"_Sunday, 4th._--Performed divine service myself! manfully

overcoming that horror which I have to the sound of my own voice

before an audience. In the evening landed again more to the

westward. Shore skirted by rocks; timber noble, and the forest

clear of brushwood, enabling us to penetrate with ease as far as

caution permitted. Traces of wild beasts numerous and recent, but

none discovered. Fresh-water streams coloured as yesterday, and the

trail of an alligator from one of them to the sea. This dark

forest, where the trees shoot up straight and tall, and are

succeeded by generation after generation varying in stature, but

struggling upward, strikes the imagination with pictures trite yet

true. It was thus I meditated in my walk. The foot of European, I

said, has never touched where my foot now presses--seldom the

native wanders here. Here, I, indeed, behold nature fresh from the

bosom of creation, unchanged by man, and stamped with the same

impress she originally bore! Here I behold God's design when He

formed this tropical land, and left its culture and improvement to

the agency of man! The Creator's gift as yet neglected by the

creature; and yet the time may be confidently looked for when the

axe shall level the forest, and the plough turn the ground."

Upon the 5th of August, a boat was sent to the island of Tulang-Talang,

where some Malays were seen; they were civil, and offered their

assistance. On the following morning the _bandar_ (or chief steward) of

the place came off in his canoe, and welcomed the new-comers. He assured

them of a happy reception from the Rajah, and took his leave, after

having been sumptuously entertained with sweetmeats and syrups, and

handsomely provided with three yards of red cloth, some tea, and a

little gunpowder. The great man himself, Muda Hassim, was, visited in

his town of Sar[=a]wak on the morning of the 15th. He received his

visitors in state, seated in his hall of audience, a large shed, erected

on piles. Sar[=a]wak is only the occasional residence of the Rajah, and

at the time of the ship's arrival he was detained there by a rebellion

in the interior. The town was found to be a mere collection of mud-huts,

containing about 1500 persons, and inhabited for the most part by the

Rajah, his family, and their attendants. The remaining population were

poor and squalid. "We sat," says Mr Brooke, "in easy and unreserved

converse, out of hearing of the rest of the circle. He expressed great

kindness to the English nation; and begged me to tell him _really_,

which was the most powerful nation, England or Holland; or, as he

significantly expressed, which is the 'cat and which is the rat?' I

assured him that England was the mouser, though in this country Holland

had most territory. We took our leave after he had intimated his

intention of visiting us to-morrow morning."

The visit was duly paid, and as duly returned. Tea, cigars, scissors,

knives, and biscuits, were distributed amongst the rajah and his suite,

and the friendliest understanding was maintained. Mr Brooke, however,

had come to Borneo for more serious business. Ceremonies being over, he

dispatched his interpreter, an Englishman, (Mr. Williamson by name,) to

the rajah, intimating his desire to travel to some of the Malay towns,

and especially into the country of the _Dyaks_. The request, it was

fully believed, would be refused; but, to the surprise of the asker,

leave was given, with the accompanying assurance, however, that the

Rajah was powerless amongst many Dyak tribes, and could not answer for

the adventurer's safety. Mr Brooke availed himself of the license, and

undertook to provide in other respects for himself. The _Dyaks_ are the

aborigines of Borneo, and share the country with the Malays and Chinese

who have made their homes in it. "There be land rats, and there be water

rats." There be also land Dyaks and water Dyaks; or, to use the language

of the country, _Dyak Darrat_ and _Dyak Laut_. Those of the sea vary in

their character and prospects, but, for the most part, they are powerful

communities, and desperate pirates, ravaging the coasts in immense

fleets, and robbing and murdering without discrimination. Their

language is similar to the Malay. The name of God amongst them is

Battara (the Avatara of the Hindoos.) They bury their dead, and in the

graves deposit a large portion of the property of the deceased,

consisting of gold ornaments, brass guns, jars, and arms. "Their

marriage ceremony consists in two fowls being killed, and the forehead

and breast of the young couple being touched with the blood; after which

the chief, or an old man, knocks their heads together several times, and

the ceremony is completed with mirth and feasting." The Dyak Darrats

inhabit an inconsiderable portion of the island, and are composed of

numerous tribes, all agreeing in their customs, and speaking the same

dialect. They are regarded as slaves by the Malays, and treated and

disposed of like beasts of burden. "We do not live," said one, "like

men; we are like monkeys; we are hunted from place to place; we have no

houses; and when we light a fire, we fear the smoke will draw our

enemies upon us." The appearance of these Dyaks, we are told, is very

prepossessing. They are of middle height, active, and good-natured in

their expression; the women not so good-looking, but as cheerful

tempered. "The dress of the men consists of a piece of cloth, about

fifteen feet long, passed between the legs, and fastened round the

loins, with the ends hanging before and behind; the head-dress is

composed of bark cloth, dyed bright yellow, and stuck up in front, so as

to resemble a tuft of feathers. The arms and legs are often ornamented

with rings of silver, brass, or shell; and necklaces are worn, made of

human teeth, or those of bears or dogs, or of white beads, in such

numberless strings as to conceal the throat. A sword on one side, a

knife and small betel-basket on the other, completes the ordinary

equipment of the males; but when they travel, they carry a basket slung

from the forehead, on which is a palm mat, to protect the owner and his

property from the weather. The women wear a short and scanty petticoat,

reaching from the loins to the knees, and a pair of black bamboo stays,

which are never removed except the wearer be _enceinte_. They have rings

of brass and red bamboo about the loins, and sometimes ornaments on the

arms; the hair is worn long; the ears of both sexes are pierced, and

ear-rings of brass inserted occasionally; the teeth of the young people

are sometimes filed to a point and discoloured, as they say that 'dogs

have white teeth.' They frequently dye their feet and hands of a bright

red or yellow colour; and the young people, like those of other

countries, affect a degree of finery and foppishness, whilst the elders

invariably lay aside all ornaments as unfit for a wise person, or one

advanced in years." The character given of these Dyaks is highly

favourable. They are pronounced grateful for kindness, industrious,

honest, simple, mild, tractable and hospitable, when well used. The word

of one may be taken before the oath of half a dozen Borneons. Their

ideas are limited enough; they reckon with their fingers and toes, and

few are arithmeticians beyond counting up to twenty. They can repeat the

operation, but they must record each twenty by making a knot in a

string.

It was to these people that Mr Brooke made more than one excursion

during his first visit to Sar[=a]wak. He met with no disaster, but he

stored up useful information for future conduct. Great morality and the

practice of many virtues distinguished the tribes he encountered,

although degraded as low as oppression and utter ignorance could bring

them. The men, he found, married but one wife, and concubinage was

unknown in their societies; cases of seduction and adultery were very

rare, and the chastity of the Dyak women was proverbial even amongst

their Malay rulers. Miserable as was the lot of these people, Mr Brooke

gathered from their morality and simplicity, hopes of their future

elevation. They have no forms of worship, no idea of future

responsibility; but they are likewise free from prejudice of every kind,

and therefore open, under skilful hands and tender applications, to the

conviction of truth, and to religious impressions. One tribe, the

Sibnowans, particularly struck Mr Brooke by their gentleness and

sweetness of disposition. But,

"Like the rest of the Dyaks," he informs us, "the Sibnowans _adorn_

their houses with the heads of their enemies; yet with them this custom

exists in a modified form. Some thirty skulls," he adds, "were hanging

from the roof of one apartment; and I was informed that they had many

more in their possession; all however, the heads of enemies, chiefly of

the tribe of Sazebus. On enquiring, I was told that it is indispensably

necessary a young man should procure a skull before he gets married. On

my urging that the custom would be more honoured in the breach than in

the observance, they replied, that it was established from time

immemorial, and could not be dispensed with. Subsequently, however,

Sejugali allowed that heads were very difficult to obtain now, and a

young man might sometimes get married by giving presents to his

ladye-love's parents; at all times they denied warmly ever obtaining any

heads but those of their enemies; adding, they were bad people, and

deserved to die.

"I asked a young unmarried man whether he would be obliged to get a head

before he could obtain a wife. He replied, 'Yes.' 'When would he get

one?' 'Soon.' 'Where would he go to get one?' 'To the Sazebus river.' I

mention these particulars in detail, as I think, had their practice

extended to taking the head of any defenceless traveller, or any Malay

surprised in his dwelling or boat, I should have wormed the secret out

of them."

The Dyaks, generally, are celebrated for the manufacture of iron. Their

forge is the simplest possible, and is formed by two hollow trees, each

about seven feet high, placed upright, side by side, in the ground. From

the lower extremity of these, two pipes of bamboo are conducted through

a clay bank three inches thick, into a charcoal fire; a man is perched

at the top of the trees, and pumps with two pistons, the suckers of

which are made with cocks' feathers, which, being raised and depressed

alternately, blow a regular stream of air into the fire. The soil

cultivated by these people was found to be excellent. In the course of

his wanderings, Mr Brooke lighted upon a Chinese colony, who, as is

customary with our new allies, were making the most of their advantages.

The settlement consisted of thirty men, genuine Chinese, and five women

of the mixed breed of Sambas. They had been but four or five months in

the country, and many acres were already cleared and under cultivation.

The head of the settlement, a Chinese of Canton, spoke of gold mines

which were abundant in the Sar[=a]wak mountains, and of antimony ore and

diamonds; the former, he said, might be had in any quantities.

Upon his return to Sar[=a]wak, Mr Brooke opened to the rajah the

business which had chiefly conducted him to his shores. He informed his

highness that, being a private gentleman, he had no interest in the

communication he was about to make; and that, being in no way connected

with government, his words came with no authority. At the same time, he

was, anxious for the interests of mankind, and more especially for the

wellbeing of the inhabitants of Borneo, which was the last Malay state

possessing any power, that the resources of a country so favoured by

Providence should be brought into the fullest play. To this end, he

suggested the opening of a trade with individual European merchants.

Sar[=a]wak was rich, and the territory around it produced many articles

well adapted for commercial intercourse--such as bees' wax, birds'

nests, rattans, antimony ore, and sago, which constituted the staple

produce of the country. And, in return for such commodities, merchants

of Singapore would gladly send from Europe such articles as would be

highly serviceable to the people of Borneo--gunpowder, muskets, and

cloths. Both parties would be benefited, and the comfort and happiness

of the Borneons greatly enhanced. There was much discussion on the

proposal, timidity and apprehension characterizing the questions and

answers of the Rajah.

The important interview at an end, Mr Brooke prepares for a return to

Singapore. "Never," says that gentleman, "was such a blazing as when we

left Sar[=a]wak; twenty-one guns I fired to the Rajah, and he fired

forty-two to me--at least we counted twenty-four, and they went on

firing afterwards, as long as ever we were in sight. The last words the

Rajah, Muda Hassim, said, as I took my leave, were--'Tuan Brooke, do not

forget me.'"

In August 1840, Mr Brooke arrived in Sar[=a]wak for the second time. He

had passed many months in cruising about the Archipelago, obtaining

valuable information respecting the language, habits, and history of the

race for whom he was concerned, and in collecting specimens of natural

history, which are said to be interesting in the highest degree. The

position of the Rajah had altered during his absence. The civil war or

rebellion which had, in the first instance, forced the governor to

reside in Sar[=a]wak, was not yet quelled. The rebels, indeed, were

within thirty miles of the rajah, and threatening an immediate attack.

Nothing could be more opportune than the return of Mr Brooke at this

critical moment. Muda Hassim begged his ancient friend not to desert him

in his extremity, and appealed to his honour, as a gentleman from

England, whether it would be fair to suffer him to be vanquished by the

traitorous revolt of his people. Mr Brooke felt that it would not, and

resolved to stand by the governor.

"A grand council of war," writes Mr Brooke in his journal, "was held, at

which were present Macota, Subtu, Abong Mia, and Datu Naraja, two

Chinese leaders, and myself--certainly a most incongruous mixture, and

one rarely to be met with. After much discussion, a move close to the

enemy was determined on for to-morrow; and on the following day to take

up a position near the defences. To judge by the sample of the council,

I should form very unfavourable expectations of their conduct in action.

Macota is lively and active; but, whether from indecision or want of

authority, undecided. The Capitan China is lazy and silent; Subtu

indolent and self-indulgent; Abong Mia and Datu Maraja stupid."

The army set off, and Mr Brooke availed himself of a friendly hill to

obtain a view of the country, and of the enemy's forts. The fort of

Balidah was the strongest of their defences, and a moment's observation

convinced him that a company of military might put an end to the war in

a few hours. This fort was situated at the water edge, on a slight

eminence on the right bank of a river; a few swivels and a gun or two

were in it, and around it a breast-work of wood, six or seven feet high.

The remaining defences were even more insignificant; and the enemy's

artillery was reported to consist of three six-pounders, and numerous

swivels. The number of fighting men amounted to about five hundred,

about half of whom were armed with muskets, while the rest carried

swords and spears. _Ranjows_ were stuck in every direction. "These

ranjows are made of bamboo, pointed fine, and stuck in the ground; and

there are, besides, holes of about three feet deep filled with these

spikes, and afterwards lightly covered, which are called patobong." The

army of the rajah was scarcely more formidable than that of the enemy.

It consisted of two hundred Chinese, excellent workmen and bad soldiers,

two hundred and fifty Malays, and some two hundred friendly Dyaks; a few

brass guns composed the artillery; and the boats were furnished with

swivels. Mr Brooke suggested an attack of the detached defences--a

proposition that was treated as that of a madman, the Rajah's army

having no notion of fighting except from behind a wall. A council of war

decided that advances should be made from the hill behind the rajah's

fort to Balidah by a chain of posts, the distance being a short mile, in

which space the enemy would probably erect four or five forts; "and

then," says Mr Brooke, "would come a bombardment, noisy, but harmless."

Insignificant as the account may read, the difficulties of Mr Brooke, as

commander-in-chief, were formidable enough, surrounded as he was by

perils threatening not only from the enemy, but from the rank cowardice

of his supporters, and the envy, spite, hatred, and machinations of his

allies, the Rajah's ministers. The operations are admirably described in

Mr Brooke's journal. Let it suffice to say, that the energy and bravery

of the English leader brought them to a satisfactory issue, and,

finally, the war to a happy close. At his intercession the lives of many

of the offenders were spared, and the rebels suffered to deliver up

their arms, and to return in peace to Sar[=a]wak.

It is now necessary to state, that at the commencement of the war, Muda

Hassim, unsolicited by Mr Brooke, had undertaken to confer upon the

latter the governorship of Sar[=a]wak, in the event of success crowning

the efforts of his "friend from England." Mr Brooke had not demanded

from the unfortunate Rajah a written agreement to this effect; nor at

the time even desired a recompense, which was likely to bring with it

much more of difficulty and vexation than profit and power. He

respectfully declined an honour which he informed the Rajah it did not

become him to accept whilst his highness was in his hands. The war being

over, and Muda Hassim reinstated, the negotiation recommenced. No sooner

was it discussed, however, than Mr Brooke informed the rajah that Malay

institutions were so faulty, the high being allowed by them so much

license, and the poor so oppressed, that any attempt to govern without a

removal of abuses, was, on his part at least, impossible; and as a

condition of his acceptance, he insisted that the Rajah should use all

his exertions to establish the principle, that one man must not take

from another, and that all men were free to enjoy the produce of their

labour, save and except when they were working for the revenue. This

revenue, too, he submitted, it was necessary to fix at a certain amount

for three years, as well as the salaries of the government officers. The

same rights should be conceded to the Dyak and Malay, and the property

of the former must be protected, their taxes fixed, and labour free. The

rajah acquiesced in the propriety of these measures, and bargained only

for the maintenance of the national faith and customs. Mr Brooke

remained in Sar[=a]wak, but the office which had been offered with so

much eagerness and pressing love, was after all slow in being conferred.

Bad advisers, envious ministers, and weakness in Muda Hassim himself,

all prevented the conclusion of a business upon which Mr Brooke had

never entered of his own accord; but which, having entered upon it, had

rendered him liable for many engagements which his anticipated new

position had made essential.

"I found myself," writes Mr Brooke, "clipped like Samson, while delay

was heaped upon delay, excuse piled upon excuse. It was provoking beyond

sufferance. I remonstrated firmly but mildly on the waste of my money,

and on the impossibility of any good to the country whilst the rajah

conducted himself as he had done. I might as well have whistled to the

winds, or have talked reason to stones. I had trusted--my eyes gradually

opened--I feared I was betrayed and robbed, and had at length determined

to be observant and watchful." Upon the faith of the Rajah, Mr Brooke

had purchased in Singapore a schooner of ninety tons, called _The

Swift_, which he had laden with a suitable cargo. Upon its arrival at

Sar[=a]wak, the rajah petitioned to have the cargo ashore, assuring Mr

Brooke of a good and quick return: part of such return being immediately

promised in the shape of antimony ore. Three months elapsed, and the

rajah's share in this mercantile transaction had yet to be fulfilled.

Disgusted with his treatment, and hopeless of justice, Mr Brooke

dispatched the _Swift_ to Singapore; and hearing that the crew of a

shipwrecked vessel were detained in Borneo Proper, sent his only

remaining vessel, the _Royalist_, to the city of Borneo, in order to

obtain such information as might lead to the rescue of his countrymen.

"I resolved," the journal informs us, "to remain here, to endeavour, if

I could, to obtain _my own_. Each vessel was to return as quickly as

possible from her place of destination; and I then determined to give

two additional months to the rajah, and to urge him in every way in my

power to do what he was bound to do as an act of common honesty. Should

these means fail, after making the strongest representations, and giving

amplest time, I considered myself free to extort by force what I could

not gain by fair means."

"I need hardly remark," writes Captain Keppel, "on the singular courage

and disregard of personal safety, and life itself, evinced by my friend

on this occasion. At issue with the rajah on points of great temptation

to him, beset by intrigues, and surrounded by a fierce and lawless

people, Mr Brooke did not hesitate to dispatch his vessels and

protectors,--the one on a mission of pure humanity, and the other in

calm pursuance of the objects he had proposed to himself to accomplish;

and, with three companions, place himself at the mercy of such

circumstances, regardless of the danger, and relying on the overruling

Providence in which he trusted, to bring him safely through all his

difficulties and perils."

On the 16th of August 1841, the Royalist returned, and three days

afterwards it was followed by the Swift. The former reported that the

prisoners had been heard of in Borneo, but, unfortunately, not released.

The Swift was accompanied by the Diana steamer. The formidable squadron

alarmed the rajah and his ministers. Mr Brooke learned that the

difficulties of the rajah's situation were increased, and his conduct

towards himself, in a manner, excused, by the intrigues and evil doings

of the latter. Macota, of whom mention has been made, was the most

vindictive and unscrupulous amongst them. He had attempted to poison the

interpreter of Mr Brooke, and had been discovered as the abettor of even

more fearful crimes. Mr Brooke, strengthened by his late arrivals,

resolved to bring matters to a crisis, and to test at once the strength

of the respective parties. He landed a party of men fully armed, and

loaded the ship's guns with grape and canister; he then proceeded to

Muda Hassim, protested that he was well disposed towards the rajah, but

assured him, at the same time, that neither he nor himself was safe

against the practices of the artful and desperate Macota. Muda Hassim

was frightened. One of the Dyak tribes took part with Mr Brooke, two

hundred of them, with their chiefs, placing themselves unreservedly at

his disposal, whilst Macota was deserted by all but his immediate

slaves. The Chinese and the rest of the inhabitants looked on. The

upshot may be anticipated. The rajah became suddenly active and eager

for an arrangement. The old agreement was drawn out, sealed, and signed;

guns fired, flags waved, and on the 24th of September 1841 Mr Brooke

became Rajah of Sar[=a]wak.

The first acts of Mr Brooke, after his accession to power, were

suggested by humanity, and a tender consideration for the savage people

whom he so singularly and unexpectedly had been called upon to govern.

He inquired into the state of the Dyaks, endeavoured to gain their

confidence, and to protect them from the brutal onslaught of the Malays

and of each other, and at once relieved them of the burdens of taxation

which weighed so cruelly upon them. He opened a court for the

administration of justice, at which he presided with the late rajah's

brothers, and maintained strict equity amongst the highest and lowest of

his people. He decreed that murder, robbery, and other heinous crimes,

should, for the future, be punished according to the written law of

Borneo; that all men, irrespectively of race, should be permitted to

trade and labour according to their pleasure, and to enjoy their gains;

that all roads should be open, and that all boats coming to the river

should be free to enter and depart without let or hindrance; that trade

should be free; that the Dyaks should be suffered to live unmolested;

together with other salutary measures for the general welfare.

Difficulty and vexation met the governor at every step; but he

persevered in his schemes of amelioration, and with a success which is

not yet complete, and for years cannot be fairly estimated.

MUDA HASSIM, the former rajah of Sar[=a]wak, was also presumptive heir

to the throne of Borneo; but, unfortunately for him, under the

displeasure of his nephew, the reigning sultan. The confirmation of Mr

Brooke's appointment, it was absolutely necessary to receive from the

latter; and Mr Brooke accordingly resolved to pay a visit to the prince,

in the first place, to obtain a reconciliation, if possible, with the

offending Muda, and secondly, to consolidate his own infant government.

There was another object, too. The sultan had power to release the

prisoners who had been spared in the wreck already mentioned; and this

power Mr Brooke hoped, by discretion, to prevail upon his majesty to

exercise. The picture of this potentate is thus drawn by Mr Brooke:

"The sultan is a man past fifty years of age, short and puffy in

person, with a countenance which expresses, very obviously, the

imbecility of his mind. His right hand is garnished with an extra

diminutive thumb--the natural member being crooked and distorted.

His mind, indeed, by his face, seems to be a chaos of

confusion--without acuteness, without dignity, and without good

sense. He can neither read nor write; is guided by the last

speaker; and his advisers, as might be expected, are of the lower

order, and mischievous from their ignorance and greediness. He is

always talking, and generally joking; and the most serious subjects

never meet with five minutes' consecutive attention. The favourable

side of his character is, that he is good-tempered and

good-natured--by no means cruel--and, in a certain way, generous,

though rapacious to as high a degree. His rapacity, indeed, is

carried to such an excess as to astonish a European, and is evinced

in a thousand mean ways. The presents I made him were

unquestionably handsome; but he was not content without begging

from me the share I had reserved for the other Pangerans; and

afterwards, through Mr Williamson, solicited more trifles--such as

sugar, penknives, and the like. I may note one other feature that

marks the man. He requested as the greatest favour--he urged with

the earnestness of a child--that I would send back the schooner

before the month Ramban, (Ramadan of the Turks,) remarking, 'What

shall I do during the fast without soft sugar and dates?'"

The delivery of the prisoners, and the forgiveness of Muda Hassim, were

quickly obtained; the more personal matter found opposition with the

advisers of the Crown, but was ultimately conceded. On the 1st of August

1842, the letters to Muda Hassim were sealed and signed; and at the same

council the contract, which gave Mr Brooke the government of Sar[=a]wak,

was fully discussed; and by ten o'clock at night was signed, sealed and

witnessed. Mr Brooke returned to his government and people on the

following day.

On the 1st of January 1843, the following entry appears in the diary so

often quoted:--"Another year passed and gone!--a year with all its

anxieties, its troubles, its dangers, upon which I can look back with

satisfaction--a year in which I have been usefully employed in doing

good to others. Since I last wrote, the Dyaks have been quiet, settled,

and improving; the Chinese advancing towards prosperity; and the

Sar[=a]wak people wonderfully contented and industrious, relieved from

oppression, and fields of labour allowed them. Justice I have executed

with an unflinching hand."

It was in the month of March 1843, at the conclusion of the Chinese war,

that Captain Keppel was ordered in the Dido to the Malacca Straits and

the island of Borneo. Daring acts of piracy had been committed, and were

still committing, on the Borneon coast; and, becoming engaged in the

suppression of these crimes, he fell in with the English rajah of

Sar[=a]wak, and obtained from him the information which he has recently

given to the world, and enabled us to place succinctly before our

readers.

The piracy of the Eastern Archipelago is very different to that of the

western world. The former obtains an importance unknown to the latter.

The hordes who conduct it issue from their islands and coasts in fleets,

rove from place to place, intercept the native trade, enslave whole

towns at the entrance of rivers, and attack ill-armed or stranded

European vessels. The native governments, if they are not participators

in the crime, are made its victims, and in many cases, we are told, they

are both--purchasing from one set of pirates, and plundered and enslaved

by another. Captain Keppel has well related more than one engagement in

which he was concerned with the ferocious marauders of these eastern

seas--scenes of blood and horror, justified only by the enormity of the

offence, and the ultimate advantages likely to be obtained from an

extirpation of the deeply-rooted evil. As we have hinted at the

commencement of this article, our present object is not so much to draw

attention to the battle-scenes described by Mr Keppel, and which may be

read with peculiar though painful interest in his book, as to obtain for

Mr Brooke, the peaceful and unselfish disposer of so many blessings

amongst a benighted and neglected people, that admiration and regard

which he has so nobly earned. He has done much, but our government may

enable him to do more. He has shown the capabilities of his distant

home, and called upon his mother-country to improve them to the

uttermost. We hear that her Majesty's government have not been deaf to

his appeal, and that aid will be given for the development of his plans,

equal to his warmest expectations. We trust it may be so. Nothing is

wanting but the assistance which a government alone can afford, to

render Borneo a friendly and valuable ally, and to constitute Mr Brooke

one of the most useful benefactors of modern times; a benefactor in the

best sense of the term--an improver of his species--an intelligent

messenger and expounder of God's purpose to man.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 48: _The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido, for the

Suppression of Piracy, &c. &c_. By Capt. the Hon. HENRY KEPPEL, R.N.

London, 1846.]

[Footnote 49: _Borneo Proper_ is the northern and north-western part of

the island, and an independent Malay state.]

THE SMUGGLER'S LEAP.

A PASSAGE IN THE PYRENEES.

"Oh! there's not in this wide world," I exclaimed, quite unintentionally

quoting Tom Moore; "there never has been, nor can ever be again, so

charming a creature. No nymph, or sylph, or winged Ariel, or syren with

song and mirror, was ever so fascinating--no daughter of Eve so pretty

and provoking!"

This apostrophe, which certainly appears, now that in cooler moments I

recall it, rather rhapsodical, was not uttered _viva voce_, nor even

_sotto voce_, seeing that its object, Miss Dora M'Dermot, was riding

along only three paces in front of me, whilst her brother walked by my

side. It was a mere mental ejaculation, elicited by the surpassing

perfections of the aforesaid Dora, who assuredly was the most charming

girl I had ever beheld. But for the Pyrenean scenery around us, and the

rough ill-conditioned mule, with its clumsy side-saddle of discoloured

leather, on which she was mounted, instead of the Spanish jennet or

well-bred English palfrey that would best have suited so fair an

equestrian, I could, without any great exertion of fancy, have dreamed

myself back to the days of the M'Gregor, and fancied that it was Die

Vernon riding up the mountain side, gaily chatting as she went with the

handsome cavalier who walked by her stirrup, and who might have been

Frank Osbaldistone, only that he was too manly-looking for Scott's

somewhat effeminate hero. How beautifully moulded was the form which her

dark-green habit set off to such advantage; how fairy-like the foot that

pressed the clumsy stirrup; how slender the fingers that grasped the

rein! She had discarded the heavy riding-hat and senseless bonnet, those

graceless inventions of some cunning milliner, and had adopted a

head-dress not unusual in the country in which she then was. This was a

_beret_ or flat cap, woven of snow-white wool, and surmounted by a

crimson tassel spread out over the top. From beneath this elegant

_coiffure_ her dark eyes flashed and sparkled, whilst her luxuriant

chestnut curls fell down over her neck, the alabaster fairness of which

made her white head-dress look almost tawny. Either because the air,

although we were still in the month of September, was fresh on the

mountains, or else because she was pretty and a woman, and therefore not

sorry to show herself to the best advantage, she had twisted round her

waist a very long cashmere scarf, previously passing it over one

shoulder in the manner of a sword-belt, the ends hanging down nearly to

her stirrup; and this gave something peculiarly picturesque, almost

fantastical, to her whole appearance.

Upon the second day of my arrival at the baths of St Sauveur, in the

Pyrenees, I had fallen in with my old friend and college chum, Jack

M'Dermot, who was taking his sister the round of the French

watering-places. Dora's health had been delicate, the faculty had

recommended the excursion; and Jack, who doated upon his only sister,

had dragged her away from the gaieties of London and brought her off to

the Pyrenees. M'Dermot was an excellent fellow, neither a wit nor a

Solomon; but a good-hearted dog who had been much liked at Trin. Coll.,

Dublin, where he had thought very little of his studies, and a good deal

of his horses and dogs. An Irishman, to be sure, occasionally a slight

touch of the brogue was perceptible in his talk; but from this his

sister, who had been brought up in England, was entirely free. Jack had

a snug estate of three thousand a-year; Miss Dora had twenty thousand

pounds from her mother. She had passed two seasons in London; and if she

was not already married, it was because not one of the fifty aspirants

to her hand had found favour in her bright eyes. Lively and

high-spirited, with a slight turn for the satirical, she loved her

independence, and was difficult to please.

I had been absent from England for nearly two years, on a continental

tour; and although I had heard much of Miss M'Dermot, I had never seen

her till her brother introduced me to her at St Sauveur. I had not known

her an hour, before I found myself in a fair way to add another to the

list of the poor moths who had singed their wings at the perilous light

of her beauty. When M'Dermot, learning that, like themselves, I was on a

desultory sort of ramble, and had not marked out any particular route,

offered me a seat in their carriage, and urged me to accompany them,

instead of prudently flying from the danger, I foolishly exposed myself

to it, and lo! what might have been anticipated came to pass. Before I

had been two days in Dora's society, my doom was sealed; I had ceased to

belong to myself; I was her slave, the slave of her sunny smile and

bright eyes--talisman more potent than any lamp or ring that djinn or

fairy ever obeyed.

A fortnight had passed, and we were at B----. During that time, the

spell that bound me had been each day gaining strength. As an intimate

friend of her brother, I was already, with Dora, on the footing of an

old acquaintance; she seemed well enough pleased with my society, and

chatted with me willingly and familiarly; but in vain did I watch for

some slight indication, a glance or an intonation, whence to derive

hope. None such were perceptible; nor could the most egregious coxcomb

have fancied that they were. We once or twice fell in with other

acquaintances of her's and her brother's, and with them she had just the

same frank friendly manner, as with me. I had not sufficient vanity,

however, to expect a woman, especially one so much admired as Miss

M'Dermot, to fall in love at first sight with my humble personality, and

I patiently waited, trusting to time and assiduity to advance my cause.

Things were in this state, when one morning, whilst taking an early walk

to the springs, I ran up against an English friend, by name Walter

Ashley. He was the son of a country gentleman of moderate fortune, at

whose house I had more than once passed a week in the shooting season.

Walter was an excellent fellow, and a perfect model of the class to

which he belonged. By no means unpolished in his manners, he had yet a

sort of plain frankness and _bonhomie_, which was peculiarly agreeable

and prepossessing. He was not a university man, nor had he received an

education of the highest order; spoke no language but his own with any

degree of correctness; neither played the fiddle, painted pictures, nor

wrote poetry. On the other hand, in all manly exercises he was a

proficient; shot, rode, walked, and danced to perfection; and the fresh

originality, and pleasant tone of his conversation, redeemed any

deficiency of reading or accomplishment. In personal appearance he was a

splendid fellow, nearly six feet in his boots, strongly, but, at the

same time, symmetrically built; although his size of limb and width of

shoulder rendered him, at six-and-twenty, rather what is called a fine

man, than a slender or elegant one. He had the true Anglo-Saxon

physiognomy, blue eyes, and light brown hair that waved, rather than

curled, round his broad handsome forehead. And, then, what a mustache

the fellow had! (He was officer in a crack yeomanry corps.) Not one of

the composite order, made up of pomatum and lamp-black, such as may be

seen sauntering down St James's Street on a spring afternoon, with

incipient guardsmen behind them--but worthy of an Italian painter or

Hungarian hussar; full, well-grown, and glossy. Who was the idiot who

first set afloat the notion--now become an established prejudice in

England--that mustaches were unseemly? To nine faces out of ten, they

are a most becoming addition, increasing physiognomical character,

almost giving it where there is none; relieving the monotony of broad

flat cheeks, and abridging the abomination of a long upper-lip.

Uncleanly, say you? Not a bit of it, if judiciously trimmed and trained.

What, Sir! are they not at least as proper looking as those foxy

thickets extending from jawbone to temple, which you yourself, each

morning of your life, take such pains to comb and curl into shape?

Delighted to meet Ashley, I dragged him off to the hotel, to introduce

him to M'Dermot and his sister. As a friend of mine they gave him a

cordial welcome, and we passed that day and the following ones together.

I soon, however, I must confess, began to repent a little having brought

my handsome friend into the society of Dora. She seemed better pleased

with him than I altogether liked, nor could I wonder at it. Walter

Ashley was exactly the man to please a woman of Dora's character. She

was of rather a romantic turn, and about him there was a dash of the

chivalrous, well calculated to captivate her imagination. Although

perfectly feminine, she was an excellent horsewoman, and an ardent

admirer of feats of address and courage, and she had heard me tell her

brother of Ashley's perfection in such matters. On his part, Ashley,

like every one else who saw her, was evidently greatly struck with her

beauty and fascination of manner. I cannot say that I was jealous; I had

no right to be so, for Dora had never given me encouragement; but I

certainly more than once regretted having introduced a third person into

what--honest Jack M'Dermot counting, of course, for nothing--had

previously been a sort of _tete-a-tete_ society. I began to fear that,

thanks to myself, my occupation was gone, and Ashley had got it.

It was the fifth day after our meeting with Walter, and we had started

early in the morning upon an excursion to a neighbouring lake, the

scenery around which, we were told, was particularly wild and beautiful.

It was situated on a piece of table-land on the top of a mountain, which

we could see from the hotel window. The distance was barely ten miles,

and the road being rough and precipitous, M'Dermot, Ashley, and myself,

had chosen to walk rather than to risk our necks by riding the

broken-knee'd ponies that were offered to us. A sure-footed mule, and

indifferent side-saddle, had been procured for Miss M'Dermot, and was

attended by a wild-looking Bearnese boy, or gossoon, as her brother

called him, a creature like a grasshopper, all legs and arms, with a

scared countenance, and long lank black hair hanging in irregular shreds

about his face.

There is no season more agreeable in the Pyrenees than the month of

September. People are very apt to expatiate on the delights of autumn,

its mellow beauty, pensive charms, and suchlike. I confess that in a

general way I like the youth of the year better than its decline, and

prefer the bright green tints of spring, with the summer in prospective,

to the melancholy autumn, its russet hues and falling leaves; its

regrets for fine weather past, and anticipations of bad to come. But if

there be any place where I should be tempted to reverse my judgment, it

would be in Southern France, and especially its western and central

portion. The clear cloudless sky, the moderate heat succeeding to the

sultriness, often overpowering, of the summer months, the magnificent

vineyards and merry vintage time, the noble groves of chestnut, clothing

the lower slopes of the mountains, the bright streams and

flower-spangled meadows of Bearn and Languedoc, render no part of the

year more delightful in those countries than the months of September and

October.

As before mentioned, Dora rode a little in front, with Ashley beside

her, pointing out the beauties of the wild scenery through which we

passed, and occasionally laying a hand upon her bridle to guide the mule

over some unusually rugged portion of the almost trackless mountain.

M'Dermot and I were walking behind, a little puffed by the steepness of

the ascent; our guide, whose name was Cadet, a name answered to by every

second man one meets in that part of France, strode along beside us,

like a pair of compasses with leathern lungs. Presently the last-named

individual turned to me--

"_Ces messieurs veulent-ils voir le Saut de lou Contrabandiste?_" said

he, in the barbarous dialect of the district, half French, half patois,

with a small dash of Spanish.

"_Le Saut du Contrebandier_, the Smuggler's Leap--What is that?" asked

Dora, who had overheard the question, turning round her graceful head,

and dazzling us--me at least--by a sudden view of her lovely face, now

glowing with exercise and the mountain air.

The smuggler's leap, so Cadet informed us, was a narrow cleft in the

rock, of vast depth, and extending for a considerable distance across a

flank of the mountain. It owed its name to the following incident:--Some

five years previously, a smuggler, known by the name of Juan le Negre,

or Black Juan, had, for a considerable period, set the custom-house

officers at defiance, and brought great discredit on them by his success

in passing contraband goods from Spain. In vain did they lie in ambush

and set snares for him; they could never come near him, or if they did

it was when he was backed by such a force of the hardy desperadoes

carrying on the same lawless traffic, that the douaniers were either

forced to beat a retreat or got fearfully mauled in the contest that

ensued. One day, however, three of these green-coated guardians of the

French revenue caught a sight of Juan alone and unarmed. They pursued

him, and a rare race he led them, over cliff and crag, across rock and

ravine, until at last they saw with exultation that he made right for

the chasm in question, and there they made sure of securing him. It

seemed as if he had forgotten the position of the cleft, and only

remembered it when he got within a hundred yards or thereabouts, for

then he slackened his pace. The douaniers gained on him, and expected

him to desist from his flight, and surrender. What was their surprise

and consternation when they saw him, on reaching the edge of the chasm,

spring from the ground with lizardlike agility, and by one bold leap

clear the yawning abyss. The douaniers uttered a shout of rage and

disappointment, and two of them ceased running; but the third, a man of

great activity and courage, and who had frequently sworn to earn the

reward set on the head of Juan, dared the perilous jump. He fell short;

his head was dashed against the opposite rock, and his horror-struck

companions, gazing down into the dark depth beneath, saw his body strike

against the crags on its way to the bottom of the abyss. The smuggler

escaped, and the spot where the tragical incident occurred was

thenceforward known as "_Le Saut du Contrebandier_."

Before our guide had finished his narrative, we were unanimous in our

wish to visit its scene, which we reached by the time he had brought the

tale to a conclusion. It was certainly a most remarkable chasm, whose

existence was only to be accounted for by reference to the volcanic

agency of which abundant traces exist in Southern France. The whole side

of the mountain was cracked and rent asunder, forming a narrow ravine of

vast depth, in the manner of the famous Mexican _barrancas_. In some

places might be traced a sort of correspondence on the opposite sides; a

recess on one side into which a projection on the other would have

nearly fitted, could some Antaeus have closed the fissure. This, however,

was only here and there; generally speaking, the rocky brink was worn by

the action of time and water, and the rock composing it sloped slightly

downwards. The chasm was of various width, but was narrowest at the spot

at which we reached it, and really did not appear so very terrible a

leap as Cadet made it out to be. On looking down, a confusion of

bush-covered crags was visible; and now that the sun was high, a narrow

stream was to be seen, flowing, like a line of silver, at the bottom;

the ripple and rush of the water, repeated by the echoes of the ravine,

ascending to our ears with noise like that of a cataract. On large

fragment of rock, a few yards from the brink, was rudely carved a date,

and below it two letters. They were the initials, so our guide informed

us, of the unfortunate douanier who had there met his death.

We had remained for half a minute or so gazing down into the ravine,

when Ashley, who was on the right of the party, broke silence.

"Pshaw!" said he, stepping back from the edge, "that's no leap. Why,

I'll jump across it myself."

"For heaven's sake!" cried Dora.

"Ashey!" I exclaimed, "don't be a fool!"

But it was too late. What mad impulse possessed him I cannot say; but

certain I am, from my knowledge of his character, that it was no foolish

bravado or schoolboy desire to show off, that seduced him to so wild a

freak. The fact was, but for the depth below, the leap did not look at

all formidable; not above four or five feet, but in reality it was a

deal wider. It was probably this deceitful appearance, and perhaps the

feeling which Englishmen are apt to entertain, that for feats of

strength and agility no men surpass them, that convinced Walter of the

ease With which he could jump across. Before we could stop him, he took

a short run, and jumped.

A scream from Dora was echoed by an exclamation of horror from M'Dermot

and myself. Ashley had cleared the chasm and alighted on the opposite

edge, but it was shelving and slippery, and his feet slid from under

him. For one moment it appeared as if he would instantly be dashed to

pieces, but in falling he managed to catch the edge of the rock, which

at that place formed an angle. There he hung by his hands, his whole

body in the air, without a possibility of raising himself; for below the

edge the rock was smooth and receding, and even could he have reached

it, he would have found no foot-hold. One desperate effort he made to

grasp a stunted and leafless sapling that grew in a crevice at not more

than a foot from the edge, but it failed, and nearly caused his instant

destruction. Desisting from further effort, he hung motionless, his

hands convulsively cramped to the ledge of rock, which afforded so

slippery and difficult a hold, that his sustaining himself by it at all

seemed a miracle, and could only be the result of uncommon muscular

power. It was evident that no human strength could possibly maintain him

for more than a minute or two in that position; below was an abyss, a

hundred or more feet deep--to all appearance his last hour was come.

M'Dermot and I stood aghast and helpless, gazing with open mouths and

strained eyeballs at our unhappy friend. What could we do? Were we to

dare the leap, which one far more active and vigorous than ourselves had

unsuccessfully attempted? It would have been courting destruction,

without a chance of saving Ashley. But Dora put us to shame. One scream,

and only one, she uttered, and then, gathering up her habit, she sprang

unaided from her mule. Her cheek was pale as the whitest marble, but her

presence of mind was unimpaired, and she seemed to gain courage and

decision in the moment of peril.

"Your cravats, your handkerchiefs!" cried she, unfastening, as she

spoke, her long cashmere scarf. Mechanically M'Dermot and myself obeyed.

With the speed of light and a woman's dexterity, she knotted together

her scarf, a long silk cravat which I gave her, M'Dermot's handkerchief

and mine, and securing--how, I know not--a stone at either extremity of

the rope thus formed, she threw one end of it, with sure aim and steady

hand, across the ravine and round the sapling already referred to. Then

leaning forward till I feared she would fall into the chasm, and sprang

forward to hold her back, she let go of the other end. Ashley's hold was

already growing feeble, his fingers were torn by the rock, the blood

started from under his nails, and he turned his face towards us with a

mute prayer for succour. At that moment the two ends of the shawl fell

against him, and he instinctively grasped them. It was a moment of

fearful suspense. Would the knots so hastily made resist the tension of

his weight? They did so; he raised himself by strength of wrist. The

sapling bent and bowed, but his hand was now close to it. He grasped it;

another powerful effort, the last effort of despair, and he lay

exhausted and almost senseless upon the rocky brink. At the same moment,

with a cry of joy, Dora fell fainting into her brother's arms.

Of that day's adventures little remains to tell. A walk of a mile

brought Ashley to a place where a bridge, thrown over the ravine,

enabled him to cross it. I omit his thanks to Dora, his apologies for

the alarm he had caused her, and his admiring eulogy of her presence of

mind. Her manner of receiving them, and the look she gave him when, on

rejoining us, he took her hand, and with a natural and grateful courtesy

that prevented the action from appearing theatrical or unusual, pressed

it to his lips, were any thing but gratifying to me, whatever they may

have been to him. She seemed no way displeased at the freedom. I was

most confoundedly, but that Walter did not seem to observe.

The incident that had occurred, and Dora's request, brought our

excursion to an abrupt termination, and we returned homewards. It

appeared as if this were doomed to be a day of disagreeables. On

reaching the inn, I found a letter which, thanks to my frequent change

of place, and to the dilatoriness of continental post-offices, had been

chasing me from town to town during the previous three weeks. It was

from a lawyer, informing me of the death of a relative, and compelling

me instantly to return to England to arrange some important business

concerning a disputed will. The sum at stake was too considerable for me

to neglect the summons, and with the worst possible grace I prepared to

depart. I made some violent attempts to induce Ashley to accompany me,

talked myself hoarse about fox-hunting and pheasant-shooting, and other

delights of the approaching season; but all in vain. His passion for

field-sports seemed entirely cooled; he sneered at foxes, treated

pheasants with contempt, and professed to be as much in love with the

Pyrenees as I began to fear he was with Dora. There was nothing for it

but to set out alone, which I accordingly did, having previously

obtained from M'Dermot the plan of their route, and the name of the

place where he and his sister thought of wintering. I was determined, so

soon as I had settled my affairs, to return to the continent and propose

for Dora.

Man proposes and God disposes, says the proverb. In my case, I am

prepared to prove that the former part of the proverb lied abominably.

Instead of a fortnight in London being, as I had too sanguinely hoped,

sufficient for the settlement of the business that took me thither, I

was detained several months, and compelled to make sundry journeys to

the north of England. I wrote several times to M'Dermot, and had one

letter from him, but no more. Jack was a notoriously bad correspondent,

and I scarcely wondered at his silence.

Summer came--my lawsuit was decided, and sick to death of briefs and

barristers, parchments and attorneys, I once more found myself my own

master. An application to M'Dermot's London banker procured me his

address. He was then in Switzerland, but was expected down the Rhine,

and letters to Wiesbaden would find him. That was enough for me; my

head and heart were still full of Dora M'Dermot; and two days after I

had obtained information, the "Antwerpen" steamer deposited me on

Belgian ground.

"Mr M'Dermot is stopping here?" I enquired of, or rather affirmed to,

the head waiter at the Four Seasons hotel at Wiesbaden. If the fellow

had told me he was not, I believe I should have knocked him down.

"He is, sir. You will find him in the Cursaal gardens with madame _sa

soeur_."

Off I started to the gardens. They were in full bloom and beauty,

crowded with flowers and _fraueleins_ and foreigners of all nations. The

little lake sparkled in the sunshine, and the waterfowl skimmed over it

in all directions. But it's little I cared for such matters. I was

looking for Dora, sweet Dora--Dora M'Dermot.

At the corner of a walk I met her brother.

"Jack!" I exclaimed, grasping his hand with the most vehement affection,

"I'm delighted to see you."

"And I'm glad to see you, my boy," was the rejoinder. "I was wondering

you did not answer my last letter, but I suppose you thought to join us

sooner."

"Your last letter!" I exclaimed. "I have written three times since I

heard from you."

"The devil you have!" cried Jack. "Do you mean to say you did not get

the letter I wrote you from Paris a month ago, announcing"----

I did not hear another word, for just then, round a corner of the

shrubbery, came Dora herself, more charming than ever, all grace and

smiles and beauty. But I saw neither beauty nor smiles nor grace; all I

saw was, that she was leaning on the arm of that provokingly handsome

dog Walter Ashley. For a moment I stood petrified, and then extending my

hand,

"Miss M'Dermot!"----I exclaimed.

She drew back a little, with a smile and a blush. Her companion stepped

forward.

"My dear fellow," said he, "there is no such person. Allow me to

introduce you to Mrs Ashley."

If any of my friends wish to be presented to pretty girls with twenty

thousand pounds, they had better apply elsewhere than to me. Since that

day I have forsworn the practice.

MINISTERIAL MEASURES.

Not enviable, in our apprehension, at the present crisis, is the

position of a young man whose political education has been framed upon

Conservative principles, and whose personal experience and recollections

go little further back than the triumph of those principles over others

which he has been early taught to condemn. His range of facts may be

limited, but at the same time it is very significant. He has seen his

party--for a season excluded from power--again re-assume the reigns of

government at the call of a vast majority of the nation. He remembers

that that call was founded upon the general desire that a period of

tranquil stability should succeed to an interval of harassing

vacillation; and that the only general pledge demanded from the

representatives of the people was an adherence to certain principles of

industrial protection, well understood in the main, if not thoroughly

and accurately defined. We shall suppose a young man of this stamp

introduced into the House of Commons, deeply impressed with the full

import and extent of his responsibilities--fortified in his own opinions

by the coinciding votes and arguments of older statesmen, on whose

experience he is fairly entitled to rely--regarding the leader of his

party with feelings of pride and exultation, because he is the champion

of a cause identified with the welfare of the nation--and unsuspicious

of any change in those around him, and above. Such was, we firmly

believe, the position of many members of the present Parliament, shortly

before the opening of this session, when, on a sudden, rumours of some

intended change began to spread themselves abroad. An era of conversion

had commenced. In one and the same night, some portentous dream

descended upon the pillows of the Whig leaders, and whispered that the

hour was come. By miraculous coincidence--co-operation being studiously

disclaimed--Lord John Russell, Lord Morpeth,

"And other worthy fellows that were _out_,"

gave in their adhesion, nearly on the same day, to the League--thereby,

as we are told, anticipating the unanimous wish of their followers. Then

came, on the part of Ministers, a mysterious resignation--an episodical

and futile attempt to re-construct a Whig government--and the return of

Sir Robert Peel to power. Still there was no explanation. Men were left

to guess, as they best might, at the Eleusinian drama performing behind

the veil of Isis--to speculate for themselves, or announce to others at

random the causes of this huge mystification. "The oracles were dumb."

This only was certain, that Lord Stanley was no longer in the Cabinet.

Let us pass over the prologue of the Queen's speech, and come at once to

the announcement of his financial measures by the Minister. What need to

follow him through the circumlocutions of that speech--through the

ostentatiously paraded details of the measure that was to give

satisfaction to all or to none? What need to revert to the manner in

which he paced around his subject, pausing ever and anon to exhibit some

alteration in the manufacturing tariff? The catalogue was protracted,

but, like every thing else, it had an end; and the result, in so far as

the agricultural interest is concerned, was the proposed abolition of

all protective duties upon the importation of foreign grain.

Our opinion upon that important point has been repeatedly expressed. For

many years, and influenced by no other motive than our sincere belief in

the abstract justice of the cause, this Magazine has defended the

protective principle from the assaults which its enemies have made. Our

views were no doubt fortified by their coincidence with those

entertained and professed by statesmen, whose general policy has been

productive of good to the country; but they were based upon higher

considerations than the mere approbation of a party. Therefore, as we

did not adopt these views loosely, we shall not lightly abandon then. On

the contrary, we take leave to state here, in _limine_, that, after

giving our fullest consideration to the argument of those who were

formerly, like us, the opponents, but are now the advisers of the

change, we can see no substantial reason for departing from our

deliberate views, and assenting to the abandonment of a system which

truth and justice have alike compelled us to uphold.

We can, however, afford to look upon these things philosophically, and

to content ourselves with protesting against the change. Very different

is the situation of those Conservative members of Parliament who are now

told that their eyes must be couched for cataract, in order that they

may become immediate recipients of the new and culminating light.

CONVERSION is no doubt an excellent thing; but, as we have hitherto

understood it, the quality of CONVICTION has been deemed an

indispensable preliminary. Conversion without conviction is hypocrisy,

and a proselyte so obtained is coerced and not won. We are not

insensible to the nature of the ties which bind a partisan to his

leader. Their relative strength or weakness are the tests of the

personal excellence of the latter--of the regard which his talents

inspire--of the veneration which his sagacity commands. Strong indeed

must be the necessity which on any occasion can unloose them; nor can

it, in the ordinary case, arise except from the fault of the leader. For

the leader and the follower, if we consider the matter rightly, are

alike bound to common allegiance: some principle must have been laid

down as terms of their compact, which both are sworn to observe; and the

violation of this principle on either side is a true annulment of the

contract. No mercy is shown to the follower when he deserts or

repudiates the common ground of action;--is the leader, who is presumed

to have the maturer mind, and more prophetic eye, entitled to a larger

indulgence?

Whilst perusing the late debates, we have repeatedly thought of a

pregnant passage in Schiller. It is that scene in "The Piccolomini,"

where Wallenstein, after compromising himself privately with the enemy,

attempts to win over the ardent and enthusiastic Max, the nursling of

his house, to the revolt. It is so apposite to the present situation of

affairs, that we cannot forbear from quoting it.

WALLENSTEIN.

Yes, Max! _I have delay'd to open it to thee,

Even till the hour of acting 'gins to strike_.

Youth's fortunate feeling doth seize easily

The absolute right; yea, and a joy it is

To exercise the single apprehension

Where the sums square in proof;--

But where it happens, that _of two sure evils

One must be taken_, where the heart not wholly

Brings itself back from out the strife of duties,

_There 'tis a blessing to have no election,

And blank necessity is grace and favour._

--This is now present: do not look behind thee,--

It can no more avail thee. Look thou forwards!

_Think not! judge not! prepare thyself to act!

The Court--it hath determined on my ruin,

Therefore will I to be beforehand with them._

We'll join THE SWEDES--right gallant fellows are they,

And our good friends.

For "the Swedes" substitute "the League," and there is not one word of

the foregoing passage that might not have been uttered by Sir Robert

Peel. For, most assuredly, until "the hour of acting" struck, was the

important communication delayed; and no higher or more comprehensive

argument was given to the unfortunate follower than this, "that of two

sure evils one must be taken." But is it, therefor, such a blessing "to

have no election," and is "blank necessity," therefore, such a special

"grace and favour?"--say, _is_ it necessity, when a clear, and

consistent, and honourable course remains open? The evil on one side is

clear: it is the loss of self-respect--the breach of pledges--the

forfeiture of confidence--the abandonment of a national cause. On the

other it is doubtful; it rests but on personal feeling, which may be

painful to overcome, but which ought not to stand for a moment in the

way of public duty.

Far be it from us to say, that amongst those who have cast their lot on

the opposite side, there are not many who have done so from the best and

the purest motives. The public career of some, and the private virtues

of others, would belie us if we dared to assert the contrary. With them

it may be conviction, or it may be an overruling sense of

expediency--and with either motive we do not quarrel--but surely it is

not for them, the new converts, to insinuate taunts of interested

motives and partial construction against those who maintain the deserted

principle. "For whom are you counsel now?" interrupted Sir Robert Peel,

in the midst of the able, nay chivalrous speech of Mr Francis Scott, the

honourable member for Roxburghshire. Admitting that the question was

jocularly put and good-humouredly meant, we yet admire the spirit of the

reply. "I am asked for whom I am the counsel. I am the counsel for my

opinions. I am no delegate in this assembly. I will yield to no man in

sincerity. I am counsel for no man, no party, no sect. I belong to no

party. I followed, and was proud to follow, that party which was led so

gloriously--the party of the constitution, which was led by the Right

Honourable Baronet. I followed under his banner, and was glad to serve

under it. I would have continued to serve under his banner if he had

hoisted and maintained the same flag!" Can it be that the Premier, who

talks so largely about his own wounded feelings, can make no allowance

for the sorrow, or even the indignation of those who are now restrained

by a sense of paramount duty from following him any further? Can he

believe that such a man as Mr Stafford O'Brien would have used such

language as this, had he not been stung by the injustice of the course

pursued towards him and his party:--"We will not envy you your

triumph--we will not participate in your victory. Small in numbers, and,

it may be, uninfluential in debate, we will yet stand forward to protest

against your measures. You will triumph; yes, and you will triumph over

men whose moderation in prosperity, and whose patience under adversity

has commanded admiration--but whose fatal fault was, that they trusted

you. You will triumph over them in strange coalition with men, who, true

to their principles, can neither welcome you as a friend, nor respect

you as an opponent; and of whom I must say, that the best and most

patriotic of them all will the least rejoice in the downfall of the

great constitutional party you have ruined, and will the most deplore

the loss of public confidence in public men!"

We may ask, are such men, speaking under such absolute conviction of the

truth, to be lightly valued or underrated? Are their opinions, because

consistent, to be treated with contempt, and consistency itself to be

sneered at as the prerogative of obstinacy and dotage? Was there no

truth, then, in the opinions which, on this point of protection, the

Premier has maintained for so many years; or, if not, is their fallacy

so very glaring, that he can expect all the world at once to detect the

error, which until now has been concealed even from his sagacious eye?

Surely there must be something very specious in doctrines to which he

has subscribed for a lifetime, and without which he never would have

been enabled to occupy his present place. We blame him not if, on mature

reflection, he is now convince of his error. It is for him to reconcile

that error with his reputation as a statesman. But we protest against

that blinding and coercing system which of late years has been unhappily

the vogue, and which, if persevered in, appears to us of all things the

most likely to sap the foundations of public confidence, in the

integrity as well as the skill of those who are at the helm of the

government.

We have given the speech of Wallenstein-let us now subjoin the reply of

Piccolomini. Mark how appropriate it is, with but the change of a single

word--

MAX.

My General; this day thou makest me

Of age to speak in my own right and person.

For till this day I have been spared the trouble

To find out my own road. _Thee have I follow'd

With most implicit, unconditional faith,

Sure of the right path if I follow'd thee._

To-day, for the first time, dost thou refer

Me to myself, and forcest me to make

Election between thee and my own heart--

_Is that a good war, which against the Empire

Thou wagest with the Empire's own array?_

O God of heaven! what a change is this!

Beseems it me to offer such persuasion

To thee, who like the fix'd star of the pole

Wert all I gazed at on life's trackless ocean;

Oh, what a rent thou makest in my heart!

The engrain'd instinct of old reverence,

The holy habit of obediency,

Must I pluck live asunder from thy name?

Oh, do it not!--I pray thee do it not!--

Thou wilt not--

Thou canst not end in this! It would reduce

All human creatures to disloyalty

Against the nobleness of their own nature.

'Twill justify the vulgar misbelief

Which holdeth nothing noble in free-will,

And trusts itself to impotence alone,

Made powerful only in an unknown power!

These quotations may look strangely in such an article as this; but

there are many within the walls of St Stephens's who must acknowledge

the force of the allusion, and the truth of the sentiments they convey.

The language we intend to use is less that of reproach than sorrow: for

whatever may be the practical result of this measure--however it may

affect the great industrial interest of the country, it is impossible

not to see that, from the mere manner of its proposal, it has

disorganized the great Conservative party, and substituted mistrust and

confusion for the feeling of entire confidence which formerly was

reposed in its leaders.

The change, however has been proposed, and we shall not shrink from

considering it. The scheme of Sir Robert Peel is reducible to a few

points, which we shall now proceed to review _seriatim_. First--let us

regard it with a view to its _nature_; secondly, as to its _necessity_

under existing circumstances.

The Premier states, that this is a great _change_. We admit that fully.

A measure which contains within itself a provision, that at the end of

three years agricultural industry within this country shall be left

without any protection at all, and that, in the interim, the mode of

protection shall not only be altered but reduced, is necessarily a

prodigious _change_. It is one which is calculated to affect agriculture

directly, and home consumption of manufactures indirectly; to reduce the

price of bread in this country--otherwise it is a useless change--by the

introduction of foreign grain, and therefore to lower the profits of one

at least of three classes, the landlord, the tenant, or the labourer,

which classes consume the greater part of our manufactures. So far it is

distinctly adverse to the agricultural interest, for we cannot exactly

understand how a measure can be at once favourable and unfavourable to a

particular party--how the producer of corn can be benefited by the

depreciation of the article which he raises, unless, indeed, the

reduction of the price of the food which he consumes himself be taken

as an equivalent. Very likely this is what is meant. If so, it partakes

of the nature of a principle, and must hold good in other instances.

Apply it to the manufacturer; tell him that, by reducing the cost of his

cottons one-half, he will be amply compensated, because in that event

his shirts will cost him only a half of the present prices, and his wife

and children can be sumptuously clothed for a moiety. His immediate

answer would be this: "By no means. I an manufacturing not for myself

but for others. I deal on a large scale. I supply a thousand customers;

and the profit I derive from that is infinitely greater than the saving

I could effect by the reduced price of the articles which I must consume

at home." The first view is clearly untenable. We may, therefore,

conclude at all events that some direct loss must, under the operation

of the new scheme, fall upon the agricultural classes; and it is of some

moment to know how this loss is to be supplied. For we take the opening

statement of Sir Robert Peel as we find it; and he tells us that _both_

classes, the agriculturists and the manufacturers, are "to make

sacrifices." Now, in these three words lies the germ of a most

important--nay paramount--consideration, which we would fain have

explained to us before we go any further. For, according to our ideas of

words, a sacrifice means a loss, which, except in the case of deliberate

destruction, implies a corresponding gain to a third party. Let us,

then, try to discover who is to be the gainer. Is it the state--that is,

the British public revenue? No--most distinctly not; for while, on the

one side, the corn duties are abolished, on the other the tariff is

relaxed. Is the sacrifice to be a mutual one--that is, is the

agriculturist to be compensated by cheaper _home_ manufactures, and the

manufacturer to be compensated by cheaper _home-grown bread_? No--the

benefit to either class springs from no such source. _The duties on the

one side are to be abolished, and on the other side relaxed, in order

that the agriculturist may get cheap foreign manufactures, and the

manufacturer cheap foreign grain._ If there is to be a sacrifice upon

both sides, as was most clearly enunciated, it must just amount to this,

that the interchange between the classes at home is to be closed, and

the foreign markets opened as the great sources of supply.

Having brought the case of the "mutual sacrifices" thus far, is there

one of our readers who does not see a rank absurdity in the attempt to

insinuate that a compensation is given to the labourer? This measure, if

it has meaning at all, is framed with the view of benefiting the

manufacturing interest, of course at the expense of the other. Total

abolition of protective duties in this country must lower the price of

corn, and that is the smallest of the evils we anticipate;--for an evil

it is, if the effect of it be to reduce the labourer's wages--and it

must also tend to throw land out of cultivation. _But what will the

relaxation of the tariff do?_ Will it lower the price of manufactured

goods in this country to the agricultural labourer?--that is, after the

diminished duty is paid, can foreign manufactures be imported here _at a

price which shall compete with the home manufactures_? If so, the home

consumption of our manufactures, which is by far the most important

branch of them, is ruined. "Not so!" we hear the modern economist

exclaim; "the effect of the foreign influx of goods will merely be a

stimulant to the national industry, and a consequent lowering of our

prices." Here we have him between the horns of a plain and palpable

dilemma. If the manufacturer for the home market will be compelled, as

you say he must be, to lower his prices at home, in order to meet the

competition of foreign imported manufactured goods, which are still

liable in a duty, WHAT BECOMES OF YOUR FOREIGN MARKET AFTER YOU HAVE

ANNIHILATED OR EQUALIZED THE HOME ONE? If the foreigner can afford to

pay the freight and the duties, and still to undersell you at home, how

can you possibly contrive to do the same by him? If his goods are

cheaper than yours in this country, when all the costs are included, how

can you compete with him in his market? The thing is a dream--a

delusion--a palpable absurdity. The fact is either this--that not only

the foreign agriculturist but the foreign manufacturer can supply us

with either produce cheaper than we can raise it at home--in which case

we have not a foreign manufacturing market--or that the idea of "mutual

sacrifices" is a mere colour and pretext, and that to all practical

intents and purposes the agriculturist is to be the only sufferer.

A great change, however, does not necessarily imply a great measure.

This proposal of Sir Robert Peel does not, as far as we can see, embody

any principle; it merely surrenders the interests of one class for the

apparent aggrandizement of another. We use the word "apparent"

advisedly; for, looking to the nature and the extent of home

consumption, we believe that the effects of the measure would ultimately

be felt most severely by the manufacturers themselves. The agriculturist

of Great Britain is placed in a peculiarly bad position. In the first

place, he has to rear his produce in a more variable climate, and a soil

less naturally productive, than many which exist abroad. In the second

place, he has to bear his proportion of the enormous taxation of the

country, for the interest of the national debt, and the expense of the

executive government--now amounting to nearly fifty millions per annum.

It is on these grounds, especially the last, that he requires some

protection against the cheap-grown grain of the Continent, with which he

cannot otherwise compete; and this was most equitably afforded by the

sliding scale, which, in our view, ought to have been adhered to as a

satisfactory settlement of the matter. In a late paper upon this

subject, we rested our vindication of protection upon the highest

possible ground--namely, that it was indispensable for the stability and

independence of the country, that it should depend upon its own

resources for the daily food of its inhabitants. There is a vast degree

of misconception on this point, and the statistics are but little

understood. Some men argue as if this country were incapable, at the

present time, of producing food for its inhabitants, whilst others

assert that it cannot long continue to do so. To the first class we

reply with the pregnant fact, that at this moment there is not more

foreign grain consumed in Great Britain, than the quantity which is

required for production of the malt liquors which we export. To the

second we say--if your hypothesis is correct, the present law is

calculated to operate both as an index and a remedy; but we broadly

dispute your assertions. Agriculture has hitherto kept steady pace with

the increase of the population; new land has been taken into tillage,

and vast quantities remain which are still improveable. The railways, by

making distance a thing of no moment, and by lowering land-carriage,

will, if fair play be given to the enterprise of the agriculturist,

render any apprehension of scarcity at home ridiculous. As to famine,

there is no chance whatever of that occurring, provided the

agriculturists are let alone. But, on the contrary, there is a chance

not of one future famine, but of many, if the protective duties are

removed, and the land at present under tillage permitted to fall back.

You talk of the present distress and low wages of the agricultural

laborer. It is a favourite theme with a certain section of

philanthropists, whose hatred to the aristocracy of this country is only

equalled by their ignorance and consummate assurance. Is that, or can

that be made--supposing that it generally exists--an argument for a

repeal of the corn-laws? If the condition of the labouring man be now

indifferent, what will it become if you deprive him of that employment

from which he now derives his subsistence? Agriculture is subject to the

operation of the laws which govern every branch of industrial labour. It

must either progress or fall back--it cannot by possibility stand still.

It will progress if you give it fair play; if you check it, it will

inevitably decline. What provision do you propose to make for the

multitude of labourers who will thus be thrown out of employment?

They--the poor--are by far more deeply interested in this question than

the rich. Every corn field converted into pasture, will throw some of

these men loose upon society. What do you propose do with them? Have you

poor's-houses--new Bastilles--large enough to contain them? are they to

be desired to leave their homes, desert their families, and seek

employment in the construction of railways--a roving and a houseless

gang? These are very serious considerations, and they require something

more than a theoretical answer. You are not dealing here with a

fractional or insignificant interest, but with one which, numerically

speaking, is the most important of any in the empire. The number of

persons in the United Kingdom immediately supported by agriculture, is

infinitely greater than that dependent in like manner upon manufactures.

It is a class which you do not count by thousands, but by millions; so

that the experiment must be made upon the broadest scale, and the danger

of its failure is commensurate. Rely upon it, this is not a subject with

which legislators may venture to trifle. If the land of this country is

once allowed to recede--as it must do if the power of foreign

competition in grain should prove too much for native industry--the

consequences may be more ruinous than any of us can yet foresee.

We need hardly say that a period of agricultural depression is of all

things that which the manufacturer has most reason to dread. Exportation

never can be carried to such a height, that the home consumption shall

be a matter of indifference. At present, from eight to nine-tenths of

the manufacturing population are dependent for support upon articles

consumed at home. Any depression, therefore, of agriculture--any measure

which has tendency to throw the other class of labourers out of

employment--must be to them productive of infinite mischief. If the

customer has no means of buying, the dealer cannot get quit of his

goods. This surely is a self-evident proposition; and yet it is now

coolly proposed, that for the benefit of the dealer, the resources of

the principal customer must be so far crippled that even the employment

is rendered precarious.

The abolition of the protective duties upon corn, is unquestionably the

leading feature of the scheme which the Premier has brought forward.

There are, however, other parts of it with which the agriculturist has

little or nothing to do, but which may appear equally objectionable to

isolated interests. Such is the proposal to allow foreign manufactured

papers to be admitted at a nominal duty, in the teeth of the present

excise regulations, which, of themselves, have been a grievous burden

upon this branch of home industry--the reduction of the duties upon

manufactured silks, linens, shoes, &c.--all of which are now to be

brought into direct competition with our home productions. Brandy,

likewise, is to supersede home-made spirits, whilst the excise is not

removed from the latter. For these and other alterations, it is

difficult to find out any thing like a principle, unless indeed some of

them are to be considered as baits thrown out to foreign states for the

purpose of tempting them to reciprocity. We should, however, have

preferred some distinct negotiation on this subject before the

reductions were actually made; for we have no confidence in the scheme

of tacit subsidies, without a clear understanding or promise of

repayment. Indeed the whole success of this measure, if its effects are

prospectively traced, must ultimately depend upon its reception by the

foreign powers. No doubt, our abandonment of protection upon grain will

be considered by them as a valuable boon; for either their agriculture

will increase in a ratio corresponding to the decline of our own, which

would clearly be their wisest policy, or they will transfer the system

of protective duties to the other side of the seas, and establish a

sliding scale on exports, which may actually prevent us from getting

their grain any cheaper than at present, whilst our public revenue will

thereby be materially diminished. Looking to the commercial jealousy of

our neighbours--to the Zollverein, the various independent tariffs, and

the care and anxiety with which they are shielding their rising

manufactures from our competition--we are inclined to think the last

hypothesis the more probable of the two. The vast success of English

manufacture, and the strenuous efforts which she has latterly made to

command the markets of the world, have not been lost upon the European

or the American sates. They are now far less solicitous about the

improvement of their agriculture, than for the increase of their

manufactures; and some of them--Belgium for example--are already

beginning in certain branches to rival us. This scheme of concession

which is now agitating us will not, as some suppose, resolve itself into

a matter of simple barter, as if Britain with the one hand were

demanding corn, and with the other were proffering the equivalent of a

cotton bale. We are indeed about to demand corn, but the answer of the

foreigner will be this,--"You want grain, for your population is

increasing, your land has gone out of cultivation, and you cannot

support yourselves. Well, we have a superfluity of grain which we can

give you--in fact we have grown it for you--but then it is for us to

select the equivalent. We shall not take those goods which you offer in

exchange. Twelve years ago we set up cotton manufactories. We had not

the same advantages which you possessed in coal and iron, and machinery;

but labour was cheaper with us, and we have prospered. Our manufactures

are now sufficient to supply ourselves--nay, we have begun to export.

Your cotton goods, therefore, are worthless to us, and we must have

something else for our corn." Gold, therefore, the common equivalent,

will be demanded; and the price of corn in this country will, like every

other article, be regulated by the amount and the exigency of the

demand. The regulating power, however, will not then be with us, but

with the parties who furnish the supply.

But, supposing that no protective duties upon the exportation of grain

shall be levied abroad--which certainly is the view of the free-traders,

and, we presume, also of the Ministry--and, supposing that corn is

imported from abroad at no very great rise of price, then the evil will

come upon us in all its naked deformity. It is very well for certain

politicians to say, that it is an utter absurdity to maintain that cheap

bread can affect the interests of the country; but the men who can argue

thus, have not advanced a step beyond the threshold of social economy.

Let them take the converse of the proposition. If there existed abroad a

manufacturing state which could supply the people of this country with

clothing and every article of manufactured luxury, at a ratio thirty per

cent cheaper than these could be produced in this country, would it be a

measure of wise policy to abandon a system of protective duties? Would

it be wise in the agriculturist to insist upon such an abandonment, in

order that he might wear a cheaper dress, whilst the practical effect of

the measure must be to annihilate the capital now invested in

manufactures, to starve the workman, and of course to narrow within the

lowest limits his capability of purchasing food? In like manner we say,

that it is not wise in the manufacturer to co-operate in this scheme;

for sooner or later the evil effects of it must fall upon his own head.

Cheap bread may be an evil, and a great one. Mr Hudson, no mean

authority in the absence of all official information upon the point, but

a man who has personally dealt in grain, informs us that the probable

price of wheat will be from 35s. to 40s. a quarter. We shall adopt his

calculation, and the more readily because we firmly believe that foreign

grain will at first be imported at some such price, although the spirit

of avarice may combine with the necessity of expending capital in

improvement, to raise it considerably afterwards. But let us assume that

as the probable starting price. No man who knows any thing at all upon

the subject, will venture to say that, at such a price, the agriculture

of the country can be maintained. It _must_ go back. The immediate

consequence is not a prophecy, but a statement of natural effect. Much

land will go out of cultivation. Pauperism will increase in the country

on account of agricultural distress, and the home market for

manufactures will suffer accordingly.

Is cheap bread a blessing to the labourer, let his labour be what it

may? Let us consider that point a little. And, first, what is meant by

cheap bread? Cheapness is a relative term, and we cannot disconnect it

as a matter of _price_, from the counter element of _wages_. If a

labourer earns but a shilling a-day, and the loaf costs seven-pence, he

will no doubt be materially benefited by a reduction of twopence upon

its price. But if he only earns tenpence, and the loaf is reduced to

fivepence, it is clear to the meanest capacity that he is nothing the

gainer. Nay, he may be a loser. For the grower of the loaf is more

likely, on account of his extra price, to be a purchaser of such

commodities as the other labourer is producing, than if he were ground

down to the lowest possible margin. But, setting that aside, the

consideration comes to be, does price regulate labour, or labour

regulate price? In such a country as this, we apprehend there can be no

doubt that price is the regulating power. At the present moment,

peculiar and extraordinary causes are at work, which, in some degree,

render this question of less momentary consequence. Undoubtedly there is

a stimulus within the country, caused by new improvement, which alters

ordinary calculations, but which cannot be expected to last. We never

yet had so great a demand for labour. But let a period of distress

come--such as we had four years ago--and the political problem revives.

We are undoubtedly an overgrown country. Periods of distress constantly

occur. The slightest check in our machinery, sometimes in parts

apparently trivial, is sufficient to derange the whole of our industrial

system, and to throw the labourer entirely at the mercy of the

capitalist. It is _then_ that the relative value of wages and prices is

developed. The standard which is invariably fixed upon to regulate the

rate of the former, is the price of bread. No class understand this

better than the master-manufacturers, who have the command of capital,

and are not only the council, but the absolute incarnation of the

League. It is in these circumstances that the labouring artisan is

driven to the lowest possible rate of wages, which is calculated simply

upon the price of the quartern loaf. In order to work he must live. That

is a fact which the tyrants of the spinneries do not overlook, but they

take care that the livelihood shall be as scant as possible. The

labourer is desired to work for his daily bread, to which the wages are

made to correspond, and, of course, the cheaper bread is, the greater

are the profits of the master.

Where the different industrial classes of a nation purchase from each

other, there is a mutual benefit--when either deserts the home market,

and has recourse to a foreign one, the benefit is totally neutralized.

There is no greater fallacy than the proposition, that it is best to buy

in the cheapest and to sell in the dearest market. There is a

preliminary consideration to this--which is your best, your steadiest,

and your most unfailing customer? None knows better than the

manufacturer, that he depends, _ante omnia_, upon the home market. Is

not this the very interest which is now assailed and threatened with

ruin? There is not a man in this country, whatever be his condition, who

would escape without scaith a period of agricultural depression; and how

infinitely more dangerous is the prospect, when the period appears to be

without a limit! The longer we reflect upon this measure, the more are

we convinced of its wantonness, and of the dangerous nature of the

experiment upon every industrial class in this great and prospering

country.

There is one objection to the Ministerial scheme which, strange to say,

is open to both Protectionist and the Free-trader. The landowner has

reason to object to it both as an active and a passive measure--it

professes to leave him to his own resources, but it does not remove his

restrictions. Surely if the foreigner and the colonists are to be

permitted to compete on equal terms with him in the production of the

great necessary of life, his ingenuity ought to have free scope in other

things, more especially as he labours under the disadvantage of an

inferior soil and climate. Why may he not be allowed, if he pleases, to

attempt the culture of tobacco? The coarser kinds can be grown and

manufactured in many parts of England and Scotland, and if we are to

have free trade, why not carry out the principle to its fullest extent?

Why not allow us to grow hops duty free? Why not relieve us of the

malt-tax and of many other burdens? The answer is one familiar to

us--the revenue would suffer in consequence. No doubt it would, and so

it suffers from every commercial change. But these changes have now

gone so far, that--especially if you abolish this protective duty upon

corn--we are entitled to demand a return from the present cumbrous,

perplexing, and expensive mode of taxation, to the natural cheap and

simple one of poll or property-tax. At present no man knows what he is

paying towards the expense of government. He is reached in every way

indirectly through the articles he consumes. The customs furnish

occupation for one most expensive staff; the excise for another; nowhere

is the machinery of collection attempted to be simplified. Then comes

the assessed-taxes, the income-tax, land-tax--and what not--all

collected by different staffs--the cost of the preventive guard is no

trifle--in fact, there are as many parasites living upon the taxation of

this country as there are insects on a plot of unhealthy rose-trees. If

we are to have free trade, let it be free and unconditional, and rid us

of these swarms of unnecessary vermin. Open the ports by all means, but

open them to every thing. Let the quays be as free for traffic as the

Queen's highway; let us grow what we like, consume what we please, and

tax us in one round sum according to each man's means and substance, and

then at all events there can be no clashing of interests. This is the

true principle of free trade, carried to its utmost extent, and we

recommend it now to the serious consideration of Ministers.

We have not in these pages ventured to touch upon the interests which

the national churches have in this important measure, because hitherto

we have been dealing with commercial matters exclusively. May we hope

they will be better cared for elsewhere than in our jarring House of

Commons.

As to the necessity of the measure, more especially at the present time,

we can find no shadow of a reason. We can understand conversions under

very special circumstances. Had it been shown that the agriculturists,

notwithstanding their protection, were remiss in their duties--that they

had neglected improvement--that thereby the people of this country, who

looked to them for their daily supply of bread, were stinted or forced

pay a most exorbitant price, then there might have been some shadow of

an argument for the change at the present moment. We say a shadow, for

in reality there is no argument at all. The sliding-scale was

constructed, we presume, for the purpose of preventing exorbitant

prices, by admitting foreign grain duty free after our averages reached

a certain point, _and that point they have never yet reached_. Was,

then, the probability of such prices never in the mind of the framers,

and was the sliding-scale merely a temporary delusion and not a

settlement? So it would seem. The agriculturists are chargeable with no

neglect. The attempt some three or four months ago to get up a cry of

famine on account of the failure of the crops, has turned out a gross

delusion. Every misrepresentation on this head was met by overwhelming

facts; and the consequence is, that the Premier did not venture, in his

first speech, to found upon a scarcity as a reason for proposing his

measure. Something, indeed, was said about the possibility of a pressure

occurring before the arrival of the next harvest--it was perhaps

necessary to say so; but no man who has studied the agricultural

statistics of last harvest, can give the slightest weight to that

assertion. His second speech has just been put into our hands. Here

certainly he is more explicit. With deep gravity, and a tone of the

greatest deliberation, he tells the House of Commons, that before the

month of May shall arrive, the pressure will be upon us. We read that

announcement, so confidently uttered, with no slight amount of misgiving

as to the opinions we have already chronicled, but the next half column

put us right. There is, after all, no considerable deficiency in the

grain crop. It may be that the country has raised that amount of corn

which is necessary for its ordinary consumption, but the potato crop in

Ireland has failed! This, then--the failure of the potato crop in

Ireland--is the immediate cause, the necessity, of abolishing the

protections to agriculture in Great Britain! Was there ever such logic?

What has the murrain in potatoes to do with the question of foreign

competition, as applied to English, Scottish, nay, Irish corn? We are

old enough to recollect something like a famine in the Highlands, when

the poor were driven to such shifts as humanity shudders to recall; but

we never heard that distress attributed to the fact of English

protection. If millions of the Irish will not work, and will not grow

corn--if they prefer trusting to the potato, and the potato happens to

fail--are _we_ to be punished for that defect, be it one of

carelessness, of improvidence, or of misgovernment? Better that we had

no reason at all than one so obviously flimsy. If we turn to the

petitions which, about the end of autumn, were forwarded from different

towns, praying for that favourite measure of the League, the opening of

the ports, it will be seen that one and all of them were founded on the

assumed fact, that the grain crop was a deficient one. That has proved

to be fallacy, and is of course no longer tenable; but now we are asked

to take, as a supplementary argument, the state of the potatoes in

Ireland, and to apply it not to the opening of the ports for an

exigency, but to the total abolition of the protective duties upon

grain!

Of the improvidence of the peasantry of Ireland we never entertained a

doubt. To such a scourge as this they have been yearly exposed; but how

their condition is to be benefited by the repeal of the Corn-laws, is a

matter which even Sir Robert Peel has not condescended to explain. For

it is a notorious and incontrovertible fact, that if foreign corn were

at this moment exposed at their doors duty free, they could not purchase

it. We shall give full credit to the government for its intention to

introduce the flour of Indian corn to meet, if possible, the exigency.

It was a wise and a kind thought, objectionable on no principle

whatever; and, had an Order in Council been issued to that effect, we

believe there is not one man in the country who would not have applauded

it. But why was this not done, more especially when the crisis is so

near? If the Irish famine is to begin in May, or even earlier, surely it

was not a very prudent or paternal act to mix up the question with

another, which obviously could not be settled so easily and so soon. It

is rather too much to turn now upon the agriculturists, and say--"You

see, gentlemen, what is the impending condition of Ireland. You have it

in your power to save the people from the consequences of their own

neglect. Adopt our scheme--admit Indian corn free of duty--and you will

rescue thousands from starvation." The appeal, we own, would be

irresistible, _were it made singly_. But if--mixed up as it were and

smothered with maize-flour--the English agriculturist is asked at the

same time to pass another measure which he believes to be suicidal to

his interest, and detrimental to that of the country, he may well be

excused if he pauses before taking so enthusiastic a step. Let us have

this maize by all means; feed the Irish as you best can; do it

liberally; but recollect that there is also a population in this country

to be cared for, and that we cannot in common justice be asked to

surrender a permanent interest, merely because a temporary exigency,

caused by no fault of ours, has arisen elsewhere.

Apart from this, where was the necessity for the change at the present

moment? We ask that question, not because we are opposed to change when

a proper cause has been established, but because we have been taught--it

would seem somewhat foolishly--to respect consistency, and because we

see ground for suspicion in the authenticity of all these sudden and

unaccountable conversions. This is the first time, so far as we can

recollect, that Ministers, carried into power expressly for their

adherence to certain tangible principles, have repudiated these without

any intelligible cause, or any public emergency which they might seize

as a colourable pretext. The sagacity of some, the high character and

stainless honour of others--for we cannot but look upon the whole

Cabinet as participators in this measure--render the supposition of any

thing like deliberate treachery impossible. It is quite clear from what

has already transpired, that the private opinions of some of them remain

unchanged. They have no love for this measure--they would avoid it if

they could--they cannot look upon its results without serious

apprehension. Some of them, we know, care nothing for power--they would

surrender, not sacrifice it, at any time cheerfully--most of all at a

crisis when its retention might subject them to the reproach of a broken

pledge. Neither do we believe that this is a faint-hearted Cabinet, or

that its members are capable of yielding their opinions to the _brutum

fulmen_ of the League. That body is by no means popular. The great bulk

of the manufacturing artisans are totally indifferent to its

proceedings; for they know well that self-interest, and not

philanthropy, is the motive which has regulated that movement, and that

the immediate effect of cheap bread would be a reduction of the

workman's wages. We cannot, therefore, admit that any pressure from

without has wrought this change of opinion, about which there seems to

be a mystery which may never be properly explained. Perhaps it is best

that it should remain so. Enough are already implicated in this

question, on one side or the other. The facts and the arguments are

before us, and we have but to judge between them.

Of the probable fate of this measure we shall venture no opinion. The

enormous amount of private business which of late years has been brought

before the Houses of Parliament--the importance and the number of the

internal improvements which depend upon their sanction, and in which

almost every man of moderate means has a stake, are strong probabilities

against any immediate dissolution of Parliament, or an appeal to the

judgment of the country. But there is no policy equal to truth, no line

of conduct at all comparable to consistency. We have not hesitated to

express our extreme regret that this measure should have been so

conceived and ushered in; both because we think these changes of opinion

on the part of public men, when unaccompanied by sufficient outward

motives, and in the teeth of their own recorded words and actions, are

unseemly in themselves, and calculated to unsettle the faith of the

country in the political morality of our statesmen--and because we fear

that a grievous, if not an irreparable division has been thereby caused

amongst the ranks of the Conservative party. Neither have we

hesitated--after giving all due weight to the arguments adduced in its

favour--to condemn that measure, as, in our humble judgment, uncalled

for and attended with the greatest risk of disastrous consequences to

the nation. If this departure from the protective principle should

produce the effect of lessening the tillage of our land, converting

corn-fields into pasture, depriving the labourer of his employment, and

permanently throwing us upon the mercy of foreign nations for our daily

supply of corn, it is impossible to over-estimate the evil. If, on the

contrary, nothing of this should take place--if it should be

demonstrated by experience that the one party has been grasping at a

chimera, and the other battling for the retention of an imaginary

bulwark, then--though we may rejoice that the delusion has been

dispelled--we may well be pardoned some regret that the experiment was

not left to other hands. Our proposition is simply this, that if we

cannot gain cheap bread without resorting to other countries for it, we

ought to continue as we are. Further, we say, that were we to be

supplied with cheap bread on that condition, not only our agricultural

but our manufacturing interest would be deeply and permanently injured;

and that no commercial benefit whatever could recompense us for the

sacrifice of our own independence, and the loss of our native resources.

_Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul's Work._

Transcriber's note:

In this etext a macron is represented thus [=a].