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Title: Blackwood's Edinburgh magazine, Vol. 75, No. 462, April 1854
Author: Various
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE, VOL. 75, NO. 462, APRIL 1854 ***
BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
NO. CCCCLXII. APRIL, 1854. VOL. LXXV.
CONTENTS.
THE COMMERCIAL RESULTS OF A WAR WITH RUSSIA, 381
THE PUPPETS OF ALL NATIONS, 392
THE QUIET HEART.—PART V., 414
CHRONOLOGICAL CURIOSITIES: WHAT SHALL WE COLLECT? 426
THE REFORM BILLS OF 1852 AND 1854, 441
THE BLUE BOOKS AND THE EASTERN QUESTION, 461
LIFE IN THE SAHARA, 479
THE COST OF THE COALITION MINISTRY, 492
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. CCCCLXII. APRIL, 1854. VOL. LXXV.
THE COMMERCIAL RESULTS OF A WAR WITH RUSSIA.
After the enjoyment of nearly forty years of peace, during which two
generations of men, whose fate it was to live in more troublous times,
have passed to their account, we are entering upon a war which will
inevitably tax all the energies of the country to conduct it to a
successful and honourable conclusion. The enemy against whom our arms
are directed is not one whose prowess and power can with safety be
slighted. A colossal empire possessed of vast resources, wielded by a
sovereign of indomitable character and vast ambition, who has for years
been collecting strength for a gigantic effort to sweep away every
barrier by which the realisation of that ambition has been impeded, is
our opponent. The issue to him is most momentous. It is to decide
whether he is hereafter to be a controlling power in Europe and Asia, to
rule absolutely in the Baltic, to hold the keys of the Euxine and the
Mediterranean, and to push his conquests eastwards, until he clutches
Hindostan,—or to be driven back and confined within the limits of the
original empire which Peter the Great bequeathed to his successors. Such
a struggle will not be conducted by Russia, without calling forth all
the vigour of her arm. An issue so far beyond her contemplation as
defeat and extinction as a first-rate power in the world, will not be
yielded until she has drained her last resources, and exhausted every
available means of defence and procrastination. Russia possesses too in
this, the climax of her fate and testing-point in her aggressive career,
a mighty source of strength in the enthusiasm of her people, whom she
has taught to regard the question at issue between herself and Europe as
a religious one, and the war into which she has entered as a crusade
against “the infidel” and his abettors. The result may be seen in the
personal popularity which the Emperor enjoys, and the ready devotion
with which his efforts are aided by the Christian portion of the
population of his empire.
On the other hand, Great Britain enters into the struggle with every
recognised prestige of success in her favour. She has, as her active
ally, the greatest military nation in the world, whose soldiers and
sailors are about, for the first time for many centuries, to fight side
by side against a common enemy. Little as we are disposed to decry the
strength of that navy which Russia, by her wonderful energy, has
succeeded in creating during the past few years, it would be absurd to
compare it with the magnificent fleets which England and France combined
have at present floating in the waters of the Black Sea, and about to
sail for the Baltic. A comparison of our monetary resources with those
of our opponent would be still more absurd. Another feature in our
position as a maritime country at present, is the vast facilities which
we possess, by means of our mercantile ocean steamers, of transporting
any required number of troops to the locality where their services are
required, with a rapidity and comfort never dreamt of during the last
European war. A veteran of our Peninsular Campaigns, witnessing the
splendid accommodation provided in such noble vessels as the Oriental
Company’s steamer _Himalaya_ at Southampton, the Cunard Company’s
steamer _Cambria_ at Kingston Harbour, Dublin, and the same Company’s
steamer _Niagara_ at Liverpool, and acquainted with the fact that each
of these vessels was capable of disembarking their freight of armed men
within five or six days of their departure hence in any port of the
Mediterranean, must have been struck by the marked difference between
such conveyances and the old troop ships employed in former days.
Moreover, there is scarcely a limit to the extent of this new element of
our power as a military nation. We enter, too, upon the approaching
struggle with Russia backed by the enthusiastic support of all classes
of our population. It is not regarded with us as a religious war, or one
into the incentives to which religion enters at all. It is scarcely
regarded by the mass as a war of interest. With that sordid motive we
cannot as a nation be reproached. It is felt only that an unjust
aggression has been committed by a powerful state upon a weak one; that
the tyranny of the act has been aggravated by the gross breaches of
faith, the glaring hypocrisy, amounting to blasphemy, and the
unparalleled atrocity, by which it has been followed up; and that we
should prove ourselves recreant, and devoid of all manhood, were we to
stand tamely by and see a gallant people, differing though they do from
us in religion, overwhelmed by brute force, and exterminated from the
face of Europe by such butcheries as Russia has shown us, in the
memorable example of Sinope, that she is not ashamed to perpetrate in
the face of the civilised world, and in the name of Christianity.
There is one consideration, however, connected with the present warlike
temper of our population, which cannot with safety be permitted to
escape remark. We have already stated that two generations of men have
passed away since this country was in actual war with an enemy in
Europe. The bulk of the present race of Englishmen have never
experienced the inconveniences, and occasional privations, which attend
upon war even in countries, like ours, which are happily free from the
affliction of having an armed enemy to combat upon its own soil. We
believe most firmly that we are not a degenerate people. We see evidence
of this in the ready zeal with which large numbers of our hardy and
enterprising youth are everywhere flocking to be enrolled under the flag
of their country, both for land and sea service. We trust that this
feeling will endure, and that we shall be found willing to bear up
cheerfully under any temporary sacrifices which we shall be called upon
to make; but we cannot blind ourselves to the fact that a great change
has taken place in our social condition, in our traditionary instincts,
in our pursuits, and in our institutions, during the forty years of
peace which we have enjoyed. We have become more essentially a
manufacturing and commercial people. A larger number of our population
than formerly are dependent for their daily bread upon the profitable
employment of capital in our foreign trade. The more extensive
adaptation of machinery to manufacturing processes of every kind has led
to the aggregation of large masses of our population in particular
districts; and such masses, ignorant as we have unfortunately allowed
them to grow up, are notoriously subject to the incendiary persuasions
of unprincipled and bad men, and have been sedulously taught that
cheapness of all the necessaries of life can only be secured by
unrestricted communication with foreign countries. Moreover, we have had
a large infusion of the democratic element into our constitution. Our
House of Commons no longer represents the yeomanry and the property
classes of the country; but, instead, must obey the dictates of the
shopkeeping and artisan classes of our large towns. It is no longer the
same body of educated English gentlemen, whose enduring patriotism,
during the last war, stood firm against the clamours of the mobs of
London, Manchester, and other large centres of population, and turned a
deaf ear to the persuasions of faction within its own walls; but a mixed
assemblage of a totally opposite, or, at all events, a materially
changed character, so far as regards a considerable number of its
members. We have in it now a larger proportion of the capitalist
class—men suspected of being rather more sensitively alive to a rise or
fall in the prices of funds, stock, railway shares, &c., than to any
gain or loss of national honour; more wealthy manufacturers, who would
be disposed to regard the loss of a fleet as a minor calamity, compared
with the loss of a profitable market for their cottons, woollens, or
hardwares; and, lastly, more Irish representatives of the Maynooth
priesthood, ready to sell their country, or themselves, for a concession
to Rome, or a Government appointment. The honourable member for the West
Riding—Mr Cobden—showed a thorough appreciation of the character and
position of a portion of the House, and of his own constituents, when he
wound up his speech on the adjourned debate upon the question of our
relations with Russia and Turkey, on the 20th ult., with these words,
which deserve to be remembered:—“He would take upon himself all the
unpopularity of opposing this war; and, more than that, _he would not
give six months’ purchase for the popularity of those who advocated it
on its present basis_.”
Under such circumstances it is material to examine what is the amount of
interruption to the commerce of the country, which may be assumed as
likely to occur, as the result of a state of war with Russia. What, in
other words, is the amount and the nature of the pressure, to which the
masses of our population may be called upon to submit, to prepare them
for the purposes of those persons—happily few in number at present—whose
voice is for peace at any sacrifice of the national honour, and any
sacrifice of the sacred duties of humanity? We shall perhaps be excused
if we examine first _the nature_ of the pressure which is relied upon by
such persons; and we cannot exemplify this better than by a quotation
from the speech already referred to by the same Mr Cobden—their first
volunteer champion in the expected agitation. The honourable gentleman
remarked:—
“He could not ignore the arguments by which they were called upon by
honourable and right honourable gentlemen to enter into a war with
Russia. The first argument was one which had been a dozen times
repeated, relative to the comparative value of the trade of the two
countries. We were to go to war to prevent Russia from possessing
countries from which she would exclude our commerce, as she did from
her own territory. That argument was repeated by a noble lord, who
told the House how insignificant our trade with Russia was, compared
with that with Turkey. Now, that opinion was erroneous as well as
dangerous, for we had no pecuniary interest in going to war. Our
interests were all on the other side, as he was prepared to show. The
official returns did not give him the means of measuring the extent of
our exports to Russia, but he had applied to some of the most eminent
merchants in the City, and he confessed he had been astonished by the
extent of our trade with Russia. He used to be told that our exports
to Russia amounted to less than £2,000,000. Now, Russia was still
under the Protectionist delusion, which had also prevailed in this
country in his recollection. (A laugh.) Russia still kept up her
protective duties upon her manufactures, but he would tell the House
what we imported from Russia, and they might depend on it that
whatever we imported we paid for. (Hear, hear.) He had estimated the
imports from Russia as of much greater value than most people thought,
and he was under the impression that they might amount to from
£5,000,000 to £6,000,000 per annum. Now, here was a calculation of our
imports from Russia which he had obtained from sources that might be
relied upon,—
_Estimated Value of Imports
from Russia into the United
Kingdom._
Tallow, £1,800,000
Linseed, 1,300,000
Flax and hemp, 3,200,000
Wheat, 4,000,000
Wool, 300,000
Oats, 500,000
Other grain, 500,000
Bristles, 450,000
Timber, deals, &c., 500,000
Iron, 70,000
Copper, 140,000
Hides, 60,000
Miscellaneous, 200,000
———————————
£13,020,000
Now, last year our imports from Russia were larger than usual, and
another house, taking an average year, had made them £11,000,000. In
that calculation, the imports of wheat were taken at £2,000,000
instead of £4,000,000, and that made the difference. He was also
credibly informed that Russian produce to the value of about
£1,000,000 came down the Vistula to the Prussian ports of the Baltic,
and was shipped thence to this country; so that our imports from
Russia averaged about £12,000,000 sterling per annum, and included
among them articles of primary importance to our manufactures. How was
machinery to work, and how were locomotives to travel, without tallow
to grease their wheels? (A laugh.) Look, too, at the imports of
linseed to the value of £1,300,000. No persons were more interested
than honourable gentlemen opposite in the reduction of the price of
the food of cattle. Then take the articles of flax and hemp. There
were districts in the West Riding which would suffer very serious
injury and great distress if we should go to war and cut off our
intercourse with Russia. (Hear.) Even with regard to the article of
Russian iron, which entered into consumption at Sheffield, he was told
it would be hardly possible to manufacture some of the finer
descriptions of cutlery if the supply of Russian iron were interfered
with.”
We shall not here take the trouble of criticising Mr Cobden’s figures,
but take them as they stand, although they are exaggerated enough. His
argument is obviously, that we must submit to any amount of aggression
which Russia may choose to make upon neutral countries, and even upon
our own Indian possessions, because that country supplies us yearly with
thirteen millions’ worth of raw materials and food! The same was the
humiliating position which the men of Tyre and Sidon, as recorded in
Scripture, occupied towards Herod, when “they came of one accord to him,
and having made Blastus, the king’s chamberlain, their friend, desired
peace, _because their country was nourished by the king’s country_.”
How, asks Mr Cobden, is machinery to work without tallow to grease the
wheels? We are to have an anti-war cry from the farmers for the lack of
Russian linseed; the West Riding of Yorkshire is to be stirred up into
insurrection by the want of flax and hemp; and the fine cutlers of
Sheffield cannot get on without the £70,000 worth of iron which they
import from Russia! The main reliance of the peace-at-any-price party,
we have no doubt, rests upon the probability of high prices of food, and
their hope of producing in the minds of the masses the impression that
the cause of those high prices is mainly the interruption of our usual
imports of grain from the Russian ports of the Baltic and the Black Sea.
It is rather singular that it should not have struck so astute a man as
Mr Cobden, that Russia is very likely to feel the loss of so excellent a
customer as England appears to have been to her, quite as much as we are
likely to feel the want of her tallow, her flax and hemp, her linseed,
or even her wheat. The vendor of an article is generally the party who
feels most aggrieved when his stock is permitted to accumulate upon his
shelves. The Russian landowners cannot very conveniently dispense with
the annual thirteen millions sterling which they draw from this country.
Mr Cobden may depend upon it that, if we want it, a portion of their
growth of staple articles will find its way to this country, through
intermediate channels, although Russian ships no longer gain the
advantages derived from its transport. The fact, however, of our
absolute dependence upon Russia for these articles is too palpably a
bugbear, either of Mr Cobden’s own creation, or palmed upon him by his
friends, the “eminent merchants of the City,” to be worthy of serious
notice, did it not betray the direction in which we are to look for the
agitation, by which that gentleman and his friends hope to paralyse the
hands of Government during the coming crisis of the country.
In the effort to form a correct estimate of the extent of interruption
to our commerce to be anticipated from the existence of a state of war
between this country and Russia, we must have, in the first place,
reliable facts to depend upon, instead of the loose statements of
Russian merchants, who are, as a class, so _peculiarly_ connected with
her as almost to be liable to the imputation of having Russian rather
than British interests nearest to their hearts. We have a right also to
look at the fact that, so far at least as present appearances go, Russia
is likely to be isolated on every side during the approaching struggle,
her principal seaports, both in the Baltic and the Black Sea, to be
commanded by the united British and French fleets; whilst that produce,
by the withholding of which she could doubtless for a time, and to a
certain extent, inconvenience our manufacturers and consumers, may find
its way to us either direct from Russian ports in neutral vessels, or
through those neighbouring countries which are likely to occupy a
neutral position in the quarrel. We have also to bear in mind that, with
respect to many of the articles which we have lately been taking so
largely from Russia, other sources of supply are open to us. It is
remarkable to observe the effect produced by even temporarily enhanced
prices in this country in extending the area on every side from which
foreign produce reaches us. A few shillings per quarter on wheat, for
example, will attract it from the far west States of America, from which
otherwise it would never have come, owing to the inability of the grower
to afford the extra cost of transport. All these considerations have to
be borne in mind; and although it will perhaps have to be conceded that
somewhat enhanced prices may have to be paid for some of the articles
with which Russia at present supplies us, we think we shall be enabled
to show that the enhancement is not at all likely to be such as to
amount to a calamity, or cause serious pressure upon our people.
Before proceeding further, it may be desirable to explain the mode in
which our trade with Russia, both import and export, is carried on.
Russia is, commercially, a poor country. The description of her given by
M‘Culloch, in an early edition of his _Dictionary of Commerce_,
published two-and-twenty years ago, is as appropriate and correct as if
it had been written yesterday, notwithstanding the vast territorial
aggrandisement which has taken place in the interim. Her nobles and
great landowners hold their property burdened by the pressure of many
mortgages; and they are utterly unable to bring their produce to market,
or to raise their crops at all, without the advances of European
capitalists. These consist chiefly of a few English Houses, who have
branch establishments at St Petersburg, Riga, and Memel on the Baltic,
and Odessa on the Black Sea. The mode of operation is the following.
About the month of October the cultivators and factors from the interior
visit those ports, and receive advances on the produce and crops to be
delivered by them ready for shipment at the opening of the navigation;
and it is stated that the engagements made between these parties and
British capitalists have rarely been broken. This process of drawing
advances goes on until May, by which month there are large stocks ready
for shipment at all the ports, the winter in many districts being the
most favourable for their transport. The import trade is carried on in a
similar manner by foreign capital; long credits, in many instances
extending to twelve months, being given to the factors in the interior.
A well-known statistical writer, the editor of the _Economist_, Mr John
Wilson, in his publication of the 25th ult., says, upon the subject of
the amount of British capital thus embarked in Russia at the period when
her battalions crossed the Pruth: “The most accurate calculations which
we have been able to make, _with the assistance of persons largely
engaged in the trade_, shows that at that moment the British capital in
Russia, and advanced to Russian subjects, was at least £7,000,000,
including the sums for which Houses in this country were under
acceptance to Russia.” We can perfectly believe this to have been the
fact, under such a system of trading as that which we have described. We
can believe, too, that a considerable number of British ships and
sailors were at the same time in Russian ports, and would, in case we
had treated the occupation of Moldavia and Wallachia by Russian troops
as a _casus belli_, very probably have been laid under embargo. We could
sympathise with those “persons largely engaged in the trade,” in
rejoicing that, as one effect of a temporising policy, the whole of this
capital, these ships, and these sailors, had been released from all
danger of loss or detention. But we cannot bring ourselves to consider
it _decent_ in a gentleman holding an important office in the
Government, whilst admitting, as he does, that we have been bamboozled
by Russian diplomacy, to point triumphantly to this saving of “certain
monies”—the property of private individuals, who made their ventures at
their own risk and for their own profit—as in any sort balancing the
loss of the national honour, which has been incurred by our tardiness in
bringing decisive succour to an oppressed ally. Ill-natured people might
suggest a suspicion that Mincing Lane and Mark Lane had been exercising
too great an influence in Downing Street. And the public may hereafter
ask of politicians, who thus ground their defence against the charges of
infirmness of purpose and blind credulity, or “connivance,” as Mr
Disraeli has, perhaps too correctly, termed it, upon this alleged saving
of a few millions of the money of private adventurers—Will it balance
the expenditure of the tens of millions of the public money which the
prosecution of this war will probably cost, and which might have been
saved by the adoption of a more prompt and vigorous policy in the first
instance? Will it balance the loss of life—will it support the widows
and orphans—will it lighten by one feather the burden upon posterity,
which may be the result of this struggle? It would be a miserable thing
should it have to be said of England, that there was a period in her
history when she hesitated to strike a blow in a just cause until she
had taken care that the offender had paid her shopkeepers or her
merchants their debts! We pass over this part of the subject, however,
as scarcely belonging to the question which we have proposed to
ourselves to discuss.
Our imports from Russia, upon the importance of which so much stress has
been laid, were in 1852 as given below, from official documents. We have
ourselves appended the value of the various items upon a very liberal
scale; and we may explain that we select that year instead of 1853, for
reasons which we shall hereafter explain.
_Quantities of Russian Produce imported into Great Britain
during the year 1852._
Corn, wheat, and flour, qrs. 733,571 value £1,540,499
Oats, „ 305,738 366,855
Other grain, „ 262,348 327,935
Tallow, cwts. 609,197 1,187,700
Linseed, and flax seed, &c. qrs. 518,657 1,125,000
Bristles, lbs. 1,459,303 292,000
Flax, cwts. 948,523 1,897,046
Hemp, „ 543,965 861,277
Wool (undressed), lbs. 5,353,772 200,390
Iron (unwrought), tons 1,792 17,920
Copper (do.), „ 226 20,000
Do. (part wrought), „ 1,042 120,000
Timber (hewn), loads 28,299 94,800
Do. (sawn), „ 189,799 759,196
——————————
£8,810,618
We have taken for the above estimate the prices which prevailed in the
first six months of 1852, after which they were raised above an average
by peculiar circumstances. The year selected, moreover, was one of
larger imports than usual of many articles. For example, our imports of
Russian grain in 1852 amounted, in round numbers, to £2,235,300
sterling, against only £952,924 in 1850. Yet we have less than nine
millions as the amount of this vaunted import trade from Russia, the
interruption of which is to be fraught with such serious consequences to
our internal peace, and to the “popularity” of the liberal
representatives of our large towns.
But fortunately for the country, and rather _mal apropos_ for those who
would fain convert any diminution of our supplies of produce from Russia
into the ground of an anti-war agitation, we have succeeded in procuring
from that country during the past year supplies unprecedented in
quantity. The following have been our imports from Russia in 1853, as
compared with the previous year:—
Corn, wheat, and flour, qrs. 1,070,909 against 733,571 in 1852.
Oats, „ 379,059 305,738
Other grain, „ 263,653 262,238
Tallow, cwts. 847,267 609,197
Seeds, qrs. 785,015 518,657
Bristles, lbs. 2,477,789 1,459,303
Flax, cwts. 1,287,988 948,523
Hemp, „ 836,373 543,965
Wool, lbs. 9,054,443 5,353,772
Iron, tons 5,079 1,792
Copper (unwrought), „ 974 226
Copper (part wrought), „ 656 1,042
Timber (hewn), loads 45,421 28,299
Timber (sawn), „ 245,532 189,799
If mercantile opinions are at all to be relied upon, these extra
supplies ought to have a tendency to bring down prices, which the
prospect of war has enhanced beyond what existing circumstances seem to
warrant, even presuming that we had no other dependence than upon Russia
for the articles with which she has heretofore supplied us. For example,
we have paid during the past year, if we take present prices, for our
imports of wheat alone from Russia, about £6,470,000 sterling, whereas,
at the prices of the early part of 1852, we should have paid for the
same quantity of wheat just half the money. And at the present moment,
and since war has been regarded as inevitable, we have had a downward
tendency in all our principal markets. It has been discovered that we
hold more home-grown wheat than was anticipated; and, with a favourable
seed-time and a propitious spring, hopes are entertained that we shall
not in the present year be so dependent upon the foreigner as we have
been during that which has passed. Tallow also is an article for which
we have been lately paying the extravagant prices of 62s. to 63s. per
cwt. In the early part of 1852, the article was worth about 37s. 6d. for
the St Petersburg quality. No English grazier, however, ever knew
butcher’s meat or fat at their present prices; and a propitious year for
the agriculturist will most probably bring matters to a more favourable
state for the consumer.
It is not, however, true that a state of war with Russia can shut us out
from our supply of the produce of that country. It will come to us from
her ports, unless we avail ourselves of our right to blockade them
strictly, in the ships of neutral countries. A portion of it—and no
inconsiderable portion—will reach us overland, Russia herself being the
greatest sufferer, from the extra cost of transit. There can be no doubt
of every effort being made by her great landowners to make market of
their produce, and convert it at any sacrifice into money; for it must
be borne in mind that they are at the present moment _minus_ some seven
or eight millions sterling of British and other money, usually advanced
upon the forthcoming crops. We need scarcely point at the difficulty in
which this want must place Russia in such a struggle as that in which
she is at present engaged. The paper issues of her government may for a
time be forced upon her slavish population as money. But that population
requires large imports of tea, coffee, sugar, spices, fruits, wines, and
other foreign products; and it is not difficult to predict that there
will be found few capitalists in Europe or Asia, willing to accommodate
her with a loan wherewith to pay even for these necessaries, much less
to feed her grasping ambition by an advance of money for the purchase of
additional arms and military stores. Moreover, we are not by any means
so absolutely dependent upon Russia for many of the principal articles
with which she has heretofore supplied us, as certain parties would wish
us to believe. We could have an almost unlimited supply of flax and hemp
from our own colonies, if we chose to encourage the cultivation of them
there. In the mean time, Egypt furnishes us with the former article; and
Manilla supplies us with a very superior quality of both. Belgium and
Prussia are also producers, and with a little encouragement would no
doubt extend their cultivation. Our own colonies, however, are our
surest dependence for a supply of these and similar articles. An advance
of seeds and money to the extent of less than one quarter of the sums
which we have been in the habit of advancing to the Russian cultivator,
would bring forward to this country a supply of the raw materials of
flax and hemp, which would be quite in time, with our present stock, to
relieve us from any danger of deficiency for at least a season to come.
With respect to tallow, we have a right to depend upon America, both
North and South, for a supply. Australia can send us an aid, at all
events, to such supply; and we may probably have next year a larger
quantity within our own resources. With respect to seeds, we shall be
able to derive these from the countries whence flax and hemp are
cultivated for our markets; and our timber, derived at present from
Russia, we can certainly dispense with. There is nothing valuable in
Russian timber except its applicability for the masting and sparring of
ships requiring large growth; and, with our modern method of splicing
yards and masts, we can do perfectly well with the less tall timber of
Norway and Sweden.
The real fact is, that the alleged short supply of the raw materials to
be expected from Russia is a perfect bugbear. We could dispense with
Russia as a country of supply, were we to employ British capital to
assist our own colonists, and other countries, to provide us with such
supply. There was once, however, a Russian Company; and the trade seems
to have been conducted as a monopoly ever since.
But we must get rid of this strange argument, that the value of the
trade with a country consists in the large amount of indebtedness which
we contract with its dealers. We have now to consider the relative value
of Russia and Turkey as _consumers_ of British manufactured goods and
produce. The following we find to have been the value of British and
Irish produce and manufactures exported to the two countries for the
five years from 1846 to 1850:—
1846. 1847. 1848. 1849. 1850.
Turkey, £2,141,897 £2,992,280 £3,116,365 £2,930,612 £3,113,679
Russia, 1,725,148 1,844,543 1,925,226 1,566,575 1,454,771
Turkey thus took from us in 1850 £1,658,908 in excess of Russia’s
purchases, having increased that excess from £416,719 in 1846. The
increased imports of the former country amounted in the five years to
nearly a million sterling, or 50 per cent, whilst the imports of Russia
fell off by £370,377, or above 20 per cent. There is this great
difference, too, in the imports from this country of Russia and
Turkey—The former takes from us raw materials, which we do not produce
ourselves, deriving merely a mercantile or brokerage profit upon the
supply; manufactured articles which contain the smallest amount of
British labour; and machinery to aid the progress of her population as
our rivals in manufacturing pursuits. The latter takes our fully
manufactured and perfected fabrics. So far as our cotton and woollen
manufacturers are concerned, Russia took in 1850—
Cotton yarn, £245,625
Woollen and worsted do., 304,016
Machinery and mill-work, 203,992
The remainder of her imports from us consisted of foreign produce.
Turkey took from us, however, a large amount of labour and skill, or its
reward, as will be seen from the following table:—
_Imports of Manufactured Textiles to Russia and Turkey in 1850._
Cotton. Woollen. Linen. Silk. Total.
Turkey, £2,232,369 £154,558 £22,500 £13,221 £2,422,348
Russia, 61,196 66,256 5,414 8,579 140,455
——————————
Total excess to Turkey, £2,280,903
Our exports to Russia have certainly increased in amount within the last
two years, although our customs’ reports do not convey to us the full
truth as to their character. We have been feeding that country with
materials of mischief. She has had not only mill machinery, but the
machinery of war-steamers from us; but most likely either Sir Charles
Napier, or Admiral Dundas, will be enabled to render us a profitable
account of the property thus invested.
But a comparison of our exports to Russia and Turkey respectively does
not by any means meet the true facts of our position. Within the past
few years we have been carrying on a vast and increasing trade with
those Asiatic countries which draw their supplies of merchandise from
the various ports of the Levant, and from the Adriatic. Smyrna has
become a commercial station so important that we have at this moment
three lines of powerful steamers running to it from the port of
Liverpool alone; and a very valuable trade is also carried on by English
houses in the port of Trieste. Egypt, too, is largely tributary to us
commercially. There is, in fact, no portion of the world whose
transactions with Great Britain have expanded so greatly in amount and
value within the past few years as those very countries which Russia is
seeking to grasp and bring within her own control. Our “Greek houses,”
through whose agency the bulk of this trade is carried on, are now
regarded throughout the manufacturing districts as second to none in the
extent and importance of their business; and, what is more, that
business must rapidly extend, as increased facilities of communication
are provided from the shores of the Levant and the Black Sea with the
interior countries of Asia. Notwithstanding all the faults of the
Turkish character and rule, we are inclined to believe that from the
reign of the present Sultan, Abdul Medjid, a vast amelioration of the
condition of her people, and the cultivation by them of increased
dealings and friendships with the more civilised communities of Western
Europe will take place. Be these expectations, however, fulfilled or
not, we cannot afford to lose such a trade as the following figures,
which we take from Mr Burns’ _Commercial Glance_, show that we are at
present carrying on with Turkey in the article of cotton goods alone:—
_Exports of Cotton Goods to Turkey and the Levant in 1851 to
1853._
1851. 1852. 1853.
Plain calicoes, yards, 49,337,614 57,962,893 51,224,807
Printed and dyed do., 40,433,798 39,394,743 47,564,743
Cotton yarn, lbs. 8,015,674 12,171,045 10,563,177
These markets, in fact, have taken, during the past year, one-sixteenth
of our entire exports of plain calicoes, and one-eleventh of our exports
of printed and dyed calicoes, whilst her imports of yarn—the article
upon the production of which in this country the least amount of labour
is expended—have been comparatively insignificant. The imports of cotton
goods into Russia are, on the contrary, almost entirely confined to yarn
for the consumption of the Russian manufacturer.
So far, therefore, as our export trade is likely to be affected during
the coming struggle, we have manifestly got by the hands a more valuable
customer than we are likely to lose in Russia; and we cannot discover in
what way, with the means at present at her disposal, she can interrupt,
or limit, that trade further than by destroying for a time the consuming
power of those provinces of Turkey east of the river Pruth, which she
has occupied with her troops. Our shipowners and manufacturers may lose
for a time some portion of the valuable trade with the population of
Wallachia and Moldavia which is carried on through the ports of Galatz
and Ibrail upon the Danube. It will probably, however, be one of the
earliest aims of the combined powers of England and France to clear that
portion of Turkey of the presence of the invader, and to maintain the
long-established inviolability of the two eastern mouths of the
Danube—the St George’s and Sulina—as outlets for her commerce with
neutral countries. The remainder of our trade with Turkey must remain
impervious to the efforts of Russia, unless her fleet, at present shut
up in Sebastopol, first achieve the exploit of destroying, or capturing,
the magnificent navies which England and France have assembled in the
Black Sea, or her Baltic fleet succeeds in forcing its passage through
the Cattegat or the Sound, and in making its way to the shores of the
Mediterranean. Neither of these contingencies can be regarded as very
likely to be realised by Russia in the face of the superior power which
will shortly be arrayed against her.
There is certainly the possibility that our commerce with Turkey may
suffer to some extent through the drain upon the resources of her
population, created by a necessarily large war-expenditure. No material
symptoms of such suffering have occurred thus far, notwithstanding she
has been for months past actually engaged in hostilities, the
preparation for which must have been very costly. Her imports of textile
fabrics fell off very little in 1853 from their amount in former years;
and even this may in part be accounted for by the unsettled prices, in
this country, which have resulted from strikes throughout our
manufacturing districts, and other causes of an accidental or a purely
domestic character. Moreover, to balance any such falling off in her
ordinary imports, Turkey will most probably require from us large
supplies of stores, munitions of war, arms, &c., as well as of produce
of various kinds, to fill up the vacuum created by the partial
interruption of her own foreign trade.
We have a further guarantee of commercial safety during this struggle,
unless it should assume new features, in the fact that the commercial
marine of Russia is blocked up, like her fleets, in the Baltic and the
Black Sea. There is not at this moment a single Russian merchantman in
the ports of Great Britain or France—the few vessels which were shut out
from their usual winter quarters having been sold some time ago, to
escape the risk of seizure. She is thus without the materials for
inflicting the annoyance upon our colonial and foreign trade which she
might have possessed, could she have armed any considerable portion of
her mercantile navy for privateering purposes. It has been reported,
indeed, that two of her cruisers have been met with somewhere in the
neighbourhood of the Pacific, and suggested that their object may be to
waylay and capture some of our gold ships. But that the report in
question is not believed—and that any serious interference with our
vessels engaged in the carrying trade, to and from the various ports of
the world, is not feared by our best informed capitalists—is evident
from the fact, that there has as yet been no marked advance in the rates
of insurance upon such property. It has been reported, too, that Russian
agents have been lately engaged in the United States of America in
negotiating for the purchase, or building, of large ships capable of
being converted into vessels of war. Be this so, although we greatly
doubt the fact. We cannot be taken off our guard, in the event of any
such purchase being made, or such conversion taking place. Our
fast-sailing ocean steamers will bring us the necessary information
quite in time to enable us to take the steps most proper for the
occasion; and whilst mentioning those noble vessels, we must remark upon
the important change which the application of steam to navigation will
effect in all future struggles between maritime countries. We do not
refer here to the power which it gives of taking fleets into action, or
of making more rapid sail to the localities where their services are
required, although the effect of this power is incalculable in value. We
allude merely to the advantage which we shall derive in such struggles
from the vastly increased rapidity and regularity with which we are at
present supplied with information of an enemy’s movements, from all
quarters of the world. We shall no longer have to witness the spectacle
of rival fleets seeking each other in vain—proceeding from sea to sea
only to discover that they have missed each other on the way. Traversed
as the ocean is now in every direction by fast-sailing steamers, there
can be little fear of such fleets, if their commanders are really
anxious for an engagement, being unable to procure tolerably accurate
information of each other’s whereabouts. We shall no longer require the
aid of powerful fleets as convoys of our merchantmen, in seas where it
can be so readily known that an enemy is not to be met with; and, as
another result, we shall probably see an end put to the injurious system
of privateering. Few parties will be found to risk life and property in
assaults upon the commerce of a powerful maritime country, with the
certainty before them that every movement which they make must be so
promptly made known, and every offence which they commit must bring down
upon them such speedy punishment.
There is, however, one element of commercial mischief which may make
itself felt during the coming struggle, although such mischief, if it
unfortunately should occur, could not be attributed properly to the mere
fact of the existence of a state of war. It may, and very probably will,
be proved that we cannot carry on a free-trade system, which involves
the necessity of providing for enlarged imports concurrently with
expensive military and naval operations both in the north and south of
Europe, and possibly in Asia as well, with a currency restricted as ours
is by the mistaken legislation of 1844. Already the note of alarm of
this danger has been sounded from a quarter whose authority cannot be
treated lightly on such a subject. Mr William Brown, the eminent
American merchant, and member for South Lancashire, emphatically warned
her Majesty’s Government, during the recent debate on the Budget, of the
probability, and almost certainty, of a severe monetary crisis as the
consequence of persistence in carrying out in their full stringency the
measures passed, at the instigation of Sir Robert Peel, in that and the
following year. But for the operation of those measures, Mr Brown
contended that the calamity of 1847 would never have occurred. The
country, he says, was paralysed by the effect which they produced; and
the seven or eight millions sterling in bullion, held at the time in the
coffers of the Bank, “might as well have been thrown into the sea,” as
retained there unproductive during a period of pressure. Should the same
state of things occur again, therefore, during the approaching
struggle—should the commerce and industry of the country be prostrated,
and the government be rendered incapable of prosecuting with the
required energy a just war, to which we are bound alike by every
consideration of national honour, sound policy, and good faith towards
an oppressed ally—we must not be told that the suffering and degradation
which will be brought down upon our heads are the results of a war
expenditure merely, or have been caused by any natural interruption of
our ordinary trading pursuits. The true cause of the calamity, it must
become obvious to all the world, will be our dogged maintenance of an
impracticable crotchet; and should the nation submit to be thus thwarted
and fettered in its determination to maintain its high prestige—should
it submit to sink down from its position as a leading power,—we may with
reason be asked the question, “Of what avail is your possession of the
noblest fleet which ever rode the seas in ancient or in modern days—of
what avail is the possession of the best-disciplined and bravest
soldiers which ever marched to battle—of what avail is your vast
mercantile marine, your vast accumulations of capital, your almost
limitless command over all the improved appliances which modern science
and ingenuity have constructed for the purposes of war, if you cannot
resent a national insult, or oppose the aggressions of an enemy, without
commercial ruin, suspended industry, and popular disaffection and
outrage being spread over the face of your whole empire?” We hope,
however, for better things. We feel confident that a high-minded and
honourable people will not submit to be thus stultified and degraded in
the eyes of the world. We entertain, too, a reasonable hope that the
unpatriotic faction, who would gladly involve the country in that
degradation, will not be favoured in their unworthy efforts by the
possession of the instrumentality—a suffering and dissatisfied working
population—upon which they calculate to insure success. By the blessing
of a bountiful Providence, clothing our fields and those of Western
Europe and America with luxuriant harvests, we may this year be snatched
from our position of dependence upon the growth of an enemy’s soil for
the food of our people, and be enabled to enter upon a period of plenty
and cheapness, instead of that scarcity and high prices of all the
necessaries of life from which we have been suffering during the past
twelve months—certainly without such suffering being attributable to a
state of war, or to any but ordinary causes.
THE PUPPETS OF ALL NATIONS.[1]
The history of Puppets and their shows may at first appear but a trivial
subject to fix the attention and occupy the pen of a learned academician
and elegant writer. The very word history may seem misapplied to a
chronicle of the pranks of Punchinello, and of the contortions of
fantoccini. Puppet-shows! it may be said; troops of tawdry figures,
paraded from fair to fair, to provoke the laughter of children and the
grin of rustics—is that a theme for a bulky octavo at the hands of so
erudite and _spirituel_ an author as M. Charles Magnin? Had M. Magnin
chosen to reply otherwise than with perfect candour to anticipated
comments of this kind—the comments of the superficial and
hastily-judging—he might easily have done so by saying that, whilst
studying with a more important aim—for that history of the stage of
which he has already published portions—he found the wooden actors so
constantly thrusting themselves into the society of their
flesh-and-blood betters, so continually intruding themselves, with
timber joints, invisible strings, and piping voices, upon stages where
human players strutted, that, to be quit of their importunity, he was
fain to shelve them in a volume. This, however, is not the motive he
alleges. He boldly breasts the difficulty, and stands up for the merits
of his marionettes, quite deserving, he maintains, of a separate study
and a special historian. He denies that time can be considered lost or
lightly expended which is passed in tracing the vicissitudes of an
amusement that, for three thousand years, has been in favour with
two-thirds of the human race. And he summons to his support an imposing
phalanx of great men—poets, philosophers, dramatists, musicians—who have
interested themselves in puppets, taken pleasure in their performances,
and even written for their mimic theatre. He reminds his readers how
many pointed remarks and precious lessons, apt comparisons and graceful
ideas, have been suggested by such shows to the greatest writers of all
countries and ages, and heads the list of his puppets’ patrons with the
names of Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Marcus Aurelius, Petronius, in
ancient times; and with those of Shakespeare, Cervantes, Ben Jonson,
Molière, Swift, Voltaire, and Goethe, amongst the moderns; to say
nothing of Charles Nodier, Punchinello’s laureate, the assiduous
frequenter of Parisian puppet-shows, who has devoted so many playful and
sparkling pages to that favourite study of his literary leisure. M.
Magnin begins to be alarmed at the shadows he has evoked. Is it not
presumption, he asks himself, to enter a path upon which his
predecessors have been so numerous and eminent? The subject, for whose
frivolity he lately almost apologised, appears too elevated for his
range when he reviews the list of illustrious names more or less
connected with it, when he recalls the innumerable flowers of wit with
which their fancy has wreathed it. So he marks out for himself a
different track. Others have played with the theme; he approaches it in
a graver spirit. “I am not so impertinent,” he exclaims, “as to seek _to
put_ (as the Greeks would have said) _my foot in the dance of those
great geniuses_. Too well do I see the folly of attempting to jingle,
after them, the bells of that bauble.” Following the example of the
learned Jesuit, Mariantonio Lupi—who wrote a valuable although a brief
dissertation on the Puppets of the Ancients—but allotting to himself a
much broader canvass, M. Magnin purposes to write, in all seriousness,
sincerity, and simplicity, a history of the “wooden comedians,” not only
of antiquity, but of the middle ages, and of modern times.
A subject of far less intrinsic interest than the one in question could
not fail to become attractive in the hands of so agreeable and skilful a
_savant_ as M. Magnin. But it were a mistake to suppose that the history
of the Puppet family, from Euripides’ days to ours, has not a real and
strong interest of its own. The members of that distinguished house have
been mixed up in innumerable matters into which one would hardly have
anticipated their poking their wooden noses and permanently blushing
countenances. They have been alternately the tools of priestcraft and
the mouthpiece of popular feeling. Daring _improvisatori_, in certain
times and countries, theirs was the only liberty of speech, their voice
the sole organ of the people’s opposition to its rulers. Their
diminutive stature, the narrow dimensions of their stage, the smallness
of their powers of speech, did not always secure impunity to their free
discourse, which sometimes, as their best friends must confess,
degenerated into license. So that we occasionally, in the course of
their history, find the audacious dolls driven into their boxes—with
cords cut and heads hanging—or at least compelled to revise and chasten
their dramatic repertory. Sometimes decency and morality rendered such
rigour incumbent upon the authorities; but its motive was quite as
frequently political. It is curious to note with what important events
the Puppet family have meddled, and what mighty personages they have
managed to offend. At the present day, when the press spreads far and
wide the gist and most salient points of a successful play, in whatever
European capital it may be performed, allusions insulting or irritating
to friendly nations and governments may be fair subject for the censor’s
scissors. It was only the other day that a Russian official journal
expressed, in no measured terms, its high indignation at the
performance, at a fourth-rate theatre on the Paris boulevards, of a
drama entitled “The Cossacks,” in which those warriors of the steppes
are displayed to great disadvantage. The circumstances of the moment not
being such as to make the French government solicitous to spare the
feelings of the Czar, the piece continued to be nightly played, to the
delight of shouting audiences, and to the no small benefit of the
treasury of the _Gaieté_. One hundred and twenty-three years ago,
Russian susceptibility, it appears, was held quite as easy to ruffle as
at the present day. In 1731, the disgrace of Menschikoff was made the
subject of a sort of melodrama, performed in several German towns by the
large English puppets of Titus Maas, privileged comedian of the court of
Baden-Durlach. The curious playbill of this performance ran as follows:
“With permission, &c., there will be performed on an entirely new
theatre, and with good instrumental music, a _Haupt-und-Staatsaction_,
recently composed and worthy to be seen, which has for title—The
extraordinary vicissitudes of good and bad fortune of Alexis
Danielowitz, prince Menzicoff, great favourite, cabinet minister, and
generalissimo of the Czar of Moscow, Peter I., of glorious memory,
to-day a real Belisarius, precipitated from the height of his greatness
into the most profound abyss of misfortune; the whole with Jack-pudding,
a pieman, a pastrycook’s boy, and amusing Siberian poachers.” Titus Maas
obtained leave to perform this wonderful piece at Berlin, but it was
quickly stopped by order of Frederick-William I.’s government, for fear
of offending Russia. In 1794 a number of puppet-shows were closed in
Berlin—for offences against morality, was the reason given, but more
probably, M. Magnin believes, because the tone of their performances was
opposed to the views of the government. In what way he does not mention,
but we may suppose it possible that the _Puppenspieler_ had got infected
with the revolutionary doctrines then rampant in France. The Prussian
police still keeps a sharp eye on exhibitions of this kind, which at
Berlin are restricted to the suburbs. In France we find traces of a
regular censorship of the marionette theatres. Thus, in the Soleinne
collection of manuscript plays is one entitled: _The capture of a
company of players by a Tunis rover, in the month of September 1840_.
This piece, whose name, as M. Magnin remarks, reads more like the
heading of a newspaper paragraph than the title of a play, was performed
in 1741 at the fair of St Germains, by the puppets of the celebrated
Nicolet, and annexed to it is a permit of performance, bearing no less a
signature than that of Crébillon. It is not improbable that the
puppet-show had fairly earned its subjection to a censorship by the
irreverence and boldness with which it took the most serious, important,
and painful events as subjects for its performances. In 1686, D’Harlay,
then attorney-general at the parliament of Paris, wrote as follows to La
Reynie, the lieutenant of police:—“To M. de la Reynie, councillor of the
king in his council, &c. It is said this morning at the palace, that the
marionettes which play at the fair of St Germain represent the
discomfiture of the Huguenots, and as you will probably consider this a
very serious matter for marionettes, I have thought it right, sir, to
advise you of it, that you may so act as in your prudence shall seem
fit.” It does not appear what result this advice had; but as the date of
the note is little more than three months later than that of the edict
of revocation, when Louis XIV. was exulting in the downfall of heresy in
France, and when those who still clung to Protestantism were looked upon
as hardened sinners, no better than common malefactors, it is quite
probable La Reynie thought it needless to interfere with the
puppet-scoffers at the Huguenots. D’Harlay, it will be remembered, was
intimate with some of the chiefs of the proscribed party, and a
particular friend of the Marquis de Ruvigny, although he some years
afterwards betrayed, according to St Simon, the trust that friend had
reposed in him. But we are wandering from our wooden play-actors.
The first two sections of M. Magnin’s work, devoted to the puppets of
Antiquity and of the Middle Ages, are far briefer, and upon the whole,
less interesting than the portion of his volume allotted to those of
modern times. All those parts display extensive reading and patient
research. The author commences by defining and classing his marionettes.
“Everybody knows that marionettes are small figures of wood, bone,
ivory, baked earth, or merely of linen, representing real or fantastical
beings, and whose flexible joints obey the impulse given to them by
strings, wires, or catgut, pulled by a skilful and invisible hand.” He
divides them into three classes: hierarchical, aristocratic, and
popular. In ancient times and in the middle ages, the first of these
classes was decidedly the most important and influential. Auguries were
obtained and miracles wrought by its aid, indispensable to priestly
ambition and to idolatrous or erroneous creeds, dependent upon prodigies
for support. Even at the present day, and in highly civilised countries,
puppets of this kind are not wholly in disrepute, nor are the services
of bleeding saints and nodding madonnas uniformly declined by the
pastors of credulous flocks. The practice is very ancient—if that can
give it respectability. The statue of Jupiter Ammon, when carried in
procession on the shoulders of priests, previously to uttering its
oracles, indicated to its bearers, by a motion of its head, the road it
wished them to take. The golden statue of Apollo, in the temple of
Heliopolis, moved when it had an oracle to deliver; and if the priests
delayed to raise it upon their shoulders, it sweated and moved again.
When the high-priest consulted it, it recoiled if it disapproved of the
proposed enterprise; but if it approved, it pushed its bearers forward,
and drove them, as with reins. M. Magnin quotes, from the writers of
antiquity, a host of instances of this kind, in which machinery,
quicksilver, and the loadstone were evidently the means employed. “In
Etruria and in Latium, where the sacerdotal genius has at all times
exercised such a powerful influence, hierarchical art has not failed to
employ, to act upon the popular imagination, sculpture with springs.”
The ancient idols of Italy were of wood, like those of Greece, coloured,
richly dressed, and very often capable of motion. At Præneste the
celebrated group of the infants Jupiter and Juno, seated upon the knees
of Fortune, their nurse, appears to have been movable. It seems evident,
from certain passages in ancient writers, that the little god indicated
by a gesture the favourable moment to consult the oracle. At Rome,
feasts were offered to the statues of the gods, at which these did not
play so passive a part as might be supposed. Religious imagination or
sacerdotal address aided their immobility. Titus Livius, describing the
banquet celebrated at Rome in 573, mentions the terror of the people and
senate on learning that the images of the gods had averted their heads
from the dishes presented to them. When we meet with these old tales of
statues invited to repasts, and manifesting their good or bad will by
movements, we understand by what amalgamation of antique recollections
and local legends was formed, in the Spain of the middle ages, the
popular tale, so touching and so dramatic, of the _Convidado de Piedra_.
Between these tricks of the priests of Jupiter and Apollo, and the
devices resorted to by the Christian priests of the middle ages, a close
coincidence is to be traced. M. Magnin touches but cursorily on this
part of the subject, referring to the crucifix said to have bowed its
head in approval of the decisions of the Council of Trent, to the votive
crucifix of Nicodemus, which, according to popular belief at Lucca,
crossed the town on foot to the cathedral, blessing the astonished
people on its passage, and which, upon another occasion, gave its foot
to kiss to a poor minstrel—perhaps himself a puppet-showman—and
mentioning as a positive and undoubted fact the movement of the head and
eyes of the crucifix in the monastery of Boxley in Kent, testified to by
old Lambarde in his Perambulations of that county. It is to be observed
that these winking, walking, and nodding images were not always
constructed with a view to delude credulous Christians into belief in
miracles, but also for dramatic purposes, with the object of exciting
religious enthusiasm by a representation of the sufferings of the
Redeemer and the martyrs, and probably, at the same time, to extract
alms from the purses of the faithful. When thus employed, they may be
said to form the link between mechanical church sculpture, used by
priests for purposes of imposture, and the player-puppets of more modern
times. It is the point where the hierarchical and the popular classes of
puppets blend. Scenes from the life and passion of the Saviour were
favourite subjects for such representations; but incidents in the lives
of the Virgin and saints were also frequently acted, both in secular and
monastic churches, and that almost down to our own times,
notwithstanding canonical prohibitions. “In a synod held at Orihuela, a
little Valencian bishopric, at the commencement of the seventeenth
century, it was found necessary to renew the orders against the
admission into churches of small images (_statuettes_) of the Virgin and
female saints, curled, painted, covered with jewels, and dressed in
silks, and resembling courtezans.” The abuse, nevertheless, continued;
and we believe there would be little difficulty in authenticating
instances of it in Spain within the present century. That it was an
actual puppet-show which the ecclesiastical authorities thus strove to
suppress, or at least to expel from churches, is clearly proved by a
passage M. Magnin quotes from the proceedings of the synod: “We forbid
the representation, in churches or elsewhere, of the actions of Christ,
of those of the most holy Virgin, and of the lives of the saints, by
means of those little movable figures vulgarly called _titeres_.” This
last word is the exact Spanish equivalent to the French marionettes and
the English puppet-show. It was a _titerero_ who fell in with Don
Quixote at a Manchegan hostelry, and exhibited before him “the manner in
which Señor Don Gayferos accomplished the deliverance of his spouse,
Melisendra,” and whose figures of paste were so grievously mishandled by
the chivalrous defender of dames. And it may further be remarked, as a
sign of the ancient alliance in Spain between the church and the
theatre, that an altarpiece and the stage or theatre upon which a
puppet-show is exhibited are both expressed, to the present day, by the
word _retablo_. To the _titeres_, by no means the least diverting and
original of the European marionette family, we shall hereafter come. The
precedence must be given to Italy, the cradle and the paradise of
puppets.
The eccentric and learned physician and mathematician, Jerome Cardan,
was the first modern writer who paid serious and scientific attention to
the mechanism of marionettes. He refers to them in two different works,
and in one of these, a sort of encyclopedia, entitled _de Varietate
Rerum_, when speaking of the humbler branches of mechanics, he expresses
his surprise at the marvels performed by two Sicilians, by means of two
wooden figures which they worked between them. “There was no sort of
dance,” he says, “that these figures were not able to imitate, making
the most surprising gestures with feet and legs, arms and head, the
whole with such variety of attitude, that I cannot, I confess,
understand the nature of the ingenious mechanism, for there were not
several strings, sometimes slack and sometimes tight, but only one to
each figure, and that was always at full stretch. I have seen many other
figures set in motion by several strings, alternately tight and slack,
which is nothing marvellous. I must further say that it was a truly
agreeable spectacle to behold how the steps and gestures of these dolls
kept time with the music.” Such variety and precision of movement
prevent the possibility of confounding this exhibition with that
puppet-show of the lowest class common in the streets at the present
day, where a Savoyard boy makes a doll dance upon a board by means of a
string fastened to his knee.[2] M. Magnin supposes that the single
string, always at full stretch, was a little tube, through which passed
a number of small strings connected with the interior of the puppet. A
similar plan is general in Italy at the present day amongst the
aristocracy of the marionettes—those whose performances are in regular
theatres, and not in wandering show-boxes. The theatre and the mode of
working of out-of-door puppet-shows is the same in most countries, and
it appears more than probable, from the authorities adduced by M.
Magnin, that the marionettes of Greece and ancient Italy had much the
same sort of stage as that on which the _pupazzi_ of Italian towns, the
London Punch, and the Guignol and Gringalet of Paris, are to the present
day exhibited; namely, a sort of large sentry-box or little fortress,
called _castello_ in Italy, _castillo_ in Spain, and _castellet_ in
France. In Persia, in Constantinople, in Cairo, the same form prevails.
In modern times the extent of the stage has been diminished, and the
apparatus lightened, so as to admit of theatre, scenery, actors, and
orchestra being carried long distances by two men. Formerly, in Spain,
as we gather from Cervantes and other authorities, a cart was necessary
to convey the theatrical baggage of a _titerero_, which was on a larger
scale than at the present day, many more figures appearing on the stage,
and the mode of working them being different from that now in use in
strolling puppet-shows, where the usual and very simple process is for
the showman to insert his fingers in the sleeves of the actors, only
half of whose body is visible. Master Peter’s show was of a much more
elevated style, and seems to have possessed all the newest improvements;
as for instance, when the Moor steals softly behind Melisendra and
prints a kiss in the very middle of her lips, we are told that “she
spits, and wipes them with the sleeves of her shift, lamenting aloud,
and tearing for anger her beautiful hair.” If the Lady Melisendra really
did spit—and that the word was not a figure of speech of Master Peter’s
boy, whose flippancy his master and the Knight of the Rueful Countenance
had more than once to reprove—the civilisation of Spanish puppets must
have been in a very forward state, for we find M. Magnin recording, as a
novel triumph of puppet-mechanism, similar achievements in Germany in
the present century. When Goethe’s _Faust_ gave a fresh vogue to the
marionette exhibition, from which he had derived his first idea of the
subject, Geisselbrecht, a Viennese mechanician, got up the piece with
those docile performers, under the title of _Doctor Faust_, the great
Necromancer, in Five Acts, with songs, and performed it at Frankfort,
Vienna, and at Weimar, Goethe’s residence. “He strove to excel Dreher
and Schütz (other proprietors of marionettes) by the mechanical
perfection of his little actors, whom he made raise and cast down their
eyes. He even made them _cough_ and _spit_ very naturally, feats which
Casperle,[3] as may be supposed, performed as often as possible. M. Von
der Hagen, scoffing at this puerile marvel, applied Schiller’s lines,
from _Wallenstein’s Camp_, to the Austrian mechanician:—
‘Wie er räuspert und wie er spuckt
Das habt Ihr ihm glücklich abgeguckt;
Aber sein Genie....’”[4]
As regards his puppets’ expectorating accomplishments, Geisselbrecht
appears merely to have revived the traditions handed down from the days
of Gines de Passamonte. But we are again losing the thread of our
discourse amongst those of the countless marionettes that glide, skip,
and dance over the pages of M. Magnin. Having spoken in this paragraph
of the general form and fashion of the ambulant puppet-show, and having
in so doing strayed from Italy into Germany and Spain, we will go
somewhat farther, to look at the most compact and portable of all
exhibitions of the kind. This is to be found in China. There the
peripatetic showman elevates himself upon a small platform, and puts on
a sort of case or sheath of blue cotton, tight at the ankles, and
widening as it approaches the shoulders. Thus accoutred, he looks like a
statue in a bag. He then places upon his shoulders a box in the form of
a theatre, which encloses his head. His hands, concealed under the dress
of the puppets, present these to the spectators, and make them act at
his will. The performance over, he shuts up actors and sheath in the
box, and carries it away under his arm.
The higher class of marionettes, that have permanent establishments in
all the towns of Italy and in various other Continental countries, and a
colony of whom lately settled in London, would surely feel a thrill of
indignation through every fibre and atom of their composite bodies, were
they to hear themselves assimilated to the hardy plebeian puppets that
pitch their tent in the gutter or by the road-side, and jest for all
comers on the chance of coppers. Here you have him at the street
corner—Punch, the ribald and the profligate, maltreating his wife,
teasing his dog, hanging the hangman, and beating the devil himself. Or,
open this portfolio, containing Pinelli’s charming collection of Italian
picturesque costumes. Here is Pulcinella, with his black half-mask, his
tight white jerkin, his mitre-shaped cap. What a group he has gathered
around him:—idle monks, stately and beautiful Roman women, swarthy and
vigorous _Trasteverini_, children on tiptoe with delight, a lingering
peasant, who has stopped his ass to enjoy for a moment the fascinating
spectacle and pungent jokes. Nor is the audience always of so humble a
description. Persons of rank and education have frequently been known to
mingle with it; and tradition relates that the celebrated Leone Allacci,
librarian of the Vatican under Alexander VII., author of many great
theological works, and of the _Dramaturgia_, went nightly for recreation
to the puppet-show. In social position, however, the _al fresco_
performers are necessarily far inferior to the more elegant and tender
puppets who have a settled habitation, a smart and spacious stage, a
fixed price, and who, instead of having their master’s hands rudely
thrust under their petticoats, are decorously and genteelly manœuvred by
means of springs and wires. The difference is manifest: it is
Richardson’s booth to the Italian Opera; the _Funambules_ to the
_Comédie Française_. Moreover, the materials of the marionette
aristocracy are very superior indeed to those of the common out-of-door
jokers. They are by no means of the same clay or from the same mould.
They are not cut out of a block, daubed with gaudy paint, and dressed in
coarse and tawdry rags. M. Magnin lets us into the secret of their
structure and motions. “Their head is usually of card-board; their body
and thighs are wooden, their arms of cord; their extremities (that is to
say, their hands and their legs) are of lead, or partially so, which
enables them to obey the slightest impulse given them, without losing
their centre of gravity.” From the top of their head issues a little
iron rod, by means of which they are easily transported from one part of
the stage to another. To conceal this rod and the movement of the
threads from the spectators, the plan was devised of placing in front of
the stage a sort of screen, composed of very fine perpendicular threads,
drawn very tight, which, blending with those that move the puppets,
deceive the most attentive eye. By another still more ingenious
invention, all the strings, excepting those of the arms, were made to
pass within the body and out at the top of the head, where they were
assembled in a slender iron tube, which served at the same time as the
rod to move the figures. A totally different system was subsequently
introduced by Bartholomew Neri, a distinguished painter and mechanician.
It was that of grooves, in which the marionettes were fixed. Their
movements were directed by persons beneath the stage, who also pulled
their strings. These various systems, sometimes combined, have produced
the most astonishing results. One of our countrymen, passing through
Genoa in 1834, was taken to the marionette theatre _delle Vigne_, and
witnessed the performance of a grand military drama, _The Siege of
Antwerp_, in which Marshal Gerard and old General Chassé vied with each
other in sonorous phrases, rolling eyes, and heroism. The fantoccini of
the _Fiando_ theatre at Milan are as celebrated and as much visited by
foreigners as the dome, the arch of the Simplon, or the shrine of St
Charles. In 1823, a correspondent of the _Globe_ newspaper spoke of them
thus: “Such is the precision of movement of these little actors, their
bodies, arms, head, all gesticulate with such judgment, and in such
perfect unison with the sentiments expressed by the voice, that, but for
the dimensions, I might have thought myself in the Rue de Richelieu.
Besides _Nebuchadnezzar_, a classic tragedy, they performed an
anacreontic ballet. I wish our opera-dancers, so proud of their legs and
arms, could see these wooden dancers copy all their attitudes and
graces.” Dancing is a department of their performances in which the
Italian marionettes excel. A French author, Mr Jal, who published,
nearly twenty years ago, a lively narrative of a ramble from Paris to
Naples, was wonder-struck by what he saw at the _Fiando_. The grand
romantic drama in six tableaux, _Prince Eugene of Savoy at the Siege of
Temeswar_, which composed the bulk of the evening’s performance,
astonished him much less than the ballet between its acts. “The dancing
of these wooden Perrots and Taglionis,” he says, “is truly not to be
imagined; horizontal dance, side dance, vertical dance, every possible
dance, all the flourishes of feet and legs that you admire at the opera,
are to be seen at the _Fiando_ theatre; and when the doll has danced her
dance, when she has been well applauded, and the pit calls for her, she
comes out from the side scenes, bows, puts her little hand on her heart,
and disappears only when she has completely parodied the great singers
and the proud dancers of _La Scala_.” But doubtless the greatest
compliment these doll-dancers ever received, was the practical one paid
them by the Roman authorities, who compelled the female marionettes to
wear drawers! The completeness of the illusion in the case of these
puppets suggested some curious reflections to a clever French critic, M.
Peisse, with respect to reality in painting, and the laws of material
illusion. Speaking of the Roman _burattini_, “These,” he says, “are
little figures worked by a man placed above the stage, which is arranged
exactly like that of our theatres. For some minutes after the rising of
the curtain, the puppets preserve their true dimensions, but soon they
grow larger to the eye, and in a short time they have the appearance of
real men. The space in which they move, the furniture, and all the
surrounding objects, being in exact proportion with their stature, the
illusion is perfect, and is sustained so long as the eye has no point of
comparison. But if, as sometimes happens, the hand of the manager shows
itself amongst the little actors, it seems that of a giant.... If a man
suddenly came amongst the marionettes, he would appear a Gargantua.”
Another well-known and esteemed French writer on Italy, M. Beyle
(Stendhal),[5] tells of the realisation of this last ingenious
supposition. He relates, that after the performance (at the Palazzo
Fiano at Rome) of _Cassandrino allievo di un pittore_ (Cassandrino pupil
of a painter), a child coming upon the stage to trim the lamps, two or
three strangers uttered a cry; they took the child for a giant. In all
the principal towns of Italy through which he passed, M. Beyle waited
upon the marionettes—now in theatres, then in private houses—and the
pages he devotes to them are full of that fineness of observation which
characterised his charming talent. We can hardly do better than extract
his first impressions. “Yesterday, towards nine o’clock,” he says, “I
quitted those magnificent saloons, adjacent to a garden full of orange
trees, which are called the _Café Rospoli_. The _Fiano_ palace is just
opposite. At the door of a sort of cellar stood a man, exclaiming,
‘_Entrate, ô signori!_ it is about to begin!’ For the sum of
twenty-eight centimes (three-pence), I was admitted to the little
theatre. The low price made me fear bad company and fleas. I was soon
reassured; my neighbours were respectable citizens of Rome. The Roman
people is perhaps in all Europe that which best loves and seizes
delicate and cutting satire. The theatrical censors being more rigid
than at Paris, nothing can be tamer than the comedies at the theatre.
Laughter has taken refuge with the marionettes, whose performances are
in great measure extemporaneous. I passed a very agreeable evening at
the Fiano palace; the stage on which the actors paraded their small
persons was some ten feet broad and four high. The decorations were
excellent, and carefully adapted to actors twelve inches in height.” The
pet character with the Romans is Cassandrino, an elderly gentleman of
fifty-five or sixty years of age, fresh, active, dandified, well
powdered, well dressed, and well got up, with excellent manners, and
much knowledge of the world, whose only failing is, that he falls in
love with all the women he meets. “It must be owned,” says M. Beyle,
“that the character is not badly devised in a country governed by an
oligarchical court composed of bachelors, and where the power is in the
hands of old age.” I need hardly say that Cassandrino, although a
churchman, is not bound by monastic rules—is in fact a layman—but I
would wager that there is not a spectator who does not invest him in
imagination with a cardinal’s red cap, or at least with the violet
stockings of a _monsignore_. The _monsignori_ are, it is well known, the
young men of the papal court; it is the place that leads to all others.
Rome is full of _monsignori_ of Cassandrino’s age, who have their
fortune still to make, and who seek amusement whilst waiting for the
cardinal’s hat. Cassandrino is the hero of innumerable little plays. His
susceptible heart continually leads him into scrapes. Disguised as a
young man, he goes to take lessons of a painter, with whose sister he is
in love, is detected by the lady’s aunt whom he had formerly courted,
escapes from her into the studio, is roughly treated by the pupils,
threatened with a dagger’s point by the painter, and at last, to avoid
scandal, which he fears more than the poniard, abandons all hope of the
red hat, and consents to marry the aunt. In another piece, tired of the
monotony of his solitary home, he makes a journey to Civita Vecchia, and
meets with all manner of ludicrous mishaps; and in a third, entitled
_Cassandrino dilettante e impresario_, his too great love of music and
the fair sex gets him into quarrels with _tenori_ and _bassi_, and
especially with the _prima donna_ whom he courts, and with the _maestro_
who is his rival. This _maestro_ is in the prime of youth; he has light
hair and blue eyes, he loves pleasure and good cheer, his wit is yet
more seductive than his person. All these qualities, and the very style
of his dress, remind the audience of one of the few great men modern
Italy has produced. There is a burst of applause; they recognise and
greet Rossini.
Of the performances of marionettes in the houses of the Italian nobility
and middle classes, it is naturally much less easy to obtain details
than of those given in public. It is generally understood, however, that
the private puppets are far from prudish, and allow themselves tolerable
license in respect of politics. At Florence, at the house of a rich
merchant, a party was assembled to witness the performance of a company
of marionettes. M. Beyle was there. “The theatre was a charming toy,
only five feet wide, and which, nevertheless, was an exact model of a
large theatre. Before the play began, the lights in the apartment were
extinguished. A company of twenty-four marionettes, eight inches in
height, with leaden legs, and which had cost a sequin apiece, performed
a _rather free_ comedy, abridged from Machiavelli’s _Mandragora_.” At
Naples the performance was satirical, and its hero a secretary of state.
In pieces of this kind, there is generally a speaker for every puppet;
and as it often happens that the speakers are personally acquainted with
the voice, ideas, and peculiarities of the persons intended to be
caricatured, great perfection and point is thus given to the
performance.
When the passion of the Italians for marionettes is found to be so
strong, so general, so persevering, and, we may add, so refined and
ingenious, it is not to be wondered at that most other European
countries are largely indebted to Italy for their progress, improvement,
and, in some cases, almost for the first rudiments of this minor branch
of the drama. Even the Spain of the Middle Ages, in most things so
original and self-relying, was under some obligations to Italy in this
respect. The first name of any mark which presents itself to the student
of the history of Spanish puppet-shows is that of a skilful
mathematician of Cremona, Giovanni Torriani, surnamed Gianello, of whom
the learned critic Covarrubias speaks as “a second Archimedes;” adding,
that this illustrious foreigner brought _titeres_ to great perfection.
That so distinguished a man should have wasted his time on such
frivolities requires some explanation. The Emperor Charles V.’s love of
curious mechanism induced many of the first mechanicians of Germany and
Italy to apply themselves to the production of extraordinary automatons.
Writers have spoken of an artificial eagle which flew to meet him on his
entrance into Nuremberg, and of a wonderful iron fly, presented to him
by Jean de Montroyal, which, took wing of itself, described circles in
the air, and then settled on his arm—marvels of science which other
authors have treated as mere fables. Gianello won the emperor’s favour
by the construction of an admirable clock, followed him to Spain, and
passed two years with him in his monastic retreat, striving, by
ingenious inventions, to raise the spirits of his melancholy patron,
depressed by unwonted inactivity. “Charles V.,” says Flaminio Strada,
historian of the war in Flanders, “busied himself, in the solitude of
the cloisters of St Just, with the construction of clocks. He had for
his master in that art Gianello Torriani, the Archimedes of that time,
who daily invented new mechanisms to occupy the mind of Charles, eager
and curious of all those things. Often, after dinner, Gianello displayed
upon the prince’s table little figures of horses and armed men. There
were some that beat the drum, others that sounded the trumpet; some were
seen advancing against each other at a gallop, like enemies, and
assailing each other with lances. Sometimes the ingenious mechanician
let loose in the room small wooden birds, which flew in all directions,
and which were constructed with such marvellous artifice that one day
the superior of the convent, chancing to be present, appeared to fear
that there was magic in the matter.” The attention of Charles V., even
in the decline of his genius, was not, however, wholly engrossed by such
toys as these. He and Torriani discussed and solved more useful and more
serious problems—one, amongst others, which Gianello realised after the
prince’s death, and which consisted in raising the waters of the Tagus
to the heights of Toledo. The improvements introduced by the skilful
mechanician of Cremona into the construction of marionettes were soon
adopted by the _titereros_. Puppets were already a common amusement in
Spain, and had right of station on all public places, and at all fairs,
and entrance into most churches. It is to be observed, that Italian
influence can be traced in the Peninsula only in the material and
mechanical departments of the marionette theatres. The characters and
the subjects of the plays have always been strictly national,
notwithstanding that, from the beginning of the seventeenth century down
to the commencement of the nineteenth—and probably even at the present
day—the exhibitors of these shows were principally foreigners, including
many gypsies. Punchinello succeeded in getting naturalised under the
name of Don Cristoval Pulichinela; but he does not appear ever to have
played a prominent part, and probably was rather a sort of supernumerary
to the show, like Master Peter’s ape. Occupation was perhaps hard to
find for him in the class of pieces preferred by Spanish taste. The
nature of these it is not difficult to conjecture. Spain, superstitious,
chivalrous, and semi-Moorish, hastened to equip its puppets in knightly
harness and priestly robes. “Moors, knights, giants, enchanters, the
conquerors of the Indies, the characters of the Old and the New
Testament, and especially saints and hermits, are,” says M. Magnin, “the
usual actors in these shows. The _titeres_ so frequently wear monkish
garb, especially in Portugal, that the circumstance has had an influence
on their name in this country, where they are more often called
_bonifrates_ than _titeres_. The composition of _bonifrate_ (although
the word is old, perhaps older than _titere_) indicates an Italian
origin.” Legends of saints and the book of ballads (_Romancero_)
supplied most of the subjects of the plays performed by Spanish puppets.
Of this we have an example in the drama selected by Cervantes for
performance by Master Peter’s _titeres_ before Don Quixote. In the
course of his researches, M. Magnin was surprised to find (although he
ought, perhaps, to have expected it) that bull-fights have had their
turn of popularity on the boards of the Spanish puppet-show. He traces
this in a curious old _picaresque_ romance, the memoirs of the _picara
Justina_. This adventurous heroine gives sundry particulars of the life
of her great-grandfather, who had kept a theatre of _titeres_ at
Seville, and who put such smart discourse into the mouths of his actors
that, to hear him, the women who sold fruit and chestnuts and _turrones_
(cakes of almonds and honey, still in use in Spain) quitted their goods
and their customers, leaving their hat or their _brasero_ (pan of hot
embers) to keep shop. The popular manager was unfortunately of irregular
habits, and expended his substance in riotous living. His money went,
his mules, his puppets—the very boards of his theatre were sold, and his
health left him with his worldly goods, so that he became the inmate of
an hospital. When upon the eve of giving up the ghost, his granddaughter
relates, he lost his senses, and became subject to such furious fits of
madness, that one day he imagined himself to be a puppet-show bull (_un
toro de titeres_), and that he was to fight a stone cross which stood in
the court of the hospital. Accordingly, he attacked it, crying out, “_Ah
perra! que te ageno!_” (words of defiance), and fell dead. The sister of
charity, a good simple woman, seeing this, exclaimed, “Oh the thrice
happy man! he has died at the foot of the cross, and whilst invoking
it!” At a recent date (1808), a French _savant_, travelling in Spain,
went to the puppet theatre at Valencia. _The Death of Seneca_ was the
title of the piece performed. In presence of the audience, the
celebrated philosopher, the pride of Cordova, ended historically by
opening his veins in a bath. The streams of blood that flowed from his
arms were simulated cleverly enough by the movement of a red ribbon. An
unexpected miracle, less historical than the mode of death, wound up the
drama. Amidst the noise of fireworks, the pagan sage was taken up into
heaven in a _glory_, pronouncing, as he ascended, the confession of his
faith in Jesus Christ, to the perfect satisfaction of the audience. The
smell of powder must have been a novelty to Seneca’s nostrils; but
doubtless the rockets contributed greatly to the general effect of the
scene, and Spain, the country of anomalies, is not to be disconcerted by
an anachronism.
Into whatever country we follow the footsteps of the numerous and motley
family of the Puppets, we find that, however exotic their habits may be
on their first arrival in the land, they speedily become a reflex of the
peculiar genius, tastes, and characteristics of its people. Thus in
Italy, the land of song and dance, of strict theatrical censors, and
despotic governments, we find the _burattini_ dealing in sharp but
polished jests at the expense of their rulers, excelling in the ballet,
and performing Rossini’s operas, without suppressions or curtailment,
with an orchestra of five or six instruments and singers behind the
scenes. The Spanish _titere_ couches his lance and rides forth to meet
the Moor and rescue captive maidens, marches with Cortes to the conquest
of Montezuma’s capital, or enacts, with more or less decorum, a moving
incident from Holy Writ. In the _Jokken_ and _Puppen_ of Germany we
recognise the metaphysical and fantastical tendencies of that country,
its broad and rather heavy humour, its quaint superstitions, domestic
sprites, and enchanted bullets. And in France, where puppet-shows were
early cherished, and encouraged by the aristocracy as well as by the
people, we need not wonder to find them elegant, witty, and
frivolous—modelling themselves, in fact, upon their patrons. M. Magnin
dwells long upon the puppets of his native land, which possess, however,
less character and strongly marked originality than those of some of the
other countries he discourses of. It is here he first traces the
etymology of the word _marionette_—unmistakably French, although it has
been of late years adopted in Germany and England. He considers it to be
one of the numerous affectionate diminutives of the name of Marie, which
crept into the French language in its infancy, and which soon came to be
applied to those little images of the Virgin that were exhibited, gaily
dressed and tinsel bedecked, to the adoration of the devout. In a
pastoral poem of the 13th century, he finds the pretty name of
Marionette applied by her lover to a young girl called Marion. “Several
streets of old Paris, in which were sold or exposed images of the Virgin
and saints, were called, some _Rues des Marmouzets_ (there are still two
streets of this name in Paris), others _Rues des Mariettes_, and
somewhat later, _Rues des Marionettes_. As irony makes its way
everywhere, the amiable or religious sense of the words _Marotte_,
_Mariotte_, and _Marionette_, was soon exchanged for a jesting and
profane one. In the 15th century there was sung, in the streets and
taverns, an unchaste ditty called the _Chant Marionnette_. The bauble of
a licensed fool was called, and is still called, _marotte_; ‘by reason,’
says Ménage, ‘of the head of a marionette—that is to say, of a little
girl’—which surmounts it; and at last mountebanks irreverently called
their wooden actors and actresses _marmouzets_ and _mariottes_. At the
end of the 16th century and commencement of the 17th, several Protestant
or sceptical writers were well pleased to confound, with an intention of
mockery, the religious and the profane sense of the words _marmouzets_
and _marionettes_. Henry Estienne, inveighing, in his _Apologie pour
Herodote_, against the chastisements inflicted on the Calvinists for the
mutilation of madonnas and images of saints, exclaims: ‘Never did the
Egyptians take such cruel vengeance for the murder of their cats, as has
been seen wreaked, in our days, on those who had mutilated some
_marmouzet_ or _marionette_.’” It is curious here again to trace the
connection between Roman image-worship and the puppet-show. The
marionette, at first reverently placed in niches, with spangled robe and
burning lamp, is presently found perched at the end of a jester’s bauble
and parading a juggler’s board. The question here is only of a name,
soon abandoned by the sacred images to its disreputable usurpers. But we
have already seen, especially in the case of Spain, what a scandalous
confusion came to pass between religious ceremonies and popular
entertainments, until at times these could hardly be distinguished from
those; and, as far as what occurred within them went, spectators might
often be perplexed to decide whether they were in a sacred edifice or a
showman’s booth. With respect to the French term _marionette_, it had
yet to undergo, after its decline and fall from a sacred to a profane
application, a still deeper degradation, before its final confinement to
the class of puppets it at the present day indicates. In the 16th
century it came to be applied not only to mechanical images of all
kinds, sacred and profane, but, by a strange extension of its meaning,
to the supposed supernatural dolls and malignant creatures that
sorcerers were accused of fostering, as familiar imps and as idols. From
a huge quarto printed in Paris in 1622, containing a collection of
trials for magic which took place between 1603 and 1615, M. Magnin
extracts a passage showing how certain poor idiots were accused of
“having kept, close confined and in subjection in their houses,
_marionettes_, which are little devils, having usually the form of
toads, sometimes of apes, always very hideous.” The rack, the gallows,
and the faggot were the usual lot of the unfortunate supposed possessors
of these unwholesome puppets.
There are instances on record of long discussions and fierce disputes
between provinces or towns for the honour of having been the birthplace
of some great hero, poet, or philosopher. In like manner, M. Magnin
labours hard, and expends much erudition, to prove that the French
_Polichinelle_, notwithstanding the similarity of name, is neither the
son, nor in any way related to the Italian _Pulcinella_, but is
thoroughly French in origin and character. That Harlequin and Pantaloon
came from south of the Alps he readily admits; also, that a name has
been borrowed from Italy for the French Punch. But he stands up manfully
for the originality of this jovial and dissipated puppet, which he
maintains to be a thoroughly Gallic type. Whether conclusive or not—a
point to the settlement of which we will not give many lines—the
arguments and facts he brings forward are ingenious and amusing. After
displaying the marked difference that exists in every respect, except in
that of the long hooked nose and the name, between the Punchinello of
Paris and that of Naples—the latter being a tall straight-backed active
fellow, dressed in a black half-mask, a grey pointed hat, a white frock
and trousers, and a tight girdle, and altogether of a different
character from his more northern namesake—he has the audacity to broach,
although with some hesitation, the bold idea that Polichinelle is a
portrait of the great Béarnais. “To hide nothing of my thought, I must
say that, under the necessary exaggeration of a loyal caricature,
Polichinelle exhibits the popular type, I dare not say of Henry IV., but
at any rate of the Gascon officer imitating his master’s bearing in the
guardroom of the palace of St Germain, or of the old Louvre. As to the
hunch, it has been from time immemorial the appendage, in France, of a
facetious, witty fellow. In the thirteenth century, Adam de la Halle was
called the _hunchback of Arras_, not that he was deformed, but on
account of his humorous vein.
On m’appelle bochu, mais je ne le suis mie.
The second hump, the one in front, conspicuous under his spangled
doublet, reminds us of the glittering and protuberant cuirass of
men-at-arms, and of the pigeon-breasted dress then in fashion, which
imitated the curve of the cuirass.[6] The very hat of Polichinelle (I do
not refer to his modern three-cornered covering, but to the beaver, with
brim turned up, which he still wore in the seventeenth century), was the
hat of the gentlemen of that day, the hat _à la Henri IV._ Finally,
certain characteristic features of his face, as well as the bold jovial
amorous temper of the jolly fellow, remind us, in caricature, of the
qualities and the defects of the Béarnais. In short, notwithstanding his
Neapolitan name, Polichinelle appears to me to be a completely national
type, and one of the most vivacious and sprightly creations of French
fancy.”
The first puppet-showmen in France whose names have been handed down to
posterity, were a father and son called Brioché. According to the most
authentic of the traditions collected, Jean Brioché exercised, at the
beginning of Louis XIV.’s reign, the two professions of tooth-drawer and
puppet-player. His station was at the end of the Pont Neuf, near the
gate of Nesle, and his comrade was the celebrated monkey Fagotin. With
or without his consent, Polichinelle was about this time dragged into
politics. Amongst the numerous Mazarinades and political satires that
deluged Paris in 1649, there was one entitled _Letter from Polichinelle
to Jules Mazarin_. It was in prose, but ended by these three lines, by
way of signature:—
“Je suis Polichinelle,
Qui fait la sentinelle
A la porte de Nesle.”
It is also likely that the letter was the work of Brioché or Briocchi
(who was perhaps a countryman and _protégé_ of the cardinal’s), written
with a view to attract notice and increase his popularity (a good
advertisement, in short), than that it proceeded from the pen of some
political partisan. But in any case it serves to show that the French
Punch was then a great favourite in Paris. “I may boast,” he is made to
say in the letter, “without vanity, Master Jules, that I have always
been better liked and more respected by the people than you have; for
how many times have I, with my own ears, heard them say: ‘Let us go and
see Polichinelle!’ whereas nobody ever heard them say: ‘Let us go and
see Mazarin!’” The unfortunate Fagotin came to an untimely end, if we
are to put faith in a little book now very rare (although it has gone
through several editions), entitled, _Combat de Cirano de Bergerac
contre le singe de Brioché_. This Cirano was a mad duellist of extreme
susceptibility. “His nose,” says Ménage, “which was much disfigured, was
cause of the death of more than ten persons. He could not endure that
any should look at him, and those who did had forthwith to draw and
defend themselves.” This lunatic, it is said, one day took Fagotin for a
lackey who was making faces at him, and ran him through on the spot. The
story may have been a mere skit on Cirano’s quarrelsome humour; but the
mistake he is said to have made, appears by no means impossible when we
become acquainted with the appearance and dress of the famous monkey.
“He was as big as a little man, and a devil of a droll,” says the author
of the _Combat de Cirano_; “his master had put him on an old Spanish
hat, whose dilapidations were concealed by a plume; round his neck was a
frill _à la Scaramouche_; he wore a doublet with six movable skirts,
trimmed with lace and tags—a garment that gave him rather the look of a
lackey—and a shoulder-belt from which hung a pointless blade.” It was
this innocent weapon, according to the writer quoted from, that poor
Fagotin had the fatal temerity to brandish against the terrible Cirano.
Whatever the manner of his death, his fame lived long after him; and
even as certain famous French comedians have transmitted their names to
the particular class of parts they filled during their lives, so did
Fagotin bequeath his to all monkeys attached to puppet-shows. Loret, in
his metrical narrative of the wonders of the fair of St Germain’s in the
year 1664, talks of “the apes and fagotins;” La Fontaine praises
_Fagotin’s tricks_ in his fable of _The Lion and his Court_, and Molière
makes the sprightly and malicious Dorine promise Tartuffe’s intended
wife that she shall have, in carnival time,
“Le sal et la grand ’branle, à savoir deux musettes,
Et parfois _Fagotin et les marionnettes_.”
Great honour, indeed, for a quadrumane comedian, to obtain even
incidental mention from France’s first fabulist and greatest dramatist.
It was at about the time of Tartuffe’s performance (1669) that
puppet-shows appear to have been at the zenith of their popularity in
France, and in the enjoyment of court favour. In the accounts of
expenditure of the royal treasury is noted a payment of 1365 livres “to
Brioché, player of marionettes, for the stay he made at St
Germain-en-Laye during the months of September, October, and November,
to divert the royal children.” Brioché had been preceded by another
puppet-showman, who had remained nearly two months. The dauphin was then
nine years old, and evidently very fond of Polichinelle—to whose
exploits and drolleries, and to the tricks of Fagotin, it is not,
however, to be supposed that the attractions of Brioché’s performances
were confined. He and his brother showman had doubtless a numerous
company of marionettes, performing a great variety of pieces, since they
were able to amuse the dauphin and his juvenile court for nearly five
months without intermission. Like all distinguished men, Brioché,
decidedly one of the celebrities of his time, and to whom we find
constant allusions in the prose and verse of that day, had his enemies
and his rivals. Amongst the former was to be reckoned no less a
personage than Bossuet, who denounced marionettes (with a severity that
might rather have been expected from some straight-laced Calvinist than
from a prelate of Rome) as a shameful and impure entertainment,
calculated to counteract his laborious efforts for the salvation of his
flock. M. Magnin’s extensive researches in puppet chronicles leave him
convinced that the eloquent bishop must have been in bilious temper when
thus attacking the poor little figures whose worst offences were a few
harmless drolleries. Anthony Hamilton, in a letter, half verse and half
prose, addressed to the daughter of James II. of England, describes the
fête of St Germain-en-Laye, and gives us the measure of the marionettes’
transgressions. “The famous Polichinelle,” he says, “the hero of that
stage, is a little free in his discourse, but not sufficiently so to
bring a blush to the cheek of the damsel he diverts by his witticisms.”
We would not take Anthony Hamilton’s evidence in such matters for more
than it is worth. There was, no doubt, a fair share of license in the
pieces arranged for these puppets, or in the jests introduced by their
invisible readers; and as regards their actions, M. Magnin himself tells
us of the _houzarde_, an extremely _gaillarde_ dance, resembling that
called the _antiquaile_ mentioned in Rabelais. Notwithstanding which,
the marionettes were in great favour with very honest people, and
Charles Perrault, one of the most distinguished members of the old
French Academy, praised them in verse as an agreeable pastime. The jokes
Brioché put into the mouths of his actors were greatly to the taste of
the Parisians; so much so that when an English mechanician exhibited
other puppets which he had contrived to move by springs instead of
strings, the public still preferred Brioché, “on account of the
drolleries he made them say.” That he was not always and everywhere so
successful, we learn by a quaint extract from the _Combat de Cirano_,
already mentioned. Brioché, says the facetious author, “one day took it
into his head to ramble afar with his little restless wooden Æsop,
twisting, turning, dancing, laughing, chattering, &c. This heteroclite
marmouzet, or, better to speak, this comical hunchback, was called
Polichinelle. His comrade’s name was Voisin. (More likely, suggests M.
Magnin, the _voisin_, the neighbour or gossip of Polichinelle.) After
visiting several towns and villages, they got on Swiss ground in a
canton where marionettes were unknown. Polichinelle having shown his
phiz, as well as all his gang, in presence of a people given to burn
sorcerers, they accused Brioché to the magistrate. Witnesses declared
that they had heard little figures jabber and talk, and that they must
be devils. Judgment was pronounced against the master of this wooden
company animated by springs. But for the interference of a man of sense
they would have made a roast of Brioché. They contented themselves with
stripping the marionettes naked. _O poveretta!_” The same story is told
by the Abbé d’Artigny, who lays the scene at Soleure, and says that
Brioché owed his release to a captain of the French-Swiss regiment then
recruiting in the cantons. Punch at that time had powerful protectors.
Brioché’s son and successor, Francis, whom the Parisians familiarly
called _Fanchon_, having been offensively interfered with, wrote at once
to the king. It would seem that, without quitting the vicinity of the
Pont Neuf, he desired to transfer his standing to the Faubourg St
Germains end, and that the commissaire of that district prohibited his
exhibition. On the 16th October 1676, the great Colbert wrote to the
lieutenant-general of police, communicating his majesty’s commands that
Brioché should be permitted to exercise his calling, and should have a
proper place assigned to him where he might do so.
The history of the French marionettes, during the first half of the
eighteenth century, is given in considerable detail by M. Magnin, but
does not contain any very striking episodes. It is to be feared their
morals got rather relaxed during the latter years of Louis XIV.’s reign,
and under the Regency, and Bossuet might then have thundered against
them with greater reason than in 1686. Towards the middle of the
century, a great change took place in the character of their
performances: witty jests, and allusions to the scandal of court and
city, were neglected for the sake of mechanical effects and surprises;
the vaudeville and polished farce, for which the French stage has long
been and still is famous, were replaced by showy dramas and _pièces à
spectacle_, in which the military element seems to have predominated,
judging from the titles of some of them—The Bombardment of Antwerp, The
Taking of Charleroi, The General Assault of Bergen-op-Zoom. It was the
commencement of the decline of puppet performances in France; the public
taste underwent a change; the eye was to be gratified, wit and satire
were in great measure dispensed with. “Vaucanson’s automatons, the
flute-player, the duck, &c., were imitated in every way, and people ran
in crowds to see Kempel’s chess-player. At the fair of St Germains, in
1744, a Pole, named Toscani, opened a picturesque and automatical
theatre, which seems to have served as a prelude to M. Pierre’s famous
show. ‘Here are to be seen,’ said the bills, ‘mountains, castles, marine
views; also figures that perfectly imitate all natural movements,
without being visibly acted upon by any string; and, which is still more
surprising, here are seen a storm, rain, thunder, vessels perishing,
sailors swimming, &c.’ On all hands such marvels as these were
announced, and also (I blush to write it) combats of wild animals.” Bull
and bear baits, wolf and dog fights, in refined France, just a century
ago, for all the world as in England in the days of buxom Queen Bess. M.
Magnin copies an advertisement of one of these savage exhibitions, which
might pass for a translated placard of the beast-fighting establishment
that complained of the opposition made to them by Will Shakespeare and
his players. Martin was the name of the man who kept the pit at the
_barrière de Sèvres_; and after lauding the wickedness of his bull, the
tenacity of his dogs, and the exceeding fierceness of his new wolf, he
informs the public that he has “pure bear oil for sale.” When Paris ran
after such coarse diversions as these, what hope was there for the elves
of the puppet-show? Punch shrugged his hump, and crept moodily into a
corner. Bull-rings and mechanism were too many for him. Twenty years
later we find him again in high favour and feather at the fair of St
Germains, where Audinot, an author and ex-singer at the united comic and
Italian operas, having quarrelled with his comrades and quitted the
theatre, exhibited large marionettes, which he called _bamboches_, and
which were striking likenesses of the performers at the Opéra Comique,
Laruette, Clairval, Madam Bérard, and himself. Polichinelle appeared
amongst them in the character of a gentleman of the bedchamber, and
found the same sort of popularity that Cassandrino has since enjoyed at
Rome. The monarchy was in its decline, the follies and vices of the
courtiers of the 18th century had brought them into contempt, and a
parody of them was welcome to the people. The fair over, Audinot
installed his puppets in a little theatre on the boulevard, which he
called the _Ambigu Comique_, to indicate the variety of the
entertainments there given, and there he brought out several new pieces,
one, amongst others, entitled _Le Testament de Polichinelle_. It was
quite time for Punch to make his will; his theatre was in a very weakly
state. It became the fashion to replace puppets by children; and one
hears little more of marionettes in France until Seraphin revives them
in his _Ombres Chinoises_. Few persons who have been in Paris will have
failed to notice, when walking round the Palais Royal between two and
three in the afternoon, or seven and nine in the evening, a shrivelled
weary-looking man, standing just within the railings that separate the
gallery from the garden, and continually repeating, in a tone between a
whine, a chant, and a croak, a monotonous formula, at first not very
intelligible to a foreigner. This man has acquired all the rights that
long occupation can give: the flagstone whereon, day after day, as long
as we can remember—and doubtless for a score or two of years before—he
has stood sentry, is worn hollow by the shuffling movement by which he
endeavours to retain warmth in his feet. He is identified with the
railings against which he stands, and is as much a part of the Palais
Royal as the glass gallery, Chevet’s shop, or the cannon that daily
fires itself off at noon. A little attention enables one to discover the
purport of his unvarying harangue. It begins with “_Les Ombres Chinoises
de Seraphin_”—this very drawlingly spoken—and ends with “_Prrrrenez vos
billets_”—a rattle on the _r_, and the word _billets_ dying away in a
sort of exhausted whine. In 1784, the ingenious Dominique Seraphin
exhibited his Chinese shadows several times before the royal family at
Versailles, was allowed to call his theatre “_Spectacle des Enfans de
France_,” and took up his quarters in the Palais Royal, in the very
house opposite to whose door the monotonous and melancholy man above
described at the present day “touts” for an audience. There for seventy
years Seraphin and his descendants have pulled the strings of their
puppets. But here, as M. Magnin observes, it is no longer movable
_sculpture_, but movable _painting_—the shadows of figures cut out of
sheets of pasteboard or leather, and placed between a strong light and a
transparent curtain. The shadows, owing doubtless to their intangible
nature, have passed unscathed through the countless political changes
and convulsions that have occurred during the three quarters of a
century that they have inhabited a nook in the palace which has been
alternately Cardinal, Royal, National, Imperial—all things by turn, and
nothing long. They have lasted and thriven, as far as bodiless shades
can thrive, under Republic and Empire, Directory and Consulate,
Restoration and Citizen Monarchy, Republic, and Empire again. We fear it
must be admitted that time-serving is at the bottom of this long
impunity and prosperity. In the feverish days of the first Revolution,
marionettes had _sans-culotte_ tendencies, with the exception of
Polichinelle, who, mindful doubtless of his descent from Henry IV.,
played the aristocrat, and carried his head so high, that at last he
lost it. M. Magnin passes hastily over this affecting phase in the
career of his puppet friends, merely quoting a few lines from Camille
Desmoulins, which bear upon the subject. “This selfish multitude,”
exclaims the _Vieux Cordelier_, indignant at the apathetic indifference
of the Parisians in presence of daily human hecatombs, “is formed to
follow blindly the impulse of the strongest. There was fighting in the
Carrousel and the Champ de Mars, and the Palais Royal displayed its
shepherdesses and its Arcadia. Close by the guillotine, beneath whose
keen edge fell crowned heads, on the same square, and at the same time,
_they also guillotined Polichinelle_, who divided the attention of the
eager crowd.” Punch, who had passed his life hanging the hangman, was at
a nonplus in presence of the guillotine. He missed the running noose he
was so skilful in drawing tight, and mournfully laid his neck in the
bloody groove. Some say that he escaped, that his dog was dressed up,
and beheaded in his stead, and that he himself reached a foreign shore,
where he presently regained his freedom of speech and former jollity of
character. M. Magnin himself is clearly of opinion that he is not dead,
but only sleeps. “Would it not be well,” he asks, “to awaken him here in
France? Can it be that the little Æsop has nothing new to tell us? Above
all, do not say that he is dead. Polichinelle never dies. You doubt it?
You do not know then what Polichinelle is? He is the good sense of the
people, the brisk sally, the irrepressible laugh. Yes, Polichinelle will
laugh, sing, and hiss, as long as the world contains vices, follies, and
things to ridicule. You see very well that Polichinelle is not near his
death. Polichinelle is immortal!”
To England M. Magnin allots nearly as many pages as to his own country,
and displays in them a rare acquaintance with our language, literature,
and customs. It would in no way have surprised him, he says, had the
playful and lightsome muse of the puppet-show been made less welcome by
the Germanic races than by nations of Greco-Roman origin. The grave and
more earnest temper generally attributed to the former would have
accounted for their disregard of a pastime they might deem frivolous,
and fail to appreciate. He was well pleased, then, to find his wooden
clients, his well-beloved marionettes, as popular and as well understood
on the banks of the Thames, the Oder, and the Zuyder Zee, as in Naples,
Paris, or Seville. “In England especially,” he says, “the taste for this
kind of spectacle has been so widely diffused, that one could hardly
name a single poet, from Chaucer to Lord Byron, or a single
prose-writer, from Sir Philip Sydney to Hazlitt, in whose works are not
to be found abundant information on the subject, or frequent allusions
to it. The dramatists, above all, beginning with those who are the glory
of the reigns of Elizabeth and James I., supply us with the most curious
particulars of the repertory, the managers, and the stage of the
marionettes. Shakespeare himself has not disdained to draw from this
singular arsenal ingenious or energetic metaphors, which he places in
the mouths of his most tragic personages at the most pathetic moments. I
can name ten or twelve of his plays in which this occurs.” (The list
follows.) “The cotemporaries and successors of this great poet—Ben
Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Milton, Davenant, Swift, Addison, Gay,
Fielding, Goldsmith, Sheridan—have also borrowed many moral or satirical
sallies from this popular diversion. Thanks to this singular tendency of
the English dramatists to busy themselves with the proceedings of their
little street-corner rivals, I have found in their writings much
assistance—as agreeable as unexpected—in the task I have undertaken.
Deprived, as one necessarily is in a foreign country, of direct sources
and original pamphlets, having at my disposal only those standard works
of great writers that are to be met with on the shelves of every
library, I have found it sufficient, strange to say! to collate the
passages so abundantly furnished me by these chosen authors to form a
collection of documents concerning English puppets more circumstantial
and more complete, I venture to think, than any that have hitherto been
got together by the best-informed native critics.” Others, if they
please, may controvert the claim here put forward; we shall content
ourselves with saying that the amount of research manifested in M.
Magnin’s long essay on English puppets does as much credit to his
industry as the manner of the compilation does to his judgment, acumen,
and literary talent. It must be observed, however, that he has not
altogether limited himself, when seeking materials and authorities, to
the chosen corps of English dramatists, poets, and essayists, but has
consulted sundry antiquarian authorities, tracts of the time of the
commonwealth, the works of Hogarth, those of Hone, Payne Collier, Thomas
Wright, and other modern or cotemporary writers. At the same time, this
portion of his book contains much that will be novel to most English
readers, and abounds in curious details and pertinent reflections on old
English character and usages. If we do not dwell upon it at some length,
it is because we desire, whilst room remains, to devote a page or two to
Germany and the Northerns. We must not omit, however, to mention that M.
Magnin joins issue with Mr Payne Collier on the question of the origin
of the English Punch. Mr Collier makes him date from 1688, and brings
him over from Holland in the same ship with William of Orange. M. Magnin
takes a different view, and makes out a very fair case. He begins by
remarking that several false derivations have been assigned to the name
of Punch. “Some have imagined I know not what secret and fantastical
connection between Punch’s name, and even between the fire of Punch’s
wit, and the ardent beverage of which the recipe, it is said, came to us
from Persia. It is going a great deal too far in search of an error.
Punch is simply the name of our friend _Pulchinello_, a little altered
and contracted by the monosyllabic genius of the English language. In
the early period of his career in England we find the names Punch and
Punchinello used indifferently for each other. Is it quite certain that
Punch came to London from the Hague, in the suite of William III.? I
have doubts of it. His learned biographer admits that there are traces
of his presence in England previous to the abdication of James II....
Certain passages of Addison’s pretty Latin poem on puppet-shows
(_Machinæ Gesticulantes_) prove that Punch’s theatre was in great
progress on the old London puppet-shows in the days of Queen Elizabeth.”
The personal appearance, and some of the characteristics of Punch,
certainly induce a belief that he is of French origin; and even though
it be proved that he was imported into England from Holland, may it not
be admitted as highly probable that he went to the latter country with
the refugees, who for several years previously to the Revolution of 1688
had been flocking thither from France? We risk the question with all
diffidence, and without the slightest intention of pronouncing judgment
on so important a matter. And as we have no intention or desire to take
up the cudgels in behalf of the origin of that Punch, who, as the
unfortunate and much-battered Judy can testify, himself handles those
weapons so efficiently, we refer the reader to M. Magnin for the _pros_
and _cons_ of the argument, and start upon a rapid tour through Germany
and northern Europe. M. Magnin accelerates his pace as he approaches the
close of his journey, and pauses there only where his attention is
arrested by some striking novelty or original feature, to omit mention
of which would be to leave a gap in the history he has undertaken to
write.
Germany is the native land and head-quarters of wood-cutters. We mean
not hewers of wood for the furnace, but cunning carvers in
smooth-grained beech and delicate deal; artists in timber, we may truly
say, when we contemplate the graceful and beautiful objects for which we
are indebted to the luxuriant forests and skilful knives of Baden and
Bavaria. The Teutonic race also possess, in a very high degree, the
mechanical genius, to be convinced of which we have but to look at the
ingenious clocks, with their astronomical evolutions, moving figures,
crowing cocks, and the like, so constantly met with in all parts of
Germany, in Switzerland, and in Holland. This double aptitude brought
about an early development of anatomical sculpture in Germany, applied,
as usual, to various purposes, religious and civil, serious and
recreative, wonderful images of saints, figures borne in municipal
processions, and dramatic puppets. These latter are traced by M. Magnin
as far back as the 12th century. Even in a manuscript of the 10th
century he finds the word _Tocha_ or _Docha_ used in the sense of doll
or puppet (_puppa_), and also in that of mime (_mima_, _mimula_).
Somewhat later the word _Tokke-spil_ (puppet-show) occurs in the poems
of the Minnesingers. One of these, Master Sigeher, when stigmatising the
Pope’s abuse of his influence with the Electors of the Empire, writes—
“Als der Tokken spilt der Welche mit Tutschen Vürsten.”
“The Italian plays with the German princes as with puppets.”
There still exists in the library at Strasburg a manuscript dating from
the end of the 12th century, and adorned with a great number of curious
miniatures, one of which, under the strange title of _Ludus Monstrorum_,
represents a puppet-show. Two little figures, armed _cap-à-pie_, are
made to move and fight by means of a string, whose ends two showmen
hold. The painting proves not only the existence of marionettes at that
period, but also that they were sufficiently common to supply a symbol
intelligible to all, since it is put as an illustration to a moral
reflection on the vanity of human things. From the equipment of the
figures it may also be inferred that military subjects were then in
favour on the narrow stage of the puppet-show. And M. Magnin, zealous to
track his fox to its very earth, risks the word _Niebelungen_, but
brings no evidence to support his surmise. In the 14th and 15th
centuries we obtain more positive data as to the nature of the
_puppenspiel_, and of its performances. Romantic subjects, historical
fables, were then in fashion—the four sons of Aymon, Genevieve of
Brabant, the Lady of Roussillon, to whom her lover’s heart was given to
eat, and who killed herself in her despair. The history of Joan of Arc
was also a favourite subject. That heroine had an episodical part in a
piece performed at Ratisbon in 1430. “There exists,” says M. Magnin, “a
precious testimony to a performance of marionettes at that period. In a
fragment of the poem of Malagis, written in Germany in the 15th century,
after a Flemish translation of our old romance of Maugis, the fairy
Oriande de Rosefleur, who has been separated for fifteen years from her
beloved pupil, Malagis, arrives, disguised as a juggler, at the castle
of Rigremont, where a wedding is being celebrated. She offers the
company the diversion of a puppet-show; it is accepted; she asks for a
table to serve as a stage, and exhibits upon it two figures, a male and
female magician. Into their mouths she puts stanzas, which tell her
history and cause her to be recognised by Malagis. M. Von der Hagen has
published this fragment from the MS. preserved at Heidelberg, in
_Germania_, vol. viii., p. 280. The scene in question is not to be found
either in the French poem or the French prose romance.” The 16th century
was an epoch in the annals of German puppets. Scepticism and sorcery
were the order of the day. Faust stepped upon the stage and held it
long.
It appears to have been the custom, rarely deviated from by the
puppet-shows of any nation or time, to have a comic character or
buffoon, who intruded, even in the most tragical pieces, to give by
his jests variety and relief to the performance. There was nothing odd
or startling in this in the Middle Ages, when every great
personage—emperor, king, or prelate—had his licensed jester attached
to his household. M. Magnin is in some doubt as to the name first
given to this character in Germany, unless it was Eulenspiegel (a name
which in modern times has acquired some celebrity as a literary
pseudonyme), or rather Master Hemmerlein, whose caustic sarcasm
partakes at once of the humour of the devil and the hangman. Master
Hemmerlein, according to Frisch, had a face like a frightful mask; he
belonged to the lowest class of marionettes, under whose dress the
showman passes his hand to move them. This author adds that the name
of Hemmerlein was sometimes given to the public executioner, and that
it is applied to the devil in the _Breviarium Historicum_ of Sebald.
This will bear explanation. The word Hämmerlein or Hämmerling (the
latter is now the usual orthography) has three very distinct
meanings—a jack-pudding, a flayer, and a gold-hammer (bird). The
German headsman, in former days, combined with his terrible duties the
occupation of a flayer or knacker, charged to remove dead horses and
other carrion; hence he was commonly spoken of as Master
Hämmerlein.[7]
It is difficult to say by what grim mockery or strange assimilation his
name was applied to the buffoon of the puppet-show. We have little
information, however, concerning Hämmerlein the droll, who appears to
have had but a short reign when he was supplanted by the famous
_Hanswurst_, to whom out-spoken Martin Luther compared Duke Henry of
Brunswick. “Miserable, choleric spirit” (here Martin addresses himself
to Satan), “you, and your poor possessed creature Henry, you know, as
well as all your poets and writers, that the name of _Hanswurst_ is not
of my invention; others have employed it before me, to designate those
rude and unlucky persons who, desiring to exhibit finesse, commit but
clumsiness and impropriety.” And that there might be no mistake as to
his application of the word, he adds: “Many persons compare my very
gracious lord, Duke Henry of Brunswick, to _Hanswurst_, because the said
lord is replete and corpulent.” One of the consequences in Germany of
Luther’s preachings, and of the more fanatical denunciations of some of
his disciples and cotemporaries, was terrible havoc amongst church
pictures and statues, including automatical images and groups, then very
numerous in that country, and an end was at that time put to dramatic
church ceremonies, not only in districts that embraced the new doctrine,
but in many that adhered to Rome. Some of the performances were of the
most grotesque description. They were particularly frequent in Poland,
where, at Christmas time, in many churches, and especially in those of
monasteries, the people were amused between mass and vespers, by the
play of the _Szopka_ or stable. “In this kind of drama,” says M. Magnin,
“_lalki_ (little dolls of wood or card-board) represented Mary, Jesus,
Joseph, the angels, the shepherds, and the three Magi on their knees,
with their offerings of gold, incense, and myrrh, not forgetting the ox,
the ass, and St. John the Baptist’s lamb. Then came the massacre of the
innocents, in the midst of which Herod’s own son perished by mistake.
The wicked prince, in his despair, called upon death, who soon made his
appearance, in the form of a skeleton, and cut off his head with his
scythe. Then a black devil ascended, with a red tongue, pointed horns,
and a long tail, picked up the king’s body on the end of his pitchfork,
and carried it off to the infernal regions.” This strange performance
was continued in the Polish churches until the middle of the 18th
century, with numerous indecorous variations. Expelled from consecrated
edifices, it is nevertheless preserved to the present day, as a popular
diversion, in all the provinces of the defunct kingdom of Poland. From
Christmas-tide to Shrove Tuesday it is welcomed by both the rural and
the urban population, by the peasantry, the middle classes, and even in
the dwellings of the nobility.
In Germany, the last twenty years of the seventeenth century witnessed
a violent struggle between the church and the stage, or it should
rather be said a relentless persecution of the latter by the former,
which could oppose only remonstrances to the intolerant rigour of the
consistories. The quarrel had its origin at Hamburg. A clergyman
refused to administer the sacrament to two stage-players. An ardent
controversy ensued; the dispute became envenomed; the Protestant
clergy made common cause; the anti-theatrical movement spread over all
Germany. In vain did several universities, appealed to by the
comedians, prove, from the most respectable authorities, the innocence
of their profession, of which the actors themselves published sensible
and judicious defences; in vain did several princes endeavour to
counterbalance, by marks of esteem and consideration, the exaggerated
severity of the theologians; the majority of the public sided with its
pastors. Players were avoided as dissolute vagabonds; and although,
whilst condemning the performers, people did not cease to frequent the
performances, a great many comedians, feeling themselves humiliated,
abandoned the stage to foreigners and to marionettes. The regular
theatres rapidly decreased in number, and puppet-shows augmented in a
like ratio. “At the end of the 17th century,” says Flögel, “the
_Haupt-und-Staatsactionen_ usurped the place of the real drama. These
pieces were played sometimes by mechanical dolls, sometimes by
actors.” The meaning of the term _Haupt-und-Staatsaction_ is rather
obscure, but it was in fact applied to almost every kind of piece
performed by puppets. It was bound to include a great deal of incident
and show, to be supported by occasional instrumental music, and to
have a comic personage or buffoon amongst its characters. The tenth
chapter of M. Magnin’s fifth and final section shows us a strange
variety in the subjects selected for these plays—in which, it is to be
noted, each puppet had its own separate speaker behind the scenes.
Weltheim, the manager of a company of marionettes in the last twenty
years of the 17th century, and the beginning of the 18th, usually
recruited interpreters for his puppets amongst the students of Leipzig
and Jena. He was the first who performed a translation of Molière’s
comedies in Germany. In 1688, we find him giving at Hamburg, a piece
founded on the fall of Adam and Eve, followed by a buffoonery called
_Jack-pudding in Punch’s Shop_. Then we come to such pieces as _The
Lapidation of Naboth_; _Asphalides, King of Arabia_; _The Fall of
Jerusalem_, and _The Death of Wallenstein_—a strange medley of
ancient, modern, sacred and profane history. The following
performance, at which M. Schütze, the historian of the Hamburg
theatre, declares that he was present in his youth, must have been as
curious as any we have named. “A little musical drama on the fall of
Adam and Eve (performed at Hamburg rather more than a century ago),
the characters in which, including that of the serpent, were filled by
puppets. The reptile was seen coiled round the tree, darting out his
pernicious tongue. After the fall of our first parents, Hanswurst
addressed them in a strain of coarse pleasantry that greatly diverted
the audience. Two bears danced a ballet, and at the end, an angel
appeared, as in Genesis, drew a sword of gilt paper, and cut at a
single blow the knot of the piece.” Later than this a tailor named
Reibehand, who kept a puppet theatre, contrived to burlesque the
touching parable of the Prodigal Son. His playbill ran thus: “The
arch-prodigal, chastised by the four elements, with Harlequin, the
joyous companion of a great criminal.” The merit of this most
irreverent _Haupt-Action_ consisted in the transformations it
contained. Thus the fruit the young prodigal was about to eat changed
itself into death’s heads, the water he was about to drink, into
flames; rocks split open and revealed a gallows with a man hanging
from it. The limbs of this corpse swinging in the wind, fell off one
by one, then assembled upon the ground and reconnected themselves, and
then the dead man arose and pursued the prodigal. A very German and
not very pleasing device. When Charles XII. of Sweden fell dead in the
trenches at Friedrichshall, slain, according to popular superstition,
by an enchanted bullet, his death was immediately taken advantage of
by the indefatigable marionettes. A great historical piece was brought
out at Hamburg, in which Friedrichshall was twice bombarded. In it a
soldier excited great admiration as a prodigy of mechanism, by
lighting his pipe and puffing smoke from his mouth. This feat was soon
imported into France, and may be seen at the present day executed in
great perfection at Seraphin’s theatre in the Palais Royal.
The triviality, absurdity, and profanity that tarnished the German stage
during the first half of the eighteenth century, were followed by a
reaction in favour of better taste and common sense. Gottsched and
Lessing gave the signal of the revival of art and poetry. The theatre
resumed its importance; actors their proper place, from which they had
been ousted by the intolerance of the consistories; puppets returned to
the modest sphere which circumstances had permitted and encouraged them
temporarily to quit, and resumed their old stock pieces, consisting of
Biblical dramas and popular legends. Faust was exceedingly popular, and
novelties were occasionally introduced. Lewis’s _Bravo of Venice_ was
taken for the subject of a grand drama, performed by the Augsburg
marionettes, which also played, with great success, a drama founded on
the well-known story of Don Juan and his marble guest. And this brings
us to the time when a boy, Wolfgang Goethe by name—kept at home by his
parents during certain gloomy episodes of the Seven Years’ War, when
Frankfort was occupied by the French—delighted his leisure with a
marionette theatre, a Christmas gift from his grandfather, and so
fostered his inborn dramatic taste and genius. In his memoirs, and in
_Wilhelm Meister_, he tells us, in some charming passages, what pleasure
he took in the management of his mimic comedians.
“We are indebted,” says M. Magnin, “for what follows, to a
confidential communication made by the illustrious composer Haydn, at
Vienna, in 1805, to M. Charles Bertuch, one of his fervent admirers.”
And he relates that when Hadyn was _mâitre de chapelle_ to Prince
Nicholas-Joseph Esterhazy, that enlightened and generous patron of
art, and especially of music, he composed four little operas for a
marionette theatre, which existed in the Esterhazys’ magnificent
Castle of Eisenstadt in Hungary. They were written between 1773 and
1780. “In the list of all his musical works, which the illustrious old
man signed and gave to M. Charles Bertuch, during the residence of the
latter at Vienna, occur the following lines, which I exactly
transcribe:—_Operette_ composed for the marionettes: _Philémon and
Baucis_, 1773; _Geniêvre_, 1777; _Didon_, parody, 1778; _La Vengeance
accomplie ou la Maison Brulie_ (no date). In the same list the _Diable
Boiteux_ is set down, probably because it was played by Prince
Esterhazy’s marionettes, but it was composed at Vienna, in the
author’s early youth, for Bernardone, the manager of a popular theatre
at the Corinthian Gate, and twenty-four sequins were paid for it. It
was thought that these curious operas, all unpublished, had been
destroyed in a fire which consumed a part of the Castle of Eisenstadt,
including Haydn’s apartment; but that was not the case, for they were
seen in 1827 in the musical library of the Esterhazys, with a score of
other pieces whose titles one would like to know.”
Goethe has told us, in an interesting passage of his memoirs, that the
idea of his great work of Faust was suggested to him by the puppet-show.
M. Magnin, who takes an affectionate interest in the triumphs of the
marionettes with whom he has so long associated, and whose career he has
traced from their cradle, exults in the claim they have thus acquired to
the world’s gratitude—not always, it must be owned, shown to those who
best deserve it. He concludes his history with a double
recapitulation—first, of the celebrated persons who have taken pleasure
in this class of dramatic performances; and, secondly, of the most
distinguished of those who have wielded pen in its service. And he calls
upon his readers to applaud, and upon the ladies especially to wave
kerchief and throw bouquet at the graceful FANTASIA, the pretty fairy,
the sprightly muse of the marionettes. We doubt not but that the appeal
will be responded to; although her fairyship may fairly be considered to
be already sufficiently rewarded by meeting with a biographer in every
way so competent.
THE QUIET HEART.
PART V.—CHAPTER XXV.
But this Menie Laurie, rising up from her bed of unrest, when the
morning light breaks, cold and real, upon a changed world, has wept out
all her child’s tears, and is a woman once again. No one knows yet a
whisper of what has befallen her, not even poor Jenny, who sobbed over
her last night, and implored her not to weep.
Now, how to tell this—how to signify, in the fewest and calmest words,
the change that has come upon her. Sitting, with her cheek leant on her
hand, by the window where she heard it, before any other eyes are awake,
Menie ponders this in her heart. Always before in little difficulties
counsel and help have been within her reach; few troublous things have
been to do in Menie’s experience; and no one ever dreamt that _she_
should do them, when they chanced to come to her mother’s door.
But now her mother’s honour is involved—she must not be consulted—she
must not know. With a proud flush Menie draws up herself—herself who
must work in this alone. Ah, sweet dependence, dear humility of the old
times! we must lay them by out of our heart, to wait for a happier dawn.
This day it is independence—self-support—a strength that stands alone;
and no one who has not felt such an abrupt transition can know how hard
it is to take these unused weapons up.
“Will you let me speak to you, aunt?” Menie’s heart falters within her,
as she remembers poor Miss Annie’s unaccepted sympathy. Has she indeed
been driven to seek refuge here at last?
“My love! how can you ask such a question, darling, when I am always
ready to speak to you?” exclaimed Miss Annie, with enthusiasm.
“But not here—out of doors, if you will permit me,” said Menie in a half
whisper. “I—I want to be out of my mother’s sight—she must not know.”
“You delightful creature,” said Miss Annie, “are you going to give me
your confidence at last?”
Poor Menie, sadly dismayed, was very ill able to support this strain of
sympathy. She hastened out, not quite observing how it tasked her
companion to follow her—out to the same green overgrown corner, where
once before she had spoken of this same subject to Randall himself. With
a slight shudder she paused there before the little rustic seat, from
which she had risen at his approach; but Menie knew that she must harden
herself against the power of associations; enough of real ill was before
her.
“I want to tell you, aunt, if you will please to listen to me, that the
engagement of which you were told when we came here is dissolved—broken.
I do not know if there is any stronger word,” said Menie, a bewildered
look growing on her face. “I mean to say, that it is all over, as if it
had never been.”
And Menie folded her hands upon her breast, and stood patiently to
listen, expecting a burst of lamentation and condolence; but Menie was
not prepared for the laugh which rung shrilly on her ears—the words that
followed it.
“My sweet simple child, I have no doubt you quite believe it—forgive me
for laughing, darling; but I know what lovers’ quarrels are. There, now,
don’t look so grave and angry; my love, you will make it all up
to-morrow.”
And Miss Annie Laurie patted Menie’s shrinking shoulder encouragingly.
It was a harder task this than Menie had anticipated; but she went on
without flinching.
“This is no lovers’ quarrel, aunt; do not think so. My mother is in some
degree involved in this. I cannot consult her, or ask her to help me; it
is the first time I have ever been in such a strait;” and Menie’s lip
quivered as she spoke. “You are my only friend. I am serious—as serious
as mind can be, which feels that here it decides its life. Aunt, I apply
to you.”
Miss Annie Laurie looked up very much confused and shaken; very seldom
had any one spoken to her with such a sober seriousness of tone; she
could not think it unreal, for neither extravagance nor despair were in
these grave sad words of Menie. The poor frivolous heart felt this voice
ring into its depths, past all superficial affectations and sentiments.
No exuberance of sympathy, no shower of condoling words or endearments,
could answer this appeal; and poor Miss Annie faltered before this claim
of real service—faltered and shrank into a very weak old woman, her
self-delusions standing her in no stead in such a strait; and the only
answer she could make was to cry, in a trembling and strangely altered
voice, “Oh, child, do not speak so. What can I do for you?”
Most true, what can you do, indeed, poor soul! whose greatest object for
all these years has been to shut out and darken the daylight truth,
which mocked your vain pretences? You could give charity and gentle
words—be thankful; your heart is alive in you because of these: but what
can you do in such a difficulty as this? where is your wisdom to
counsel, your strength to uphold? This grave girl stands before you,
sadly bearing her burden, without an effort to conceal from you that she
feels it hard to bear; but you, whose age is not grave, whose heart has
rejected experience, whose mind has refused to learn the kindly insight
of advancing years—shrink into yourself, poor aged butterfly; feel that
it is presumption to call yourself her counsellor, and say again—again,
with a tremble in your weakened voice, “What can I do for you?”
“Aunt, I apply to you,” said Menie Laurie; “I ask your help, when I
resolve to decide my future life according to my own will and conviction
of what is best. I have no one else to assist me. I apply to you.”
Miss Annie melted into a fit of feeble crying; her hands shook, her
ringlets drooped down lank about her cheeks. “I will do
anything—anything you like; tell me what to do, Menie—Menie, my dear
child.”
It was pitiful to see her distress. Menie, whom no one comforted, felt
her heart moved to comfort her.
“I will not grieve you much,” said Menie gently; “only I beg you to give
me your countenance when I see Randall—Mr Home. I want you to be as my
mother might have been in other circumstances; but I will not trouble
you much, aunt—I will not trouble you.”
Miss Annie could not stop her tears; she was very timid and afraid,
sobbing helplessly. “What will I do? what can I do? Oh, Menie, love, you
will make it up to-morrow;” for poor Miss Annie knew no way of
conquering grief except by flying out of its sight.
Menie led her back to the house tenderly. Menie had never known before
this necessity of becoming comforter, when she had so much need to be
comforted. It was best for her—it gave her all the greater command over
her own heart.
And to hear poor innocent July, in her own young unclouded joy—to hear
her unsuspicious mother at their breakfast-table—to have Randall’s name
cross her now and then, like a sudden blow—Randall, Randall;—Menie knew
nothing of all these depths, nor how such sorrows come in battalions;
so, one by one, her inexperienced heart gained acquaintance with them
now,—gained acquaintance with that sorest of human truths, that it is
possible to love and to condemn—possible to part, and know that parting
is the best—yet withal to cling and cling, and hold, with the saddest
gripe of tenderness, the heart from which you part. Poor Menie! they
said she looked very dark and heavy; that last night’s exertions had
wearied her—it was very true.
Miss Annie sent a message that she was not well, and would breakfast in
her own room. In the forenoon, when she came down stairs again, even
Menie was startled at the change. Miss Annie’s ringlets were smoothed
out and braided on her poor thin cheek—braided elaborately with a care
and study worthy of something more important; her step tottered a
little; when any one spoke to her, a little gush of tears came to her
eyes; but, notwithstanding, there was a solemnity and importance in the
hush of Miss Annie’s manner, which no one had ever seen in her before.
Half-a-dozen times that day she asked, in a startling whisper, “Menie,
when is he to come?” Poor Menie, sick at heart, could scarcely bear this
slow prolonging of her pain.
CHAPTER XXVI.
“Aunt, he has come.”
No one knows; July is out on a ramble in this pleasant heath, where she
cannot lose herself; Mrs Laurie has gone out for some private errands of
her own. In her first day, Menie has managed well. True, they all know
that Menie has been wearied last night; that her eye looks dull and
heavy; that her cheek has lost its slight bloom of colour; that she says
something of a headache; but nobody knows that headache has come to be
with Menie Laurie as with many another, only a softer word for
heartache—no one suspects that the quiet heart, which feared no evil
when this spring began, is now a battle-ground, and field of contest,
and that sometimes, when she sits quiet in outward seeming, she could
leap up with a start and scream, and feels as if madness would come to
her underneath their unsuspicious eyes.
“Aunt, he has come.”
Miss Annie Laurie is very nervous; she has to be supported on Menie’s
arm as they go down stairs. “You will make it all up, Menie; yes, my
darling;” but Miss Annie’s head nods spasmodically, and there is a
terrified troubled expression about her face, which looks so meagre in
its outline under that braided hair.
Slightly disturbed, something haughty, rather wondering what Menie has
got to say for herself, Randall sits waiting in the drawing-room. It is
no small surprise to him to see Miss Annie—especially to see her so
moved and nervous; and Randall restrains, with visible displeasure, the
words which rose to his lips on Menie’s entrance, and coldly makes his
bow to the lady of the house.
“My dear Mr Home, I am very much grieved; I hope you are ready to make
it all up,” murmurs Miss Annie; but she trembles so much that it is not
easy to hear what she says, except the last words, which flush Randall’s
cheek with a sudden disdainful anger. A lovers’ quarrel!—that he should
be fancied capable of this.
“My aunt has come with me,” said Menie steadily, “to give the weight of
her presence to what I say. Randall, I do not pretend that my own
feelings are changed, or that I have ceased to care for you. I do not
need to seem to quarrel, or to call you by a less familiar name. We know
the reason both of us; there is no use for discussing it—and I have come
to have it mutually understood that our engagement is broken. We will go
away very soon. I came to say good-by.”
Before she concluded, Menie had bent her head, and cast down her
wavering eyes upon Miss Annie’s hand, which she held firmly in her own.
Her voice was very low, her words quick and hurried; she stood beside
Miss Annie’s chair, holding fast, and twining in her own Miss Annie’s
nervous fingers; but she did not venture to look up to meet Randall’s
eyes.
“What does this mean? it is mere trifling, Menie,” said Randall
impatiently. “You hear a gossip’s story of something I said; true or
false, it did not affect you—it had no bearing on you; you know very
well that nothing has happened to make you less precious to me—that
nothing can happen which will ever change my heart. Menie, this is the
second time; is this the conduct I have a right to expect from you? Deal
with me frankly; I have a title to it. What do you mean?”
“My darling, he will make it up,” said Miss Annie, with a little
overflow of tears.
But Menie was very steady—so strange, so strange—she grew into a
startling acquaintance with herself in these few hours. Who could have
thought there were so many passionate impulses in Menie Laurie’s quiet
heart?
“We will not discuss it, Randall,” she said again; “let us simply
conclude that it is best for both of us to withdraw. Perhaps you will be
better content if I speak more strongly,” she continued, with a little
trembling vehemence, born of her weakness, “if I say it is
impossible—impossible—you understand the word—to restore the state of
mind, the hope, the trust, and confidence that are past. No—let us have
no explanation—I cannot bear it, Randall. Do we not understand each
other already? Nothing but parting is possible for us—for me. I think I
am saying what I mean to say—good-by.”
“Look at me, Menie.”
It is hard to do it—hard to lift up those eyes, so full of tears—hard to
see his lips quiver—hard to see the love in his face; but Menie’s eyes
fall when they have endured this momentary ordeal; and again she holds
out her hand and says, “Good-by.”
“Good-by—I answer you,” said Randall, wringing her hand, and throwing it
out of his grasp. “Good-by—you are disloyal, Menie, disloyal to Nature
and to me; some time you will remember this; now I bid you farewell.”
Something crossed her like an angry breath—something rang in her ears,
confused and echoing like the first drops of a thunder-shower; and Menie
can see nothing in all the world but Miss Annie weeping upon her hand,
and, like a culprit, steals away—steals away, not knowing where she
goes—desolate, guilty, forsaken, feeling as if she had done some
grievous wrong, and was for ever shut out from peace or comfort in this
weary world.
Yes—there is no one to see you. Lie down upon the ground, Menie
Laurie—down, down, where you can be no lower, and cover your eyes from
the cheerful light. How they pour upon you, these dreadful doubts and
suspicions of yourself!—wisely—wisely—what should make it wise, this
thing you have done? You yourself have little wisdom, and you took no
counsel. If it was not wise, what then?—it is done, and there is nothing
for it now but to be content.
CHAPTER XXVII.
“It must not be—I cannot permit it,” said Mrs Laurie. “Menie, is this
all that your mother deserves at your hands? to take such a step as this
without even telling me—without giving me an opportunity of
remonstrance? Menie! Menie!”
And with hasty steps Mrs Laurie paces backward and forward the narrow
room. Beside the window, very pale, Menie stands with a half-averted
face, saying nothing—very pale—and there is a sullen suffering in Menie
Laurie’s darkened face.
“I cannot have it—I will not permit it”—Mrs Laurie is much excited. “My
own honour is compromised; it will be said it is I who have separated
you. Menie! it is strange that you should show so little regard either
to Randall or to me. I must do something—I must make an effort—I cannot
have this.”
“Mother, hear me,” exclaimed Menie. “No one shall do anything; I will
not bear it either. In everything else you shall make of me what you
will—here I am not to be swayed; I must decide this for myself—and I
have decided it, mother.”
With astonished eyes Mrs Laurie looked upon her daughter’s face. Flushed
with passion, full of a fierce unrespecting will—was this Menie Laurie?
but her mother turned aside from her. “I am sorry, Menie—I am very
sorry—to see you show such a spirit; another time I will speak of it
again.”
Another time!—Menie Laurie laughed a low laugh when her mother left the
room. Something like a scowl had come to Menie’s brow; a dark abiding
cloud was on her face; and in her heart such bitterness and universal
disappointment as killed every gentle feeling in her soul: disloyal to
the one love, disrespectful and disobedient to the other—bitterly
Menie’s heart turned upon itself—she had pleased no one; her life was
nothing but a great blot before her. She was conscious of a host of evil
feelings—evil spirits waging war with one another in her vexed and
troubled mind. Sullenly she sat down once more upon the ground, not to
seek if there was any comfort in the heavens above or the earth beneath,
but to brood upon her grief, and make it darker, till the clouds closed
over her, and swallowed her up, and not a star remained.
There is a certain obstinate gloomy satisfaction in despair. To decide
that everything is hopeless—that nothing can be done for you—that you
have reached to the pre-eminence of woe—no wonder Menie’s face was dark
and sullen—she had come to this point now.
Like a thunder-storm this intelligence came upon little July Home—she
could not comprehend it, and no one took the trouble to explain to her.
Lithgow, knowing but the fact, was surprised and grieved, and prophesied
their reunion; but no hope was in Menie’s sullen gravity—none in the
haughty resentment of Randall Home.
And Mrs Laurie once more with a troubled brow considers of her
future—will Menie be best in the Dumfriesshire cottage, where no one
will see their poverty, or pursuing some feminine occupation among the
other seamstresses, teachers, poor craftswomen of a less solitary place?
For now that all is done that can be done, there is no hope of
recovering anything of the lost income,—and Mrs Laurie will not live on
Miss Annie’s bounty. She is anxious with all her heart to be away.
Miss Annie herself has not recovered her trial: autumn winds grow cold
at night—autumn rains come down sadly upon the little world which has
had its cheerfulness quenched out of it—and when Randall takes away his
little sister to carry her home, Miss Annie looks a mournful old woman,
sitting there wrapped up by the early lighted fire. These two or three
mornings she has even been seen at the breakfast-table with a cap
protecting the head which is so sadly apt to take cold—and Miss Annie
cries a little to herself, and tells bits of her own love-story to
Menie, absorbed and silent, who sits unanswering beside her—and moans to
herself sadly sometimes, over this other vessel of youthful life, cast
away.
But Miss Annie Laurie never wears ringlets more. Strangely upon her
conscience, like a reproach for her unnatural attenuated youth, came
Menie’s appeal to her for help and comfort. Feeling herself so frivolous
and feeble, so unable to sustain or strengthen, Miss Annie made a
holocaust of her curls, and was satisfied. So much vanity was
relinquished not without a struggle; but great comfort came from the
sacrifice to the heroic penitent.
And Jenny, discontented and angry with them all, furiously now takes the
part of Randall Home, and wonders, in a fuff and outburst, what Miss
Menie can expect that she “lightlies” a bonny lad like yon. A great
change has taken place on Menie; no one can say it is for the better—and
sullenly and sadly this bright year darkens over the house of Heathbank.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
“You’re to bide away—you’re no to come near this place. Na, you may just
fecht; but you’ve nae pith compared to Jenny, for a’ sae auld and thrawn
as Jenny has been a’ her days. It’s no me just—it’s your mamma and the
doctor. Bairn! will you daur struggle wi’ me?”
But Menie would dare struggle with any one—neither command nor
resistance satisfies her.
“Let me in—I want to see my mother.”
“You can want your mother for a day—there’s mair than you wanting her.
That puir auld haverel there—guid forgi’e me—she’s a dying woman—has
sairer lack o’ her than you. Keep to your ain place, Menie Laurie—muckle
made o’—muckle thocht o’—but you’re only a bairn for a’ that—you’re no a
woman of judgment like your mamma or me. I tell you to gang away—I will
not let you in.”
And Jenny stood firm—a jealous incorruptible sentinel in the passage
which led to Miss Annie Laurie’s room. “Miss Menie, ye’ll no take it ill
what I say,” said Jenny; “there’s death in the house, or fast coming. I
ken what the doctor means. Gang you ben the house, like a good bairn;
look in your ain glass, and see if there should be a face like that in a
house where He comes.”
Menie looked silently into the countenance before her—the keen,
impatient, irascible face; but it was easy to see a hasty tear dashed
away from Jenny’s cheek.
And without another word, Menie Laurie turned away. Some withered leaves
are lying on the window-sill—the trees are yielding up their treasures,
dropping them down mournfully to the disconsolate soil—but the meagre
yew-tree rustles before her, darkly green in its perennial gloom. Rather
shed the leaves, the hopes—rather yield to winter meekly for the sake of
spring—rather be cut down, and rooted up altogether, than grow to such a
sullen misanthrope as this.
And Menie Laurie looks into her own face; this gloomy brow—these heavy
eyes—are these the daylight features of Menie Laurie?—the interpretation
of her heart? Earnestly and long she reads—no lesson of vanity, but a
stern sermon from that truthful mirror. Hush!—listen!—what was that?—a
cry!
The doctor is leaving Miss Annie Laurie’s room—the cry is over—there is
only now a feeble sound of weeping; but a shadow strangely still and
sombre has fallen upon the house, and the descending step rings like a
knell upon the stairs. What is it?—what is coming?—and what did it mean,
that melancholy cry?
Alas! a voice out of a startled soul—a cry of wild and terrified
recognition—acknowledgment. Years ago, age came gently to this
dwelling—gently, with light upon his face, and honour on his grey hairs.
There was no entrance for him through the jealous door; but now has come
another who will not be gainsaid.
Gather the children, Reaper—gather the lilies—take the corn full in the
ear—go to the true souls where thought of you dwells among thoughts of
other wonders, glories, solemn things to come—leave this chamber here
with all its poor devices. No such presence has ever stood within its
poverty-stricken walls before. Go where great love, great hope, great
faith, great sorrow, sublimer angels, have made _you_ no phantom—leave
this soul to its toys and delusions—it is a poor triumph—come not here.
Hush, be still. They who have sent him have charged him with a message;
hear it how it rings slow and solemn into the ear of this hushed house.
“There is a way, and it shall be called the way of holiness; the
wayfaring man, though a fool, shall not err therein.” Stay your weeping,
poor fool—poor soul; prayers have gone up for you from the succoured
hearts of some of God’s poor. Unawares, in your simplicity, you have
lent to the Lord. Your gracious debtor gives you back with the grand
usury of heaven—gives you back opportunity—hope—a day to be saved—lays
aside those poor little vanities of yours under the cover of this, His
great magnanimous divine grace—and holds open to your feeble steps the
way, where wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err any more for ever.
“I’ll let you pass, Miss Menie, if you’ll bide a moment,” said Jenny,
wiping her eyes; “he says it’s no the fever he thought it was, but just
a natural decay. Did you hear yon? she wasna looking for Him that’s at
the door, and He’ll no wait lang where ance He’s gi’en His summons—pity
me! I would like to see him coming the road mysel, afore I just found
him at my door-stane.”
The room is very still; through the quiet you can only hear the panting
of a frightened breath, and now and then a timid feeble sob. She has to
go away—knows and feels to the depth of her heart that she must go upon
this solemn road alone; but, with a sad panic of terror and curiosity,
she watches her own feelings, wondering if this and this be death.
And now they sit and read to her while the daylight flushes in
noon—while it fades and wanes into the night—the night and dark of which
she has a childish terror—read to her this gracious blessed Gospel,
which does not address itself alone to the wise and noble, but is for
the simple and for fools. Safe ground, poor soul, safe ground—for this
is no scheme of eclecticism, no portal to the pagan heavens—and you
cannot know yourself so low, so mean, as to escape the range of this
great wide embracing arm.
“I have not done all that I ought to have done,” murmurs poor Miss
Annie. “Don’t leave me:” for she cannot rest except some one holds her
hand, and has a faint superstitious trust in it, as if it held her sure.
A little pause—again the fingers close tightly upon the hand they hold.
“I never did any harm.” The words are so sad—so sad—falling out slow and
feeble upon the hushed air of this darkening room.
“But I never did any good—never, never.” The voice grows stronger. “Does
anybody think I did? I—I—I never was very wise. I used to try to be kind
sometimes;” and in a strain of inarticulate muttering, the sound died
away once more.
And then again the voice of the reader broke the silence. They scarcely
thought the sufferer listened; for ever and anon she broke forth in such
wavering self-justifications, self-condemnings, as these. But now there
is a long silence; strange emotions come and go upon this old, old,
withered face. The tears have been dried from her eyes for hours; now
they come again, bedewing all her poor thin cheeks; but a strange
excitement struggles with her weakness. Looking about to her right hand
and to her left, the dying woman struggles with an eager
defiance—struggles till, at a sudden climax, her broken voice breaks
forth again.
“Who said it was me—me—it’s not me! I never could win anything in this
world—nothing in this world—not a heart to care for me. Do you think I
could win Heaven? I say it is not me; it’s for His sake.
“For His sake—for His sake.” If it is a prayer that ends thus—if it is a
sudden assurance of which she will not loose her hold for ever—no one
can know; for by-and-by her panic returns upon Miss Annie. Close in her
own cold fingers she grasps the hand of Menie Laurie, and whispers, “Is
it dark—is it so dark to you?” with again a thrill of terror and
trembling, and awful curiosity, wondering if this, perchance, is the
gloom of death.
“It is very dark—it is almost night.” The lamp is lighted on the table;
let some one go to her side, and hold this other poor wandering hand.
“Oh! not in the night—not in the night—I am afraid to go out in the
night,” sobs poor Miss Annie; and with a dreadful suspicion in her eyes,
as if of some one drawing near to murder her, she watches the falling of
this fated night.
A solemn vigil—with ever that tight and rigid pressure upon their
clasped hands. Mother and daughter, silent, pale, keep the watch
together; and below, the servants sit awe-stricken, afraid to go to
sleep. Jenny, who is not afraid, goes about the stairs, up and down,
from room to room, sometimes serving the watchers, sometimes only
straying near them, muttering, after her fashion, words which may be
prayers, and dashing off now and then an intrusive tear.
Still, with many a frightened pause—many a waking up, and little pang of
terror, this forlorn heart wanders back into the life which is ending
now—wanders back to think herself once more engaged in the busier scenes
of her youth, in the little occupations, the frivolities and gaiety of
her later years; but howsoever her mind wanders, she never ceases to fix
her eyes upon the span of sky glittering with a single star, which
shines pale on her through the window from which, to please her, they
have drawn the curtain. “I am afraid to go out in the dark;” again and
again she says it with a shudder, and a tightened hold upon their
hands—and steadfastly watches the night.
At last her eyes grow heavy—she has fallen asleep. Little reverence has
Miss Annie won at any time of all her life—but the eyes that look on her
are awed and reverent now. Slowly the hours pass by—slowly the gradual
dawn brightens upon her face—the star has faded out of the heavens—on
her brow, which is the brow of death, the daylight glows in one reviving
flush. The night is over for evermore.
And now her heavy eyes are opened full—her feeble form is raised; and,
with a cry of joy, she throws out her arms to meet the light. Lay her
down tenderly; her chains are broken in her sleep; now she no more needs
the pressure of your kindly hands. Lay her down, she is afraid no
longer; for not in the night, or through the darkness, but with the
morning and the sun, the traveller fares upon her way—where fools do not
err. By this time they have taken her in yonder at the gate. Lay down
all that remains of her to its rest.
CHAPTER XXIX.
The curtains are drawn again in Miss Annie Laurie’s house of
Heathbank—drawn back from the opened windows to let the fresh air and
the sunshine in once more to all the rooms. With a long breath and sigh
of relief, the household throws off its compelled gloom. With all
observances of honour, they have laid her in her grave, and a few
natural tears have been wept—a few kindly words spoken—a reverent
memento raised to name the place where she lies. Now she is passed away
and forgotten, her seat empty—her house knowing her no more.
In Miss Annie’s desk, a half-written paper—intimating vaguely that, in
case of “anything happening” to her at any future time, she wished all
that she had to be given to Menie Laurie—was found immediately after the
funeral. But some superstitious terror had prevented her from finishing
it, far more from making a will. Menie was her next of kin; it pleased
them to have this sanction of her willingness to the inheritance of the
natural heir.
Miss Annie had been rather given to speak of her savings; but no vestige
of these savings was to be found. She had practised this on herself like
many another delusion; and saving the furniture of Heathbank, and a
profusion of ornaments not valuable, there remained little for Menie to
inherit. Miss Annie’s maid was her well-known favourite, and had been
really attentive, and a good servant to her indulgent mistress. Her name
was mentioned in the half-written paper, and Maria’s own report of many
conversations, modestly hinted at a legacy. Miss Annie’s furniture,
pretty and suitable for her house as it was, was not valuable in a sale;
and Mrs Laurie, acting for her daughter, bestowed almost the whole
amount received for it upon Maria, as carrying out the will of her
mistress. Having done this, they had done all, Mrs Laurie thought, and
would now go home to live as they could upon what remained to them.
Burnside, with all its plenishing, brought in no greater revenue than
fifty pounds a-year, and Mrs Laurie had two or three hundred pounds “in
the bank.” This was all. She began to calculate painfully what the
home-journey would cost them, and called Jenny to consult about their
packing. They were now in a little lodging in the town of Hampstead.
They had no inducement to stay here; and Menie’s face looked very
pale—very much in want of the fresh gale on the Dumfriesshire braes.
True, they knew not where they were going, but the kindly soil was home.
When her mother and Jenny began to take enumeration of the bags and
boxes which must go with them, Menie entered the room. Menie looked very
slight, very pale, and exhausted, almost shadowy in her mourning dress;
but Menie’s now was a face which had looked on Death. The conflict and
sullen warfare were gone out of it. Dead and silent within her lay her
chilled heart, like a stricken field when the fight is over, with
nothing but moans and sighs, and voices of misery, where the music and
pomp of war has so lately been. The contest was over; there was nothing
to struggle for, or struggle with, in this dull unhappiness—and a heavy
peace lay upon Menie like a cloud.
“There’s a wee kistie wi’ a lock. I set it by mysel for Miss Menie; and
there’s the muckle ane that held the napery at hame; but I’m no gaun
owre them a’. I’ll just lay in the things as I laid them when we came.
Miss Menie! gang awa your ways, like a good bairn, and read a book; your
mamma’s speaking about the flitting, and I can only do ae thing at a
time.”
“Are we going home, mother?”
“There is nothing else we can do, Menie,” said Mrs Laurie. “I suppose
none of us have any inducement now to stay in London.”
A flush of violent colour came to Menie’s cheeks. She paused and
hesitated. “_I_ have, mother.”
“Bless me, I aye said it,” muttered Jenny quickly, under her breath, as
she turned round with an eager face, and thrust herself forward towards
the mother and daughter. “The bairn’s come to hersel.”
Mrs Laurie coloured scarcely less than Menie. “I cannot guess what you
mean,” she said hurriedly. “You did not consult me before—I am, perhaps,
an unsuitable adviser now; but I cannot stay in London without having a
reason for it. This place has nothing but painful associations for me.
You are not well, Menie,” continued the mother, softening; “we shall all
be better away—let us go home.”
The colour wavered painfully on Menie Laurie’s cheek, and it was hard to
keep down a groan out of her heart. “I am not come to myself—my mind is
unchanged,” she said with sudden meekness. “I want you to stay for a
month or two—as short a time as possible—and to let me have some
lessons. Mother, look at these.”
Menie had brought her little portfolio. With some astonishment Mrs
Laurie turned over its contents, and delicately—almost timidly too—lest
Randall’s face should look out upon her as of old. But all the sketches
of Randall were removed. Jenny pressed forward to see; but Jenny, as
bewildered as Menie’s mother, could only look up with a puzzled face.
What did she mean?
“They are not very well done,” said Menie; “but, for all that, they are
portraits, and like. I want to have lessons, mother. Once before, long
ago,”—poor Menie, it seemed to be years ago,—“I said this should be my
trade. I will like the trade; let me only have the means of doing it
better, and it will be good for me to do it. This is why I ask you to
stay in London.”
Jenny, very fierce and red, grasping the back of a chair, thrust it
suddenly between them at this point, with a snort of emphatic defiance.
“Ye’ll no let on ye hear her!” exclaimed Jenny; “you’ll let her get her
whimsey out like ony ither wean!—ye’ll pay nae attention to her maggots
and her vanities! Trade! My patience! to think I should live to hear a
bairn of ours speak of a trade, and Jenny’s twa hands to the fore!”
And a petulant reluctant sob burst out of Jenny’s breast—an angry tear
glittered in her eye. She drew a long breath to recover herself—
“Jenny’s twa hands to the fore, I say, and the bere a’ to shear yet, and
the ’taties to gather—no to say the mistress is to buy me twa kye, to
take butter to the market! I would just like to ken where’s the pleasure
in working, if it’s no to gi’e ease to folk’s ain? I’ve a’ my ain plans
putten down, if folk would just let me be; and we’ll can keep a young
lass to wait upon Miss Menie,” cried Jenny, with a shrill tone in her
voice, “and the first o’ the cream and the sweetest o’ the milk, and nae
occasion to wet her finger. You’re no gaun to pay ony heed to her—you’re
no gaun to let on you hear what she says!”
Reaching this point, Jenny broke down, and permitted, much against her
will, a little shower of violent hot tears to rain down upon the arms
which she folded resolutely into her apron. But Jenny shook off, with
indignation, the caressing hand which Menie laid upon her shoulder.
Jenny knew by experience that it was better to be angry than to be sad.
“I would think with you too, Jenny,” said Mrs Laurie, slowly. “I could
do anything myself; but a bairn of mine doing work for money—Menie, we
will not need it—we will try first—”
“Mother,” said Menie, interrupting her hastily, “_I_ will need it—I will
never be wilful again—let me have my pleasure now.”
It was a thing unknown in the household that Menie should not have her
pleasure. Even Jenny yielded to this imperative claim. The boxes were
piled up again in Jenny’s little bedchamber. Jenny herself, able to do
nothing else, set to knitting stockings with great devotion. “I’ll ha’e
plenty to do when we get hame, without ever taking wires in my hand,”
said Jenny. “Nae doubt it’s just a providence to let me lay up as mony
as will serve.”
Their parlour was in the first floor, over one of the trim little
ladies’ shops, which have their particular abode in little towns of
competence and gentility. Toys and Berlin wool—a prim, neat, gentle Miss
Middleton sitting at work on some pretty bit of many-coloured industry
behind the orderly counter—gay patterns and specimens about—little carts
and carriages, and locomotive animals upon the floor—bats, balls, drums,
shining tin breastplates, and glorious swords hanging by the door, and a
linen awning without, throwing the little shop into pleasant shade. This
was the ground floor; above it was a very orderly parlour, and the sun
came glistening in upon the little stand of flowers through the bright
small panes of the old-fashioned window, and fell upon Mrs Laurie,
always at work upon some making or mending—upon Jenny’s abrupt exits and
entrances—her keen grey eyes and shining ‘wires,’ the latter of which
were so nobly independent of any guidance from the former—and upon
Menie’s heavy meditations, and Menie’s daily toil.
For toil it came to be, exalted from the young lady’s accomplishment to
the artist’s labour. She worked at this which she harshly called her
trade with great zeal and perseverance. Even herself did not know how
deficient she was till now; but Menie worked bravely in her
apprenticeship, and with good hope.
CHAPTER XXX.
“I wouldna ha’e come hame as I gaed away, if I had been you, Jenny.” The
speaker stands at the door of Jenny’s little byre, looking on, while
Jenny milks her favourite cow. “Ye see what Nelly Panton’s done for
hersel; there’s naething like making up folk’s mind to gang through wi’
a’ thing; and you see Nelly’s gotten a man away in yon weary London.”
“I wouldna gang to seek a misfortune—no me,” said Jenny; “ill enough
when it comes; and I wonder how a woman like you, with twelve bairns for
a handsel, could gie such an advice to ony decent lass; and weel I wat
Nelly Panton’s gotten a man. Puir laddie! it’s the greatest mercy ever
was laid to his hands to make him a packman—he’ll no be so muckle at
hame; but you’ll make nae divert of Jenny. If naebody ever speered my
price, I’m no to hang my head for that. I’ve aye keepit my fancy free,
and nae man can say that Jenny ever lookit owre her shouther after him.
A’ the house is fu’ ’enow, Marget; we’ve scarcely done with our
flitting; I canna ask you to come in.”
So saying, Jenny rose with her pail, and closed the byre-door upon
Brockie and her black companion. The wind came down keen from the hills;
the frosty wintry heavens had not quite lost the glow of sunset, though
the pale East began to glitter with stars. Sullen Criffel has a purple
glory upon his cap of cloud, and securely, shoulder to shoulder, this
band of mountain marshals keep the border; but the shadows are dark
about their feet, and night falls, clear and cold, upon the darkened
grass, and trees that stir their branches faintly in the wind.
The scene is strangely changed. Heaths of other nature than the peaceful
heath of Hampstead lie dark under the paling skies, not very far away;
and the heather is brown on the low-lying pasture hills, standing out in
patches from the close-cropped grass. Yonder glow upon the road is the
glow of fire-light from an open cottage door, and on the window ledge
within stand basins of comfortable Dumfriesshire “parritch,” cooling for
the use of those eager urchins, with their fair exuberant locks and
merry faces, and waiting the milk which their loitering girl sister
brings slowly in from the byre. It is cold, and she breathes upon her
fingers as she shifts her pail from one hand to the other; yet
bareheaded Jeanie lingers, wondering vaguely at the “bonnie” sky and
deep evening calm.
Another cottage here is close at hand, faintly throwing out from this
back-window a little light into the gathering gloom. Brockie and Blackie
are comfortable for the night; good homely sages, they make no account
of the key turned upon them in the byre-door; and Jenny, in her original
dress, her beloved shortgown and warm striped skirts, stands a moment,
drawing in, with keen relish, the sweep of cold air which comes full
upon us over the free countryside.
“I’m waiting for Nelly’s mother,” says Jenny’s companion, who is Marget
Panton from Kirklands, Nelly’s aunt; “she’s gane in to speak to your
mistress. You’ll no be for ca’ing her mistress now, Jenny, and her sae
muckle come down in the world. I’m sure you’re real kind to them;
they’ll no be able now to pay you your fee.”
“Me kind to them! My patience! But it’s because ye dinna ken ony
better,” said Jenny, with a little snort. “I just wish, for my part,
folk would haud by what concerns themsels, and let me abee. I would like
to ken what’s a’ the world’s business if Jenny has a good mistress, and
nae need to seek anither service frae ae year’s end to the ither—and it
canna advantage the like o’ you grudging at Jenny’s fee. It’s gey dark,
and the road’s lanesome; if I was you, I would think o’ gaun hame.”
“I wouldna be sae crabbit if I got a pension for’t,” returned Marget,
sharply; “and ye needna think to gar folk believe lees; it’s weel kent
your house is awfu’ come down. ‘Pride gangs before a fa’,’ the Scripture
says. Ye’ll no ca’ that a lee; and I hear that Miss Menie’s joe just
heard it, and broke off in time.”
“I’m like to be driven daft wi’ ane and anither,” exclaimed Jenny
furiously. “If Miss Menie hadna been a thrawart creature hersel, I
wouldna have had to listen to the like o’ this. Na, that micht ha’e been
a reason—but it was nane of the siller; she kens best hersel what it
was. I’m sure I wouldna have cast away a bonnie lad like yon if it had
been me; but the like of her, a young lady, behooves to ha’e her ain
way.”
“Weel, it’s aye best to put a guid face on’t,” said Jenny’s tormentor.
“I’m no saying onything at my ain hand; it’s a’ Nelly’s story, and
Johnnie being to marry July Home—it’s a grand marriage for auld
Crofthill’s daughter, such a bit wee useless thing—we’re the likest to
ken. Ye needna take it ill, Jenny. I’m meaning nae reproach to you.”
“I’m no canny when I’m angered,” said Jenny, setting down her pail in
the road; “ye’ll gang your ways hame, if you take my counsel; there’s
naething for you here. Pity me for Kirklands parish, grit and sma’! with
Nelly at the Brokenrig, and you at the Brigend; but I canna thole a
lee—it makes my heart sick; and I tell ye I’m no canny when I’m angered.
Guid nicht to you, Marget Panton; when I want to see you I’ll send you
word. You can wait here, if you maun get yon puir decent woman hame wi’
you. I reckon I would get mony thanks if I set her free; but I dinna
meddle wi’ ither folks’ business; you can wait for her here.”
And, taking up her pail again rapidly, Jenny pattered away, leaving
Marget somewhat astonished, standing in the middle of the road, where
this energetic speech had been addressed to her. With many mutterings
Jenny pursued her wrathful way.
“Ye’ve your ainsel to thank, no anither creature, Menie Laurie; and now
this painting business is begun, they’ll be waur and waur. Whatfor could
she no have keepit in wi’ him? A bonnie ane, to ha’e a’ her ain way, and
slaving and working a’ day on her feet, as if Jenny wasna worth the
bread she eats; and the next thing I’ll hear is sure to be that she’s
painting for siller. Pity me!”
Full of her afflictions, very petulant and resentful, Jenny entered the
cottage door. It was a but and a ben—that is to say, it had two
apartments, one on each side of the entrance. The larger of the two was
boarded—Mrs Laurie had ventured to do this at her own expense—and had
been furnished in an extremely moderate and simple fashion. It was a
very humble room; but still it was a kind of parlour, and, with the
ruddy fire-light reddening its farther corners, and blinking on the
uncovered window, it looked comfortable, and even cheerful, both from
without and within. Mrs Laurie, with her never-failing work, sat by a
little table; Menie, whose day’s labour was done, bent over the fire,
with her flushed cheeks supported in her hands; the conflict and the
sullen glow had gone out of Menie’s face, but a heavy cloud oppressed it
still.
Conscious that she is an intruder, divided between her old habitual
deference and her new sense of equality, as Johnnie Lithgow’s mother,
with any Mrs Laurie under the sun, Mrs Lithgow sits upon the edge of a
chair, talking of Nelly, and Nelly’s marriage.
“Nelly says you were real kind. I’m sure naething could be kinder than
the like of you taking notice of her, when she was in a strange place
her lane, though, nae doubt, being Johnnie’s sister made a great
difference. I can scarcely believe my ainsel whiles, the awfu’ odds it’s
made on me. I have naething ado but look out the best house in
Kirklands, and I can get it bought for me, and an income regular, and
nae need to do a thing, but be thankful to Providence and Johnnie. It’s
a great blessing a good son.”
As there was only a murmur of assent in answer to this, Mrs Lithgow
proceeded:—
“I’m sure it’s naething but neighbourlike—you’ll no take it amiss, being
in a kindly spirit—to say if there’s onything ane can do—There’s Nelly
gotten her ain house noo, and wonderful weel off in the world; and for
me, I’m just a miracle. If there was ought you wanted, no being used to
a sma’ house, or ony help in ae way or anither, from a day’s darg wi’
Jenny, to——”
But Mrs Lithgow did not dare to go any further. The slight elevation of
Mrs Laurie’s head, the sudden erectness of that stooping figure by the
fireside, warned the good woman in time; so, after a hurried breathless
pause, she resumed:—
“I would be real glad—it would be naething but a pleasure; and I’ll
ne’er forget how guid you were to me when I was in trouble about
Johnnie, and aye gied me hope. Poor laddie! next month he’s coming down
to be married—and I’m sure I hope he’ll be weel off in a guid wife, for
he canna but be a guid man, considering what a son he’s been to me.”
“He will be very well off,” said Mrs Laurie; “and poor little July goes
away next month, does she? Has Jenny come in yet, Menie? We have
scarcely had time to settle in our new house, Mrs Lithgow; but I will
remember your kind offer, and thank you. How dark the night grows—and it
looks like snow.”
“I’ll have to be gaun my ways,” said the visitor, rising; “it’s a
lanesome road, and I’m no heeding about leaving my house, and a’ the
grand new things Johnnie’s sent me, their lane in the dark. I’ll bid you
good night, ladies, kindly, and I’m real blithe to see you in the
countryside again.”
She was gone, and the room fell into a sudden hush of silence, broken by
nothing but the faint rustling of a moved hand, or the fall, now and
then, of ashes on the hearth. The bustle and excitement of the
“flitting” were over—the first pleasure of being home in their own
country was past. Grey and calm their changed fate came down upon them,
with no ideal softening of its everyday realities. This sliding pannel
here opens upon their bed; this little table serves all purposes of
living; these four dim walls, and heavy raftered roof, shut in their
existence. Now, through the clear frosty air without, a merry din breaks
into the stillness. It is little Davie from the cothouse over the way,
who has just escaped from the hands which were preparing him for rest,
and dares brothers and sisters in a most willing race after him, their
heavy shoes ringing upon the beaten way. Now you hear them coming back
again, leading the truant home, and by-and-by all the urchins are
asleep, and the mother closes the ever open door. So good night to life
and human fellowship. Now—none within sight or hearing of us, save Jenny
humming a broken song, on the other side of the wooden partition, which,
sooth to say, is Jenny’s bed—we are left alone.
Menie, bending, in her despondent attitude, over the fire, which throws
down, now and then, these ashy flakes upon the hearth—our mother,
pausing from her work, to bend her weary brow upon her hand. So very
still, so chill and forsaken. Not one heart in all the world, except the
three which beat under this thatched roof, to give anything but a
passing thought to us or our fate; and nothing to look to but this even
path, winding away over the desolate lands of poverty into the skies.
Into the skies!—woe for us, and our dreary human ways, if it were not
for that blessed continual horizon line; so we do what we have not been
used to do before—we read a sad devout chapter together, and have a
faltering prayer; and then for silence and darkness and rest.
Say nothing to your child, good mother, of the bitter thoughts that
crowd upon you, as you close your eyes upon the wavering fire-light, and
listen, in this stillness, to all the stealthy steps and touches of the
wakeful night. Say nothing to your mother, Menie, of the tears which
steal down between your cheek and your pillow, as you turn your face to
the wall. What might have been—what might have been; is it not possible
to keep from thinking of that? for even Jenny mutters to herself, as she
lies wakefully contemplating the glow of her gathered fire—mutters to
herself, with an indignant fuff, and hard-drawn breath, “I wish her
muckle pleasure of her will: she’s gotten her will: and I wadna say but
she minds him now—a bonnie lad like yon!”
CHRONOLOGICAL CURIOSITIES: WHAT SHALL WE COLLECT?
Is knowledge, like Saturn, destined to devour her own masculine
offspring, and leave only the weak to live to propagate follies? If
Common Sense, the strong born, has escaped, it is because Knowledge has
been deceived, like Saturn, with a stone, not very easy of digestion,
nor promising to add much to her substance. But this survivor, Common
Sense, has the effeminate yet numerous progeny to contend with, who,
with a busy impertinence, multiply absurdities, and put them forth under
the glorifying name of their parent, Knowledge. We rejoice, therefore,
to see a laudable attempt being made to rescue knowledge from the
cramming in of uncommon and worthless things, and to substitute for the
people’s use a knowledge of “common things.” And we hope an aggregate
addition of the bone and muscle of a little more common honesty, and
true genuine natural feeling, will be the result of the wholesomer food.
The people have been long enough imposed on by false titles; or the
“Useful Knowledge,” the pretence of the age, has been exhausted, and
resort had to a very useless substitute.
It is not long since that we read the question and answer scheme of an
examination of a retired village school, consisting of labourers’
children; one of the questions being, “What is chronology?” “What is its
derivation?” Answer, “Derived from two Greek words,” &c. Will any one
think that children so taught become wiser or better? This may not be an
isolated instance. It seems possible that chronology may become rather
too fashionable a study, and engage a host of collectors of valueless
nothings. The neglected science has certainly some arrears to make up.
Some few years ago we were authoritatively told that “History” is
nothing but an “old Almanac.” Since which time, History and her sister,
Chronology, have been discarded servants—out of place, and glad to pick
up a few pence here and there as charwomen, in all sorts of odds and
ends of corners, to sweep away time-collected dust and rubbish. Their
industry seems likely to be rewarded at last. A few of the old
worshippers, taking advantage of this exhaustion of “useful knowledge,”
benevolently lend them a helping hand, and are trying to persuade the
public that the dust was gold dust, or better than gold dust, and the
rubbish a treasure, and advising that it should all be swept in
again—and where?—into our National Gallery! and doubtless their next
step will be to appoint a Parliamentary Commission, not so much for the
purpose of sifting it, as of issuing treatises and lectures upon the
value and national importance of this new-old treasure trove. So that
the public may look to this, that, instead of having their eyes
gratified by the beauties of art, they will be disgusted with its
deformities; while their heads will be so stuffed with its history, as
to leave no room for a thought of its excellence, or a sentiment to be
derived from it.
Let not the reader be alarmed at the very mention of the National
Gallery. We are not about to inflict upon him the evidence in the Blue
Book respecting the picture-cleaning, the doings and misdoings of
trustees, the “discrepancies” of opinions and statement of facts, the
faults of a system which is inconsistently at once condemned and
recommended for continuance, the labyrinth of question and answer
leading to no conclusion, the blame here and the flattery there, the
unwilling admissions and unreserved condemnations: most people we see
are perhaps inclined to believe, in this instance at least, that a “big
book is a big evil.” We do not, therefore, intend in this place to
reopen the discussion which made the subject of our former papers.
The difficulty under which the Commission laboured was visible from the
beginning. The trustees had approved of the cleaning. The task of very
decidedly condemning this approval was naturally distasteful; therefore,
what is too evidently wrong is charged upon a “system,” while the
honourable personages are praised and flattered as if they had never had
anything to do with it.
The case must for a while rest where it is, and we should have waited
with patience the leisure of our now busy Parliament for its resumption,
were it not that a very grievous mischief is left in the Blue Book,
where it meets with much favour, to be taken up and made the key-note,
the first and last principle of every future discussion respecting a
national gallery. It might be thought that, after thirty years of its
establishment, we should not have now to come to the question, what a
national gallery should be. But so it is. There has been as yet no
“fixed principle,” we are told, upon which a national collection is to
be formed. We have no charge to bring against the trustees on that
account; indeed, we rejoice that they had no fixed principle, if by
fixed principle is meant such scheme and system as we see pertinaciously
and insinuatingly urged upon the public notice in parts of the evidence,
and more particularly in the appendix of this voluminous Report.
We give our reader credit for good taste and common sense, and doubt not
he will think it sufficient that a national gallery should consist of
good pictures—the best that are to be had. But no: common sense is too
unrefined for this knowledge-age, and good taste is of private
purveyorship, and of very little importance in forming a public
collection. However absurd this may seem to be, we assure the reader
that it is an idea put forth with a good deal of authority, and perhaps
no little presumption, on the part of some of its advocates; we see its
dressing up into a substantial image of magnitude, and mean to take up
the sling and the stone, and do battle with it. There are always a
multitude of dilettanti who, loading their memories with names, love to
talk with apparent learning about art, and yet have little feeling for
its real excellences. To such, a history of art is better than art
itself. They would make a national gallery a lumber-house of
chronological curiosities. They have a perverse love for system and
arrangement: very good things in their proper places, and with
moderation, keeping a very subordinate position, not without value in a
national gallery; but the value is little indeed, if put in any degree
in competition with what should be the great primary aim—to gather
together the finest works of the best painters. The chronological
arrangement should be the after-thought, arising out of what we possess,
not directing the first choice. This whim of the dilettanti school is
not new with us. It may be seen in the Report of the Commission of
1836—and is repeated in the present Report.
“The intelligent public of this country are daily becoming more alive to
the truth, which has long been recognised by other enlightened nations,
that the arts of design cannot be properly studied or rightly
appreciated by means of insulated specimens alone; that, in order to
understand or profit by the great works, either of ancient or modern
schools of art, it is necessary to contemplate the genius which produced
them, not merely in its final results, but in the mode of its
operation—in its rise and progress, as well as in its perfection. A just
appreciation of Italian painting can as little be obtained from an
exclusive study of the works of Raphael, Titian, or Correggio, as a
critical knowledge of English poetry from the perusal of a few of its
masterpieces. What Chaucer and Spenser are to Shakespeare and Milton,
Giotto and Massaccio are to the great masters of the Florentine school:
and a national gallery would be as defective without adequate specimens
of both styles of painting, as a national library without specimens of
both styles of poetry. In order, therefore, to render the British
National Gallery worthy the name it bears, your committee think that the
funds appropriated to the enlargement of the collection should be
expended with a view not merely of exhibiting to the public beautiful
works of art, but of instructing the people in the history of that art,
and of the age in which, and the men by whom, those works were
produced.”
There is but little said here in many words, and that little based upon
an erroneous presumption. We do not believe that the “intelligent
public” are becoming alive to “the truth,” which is a fallacy, that they
cannot profit by great works without having before them the previous
failures, experiments, and imbecilities of the earlier practitioners in
art. If the public have any intelligence at all, they will appreciate
the “Madonna de Sisto,” for instance, without disgusting their eyes with
such Byzantine “specimens” as that shown to Mr Curzon in the monastery,
where the monk in his strange ignorance inquired if “all women were like
that?” Nor is the parallelism between poetry and painting here
fortunate. For, besides that books may sleep on shelves and not offend,
and pictures (for the purpose intended) must obtrude themselves on the
eye, we do not see that Chaucer and Spenser at all bear the relation to
Shakespeare and Milton that Giotto and Massaccio do to the great masters
of the Florentine school. All these were men of great, mostly
independent genius, worthy of galleries and libraries for their own
sakes. But they are here placed as screens to hide the chronological
deformities behind them. The “not merely exhibiting to the public
beautiful works of art” would seem to infer, to give any force to the
passage, that not only the painters Giotto and Massaccio had no
“beautiful works,” but that Chaucer and Spenser were poor poets, having
no beauties, and no other or little merit but that of being the warning
precursors to Shakespeare and Milton, to enable them to eschew their
faults.
The committee very cautiously abstained from defining any chronological
limits, for we are not to infer that they are to begin with Giotto.
However they may consider him the founder of the Italian school, the
appendix shows that the Byzantine and very early Italian art (if to be
obtained) are desired specimens. “The specimens more especially fitted
for a gallery of paintings commence with movable paintings on wood, by
the Byzantines, representing the Madonna and child, single figures of
saints, and sometimes extensive compositions on a minute scale,” going
back even to the ninth century, and so to the earlier Italian
“influenced by Byzantine art.” And more decidedly to show the mere
chronological object, it is added, “In the case of works without names,
or inscribed with names before unknown, the test of artistic merit must
chiefly determine the question of eligibility.” Artistic merit _only in_
these cases, and then “chiefly” so that in other cases names are
everything.
And all this is for the purpose of instructing the people, not in art,
but in the history of art, which may be quite well enough learnt from
books by the curious, or in some museum of curiosities, better than in a
national gallery, where the real and proper instruction would only be
hindered by the sight of things antagonistic to any beauty. We do not
doubt that this idea, carried out, would lead to a pictorial
chronological mania, if it does not commence with it, not unlike the
Bibliomania, ever in search of works, only rare because worthless. Such
a national gallery as this scheme contemplates would be the exhibition
of a pictorial Dunciad, in which we hope the _veræ effigies_ of the
first schemers and promoters would not be omitted, that some future
satirist may give them also their merited immortality. Why cannot a
committee upon a national gallery confine themselves to the objects for
the consideration of which they are appointed, and not run needlessly
into the duties of an educational committee, and talk of _instruction_,
when the preservation and advantageous exhibition of the monuments of
antiquity and fine art “possessed by the nation” are what they are
required to give their attention to? There is enough to be done in the
line pointed out to them, and no need of bewildering themselves or the
public, led astray by this _ignis fatuus_ of a chronological whim. We
are weary of the daily cant; everything is to be _instruction_, works of
art are to be “specimens.” Michael Angelo, Raphael, Correggio, are to be
known only by and as “specimens.” The “people” must be ever in a worry
of knowledge, flying about from specimen to specimen: it is for
knowledge alone they are to come to a national gallery—we hear nothing
of enjoyment, of an indulgence in the repose of taste; and we do
sometimes smile, in turning over the leaves of the Blue Book, when
meeting with much talk about _instructing_ the people, and turn our
thoughts for a moment to the happy “specimens” of instruction the walls
of our or any National Gallery exhibit. Is moral instruction or art
instruction to be gathered in by the people’s eyes, with their
astonishment at “Susanna and the Elders,” and that other Guido purposely
purchased as a companion to it, the “Lot and his Daughters?” very costly
specimens of instruction, the one amounting to £1680, the other £1260,
and neither thought very good specimens for instruction in art—not that
the severe criticism upon Guido in the evidence is quite to be depended
upon. The great flustering “Rape of the Sabines” is not of very nice
instruction, perhaps, either in morals or art. There are the “Three
naked Goddesses” by Rubens, to whom the caterers of public instruction
took the part of Paris, and threw the golden apple, and a very large one
too;—what are their Flemish nudities to teach? A stern moralist showed
his insulted purity by dashing one offending specimen to atoms.
We do not, however, profess to be such purists as to desire an irruption
into the Gallery of a mob of mad Savonarolas, not easily gathered
together in these Latter-day-Saints’ times, knowing as we do the real
why and wherefore of collecting; yet we cannot but smile at the pretence
of instruction, which is sometimes put upon moral, and sometimes shifted
to pictorial, grounds. But there is a class of pictures we could wish to
see more sought after—pictures of a pure sentiment. It is true they are
rare, in comparison to those of a far other character; but they are the
most precious, and the really improving. Nevertheless, at once to get
rid of this pretence and sham of instruction, we would ask, to whom are
such works of sentiment precious, and whom are they likely to
improve?—Certainly not the multitude, who would look at them with
indifference, and pass them by. They are precious to cultivated minds
and pure tastes: minds which, either from natural dulness or evil
habits, cannot receive, or even admit, the perception of common virtues,
will be altogether untouched by their pictorial representations.
Fortunately, there are enough works of a simply pleasing character, that
excite little emotion, and none of a high caste, so that, to a certain
degree, those may be gratified, and receive a pleasure, who will neither
receive instruction nor improvement from a national gallery. And it is
this modicum of pleasure to all which justifies expenditure for a
national gallery. The real, solid benefit, delight, and improvement are
very great, but they are the luxury of the few.
It must be that the multitudes go to such an exhibition more from
curiosity than from any love of art. Nor is love of art likely, in the
first place, to be there implanted; for, in most cases, a certain love
of art, commencing, perhaps, with a mere love of imitation, precedes
taste—that perception of what is good. If we were to collect only for
the masses, we should have a very worthless gallery. Nor would “the
people” ever even learn, from a chronological collection, that history
of art, which it seems, in the opinion of the Commissioners, so
desirable to teach them. Art, which is not valued for itself, will not,
in general, be valued for its history; and without the love for itself,
a knowledge of its history is nothing but pedantry. High art is a common
prate; it is in every one’s mouth, but in very few hearts. It is not
difficult to find the “reason why.” High art treats of high and noble
sentiments, of generous actions, fortitude, patience, sublime
endurance—all that is great, and good, and pure—all tending to a real
“elevated taste.” If it be true that “Similis simili gaudet,” the
recipients of delight from this High art should, in some degree at
least, be recipients of these high virtues themselves. It must be a
large nature for High art. Such a nature may not always be good; but if
it be large, even if it be viciously great, it may be possible that it
will have a perception of what is great in art, though it may lose its
finer qualities. But narrow and utterly selfish minds are altogether out
of art’s pale. There are degrees of narrow-mindedness and of
selfishness, and there is a condition which may be free from these
vices, yet of no very elevated virtue. We do not wish to put all our
fellow-men in the worst category, but we do maintain that there is a
general lack of moral training—of moral habit—and not confined to one
branch of society, which operates as a bar to the acquirement of a real
taste for art. We live in too mercenary an age. There is too great a
worship of mere money—there is cold calculation where there should be
feeling. The romance of life is a term of contempt. What is useful
supersedes what is good. Take classes with their characteristics, and
see if they be fit for the enjoyment of the Fine Arts. The Parliamentary
class have established new maxims. Expediency has taken the place of
honour, and perhaps of integrity. To say one thing and mean another not
only meets with no reprobation, but is justified and applauded.
Statesmen make sham speeches and false promises; politicians bribe and
are bribed. Is it likely that _High_ art, whose essential being is good,
great, and noble, and, beyond all, truth, should find a real love among
such? We deny not exceptions, we speak of that which prevails. View the
large and important class, the manufacturing, the great fabricators of
wealth—they are encouragers of art, but of what quality? Shall they who
thicken their cotton goods with flour, to give them a deceitful
substance; shall the common traders, who adulterate everything, whether
it be what we put in our mouths or on our backs—nay, to a fearful
extent, even the drugs, for lack of whose genuineness miserable
sufferers die—shall these, we say, stand with delight before the grand
dignity wherewith Michael Angelo has embodied our common nature; or
before the pure “Spozalitio” of Raffaelle; or, to come to a “_specimen_”
in our National Gallery, before the lovely countenance of the
pure-minded St Catharine, beaming with every grace of truth, of love, of
faith, and of fortitude, that appears too much natural instinct to have
the effort of strength? Will they, whose pursuits are the material
things of a material world, stand for a moment to receive one impression
that shall produce an unusual awful thought, before the solemn miracle,
the “Raising of Lazarus” of Sebastian del Piombo? No one will deny that
there is but little feeling for works of this kind; and that there is so
little, characterises our utilitarian times.
It may be as well here to notice what is said in the body of the
evidence with regard to this chronological principle. The questioning is
not very extensive, and was, perhaps, purposely limited. J. Dennistoun,
Esq., is examined, and says: “The only further observation I would
venture to make is the extreme desirableness of something like an
arrangement of the pictures. I believe that is a matter felt to be so
important that it is hardly necessary for me to speak upon it. I think a
chronological arrangement in schools is desirable; but, in the
meanwhile, as that would be totally impossible in the present building,
I think, as far as possible, an arrangement of the pictures might be
made chronologically, without reference to schools,—even that would be a
step.” We observe that Mr Dennistoun subsequently, as if alarmed at the
chronological prospect, very much qualifies this his opinion. To
_Question_ 5901, he says: “I have already stated that I think they
should omit no favourable opportunity of obtaining any monument
illustrative of the progress of art in any school, such as pictures
authenticated by signature or date, and of sufficient interest to be
specimens of art of that period. But I think it is desirable that they
should, in the first place, bestow their attention and dedicate their
funds to that more particularly interesting and valuable period of
Italian art, which I have already considered in the course of my
evidence.” This puts the chronological arrangement happily a little more
in the background. As might have been expected from the accomplished and
learned author of the _Dukes of Urbino_, we find in Mr Dennistoun a nice
appreciation of the immediate predecessors of Raffaelle, but he has no
very long list; he only mentions twenty whose works should be collected,
not merely on account of their historical relation to Raffaelle, but for
their merit.
No one is more thoroughly acquainted with the Italian schools than Sir
Charles Eastlake, both as an artistic critic and historical scholar. He
is (_Q._ 6512) consulted with regard to chronological arrangement. He
evidently fears the subdivisions of the whimsical process. _Q._ 6515:
“Would you then propose to arrange the Italian school in a chronological
series as a whole, or would you subdivide it into separate schools?”—“I
would certainly not separate the schools needlessly; but I would not
take out the finest works and put them apart.” _Q._ 6015: “Then you do
not approve of having separate apartments for paintings of the Venetian,
Florentine, and other schools?”—“I see no objections to a separation,
but I do not see that there would be anything gained by having a mere
historical series independent of merit.”
We rejoice to find that the influence of Sir Charles, deservedly great,
will not tend to turning our National Gallery into an hospital of
invalids and imbeciles. We now come to Mr Dyce’s evidence. _Q._ 7471:
“You have also, in your published work, made suggestions as to the mode
of carrying into effect the historical and chronological principle in
the arrangement of the collection?”—“I have touched on the subject very
slightly, though I have laid it down as a primary rule in the formation
of the National Gallery, that the historical arrangement of the works
should be had regard to.” _Q._ 7472: “You insisted that an endeavour
should be made, as far as possible, to show the origin and progress of a
school of art, independently of showing the excellence of its highest
and most perfect works?”—“Yes.” As Mr Dyce’s pamphlet, a _Letter,
addressed, by permission, to H.R.H. the Prince Albert, K.G._, may be
considered the first, and perhaps authorised, movement towards the fully
setting up the chronological system, we shall make it the subject of our
comments more at large; preliminary to which it may be useful to show
the reader the number of painters in the several lists furnished in the
Appendix, which, we are yet told, is imperfect—in fact, deficient, by
many omissions; so that the actual lists—as the mania of making fresh
acquisitions would become very restless and busy—would be possibly
doubled and trebled. Sir Charles Eastlake, in his suggestions in the
Appendix, not very strenuously, we think, notices the object, keeping it
somewhat subordinate; and we discover here why Mr Dyce has dedicated his
letter, by permission, to H.R.H. the Prince Albert. “The idea of a
catalogue of the masters, who might sooner or later be represented in a
national gallery, has occurred to many; but the actual formation of such
a list has only been recently undertaken, according to a plan suggested
by His Royal Highness Prince Albert, and for His Royal Highness’ use.
With reference to that list, I may add, that the catalogue of the
Italian masters was prepared by myself, and that relating to the other
schools by Mr Wornum. The series cannot be considered complete; there
are probably both omissions and redundancies; but it may, at least, be
taken as the ground-work for such a guide.” We find the lists for this
chronological collection to contain (the Byzantine curiosities not
included) one thousand five hundred and fifty-five names, and it is
probable that as many more might be collected. So that these specimens,
if even confined to one for each name, would very soon exhaust the
public purse, and possibly so disgust the nation, by their exhibition,
as to cause a stoppage of supply for a national gallery. Seeing this
array of names, Mr Dyce may well add, when he asks, “What ought a
national collection of pictures to be?”—“extensiveness will, I think,
suggest itself as one of those characteristics.”
We are not denying that catalogues of this kind are of value—far from
it; they are parts of the history of Art; but surely a dictionary of
painters is one thing and a collection of pictures another. An army and
navy list are valuable documents, but would be rather unwieldy national
incumbrances if accompanied by each individual’s portrait at full
length—especially viewing the collection, as is the case with this
gallery scheme, “independently of merit.” It may be well said, that it
is absurd to think of such a scheme with our present building; and it
would be difficult to find a site of sufficient area for these specimens
by thousands, and at the same time provide for the increase at the
present ratio of art propagation.
We proceed to consider Mr Dyce’s pamphlet, or letter—happily not very
long—for we have seldom met with so much serious nonsense in so few
pages. He blunders on the very threshold of his work; for, as shown, he
makes extensiveness a characteristic, whereas it must be but the
accident of finding good things to collect. He considers it as a museum,
having evidently in view a collection of curiosities, the thing above
all others a National Gallery should not be. “Then, again, as every
collection has in view some definite purpose, the systematic fulfilment
of that purpose on the most enlarged basis—in other words, systematic
arrangement, and a _wholeness_ or completeness in relation to its
particular purpose, seem necessary to the idea of a national
collection.” Words, words, words! all to envelop a commonplace truth
that no one need be told. Of course, every man, woman, and child, having
a “purpose,” should suit the matter in hand to it. If the man had been
destined to manufacture small-clothes instead of writing about art, he
wouldn’t begin at the wrong end, and stitch on the buttons before he had
cut out his shapes. Of course, he would have had his arrangement and his
“chronological” measure too, and not put the boy’s fit on the aged
father. There is no end to writing in this style; there may be, if a
writer pleases, miles of verbiage before reaching a place of rest or
tolerable entertainment, without any prospect of the journey’s end. Then
he goes on thinking, and “thinks” what nobody ever doubted: “I think we
may assume that a public museum ought to fulfil its purpose” (so ought a
pipkin)—but more—“and, secondly, that the objects contained in it ought
not merely to be coextensive with that purpose, but illustrate it with
the greatest possible fulness and variety; that is to say, the
collection ought to be at once extensive and complete.” Extensive and
complete—or we would put it plainly, as with regard to the pipkin, that
care should be taken that as much be put into it as it will hold without
boiling over, preserving in the simmering every variety in the broth—the
meat, the bone, the fat, and the vegetables. Notwithstanding this his
very clear explanation, he immediately again gravely asks, “But what are
we to understand by the completeness of a collection of pictures?” The
reply to this question (a reply which may well astonish any inquirer)
“depends upon the view we take of its purpose;” that is, to pursue our
illustrations, whether the small-clothes be to be made for grandson or
grandfather; whether the pipkin is to hold porridge for breakfast, or
broth for supper. “Now all, I imagine, will agree, that the object of
our National Gallery is, to afford instruction and enjoyment” (a
discovery which he very shortly annihilates, by taking out the
enjoyment, and making the instruction doubtful); “that it is, or ought
to be, an institution where the learned study art, and the unlearned
enjoy it, where _docti artis rationem intelligunt, indocti sentiunt
voluptatem_; so that we have to consider how that instruction and
enjoyment which the gallery is calculated to afford ought to be provided
for.” Not a doubt of it. But why, Mr Dyce, ride your poor hobby-horse
round this circle? Don’t you see you haven’t advanced ten paces beyond
the stable door. In fact, you have said but the same thing over and over
again; but you have taken out of the pack-saddle a scrap of Latin,
which, however well it may sound, and your own hobby may prick up his
ears at it, is really a piece of arrant nonsense; indeed the reverse of
it is the truth; for it is _the unlearned_, of course, who come to your
lecture, that they may understand, “_intelligunt_;” and the learned, the
“_docti_,” they who know something about the matter, only who can
perceive, “_sentiunt_,” the “_voluptatem_,” the pleasure of art. But we
said Mr Dyce would annihilate enjoyment, and see if he does not do the
thing, and most astonishingly. After the passage last quoted, follows:
“Now, if there be any, and at this time of day it is to be hoped there
are very few, who think that the purpose of the National Gallery will be
served by what in popular phrase is termed ‘a selection of the best
works of the best masters’” (we rejoice to find so sensible a _phrase_
is popular), “I will simply beg them to apply their opinion to the case
of any section of a national library to convince themselves how utterly
untenable it is.”
Now the Curiosity Museum is a Library, and a Museum of Curiosities and a
library are, _ergo_, moulded into one—a National Gallery; whereas the
materials will not amalgamate,—not one is a bit like the other. To go on
is really to get deeper and deeper into the quagmire of nonsense, the
only kind of _depth_ to be met with in the whole pamphlet. It must sadly
have tired the patience of his Royal Highness, if he did read it; and if
Mr Dyce wrote it with any view of giving his Royal Highness a lesson in
the English language, which was not needed, he has furnished as bad a
“specimen” as could be well met with. But to the matter and the
argument:—“the best works of the best masters” is as silly an idea, he
thinks, as to supply a library with the best dramatists, Shakespeare, of
course, included. He is an advocate for the worst, such as no one would
read—and why?—the very sound of it is truly asinine. “Would such a
proceeding be tolerated for a single moment? Would it be endured that
they, that any body of men, however eminent, should possess the right to
withhold from the public any attainable materials for literary knowledge
and criticism?”—for which purpose Mr Dyce does not withhold this
pamphlet. His materials it is not difficult to decide. It certainly
could never have been intended for knowledge but under the greatest
mistake; supposing it then to be for criticism, we take him at his word,
and indulge him accordingly, or, as he says, “in relation to its
particular purpose.” But he is not satisfied yet; having nothing more to
say, he must say that nothing in more words. He continues—“that, in
fact, they should have it in their power” (that is, the any men, however
eminent) “actually or virtually to pronounce a judgment on the
comparative merits of authors, the accuracy of which could only be
tested by the very comparison which the judgment has the effect of
preventing. Yet there is no difference between such a proceeding and the
restriction of the national collection of pictures to such works as
might happen to be considered the best.” What a circular jumble of words
is here!—“a judgment on comparative merits” not to be pronounced, not to
be endured to be pronounced, because such judgment has the effect of
preventing the said judgment, which is here made at once both desirable
and undesirable.
The reader sees how much nonsense may be comprised in less than two
pages, for we have not advanced further in the pamphlet. A library, to
be a good library, ought to contain the veriest rubbish, even Mr Dyce’s
letter, because without comparison therewith we shall never be able to
appreciate the styles of Swift, and Addison, and Milton, nor
Shakespeare’s dramas, without ransacking the “condemned cells” of Drury
Lane. And when at length, by these forbidden comparisons, we have
discovered the best works of the best masters, it is not to be endured
that “any men, however eminent,” should prefer them to the worst, or at
least not give the worst equal honour. Our letter-writer thinks he
strengthens his argument by quotations from the evidence, which, if
there be anything in them, are quite against him, for they tend to show
that selection should be of the best: thus Mr Solly is asked, _Q._
1855—“Is it your opinion the study of these earlier masters is likely to
lead to a purer style on the part of our own painters, than of the later
and more effeminate school?”—“Certainly. I perfectly agree with the
questions that have just been put to me, and I am not aware that I could
add anything to them, as I think they comprehend all that I should have
thought of suggesting myself upon the subject.”
It would have been surprising if Mr Solly had not agreed with questions
so manufactured by epithets—for “purer” and “effeminate” make an
undeniable difference. The questioner might as well have said, Don’t you
think good better than bad? Don’t you think virtue better than vice?
This is a specimen of the art of dressing up a false fact, to knock down
with it a true one; but even here, according to the Dycian theory, the
only earthly reason for preferring the purer is that it is the earlier;
if the effeminate had by chance changed places with it, it would have
had his chronological post of honour.
In his next quotation the pamphleteer is intent on giving a blow to his
compeers of the English school. Mr Leigh confirms Mr Solly’s view—is
questioned, _Q._ 1913: “You say the more chaste works of the Italian
school—do you refer to an earlier era?”—“I allude to that particular
period so justly referred to in the questions put to Mr Solly.” _Q._
1914: “Do you mean the historical painters who were contemporaneous or
prior to Raffaelle?”—“Yes.” _Q._ 1915: “You prefer these to the schools
of Bologna?”—“Yes; it is a school whose works we are exceedingly in want
of, to enable us to correct the tendency of the English style towards
weakness of design, effeminacy of composition, and flauntiness of
colouring.” But Mr Dyce has altogether forgotten his own rule, that it
is not to be endured to give a judgment, &c.—that is, to pronounce what
is good, what is “best” and “of the best,” and that if proved best, we
have nothing whatever to do with that accident. We have just warned the
public, by showing the probable number of specimens for this new “Old
Curiosity Shop,” to be called our National Gallery. Page 18, Mr Dyce
says, “Still, if it be remembered that only fifteen years after the
commencement of the Royal Gallery of Berlin it possessed works of all
classes, from the rude Byzantine down to productions of the last
century, to the number of nearly twelve hundred, we need entertain no
great misgiving as to the possibility of forming even a very
considerable collection within a moderate period.” The public, we hope,
do entertain a very great misgiving of the consequences of so frightful
an inundation, especially as it is to begin with the rude Byzantine. But
as the “rude Byzantine” may stand as high art, or fine art, in
comparison with still more rude beginnings; and as antiquity lore is
ever increased as it looks backward, and is not confined to country,
there may be cause for misgiving whether there may not be an attempt to
ransack China and Japan for new old schools—to discover picture mines in
Peru, for monstrosities in paint and design; for all become legitimate
sources under the ever-growing chronological mania, this outrageous
pedantry of the “The history of Art.” And here the writer of the
pamphlet, having perhaps momentary misgivings himself as to the quality
of the stuff to be collected, goes backwards and forwards in oscillating
contradictions, from best to any specimens, and from any specimens to
best, ending in such wise conclusion as he generally comes to, that it
is “best” to get the “best” specimens we can, but no matter whether we
get them or not, provided we get any. For he insists that the one object
is to have “a collection illustrative of the history of the art, and
“(in italics)” the formation of it must be undertaken expressly with
that view.” Moreover, “secondly, that though it be desirable that all
works collected should be of the highest order—that is to say” (he loves
to explain himself thus by duplicate) “that every master should be
represented by one or more of his best works, yet as such works are not
essential to the completeness of the collection, considered as an
historical series, but serve rather to enrich it as a mere assemblage of
beautiful works,” &c. &c. Can anything show more his contempt of mere
beautiful works, as in no way being an object in collecting? In fact,
the whole pamphlet is to recommend, if not to enforce, the gathering
together an enormous mass of curiosity lumber, and building a labyrinth
of “Chambers of Horrors” to hold them. And it must be taken into account
that this absurd, this tasteless scheme, is not confined to pictures. It
is proposed, in most views of our future gallery, that statues are to be
added, and architecture is to claim its due share as one of the Fine
Arts; and where are we to begin, and where end? Is statuary to find its
rude commencement in the “Cannibal Islands,” its progress in Tartary,
its rise and deification in joss-houses, Burmah furnishing “specimens,”
even the wheels of Juggernaut moving slowly and majestically to a new
enthronement in Kensington Gardens, or wherever our grand, national,
amalgamated museum is to be? Pagodas will yield up their deformities to
the new idolatry of chronological worshippers; the old monsters of
Nineveh will be revived; and to prove Lord Jeffrey to be right, that
there is no principle of beauty, many a hideous image will in
arrangement claim affinity to the Venus de Medicis and the Apollo
Belvidere. Really, all this is but a natural consequence of the first
step in the system. It is to be, not art, but a history of art, to be
shown by “specimens;” nor will it do to bring a brick even from Babylon
as a specimen of its architecture. The public may rejoice in its ruin,
or it would have to be brought in bodily, and a hundred or two crystal
palaces added to our wonder of the world; as it is, there must be an
“_hiatus maxime deflendus_.” We should have architecture, and
“specimens” of architects of all the several countries and schools, as
of pictures and painters. The English progress would be delightful to
see. Holingshed says, that within the memory of many in his days,
chimneys were rare; of course we must have “specimens.” We might go on
indeed to weary the reader with absurdities, and it would only be
following out Mr Dyce’s chronological idea in all its collateral
branches; for, getting warm in riding his hobby, his heated imagination
looks out for inconceivable vanishing points, which recede as fast as he
finds them, till he sees in the unbounded space of art, which he thinks
he has himself created, arts and sciences flying about in every
direction, and crossing each other like so many dancing comets. The
reader must look for a little incomprehensible language and confused
utterance when Mr Dyce descends, having breathed the bewildering gas of
his extraordinary sphere, to put his thoughts on paper, and thus he
writes: “What I was going to say was in substance this—that if the idea
of a complete museum of the fine arts involved the illustration of
decorative art, and of physical science in its relation to art, to an
extent which, though not unlimited, is nevertheless indefinite, if the
_vanishing point_” (the italics of Mr Dyce), “so to speak, of such a
museum lies somewhere in the region of practical science, one is
immediately led to consider whether, as the reverse is true—viz., that
practical science finds its vanishing point in the region of fine
art—the true idea of a museum of arts would not be that which embraced
the whole development of the artistic faculty, and commenced, therefore,
on the one hand, with those arts which are solely, or almost solely,
dependant on _æsthetical_ science, and terminated on the other with
those which are solely or chiefly dependant on _physical_ science. Such
an institution would start at the one extreme from physical science, and
at the other from fine art; and these two would meet and cross one
another, the influence of each vanishing and disappearing towards the
opposite extremes.” So that, if there is anything to be understood and
unriddled from this confusion of wordy ideas, it is this, that these
arts and sciences, æsthetical and physical, do not meet to kiss and be
friends, but to cross each other, and, having simply blazed awhile in
each other’s faces, to fly off to their own vanishing points, more
distant than ever, disappearing beyond the hope of that happy junction
which, nevertheless, it had been the whole purpose of Mr Dyce’s pamphlet
to bring about, and which, perhaps, he thinks he has brought about, or
intends to bring about, unconscious of the impossibility which he has
set in their way.
Lest the reader think we have needlessly brought in this body of
architecture, we must again quote Mr Dyce. He certainly, to do him
justice, does admit that specimens of architecture may be too big; but
if he enumerates and measures his “fragmentary remains” from the British
Museum and elsewhere, “models of whole structures, or models and casts
of details,” “adequate to the great purpose of exhibiting the
development of architecture, both as it is a science and a fine art, in
all the various stages of its history,” and if some genii could bring
them all together and throw the brick and plaster down before him, we
doubt if his, or any known human agility, would enable him to escape the
being buried under the dust that would be made by the deposit.
“But secondly, there is a peculiarity in the case of architecture which
deserves to be specially noticed. It is this:—that the examples required
to illustrate the history of architectural construction and decoration
lead us at once into the province of _practical science_ and of
_decorative art_; and thus the door is opened to a more extended view of
the contents of a National Gallery of Art.” When he told us in the
commencement that extensiveness was one of the characteristics of a
National Gallery, we never thought of an extensiveness that should have
no termination. The opening of this, his one door, shows a wearying
vista—but there are so many doors to open to “complete” his scheme, that
it is past all comprehension where he will find door-keepers, or the
nation means to pay them.
Let us imagine these ten thousand chronological galleries built, and
inhabited by all the arts and sciences. Who could preside over such a
seraglio of beauties and uglinesses?—who could possibly know anything
about one-half of them? We should doubt even Mr Dyce’s powers to
interpret their languages, which would be wanted, considering that the
object in view is instruction in their history. And yet Mr Dyce, in his
scheme of government for the National Gallery, looks to some one “coming
man.” “Some officer should be appointed to take charge of all business
relating to the National Gallery, to be responsible for the immediate
management, and to whom the public should look for the success or
failure of the undertaking.” He must be a very wonderful man indeed: if
Mr Dyce has any such in his eye, he ought to have named him; for no one
besides ever saw a man on earth equal to so much; and if he is to be
general instructor too, he would be wondered at, as when
“——still the wonder grew
That one small head should carry all he knew.”
Yet upon the appointment of this one officer Mr Dyce again insists in
the conclusion of his letter, and under the idea of his duty embracing
sculpture and architecture, as well as painting, under which heads also
are included unlimited and undefined æsthetical and practical arts and
sciences.
In our former articles on the National Gallery, we advocated the
appointment of one responsible person; in what then, it may be asked, do
we differ from Mr Dyce? Simply, that we would confine his attention to
one thing which he might be able to know—to the collection of pictures.
Even if it were thought desirable to place statues under the same
building, we would put them under the direction of a person specially
acquainted with sculpture.
The interest of the nation has been now awakened with regard to the
National Gallery, to the pictures only, to their collection and
preservation. A national museum, such as Mr Dyce and others propose, is
far too large a subject, to discuss which seriously would be only
drawing away the public mind from that which is a pressing necessity. As
the system holds at present, we are neither able to buy pictures
properly, nor to preserve them when we have them. Mr Dyce’s own
experience in the art qualifies him to speak upon this point, and in
justice to him we add, that, excepting the times when the chronological
mania is upon him, he writes fairly and sensibly; and we willingly add
his modicum of assent to the general opinion, upon the matters which the
blue-book has brought before the public. Indeed, in this pamphlet he has
two styles of writing: the pages might be well thought the work of two
hands. Whatever relates to his chronological scheme is redundant,
confused, and ambitiously laboured. He does not appear very clearly to
know what he has to say. He is, we suppose, in the midst of his
theoretic arrangements, as a painter of eminence visited with some
misgivings as to the worthless trash the fulfilment of his scheme would
introduce. He writes like one under an adopted whim, against his first
instincts, with the verbosity of an untutored and awkward advocate. When
he knows clearly what he is writing about, he writes like other people.
He successfully exonerates the keepers of the National Gallery, those
appointed subsequently to Mr Seguier, from much of the blame that had
been cast upon them. He shows that the responsibility had been, for the
most part, taken out of their hands, with regard to the purchase of
pictures; that the trustees superseded the keepers, and were afterwards
themselves superseded by the Treasury as to active operations. The Lords
Commissioners of the Treasury, from the nature of their appointment, are
sure to be more incompetent than the trustees themselves. It is in
evidence that the Lords of the Treasury had no confidence in the
trustees; nor, perhaps, much in themselves. Therefore, in 1845, when the
trustees recommended the purchase of the Guido from Mr Buchanan, the
Treasury do not comply with the request unconditionally—they require Mr
Seguier to be consulted as to the condition of the picture; and also
“two other eminent judges of the merit and pecuniary value of Italian
pictures.” They even point out the individuals for selection: “Mr
Woodburn and Mr Farrer might probably be selected with advantage for the
purpose, or any others whom Mr Eastlake might consider preferable.” The
Lords of the Treasury then preferred the opinion of two dealers in
pictures to that of the trustees or Mr Eastlake; the latter being more
competent than all the others put together to decide upon the subject.
The only surprising thing is, that the trustees, upon this slight put
upon them, did not resign their appointments, which, if honourable in
other respects, were now marked with the character of incompetency. We
have already strongly insisted that picture-dealers should in no case be
consulted. They are too much interested, and wish to keep up the value
(artificial) of pictures; and the world knows too well the nature of
their trafficking, to place implicit confidence in their decisions. We
say not that a judicious choice might not be made of skilful and
honourable men; but looking to all times, and with some knowledge of the
temptations of trade, we should be sorry to see the practice of
consulting dealers become a habit or a rule. Take the case which has
occurred—the Treasury nominate judges; at a subsequent meeting of the
trustees these very judges have pictures to be recommended—are other
trading judges to be called in? In that case decisions will have to go
the round of these dealer judges. They will either be shy of pronouncing
against the interests of each other, or be under the temptation to give
each other a good turn, or, at any rate, keep up the market, which they
themselves supply. The public have of late been let a little too much
into the secrets of picture trafficking, and of picture manufacturing.
Is there truth in the exposure that an overbaked would-be Raffaelle was
spoiled for that master, but would make an admirable Correggio? With all
the respect we owe to individuals, we confess that there is a strong
resemblance between picture-dealing and horse-dealing. The habit of
appointing dealers as judges would certainly end in a council of
dealers, who would, in actual operation, supersede all others. The fiat
of the Treasury transferred to the fiat of Wardour Street. We are glad
to quote Mr Dyce on this subject:—“This, then, is the present state of
matters. The right to entertain a proposal to purchase any picture rests
with the trustees; the ultimate opinion of its merits, on which the
purchase depends, is not theirs, but that of certain ‘eminent judges’ of
such points. The trustees decide what may be and shall be purchased, if
it be worth purchasing; the eminent judges decide whether it be worth
purchasing, and worth the money asked for it. It may be said that this
is an extreme and exaggerated case; that the Treasury, though reposing
confidence in the recommendation of the trustees, might nevertheless
think it desirable, on several accounts, to have this recommendation
fortified by the opinions of eminent judges. True: but as it cannot be
supposed that the trustees would press a recommendation, in any case, in
the face of an adverse opinion given by the judges they had summoned to
their assistance—in other words, since they cannot make a recommendation
at all without both summoning such assistance, and obtaining a
favourable opinion—it is perfectly clear that the favourableness of
opinion they have obtained, not their concurrence in it, must be looked
upon by the Treasury as the real warrant for adopting their
recommendation. Nor, on the other hand, is it refining too much to say
that the _ex officio_ trusteeship of the heads of the financial
department of the Government, not only annihilates the responsibility of
the trustees, but prevents the due exercise of the control which that
department ought to have over their proceedings.”... “If the trustees
were to be superseded in a matter of such importance, they surely ought
to have been consulted, not only as to the manner in which they might,
with the greatest advantage, avail themselves of professional
assistance, but as to the class of persons who were to afford it. But no
discretion was left to them; and who, let me ask, were the ‘eminent
judges’ fixed upon by the Treasury? Will it be believed that not only
the class of persons, but the very individuals chosen to give an
opinion, on which the purchase of pictures was to depend, were those who
were in the habit of offering, and _actually at the time were offering
pictures to the trustees for sale_? At the very meeting (held February
2, 1846) at which the communication from the Treasury was read, I find
the trustees considering a proposal for the sale of a collection of
pictures by _Mr Woodburn_, one of the judges nominated by the Treasury.
At the next meeting (held March 2, 1846), I find that “the trustees
_again_ took into consideration the offer of a picture, by Spagnoletti,
for sale by _Mr Farrer_,” the other “eminent judge” recommended by the
Treasury. So that, in fact, the “eminent judges” were by turns
competitors for the patronage of the trustees, and by turns sat in
judgment on one another’s wares.”
Constitutions grow—they are not made. We never knew one from any
manufactory, paper-made, that could hold together; yet we go on with the
conceit that we have consummate skill in that line; we make ourselves,
as it were, sole patentees for all people and nations, and wonder at the
folly of those who reject the commodity, and yet we never attempt the
thing on a small scale at home, or a large one abroad, but the result is
a failure. The School of Design is a parallel case with the National
Gallery. The committee of management of that school was in the same
relation with the Board of Trade as the National Gallery with the
Treasury. The action of the body was stopped if no official
representative of the Board of Trade was present; and if present, the
council felt themselves to be a nullity. Yet the council could not at
once be easily dismissed, for the Parliamentary grant was voted for the
council of the School of Design. In 1842, therefore, this constitution
is remodelled. The School is put “under the _management_ of a director
and of a council, subject to the control of the Board of Trade.” But
here again is a failure. The council and director cannot arrange
responsibilities. The director resigns, another succeeds: as before,
there is no working together. The constitution has to be remodelled
again. The Board of Trade takes the management, assisted by the artist
members of the old council. This fails also; and at last that is done
which should have been done at the beginning—an officer is appointed,
“under the authority of the Board of Trade, to superintend and be
responsible for the business of the schools.”
In our democratic tendencies we are jealous of one responsible director;
and, on the other hand, with our aristocratic tastes and habits, we
devolve upon men of rank and wealth, solely on account of their rank and
wealth, duties which they are not qualified to perform (and, we think,
the greater honour would consist in their declining such positions), and
which, if in other respects qualified to perform, they will not, simply
because it is not their distinct personal business, and of a paid
responsibility. And thus it is that the really qualified persons,
eminent for their knowledge in art, science, and habits of business, are
ever excluded. Can we be surprised if there be perpetual failures?
The best boon the trustees of the National Gallery can confer upon the
nation, is to resign in a body. Surely there is now little to induce
them to remain where they are, and as they are. This step would compel
the Government to do what they have found it necessary to do in other
cases—appoint a paid and responsible minister; and, if it be thought
worth while to have a National Gallery at all, to provide liberally the
means of obtaining it. It will never do, on every trifling occasion, to
have to go to Parliament, and to be met in a huckstering spirit. We must
break some of the shackles which the modern utilitarian school is ever
imposing; we must learn to view the fine arts as a constitutional part
of the liberal arts, which must be treated liberally, if we would have
them permanently established.
We must now return for a little space to the subject which, in the
commencement of this paper, we proposed to discuss: “What are we to
collect?” We shall make a great mistake indeed, if we are led by Mr Dyce
as an authority, to pass contempt upon either the works of, or the
admiration felt for, the genius of the greatest men in art—if we put
chronological series in competition with excellence. He overdoes his
part, and can gain nothing by such language as this:—“Turgid, unmeaning
panegyrics of Raffaelle, Michael Angelo, Titian, Correggio, and the
rest.” These “_and the rest_” are such pre-eminently great masters,
that, in some shape or other, we would have their works ever before the
public. Where we cannot have originals, we would have copies, and the
best that either have been made and can be acquired, or that can now be
made. We cannot think a gallery perfect without them. We would have a
portion set apart especially for copies of the best works, and also for
prints. In them we might have the designs, and the light and shade, the
great and beautiful ideas represented: and here we cannot but lament,
that the perfection to which the art of engraving has been brought
should in this country be given up to inferior and almost to worthless
things. Our engravings indicate the public taste, the causes of the low
state of which we have already remarked upon. If there be really a
desire to instruct the public—and without instruction there will not be
an encouragement for a better devotion of that beautiful art—let the
collecting the best engravings, whether old or new, be a great object
with the purveyors of a National Gallery. Nor would we have the grand
works to which we allude put away in portfolios, but glazed, and hung
upon walls specially appropriated to them. Let us have, at least, good
things—the best originals we can procure, and the next best, copies, and
engravings of the best; and not waste time and squander means in
searching out for chronological histories, the attenuated deformities of
the Byzantine schools, the hideous performances of those predecessors in
art, who had not yet acquired the knowledge of drawing with any
tolerable correctness.
We are earnest to make this protest against the chronological scheme,
and we hope it will be dissipated by the general voice, because Mr
Dyce’s pamphlet seems to have found favour in the eyes of the
commissioners. They almost adopt his language—or at least, with little
variation of phrase, his argument, and his illustration. They too speak
of an “intelligent public,” which has no existence as to art, and is but
the translation of Mr Dyce’s Latin quotation, “docti artis rationem
intelligunt.” With him, they snub the admirers of “Raffaelle, Titian,
and Correggio,” and adopt his literary illustration, and a very bad
illustration it is, for the rubbish of books in the world is even
greater in bulk than the picture rubbish. Some of the book rubbish may
indeed bear affinity to art, and come within the scope of the scheme’s
arrangement. The woodcuts of our earliest spelling-books, of Jack the
Giant-killer, of Pilgrim’s Progress, and the “specimens” heading last
dying speeches and confessions, may yet be discovered with some pains,
and no very large cost, if a Parliamentary commission would bespeak Mr
Dyce’s acceptable labours. How gratifying to such collectors would it be
to trace the rise and progress of that particular branch of the art now
so much in fashion, from the earliest “specimens” of designs in popular
editions of Æsop’s Fables, to Mr Landseer’s last costly print. Nor
should the old glazed picture tiles, that used to amuse our early
childhood, when the glow of fire-light illuminated the “animali
parlanti,” warmed our young affections, and heated our incipient
imaginings, be omitted. The “intelligent public” might perhaps hence
learn not only a little in the history of art and its progress, but
somewhat also of the history and progress of cruelty, when they see how
much artistic labour has been bestowed, and what a large price is given,
in our modern improvement days, in getting up and in the sale of that
“perfect specimen,” Mr Landseer’s “Otter Hunt,” where the poor creature
is writhing upon the spear of the huntsman, and the howling brute dogs
are in sympathetic delight with the human bigger brute than themselves.
It will be then not uncreditable if the “intelligent public” retrograde
in their taste, and for once agree with Mr Dyce in rather admiring the
attenuated and ill-drawn deformities, which, after all that can be said
against them, were a less libel upon man and brute than some later and
more perfect “specimens.” To this extent the chronological idea must go
for completion, for Mr Dyce, the favourite of connoisseurs and
dilettanti, will not allow them to stop short of it. “Notwithstanding
appearances,” he says, “I do not imagine the trustees of the National
Gallery ever seriously contemplated the establishment of an _index
expurgatorius_ of pictures.” Such opinions he considers obsolete. We
must have all “specimens,” however bad; for he says, in emphatic
italics—“_The collection can aim at no lower object than to exhibit the
whole development of the art of painting; the examples of which it
consists must therefore range over its whole history!_” The “ςηματα
λυγρα” of Zellerophon were not of a more deadly character than would the
contemplated collection be to all true notions of the Beautiful in
art—the collection of inhumanities, the doleful horrors of saints and
demons, and worse and more awful representations which preceded
perceptions of the Beautiful.
We ought to be glad to learn from any who know better than ourselves,
but we very much question if our perpetual appeal to the practice of
foreign galleries, in the way in which it is made, is at all a healthy
sign. We are not sure that some of the examples we seek may not rather
be warnings. It is a confession of imbecility and mistrust in themselves
of trustees and commissioners. Foreign architects, foreign directors,
and foreign galleries, bear too prominent a part in our blue-books and
our pamphlets. We are confident in our own men, if not in the
“intelligent public.” We have men quite able to devise galleries, and to
know how to fill them. The misfortune has been, not that we lack men of
ability, but we do not employ them. And why? Our governments have no
better taste, no better knowledge, no better desires, with regard to the
arts, than the “intelligent public.” They have never entertained serious
views upon the subject. In conclusion, we would ask if the series of
Hogarth’s pictures have been removed from our National Gallery, on which
they conferred an honour and importance of a kind that no other gallery
in Europe can boast of possessing, with the object of forming a
chronological series of the British school. We hope to see them
transferred to their old places. Our National Gallery should not be
deteriorated, to give a grace to Marlborough House, however much it may
want it.
THE REFORM BILLS OF 1852 AND 1854.
The postponement of the second reading of Lord John Russell’s new Reform
Bill, until a later, and it may be a protracted period of the Session,
is suggestive of some important considerations. It shows, in the first
place, that even the author of the bill is by no means confident in his
power of carrying it through the House of Commons, else we may be
perfectly certain that no departure from the original arrangements would
have taken place. It shows, moreover, that other members of the
Cabinet—or, we should rather say, the members of the Cabinet
collectively—do not consider the provisions of this measure of so much
importance as to justify them in allowing it to interfere with the more
immediate exigencies of the state. In one sense of the word, Lord
Aberdeen and his colleagues are thoroughly conservative. They want to
keep their places; and they have no idea whatever of sacrificing
themselves through the impulse of Quixotic gallantry, or of allowing
Lord John Russell’s pledges to imperil their tenure of office. But they
have an obstinate and pragmatical man to deal with, and cannot afford to
affront him. Without Lord John Russell, the Coalition could not stand,
and therefore, in some matters, they are compelled to allow him more
license than is agreeable to their own inclination, or in accordance
with the interests of the country. Thus, they not only permitted him to
prepare his measure during the recess, but they gave it real importance,
by introducing it as a material part of the ministerial programme, as
announced by her Majesty from the throne. At that time there was no more
probability of a pacific settlement of the Eastern question than exists
just now; so that every objection to the measure, founded on the
impropriety of exciting internal agitation at such a crisis, must have
been foreseen. There was still time before the development of the
measure, and the publication of its intended details, to have postponed
it without any loss of credit. No one would have blamed the Ministry had
they done so—even the most ardent reformer could scarcely have
maintained that they were bound to force it through Parliament, just as
if no war were expected, or as if the country emphatically demanded it.
But Lord John Russell would not consent to that. He was determined that
the whole details of his project should be laid before the public; and
he accordingly did so in a speech which fell flat on the ear alike of
the House and of the country. He fixed a day for the second reading; but
before that day arrived, postponed his bill until a later period of the
Session, with a statement that, even then, it would depend upon
circumstances whether he should proceed with it or not.
This is not such conduct as the country has a right to expect from the
ministers of the Crown. They were entreated, both by friends and
opponents, not to bring forward their measure in the midst of warlike
preparations, and in the total absence of any demand on the part of the
country for an immediate change in the representation. Those entreaties
were met by silly, bombastical, and vapouring speeches about the sublime
spectacle which Great Britain would afford to the world, if, while
waging war abroad, she applied her energies to the remodelment of the
constitution at home! We need not pause now to demolish that most
pitiful pretext. It has virtually been given up by the Ministry; for
they now acknowledge, that the time originally fixed for the second
reading of the English bill was not seasonable; and they indicate, that
if we should be actively engaged in war on the 27th of April, the bill
will not be proceeded with; so that the notion of the “sublime
spectacle” is thrown aside, whilst the cause of the irritation, made
worse by the divulgence of the scheme in detail, is still continued.
No really united cabinet would have ventured to act in such a manner. It
is in vain to tell us of concert and cordiality, when the public
measures of one week belie the bragging language used in that which
immediately preceded it—when bluster is followed by postponement, and
extreme recklessness by an affectation of patriotic caution. The
prevalent opinion is, that the bill will not be proceeded with; and if
the Ministry had said even so much as that, there would have been no
occasion for any further discussion; but they will not say it. Lord
Aberdeen, on the 9th of March, when urged by Earl Grey to withdraw the
bill altogether, is reported to have replied, that “the second reading
of the bill had been postponed by Lord John Russell till the 27th of
April, _in sincerity and good faith_. Whether it would then be proceeded
with, depended upon the state of Europe; for no one could tell what a
day or an hour would bring forth. Government, however, would act
consistently with the interests of the country, and with a due regard to
their own honour.”
We cannot predict what the Government may do hereafter, but we know what
they have already done with respect to this matter; and it is our humble
but deliberate opinion, that they have neither consulted the interests
of the country nor their own collective credit. We should have been very
glad, indeed, had they allowed the subject to drop; for we should then
have been spared the necessity of criticising their conduct. But,
threatened as we are, though by no means agitated or alarmed by the
suspension of a most clumsy weapon over our heads, we must take the
liberty of reviewing the proceedings of these Dionysians.
Let us assume, which we really believe and devoutly hope to be the case,
that, notwithstanding the professions about sincerity and good faith,
this bill has been absolutely sent to limbo. Let us look upon it in the
light of a scheme abandoned. That, however, cannot acquit Ministers from
the serious charge of having played fast and loose with the country, by
embodying in the Queen’s speech, at the opening of Parliament, a
distinct recommendation of internal organic change, when war was staring
us in the face. They knew then perfectly well that there existed no
probability of the settlement of the Eastern dispute without a direct
appeal to arms; and it was their bounden duty to have interdicted the
mooting of such a question at such a time. We maintain, that no cabinet
has a right to countenance this species of deception. No specific
measure should be announced by a Ministry, much less recommended by the
Crown, unless it is seriously intended that it shall be carried through,
not at some indefinite future period, but in the course of the existing
session. This is not the first time that the country has been annoyed by
this indecent and reprehensible practice, introduced, we believe, by
Lord John Russell, of rash ministerial pledges. We do not think that
even a premier is entitled, towards the close of one session, to
announce distinctly the ministerial policy of the next, or to bind
himself by a specific pledge; for even a premier is not allowed by our
constitutional custom to act autocratically—he must carry along with him
at least the majority of the Cabinet. He cannot accurately predict who
may be his colleagues at the opening of the ensuing session—he cannot
foresee what events may occur or causes arise to render a change of the
intended policy not only expedient, but necessary. If a premier is not
entitled to do this, still less is a subordinate like Lord John Russell;
and yet we see him, session after session, blabbing about future
schemes, and pledging himself unconditionally to their introduction.
This is really intolerable, and it is full time that the nuisance should
be abated. If the noble lord is of opinion that, notwithstanding all
which we have heard and seen, he has still power and reputation enough
to head an independent party—let him leave the Cabinet, and then, as a
plain member of Parliament, he may pledge himself to his heart’s
content. But while he remains a minister and servant of the Crown, he is
bound to maintain the dignity of his position, and preserve a due
decorum, instead of acting like a popularity-hunter and a partisan. Of
late he has let himself down woefully. We are not accustomed, in this
country, to see ministers, while in office, engaging in literary
squabbles—and exposing themselves to damaging rejoinders by petulant
paragraphs and absolutely deplorable sneers. Their duty is, not to write
or edit gossip and scandal, but to devote themselves, heart and soul, to
the affairs of the nation and the service of their sovereign; and, if
they are not willing to abandon their favourite pursuits, they ought at
once to withdraw. With less than this the nation will not be satisfied;
and we really think we are acting a friendly part to Lord John Russell
to tell him so, in as many words. If he doubts our sincerity, let him
ask the opinion of his colleagues upon the point; and we are ready to
stake our existence that they will be unanimous in their agreement with
us. We believe also, that, if the question were fairly put them, they
would be unanimous in recommending him, for the future, so long as he is
a member of the Cabinet and acting along with them, to abstain from that
system of specific pledging, the result of which, in the present
instance, has by no means tended to raise them in the estimation of the
country.
But it may be asked, why, when the Ministry have postponed for the
present, and may abandon, the Reform Bill, we should harp upon a string
not intended, for some time at least, to vibrate in the ear of the
country? To that we reply that we have many good reasons for doing so.
The vibration has already been made. If a man is told that it was
intended, by virtue of a parliamentary act for which Ministers were to
be responsible, to make some decided change in his property or
condition, but that, in respect of certain external circumstances, it
was deemed expedient to allow him a respite—surely he is entitled to use
the interval in examining into the nature of the proposed change; and,
if need be, in preparing his defence. It would perhaps be too strong a
phrase to say that we know what is to come—for Lord John Russell is such
an experimentalist, so entirely dependent upon suggestions from others,
and so utterly devoid of any fixed principles to guide his own judgment,
that no one can venture to predict what his views may be six months from
the present moment. As a constitution-monger, the Abbé Sièyes was, in
reality, less erratic. But we know this—that his lordship in 1852
brought forward a bill for amending the representation, which bill,
owing to certain circumstances which we need not recapitulate, went to
limbo; and that in 1854 he has brought forward another, bearing in no
respect any likeness to the former one. Indeed the issue of Banquo and
of Macbeth could not have been more dissimilar. No. 3, however, is a
great deal more sweeping in its innovations than No. 2 (for we must
recollect that more than twenty years ago the noble lord carried No. 1);
and No. 4 may be still more progressive. Heaven only knows what we shall
have proposed, when the number of his Reform Bills equals that of his
Jew Bills, or the volumes of his _Biography of Moore_! He seems to think
that the story of the Sybilline books was written expressly for his
guidance and conduct, and that he is entitled, after each successive
failure and rebuff, to charge the constitution with an additional per
centage of radicalism by way of penalty. He becomes louder and broader
in his demands whenever they are negatived or postponed, and seems in
the fair way to adopt some of the views of the Chartists.
We do not say this lightly—by way of banter—or in regard of general
political disagreement. We never, at any time, reposed much faith in the
judgment or sagacity of Lord John Russell; and, of late years, our
opinion of him, in these respects, has, we confess, materially declined.
We have been, in our own sphere of action, engaged in most of the
political struggles which have taken place within the memory of the
present generation; and we trust that these have not passed by without
some wholesome lessons. To change of opinion, where honestly induced and
through conviction, every one is bound to be fair and lenient; because,
undeniably, in our own day there has been a great unravelment of social
questions, and mere party prejudice is no longer allowed to be
paramount. Perhaps the only living statesman of eminence, who cleaves to
the old system, and is inveterate in his addiction to party intrigue,
and what he calls “tradition,” is Lord John Russell. Put him into
Utopia, and his first thought would be how he might establish the
exclusive supremacy of the Whigs. He is so much and so inveterately a
party man, that he seems to care little what becomes of the country,
provided only that he, and his, sit at the receipt of customs. He showed
that long ago—not in the days of his hot youth, but in those of his
pragmatic manhood. He—the Whig Constitutionalist—characterised the
opinion of the Upper House as “the whisper of a faction;” and did not
disdain the violent and frantic sympathy of mobs when such
demonstrations tended to his own particular purpose, or aided the
ascendancy of his party. Ever since he has pursued the same course. No
man can tell when he is in thorough earnest, or when he is not. He
invited, by word and deed, Papal aggression; and, when the aggression
came, he started up at once, as an indignant Protestant champion, and
flung down his diminutive gauntlet, in name of Great Britain, to the
Pope! And yet, at the bidding of the Irish Roman Catholic phalanx, we
find this second Luther a strenuous supporter of Maynooth, and of the
nunneries! Had his ancestor John, the first Lord Russell—who in 1540,
and 1550, obtained grants from the Crown of the possessions of the Abbey
of Tavistock and the Monastery of Woburn—been equally zealous for the
protection of convents, he probably would have remained, as he was born,
an utterly unacred gentleman.
The proposed Reform Bill of 1852 did not attract a large share of the
public attention, and that for two reasons. In the first place, the
country was quite apathetic on the subject; and in the second place, it
was introduced at a time when the Whigs were tottering to their fall.
Nevertheless, it is a remarkable document, inasmuch as we may conclude
it to embody the experiences and observation of Lord John Russell upon
the working of our representative system during a period of exactly
twenty years. That there should have been some defects in the machinery
of the engine which he invented in 1832, is not wonderful; nor can we
call him rash for essaying, after so long an interval, to remedy these
defects according to the best of his judgment. His position in 1852 was
this:—He told the House, that he, the mechanist of 1832, was now
prepared, from the results of twenty years’ observation, to introduce
certain improvements which would have the effect, for a long time
coming, of preventing the necessity of any further change. The
improvements he proposed were these:—The qualification in towns was to
be reduced from £10 to £5; and in counties from £50 to £20. Every man
paying 40s. a-year of direct taxes was to be entitled to vote. There was
to be no disfranchisement of boroughs, but the smaller ones were to
receive an infusion of fresh blood by the incorporation of adjoining
villages. No property qualification was to be required for members, and
the parliamentary oaths were to be modified, so as to allow the
admission of Jews and other unbelievers in the Christian faith. Such
were the chief features of the proposed measure of 1852, as laid before
the House of Commons by Lord John Russell, then Prime Minister. Wise or
unwise, they were the conclusions which he had formed as to the change
necessary to be made in the English representative system; and we must
assume that he had not formed them without due thought and matured
investigation. That both the necessity for, and the nature of the change
were seriously considered by him and his colleagues in the Cabinet, it
would be unfair and irrational to doubt; and we must therefore hold that
the provisions of the bill were regarded by them not only as wise and
salutary, but as the very best which their collective wisdom could
devise.
If, in 1852, this bill had been rejected by a majority of the House of
Commons, Lord John might either have remodelled it, so as to meet the
more obvious objections, or have again introduced it, without
alteration, for the consideration of another parliament. But it was not
rejected by the House, and its merits were never thoroughly discussed
throughout the country. It was, as we have said, introduced at a time
when the Whig ministry were obviously in the death throes, and in
February of that year they tendered their resignation. The bill
accordingly fell to the ground before judgment could be pronounced upon
it. The public at large seemed to care nothing about it. There was no
enthusiasm manifested at its introduction, and no disappointment
expressed at its withdrawal.
The scheme, therefore, of 1852, was not only untried but uncondemned.
Nothing had occurred that could reasonably shake the confidence of the
deviser in its prudence, correctness, or aptitude for the necessities of
the country; unless we are to suppose that he felt somewhat disappointed
by the exceedingly cold and indifferent nature of its reception. That,
however, could not be taken as any distinct criterion of its merits. We
are not to suppose that Lord John Russell, in framing that bill, merely
looked to the popularity which he and his party might attain thereby, or
the future advantages which it might secure to them. We are bound, on
the contrary, to assume that he, being then Premier, and in the very
highest responsible position, was acting in perfectly good faith, and
had embodied in the bill the results of his long experience and
observation.
Now, mark what follows. In 1853, he again pledges himself to introduce a
measure for the amendment of the Parliamentary representation; and
redeems his pledge by bringing out, early in 1854, a measure totally
different from that which he recommended in 1852! The great points of
difference are these: By the one, the boroughs were to be preserved, and
in some cases enlarged; by the other, they are to be disfranchised to
the amount of sixty-six members. The bill of 1852 maintained the
distinction between town and county qualification—that of 1854 abolishes
such distinction. The first proceeded upon the plain principle that
majorities alone were to be represented—the second, in special cases,
assigns a member to minorities. In short, the two bills have no kind of
family resemblance. They are not parallel, but entirely antagonistic
schemes; and it is almost impossible, after perusing them both, to
believe that they are the productions of the same statesman.
Nothing, it will be conceded on all hands, has occurred during the last
two years, to justify such an extraordinary change of sentiment. We have
had in the interim a general election, the result of which has been that
a Coalition Ministry, numbering Lord John Russell among its members, is
presently in power. Trade, we are told, is in the highest degree
flourishing; and the prosperity of the country has been made a topic of
distinct congratulation. Search as closely as you please, you will find
no external reason to account for so prodigious a change of opinion. The
potato-rot and famine were the visible reasons assigned for Sir Robert
Peel’s change of opinion on the subject of protective duties—but what
reasons can Lord John Russell propound for this prodigious wrench at the
constitution? He cannot say that the proposals in _both_ his bills are
sound, safe, and judicious. The one belies and utterly condemns the
other. If his last idea of disfranchising and reducing sixty-six English
borough constituencies is a just one, he must have erred grievously in
1852 when he proposed to retain them. So with the other provisions. If
he intends to maintain that he has now hit upon the true remedy, he must
perforce admit that he has acquired more wisdom in 1853 than was
vouchsafed him during the twenty previous years of his political career.
He must admit that he was totally and egregiously wrong in 1852; and he
has no loophole for apology on the ground of intervening circumstances.
Really we do not believe that there is a parallel instance of a British
minister having voluntarily placed himself in such a predicament. How is
it possible that he can expect his friends, independent of the mere
official staff, to support, in 1854, a measure diametrically opposite to
that which was propounded in 1852? No wonder that Earl Grey and other
influential Whigs are most desirous to have the measure withdrawn
without provoking a regular discussion. Some of them may not have
approved of the former bill; but those who did so, or who were at all
events willing to have let it pass, can hardly, if they wish to be
consistent, give their sanction to the present one. It is not Lord John
Russell alone who is compromised; he is compromising the whole of his
party. If they thought him right in 1852, they must think him wrong in
1854; for he cannot point to the smallest intervening fact to justify
his change of principle. And if they think him wrong, how can they
possibly support him? We do not believe that he can reckon on the
support of the high-minded Whigs of England. They have principle and
honour and character to maintain; and we think it exceedingly improbable
that they will allow themselves to be swept into the howling Maëlstrom
of Radicalism. Rather than that, we venture to predict that they will
toss the rash little pilot, whose incapacity and want of knowledge are
now self-confessed, overboard, and trust to the direction of an abler
and more consistent member of the crew.
Be that as it may, we must try if possible to ascertain what cause has
operated to produce this singular and rapid change in the opinions, or
rather convictions, of Lord John Russell on the subject of Parliamentary
Reform. As we have said already, there are no external circumstances,
either apparent or alleged, to account for it. The boroughs have done
nothing to subject them to the penalty of disfranchisement; the counties
have done nothing to entitle them to a considerable addition of members.
To use diplomatic language, the _status quo_ has been rigidly observed.
Well, then, in the absence of any such tangible reason, we must
necessarily fall back upon motives, the first of which is the advice and
representation of confederates.
We at once acquit Lord Aberdeen and the majority of the Cabinet of any
real participation in the scheme of Lord John Russell. What may be the
mind of Sir James Graham and Sir William Molesworth on the subject, we
cannot tell, but we are tolerably sure that no other minister regards
the bill with favour. Even the members of the Manchester party do not
seem to consider it as an especial boon. Mr Bright knows well enough
that a new reform bill, if carried, cannot be disturbed for a number of
years to come; and as this one does not come up to his expectations, he
is ready to oppose it. Indeed, it seems to satisfy none of the extreme
party beyond old Joseph Hume, who, for some reason or other to us
unknown, has of late years been in the habit of spreading his ægis from
the back seats of the Treasury bench over the head of the noble Lord,
the member for London. The voice of the ten-pounders, as a body, was not
favourable in 1852 to the lowering of the franchise; and we have heard
no counter-clamour from the class who were and are proposed to be
admitted to that privilege. The Whig aristocracy, naturally enough,
regard this bill with peculiar bitterness. Therefore we do not think
that the astonishing change of opinion, or rather of principle exhibited
by Lord John Russell, is to be traced either to the advice of
colleagues, or the influence of more matured democrats. Our own theory
is this—that he never had, as regarded improvements on the form of the
constitution or the representation, anything like a fixed principle—that
he was striking just as much at random in 1852 as in 1854; and that, so
far from having any settled or original ideas of his own, he grasps at
any which may be presented to him with extreme recklessness and avidity.
We are quite aware that it would be, to say the least of it, gross
impertinence to make any such statement, or to express any such opinion,
without reasonable and rational grounds. We should be very sorry to do
so at any time, but more especially at the present, when we wish to see
Ministers disembarrassed of all perplexing questions at home. But it is
their fault, not ours, if we are forced to make the disclosure; and to
show that, in reality, the grand mechanist of 1832 had so forgotten his
craft, if he ever had a due knowledge of it, that after his last
abortive effort, in 1852, he was fain to derive new notions from the
pages of the _Edinburgh Review_. In saying this, we intend anything but
an insinuation against the talents of the author of the articles to
which we refer. We can admire the ingenuity of his arguments, even while
we question their soundness. We have no right to be curious as to what
section of politicians he belongs. He may represent the philosophic
Liberals, or he may be the champion of Manchester in disguise. All we
know is, that he has written three plausible articles, after the manner
of Ignatius Loyola, the result of which has been that poor Lord John
Russell has plunged into the marsh, misled by the _ignis fatuus_, and is
at the present moment very deep in a quagmire.
Some of our readers will doubtless remember that, during the autumn of
1851, various pompous paragraphs appeared in the Whig newspapers,
announcing that Lord John Russell had withdrawn himself to country
retirement, for the purpose of maturing a grand and comprehensive scheme
of Parliamentary Reform. The task was entirely gratuitous and
self-imposed; for although the venerable Joseph Hume, Sir Joshua
Walmsley, and a few other Saint Bernards of the like calibre, had
attempted to preach up an itinerant crusade, their efforts met with no
response, and their harangues excited no enthusiasm. Nobody wanted a new
Reform Bill. The class which, of all others, was most opposed to
innovation, embraced the bulk of the shopkeepers in towns, who, having
attained considerable political and municipal influence, were very
unwilling to share it with others, and regarded the lowering of the
franchise not only with a jealous but with an absolutely hostile eye. It
was upon the shoulders of that class that the Whigs had been carried
into power; and it really seemed but a paltry return for their support
and devotion, that a Prime Minister, upon whom they had lavished all
their honours, should attempt to swamp their influence without any
adequate reason. It would be absurd or unfair to charge them with
selfishness. The first Reform Bill, acceded to and hailed by the great
mass of the people, had established a certain property qualification for
voters; and no one could allege that popular opinion was not
sufficiently represented in the House of Commons. Nay, many of the Whigs
began to think that popular opinion was too exclusively represented
therein, and did not scruple to say so. Anyhow, the Bill had so worked
that there, in 1851, was Lord John Russell, its parent and promoter, in
the office of Premier of Great Britain, and in the command of a
parliamentary majority. Small marvel if the ten-pounders asked
themselves the question, what, in the name of gluttony, he could covet
more?
They were quite entitled to ask that question, not only of themselves,
but of the singular statesman whom they had been content to follow.
Could he state that there was any measure, not revolutionary, but such
as they and other well-disposed subjects of the realm desired, which he
was prevented from introducing by the aristocratic character of the
House of Commons? Certainly not. The triumph of the Free-trade policy
was a distinct proof to the contrary. Was there any discontent in the
country at the present distribution of the franchise? Nothing of the
kind. The apathy was so great that even those entitled to enrolment
would hardly prefer their claims. Even the enrolled cared little about
voting—so little, indeed, that it was sometimes difficult to persuade
one-half of a large constituency to come to the poll. All attempts at
public meetings, for the purpose of agitating a reduction of the
franchise, had been failures. The people were quite contented with
things as they stood, and grumbled at the idea of a change. And yet this
was the time, selected by a Prime Minister who had everything his own
way, for getting up a fresh agitation!
Every one, beyond himself, saw the exceeding absurdity of his conduct.
The leading Whigs became positively angry; and from that period we may
date his rapid decadence in their estimation. The real nature of his
scheme, consisting of an arbitrary lowering of the franchise, was quite
well known; and as that could not, by any possibility, be carried even
through the House of Commons, his own friends thought it advisable to
put the noble Lord upon another scent.
There appeared, accordingly, in the _Edinburgh Review_ for January 1852,
an article on “The Expected Reform Bill,” which took most people by
surprise on account of its apparently moderate, philosophic, and even
Conservative tone. It would be difficult to analyse it—it is difficult,
even after reading it, to draw any distinct conclusion from its
propositions and argument. But this, at all events, was admitted, that
“clearly there is no _call_ for Parliamentary Reform on the part of any
large or influential class. There is no zeal about it, one way or the
other. An extension of the franchise is wished for by some, and thought
proper and desirable by many; but it is not an actual want largely felt,
nor is the deprivation of the franchise a practical grievance, clear
enough, tangible enough, generally recognised enough, to have given rise
to a genuine, spontaneous, exclusive demand for redress. There is a
general languor and want of interest on the subject, manifested nowhere
more plainly than in the tone and character of the meetings got up by
the Reform Association for the sake of arousing public feeling. _The
nation, as a whole, is undeniably indifferent; the agitation is clearly
artificial._” Then, again, we are told that “_Quieta non movere_ is, in
political matters, as often a maxim of wisdom as of laziness;” and a
great deal more to the same effect, which could not have had a very
exhilarating effect on the mind of Lord John Russell, supposing, as we
do, that he was in total ignorance of the article in question before it
was given to the public. Certainly, on this occasion, he had but a poor
backing from his friends.
The view of the writer in question seemed to be this—that instead of
arbitrarily lowering the franchise on the footing of a property
qualification, it is important to discover some criterion by means of
which persons morally and educationally qualified, who have not the
franchise at present, may be admitted to that privilege. We are not
reviewing or discussing the article—we are simply pointing out the
sources from which Lord John Russell has derived most of his new ideas.
Therefore we shall simply quote one passage from this article.
_Source of Lord John Russell’s new idea of the Savings’ Bank Deposit
qualification._—“Our present system is defective and unjust in this—that
it selects two kinds or forms of property only as conferring the
franchise. Let us continue to maintain a property qualification; but let
us not insist that the property, so favourably and honourably
distinguished, must be invested in one special mode. If a man has
accumulated by diligence or frugality £50 or £100, and spends it either
in the purchase of a freehold, or in removing his residence from an £8
to a £10 house, his realised property confers upon him the distinction
of a vote. But if he invests the same sum, earned by similar qualities,
in the savings’ bank, or in railway shares or debentures, or in the
purchase of a deferred annuity—which would probably be much wiser modes
of disposing of it—it carries with it no such privilege. This seems
neither equitable nor wise. It might easily be rectified, and such
rectification would be at once one of the safest, simplest, justest, and
most desirable extensions of the franchise that could be suggested. _Let
the production before the registration courts of a savings’ bank book,
showing a credit of £50_, of at least six months’ standing, or of a
_bona fide_ certificate of shares to the same value in a valid railway,
or of coupons to the same amount, be held to entitle a man to be
inscribed upon the list of voters for that year.”—_Edinburgh Review_,
Jan. 1852, p. 265.
Adhering to our original intention of not discussing the merits of the
different proposals of this and the other articles in the _Edinburgh
Review_, we shall not comment upon the unblushing impudence of such a
project as this, which would place the representation of the country
principally in the hands of millionaires and railway directors. It _is_
unparalleledly impudent. But we notice it now simply as the germ of Lord
John Russell’s £50 savings’ bank qualification.
By the time this article appeared, Lord John Russell’s Bill was
prepared; though no one expected that it would be carried. The Whig
party were conscious that the hour of their doom was approaching, but
they wished to bear with them into opposition a weapon which might be
available for future warfare. Lord John’s ideas had not then penetrated
beyond a lowering of the franchise and the admission to the register of
parties who paid 40s. a-year of direct taxes. These were his deliberate
impressions before the schoolmaster of the _Edinburgh Review_ appeared
abroad.
After this, Lord John Russell went out of office; but the _Review_ kept
harping on Reform. The writer had already stated, “that a new measure of
Parliamentary Reform was demanded, rather in the name of theoretical
propriety than of practical advantage.” It seems to us that such an
admission was nearly tantamount to an argument against the policy of
making any change at all; more especially when we were told, nearly in
the same page, that “there was no _call_ for Parliamentary Reform on the
part of any large or influential class.” If that were true, we should
like to know who “demanded” the new measure? But we must not be too
critical regarding the advances of the new Lycurgus.
In October 1852, a second article appeared, the preamble of which was
very moderate—indeed, rather calculated to impress the casual reader
with the idea that the author would have much preferred if “the vexed
question of the franchise” could have been left alone. Nevertheless it
appeared to him that there were “many reasons which make it impossible
either entirely to shelve or long to postpone the question of
Parliamentary Reform;” and, having stated these, he dashes again into
his subject. He is, however, a great deal too knowing to commence with
the proposal of innovations. He treats us to several pages of high
Conservativism, condemnatory of universal suffrage; and having thus
established a kind of confidence—acting on Quintilian’s advice, to frame
the introduction so as “_reddere auditores benevolos, attentos,
dociles_”—he begins to propound his new ideas. In this article we have:—
_Source of Lord John Russell’s new proposal to swamp the Counties by the
admission of £10 occupants._—“The other plan is to extend the £10
qualification to counties, by which means _every_ householder (to the
requisite value) throughout the land would possess a vote; if he resided
in a small town or a village, or an isolated dwelling, he would be upon
the county register. The only objection we can hear of to this plan is,
that in the country districts and in hamlets a £10 occupancy generally
includes some land, and would not, therefore, indicate the same social
station as the living in a £10 house in town, and that it might lead to
the creation, for the sake of augmenting landlord influence, of a
numerous and dependent class of tenant voters. But in the first place,
the occupier of a £10 house in villages and small towns belongs to a
decidedly higher social grade than the occupier of a £10 house in
cities; and, in the second place, it would not be difficult to meet the
objection, by requiring that the qualifying occupancy shall be, in the
county register, a house, and not a house and land, or by fixing a sum
which shall, as nearly as can be ascertained, be generally an equivalent
to the £10 occupancy contemplated by the present law.”—_Edinburgh
Review_, Oct. 1852, p. 472.
That is the second instance of appropriation on the part of the wise,
ripe, deliberate statesman, who for twenty years had been watching the
progress of his own handiwork with the view to introducing repairs.
Before this article in the _Edinburgh Review_ appeared, it had never
occurred to him how convenient it might be to swamp the counties, and
how very simple were the means of doing so! Now for appropriation
third:—
_Source of Lord John Russell’s proposal to admit all Graduates of
Universities to Town and County franchise._ “It is, of course,
desirable, and is admitted to be so by every party, that _all_ educated
men shall be voters; the difficulty is to name any ostensible
qualifications which shall include them, and them alone. But though we
cannot frame a criterion which shall include all, there is no reason why
we should not accept one which will include a considerable number of
whose fitness to possess the franchise there can be no question. We
would propose, therefore, that the franchise be granted to all
_graduates of Universities_,” &c.—_Edinburgh Review_, Oct. 1852, p. 473.
Another hint adopted by Sir Fretful Plagiary! Next we come to a more
serious matter:—
_Source of Lord John Russell’s proposal for disfranchising the lesser
English boroughs._—“The great majority of them are notoriously
undeserving of the franchise, and those who know them best are least
disposed to undertake their defence. The plan of combining a number of
them into one constituency would be futile or beneficial according to
the details of each individual case. If a close or a rotten borough were
amalgamated with an open or a manufacturing town, much advantage might
possibly result; if two or three corrupt or manageable constituencies
merely united their iniquities, the evil of the existing things would
only be spread farther and rooted faster. We should propose, therefore,
at once to reduce the 61 boroughs with fewer than 500 electors, and now
returning 91 members, to one representative each.”—_Edinburgh Review_,
Oct. 1852, p. 496.
We shall see presently that this proposal was amended, as not being
sufficiently sweeping. Only thirty seats are here proscribed; but it was
afterwards found expedient to increase the black list to the number of
sixty-six. Pass we to the next instance of palpable cribbage.
_Source of Lord John Russell’s proposal that Members accepting office
shall not be obliged to vacate their seats._—“The most desirable man
cannot be appointed Colonial Minister, because his seat, if vacated,
might be irrecoverable. Administrations cannot strengthen themselves by
the alliance of colleagues who possess the confidence of the general
public, because the place for which they sit has been offended by some
unpopular vote or speech. We need add no more on this head: the
peculiarity of the case is, that we have no adverse arguments to
meet.”—_Edinburgh Review_, Oct. 1852, p. 501.
The writer is decidedly wrong about the non-existence of adverse
arguments; and we shall be happy to convince him of the fact if he will
be kind enough to accord us a meeting. In the mean time, however, he has
humbugged Lord John, which was evidently his special purpose. Even while
we deprecate the morality of his proceeding, we can hardly forbear
expressing our admiration of his skill. We know not his earthly name or
habitation; but he _is_ a clever fellow, for he has led, with equal
audacity and success, the ex-Premier of Great Britain, and the father of
Reform, by the nose!
But we have not yet done. The article last referred to was penned and
published before the new Parliament met, towards the close of 1852, and
before the balance and state of parties could be ascertained. The result
of the election showed that parties were in effect almost equally
balanced—so much so, that, but for the junction of the Peelites with the
Liberals, Lord Derby would have obtained a majority. The election, it
will be remembered, took place under circumstances peculiarly
unfavourable to the Government; and never perhaps was misrepresentation
of every kind more unscrupulously employed than by the Liberal press on
that occasion. Still it became evident that Conservatism was gaining
ground in the country; and it was a natural inference that, after the
question of Protection was finally set at rest, its progress would be
still more rapid. This was not exactly what the writer in the _Edinburgh
Review_ had calculated on. He now saw that it would be necessary, if the
Liberal party was to be maintained in power, to go a good deal further
than he at first proposed; and accordingly, when he appears again before
us in October 1853, we find him armed this time, not with a
pruning-hook, but with a formidable axe. We hear no more about
“theoretical propriety”—he is evidently determined upon mischief. Now,
then, for his developed views, as adopted by his docile pupil.
_Source of Lord John Russell’s proposal that freemen shall have no
votes._—“There is no doubt in the mind of any man, we imagine, that
incomparably the most openly and universally venal portion of borough
constituencies are the old freemen, so unhappily and weakly retained by
the Reform Act of 1832.... The disfranchisement of the freemen is,
perhaps, of all steps which will be urged upon Parliament, the most
clearly and indisputably right and necessary, and, added to the plan
already suggested for pursuing individual cases of venality, will
probably sweep away the most incurably corrupt class of
electors.”—_Edinburgh Review_, Oct. 1853, p. 596.
We have already seen that, in Oct. 1852, the reviewer proposed to
abstract thirty members from the smaller English boroughs. It became
evident, however, that so paltry a massacre of the innocents would not
suffice, more especially as it had become part of the scheme to swamp
the English counties. Accordingly we are told, in an off-hand and easy
manner: “To all that we said on a former occasion as to the theoretical
propriety and justice of the _small_ borough representation, we
unreservedly adhere. But, unfortunately, it is too notorious that these
boroughs are generally in a condition which, for the sake of electoral
purity, imperatively demands their disfranchisement, partial or entire.
_Here again it is true that parliamentary statistics do not altogether
bear out our conclusion._ Of the seventy-two boroughs convicted of
bribery between 1833 and 1853, only twenty-one can properly be called
small—as having fewer than five hundred electors—while some of the more
constantly and flagrantly impure places number their votes by
thousands.” So, according to the admission of even this writer, there is
no case established, on the ground of corruption, for the wholesale
disfranchisement of the small boroughs. Nevertheless we are to assume
them to be impure, because he says it is notorious that they are so; and
by this short and summary process of assertion he gets rid of the
trouble of investigation. The boroughs are not put upon their trial, for
there is no specific charge against them; but they are condemned at once
because the writer has a low opinion of their morality. This is worse
than Jeddart justice, where the trial took place after the execution. In
the case of the boroughs there is to be no trial at all. The following
conclusion is therefore easily arrived at: “There can be no doubt in the
mind of any reformer that, in some way or other, these small boroughs
ought to be suppressed; that we must have, if possible, no more
constituencies under one thousand electors.” So much for the
disfranchisement; now for the redistribution.
_Final scheme suggested to Lord John Russell for disfranchising the
small boroughs and swamping the counties._—“The third method proposed is
to merge all these small boroughs into the county constituencies, by
depriving them of their members, and reducing the county franchise to a
£10 occupancy. In this way the class would still be represented, and the
individuals would still retain their votes, and the electoral lists of
counties would be considerably modified and greatly enriched. This plan
would, we think, be far the fairest and most desirable, inasmuch as it
would give us constituencies large in number and varied in character,
and, therefore, to a great extent secure against illicit and undue
influences.”—_Edinburgh Review_, Oct. 1853, p. 602.
The next and last point which we shall notice is the representation of
minorities. We do not know to whom the credit of having invented this
notable scheme is really due. There are various claimants in the field.
Mr G. L. Craik, of Queen’s College, Belfast, asserts that he was the
original discoverer, having propounded a plan of this nature so early as
1836. Ingenious as the idea may be, it will hardly rank in importance
with the discovery of the steam-engine, nor do we think that its
originator is entitled to any exorbitant share of public gratitude or
applause. We shall give it as we find it in the _Review_.
_Source of Lord John Russell’s proposal to give members in certain cases
to minorities._—“The mode by which we propose to insure the constituent
minorities their fair share in the representation—_i. e._ to make the
majorities and minorities in the House of Commons correspond as nearly
as may be to majorities and minorities in the country, or in the
electoral bodies—is, to give (as now) to each elector as many votes as
there are members to be chosen, and to allow him to divide these votes
as he pleases among the candidates, _or to give them all to one_. But as
at present most places return two members, it is obvious that, under the
proposed arrangement, wherever the minority _exceeded one-third_ of the
total number of the electors, they would be able to return one member,
or to obtain _one-half_ the representation, which would be more than
their fair share, and would place them on an equality with the majority,
which would never do; while, if they _fell short of one-third_, they
would be, as now, virtually unrepresented and ignored. To obviate this,
it will be necessary so to arrange our electoral divisions, that as many
constituencies as possible should return _three_ members: one of these a
minority, if at all respectable, could always manage to secure.”—_Edin.
Review_, Oct. 1853, p. 622.
Here, at all events, is the notion about the representation of
majorities, and the establishment of as many constituencies as possible,
returning _three_ members. Lord John Russell’s method of working this,
is to restrict each elector to two votes.
Thus we see that all the leading features and peculiarities of Lord John
Russell’s new Reform Bill—the disfranchisement of the boroughs, the
swamping of the counties, the ten-pound occupancy clause, the
qualification by deposit in the savings’ bank, the voting of graduates,
the retention of their seats by members accepting office, and the
representation of minorities—are contained in the articles published in
the _Edinburgh Review_, in 1852 and 1853. This is, to say the least of
it, a very singular coincidence. Of course we do not mean to maintain
that Lord John Russell was debarred from availing himself of any useful
hints which might be offered him, or from adopting the notions of any
political sage, or harum-scarum cobbler of constitutions; we entirely
admit his right to gather wisdom, or its counterfeit, from any source
whatever. What we wish to impress upon the public is this, that, down to
1852, not one of these notions had occurred to our grand constitutional
reformer, who for twenty years had been sedulously watching the
operation of his original measure! Nay, more than that: two years ago,
his ideas on the subject of Parliamentary Reform were diametrically
opposite to those which he has now promulgated; and that not only in
detail, but in absolute essence and form! Had he come before us this
year with a scheme based upon the principle of 1852, which was a
lowering of the franchise, without any farther disturbance of the
constitution of the electoral bodies, it would have been but a poor
criticism to have taunted him with a minor change in the details. He
might have used his discretion in elevating or lowering the point where
the franchise was to begin, without subjecting himself to any sneer on
account of change of principle. But, wonderful as are the changes which
we have seen of late years in the views of public men, this is the most
astounding of them all. Never before, perhaps, did a statesman pass such
a decided censure on his own judgment, or make such an admission of
former recklessness and error. If he is right now, he must have been
utterly wrong before. The constitution of 1852, as he would have made
it, must have been a bad one. One-tenth of the members of the House of
Commons would still have been returned by constituencies which he now
regards as unfit to be constituencies any more. If the maintenance of
the small boroughs is a blot on the constitution, how was it that Lord
John Russell did not discover that blot until 1853, after the articles
we have referred to were published? Did he take his ideas from those
articles? If so, was there ever a more humiliating confession of entire
poverty of mind? If he did not take his ideas from those articles, what
was it that produced so entire a change of opinion?—what eminent
political oculist has removed the film which impeded his vision but two
short years ago? This is, in reality, a very grave matter. We are
accustomed in this country to associate measures with men, and sometimes
to accept the former on account of our belief and confidence in the
sagacity of those who propose them. But what faith can we repose in a
man who thus plays fast and loose upon a question with which he has been
occupied all his life? This is not a case of expediency arising out of
unforeseen circumstances. That the question is of the deepest import no
one in his senses can deny. We know how the constitution, as framed at
present, works; but we do not know how it may work if very materially
altered. And yet we find the same mechanist proposing, within two years,
two separate kinds of alteration! The first was simple enough, and had
at least this much in its favour, that it did not require any violent
displacement of the machinery. The second is so complex that the whole
machinery must be re-arranged. It was our sincere hope that the country
had seen the last of sudden conversions of parties—at no time edifying
events, and sometimes attended by disastrous consequences—but we must,
it seems, prepare ourselves for another conversion on the part of the
Whigs, if this bill is to be carried through. They must, supposing them
inclined to support Lord John Russell, either unsay what they said, or
were prepared to have said, in 1852, or be ready to maintain that they
were then greatly in advance of their leader. The dilemma, we admit, is
an unpleasant and an odious one; but there is no escape from it, if the
Whigs are determined, at all hazards, to follow their erratic leader.
That there is room for certain changes in the national representation we
are by no means disposed to deny. It is impossible to devise any system
so perfect as to preclude the idea of amendment; indeed, we suppose that
there never was a constitution, or phase of a constitution, in the
world, which gave entire and perfect satisfaction to all who lived under
its operation. We may be told that the present system is theoretically
wrong, that its principle is to exalt property and to exclude
intelligence, and that in some parts it is incongruous, inconsistent,
and contradictory. Possibly there may be some truth in such allegations;
but then we must never lose sight of this, that the real test of a
constitution is its practical working. It is undeniable that under the
present system the middle classes have gained, not only power, but
preponderance in the state; and accordingly we find that they are not
favourable to a change which would certainly operate to their
disadvantage. The ulterior aims of the men of Manchester may prompt them
to desire a still further infusion of the democratic element, but
neither the members nor the doctrines of that school have found favour
with the British public. If public opinion generally, and the great
interests of the nation, are well and effectively represented in the
House of Commons, it does seem to us a very perilous experiment to
disturb that state of matters. We should like very much to hear from
Lord John Russell a distinct exposition of the results which he
anticipates, should this scheme of his be carried. Is there any real
point of interest to the nation which he is at present debarred from
bringing forward by the exclusive constitution of the House of Commons?
What are the existing grievances which call for so radical an
alteration?
“What is there now amiss
That Cæsar and his senate must redress?”
We apprehend that the noble lord would be greatly puzzled to frame an
intelligible answer to such queries. Well then, we are, perforce,
compelled to fall back upon theory, and to assume that he vindicates his
proposal, not because future measures will be of a better kind, or
better discussed than heretofore, but because it is desirable, for
symmetry’s sake, that the representation should be readjusted.
Be it so. We are content to take that view, albeit a low one, and to
examine his scheme without any partial leaning to the present
constitution of the House of Commons. And first, let us see what regard
he has paid to the principle of equal representation.
It will not, we presume, be denied by any one that the three kingdoms of
England, Scotland, and Ireland, ought to be put upon an equitable
footing as regards one another in this matter of representation. If
imperial measures were all that the House of Commons had to discuss,
this relative equality might be of less importance; but with separate
laws and separate institutions guaranteed to and existing in the three
kingdoms, it is proper that each should be fairly represented in the
grand council of the nation. At present that is not the case. If we take
the test of population, Scotland ought to have 18 more members than are
now allotted to her; if we take the test of taxation and revenue, she
ought to have 25 more. Combining the two, there is a deficit of more
than 20 members to Scotland in her share of the national representation.
Now, that is a matter which ought, in the very first instance, to have
occupied the attention of the noble lord, and would have so occupied it,
had he laid down for himself any fixed principles of action. It is
nonsense to talk of inequalities between one borough and another, or
between town and country qualification, before the first grand
inequality is remedied. Apply the double test of population and revenue,
and you will find that Ireland is upon an equality in point of
representation with England, but that Scotland is not; and no reason has
been, or can be, assigned for this anomaly. The quota for Scotland was
fixed by the Act of Union at 45 members. It was increased by the Reform
Act of 1832 to 53, but the number is still insufficient. Lord John
Russell proposes, out of the 66 disfranchised seats, to give _three_ to
Scotland, but he has assigned no reason for doing so. The people of
Scotland are not in the position of men supplicating for a boon. They
are demanding that, when such a change as this is made, their political
rights shall be respected and allowed; and they will not be satisfied
with less than a measure of perfect justice. We think it right to put
forward this point prominently, because it lies at the foundation of the
whole question of the readjustment of the representation.
The question of the disfranchisement of the boroughs is one which should
be approached with very great caution. In 1852, as we have already seen,
Lord John Russell did not propose to touch them—now he has made up his
mind to lop away 66 members from this branch of the representation. This
is, in our opinion, by far too reckless a proceeding. We can see no good
ground or principle for the entire disfranchisement of any of the
boroughs, a step which we think ought never to be taken, except in case
of absolute and proved corruption. When constituencies are too small,
the proper and natural plan is, to annex and unite, not to abolish; and
we believe that this could be effected with very little difficulty. The
new Schedule A contains a list of 19 boroughs, returning at present 29
members, which are to be wholly disfranchised, on the ground either that
the number of the electors is under 300, or that of the inhabitants
under 5000. Therefore the privilege is to be taken from them, and the
voters are to be thrown into the counties. We agree with Lord John
Russell, that some constituencies are too small, but we do not agree
with him in his scheme of disfranchisement, and we utterly object to his
proposal of quartering the electors on the counties. They are borough
voters, and so they ought to remain; and it is a very poor pretext,
indeed, to make this disfranchisement the excuse for altering the county
qualification. Let a union of the boroughs, by all means, take place;
let the number of their members, if necessary, be considerably reduced;
but let us have no disfranchisement, or assimilation between the town
and county qualification, which would quite upset the whole system
throughout the kingdom.
We do not profess to be conversant with local details, so that we cannot
speak with perfect confidence; but it appears to us that some such
arrangement as the following, which would unite the smaller boroughs,
and at the same time diminish the number of members, might be adopted
with advantage:—
┌──────────────┬──────────────┬─────────┬─────────┬─────────┬─────────┐
│ County. │ Borough. │ Present │Combined │ Present │ Future │
│ │ │Electors.│Electors.│Members. │Members. │
├──────────────┼──────────────┼─────────┼─────────┼─────────┼─────────┤
│Devonshire, │Ashburton, │ 211│ 520│ 1│ 1│
│ „ │Dartmouth, │ 309│ „ │ 1│ „ │
│ „ │Honiton, │ 335│ 649│ 2│ 1│
│ „ │Totness, │ 314│ „ │ 2│ „ │
│Dorsetshire, │Lyme Regis, │ 297│ 665│ 1│ 1│
│Somersetshire,│Wells, │ 368│ „ │ 2│ „ │
│Sussex, │Arundel, │ 208│ 493│ 1│ 1│
│ „ │Midhurst, │ 285│ „ │ 1│ „ │
│Wiltshire, │Calne, │ 151│ 641│ 1│ 1│
│ „ │Marlborough, │ 254│ „ │ 2│ „ │
│ „ │Wilton, │ 236│ „ │ 1│ 1│
│Yorkshire, │Richmond, │ 342│ 642│ 2│ „ │
│ „ │Northallerton,│ 303│ „ │ 1│ „ │
│Essex, │Harwich, │ 299│ 506│ 2│ 1│
│Norfolk, │Thetford, │ 217│ „ │ 2│ „ │
│ │ │ │ │ ——│ —│
│ │ │ │ │ 22│ 7│
└──────────────┴──────────────┴─────────┴─────────┴─────────┴─────────┘
Thus, without any disfranchisement, or violent displacement, fifteen
boroughs, at present returning twenty-two members, might be formed into
seven respectable constituencies, returning one member each to
Parliament. There are, however, four others—Knaresborough, Evesham,
Reigate, and Andover—which cannot be so easily thrown together. We would
proceed with these on the same principle, by adding them to boroughs at
present returning two members, but which Lord John Russell proposes to
restrict to one member each. The following is our view:—
┌──────────────┬──────────────┬─────────┬─────────┬─────────┬─────────┐
│ County. │ Borough. │ Present │Combined │ Present │ Future │
│ │ │Electors.│Electors.│Members. │Members. │
├──────────────┼──────────────┼─────────┼─────────┼─────────┼─────────┤
│Yorkshire, │Knaresborough,│ 226│ 583│ 2│ 1│
│ „ │Ripon, │ 357│ „ │ 2│ „ │
│Worcester, │Evesham, │ 396│ 755│ 2│ 2│
│ „ │Tewkesbury, │ 359│ „ │ 2│ „ │
│Surrey, │Reigate, │ 297│ 1124│ 1│ 2│
│ „ │Guildford, │ 595│ „ │ 2│ „ │
│Hampshire, │Andover, │ 232│ „ │ 2│ „ │
│ │ │ │ │ ——│ —│
│ │ │ │ │ 13│ 5│
└──────────────┴──────────────┴─────────┴─────────┴─────────┴─────────┘
Here there are twenty-three seats set at liberty, without
disfranchisement in any one instance. In justice to ourselves, we must
state that we have implicitly followed the schedule attached to Lord
John Russell’s bill, and not indulged in speculations of our own. Had
the latter been the case, we might have been tempted to ask why
Westbury, with an electorate of 289, is to be spared, while Wells, with
368, is to be blotted from the list of boroughs?
Besides these, Lord John Russell proposes that thirty other seats shall
be made vacant, by restricting boroughs now returning two members to
one. (His number is thirty-three, but we have already noticed Ripon,
Tewkesbury, and Guildford.) If it could be shown that there is a really
clamant case for representation elsewhere, the reduction might be
allowed, but only to the extent required. It seems to us perfect madness
to proceed with wholesale disfranchisement, until the necessity of
transferring seats to other places is satisfactorily established. We can
very well understand why some of the smaller boroughs which have now two
members should be restricted to one, in order to satisfy the just
requirements of some rising township which has hitherto been
unrepresented. We have no doubt that Lord John Russell is quite right in
his proposals to give members to Birkenhead, Burnley, and Staleybridge,
and to erect Chelsea and Kensington into a Parliamentary borough to
return two members. We think that two additional members each might be
granted to the West Riding of Yorkshire and to the county of
Lancaster—that Salford should return two members instead of one—and that
the London University should be represented. We think that these are
rational demands, and such as might be accorded; and the necessary
number for these purposes, and for putting Scotland on a fair footing of
equality with England and Ireland, would amount to the vacation of about
thirty or thirty-two existing seats. We have already shown how, without
entirely disfranchising any borough, twenty-three seats may be obtained;
and if nine others are required, it would be no hardship to take from
each of the following boroughs one out of the two members which they
presently return:—
County. Borough. Constituency.
Hampshire, Lymington, 328
Cumberland, Cockermouth, 330
Buckinghamshire, Marlow (Great), 335
Wiltshire, Chippenham, 345
Buckinghamshire, Buckingham, 349
Devonshire, Tavistock, 352
Cornwall, Bodmin, 360
Wiltshire, Devizes, 363
Buckinghamshire, Wycombe (Chipping), 365
This would take out of Schedule B no less than twenty-one seats which
are now included in it; and it would be obviously unwise to exhaust, all
at once, the only source from which new rising constituencies can be
endowed. Lord John Russell seems to think—and we agree with him—that the
present number of the House of Commons (654) is quite large enough; and
although there is no principle to fix numbers, it may be as well to
maintain them as they are. It is but natural to expect that, in future
years, some places will decrease, and others increase, and that partial
changes will be required. For that very reason we deprecate too hasty a
reduction of the boroughs, and an apportionment of their seats to places
and constituencies which do not require them. Suppose that in ten years
after this, new seats of commerce and manufacture, like Birkenhead,
Burnley, and Staleybridge, start into existence—that places like Salford
increase immensely—and that new Chelseas require to be conjoined with
new Kensingtons—where are we to find members for them, without unduly
swelling the bulk of the House of Commons, if all the smaller borough
seats are to be disposed of at the present time? The Legislature may say
just now, with perfect propriety, to the men of Lymington—“Your borough
is the smallest in the country which returns two members to Parliament.
Birkenhead is a place of such importance that it requires a member; and
therefore, as it is not expedient to increase the aggregate number of
the national representatives, we shall take a member from you, and give
one to Birkenhead.” That is quite intelligible; but why disfranchise
boroughs when you do not know what to do with the vacancies? It is true
that Lord John Russell tells us what he means to do with them; but we
entirely demur to every proposal of his beyond those which we have
already noticed. He proposes, we observe, to give three members instead
of two to the following cities and boroughs whose constituencies we have
noted:—
Towns. Constituencies.
Birmingham, 8,780
Bristol, 10,958
Bradford, 2,723
Leeds, 6,400
Liverpool, 15,382
Manchester, 17,826
Sheffield, 5,612
Wolverhampton, 3,499
It must strike every one that there can be no principle in this. The
constituencies both of Manchester and Liverpool are more than five times
larger than that of Bradford, and yet all of them are to have three
members; whereas the Tower Hamlets with 25,366, Marylebone with 20,377,
and Lambeth with 18,522 electors, are but to have two each as
heretofore. Even the sage of the _Edinburgh Review_ has borne testimony
to the impropriety and injustice of adding to the number of
representatives returned for large towns. In his article of October
1852, he says:—
“It would appear that the large towns have their full share of the
representation; since, if we add the small boroughs to the counties,
on the supposition of their returning a somewhat similar class of
members, and containing a somewhat similar constituency, the
comparison would stand thus:—
Population. Members.
Counties and small boroughs, 10,250,000 259
Large towns and cities, 6,660,000 206
—whereas the proper arithmetical proportion for the cities would be
169, instead of 206.”
The fact is, that Lord John Russell has assigned an additional number to
each of these towns, not because they require one, but in order to make
the extraordinary experiment, to which we have already alluded, of the
representation of minorities in Parliament. For that reason, also, he
proposes to give thirty-six additional members to so many counties and
their divisions, making each up to the number of three, so that
minorities may be represented on rather an extensive scale. We shall
have occasion presently to say a word or two on that subject. The notion
seems to us not only impracticable, but positively silly; and such as no
man of ordinary sense could entertain for a moment. Even were it more
feasible than it appears, that would not justify an unnecessary
disfranchisement of the boroughs. We can see no reason for parting with
them so abruptly—many for retaining them; because, undoubtedly, they
keep the balance even between town and country, and so perform a very
valuable function in the Legislature. We do not dispute the propriety of
their remodelment or curtailment. Our views, in that respect, are, we
submit, sufficiently liberal; for we think it just that from them, as
small constituencies, any palpable defect or positive need in the
national representation should be supplied. But we will not consent to
their sacrifice merely for theoretical experiment; or in order to give
colour to the proposal for assimilating the town and county franchise—in
other words, for swamping the latter representation. We are greatly
surprised that Lord John Russell should, in his mature years, have thus
been led astray. In the popular ferment of 1831–2—the particulars of
which are better known to his lordship than to us—almost any proposal
might have gone down; but now reason instead of passion must be appealed
to and satisfied, before any one can be allowed to make a material
inroad on the Constitution. Lord John is singularly unfortunate. Mr
Bright is quite as much opposed to the notion of the representation of
minorities as we are; and we venture to say that the collective voice of
the counties, to which he proposes to give an additional member, will be
raised against him. We need not press the point that the borough
electors will be especially unwilling to lose their existing privileges.
And if it should so happen—as we know, and as every man who knows the
political feeling of the country, must be the case—that both the
disfranchised parties, and those whose franchise is thereby nominally
increased, hold the scheme in detestation and contempt, how is it
possible that he can hope to carry it even through the House of Commons?
He has no enthusiasm to back him. He is not attempting to give voice to
the opinion of any large section of the public—he is simply repeating,
parrot-like and without examination, in opposition to all he has
heretofore said, the opinions enunciated by another. He is theorising,
contrary to his own experience; and sacrificing, for a mere crotchet,
his own arrangements, which, for twenty years, and until 1852, he deemed
to be mathematically correct.
We now come to the question of qualification. This is a very serious
one, and cannot be properly treated without reference to our existing
fiscal arrangements. Indirect taxation has been reduced to the lowest
possible limit; and, in order to make up the deficiency in the revenue
occasioned by numerous relaxations, we are forced to submit to an
income-tax which amounted last year to more than five and a half
millions, levied from those persons only who are in receipt of more than
£100 yearly. From Mr Gladstone’s financial statement, it appears that
the Government does not intend to increase the amount of the national
debt by contracting fresh loans, but that the inevitable expenses of the
war, however large, are to be defrayed by additional yearly taxation.
Further, we are told that it is not proposed to raise any portion of
this by again resorting to indirect taxation, but that the whole of it
is to be charged upon those persons who are already rated to the
income-tax. We subscribe in theory to the opinion, that it is not
advisable for the interests of posterity to increase the amount of the
national debt; which might, however, have been cleared off during the
years of peace but for the insane system pursued by successive
Ministries, of abandoning indirect taxation for the sake of immediate
popularity. In practice, it may be found impossible to avoid the
contraction of fresh loans. It is not likely, for some time at least,
that any Ministry will be bold enough to resort to the customs and
excise duties for the supply of the yearly deficiency, so that there
really seems no other available course than that of taxing property and
income still farther. The effect of this is, that a certain limited
class is made to pay for the others, and that the great bulk of the
population are exempted. How long this can be endured we shall not
venture to predict. We have demonstrated over and over again, in the
pages of the Magazine, the extreme impolicy and ultimate danger of
continuing a war tax in time of peace, and the result shows the
soundness of our warning. The day will arrive when this burden will
become so great as to be intolerable; and then, perhaps, it may be
discovered that, in abandoning easy and evident sources of revenue, our
commercial legislators have committed a most grievous error. At present,
however, we can only look to the fiscal arrangements which have been
proposed. It is obvious, at least to us, that it would be highly
inexpedient, and even dangerous, to lodge political power in the hands
of those who are not called upon to contribute directly to the
necessities of the State. If you are to select a certain class as
peculiar rate-payers, and to compel them, year after year, to make up
the deficiency of the national income, whatever that may be, you are
bound also to give them peculiar privileges. We care not how low you
make the assessment. Indeed, we are of opinion that it should be brought
down to the lowest possible limit, which, probably, would be fixed, as
regards income, at £60 per annum. But whatever that limit may be, this
principle ought to be established, that no man, not rated to the
property and income tax, shall hereafter be capable of voting, or of
being enrolled. This is the only good security we can have against
confiscation. It is said that the idea of a war is peculiarly popular in
the country. No wonder that it should be so. The artisan is informed
that no additional tax will be laid in consequence upon any article of
his consumpt; that the price of his beer, spirits, tea, coffee, sugar,
and tobacco, will not be raised; and that others will defray the cost of
equipping those fine fleets, and maintaining those splendid troops,
which he cheers as they leave our shores. Very different are the
feelings of the unfortunate individual who, by dint of industry, has
worked his way to an income of £150 a-year, and has a wife and family to
support. Last year he had to pay £4, 7s. 6d., directly to the Exchequer,
and was consoling himself with the vision that, after April 1855, his
contribution would be lowered to £3, 15s. Down upon him, like a vulture,
swoops the tax-gatherer, with a demand for £7, 11s. 3d., to be increased
if the war goes on. You cannot expect that man to be quite as
enthusiastic as the artisan, whose voice, like that of Sempronius, is
still for war, so long as he escapes untaxed. It is easy to be patriotic
when there is nothing whatever to pay. What we advocate, therefore, is,
an extension of the property and income tax to the lowest available
limit, and an exclusion from the franchise of all those who do not
contribute to it. It is a proposition not only fair and reasonable, but
imperatively necessary under the circumstances in which we are placed;
and no one can complain of injustice in being excluded from a privilege
for which he does not pay, either from want of means, or because he
fraudulently evades the tax.
Of course, this is tantamount to a rejection of Lord John Russell’s
proposal, that persons having £50 for a certain period of time deposited
in a savings’ bank, shall be entitled to the franchise. This is a
proposal which really will not bear examination. In the first place, it
would lead to a prodigious deal of fictitious registration and wholesale
manufacture of votes; in the second place, it is a most invidious and
senseless preference given to one species of property beyond another.
Why a savings’ bank? Are chartered, joint-stock, or private banks not as
good? And why give a vote for £50 in the shape of a deposit only? Money
is only equivalent to money’s worth. The man who expends £50 in the
furnishing of his house, or in purchasing a share in some small
business, or in fifty other ways of investment, is as good or better
than his neighbour, who lets his money lie in the savings’ bank. It is
utterly absurd to select one only kind of deposit for the franchise,
practically excluding hundreds of thousands, who have more money
invested in a different way. Then, again, what means are to be devised
for ascertaining the right of parties so registered to continue on the
roll? The tenure is obviously of the most precarious kind. An election
takes place to-day, and a depositor votes in virtue of his £50;
to-morrow he withdraws it from the bank. How is that to be ascertained?
We presume it is not contemplated that the savings’-bank books shall be
open to the inspection of the public; and if not, where are the means of
ascertaining the continued qualification of parties? In like manner, we
object to the qualification of £10 of yearly dividend from the Funds, or
from bank stock. It is reasonable enough, perhaps, on account of their
educational attainments, that graduates of universities should be
admitted to vote either in town or county, _provided that they are
assessed to the property and income tax, but not otherwise_; and the
receipt of £100 a-year of salary, as it implies direct rating, may be
taken as a sufficient qualification for borough or town voting.
But we are not at all prepared to agree to the proposed assimilation of
the town and county franchise. It is a direct and dangerous innovation
on the principle of the British constitution, which is, that the county
representation shall be kept apart from that of the towns and boroughs.
The Act of 1832 admitted the proprietor of a £10 house, not situated
within the boundaries of a borough, to a county vote; and the result of
that, in some localities, has been, that the voters in villages and
small towns which were not boroughs, have been numerous enough to swamp
and overpower the proper county constituency. That was bad enough; but
it is now proposed that _occupiers_ shall have the franchise; and, as we
remarked last month, it is not by any means necessary that the house
which the voter occupies should be of the yearly value of £10. We must
again quote the words of Lord John Russell: “We propose, with respect to
the county right of voting, that—with the exception of a dwelling-house,
_which may be of any value, provided the voter lives in it_—in all other
cases the building must be of the value of £5 a-year. Supposing there is
a house and land, the house may be rated at £1 or £2 a-year, provided
the voter resides in it; but if the qualification is made out by any
other building—a cattle-shed, or any other building of that kind—then we
propose this check, that such building shall be of the value of £5
a-year. This, then, is the franchise we propose to give in counties for
the future.” Thus the English counties are to be inundated, 1st, By £10
occupiers, not resident within borough boundaries; and, 2dly, By the
voters of sixty-six disfranchised boroughs, who are to be thrown loose
upon them! We are confident that, in any case, such a proposal as this
will be rejected. The counties do not want additional members at the
expense of the boroughs; and we think it is, on principle, most
important that the two kinds of representation should be preserved
distinct. Indeed, but for the crotchet of giving representation to
minorities, by assigning to as many constituencies as possible three
members each, we should probably have heard nothing of this transfer of
borough representation. That the county franchise may be advantageously
lowered as regards tenants, we are ready to admit. Let them be enrolled
from £20 upwards, provided they pay property and income tax, which,
according to our view, ought to be made an indispensable condition to
the franchise.
But we shall be asked, what is to become of £10 occupants residing
beyond borough boundaries, who are really rated to the income-tax? Are
they to remain unrepresented? Our reply is, that they ought to be
represented, and can be represented, without sending them to the
county-roll. The true, sound, and equitable method is to enlarge the
parliamentary boundaries of boroughs, so that persons of this class may
be enrolled in the nearest borough to their residence. Such enlargement
may be made irrespective of other persons who are entitled to the county
franchise, and who would still claim to be placed upon that roll. In
this way, no one really entitled to vote would be excluded: both
counties and boroughs would be preserved; and the latter would receive a
very considerable augmentation of numbers from a class of men who at
present do not enjoy the franchise.
There is but one point more to which we shall specially refer, and that
is the proposed representation of minorities. We have shown, in a former
article, that this is perfectly unworkable, and moreover greatly to be
deprecated, as entirely changing the relations of the electors and their
representatives. It can only, according to Lord John Russell’s
admission, be attempted in constituencies which are to be allowed three
representatives; and the simple fact of its being the exception, and not
the rule, seems to us sufficient to condemn it. We have already put the
case of the death or resignation of one of these minority members, and
we cannot see how his place can be supplied, unless it is enacted that
the candidate lowest on the poll is to be returned. It is neither
sensible nor equitable to challenge the authority of majorities. If you
leave a question, whether it relate to men or measures, to be decided by
a certain number of people, you must perforce adopt and acquiesce in the
verdict of the majority. But it is within our power to render the
majorities less oppressive, by multiplying as much as possible the
number of the tribunals of appeal.
This brings us to the consideration of a topic which we broached in the
last number of the Magazine, and which, we venture to say, is well
worthy of the attention of our statesmen. It cannot be denied that in
many places, especially large towns, there is an immense degree of
apathy on the part of those who are entitled to the franchise. Men who
are in the possession or occupation of property far more than sufficient
to entitle them to vote, do not even take the pains to place themselves
on the roll; and many of those who are on the roll will not give
themselves the trouble to vote. It is remarkable also that these are
generally men of wealth, station, and intelligence—belonging, in short,
to the class most likely to use the franchise with discretion and
independence. The reason of this apparent apathy is, that they know
quite well that they will be outvoted. In urban constituencies of four
thousand or upwards, returning two members each, every one knows
beforehand how the election will go, and consequently no effort is made
by a desponding minority. We grant that such ought not to be the case;
because an elector, though he may not be able to find a candidate of his
own way of thinking, can always exercise a wholesome control, by voting
for the man who, in his judgment, is the best in the field—but there can
be no doubt that the case is as we represent it. For example, at last
election, there voted, in round numbers, at London, only 7,500 out of
20,000 electors—at Finsbury, 9,000 out of 20,000—at Lambeth, 8,000 out
of 18,000—at Manchester, 9,000 out of 13,000—at Westminster, 800 out of
14,800—at Sheffield, 3,500 out of 5,300—at York, 2,500 out of 4,100—at
Edinburgh, 3,500 out of 6,900—at Glasgow, 5,000 out of 16,500. These
represent the actual numbers on the register, but not the number of
those entitled to be enrolled, but who have not lodged claims. In short,
the activity in voting and enrolling seems to decline in proportion to
the size of the constituency.
There is but one way of remedying this, and that is by recurring to the
simple principle _that no man shall be entitled, in one place, to vote
for more than a single member_. We do not mean by this that large
populations should be restricted to a single member—that would be
unfair, and even preposterous. We mean that each county, division of a
county, city, town, or borough, which has more than one member allotted
to it, should be subdivided into parishes, districts, or wards, each to
return a member, according to the votes of the majority of the qualified
electors within it. Thus London would be divided into four electoral
districts; Liverpool, Manchester, Edinburgh, and others into two; and
the counties would, in the same way, be partitioned into so many
districts as there were members to be returned. This system is at
present in partial operation in the counties of England, which are split
into divisions, and there undoubtedly the system has worked well and
satisfactorily. No man in his senses would propose that each county
elector of Yorkshire should have six votes; and we really cannot see why
one man, because he happens to live in a large town, should have double
the personal political influence of another who resides in a small
borough. It does not necessarily follow, by any means, that the members
to be returned under the operation of the system which we propose should
be antagonistic to one another. It would, we are convinced, materially
tend to improve the representation, by infusing fresh energy into the
constituencies; it is already recognised, and partially in effect; and
it is not liable to any of the objections which it requires no ingenuity
to rear against Lord John Russell’s absurd scheme for giving members to
minorities.
We might say a great deal more on the subject of the present bill, but
we think that further comment is needless. We have shown, by absolute
demonstration, that it is not the result of Lord John Russell’s own
Parliamentary experience—that, for twenty years of his public life,
dating from 1832, he had failed to see the proper method of amending the
representation of the people—and that he was at last enlightened by a
series of articles, which display as little consistency as wisdom. We
have shown also that he has not probed the great question of the
relative proportional representation of the three united kingdoms—that
he proposes to demolish borough representation, without any necessity
for doing so—and that he wishes entirely to change, or rather to
abrogate, the ancient distinction between town and county franchise. We
have shown that he has not taken at all into consideration the recent
fiscal changes, and that he proposes to place those who are heavily and
directly taxed on the same footing with those who are allowed to escape
that burden. We have shown that other parts of his scheme are either
merely fantastical, or dictated by party motives; and having said so
much, we are content to abide by the decision of the country.
If this bill is again brought forward on the 27th of April, or a later
day in the session, we do not believe that it will ever pass into the
statute-book. If it is withdrawn, on the score of inconvenience or
otherwise, we are perfectly certain that it will not again appear in its
present shape; for, many as are the legislative proposals which we have
had occasion to consider, this is, beyond comparison, the worst
digested, most incoherent and most rambling measure of them all.
THE BLUE BOOKS AND THE EASTERN QUESTION.
Notwithstanding the imposing aspect of these azure tomes, technically
termed _Blue Books_, we confess we do not look upon them without a
feeling of suspicion or incredulity. No doubt the usages of Parliament
and the will of the Crown require the production of documents relating
to every important transaction connected with our foreign policy, and
they are intended to furnish ample and accurate details of our
international acts, and to unfold to the public the intricacies of
complicated and tedious negotiations. Such is the object of those
expensive publications; but, for the attainment of that object, they
should be not merely authentic, but complete. And when we say that we do
not regard the _Blue Books_ with all the respect that full confidence
inspires, it is because we know that the papers they contain are well
sifted and culled: those parts which would prove the weakness, the
ignorance, and the imprudence of a Minister, are so carefully kept out
of sight, and so curtailed, and those in his favour so prominently
brought forward, that we have, after all, a very partial, and
consequently a very imperfect, view of the manner in which a negotiation
has been conducted. Truth, they say, lies at the bottom of a well: the
Foreign Office may be that well, but the eye of the public is not always
enabled to pierce its depth. Moreover, we have heard it related that
some Ministers indulge a vicious habit of communicating instructions to
their diplomatic agents in notes or letters marked _private_, or
evidently meant to be so from their familiar style and tone; and that
some letters contain hints or instructions sometimes contrary to the
official despatches. This is unjust to the public, and unfair to the
diplomatic agent himself, who, in case his conduct should become subject
of inquiry or censure in Parliament, is thus debarred from defending
himself, because the real instructions on which he acted bear the stamp
of privacy, which delicacy forbids him to violate; and it is quite
certain that the _Blue Books_ contain no trace of those confidential
missives. There is one personage in particular whose name has been more
connected than any other with our foreign policy, who is said to carry
this habit to such a point as to force complaints from his own
subordinates.
We are not exempt from human weakness: we confess that we have more than
once cast a curious and a longing glance on those plethoric Jacks which
daily issue from Downing Street, and the safe conveyance of which to
their distant destination costs the country annually a handsome sum of
money. We have often desired to dive to the very bottom of these round
white leathern envelopes, which are so tenderly handled and so
scrupulously guarded. What profound thoughts, what foresight, what
eloquence, and what wisdom, must be contained, we have often thought,
within that mysterious covering of calf, of more than aldermanic
rotundity, tightly closed at the neck with whipcord, and the genius of
England protecting the orifice in the form and fashion of a huge red
seal. It is true that idle or blabbing clerks, and supercilious or
rollicking messengers—the external “gentlemen” of the Foreign Office—are
said to indulge occasionally in a laugh, whilst lounging in their
waiting-room, at the reverential awe with which the vulgar are wont to
look upon the “despatch bags.” Strange stories, too, are said to be
current of the miscellanies which sometimes fill them, the curious _olla
podrida_, the several parts of which are so well adapted to the tastes
of the youthful _employés_ of our foreign embassies. Packages of
pomatum, bottles of hair-dye, pots of varnish, patent-leather boots, and
dress-coats, are occasionally conveyed to the capital where we are
blessed with a representative who unites in his own person the
conflicting tastes of dandyism and parsimony. Gossipping tongues speak
of even more important cargoes—not, of course, in the bag, but outside
it—that were sometimes conveyed, at her Majesty’s expense, to her
“Honourable” or “Right Honourable” representative, under the care of
some bustling “gentleman,” whose official character is indicated by the
Windsor uniform, and a minute badge with the royal arms, and the effigy
(a harmless irony) of a greyhound—the latter symbolical of the speed at
which he is presumed to travel.
Taking the present _Blue Books_ at the value set upon them by the
Government, we believe that every impartial man who has glanced over
their contents, and who has read the debates in Parliament, will be
convinced of the blindness, the weakness—we will not say the
criminality—of the Cabinet, in all that relates to the Eastern question.
It is in vain that we attempt to defend their conduct on the ground of
_ignorance_, for there are abundant proofs in the documents before us,
however imperfect they may be, that they were not ignorant, and were not
unwarned of what was going on. The evidence is too clear even for
audacity to deny, or hypocrisy to diminish. They themselves have been
forced to admit that they were outwitted and duped as no men were ever
duped before; and however a generous and forgiving people may pardon the
fault for the frankness of the confession, such imbecility in the past
is but poor encouragement for the future. The noble lord who holds the
post of Prime Minister is indeed unfortunate in his general estimate of
men and things. When the Revolution of February was on the point of
bursting forth, he is said to have declared his conviction that King
Louis Philippe and his dynasty were firmer than ever on the throne of
France. After a long, and, we presume, conscientious study of the
President of the new French republic, the same acute intellect
pronounced Louis Napoleon to be little better than an idiot, and in
contemptuous terms described him as incapable in thought and action.
When the votes of millions approved and confirmed the daring illegality
of the act of December 1851, he believed that his rule could not last
three months: and in the latest exercise of his discrimination and
knowledge of the world, our great statesman laughed to scorn the fear
that the Emperor Nicholas ever contemplated any attack against the
integrity of the Ottoman Empire, and this at the moment when every post
was bringing home news of the hostile attitude of Russia; when the
newspapers teemed with accounts of the movements of armies in the south
of Russia; when that force was placed on a war footing, and provisioned
as if on the eve of a campaign; when a fleet was at Sebastopol ready to
weigh anchor; when wood was cut down for the construction of pontoons
and bridges for the Pruth and Danube; and when Constantinople itself was
menaced with a _coup de main_;[8] when the magazines of Odessa were
gorged with military stores for the complete equipment of 150,000 men;
when troops had already marched to the Turkish frontier; when Prince
Menschikoff was outraging the Sultan in his own capital, and dictating
who should, or who should not, be his minister. And with the reports of
our own diplomatic and consular agents confirming all those facts, the
noble Lord at the head of her Majesty’s Government was smiling
complacently at the compliments lavished on him by that great master of
irony, Count Nesselrode, who chuckled with his imperial master at the
simplicity of the statesman refusing to believe the evidence of his
senses. We have seldom witnessed so much prevarication, so much
barefaced misstatement, as have been exhibited on this question. It was
denied in the most positive manner in the House of Lords that Russia had
ever required from the Sultan the dismissal of his minister Fuad
Effendi; or that the resignation of that minister was voluntary. The
repeated warnings in the public press, the official communications of
his own agents in Turkey and Russia, went for nothing. The intentions of
the Emperor of Russia were in his eyes moderate and pacific, even so
late as the end of April. The arrogant language of the Russian Envoy at
Constantinople, the menaced occupation of the Principalities, were,
because Count Nesselrode pronounced them to be so, not merely
exaggerated, but “destitute of any foundation whatever.” The “_beau
rôle_” which the wily chancellor of the Russian Empire congratulated
Lord Aberdeen for having preferred, was in point of fact the meanest
subservience; and we are satisfied that it was to the conviction that
this “_beau rôle_”[9] was to be played out to the end, that we owe all
that has since taken place. The same truckling spirit characterised even
those acts of the Government which had the appearance of energy. When
our ships entered the Dardanelles, and anchored before Constantinople,
the country was made to believe that their presence in the Bosphorus had
no reference to the acts of Russia, but to the protection of British
subjects and property, and to the defence of the Sultan from the
violence of his own subjects at a moment when it was known that not the
slightest danger menaced either the one or the other. Abdul Medjid must
have felt indignant at the imputation thus cast by his friends on the
loyalty of his subjects, and even Lord Aberdeen’s own ambassador
declined to accept such an explanation of movement of the fleet without
a pretext. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, while expressing his thanks for
the interest taken by the British Government in the preservation of
British life and property at Constantinople, said, at the same time,
that he applied his gratitude also to that part of the instructions
which authorised him to consider the presence of her Majesty’s squadron,
if he thought proper to require it, as intended to embrace the
protection of the Sultan in case of need: from whom the Sultan most
needed protection, no man knew better than the English ambassador. The
defence set up for the delays, the hesitations, and the inaction of the
Aberdeen Cabinet, was, it seems, the doubt entertained of the
co-operation of France. Now, nothing is more clearly shown, even in the
_Blue Books_, that the contrary was the fact. It is proved by the
despatches of the French Ambassador in London, and of the English
Ambassador in Paris. They show, beyond the possibility of doubt, not
only that such was not the case, but that every proposition of active
measures, from the very beginning when the squadrons appeared in the Bay
of Salamis to their entering the Black Sea, originated exclusively with
the French Government. The despatch of Lord Cowley of the 28th January
confirmed the intelligence published in the London papers, that it was
the French Government who had invited the English to join the French
fleet in the expedition to the Greek waters, and the fact is
corroborated in the despatch of the French Minister of Foreign Affairs
to his ambassador in London, dated the 5th June. Again, on the 13th July
the French Ambassador proposed to Lord Clarendon that, in the event of
Russia not accepting the Vienna note, or showing a disposition to
persist in a violent policy, the French and English fleets should
forthwith enter the Dardanelles. That proposition was repeated in the
beginning of September by the French Government; and once more, on the
23d of the same month, Count Walewski urged the presence of the fleets
in the Black Sea as _indispensable_. On this important point there was
not the slightest divergence of opinion between the head of the French
Government and his Minister of Foreign Affairs; their views were the
same, their opinions identical; and the _Blue Books_ prove no fact to be
more indisputable, more certain, than that their conduct throughout the
whole of the affair was frank and straightforward. It is not alone in
the French despatches that we find this proof. We see it in the
correspondence of Lord Aberdeen and Lord Cowley. The latter noble lord,
who had the best opportunity of ascertaining the truth, and who is not a
person to be easily deceived, repeatedly informs his Government that he
invariably received from the Emperor, or from his minister, the same
assurances of a desire to act in concert and in cordial alliance with
England, and that he never could discover, though he was evidently on
the watch, the slightest difference between them. It is all very well to
say that the time which has been spent in, as it now appears, useless
negotiation, has not been lost, and that the Government has been enabled
to prepare the means of resisting the encroachments of Russia, and of
wresting from her the territory she has seized. It is a poor defence to
allege that fortune has, after all, favoured us, and that we are not in
so bad a condition as we might have been. A blunder is not the less a
blunder because its results are not so mischievous as they might be. But
if we are prepared at this moment, as there can be little doubt, the
credit is not due to Ministers, who have exhibited throughout a
credulity and a simplicity we believe to be unexampled. We have no
reason to believe that if, in the very commencement, a firm and imposing
attitude had been assumed by our Government, the Emperor of Russia would
not have recoiled before he had yet placed himself in a position, to
retire from which, without striking a blow, is shame and dishonour. Had
it been announced that the squadrons would enter the Black Sea the
moment the Russians crossed the Pruth, we believe that that passage
would not have taken place, and in that menace we are confident that
France would have joined us.
On perusing the despatches published by the French Government in its
official organ, we have been particularly struck by the clearness of
views and the intrepidity, mingled with good sense, which pervade them.
From the moment that the question assumed a more general character; when
it ceased to refer exclusively to French interests, we remark the
masterly view which the Emperor’s minister of foreign affairs took of
the whole question as it then stood; of the accuracy with which he
judged of the future conduct of the Czar, and the marked line of conduct
which he proposed to follow. Yet the difficulties in the way of the
French Government were great. With the cunning which distinguishes the
policy of Russia, this power had the tact to present the Eastern
question, from the outset, in a light most disadvantageous to France;
and the excessive zeal and indiscretion of M. de Lavalette indisposed
the other powers, and afforded a pretext to our own Government to stand
aloof. In this country the policy and person of the French Emperor had
been unpopular. With the prejudice, mistrust, and ill-feeling which his
name inspired, it is not to be wondered at that all his acts were viewed
with suspicion; and the question of the holy places was at once, and as
this result has shown, unfairly interpreted as the forerunner of new and
more important pretensions,—as the continuation, in fact, of the plans
of his uncle, whose hostility to England he was supposed to have
inherited with his crown. It was at the moment of the invasion
panic—which was so far useful that it roused us to strengthen our
defences, and organise a naval and military force which we then little
thought would be employed against Russia—that the French minister at
Constantinople succeeded in obtaining immunities in favour of the Latin
church, of which France assumed to be the protector. We will not now
examine whether these privileges were of the exorbitant and unjust
character ascribed to them. It is sufficient that they were so
considered by Russia, and that the advantages extorted from the Porte
for the monks of the holy cities were understood as placing the Greek
communion in a condition of relative inferiority, and as realising a
triumph over Russia in those places where she had long reigned supreme,
and where she would brook no rival, much less a superior. From such a
quarrel between rival churches, with the dogmas of which we had nothing
in common, England properly kept apart, and France was left to find her
own way, unaided, out of the unpleasant position in which her agents had
placed her. No moment could be more propitious to Russia, ever watchful
as she has always been of dissension between the Western powers, and
ever ready to take advantage of it. The French Government soon saw and
met the danger. Its ambassador was recalled and disavowed. Explanations
were promptly and frankly given, and readily received; and M. de
Nesselrode himself, however disappointed or checked, was forced to admit
that these explanations were perfectly satisfactory, and that the
redress obtained in favour of the Latins was not of a nature to trench
upon the immunities of the Greeks. That admission completely closed the
question of the Holy Places, in which France was exclusively interested.
But scarcely had it terminated when the mission of Prince Menschikoff
assumed all at once a strange and startling aspect. It was soon seen
that the holy places were but the mask which covered pretensions of far
greater moment. The French Government, struck by the haughty and
menacing tone of the Russian envoy, quickly understood the true cause of
the vast military preparations of Russia, and became aware that they
were the prelude to a state of things which would endanger the
independence of the Sultan and the security of his states. It considered
that France was bound by the Treaties of 1841, to which she was a party,
as well as by her position in Europe, not to regard with indifference
the proceedings of Russia; and, as a precautionary measure, it ordered
the Mediterranean fleet to proceed on the 20th March to the Greek
waters, and to remain there until further events rendered a nearer
approach to the Sultan’s capital necessary. When that order was issued,
France alone declared its belief in the grave and threatening character
of the pretensions of the Czar. Austria affected to give credit to the
repeated assurances of Russian moderation, and continued to keep aloof;
and Lord Aberdeen, whose attention had been drawn by the public press,
and, no doubt, by his own agents, to the coming storm, could perceive no
cloud, no angry speck in the political horizon. The French Government,
as is proved by the despatches in the _Moniteur_, persisted in its
conviction that the most serious dangers were at hand; and that Russia
believed that the long-expected moment had arrived for realising her
traditional policy in the East—the annihilation of the Ottoman Empire,
or its absorption, by the process of previous degradation. France
considered that, under such circumstances, complete obstruction was
impossible, and that, so far as England was concerned, the necessity of
maintaining her maritime superiority ought to be a sufficient motive for
her participation in a more active policy. The instructions to M. de
Lacour, dated the 22d March, presupposed the adherence of the British
Government to that policy; the co-operation of the English squadron was
anticipated for months previously; and, in his despatch of the 3d June,
M. Drouyn de Lhuys presumed that the policy of the French Cabinet would
soon become that of the Powers who were equally if not more interested
than France in the maintenance of the Treaties of 1841. This energetic
conduct, and the conviction which began to creep over the slow mind of
Lord Aberdeen, produced some effect. On the 3d June the English squadron
received orders similar to those of the French, and at length it sailed
for Besica Bay. In the course of the same month, Austria and Prussia,
roused to a sense of the impending danger, mustered courage enough to
show symptoms of resistance to the pretensions of Russia, and in the
month of July these two Powers united with England and France in the
Vienna note, with the avowed object of maintaining peace. We are bound
to admit that throughout this operation the French Government acted in a
manner that redounds to its honour, and that subsequent events have
fully justified its original apprehensions and precautions. The Vienna
note was very properly regarded by the Divan as leaving a door open to
the encroachments of Russia. The instinct of impending danger rendered
the Porte more acute than usual, and its fears, which had been termed
puerile, were completely justified by the commentary of M. de
Nesselrode, who accepted the note for the same reasons that made the
Sultan reject it. The plenipotentiaries were confounded (or at least
affected to be so) on learning that the elaborate state paper, which had
been so carefully worded, and which had stood the scrutinising glance
and the keen criticism of the collective statesmanship of the Four
Cabinets, was, in point of fact, nothing less than the Menschikoff
_ultimatum_, which had been indignantly rejected by the same conference
that adopted the Vienna note. Matters now became more complicated and
alarming. The war which began to rage on the banks of the Danube, with
every prospect of a long duration, produced its fatal effects on the
commerce of western Europe; and as the hope of preserving peace became
weaker each day, the union of the four great Powers was found to be more
necessary. The consequence of this resolution was a new conference,
which opened on the 5th December 1853. The note of the 13th January was
the result. It was, no doubt, intended as the bond by which the Powers
pledged themselves to act together for the peace of Europe; for,
notwithstanding the suspicious conduct of Austria, it was clear that
she, even more than any other, was interested in resisting any attempt
to violate international law. The French Government acted throughout
this affair with much prudence, foresight, and loyalty. We have it on
record that Louis Napoleon and his Government saw from the commencement
the aim of Russia, and fully appreciated the grave and alarming
character of the events which were preparing in the East. The Emperor of
the French had, as we have said, been exposed to a great deal of obloquy
in this country. He had encountered the sullenness or hostility of our
Government; he had to contend with the intrigues of political parties in
France, the most selfish and unprincipled of all, the _Fusionists_; and
he exhibited throughout the sagacity which foresaw, and the judgment
which estimated, the full importance of the situation—as well as the
courage to face it. He who had been suspected of a design to trample all
obligations under foot, to disregard faith and honour, stood forth
boldly, first, and alone, to defend the inviolability of treaties; and
he summoned the nations of Europe to co-operate with him. Insulted by
suspicions of his good faith, and baffled in his attempts to conciliate
his enemies, he yet did not abandon the task he had undertaken. He at
length succeeded in bringing over England. Austria and Prussia, ever
timorous, hesitating, and slow, inclined to the manly policy of which
France had set the example, and the question of the Holy Places, which
had been confined to Russia and France, soon lost its original
character, and assumed another, which now interests and agitates the
whole of the European continent. We live in strange times! One of the
strangest events to which the Eastern question has given rise is, that
Napoleon III.—the “idiot,” as a noble lord in the present Cabinet was
wont to call him—the penniless adventurer, the man regardless of all
ties, of all faith, should be the person to remind the Conservative
Governments of Europe of the treaties they themselves had framed, and to
summon them to execute them faithfully. Louis Napoleon is no longer an
outcast; nor is France isolated. His alliance, on the contrary, is
courted; and among his former foes are some who find no terms too
extravagant to celebrate his disinterestedness and his loyalty. The
French despatches do honour to the sovereign who inspired, and the
minister who drew them up; and they are in every respect worthy of the
great nation whose title to our friendship is, that she has been the
most formidable and honourable of our enemies.
Foresight, moderation, and firmness are, as we have observed, the
characteristics of French policy in the Eastern question. In these
despatches we see the French minister anticipate the moment when
negotiation would become fruitless, and when all honourable mode of
arrangement would be rejected by Russia. In its earlier stages we find
the French ambassador in London, earnestly and repeatedly urged to come
to an understanding with the English Cabinet on the conduct which, in
such an emergency, it would be necessary to adopt. It is to the repeated
instances of M. Drouyn de Lhuys we owe it, that identical instructions
were given to M. de Lacour and Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, which
directed that the fleets should enter the Dardanelles if the Russians
did not evacuate the Principalities which they had invaded. Yet the
fatal hesitation of Lord Aberdeen may be traced even in the resolves of
the French minister. In the decided measure adopted by M. Drouyn de
Lhuys, there appeared an unwillingness to break off rudely with Russia.
In his despatch of the 1st September, that minister informs Count
Walewski, that the presence of the fleets at the entrance of the
Dardanelles—_outside the castles_—if demanded by the Porte—was rather a
measure of precaution against the weather, than an encouragement to the
Porte in its refusal to the reasonable demands of Russia. It may be that
such a declaration was with a view to allay any alarm which might be
felt by the German states at the onward movement of the fleet. We find
additional evidence of the unwillingness to occasion fresh embarrassment
in the cause assigned for the first appearance of a detachment of the
squadron before Constantinople. That pretext was the apprehension of
insurrection against the Sultan by the _Ulemas_, and the massacre of the
Christian population. We have no doubt that there was considerable
dissatisfaction manifested by the Turks at the delays of their
_soi-disant_ allies; and that there existed much irritation at the
conduct of the western Courts, who had advised the Porte to resist the
demands of Russia; excited it to use all the means at its disposal to
maintain that resistance; and who, when Turkey was left exposed to the
wrath of her formidable enemy, still lingered at the mouth of the
Dardanelles. But we look in vain for satisfactory proofs of the plots of
insurrection and massacre attributed to the Mussulman population, and
assigned as the cause of the presence of the fleets at Constantinople.
We regard the whole thing as one of those paltry subterfuges, of which
we find so many instances throughout this proceeding. Nothing was,
however, gained by it; and neither the Emperor of Russia nor the public
was deceived. The Christian population of Stamboul showed no sign of
apprehension, and we have reason to believe that they disclaimed, so far
as they were concerned, any such motive. The Turks were offended at
being accused of a crime which they had not contemplated, and outraged
by being falsely accused by Christians of treason to their own
sovereign. With the arrival of the fleets before Constantinople vanished
the danger of the Christians, of which, however, they were perfectly
unconscious; as also of the Sultan, who, though informed that the
vengeance of his subjects had placed his crown and life in danger, yet,
in all the consciousness of security, had not ceased for a single day to
appear in public, in the streets and public places where the population
is in greatest number;—that population which our Ministers pretended to
believe was watching the first favourable occasion to depose or
assassinate him. He never failed to pray at the stated hours in the
_mosque_, where the plotting _Ulemas_ and the fanatical _Softas_
explained or studied the Koran. Not only no insult was offered to him in
word, act, or perhaps thought; but his Highness was on all occasions
received with the same respect, reverence, and affection which
Abdul-Medjid, ever since his accession to the throne, has proved himself
deserving of.
The fleets having gone up for a special service, which they were not
called upon to perform, the next question was, what was to be done with
them, and where they should go next? An extract from the despatch of M.
Drouyn de Lhuys to Count Walewski, of 4th September, shows the anxiety
of the French Government to get as quickly as possible out of the
awkward position in which their assent to that contemptible policy
placed them. The French minister took up the matter with courage, and
like a man of business:—“The question now is to determine as to the
employment of our naval forces. The Emperor is of opinion that our fleet
is destined to play an important part in the defence of the Ottoman
empire. It might serve to cover Constantinople, and to operate, if
necessary, on the western coast of the Black Sea, as far up as Varna,”
&c. This plan was not, however, executed. Some difficulty arose on the
part of Austria and Prussia, and these powers did not think,
notwithstanding the intended massacre of the Christians and the
deposition of the Sultan, that the appearance of the combined forces in
the Bosphorus, much less their entry into the Black Sea, was
sufficiently called for. Whether right or wrong, their influence
arrested the further proceedings, which, if we are to credit M. Drouyn
de Lhuys, had been already contemplated by the Emperor of the French.
The fleets of France and England remained, therefore, in a state of
inactivity near the Golden Horn, and negotiations again commenced. New
collective notes were drawn up, and the idea of another quadruple
intervention, with, of course, a view to a pacific solution, was again
revived. The prospect grew brighter. The inexorable Czar appeared to
take pity on our Cabinet; to smile graciously on the minister of the
“_beau rôle_,” the gentle and confiding friend of Nesselrode. The
Emperor of Russia, whose preparations were not as yet complete, showed a
disposition to treat; and, false throughout, gave assurances that he
would not assume the offensive on any point. “Our latest intelligence,”
says M. Drouyn de Lhuys, so recently as the 15th December—“our latest
intelligence from St Petersburg is to the effect that Russia is resolved
to treat, and, above all, to adopt no offensive measures, and our
confidence in this may suffice to explain the inactivity of the fleets.”
But the pacific declarations of Russia, which we fear M. Castelbajac too
readily believed, were but the cloak under which the attack on the
Turkish squadron of Sinope, and the massacre which followed, were
concealed. With such a deed perpetrated at so short a distance from the
spot where the flags of England and France were floating together, the
fleets could not linger any more in the Bosphorus. They entered the
Black Sea, and what was termed _a policy of action_ commenced. Prussia
and Austria were startled from their propriety, but they still followed
on in the pursuit of that peace which, when nearest, always eluded their
grasp,—and
“Like the circle bounding earth and skies,
Allures from far, yet, as they follow, flies.”
The attitude of France and England became more decided, and at length,
after much hesitation, the Russian ambassadors were recalled from Paris
and London.
In the course of the long operation which preceded the rupture of
diplomatic relations, the judgment of M. Drouyn de Lhuys appeared
nowhere to greater advantage than in the accuracy with which he divined
and unmasked the real designs of the Czar in the matter of the Holy
Shrines, while our noble Premier looked on credulous and confiding. The
anger of the Czar, so much out of proportion to the offence, had, to be
sure, something suspicious in it, and to the uninitiated or unsuspecting
was utterly inexplicable. M. Drouyn de Lhuys knew well the cause of that
immense wrath. It was not on account of the miserable squabbles of Latin
and Greek monks that vast bodies of troops traversed the plains of
southern Russia, that stores sufficient for an immense army and for a
long campaign were accumulated in the magazines of Odessa, and that vast
preparations were made at Sebastopol.
The absorbing interest which attached to events in western Europe since
the revolution of 1848—the revolution which had convulsed nearly every
Continental state—had occupied the public mind to the exclusion of
everything else; and Russia availed herself of the storm which raged
everywhere, except in her own territory, to realise her aggressive
projects. Her political and religious influence had long been paramount
at Constantinople. The arrival of M. de Lavalette first threatened to
disturb that monopoly. Indeed, any allusion, however slight, to the
capitulation of 1741, instantly alarmed Russia; and Prince Menschikoff,
finding that the secret of the Czar was discovered, hastened to present
his ultimatum, with all the aggravating and insulting circumstances
already known. The French Government explained at length to the Cabinet
of St Petersburg the motives and the extent of the French demands with
reference to the Holy Places; but the Head of the Orthodox Church
refused to listen—he would bear no rival in the East. “There is
established,” said M. Drouyn de Lhuys in his despatch of the 21st March
to General Castelbajac, “an important political usage in Europe. It
consists in this, that the Powers interest themselves in common in
certain general interests, and overcome, by means of their diplomacy,
difficulties which at another period could only be terminated by force
of arms. Be so good, then, General, as to demand of M. de Nesselrode if
the Cabinet of St Petersburg, repudiating the principle which has
prevailed for thirty years in the relations of the great Powers with
each other, means to constitute itself the sole arbiter of the destinies
of Turkey, and if for that common policy, to which the world is indebted
for its repose, Russia means to substitute a policy of isolation and
domination which would necessarily constrain the other Cabinets in the
approaching crisis to consult only their own interests, and to act only
with a view to their private views.” Russia did not choose to comprehend
the full significance of that intimation; and though she herself had
often been among the first to solicit a European combination when there
appeared a chance of her deriving advantage from it, she yet haughtily
rejected the proposal when it crossed, or did not promote, her ambition.
Her great object was to treat with Turkey _without the intervention of a
third party_; and it was the arrogant manner in which she met the
advances of the Western Powers, or rather forbade them to meddle in what
she regarded as a domestic quarrel between a vassal and his master, that
attracted general attention to the question, and gave it a European
character. We find no point more strongly insisted on by M. Drouyn de
Lhuys, in his despatches to General Castelbajac, than not permitting
Russia to assume this exclusive right of dictating her will on the
Oriental question. It is superfluous to say that France had no intention
of excluding her from a fair share; but beyond that she would not go.
Fearing the probability of a cordial union between England and France—an
event which, so long as Lord Aberdeen directed the affairs of state, he
would not believe possible—the whole force of the Emperor’s policy was
directed to prevent it, or break it off if it had been already formed.
Heretofore the Czar had fully approved the conduct of his noble friend,
and we find more than once, in the papers laid before Parliament, the
warm expression of imperial gratitude. Happy minister! It falls to the
lot of few to be enabled to boast of such certificates of conduct as
those from Louis Philippe in 1846, and from Nicholas in 1853. It is true
that the excellent qualities so much admired rendered it easy for a
hypocrite to overreach, and an overbearing despot to insult, England.
The English and French alliance must be broken off at any cost. The
insults to the French Emperor, and the French people, were still ringing
in the ears of the public. The impertinencies of two members of the
Aberdeen Cabinet—the wriggling of miserable sycophancy which met with
the contempt it merited—when alluding to the ruler of France, were fresh
in the memory of all. The invasion fever had not been entirely allayed;
the old suspicions of the insincerity of the French Government, and the
jealousies and hatreds which had been dormant, might again be roused.
France must be isolated, and the partisans of the Orleans family, the
“Fusionists,” or by whatever nickname they are known, already exulted in
the shame which they invoked at the hand of a foreign despot on their
own country. The Chancellor of the Russian Empire brought all his
ability to the task. He accused France of ambition, and reproached her
with being the cause of the quarrel by her conduct in the question of
the Holy Places. The point was a sore one, as, however disingenuously it
was revived by Russia, it was nevertheless a fact that the quarrel
followed hard on the demands of M. de Lavalette. M. de Nesselrode, with
true Muscovite candour, omitted to add that he himself had expressed his
satisfaction and approbation of the fair and honourable manner in which
the French Government had brought that question to an issue. That
account had been finally closed. A considerable portion of the
despatches of M. Drouyn de Lhuys is taken up with a refutation of those
charges, and it is admitted on all hands that his refutation of them is
satisfactory and complete. With the history of Russian aggression for
the last century before us, the charge of ambition against another power
was strange in the mouth of a Russian minister. But the capitulation of
1741, which confirmed the previous immunities of the Latin communion in
the East, were not, after all, of a nature to offend or alarm any one.
The sort of protectorate which they established, was not menacing to any
power in Europe, inasmuch as they applied to establishments which were
under the protection of all alike; whilst the Greek protectorate was of
the most exclusive character, and, as has been shown in a previous
article, was not religious, but political, and aimed at placing the
whole Ottoman Empire at the feet of Russia.
Another point which M. Drouyn de Lhuys has handled successfully, is that
which relates to the difference in the measures adopted in common by
France and England, when affairs reached a most alarming point, and
those which Russia, in the impatience of her ambition, adopted, at the
very outset. In the despatch of the 11th June, General Castelbajac is
enjoined to apprise the Russian Government of the position in which it
was about to place itself with respect to the rest of Europe; to warn it
that it was grievously mistaken if it counted upon allies in the
realisation of its designs, and particularly upon the German states.
Indeed, it was not probable that these states would see with
indifference the Lower Danube in the possession of a powerful
government, which might at will obstruct its navigation, and at any
moment block up a commercial outlet of so much importance. The French
Minister clearly showed that the conduct of Russia was in opposition to
the general interests of Europe; and that the realisation of the
doctrines of the Russian Chancellor meant, in point of fact, the
subjugation of the weaker states to the will of one great power. The
replies of M. de Nesselrode are, of course, replete with the same
pacific declarations which had produced so soporific an effect on our
own Government, and with solemn denials of ambitious views, which
present a curious contrast with the warlike preparations which were
never for a moment suspended except by difficulties independent of the
will of Russia. It was soon seen that, _coûte qui coûte_, Russia was
determined not to give way. Smooth and hypocritical, like a thief at the
bar, who profits by the scantiness of the evidence at first brought
against him, earnestly to protest his innocence, she became bold,
insolent, and defying, like the same culprit when accumulated proofs
leave no doubt of his guilt. There are some despatches that have not
been inserted in the _Moniteur_, but we have little doubt that the
omitted ones are not less moderate, less firm, and not less
characterised by good sense and dignity, than those we have noticed; and
if any such doubt existed, the ultimatum, which was at once followed by
a complete rupture of diplomatic relations, would suffice to remove it.
Towards the close of December all was over. The massacre of Sinope had
taken place, and no further hope remained of obtaining any satisfactory
result from a power which, in its diplomacy as its hostility, appeared
to have all at once lost every sentiment of truth, justice, and
humanity. The autograph letter of the Emperor Napoleon is little more
than a summary of the despatch of the 25th December, of the notes
addressed to M. de Kisseleff before his departure from Paris, and of the
last letter of M. Drouyn de Lhuys to the French ambassador at St
Petersburg.
We believe the Emperor of Russia to have been led into his present
difficult position—a position from which escape, unless through a
disastrous war, seems almost impossible—by the erroneous information he
received with respect to the state of public feeling in France and
England, from “antiquated imbecilities” of both countries. In ordinary
times it would be no easy task to so impose on any person of
intelligence, even much inferior to that of the Emperor Nicholas; and
his facility of belief in the present instance can only be explained by
the social and political complications supposed to exist in a country
which has gone through so many violent changes. Under the regime of
Louis Philippe, the female diplomatists of the Rue St Florentin were
enabled to ascertain with accuracy, and communicate with fidelity, the
secret policy of the Tuileries. In the Russian _salons_ of Paris, the
centre of the more important _espionage_, were nightly assembled
ministers, ex-ministers, functionaries past and present, and, in fine,
all who, in official parlance, were supposed to represent France. The
secrets, the gossip, the scandal of every political coterie in the
capital, were discharged, there, as in one common reservoir; and were
thence transmitted for the information, or amusement, of the Imperial
Court of Russia. The ministers of the citizen-king were too eager to
propitiate the favour of the northern Court, to withhold their
confidence from any of the Czar’s agents, official or non-official. The
revolution of February rudely interfered with that machinery, directed
by a well-known _intrigante_. Attendance at a half-dozen saloons no
longer sufficed to obtain a knowledge of the state of the country.
Whilst a dozen dowagers of the old schools, and as many retired,
discontented, or broken-down statesmen, and a few amateur republicans,
were indulging in reveries of a restoration, or the re-establishment of
a convention, with its appendages of committees of public safety, the
dream was broken by the acclamations of millions, who bestowed absolute
power on the only man capable of saving them. The Cabinet of St.
Petersburg could not be expected to know more about the country than
those who had for so many years administered its affairs. The agents of
Russia beheld the struggle that had been going on so long among
political coteries, the selfish disputes of discarded placemen, and
their ephemeral and hollow reconciliations; and they supposed that,
because adventurers quarrelled, or political coteries made war on each
other, the nation was similarly divided. The diplomatic communications
of that period must be curious; and we confess we should like to be
permitted a perusal of the confidential correspondence of the well-known
_diplomate_ in petticoats, who for so many years was the pet agent of
the Czar, and for whom existence was valueless unless passed in the
atmosphere of political intrigue, to which it had been so long
accustomed. When speaking of confidential correspondence, we do not, of
course, allude to those indecent libels penned daily in the French
capital; and, we regret to say, with the knowledge, or under the
superintendence, of persons who, though known for profligacy in private
life, were the confidential companions and bosom friends of personages
whose praises we have heard, even to satiety, for austerity of morals,
and who are held up as samples of every public and private virtue. Those
chroniclers of scandal spared neither sex, nor age, nor rank. The
meanest agency was set to work to furnish amusement for the _Cabinet_ of
the Czar during his hours of recreation; and to record stories and
anecdotes in the style and manner of _Taillement des Réaux_, the _Œil de
Bœuf_, or the _Chevalier de Faublas_. With such unerring guides, it is
no wonder that the Czar believed that the propitious moment was come. It
was represented to him that the Court of Paris was more corrupt, more
profligate, than that of Louis XV.; that all France was impoverished,
degraded, and discontented, anxious to throw off the yoke of the
Buonaparte, eager to receive a sovereign flung to it by any foreign
despot; or, at all events, utterly incapable of resisting any
encroachment, much less avenging any insult from abroad. The ruler of
France, he was told, was overwhelmed by the difficulties that naturally
encompass every government in its commencement. His declaration of the
_pacific_ policy of the empire was but the unwilling avowal of his
weakness, and of his fears. The agitation of political parties, he
believed, ruined the country, though, since 1789, political intrigues,
secret societies, and conspiracies never were more powerless than at the
moment we speak of. The agents who thus instructed the Emperor of Russia
crowned those reports by depicting Louis Napoleon as apathetic, because
they saw him calm; as hesitating and timid, because they saw him patient
and moderate.
We have no doubt that the Emperor of Russia was led into similar error
with respect to this country. He was assured that it had become selfish
and apathetic from its unexampled prosperity; and that so opulent and so
sensual a nation would never expose itself, after so long a peace, to
the chances and the dangers of a long war, for the sake of maintaining
the integrity and independence of an empire whose people preferred the
Koran to the Bible. Their commercial prudence, the love of ease
engendered by opulence, the long period of time that passed since the
wars with the first Napoleon, the many important interests which have
grown up since then, religious antipathy—everything, in fact—indisposed
the English nation to interfere with his designs in Turkey. But the
presence in the Government of a statesman, recently so ridiculed and
insulted by those who were now his colleagues, believed to be a warm
admirer of the Emperor of Russia, and known for his cold hatred of the
Emperor of the French, was considered the most fortunate circumstance of
all; it was, at any rate, a guarantee against any favourable
understanding with France or her ruler. Letters, said to be from that
statesman, addressed to one of the former ministers of Louis Philippe,
were read in one of the principal Russian saloons in Paris, the most
notorious of all for intrigues, and the resort of the leaders of every
anti-national party. These letters, asserted to be genuine, are
described as having alluded in terms of the greatest contempt to the
person, the character, and the intellect of Louis Napoleon; and as
containing declarations that, under no circumstances whatever, could
England act with France so long as its present regime lasted. The scum
of the Orleanist agency were sent round to circulate the news, and
despatches addressed to St Petersburg repeated the same. The tone of a
portion of the daily press in England with reference to France seemed to
confirm those assurances, and to render the formation of a coalition
against the French Emperor, in which it was hoped England would join, by
no means a difficult nor an improbable task. The falsest of all these
calculations was unquestionably that which represented England as
labouring under an oppression of wealth, a plethora of opulence, of
which indifference, timidity, and inaction were the consequences. Yet
such is the description given of us to Russia by Orleanists, whose
incapacity and cowardice produced the overthrow of the dynasty of July.
The acquisition of wealth and power supposes the possession of great
energy of character; for those qualities we have been distinguished
above all other people. That we have not become wearied or satiated, the
events of each day that passes over our heads prove; and whatever be the
period at which we are destined to reach the declining point, and which
such scribblers as Ledru Rollin and the like maintain we have attained,
we ourselves believe that the fatal moment is still far distant. We have
shown energy without example, since the time of the Romans, in making
ourselves what we are; and we are ready to let the world see that we
know how to maintain the power which was supposed to have enervated us,
with more than Roman courage. With admitted social and political
evils—far less, however, than any other nation on earth—we have not
become corrupt or effeminate. It is not true that the extraordinary
development of our public and private fortune has buried us in that
shameful indolence which made the Romans so easy a prey to the
barbarians. Prosperity has not made us forget or disregard our rights.
The wonderful development of our railway communications and our steam
navigation, the extension of our commerce, the pacification of India,
the colonisation of Africa, ought to have shown the Emperor of Russia
that we have not yet fallen from our high estate in the political or
moral world. The mighty fleets and the gallant bands of warriors that
are even now conveying to him our answer to his insolent defiance, will
show him the magnitude of his error. Our courage and our activity, our
resolution in council, and our sternness in execution, are in proportion
to the grandeur of the interests we have to defend. Our decline, much
less our fall, has not yet commenced; and if any foreign or domestic
friend has persuaded Russia that we resemble the Romans in the latter
days of their empire, and that we are in a condition to fall a prey to
the barbarians, he is an idiot or a calumniator.
Nothing is now so clear as that the Emperor of Russia has been most
grossly deceived with respect to Turkey; but it is just to admit that
the error has been also shared by many who should know better. Prince
Menschikoff, during his short sojourn at Constantinople, had only time
to insult the Sultan and his government, but also time to rouse a spirit
of resentment and resistance. The backwardness of Turkey in civilisation
was taken as a proof of her weakness and her deficiency in moral
courage. But, with all her shortcomings, the old Mussulman spirit still
subsisted amid the ruins of her former glory. It has been said that
there are qualities which are effaced or destroyed by refinement, but
there are others which live without it, though the occasion may have
seldom occurred to call them forth. Turkish patriotism was regarded as a
byword, Turkish loyalty as a mockery; Turkish courage was more than
doubtful; and nothing remained of the daring valour which, in other
times, made Christendom quail before the Crescent, except that vigour of
faith which once distinguished the children of the Prophet: and even
that, we were led to believe, had degenerated into a brutal and ignoble
fanaticism, capable of vulgar crime, but unequal to a single act of
heroism. The arrogant envoy of Russia rendered an essential service, not
to his imperial master, but to his intended victim. His insults roused
the dormant spirit of the Mussulman. The Ottoman army was
undisciplined—unprovided with the commonest necessaries; the navy was
but the melancholy remnant of Navarino; the Sultan’s authority was
weakened by internal abuses and disorders; his territory dismembered by
the separation of Greece, and by the all but successful rebellion of
Egypt. Those to whom he looked for aid or protection against his
colossal foe were long cold, if not hostile to him; yet Turkey rose with
a courage and a dignity which have extorted applause, and won respect,
even from those who were most indisposed to her cause, politically and
religiously. She summoned her children about her; appealed, _not_ to the
relentless fanaticism of their creed, but to their manlier and nobler
instincts; and after making every sacrifice, every concession consistent
with self-respect, to appease or disarm her unscrupulous and faithless
enemy, who was bent on her destruction, drew the sword in the cause of
her independence. Whilst still uncertain whether she was to maintain the
struggle alone and unsympathised with, against fearful odds, she
advanced to the contest with a bravery worthy of better times, and with
a success which has astonished her friends as well as foes. The feelings
which Prince Menschikoff believed he could most safely outrage were
those which quickened the nation into life and vigour. The Emperor of
Russia was astonished at a result so different from what he was led to
expect. The advices which had reached him from his friends in London,
Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and Constantinople, were such as might have been
true some twenty years ago, but were false in 1853. France and England
were said to be divided, and likely to remain so as long as a Buonaparte
ruled the destinies of the former, and as long as Lord Aberdeen directed
the administration of the latter. France had become exhausted by
revolution, discontented with her new chief, demoralised, and rotten at
the very heart;—no remedy to restore her, till the Count de Chambord, or
the Count de Paris, was restored to the throne; and with England,
satiated and unwieldy with unwholesome prosperity, no desire remained,
no passion survived, but that of enjoying in undisturbed tranquillity
what she had hardly acquired. Count Orloff has learned something at
Vienna; but it does not appear that the lesson has much profited him or
his imperious master.
In these multiplied and intricate transactions, in which Russia was
alternately the deceived and the deceiver, there is one point in
particular to which we would direct the attention of our readers. We
allude to the claim made by the Porte to the intervention of the great
powers in its quarrel with Russia. It is a claim based on equity and on
international law, which it is impossible to dispute. Previous to 1841,
Turkey was hardly looked upon as forming part of the general combination
of European states in the settlement of any great international
question. Rightly or wrongly, the Turks were considered less as forming
an integral part of the European family of nations, than as an
agglomeration of various tribes of warriors, bound together only by a
common superstition and a common fanaticism; not rooted in the soil they
occupied, but merely encamped on the outskirts of Christendom. The
Treaties of 1841, which facilitated to France the resumption of her
place in Europe, after her separation the previous year, also admitted
Turkey to that general political association. That privilege or right
Turkey has not forgotten in her hour of need, as we believe she would
have done in her hour of prosperity; and in her appeal to the world
against the pretensions of Russia, she summoned Austria, France,
Prussia, and Great Britain, in the name of those solemn obligations, to
come to her aid. She maintained that her participation in what is
termed, in diplomatic parlance, the _Concerte Européen_, was recognised;
and she showed, we think successfully, that henceforth all questions
affecting the independence and integrity of her territory should be
brought before the great tribunal of European states, and not left to
the judgment of a single and an interested power. The principle of the
right claimed by Turkey was admitted by the Cabinets of Vienna, Berlin,
Paris, and London; and that recognition is manifest in the documents
that have been made public. In the note addressed to the Austrian
Cabinet on the 31st December 1853, we find this declaration:—“The
multiplicity of the relations and the alliances of the Sublime Porte and
of the European States, giving to it, in every respect, the right and
the faculty of participating in the community which binds these States
to each other, and to the security which they derive from them, the
necessity will be felt of confirming and completing in that sense the
Treaty of 1841, and for that it reposes on the friendly efforts of the
allied Courts.” And the allied Courts, in turn, declared, “that the
Russian Government, which invaded the territory of the Sultan, had
placed itself in opposition with the resolutions declared by the great
powers of Europe in 1840 and 1841. That, moreover, the spirit of the
important transaction in which Russia took part in 1841 with the other
powers, and with Turkey herself, is opposed to the pretension that the
affairs of the East should be treated otherwise than in common, and in
the conferences in which all these interests should be examined and
discussed. And it must be well understood that every such question must
be treated by _five_; and that it does not belong to _one_ or to _two_
cabinets to settle, separately or apart, interests which may affect the
whole of Europe.” The allies of Turkey also added, “that the Treaty of
1841, in the meaning of which all are this day agreed, is to serve as
the basis of operations. All the powers who have signed that treaty are
qualified to appeal to it. We present ourselves as the defenders of that
treaty, violated in its spirit, and as the supporters of the equilibrium
of Europe, menaced by the power which seemed, more than any other, to
have the pretension of constituting herself the guardian of it. The
cause for which we are armed is that of all.” That claim of Turkey to
form part of the European community is precisely the one to which Russia
is inexorably opposed. Its admission would destroy the monopoly of
interference and protection which the Czar wishes to maintain over
Turkey, and we need not therefore be surprised at the stern refusals
which the good offices of any other power have invariably encountered at
St Petersburg. Russia insisted throughout that the question only
regarded Russia and Turkey; it denied the right of any one to interfere,
except in advising Turkey to submit to her dictates; and to the last she
rejected all intervention or mediation. It is true that intervention
menaced the fundamental principle on which the traditional policy of
Russia is based; and the day that the Treaty of 1841 forms part of the
international law of Europe, the designs of Russia on Turkey are at once
arrested. Russia will then have lost all exclusive rights; and all
questions of public interest affecting the Porte must be treated by all
the states who have affixed their signatures to that important
instrument.
We are decidedly of opinion that the view taken by Turkey of the rights
created for her by this new state of things, is the correct one; and we
submit that the interpretation which gives the greatest effect to the
joint engagement of the four powers, is that which is most conformable
to the spirit and meaning of its framers. “The important act of this
Convention,” said M. Guizot in the Chamber of Peers, “is to have
included the Porte itself, the inviolability of the sovereign rights of
the Sultan, the repose of the Ottoman Empire, in the public law of
Europe. Therein is comprised the general recognition—the recognition
made in common, and officially declared—of the inviolability of the
sovereign rights of the Porte, and of the consolidation of the Turkish
Empire. It cannot be supposed that France would have refused to
facilitate by her adhesion the execution of that act.” “The
Turco-Egyptian question,” said the same minister in the Chamber of
deputies, “was settled—the question of Constantinople remained. What is
the object the policy of Europe has in view for a long time past with
reference to Constantinople? It is to withdraw Constantinople from
exclusive protection; to admit Turkey into our European law; and to
prevent her from becoming the Portugal of Russia. Well, then, a step has
been made towards that end. It is true that the Porte has not been
secured from ambition of all kinds—from all the chances of the future;
but, at all events, we have an official instrument, signed by all the
great powers of Europe, which admits Turkey into the European law, which
declares that it is the intention of all the great powers to respect the
inviolability of the Sultan’s rights, and to consolidate the repose of
the Ottoman Empire.”
There is no doubt that Russia is deeply interested in the possession of
Constantinople. It is equally certain that, whenever she becomes
mistress of both shores of the Bosphorus, she will, in an incredibly
short time, add to her present pre-eminent military character that of a
first-rate commercial and maritime power. The populations that would
then acknowledge the supremacy of the _Knout_ would be over eighty
millions; and the seventy millions of Christians professing the Greek
faith would bow their necks to the political and religious autocrat.
Russia would then indeed hold at her girdle the keys of the Caspian Sea,
the lake of Azof, the Black Sea, and the Mediterranean. The possession
of Syria and Egypt would before long follow, as a matter of course, that
of Turkey in Europe; and soon the fairest regions in the world, the most
fertile shores of that inland sea, would fall under her rule. A single
glance at the map will enable us to comprehend the magnificence, the
vast extent, of such an acquisition; and the mind may dwell with wonder
on the immensity of the new Russian Empire in Europe and Asia, and
anticipate the supremacy she would gain by the conquest of
Constantinople, which opens to her a path to the very heart of civilised
Europe. That Russia should make gigantic efforts, and risk, as she is
now risking, her rank as a first-rate Power, if not her existence, to
attain such an object, is not astonishing. The fair capital that stands
on the Bosphorus is the guarantee of the empire of the world. It is more
than the ambition of Alexander, of Charlemagne, or of Napoleon, ever
dreamed the realisation of; and if treachery or violence ever gives it
to Russia, the irresistible and universal domination of Rome over the
rest of the world, after the fall of Carthage, alone furnishes an
example of what Russia would then become.
Russia has, by the tolerance or apathy of Europe, been singularly
favoured since the seventeenth century; and she whose name was not even
mentioned in the Treaty of Westphalia, which defined the limits of the
great European states, has risen to gigantic proportions since then. She
has invariably availed herself, as she is now ready to do, of the
dissensions of the Western kingdoms; she has absorbed provinces and
nations of various tongues, religions, and races; and has opened her
way, through the territories of her neighbours, to the shores of two
seas. Her hand it was that put an end to the existence of Poland. It was
she that paralysed Sweden and Denmark; and it is by her that Persia and
Turkey have been pushed on to their ruin. The history of her crimes in
Poland is the same as that of her plunder in Turkey, Georgia, and
Persia; and the partition of the ancient northern kingdom is now to be
repeated with the Ottoman Empire. The means she employs are ever the
same;—menaces and caresses by turns;—attempts at exclusive
intervention;—a slow but steady system of dismemberment;—pretensions and
claims, as impudently advanced as they are unfounded; then apparently
withdrawn, postponed, placed in abeyance, seemingly forgotten, but never
finally abandoned; revived with hypocritical humility, or with
arrogance, according to circumstances; pretexts of quarrel of the most
imaginary and untenable kind; intimidation mingled with seduction.
Nothing is too bold, too base for her selfishness. Her princes and
nobles are spies; her princesses—worse. No profligacy is too gross, no
crime is too enormous, that advances by one inch the influence of “Holy
Russia.” War is undertaken for no other object than to arrive at
conventions ruinous to the conquered. Such is the hereditary policy of
Russia; such it has been since she first assumed a standing in Europe;
and we say it to our shame, that her unexampled success is in great part
owing to the selfishness of some, the exaggerated fears of others, and
the indifference and apathy of all the states of Europe. If England and
France had but pronounced a _veto_ in 1774, Poland might, with a
reformed constitution, and an improved administration, still be an
independent kingdom, and stand the barrier between the barbarism of the
north and the civilisation of the west. If the Western Powers had
directed their attention a little more frequently, and more earnestly to
Turkey, the events against which we are now preparing might not have
taken place. Even now, it is not too late; and we firmly believe that it
is in the power, as we have little doubt it is the desire, of Europe, to
arrest for many years the aggressive policy of Russia.
We have heard one argument advanced against our interference to save
Turkey from Russia, and which seems to have made a certain impression in
some quarters. We think the argument to be more specious than real; and
the only reason we notice it here is, because it has been dwelt upon by
persons whose opinions are in other respects entitled to consideration.
We are told that it is a shame and a scandal for a civilised and
religious nation to go to war in support of a barbarous and unbelieving
Government. If such an argument mean anything, it must mean that England
is to have no ally but such as can boast of equal civilisation, and
profess the same faith as ourselves. We deny that we go to war, and in
support of Turkey, in order to insure the supremacy of the Koran over
the Bible, of the Crescent over the Cross, of barbarism over
civilisation. We take the part of Turkey, not on religious grounds, but
on political; to prevent the extension of Russia in those parts of
Europe and Asia where her power would seriously endanger the vital
interests of Western Europe; to maintain what is termed the balance of
Europe; or, in other words, to prevent any one Power from growing to
such a colossal size as that all the others would be at her mercy. We do
not go to war to continue Mussulman barbarism, or to perpetuate the
despotism under which the Christian populations have groaned. The
conditions on which France and England afford succour to the Sultan are,
that the reform long since commenced by Sultan Mahmoud, and continued by
Abdul Medjid, shall be still further developed; and that the Christian
subjects of the Porte, whose condition has materially improved, shall be
placed on an equality with the Mussulmans. As well might it be said that
our wars in Spain had for their object the protection of the Roman
Catholic religion, the consolidation of the influence of the Pope, the
re-establishment of the Inquisition, or the perpetuation of the stupid
despotism of Ferdinand. We entered on the Peninsular war, not for such
objects, but for reasons similar to those which now lead us to the
East;—to rescue the Spanish territory from the grasp of a usurper, from
the power of a conqueror whose ambition of universal rule was not less
than that of Nicholas; to prevent the whole of Europe from falling under
the dominion of a single potentate. In this country we denounce the
doctrines of the Church of Rome as contrary to Scripture, and we, a
Protestant Government, employed its armies in defence of a nation whose
principle has been, and still is, intolerance of all other creeds but
its own, and against a Government which, whatever may have been its
faults, had not, at all events, religious intolerance among them. In no
country is the Roman Catholic religion made to assume a more odious form
than in Spain. We are told that the Turks speak of Christians as “dogs;”
but, in Christian Spain, English Protestants are actually treated as
dogs, or worse. We have seen, and this within a very few years, those
who fought, and bled, and died in the cause of Spanish independence,
flung, like offal, into a hole, or left to rot on the sea coast below
high-water mark. We have, within the last few months, witnessed the
tedious negotiations carried on between our Minister at Madrid and the
Government in whose cause our blood and treasures have been spent with
profusion, to obtain a secluded spot of earth wherein the bones of those
of our countrymen, who still labour to introduce civilisation into that
country, may be sheltered from pollution; and we have no cause to
rejoice at its humiliating conclusion. When we are told of Turkish
bigotry and intolerance, we would point to Madrid, to Naples, and to
Tuscany. Turkish honour and Turkish fidelity to engagements will not
suffer by a comparison with the Government of her most Catholic Majesty,
as we presume those Englishmen who have had anything to do with it will
be ready to admit. We are not of opinion that the barbarism of the Turks
is greater than that which may be found in many parts of the Spanish
peninsula; and those who have travelled into the interior of both
countries may bear witness to the fact that her Catholic Majesty’s
subjects, with the exception of the large towns, cannot be surpassed by
any others in ignorance, sloth, and bigotry. Corrupt as the Turkish
Government may have been, and badly administered as the country
unquestionably is, we doubt whether the general run of Spanish statesmen
have exhibited much more probity, integrity, and talent in government,
with all the advantages of our example; and, in the matter of private
morals, we think we could point out Spanish sovereigns who, with all
their piety and attachment to Catholicism, have not much to boast over
Sultan Abdul Medjid. We are not of opinion that, as respects mere
civilisation, the Russian serfs are superior to the Turks. We have no
evidence that Russia has made any improvement within the recollection of
the present generation; while it is undeniable that, within the same
space of time, Turkey had made, and is still making, material progress
in its administration. Since the time of Mahmoud, Turkey—though, of
course, still far behind France and England—has effected immense
ameliorations in all matters connected with internal navigation, with
her military and naval establishments, and her political and judicial
administration; and, from the great improvement that has taken place in
the condition of her Christian populations, we are confident that,
before long, she will realise the wish of Mahmoud, and those populations
will be placed on a footing of political equality with the Mussulmans.
We doubt whether all these things can be stated of Russia.
The Grand-duke Michael is said to have predicted the dismemberment of
the Russian Empire soon after the death of the present autocrat.
Whatever be the claims of that prince to the character of a prophet, it
is evident that Russia is now approaching a more important crisis.
Russia will give way, or she will not. If the former, her prestige is
gone, and the pettiest Continental kingdom may regard her with
indifference. If the latter, a more terrible fate may await her, for she
can scarcely resist all that is powerful in Europe combined against her.
Russia has been to Europe, for the last forty years, what a ball
remaining in an old wound is to the limb of a veteran. Every change of
temperature, the heat of summer, the cold of winter, produces uneasiness
and pain. The ball must now be extracted; the wound must now be entirely
closed up, that we may be all at rest.
Since the preceding pages were written, a “Confidential correspondence”
has been brought to light, which no longer leaves any mystery in this
once incomprehensible question. Our readers will find these important
documents, and the indefensible conduct of the Ministry in the matter,
fully discussed in the concluding article of this Number.
LIFE IN THE SAHARA.
Tired of poetical criticism, in which we last month so freely indulged,
and turning with satisfaction from the political disquisitions now going
through the press for the benefit of our sorely-perplexed countrymen, we
feel disposed, cutting both poetry and politics, fairly to fly our
shores, and recreate ourselves and readers in some less troubled quarter
of the earth. Among the host of new books on our table, redolent of
Cossack and Turk, Cross and Crescent, and here and there interspersed
with cabalistic-looking titles, which, we are requested to believe,
signify the “Doom of Turkey,” or the “Drying up of the Euphrates”—lo,
there peeps forth one of a more pacific hue. There, lustrous on its
boards, rises the feathery palm-tree of the Desert,—the Arab tent,—the
camel; and what an emblem of peace is that cross-legged Oriental,
smoking his long pipe, imperturbable as a statue! _Sedit æternumque
sedebit._ We open the book, and, amidst the intricacies of a very long
title, catch the piquant words—“Wanderings in the African Sahara.”[10]
How we feel the breezes of the Desert come around us!—the freedom,—the
expanse,—the wild novelty of the scene;—the heaving motion of the camel
beneath us,—the flashing spears and pennons of the escort, as they whirl
in mimic warfare around. Away into the Desert! with a sea of rigid white
sand beneath, and a twin sea of glowing light above! On, over the waste,
till the glare of day is done, and the cool breeze comes forth, and all
the stars of night,—and we kiss our hand to the moon “walking in
brightness,” and say, with Southey,
“How beautiful is night!
A dewy freshness fills the silent air;
No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain,
Breaks the serene of heaven;
In full-orbed glory yonder Moon divine
Rolls through the dark-blue depths.
Beneath her steady ray
The desert-circle spreads,
Like the round ocean, girdled by the sky!
How beautiful is night!”
What mystery hangs over this last-born of continents! whose plains are
sea-beds, at whose vast upheaval the waters of ocean must have rushed
furiously in all directions to regain their level. A land of mystery,
from the days of Herodotus until now. How we long to join those yearly
caravans, which, after leaving behind them the whole northern region of
the coast, travel for sixty days southwards through the burning
Sahara,—reaching springs but once a-week,—crossing alternately now
mountain-ridges, now seas of sand; until, passing from oasis to oasis,
they at length penetrate into the region of Soudaan,—the heart of
Africa, the death-place of Clapperton, and Richardson, and Overweg,—and
behold the great central lake of Tchad, the most inaccessible point on
the globe, yet to within a few miles of whose shores the dying energies
of Clapperton brought a boat,—whose waters have been navigated by his
European comrade, and on whose bosom, perchance, that bark still floats,
with the flag of England flying from its mast!
Such were the quick musings of the moment of imaginative pleasure which
elapsed, as we cut open preface and contents, and plunged into the book
itself. In a trice, the argument of the book is plain to us. After a
residence of several years on the shores of North Africa—during which
time he seems to have mastered the various dialects of the Arab tribes,
and of course studied their manners—Mr Davis, the reverend author,
catches sight of an excellent opportunity for visiting the interior.
“Sidy Mohammed Bey,” he says, “the heir-apparent of the throne of
Tunis,—a prince possessed of excellent qualities, among which extreme
kindness and affability are not the least prominent,—was on the point of
making a journey into the interior, in order to regulate some public
affairs; and, upon application, he very kindly took me under his
immediate protection.”
On the sixth day after starting, they came to a good deal of broken
country,—traversed several dry beds of rivers,—and crossed a number of
rugged heights, rent into strange shapes. Marching through an opening in
one of these minor ridges, they passed at once from a beautiful plain
into the wild and ragged outskirts of the great chain of Gebel Waslaat,
celebrated for the warlike character of its ancient inhabitants. “At a
little distance,” says Mr Davis, “these famous and romantic heights have
a most lovely appearance, resembling the vineyards of Spain and of the
south of France;” but on a nearer approach, he found—as on many other
occasions during the expedition—that it was only distance that lent to
them their enchanting look. The Arabs of the coast look upon this region
as perhaps the blackest spot in all creation; and you may as well call
one of them a devil as a _Waslaati_. They relate that this part was at
one time inhabited by a very wicked people, and that the Pharaoh under
whom the Israelites were in bondage, and who received such signal
chastisement, was a native of these mountains. The Mohammedan doctors go
still further, and assert that it was upon this Gebel Waslaat that Eblis
(Satan) was hurled down, after his expulsion from the regions of light
and happiness; and that it was in these mountains that he took up his
first earthly abode.
Leaving these ill-omened mountains to the west, they journeyed
south-eastwards, for two days, through a plain, which, says Mr Davis,
“for this part of the world, must be pronounced a luxuriant one.” It is
pretty well cultivated, and is watered by a river which has its source
in the Waslaat mountains. They then encamped for a couple of days in the
vicinity of Cairwan, the “city of saints.” “At a short distance,” he
says, “this, like every other Mohammedan city of any note, has a fine
appearance, but as one approaches, its beauty vanishes. Crooked and
filthy streets, ruined and dilapidated houses, wretched shops and
miserable hovels, are too glaring not to attract one’s attention.” The
city is surrounded by a wall in pretty good condition, and has a
garrison of regular as well as of irregular troops. Outside are large
cisterns, supplementing the reservoirs with which the houses within are
furnished for collecting rain-water; and, still more remarkable, though
much less useful, the tomb wherein repose the holy remains of Saint
_Shaab_, “the Prophet’s barber.”
After a two days’ halt, they left behind them the plain of Cairwan, and
began to approach the borders of the Sahara. On the day after starting,
the Prince’s party was met by the “noble and highly-favoured” tribe of
Arabs, the Dreeds (who are allowed to sit in presence of a prince,
whilst every other Arab is obliged to stand), headed by their _kaid_ or
governor, Smeeda Ben Azooz. “Smeeda himself was mounted on a magnificent
grey steed, whose saddle appeared to be of a solid mass of gold, so
richly was it embroidered; and the other trappings were also sumptuously
adorned with gold and silver. He rode in advance, and the hundred Dreeds
who followed him were on horses not much inferior to that of their proud
and haughty chief. When within about a hundred yards of the Prince,
Smeeda dismounted, and approached on foot to kiss his hand. On resuming
his seat in the saddle, he took up his position to his master’s left,
whilst his attendants fell back in the rear of our party.”
The Prince was enthusiastically fond of hunting. Every day, when he had
the opportunity, he was engaged in it. The chase of gazelles was his
favourite sport, and it was one in which success was neither easily nor
frequently achieved. “It is a grand sight,” says Mr Davis, “to behold
these slender-limbed and feeble-looking tiny creatures defying the most
spirited horse in speed. When pursued, they actually often stopped to
nibble the grass,—as if to challenge the rider and ridicule his efforts,
and treat him, his horse and hounds alike, with contempt.” They were
frequently seen in companies of about twenty together. On the day after
Smeeda and his Dreeds joined the expedition, a great many gazelles were
chased by the Prince’s cavalry and the Arabs, but not a single one was
killed. This, it is alleged, was owing, firstly, to the rough and broken
character of the soil; secondly, to the burning heat which prevailed;
and thirdly, the shirocco wind, which sometimes, as it blew in their
faces, seemed as if it carried along with it flames of fire, and caused
the riders to check the speed of their horses. But to compensate the
party for their bootless efforts, Smeeda sent his servants for his
well-trained hawks.
“In half an hour about twenty of these birds of prey, of an unusually
large size, were brought, accompanied by several Dreeds, expert in
hawking. Smeeda,—who is rather a short, but very corpulent man, with a
handsome face, ornamented by a fine black, neatly-trimmed beard, and
most penetrating dark eyes,—was this day mounted on a beautiful white
horse, decked out with the same saddle and trappings his grey horse
exhibited the day before. The dress of the rider was elegant and rich
in the extreme. As soon as he had protected his hands from the talons
by gauntlets, partly covered with plates of gold, a hawk was handed to
him by one of his attendants. He undid the hood which confined the
head of the bird, and prevented his quick eye from beholding the
objects around. In an instant the hawk was seen soaring up to the sky.
Another and another followed, and in this manner about twelve or
fifteen were despatched. A few seconds elapsed, when one after the
other pounced upon his prey. Hares and rabbits, partridges and other
birds, were thus secured in abundance. The servants were busily
engaged running in all directions to secure both the hawks and the
prey,—the former, in order to adjust their hoods for a short time
previous to being despatched again; and the latter, ‘to cut the
throat’ before life is extinct, so as to render them lawful food for
the _true believer_.”
In connection with this love of the chase, we must mention an incident
which occurred as the expedition was approaching Cairwan, and which
shows how little prevalent is any rule but the “law of the strongest” in
those quarters, and how naturally men take to deceit as a refuge against
lawless force. Mr Davis and some others of the party came to
half-a-dozen Arab tents, where, to their great surprise, a general
stillness and gloom prevailed. The men and children sat on the ground
with an air of profoundest melancholy; whilst the women, usually so
active, were resting from their labours, and exhibiting grief by floods
of tears.
“‘What has happened, Ali, that you are all so much cast down?’ asked
one of our party, addressing an old man.
‘Such is the will of God,’ was the only reply.
‘But what has happened, Ali?’
‘_Maktoob_,—it is so preordained!’ answered the old man, shaking his
head, and clasping his hands.
‘Has any one died?’
To this he only replied with a sigh, and pointed us to the interior of
his tent. But instead of participating in his grief, my friend
abruptly asked him,—Where is the _sloghi_ (greyhound) of last year?’
‘How can you put such a question to me, when you witness my grief and
distress?’
‘Who, then, is dead?’ pursued my inquisitive companion.
‘My wife!’ replied the old Arab, again pointing us to the interior of
the tent, where apparently she lay, covered with a kind of blanket.
‘But what have you done with _the lovely_ (greyhound)?’
Old Ali now indignantly expressed his surprise that such a question
should be put to him at a time when his mind was so differently
occupied. He thought it manifested hard-heartedness, if not cruelty.
‘But are you sure your wife is _quite_ dead?’
‘Do not mock me, O Moslems!’
The interrogator then called a soldier, who happened to be near, and
gave him his horse to hold, while he himself ruthlessly entered the
tent. On removing the blanket, he found the Arab’s wife, all alive,
and holding the pet _sloghi_ in her arms. On being thus detected, the
poor woman cried out most beseechingly, ‘Do not take the dog!’ and the
whole company, men, women, and children, most imploringly re-echoed
the cry.
The intruder then turned to old Ali, and with an ironical smile
said,—‘You see your _dear_ wife is not _quite_ dead!’”
The Prince, as we have said, was a keen sportsman, and not one of his
dogs could compare with Ali’s _sloghi_; but his veneration for justice
predominated even over his love of the chase. “Ali is rich,” said he,
when the hound was brought to him, “and money will not tempt him, else I
would gladly offer it him. Send the _sloghi_ instantly back!”
The day after the junction of Smeeda and his noble Dreeds, the
expedition entered the district of the Majer,—a tribe (numbering 200
tents, or 1200 souls) of a peculiarly rascally character, and the larger
portion of whose scanty resources is obtained by the robbery and murder
of travellers. For these outrages they are rarely brought to account,
save when the Prince, or other representative of the Regency of Tunis,
makes a tour in person among the tribes. On the present occasion they
had a heavy debt to pay,—the value of a life, in the Desert, being
generally reckoned at from twenty-five to thirty camels. Within the
precincts of this tribe are the ruins of Spaitla, the ancient Sufetula;
and, by the favour of the Prince, our author set out to visit them.
Under the guidance of the Majer chief, and escorted by twenty soldiers
well mounted, and armed to the teeth—after a gallop over a beautiful
plain, and thence crossing a district of hill and dale, “all covered
with verdure, and occasionally bordering upon the picturesque,” Mr Davis
and his party arrived at the ruins. On their first approach all was
perfectly still. Not a sound but their own was audible, save the
rippling of a brook which glides past the ruins on their north-eastern
side. Not a human being was to be seen, either among the ruins or in
their vicinity; and even animal life seemed to have for ever departed
from the sombre walls and mansions of the ancient Sufetulans. But such
was not really the case. In the holes, caverns, and clefts of the rocks
on which the city stands, were dispersed numbers of the followers and
subjects of the Majer chief. From their dwellings they issued forth
imperceptibly to the travellers. And most unpleasant company they must
have been; for, says our author, “all the corrupt ramifications of the
human heart,—all the vile actions of which man is capable, could be
traced, and that distinctly, in the features of these sons of Ghiath.”
The situation of this ancient city is delightful. It is built upon an
eminence, commanding a panoramic view of an expanse of country which,
even in its present barren and deserted condition, has a charming
aspect. Wild olive, juniper, and almond trees in abundance stud the
banks of the brook. Of the place itself, Mr Davis says, “I had no
conception of the extent of the ruins to be found here; so that my
companions, as well as myself, were absolutely amazed on beholding the
magnificence of some of them. As I viewed these from some angles, I
could almost fancy myself again on the majestic ruins of Baalbec.” He
especially notices a sumptuous triumphal arch of the Corinthian order,
with a lesser arch on each side. From this he proceeded to three
temples,—upon which time, and the innate destructive disposition of the
Arabs, have left evident traces. “Parts are in a most dilapidated
condition, yet it is surprising to meet with so much which, with very
little trouble and expense, might easily be restored to its former
grandeur. The front and entrance to the temples are in ruins, and large
masses of stone are lying about in all directions, and block up the
ingress; but the backs, which face the triumphal arch, are in capital
repair.”
On his return from visiting the ruins of Spaitla, our author and his
companions, miscalculating the movements of the main body of the
expedition, found themselves very much out of their reckoning. Night
came on,—their guide, the Majer chief, disappeared at the very time his
presence was most required; and what with the fear of his rascally tribe
before their eyes, as well as of the wild beasts of the desert, the
night which the little party had to pass on the sands before they could
rejoin the main body was anything but a comfortable one.
Lions are common in these parts, and their tracks were occasionally
visible; but the king of beasts nowhere appeared in person, and the
Prince, who longed to try his skill on this lordly tenant of the wastes,
was balked of his sport. Hyenas are likewise to be met with; and the
manner in which they are taken by the Arabs in these parts is very
peculiar. Its subterranean abode, it appears, is so narrow as not to
permit of the animal turning about in it; and hence, to use the Arab
phraseology, it has “two doors,” by one of which it enters, and by the
other goes out. The Arabs, lying _perdus_ in the vicinity of one of
these dens, watch the particular hole by which the hyena enters, and
then proceed to place a strong rope net over the opposite hole,—whilst
one of their fraternity, skilled in the business, and prepared with a
rope, works his way in by “the door” which the animal has entered. As he
nears the brute (which cannot turn upon him), he “charms it,” according
to our author’s informants, saying,—“Come, my dear little creature; I
will lead you to places where many carcases are prepared for you,—plenty
of food awaits you. Let me fasten this rope to your beautiful leg, and
stand quiet whilst I do so.” This sentence, or something very similar to
it, is repeated till the operation is effectually achieved; when the
daring son of the Sahara begins to gore the brute with a dagger, till he
is forced to rush out, when he is caught in the net, and either killed
on the spot or carried off alive. If any blunder happens, however,—as is
sometimes the case—through which the hyena is enabled to struggle and
re-enter its abode, the “charmer,” in spite of his charming, falls a
victim to its savage rage, and frequently his companions can scarcely
contrive to get clear without feeling something of its effects.
The powerful Hamama tribe was the next which our travellers fell in
with,—two hundred of this tribe coming to pay their respects to the
heir-apparent of the throne, and escort him to the city of Cafsa. “There
was much in their appearance,” says Mr Davis, “to make me regard this
tribe with a great degree of interest. They are genuine Arabs, and of
this they are very proud. ‘Their hand is against every man, and every
man’s hand is against them.’ An officer from the reigning sovereign of
Tunis, (who has just joined our expedition) with a number of cavalry
soldiers, is now amongst them, in order to enforce a fine of 2000
camels, for murders and other outrages committed by these genuine
descendants of Ishmael. They are at enmity with the Dreeds, jealous of
the Farasheesh, and almost constantly at war with the Mamshe—a tribe
inhabiting the western borders of the regency, quite as powerful and as
full of pretensions as their own.” As seldom more than thirty camels are
ever demanded for a single life, these two thousand camels symbolise
upwards of sixty murders committed by this tribe, and known to the
Government!
His Highness the Prince made his entry in grand style into Cafsa,—the
Mamlooks on their choice horses, and in their best uniforms—a native
band playing their national tunes—a host of unfurled banners—and at the
wings several companies of cavalry. In all, including the various tribes
that had joined, the camp now amounted to no less than 30,000 men, about
50,000 camels, and 2000 horses and mules! “A just estimate of the size
of the expedition,” says our author, “can only be formed by viewing it
from some eminence as it is moving along, either in some large plain, or
over the seas of sand which now and then it is traversing. Often have I
taken my position on a little hillock, and could see nothing for miles
before me or behind but the living masses which composed the inhabitants
of our canvass city. How similar to this must have been the marching of
the Children of Israel in the wilderness, on their way from Egypt to the
Promised Land!”
The morning was lovely as they approached Cafsa. Not a speck could be
discovered in the sky, and everything around seemed to have an aspect of
contentment and cheerfulness. The city is surrounded by gardens, gay
with clusters of date, olive, lemon, orange, pomegranate, pistacchio,
and other fruit trees. “In walking among these gardens, richly watered
by a delicious brook, which has its supply from two fountains, one
within the citadel, and the other in the centre of the city, a stranger
can imagine himself in some more temperate region, and among a people
more advanced in civilisation.” But on entering the city, the charm (as
usual) vanishes. Cafsa is the ancient Capsa, (built three hundred years
before Carthage), the stronghold of Jugurtha; of the inhabitants of
which place Florus says, “They are in the midst of their sands and
serpents, which defend them better from those that would attack them
than armies and ramparts would.” Marius, however, after some adroit
manœuvring, pounced upon and took the city;—and as the inhabitants were
strongly attached to the Numidian prince, the Roman general, after
giving the place up to be plundered by his soldiers, levelled it with
the ground, and put the inhabitants to the sword, or sold them as
slaves. The modern city, built on the ruins of the ancient one, is
situated upon a rising ground, and has a population of about three or
four thousand inhabitants. Within it there is a spring, the waters of
which, at their source, are tepid, but are considerably cooled in the
large basin into which they discharge themselves. This is in all
probability the _Tarmid_ of Edrisi and the _Jugis aqua_ of Sallust. A
small kind of fish, about two or three inches in length, is to be found
in this slightly tepid basin.
The capture of one of the Hamana tribe at this place, who had been
“preaching up a kind of crusade against the Government, and instilling
Chartist principles,” (!) not unnaturally suggests to Mr Davis the
recollection of certain cases of capital punishment which he had
witnessed at Tunis. One of these he thus describes:—
“A crowd near the Carthagenian gate attracted my attention, and on
inquiry I found that the five or six hundred persons had assembled to
see the sentence of their despot carried into execution. In a few
minutes six _hambas_ (policemen) made their appearance on the wall,
some forty yards distant from the gate, and about thirty feet in
height, leading two culprits, whose hands were pinioned in front. They
stepped firmly, and seemed quite callous and indifferent about their
doom. The hambas set at once about their work. They fastened ropes
round the necks of the criminals, which they secured to the
battlements, on the wall. No ecclesiastic was present to administer
any religious consolation; but the executioners now and then
ejaculated the words, _Maktoob_, ‘it is so predestinated,’ and _Hacka
yehab rubby_, ‘such is the will of God.’ When desired to take the
position pointed out to them, they did so without manifesting the
slightest reluctance, or exhibiting the least symptom of fear. Each
took his seat between two of the battlements, their feet hanging over.
They looked for a moment on the crowd beneath; and when one of the
hambas desired them to pronounce their creed, they cried out, ‘O
Moslems! pray for us.’ Then, turning their eyes heavenwards, they
pronounced in a clear, distinct, and audible voice, the words,’There
is no God but God, and Mohammed is his apostle.’ When the last word
was uttered, the executioners pushed them simultaneously off the wall,
and thus the wretched men were launched into eternity. The conduct of
the assembled spectators was very orderly—indeed, grief seemed
depicted on every countenance.”
In Mohammedan law, sentences, whether capital or otherwise, are no
sooner pronounced than they are carried into execution. There is a
delectable variety in the modes of exit from this world, which the law
prescribes for capital offenders. Arabs are generally hanged, seldom
decapitated; Turks are mostly strangled; Jews are dealt with after the
manner of Arabs. Women are drowned; and the higher classes, and princes,
enjoy the privilege of being poisoned. In some few cases, criminals are
sentenced to be burned. One mode of death—which we Europeans regard as
rather an honourable one—is regarded by the Koran-readers and the
orthodox portion of the community as heterodox in the extreme. A
knowledge of Roger Bacon’s invention, gunpowder, never having been
vouchsafed to the Prophet in any of his revelations, the Faithful, of
course, are unable to find a single passage in the Koran to justify
sentencing a soldier to be shot. But in this, as in many other
instances, the common sense or convenience of the Pasha leads him to
deviate from the Cadi’s opinion, and to overrule the _Sharrah_.
On leaving Cafsa, our travellers found themselves fairly in the Sahara.
“As the day advanced,” says Mr Davis, “the heat increased, and by noon
became almost intolerable. Besides the excessive heat of a burning sun,
we had to endure the noxious influence of the southerly wind, which,
fortunately for us, did not blow with all its wonted fury. Its effect,
however, was apparent, not only on myself, but also on some of my
friends. The weakness and lassitude these combined agencies produced,
manifested themselves by the perfect stillness and sullenness which
prevailed in every group of travellers, as they either walked or rode
along. The heat it collected in its sweep across the burning sands, it
now freely vented on us,—and that to such a degree that some of its
puffs actually resembled in their effects the flames issuing from a
furnace.” No wonder that the Psylli of old should have attempted the
extermination of so destructive a tenant of the waste! This nation, says
Herodotus, who in ancient times inhabited a district bordering on the
_Regio Syrtica_, having once had all their reservoirs of water dried up
by the south wind, advanced into the Sahara in order to make war upon
it; but the enemy, defying bow and arrow, opposed them by blowing with
extreme violence, and raised such clouds and torrents of sand that the
poor Psylli were overwhelmed, and all of them perished! What African
traveller does not regret that the victory was on the side of the
noxious element!
Mr Davis never saw the Simoom in its full and dreadful force, nor did he
witness any of those astounding exhibitions of sand-columns, circling in
numbers over the surface of the desert, and overwhelming everything that
come in their way, that Bruce once gazed upon with awe and wonder. But
of snakes and scorpions, and suchlike poisonous inhabiters of the
Desert, our author had his fill. On one occasion, when about to encamp,
they found the ground literally covered with snakes, whose bite, the
Arabs say, is certain death. “Happily for man,” said one of Mr Davis’s
companions, “these reptiles have not the benefit of sight;—had they not
been deficient in this, the world could not have existed, as these
enemies of man would undoubtedly have extirpated him from the face of
the earth! So powerful is their sting, that they have been known to have
penetrated the large iron stirrup of the Hamama.” The snake thus alluded
to—and we need hardly say, our readers may take the description _cum
grano salis_—is the _liffa_ or _liffach_,—a reptile about a yard in
length; and the account which the Arabs give of the death of those who
have been bitten by it tallies very closely with the description which
Lucan gives of the death of Nasidius in the same locality:—
“A fate of different kind Nasidius found:
A burning _prester_ gave the deadly wound,—
And straight a sudden flame began to spread,
And paint his visage with a glowing red.
With swift expansion swells the bloated skin,
Nought but an undistinguish’d mass is seen:
The puffy poison spreads and heaves around,
Till all the man is in the monster drown’d.”
The next place the expedition reached was Tozar,—a town fairly in the
Sahara, and beyond even the farreaching sway of the old _Dominos rerum_
and their redoubtable Legionaries. “Before Tozar,” says our author,
“there are a few hillocks, dotted with some majestic palm-trees;
affording a delightful shade: and the silvery rivulet, winding its way
among these in devious directions, adds to the charm of the scene. As we
approached, we found the hillocks and the trees literally covered with
men, women, and children,—assembled to witness the entry of Prince
Mohammed and the camp, with their shrill notes of _lo-lo-lo-lo_!” Tozar,
like the other cities of the Sahara, is in one important feature
different from those on the coast. Generally speaking, the streets of
all the towns of Barbary, like those in Egypt and Syria, are exceedingly
narrow, so that one camel, laden with wood or merchandise, is sufficient
to obstruct the thoroughfare. But in the towns of the Sahara the streets
are generally very wide,—the object of which is, to allow the furious
winds of the Desert, charged with immense masses of sand, to sweep clean
through, instead of being checked in their course, and therefore
blocking up the streets with their noxious deposit. From these
sand-storms of the desert, the coast-towns have little to fear, on
account of the intervening mountain-chains robbing those terrible
visitants of their deadly burden; and accordingly the inhabitants of the
Barbary towns can afford to build their streets very narrow, so as to
exclude the fierce rays of the sun,—a luxury which their southern
brethren dare not indulge in.
The population of Tozar amounts to about five thousand,—for the most
part of a swarthy complexion, with a cast of features bordering upon
that of the Negro. Indeed every fresh stage one makes in the journey
into Central Africa, a gradual change is perceptible in the features and
complexion of the population,—the white man, by a slow but invariable
process, changing into a Negro. “Were it possible,” says Mr Davis, “to
introduce into Europe an ethnological collection, classified
latitudinally, from the northern coast to Central Africa, the greatest
sceptic might be convinced of the fact, that _time_ and _place_ alone
made our coloured fellow-creatures what they are. The slave-dealer, and
the Negro-dealer, might thus have an ocular demonstration of the great
truth, that the black man is our brother, and that circumstances alone,
with the nature of which we are not fully acquainted, made him to differ
from us.” He mentions, as an additional proof of this, that even among
the Jews (who, he says, “have probably lived in this part of Africa from
the time the Phœnicians first settled here”) a striking difference is
perceptible between those on the coast and those residing in the
interior. He adds the curious fact, that in the desert the Jews
certainly do not live for many centuries; and thence deduces the
conclusion, that if its influence is so clearly shown in them, both as
regards colour and features, it is not to be wondered that it should
have told to a much greater extent on those to whom the Sahara has been
a home for thousands of years. Of all these vari-coloured sections of
the North African population, the most merry and gay are unquestionably
the Negroes, whether male or female. To ask a Moor or an Arab if he
danced, would be to offer him a serious insult—the former especially
being too grave to have a regard even for music. But the black people
are almost always cheerful, and enjoy life even when in a state of
bondage. “Often have I seen them,” says Mr Davis, “congregated by
hundreds in some open space, singing and dancing, and playing, for hours
consecutively. The ability of the Negro to accommodate himself to
circumstances is surprising. What would depress and crush a white man is
supported with a marvellous resignation by the black, whose light heart
enables him to toil and to sing, to suffer, and yet not despair.”
Within the oasis of Tozar, and its date-forest, are half-a-dozen
villages, besides four marabouts with their cupolas, around each of
which are a few huts. The houses of the Desert are generally only one
storey high, and are built, like those of Cafsa, of bricks, with rafters
of palm-wood. The interior of the houses is as humble as their exterior.
The rooms are long and narrow, with only a hole here and there to admit
the light; and from the rafters of the ceiling of every apartment is
suspended the stock of dates which, with milk, forms the principal
articles alike of food and of commerce. It is by the sale, or rather
barter, of their dates to the wandering tribes that the inhabitants of
the oasis of Tozar procure for themselves wheat, barley, cloth, cattle,
&c. In former times their commerce was not of so simple or so innocent
description—for a flourishing business used to be done here with Tunis
in human flesh. A slave was given in exchange for two or three
hundredweight of dates, or at the intrinsic value of about £3; and when
the rich planter’s shed was filled, he marched the unhappy objects of
his purchase northwards to the coast, where they were shipped for their
various destinations. “Before the abolition of slavery in the regency of
Tunis,” says our author, “I have often seen caravans from this place
exposing their merchandise in the slave-market of the capital, and
selling them at the rate of £12 or £15 per head. But this lucrative
business is now stopped, at least so far as Tunis is concerned, and loud
are the complaints of the Tozarians on this subject.”
Besides the stock of dates pendant from the ceiling, the chief ornaments
which decorate the rooms of the Sahara towns, are a strange medley of
jars, jugs, dishes, plates, bottles, and glasses, suspended on the wall
facing the entrance-door. Here they are exhibited promiscuously, totally
irrespective of size, shape, colour, or order, and by the quantity of
these, an estimate is formed of the wealth of the owner. A low table, a
few stools made of the branches of the palm-tree, and, in some
instances, a couch or divan, complete the furniture of an apartment,—and
an apartment generally forms the residence of a single family. At night,
sheepskins, rugs, or mats, are spread on the floor, and supply the place
of beds. Every household, we may add, has one or more immense jars, into
which any loose or stray dates are thrown. Within an inch or two of the
bottom of these jars there is a top, by which they draw off a species of
date-honey, which they use in cooking and for other purposes.
Date-honey, however, is not the only species of juice which the
Tozarians obtain from the palm-trees of their oasis; for we are informed
that though the devout believers in the Koran there scrupulously abstain
from _wine_, they indulge freely in _lagmi_, or the juice of the
palm-tree, which, when fermented, is quite as intoxicating in its
effects as the beverage prohibited by the Prophet. This juice is easily
obtained, and if possible still more easily prepared. At a certain
season of the year, an incision is made in the tree just beneath the
branches,—a jar is then so fastened as to receive the liquid as it
exudes,—and, in this manner, they usually procure from a tree, during
the course of a night, from a quart to a quart and a half of _lagmi_.
When drunk immediately, this liquor tastes like genuine rich milk, and
is perfectly free from an intoxicating influence; but when allowed to
stand for a night, or at most for twenty-four hours—during which time
fermentation takes place—“it partakes (with the exception of the colour,
which is whitish) of the quality and flavour of champagne, and that of a
much superior sort to what is usually offered in the British markets.”
This date-tree wine is to be found in every house, and has its victims
reeling through the streets of Tozar just as beer and whisky have in our
streets at home. But the curious part of the matter is, that “the
faithful” openly justify themselves against the charge of transgressing
their Prophet’s precept. “_Lagmi_ is not wine,” they say, “and the
Prophet’s prohibition refers to _wine_.”
Of the social relations at Tozar, Mr Davis says:—“My first impression,
on visiting several families, was such as to induce me to believe that
greater domestic happiness prevailed here than in the Mohammedan cities
on the coast. The females are not kept in distinct and separate
apartments, nor do they even cover their faces when in the presence of
strangers, but appear perfectly free, and seem exceedingly affable.” A
closer examination, however, sufficed to show that the regulations of
Mohammedanism in regard to females produced very much the same results
here as elsewhere. Marriage is usually contracted very early,—so that it
is no uncommon thing to see boys of thirteen and fourteen in possession
of wives of eleven or twelve, or even younger; and the result, here as
elsewhere, is, that girls of twelve look as old as European females do
at twenty, and at thirty they are almost fit to be placed on the retired
list. Indeed, as Colonel Dow in his _Ferishta_ says, polygamy in the
East is founded very much on natural causes, as, owing to early
marriages, and the effects of the climate, a man there keeps his vigour
long enough to see two or three wives bloom and fade in succession.
Moslems consider it wrong, and even sinful, if a man has reached his
twentieth year without marrying. The young couple are joined together on
the good faith of their parents or relations; for they are not permitted
to see each other before the nuptial night. Certain persons,
however,—generally old women, relatives of the parties—are sent from the
man, who examine the lady, and bring him back a report of her bodily
accomplishments. If the man finds himself disappointed, he has a right
to send her back to her parents, without restoring to her the portion
that was promised her,—or rather, the price that was to be paid for her,
as the wife is bought by the husband. The young damsels, it must be
allowed, take all pains to avoid so lamentable a catastrophe. “Excessive
obesity,” says Mr Davis, “is considered the perfection of female beauty
among the Mohammedans on the coast; hence a young woman, after she is
betrothed, receives gold or silver shackles upon her hands and wrists,
and is fed so long till these are filled up. A kind of seed called
_drough_, and their national dish _coscoso_, are used for the purpose.
The young lady is literally crammed, and some actually die under the
spoon.”
These African beauties, it would appear, are subject to strange
fantasies and superstitions. The Jenoon, or devil, we are told,
sometimes causes a lady to fancy some article of dress or jewellery; and
until her husband (for the lady is always a married one) procures her
the article, the Jenoon torments her in a most pitiless manner. But the
tormentor is not satisfied by the lady obtaining the article. He must
have something for himself, in return for the trouble he takes in the
matter,—and that something is nothing less than a splendid feast
exclusively of ladies. Our reverend author, however, by special favour,
was once present at a feast of this kind at Nabil, the ancient Neapolis;
and as the spirits do not seem to have stood much in awe of “the cloth,”
he is able to furnish us with the following account of this Jenoon or
devil feast:—
“The room in which it was celebrated was beautifully illuminated, and
surrounded with ottomans, upon which the ladies, amounting to forty,
were luxuriously reclining, and amongst them the lady possessed by the
Jenoon. All of them were beautifully dressed, and none of them,
judging from their appearance, were more than forty years of age,
though some of them were still in their teens. After I had been there
a few moments, supper was brought in; and coscoso, the favourite dish
of Barbary, was of course not excluded. They all sat down on the
ground, and some with wooden spoons, whilst others with their hands,
partook freely of the repast. I was invited to join them, which I did,
and had also the pleasure to be favoured with a spoon.” (We hope it
was a _long_ one!)
“After supper they all took their former places; and a band of music
began to strike up some of their national tunes. All the ladies sat
quiet—till of a sudden one of them, a young woman of about twenty,
arose and began to dance by herself. She was soon followed by several
others, who were wheeling rapidly round; and all of them worked
themselves into such a frenzy that from weakness they dropped to the
ground, where they lay, till, recovering their strength, they
recommenced their madness. This lasted a considerable time. The lady
with the Jenoon was sitting quietly on the ottoman. When the visitors
had finished their amusement, she started up, and followed their
example; and when she, like the others, was stretched on the floor,
one of the spectators arose, and asked what article she fancied,—to
which she made no reply. The former then named several articles of
dress, asking whether she wished any of them; and when the article
which the Jenoon lady desired was mentioned, (I believe a shawl), she
suddenly started up,—and this was the signal that the Jenoon feast was
considered as ended.”
When Barbary ladies play the _Jenoon_ with their husbands at this rate,
it is not to be wondered at that a separation from such fantastic
spirits should be placed within easy reach of the man. Barbary husbands,
at least if they be Moslems, can take back their divorced partners after
a first divorce, but not after a second, unless—strange provision!—she
has in the interim been married to another man. A husband may oblige his
divorced wife to nurse any infant she has borne him, until it is two
years old; and no man can marry a divorced woman sooner than four months
and a half after her total separation from the former husband. The
facility with which a divorce can be procured in Northern Africa, even
for the most trivial causes, cannot be otherwise than most pernicious to
the social welfare of the community. Mr Davis narrates the following
anecdote in illustration of this ridiculous as well as most mischievous
license:—
“A servant of mine of the name of Ali, once very pressingly applied
for leave to go out for a short time. It was not my custom to inquire
into the nature of his business, but, on that occasion something
unaccountable prompted me to put the question,—‘And where are you
going to, Ali?’
“Holding up a piece of paper, he very coolly answered,—‘To give my
wife this divorce; and shall soon be back, _Arfi_,’ (my master).
“‘To give your wife a divorce! Well, you may go; but remember, if you
divorce her, I from this very moment divorce you.’
“Handing me the paper, Ali exclaimed,—‘Here, master, take it; on such
conditions I shall not divorce my wife.”’
Tozar was the most southerly point which the expedition reached; and
here it remained for the space of three weeks, during which time Mr
Davis and his three French companions made excursions to the
neighbouring oases. Accompanied by the Governor and Cadi of Nefta, with
a retinue of some twenty well-mounted servants, they set out over the
sands to visit that place. “Never,” says Mr Davis, “had the propriety of
styling the camel _the ship of the Desert_ been so apparent to me as
this day. The whole way from Tozar to Nefta, the Desert had completely
the aspect of a vast bed of an ocean, and we seemed to plough the sandy
waves of the Sahara as the ship does those of the sea. The morning was
rather hazy, and the sky was overcast with a number of detached small
white clouds, which (particularly those along the horizon) very often
assumed the form of a variety of sailing crafts; and thus added
considerably to the delusion, under the influence of which we Europeans
were quite willing to abide, viz. of navigating some expansive lake. By
seven o’clock, however, the sun burst forth in all his brilliance; every
cloud was speedily dispersed, and a clear, blue ethereal sky was
stretched over us as far as the eye could reach.” When fairly launched
upon the Deserts, the sameness of the scenery becomes most oppressive.
Seldom is the traveller’s eye refreshed by anything in the shape of a
mountain or a green plain. One sea of sand succeeds another; and were it
not for an occasional mirage, which for a time diverts them, or, for the
circumstance that the glaring sun and drifting sand-clouds compels them
sometimes for hours together to envelop their faces in the _bornoos_, or
cloak, so that they are able to dream of the fantastic groups of
date-trees, and the gentle rivulets winding amongst them in their native
land, their journey through such portions of the Desert would be the
most intolerable and dreary imaginable. These alleviations, or
“comforts,” as an old voyager of the Desert called them, being mere
illusions, are rather calculated to vex the heart of the inexperienced
traveller. But those who have been in the habit of crossing the sandy
ocean from their infancy, and to whom every spot on its surface is
familiar, are diverted, and even cheered by such illusions. “It is a
change for them,” said one of these veteran voyagers, “and any change in
a monotonous life is agreeable.”
On the present occasion, however, our travellers were embarked on a much
shorter journey. A few hours’ ride sufficed to carry them over the
waste, and bring them to the oasis of Nefta—of the extreme antiquity of
which town the Cadi had the most assured belief. “Nefta,” said he, “was
built—or, rather the foundation of it was laid—by _Saidna Noah_ (our
Lord Noah): peace be upon him! Here he discovered the first dry spot;
and hence he disembarked here, and erected an abode for his family.” The
inhabitants of these oases of the Desert are not without their
etiquette; and on approaching the town, the Governor assumed his
dignified aspect, made his entry with all possible gravity, and was no
sooner seated in his own residence than the sheikhs and aristocracy of
Nefta assembled to welcome him, some kissing his head, some his
shoulder, some his elbow, and some the palm of his hand. The worthy
Governor, however, who had a good dash of humour in his composition,
loved other things better than etiquette. “No sooner was the assembly
dismissed,” says our author, “than our lordly host again resumed his
easy and affable manner. When the sound of the feet of the last grandee
had died away, Ibrahim rose up, and assumed an attitude which might have
been a subject for the study of an artist. There he stood, not unlike
what I could fancy a Demosthenes, a Cato, or a Cicero, when on the point
of commencing one of their thrilling orations. Ibrahim remained in that
position a few seconds, and then turning to us, said, ‘I am glad to be
free again. Gentlemen! you no doubt are hungry as well as myself; have
you any objection to a good dinner?’”
Having despatched the dinner, which justified the host’s eulogium of it,
and reposed for a few hours after their fatigues, Mr Davis and one of
his companions set out by themselves to ride all round the oasis of
Nefta. “All went on well at first,” he says, “and we even enjoyed our
ride along the outskirts of the thick forest of magnificent and majestic
date-trees, till we suddenly perceived our horses sinking beneath us.
‘Pull up! pull up!’ screamed my companion; ‘the ground is unsafe!’ We
were on the brink of getting on the _Kilta_, a dangerous swamp, which
receives the surplus waters of the head-fountain, after they have
supplied the vast date-plantations. The _Kilta_ joins the ‘Sea of
Pharaoh,’ and never have I seen anything of a more delusive character.
The surface of the swamp had precisely the same appearance as the solid
ground; and had we been riding at full speed, we might have perished in
this deceitful abyss.” The _Ras Elain_—“head fountain or spring,”—which
is the source of the _waad_, or river, constitutes the charm and luxury
of this delightful oasis. The spring is surrounded on three sides by
hillocks, and is embowered amidst a cluster of palm-trees, so thickly
and eccentrically placed that our travellers had much difficulty in
approaching it so as to taste its waters. _Fi kol donya ma atsh’
kaifho’_,—“In the whole world there is nothing like it!” exclaimed their
guide. “And I must candidly confess,” says Mr Davis, “that though he had
never left the locality of his birth, he was pretty correct on this
point. Never did I taste more delicious water; and we unanimously agreed
that the Neftaweens might well be proud of their _Ras Elain_. What a
boon is this spring, located as it is amidst the burning sands!”
But the great marvel of this district is the mysterious _Bakar Faraoon_,
the “Sea of Pharaoh.” The whole tribes of the vicinity look with awe and
terror upon this so-called “sea,” and superstitions innumerable are
connected with it. Not only has the army of that wicked monarch after
whom the sea is called, perished in it, but hosts of infidel sovereigns,
persecutors of the Faithful, with their myriads of warriors, been
engulfed in it, and are still sinking down its bottomless abyss! Such
are the reports of the Moslems, confirmed by the weighty asseverations
of our author’s learned friend, the Cadi of Nefta. “Not only have
numberless armies been seen marching and re-marching on its surface by
night,” said that erudite expounder of the Koran, “but repeatedly have
they been seen during broad daylight. Giants on monstrously large
horses, have been seen galloping about in various directions, advancing
and receding, and then suddenly disappearing again in that ‘sea.’”
“‘Have you ever, my Lord Cadi, seen any of those submarine warriors?’
_Cadi._—‘No, _I_ never have.’
‘Can you mention any trustworthy person of your acquaintance who has?’
_Cadi._—‘I certainly cannot.’
‘Then what evidence have you for the truth of those marvellous
apparitions?’
_Cadi._—‘Every one believes in all I have told you.’
‘Is it not possible that all this belief may be the result of the
fevered imagination of some superstitious individual?’
_Cadi._—‘It certainly is possible,—but all believe it.’”
This wonderful “sea” is a vast lake, dry for about nine months of the
year, extending about seventy miles in length, by forty broad at its
widest part. It receives several streamlets, such as the _Ras Elain_ of
Nefta; and, during the rainy season, the torrents from the mountains
which on two sides at least adjoin it. During the winter, portions of
the lake-bed retain for a short time the waters thus poured into it; but
during the greater part of the year, a deposit of salt only is visible
on its sandy surface. It abounds in marshes, quicksands, and trap-pits;
and at no time can it be crossed save by a single route, which is
pointed out by trunks of palm-trees, placed at short distances,—and
hence its proper name, _the Lake of Marks_. Tufts of very sickly-looking
grass, and mounds clothed with consumptive shrubs, fringed its shores at
the time our travellers visited it; and its surface was wavy, and
covered with saline incrustations. Towards the north-east part of the
lake there is a kind of island, about four miles in circumference, which
is covered with palm-trees. The Arabs say that those trees have grown up
from the kernels left there by Pharaoh’s troops,—and this they regard as
an additional proof that the Egyptian monarch and his army perished
there!
At last the three weeks’ stay at Tozar drew to a close, and a most
lovely night was that which preceded their departure. Mr Davis seldom
indulges in scenic description; and we give the following as a rare and
charming picture of a night-scene in the Desert:—
“At half-past ten, when every inmate of my establishment had retired
to rest,—the tranquillity, the universal stillness, and balmy
atmosphere seemed to invite me to leave my tent again. All was serene
and calm without, and everything appeared to inspire the mind with
serious and sober reflection.
‘Nature was hush’d, as if her works adored,
Still’d by the presence of her living Lord.’
The sultry heat of the day had now ceased, and a cool northerly breeze
gently waved the branches of the stately palm-trees. The darkness
gradually vanished before the bright rays of the moon, whose silvery
light streamed through the forest; and in a few minutes, she rode high
above the loftiest of its countless trees, and by her splendour and
brilliancy so illuminated every object around, that day appeared again
perfectly restored. And the stars, too,—
‘Those quenchless stars! so eloquently bright.
Untroubled sentries of the shadowy night,’—
vied with each other in lustre, to contribute to the magnificence of
this majestic scene,—to add dazzling refulgence to the prodigious
theatre exhibited for the admiration of wondering man!
“Here we have our white canvass city, and, a little beyond it, the
sombre buildings of Tozar. Here again is the thick forest of graceful
palms, with their clusters of ‘fruits of gold,’ pendant beneath their
feathery branches. The rippling brook flows on in its eccentric
course, bearing on its surface the reflection of the host of stars in
the firmament. All nature—animate and inanimate—as far as my vision
could embrace, not only declared the omnipotence and benevolence of
the great Eternal, but seemed to proclaim universal peace and safety,—
‘’Twas a fair scene,—a land more bright
Never did mortal eye behold!’
“The only sound audible, besides that of the sentries, and the
rippling stream close by, was the voice of a _dervish_ or saint, who
was entertaining the inmates of a tent, pitched a short distance from
mine, with some extraordinary Mecca legends. I was on the point of
re-entering my tent, when one of the party, attracted by the scene
without, called upon his companions to behold the wonderful works of
God. All obeyed; and my thin texture partition enabled me to listen to
their repeated exclamations of _Allah Kabeer_, ‘God is great!’ Thus
the Moslem, like the Christian, was led, from a survey of the
stupendous works of nature, to contemplate nature’s omnipotent God.”
We need not follow the steps of the expedition as it slowly retraced its
path northwards through the Desert, from oasis to oasis, till it fairly
reentered the region of verdure and perennial waters. Nor can we stay,
even in passing, to tell of the many French deserters who have sought
refuge among the tribes and towns of the Sahara, nor of their strange
adventures, nor of the hardship and death which in so many cases has
overtaken them. We merely reconduct Mr Davis, with a velocity unknown to
desert-travelling, back to Tunis, and there leave him. His book is a
very creditable performance,—though one-half of it might have been as
well written (and perhaps was so) in comfortable lodgings in London as
in “My Tent” in the Balad Ejjareed. It is not a book of personal
adventure. The author is a reverend gentleman, who has no ambition to
rival the feats of Gordon Cumming among the lions and hippopotamuses of
the African wastes; still less is he inclined to become a “free lance”
in the ranks of General Pelissier’s _Zouaves_, and spin us thrilling
tales of hairbreadth escapes, such as have lately issued from the press
of Germany. But he has been a considerable time—six years—in Northern
Africa, and has made himself well acquainted with the language and
customs of its people,—upon which subjects we know of no writer in whom
we would place more confidence. He is also well acquainted with the
works of adventure and travel already published on this part of the
world, and of which he very properly makes use to lend additional value
or interest to his own. Indeed we think we have recognised several
anecdotes in his book which we have already quoted in our pages, when
reviewing the foreign works in which they originally appeared. Hence
these _Evenings in my Tent_ do not contain so much fresh matter as we
anticipated; yet the substance of their pages is, on the whole, both
good and readable—if we except the antiquated chapter on the
Slave-trade, and a few passages where the author’s clerical habits
incline him to sermonise rather more than may suit the tastes of his lay
readers.
THE COST OF THE COALITION MINISTRY.
It is probable that ere these pages issue from the press, war will have
been formally declared with Russia, and Great Britain will be
irretrievably engaged in a contest of which it is impossible to see the
termination. Already our choicest troops have left our shores for the
Mediterranean, inspired by the cheers and accompanied by the blessing of
many hundreds of thousands of their fellow-countrymen, who, for the
first time in their lives, have witnessed so solemn yet exciting a
spectacle. Already has a noble fleet sailed for the waters of the
Baltic, to sweep that inland sea, and to launch its thunders against the
foe. Wellnigh forty years have elapsed since such din of martial
preparation has been heard. On the last occasion, Russia and Britain
were combined against France—now, Britain and France are combined
together against Russia. Such a struggle, so commenced, must be a
desperate, but not therefore necessarily a short one. We cannot yet
calculate on the part to be taken by the central powers of Europe; for,
notwithstanding Lord Clarendon’s assurance that Austria is with us, we
have every reason to believe that the government of that country is so
closely leagued with Russia, that when compelled to throw off its
appearance of neutrality, its forces will be ranged upon her side.[11]
We cannot depend upon the cordial co-operation of Prussia—which power,
besides having no direct interest in the Eastern quarrel, is intimately
allied with Russia, and has always acted, during times of European
disturbance, with a view to its own aggrandisement. It would be folly to
underrate the magnitude of the contest in which we are engaging. The
re-pacification of Europe cannot be achieved without an enormous
expenditure of blood and treasure, and without very considerable
alterations in its territorial adjustment. The war once begun, Russia
will know that she is fighting, not for the occupation of the Danubian
provinces, but for the retention of the territories which she has
absorbed or pillaged from her neighbours. The penalty she must pay in
the event of defeat is dismemberment, and she will resist that to the
uttermost.
We must not, therefore, blind ourselves to consequences, which, in so
far as human judgment can go, appear to be inevitable. We may be able to
disperse or even to annihilate the Russian fleets in the Baltic and the
Black seas—we may be able to prevent the colossal northern power from
crossing the Danube, or even beat it back from the Principalities—but
the contest will not end there. We are on the verge of a general
European embroilment, in which there will not only be wars, but bloody
revolutions; and as we have been the first to enter, so we must be the
last to withdraw. We do not say this for the purpose of checking
enthusiasm—God forbid! We are already committed to the struggle; and if
in the minds of any there has lingered a doubt as to the propriety of
Christian intervention for the maintenance of a Mahometan power in
Europe, that ought to be dispelled by the revelations recently made of
the objects of the Russian ambition. The Czar is no crusader; nor is he
influenced by any tender regard for the religious liberties of the
Christian population dwelling beneath the government of the Sultan. He
has set his eyes upon Turkey, just as Catherine in 1772 fixed hers upon
Poland, and he has had the astounding effrontery to propose that Great
Britain should take part in the spoliation. Here is his own proposition,
as communicated to Lord John Russell, by Sir G. H. Seymour, in his
despatch of 22d February 1853:—
“The Emperor went on to say that, in the event of the dissolution of
the Ottoman empire, he thought it might be less difficult to arrive at
a satisfactory territorial arrangement than was commonly believed.
‘The Principalities are,’ he said, ‘in fact an independent state under
my protection; this might so continue. Servia might receive the same
form of government. So again with Bulgaria. There seems to be no
reason this province should not form an independent state. As to
Egypt, I quite understand the importance to England of that territory.
_I can then only say that if, in the event of a distribution of the
Ottoman succession upon the fall of the empire, you should take
possession of Egypt, I shall have no objections to offer. I would say
the same thing of Candia: that island might suit you, and I do not
know why it should not become an English possession._’”
Such was the language used by the Emperor of Russia to the British
minister at the Court of St Petersburg, and we really cannot imagine
anything more absolutely infamous. It was a bribe, tendered evidently in
the belief that it would be accepted; and the offer ought to have been
at once most indignantly repelled. Was it so? We shall see presently—for
the correspondence recently published is far too remarkable and
momentous to be passed over with a single extract from its contents.
The Government of Lord Aberdeen, it will be remembered, acceded to
office in the latter part of December 1852. On the 9th of January
following, the Emperor Nicholas, at a private meeting in the palace of
the Grand-duchess Helen, thus approached Sir G. H. Seymour. We shall be
as short in quotation as possible; but it is absolutely necessary that
the leading points of such an extraordinary transaction as this should
be kept before the public view. We quote from Sir Hamilton Seymour’s
despatch to Lord John Russell, then Foreign Secretary, of date 11th
January 1853:—
“The Emperor came up to me, in the most gracious manner, to say that
he had heard with great pleasure of Her Majesty’s Government having
been definitively formed, _adding that he trusted the Ministry would
be of long duration_.
“His Imperial Majesty desired me _particularly to convey this
assurance to the Earl of Aberdeen_, with whom, he said, he had been
acquainted for nearly forty years, and for whom he entertained equal
regard and esteem. His Majesty desired to be brought to the kind
recollection of his Lordship.”
Then follows the report of some expressions regarding the close amity
which ought to prevail between the two countries, and their community of
interests, which, being general, we may pass over: but Nicholas speedily
comes to the point—
“In the mean time, the Emperor went on to say—‘I repeat, that it is
very essential that the two Governments—that is, that the English
Government and I, and I and the English Government—should be upon the
best terms; _and the necessity was never greater than at present_. I
beg you to convey these words to Lord John Russell. When we are agreed
(_d’accord_), I am quite without anxiety to the west of Europe; it is
immaterial what the others may think or do. As _to Turkey, that is
another question_; that country is in a critical state, and may give
us all a great deal of trouble. And now I will take my leave of you,’
which His Majesty proceeded to do by shaking hands with me very
graciously.”
The Czar probably thought that he had said enough in the first instance,
and that it would be prudent to allow Sir Hamilton Seymour to chew, for
a day or two, the cud of thought. But that active and astute diplomatist
saw that something more than common was intended, and pressed for a
further explanation. The following conversation is certainly as curious
as any which is recorded in the pages of history:—
“‘Sir,’ I observed, ‘your Majesty has been good enough to charge me
with general assurances as to the identity of views between the two
Cabinets, which assuredly have given me the greatest pleasure, and
will be received with equal satisfaction in England; but I should be
particularly glad that your Majesty should add a few words which may
tend to calm the anxiety with regard to the affairs of Turkey, which
passing events are so calculated to excite on the part of Her
Majesty’s Government. Perhaps you will be pleased to charge me with
some additional assurances of this kind.’
“The Emperor’s words and manner, although still very kind, showed that
His Majesty _had no intention of speaking to me of the demonstration
which he is about to make in the South_. He said, however, at first
with a little hesitation, but, as he proceeded, in an open and
unhesitating manner—‘The affairs of Turkey are in a very disorganised
condition; the country itself seems to be falling to pieces (_menace
ruine_); the fall will be a great misfortune, and it is very important
that England and Russia should come to a perfectly good understanding
upon these affairs, and that neither should take any decisive step of
which the other is not apprised.’
“I observed in a few words, that I rejoiced to hear that His Imperial
Majesty held this language; that this was certainly the view I took of
the manner in which Turkish questions were to be treated.
“‘Tenez,’ the Emperor said, as if proceeding with his remark, ‘tenez;
nous avons sur les bras un homme malade—un homme gravement malade; ce
sera, je vous le dis franchement, un grand malheur si, un de ces
jours, il devait nous échapper, surtout avant que toutes les
dispositions nécessaires fussent prises. Mais enfin ce n’est point le
moment de vous parler de cela.’
“It was clear that the Emperor did not intend to prolong the
conversation. I therefore said, ‘Votre Majesté est si gracieuse
qu’elle me permettra de lui faire encore une observation. Votre
Majesté dit que l’homme est malade; c’est bien vrai, mais votre
Majesté daignera m’excuser si je lui fais observer, que c’est à
l’homme généreux et fort de ménager l’homme malade et faible.’
“The Emperor then took leave of me in a manner which conveyed the
impression of my having, at least, not given offence, and again
expressed his intention of sending for me on some future day.”
It is proper to subjoin Sir Hamilton Seymour’s own impressions of this
interview, as communicated to Lord John Russell.
“Your Lordship will pardon me if I remark that, after reflecting
attentively upon my conversation with the Emperor, it appears to me
that this, and any overture of the kind which may be made, tends to
establish a dilemma by which it is very desirable that Her Majesty’s
Government should not allow themselves to be fettered. The dilemma
seems to be this:—If her Majesty’s Government do not come to an
understanding with Russia as to what is to happen in the event of the
sudden downfall of Turkey, they will have the less reason for
complaining if results displeasing to England should be prepared. If,
on the contrary, Her Majesty’s Government should enter into the
consideration of such eventualities, they make themselves in some
degree consenting parties to a catastrophe which they have so much
interest in warding off as long as possible.
The sum is probably this:—That England has to desire a close concert
with Russia, with a view to preventing the downfall of Turkey; while
Russia would be well pleased that the concert should apply to the
events by which this downfall is to be followed.”
In a postscript to this despatch, we learn that the Emperor had
communicated _to the Austrian Minister_ the tenor of the above
conversation. That circumstance is, to say the least of it, significant.
Five days afterwards, Sir Hamilton Seymour waited upon the Emperor, at
the request of the latter, and was favoured from the imperial lips with
a remarkably choice specimen of what our Irish friends denominate
_blarney_. The Czar began by asseverating that he had not the least
intention of increasing the extent of his territorial dominions. The
only danger, he said, which he could foresee to Russia would arise from
an extension given to an empire already too large. From this general
statement he presently condescended to particulars.
“Close to us lies Turkey, and, in our present condition, nothing
better for our interests can be desired; the times have gone by when
we had anything to fear from the fanatical spirit or the military
enterprise of the Turks, and yet the country is strong enough, or has
hitherto been strong enough, to preserve its independence, and to
insure respectful treatment from other countries.”
These were, we venture to think, injudicious premises on the part of the
Emperor, for they are tantamount to an admission that Turkey, if left
alone, was quite able to maintain its own position. We are not quite
sure that the same could be said of Austria, which, but a few years ago,
owed its integrity to the intervention of Russian bayonets. Be that as
it may, the Emperor went on to state that he had the right of
surveillance over some millions of Christians in the Ottoman empire—a
right which he regarded as a duty, but used sparingly, because it was
“attended with obligations occasionally very inconvenient.” And then we
arrive at a statement, quite inconsistent, we think, with what had gone
before.
“Now, Turkey, in the condition which I have described, has by degrees
fallen into such a state of decrepitude, that, as I told you the other
night, _eager as we all are for the prolonged existence of the man_
(and that I am as desirous as you can be for the continuance of his
life, I beg you to believe), he may suddenly die upon our hands (_nous
rester sur les bras_); we cannot resuscitate what is dead: if the
Turkish empire falls, it falls to rise no more; and I put it to you,
therefore, whether it is not better to be provided beforehand for a
contingency, than to incur the chaos, confusion, and the certainty of
a European war, all of which must attend the catastrophe if it should
occur unexpectedly, and before some ulterior system has been sketched?
This is the point to which I am desirous that you should call the
attention of your Government.”
We had better give _in extenso_ the conversation which immediately
followed; because we think that Sir Hamilton Seymour might, without any
breach of propriety, have used more decided language than he did employ,
with regard to the view likely to be taken by the British Cabinet. We
are quite aware of the difficulties of an ambassador in such a
situation; still we cannot avoid the conclusion that Sir H. Seymour was
unnecessarily timid, and not nearly decided enough in the tone which he
assumed. He objected, indeed, but the objection was rather feeble; which
was unfortunate, as his principal in England immediately adopted the
like inconclusive tone.
“‘Sir,’ I replied, ‘your Majesty is so frank with me that I am sure
you will have the goodness to permit me to speak with the same
openness. I would then observe that, deplorable as is the condition of
Turkey, it is a country which has long been plunged in difficulties
supposed by many to be insurmountable. With regard to contingent
arrangements, her Majesty’s Government, as your Majesty is well aware,
objects, as a general rule to taking engagements upon possible
eventualities, and would, perhaps, be particularly disinclined to
doing so in this instance. If I may be allowed to say so, a great
disinclination (_répugnance_) might be expected in England to
disposing by anticipation (_d’escompter_) of the succession of an old
friend and ally.’
“‘The rule is a good one,’ the Emperor replied, ‘good at all times,
especially in times of uncertainty and change, like the present: still
it is of the greatest importance that we should understand one an
other, and not allow events to take us by surprise; maintenant je
désire vous parler en ami et en _gentleman_; si nous arrivons à nous
entendre sur cette affaire, l’Angleterre et moi, pour le reste peu
m’importe; il m’est indifferent ce que font ou pensent les autres.
Usant donc de franchise, je vous dis nettement, que si l’Angleterre
songe à s’établir un de ces jours à Constantinople, je ne le
permettrai pas; je ne vous prête point ces intentions, mais il vaut
mieux dans ces occasions parler clairement; de mon côté, je suis
également disposé de prendre l’engagement de ne pas m’y établir, _en
propriétaire il s’entend, car en dépositaire je ne dis pas_; il
pourrait se faire que les circonstances me misent dans le cas
d’occuper Constantinople, si rien ne se trouve prévu, si l’on doit
tout laisser aller au hazard.’
“I thanked his Majesty for the frankness of his declarations, and for
the desire which he had expressed of acting cordially and openly with
her Majesty’s Government, observing at the same time that such an
understanding appeared the best security against the sudden danger to
which his Majesty had alluded. I added that, although unprepared to
give a decided opinion upon questions of such magnitude and delicacy,
it appeared to me possible that some such arrangement might be made
between her Majesty’s Government and his Majesty as might guard, if
not for, at least against certain contingencies.
“To render my meaning more clear,” I said, further, “I can only
repeat, Sir, that in my opinion her Majesty’s Government will be
indisposed to make certain arrangements connected with the downfall of
Turkey, _but it is possible that they may be ready to pledge
themselves against certain arrangements which might, in that event, be
attempted_.”
We have no desire whatever to reflect upon the conduct of the prudence
of Sir Hamilton Seymour, but we cannot help saying that he seems to have
missed one very material point—that being _a distinct explanation of the
quarter from which the anticipated danger to Turkey was to arise_. Sir
Hamilton was perfectly justified in intimating that Britain did not
intend to subvert the integrity of Turkey, and that she would not be
passive if France were to manifest such a design. There was no earthly
danger from either quarter; and certainly Austria, whatever she may wish
to have or is ready to receive, would not have dared, under existing
circumstances, to disturb the peace of Europe. Turkey itself was in a
far better position than it ever had been. “L’homme gravement malade,”
was exhibiting every symptom of convalescence, and the only danger to be
apprehended was from the Muscovite doctor, who, without being summoned,
was preparing to administer his pills. Therefore, we think that the
rejoinder to the Emperor’s confidences—subject, of course, to the
official Cabinet approval—should have been in the shape of a query as to
the nature of the apprehended danger. The Czar had protested, in the
most emphatic language, that he was “eager for the prolonged existence
of the man;” and, if that were the case, his dissolution was an event
much less likely than that of many a dynasty of Christian Europe. With
Russia and Britain as determined protectors, who was to give him the
_coup-de-grace_? Surely Sir Hamilton Seymour erred in not putting that
point more forcibly and distinctly in his confidential conversations
with the Emperor.
We say this, because the last paragraph in Sir Hamilton Seymour’s
despatch, of 22d January 1853, to Lord John Russell shows that he was
not altogether uninfluenced by the Imperial blandishments and
affectation of perfect sincerity.
“A noble triumph would be obtained by the civilisation of the
nineteenth century if the void left by the extinction of Mahommedan
rule in Europe could be filled up without an interruption of the
general peace, in consequence of the precautions adopted by the two
principal Governments the most interested in the destinies of Turkey.”
Precautions indeed! Precautions which would have made Russia, without
assuming the name of proprietor, the virtual and absolute occupier of
Constantinople, with the power of the keys of the Bosphorus! It is
marvellous that so acute a minister as Sir Hamilton Seymour—who
otherwise deserves great praise for his lucid exposition of the designs
and motives of the Czar—did not perceive that any approach to an
arrangement for disposing of the inheritance, was tantamount to a
declaration of the immediate dissolution of Turkey.
In answer to these communications, Lord John Russell, on the 9th
February, forwarded a despatch, of the wisdom of which it is for the
public to form their own opinion. It commences with an acknowledgment of
“the moderation, the frankness, and the friendly disposition of his
Imperial Majesty.” Why the first of these terms should have been
employed, we really do not comprehend. Then Lord John, adverting to the
indirect proposal of the Emperor, observes that—“In considering this
grave question, the first reflection which occurs to Her Majesty’s
Government is, that no actual crisis has occurred which renders
necessary a solution of this vast European problem”—that “there is no
sufficient cause for intimating to the Sultan that he cannot keep peace
at home, or preserve friendly relations with his neighbours”—and that
“it occurs further to her Majesty’s Government to remark that the event
which is contemplated is not definitely fixed in point of time.” After
pointing out the impropriety as well as the impolicy of devising a
partition for providing for a settlement under such circumstances, Lord
John intimates, in tolerably distinct terms, that “neither England nor
France, nor probably Austria, would be content to see Constantinople
permanently in the hands of Russia.” He then draws the following
conclusions:—
“Upon the whole, then, Her Majesty’s Government are persuaded that no
course of policy can be adopted more wise, more disinterested, more
beneficial to Europe, than that which His Imperial Majesty has so long
followed, and which will render his name more illustrious than that of
the most famous sovereigns who have sought immortality by unprovoked
conquest and ephemeral glory.
“With a view to the success of this policy, it is desirable that the
utmost forbearance should be manifested towards Turkey; that any
demands which the Great Powers of Europe may have to make should be
made matter of friendly negotiation rather than of peremptory demand;
that military and naval demonstrations to coerce the Sultan should as
much as possible be avoided; that differences with respect to matters
affecting Turkey, within the competence of the Sublime Porte, should
be decided after mutual concert between the great powers, and not be
forced upon the weakness of the Turkish Government.”
To this succeeds a passage which we cannot help considering as
unfortunate, because it gives decided colour to the Russian pretext,
that a protectorate over Turkey was necessary for securing the rights of
the Christian inhabitants. There was no occasion whatever for its
introduction, especially as the Emperor had not thought it necessary to
ask advice upon the subject:—
“To these cautions Her Majesty’s Government wish to add, that in their
view it is essential that the Sultan should be advised to treat his
Christian subjects in conformity with the principles of equity and
religious freedom which prevail generally among the enlightened
nations of Europe. The more the Turkish Government adopts the rules of
impartial law and equal administration, the less will the Emperor of
Russia find it necessary to apply that exceptional protection which
his Imperial Majesty has found so burdensome and inconvenient, though
no doubt prescribed by duty and sanctioned by treaty.
We observe that the _Times_, notwithstanding its notorious ministerial
leaning, has declined awarding praise to this state document, and we are
not surprised at it. It is dissuasive and declinatory, but it is
altogether feeble. We should have expected to find in it, not
hypocritical acknowledgments of Imperial moderation and so forth, but a
distinct, firm, and energetic protest against any attempt to disturb the
peace, or to violate the integrity of Turkey. The infamous proposals
made to Britain—for they were infamous not only as regarded Turkey but
other European powers—should have been rejected in a manner that could
have left no doubt in the mind of the Czar as to the part which the
British Government was prepared to take in the event of his entering
into hostilities with the Sultan. From the beginning to the end of this
despatch there is not a single word which can be construed into a plain
warning to the Czar, that any attempt made by him upon Turkey would
provoke the hostility of Britain. On the contrary, the declinature to
participate in the scheme is mainly founded on the fact that no “actual
crisis” has yet arrived; but there is nothing said to indicate that
Britain would oppose the forcing on of such a crisis, if Russia thought
proper to precipitate it; and a more unlucky expression than “_that the
event which was contemplated is not definitely fixed in point of time_”
it is utterly impossible to conceive. The perusal of this despatch could
leave no other impression upon the mind of the Czar, than that the
British Ministry were afraid to commit themselves by entering into any
secret or separate treaty with Russia for the disposal of the Turkish
dominions, until a crisis actually should occur. That they would have
preferred the maintenance of the _status quo_ to a disturbance of it,
was tolerably clear; but it was not in the least degree clear that they
would take umbrage at an act of aggression, or be indisposed to treat
with Russia after the aggression was made, and the weakness of the
Ottoman empire exhibited by its being forced to succumb to the attack of
the northern Colossus. The despatch, in short, was not couched in such
manly, distinct, and positive terms as a British Secretary of State for
foreign affairs should have employed on such an occasion. It is weak,
timid, and almost subservient; and we are not in the least degree
surprised to find that the Czar considered that it gave him sufficient
encouragement again to renew his attack. Here is an extract from his
next conversation with the British envoy, Sir Hamilton Seymour.
“‘I think your Government does not well understand my object. I am not
so eager about what shall be done when the sick man dies, as I am to
determine with England what shall not be done upon that event taking
place.’
“‘But, sir,’ I replied, ‘allow me to observe, that we have no reason
to think that the sick man (to use your Majesty’s expression) is
dying. We are as much interested as we believe your Majesty to be in
his continuing to live; while, for myself, I will venture to remark
that experience shows me that countries do not die in such a hurry.
Turkey will remain for many a year, unless some unforeseen crisis
should occur. It is precisely, sir, for the avoidance of all
circumstances likely to produce such a crisis that Her Majesty’s
Government reckons upon your generous assistance.’
“‘Then,’ rejoined the Emperor, ‘I will tell you that, if your
Government has been led to believe that Turkey retains any elements of
existence, your Government must have received incorrect information. I
repeat to you, that the sick man is dying; and we can never allow such
an event to take us by surprise. We must come to some understanding;
and this we should do, I am convinced, if I could hold but ten
minutes’ conversation with your Ministers—with Lord Aberdeen, for
instance, who knows me so well, who has full confidence in me, as I
have in him. And, remember, I do not ask for a treaty or a protocol; a
general understanding is all I require—that between gentlemen is
sufficient; and in this case I am certain that the confidence would be
as great on the side of the Queen’s Ministers as on mine.’”
The despatch, containing the report of this conversation, was written on
the 21st February, and received at the Foreign Office on 6th March 1853;
so that the Emperor Nicholas, whatever may be thought of his conduct
otherwise, cannot be justly charged with deliberate perfidy in
concealing his views from our Government. Indeed, Sir Hamilton Seymour,
in this very document, gave Lord John Russell a distinct intimation of
the real objects of the Czar.
“It can hardly be otherwise but that the Sovereign, who insists with
such pertinacity upon the impending fall of a neighbouring state, must
have settled in his own mind that the hour, if not of its dissolution,
at all events for its dissolution, must be at hand.
“Then, as now, I reflected that this assumption would hardly be
ventured upon unless some, perhaps general, but at all events intimate
understanding, existed _between Russia and Austria_.
“Supposing my suspicion to be well founded, the Emperor’s object is to
engage Her Majesty’s Government, in conjunction with his own Cabinet
and that of Vienna, in some scheme for the ultimate partition of
Turkey, and for the exclusion of France from the arrangement.”
On the following day a more particular, and, if possible, more
interesting, conversation took place between the Czar and the British
envoy. We regret extremely that our limits will not allow us to detail
this so fully as we could wish, but we shall advert to the principal
points, which were in the form of a commentary upon Lord John Russell’s
despatch. The Emperor began by saying,—
“That he was, perhaps, even more interested than England could be in
preventing a Turkish catastrophe, but that it was constantly
impending; that it might be brought about at any moment, either by an
external war, or by a feud between the old Turkish party and that of
the ‘new superficial French reforms,’ or again, by a rising of the
Christians, already known to be very impatient of shaking off the
Mussulman yoke. As regards the first cause, the Emperor said that he
had a good right to advert to it, inasmuch as, if he had not stopped
the victorious progress of General Diebitch in 1829, the Sultan’s
authority would have been at an end.”
Next he descanted upon what could _not_ be permitted in the event of a
break-up of the Ottoman empire. This is perhaps the most curious passage
of the whole.
“‘Well, there are several things which I never will tolerate; I will
begin by ourselves. I will not tolerate _the permanent occupation_ of
Constantinople by the Russians; having said this, I will say that it
never shall be held by the English, or French, or any other great
nation. Again, I never will permit an attempt at the reconstruction of
a Byzantine empire, or such an extension of Greece as would render her
a powerful state; still less will I permit the breaking up of Turkey
into little republics, asylums for the Kossuths and Mazzinis, and
other revolutionists of Europe; rather than submit any of these
arrangements I would go to war, and as long as I have a man and a
musket left would carry it on. These,’ the Emperor said, ‘are at once
some ideas; now give me some in return.’”
This was an awkward demand, but Sir H. Seymour seems to have acquitted
himself with sufficient adroitness. He put the following case: “How
would it be if, in the event of any catastrophe occurring in Turkey,
Russia and England were to declare that no Power should be allowed to
take possession of its provinces; that the property should remain, as it
were, under seals, until amicable arrangements could be made as to its
adjudication?” Of course this notion could not be countenanced; and the
Emperor’s reply allowed Sir Hamilton the opportunity of making the
following remark:—
“‘Sir,’ I then observed, ‘if your Majesty will allow me to speak
plainly, I would say that the great difference between us is this—that
you continue to dwell upon the fall of Turkey, and the arrangements
requisite before and after the fall; and that we, on the contrary,
look to Turkey remaining where she is, and to the precautions which
are necessary for preventing her condition from becoming worse.’ ‘Ah!’
replied the Emperor, ‘that is what the Chancellor is perpetually
telling me; but the catastrophe will occur some day, and will take us
all unawares.’”
Then follows a passage of very great interest at the present moment,
when the course which Austria may adopt is still matter of speculation.
Our impression has been, and is, that she will ultimately co-operate
with Russia.
“Being desirous, if possible, of ascertaining whether there was any
understanding between the Cabinets of St Petersburg and Vienna, I
added, ‘But your Majesty has forgotten Austria; now all these Eastern
questions affect her very nearly; she, of course, would expect to be
consulted.’ ‘Oh!’ replied the Emperor, greatly to my surprise, ‘but
you must understand that when I speak of Russia I speak of Austria as
well: what suits the one suits the other; our interests as regards
Turkey are perfectly identical.’ I should have been glad to make
another inquiry or two upon this subject, but I did not venture to do
so.”
Next comes the bribe—for we can call it nothing else—implied in the
Emperor’s statement, already quoted, that he saw no reason why, in the
event of the dissolution of the Ottoman empire, Great Britain should not
obtain possession of Egypt and Candia! And so completely does he seem to
have considered that point settled, that a few days afterwards, and
without any further intercourse with Britain (for so we are given to
understand), a confidential memorandum, dictated by the Czar, and
containing the following passage, was placed in the hands of Sir
Hamilton Seymour:—
“In short, the Emperor cannot but congratulate himself at having given
occasion for this intimate interchange of confidential communications
between Her Majesty and himself. He has found therein valuable
assurances, of which he takes note with a lively satisfaction. The two
Sovereigns have frankly explained to each other, what in the extreme
case of which they have been treating, their respective interests
cannot endure. England understands that Russia cannot suffer the
establishment at Constantinople of a Christian Power sufficiently
strong to control and disquiet her. She declares, that for herself she
renounces any intention or desire to possess Constantinople. The
Emperor equally disclaims any wish or design of establishing himself
there. England promises that she will enter into no arrangement for
determining the measures to be taken in the event of the fall of the
Turkish empire, without a previous understanding with the Emperor. The
Emperor, on his side, willingly contracts the same engagement. As he
is aware that in such a case he can equally reckon upon Austria, who
is bound by her promises to concert with him, he regards with less
apprehension the catastrophe which he still desires to prevent, and
avert as much as it shall depend on him to do so.”
This is, perhaps, the most extraordinary note that was ever issued. If
founded upon nothing else than Lord John Russell’s single despatch of
9th February 1853, it is an attempt to make a memorandum supply the
place of a treaty, and that not with regard to existing circumstances,
but to a contingency involving the destruction of an ally. The Emperor
must, indeed, have had great faith in the subserviency of the British
Cabinet to his views, before he could have ventured on such a step. Lord
Clarendon now comes into action, as the successor of Lord John Russell
in the Home Office; but we need not pursue the correspondence further
than to say, that it was conducted on the same principle of
remonstrance, though very feeble on the part of the British Minister,
against the assumption that Turkey was absolutely in a critical state,
and of assertion to the contrary on the part of the Czar. His object was
to alienate Britain from France—to keep the latter power out of any
arrangement which might be made for the partition of the Turkish
territories—and to hasten the crisis as fast as possible, in order that
Britain might be compelled to come to definite terms. Lord Clarendon’s
despatches are couched in terms quite unworthy of his position. Lord
John Russell, who had primarily to state the views of the British
Cabinet, may be excused for a certain weakness of expression; but no
such apology can be made for Lord Clarendon, who was bound emphatically
to have informed the Czar that this country disdained his proposals, and
was prepared, at any hazard, to maintain the integrity of Turkey. We say
that he was bound to have done so, on the supposition that the Aberdeen
Ministry disapproved of the partition of Turkey, and were prepared, by
force of arms, to oppose it. Disapproval is of two kinds: There is the
faint remonstrance, which is usually considered to imply reluctant
consent; and there is strong distinct denial, which cannot possibly be
misinterpreted. We find no such strong distinct denial in Lord
Clarendon’s despatches. They are filled with almost fulsome adulation of
the Czar, who had previously tendered a bribe. Thus, in the despatch of
23d March, we find the following passage:—
“The generous confidence exhibited by the Emperor entitles His
Imperial Majesty to the most cordial declaration of opinion on the
part of Her Majesty’s Government, who are fully aware that, in the
event of any understanding with reference to future contingencies
being expedient, or indeed possible, the word of His Imperial Majesty
would be preferable to any convention that could be framed.”
Scarce less miserably sycophantish are the terms of the despatch of
April 5th. “My despatch of the 23d ult. will have furnished you with
answers upon all the principal points alluded to in the memorandum which
Count Nesselrode placed in your hands; but it is my duty to inform you
that that important and remarkable document was received by her
Majesty’s Government with feelings of sincere satisfaction, as a renewed
proof of the Emperor’s confidence and friendly feelings; and her
Majesty’s Government desire to convey their acknowledgments to his
Imperial Majesty for having thus placed on record the opinions he
expressed at the interview with which you were honoured by his Imperial
Majesty.”
We do not profess to know much about the language of diplomacy; but if
these are the sort of terms to be addressed to an avowed disturber of
the peace of Europe, who has attempted to engage us in a conspiracy by
offer of a bribe, we are at a loss to know what language can afford by
way of adequate encomium to a really honest ally. The excuse of sincere
belief in the sincerity of the Czar is entirely precluded by the terms
of the previous communications from Sir Hamilton Seymour, which not only
indicate but demonstrate the game which the Autocrat was playing. It is
certainly remarkable to observe the extreme cordiality with which the
Emperor greeted the accession of his old friend, Lord Aberdeen, to
power, and the fervency of his wishes for his long continuance in
office. Immediately thereafter—or rather on the same occasion—he begins
to develop his designs upon Turkey, states his prognosis of the
condition of the sick gentleman, and requests to be informed what are
our views as to the partition of his property. Our Ministers demur as to
the fact of the sickness; but the Imperial Doctor assures them that it
is so, or shall immediately be so, and states that he will be contented
with a temporary occupation of the dying man’s domicile—the catastrophe
to be hastened by a bolus of his own administration—but that we are
perfectly welcome to seize upon certain outlying hereditaments! And in
return to such proposals, which, if agreed to, would have made us
deservedly infamous throughout Europe, the Ministers of Queen Victoria
think fit to beslaver the Czar! Since the days of Charles II. England
has seen no similar instance of adulation to a foreign potentate.
The correspondence is now before the world, and the public must decide
whether it is such as to justify Lord Aberdeen’s assertion, in reply to
Lord Derby, “that if he thought it would be found to contain anything on
which a charge could be founded against the Government, he would find
himself egregiously mistaken.” Undoubtedly they are not chargeable with
connivance—but they are chargeable with incapacity and misconduct so
gross, that even connivance could not have produced effects more
disastrous. If they did not play directly into the hands of the Czar,
they failed to make him aware of the part which they were bound to take
should he persist in his nefarious designs. They manifested no kind of
honourable indignation at his offers; they received his cajolements with
complacency, and paid him back with compliments and assurances not one
whit more sincere than his own. If this really is the style in which our
diplomatic intercourse is usually conducted, there is ample room for a
reform. They cannot with justice assert that the Emperor was keeping
them in the dark as to the nature of his own projects. He was, on the
contrary, particularly frank. He insisted, over and over again, that
Turkey was on the eve of dissolution; he even indicated that he might
himself be the agent to force on that catastrophe—and yet Lord Aberdeen
and his colleagues are now maintaining that he had deceived them! How,
where, and when were they deceived? He showed them the victim,
prophesied his immediate death, intimated that the fatal deathblow might
be given by his hand, told them that he was in accord with Austria,
invited them to declare their wishes as to the subsequent partition, and
emphatically assured them that there was no time to be lost. Let us call
things by their proper names. Stigmatise the conduct of the Czar, if you
will, as ambitious, tyrannical, unprincipled, or nefarious—but do not
accuse him of having concealed his purpose from the British Ministry.
Were the Ministers then so blind that they failed to perceive his
purpose? Of course they were not. The Cabinet which contained Lords
Aberdeen and Palmerston, both of them experienced in foreign affairs,
could be at no loss to divine his meaning, even if that had been more
obscurely expressed; and consequently we must conclude that so early as
March 1853 they were put thoroughly on their guard. They were aware that
the Czar meditated the destruction of the Ottoman empire, and having
that knowledge, every movement of his in the East, whether diplomatic or
military, could only be regarded as progressive means towards the end
proposed.
Now there were two courses open to Ministers. The one was to have
intimated at once, without any circumlocution or compliment, that Great
Britain would not submit to any invasion of the Turkish territories on
the part of a European power, but would be prepared, by force of arms,
to resist any such attempt. That would have been a manly and honourable
course; and we are satisfied that, if adopted, the Czar would not have
had the temerity to provoke a crisis. Unfortunately no declaration was
made. A faint dissuasive, accompanied by an immense deal of
complimentary sugar, was all that our Ministers ventured to tender; and
the Czar was accordingly allowed to proceed, under the evident
impression that Great Britain would not actively interfere to prevent
his designs upon Turkey, any more than she interfered to prevent those
of his ancestress upon Poland.
The other course was to have maintained a strict neutrality, and to have
treated the Eastern question as an affair entirely between Russia and
Turkey. To that, however, it is more than doubtful whether the people of
this country would have submitted. The appetite of Russia for
territorial aggrandisement is so insatiable, and her advances have been
pushed so far, that the virtual cession to her of so fair and fertile a
country as Turkey, and the entire command of the entrance to the Black
Sea, would, very justly, have been deemed an act of culpable cowardice.
Setting aside the position of India, and the facilities which the
occupation of Turkey would afford for any hostile demonstration upon
that part of our dominions, we have now, in consequence of Free Trade, a
direct interest in the Danubian Principalities, as so many granaries for
our home consumption. Since we ceased to act upon the principle of
growing corn for our own population, and made ourselves dependent upon
foreign supplies, it would be suicidal to give Russia the power of
cutting us short both in the north and on the south—in the Baltic and
the Black Seas. Still that was the only other course which Ministers
could consistently have adopted, if they wished to avoid or postpone the
terrible calamity of a war.
They followed neither the one course nor the other. They did not tell
the Czar that, if he persisted in the schemes which he had disclosed to
them, he must be prepared to meet Britain in the field; nor did they
tell him that, in so far as they were concerned, he might do what he
pleased with Turkey. THEY HALTED BETWEEN TWO OPINIONS. In full knowledge
of his designs, they allowed him to commit himself—to pick a quarrel
with Turkey about some rubbish relating to the keys of the Holy
Places—to march his forces across the Pruth—to occupy the
Principalities,—to do, in short, the work of one effective campaign.
They never intimated to the country that the religious questions,—on
which Russia, with scandalous hypocrisy, rested her justification of
invasion,—were mere pretexts to mask the avowed intentions of Nicholas.
They did not even send a fleet at once to Constantinople, but kept it
hovering between Malta and Besika Bay, in the attitude of observation,
long after the Russian guns were roaring upon the Danube. Is it fair to
suppose that Nicholas,—after having frankly communicated to them his
intentions more than a twelvemonth ago; after having told them that the
sick gentleman was sure to die immediately; and after having taken
measures to secure the fulfilment of that prophecy,—could consider their
late hesitating and dilatory movement as otherwise than a convenient
sham? It must have appeared to him that if the British Government was
determined to oppose his project, they would at once have said so, with
the same openness which he manifested in his communications to them.
They said nothing of the kind. They gave him fulsome compliments. Of
course he went farther, and marched into the sick man’s territory. What
did our Ministers then? _They concealed what they knew_, and entered
into negotiations about the Russian Protectorate of Christian subjects
in Turkey, as if that were the sole point which had occasioned the
disturbance! What, under such circumstances, could the Czar conceive,
but that they were playing into his hands? He had apprised them, in
almost as many words, that he intended to take possession of Turkey, so
that they knew perfectly well that the question involved was not one of
religion, but of political aggrandisement. It was, however, his policy
to make it appear to the uninitiated that religion was his paramount
motive; and when the British Cabinet began to negotiate and issue notes
upon that footing, he was, after the confidential correspondence which
had taken place, fairly entitled to believe that they were not in
earnest. The Czar is a remarkably able man—we question whether,
politically speaking, he is not the ablest man in Europe—but his own
extraordinary position precludes him from understanding the effect of
public opinion in such a country as our own. He is accustomed to deal
with Cabinets, not with nations or parliaments; and he attributes more
power to the former than they possess, at least according to the
constitution of Great Britain. The British Cabinet cannot, like that of
Prussia or Austria, commit the country to a course which is inconsistent
with or derogatory to its honour.
In consequence of this irresolution on the part of our rulers, we are
now precipitated into war, and are already beginning to feel some of its
inconveniences. Let us now endeavour to ascertain the causes which have
led to so very serious a denouement as the disruption of the peace of
Europe. It is important that we should do so now, and not leave the
question entirely to the future speculation of historians.
During Lord Derby’s short tenure of office, relations of peculiar amity
had been established between Britain and France. Lord Malmesbury, than
whom no more able or judicious minister ever held the seals of the
Foreign Office, saw that the interests of civilisation not only in the
west, but throughout the whole of Europe, could only be maintained by a
close and permanent co-operation, and mutual good understanding between
these two countries; and he addressed himself to the task with equal
discretion and success. It is not too much to say that Britain and
France never were more cordially united and confidentially allied than
during the period we refer to. This, of course, was anything but
agreeable to the Czar, whose opportunity lay in a separation of the
interests of the two great powers of the West.
The dissolution of Lord Derby’s Government and the accession of the
Aberdeen Ministry effected a material alteration. The new Premier, Lord
Aberdeen, had been for a great many years on the most intimate footing
with the despotic Courts and Cabinets. He had not, it was true, the
ability of the Nesselrodes or Metternichs; but he was considered in the
highest diplomatic circles as a person who might easily be led, and upon
whom a certain show of deference would not be thrown away. It was
supposed, also, that he regarded with particular dislike the recent
changes in France, and was not favourable to the re-establishment of the
Empire under the rule of Napoleon III. This veteran ally of the despotic
powers was now associated with men whose former political opinions had
differed greatly from his, but who were openmouthed and unscrupulous in
their attacks upon the Emperor of the French. We need hardly remind our
readers of the highly reprehensible language which was employed by Sir
James Graham, and Sir Charles Wood—both of them Cabinet Ministers—in
respect to the Emperor Napoleon, or of the foul and scurrilous attacks
upon him with which, about the beginning of last year, the columns of
the Liberal press abounded. All that is changed now. There is, indeed,
plenty of invective and abuse, but it is directed towards another
quarter. The French Emperor, formerly pilloried by the Coalitionists,
has become the object of their laudation. The Russian Emperor, whom they
formerly lauded, is now put into the pillory.
Such being the declared views of the Coalitionists in regard to France,
it very naturally occurred to the Czar, that a more favourable
opportunity could not possibly arise for detaching Britain from the side
of France, and so rendering a future combination between these two
powers impracticable. Accordingly, as the published correspondence
shows, he did not lose a moment in opening his views to the British
envoy at St Petersburg: France, as we have seen, was not to be consulted
at all regarding the disposal of Turkey. Provided Britain and Russia
were of accord, it mattered nothing what view might be taken by any
other European power. France might do as she pleased, but the others
would be an overmatch for her. Here are the expressions which the
Emperor used on the 21st February:—
“His Imperial Majesty spoke of France. ‘God forbid,’ he said, ‘that I
should accuse any one wrongfully, but there are circumstances both at
Constantinople and Montenegro which are extremely suspicious; it looks
very much as if the French Government were endeavouring to embroil us
all in the East, hoping in this way the better to arrive at their own
objects, one of which, no doubt, is the possession of Tunis.’
“The Emperor proceeded to say that, for his own part, he cared very
little what line the French might think proper to take in Eastern
affairs, and that little more than a month ago he had apprised the
Sultan that if his assistance was required for resisting the menaces of
the French, it was entirely at the service of the Sultan!”
But for the temptation held out by the accession of the Coalition
Ministry to power in Great Britain, it is more than improbable that the
Czar would have made any overtures of the kind. But at the head of that
Ministry he saw Lord Aberdeen, “who knows me so well, who has full
confidence in me as I have in him”—the extent of that confidence being
marked by the statement, that he was convinced he could bring his
lordship to an understanding in the course of ten minutes’ conversation.
He had also remarked that at least two members of the Cabinet, in
violation both of decency and of their duty as Ministers of the Crown,
had been indulging in coarse and unmannerly invective against the
Sovereign of France; and, as a matter of course, he arrived at the
conclusion that they would be more ready to coalesce with him than to
ally themselves cordially with a government which they had spoken of in
public in such unexampled terms of contempt. In this calculation,
however, he was deceived. Wrong-headed as Lord John Russell is, we do
not believe that he would, for one moment, have allowed himself to
become a consenting party to such a flagitious transaction as the
partition of Turkey; and the same thing may be said of Lord Palmerston,
whose exclusion, through short-sighted jealousy, from the Foreign Office
at that particular time, we must regard as a national misfortune. But
that matters not in the consideration of the point before us. Both
circumstance and time concur to show that it was the accession of the
Coalition Ministry to power, and the unwarrantable language used by some
of its members towards the Emperor of France, that encouraged the Czar
to bring forward, and to put into shape, the project which, no doubt, he
had long entertained, but which could not be previously pursued for the
want of a fitting opportunity.
We regard, therefore, the formation of the Coalition Ministry in Britain
as the event which directly led to the original overture—the hopes of
the Czar being founded upon the political connections and understood
tendencies of Lord Aberdeen, and also on the declared aversion of some
of his colleagues to the head of the French Government. But for the
formation of that Ministry the designs of Russia upon Turkey would have
been postponed.
We have already commented upon the course which was pursued by the
Ministry from the time when they were apprized of the designs of the
Czar, down to that when the Danubian Principalities were invaded. We
have expressed our opinion that a serious remonstrance, coupled with a
plain intimation that Great Britain would not permit an occupation of
the Turkish territory, would have sufficed during the earlier part of
last year, and before any overt step was taken, to have deterred the
Czar from proceeding with his project. We ground that view upon the
policy which has been invariably pursued by Russia—which is to bully and
cajole, not to fight. Let us grant that the possession of Constantinople
is the darling project of the Czar—let us grant that, in order to attain
it, he would run considerable risk, and submit to extraordinary
sacrifices; still we are of opinion that had he been aware, before
utterly committing himself, that he would be opposed by the combined
forces of Britain and France, he never would have plunged into the
contest. See what he risks. First, the annihilation of his fleets, both
in the Baltic and in the Black Sea, for he can hardly hope to contend
with Britain and France upon the waters. Next, the derangement and
stoppage of trade, so vital to the real interests of Russia, and
equivalent to a sentence of bankruptcy against many of her nobles and
merchants, who depend entirely upon the amount and continuance of their
exports. Then there are the chances of insurrection in Poland, and
revolt in Finland; and the certainty that Russia, if worsted, will be so
dismembered as to prevent her from again disturbing the peace of Europe.
These are very serious considerations; and we may be certain that the
Czar, great as his appetite undoubtedly is for appropriation, would
rather have foregone his purposes upon Turkey, than have proceeded had
he believed that the two Western powers would be firm and united in
their resistance. Indeed, singular as it may appear, we are about to
engage in a war for which no one country in Europe is desirous. Britain,
with her eight hundred millions of debt, is by no means desirous to
increase the burden of taxation, or to imperil or impede that commerce
to which she owes so much of her greatness. In like manner France has no
interest to go to war, for she also is heavily burdened, and the present
Emperor has nothing so much at heart as to restore the state of the
finances. Austria has anything but an interest that war should take
place, for in that event, if she takes the side of Russia, there will be
immediate insurrection both in Hungary and Lombardy; and if she takes
the other side, she must quarrel with a very old partner in iniquity.
Prussia has no interest, for the age of subsidies has gone by, and she
is likely to suffer to whichever side she adheres; but most especially
if she adopts the cause of Russia. Neutral she cannot remain. We need
not say that Turkey, the state which is attacked, does not desire war;
and we are thoroughly convinced that the Czar, were he not committed so
deeply, would be glad to withdraw his pretensions. Now, who suffered him
to commit himself so deeply? We answer, the Coalition Ministry.
Had they been of one accord among themselves, nothing of this kind would
have happened. If Lord Aberdeen had been sole and supreme master in his
Cabinet, it is possible that Russia might have succeeded in acquiring a
protectorate over Turkey. The Sultan could hardly have attempted to
resist without powerful European aid; and France, had she found Britain
lukewarm or indifferent, could not be expected to come forward as the
defender of the balance of power without a single ally. No doubt, had
this occurred, it would have given Russia a most dangerous preponderance
in Europe, and probably necessitated a future struggle; but, in the mean
time, there would have been no war. Had the Cabinet been under the
guidance of Palmerston or Russell, the first advances of the Emperor, if
made at all, would have been met by a distinct and peremptory refusal,
and by a threat which would have effectually deterred him from moving a
step further. But unfortunately—most unfortunately for us, and for our
children, and for the general peace of Europe, this is _not_ a united
Cabinet. It is a congregation of men holding totally opposite
opinions—bred up in adverse schools—adhering to antagonistical
traditions—influenced by jealousy among themselves—and unable, upon any
one important point, whether it relates to foreign or domestic policy,
to arrive at a common conclusion. Take the case now before us. But for
Palmerston and Russell, and their other adherents in the Cabinet, Lord
Aberdeen might have established the principle of non-interference
between Russia and Turkey—and there would have been no war. But for Lord
Aberdeen and his adherents, Palmerston and Russell might have checked
the designs and met the overtures of the Czar, by declaring at once that
they would not suffer him to send a single soldier across the Pruth, and
that if he persisted in his design, they would invite the co-operation
of France, and defend Turkey to the uttermost—and in that case also
there would have been no war. But the Cabinet was split into two, if not
three, parties; and the adoption of a middle course, of feeble
dissuasion, unaccompanied by any hint of ulterior consequences, but
rather couched in terms of extreme and unworthy subserviency, deceived
the Czar, encouraged him to proceed,—and now war is all but declared,
and our fleet is riding in the Baltic. We have approached the subject in
anything but a party spirit—we have perused the correspondence, recently
published, over and over again, in the hope that we might gather from it
a justification of the course which the British Ministry has pursued—but
we are unable to arrive at any conclusion except this, that but for the
formation of the Coalition Cabinet, the ambitious schemes of Russia
would not have been developed; and that, but for its continuance and
internal divisions, those schemes would have been effectually checked.
In plain language, had it not been determined by a secret cabal that
Lord Derby’s Government should be overthrown by the most extraordinary
combination of parties ever known in this country, there would have been
no war; and it is right that the country should know to whom they are
indebted for the burdens which are now to be imposed upon us.
We do not object to the principle upon which the war proceeds. We think
it full time that the grasping ambition, insidious progress, and
inordinate arrogance of Russia should receive a check. It is to us
matter of pride and congratulation to know that, in the coming struggle,
the colours of Britain and France will be displayed side by side. But we
detest war, for its own sake, as fervently as any member of the Peace
Society can do, and we are perfectly alive to the awful consequences
which it entails. What we wish is, that the public should not
misapprehend the real cause of the present rupture of the peace of
Europe. That it originally arose from the exorbitant ambition of the
Czar, is beyond all question; but ambition can be controlled, and,
fortunately, the Czar is not yet master of the universe. Nay, he is not
yet master of Europe; for although, by spoliation and absorption, he has
secured to himself a vast extent of territory to which he had no
patrimonial claim; and although he exercises a great influence over
States which, in former times, have acquired accretions by unprincipled
subserviency to his house, he has yet to encounter the exerted power and
civilisation of the West. Had our Cabinet been united, and true to their
trust, that encounter might have been avoided. But it was not so. Some
of them were Russian, and some anti-Russian in their views, principles,
and antecedents; and so, in consequence of having a Coalition Ministry,
which, after being warned of the designs of Russia, egregiously bungled
our finance, and left us with a prospect of a deficit, we are to be
forced into a war of which no man can foresee the issue.
Let those who shudder at the cost, at least know to whom the cost is
due. We are now paying, and are likely to pay for a long time to come,
for the privilege of having a Coalition Ministry. But we submit, that
the continuance of such a form of government is not desirable. We have
shown, in regard to foreign affairs, and from evidence which cannot be
gainsayed, what are its results; we could show, if space allowed us, its
results upon domestic legislation. But we shall not enter into the
lesser topics now. We have, as yet, but touched upon a part of the
expediency of coalition; and our deliberate conclusion is, that to the
fact of the formation of the Coalition Ministry we must attribute the
development of the schemes of Russia, and to its extraordinary
vacillation and want of concert the catastrophe of a European war.
_Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh._
-----
Footnote 1:
_Histoire des Marionettes en Europe depuis l’antiquité jusqu’à nos
jours._ Par CHARLES MAGNIN, Member de l’Institut. Paris, 1852.
Footnote 2:
These common Italian marionettes have travelled far. Daniel Clarke
found them in Tartary, all the fashion amongst the Cossacks of the
Don.—_Vide_ his _Travels in Various Countries_, part I.; _Russia,
&c._, p. 233.
Footnote 3:
Casperle is a comic countryman, who replaced Jack Padding on the stage
of the Austrian puppet-shows, and became so popular that the principal
marionette theatre of the Vienna faubourgs received the name of the
Casperle Theatre, and the coin which was the price of a place in the
pit was called a casperle.
Footnote 4:
“You have exactly caught his manner of clearing his throat and
spitting, but as for his genius....”—_Wallenstein’s Lager_, Scene vi.
Footnote 5:
The accomplished and lamented author of La Chartreuse di Parme; Le
Rouge et le Noir; Rome, Naples, et Florence, &c. &c., of whose
complete works a new edition is now appearing at Paris, under the
editorship of his friend, M. Prosper Mérimée.
Footnote 6:
M. Magnin here refers to an engraving at page 47 of the fifth volume
of the _Théatre de la Foire_ (1722) to prove that Punch’s humps, both
in front and rear, were formerly much less prominent. It is easy to
understand how, in the hands of ignorant showmen and manufacturers of
puppets, that which was at first the reflection of a popular metaphor
(of origin difficult to trace) was exaggerated into a senseless and
scarcely ludicrous deformity. _Rire comme un bossu_, to laugh like a
hunchback, is to the present day one of the vulgarest of French
colloquial similes. It is not easy to say whence it arose, or why a
hump between the shoulders should render the bearer more prone to
laughter than his straighter made fellows.
Footnote 7:
Another strange office of the headsman, at least in some parts of
Germany, was to collect the periodical fine or impost levied from
houses of an infamous class. Some striking particulars of his various
opprobrious functions in the Middle Ages, which the peculiar genius of
the German people and their literature has environed with a ghastly
mystery that at times borders on the supernatural, is to be found in a
curious work, entitled _Das Malefiz Buch_, reviewed in Blackwood’s
Magazine for February 1848.
Footnote 8:
On the 31st May M. Drouyn de Lhuys wrote to Count Walewski, the French
Ambassador in London, in the following terms:—“Monsieur le Comte, as I
have already several times mentioned, there is by the side of
diplomatic negotiations another action to exercise, and it is the
attitude assumed by the Cabinet of St Petersburg itself which has
shown the necessity of it. When we knew that the army cantoned in the
south of Russia was on a war footing, that it was provisioned as on
the eve of a campaign—when the fleet at Sebastopol was ready to weigh
anchor—when considerable purchases of wood were made for throwing
bridges over the Pruth and the Danube—if all this did not indicate
that hostilities were declared, it at least showed that they were
approaching, and that their commencement only depended on a word. Who
could guarantee us that, under the influence of a first movement, that
word would not be pronounced at St Petersburg, and that, if it had
been, that the city of Constantinople would be protected from a _coup
de main_? It was a danger of this kind that we feared, and as, if it
were to be realised, the game would be lost at the outset, prudence
imposed on us the duty of doing everything to prevent it. In what
could such a measure of foresight more resemble a provocation than did
the armaments of Russia herself? Why should not France and England,
for the object of maintaining the treaty of 1841, have the right of
doing that which one of the Powers which signed that convention was
doing with such very different designs? Such are the considerations
which determined us to send our fleet to Salamis, and which we now
recommend to draw closer to the Dardanelles, not to take the
initiative in an aggression, not to encourage Turkey to refuse every
arrangement, but to secure her against an immediate danger, and to
reserve in case of need to diplomacy the resources which it would no
longer have if it had to struggle against _faits accomplis_.”
Footnote 9:
It is but fair to say that the noble Lord seemed to feel the sarcasm
conveyed in the term “beau,” as the word is translated “important” in
the papers laid before Parliament.
Footnote 10:
_Evenings in my Tent; or, Wanderings in Balad Ejjareed. Illustrating
the Moral, Social, and Political Conditions of various Arab Tribes of
the African Sahara._ By the Rev. W. Davis, F.R.S.S.A. 2 vols. London:
1854.
Footnote 11:
In January 1850 (_vide_ article “The Year of Reaction”), after
commenting on the interposition of Russia to save Austria in the
Hungarian war, we stated our belief that the Czar did not render such
a service to his brother-despot for nothing. “_It is more than
probable_,” we said, “_that a secret treaty, offensive and defensive,
already unites the two powers_; that the crushing of the Magyars was
bought by the condition that the extension of Muscovite influence in
Turkey was to be connived at; _and that the Czar will one day advance
to Constantinople without fear, because he knows that his right flank
is secure on the side of Austria_.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
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spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
3. Re-indexed footnotes using numbers and collected together at the end
of the last chapter.
4. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
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