road. Not a hoof nor a wheel was to be heard. And to strengthen this
false luxurious confidence in the noiseless roads, it happened also
that the night was one of peculiar solemnity and peace. I myself,
though slightly alive to the possibilities of peril, had so far
yielded to the influence of the mighty calm as to sink into a profound
reverie. The month was August, in which lay my own birth-day; a
festival to every thoughtful man suggesting solemn and often sigh-born
thoughts.[15] The county was my own native county--upon which, in its
southern section, more than upon any equal area known to man past or
present, had descended the original curse of labour in its heaviest
form, not mastering the bodies of men only as of slaves, or criminals
in mines, but working through the fiery will. Upon no equal space of
earth, was, or ever had been, the same energy of human power put forth
daily. At this particular season also of the assizes, that dreadful
hurricane of flight and pursuit, as it might have seemed to a stranger,
that swept to and from Lancaster all day long, hunting the county
up and down, and regularly subsiding about sunset, united with the
permanent distinction of Lancashire as the very metropolis and citadel
of labour, to point the thoughts pathetically upon that counter vision
of rest, of saintly repose from strife and sorrow, towards which, as
to their secret haven, the profounder aspirations of man's heart are
continually travelling. Obliquely we were nearing the sea upon our
left, which also must, under the present circumstances, be repeating
the general state of halcyon repose. The sea, the atmosphere, the
light, bore an orchestral part in this universal lull. Moonlight, and
the first timid tremblings of the dawn, were now blending; and the
blendings were brought into a still more exquisite state of unity, by
a slight silvery mist, motionless and dreamy, that covered the woods
and fields, but with a veil of equable transparency. Except the feet
of our own horses, which, running on a sandy margin of the road, made
little disturbance, there was no sound abroad. In the clouds, and on
the earth, prevailed the same majestic peace; and in spite of all that
the villain of a schoolmaster has done for the ruin of our sublimer
thoughts, which are the thoughts of our infancy, we still believe in no
such nonsense as a limited atmosphere. Whatever we may swear with our
false feigning lips, in our faithful hearts we still believe, and must
for ever believe, in fields of air traversing the total gulf between
earth and the central heavens. Still, in the confidence of children
that tread without fear _every_ chamber in their father's house, and to
whom no door is closed, we, in that Sabbatic vision which sometimes is
revealed for an hour upon nights like this, ascend with easy steps from
the sorrow-stricken fields of earth, upwards to the sandals of God.
[15] "Sigh-born:" I owe the suggestion of this word to an obscure
remembrance of a beautiful phrase in Giraldus Cambrensis, viz.,
_suspiriosæ cogitationes_.
Suddenly from thoughts like these, I was awakened to a sullen sound,
as of some motion on the distant road. It stole upon the air for a
moment; I listened in awe; but then it died away. Once roused, however,
I could not but observe with alarm the quickened motion of our horses.
Ten years' experience had made my eye learned in the valuing of
motion; and I saw that we were now running thirteen miles an hour. I
pretend to no presence of mind. On the contrary, my fear is, that I am
miserably and shamefully deficient in that quality as regards action.
The palsy of doubt and distraction hangs like some guilty weight of
dark unfathomed remembrances upon my energies, when the signal is
flying for _action_. But, on the other hand, this accursed gift I have,
as regards _thought_, that in the first step towards the possibility
of a misfortune, I see its total evolution: in the radix, I see too
certainly and too instantly its entire expansion; in the first syllable
of the dreadful sentence, I read already the last. It was not that I
feared for ourselves. What could injure _us_? Our bulk and impetus
charmed us against peril in any collision. And I had rode through too
many hundreds of perils that were frightful to approach, that were
matter of laughter as we looked back upon them, for any anxiety to
rest upon _our_ interests. The mail was not built, I felt assured, nor
bespoke, that could betray _me_ who trusted to its protection. But any
carriage that we could meet would be frail and light in comparison
of ourselves. And I remarked this ominous accident of our situation.
We were on the wrong side of the road. But then the other party, if
other there was, might also be on the wrong side; and two wrongs
might make a right. _That_ was not likely. The same motive which had
drawn _us_ to the right-hand side of the road, viz., the soft beaten
sand, as contrasted with the paved centre, would prove attractive
to others. Our lamps, still lighted, would give the impression of
vigilance on our part. And every creature that met us, would rely upon
_us_ for quartering.[16] All this, and if the separate links of the
anticipation had been a thousand times more, I saw--not discursively or
by effort--but as by one flash of horrid intuition.
[16] "_Quartering_"--this is the technical word and, I presume, derived
from the French _cartayer_, to evade a rut or any obstacle.
Under this steady though rapid anticipation of the evil which _might_
be gathering ahead, ah, reader! what a sullen mystery of fear, what a
sigh of woe, seemed to steal upon the air, as again the far-off sound
of a wheel was heard! A whisper it was--a whisper from, perhaps, four
miles off--secretly announcing a ruin that, being foreseen, was not
the less inevitable. What could be done--who was it that could do
it--to check the storm-flight of these maniacal horses? What! could I
not seize the reins from the grasp of the slumbering coachman? You,
reader, think that it would have been in _your_ power to do so. And I
quarrel not with your estimate of yourself. But, from the way in which
the coachman's hand was viced between his upper and lower thigh, this
was impossible. The guard subsequently found it impossible, after this
danger had passed. Not the grasp only, but also the position of this
Polyphemus, made the attempt impossible. You still think otherwise.
See, then, that bronze equestrian statue. The cruel rider has kept the
bit in his horse's mouth for two centuries. Unbridle him, for a minute,
if you please, and wash his mouth with water. Or stay, reader, unhorse
me that marble emperor: knock me those marble feet from those marble
stirrups of Charlemagne.
The sounds ahead strengthened, and were now too clearly the sounds
of wheels. Who and what could it be? Was it industry in a taxed
cart?--was it youthful gaiety in a gig? Whoever it was, something
must be attempted to warn them. Upon the other party rests the active
responsibility, but upon _us_--and, woe is me! that _us_ was my single
self--rests the responsibility of warning. Yet, how should this be
accomplished? Might I not seize the guard's horn? Already, on the
first thought, I was making my way over the roof to the guard's seat.
But this, from the foreign mails being piled upon the roof, was a
difficult, and even dangerous attempt, to one cramped by nearly three
hundred miles of outside travelling. And, fortunately, before I had
lost much time in the attempt, our frantic horses swept round an angle
of the road, which opened upon us the stage where the collision must be
accomplished, the parties that seemed summoned to the trial, and the
impossibility of saving them by any communication with the guard.
Before us lay an avenue, straight as an arrow, hundred yards, perhaps,
in length; and the umbrageous trees, which rose in a regular line
from either side, meeting high overhead, gave to it the character of
a cathedral aisle. These trees lent a deeper solemnity to the early
light; but there was still light enough to perceive, at the further
end of this gothic aisle, a light, reedy gig, in which were seated a
young man, and, by his side, a young lady. Ah, young sir! what are you
about? If it is necessary that you should whisper your communications
to this young lady--though really I see, nobody at this hour, and
on this solitary road, likely to overhear your conversation--is it,
therefore, necessary that you should carry your lips forward to hers?
The little carriage is creeping on at one mile an hour; and the parties
within it, being thus tenderly engaged, are naturally bending down
their heads. Between them and eternity, to all human calculation, there
is but a minute and a half. What is it that I shall do? Strange it is,
and to a mere auditor of the tale, might seem laughable, that I should
need a suggestion from the _Iliad_ to prompt the sole recourse that
remained. But so it was. Suddenly I remembered the shout of Achilles,
and its effect. But could I pretend to shout like the son of Peleus,
aided by Pallas? No, certainly: but then I needed not the shout that
should alarm all Asia militant; a shout would suffice, such as should
carry terror into the hearts of two thoughtless young people, and one
gig horse. I shouted--and the young man heard me not. A second time I
shouted--and now he heard me, for now he raised his head.
Here, then, all had been done that, by me, _could_ be done: more
on _my_ part was not possible. Mine had been the first step: the
second was for the young man: the third was for God. If, said I, the
stranger is a brave man, and if, indeed, he loves the young girl at
his side--or, loving her not, if he feels the obligation pressing upon
every man worthy to be called a man, of doing his utmost for a woman
confided to his protection--he will at least make some effort to save
her. If _that_ fails, he will not perish the more, or by a death more
cruel, for having made it; and he will die, as a brave man should, with
his face to the danger, and with his arm about the woman that he sought
in vain to save. But if he makes no effort, shrinking, without a
struggle, from his duty, he himself will not the less certainly perish
for this baseness of poltroonery. He will die no less: and why not?
Wherefore should we grieve that there is one craven less in the world?
No; _let_ him perish, without a pitying thought of ours wasted upon
him; and, in that case, all our grief will be reserved for the fate
of the helpless girl, who, now, upon the least shadow of failure in
_him_, must, by the fiercest of translations--must, without time for a
prayer--must, within seventy seconds, stand before the judgment-seat of
God.
But craven he was not: sudden had been the call upon him, and sudden
was his answer to the call. He saw, he heard, he comprehended, the ruin
that was coming down: already its gloomy shadow darkened above him;
and already he was measuring his strength to deal with it. Ah! what
a vulgar thing does courage seem, when we see nations buying it and
selling it for a shilling a-day: ah! what a sublime thing does courage
seem, when some fearful crisis on the great deeps of life carries a
man, as if running before a hurricane, up to the giddy crest of some
mountainous wave, from which, accordingly as he chooses his course,
he descries two courses, and a voice says to him audibly--"This way
lies hope; take the other way and mourn for ever!" Yet, even then,
amidst the raving of the seas and the frenzy of the danger, the man
is able to confront his situation--is able to retire for a moment
into solitude with God, and to seek all his counsel from _him_! For
seven seconds, it might be, of his seventy, the stranger settled his
countenance steadfastly upon us, as if to search and value every
element in the conflict before him. For five seconds more he sate
immovably, like one that mused on some great purpose. For five he
sate with eyes upraised, like one that prayed in sorrow, under some
extremity of doubt, for wisdom to guide him towards the better choice.
Then suddenly he rose; stood upright; and, by a sudden strain upon
the reins, raising his horse's forefeet from the ground, he slewed
him round on the pivot of his hind legs, so as to plant the little
equipage in a position nearly at right-angles to ours. Thus far his
condition was not improved; except as a first step had been taken
towards the possibility of a second. If no more were done, nothing
was done; for the little carriage still occupied the very centre of
our path, though in an altered direction. Yet even now it may not be
too late: fifteen of the twenty seconds may still be unexhausted; and
one almighty bound forward may avail to clear the ground. Hurry then,
hurry! for the flying moments--_they_ hurry! Oh hurry, hurry, my brave
young man! for the cruel hoofs of our horses--_they_ also hurry! Fast
are the flying moments, faster are the hoofs of our horses. Fear not
for _him_, if human energy can suffice: faithful was he that drove, to
his terrific duty; faithful was the horse to _his_ command. One blow,
one impulse given with voice and hand by the stranger, one rush from
the horse, one bound as if in the act of rising to a fence, landed
the docile creature's fore-feet upon the crown or arching centre of
the road. The larger half of the little equipage had then cleared our
over-towering shadow: _that_ was evident even to my own agitated sight.
But it mattered little that one wreck should float off in safety, if
upon the wreck that perished were embarked the human freightage. The
rear part of the carriage--was _that_ certainly beyond the line of
absolute ruin? What power could answer the question? Glance of eye,
thought of man, wing of angel, which of these had speed enough to
sweep between the question and the answer, and divide the one from the
other? Light does not tread upon the steps of light more indivisibly,
than did our all-conquering arrival upon the escaping efforts of the
gig. _That_ must the young man have felt too plainly. His back was now
turned to us; not by sight could he any longer communicate with the
peril; but by the dreadful rattle of our harness, too truly had his ear
been instructed--that all was finished as regarded any further effort
of _his_. Already in resignation he had rested from his struggle; and
perhaps, in his heart he was whispering--"Father, which art above, do
thou finish in heaven what I on earth have attempted." We ran past
them faster than ever mill-race in our inexorable flight. Oh, raving
of hurricanes that must have sounded in their young ears at the moment
of our transit! Either with the swingle-bar, or with the haunch of our
near leader, we had struck the off-wheel of the little gig, which stood
rather obliquely and not quite so far advanced as to be accurately
parallel with the near wheel. The blow, from the fury of our passage,
resounded terrifically. I rose in horror, to look upon the ruins we
might have caused. From my elevated station I looked down, and looked
back upon the scene, which in a moment told its tale, and wrote all its
records on my heart for ever.
The horse was planted immovably, with his fore-feet upon the paved
crest of the central road. He of the whole party was alone untouched
by the passion of death. The little cany carriage--partly perhaps from
the dreadful torsion of the wheels in its recent movement, partly from
the thundering blow we had given to it--as if it sympathised with human
horror, was all alive with tremblings and shiverings. The young man
sat like a rock. He stirred not at all. But _his_ was the steadiness
of agitation frozen into rest by horror. As yet he dared not to look
round; for he knew that, if anything remained to do, by him it could no
longer be done. And as yet he knew not for certain if their safety were
accomplished. But the lady----
But the lady----! Oh heavens! will that spectacle ever depart from my
dreams, as she rose and sank upon her seat, sank and rose, threw up
her arms wildly to heaven, clutched at some visionary object in the
air, fainting, praying, raving, despairing! Figure to yourself, reader,
the elements of the case; suffer me to recall before your mind the
circumstances of the unparalleled situation. From the silence and deep
peace of this saintly summer night,--from the pathetic blending of this
sweet moonlight, dawnlight, dreamlight,--from the manly tenderness of
this flattering, whispering, murmuring love,--suddenly as from the
woods and fields,--suddenly as from the chambers of the air opening in
revelation,--suddenly as from the ground yawning at her feet, leaped
upon her, with the flashing of cataracts, Death the crownèd phantom,
with all the equipage of his terrors, and the tiger roar of his voice.
The moments were numbered. In the twinkling of an eye our flying
horses had carried us to the termination of the umbrageous aisle; at
right-angles we wheeled into our former direction; the turn of the road
carried the scene out of my eyes in an instant, and swept it into my
dreams for ever.
DREAM-FUGUE.
ON THE ABOVE THEME OF SUDDEN DEATH.
"Whence the sound
Of instruments, that made melodious chime,
Was heard, of harp and organ; and who mov'd
Their stops and chords, was seen; his volant touch
Instinct through all proportions, low and high,
Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue."
_Par. Lost_, B. xi.
_Tumultuosissimamente._
Passion of Sudden Death! that once in youth I read and interpreted by
the shadows of thy averted[17] signs;--Rapture of panic taking the
shape, which amongst tombs in churches I have seen, of woman bursting
her sepulchral bonds--of woman's Ionic form bending forward from
the ruins of her grave, with arching foot, with eyes upraised, with
clasped adoring hands--waiting, watching, trembling, praying, for the
trumpet's call to rise from dust for ever;--Ah, vision too fearful of
shuddering humanity on the brink of abysses! vision that didst start
back--that didst reel away--like a shrivelling scroll from before the
wrath of fire racing on the wings of the wind! Epilepsy so brief of
horror--wherefore is it that thou canst not die? Passing so suddenly
into darkness, wherefore is it that still thou sheddest thy sad funeral
blights upon the gorgeous mosaics of dreams? Fragment of music too
stern, heard once and heard no more, what aileth thee that thy deep
rolling chords come up at intervals through all the worlds of sleep,
and after thirty years have lost no element of horror?
[17] "_Averted_ signs."--I read the course and changes of the lady's
agony in the succession of her involuntary gestures; but let it be
remembered that I read all this from the rear, never once catching the
lady's full face, and even her profile imperfectly.
1.
Lo, it is summer, almighty summer! The everlasting gates of life and
summer are thrown open wide; and on the ocean, tranquil and verdant as
a savannah, the unknown lady from the dreadful vision and I myself are
floating: she upon a fairy pinnace, and I upon an English three-decker.
But both of us are wooing gales of festal happiness within the domain
of our common country--within that ancient watery park--within that
pathless chase where England takes her pleasure as a huntress through
winter and summer, and which stretches from the rising to the setting
sun. Ah! what a wilderness of floral beauty was hidden, or was suddenly
revealed, upon the tropic islands through which the pinnace moved. And
upon her deck what a bevy of human flowers--young women how lovely,
young men how noble, that were dancing together, and slowly drifting
towards _us_ amidst music and incense, amidst blossoms from forests
and gorgeous corymbi from vintages, amidst natural caroling and the
echoes of sweet girlish laughter. Slowly the pinnace nears us, gaily
she hails us, and slowly she disappears beneath the shadow of our
mighty bows. But then, as at some signal from heaven, the music and the
carols, and the sweet echoing of girlish laughter--all are hushed. What
evil has smitten the pinnace, meeting or overtaking her? Did ruin to
our friends couch within our own dreadful shadow? Was our shadow the
shadow of death? I looked over the bow for an answer; and, behold! the
pinnace was dismantled; the revel and the revellers were found no more;
the glory of the vintage was dust; and the forest was left without a
witness to its beauty upon the seas. "But where," and I turned to our
own crew--"where are the lovely women that danced beneath the awning
of flowers and clustering corymbi? Whither have fled the noble young
men that danced with _them_?" Answer there was none. But suddenly the
man at the mast-head, whose countenance darkened with alarm, cried
aloud--"Sail on the weather-beam! Down she comes upon us; in seventy
seconds she will founder!"
2.
I looked to the weather-side, and the summer had departed. The sea was
rocking, and shaken with gathering wrath. Upon its surface sate mighty
mists, which grouped themselves into arches and long cathedral aisles.
Down one of these, with the fiery pace of a quarrel from a crossbow,
ran a frigate right athwart our course. "Are they mad?" some voice
exclaimed from our deck. "Are they blind? Do they woo their ruin?" But
in a moment, as she was close upon us, some impulse of a heady current
or sudden vortex gave a wheeling bias to her course, and off she forged
without a shock. As she ran past us, high aloft amongst the shrouds
stood the lady of the pinnace. The deeps opened ahead in malice to
receive her, towering surges of foam ran after her, the billows were
fierce to catch her. But far away she was borne into desert spaces of
the sea: whilst still by sight I followed her, as she ran before the
howling gale, chased by angry sea-birds and by maddening billows; still
I saw her, as at the moment when she ran past us, amongst the shrouds,
with her white draperies streaming before the wind. There she stood
with hair dishevelled, one hand clutched amongst the tackling--rising,
sinking, fluttering, trembling, praying--there for leagues I saw her as
she stood, raising at intervals one hand to heaven, amidst the fiery
crests of the pursuing waves and the raving of the storm; until at
last, upon a sound from afar of malicious laughter and mockery, all was
hidden for ever in driving showers; and afterwards, but when I know
not, and how I know not.
3.
Sweet funeral bells from some incalculable distance, wailing over the
dead that die before the dawn, awakened me as I slept in a boat moored
to some familiar shore. The morning twilight even then was breaking;
and, by the dusky revelations which it spread, I saw a girl adorned
with a garland of white roses about her head for some great festival,
running along the solitary strand with extremity of haste. Her running
was the running of panic; and often she looked back as to some dreadful
enemy in the rear. But when I leaped ashore, and followed on her steps
to warn her of a peril in front, alas! from me she fled as from another
peril; and vainly I shouted to her of quicksands that lay ahead.
Faster and faster she ran; round a promontory of rock she wheeled out
of sight; in an instant I also wheeled round it, but only to see the
treacherous sands gathering above her head. Already her person was
buried; only the fair young head and the diadem of white roses around
it were still visible to the pitying heavens; and, last of all, was
visible one marble arm. I saw by the early twilight this fair young
head, as it was sinking down to darkness--saw this marble arm, as it
rose above her head and her treacherous grave, tossing, faultering,
rising, clutching as at some false deceiving hand stretched out from
the clouds--saw this marble arm uttering her dying hope, and then her
dying despair. The head, the diadem, the arm,--these all had sunk, at
last over these also the cruel quicksand had closed; and no memorial of
the fair young girl remained on earth, except my own solitary tears,
and the funeral bells from the desert seas, that, rising again more
softly, sang a requiem over the grave of the buried child, and over her
blighted dawn.
I sate, and wept in secret the tears that men have ever given to
the memory of those that died before the dawn, and by the treachery
of earth, our mother. But the tears and funeral bells were hushed
suddenly by a shout as of many nations, and by a roar as from some
great king's artillery advancing rapidly along the valleys, and heard
afar by its echoes among the mountains. "Hush!" I said, as I bent my
car earthwards to listen--"hush!--this either is the very anarchy of
strife, or else"--and then I listened more profoundly, and said as I
raised my head--"or else, oh heavens! it is _victory_ that swallows up
all strife."
4.
Immediately, in trance, I was carried over land and sea to some distant
kingdom, and placed upon a triumphal car, amongst companions crowned
with laurel. The darkness of gathering midnight, brooding over all
the land, bid from us the mighty crowds that were weaving restlessly
about our carriage as a centre--we heard them, but we saw them not.
Tidings had arrived, within an hour, of a grandeur that measured itself
against centuries; too full of pathos they were, too full of joy that
acknowledged no fountain but God, to utter themselves by other language
than by tears, by restless anthems, by reverberations rising from every
choir, of the _Gloria in excelsis_. These tidings we that sate upon the
laurelled car had it for our privilege to publish amongst all nations.
And already, by signs audible through the darkness, by snortings and
tramplings, our angry horses, that knew no fear of fleshly weariness,
upbraided us with delay. Wherefore _was_ it that we delayed? We waited
for a secret word, that should bear witness to the hope of nations, as
now accomplished for ever. At midnight the secret word arrived; which
word was--Waterloo and Recovered Christendom! The dreadful word shone
by its own light; before us it went; high above our leaders' heads it
rode, and spread a golden light over the paths which we traversed.
Every city, at the presence of the secret word, threw open its gates
to receive us. The rivers were silent as we crossed. All the infinite
forests, as we ran along their margins, shivered in homage to the
secret word. And the darkness comprehended it.
Two hours after midnight we reached a mighty minster. Its gates, which
rose to the clouds, were closed. But when the dreadful word, that rode
before us, reached them with its golden light, silently they moved
back upon their hinges; and at a flying gallop our equipage entered
the grand aisle of the cathedral. Headlong was our pace; and at every
altar, in the little chapels and oratories to the right hand and left
of our course, the lamps, dying or sickening, kindled anew in sympathy
with the secret word that was flying past. Forty leagues we might have
run in the cathedral, and as yet no strength of morning light had
reached us, when we saw before us the aerial galleries of the organ and
the choir. Every pinnacle of the fret-work, every station of advantage
amongst the traceries, was crested by white-robed choristers, that sang
deliverance; that wept no more tears, as once their fathers had wept;
but at intervals that sang together to the generations, saying--
"Chaunt the deliverer's praise in every tongue,"
and receiving answers from afar,
----"such as once in heaven and earth were sung."
And of their chaunting was no end; of our headlong pace was neither
pause nor remission.
Thus, as we ran like torrents--thus, as we swept with bridal rapture
over the Campo Santo[18] of the cathedral graves--suddenly we became
aware of a vast necropolis rising upon the far-off horizon--a city
of sepulchres, built within the saintly cathedral for the warrior
dead that rested from their feuds on earth. Of purple granite was
the necropolis; yet, in the first minute, it lay like a purple stain
upon the horizon--so mighty was the distance. In the second minute it
trembled through many changes, growing into terraces and towers of
wondrous altitude, so mighty was the pace. In the third minute already,
with our dreadful gallop, we were entering its suburbs. Vast sarcophagi
rose on every side, having towers and turrets that, upon the limits of
the central aisle, strode forward with haughty intrusion, that ran back
with mighty shadows into answering recesses. Every sarcophagus showed
many bas-reliefs--bas-reliefs of battles--bas-reliefs of battle-fields;
of battles from forgotten ages--of battles from yesterday--of
battle-fields that, long since, nature had healed and reconciled to
herself with the sweet oblivion of flowers--of battle-fields that were
yet angry and crimson with carnage. Where the terraces ran, there did
_we_ run; where the towers curved, there did _we_ curve. With the
flight of swallows our horses, swept round every angle. Like rivers
in flood, wheeling round headlands; like hurricanes that ride into
the secrets of forests; faster than ever light unwove the mazes of
darkness, our flying equipage carried earthly passions--kindled warrior
instincts--amongst the dust that lay around us; dust oftentimes of
our noble fathers that had slept in God from Créci to Trafalgar. And
now had we reached the last sarcophagus, now were we abreast of the
last bas-relief, already had we recovered the arrow-like flight of
the illimitable central aisle, when coming up this aisle to meet us we
beheld a female infant that rode in a carriage as frail as flowers. The
mists, which went before her, hid the fawns that drew her, but could
not hide the shells and tropic flowers with which she played--but could
not hide the lovely smiles by which she uttered her trust in the mighty
cathedral, and in the cherubim that looked down upon her from the
topmost shafts of its pillars. Face to face she was meeting us; face to
face she rode, as if danger there were none. "Oh baby!" I exclaimed,
"shalt thou be the ransom for Waterloo? Must we, that carry tidings of
great joy to every people, be messengers of ruin to thee?" In horror
I rose at the thought; but then also, in horror at the thought, rose
one that was sculptured on the bas-relief--a Dying Trumpeter. Solemnly
from the field of battle he rose to his feet; and, unslinging his stony
trumpet, carried it, in his dying anguish, to his stony lips--sounding
once, and yet once again; proclamation that, in _thy_ ears, oh baby!
must have spoken from the battlements of death. Immediately deep
shadows fell between us, and aboriginal silence. The choir had ceased
to sing. The hoofs of our horses, the rattling of our harness, alarmed
the graves no more. By horror the bas-relief had been unlocked into
life. By horror we, that were so full of life, we men and our horses,
with their fiery fore-legs rising in mid air to their everlasting
gallop, were frozen to a bas-relief. Then a third time the trumpet
sounded; the seals were taken off all pulses; life, and the frenzy of
life, tore into their channels again; again the choir burst forth in
sunny grandeur, as from the muffling of storms and darkness; again the
thunderings of our horses carried temptation into the graves. One cry
burst from our lips as the clouds, drawing off from the aisle, showed
it empty before us--"Whither has the infant fled?--is the young child
caught up to God?" Lo! afar off, in a vast recess, rose three mighty
windows to the clouds; and on a level with their summits, at height
insuperable to man, rose an altar of purest alabaster. On its eastern
face was trembling a crimson glory. Whence came _that_? Was it from the
reddening dawn that now streamed _through_ the windows? Was it from the
crimson robes of the martyrs that were painted _on_ the windows? Was
it from the bloody bas-reliefs of earth? Whencesoever it were--there,
within that crimson radiance, suddenly appeared a female head, and then
a female figure. It was the child--now grown up to woman's height.
Clinging to the horns of the altar, there she stood--sinking, rising,
trembling, fainting--raving, despairing; and behind the volume of
incense that, night and day, streamed upwards from the altar, was seen
the fiery font, and dimly was descried the outline of the dreadful
being that should baptise her with the baptism of death. But by her
side was kneeling her better angel, that hid his face with wings; that
wept and pleaded for _her_; that prayed when _she_ could _not_; that
fought with heaven by tears for _her_ deliverance; which also, as he
raised his immortal countenance from his wings, I saw, by the glory in
his eye, that he had won at last.
[18] _Campo Santo._--It is probable that most of my readers will be
acquainted with the history of the Campo Santo at Pisa--composed of
earth brought from Jerusalem for a bed of sanctity, as the highest
prize which the noble piety of crusaders could ask or imagine. There
is another Campo Santo at Naples, formed, however, (I presume,) on the
example given by Pisa. Possibly the idea may have been more extensively
copied. To readers who are unacquainted with England, or who (being
English) are yet unacquainted with the cathedral cities of England,
it may be right to mention that the graves within-side the cathedrals
often form a flat pavement over which carriages and horses might roll;
and perhaps a boyish remembrance of one particular cathedral, across
which I had seen passengers walk and burdens carried, may have assisted
my dream.
5.
Then rose the agitation, spreading through the infinite cathedral, to
its agony; then was completed the passion of the mighty fugue. The
golden tubes of the organ, which as yet had but sobbed and muttered at
intervals--gleaming amongst clouds and surges of incense--threw up, as
from fountains unfathomable, columns of heart-shattering music. Choir
and anti-choir were filling fast with unknown voices. Thou also, Dying
Trumpeter!--with thy love that was victorious, and thy anguish that was
finishing, didst enter the tumult: trumpet and echo--farewell love, and
farewell anguish--rang through the dreadful _sanctus_. We, that spread
flight before us, heard the tumult, as of flight, mustering behind us.
In fear we looked round for the unknown steps that, in flight or in
pursuit, were gathering upon our own. Who were these that followed?
The faces, which no man could count--whence were _they_? "Oh, darkness
of the grave!" I exclaimed, "that from the crimson altar and from the
fiery font wert visited with secret light--that wert searched by the
effulgence in the angel's eye--were these indeed thy children? Pomps
of life, that, from the burials of centuries, rose again to the voice
of perfect joy, could it be _ye_ that had wrapped me in the reflux of
panic?" What ailed me, that I should fear when the triumphs of earth
were advancing? Ah! Pariah heart within me, that couldst never hear
the sound of joy without sullen whispers of treachery in ambush; that,
from six years old, didst never hear the promise of perfect love,
without seeing aloft amongst the stars fingers as of a man's hand
writing the secret legend--"_ashes to ashes, dust to dust!_"--wherefore
shouldst _thou_ not fear, though all men should rejoice? Lo! as I
looked back for seventy leagues through the mighty cathedral, and saw
the quick and the dead that sang together to God, together that sang
to the generations of man--ah! raving, as of torrents that opened on
every side: trepidation, as of female and infant steps that fled--ah!
rushing, as of wings that chased! But I heard a voice from heaven,
which said--"Let there be no reflux of panic--let there be no more
fear, and no more sudden death! Cover them with joy as the tides cover
the shore!" _That_ heard the children of the choir, _that_ heard the
children of the grave. All the hosts of jubilation made ready to move.
Like armies that ride in pursuit, they moved with one step. Us, that,
with laurelled heads, were passing from the cathedral through its
eastern gates, they overtook, and, as with a garment, they wrapped us
round with thunders that overpowered our own. As brothers we moved
together; to the skies we rose--to the dawn that advanced--to the
stars that fled: rendering thanks to God in the highest--that, having
hid his face through one generation behind thick clouds of War, once
again was ascending--was ascending from Waterloo--in the visions of
Peace:--rendering thanks for thee, young girl! whom having overshadowed
with his ineffable passion of Death--suddenly did God relent; suffered
thy angel to turn aside his arm; and even in thee, sister unknown!
shown to me for a moment only to be hidden for ever, found an occasion
to glorify his goodness. A thousand times, amongst the phantoms of
sleep, has he shown thee to me, standing before the golden dawn,
and ready to enter its gates--with the dreadful Word going before
thee--with the armies of the grave behind thee; shown thee to me,
sinking, rising, fluttering, fainting, but then suddenly reconciled,
adoring: a thousand times has he followed thee in the worlds of
sleep--through storms; through desert seas; through the darkness of
quicksands; through fugues and the persecution of fugues; through
dreams, and the dreadful resurrections that are in dreams--only that at
the last, with one motion of his victorious arm, he might record and
emblazon the endless resurrections of his love!
FREE TRADE AT ITS ZENITH.
It was observed by Sir Robert Peel, in his speech on the subject of
Free Trade in the House of Commons, in the last session of parliament,
that those who reproached the new system with all the suffering the
country had undergone during the last three years, forgot or concealed
the fact, that that system was partially introduced by the tariff of
1842, which so materially diminished the import-duties on rude produce
in that year; and that the three following years (those of 1843,
1844, and 1845) were the most prosperous that Great Britain has ever
experienced. Is it then just, he added, when _quasi_ free trade in 1842
produced such beneficial results, to charge complete free trade in 1846
with the subsequent distress which has occurred; the more especially
as adventitious causes--in particular, the Irish famine of 1846, and
the European revolutions of 1848--amply account for the change, without
supposing that the same principles, when carried into practice in 1846,
produced such widely different results from those which had attended
their adoption, to a certain extent, four years before.
The observation is a fair one, and apparently of material weight in the
great question now at issue in the nation. When properly considered, it
gives no countenance to the free-trade measures which the right hon.
baronet has introduced, but only shows that it is to the combination
of those measures, with another element of still more general and
potent agency, that the disaster has been owing. In the interval, be
it recollected, between 1842 and 1846, _the new currency restriction
bills were passed_. The Bank Charter Bill of England received the
royal assent in 1844, that of Scotland and Ireland in 1845. Free
trade in grain was introduced in July 1846; in sugar, in May 1847; in
shipping, in May 1849. The harvests of the years from 1846 to 1849
have been, as usual in this climate, checkered: that of 1846 was fair
in grain, but sadly deficient in potatoes; that of 1847 was above an
average in both; that of 1848, deficient in the south of England in
corn; that of 1849, generally very good. The years from 1842 to 1846,
therefore, were not a trial of free trade and a restricted currency,
_acting simultaneously_--they were a trial only of _semi_-free trade,
without the new monetary laws, coexisting with a railway mania in
the palmy days of its progress, and other favourable circumstances,
which concealed, as will be immediately shown, its actual tendency.
Real free trade has begun to act, _along with a restricted currency,
for the first time, in 1846_. The harvests since have been, on the
whole, average ones--neither better nor worse than generally may, in
this variable climate, be expected in future years. It is since 1846,
therefore, that we are to look, in this climate, for the real proof of
the effects of the _combined free-trade and currency measures_ which
Sir Robert Peel has introduced; and unless they are taken together,
the practical tendency of both will be entirely misunderstood. The
right hon. baronet has done a great service to the cause of truth,
by pointing out the difference in the state of the country before
and after 1846; and we shall endeavour to follow up the subject by
tracing the difference to its real source, and endeavouring to detach
from the question the simultaneous circumstances which have been so
often referred to as explaining the phenomena. The inquiry is the
more important, that the Protection party as a body have, with a few
striking and illustrious exceptions, never seen the currency question
in its true light, as accompanied with that of free trade, and, by
not doing so, have both voluntarily relinquished the most powerful
lever wherewith to shake the strength of their opponents, and failed
in instructing the public mind either in the real causes of their
sufferings, or the means by which they are likely to be, alleviated.
Various circumstances have been studiously kept out of view by the
free-trade party, in reference to the years from 1842 to 1846, which
really were mainly instrumental in producing the prosperity of that
period. And many others have been emphatically dwelt upon, in reference
to the years since 1846, which really had very little hand in producing
these disasters.
The first circumstance which had a powerful influence in producing the
prosperity from 1842 to 1846, was the return of fine seasons after
five bad harvests in succession, which closed in 1841. The summer,
and still more the autumn, of 1842, was a long and unbroken period
of sunshine, which gladdened the hearts of men after the long series
of dreary and cheerless years which had preceded it. The subsequent
years, from 1842 to 1846, were very fine seasons, the harvests of which
were all above an average. This is decisively proved by a comparison
of the average prices of grain for the years from 1839 to 1841, and
from 1842 to 1845.[19] The tariff of 1842 without doubt contributed to
bring about, in some degree, this reduction of prices; but still, as
the sliding-scale was then in operation, and the import duties were
in general 8s. and 9s. the quarter, the effect must have been mainly
owing to the succession of fine seasons. No one can have lived through
that period, without recollecting that this was the case. But the cheap
prices which result from abundant harvests and improved cultivation at
home, are the greatest of all public blessings, as much as the cheap
prices arising from an extended foreign importation and declining
agriculture at home, are the greatest of all curses. The first enriches
the manufacturer, by the previous comfort of the farmer, and the plenty
diffused through the land by his exertions; the last gives a temporary
stimulus to the manufacturer, by the cheapness which is fatal to the
domestic cultivator, and, by abridging the home market, speedily makes
the manufacturer share in his ruin.
[19] Average price of wheat in London in--
_s._ _d._
1838, 57 11
1839, 68 7
1840, 65 8
1841, 54 6
1842, 49 0
1843, 47 4
1844, 46 8
1845, 50 10
The second circumstance which tended to produce the prosperity from
1842 to 1845, was the glorious successes which, in the first of these
years, succeeded to the Affghanistaun disasters. We all recollect the
throb of exultation which beat in the breast of the nation when the
astonishing news arrived, in November 1842, that a single Delhi Gazette
had announced the second capture of Cabul, in the centre of Asia, and
the dictating a glorious peace to the Celestial Empire, under the walls
of Nankin. Not only was our Indian empire secured for a long period, by
those astonishing triumphs, but its strength was demonstrated in a way
of all others the best calculated to insure confidence in its future
prosperity. The effect of this upon our manufacturing and commercial
prosperity was great and immediate. Confidence revived from so
marvellous a proof of the resources and spirit of the nation, which had
so speedily risen superior to so terrible a disaster. Speculation was
renewed on a great scale, from the sanguine ideas entertained of the
boundless markets opened for our manufactures in the centre of Asia,
and in the Chinese dominions. Sir Robert Peel is entitled to great
credit for the glorious turn thus given to our Eastern affairs, and the
gleam of sunshine which they threw upon the affairs of the nation; for
his fortitude, when the previous disastrous news arrived, was mainly
instrumental in producing it. But free-trade principles, and the tariff
of 1842, had no more to do with it than they had with the affairs of
the moon.
The third circumstance which tended to bring about the prosperity from
1842 to 1845, was the revival in the home market, which, on the first
gleam of returning prosperity, arose with redoubled energy from the
very magnitude of previous deterioration and suffering. During the
long train of disasters which followed the great importation of grain,
and consequent exportation of the precious metals, in 1839--which
compelled the Bank of England, for the first time, recorded in
history, to have recourse to the Bank of France for assistance--all
classes of the people had undergone very severe privations. The
depression had been general in extent, and unprecedented in duration,
till it was entirely thrown into the shade by the effects of the
terrible monetary crisis of October 1847. Stocks of goods were reduced
to the lowest amount consistent with the keeping up even a show of
business; comforts of various sorts had been long abandoned by a large
portion of the middle and working classes. At the same time, capital,
in great part unemployed, accumulated in the hands of moneyed men,
and the competition for safe investment lowered the rate of interest.
It was soon down to 3 and 2-1/2 per cent. In these circumstances the
revival of trade, owing to the Eastern victories and fine harvest of
1842, acted immediately, and with the most vivifying effect, on the
home market. A rush took place to replace worn out garments, to revive
long abandoned but unforgotten enjoyments. This result always ensues,
and is attended with very important effects, after a long period of
depression and suffering. It is beginning, though in a slight degree,
and from the same causes, amongst us at this time. But, no opinion can
be formed, of the extent or probable duration of such revived activity,
from its intensity on its first appearance.
The last, and, without doubt, the most important circumstance which
produced the great prosperity from 1842 to 1845, was the monetary
change produced by the Bank Charter Act of 1844.
Sir Robert Peel admitted, in the debate on the currency at the opening
of last session of parliament, that the act of 1844 had failed in
one of its principal objects--viz., the discouraging of perilous and
irrational speculation. He might have gone a step farther, and admitted
that it had been the greatest possible _encourager, for a short season,
of the most absurd and dangerous undertakings_. The proof of this is
decisive. The Bank Charter Act was passed in May 1844, and from that
time till the first check experienced in October 1845, was, beyond
all comparison, the wildest and most absurd season of speculation
ever known in English history. Among others, railways, to the amount
of £363,000,000 sterling, received the sanction of the legislature,
within two years after the new Bank Charter Act had passed. And so
far was government from giving any check to these undertakings--the
results of which, monstrous when co-existing with a fettered currency,
are apparent in the present wreck of railway property--that they gave
them the utmost encouragement, both by lowering the sum required for
deposits from ten to five per cent, and by bestowing, at once in
public and private, the most lavish encomiums on the immense present
and prospective blessings they would confer upon the country. It is
not surprising that a government, looking only to temporary objects,
did so; for the railway mania, while it lasted, and before the ruinous
effects in which it necessarily terminated, when fettered by the
currency laws, had developed themselves, gave a passing stimulus to the
demand for labour, and increase to industry, which rendered men blind
to the whole consequences of the course on which they were launched.
Sir Robert Peel ably and emphatically enforced the favourable condition
of the nation, and dwelt with peculiar emphasis on the diminution in
criminal commitments through the country, in his opening speech of the
session of 1846--although he ascribed it to the free-trade measures,
not the first effect of the general insanity on the subject of railways.
It is now perfectly apparent, and is generally understood, that the
fatal Bank Charter Act was the main cause of the ruinous railway mania
which has since spread distress and ruin so widely through the country.
The reason is evident. It at once emancipated the Bank directors from
every consideration, except that of making the most, as ordinary
bankers, of their capital; and subjected them to such heavy expenses,
from the vast quantity of specie they were obliged to keep in their
vaults, as rendered a very extensive pushing of their business in
every direction a matter of necessity. The effect of these concurring
circumstances was soon apparent. Interest was lowered, immediately
after the passing of the Bank Charter Act, to _two per cent for
first-class bills_, or still lower, as appears from the subjoined table
furnished by Messrs Gurney and Overend, "the greatest bill-brokers in
the world."[20] The facility of getting discounts increased beyond all
precedent the issues of the banks. Those of the Bank of England rose
to £21,000,000; and of all country bankers in a similar proportion.
The total notes in circulation, in England alone, reached £28,000,900;
in Great Britain and Ireland they exceeded £39,000,000. It was this
copious issue of notes which gave, for the time at least, nearly
sufficient accommodation for the immense undertakings which were set
on foot; which, beyond all doubt, both gave birth to, and nurtured
the infancy of that vast network of railways which so soon overspread
the country, and, while it was in course of formation, diffused such
general prosperity over the land.
[20] Rate of discount of first-class bills at the undermentioned
periods:--
|Jan. |Feb.|March.|April.|May. |June.|July.|Aug. |Sept.|Oct. |Nov. | Dec.
----+-----+----+------+------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----
1844|2-1/4| 2 | 2 | 2 |1-3/4| 2 | 2 |1-3/4| 2 |1-3/4|1-3/4|1-3/4
Had the impulse thus given to industry, and the enormous domestic
undertakings thus set on foot by the sanction and with the approbation
of government, been cautiously sustained, as a similar impulse had
been during the war, by a corresponding increase of the circulation,
based on a footing which was _not liable to be contracted by a failure
of the harvest, or an enhanced demand for gold in foreign states_,
it might have been the commencement of an era of prosperity, and a
general spread of happiness, unprecedented in British annals. It had
one immense advantage, which distinguished it both from the previous
lavish expenditure during the war, and the extravagant South American
speculations which ended in the monetary catastrophe of December 1825.
The money was all expended at home, and on undertakings useful to the
nation. No man will dispute, that, whether or not all the railways
undertaken during that period were in themselves reasonable, or
likely to yield a dividend to the shareholders, they were beyond all
doubt, one and all of them, advantageous to the public. They afforded
facilities for the transit of goods and the conveyance of passengers,
which were not only an immense advantage to individuals, but a great
relief and benefit to the commerce and manufactures of the country.
So far from being blamed, government deserve the very highest credit
for having given this direction to the industry and expenditure of the
nation. Their fault consisted in the simultaneous and fatal measures
they adopted regarding the currency.
Having taken this great step in the right direction, it became
the first and most important duty of government to have provided,
simultaneously with the commencement of the undertaking, _a currency
independent of foreign drains_, commensurate to the vast addition
made to the industry and engagements of the nation. Its _capital_ was
far more than adequate to the undertakings, how vast soever. This
is now decisively proved by the event. Two-thirds of the railways
are finished; the remaining third is in course of construction; and
interest is in London from _three_ to _two-and-a-half per cent._ But
capital alone is not sufficient for carrying on undertakings. Currency
also is requisite; and if that be deficient, the most boundless
overflow of capital will not avert a monetary crash, or save the nation
from the most dreadful calamities. Here, too, the event has thrown a
broad and decisive light on this vital question, and the cause of our
calamities. Interest was fixed by government, after the crash, for
advances by the Bank of England, in October 1847, at eight per cent;
it rose, in private transactions, to twelve and fifteen per cent. Why
was that? Not because capital was awanting, but because the bankers,
from the drain of specie to buy foreign grain, and the operation of the
Bank Charter Acts of 1844 and 1845, could not venture to issue notes
to their customers. The nation resembled a great army, in which vast
stores of provisions existed in the magazines at its disposal, but a
series of absurd regulations affecting the commissariat prevented the
grain they contained being issued to the soldiers. Accordingly, when
the absurd restrictions were removed, things soon began to amend. When
the Bank Charter Act was _pro tempore_ repealed, by Lord John Russell's
famous letter of October 1847, the effect was instantaneous in allaying
the panic, and interest gradually fell, until now money has become
overflowing, and it is to be had at two per cent, although the years
since that time have been the most disastrous to capital ever known in
the British annals, so that no subsequent increase has been possible.
What government should have done, when they engaged the nation in
the vast system of inland railways, was what Pitt actually did, with
such happy effect, when its currency was exposed to a similar strain
from foreign expenditure, and immense engagements, in 1797. They
should have provided a currency under proper control as to amount, but
capable of being increased, according to the wants and engagements of
society, and, above all, not liable to be withdrawn by the mutations
of commerce, or the demand for gold in foreign states. The example of
Great Britain during the war, when a gigantic expenditure, varying from
eighty to one hundred and twenty millions yearly, was carried on for
twenty years with the aid of such an expansive _domestic currency_--not
only without any lasting distress, save from the stoppage of foreign
markets, but with the _utmost prosperity and happiness to all classes_,
although guineas had altogether disappeared from the circulation--was
not only an example of what was required, but the best indication
of _how_ it was to be done. No period more loudly called for such
a precautionary measure than one in which, under the sanction of
government, no less than £363,000,000 was to be expended on railways
in the short space of four years--a sum equal, if the change in the
value of money is taken into consideration, to £500,000,000 during
the war--at a time when all other branches of industry, foreign and
domestic, were in an unusual state of activity, from the sudden return
of prosperity after a long period of suffering. To expect that the
nation, without some addition to its currency, could carry out so great
an increase in its undertakings, was as hopeless as to imagine that an
army, with a half added to its mouths, is to go on successfully with
no addition made to its distribution of rations. And it is evident
that this addition to the currency could be effectually made only by
extending the paper circulation on a scale proportioned to the increase
of work undertaken. By no possible means could gold, in adequate
quantities, be brought to the scene of activity, the place where it was
required; and even if brought there, no reliance could be placed on
its continuing there for any length of time. On the contrary, nothing
is more certain than that it would speedily be re-exported to other
countries where it was less plentiful, and, therefore, more valuable;
and thus its support would have been lost at the very time when it was
most required.
The rise of prices during the war, when such a domestic currency was
provided by government in adequate quantities, was really owing,
not so much to the circulation having become redundant, as to its
having permitted an adequate remuneration to be given to industry.
This is a most important consideration, which Mr Taylor has most ably
illustrated. The proof that the circulation had not, like the assignats
of France, become redundant, is to be found in two things which are
decisive of the point: 1. At no period of the war was there any
difference between the price of an article when paid in bank notes and
when paid in silver. No man ever saw the price of anything five pounds
in bank notes, and four pounds ten shillings in silver. _Gold_ bore an
enhanced price, because it was required urgently for the operations
of the Continental armies. 2. The increase in the paper circulation,
considerable as it was, was yet not so great as the parallel and
simultaneous increase in our national industry, as measured by our
exports, imports, and public expenditure.[21] Prices rose, therefore,
and reached, for a time, more than double their level anterior to the
contest, not because too much paper had been put in circulation, but
because enough had been issued to let the demand for labour keep pace
with the enlarged undertakings of the nation.
[21]
| |Bank Notes in| Exports. | | |
|Years.|Circulation--| Official | Imports. | |
| | Total. | Value. |Declared Value.| Revenue. |
+------+ | | | |
| 1797 | £10,542,365 | £28,917,010 | £21,013,956 | £19,852,646 |
| 1798 | 13,695,830 | 27,317,087 | 25,122,203 | 30,492,995 |
| 1799 | 12,959,800 | 29,556,637 | 24,066,700 | 35,311,018 |
| 1813 | 23,120,930 |Records dest- | | 68,302,861 |
| | |royed by fire.| | |
| 1814 | 24,801,000 | 51,358,398 | 32,622,771 | 70,240,313 |
| 1815 | 27,261,651 | 57,420,437 | 31,822,053 | 72,203,142 |
--ALISON'S _Europe_, C. 41, §69.
Instead of imitating this great and decisive example of wise and
statesmanlike policy, what did Sir Robert Peel and the Free-traders do,
on the commencement of a similar period of vastly augmented national
industry? Why, they did just the reverse. Not only did they make no
provision for enlarging the currency of the nation at the time, when
they themselves had occasioned or sanctioned so immense an increase to
its undertakings, but they took the most effectual measures possible
to _contract_ the circulation, both in gold and paper, directly in
proportion to the necessity for its expansion. They first passed a law
which limited the circulation of the Bank of England, irrespective of
the notes issued on the basis of gold in their coffers, to £14,000,000;
and that of the whole banks in Great Britain and Ireland to about
£32,000,000; and then they introduced a system of free trade which
permitted the unlimited entrance of foreign agricultural produce at a
nominal duty, and thereby sent nearly half the gold headlong out of
the country. Under the influence of this monstrous system, the gold in
the vaults of the Bank of England was progressively diminished, until,
in the end of October 1847, it was reduced to £564,000 sterling in the
banking department; at the very time that, by the same judicious law,
above £8,000,000 of sovereigns were lying useless, and locked up in the
issue department of the same establishment. The governor of the bank
very candidly admitted, in his examination before the House of Lords,
that the bank, under the existing system, might have broke while there
were still £8,000,000 of sovereigns lost to them and the nation in the
cellars of the issue department.[22] Of course the whole banks of the
country were compelled instantly to contract their credits, and force
payment of their debts, and thence the universal distress and ruin
which ensued. And all this took place at the very time that the bank
had eight millions of sovereigns chained up by act of parliament in its
cellars, at the issue end of the building; and when the government,
which so chained it up, had landed the nation, by act of parliament, in
engagements requiring an expenditure on railway shares of £363,000,000
in the next four years. You may search the annals of the world in vain
for a similar instance of infatuation in the rulers of a nation, and
self-immolation in a people.
[22] In reference to this state of things, the following important
evidence was given by the governor and deputy-governor of the Bank of
England:--
"You had only £1,600,000 in the banking department for the payment of
your liabilities?--Yes.
If anybody had called upon you for anything beyond that million and a
half, you must have stopped payment?--Yes, we must.
At the same time, if there had been no separation between the two
departments, and the Bank of England had been conducted on its old
principle, instead of being within one million and a half of stopping,
there would have been very nearly £8,500,000 of treasure in your
vaults?--We should have had £8,500,000 in our vaults."--_Lords'
Report_, 1848.
It will be said that the vast importation of grain, in the course of
1847, was a matter of necessity, from the failure of the potato crops
in Ireland in the preceding autumn; and that, be the consequences
what they may, they cannot be ascribed to Sir Robert Peel or the
Free-traders. In one sense this is undoubtedly true. It is certain
that the most staunch Protectionists would never have objected to the
largest importation of grain, and exportation of sovereigns, in a
period such as that of severe and unlooked-for scarcity. It was the
precise object of the sliding-scale to admit grain, in periods of
scarcity, free of all duty. But what the Free-traders and Sir Robert
Peel are chargeable with, is having established a system of currency
so fettered and restricted by absurd regulations, that the exportation
of sovereigns _led necessarily and inevitably to a contraction of
paper accommodation, and a shock to credit over the whole country_;
and aggravated the danger by a monstrous regulation, which exposed the
bank to the risk of stopping payment when they had still eight millions
in gold--enough to have enabled them, perhaps, to go on--at one end of
their establishment. They are responsible for the dreadful error of
having not only done nothing to extend and secure the currency from
being exported or contracted, when they had added so enormously to
the internal engagements of the kingdom, but done everything, by the
establishment of a permanent system of free trade, and a permanently
fettered currency, to secure its reappearance on occasion of every
future recurrence of an indifferent harvest, or any continuance of a
great importation.
It is the consciousness of this terrible calamity, impending over the
nation, which terrifies all the directors of banks, and paralyses
industry in so grievous a manner over the whole country. If you ask
any moneyed man, what is the cause of the insecurity so universally
complained of in money transactions over the country, and the
reluctance of bankers to advance largely, even when their coffers
are overflowing, to persons of the best credit? they will invariably
answer, that they are afraid of a commercial crisis; that they do not
know when it may come on: and that they must be, at all times, prepared
for a storm. It is this indefinite dread, the natural result of the
catastrophe of 1847, which renders them so cautious, and keeps the
nation starved of accommodation, at the very time that Lombard Street
is overflowing with money seeking for investment. It is no wonder they
are afraid. The sword of Damocles is suspended over their heads, and
thence their terror. They know that the heavy rains, and consequent
importation of grain, in 1839 into the British islands, forced the Bank
of England to apply for aid to the Bank of France, caused the United
States Bank of America to stop payment, and rendered three-fourths of
the traders in the United States bankrupt. The recollection of the
dreadful crisis of 1847, brought on by the great importation of grain
and exportation of sovereigns in that year, is fresh in their minds.
They see the importations of food going on without intermission, in the
face of exceedingly low prices, at the rate of _fifteen millions of
quarters_ a-year, being nearly quadruple that of 1839, which was four
million quarters.[23] They know that the grain countries will take our
gold to any amount, but not our manufactures, because they do not want
them, or are too poor to buy them; and they ask, How is all this grain
to be paid? In what is all this to end? How are the bills, drawn to
pay for these exports, to be met? So general is this feeling of dread,
from the effects of a drain on our metallic resources to pay for the
vast importations of grain going forward, that when the author, in the
beginning of last autumn, said to the chief officer of one of the first
banking establishments in Britain, that "three weeks' rain in August
would render half the merchants in England bankrupt," he replied--"Sir,
three weeks' rain in August will make half the merchants in Europe
bankrupt."
[23]
|All kinds |Flour. | |
Imported, month|of Grain. | Cwt. | Total. | Authority.
ending-- | Qrs. | | |
|----------+-------+---------+-------------------------------
April 5, 1849, |1,110,306 |320,764|1,213,888|London Gazette, April 20, 1849.
Aug. 5, 1849, | 990,270 |295,667|1,088,776| Ditto, Aug. 20, 1849.
Sept. 5, 1849, | 928,258 |332,434|1,039,269| Ditto, Sept. 20, 1849.
Oct. 10, 1849, |1,123,434 |290,713|1,213,640| Ditto, Oct. 30, 1849.
That it is this fatal dependence of the currency, and consequent
credit of the country, on the retention of its gold circulation,
under circumstances when, from the vast importation of grain going
forward, _it is impossible to retain it_, which is the real cause of
the calamitous state of the country for the last three years, and
not either the potato rot or the European revolutions, to which the
Free-traders ascribe it, is evident from the slightest consideration.
The potato rot of 1846, which has been the sheet-anchor of the
Free-traders ever since--the scapegoat which they hoped would answer
for all their sins--was never, by the most determined of their party,
set down as having occasioned a loss of above £15,000,000 sterling.
Call it £20,000,000 to avoid cavil. The strength of the case will
admit of any concession. Now, the value of the agricultural produce of
the United Kingdom, prior to the free trade in grain, was generally
estimated at £300,000,000.[24] A deficiency of £20,000,000, or a
_fifteenth part_, might occasion, doubtless, the most acute _local_
distress in the districts in which it was most severely felt; but it
could never, _irrespective of its action on the currency_, occasion a
general monetary and commercial crisis. England and Scotland exported
little or nothing to the boys of Munster and Connaught, where the
failure occurred. There is no more reason, had it not been for the
currency laws, why a failure of the potato crop in Ireland should have
produced a monetary crisis in Great Britain, than a failure in the
potato crop of Norway.
[24]
Viz.--19,135,000 arable acres, at £7 each, £133,945,000
27,000,000 acres of grass, at £6 each, 162,000,000
15,000,000 do. wastes, 5,000,000
-------------
£300,945,000
--PORTER'S _Progress of the Nation_, 158; 2d edition.
Again, the revolutions in Europe in 1848, of which so much has been
said to account for the distress, are equally inadequate to explain
the phenomenon. They could, of course, affect the European market
for our export goods only; and they, taken altogether, only amount,
to the countries affected by the revolutions, to £13,000,000--little
more than a fourth part of our exports, which vary from £51,000,000
to £60,000,000. Supposing a half of this export, or £7,000,000, had
been lost, during the year 1848, by the French, German, and Italian
revolutions; what is that amidst the mass, thirty-fold greater, of our
total manufactures, which some years ago were estimated at £133,000,000
for the home market, and £50,000,000 for the foreign. They are now
unquestionably above £200,000,000 annually. But let it be supposed that
the _whole_ defalcation of our exports, from £60,000,000 in 1845, to
£53,000,000 in 1848, was owing to the European revolutions, and none at
all to the paralysis of domestic industry by the effects of free trade
and a fettered currency--seven millions deficit, out of £200,000,000
annual produce of manufactures, is only a _twenty-ninth_ part. Is it
possible that so trifling a deficit can have been the cause of the
terrible calamity which overtook the country in 1848 and 1849, the
more especially as the harvest of 1847 was so good, that, by orders of
government, a public thanksgiving was returned for it? That calamity
was unparalleled in point of extent, and has, in two years, swept away
at least one half of the whole commercial and manufacturing wealth
of the kingdom. The thing is perfectly ridiculous. The failure of an
eighth part of our annual export, and a twenty-ninth part of our annual
creation of manufactures, might occasion considerable distress in the
particular places or branches of manufacture principally affected,
but it could never explain the universal paralysis, affecting the home
trade even more than the foreign, which followed the monetary crisis of
October 1847.
Again, as to the European revolutions of 1848, although, undoubtedly,
they largely contributed to interrupt the commerce of this country with
central Europe, and may fairly be considered as the principal cause of
the decline in the exports of that year, yet it may be doubted whether
the influx of wealth, from the distracted monarchies of Europe, which
they occasioned, did not more than counterbalance that disadvantage.
England, during the convulsions of France, Germany, and Italy, became
the bank of Europe. Wealth flowed in from all quarters, for investment
in the only capital left which held out the prospect of security. The
solid specie which then was brought to London for purchase into the
British funds, in the course of 1848, has been estimated, by competent
authorities, at £9,000,000 sterling. Beyond all doubt, this great
influx of the precious metals from continental Europe--at a time when
it was so much required, in consequence of the enormous exportation
of specie which free trade was inducing, and the monstrous monetary
laws which contracted the paper circulation in proportion as it was
withdrawn--had a powerful effect in counteracting the evils we had
brought upon ourselves, and sustaining the currency and national
credit, which the Free-traders had done so much to destroy. And as
this was an alleviation of the evil at its fountain-head, it is next
to certain that the European revolutions of 1848, so far from having
occasioned the distress in Great Britain in that year, had a material
effect in abating it.
It is vain, therefore, for the Free-traders to push forward extraneous
and separate events, as the cause of the dreadful calamities which
have overtaken the country since October 1847; calamities which all
the witnesses examined in both Houses of Parliament, in the committees
on commercial distress, described as _altogether unparalleled_. They
arose, evidently, not from the failure of crops in a particular place,
or the temporary stoppage in the foreign vent for a particular branch
of manufacture--causes which only touched the extremities--but from
some great cause affecting the heart of the empire, and which through
it paralysed all its members. And when it is recollected that, after
having landed the nation in extra domestic engagements, for the next
four years, to the amount of £360,000,000, the government adopted
the most decisive and effective measures to contract the currency,
and, after making it mainly dependant on the retention of gold in the
country, they took steps which sent that gold headlong abroad--in
exchange for enormously increased importations, the fruit of free
trade--it is not difficult to discover what that cause was.
But all these evils, it is said, are over. We have passed through the
desert, and arrived at the promised land. Free trade, disjoined from
the extraneous circumstances which have hitherto concealed its real
effect, is at length beginning to appear in its true colours. The
Continent is pacified; the trade to France and Germany has revived;
the revenue is improving; the exports in September were £2,000,000
more than in the corresponding month of last year: wait a little and
we shall soon be in Elysium, and free trade and a fettered currency
will realise all their promised advantages. We are not unaware of
the _Io Pæans_ which are already sung from the Liberal camp on this
subject, and it is precisely for that reason that, when FREE TRADE IS
AT ITS ZENITH, we have taken the opportunity to examine its effects. We
have seen that the prosperity from 1842 to 1845 arose from extraneous
causes, with which the tariff of the first of these years had nothing
to do; and that the disasters from 1847 to 1849 were not in any
sensible degree owing to external or separate calamities, but were the
direct and inevitable effect of the establishment of a system of free
trade, at the very time when the industry of the nation was manacled
by the restriction of absurd and destructive monetary laws. Let us
now examine our present condition, and see whether or not we are in
an enviable position at home or abroad; whether the industry of the
country can possibly survive, or its revenue be maintained, under
the present system; and whether the seeds of another catastrophe, as
terrible as that of 1847, are not already spread in the land.
In one particular the Free-traders are unquestionably right. Beyond
all doubt, the external circumstances of the nation, at present, are
in the highest degree favourable to its manufacturing and trading
interests. We are at peace with all the world, and, thank God, there is
no immediate appearance of its being broken. The markets of continental
Europe have, for six months past, been entirely laid open to our
merchants, by the settlement of France under the _quasi_ empire of
Louis Napoleon, and the extinction of the war in Italy and Germany.
Rome is taken; Hungary is subdued; Baden is pacified; the war in
Schleswig is at an end; the Danish blockade is raised; California has
given an extraordinary impulse to activity and enterprise in the West;
the victory of Goojerat has extinguished, it is to be hoped for a long
period, all appearance of disturbance in the East. The harvest, just
reaped, has been uncommonly fine in grain, both in Great Britain and
Ireland: that of the potatoes above an average in the latter island.
The Chartists of England and Scotland, astounded at the failure of all
their predictions and the defeat of all their hopes, are silent; the
revolutionists of Ireland, in utter despair, are leaving the Emerald
Isle. Amidst the general pacification and cessation of alarms, old
wants and necessities begin to be felt. Men have discovered that
revolting will not mend their clothes or fill their bellies. New
garments are required, from the old being worn out; the women are
clamorous for bonnets and gowns; the men are sighing for coats and
waistcoats. Provisions are cheap to a degree unexampled for fourteen
years; wheat is at 41s. the quarter, meat at 5d. a pound. Capital in
London can be borrowed at 2-1/2 per cent, in the provinces at 3-1/2.
That great Liberal panacea for all evils, a _huge importation_ of
foreign produce, is in full operation. This year it will probably
reach in value at least £100,000,000 sterling. Let us then, in these
eminently favourable circumstances, examine the effects of the
free-trade system.
First, with regard to the revenue, that never-failing index of the
national fortunes. The revenue for the year ending Oct. 10, 1849,
being the last quarter that has been made up, was only £236,000 more
than that for the year ending Oct. 10, 1848. That is to say, during
a year when free trade was acting under the most favourable possible
circumstances, and when the pacification of the world was reopening
markets long closed to our manufactures, the revenue only rose a mere
trifle above what it had been in the year wasted by the triple curse
of a monetary crisis, European revolutions, Chartist disturbances and
Irish rebellion. Why is this? Evidently because the effect of free
trade and a restricted currency acting together, and the dread of a
fresh monetary crisis hanging over our heads from the unprecedented
magnitude of our importations in every branch of commerce, have
depressed industry at home to such a degree, that even the reopening of
all the closed markets of the world, and the rush to fill up the void,
created during fifteen months of stoppage of intercourse, has been able
to produce no sensible addition to the public revenue.
Next, as to the exports. The reopening of the Continental markets, the
pacification of India by the victory of Goojerat, and the impulse given
to American speculation by the gold of California, has occasioned a
considerable increase in our exports, on which the Free-traders are
pluming themselves in an extraordinary degree. We should be glad to
know in what way free trade pacified India, extinguished revolution in
Europe, and vivified America by the Californian diggings. And yet, had
these distant and adventitious occurrences not taken place, would we
have had to congratulate the manufacturers on a rise of two millions
in September, and a rise of seven or eight millions on the whole year?
And what, after all, is a rise of our exports from £53,000,000 to
£60,000,000 or even £63,000,000 in a year, to the total manufacturing
industry of the country, which produces at least £200,000,000
annually? It is scarcely the addition of a _thirtieth_ part to the
annual manufactured production. The Free-traders are hard pushed,
indeed, when they are constrained to exult in an addition to the
national industry so trifling, and wholly brought about by fortunate
external events entirely foreign to their policy.
In the immense and increasing amount of our IMPORTS, however, the
Free-traders may indeed see, as in a mirror, the real and inevitable
result of their measures. Their amount for this year is of course
not yet known; although, from the returns already procured, it is
certain that they will greatly exceed the level of last year, which
reached £94,000,000. In all probability they will considerably exceed
£100,000,000. Indeed, in the single article of grain, the excess of
1849 over 1848, since the one shilling duty began in February, has
been so great as much to exceed in value the augmentation which has
taken place in our exports.[25] The importation of grain in the first
eight months of 1849 has been more than double what it was in the
corresponding period of 1848, and that in the face of a fine harvest,
and prices throughout the whole period varying from forty-five to
forty-one shillings a quarter of wheat. The importation at these
low prices has settled down to a regular average of about 1,200,000
quarters of all sorts of grain a-month, or between fourteen and fifteen
millions of all sorts of grain in a year. This is just a _fourth of the
annual subsistence_, estimated in all sorts of grain at 60,000,000 of
quarters. This immense proportion free trade has already caused to be
derived from foreign supplies, though it has only been three years in
operation, and the nominal duties only came into operation in February
last.
[25] In the eight months up to the 5th of September 1849, the
quantities of foreign food taken out for home consumption have been--
Foreign wheat, 3,387,596 qrs.
Foreign flour, 2,956,878 cwt.
Foreign barley, 1,018,858 qrs.
Foreign oats, 869,077 "
Foreign rye, 219,810 "
Maize, 1,735,778 qrs.
Foreign bacon, 349,727 cwt.
Salted beef, 119,867 "
Salted pork, 306,400 "
Eggs, (number) 73,605,759
All these amounts are largely, and the most important of them _very_
largely, in advance of the imports of the first eight months of 1848.
Abstract of grain imported in quarters in seven months of free trade--
Wheat, 3,387,596 qrs.
Flour, (2,956,878 cwt.,) 985,293 "
Barley, 1,018,858 "
Oats, 869,077 "
Rye, 219,810 qrs.
Maize, 1,735,778 "
---------
In eight months, }
seven of free trade,} 8,216,412 qrs.
So vast an increase of importation is perhaps unprecedented in so
short a period; for, before the change was made, the importation was
so trifling that, on an average of five years ending in 1835, it had
sunk to 398,000 quarters. Indeed, the importation before the five bad
harvests, from 1846 to 1840, had been so trifling, that it had become
nominal merely, and the nation had gained the inestimable advantage of
being self-supporting.[26] With truth did that decided free-trader, Mr
Porter, say, in the last edition of his valuable work, entitled the
_Progress of the Nation_--"The foregoing calculations show in how small
a degree this country has hitherto been dependent upon foreigners,
in ordinary seasons, for a due supply of our staple article of food.
These calculations are brought forward to show how exceedingly great
the increase of agricultural production must have been, to have thus
effectively kept in a state of independence a population which has
advanced with so great a degree of rapidity. To show the fact, the one
article of wheat has been selected, because it is that which is the
most generally consumed in England; but the position advanced would
be found to hold good, were we to go through the whole list of the
consumable products of the earth. The supply of meat, during the whole
years comprised in this inquiry, has certainly kept pace with the
growth of the population; and, as regards this portion of human food,
our home agriculturists have, during almost the whole period, enjoyed a
strict monopoly."[27]
[26] Quarters of wheat and wheat-flour imported into Britain from 1807
to 1836, both inclusive:--
Quarters.
1807, 379,833
1808, --
1809, 424,709
1810, 1,491,341*
1811, 238,366
1812, 244,385
1813, 125,559
1814, 681,333
1815, --
1816, 227,263
1817, 1,020,949*
1818, 1,593,518*
1819, 1,122,133
1820, 34,274
1821, 2
1822, --
1823, 12,137
1824, 15,777
1825, 525,231
1826, 315,892
1827, 772,133
1828, 842,050
1829, 1,364,220*
1830, 1,701,889*
1831, 1,491,631
1832, 325,425
1833, 82,346
1834, 64,653
1835, 28,483
1836, 24,826
1837, 244,087
1838, 1,834,452*
1839, 2,590,734*
1840, 2,389,732*
*Bad seasons.
AVERAGE QUARTERS.
1801 to 1810, 600,946
1811 -- 1820, 458,578
1821 -- 1830, 534,292
1831 -- 1835, 398,509
1836 -- 1840, 1,992,548**
**Five bad years in succession. --PORTER'S _Progress of the Nation_,
137, 138, second edition.
[27] PORTER'S _Progress of the Nation,_ second edition, p. 139.
Things, however, are now changed. Protection to domestic industry, at
least in agriculture, is at an end; prices are down to forty shillings
the quarter for wheat, and half that sum for oats and barley; the
prices of sheep and cattle have fallen enormously to the home-grower,
though that of meat is far from having declined in the same proportion;
and, as all this has taken place during a season of prices low beyond
example, it is evident that it may be expected to be still greater
when we again experience the usual vicissitudes of bad harvests in
our variable climate. The returns prove that ever since the duties on
foreign grain became nominal, in the beginning of February last, the
importation of corn and flour into Great Britain and Ireland has gone
on steadily at the rate of 1,200,000 quarters a-month; and that now
seven-eighths of the supply of the metropolis, and of all our other
great towns, comes from foreign parts.[28] How British agriculture is
to go on staggering under such a frightful load of foreign importation
into its best markets, it is not difficult to foresee. Every scholar
knows how Italian agriculture decayed, under a similar importation of
grain from the distant provinces of the Roman empire; and how directly
the fall of the empire was owing to that fatal change.
[28] Take as an example the importation into London, from 24th to 29th
September 1849: prices being--wheat, 41s. 9d.; barley. 27s.; oats, 17s.
10d.
FOREIGN. BRITISH.
Qrs. Qrs.
Wheat 18,023 All kinds of
Barley, 8,319 grain.
Oats, 23,408
Beans, 2,620 7,129
-------
52,375
--_Week from Oct. 29 to Nov. 3._
Putting aside all minor considerations, which crowd upon the mind in
considering the probable effects of this prodigious change, there are
three of paramount importance which force themselves on the attention,
any one of which holds the fate of the empire suspended in a doubtful
balance.
The first is, How is the revenue of £55,000,000, and the interest
of mortgages at least half as much more,[29] to be provided for
under so great a reduction in the value of the staple articles of
British agricultural produce? It has been seen that the total value
of the agricultural produce of the empire was, anterior to the late
changes, about £300,000,000. If prices fall on an average a fourth,
in consequence of foreign importations, which is a most moderate
supposition, probably much within the truth, this £300,000,000 will be
reduced at once to £225,000,000. But the disastrous effect of such a
reduction is not to be measured by its absolute amount, considerable
as that amount undoubtedly is. Its dreadful effect lies here, that
the £75,000,000 thus cut off, absorb nearly the whole profits of
cultivation, out of which both the rent is paid to the landlord, and
the farmer obtains the means of livelihood. The remainder is the cost
of production, and it is not lowered in any sensible degree. _Thus the
whole loss falls on the cultivators._ This is just what has happened
under a similar course of policy in the West Indies, where the indolent
habits of the emancipated slaves, and free trade in sugar, acting
together, have destroyed the profits of agriculture; and of course the
islands are rapidly returning to the jungle and the forest.
[29] The mortgages of England alone are estimated, by the best
authorities, at £400,000,000. Those of Ireland and Scotland are
certainly at least half as much more, or £200,000,000. Indeed, out
of the rental of £14,000,000 a-year, now in part become nominal in
the former country, it is usually reckoned that £10,000,000 go to the
holders of mortgages.
Now, if a deficiency at all approaching to this occurs in the revenue
derived from land--the sources of _three-fifths_ of the income of the
United Kingdom--how, in the name of common sense, is the revenue to be
paid? How are the jointures of the widows, the interest of mortgages,
and the other charges on the land, to be made good, when the change of
prices has absorbed nearly the whole profit of cultivation? If they
are recovered, what is to remain to the landlord? How are the home
manufacturers, and the numerous class of shopkeepers in towns, and,
above all, in the metropolis, who are supported by their expenditure,
to be maintained? It is very easy to say the fall of rents is a
landlord's question, and the mass of the people have no interest in
it. Who support the manufacturers and shopkeepers over the country?
The landlords and holders of securities over the land furnish at the
very least a half of that support. Of the £5,400,000 a-year, which the
Income Tax produces, £3,200,000, or more than a half, comes from the
land. How wide-spread, then, will be the distress produced over the
community, and, above all, to the shopkeepers in towns, from a change
which threatens to dry up the principal sources from which their sales
are paid.
In the next place, How is the _national independence_ to be maintained
when we come to import so large a proportion as from a fourth to a
third of our subsistence from foreign states? If the chances of war,
or a Continental blockade, interrupt our usual sources of supply, what
is to come of the people? Who is to guarantee us against famine prices
on any deficiency of our usual supply from abroad, and our people from
becoming, as the Romans were in former days, the sport of the winds
and the waves? Observe, nearly all our foreign supply comes from two
countries only, Russia, or Prussia, whom it influences, and America. If
we lose our maritime superiority--and who will secure its continuance,
now that the Navigation Laws are repealed?--we may be at once blockaded
in our harbours, and reduced in three months to the alternative of
starvation or submission. But supposing we are not at once reduced to
so humiliating an alternative, is it not clear that, when we have come
practically to depend for the food of a _third_ of our people on _two_
foreign states, we are entirely at the mercy of those two countries,
and can never venture to assert, even in form, our independence against
them? Without fitting out a ship of the line, or equipping a battalion,
they can, by the mere threat of closing their harbours, at any time
starve us into submission. And what are the nations beneath whose feet
proud Albion is thus content to place her neck? Russia and America, the
two most rising countries in existence, and both of which are actuated
by the strongest and the most undying jealousy of the ancient glory and
maritime preponderance of this country.
Mr Gurney, "the greatest bill-broker in the world," has emphatically
declared in public, on more than one occasion, that the country cannot
go on with its present expenditure; that £15,000,000 a-year, on the
charges of the army and navy, is more than can possibly be afforded;
and that, if a great reduction is not made, we shall become bankrupt.
His remedy for this is to disband our troops, sell our ships of the
line, and establish the reign of peace and bill-broking throughout the
world. On the other hand, "the greatest captain in the world," the
Duke of Wellington, has made the following remonstrance to several
successive administrations, on the total inadequacy of our present
establishments, by sea and land, to secure the national independence in
the political changes which may be anticipated in the lapse of time:--
"I have in vain endeavoured to awaken the attention of
different administrations to this state of things, as well
known to our neighbours (rivals in power, at least former
adversaries and enemies) as it is to ourselves.
* * * * *
We ought to be with garrisons as follows at the moment war is
declared:--
Men.
Channel Islands (besides the militia
of each, well organised,
trained, and disciplined) 10,000
Plymouth 10,000
Milford Haven 5,000
Cork 10,000
Portsmouth 10,000
Dover 10,000
Sheerness, Chatham, and the Thames 10,000
I suppose that one-half of the whole regular force of the
country would be stationed in Ireland, which half would give
the garrison for Cork. The remainder must be supplied from the
half of the whole force at home, stationed in Great Britain.
The whole force employed at home in Great Britain and Ireland
would not afford a sufficient number of men for the mere
defence and occupation, on the breaking out of a war, of the
works constructed for the defence of the dockyards and naval
arsenals, _without leaving a single man disposable_.
The measure upon which I have _earnestly entreated different
administrations to decide_, which is constitutional, and has
been invariably adopted in time of peace for the last years,
is to raise, embody, organise, and discipline the militia
of the same number for each of the three kingdoms united,
as during the late war. This would give an organised force
amounting to about a hundred and fifty thousand men, which we
might immediately set to work to discipline. This amount would
enable us to establish the strength of our army. This, with
an augmentation of the force of the regular army, which would
cost £400,000, would put the country on its legs in respect to
personal force, and I would engage for its defence, old as I am.
But as we stand now, and if it be true that the exertions of
the fleet alone are not sufficient to provide for our defence,
_we are not safe for a week after the declaration of war_."...
"I shall be deemed foolhardy in engaging for the defence of the
empire with an army composed of such a force as militia. I may
be so. I confess it, I should infinitely prefer, and should
feel more confidence in, an army of regular troops. But I
_know_ that I shall not have these. I can have the others; and
if an addition is made to the existing regular army allotted
for home defence of a force which would cost £400,000 a-year,
there would be a sufficient disciplined force in the field to
enable him who should command it to defend the country.
This is my view of our danger and of our resources. I am
aware that our magazines and arsenals were very inadequately
supplied with ordnance and carriages, as well as stores of all
denominations, and ammunition.
The deficiency has been occasioned in part by the sale of arms,
and of various descriptions of ordnance stores, since the
termination of the late war, in order to diminish the demand
of supply to carry on the peace service of the ordnance, in
part by the conflagration of the arsenal which occurred in
the Tower some years ago, and by the difficulty under which
all governments in this country _labour in prevailing upon
parliament, in time of peace, to take into consideration
measures necessary for the safety of the country in time of
war_."
"I am bordering upon 77 years of age passed in honour. I hope
that the Almighty may protect me from being again witness of
the tragedy which I cannot persuade my contemporaries to take
measures to avert."
These are strong words, as all those of the Duke of Wellington, and
all other men of powerful and clear intellect, are, when they are
roused and thoroughly in earnest. But when charged with such a subject,
the means of defence and independence to his country, would a man of
his patriotic feeling use expressions less strong, when he saw both
endangered by the weakness of successive administrations, acting in
obedience to the dictates of a blind and infatuated people? But if our
independence has been thus menaced by the inadequacy of our defensive
armaments by sea and land in time past, what is it likely to be in days
to come, when the public revenue, and the resources of the kingdom,
are prostrated by the combined action of a currency fettered by the
acts of 1844 and 1845, and national industry overwhelmed with foreign
competition under the free-trade system of 1846?
In truth, the peace congresses which now amuse the world, and give
an opportunity for clever but chimerical and ignorant men to declaim
upon the speedy advent of a political millennium, are nothing more
than an effort, on the part of the free-trade party, to escape from
the consequences of their own measures. Mr Cobden and the Free-traders
of England now see as clearly as any body, that cheap prices and a
large revenue, either to individuals or nations, cannot by possibility
co-exist; that the £100,000,000, promised us from the abolition of the
corn laws, have vanished into thin air, and that the reduction of the
income of the whole classes of society under its operation will be so
considerable, that it is quite impossible the national expenditure can
be maintained. As the touching of the dividends is not for a moment
to be thought of--as that would be bringing the tempest back with a
vengeance on the moneyed class who evoked it--his only resource, to
make our expenditure square with our reduced income, is in disbanding
the soldiers, instituting a national guard, and selling our stores
and ships of war. He is quite serious in that; and, like all other
fanatics, he is not in the slightest degree influenced by the decisive
refutation of his principles, which the universal breaking out of
hostilities, and arming of the world, in consequence of the French
Revolution of 1848, and the momentary triumph of liberal principles,
has afforded. He is perfectly aware, that if industry was protected,
and we had a currency equal to the wants and necessities of the nation,
we might, with our extended population, raise £100,000,000 a-year,
with more ease than we now do fifty millions, and thus secure the
independence of the country, and bid defiance to all our enemies.
But that would lower the value of money in the hands of the great
capitalists, and would amount to an admission that he had been wrong;
and, rather than risk that, he is content to prostrate the national
defences, and hand us over, unarmed, to the tender mercies of the
Chartists and Repealers at home, and the Red Republicans or Cossacks
abroad.
The more intelligent of the Liberal party are now intent on a different
object, but one equally descriptive of their secret sense of the
failure of their grand panacea of free trade. They are full of the
incalculable effects of the application of science to agriculture;
expatiate largely on the analysis of soils and liquid manures, and
indulge in learned disquisitions on the application of the refuse
of towns and common-sewers to the improvement and fertilisation of
the soil. From the _Edinburgh Review_, which treats its readers to a
learned _exposé_ of Liebig's principles, to Sir R. Peel's protegé, the
Dean of Westminster, who boasts of having tripled the produce of his
land by liquid manure, this is the grand remedy for the evils which
they now see they have introduced. It is singular, if there is any
truth in these discoveries, that though man has been labouring at the
soil for four thousand years, and during that time had an ample supply
of these fertilising streams, they have never been brought to light
till free trade made them a question of life and death to a powerful
party in the state. Having had ample experience of the application of
these liquid manures on the largest and most favourable scale, we are
able to give a decided opinion on this subject. Liquid manures are
of great service in enriching _meadow_ lands, or forcing up _coarse
but luxuriant crops of vegetables, such as cabbage or cauliflower_,
of which the leaves or stems, not the seeds or roots, form an article
of food. But they do not _permanently_ enrich the soil: their effect
is over in a few weeks. A fresh inundation of the fertilising stream
is then requisite, the effects of which are speedily evaporated. On
this account they are wholly inapplicable to grain crops, and of very
doubtful service to potatoes or turnips. In the emphatic language of
farmers, they put no _heart_ into the ground. The vegetation they
force on is entirely in leaves and stems, not in seeds or roots. If
they come into general use, they may increase the determination of the
agricultural industry of the country to grass cultivation, and render
England in modern, as Italy was in ancient times, one great sheet of
pasturage; but they will never overcome the difficulties with which
free trade has environed our farmers in the raising of _grain_ crops,
or enable them to compete with the harvests of the Ukraine, or the
basin of the Mississippi.
In the third place--and this is perhaps a more vital consideration
than any--How is the constant recurrence of monetary crises, similar
to that which has left such woful desolation behind it, to be avoided
upon every recurrence of a deficient harvest at home, or a straitened
importation from abroad? The people of England are sensitively alive
on this subject. They watch the rain in autumn with the most intense
anxiety; and, if it falls a few days more than usual, the utmost alarm
pervades all classes. They know well what rain in autumn portends. They
see rising up, in dismal perspective before them, a great importation
of grain, a vast export of sovereigns, the screw put on by the Bank
of England, a contraction of credits by every bank, every man finding
his creditors on his back, and one-half of his debtors bankrupt. All
this they see, and see clearly; but the minds of a large portion of
them are so benighted by the free-trade dogmas, that it never occurs
to them that all this is the creation of their own policy, and is in
no degree imputable to the laws of Providence. They think the thing
is inevitable. They believe that there is a natural connexion between
three weeks' rain in August and a monetary crisis, just as there is
between a similar deluge and flooded meadows, or destroyed bridges. The
evil, however, is entirely of human creation, and may, with absolute
certainty, be avoided by human means. There is no more reason why three
weeks' rain in August should produce a monetary crisis, than three
weeks' rain in November. It is our ruinous monetary laws which render
them cause and effect.
But assuming that the monetary laws are to continue, and free trade
to be persisted in, it will become the people of this country, and
_especially the trading classes_, to consider well the inevitable
effect of such a state of things on the monetary concerns of the
country, and, through them, on the solvency of every one of themselves.
We have seen that the heavy rains and large importations of grain in
1839 produced the severe and long-protracted period of distress from
1839 to 1842; and that the potato failure in 1846, acting on the Bank
Charter Act of 1844, occasioned the terrible catastrophe of October
1847. But what was the importation of grain, in either of these
periods of distress or famine, to that which is now taking place,
and has _become habitual in the face of exceedingly low prices_? In
1839, the whole grain of all kinds imported was 4,000,000 quarters,
an amount in those days unprecedented. In 1846 and 1847, 12,000,000
quarters, under the stimulus of famine prices, was imported in fifteen
months. But now, after a fine harvest, and with wheat at 41s. a
quarter, we are importing annually, as our _average amount, fifteen
millions of quarters of foreign grain_! How are the most terrible
commercial disasters to be averted, if this immense amount receives any
augmentation from bad seasons? Nay, how are they to be averted even in
ordinary seasons, with so immense a drain on the metallic resources of
the country? This is a question in which the mercantile classes are far
more interested than the agricultural--for with them a monetary crisis
is an affair of life and death. With landholders, cheap prices, unless
very long continued, are merely an affair of temporary loss of income,
because the land itself remains, and it is the value of the annual
fruits only that is affected.
To compensate so many perils, past, present, and to come, have free
trade and a fettered currency, since they were simultaneously brought
into action in this country, afforded such a spectacle of internal
prosperity and concord as to render them on the whole worth persisting
in, at such hazard to our national independence, and even existence?
Alas! the view is now, if possible, more alarming than the prospect of
dangers to come, so much have the realised and experienced evils of the
new system exceeded what the most sombre imagination, fraught with the
most gloomy images, could have anticipated. Amidst the infinite variety
of topics bearing on this subject, we select the five following, as
bearing decisively on the subject:--The increase of the poor-rate,
both in Great Britain and Ireland; the increase in emigration; the
increase of crime; the decline in railway travelling, and the ruin of
agriculture in Ireland.
With regard to the increase of the poor-rate, since free trade and
the new monetary system were introduced, we have the best possible
authority in the following statement in the last number of a
leading journal. "It appears," says the _Edinburgh Review_, "from
Mr Commissioner Symmon's report on pauperism, that the poor-rate in
England has now become _heavier than it was before 1835_ when _the
New Poor law was introduced_. It was, in 1834, £7,373,807; it was in
1848, £7,817,459. _Every ninth person now in England is now a pauper_:
and the increase of paupers during the last two years has been double
in proportion to the relative numbers of criminals."[30] In Ireland,
above 2,000,000 persons are paupers; and the poor-rate since 1846 has
risen from £260,000 a-year to £1,900,000, though it was in the first
of these years only (1846) that there was any general failure of the
potato crop. In Scotland the poor-rate, has nearly tripled in the last
three years; it has risen from £185,000 a-year to £560,000. In Glasgow,
the poor-rates, which anterior to 1846 were under £30,000 yearly for
the city and suburbs, rose in the year 1848-9 to £200,000, and in the
present year (1849-50) amount to £138,500. Nor is it wonderful that
assessments have increased so prodigiously, when the augmentation of
paupers has been so alarming. The following is the increase in the city
of Glasgow parish, being about a half of the city and suburbs, during
the last three years:--
[30] _Edinburgh Review_, October 1848, p. 524.
Year. Total number of Paupers.
1845-6, 7,454
1846-7, 15,911
1847-8, 51,852
The total number of paupers relieved in the city of Glasgow and
suburbs in the year 1848-9 was 122,000; being exactly _a third of the
population_ receiving parochial relief.
The enormous and unprecedented increase of emigration in the last three
years is still more alarming and descriptive of the fatal disease
under which the body politic is labouring. Previous to 1846 the annual
emigration had stood thus:--
1838, 33,222
1839, 62,207
1840, 90,743
1841, 118,592
1842, 128,344
1843, 57,212
1844, 70,686
1845, 93,501
1846, 129,851
But free trade and a fettered currency soon doubled these numbers. The
emigration stands thus in round numbers:--
1847, 258,461
1848, 248,582
For 1849 the numbers have not yet been made up; but that they have much
exceeded 300,000 is well known, and may be judged of by the following
facts. From the official return made up at New York, and published in
the _New York Herald_ of October 10, it appears that, up to that date,
there had landed, in _that harbour alone_, 238,487 emigrants, of whom
_no less than 189,800 were Irish_. If to these is added the emigrants
who went to Boston--where 13,000 landed in the same period, and those
who have gone to Canada, where above 60,000 landed last year--it is
evident that the total emigrants from the United Kingdom this year
must have considerably exceeded 300,000; being probably the greatest
emigration, from any country in a single year, in the whole annals
of the world. It considerably exceeds the annual increment of the
population of the United Kingdom, which is about 230,000: so that,
under the combined action of free trade and a fettered currency, THE
POPULATION OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND, WHICH FOR THREE CENTURIES
HAD CONTINUALLY BEEN ADVANCING, HAS FOR THE FIRST TIME DECLINED. The
Free-traders may boast of an exploit which all the enemies of England
have never been able to effect. This has become so notorious, that
it has passed into an ordinary newspaper paragraph; which, without
attracting the least attention--though it is the most striking thing
that has occurred in English history for five centuries--is now making
the round of the public prints.
It is in vain to put this dismal fact down to the account of the Irish
famine. That occurred in the winter of 1846-7, three years ago, since
which period we have had good harvests; notwithstanding which the
emigration has, since that, been constantly about 250,000; and this
year, in the midst of a fine harvest, has turned 300,000.
The _increase of crime_ during the last three years has been equally
alarming, and illustrative of the grievous distress which, for that
period, has affected the industrial interests of the empire. Having,
in the last Number of this magazine, fully discussed this subject, we
shall only observe that, during the last three years, the increase of
crime in the two islands has been nearly 50 _per cent._ Sir R. Peel,
in spring 1846, when the railway mania was at its height, and full
employment was given to railway labourers and mechanics in every part
of the country, dwelt with peculiar emphasis and complacency on the
diminution of commitments which appeared in the preceding year, as the
most decisive proof of the beneficial effect of his measures in 1842.
We hope he will dwell with equal emphasis on the _increase_ of crime
since that time, and draw from it the appropriate conclusion as to the
wisdom of his subsequent measures.
The woful state of the _railway_ interests throughout the country,
and the steady and alarming decrease of the mileage profits, on an
average of all the lines, is another internal symptom of the dreadful
effects of the new system which, within the last three years, has been
introduced. Railway property, within the last three years, has almost
everywhere declined to a half, in many great lines to a third of its
former value. In one of the greatest lines in the kingdom, the £50
shares, all paid up, are now selling at £14, and were even lately down
as low as £10. The following is taken from the _Times_ of October 21:--
"The subjoined table exhibits the number of miles opened at
Michaelmas in seven consecutive years, and the average traffic
per mile during the first nine months in each year:--
Years. Miles opened. Traffic per mile.
1843 1,586 £2,330
1844 1,770 2,500
1845 2,033 2,640
1846 2,498 2,560
1847 3,375 2,200
1848 4,178 1,965
1849 4,980 1,780
The decline in the last column, from 1845 to the present year,
is sufficiently alarming, and looks like a sinking to zero."
To what is this lamentable sinking of property, in so important a
branch of public investment, to be ascribed? We are aware that much
of it is owing to unproductive branch lines; but what is the main
cause of these branch lines having, contrary to general expectation,
proved so unproductive? It is in vain to ascribe it to the cholera:
that only temporarily affected parts of the kingdom; and, at any
rate, it is now over, and government have very properly appointed a
public thanksgiving for its termination. It is equally in vain to
ascribe it to the monetary crisis of 1847; that is long since past:
capital is overflowing, and interest in London is again down to 3
and 2-1/2 per cent. It is evidently owing to one cause, worse than
plague, pestilence, and famine put together--viz. the wasting away of
the internal resources of the country, under the combined operation
of free trade and a restricted currency: free trade deluging us with
foreign goods in every department of industry, and a restricted
currency paralysing every attempt at competition in our own. We are
very complacent: we not only present our shoulders bare to the blows of
the enemy, but we tie up our own hands, lest, under the smart of the
injury, we should be tempted to return them.