seen. It was Marshal Ney’s rearguard,
which had halted there, and was now resuming its march: we joined it,
and learned that upon the previous evening the marshal had advanced
against the Cossack artillery, and forced it to yield him passage.

“Thus did the 4th regiment extricate itself from a position seemingly
desperate. The march lasted another hour. The exhausted soldiers
required repose, and we halted in a village where we found some
provisions. But we were still eight leagues from Orcha, and General
Platow would doubtless redouble his efforts for our destruction. The
moments were precious; at one in the morning the assembly sounded, and
we set out.... We marched unmolested till the dawn. With the first
sunrays came the Cossacks, and soon our road led us over a plain.
General Platow, desirous of profiting by this advantage, advanced that
sledge-artillery which we could neither avoid nor overtake; and when he
thought he had disordered our ranks, he commanded a charge. Marshal Ney
rapidly formed each of his two divisions into a square; the 2d, under
General d’Henin, being the rearmost, was first exposed. We forced all
stragglers who still had a musket to join our ranks; severe threats were
required to do this. The Cossacks, but feebly restrained by our
skirmishers, and driving before them a crowd of unarmed fugitives,
strove to reach the square. On their approach, and under fire of the
artillery, our soldiers hastened their march. Twenty times I beheld them
on the point of disbanding and flying in all directions, leaving us at
the mercy of the Cossacks; but the presence of Marshal Ney, the
confidence he inspired, his calmness in the moment of such great danger,
kept them to their duty. We reached an eminence. The marshal ordered
General d’Henin to hold it; adding, that we must know how to die there
for the honour of France. Meanwhile, General Ledru marched to Jokubow, a
village on the edge of a wood. When he had established himself there, we
marched to join him: the two divisions took up a position, mutually
flanking each other. It was not yet noon, and Marshal Ney declared he
would defend this village till nine at night. General Platow made twenty
attempts to take it from us; his attacks were constantly repulsed, and
at last, fatigued by such a tenacious resistance, he himself took
position opposite to us.

“Early in the morning the marshal had sent off a Polish officer, who
reached Orcha and described our condition. The Emperor had left the town
the day before: the Viceroy and Marshal Davoust still occupied it. At
nine that night we resumed our march in profound silence. The Cossack
pickets, distributed along the road, retired at our approach. The march
continued with much order. At a league from Orcha, our vanguard fell in
with an advanced post, which challenged in French. It was a division of
the 4th corps coming to our assistance with the Viceroy. One must have
passed three days between life and death to judge of the joy this
meeting gave us. The Viceroy received us with lively emotion, and warmly
expressed to Marshal Ney his admiration of his conduct. He congratulated
the generals and the two remaining colonels. His aides-de-camp
surrounded us, and overwhelmed us with questions on the details of this
great drama, and the part that each of us had played in it. But time
pressed; after a few minutes we again moved on. The Viceroy formed our
rearguard: at three in the morning we entered Orcha. Thus terminated
this bold march, one of the most curious episodes of the campaign. It
covered Marshal Ney with glory, and to him the 3d corps owed its
salvation; if, indeed, the term of _corps d’ armée_ may be applied to
the 800 or 900 men who reached Orcha, remnant of the 6000 who had fought
at Krasnoi.”

For eighteen days, over a distance of sixty leagues, the 3d corps had
formed the rearguard. Diminished as its numbers now were, it was no
longer available for that dangerous duty, and it joined the main body.
Scarcely had it taken three hours’ repose in some wretched houses of the
faubourg of Orcha, when the Russians, from the other side of the
Dnieper, set fire to the town with shells, which were more particularly
aimed at some conspicuous buildings, serving as provision-stores. It was
impossible to serve out rations; at the risk of their lives, a few
soldiers brought off some brandy and flour; but Davoust, now in command
of the rearguard, hurried the troops’ departure, and by eight o’clock
the unfortunate 3d corps was on the march to Borisow. A broad, good road
facilitated their progress, and Colonel de Fezensac, no longer occupied
in repelling the enemy, was able to investigate the state of his
regiment. Eighty men remained, out of the 2800 that began the campaign;
eighty tattered, famine-stricken, desponding wretches. They lived from
hand to mouth, almost by a miracle; sometimes on flour steeped in water;
at others, with a morsel of honeycomb or fragment of horseflesh; their
sole drink the melted snow. “At some distance from Orcha, I fell in with
M. Lanusse, a captain of my regiment, who had lost his sight by a shot,
at the taking of Smolensko; a sutler belonging to his company was
leading and taking the greatest care of him. He told me that after
having been taken and plundered by the Cossacks at Krasnoi, he had
contrived to escape, and that he and his guide would do their utmost to
keep up with us. Soon afterwards they were found dead and stripped upon
the road.”

Bad as the state of things already was, it became worse after the
passage of the Beresina; for the cold, abated for a while, resumed all
its severity, and heavy snow almost stifled the scanty fires kindled by
the unhappy fugitives. “I myself was at the end of my resources. I had
but a horse left; my last portmanteau had been lost at the Beresina; I
had nothing but what I stood in, and we were still fifty leagues from
Wilna, eighty from the Niemen; but, amidst so many misfortunes, I took
little account of my personal sufferings and privations. Like us,
Marshal Ney had lost everything; his aides-de-camp were dying of hunger,
and I gratefully remember that more than once they shared with me the
scanty food they managed to procure.” On the 29th November, during a
brief halt of the 3d corps, a confused stream of stragglers poured by,
all of whom had to tell of a miraculous escape at the Beresina. “I
remarked an Italian officer, who scarcely breathed, borne by two
soldiers, and accompanied by his wife. Greatly touched by this woman’s
grief, and by the care she lavished on her husband, I yielded her my
place at a fire the men had lighted. It needed all the illusion of her
affection to blind her to the inutility of her care. Her husband had
ceased to live, and still she called and spoke to him; until at last, no
longer able to doubt her misfortune, she fell fainting upon his corpse.”

“There would be no end to the task,” continues M. de Fezensac, “if one
attempted to relate all the horrible, affecting, and often incredible
anecdotes that signalised that terrible time. A general, exhausted with
fatigue, had fallen upon the road. A passing soldier began to pull off
his boots; the general, raising himself with difficulty, begged him to
wait till he was dead before stripping him. ‘General,’ replied the
soldier, ‘I would willingly do so; but another would take them; I may as
well have the benefit.’ And he continued to take off the boots.

“One soldier was being plundered by another; he entreated to be allowed
to die in peace. ‘Pardon me, comrade,’ was the reply, ‘I thought you
were dead;’ and he passed on. For the consolation of humanity, a few
traits of sublime devotion contrasted with the innumerable ones of
egotism and insensibility. That of a drummer of the 7th regiment of
light infantry has been particularly cited. His wife, sutler to the
regiment, fell ill at the beginning of the retreat. The drummer brought
her to Smolensko in her cart. At Smolensko the horse died; then the
husband harnessed himself to the cart, and dragged his wife to Wilna. At
that town she was too ill to go any farther, and her husband remained
prisoner with her.

“A sutler of the 33d regiment had been brought to bed in Prussia, before
the beginning of the campaign. She followed her regiment to Moscow, with
her little daughter, who was six months old when the army left that
city. During the retreat this child lived by a miracle: her sole
nourishment was black pudding made of horses’ blood: she was wrapped in
a fur taken at Moscow, and often her head was bare. Twice she was lost;
and they found her again, first in a field, then in a burnt village,
lying on a mattress. Her mother crossed the Beresina on horseback, with
water to her neck, holding the bridle in one hand, and with the other
her child upon her head. Thus, by a succession of marvellous
circumstances, this little girl got through the retreat without
accident, and did not even take cold.”

For many many leagues before reaching the Niemen, the harassed remnant
of the great French army had looked forward to that river as the term of
pursuit. The idea that the Russians would not pass the Niemen had taken
a strong hold of the imaginations of both officers and soldiers. At
Kowno, a stand was made by the rearguard; no very steadfast one,
certainly; but then, as ever, Ney proved equal to the emergency. An
earthen work, hastily thrown up, seemed to him sufficient to check the
foe for a whole day. Here were posted two pieces of cannon, and some
Bavarian infantry; and the marshal sought a moment’s repose in his
quarters. But the very first discharge of the Russian artillery
dismounted a French gun; the infantry took to flight—the gunners were
about to follow. Another minute, and the Cossacks might enter the
streets unopposed. Just then Ney appeared upon the ramparts, musket in
hand. His absence had been nearly fatal; his presence restored the
fight. The troops rallied, and the position was held till night, when
the retreat recommenced. The bridge was crossed, and each man, as he set
foot south of the Niemen, deemed himself safe. Great then was the
consternation of all, when, at the foot of a lofty hill, over which
winds the road to Königsberg, an alarm was given, and, at the same
moment, a cannon-ball plunged into their ranks. The Cossacks had crossed
the river on the ice, and had established themselves on the summit of
the mountain. This fresh danger, so totally unexpected, completed the
demoralisation of the troops. Brave spirits, which, till then, had
steadfastly held out, lost their firmness in face of this new calamity.
There is something very affecting in the following passage:—

“Generals Marchand and Ledru succeeded in forming a sort of battalion by
uniting the stragglers to the 3d corps, (again on rearguard.) But it was
in vain to attempt to force a passage; the muskets were unserviceable,
and the soldiers dared not advance. There was nothing for it but to
remain under fire of the artillery, without daring to take a step
backwards, for that would have exposed us to a charge, and our
destruction was then certain. This position drove to despair two
officers, who had been a pattern to my regiment during the whole
retreat, but whose courage at last gave way under long physical
exhaustion. They came to me and said, that as they were no longer able
either to march or to fight, they should fall into the hands of the
Cossacks, who would massacre them, and that, to avoid this, they must
return to Kowno and yield themselves prisoners. I made useless efforts
to dissuade them, appealing to their feelings of honour, to the courage
of which they had given so many proofs, to their attachment to the
regiment they now proposed abandoning; and I conjured them, if death was
inevitable, at least to die in our company. For sole reply they embraced
me with tears, and returned into Kowno. Two other officers had the same
fate; one was intoxicated with rum, and could not follow us; the other,
whom I particularly loved, disappeared soon afterwards. My heart was
torn: I waited for death to come and reunite me to my unhappy comrades,
and I should perhaps have wished for it but for all the ties which, at
that time, still bound me to life.”

Once more Ney came to the rescue. No accumulation of difficulties could
cloud his brow with uneasiness. Once more his promptness and energy
saved his shattered corps. A flank march was the means resorted to. On
the 20th December, the 3d corps reached Königsberg. It then consisted of
about one hundred men on foot, about as many cripples on sledges, and a
handful of officers.

“Monsieur le duc,” wrote Marshal Ney to the Duke of Feltre, Minister of
War, from Berlin, on the 23d January 1813, “I avail myself of the moment
when the campaign is, if not terminated, at least suspended, to express
to you all the satisfaction I have received from M. de Fezensac’s manner
of serving. That young man has been placed in very critical
circumstances, and has always shown himself superior to them. I commend
him to you as a true French chevalier, (_veritable chevalier Français_,)
whom you may henceforth consider as a veteran colonel.”

M. de Fezensac almost apologises for subjoining to his journal this
extract from a letter now in his possession. He has no need to do so. He
may well and honestly exult in such a testimonial from such a man.

THE PENITENT FREE-TRADER.

Tufnell! For the love of mercy,
Let me go for half an hour—
I’ll be back before that proser
Hath discussed the price of flour.
Don’t you hear, he’s just beginning
To investigate the rate
Of the Mecklenburg quotations,
Metage, lighterage, and freight?
Next, I know, he’ll pass to Dantzic,
With a glimpse at Rostock wheat—
I have seen the whole already
In his Economic sheet.
See! upon the backward benches
There reposes stealthy Peel—
Dreaming, doubtless, that he’s smothered
In an atmosphere of meal.
Palmerston’s recumbent yonder—
Hawes is sleeping by the door;
Even Russell’s tiny nostril
Quivers with a nascent snore.
Let me go—nay, do not hold me
So intensely by the coat;
I assure you, on my honour,
I’ll be back in time to vote.

Oh, the night-winds wander sweetly
O’er my hot and throbbing brow!
What a contrast is the moonlight
To the scene I left just now!
Let me walk a little onward
Underneath the budding trees,
Where the faint perfume is wafted
On the pinions of the breeze:
Overhead a thousand starlets
Glisten in the robe of night,
And the earth is wrapped in slumber
With a pure and calm delight.
By your leave, good Master Tufnell,
I shall stay a little here;
You have plenty noodles yonder
Who are safe enough to cheer
Wilson’s dunderhead discourses,
Or the cant of Labouchere!

What a dolt was I to credit
All these wild free-trading schemes!
Cobden’s calico predictions,
Porter’s importation dreams!
For I loathed the mean alliance,
Even when I chose to wheel
In the wake of him who led us,
Pinning foolish faith to Peel.
Was I mad, to place my honour
In this most disgusting fix?
Half the world was rather crazy
In the days of Forty-six.
O the happy times of premiums!
O the balmy touch of scrip!
Would that I had sold my bargains
Ere they had me on the hip!
Every day a new allotment
Promised shining heaps of gold;
Every day the mounting market
Swelled my hopes a hundredfold.
I remember old Sir Robert,
With his shirt-sleeves rolled on high,
Lust of speculation gleaming
In his gray and greedy eye;
Turning sods with silver shovel,
Celebrating that event
With a speech on competition
At the opening of the Trent.
I have dined with royal Hudson,
And may dine again, perhaps,
Should another exaltation
Follow on this drear collapse.
All had drunk the wine of gambling,
All had quaffed the share champagne,
Wisdom’s warnings were rejected,
Prudence preached to us in vain.
Madness, frenzy, lust of riches,
Reigned within the minds of all,
That, we thought, must answer Peter
Which had served the turn of Paul.
If, by scorning honest labour,
Men made fortunes in a trice,
What might be the luck of Britain,
Casting with Free-traders’ dice?

I am strongly of opinion—
Looking to my country’s good—
That I’ve stuck by him of Tamworth
Rather longer than I should.
As concerning next election,
I’ve received some pregnant hints,
Both from country correspondents,
And the leading public prints.
Cultivation’s at a discount,
Rents are very slowly paid:
Some aver that sly Sir Robert
Has contrived to coin his spade;
Neither is there much progression
In the wool and cotton trade.

What the deuce would men be after?
If those fellows had their will,
England would be straight converted
To a monstrous cotton-mill.
Everywhere would ghastly chimneys
Vomit forth their odious mist,
Settling, like the breath of Satan,
O’er this island of the blest;
When the only occupation
Would be spinning yarn and twist!
Spin away, my brave compatriots!
Spin as largely as you can;
Who shall dare to set a limit
To the sale of shirts for man?
Whilst the raw material’s granted,
Spin away with might and main;
Use the time that’s still vouchsafed you,
For it may not come again.
There’s a smartish kind of notion
Running in the Yankees’ head,
That they need not be indebted
To your kindness for their thread.
In the meanwhile go for cheapness,
Smite the farmers hip and thigh—
Making honest people bankrupt
Is the way to make them buy.
Starve the masses of the nation,
Drive them all into the mills;
Clear the plains and sweep the valleys,
Desolate the Highland hills.
Let the rough hard-fisted yeoman,
All too clumsy for the loom,
Migrate to the western prairies,
Where for labour still there’s room.
Let the peasant and the cottar
Quit the useless plough and spade—
Built for them are costly mansions,
Raised for them are rates in aid.
To the workhouse let them gather,
Or by theft attain the jail;
Honesty has bread and water,
Crime is fed on beef and ale.
O the glorious consummation
Of this truly Christian scheme,
Such as never saint or prophet
Witnessed in ecstatic dream!
Wasted fields and crowded cities,
Swarming streets and desert downs,
All the light of life concentred
In the focus of the towns!
Yea, exult, ye foes of England!
In the downfall of the race
That of yore, in fiery combat,
Met your fathers face to face:
For the pride of lusty manhood,
And the giant Saxon frame,
Never more shall be embattled
In the coming fields of fame;
Shrunken sinews, sallow faces,
Twisted limbs, and factory scars—
These shall mark your next opponents
In the European wars.
Not such yeomen as with Alfred
Won their freedom long ago—
Such as on the plain of Crecy
Triumphed o’er a worthy foe—
Such as drove invasion backward,
Have their homes in Britain now!

This at least our sons may utter,
Blushing for their fathers’ shame—
Brain me with a billy-roller,
If I longer play this game,
Either for the crimp of Tamworth,
Or his first lieutenant, Graham!
No, by Jove! I will not suffer
Degradation of the kind—
What care I for Johnny Russell,
With his hungry host behind?
Let them blunder on insanely,
Digging holes within the sand,
Thinking, like the stupid ostrich,
To escape the hunter’s hand.
Let them shirk the facts before them,
Comforting themselves the while,
That their Economic asses
Can the public ear beguile.
Lord! to hear the blockheads braying,
Spite of proof before their eyes—
“I assure the house,” quoth Wilson,
“Wheat must very shortly rise.
It was so-and-so at Dantzic
More than twenty years ago;
Therefore wait a little longer—
’Twill be up again, I know.”
Jolly Villiers, on the other
Hand, with exultation vows,
More than one-and-ninety millions
Have been plundered from the ploughs;
And he hopes before another
Year shall run its destined course,
To congratulate the public
That affairs are worse and worse.
I, for one, am sick and weary
Of these everlasting prigs;
Quite disgusted with the shuffling
Of the miserable Whigs;
With their impudent averments,
And their flagrant thimblerigs!

Hark, the midnight chimes! I fancy
The palaver’s nearly over:
For to-night let Johnny Russell
And his colleagues rest in clover.
But, upon the next occasion,
When there’s talk about a tax,
Whether it shall weigh on foreign
Or on native British backs,
Master Tufnell must excuse me,
If I seek another lobby
Than the one that’s now frequented
By my former chief, Sir Bobby!

TENOR OF THE TRADE CIRCULARS.

_Liverpool, April 19, 1850._

TO THE EDITOR OF BLACKWOOD’S MAGAZINE.

Sir,—That a period of severe commercial suffering is approaching us, in
which the ruinous condition of the agricultural classes will recoil
disastrously, not only upon the selfish Free-trade agitators in the
manufacturing districts, but also upon the importers of foreign produce,
the broker, the factor, the shopkeeper, and the labourers in our towns,
has for some months been patent to all who have dispassionately watched
the current of events, and been able to draw correct conclusions from
what is going on before their eyes. It is not to official tables of
exports and imports that such men look as the indices of the nation’s
prosperity. They turn rather to _the results_ of these operations, as
disclosed in our commercial circulars; to the degree of confidence
displayed by bankers in their dealings with their customers, and by
merchants in their transactions with each other; to the movements of
produce in our leading markets, and to the amount of activity which
characterises the internal trade and the consumption of the country.
They are guided, too, very materially, by the general feeling of
merchants and traders, expressed in their daily communications with each
other, on ‘Change, or in the intercourse of private life. Such a mode I
propose to employ, in investigating the real condition of the cotton
manufacturing districts of the north of England; and the result of this
investigation, which I shall now proceed to lay before your readers,
will, I fear, dissipate somewhat rudely the dream of prosperity in which
her Majesty’s Ministers, and their supporters in Parliament and
throughout the country, are just now indulging.

In pursuing such an inquiry, the condition of the port of Liverpool, the
great mart of this portion of the kingdom, naturally suggests itself as
of prominent interest. In this port, by the result of our vast
operations in imported foreign and colonial produce, the actual results
of our export trade in manufactures, and the consuming power of the
large population which draw their supplies from it, can be tested with
considerable fairness. In an article in your last Number, I find a
quotation from the monthly circular of Messrs T. and H. Littledale &
Co., whom you truly designate as perhaps the greatest brokers in the
world. A portion of this I must re-quote, in order to enable your
readers the better to appreciate some later observations of these
gentlemen. On the 4th of March, Messrs Littledale wrote:—

“_Great complaints are made of the bad state of the country
shopkeepers in the agricultural districts. We have closely questioned
some of our wholesale grocers and tea-dealers, who assure us that
there is no disguising the fact, that such is the case, and that the
general answer received from their travellers is, that ‘they can get
neither money nor orders.’_ The serious falling off in the deliveries
of sugar, coffee, tea, and cocoa, for the two months of this year,
compared with those of the last, but too truly confirms these
complaints, and are perhaps the most alarming features in our present
prospects. As given in Prince’s public prices current of the 1st
inst., they stand as follows:—

1850. 1849. 1848.
Sugar, 37,006 43,408 42,368 tons
Coffee, 3,795,712 4,907,691 pounds
Cocoa, 450,774 558,888
Tea, 5,375,648 5,502,931

The circular of this house, dated the 4th of April, has since been
published, in which they confirm their previous statement; and indeed
show that the condition of the country, as tested by its consumption of
imported produce, is retrograding. We quote the following as their
summary:—

“_General Remarks._—Another month of dull spiritless trade, as well in
our produce markets as in the manufacturing districts of Lancashire.
The demand for consumption has somewhat improved from exhaustion of
stocks in the hands of dealers; but we regret to find the deficiency
in deliveries of the principal articles noticed in our circular of
last month (tea excepted) has still further increased, which speaks
ill for the internal state of the country; in fact, _we believe the
small tradesmen and shopkeepers in the rural districts were seldom or
never in a worse position than at the present_.

“Corn has fallen so low in value, that _the farmers, anxious to secure
their rents, are not in a position to pay their tradesmen’s bills; and
we have been assured that, in numberless instances, their Christmas
accounts for last year are still unpaid_. This falls immediately on
the wholesale dealers, from them on the importing merchants, and
eventually, if no revival take place, must act with double force on
the manufacturers in a diminished home trade and in crippled exports,
which latter must ever depend on our power to take the products of
other countries as returns for our manufactures. To what class, then,
are the present ruinous low prices of grain a blessing? We
emphatically say _to none_; indeed it is quite impossible for so large
a portion of the community as that connected with agriculture to be
depressed, and the other portions long to continue prosperous; and
probably the best impulse we could receive, in the present inactive
state of our colonial markets, would be an advance of 5s., to 10s. per
qr., in the price of wheat. There is no doubt, also, that the fearful
depreciation of railway property, which appears a bottomless abyss of
mismanagement and ruin, tells cruelly on the available resources of a
very large proportion of the people, and adds seriously to the
embarrassment of trade.”

In glancing over this circular in detail, we find opposite nearly every
important item the words, “has moved off at easier prices,” “is less
inquired for,” “is dull,” or some other phrase significant of commercial
depression; yet, during the preceding month, the stocks on hand, owing
to the prevalence of easterly winds, which had kept a large number of
vessels windbound outside the Channel, had received very little
augmentation. It must be borne in mind that the dealings of this firm
extend over nearly every description of foreign produce—certainly every
large one, timber and iron excepted;—and that the money amount of their
annual transactions may be reckoned by many millions sterling. Further
inquiries amongst other houses enable me to state confidently that, with
the exception of a few trifling articles, the mass of the produce, which
is pouring into Liverpool, arrives at an unprofitable market. In cotton
alone, amongst the leading imports, a small margin of profit may at
present be secured, the abundance of unemployed money in the hands of
the banks allowing the speculators, for a short crop, to inflate prices.
Such a case, however, tells nothing in favour of a sound state of
things. The question of most material import is, whether either the
foreign demand, or the home consumption, is so urgently requiring
supply, as to enable the manufacturer of cotton goods to concede the
advanced rates demanded for the staple, by the American grower, or the
speculator at home. Present appearances scarcely warrant such an
expectation. The following opinion upon the subject, given by a leading
firm in the trade, Messrs George Holt & Co., in their circular of the
12th April, expresses the opinion of all except the most sanguine:—

“We can hardly account for this tendency of prices,”—(they had
slightly advanced during the week)—“or lay before our readers any new
circumstances affecting the value of the staple. No doubt confidence
in the shortness of the American crop remains, and probably is on the
increase. We may add also that stocks in spinners’ hands are at a low
ebb. Still _we have, from day to day, discouraging reports from
Manchester as to the state and prospects of a very large part of the
spinning and manufacturing trade. This depression, which has been so
long in existence, must be got rid of, or modified, before we can have
any permanent well-doing in the raw material._”

“Depression so long in existence!” A great majority of the public, with
the speech from the Throne, and the prosperity-speeches of movers and
seconders of the Address before them, imagined that the cotton
districts, at all events, were flourishing!

A later circular of the produce market, published upon the authority of
the entire brokers of the port, exhibits the state of the general
produce market in even a worse light than that of Messrs Littledale,
quoted above. I append it here:—

“LIVERPOOL PRICES CURRENT, IMPORTS, &c. for the week ending _April
12, 1850_. Arranged by a Committee of Brokers.—T. M. MYERS,
_Secretary_.

“SUGAR.—Holders continuing to offer freely, there has been a fair
amount of business, but at rather lower prices; 450 hhds. B. P., of
which 300 were new Barbadoes, sold at 34s. 6d. to 41s., 3500 bags
Bengal at 34s. to 40s., 1600 bags Khaur at 28s. 6d., and 3500 bags
Mauritius at 36s. to 36s. 6d., being a decline of 6d. to 1s. per
cwt.—_Foreign._—180 hhds. Porto Rico, of the new crop, sold at 40s.
per cwt. duty paid; the export demand continues slack, and sales are
only 24 cases, 150 bags and brls. Brazil and 100 boxes
Havanna.—MOLASSES.—The new arrivals coming in have induced holders of
last year’s crop to take much lower prices than have been hitherto
accepted; the sales are 500 puns. Porto Rico at 15s. 6d., 400 Cuba at
15s. 6d. to 16s., and 300 Barbadoes at 15s. per cwt.; the two cargoes
of new Porto Rico, just arrived, have been sent to store, the
importers not being willing to accept the low price offered by the
Trade; the quotations are reduced accordingly.—COFFEE.—The recent
import of Jamaica has been freely offered, and the slight improvement
that existed ten days ago is entirely lost, prices being now as low as
ever. 80 tierces have been sold, at 46s. 9d. to 54s. for low to fine
ordinary, and 62s. to 100s. for low to fine middling—the latter
quotation being 15s. below the rates of January. 100 bags native
Ceylon were sold early in the week at 52s. 6d., but that price is not
now obtainable, the nominal value being about 48s. per cwt.—A small
parcel of Bahia Cocoa sold at 33s. per cwt.—Nothing done in GINGER or
PEPPER, but a small lot of PIMENTO brought 6⅛d. per lb., being an
extreme price.—RICE.—No sales of Carolina; 13,000 bags East brought
7s. 6d. for broken, and 8s. 6d. to 9s. 9d. for low to good white,
being a decline of fully 6d. per cwt.—RUM is difficult of sale, except
at lower prices; the business consists of 200 puns. Demerara, 32 to 37
per cent O. P. at 2s. 2d. to 2s. 4½d. per gallon.”

There is a further decline, it will be seen, in every important article;
and the most experienced houses, I find, are at a loss to tell at what
point it will stop. It is generally admitted that, but for the
accommodation which the large holders can command, there must have been
a general crash long ere this, which would have overwhelmed half the
mercantile community in ruin. This would have reacted fearfully upon the
shopkeepers in the interior of the country, whose credits would have
been suddenly stopped, whilst their overdue accounts would necessarily
have been sternly exacted. In fact the bulk of this class at present
stand upon the verge of an abyss, into which a sudden panic may hurry
them at any moment.

It will doubtless be urged that this state of the produce market is only
temporary; that importations, having become profitless, will be
discontinued, and the supply thus become equal to the demand. This would
be the natural course of things under a sound system; but no sign of
cessation of imports is at present to be seen; and it is much to be
questioned whether any such cessation can take place, without throwing a
large portion of our manufacturing population into very serious
distress, if not into anarchy and outbreak. If importation of produce is
restricted, exportation must be restricted in proportion. The
manufacturer has thrown himself into almost total dependence upon the
foreign buyer of his wares. With a flourishing home market for
manufactures, a glut of produce might be got rid of without difficulty.
But the same cause—an inability of the masses to consume—which depresses
the prices of produce, now exists equally with respect to the home
market for manufactured goods; and to stop production and exports, with
a view to enhance the value of the stocks of produce already received in
remittance from the foreigner, would add another element to the
perplexity in which the nation is plunged. This portion of the subject,
however, it is not for me to discuss here. I only refer to it in order
to express the opinions which are beginning to be mooted in influential
commercial circles.

In order to be enabled to state, as much as possible upon my own
knowledge, the extent to which the internal markets of the country are
depressed, and the consumption of produce is declining, I have
instituted inquiries among some of the leading houses in Liverpool, who
send travellers into the country, and the reports given are fully as
discouraging as those given by Messrs Littledale, as to the difficulty
both of making sales and collecting accounts. From a gentleman connected
with a leading firm in the tea trade, I learn that in the country over
which their travellers prosecute their business, the orders which they
receive are for very limited quantities, and are, in fact, demonstrative
of what, in mercantile parlance, is styled “a hand to mouth” business.
Excessive caution and want of spirit characterise the feelings of the
retail trade everywhere.

Some of these parties, he suggests, may have locked up a portion of
their capital in railway investments, or perhaps lost it. Still, hand to
mouth orders—orders for a week’s instead of a month’s consumption, would
tell in the long run, if they served to make up the aggregate of past
years. But they do not. The consumption of this necessary article is
found to be declining; and the objection of the retail dealer to order
as largely as usual is accounted for, in the majority of cases, by the
inability of the farming and middle classes to pay their accounts as
punctually as heretofore. It must be borne in mind, in treating of the
consumption of such an article as tea—and I may include coffee, sugar,
&c.—that they frequently form the substitute for the poor man’s meal.
When the consumption of tea declines, in times acknowledged to be bad,
it is the worst sign of the condition of the community.

Another gentleman connected with an extensive firm in the grocery trade,
gives still more discouraging accounts. The travellers of this firm
extend their operations over the whole of the Midland Counties and the
North of England. Their reports to their employers are most lugubrious.
For example, one of them, a few weeks ago, remitted home £120, whereas
his accounts due were about £1500. As to sales, these are most difficult
to make. Consumption is gradually and rapidly declining. Retail dealers
in the country towns complain that the farmers no longer expend the
money they have been accustomed to do, when visiting markets; but
confine their consumption of food more and more to the products raised
upon their own lands. One of the travellers of this firm journeys
through the counties of Cumberland and Westmoreland, in which for many
years an extensive trade has been carried on in the curing of bacon and
hams. This trade he represents as now almost extinct, or rapidly
becoming so—the parties engaged in it being unable to compete with the
importers of the low-priced hams and bacon of America. Of this class are
the farmers of the country which owns Sir James Graham as their feudal
lord, and of whom that distinguished statesman asserted, in the debate
on the Address, that they must be in a state of plethoric prosperity,
inasmuch as he had never had his rents better paid than at his last
rent-day. The worthy baronet forgot to say that rent is the last debt
that a tenant farmer will omit to pay, the landlord having a power which
overrides the claims of all other creditors. If he could have added that
his farmers’ tradesmen’s bills had been equally well paid, he would have
imparted some information most gratifying to the community. Neither this
house, nor any other that I have conversed with, can see any termination
to the present declining state of things. It is becoming admitted,
amongst the circles with which their travellers mix, that reductions of
rent are wholly unequal to meet the emergency of the present crisis.

It is proper that I should refer to one trade in Liverpool which is most
prosperous—in fact, the only prosperous one. This is the trade of the
merchants engaged in, and others connected with, the emigration of our
fellow-countrymen, to seek a home in foreign lands. The following are
the statistics of this trade, kindly furnished me by a gentleman
officially connected with the shipping of emigrants from Liverpool:—

Ships. Emigrants.
Emigration in 1847 514 128,447
Do. 1848 519 124,522
Do. 1849 565 146,162

During the present year the emigration has been—

January, 6943 Persons.
February, 8779 „
March, 16,783 „
Cabin emigrants, 705 „

At the present moment, notwithstanding the large increase in the
shipping—principally American—provided for the trade, berths, and these
at very high prices, are most difficult to be got, unless detention is
submitted to. Moreover, a great change has taken place in the kind of
persons emigrating. Last year, the same gentleman informs me,
four-fifths of the parties emigrating consisted of substantial small
farmers from Ireland and elsewhere, and skilled artisans from this
country. This year, a very superior class of English farmers are leaving
a land which no longer affords them a living in exchange for their
honest industry. The quays of Liverpool daily present a scene, which few
thinking men can rejoice in, and which the country will have to regret.
The aged as well as the mature, mothers with infants at the breast, and
stalwart youths and maidens, going from vessel to vessel, to select that
particular one whose departure from our shores will cut for ever their
connexion with the country which they have loved, and in which they
leave behind the graves of their fathers. It is melancholy to think upon
the misery there must be amidst all this activity, with the momentary
absence of regret for old scenes, and enjoyment of the new ones, into
which these poor people find themselves thrown. Yet we cannot but feel
satisfied that they are about to be bettered in condition by the change.

The depression complained of, as existing in Liverpool, is by no means
confined to the classes immediately connected with the staple commerce
of the port, but pervades all classes of the community without
exception. The produce of half a world is stored in the warehouses of
Liverpool, or floating in her magnificent docks. The capital of her
merchants is embarked in every clime, and her shipping crowds every
foreign port; yet her industrious population are plunged in suffering
and embarrassment, and a portion of them—her labouring classes, pressed
down by the influx of pauper competition from the hordes of immigrants
from ruined Ireland—are continually upon the verge of actual starvation.
It is distressing to witness the shifts to which tradesmen are compelled
to resort, from time to time, in order to meet engagements, and to stave
off, by sacrifices of their goods, the day of ruin. “Selling off”
announcements, under all kinds of pretexts, meet the eye in every
direction, and yet tempt in vain. The whole community appear to be
economising; and tardily paid bills, and reduced expenditure in the
comforts, and even in some of the necessities of life, is the rule, not
the exception. The extent to which this is carried, and the suffering
existing amongst the middle classes, may be judged of by the fact that
it has already affected the incomes of many of the clergy of the town,
by diminishing the numbers of their congregations and the yield of
pew-rents. In one instance which has been mentioned to me, the income of
a clergyman, universally beloved, has been thus cut down from £600
a-year, to little more than half; and this is far from being a solitary
case.

The result of this state of things is already being felt in a strong
reaction, amongst those once the loudest in its advocacy, against the
system of Free Trade. Doubts are freely hazarded with respect to the
soundness of a policy which has produced such fruit; and the question is
upon the lips of numbers,—“Where is the prosperity which was promised to
us?” If Mr Cobden or Sir Robert Peel were to present themselves in
Liverpool at the present moment, they would have to answer this
question, not to the uninquiring crowds who would have cheered their
fallacies three years ago, but to men who have reflected deeply, and had
deep cause for such reflection. The Right Hon. Baronet, in particular,
would perhaps have to reply to another question, and to go a little back
in the history of his political life. He would be asked not only, Who
had benefited by his Free-trade measures?—a difficult one enough to
answer—but what class of the community had been aggrandised _by his
currency measures of 1819 and 1844_. To this vital subject the minds of
the intelligent mercantile community of Liverpool, of all shades of
politics, are being rapidly directed. The Free-trader sees, in the
operation of our monetary laws, one leading source of the evil brought
upon the country by the carrying out of his favourite measure. He is
prepared to acknowledge that Free-trade and a Restricted Currency are
incompatible things. And the mercantile body of all political parties
still remember the disasters of 1847 and 1848; and the insulting manner
in which their prayer, in the October of the previous year, for relief
from the unexampled money pressure, which was then prostrating the most
extensive and solvent firms, was denied by a flippant and shallow
Chancellor of the Exchequer, although at that moment the nation was
within a few days of bankruptcy. These things are not forgotten; and,
from the impressions which I have been able to form, from a close
examination of popular opinion, I should not be surprised to see the
influential community of Liverpool throwing politics and party to the
winds, and uniting their efforts to procure a relief from the monstrous
system which at present withers and strangles in its grasp the industry
of England—which tempts us one day, by its lavish kindness, to erect
vast structures of commercial enterprise and usefulness; and the next
day dashes them into wrecks before our eyes, to be scrambled for by
greedy extortioners and selfish usurers.

It is the fear of this power which, to a great extent, is at the present
moment paralysing the enterprise of the commercial communities, which
would otherwise have succeeded in neutralising a portion at least, but
certainly only a portion, of the ruinous effects of Free-trade. A few
years ago, no community embarked more largely in those railway
investments, so strongly recommended to them by the fosterer of the
system, Sir Robert Peel, than the mercantile people of Liverpool. The
extent to which such investments were encouraged by the lavish offer of
banking facilities to merchants and others, may be judged of by the
fact, that the Directors of one Liverpool Bank were, a few weeks ago,
compelled to acknowledge to their shareholders, that nearly the whole of
their subscribed capital was advanced upon railway stock; and that their
Rest, amounting to £100,000, had entirely disappeared. This species of
security is now, by the caution with which capitalists act, rendered
totally unavailable for the purpose of raising money, when required for
legitimate commercial purposes. Hence the timid apprehension with which
men, thus situated, regard the accumulation of stocks of produce, for
which no remunerative market at present offers itself; and the
consumption of which is so obviously on the decline. Hence also the
pressure to sell, when they see cargo after cargo pouring in to augment
those stocks; the unwillingness to part with funds, for which the
shopkeeper and the tradesman are eagerly longing, to enable them to
sustain their tottering credit; and that total suspension of all
internal enterprise and improvement, which is driving so many thousands
of our skilled workmen to other countries, and the labourer to that
desolate resort for the very poor—the Union Workhouse. To the attempt to
carry out a Free-trade, involving the holding of large stocks of produce
and extended operations in foreign markets, with a currency artificially
restricted by the last Banking Act of Sir Robert Peel, and further
restricted by the caution with which bankers are now conducting their
business, since the severe warning inflicted upon them in 1847, is
attributable not only the commercial depression already noticed, but
also that fearful sacrifice of realised capital, which has taken place
from the decline in the saleable value of railway shares, and which, in
Liverpool alone, has rendered hundreds of once wealthy men comparatively
poor ones, and brought many, in the decline of their days, to a
condition lower than that even in which they began the world.

Such is the condition generally of the mercantile community of
Liverpool—that port of all others in the kingdom which was most largely
to be benefited by the advent of the Free-trade system. From the apex to
the base of the social fabric all is uncertainty, fear, and suffering,
too intense any longer to be concealed from the most superficial
observer; and the crisis has not yet been reached. The reaction has
still to come from the manufacturing districts, which, up to within the
past few months, in the enjoyment of a moderate amount of activity,
caused by a temporary revival of the export demand, are only now
beginning to feel the results of the system which, in their selfishness,
they invented for their own aggrandisement, at the expense of the
industry of the whole empire.

The avowed object of the Free-trader was to stimulate the export trade
in cotton goods, which it was always boasted was the most valuable to
the manufacturer. So far as regards the quantity of the raw material
consumed for the export trade, this is an undisputed fact; but that the
amount of skill and labour employed in it is equal to that expended upon
goods consumed in the home market is not true. In order to arrive at an
idea of the relative value of the two trades, it will be necessary for
me to bring before the reader a few figures and authorities. In the
excellent _Commercial Glance_, compiled for many years by the late Mr
John Burn of Manchester, and now continued by his son, the following
statement was given, as the mode in which the cotton spun in 1845 was
disposed of. I take that year as being one of great prosperity in the
home market, and as showing the state of things antecedent to the
introduction of free trade in corn.

STATEMENT OF THE COTTON SPUN IN ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND IN 1845, AND OF
THE QUANTITY OF YARN PRODUCED, SHOWING ALSO HOW THE QUANTITY SPUN IN
ENGLAND WAS DISPOSED OF.
Lbs.
Total cotton consumed, in lbs., 555,527,283
Allowed for loss in spinning, 1¾ oz. per lb., 60,760,796
———————————
Total yarn produced in England and Scotland, 494,766,487
Deduct spun in Scotland in 1845, 27,737,022
———————————
Total spun in England in 1845, 467,029,465

Lbs.
Exported in yarn during the year, 131,937,935
Exported in thread do., 2,567,705
Exported in manufactured cotton goods, 302,360,687
Estimated quantity of yarn sent to Scotland and
Ireland, 10,734,859
Exported in mixed manufactures, consumed in
cotton banding, healds, candle and lamp wick,
waddings, socks, calender bowls, paper,
umbrellas, hats, and loss in manufacturing
goods, 31,655,230
Balance left for home consumption and stock,
1st January 87,773,049
————————————
467,029,465
===========

I have the most perfect confidence in the correctness of Mr Burn’s
calculations, being personally acquainted with that gentleman, and
knowing the excellent sources from which he derives his information, and
the care which he devotes to the accuracy of all his facts. The result
to which the above statement leads is, that the consumption of raw
cotton in goods sold in our home markets is 18·36 per cent only, upon
the total quantity of yarn spun in England. This, a superficial observer
will say, is a very trivial quantity for our boasted home consumption.
Let us see, however, in what stage of manufacture, and in what
description of goods, the cotton taken off by foreign markets
principally consists. In the first place, 131,937,935 lbs., or 28 per
cent of the total cotton spun, was exported, as shown in the table
above, in the shape of yarn, an article but one remove from the raw
material, and the manufacture of which employs machinery principally,
and leaves only a small margin of profit to the country. With respect to
the description of goods, in the manufacture of which for the foreign
market the remainder of the raw material is consumed, little difficulty
is felt by persons acquainted practically with the subject. Mr
M‘Culloch, in his _Dictionary of Commerce_, page 456 of the edition of
1847—the latest I have before me—remarks upon the facts as striking,
that, notwithstanding the superiority of our machinery, and this branch
thus being one in which we most greatly excel our foreign rivals, the
proportion of fine to coarse yarns spun has materially decreased; and
that, in fact, the actual quantity of fine yarns has decreased, whilst
the total consumption of cotton has quadrupled during the last
twenty-five years. That the quantity has decreased to this extreme
extent may well be doubted, although the cheapening which has taken
place in silk and other fabrics during this period has, we know, to a
great extent caused the disuse, for home consumption, of many once
highly prized articles of the cotton manufacture. We may accept,
however, the admission of Mr M‘Culloch, as bearing upon the quality of
those goods which are taken off by the foreign trade, and of which the
great increase in the manufacture must consist. These are, confessedly,
the coarse, heavy fabrics, into the manufacture of which the _minimum_
amount of skill and labour enters. We approach then, from this point, to
a view of the comparative value to the country of the home and the
export trade in cotton goods. In the same work, Mr M‘Culloch estimates
the total annual value of the cotton manufacture of the kingdom at
£36,000,000 sterling, of which £10,000,000 is put down for the cost of
the raw material, £17,000,000 for wages, and £9,000,000 for profits,
wages of superintendence, and cost of machinery, coals, &c. I am a
little inclined to believe that this calculation is underdrawn, the
leaning of the author being to exaggerate the importance of the export
trade, the declared value of which in 1845 was £26,119,231, leaving a
little under £10,000,000 as the consumption of the home market, or about
two-fifths of the consumption of the foreign. In estimating the value to
the country, however, of the home trade, we have a right to take into
consideration the fact that the great component material of the goods
which we consume at home consists of labour; for, whilst the proportion
of the raw material consumed in the home trade was little over one-fifth
of that consumed in the foreign, the value of the goods was two-fifths.

Admitting, however, Mr M‘Culloch’s version of the case to be correct,
but at the same time bearing in mind the fact of his being a somewhat
prejudiced authority, let us apply the figures given to the present
condition of the manufacturing interest. The average quantity of cotton
taken weekly from Liverpool for consumers’ use, was, from 1st of January
to 12th of April 1849, 29,475 bales. It has been this year, up to the
same date, 23,176 bales—a falling off of 6299 bales weekly, or a little
above a fifth of the preceding year’s importations. Perhaps a portion of
this decline in apparent consumption may be accounted for by the fact
that the stock in the hands of spinners has, to a considerable extent,
been allowed by them to become exhausted, through their unwillingness to
pay the advanced prices recently demanded for the raw material. With
respect to the prudence of this policy, and its probable effect in still
further increasing the embarrassment of affairs, I shall have something
to say by and by; at present, the question which presses is—In what
market has this decreased consumption occurred? The answer must be—In
that market which pays for the greatest amount of labour expended upon
the manufacture of cotton goods—in the home market. I have not within my
reach the most authentic record of the Cotton Trade, for the period up
to which I should desire to extend my inquiries—viz., _Burn’s Commercial
Glance_, which is only made up half yearly. I have, however, before me
this gentleman’s _Monthly Colonial Circular_, dated March the 18th, in
which I observe a considerable increase in the exports of plain
calicoes, printed and dyed calicoes, and cotton yarn to the following
markets, with a few exceptions, for the first two months of the present
year:—Calcutta, Bombay (increase in printed and dyed and in yarn, and
small decrease in plain only); Madras (considerable increase in plain
and printed and dyed, and small decrease in yarn); Singapore and Manilla
(small decrease in printed and dyed and in yarn only); Batavia (large
increase in all kinds); Hong Kong and Canton (large increase in plain,
and small decline in printed); Shanghae (trade removed to other Chinese
ports in which there is a large increase): Australian Colonies (increase
in all kinds); Mauritius (stationary); Cape of Good Hope (increase in
all); Coast of Africa (decline in all); Jamaica (decrease in plain and
increase in printed); Honduras (increase); other West Indian ports
(decrease); Cuba and St Thomas (both increase); French West Indies
(increase in printed and small decline in plain); Brazils (large
increase); Chili and Peru (large decrease); Colombia (decrease); River
Plata (considerable decrease); Mexico (increase in plain, and decrease
in printed); British North America (season for shipments not commenced);
and United States (increase in both printed and plain, and a large
business done, the shipments for the two months being upwards of half of
the entire quantity exported in 1849.) Compared with the average of the
same period of the preceding three years, there is an increase to nearly
every market. With respect to the shipments to European markets, I
cannot speak with precision as to quantities, from the circumstance,
which I have named, of the accounts not having been yet made up. From
the monthly return from the Board of Trade, however, it appears that a
general increase has taken place in the declared value of cotton
manufactures to all markets, the amount being in 1850, £3,264,350 for
the two months, against £2,837,300 last year. There is a very trifling
decline in the export of yarns. From my own observation, I should augur
that the increase has extended over March, to the United States and the
markets of the Pacific especially—an unusual stimulus having been given
to the consumption of these markets by the Californian discoveries. By
the bye, I ought to mention, in connexion with the increase in the
declared value of our exports this year, the fact that, owing to the
advance in the price of the raw material, the value of goods exported
will be rated higher than last year. To some extent, however, the severe
winter of this year preventing the early opening of the navigation of
the rivers of the north of Europe, as compared with the mild season last
year, may be a set-off. The Mediterranean trade, and the operations of
the Greek houses, have also been limited by our petty quarrel in this
part of Europe.

Assuming, however, the actual quantity of cotton consumed by the Export
Trade to have been equal to that consumed last year up to this period,
and allowing for 40,000 bales, alleged by spinners to have been drawn
from their own stocks instead of the Liverpool market, _there will
remain a deficiency, as compared with last year, of 5000 bales per week,
or 70,000 bales, in the consumption of the raw material manufactured
into goods for the Home market_. When it is considered that these goods
consist of the finer fabrics, in which the greatest amount of labour is
employed, and upon which the largest percentage of profit is realised,
whilst those consumed in the foreign markets are sold at the lowest
margin of profit, and when exported frequently result in heavy losses to
the shipper, the extent of the sacrifice made by the manufacturing
community, in their mad adoption of a policy which has destroyed the
Home market, may readily be seen.

The correctness of these calculations has been borne out by the general
character of the Home Trade during the past four months, in which
stagnation, and difficulty in accomplishing sales to consumers and
retailers throughout the country, early manifested themselves. In the
month of January, strong hopes were entertained, by the majority of the
houses engaged in this branch of the business, that the worst of the
embarrassment which had so long hung over the cotton manufacturing
districts had passed over; and that a wholesome and active trade was
before them. The circulars of the month of February, and the reports
given week by week in the local journals published in the manufacturing
districts, resumed their gloomy statements; and the home demand, it
became clear, had returned to its previous lethargic state. From
communications entered into with some of the country houses, I have
derived intelligence respecting the result of their operations, almost
precisely similar to those sent home by the representatives of produce
houses as given above. The country buyers who come to the market display
an entire want of their accustomed spirit, and buy sparingly an inferior
class of goods to those which they have been, in former years, in the
habit of consuming. The universal complaint of these parties, and of
commercial travellers engaged in the Home Trade, is of declining
consumption and ill-paid accounts, especially throughout the purely
agricultural districts. One circumstance has tended in some measure to
prevent the trade becoming absolutely ruinous—viz., the fact that cotton
fabrics are now resorted to by many classes from motives of economy. The
farmer’s and the tradesman’s wife and daughters make a fashion of
necessity, and substitute printed cotton dresses for more expensive
articles. A cotton shirt supplies moderately well the place of a linen
one. Articles of elegance and luxury, however, even of this material,
are complained of as most difficult of sale. In some of the large towns,
a few houses are doing a fair business in heavy fabrics, such as
fustians, moleskins, and other articles worn by the artisans and other
working classes; and in some fancy goods of the same description for the
middle classes. This fact, however, is in a great measure an _exemplar_
of the declining condition of the country generally, the articles in
question being worn, in a majority of cases, as substitutes for the more
costly woollen fabrics. Moreover, no profit accrues to the manufacturer
from these goods, their production at existing rates of the raw material
being, on the contrary, attended with absolute loss.

The retail trade in the manufacturing towns themselves, represented as
being in such a satisfactory condition, is anything but good, a
considerable portion of the population being employed only two or three
days in the week, and the whole having been compelled during the past
two or three years to submit to reduction of wages, as the price of
their boasted boon of Free-trade. This is particularly the case in the
districts of Rochdale, (John Bright’s district,) Heywood, Bury,
Middleton, &c. The effect of preceding years’ short-time working is
still severely felt, last year having been the only one since 1846—when
we had the boasted measure of Sir Robert Peel, and the “heavy blow and
great discouragement” was inflicted upon British agriculture and our
sugar-growing colonies—that the manufacturing population have been fully
employed.

Such being the acknowledged condition of the home market for
manufactured goods, the question naturally presents itself—what has been
the result, so far as profit is concerned, of the operations generally
of the manufacturing community during the past four months? In reply to
this question, it will be very easy to prove that thus far, in the
present year, they have been the reverse of remunerative. The following
extract from the circular of Messrs M‘Nair, Greenhow, and Irving, of
Manchester—one of the best published, although putting rather the best
face upon things—dated the 31st of December last year, will show the
prospects with which manufacturers entered upon the present year:—

“MANCHESTER, _Dec. 31, 1849_.

“Exactly twelve months ago we represented the transactions of the
closing month as having been almost unprecedented in extent,
considering the season of the year; and to-day we are happy to have in
our power to communicate a pretty similar statement with regard to the
present month, repeating what we have often remarked, that _December_
in ordinary years is generally marked by dulness and inactivity.

“The position of the market, as indicated in our last (monthly)
circular, continued for about ten days afterwards gradually acquiring
greater force and depression, and accompanied with a decline in the
value of many descriptions of cloth and twist. At that period, from a
very prevalent belief that the commencement of the new year would be
characterised by improvement, an active and vigorous demand for export
and the home trade ensued, which has, notwithstanding the interruption
of the holiday season, continued up to the present time, rendering the
stocks of all kinds of light goods, as well as of some numbers of mule
twist, exceedingly light, and placing many manufacturers and spinners
under contract for some time hence.”

Another authority, Messrs Hollinshead, Tetley, & Co., an old-established
cotton firm of Liverpool, who are generally in the possession of the
best information, remarked upon the prospects of the district in their
circular of the first of January as follows:—

“Prospects for the general trade of the country, at least as regards
the principal articles of export, more particularly cotton fabrics,
were perhaps never more promising; and it is evident that the late
disturbing causes, political and social, in Europe and India, with the
effects produced upon other countries, reducing the consumption of
cotton to 22,230 weekly in 1847, and 27,602 in 1848, (previously
upwards of 30,000 bales weekly,) created a vacuum which has not been
filled up by the increased consumption of 30,512 bales weekly in the
present year; indeed it would seem that this large quantity (and it
has been proportionately great in other cotton manufacturing
countries) has only been sufficient to supply the increasing wants of
the world, as we no longer hear of glutted markets, but the report is
of light stocks almost everywhere. And when we take into consideration
the low price of all articles of food, corn particularly, (a
questionable advantage, perhaps, when unnaturally low, if the home
market is to be considered of any value,) the great abundance of
money, its low value, not exceeding, perhaps, 2½ per cent per annum in
the London market, with a larger amount of gold, &c. (£17,000,000) in
the Bank of England than was ever known before, it is evident that a
great stimulus may be given to the trade of the country, and that with
the disfavour shown to railway property it is most likely the usual
effects will follow—viz., extensive speculation and greatly enhanced
prices of all articles of import, and of cotton in particular.”

The whole of the trade circulars, indeed, both from Liverpool and
Manchester houses, expressed similar views with respect to the prospects
of the present year; and seemed to expect an increase in the aggregate
manufactures of the country. In reviewing the actual state of things
which has taken place, I would direct your attention particularly to the
fact of spinners and manufacturers being “under contract” at this
period, as stated in the first circular from which I have quoted. Such
contracts could only have been entered upon, consistently with prudence
at least, in the anticipation of a continuance of the then existing
prices of the raw material, or upon the assurance of a stock already in
hand. To a considerable extent spinners did hold stock sufficient for
the fulfilment, profitably, of a portion of their contracts, as is shown
by the circumstance that they have, since the commencement of the year,
worked up about 40,000 bales of cotton more than they have drawn from
the Liverpool market. That in the majority of cases, however, the stocks
held were only sufficient to complete a portion of the contracts entered
into is a fact which is quite beyond dispute; and these parties have
consequently been driven into the market to purchase the raw material at
the ruling prices of the day. In order to ascertain their position, it
will be necessary to trace the relative prices of cotton and of goods
during the interval between December 1849 and the present time. Up to
the commencement of that month, the prices of the raw material had been
gradually rising; and the almost universal complaint of spinners and
manufacturers had been of the unwillingness of buyers to pay a
proportionate advance upon goods. Thus, on the 1st of June last year,
the price of fair bowed cotton was 4¼d. per lb., from which it advanced
gradually, owing to reports of a short yield of the crop in America,
until on the 1st of January this year it stood at 6⅜d., being an advance
of 2⅛d. per lb. The price of best seconds water twist, No. 20 was on the
1st of June 6¾d., and on the 1st of January 8¼d. The price of best
second mule, No. 40, was at the same dates respectively 8½d. and 10½d.
We had therefore—

Advance upon cotton, . 2⅛d. per lb.
Do. upon yarn, No. 20, 1½d. „
Do. upon yarn, No. 40, 2d. „

This was obviously a losing trade; and it is acknowledged that, during
the whole of this period business was only profitably carried on by the
fortunate few who had laid in stocks at the low prices. On the 1st of
February the highest price was attained, fair bowed cotton being quoted
at 6⅞d., with No. 20 yarn at 8¾d., and No. 40 at 11¼d.—being an advance
of ½ on the raw material, ½d. on the No. 20 yarn, and ¾d. on No. 40. To
counteract the upward tendency of the market, a resort to the working of
short time was resolved upon, principally by the spinners of coarse
numbers; and the consumption was thus materially reduced, spinners and
manufacturers drawing upon their stocks on hand, and thus keeping out of
the markets for the raw material. A gradual decline in the price of
cotton was the result—goods, however, sharing in the depression; and on
the 1st of April fair bowed was quoted at 6⅛d., or ¾d. per lb. lower
than in February. No. 20 yarn, the stocks having been reduced by
short-time working, had declined only ½d. per lb.; No. 40, however, had
fallen to the same extent as cotton. There was therefore no increase of
prosperity brought about thus far by the short-time movement, the price
of goods remaining at the same unsatisfactory point as compared with the
raw material.

At this date, Messrs Robert Barbour and Brother of Manchester, in their
monthly circular, speak as follows with respect to the general trade of
the cotton manufacturing districts:—

“We have to report a very dull and unsatisfactory state of business in
this district during the month. There has been a gradual decline in
prices varying from 2½ to 7½ per cent, so that some kinds of goods can
now be bought fully 10 to 12 per cent under the rates which were
demanded in January. These reduced quotations have induced some
parties to enter the market, but still the demand has been much under
the average of what is usually experienced at this season of the year.
The working of ‘short time’ is now generally adopted by the producers
of coarse yarn and heavy goods, and several large mills continue
closed. The drooping tendency of some descriptions of the finer
fabrics has been slightly counteracted during the last week by more
favourable intelligence from Calcutta and China; still, however, our
market is unsteady, and it is more than usually difficult to form any
idea of what is likely to be the future course of prices.

“In the goods market a general quietness has prevailed throughout the
month, buyers acting with extreme caution, purchasing only in small
parcels for the supply of their more pressing wants: prices,
consequently, have been irregular, and some considerable sales have
been made by needy manufacturers at very low rates.”

The dulness here spoken of is particularly observable in the staple
articles consumed by the home trade. Messrs Barbour and Brother state
that—

“36-inch shirtings have participated in the general depression, and
stocks are beginning to accumulate. 66-reeds, 7¾ lb., have receded in
value 6d. to 9d. per piece, having been sold in February at 8s. to 8s.
4½d., whilst now they are worth only 7s. 6d. to 7s. 9d.”

Again:—

“Domestics T cloths and stout long cloths continue neglected,
notwithstanding the curtailed production, and can now be bought on
easier terms. Average qualities of domestics have been sold at 9d. per
lb., which is by no means remunerative to the maker.”

The concluding paragraph of the circular is very decisive as to the
comparatively profitless nature of the manufacture:—

“Cotton has now declined about 1d. per lb. during the last three
months. It is still, however, much higher than is warranted by the
prices which can be obtained for the manufactured article. Indeed, _at
several periods during the last few years, prices of yarns and goods
have been quite as high as those now current, with cotton at 1d. to
2d. per lb. lower than at present_.”

Since the date of the circular containing these gloomy accounts, an
important change has taken place, and the tide has set in strongly
against the manufacturing community. Immediately subsequent to its
publication, the arrival of the American mail-steamer brought news
confirmatory of the anticipations of a short crop of cotton, and prices
immediately advanced, leaving the spinners and manufacturers to recruit
their exhausted stocks at a further loss, as compared with the prices of
goods. On the 5th of April, the receipts of cotton at the ports of
America were shown to be 310,000 bales less than at the same period of
the preceding year; whilst the stock computed to be held in Liverpool
was 511,000 bales, as compared with 447,300 bales held at the same date
in 1849, or only 63,700 bales more than last year, although spinners had
decreased their consumption by 6300 bales per week, and taken 40,000
bales from their own stocks. The total crop of the United States, which
had been estimated in the beginning of the year at from 2,250,000 to
2,300,000 bales, was only estimated in the advices by the steamer at
2,100,000 bales.

I fear that, to some readers, these statistics may be rather tedious.
They are necessary, however, to enable us fully to understand the
position in which this important branch of the manufactures of the
country, and the large population dependent upon it, have been placed by
the intelligence brought by another later mail from the United States,
which arrived in the Mersey on the morning of the 16th ult. I have
stated that the estimates formed of the probable crop in America, at the
beginning of the year, varied from 2,250,000 to 2,300,000 bales. These
had been reduced, up to the arrival of the steamer in the first week of
April, to 2,100,000 bales. With this progressive decline going on in the
amount of the crop, as estimated by competent judges upon the spot, and
with the fact of decreased receipts at the American ports before their
eyes, the spinners of this country have, with few exceptions, resolutely
refused to give credit to the representations made to them, and kept
further exhausting their stocks on hand, or buying only to supply their
immediate wants. The arrival of the Niagara, however, has put the
question at rest, and not only confirmed the statements as to the crop
being a short one, but established the fact that it is likely to be much
shorter than was by anybody anticipated. The following is the startling
disclosure made by Mr T. J. Stewart of New York, one of the best
authorities in the United States, upon the subject, in his circular of
the 2d ult.:—

“The crop proves to be a short one—and if measured by the ability of
the world to consume, the shortest one since ’41–’42. The falling off
in the receipts regularly exceeds the progressive estimate I made some
time since, and on which I made up my table of 2,100,000 bales. It
will close _under two millions of bales_. How far below, I cannot at
present say, but the interior of the country is exhausted of supplies
to so great a degree, that it is evident that such a figure is totally
impracticable.”

The decrease in the stocks arrived at the ports of America is put down
by him now at 470,000 bales. Of this very insufficient crop of less than
2,000,000 bales—that of the preceding year, I may remark, was
2,728,000—Mr Stewart reminds us that _America will require above 600,000
bales to supply her own mills, or nearly two-fifths of the total
quantity consumed in Great Britain last year_. This, of itself, is a
somewhat startling fact, and proves the rapid strides which America is
making toward depriving this country of its manufacturing pre-eminence.

It is obvious, from the above circumstances, that the American planters,
and the holders of cotton in that country and in Liverpool, have the
manufacturer at this moment within their grasp, and will be enabled to
extort from his necessities still higher prices than those which have
for months past rendered his business a losing one. The stocks of cotton
held in the manufacturing districts are unprecedentedly light, and those
of goods have been of late considerably reduced. But can an advance be
secured on the manufactured article, corresponding with that demanded
for the raw material? Few people believe this to be practicable. With
the exception of a little temporary activity in the demand of goods for
the East Indian market, towards the middle of last month, the gloomy
feeling existing in every branch of the trade had deepened, and the
demand for nearly every article perceptibly lessened. The accounts
received by export houses from foreign markets are not of a character to
encourage further operations; and the demand for the home trade remains
very limited. In broad terms, _the leading foreign markets are glutted
for months to come, and the population throughout the agricultural
districts, and in the large towns of the kingdom as well, are
diminishing their consumption of cotton and other fabrics to the lowest
possible point_. With respect to the foreign trade, the worst feature is
the falling off in the demand from the United States, to which I showed
that, in the first two months of this year, we had shipped goods equal
to the one half of last year’s exports. The returns for these shipments
may be expected to be very unsatisfactory. On this subject, the last
steamer (the Niagara) brought the following report:—

“The spring trade of New York _had disappointed all classes_. Early in
January there was an unusually active demand. High prices were
obtained, and large sales were made; since then business had fallen
off, and _the month of March, which ought to have been the best, had
been extremely dull—more so than had been known for many years_. The
stock of British and other foreign dry goods was not large, but the
demand was small.”

From this market, expectations of the most sanguine character had been
previously indulged in, which are thus rudely dashed to the ground.

As yet the manufacturing community, stunned by the conviction which has
been forced upon them of their desperate position, have formed no
definite resolution as to the course to be pursued. For a week or two
longer, it is possible that a portion of them may make further fruitless
efforts to keep down the market for the raw material, which will now be
held by speculators, aided by the abundant funds in the hands of
bankers, with the certainty of ultimately realising higher rates. In the
opinion of parties acquainted intimately with the whole circumstances of
the trade, the only available course for spinners is to decrease
consumption still further, by an extension of the system of working
short time, or by closing a considerable portion of the mills
altogether. Profitable working, even without an increase in the price of
the raw material, is out of the question, with markets in their present
depressed condition. But with such an advance as must be paid, if even
the present reduced rate of consumption is to go on, the business would
be perfectly ruinous.

It is painful to reflect upon the severe suffering which must be
entailed upon the operative and middle classes, throughout the
manufacturing districts, by a general suspension of operations, or even
by an increase of short-time working. These classes, greatly reduced as
their wages have been during the past two years, have not, I may repeat,
recovered as yet from the effect of the suspension of manufacturing
activity to which they were forced in 1847 and 1848; and are
consequently in a much worse position to be thrown again upon their own
resources. The neatly furnished cottage no longer remains to be
dismantled for the purpose of providing food for their families. The
little savings’ bank hoards disappeared in those years, and have not
since been replaced. A few employers, no doubt, may be disposed to allow
to their hands a pittance sufficient to provide against actual
deprivation; but it is to be feared that the mass will act with no such
humane considerateness. Another result of such a course must be still
farther to decrease the consumption, and depress the prices, of our
large stocks of imported produce, and thus to inflict heavy losses upon
their holders.

It is to me perfectly clear, and the fact is tacitly admitted by a large
portion of the community engaged in mercantile and manufacturing
pursuits, that a most trying and fearful crisis is at hand; and that the
present summer will not end without her Majesty’s Ministers, and the
Free Trade party, being compelled to acknowledge that the speech from
the Throne, and the representations of prosperity made by them at the
opening of Parliament, were, if not deliberate perversions of the truth,
at all events most ill-considered and hasty. We had in February last, it
is now evident, no such thing as even prosperous manufactures, or a
healthy state of commerce. Whilst these representations were being made,
and agricultural pursuits alone pointed to as being in a state of
temporary depression, the leading manufacture of the country was being
carried on without profit, and our merchants and traders were feeling
the ground shake beneath their feet. It is of no use, however, to refer
to the past. The questions for the nation now to consider are—first,
What is it which has brought about this general prostration of the
country? and next, Where is the remedy to be applied? It is idle for the
Free-traders to point any longer to potato rots, to railway manias, or
to high prices of cotton, as the cause of the failure of their
predictions of coming general prosperity. The truth is palpably before
the world that the foreign trade, stimulate it as we may, will not
employ the industry of the country; and that a prosperous home trade is
indispensably necessary to render the foreign trade a profitable one. It
is equally idle to tell us that the present state of things is only
temporary, and that a different result of our recent policy will be
attained by and by. In what direction are we to look for the change? Is
any new world about to be discovered? Is there a single outlet to be
found for our manufactures, which we cannot close up in a month? I
confess that I cannot discern a gleam of hope for the future, or a
prospect of the restoration of this great nation to its wonted
prosperity, except in a total reversal of the legislation of the past
few years, by which, and by which alone, has been caused that
prostration of its industry and enterprise, which we are now witnessing
on every side—in our own once happy land, and throughout the length and
breadth of that vast colonial empire, once the pride of Great Britain,
and the envy of the world, but now her shame, ruined and robbed as it
has been by the legislation of designing or incapable statesmen. With
our agricultural population fast sinking into pauperism and insolvency,
or taking flight from our shores, as from those of an infected land, to
fertilise with their capital and enterprise other soils, which own
protective governments and a kindred people; with the landed aristocracy
of the kingdom, and squirearchy and the yeomen, stripped of half their
possessions—the baronial hall no longer distributing its hospitality to
thousands, and pinching poverty and thrift marking the household
arrangements, where of old there was plenty, a cup for the needy, and
consolation and succour for the afflicted; with the middle classes in
our towns forced down in the social scale, and hovering over the gulf of
insolvency and ruin, and the labourer turned out, a desperate man, to
wrest with the strong hand the food which we deny him the means to
purchase, whilst we mock him with its cheapness—the manufacturing body
will strive in vain for the consummation of that object which, in their
selfishness, they proposed to themselves as the result of the boasted
Free-trade policy—viz. the setting up of their houses over those of the
time-honoured names of the land. Blindly and madly they have detached
the handful of snow from the summit of the mountain; with mocking jeers
of hideous and idiotic glee, they have seen its gathering bulk, and
watched its progress as it rolled, prostrating the cottage and the
farmstead, and spreading devastation over the vineyard and the waving
corn; and they stand now shuddering at the mighty avalanche which is
thundering above the tall chimney and the smoky town, and will shortly
involve themselves in the general calamity and devastation. Yes, the
fears of these men are at length beginning to be effectively roused by
the contemplation of the work of their own hands. I say _beginning_,
because the day of retribution is only now coming upon them, and making
itself felt. The philosophers of the loom and spindle talk now “with
bated breath” of the efficacy of their universal specific. There are
doubting anxious faces on ‘Change, gloomy greetings as they meet in the
streets, and idle hands in the once busy salerooms and warehouses. Many,
whose voices were lately loud in cheering the flattering tales and
sophistries of their Cobdens and Brights—some of those even whose
subscriptions enabled the former to buy his Woodland farm, and whose
votes and influence hoisted the blustering Quaker into a seat in the
Legislature, are now ready to acknowledge, in private, that “there is
some mistake;” that they have, perhaps, gone too far; and that, after
all, Free Trade is “only an experiment.” Alas! it is one whose fatal
effects will have to be deeply deplored, and from which the country will
not recover for years to come. A quarter of a century of toil will
scarcely replace the capital which has been swept away, up to the
present period. More remains to be swept away; but now it will be the
capital of the authors of the calamity.

And this portion of these philosophers are busily and eagerly striving
to persuade the farmer that he is foolishly nervous under the
apprehension of permanent low prices; and that these have now reached
the level at which the foreigner can no longer supply us profitably.
Unfortunately, whilst they are sagely assuring the world of this fact,
grain and flour keeps steadily pouring into our ports, at still further
reduced prices; and additional evidence is daily being afforded of the
total ignorance of the subject displayed in their statistics and
calculations: supplies are reaching us daily from countries which were
left altogether out of the catalogue of those from whose growers we were
led to anticipate competition. Thus from France, a country which it was
always said was not able to grow sufficient for its own consumption, the
receipts at the port of Liverpool during two weeks, in which alone the
quantity is quoted separately, were as follows:—

French flour.
Week ending March 19, 6000 barrels.
April 9, 6166
and 2419 American.

And from that country, and the whole of the ports of the North of
Europe, distant from us by only a few days’ sail—by a voyage made in
less time than the average consumed in those made from port to port on
our own coasts—supplies will continue to come, at rates with which the
British grower can never hope to compete. In fact, the farmer of the
North of Europe may in future be treated as a British subject—enjoying
all the immunities of one, without contributing towards his burthens. He
is nearer the London or the Liverpool markets than a Norfolk or a
Lincolnshire farmer; and that he frequently pays less for the conveyance
of his produce than it will be seen from the following table, which
contains the rates actually paid in Liverpool by importing houses during
the years beginning in 1847 to this year, such farmer pays:—

COASTING and FOREIGN FREIGHTS of WHEAT to LIVERPOOL.

┌─────────────────┬──────────────────┬──────────────────┐
│ │ 1847. │ 1848. │
├─────────────────┼──────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│ │ Per quarter. │ Per quarter. │
│ │_s. d._ _s. d._│_s. d._ _s. d._│
│From Stettin, │5 0 │ │
│ „ Dantzig, │4 6 │4 0 │
│ „ Rostock, │6 0 │4 0 │
│ „ Hamburg, │4 0 to 3 6 │4 0 to 3 0 │
│ „ Rotterdam, │ │2 6 │
│ „ Antwerp, │ │3 0 to 2 6 │
│ „ Bremen, │ │3 3 to 3 0 │
│ „ Bruges, │ │ │
│ „ Ghent, │ │ │
│ „ New York, │ │ │
│ (last │ │ │
│ rates,) │ │ │
│ │ │ │
│_From Coasts of │ │ │
│ England to │ │ │
│ Liverpool._ │ │ │
│ Colchester, │2 0 │2 0 │
│ Woodbridge, │2 6 │2 6 │
│ Salcombe, │2 6 │2 6 │
│ Kingsbridge,│2 6 │2 6 │
│ Lynn, │2 6 │2 1 │
│ Ipswich, │2 3 │1 9 │
│ Yarmouth, │2 1 │ │
└─────────────────┴──────────────────┴──────────────────┘

┌─────────────────┬──────────────────┬──────────────────┐
│ │ 1849. │ 1850. │
├─────────────────┼──────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│ │ Per quarter. │ Per quarter. │
│ │_s. d._ _s. d._│_s. d._ _s. d._│
│From Stettin, │4 0 to 2 9 │3 0 │
│ „ Dantzig, │4 0 │3 0 │
│ „ Rostock, │4 0 │ │
│ „ Hamburg, │3 0 │1 9 │
│ „ Rotterdam, │2 0 to 1 9 │1 9 │
│ „ Antwerp, │2 6 to 1 6 │1 3 to 1 0!│
│ „ Bremen, │ │1 6 │
│ „ Bruges, │1 6 │1 6 │
│ „ Ghent, │1 6 │1 6 │
│ „ New York, │ │3 0 │
│ (last │ │ │
│ rates,) │ │ │
│ │ │ │
│_From Coasts of │ │ │
│ England to │ │ │
│ Liverpool._ │ │ │
│ Colchester, │ │1 6 │
│ Woodbridge, │1 9 │1 6 │
│ Salcombe, │ │2 0 │
│ Kingsbridge,│2 0 │ │
│ Lynn, │ │ │
│ Ipswich, │1 9 to 1 6 │1 6 │
│ Yarmouth, │1 10 │ │
└─────────────────┴──────────────────┴──────────────────┘

Yet the freight on wheat was to be a sufficient protection for the
farmer!

I must here, sir, leave the subject to your own powerful pen. I have
given you the facts as I have collated them from the most authentic
sources, and the observations which I have made personally; and they
have more than confirmed the impressions with which I entered upon this
inquiry.— have the honour to be, &c.

ALISON’S POLITICAL ESSAYS.[5]

The collection of scattered periodical essays, especially such as are of
a strictly political character, is an adventure far more perilous to the
reputation of an author than the issue of any single work deliberately
planned, and laboriously executed in the closet. The historian, dealing
solely with the records of the past, reviving or recreating pictures
which have long ago appeared upon the ancient canvass, may without
difficulty arrange his scattered portraits and groups in such an order,
that they shall impress the public mind with a feeling of absolute
novelty. A historical paradox, if ingeniously conceived and plausibly
conveyed, is sure to command attention. The fickleness of the Athenians
was by no means idiosyncratic to that volatile nation. All men weary of
hearing the same phrase and the same judgment invariably repeated. They
suspect the justice of Aristides, or the perfidy of Crookback Richard,
on account of the unanimous verdict, and are by no means displeased when
any daring casuist steps forward, armed with a tolerable array of proof,
to detract from the rigid virtue of the one, or to palliate the vices of
the other. In truth, the materials of all history are so various and
conflicting in their character, that an artist of consummate skill, who
is withal not over-scrupulous, may easily pass off fictions under the
disguise of broad reality. Historical sketches, therefore, which relate
to past events, may be viewed in the light either of lively episodes or
of profound commentaries; and their republication, after a term of
years, can in no way affect the soundness of the author’s judgment.

To republish criticisms, especially such as relate to the works of
cotemporaries, is certainly a more delicate task. It is easy to comment
upon an author whose works have been long before the public, and
frequently and diligently scanned. High criticism may discover beauties
or detect faults which have escaped the notice of less keen and
scrutinising observers; but, in the aggregate, certainly in the majority
of cases, the broad opinion which has been expressed by others is
allowed to remain unchallenged. The influence of previous judgment
invariably sways the critic. None are rash enough to deny the genius of
Shakspeare; at the same time, nothing is more certain than that, were
another Shakspeare to arise amongst us at this moment, there would be no
kind of unanimity as to his deserts. In all ages and in all countries
this has been the rule. Personal spite, unacknowledged and possibly
unperceived envy, party difference of opinion, disparity of station,
prejudice of education—all these, in their turn, have passed, like so
many clouds, between the sun of living genius and the critics who
surveyed its orbit. Nor ought we to overlook the fact that, in many
instances, meteors have been mistaken for suns, and the eyes of the
critic been dazzled by a glare, to which his own willing imagination
lent at least one half its brilliancy. Therefore it is that contemporary
criticism, when republished in an abiding form, rarely satisfies the
expectation of the reader. His own judgment has been formed, apart from
the considerations and prejudices which are so apt to beset the critic;
and he conceives an unfavourable impression of the literary acuteness of
the writer, when he finds a gross discrepancy between the older and the
later estimate.

But far more trying to an author is the republication of political
essays, composed during the progress of great national events. This
branch of composition is peculiar to our own age, in which periodical
literature is so marked and eminent a feature. Pamphleteering is of
venerable date. Sir Thomas More, Milton, Marvell, Swift, and Defoe, were
all notable pamphleteers; but periodical writing, in the highest sense
of the term, is the invention of the present century. That great and
influential organs of public opinion, ranking among their contributors
the men of the highest intellect and the most laborious acquirements,
should have been established in our time, marks not only the development
of the influence of the press, but the importance of the events which
such men are imperatively summoned to discuss. It marks even more, for
it has established a power beyond the boundaries of the old
constitution, which, as it is used or misused, cannot fail to affect
materially the destinies of Great Britain.

Every political treatise referring to events which have engrossed the
attention of the day, either as modifications or as changes of our
social system, must be valuable in later years. It must necessarily
recommend or condemn measures on account of their probable operation in
the time to come; it must in some degree be a prophecy, or else it is
practically worthless. The politician studies the past merely as his
guide for the future. If he is learned, wise, and at all an adept in the
science which he professes—than which no other is of so momentous an
import—he will consider past history as the barometer which must guide
him in predicating the approach either of a tempest or a calm. Temporary
clamour or occasional obstruction will not lead him to forsake clear
principles of action, or to recommend a grand constitutional remedy in
the case of a trifling local disease. He must look forward beyond the
sphere of immediate action—resolute in this belief, that one false step,
however small, may upset the equilibrium of the State. Expediency, the
modern idol, finds little favour in the eyes of the true and sagacious
statesman. He tests measures by their intrinsic value, regardless of the
“pressure from without;” and he looks upon Parliamentary majorities as
of less moment than the maintenance of the real interests of his
country.

If we apply these remarks to our later political history, and to the
conduct of those men whom circumstances have elevated to the highest
stations in Government, we shall at once perceive that the first great
principles of practical statesmanship have been abandoned. The welfare
and integrity of the Empire has been made a subsidiary object to the
triumph of party ambition; and accordingly, CONSISTENCY, that grand test
of a politician’s sincerity and soundness, is the very quality which is
wanting. To consistency, indeed, neither Lord John Russell nor Sir
Robert Peel, for many years the rival chiefs of party, can lay the
slightest claim. They have been playing a long, and, doubtless, an
interesting game, with the map of Britain and its dependencies before
them as a chess-board: they have directed the whole of their energies to
giving checkmate to one another; and with this view they have again and
again altered the relative positions of king and queen, bishops,
knights, castles, and pawns. To counteract the last move of his
adversary was the great object of each of these ingenious players. It
was a pretty trial of dexterity and finesse; but we trust, for the sake
of the chessmen, that the match is finally concluded. Talent of this
kind may, indeed, be available when it is necessary to contend with a
foreign adversary; but it is worse than mischievous when practised
systematically at home.

To have surveyed the political events of the last twenty years with a
calm and dispassionate eye—to estimate the consequences of each
concession to popular clamour, and each move for party purposes—to form
inductions as to the future from the indelible history of the past—to
trace the causes of social misery and disquiet to their remote and
recondite source—to discern the coming cloud of adversity in the midst
of apparent abundance—required more than common thought, learning,
sagacity, and prescience; and the man who has done all this, cannot fail
to be ranked, in the estimation of those whose judgment is of real
value, among the first masters of political and economic science. Many
brilliant commentaries upon passing events, which at the first blush
were received as absolute oracles of wisdom, have utterly failed in
their predictions, and are now consigned to oblivion. They failed—if
from no other cause, at least assuredly from this—that they flowed from
the pens of partisans, whose whole energies were devoted to the
advancement of themselves and their faction. Party spirit, indeed, has
of late years almost entirely overshadowed that patriotism which was
once our highest boast. Truth may be spoken of an opponent—and very
often more than truth; but it is seldom expressed with regard to the
political conduct of those whom men are accustomed to regard as their
friends. Private motives are allowed to interfere with the more rigorous
functions of the censor; the moralist is changed into the apologetic
rhetorician; the judge becomes the interested advocate.

Were the present crisis of our political history less momentous than it
truly is—were not the great and final struggle for a return to the
principles, by means of which our national greatness was achieved, so
near at hand—we might, from motives and considerations easily
appreciable, have left this volume of Mr Alison’s collected political
essays without any special notice. For a long period of years, embracing
the most important changes which have been made in the institutions and
relations of this country, Mr Alison has been a constant contributor to
the Magazine, adopting his own views, enforcing his own opinions,
without reference to the distinctions of party or the position of
individual statesmen. We believe that, in some respects, the attitude of
the Magazine has differed from that assumed by any periodical
publication in the country. It has never been the organ of a Party, and
never subservient to a Government. Many times we have been compelled to
differ from those whose political opinions have been thought most
closely to approximate to our own; and never have we hesitated to
express that difference in clear and unambiguous terms, knowing that a
true and honourable conviction never ought to be concealed, or can be
without affecting the integrity of those who entertain it.

The present publication sufficiently discloses the part which Mr Alison
has taken in the political discussions which have arisen during that
eventful period. They are valuable to the rising generation for two
especial reasons. In the first place, they are a faithful record of the
impressions which passing events made upon the mind of a highly-gifted,
generous, and independent man, the object of whose life was apart from
those pursuits which inflame the passions, whilst they warp the
judgment, of the mere partisan. In the second place, they will enable
the reader to trace, step by step, the innovations which modern
Liberalism has made upon the older limits of the constitution; and to
estimate the consistency of those who at one time affected to be the
opponents of that Liberalism, and at another, whether through weakness,
or treachery, or ambition, came forward to assist in its blind and
infatuated progress.

Perhaps the most interesting papers in the present volume are those
which refer to the memorable and exciting era of the Reform Bill. They
are not only interesting, but highly instructive in a constitutional
point of view, as showing the utter disregard of the Whig faction to the
maintenance of that political framework which, when in power, they
affect to worship with almost superstitious veneration. Never, probably,
was there a period in our history when the passions of the populace were
more dexterously and deliberately excited by men of high station, and by
no means contemptible intellect. Treason was then in vogue: sedition
openly encouraged. Most of us can recollect the ugly and ominous emblems
which were paraded through the streets of the larger towns, and the
violence with which every one supposed to be hostile to the popular
measure was assailed. Haughty aristocrats, like the late Earl Grey,
condescended to treat with Jacobin clubs and political unions; the
physical power of the masses was appealed to as an argument of
irresistible weight, and Whig officials were privy to the plan of a
projected Birmingham insurrection. The voice of reason was entirely
stifled amidst the general democratic howl, and all suggestions as to a
modification of the grand electoral scheme were treated with fierce
hostility. The framers of the measure had no wish that its details
should be narrowly sifted, or submitted to the test of principle. There
was a deep meaning in the phrase, which at that time passed into a
proverb, “The Bill—the whole Bill—and nothing but the Bill!” No other
method of reform, however large and comprehensive, would have suited the
junta who then deemed themselves secure of an interminable lease of
power. And why? Because any other measure which might have embraced the
claim of the Colonies to a share in the Imperial representation, would
have interfered with their special project of lowering the landed
interest, and giving a decided preponderance in Parliament to the votes
of the urban population.

We are far from wishing to maintain that the spirit which animated the
councils of the Conservative leaders of the day was in all respects the
most prudent; or that they did not to a certain extent accelerate the
movement by withholding minor concessions, which might have been
gracefully and advantageously given. But in justice to them it must be
remembered, that they had a great principle to contend for—a principle
too little understood then, and perhaps only now becoming generally
appreciated on account of the pernicious effects which have resulted
from its violation. The older Representative system of Great Britain
might appear to the casual eye artificial, unequal, and therefore
unjust; but it had this grand and wholesome advantage, which we look for
in vain in its successor, that, by means of it, not only were the great
classes of the community at home adequately represented, but our
fellow-subjects of the Colonies could, and did, exercise a direct
influence within the walls of St Stephen’s. To allow this influence to
be encroached on, however covertly or plausibly, seemed tantamount to an
abandonment of the principle by which the Conservative party had been
guided throughout; and subsequent events have shown that no exaggerated
estimate was formed of the tendencies of democratic rule. This
conviction of the prospective danger of the Reform measure to the
integrity of the British Empire was, we know, the main cause of that
early, though perhaps injudicious, resistance to the extension of the
electoral suffrage, which finally gave way before the impulse added to
popular excitement by the example of foreign revolution. As regarded the
welfare of our Colonies, the Reform Bill was virtually a death-blow. It
laid the foundation for a rapid succession of measures, selfish in their
tendency and grossly impolitic, which have already gone far to pervert
the loyal feelings of the Colonists, by teaching them that the mother
country has decided upon a policy altogether injurious to their
interests as subjects of the British Crown. They have had no voice, no
direction in the legislative enactments which have since that time so
deeply affected their prosperity; they have been governed rather as
tributaries than as portions of the Empire; and their complaints have
been too often treated with undisguised contumely, or, at best, with
haughty indifference. Our opinion as to the importance of the
maintenance of our Colonial dominions, and the imminent necessity which
exists of securing that maintenance by giving them some effective voice
in the legislative councils of Great Britain, has been repeatedly
expressed. No other step will suffice to stay the tide of disaffection;
and happy will it be for all of us, if the practical refutation of the
Free-trade delusion, now becoming every day more obvious and
acknowledged, shall lead to such prudent measures, with regard to our
dependencies, as may again consolidate into one great and united mass,
inspired by the same feelings and actuated by the same interests, the
scattered elements of British greatness and renown.

But apart altogether from Colonial considerations, the Reform Bill has
been productive of the most serious consequences to the internal economy
of this country. Under its benign operation the National Debt, instead
of being diminished, is augmented; whilst, at the same time, by a system
of ruinous cheapness, induced by the free admission of foreign produce
to compete in the home market with our own, incomes have been lowered by
nearly a half, and the means of paying the increased taxation have been
proportionably curtailed. We do not believe that the Whigs, while
straining every energy to carry the Reform Bill, meditated the
possibility of any such results. We have their own statements—at least
those of Lords Melbourne and John Russell—to the contrary; and even were
it otherwise, we are not disposed to attribute to that party so great a
share of political prescience, as to assume that they foresaw the
consequences of their own deliberate act.

It was, however, foreseen by others. In 1831, Mr Alison, arguing from
historical precedents, predicted that the natural effect of the passing
of the Reform Bill would be the repeal of the Corn Laws.

“When it is recollected,” wrote he, “that 300 English members of the
Reformed house are to be for the boroughs, and only 150 for the
counties, it may easily be anticipated that this effect is certain.
And in vain will the House of Peers strive to resist such a result:
their power must have been so completely extinguished before the
Reform Bill is past, that any resistance on their part would be
speedily overcome.

“This first and unavoidable consequence of this great change will at
once set the manufacturing classes at variance with the agricultural
interest; and then will commence that fatal war between the different
classes of society, which has hitherto been only repressed by the
weight and authority of a stable, and, in a certain degree, hereditary
government, composed of an intermixture of the representatives of
_all_ interests. When it is recollected that wheat can be raised with
ease in Poland at prices varying from 17s. to 20s. a quarter, and that
it can be laid down on the quay of any harbour in Britain at from 33s.
to 40s., it may easily be anticipated what a revolution in prices
will, in the _first instance_, be effected by this measure. We say in
the _first_ instance—for nothing seems clearer than that the
_ultimate_ effect will be, by throwing a large portion of British land
out of cultivation, and in its stead producing a more extensive growth
of grain on the shores of the Vistula, to restore the equilibrium
between the supply of corn and its consumption, and, by means of
destroying a large portion of British agriculture, raise the prices
again to their former standard.”

We have lately been favoured, from certain quarters, with ingenious
disquisitions touching the probable future price of grain in this
country—disquisitions to which we by no means object, as, apart
altogether from their truth or their falsity, they manifest a growing
uneasiness as to the possibility of maintaining the Free-trade system
for many months longer. We may perhaps be allowed to take some credit
to ourselves for having effected this change in the tone and
sentiments of gentlemen who, not long ago, were clamorous in their
praise of cheap food and diminished agricultural prices. In our
January Number, by the aid of the most intelligent, skilful, and
experienced agriculturists of Scotland, we proved, beyond the power of
refutation, that no British farmer could stand his ground against the
present influx of foreign corn, and that no possible reduction of
rent, short of its annihilation, would enable him to meet the
deficiency. We were met, as might naturally be expected, by the double
weapons of rancorous abuse and deliberate falsification.[6] But these
having utterly failed in their purpose, our antagonists have since
changed their ground altogether, and are now attempting to argue,
against the experience of each successive week, that the present fall
of prices is merely temporary, and that wheat must again rise to
something like its former level. How long they may continue in their
endeavours to propagate this fresh delusion we know not. They cannot
mislead the farmers, at whose door ruin is at present knocking with an
unmistakeable sound. The only men they can mislead are their unhappy
dupes, who have been taught to believe that the prosperity of Britain
depends solely upon one of the weakest, most unstable, and most
precarious of its manufactures.

In the same article from which we have just quoted, Mr Alison wrote as
follows:—

“Now, the misery arising from the reduction of the resources of the
farmer could not be confined to his own class in society; it would
immediately and seriously affect the manufacturing and commercial
interests. The great trade of every country, as Adam Smith long ago
remarked, is between the town and the country: by far the greatest
part of the produce of our looms is consumed by those who, directly or
indirectly, are fed by the British plough. Not the haughty aristocrat
only, who spends his life in luxurious indolence among his hereditary
trees, but the innumerable classes who are maintained by his rents and
fed by his expenditure—the numerous creditors who draw large parts of
his rents through their mortgages, and live in affluence in distant
towns upon the produce of his land—the farmers, who subsist in
comparative comfort on the industry which they exert on his
estates—the tradesmen and artisans, who are fed by his expenditure or
the wants of his tenantry—all would suffer alike by such a change of
prices as should seriously affect the industry of the cultivators.
Every shopkeeper knows how much he is dependent on the expenditure of
those who directly or indirectly are maintained by the land, and what
liberal purchasers landlords are, compared to those who subsist by
manufactures; and it is probable that the first and greatest sufferers
by the repeal of the Corn Laws would be many of those very persons
whose blind cry for Reform had rendered it unavoidable.

“Now, the discouragement of British agriculture consequent on a
free-trade in corn would be _permanent_, although the benefit to the
inhabitants of towns could only be temporary. After the destruction of
a large portion of British agriculture had been effected, by the
immense inundation of foreign grain, prices would rise again to their
former level, because the monopoly would then be vested in the hands
of the foreign growers; and the bulky nature of grain renders it
_physically_ impossible to introduce an _unlimited_ supply of that
article by sea transport. But the condition of British agriculture
would not be materially benefited by the change; because prices would
rise _solely_ in consequence of the British grower being, for the most
part, driven out of the field; and could be maintained at a high level
only by his being _kept_ from an extensive competition with the
foreign cultivator. Should the British farmers, recovering from their
consternation, recommence the active agriculture which at present
maintains our vast and increasing population, the consequence would
be, that prices would immediately fall to such a degree, as speedily
to reduce them to their natural and unavoidable state of inferiority
to the farmers of the Continent.

“In considering this subject, there are two important circumstances to
be kept in view, proved abundantly by experience, but which have not
hitherto met with the general attention which they deserve.

“The first of these is, that, in agriculture—differing in this respect
from manufactures—the introduction of machinery, or the division of
labour, can effect _no reduction whatever_ in the price of its
produce, or the facility of its production; and perhaps the best mode
of cultivation yet known is that which is carried on by the greatest
possible application of human labour, in the form of spade
cultivation. The proof of this is decisive. Great Britain, with the
aid of the steam-engine, can undersell the weavers of Hindostan with
muslins manufactured out of cotton grown on the banks of the Ganges;
but it is undersold in its own markets by the wheat-grower on the
banks of the Vistula, or in the basin of the Mississippi. It is in
vain, therefore, for a state like England, burdened with high prices
and an excessive taxation—the natural consequence of commercial
opulence—to hope that its industry can, in agriculture as in
manufactures, withstand the competition of the foreign grower.
Machinery, skill, and capital can easily counteract high prices in all
other articles of human consumption: in agriculture, they can produce
no such effect. This is a law of nature which will subsist to the end
of the world.

“The second is, that a comparatively small importation of grain
produces a prodigious effect on the prices at which it is sold. The
importation of a tenth part of the annual consumption does not, it is
calculated, lower prices a tenth, but _a half_—and so on with the
importation of smaller quantities. This has always been observed, and
is universally acknowledged by political economists. Although,
therefore, the greatest possible importation of foreign grain must
always be a part only of that required for the consumption of the
whole people, yet still the effect upon the current rate of prices
would be most disastrous. The greatest importation ever known was in
1801, when it amounted, in consequence of the scarcity, to an
_eighteenth_ part of the annual consumption; but the free introduction
of much less than that quantity would reduce the price of wheat in the
first instance, in an ordinary year, to 45s. the quarter.

“The repeal of the Corn Laws, therefore, is calculated to inflict a
_permanent_ wound on the agricultural resources of the empire, and
permanently injure all the numerous classes who depend on that branch
of industry, and confer only a _temporary_ benefit, by the reduction
of prices, on the manufacturing labourers. The benefit is temporary,
and mixed up, even at first, with a most bitter portion of alloy; the
evil lasting, unmitigated by any benefit whatever.”

We are now in the course of enduring that precise phase of suffering,
arising from the repeal of the Corn Laws, which was predicted by Mr
Alison more than eighteen years ago; and it is solely from the extent of
that suffering that we are inclined to form a better augury for the
future than we could have ventured to have done in the course of the
bygone year. Three months have not passed since, at the opening of
Parliament, the Whig Ministry with unparalleled audacity ventured to
congratulate the country on its general prosperous condition! Themselves
indeed they might congratulate, that, by means of an income and property
tax, imposed under false pretences by a former Premier, the public
revenue was still sufficient to meet its ordinary engagements; but what
other ground of congratulation there was, no host of witnesses could
tell. Could they venture to congratulate the country _now_ on the state
of the manufacturing districts? Has this little interval of three
months, at a time of universal peace and unparalleled cheapness,
sufficed to change universal prosperity into widespread and acknowledged
depression? Not so. The depression had begun long before—it commenced so
soon as falling prices warned the agricultural consumers of the fate
which was in store for them; and if Ministers did not know this, they
are utterly unfit to retain their places longer. The continuance of that
depression can be only measured by the existence of the Free-trade
system. If that is allowed to go on, and if there be indeed, as is now
the common cant of the Liberal journalists, no possibility of retracing
our steps, the next move will be one of plunder. No foreign trade can
compensate for the tithe of the loss sustained by the depreciation of
property at home. That cheapness which means nothing else than
curtailment of individual profits, from the highest to the lowest,
cannot possibly coexist with expensive government and enormous taxation.
The public creditor will be marked for the next blow; and his situation
is the more precarious from the peculiar monetary history of the
country, and the first important measure—pity also that it had not been
the last!—which Sir Robert Peel was instrumental in carrying through the
House of Commons.

We are not only hopeful but sanguine as to the power of Great Britain in
extricating herself from a difficulty, not transient as before, but
settled in its character, because we believe that the downfal of a
wretched, presuming, and ignorant faction cannot be much longer delayed.
We have been cursed, for many years back, by the predominance of a race
of quacks, impostors, sham economists, and political adventurers, who,
through favour of the Reform Bill, have forced their way into
Parliament, after having failed in the ordinary occupations of trade,
and have succeeded in palming their crude and pestilential doctrines
upon Ministers too occupied with individual ambition to care much for
the public welfare. Does any one believe that such men have any interest
in maintaining the public credit, or that they would not, did an
opportunity occur, attempt to defraud the creditor, as they have already
succeeded in diminishing the means of the debtor? Surely a thoughtful
review of the political events which have occurred within the last five
years is enough to remove any lingering credulity on this point. We do
not ask any one to adopt our views, or to accept our construction. Let
him deliberately reflect upon the language of these men in 1845, when
the political and commercial fever was at its height—when private
individuals were persuaded that they might rear fortunes without the
drudgery of industry, and when statesmen were preparing to recommend the
same false principle for the general guidance of the nation. How the
upstart economists swaggered, strutted, and cackled then! Not a whit
less incompetent and treacherous, as guides in their own path, than were
the mushroom clerks and pimpled adventurers of the Stock Exchanges in
another, they stood forth like so many political John Laws, proclaiming
that unbounded wealth, increased demand for labour, and endless influx
of capital would be the immediate result of their magnificent
free-trading schemes. They had figures and blue-books, returns,
calculations and balance-sheets, painfully concocted by plodding
theorists, ready at hand to back up their asseverations, and to satisfy
the doubts of the most sceptical. This is peculiarly an age in which men
are befooled by figures. A century ago, it was enough that a statement
should pass from writing into print, and be included in the columns of a
journal, in order to secure its currency as a point of popular belief.
The increase of journalism has in some respects remedied this, most men
being now alive to the fact that typography possesses no peculiar
immunity from falsehood. But figures are—or at least were a few years
ago—untainted in their reputation. Few people were cautious enough to
resist a tempting calculation. It never entered into their heads to
suppose that there lay gross error, radical fallacy, and often
deliberate fraud, in the imposing array of cyphers which were
ostentatiously paraded for their inspection. If half-a-dozen
unscrupulous swindlers determined to start a railway, nothing more was
required to secure a rush for the scrip, than a summary of phantom
traffic, exhibiting a clear return of some fifteen or twenty per cent
after deduction of the working expenses. We all know what has been the
result of that widespread infatuation. In precisely the same manner did
the economists concoct their accounts, when they issued their Free-trade
prospectus. Less honest, or perhaps more daringly fraudulent than the
railway projectors, they did not propose to grant any compensation for
the land at all, but their traffic tables were undoubtedly an
arithmetical _chef-d’œuvre_! Two millions per week of clear gain was
about the smallest estimate; and to this result various persons, whose
previous biography, now that they have emerged as public characters,
might be interesting, pledged their valuable reputations!

That they imposed upon the leaders of party, as well as upon a large
section of the nation, is no matter of marvel. Statesmen are not exempt
from folly, imprudence, or delusion, any more than private persons. One
may be cold, selfish, and greedy; another rash, unscrupulous, and
obstinate; but, as there are few fish which will not take a bait, so
there seem to be few modern statesmen proof against the temptation of
altering their policy, if, by doing so, they believe that they can
secure possession of an unlimited lease of power. In the present case
the bait was dexterously spun between the two rivals, and the anxiety of
both to secure it was so great, that neither took the precaution of
examining curiously into the nature of its actual texture.

There is hardly a man in the country, from the peer to the artisan, who
is not asking himself at this moment, what he has gained by Free-trade.
So far as the agricultural interest is concerned, there is no dubiety on
the point. The landlord is dunned for reduction of rent, is
discontinuing his improvements, reducing his establishment, and setting
his house in order for an altered style of living. The tenant is
wellnigh ruined, furious that he has been betrayed, economising labour
as he best can, or seriously meditating emigration. The labourer finds
his wages reduced, his small comforts curtailed or abolished, work
scarce, and the workhouse at no great distance. Let them all take
comfort. According to our hopeful economists, this is a mere “transition
state of suffering.” What the next state is to be, no prophet of them
all can foretell. Meantime certain Solons advocate a wholesale
emigration—rather a strange panacea for a nation about to be so
prosperous!

Go to the towns or the manufacturing districts, and ask how they are
prospering. The cotton trade is threatening to shut up. The travellers
are returning disconsolate to their employers with the news that orders
are every day becoming more scarce, and money payments even scarcer.
There is no joy or exultation now in Leeds or Bradford. The journeymen
operatives are combining against the slop system. The _Morning
Chronicle_ harrows up the feelings of its readers, by tearful tales of
the misery and destitution which prevails throughout the large towns of
the empire, and no human being can deny the truth of the appalling
statements. Scottish philanthropists, on their midnight visits to the
wynds of Edinburgh, are struck with amazement at the squalor and vice
which they encounter, and not less with the shoals of destitute
creatures who are hurrying, with perverse infatuation, from the free
open country to the fated atmosphere of a loathsome city garret. They
want to check the stream, and drive the current back again. But whither?
In the country there is no work for these people. Machinery has forced
the hand-loom from the villages; Free Trade is reducing the wages of the
spade to nothing. From the Western Highlands, and from Ireland, those
who have money enough left to secure a passage on ship-board are
emigrating by thousands—it is, we are told by a correspondent, the
briskest trade in Liverpool. Those who have no money left are trooping
to the towns, with the prospect before them of a fate which might rend
the heart of the most callous. Who would wish to be a statesman, if for
the consequences of all his deeds he must be held accountable hereafter?

Ask the master-manufacturers themselves how they are getting on, now
that they have succeeded in their darling scheme of securing cheap food,
and paralysing the home trade? You may ask if you will, but you will
hardly obtain an answer, save through the medium of the trade circulars,
all filled with dismal forebodings. Were another Cobden testimonial to
be proposed just now, the subscriptions would scarcely purchase many
shares in the most depreciated of the lines.

Ask the gentlemen of the railway interest, what cause is in operation to
crush down their traffic and annihilate their dividends? They will tell
you to a man that it is the universal agricultural depression. Ask the
iron-masters how they are thriving? At this moment they are trembling
for the stability of their colossal fortunes.

It is utterly impossible that this state of matters can continue much
longer. If we do not reverse our mad and desperate policy—and that
soon—the pressure of taxation, still retaining its former money-level,
whilst the production which contributes to it is depreciated by a half,
will become so unendurable, that any remedy, however desperate, will
find numerous advocates; and amongst the foremost and most clamorous of
these will be the leading sham economists. The stateliest ship, when the
water is gaining upon her hold, must perforce part with her guns—the
parallel case is being practically exhibited just now, by the efforts of
the financial reformers to get rid of our warlike establishments. If we
cannot part with our defences, we must do without something else. There
is in the mean time a talk of reducing salaries, paring down judicial
emoluments, and retrenching diplomatic expenses. Lord John Russell, with
no very good grace, has been forced to refer these matters to a
committee, for the evident purpose of securing the longest possible
period of delay. But the tax-gatherer will not be idle in his function,
and still the clamour will increase. Superfluities will go first—but no
surrender of superfluities will meet the exigency. Men, when pressed to
the last extremity, become reckless of their personal obligations; and
we have already heard from various quarters intimations that, if the
land is to be permanently depreciated, the creditor who has lent his
money on the security of that land must be prepared to share the burden
of the loss with the owner. There is a smack of wild justice in this,
not at all unpalatable to the taste of a burdened debtor. Sir Robert
Peel’s favourite question, “What is a pound?” will be argued afresh,
after a fashion little likely to secure the approval of the original
propounder of the query. We shall be told, truly enough, that the pound
is the mere conventional representation of a certain amount of produce;
and a very large body of men will begin to talk of paying off their
debts, both private and public, upon a principle which, if once adopted,
would destroy the whole credit of the country. Three years ago, Mr
Doubleday demonstrated that, if the repeal of the Corn Laws should have
the effect of reducing the price of wheat on the average to 4s. or 4s.
6d. per bushel, only two courses are left—either to repeal the taxes
down to five-and-twenty millions at most; or to alter the currency law
of 1819, and reduce the value of money to half the present value. We
have now almost touched the mark.

All this was clearly foreseen and foreshadowed by Mr Alison, in his
memorable paper of 1831; and we beg of our readers to peruse with
attention the following extract, as of primary importance at the present
juncture of affairs:—

“Such a change of prices might be innocuous, if individuals and the
public could begin on a new basis, and there were no subsisting _money
engagements_, which must be provided for at a reduced rate of incomes.
But how is such a state of things to go on, when individuals and the
State are under so many engagements, which cannot be averted without
private or public bankruptcy? This is the question which, in a
complicated state of society such as we live in, where industry is so
dependent on credit, is the vital one to every interest.

“There is hardly an individual possessed of property in the country
who is not immediately or ultimately involved in money engagements.
The landlords are notoriously and proverbially drowned in debt, and it
is calculated that _two-thirds_ of the produce of the soil finds its
way ultimately into the pocket of the public or the private creditor.
Farmers are all more or less involved in engagements either to their
landlords or to the banks who have advanced their money; merchants and
manufacturers have their bills or cash-accounts standing against them,
which must be provided for, whatever ensues with regard to the prices
of the articles in which they deal; and private individuals, even of
wealthy fortunes, have provisions to their wives, sisters, brothers,
or children, which must be made up to a certain money amount, if they
would avert the evils of bankruptcy. Now, if the views of the
Reformers are well founded, and a great reduction is effected in the
price of grain, and consequently in the money-income of every man in
the kingdom, through the free trade in corn, how are these
undiminished money-obligations to be made good out of the diminished
pecuniary resources of the debtors in them? Mr Baring has estimated
that the change in the value of money, consequent on the resumption of
cash-payments, altered prices about 25 per cent; and everybody knows
what widespread, still existing, and irremediable private distress
_that_ change produced. What, then, may be anticipated from the far
greater change which is contemplated as likely to arise from a
free-trade in grain?

“But, serious as these evils are, they are nothing in comparison with
the dreadful consequences which would result to _public credit_ from
the change, and the widespread desolation which must follow a serious
blow to the national faith.

“It is well known with what difficulty the payment of the annual
charge of the National Debt is provided for, even under the present
scale of prices; and how much those difficulties were increased by the
change of prices, and the general diminution of incomes, consequent on
the resumption of cash-payments. Indeed, such was the effect of that
change that, had it not been counterbalanced by a very great increase,
both of our agricultural and manufacturing produce at the same time,
it would have rendered the maintenance of faith with the public
creditor impossible. Now, if such be the present state of the public
debt, even under the unexampled general prosperity which has pervaded
the empire since the peace, and with all the security to the public
faith which arises from the stable, consistent, and uniform rule of
the British aristocracy, how is the charge of the debt to be provided
for under the diminished national income arising from the much
hoped-for change of prices consequent on the Reform Bill and repeal of
the Corn Laws, and the increased national impatience, arising from the
consciousness of the power to cast off the burden for ever?—Great and
reasonable fear may be felt, whether, under any circumstances, the
maintenance of the national faith inviolate is practicable for any
considerable length of time: no doubt can be entertained that, under a
Reform Parliament, and a free trade in grain, it will be impossible.”

We forbear quoting the picture which our author has drawn of the awful
consequences which must instantly follow on a crash of the national
credit—not because we consider it in any degree overcharged, but because
we are now satisfied that the country is alive to its danger. We are too
well accustomed to the braggadocio of modern journalism to attach much
weight to the expiring vociferations of men who have done their utmost
to lead us into the present dilemma; and who now, finding themselves
powerless to advise, are vainly attempting to keep up a delusion which
the experience of each succeeding week is dissipating with extraordinary
rapidity. The most talented of the Free-trading journals virtually
confess that the experiment has altogether failed. They are not able to
point out one single iota of advantage which has resulted from it,
beyond the purely supposititious one that, for a time, it secured the
tranquillity of Great Britain. This is at best an ignoble argument in
behalf of a bad measure; but we believe it to be utterly without
foundation, inasmuch as there probably never was a great question
agitated in which less interest was evinced by the masses of the nation
than in that of the Corn Laws. But we should be sorry, indeed, to rank
the loyalty of the British people so low, or to suppose that the crown
of these realms rested upon so weak a foundation, as the adoption of
such a view as this must necessarily infer. The journals to which we
allude are by no means unconscious of the loss which we have incurred,
or of the danger in which we presently stand. The insane boast of Mr
Villiers, at the opening of the session, that a depreciation of
ninety-one millions had taken place in the annual produce of British
labour, found no echo in the columns of our more sharp-sighted
contemporaries. They are now attempting to show that this calculation
was an utter mistake; that importations are gradually diminishing; and
that prices must necessarily rise. Most glad should we be if their views
upon this subject were sound; but, unfortunately, stern experience
points to a different result. We complain, and that with perfect
justice, that they will not face the difficulty, and tell us what is to
be done, supposing prices remain as they are. Agricultural quackery has
done its utmost, and has been extinguished by the shout of general
derision. No man in his senses believes that production can be
artificially stimulated, or the earth so manured as to yield double
crops to supply the frightful deficiency in the annual balance-sheet of
the farmer. Both arms of husbandry are shattered. Cattle-feeding has
been made, by Sir Robert Peel’s tariff, as profitless as tillage; and
all countries have been invited, and are availing themselves of the
invitation, to inundate our markets with their produce. Under such a
state of things, what hope is there of recovery—what chance of
manufactures reviving, so long as the best customers for manufactures
are borne down? Are they not borne down? Let us see. The depreciation of
food was stated by Mr Villiers at £91,000,000. The whole land rental of
the United Kingdom is, according to a late statistical authority,
£58,753,615. Let us suppose that rents are reduced by one-third—a
reduction which, considering that mortgages and public burdens still
remain undiminished, will cripple the means of most of the proprietors
in the kingdom—and the rental will fall to about £39,169,000. Still
there will remain a loss of nearly £52,000,000 annually, to be borne by
the tenantry; in other words, low prices will have to that extent
affected their power of purchase. The real case is even stronger than
the hypothetical one, because the farmers, who constitute the larger
consuming body, are at present receiving no such remission of rent. Of
£178,000,000, the estimated amount of British manufactures, we export
£58,000,000, and there remain for home consumption goods to the value of
£120,000,000. Upon the sale of these depends not only the prosperity,
but the existence of the manufacturers; and yet people are astonished
that their wares do not go off as formerly! How, in the name of common
sense, can they be expected to go off, when no margin of profit is left,
in his own trade, to the great consumer? What these reasonable gentlemen
anticipate is this—that the proprietor shall have no surplus from his
rent, or the farmer any remuneration from his toil and capital; and yet
that they shall continue to purchase all articles of manufacture as
before!

We observe that a contemporary journal, which naturally feels rather
sore on the subject of the Corn Laws, has twitted Mr Alison with a
failure of prophecy, in not having allowed for a sufficient lapse
between the passing of the Reform Bill and the notable era when the lion
and the lamb coalesced—when Sir Robert Peel finally became a convert to
the dazzling discoveries of Mr Cobden. Our respected brother seems to
think that Mr Alison must feel disappointed that the march of democracy
has been so slow; that the avatar of Free-trade was so long in coming;
and that our fields were not, several years ago, abandoned by the
disappointed husbandman. For the satisfaction of the kindly critic, we
shall quote the following passage, penned in 1832, immediately after the
passing of the Reform Bill, and then, perhaps, refresh his memory as to
the manner in which the later measure was carried:—

“Dark and disastrous, however, as is the future prospect of the
British empire, we do not think its case hopeless, or that, after
having gone through the degradation, distraction, and suffering which
must follow the destruction of the Constitution, it may not yet
witness in the decline of its days some gleams of sunshine and
prosperity. The laws of nature have now come to aid the cause of
order; its usual suffering will attend the march of revolution;
experience will soon dispel the fumes of democracy; the reign of
Political Unions, of Jacobin Clubs, and tricolor flags, must ere long
come to an end; the suffering, anxiety, and distress consequent on
their despotic rule, the suspension of all confidence, and the ruin of
all credit, must consign them to the dust, amidst the execrations of
their country, if they are not subverted by the ruder shock of civil
warfare and military power. The distress, misery, and stagnation, in
every branch of industry, already consequent on the Reform Bill, have
been so extreme, that they must long ago have led to its overthrow,
not only without the resistance, but with the concurrence, of all the
Reformers who are not revolutionists, had it not been for the delusion
universally spread by the revolutionary journals, that the existing
distress was not owing to Reform, but to the resistance which it had
experienced, and that the danger of revolution, great in the event of
the measure being thrown out, was absolutely nugatory in the event of
its being passed. These two sophisms have alone carried the bill
through the resistance it experienced from the property, education,
and talent of the country, and blinded men’s eyes to the enormous
evils which not only threatened to follow its triumph, but attended
its progress. But these delusions cannot much longer be maintained.
Reform is now victorious: the bill is passed unmutilated and
unimpaired; and its whole consequences _now rest on the heads of its
authors, and its authors alone_. When it is discovered that all the
benefits promised from it are a mere delusion; that stagnation,
distress, and misery have signalised its triumph; that trade does not
revive with the contracted expenditure of the rich, nor confidence
return with the increased audacity of the poor; that the ancient and
kindly relations of life have been torn asunder in the struggle, and
the vehemence of democracy has provided no substitute in their stead;
that interest after interest, class after class, is successively
exposed to the attacks of the revolutionists, and the ancient barrier
which restrained them is removed: the eyes of the nation must be
opened to the gross fraud which has been practised upon it. Then it
will be discovered that the aristocratic interest, and the nomination
boroughs, which supported their influence in the Lower House, were the
real bulwark which protected all the varied interests of the country
from the revolutionary tempest, and that every branch of industry is
less secure, every species of property is less valuable, every
enterprise is more hazardous, every disaster is more irretrievable,
when its surges roll unbroken and unresisted into the legislature.

“It is upon this very circumstance, however, that our chief, and
indeed our only hope of the country is founded. Hitherto the great
body of the middle classes have stood aloof from the contest, or they
have openly joined the reforming party. They were carried away by the
prospect of the importance which they would acquire under the new
Constitution, and did not perceive that it was their own interests
which were defended, their own battle which was fought, their own
existence which was at stake, in the contest maintained by the
Conservative party. Now the case is changed. The old rampart is
demolished, and, unless these middle ranks can create a new one, they
must be speedily themselves destroyed. From the sole of their feet to
the crown of their head, the middle classes of England at present
stand exposed to the revolutionary fire; every shot will now carry
away flesh and blood. Deeply as we deplore the misery and suffering
which the exposure of these unprotected classes to the attacks of
revolution must produce, it is in the intensity of that suffering, in
the poignancy of that distress, that the only chance of ultimate
deliverance is to be found. Periods of suffering are seldom, in the
end, lost to nations, any more than to individuals; and it is years of
anguish that expiate the sin, and tame the passions, of days of riot
and licentiousness.

“The Constitution, indeed, is destroyed, but the men whom the
Constitution formed are not destroyed. The institutions which
protected all the classes of the state, the permanent interests which
coerced the feverish throes of democracy, the conservative weight
which steadied all the movements of the people, are at an end; the
peril arising from this sudden removal of the pressure which hitherto
regulated all the movements of the machine is extreme, but the case is
not utterly hopeless. It is impossible at once to change the habits of
many hundred years’ growth; it is difficult in a few years to root out
the affections and interests which have sprung from centuries of
obligation; it is not in a single generation that the virtues and
happiness, fostered by ages of prosperity, are to be destroyed. As
long as the British character remains unchanged; as long as religion
and moral virtue sway the feelings of the majority of the people; as
long as tranquil industry forms the employment of her inhabitants, and
domestic enjoyments constitute the reward of their exertion,—the cause
of order and civilisation is not hopeless. Revolutions, it is true,
are always effected by reckless and desperate minorities in opposition
to opulent and indolent majorities; but it is the ennobling effect of
civil liberty to nourish a spirit of resistance to oppression, which
outstrips all the calculations of those who ground their views upon
what has occurred in despotic monarchies.”

And so it happened. The reaction throughout the country was complete.
The Conservative party rallied; and rallied so effectively, that, with
many converts in its ranks, and the rising youth of the new generation
to back it, a great majority in the House of Commons was secured, and
the leadership intrusted to the hands of one who, in despite of previous
lapses, appeared at that time to have earned the distinction by his
zeal, and who gained it by the force of his protestations. Had the
leader been true to the cause which he then professed, we should have
been spared the ungracious duty of commenting upon a solemn treachery,
to which history affords no parallel, and the memory of which will live
long after the grave has closed above the head of the principal
delinquent. How was it possible that such an event could fail again, for
a time, to disunite a party, formed out of the ruins of the old one by a
rapid and indiscriminate conscription? That dependence and faith which
high and chivalrous spirits are so ready to place in one beneath whose
colours they have fought—the ready trustingness of youth—the great
prestige which surrounds the name of a veteran and successful
statesman—the belief in his superior sagacity—the recollection of
blandishments and flattery, so prized by the young when proceeding from
the lips of honoured age,—all these things combined to break up the
Conservative party, and to place the reins of government once more in
the hands of the eager Whigs. Perhaps it is better so. There is no risk
now of a second betrayal, whatever may be the future fortunes of the
Country Party; and on the head of him who caused the social change let
the whole consequences rest. England’s political annals have at least
gained one character more by the act. The future historian who shall
chronicle the transactions of the last five years, whatever be his creed
or his politics, will speak with veneration and honour of LORD GEORGE
BENTINCK, for whose early fate more honest tears were shed, than have
often been paid as a tribute to the patriot who has fallen in battle,
the defender of his country’s cause.

We have not left ourselves much room to glance at the three interesting
papers in this volume, on the subject of the two French Revolutions of
1830 and 1848. They will be read with profound attention by thousands
who may have passed them over cursorily in their anonymous original
form; because Mr Alison’s profound and intimate knowledge of the working
of French diplomacy, of the turbulent and dangerous element which lies,
like molten lava, beneath the surface of French society, and of the
secret causes of those outrages which, from time to time, have shaken
that unhappy country, must needs give an additional assurance of their
value. It is curious to observe how entirely the speculations of the
author, as to the consequences which might arise from the first of those
sudden revolutions, are borne out by the marvellous issue of the second.
The falsity of the system which made the stability of a government and
the existence of a dynasty mainly depend upon the doubtful adherence,
and still more doubtful valour, of a civic National Guard, was clearly
pointed out and exposed at the time when the Liberal press of England
was loud in its approbation of the citizen soldiers who had violated
their oaths, and the citizen king, who, more fortunate than his
worthless father, had succeeded in supplanting his kinsman and rightful
sovereign.

“Of the numerous delusions,” wrote Mr Alison in 1831, “which have
overspread the world in such profusion during the last nine months,
there is none so extraordinary and so dangerous as the opinion
incessantly inculcated by the revolutionary press, that the noblest
virtue in regular soldiers is to prove themselves traitors to their
oaths; and that a _national guard_ is the only safe and constitutional
force to which arms can be intrusted. The troops of the line, whose
revolt decided the three days in July in favour of the revolutionary
party, have been the subject of the most extravagant eulogium from the
Liberal press throughout Europe; and even in this country, the
Government journals have not hesitated to condemn, in no measured
terms, the Royal Guard, merely because they adhered, amidst a nation’s
treason, to their honour and their oaths.

“Hitherto it has been held the first duty of soldiers to adhere, with
implicit devotion, to that _fidelity_ which is the foundation of
military duties. Treason to his colours has been considered as foul a
blot on the soldier’s scutcheon as cowardice in the field. Even in the
most republican states, this principle of military subordination has
been felt to be the vital principle of national strength. It was
during the rigorous days of Roman discipline, that their legions
conquered the world; and the decline of the empire began at the time
that the Prætorian Guards veered with the mutable populace, and sold
the empire for a gratuity to themselves. Albeit placed in power by the
insurrection of the people, no men knew better than the French
Republican leaders that their salvation depended on crushing the
military insubordination to which they had owed their elevation. When
the Parisian levies began to evince the mutinous spirit in the camp at
St Menehould in Champagne, which they had imbibed during the license
of the capital, Dumourier drew them up in the centre of his
intrenchments, and, showing them a powerful line of cavalry in front,
with their sabres drawn, ready to charge, and a stern array of
artillery and cannoneers in rear, with their matches in their hands,
soon convinced the most licentious that the boasted independence of
the soldier must yield to the dangers of actual warfare. ‘The armed
force,’ said Carnot, ‘is essentially obedient;’ and in all his
commands, that great man incessantly inculcated upon his soldiers the
absolute necessity of implicit submission to the power which employed
them. When the recreant Constable de Bourbon, at the head of a
victorious squadron of Spanish cavalry, approached the spot where the
rearguard, under the Chevalier Bayard, was covering the retreat of the
French army in the valley of Aosta, he found him seated, mortally
wounded, under a tree, with his eyes fixed on the cross which formed
the hilt of his sword. Bourbon began to express pity for his fate.
‘Pity not me,’ said the high-minded Chevalier; ‘pity those who fight
against their king, their country, and their oath!’

“These generous feelings, common alike to republican antiquity and
modern chivalry, have disappeared during the fumes of the French
Revolution. The soldier who is now honoured is not he who keeps, but
he who violates his oath; the rewards of valour are showered, not upon
those who defend, but on those who overturn the government; the
incense of popular applause is offered, not at the altar of fidelity,
but at that of treason. Honours, rewards, promotion, and adulation,
have been lavished on the troops of the line, who overthrew the
government of Charles X. in July last; while the Royal Guard, who
adhered to the fortune of the fallen monarch with exemplary fidelity,
have been reduced to _beg their bread_ from the bounty of strangers in
a foreign land. A subscription has recently been opened in London for
the most destitute of these defenders of royalty; but the Government
journals have stigmatised, as ‘highly dangerous,’ any indication of
sympathy with their fidelity or their misfortunes.

“If these ancient ideas of honour, however, are to be exploded, they
have at least gone out of fashion in good company. The National Guard
who took up arms to overthrow the throne, have not been long of
destroying the altar. During the revolt of February 1831, _the Cross_,
the emblem of salvation, was taken down from all the steeples in Paris
by the citizen soldiers, and the image of our Saviour effaced, by
their orders, from every church within its bounds! The two principles
stand and fall together. The Chevalier ‘without fear and without
reproach’ died in obedience to his oath, with his eyes fixed on the
Cross; the National Guard lived in triumph, while their comrades bore
down the venerated emblem from the towers of Notre Dame.”

Singular was the retribution which awaited France. The “Ulysses” of
Europe, as he has been styled—the old, crafty, insincere, penurious, yet
plausible and half-sagacious man, sate in apparent peace upon his throne
for wellnigh eighteen years, negotiating alliances, maintaining a fair
outward character, pandering to popularity, identifying himself with the
_bourgeoisie_, and identifying his sons with the army—and all this to
fall at last before the worst planned and most poorly contrived
insurrection which was ever attempted in the streets of a European
capital. Surrounded by his citizens, the citizen king went down. We know
now, from the revelations of De la Hodde and others, what was the true
nature and commencement of that beggarly conspiracy. We know that a few
hundred suspected and ill-organised Socialists, along with a handful of
newspaper editors, not two of whom possessed sufficient personal courage
to lay hand on a loaded musket, contrived to overawe Paris, to bully the
redoubted National Guard, and to send poor old Ulysses again upon his
travels, without much chance of finding a second imperial Ithaca. Farce
and tragedy are here so closely interwoven that it is wellnigh
impossible to separate their texture. The dethronement of such a king
may be a grand European disaster, but it militates nothing against the
principle or the sanctity of royalty. It was but a simple Presidency
gone a-begging. The King of the Bourse or the Railway Monarch had about
them nearly as much of that divinity which should surround the royal
character as Louis Philippe, the chosen of the shopkeepers, and the
veteran dabbler in the funds. No true greatness, no high nobility of
soul, elevated him to the throne of France—ignoble beyond all precedent
was the manner in which he was compelled to leave it. The retreat of
Charles X. was a triumph compared with his panic-stricken and unfollowed
flight.

The following are Mr Alison’s remarks upon the last of these
Revolutions. The reader will not fail to observe the extreme similarity
between the two astounding Revolutions, and the precise nature of the
cause which enabled both of them to be successfully carried through by
an otherwise contemptible rabble.

“Who is answerable for this calamitous Revolution, which has thus
arrested the internal prosperity of France, involved its finances in
apparently hopeless embarrassment, thrown back for probably half a
century the progress of real freedom in that country, and perhaps
consigned it to a series of internal convulsions, and Europe to the
horrors of general war for a very long period? We answer without
hesitation, that the responsibility rests with two parties, and two
parties only—the King and the National Guard.

“The King is most of all to blame, for having engaged in a conflict,
and, when victory was within his grasp, allowing it to slip from his
hands from want of resolution at the decisive moment. It is too soon
after these great and astonishing events to be able to form a decided
opinion on the whole details connected with them; but the concurring
statements from all parties go to prove that on the _first_ day the
troops of the line were perfectly steady; and history will record that
the heroic firmness of the Municipal Guard has rivalled all that is
most honourable in French history. The military force was immense; not
less than eighty thousand men, backed by strong forts, and amply
provided with all the muniments of war. Their success on the first day
was unbroken; they had carried above a hundred barricades, and were in
possession of all the military positions of the capital. But at this
moment the indecision of the King ruined everything. Age seems to have
extinguished the vigour for which he was once so celebrated. He shrank
from a contest with the insurgents, paralysed the troops by orders not
to fire on the people, and openly receded before the insurgent
populace, by abandoning Guizot and the firm policy which he himself
had adopted, and striving to conciliate revolution by the _mezzo
termini_ of Count Molé, and a more liberal cabinet. It is with retreat
in the presence of an insurrection, as in the case of an invading
army; the first move towards the rear is a certain step to ruin. The
moment it was seen that the King was giving way, all was paralysed,
because all foresaw to which side the victory would incline. The
soldiers threw away their muskets, the officers broke their swords,
and the vast array, equal to the army which fought at Austerlitz, was
dissolved like a rope of sand. Louis Philippe fell without either the
intrepidity of the royal martyr in 1793, or the dignity of the elder
house of Bourbon in 1830; and if it be true, as is generally said,
that the Queen urged the King to mount on horseback and die as ‘became
a King’ in front of the Tuileries, and he declined, preferring to
escape in disguise to this country, history must record, with shame,
that royalty perished in France without the virtues it was entitled to
expect in the meanest of its supporters.

“The second cause which appears to have occasioned the overthrow of
the monarchy in France, is the general, it may be said universal,
defection of the National Guard. It had been openly announced that
20,000 of that body were to line the Champs Elysées _in their uniform_
on occasion of the banquet; it was perfectly known that that banquet
was a mere pretext for getting the forces of this Revolution together;
and that the intention of the conspirators was to march in a body to
the Tuileries after it was over, and compel the King to accede to
their demands. When they were called out in the afternoon, they
declined to act against the people, and by their treachery occasioned
the defection of the troops of the line, and rendered farther
resistance hopeless. They expected, by this declaration against the
King of their choice, the monarch of the barricades, to secure a
larger share in the government for themselves. They went to the
Chamber of Deputies, intending to put up the Duchess of Orleans as
Regent, and the Count of Paris as King, and to procure a large measure
of reform for the constitution. What was the result? Why, that they
were speedily supplanted by the rabble who followed in their
footsteps, and who, deriding the eloquence of Odillon Barrot, and
insensible to the heroism of the Duchess of Orleans, by force and
violence expelled the majority of the deputies from their seats,
seized on the President’s chair, and, amidst an unparalleled scene of
riot and confusion, subverted the Orleans dynasty, proclaimed a
Republic, and adjourned to the Hotel de Ville to name a Provisional
Government!...

“Here, then, is the whole affair clearly revealed. It was the timidity
of Government, and the defection of the National Guard, which ruined
everything,—which paralysed the troops of the line, encouraged the
insurgents, left the brave Municipal Guards to their fate, and caused
the surrender of the Tuileries. And what has been the result of this
shameful treachery on the part of the sworn defenders of order—this
‘_civic_’ prætorian guard of France? Nothing but this, that they have
destroyed the monarchy, ruined industry, banished capital, rendered
freedom hopeless, and made bankrupt the State! Such are the effects of
armed men forgetting the first of social duties, that of fidelity to
their oaths.”

Of the other papers contained in this volume, that on the subject of
“the British Peerage,” written at a time when certain worthy fellows out
of doors seemed to be determined that crown, mitre, and coronet should
go together into one blazing bonfire, similar to that which lately
received the state chair of Louis Philippe—and when certain peers within
testified their respect for the dignity and privileges of their order,
by doing their best to have it swamped by new creations—will especially
challenge notice as a stately, dignified, and elaborate composition.
Other essays, such as those on Crime and Transportation, Ireland, the
Navigation Laws, and the Commercial Crisis of 1837, evince the care and
attention which Mr Alison has bestowed on the leading topics of economy
and government with which modern statesmen are inevitably compelled to
grapple. Of their intrinsic merit we shall say nothing. They have often
been cited as the ablest expositions of the peculiar views which they
advocate, and all of them bear the impress of a mind earnest in its
convictions, and thoroughly practical in its tendency. Mr Alison does
not, like too many writers of the day, content himself with finding out
what is faulty, or defective, or radically vicious in any branch of our
social economy—he indulges in no vague and pointless declamation; but
while he lays bare the wound, distinctly and emphatically inculcates the
proper remedy. Many persons there are, of course, who will not subscribe
to his doctrines, but we believe there are very few who will question
the sincerity or deny the philanthropy of his views. And when it is
considered that the three massive volumes, of which this is the first,
were composed at intervals of short respite from the toil of an
engrossing profession, and form but a small portion of the literary
labours of the author, it may be questionable which is most to be
wondered at—the largeness of his information, or the unwearied energy of
his mind.

These certainly are not the columns in which this work of Mr Alison can
be discussed with absolute impartiality, nor is the writer of this
article free from a pardonable bias. Where affection, veneration, and
gratitude for many wholesome lessons, conveyed with a kindliness which
has made those lessons still more valuable, are warm at the heart,
criticism is impossible; and it would be absurd and false to feign that
we approach this book with any idea of fulfilling the critical function.
Yet thus much may we be allowed to say, that for integrity of purpose,
honesty of design, clear and unvarying adherence to principles,
laboriously sought for and conscientiously adopted—for the virtue and
total absence of selfishness which distinguish the patriot, and for the
grace and accomplishment which adorn the scholar and the gentleman, it
would be difficult to find within the four seas that encircle Britain a
superior to the author of these Essays, and of the famous History of
Europe.

OVID’S SPRING-TIME
FROM THE TRISTIA.

For once the zephyrs have removed the cold:
One year is over, and a new begun.
So short a winter, I am daily told,
Never yet yielded to this northern sun.
I see the children skipping o’er the green,
Plucking the faint unodorous violet,
A gentle stranger, rarely ever seen.
With other flowers the mead is sparsely set—
Brown birds are twittering with the joy of spring:
The universal swallow, ne’er at rest,
Aye chirping, glances past on purple wing,
And builds beneath the humble eaves her nest.
The plant, which yester-year the share o’erthrew,
Looks up again from out the opening mould;
And the poor vines, though here but weak and few,
Some scantling buds, like ill-set gems, unfold.
W. E. A.

=Dies Boreales.=

No. VII.

CHRISTOPHER UNDER CANVASS.

_Camp at Cladich._

SCENE—_The Wren’s Nest._ TIME—_Three o’clock_ A.M.

NORTH—TALBOYS.

NORTH.

Perturbed Spirit! why won’t you rest? What brings thee here?

TALBOYS.

Seward snores.

NORTH.

Why select Seward?

TALBOYS.

I do not select him—he selects himself—singles himself out from the
whole host; so that you hear his Snore loud over that of the Camp—say
rather his Snore alone—like Lablache singing a Solo in a chorus.

NORTH.

It must be Buller.

TALBOYS.

Buller began it——

NORTH.

List! How harmonious in the hush the blended Snore of Camp and Village!
How tuned to unison—as if by pitch-pipe—with the dreamy din of our
lapsing friend here, who by and by will awake into a positive Waterfall.

TALBOYS.

The Snore of either army stilly sounds. At this distance, the Snore
disposes to sleep. Seward must have awakened himself—there goes Buller——

NORTH.

Where?

TALBOYS.

Shriller than Seward—quite a childish treble—liker the Snore of a
female—

NORTH.

Females never snore.

TALBOYS.

How do you know? I won’t answer for some of them. Lionesses do—not
perhaps in their wild state—but in Zoological Gardens.

NORTH.

Not quite so loud, Chanticleer—you will disturb my people.

TALBOYS.

Disturb your people! Why, he has already stirred up the Solar System.

“The Cock that is the Trumpet of the Morn,
Doth, with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat,
Awake the God of Day.”

Taking the distance of the Earth from the Sun, in round numbers, at
Ninety-Five Millions of Miles, pretty well for a bird probably weighing
some six pounds not merely to make himself heard by the God of Day, but
by one single crow to startle Dan Phœbus from his sleep, and force him
_nolens volens_ to show his shining morning face at Cladich.

NORTH.

Out of Science, we seldom think of the vastness of the System of the
Universe. Our hearts and imaginations diminish it for the delight of
love. In our usual moods we are all Children with respect to Nature; and
gather up Stars as if they were flowers of the field—to form a coronet
for Neæra’s hair.

TALBOYS.

What ailed poor dear Doctor Beattie at Cocks in general? I never could
understand the Curse.

“Proud harbinger of Day,
Who scarest my visions with thy clarion shrill,
Fell Chanticleer! who oft hath reft away
My fancied good, and brought substantial ill!
Oh, to thy cursed scream discordant still
Let Harmony aye shut her gentle ear;
Thy boastful mirth let jealous rivals spill,
Insult thy crest, and glossy pinions tear,
And ever in thy dreams the ruthless fox appear.”

You Poets, in your own persons, are a savage set.

NORTH.

I am not a Poet, sir; nor will I allow any man with impunity to call me
so.

TALBOYS.

But Doctor Beattie was, and a Professor of Moral Philosophy to boot, at
Aberdeen or St Andrews, or some other one of our ancient
Universities—for every stone-and-lime building in Scotland is ancient;
and. goodness me! hear him cursing cocks, and dooming the whole Gallic
race to every variety of cruel and ignominious deaths, in revenge for
having been disturbed from his morning dreams by a Gentleman with Comb
and Wattles crowing on his own Dunghill, in red jacket, speckled
waistcoat, and grey breeks, the admiration of Earochs and How-Towdies.

NORTH.

Doctor Beattie was a true Poet—and had an eye and an ear for Nature. Yet
now and then he shut both—

“Hence the scared owl on pinions grey
_Breaks from the rustling boughs_;
And down the lone vale sails away
To more profound repose.”

I have seen that Stanza quoted many thousand times as exquisite. It is
criminal. An owl was never heard, scared or unscared, to “break from the
rustling boughs.” Silently as a leaf he leaves his perch; you hear no
rustle, for he makes none—any more than a ghost.

TALBOYS.

Nor are the other lines good—for they present the image of a long
rectilinear flight, which that of an owl in no circumstances is; and, in
a fright, he would take the first blind shelter.

NORTH.

Poets seldom err so—yet I remember a mistake of Coleridge’s about that
commonest of all birds, the Rook.

“My gentle-hearted Charles! when the last Rook
Bent its straight path along the dusky air
Homewards, I blest it! deeming its black wing
(Now a dim speck, now vanishing in light)
Had crossed the mighty orb’s dilated glory,
When thou stood’st gazing; or, when all was still,
_Flew creaking o’er thy head_; and had a charm
For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom
No sound is dissonant which tells of life!”

TALBOYS.

There is much silliness in the Sibylline Leaves. For Charles read
Charlotte. ’Tis more like Love than Friendship—effeminate exceedingly;
and, “no sound is dissonant which tells of life,” reminds one of the
Sunday Jackasses on Blackheath.

NORTH.

“‘_Flew creaking._’ Some months after I had written this line,” says
Coleridge in a note, “it gave me pleasure to find that Bartram had
observed the same circumstance of the Savanna Crane. ‘When these birds
move their wings in flight, their strokes are slow, moderate, and
regular; and even when at a considerable distance, or high above us, we
plainly hear the quill-feathers; their shafts and webs, upon one
another, creak as _the joints or working of a vessel in a tempestuous
sea_.’” That a Rook may fly “creaking” when moulting, or otherwise out
of feather, I shall not take upon me to deny; but in ordinary condition,
he does not fly “creaking.” Coleridge was wont, in his younger days, to
mistake exceptions for general rules. In such a case as this, a moment’s
reflection would have sufficed to tell him that there could not have
been “creaking” without let or hindrance to flight—and that the flight
of a rook is easy and equable—“The blackening train o’ craws to their
repose.” What creaking must have been there! But Burns never heard it.

TALBOYS.

One Burns, as an observer of nature, is worth fifty Coleridges.

NORTH.

Not an arithmetical question. Why, even dear Sir Walter himself
occasionally makes a slip in this way.

“Beneath the broad and ample bone,
That buckled heart to fear unknown,
A feeble and a tim’rous guest
The field-fare framed her lowly nest!”

The Field-fare is migratory—and does not build here; in Norway, where it
is native, it builds in trees—often high up on lofty trees—and in
crowds.

TALBOYS.

I believe, sir, they have been known to breed in this country—and
perhaps here they build on the ground.

NORTH.

Don’t be nonsensical. Our Great Minstrel knew wood-craft well; and
hill-craft and river-craft; yet in his fine picture of Coriskin and
Coolin,

“The wildest glen but this can show
Some touch of nature’s genial glow:
On high Benmore green mosses grow,
And heath-bells bud in deep Glencroe,
And copse on Cruachan Ben;
But here, above, around, below,
In mountain or in glen,
Nor tree, nor shrub, nor plant, nor flower,
Nor aught of vegetative power
The weary eye may ken.
For all is rocks at random strewn,
Black waves, bare crags, and banks of stone,
As if were here denied
The summer’s sun, the spring’s sweet dew,
That clothe with many a varied hue
The bleakest mountain’s head;”

would you believe it, that he introduces Deer—_fallow_ Deer!

TALBOYS.

“Call it not vain, they do not err
Who say that, when the Poet dies,
Mute nature mourns her worshipper,
And celebrates his obsequies;
Who say tall cliff and cavern lone
For the departed bard make moan;
That mountains meet in crystal rill,
That flowers in tears of balm distil;
Through his loved groves that breezes sigh,
And oaks in deeper groan reply,
And rivers teach their rushing wave
To murmur dirges round his grave.”

NORTH.

And there the Last Minstrel should have ceased. What follows spoils
all—fanciful, fantastic—not imaginative, poetical. The Minstrel is at
pains to let us know that

“Mute nature does _not_ mourn her worshipper!”

that not

“O’er mortal urn
These things inanimate can mourn.”

What, then, is the truth? To explain the mystery of flowers distilling
tears of balm, we are told that

“The maid’s pale shade, who wails her lot,
That love, true love, should be forgot,
From rose and heather shakes the tear
Upon the gentle Minstrel’s bier—”

The Phantom Knight shrieks upon the wild blast—and the Chief, from his
misty throne on the mountains, fills the lonely caverns with his
groans—while his

“Tears of rage impel the rill!
All mourn the minstrel’s harp unstrung,
Their name unknown, their praise unsung!”

Had Sir Walter been speaking in his own person he never would have
written thus—nor thus contradicted and extinguished the Passion in the
stanzas you so feelingly recited. But he puts the words into the lips of
an old Harper improvising at a Feast—on which occasion anything will
pass for poetry—even to the mind of the true Poet himself—but, believe
me, it is sheer nonsense—and by power of contrast recalls Wordsworth’s
profound saying—

“The Poets, in their elegies and lays
Lamenting the departed, call the groves—
They call upon the hills and streams to mourn
And senseless rocks; nor idly; for they speak
In these their invocation, with a voice
Obedient to the strong creative power
Of human passion. Sympathies there are
More tranquil, yet perhaps of kindred birth,
That steal upon the meditative mind,
And grow with thought. Beside yon spring I stood,
And eyed its waters till we seemed to feel
One sadness, they and I. For them a bond
Of brotherhood is broken; time has been
When, every day, the touch of human hand
Dislodged the natural sleep that binds them up
In mortal stillness; and they ministered
To human comfort.”

TALBOYS.

Are all these the Cladich Cock and his echoes? No, surely. Farm
crows to Farm, from Auchlian to Sonnachan. You might almost believe
them bagpipes. And so it is—that is a bagpipe. On which side of the
Loch? Why, on neither—beg pardon—on both; forgive me—on the
Water;—incredible—in the Camp! No snore can long outlive that—the
People are up and doing.

In my mind’s eye I see women slipping easily into petticoats—men
laboriously into breeches——

NORTH.

My more Celtic imagination sees chiefly kilts. But pray, may I ask
again, Talboys, what brought you here at this untimeous hour of the
Morn?

TALBOYS.

I feel that I ought to apologise for my unwelcome intrusion on your
privacy, sir; but on my honour I believed you were in the Van. Yesterday
I was so engrossed by you and Shakspeare, that during our colloquy I had
not a moment to look at the Wren’s Nest.

NORTH.

Its existence is believed in by few of the natives. I know no such place
for a murder. There would be no need to bury the body—here at this Table
he might be left sitting for centuries—a dead secret in a Safe.

TALBOYS.

No need to bury the body! You have no antipathy, I trust, sir, to me?

NORTH.

We are not responsible for our antipathies——

TALBOYS.

I allow that—but we are for every single murder we commit; and though
there may be no need to bury the body, murder will spunk out——

NORTH.

We are willing to run the risk. What infatuation to seek the Lion in his
Den—the Wren in his Nest! Sit down, sir, and let us have, in the form of
dialogue, your last speech and dying words on Othello.

TALBOYS.

Hamlet, sir?

NORTH.

Othello.

TALBOYS.

Romeo and Juliet?

NORTH.

Othello.

TALBOYS.

Well—Lear let it be.

NORTH.

Mind what you are about, Talboys. There are limits to human forbearance.
Swear that after this morning’s breakfast you will never again utter the
words Othello—Iago—Cassio—Desdemona——

TALBOYS.

I swear. Meanwhile, let us recur to the Question of Short and Long Time.

NORTH.

When Shakspeare was inditing the Scenes of the “Decline and Fall”—“The
Temptation”—“The Seduction”—or whatsoever else you choose to call it—the
Sequence of Cause and Effect—the bringing out into prominence and power
the successive ESSENTIAL MOVEMENTS of the proceeding transformation were
intents possessing his whole spirit. We can easily conceive that they
might occupy it absolutely and exclusively—that is to say, excluding the
computation and all consideration of actual time. If this be an
excessive example, yet I believe that a huddling up of time is a part of
the poetical state; that you must, and, what is more, may, crowd into a
Theatrical or Epic Day, far more of transaction between parties, and of
changes psychological, than a natural day will hold—ay, ten times over.
The time on the Stage and in Verse is not literal time. Not it, indeed;
and if it be thus with time, which is so palpable, so selfevidencing an
entity, what must be the law, and how wide-ranging, for everything else,
when we have once got fairly into the Region of Poetry?

TALBOYS.

The usefulness of the Two Times is palpable from first to last—of the
Short Time for maintaining the tension of the passion—of the long for a
thousand general needs. Thus Bianca must be used for convincing Othello
very potently, positively, unanswerably. But she cannot be used without
supposing a protracted intercourse between her and Cassio. Iago’s
dialogue with him falls to the ground, if the acquaintance began
yesterday. But superincumbent over all is the _necessity of our not
knowing_ that Iago begins the Temptation, and that Othello extinguishes
the Light of his Life all in one day.

NORTH.

And observe, Talboys, how this concatenation of the passionate scenes
operates. Marvellously! Let the Entrances of Othello be four—A, B, C, D.
You feel the close connexion of A with B, of B with C, of C with D. You
feel the coherence, the nextness; and all the force of the impetuous
Action and Passion resulting. But the logically-consequent near
connexion of A with C, and much more with D, as again of B with D, you
_do not feel_. Why? When you are at C, and feeling the pressure of B
upon C, you have lost sight of the pressure of A upon B. At each
entrance you go back one step—you do not go back two. The suggested
intervals continually keep displacing to distances in your memory the
formerly felt connexions. This could not so well happen in real life,
where the relations of time are strictly bound upon your memory. Though
something of it happens when passion devours memory. But in fiction, the
conception being loosely held, and shadowy, the feat becomes easily
practicable. Thus the Short Time tells for the support of the Passion,
along with the Long Time, by means of virtuous instillations from the
hand or wing of Oblivion. From one to two you feel no intermission—from
two to three you feel none—from three to four you feel none; but I defy
any man to say that from one to four he has felt none. I defy any man to
say honestly, that “sitting at the Play” he has kept count from one to
four.

TALBOYS.

If you come to that, nobody keeps watch over the time in listening to
Shakspeare. I much doubt if anybody knows at the theatre that Iago’s
first suggestion of doubt occurs the day after the landing. I never knew
it till you made me look for it—

NORTH.

For which boon I trust you are duly grateful.

TALBOYS.

’Tis folly to be wise.

NORTH.

Why, Heaven help us! if we did not go to bed, and did not dine, which of
us could ever keep count from Monday to Saturday! As it is, we have some
of us hard work to know what happened yesterday, and what the day
before. On Tuesday I killed that Salmo Ferox?

TALBOYS.

No—but on Wednesday I did. You forget yourself, my dear sir, just like
Shakspeare.

NORTH.

Ay, Willy forgets himself. He is not withheld by the chain of time he is
linking, for he has lost sight of the previous links. Put yourself into
the transport of composition, and answer. But besides, every past
scene—or to speak more suitably to the technical distribution of the
Scenes, in our Editions—every past _changed occupation of the Stage by
one coming in or one going out_, (which different occupation, according
to the technicality of the French Stage, of the Italian, of the Attic,
of Plautus, of Terence, constitutes a Scene)—every such past marked
moment in the progress of the Play has the effect for the Poet, as well
as for you, of protracting the time in retrospect—throwing everything
that has passed further back. As if, in travelling fifty miles, you
passed fifty Castles, fifty Churches, fifty Villages, fifty Towns, fifty
Mountains, fifty Valleys, and fifty Cataracts—fifty Camels, fifty
Elephants, fifty Caravans, fifty Processions, and fifty Armies—the said
fifty miles would seem a good stretch larger to your recollection, and
the five hours of travelling a pretty considerable deal longer, than
another fifty miles and another five hours in which you had passed only
three Old Women.

TALBOYS.

My persuasion is, sir, that nobody alive knows—of the auditors—that the
first suggestion of doubt and the conclusion to kill are in one Scene of
the Play. I do, indeed, believe, with you, sir, that the goings-out and
re-enterings of Othello have a strangely deluding effect—that they
disconnect the time more than you can think—and that all the changes of
persons on the stage—all shiftings of scenes and droppings of curtains,
break and dislocate and dilate the time to your imagination, till you do
not in the least know where you are. In this laxity of your conception,
all hints of extended time sink in and spring up, like that fungus
which, on an apt soil, in a night grows to a foot diameter.

NORTH.

You have hit it there, Talboys. Shakspeare, we have seen, in his calmer
constructions, shows, in a score of ways, weeks, months; that is
therefore the true time, or call it the historical time. Hurried
himself, and hurrying you on the torrent of passion, he forgets time,
and a false show of time, to the utmost contracted, arises. I do not
know whether he did not perceive this false exhibition of time, or
perceiving, he did not care. But we all must see a reason, and a cogent
one, why he should not let in the markings of protraction upon his
dialogues of the Seduced and the Seducer. You can conceive nothing
better than that the Poet, in the moment of composition, seizes the
views which at that moment offer themselves as effective—unconscious or
regardless of incompatibility. He is whole to the present; and as all is
feigned, he does not remember how the foregone makes the ongoing
impracticable. Have you ever before, Talboys, examined time in a Play of
Shakspeare? Much more, have you ever examined the treatment of time on
the Stage to which Shakspeare came, upon which he lived, and which he
left?

TALBOYS.

A good deal.

NORTH.

Not much, I suspect.

TALBOYS.

Why, not at all—except t’other day along with you—in Macbeth.

NORTH.

He came to a Stage which certainly had not cultivated the logic of time
as a branch of the Dramatic Art. It appears to me that those old people,
when they were enwrapt in the transport of their creative power, totally
forgot all regard, lost all consciousness of time. Passion does not know
the clock or the calendar. Intimations of time, now vague, now positive,
will continually occur; but also the Scenes float, like the Cyclades in
a Sea of Time, at distances utterly indeterminate—Most near? Most
remote? That is a Stage of Power, and not of Rules—Dynamic, not Formal.
I say again at last as at first, that the time of Othello, tried by the
notions of time in _our Art_, or tried, if you will, by the type of
prosaic and literal time, is—INSOLUBLE.

TALBOYS.

To the first question, therefore, being What is the truth of the matter?
the answer stands, I conceive without a shadow of doubt or difficulty,
“The time of Othello is—as real time—INSOLUBLE.”

NORTH.

By heavens, he echoes me!

TALBOYS.

Or, it is proposed incongruously, impossibly. Then arises the question,
How stood the time in the mind of Shakspeare?

NORTH.

I answer, I do not know. The question splits itself into two—first, “How
did he _project_ the time?” Second, “How did he conceive it in the
progress of the Play?” My impression is, that he projected extended
time. If so, did he or did he not know that in managing the Seduction he
departed from that design by contracting into a Day? Did he deliberately
entertain a double design? If he did, how did he excuse this to himself?
Did he say, “A stage necessity, or a theatrical or dramatic
necessity”—namely, that of sustaining at the utmost possible reach of
altitude the tragical passion and interest—“requires the precipitation
of the passion from the first breathing of suspicion—the ‘Ha! Ha! I like
not that,’ of the suggesting Fiend to the consecrated ‘killing myself,
to die upon a kiss!’—all in the course of fifteen hours—and this
tragical vehemency, this impetuous energy, this torrent of power I will
have; at the same time I have many reasons—amongst them the general
probability of the action—for a dilated time; and I, being a magician of
the first water, will so dazzle, blind, and bewilder my auditors, that
they shall accept the double time with a double belief—shall feel the
unstayed rushing on of action and passion, from the first suggestion to
the cloud of deaths—and yet shall remain with a conviction that Othello
was for months Governor of Cyprus—they being on the whole unreflective
and uncritical persons?”

TALBOYS.

And, after all, who willingly criticises his dreams or his pleasures?

NORTH.

And the Audience of the Globe Theatre shall not—for “I hurl my dazzling
spells into the spungy air,” and “the spell shall sit when the curtain
has fallen.” Shakspeare might, in the consciousness of power, say this.
For this is that which he has—knowingly or unknowingly—done.
Unknowingly? Perhaps—himself borne on by the successively rising waves
of his work. For you see, Talboys, with what prolonged and severe labour
we two have arrived at knowing the reality of the case which now lies
open to us in broad light. We have needed time and pains, and the slow
settling of our understandings, to unwind the threads of delusion in
which we were encoiled and entoiled. If a strange and unexplained power
could undeniably so beguile us—a possibility of which, previously to
this examination, we never have dreamt, how do we warrant that the same
dark, nameless, mysterious power shall not equally blind the “Artificer
of Fraud?” This is matter of proposed investigation and divination,
which let whoever has will, wit, and time, presently undertake.

TALBOYS.

Why, we are doing it, sir. He will be a bold man who treats of
Othello—after Us.

NORTH.

Another question is—What is the Censure of Art on the demonstrated
inconsistency in Othello? I propose, but now deal not with it. Observe
that we have laid open a new and startling inquiry. We have demonstrated
the double time of Othello—the Chronological Fact. That is the first
step set in light—the first required piece of the work—_done_. Beyond
this, we have ploughed a furrow or two, to show and lead further
direction of the work in the wide field. We have touched on the gain to
the work by means of the duplicity—we have proposed to the
self-consciousness of all hearers and readers the psychological fact of
their own unconsciousness of the guile used towards them, or of the
success of the fallacy; and we have asked the solution of the
psychological fact. We have also asked the Criticism of Art on the
government of the time in Othello—supposing the Poet in pride and
audacity of power to have designed that which he has done. Was it High
Art?

TALBOYS.

Ay—was it High Art?

NORTH.

I dare hardly opine. Effect of high and most defying art it has surely;
but you ask again—did he know? I seem to see often that the spirit of
the Scene possessed Shakspeare, and that he fairly forgot the logical
ties which he had encoiled about him. We know the written Play, and we
may, if we are capable, know its power upon ourselves. There _are_ the
Two Times, the Long and the Short; and each exerts upon you its especial
virtue. I can believe that Shakspeare unconsciously did what Necessity
claimed—the impetuous motion on, on, on of the Passion—the long time
asked by the successive events; the forces that swayed him, each in its
turn, its own way.

TALBOYS.

Unconsciously?

NORTH.

Oh heavens! Yes—yes—no—no. Yes—no. No—yes. What you will.

“Willingly my jaws I close,
Leave! oh! leave me to repose.”

TALBOYS.

Consciously or unconsciously?

NORTH.

Talboys, Longfellow, Perpetual Præses of the Seven Feet Club, we want
Troy, Priam, Achilles, Hector, to have been. Perhaps they were—perhaps
they were not. We must be ready for two states of mind—simple belief,
which, is the temper of childhood and youth—recognition of illusion with
self-surrender, which is the attained state of criticism wise and
childlike. At last we voluntarily take on the faith which was in the
goldener age. The child believed; and the man believes. But the child
believes _this_; and the man who perceives how _this_ is a shadow,
believes _that_ beyond. _This_ he believes in play—_that_ in earnest.
The child mixed the two—the tale of the fairies and the hope of
hereafter. Union, my dear Boys, is the faculty of the young, but
division of the old. I speak of Shakspeare at five years of age; not of
Us, whom, ere we can polysyllable men’s names, dominies instruct how to
do old men’s work and to distinguish.

TALBOYS.

My dear sir, I do so love to hear your talkee talkee; but be just ever
so little a little more intelligible to ordinary mortals—

NORTH.

You ask what really happened? The Play bewilders you from
answering—accept it as it rushes along through your soul, reading or
sitting to hear and see. The main and strange fact is, that these
questions of Time, which, reading the Play backwards, force themselves
on us, never occur to us reading straight forwards. Two Necessities lie
upon your soul.

TALBOYS.

Two Necessities, sir?

NORTH.

Two Necessities lie upon your soul. You cannot believe that Othello,
suspecting his Wife, folds his arms night after night about her disrobed
bosom. As little can you believe that in the course of twelve hours the
spirit of infinite love has changed into a dagger-armed slayer. The Two
Times—marvellous as it is to say—take you into alternate possession. The
impetuous motion forwards, in the scenes and in the tenor of action,
which belong to the same Day, you feel; and you ask no questions. When
Othello and Iago speak together, you lose the knowledge of time. You see
power and not form. You feel the aroused Spirit of Jealousy: you see, in
the field of belief, a thought sown and sprung—a thought changed into a
doubt—a doubt into a dread—a dread into the cloud of death. Evidences
press, one after the other—the spirit endures change—you feel
succession—as cause and effect must succeed—you do not compute hours,
days, weeks, months;—yet confess I must, and confess you must, and
confess all the world and his wife must, that the condition is
altogether anomalous—that a time which is at once a day of the Calendar
and a month of the Calendar, does not happen anywhere out of Cyprus.

TALBOYS.

It has arisen just as you say, sir—because Two Necessities pressed. The
Passion must have its torrent, else _you_ will never endure that Othello
shall kill Desdemona. Events must have their concatenation, else—but I
stop at this the incredible anomaly, that for _Othello_ himself you
require the double time! You cannot imagine him embracing his wife,
misdoubted false; as little can you his Love measureless, between
sunrise and sunset turned into Murder.

NORTH.

Even so.

TALBOYS.

My dear sir, what really happened?

NORTH.

Oh! Talboys, Talboys. Well then—_not_ that Othello killed her upon the
first night after the arrival at Cyprus. The Cycle could not have been
so run through.

TALBOYS.

How then in reality did the Weeks pass?

NORTH.

That’s a good one! Why, I was just about to ask you—and ’tis your
indisputable duty to tell me and the anxious world—how.

TALBOYS.

I do not choose to commit myself in such a serious affair.

NORTH.

Suppose the framing of the tale into a Prose Romance. Surely, surely,
surely, no human romancer, compounding the unhappy transactions into a
prose narrative, could, could, could have put the first sowing of doubt,
and the smothering under the pillows, for incidents of one day. He would
have made Othello for a time laugh at the doubt, toss it to the winds.
Iago would have wormed about him a deal slowlier. The course of the
transactions in the Novel would have been much nearer the course of
reality.

TALBOYS.

In Cinthio’s Novel—

NORTH.

Curse Cinthio.

TALBOYS.

My Lord, I bow to your superior politeness.

NORTH.

Confound Chesterfield. My dear friend, Reality has its own reasons—a
Novel its own—and its own a Drama. Every work of art brings its own
conditions, which divide you from the literal representation of human
experience. Ask Painter, Sculptor, and Architect. Every fine art
exercises its own sleights.

TALBOYS.

In the Novel, I guess or admit that they would have been a month at
Cyprus ere Iago had stirred. What hurry? He would have watched his
time—ever and anon would have thrown in a hundred suggestions of which
we know nothing. Let any man, romancer or other, set himself to conceive
the Prose Novel. He cannot, by any possibility, conceive that he should
have been led to make but a day of it. Ergo, the Drama proceeds upon its
own Laws. No representation in art is the literal transcript of
experience.

NORTH.

The question is, what deviations—to what extent—does the particular Art
need? And why? The talked Attic Unity of Time instructs us. But
Sophocles and Shakspeare must have one view of the Stage, in essence.
You must sit out your three or four hours. You must listen and see with
expectation _intended_, like a bow drawn. To which intent Action and
Passion must press on.

TALBOYS.

Compare, sir, the One Day of Othello to the Sixteen Years of Hermione!
There, intensest Passion sustained; here, the unrolling of a romantic
adventure. Each true to the temper imposed on the hearing spectator.

NORTH.

Good. The Novel is not a Transcript—the Play is not a Transcript. Ask
not for a Transcript, for not one of those who could give it you, will.
A _conditioned imitation we desire_ and demand—and we have it in
Othello.

TALBOYS.

And put up we must with Two Times—one for your sympathy with his tempest
of heart—one for the verisimilitude of the transaction.

NORTH.

Think on the facility with which, in the Novel, Iago could have strewn
an atom of arsenic a day on Othello’s platter, to use him to the taste;
and how, in the Play, this representation is impossible. Then, the
original remaining the same, each manner of portraiture _leaves it_, and
each, after _its own Laws_.

TALBOYS.

Did not Shakspeare know as much about the Time which he was himself
making _as we do_, as much and more?

NORTH.

I doubt it. I see no necessity for believing it. We judge him as we
judge ourselves. He came to his Art as it was, and created—improving
it—from that point. An Art grows in all its constituents. The management
of the Time is a constituent in the Art of “feigned history,” as Poetry
is called by Lord Bacon. But I contend that on our Stage, to which
Shakspeare came, the management of Time was in utter neglect—an
undreamed entity; and I claim for the first foundation of any Canon
respective to this matter, acute sifting of all Plays _previous_.

TALBOYS.

Not so very many—

NORTH.

Nor so very few. Shakspeare took up the sprawling, forlorn infant,
dramatic Time. He cradled, rocked, and fed it. The bantling throve, and
crawled vigorously about on all-fours. But since then, thou Tallometer,
imagine the study that _we_ have made. Count not our Epic Poems—not our
Metrical Romances—not our Tragedies. Count our Comedies, and count above
all our Novels. I do not say that you can settle Time in these by the
almanac. They are the less poetical when you can do so; but I say that
we have with wonderful and immense diligence studied the working out of
a Story. Time being here an essential constituent, it cannot be but
that, in our more exact and critical layings-out of the chain of
occurrences, we have arrived at a tutored and jealous respect of Time—to
say nothing of our Aristotelian lessons—totally unlike anything that
existed under Eliza and James, as a general proficiency of the Art—as a
step gained in the National Criticism.

TALBOYS.

Ay, it must be difficult in the extreme for us so to divest ourselves of
our own intellectual habits and proficiency as to take up, and into our
own, the mind of that Age. But, unless we do so, we are unable to judge
what might or might not happen to any one mind of that age; and when we
affirm that Shakspeare must have known what he was doing in regard to
the Time of Othello, we are suffering under the described difficulty or
disability—

NORTH.

Why, Talboys, you are coming, day after day, to talk better and better
sense—take care you do not get too sensible—

TALBOYS.

We must never forget, sir, that the management of the Time was on that
Stage a slighted and trampled element—that what Willy gives us of it is
gratuitous, and what we must be thankful for—and finally, that he did
not distinctly scheme out, in his own conception, the Time of
Othello—very far from it.

NORTH.

I verily believe that if you or I had shown him the Time, tied up as it
is, he would have said, “Let it go hang. They won’t find it out; and, if
they do, let them make the best, the worst, and the most of it. The Play
is a good Play, and I shall spoil it with mending it.” Why, Talboys, if
Queen Elizabeth had required that the Time should be set straight, it
could not have been done. One—two—six changes would not have done it.
The Time is an entangled skein that can only be disentangled by breaking
it. For the fervour of action on the Stage, Iago could not have delayed
the beginning beyond the next day. And yet think of the Moral
Absurdity—to begin—really as if the day after Marriage, to sow Jealousy!
The thing is out of nature the whole diameter of the globe. His project
was “after a time t’ abuse Othello’s ear,” which is according to nature,
and is _de facto_ the impression made—strange to say—from beginning to
end. But the truth is, that the Stage three hours are so soon gone, that
you submit yourself to everything to come within compass. Your
Imagination is bound to the wheels of the Theatre Clock.

TALBOYS.

Yet, in our conversation on Macbeth, you called your discovery an
“astounding discovery”—and it is so. The Duplicity of Time in Othello is
a hundred times more astounding—

NORTH.

And the discovery of it will immortalise my name. I grieve to think that
the Pensive Public is sadly deficient in Imagination. I remember or
invent that she once resisted me, when I said that “Illusion” is one
constituent of Poetry. Illusion, the Pensive Public must be made to
know, is WHEN THE SAME THING IS, AND IS NOT. Pa—God bless him!—makes
believe to be a Lion. He roars, and springs upon his prey. He at once
believes himself to be a Lion, and knows himself to be Pa. Just so with
the Shakspeare Club—many millions strong. The two times at Cyprus _are
there_; the reason for the two times—to wit, probability of the Action,
storm of the Passion—_is there_; and if any wiseacre should ask, “How do
we manage to stand the _known_ together-proceeding of two times?” The
wiseacre is answered—“We don’t stand it—for we know nothing about it. We
are held in a confusion and a delusion about the time.” We have effect
of both—distinct knowledge of neither. We have suggestions to our
Understanding of extended time—we have movements of our Will by
precipitated time.

TALBOYS.

We have—we have—we have. Oh! sir! sir! sir!

NORTH.

Does any man by possibility ask for a scheme and an exposition, by which
it shall be made luminous to the smallest capacity, _how_ we are able
distinctly all along to know, and bear in mind, that the preceding
transactions are accomplished in a day, and at the same time and
therewithal, distinctly all along to know and bear in mind that the same
transactions proceeding before our eyes take about three months to
accomplish? Then, I am obliged—like the musicians, when they are told
that, if they have any music that may not be heard, Othello desires them
to play it—to make answer, “Sir, we have none such.” It is to ask that a
deception shall be not only seemingly but really a truth! Jedediah
Buxton, and Blair the Chronologist, would, “sitting at _this_ play,”
have broken their hearts. You need not. If you ask me—which judiciously
you may—what or how much did the Swan of Avon intend and know of all
this astonishing legerdemain, when he sang thus astonishingly? Was he
the juggler juggled by aërial spirits—as Puck and Ariel? I put my finger
to my lip, and nod on him to do the same; and if I am asked, “Shall a
modern artificer of the Drama, having the same pressure from within and
from without, adopt this resource of evasion?” I can answer, with great
confidence, “He had better look before he leap.” If any spectator, upon
the mere persuasion and power of the Representation, ends with believing
that the seed sown and the harvest reaped are of one day, I believe that
he may yet have the belief of extended time at Cyprus. I should say by
_carrying the one day with him on forwards from day to day_! Or if you
wish this more intelligibly said, that he shall continually _forget_ the
past notices. Once for all, he shall _forget_ that the _first suggestion
was on the day after the arrival_.

TALBOYS.

Inquire, sir, what intelligent auditors, who have not gone into the
study, have thought; for that, after all, is the only testimony that
means anything.

NORTH.

Well, Talboys, suppose that one of them should actually say, “Why, upon
my word, if I am to tell the truth, I did take note that Iago began
‘abusing Othello’s ear’ the day after the arrival. I did, in the course
of the Play, gather up an impression that some good space of time was
passing at Cyprus—and I did, when the murder came, put it down upon the
same day with the sowing of the suspicion, and I was not aware of the
contradiction. In short, now that you put me upon it, I see that I did
that which thousands of us do in thousands of subjects—keep in different
corners of the brain two beliefs—of which, if they had come upon the
same ground, the one must have annihilated the other. But I did not at
the time bring the data together. _I suppose that I had something else
to think of._”

TALBOYS.

Assume, sir, for simplicity’s sake, that Shakspeare knew what he was
doing.

NORTH.

Then the Double Time is to be called—an Imposture.

TALBOYS.

Oh, my dear sir—oh, oh!

NORTH.

A good-natured Juggler, my dear Talboys, has cheated your eyes. You ask
him to show you how he did it. He does the trick slowly—and you see.
“Now, good Conjuror, _do it slowly, and cheat us_.” “I can’t. I cheat
you by doing it quickly. To be cheated, you must _not_ see what I do;
but you must _think_ that you see.” When we inspect the Play in our
closets, the Juggler does his trick slowly. We sit at the Play, and he
does it quick. When you see the trick again done the right way—that is
quick—you cannot conceive how it is that you no longer see that which
you saw when it was done slowly! Again the impression returns of a
magical feat.

TALBOYS.

I doubt, if we saw Othello perfectly acted, whether all our study would
preserve us from the returning imposture.

NORTH.

I will defy any one most skilful theatrical connoisseur, even at the
tenth, or twentieth, or fiftieth Representation, so to have followed the
comings-in and the goings-out, as to satisfy himself to demonstration,
that interval into which a month or a week or a day can be
dropped—_there is none_.

TALBOYS.

When do you purpose publishing this your “astounding Discovery?”

NORTH.

Not till after my death.

TALBOYS.

I shall attend to it.

NORTH.

In comparing Shakspeare and the Attic Three, we seem to ourselves, but
really do not, to exhaust the Criticism of the Drama. Is Mr Sheriff
Alison right, when he said that the method of Shakspeare is justified
only by the genius of Shakspeare? That less genius needs the art of
antiquity? Our own art inclines to a method between the two; and we
should have to account for the theatrical success, during a century or
more, of such Plays as the Fair Penitent, Jane Shore, &c.

TALBOYS.

Why, sir, does Tragedy displace often from our contemplation, Comedy?
Not when we are contemplating Shakspeare. To me his method, in reading
him, appears justified by the omnipotent Art, which, despite
refractoriness, binds together the most refractory times, things,
persons, events _in Unity_.

NORTH.

Most true. We feel, in reading, the self-compactness and
self-completeness of each Play. Thus in Lear—

TALBOYS.

In Lear the ethical ground is the Relation of Parent to Child,
specifically Father and Daughter. If the treatment of that Relation is
full to your satisfaction, that may affect you as a Unity. Full is not
exhaustive; but one part of treatment demands another. Thus the violated
relation requires for its complement the consecrated relation.

NORTH.

In Hamlet?

TALBOYS.

The ethical ground in Hamlet, sir, is the relation of Father and Son,
very peculiarly determined, or specialtied. Observe, sir, how the _like_
relation between Father and Daughter, the _same_ between Father and Son
occurs in Polonius’s House. Here, too, a slain Father—a part of the
specialty. Compare, particularly, the dilatory revenge of Hamlet, and
the dispatchful of Laertes. Again, the relation of Gertrude the Mother
and Hamlet the Son—so many differences! And the strange discords upon
the same relation—my Uncle-Father and Aunt-Mother—the tragic grotesque.

NORTH.

Eh?

TALBOYS.

Then in Lear the House of Gloster counterparts Lear’s. And compare the
ill-disposed Son-in-law Cornwall, and the well-disposed Son-in-law
Albany. The very Fool has a sort of _filial_ relation to
Lear—“Nuncle”—and “come on, my Boy.” At least the relation is in the
same direction—old to young—protecting to dependent—spontaneous love to
grateful, requiting love, and an intimate, fondling familiarity. Compare
in Hamlet, Ophelia’s way of taking her father’s death—madness and
unconscious suicide—the susceptible girl,—and the brother’s to kill the
slayer, “to cut his throat i’ the church”—the energetic youthy man,
_ferox juvenis_—fiery—full of exuberant strength;—all variations of the
grounding thought—relation of Parent and Child.

NORTH.

Of Othello?

TALBOYS.

The moral Unity of Othello can be nothing but the Connubial Relation.
How is this dealt with? Othello and Desdemona deserve one another—both
are excellent—both impassioned, but very differently—both frank, simple,
confiding—both unbounded in love. But they have married against the
father’s wish—privily, and—he dies—so here is from another sacred
quarter an influence thwarting—a law violated, and of which the
violation shall be made good to the uttermost. So somebody remarks that
Brabantio involves the fact in the Nemesis, “She has deceived her
Father, and may thee.” Then the pretended corrupt love of her and Cassio
is a reflection in divers ways of the prevailing relation—for a corrupt
union of man and woman images _ex opposito_ the true union—and then it
comes as the wounding to the death. Again, Rodrigo’s wicked pursuit of
her is an imperfect, false reflection. And then there is the false
relation—in Cassio and Bianca—woven in essentially when Iago, talking to
Cassio of Bianca, makes Othello believe that they are speaking of
Desdemona. Then the married estate of Iago and Emilia is another
image—an actual marriage, and so far the same thing, but an inwardly
unbound wedlock—between heart and heart no tie—and so far not the same
thing—the same with a difference, exactly what Poetry requires. Note
that this image is also participant in the Action, essentially,
penetratively to the core; since hereby Iago gets the handkerchief, and
hereby, too, the knot is resolved by Emilia’s final disclosures and
asseverations sealed by her death. Observe that each husband kills, and
indeed stabs his wife—motives a little different—as heaven and hell.

NORTH.

The method of Shakspeare makes his Drama the more absolute reflection of
our own Life, wherein are to be considered two things——

TALBOYS.

First—if the innermost grounding feeling of all our other feelings is
and must be that of Self—the next, or in close proximity, Sympathy with
our life—then by the overpowering similitude of those Plays to our
lives—of the method of the Plays to the method of our life—that Sympathy
is by Shakspeare seized and possessed as by no other dramatist—the
persuasion of reality being immense and stupendous. Elements of the
method are, the mixture of comic and tragic—the crossing presentment of
different interests—presentment of the same interests from divided
places and times—multiplying of agents, that is number and variety—being
of all ranks, ages, qualities, offices—coming in contact—immixt in
Action and Passion. This frank, liberal, unreserved, spontaneous and
natural method of imitation must ravish our sympathy—and we know that
the Plays of Shakspeare are to us like another world of our own in its
exuberant plenitude—a full second humanity.

NORTH.

Opposed to this is the severe method of the Greek Stage—selecting and
simplifying.

TALBOYS.

Of the modern craftsmen, to my thinking Alfieri has carried the Attic
severity to the utmost; and I am obliged to say, sir, that in them
all—those Greeks and this Italian—the severity oppresses me—I feel the
rule of art—not the free movement of human existence. That I feel
overpoweringly, only in Shakspeare.

NORTH.

Ay.

TALBOYS.

Alfieri says that the constituent Element of Tragedy is Conflict—as of
Duty and Passion—as of conscious Election in the breast of Man and Fate.

NORTH.

He does—does he?

TALBOYS.

There is Conflict—or Contrast—or Antithesis—the Jar of two Opposites—a
Discord—a Rending—in Lear; between his misplaced confidence and its
requital—between his misplaced displeasure and the true love that is
working towards his weal. And, again, between the Desert and the Reward
of Cordelia—with more in the same Play.

NORTH.

Schiller says of Tragic Fate,

“The great gigantic Destiny
That exalts Man in crushing him.”

Welcker has, I believe, written on the Fate of the Greek Tragedy, which
I desire to see.

TALBOYS.

Are Waves breaking against a Rock the true image of Tragedy?

NORTH.

Hardly; any more than a man running his head against a post, or stone
wall is. The two antagonistic Forces, Talboys, must each of them have,
or seem to have, the possibility of yielding; the Conflict or Strife
must have a certain play. Therefore I inquire—Is the Greek Fate the most
excellent of Dramatic means? and is the Greek Fate inflexible? And,
granting that the Hellenic Fate is thoroughly sublime and fitting to
Greek Tragedy, and withal inflexible—does it follow that Modern Tragedy
must have a like overhanging tyrannical Necessity?

TALBOYS.

No.

NORTH.

No. The Greek Tragedy representing a received religious Mythology, we
may conceive the poetical, or esthetical _hardness_ of a Fate known for
unalterable, to have been tempered by the inherent Awe—the Holiness.
There is a certain swallowing-up of human interests, hopes,
passions—this turmoiling, struggling life—in a revealed Infinitude. Our
Stage is human—built on the Moral Nature of Man, and on his terrestrial
Manner of Being. It stands _under_ the Heavens—_upon_ the Earth. In
Hamlet, the Ghost, with his command of Revenge, represents the
Impassive, Inflexible—with a breath freezing the movable human blood
into stillness—everything else is in agitation.

TALBOYS.

Say it again, sir.

NORTH.

Beg my pardon and your own, fully and unconditionally, Talboys, this
very instant, for talking slightingly of the Greek Drama.

TALBOYS.

Not guilty, my Lord. Of all Dramas that ever were dramatised on the
Stage of this unintelligible world, the Greek Drama is the most
dramatic, saving and excepting Shakspeare’s.

NORTH.

Ay, wonderful, my dear Talboys, to see the holy affections demonstrated
mighty on the heathen Proscenium. Antigone! Daughter and Sister. Or in
another House, Orestes, Electra.

TALBOYS.

Macbeth murders a King, who happens to be his kinsman; but Clytemnestra
murders her husband, who happens to be a King—the profounder and more
interior crime.

NORTH.

We see how grave are the undertakings of Poetry, which engages itself to
please, that it may accomplish sublimer aims. By pleasure she wins you
to your greater good—to Love and Intelligence. The heathen Legislator,
the heathen Philosopher, the heathen Poet, looks upon Man with love and
awe. He desires and conceives his welfare—his wellbeing—HIS HAPPINESS.

TALBOYS.

And the Poet, you believe, sir, with intenser love—with more solemn
awe—with more penetrant intuition.

NORTH.

I do. And he has his way clearer before him.

TALBOYS.

The Legislator, sir, will alchemise the most refractory of all
substances—Man. His materials are in truth the lowest and grossest, and
most external relations of Man’s life.

NORTH.

They are.

TALBOYS.

And these he would, with instrumentality of low, gross, outward means,
subjugate or subdue under his own most spiritual intuitions.

NORTH.

A vain task, my dear Talboys, for an impossible. He must lower his
intuition—his aim—to his means and materials. The Philosopher walks in a
more etherial region. Compared to the Legislator, he is at advantage.
But he has his own difficulties. He must _think Feelings_!

TALBOYS.

He might as well try, sir, to trace outline, and measure capacity of a
mist which varies its form momently, and, without determinate boundary
loses itself in the contiguous air. His work is to define the
indefinite.

NORTH.

And then he comes from the Schools, which in qualifying disqualify
also—from the Schools of the Senses—of the Physical Arts—of Natural
Philosophy—of Logical, Metaphysical, Mathematical Science. These have
quickened, strengthened, and sharpened his wit; they have lifted him at
last from emotions to notions; but—Love is understood by loving—Hate by
hating—and only so! Sensations—notions—EMOTIONS! I say, Talboys, that in
all these inferior schools you may understand a part by itself, and
ascend by items to the Sum, the All. But in the Philosophy of the Will,
you must from the centre look along the radii, and with a sweep command
the circumference. You must know as it were Nothing, or All.

TALBOYS.

Ay, indeed, sir; looking at the Doctrines of the Moral Philosophers, you
are always dissatisfied—and why?

NORTH.

Because they contradict your self-experience. Sometimes they speak as
you feel. Your self-intelligence answers, and from time to time,
acknowledges and avouches a strain or two; but then comes discord. The
Sage stands on a radius. If he looks along the radius towards the
circumference, he sees in the same direction with him who stands at the
centre; but in every other direction, inversely or transversely. Every
work of a Philosopher gives you the notion of glimpses caught, snatched
in the midst of clouds and of rolling darknesses. The truth is, Talboys,
that the Moral Philosopher is in the Moral Universe a schoolboy; he is
gaining, from time to time, information by which, if he shall persevere
and prosper, he shall at last understand. Hitherto he but prepares to
understand. If he knows this, good; but if the schoolboy who has
mastered his Greek Alphabet, will forthwith proceed to expound Homer and
Plato, what sort of an _ex cathedrâ_ may we not expect? Rather, what
expectation can approach the burlesque that is in store!

TALBOYS.

All are not such.

NORTH.

The Moral Sage may be the Schoolboy in the Magisterial Chair. With only
this difference, that he of the beard has been installed in form, and
the Doctor’s hat set on his head by the hand of authority. But the
ground of confusion is the same. He will from initial glimpses of
information expound the world. He will—and the worst of it is that—he
must.

TALBOYS.

A Legislator, a Philosopher, a Poet, all know that the stability and
welfare of a man—of a fellowship of men—is Virtue. But see how they deal
with it.

NORTH.

Don’t look to me, Talboys; go on of yourself and for yourself—I am a
pupil.

TALBOYS.

The Legislator, sir, can hardly do more than reward Valour in war; and
punish overt crime. The Philosopher will have Good either tangible, like
an ox, or a tree, or a tower, or a piece of land; or a rigorous and
precise rational abstraction, like the quantities of a mathematician.
For Good, _substantial and impalpable_, go to the Poet. For Good—for
Virtue—_concrete_, go to the Poet.

NORTH.

The Philosopher separates Virtue from all other motions and states of
the human will. The Poet loses or hides Virtue in the other motions and
states of the human will. Orestes, obeying the Command of Apollo,
avenges his Father, by slaying his Mother, and her murderous and
adulterous Paramour. So awfully, solemnly, terribly—with such
implication and involution in human affections and passions, works and
interests and sufferings, the Poet demonstrates Virtue.

TALBOYS.

And we go along with Orestes, sir; the Greeks did—if our feebler soul
cannot.

NORTH.

Yes, Talboys, we do go along with Orestes. He does that which he _must_
do—which he is under a moral obligation to do—under a moral necessity of
doing. Necessity! ay, an Αναγκη—stern, strong, adamantine as that which
links the Chain of Causes and Events in the natural universe—which
compels the equable and unalterable celestial motions beheld by our
eyes—such a bounden, irresistible agency sends on the son of the
murdered, with hidden sword, against the bosom that has lulled, fed,
_made_ him!—HE MUST.

TALBOYS.

Love, hate, horror—the furies of kinned shed blood ready to spring up
from the black inscrutable earth wetted by the red drops, and to dog the
heels of the new Slayer—of the divinely-appointed Parricide! So a Poet
teaches Virtue.

NORTH.

Ay, even so; convulsing your soul—convulsing the worlds, he shows you
LAW—the archaic, the primal, sprung, ere Time, from the bosom of
Jupiter—LAW the bond of the worlds, LAW the inviolate violated, and
avenging her Violation, vindicating her own everlasting stability,
purity, divinity.

TALBOYS.

Divine Law and humble, faithful, acquiescent human Obedience! Obedience
self-sacrificing, blind to the consequences, hearing the God, hearing
the Ghost, deaf to all other Voices—deaf to fear, deaf to pity!

NORTH.

Now call in the Philosopher, and hear what he has to preach. Something
exquisite and unintelligible about the Middle between two Extremes!

TALBOYS.

Shade of the Stagyrite!

NORTH.

The pure Earth shakes crime from herself, and the pure stars follow
their eternal courses. The Mother slays the children of a brother for
the father’s repast. And the sun, stopt in the heavens, veils his
resplendent face. So a Poet inculcates Law—Law running through all
things, and binding all things in Unity and in Sympathy—Law entwined in
the primal relations of Man with Man. To reconcile Man with Law—to make
him its “willing bondsman”—is the great Moral and Political Problem—the
first Social need of the day—the innermost craving need of all time
since the Fall. The Poet is its greatest teacher—a wily preceptor, who
lessons you, unaware, unsuspecting of the supreme benefit purposed
you—done you—by him, the Hierophant of Harmonia.

TALBOYS.

You ordered me, sir, some few or many hours ago—some Short or Long Time
since—to swear that after this Morning’s Breakfast I would never more so
much as confidentially whisper into a friend’s ear the words—Othello!
Desdemona! And I swore it. I am now eager to swear it over again; but I
begin, sir, to entertain the most serious apprehensions that that time
will never arrive.

NORTH.

What time?

TALBOYS.

_After_ Breakfast. We have been sitting here, sir, _before_ Breakfast
for ages, in the Wren’s Nest. During our incubation, what a succession
of changes may there not have been in Europe! Revolution on
Revolution—blood poured out like water——Hark, the Tocsin!

NORTH.

The Gong.

TALBOYS.

The _Breakfast_ Gong! The tremulous thunder meets an answering chord
within me. Six o’Clock in the Morning—and no victuals have I gorged
since Eleven Yestreen. Good-by to the Wren’s Nest—the very Cave of
Famine. This is Turkey-egg—Goose-egg—Swan-egg—Ostrich-egg day. I see
Buller eyeing open-mouthed, with premeditating mastication, my pile of
muffins. Gormandising sans Grace. Take care you don’t trip, sir, over
the precipice—’twould be an ugly fall—into the basin. Now we are out of
danger. But don’t skip, sir—don’t skip—till we emerge—on the open
ground—then we may dance among the daisies.

LETTER FROM MAJOR-GENERAL SIR WILLIAM NAPIER.

CLAPHAM, LONDON, _April 11, 1850_.

SIR,—The writer of the article headed “_The Ministerial Measures_,” in
your Magazine, has been so complimentary to me that I feel ashamed of
pointing out an error.

He says I wrote my History on _Whig principles_. Had he said _Radical
principles_, I should not have winced, though I really endeavoured to
write it on the principles of truth and knowledge of the subject. But
for Whig principles! God save the mark!—I never thought of them save to
censure; and really my History is throughout, by implication, and in
many places directly, condemnatory of the Whigs’ policy, and of their
extreme arrogance, and presumptuous, erroneous views of the Peninsular
War.

I trust the writer will, therefore, acquit me of any such foolish,
factious design as writing a history upon Whig principles.

I remain, Sir, your obedient Servant,

W. NAPIER, _Major-General_.

_To the Editor of Blackwood’s Magazine._

[We gladly give place to the gallant General’s communication. The
writer of the article in question meant simply to convey his
impression, that the able and eloquent History of Sir William Napier
was not constructed on _Tory_ principles; and consequently, that the
letter which he embodied in his paper was to be regarded as the
testimony of a political opponent.]

_Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh._

-----

Footnote 1:

_Correspondence respecting the demands made upon the Greek Government,
and respecting the Islands of Cervi and Sapienza._ Presented to both
Houses of Parliament, by command of Her Majesty. February 1850.

Footnote 2:

Protestant heresy.

Footnote 3:

This is now the case in Germany.

Footnote 4:

_Journal de la Campagne de Russie en 1812._ Par M. DE FEZENSAC,
Lieutenant-General. Librairie Militaire, Paris 1850.

Footnote 5:

_Essays; Political, Historical, and Miscellaneous._ By ARCHIBALD
ALISON, LL.D. Author of “The History of Europe,” &c. Three vols. 8vo.
William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh and London.

Footnote 6:

Vide the _Economist_ newspaper of January 19, 1850.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Page Changed from Changed to

600 declined only ½ per lb.; No. 40, declined only ½d. per lb.; No.
however, 40, however,

638 of doing. Necessity! ay, an of doing. Necessity! ay, an
Αναζκη—stern, strong, adamantine Αναγκη—stern, strong, adamantine
as that as that

● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
● Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last
chapter.
● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
● Enclosed blackletter font in =equals=.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE, VOL. 67, NO. 415, MAY, 1850 ***

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