back for a few years longer; let us return to our admirable foreign
policy; and when we have successfully embroiled ourselves with
America, lost Canada, been beaten in China, driven out of our Eastern
possessions, and provoked a war with France, then I'm your man for an
Income Tax; lay it on only heavily; let the nation, already bowed down
under the heavy burden of its calamities, receive in addition the
gracious boon of enormous taxation." Homoeopathy teaches us that
nothing is so curative in its agency, as the very cause of our present
suffering, or something as analogous to it as possible; and, like
Hahnemann, Mr. Buller administers what the vulgar call "a hair of the
dog that bit us," as the most sovereign remedy for all our evils.
The country is like a sick man with a whitlow, for the cure of which
his physician prescribes a slight, but clearly necessary, operation.
Another medical Dr. Buller is, however, standing by. He at once
insinuates his veto; remarks upon the trivial nature of the
disease--the unpainful character of the remedy; "but wait," adds
he--"wait till the inflammation extends higher; have patience till the
hand becomes swollen and the arm affected; and then, when your agony
is beyond endurance, and your life endangered, then we'll amputate the
limb high up, and mayhap you may recover, after all."
As for me, it is the only occasion I'm aware of, where a successful
comparison can be instituted between honour and the Whigs; for
assuredly neither have "any skill in surgery."
A NUT FOR THE "BELGES."
[Illustration]
Every one knows that men in masses, whether the same be called boards,
committees, aggregate, or repeal meetings, will be capable of
atrocities and iniquities, to which, as individuals, their natures
would be firmly repugnant. The irresponsibility of a number is felt by
every member, and Curran was not far wrong when he said, a
"corporation was a thing that had neither a body to be kicked, nor a
soul to be damned."
It is, indeed, a melancholy fact, that nations partake much more
frequently of the bad than the good features of the individuals
composing them, and it requires no small amount of virtue to flavour
the great caldron of a people, and make its incense rise gratefully to
heaven. For this reason, we are ever ready to accept with enthusiasm
anything like a national tribute to high principle and honour. Such
glorious bursts are a source of pride to human nature itself, and we
hail with acclamation these evidences of exalted feeling, which make
men "come nearer to the gods." The greater the sacrifice to selfish
interests and prejudices, the more do we prize the effort. Think for a
moment what a sensation of surprise and admiration, wonderment, awe,
and approbation it would excite throughout Europe, if, by the next
arrival from Boston, came the news that "the Americans had determined
to pay their debts!" That at some great congress of the States,
resolutions were carried to the effect, "that roguery and cheating
will occasionally lower a people in the estimation of others, and that
the indulgences of such national practices may be, in the end,
prejudicial to national honour;" "that honesty, if not the best, may
be good policy, even in a go-a-head state of society;" "that smart
men, however a source of well-founded pride to a people, are now and
then inconvenient from the very excess of their smartness;" "that
seeing these things, and feeling all the unhappy results which
mistrust and suspicion by foreign countries must bring upon their
commerce, they have determined to pay something in the pound, and go
a-head once more." I am sure that such an announcement would be hailed
with illuminations from Hamburg to Leghorn. American citizens would be
cheered wherever they were found; pumpkin pie would figure at royal
tables, and twist and cocktail be handed round with the coffee; our
exquisites would take to chewing and its consequences; and our belles,
banishing Rossini and Donizetti, would make the air vocal with the
sweet sounds of Yankee Doodle. One cannot at a moment contemplate what
excesses our enthusiasm might not carry us to; and I should not wonder
in the least if some great publisher of respectable standing might not
start a pirated reprint of the _New York Herald_.
Let me now go back and explain, if my excitement will permit me, how
I have been led into such extravagant imaginings. I have already
remarked, that nations seldom gave evidence of noble bursts of
feeling; still more rarely, I regret to say, do they evince any sorrow
for past misconduct--any penitence for by-gone evil.
This would be, indeed, the severest ordeal of a people's greatness;
this, the brightest evidence of national purity. Happy am I to say
such an instance is before us; proud am I to be the man to direct
public attention to the fact. The following paragraph I copy verbatim
from the _Times_.
"On the 18th of June, the anniversary of the battle of
Waterloo, a black flag was hoisted by the Belgians at the
top of the monument erected on the field where the battle
was fought."
A black flag, the emblem of mourning, the device of sorrow and regret,
waves over the field of Waterloo! Not placed there by vanquished
France, whose legions fought with all their chivalry; not hoisted by
the proud Gaul, on the plain where, in defeat, he bit the dust; but in
penitence of heart, in deep sorrow and contrition, by the Belgians who
ran--by the people who fled--by the soldiers who broke their ranks and
escaped in terror.
What a noble self-abasement is this; how beautifully touching such an
instance of a people's sorrow, and how affecting to think, that while
in the halls of Apsley House the heroes were met together to
commemorate the glorious day when they so nobly sustained their
country's honour, another nation should be in sackcloth and ashes, in
all the trappings of woe, mourning over the era of their shame, and
sorrowing over their degradation. Oh, if a great people in all the
majesty of their power, in all their might of intellect, strength, and
riches, be an object of solemn awe and wonder, what shall we say of
one whose virtues partake of the humble features of every-day life,
whose sacrifice is the tearful offering of their own regrets?
Mr. O'Connell may declaim, and pronounce his eight millions the finest
peasantry in the world--he may extol their virtues from Cork to
Carrickfergus--he may ring the changes over their loyalty, their
bravery, and their patriotism; but when eulogising the men who assure
him "they are ready to die for their country," let him blush to think
of the people who can "cry" for theirs.
A NUT FOR WORKHOUSE CHAPLAINS.
[Illustration]
The bane and antidote of England is her immense manufacturing
power--the faculty that enables her to inundate the whole habitable
globe with the products of her industry, is at once the source of her
prosperity and poverty--her millionnaire mill-owners and her
impoverished thousands. Never was the skill of machinery pushed to the
same wonderful extent--never the results of mechanical invention so
astoundingly developed. Men are but the presiding genii over the
wonder-working slaves of their creative powers, and the child, is the
volition that gives impulse to the giant force of a mighty engine.
Subdivision of labour, carried to an extent almost incredible, has
facilitated despatch, and induced a higher degree of excellence in
every branch of mechanism--human ingenuity is racked, chemical
analysis investigated, mathematical research explored--and all, that
Mr. Binns, of Birmingham, may make thirteen minikin pins--while Mr.
Sims, of Stockport, has been making but twelve. Let him but succeed in
this, and straightway his income is quadrupled--his eldest son is
member for a manufacturing borough, his second is a cornet in the Life
Guards--his daughter, with a fortune of one hundred thousand pounds,
is married to the heir of a marquisate--and his wife, soaring above
the murky atmosphere of the factory, breathes the purer air of western
London, and advertises her _soirees_ in the _Morning Post_. The
pursuit of wealth is now the grand characteristic of our age and
country; and the headlong race of money-getting seems the great
feature of the day. To this end the thundering steamer ploughs the
white-crested wave of the broad Atlantic--to this end the clattering
locomotive darts through the air at sixty miles the hour--for this,
the thousand hammers of the foundry, the ten thousand wheels of the
factory are at work--and man, toiling like a galley-slave, scarce
takes time to breathe in his mad career, as with straining eyeballs
and outstretched hands, he follows in the pursuit of lucre.
[Illustration]
Now, men are imitative creatures; and strange enough, too, they are
oftentimes disposed from the indulgence of the faculty to copy things,
and adapt them to purposes very foreign to their original destination.
This manufacturing speed, this steeple-chase of printed calico and
Paisley wear, is all very well while it is limited to the districts
where it began. That two hundred and seventy thousand white cotton
night-caps, with a blue tassel on every one of them, can be made in
twenty-four hours at Messrs. Twist and Tredlem's factory, is a very
gratifying fact, particularly to all who indulge in ornamental
head-gear--but we see no reason for carrying this dispatch into the
Court of Chancery, and insisting that every nod of the woolsack is to
decide a suit at law. Yet have the lawyer and the physician both
adopted the impetuous practices of the manufacturing world, and
Haste, red haste! is now the cry.
Lord Brougham's Chancery practice was only to be equalled by one of
Lord Waterford's steeple-chases. He took all before him in a fly--he
rode straight, plenty of neck, baulked nothing--up leap or down leap,
sunk fence or double ditch, post and rail, or quickset, stone wall, or
clay bank, all one to him--go it he would. Others might deny his
judgment; he wanted to get over the ground, and _that_ he did do.
The West-end physician, in the same way, visits his fifty patients
daily, walks his hospital, delivers a lecture to old ladies about some
"curious provision" of nature in the palm of the human hand (for
fee-taking); and devoting something like three minutes and twelve
seconds to each sick man's case, pockets some twenty thousand per
annum by his dispatch.
Speed is now the _El Dorado_. Jelly is advertised to be made in a
minute, butter in five, soup seasoned and salted in three seconds of
time. Even the Quakers--bless their quiet hearts!--couldn't escape the
contagion, and actually began to walk and talk with some faint
resemblance to ordinary mortals. The church alone maintained the even
tenor of its way, and moved not in the wild career of the whirlwind
world about it. Such was my gratulation, when my eye fell upon the
following passage of the _Times_. Need I say with what a heavy heart I
read it? It is Mr. Rushton who speaks:--
"In the month of December, 1841, he heard that a man had
been found dead in the streets of Liverpool; that all the
property he possessed had been taken from his person, and
that an attempt to trace his identity had been made in
vain. He was taken to the usual repository for the dead,
where an inquest had been held upon him, and from the 'dead
house,' as it was called, he was removed to the workhouse
burial-ground. The man who drove the hearse on the occasion
was very old, and not very capable of giving evidence. His
attendant was an idiot. It had been represented to Mr.
Hodgson and himself that the dead man had been taken in the
clothes in which he died and put into a coffin which was too
small for him; that a shroud was put over him; that the lid
of the coffin would not go down; and that he was taken from
the dead-house and buried in the parochial ground, no
funeral rites having been performed on the occasion. It had
also been communicated to Mr. Hodgson and himself that,
after two days, the clergyman who was instructed to perform
those rites over the paupers, came and performed one service
for the dead over all the paupers who had been buried in the
intermediate time."
Now, without stopping to criticise the workhouse equipage, which
appears to be driven by a man too old to speak, with an idiot for his
companion; nor even to advert to the scant ceremony of burying a man
in his daily dress, and in a coffin that would not close on him--what
shall we say of the "patent parson power" that buries paupers in
detachments, and reads the service over platoons of dead? The reverend
chaplain feeling the uncertainty of human life, and knowing how frail
is our tie to existence, waits in the perfect conviction of a large
party before he condescends to appear. Knowing that dead men tell no
tales, he surmises also that they don't run away, and so he says to
himself--these people are not pressed for time, they'll be here when I
come again--it is a sickly season, and we'll have a field-day on
Saturday. Cheap soup for the poor, says Mrs. Fry. Cheap justice, says
O'Connell. Cheap clothing, says a tailor who makes new clothes from
old, with a machine called a devil--but cheap burial is the boast of
the Liverpool chaplain, and he is the most original among them.
A NUT FOR THE "HOUSE."
I have long been of opinion that a man may attain to a very
respectable knowledge of Chinese ceremonies and etiquette before he
can learn one half the usages of the honourable house. Seldom does a
debate go forward without some absurd interruption taking place in a
mere matter of form. Now it is a cry of "Order, order," to some
gentleman who is subsequently discovered not to have been in the least
disorderly, but whom the attack has so completely dumfounded, that he
loses his speech and his self-possession, and sits down in confusion,
to be sneered at in the morning papers, and hooted by his constituents
when he goes home.
Now some gifted scion of aristocracy makes an essay in braying and
cock-crowing, both permitted by privilege, and overwhelms the speaker
with the uproar. Now it is that intolerable nuisance, old Hume,
shouting out "divide," or "adjourn;" or it is Colonel Sibthorpe who
counts the house. These ridiculous privileges of members to interfere
with the current of public business because they may be sleepy or
stupid themselves, are really intolerable, besides being so numerous
that the first dozen years of a parliamentary life will scarcely teach
a man a tithe of them. But of all these "rules of the house," the
most unjust and tyrannical is that which compels a man to put up with
any impertinence because he has already spoken. It would seem as if
each honourable member "went down" with a single ball cartridge in his
pouch, which, when fired, the best thing he could do was to go home
and wait for another distribution of ammunition; for by remaining he
only ran the risk of being riddled without any power to return the
fire.
A case of this kind happened a few evenings since:--A Mr. Blewitt--I
suppose the composer--made a very absurd motion, the object of which
was to inquire "What office the Duke of Wellington held in the present
government, and whether he was or was not a member of the cabinet."
Without referring the learned gentleman to a certain erudite volume
called the Yearly Almanack and Directory, Sir Robert Peel proceeded to
explain the duke's position. He eulogised, as who would not? his
grace's sagacity and his wisdom; the importance of his public
services, and the great value the ministers, his _confreres_, set upon
a judgment which, in a long life, had so seldom been found mistaken;
and then he concluded by quoting from one of the duke's recent replies
to some secretary or other who addressed him on a matter foreign to
his department--"That he was one of the few men in the present day who
did not meddle in affairs over which they have no control." "A piece
of counsel," quoth Sir Robert, "I would strenuously advise the
honourable member to apply to his own case."
Now we have already said that we think Blewitt--though an admirable
musician--seems to be a very silly man. Still, if he really did not
know what the duke represented in her Majesty's government--if he
really were ignorant of what functions he exercised, the information
might have been bestowed upon him without a retort like this. In the
first place, his query, if a foolish, was at least a civil one; and in
the second, it was his duty to understand a matter of this nature: it
therefore came under his control, and Sir Robert's application of the
quotation was perfectly uncalled-for. Well; what followed? Mr. Blewitt
rose in wrath to reply, when the house called out, "Spoke, spoke!" and
Blewitt was muzzled; the moral of which is simply this--you ask a
question in the house, and the individual addressed has a right to
insult you, you having no power of rejoinder, under the etiquette of
"spoke." Any flippancy may overturn a man at this rate; and the words
"loud laughter," printed in italics in the _Chronicle_, is sure to
renew the emotion at every breakfast table the morning after.
Now I am sorry for Blewitt, and think he was badly treated.
A NUT FOR "LAW REFORM."
[Illustration]
Of all the institutions of England there is scarcely one more lauded,
and more misunderstood, than trial by jury. At first blush, nothing
can seem fairer and less objectionable than the unbiassed decision of
twelve honest men, sworn to do justice. They hear patiently the
evidence on both sides; and in addition to the light derivable from
their own intelligence, they have the directing charge of the judge,
who tells them wherein the question for their decision lies, what are
the circumstances of which they are to take cognizance, and by what
features of the case their verdict is to be guided. Yet look at the
working of this much-boasted privilege. One jury brings in a verdict
so contrary to all reason and justice, that they are sent back to
reconsider it by the judge; another, more refractory still, won't come
to any decision at all, and get carted to the verge of the county for
their pains; and a third, improving on all former modes of proceeding,
has adopted a newer and certainly most impartial manner of deciding a
legal question. "Court of Common Pleas, London, July 6.--The Chief
Justice (Tindal) asked the ground of objection, and ten of the jurymen
answered that in the last case one of their colleagues had suggested
that the verdict should be decided by tossing up!" Here is certainly a
very important suggestion, and one which, recognising justice as a
blind goddess, is strictly in conformity with the impersonation.
Nothing could possibly be farther removed from the dangers of undue
influence than decisions obtained in this manner. Not only are all the
prejudices and party bearings of individual jurors avoided, but an
honest and manly oblivion of all the evidence which might bias men if
left to the guidance of their poor and erring faculties, is thus
secured. It is human to err, says the poet moralist; and so the
jurymen in question discovered, and would therefore rather refer a
knotty question to another deity than Justice, whom men call Fortune.
How much would it simplify our complex and gnarled code, the
introduction of this system? In the next place, juries need not be any
longer empannelled, the judge could "sky the copper" himself. The only
question would be, to have a fair halfpenny. See with what rapidity
the much-cavilled court would dispatch public business! I think I see
our handsome Chief of the Common Pleas at home here, with his knowing
eye watching the vibrations of the coin, and calling out in his
sonorous tone, "Head--the plaintiff has it. Call another case." I peep
into the Court of Chancery, and behold Sir Edward twirling the penny
with more cautious fingers, and then with his sharp look and sharper
voice, say, "Tail! Take a rule for the defendant."
[Illustration]
No longer shall we hear objections as to the sufficiency of legal
knowledge possessed by those in the judgment-seat. There will be no
petty likings for this, and dislikings for that court; no changes of
venue; no challenges of the jury; even Lord Brougham himself, of whom
Sir Edward remarked, "What a pity it was he did not know a little law,
for then he would have known a little of everything"--even he might be
a chancellor once more. What a power of patronage it would give each
succeeding ministry to know that capacity was of no consequence; and
that the barrister of six years' standing could turn his penny as well
as the leader in Chancery. Public business need never be delayed a
moment; and if the Chief Baron were occupied in chamber, the crier of
the court could perform his functions till he came back again.
A NUT FOR "CLIMBING BOYS."
[Illustration]
One man may lead a horse to the water, but ten cannot make him drink,
sayeth the adage; and so it might be said, any one might devise an act
of parliament--but who can explain all its intentions and
provisions--define its powers--and illustrate its meanings? One clause
will occasionally vitiate another; one section completely contradict
the preceding one; the very objects of the legislature are often so
pared away in committee, that a mere shadowy outline remains of what
the original framer intended; and were it not for the bold hand of
executive justice, the whole might be inoperative. The judge, happily,
supplies the deficiency of the lawmaker--and the thing were perfect,
if judges were not, like doctors, given to differ--and thus,
occasionally, disseminate somewhat opposite notions of the statutes of
the land.
Such being the case, it will not be deemed impertinent of one, who
desires to conform in all respects to the law, to ask, from time to
time, of our rulers and governors, certain questions, the answers to
which, should he happily receive them, will be regarded by him as
though written on tables of brass.
Now, in a late session of parliament, some humane member brought in a
bill to interdict the sweeping of chimneys by all persons small enough
for the purpose, and ingeniously suggested supplying their place by
others, whose size would have inevitably condemned them to perish in a
flue. Never had philanthropist a greater share of popularity. Little
sweeps sang his praises along the streets--penny periodicals had
verses in his honour--the "song of the soot" was set to music--and
people, in the frenzy of their enthusiasm, so far forgot their
chimneys, that scarcely a street in town had not, at least, one fire
every night in the week. Meanwhile, the tender sweeplings had lost
their occupation, they had pronounced their farewell to the
brush--what was to become of them? Alas, the legislature had not
thought of that point; for, they were not influential enough to claim
compensation. I grieve to think, but there is too much reason to fear,
that many of them betook themselves to the ancient vocation of
pickpockets. Yes, as Dr. Watts has it--
"Satan finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do."
The divisional police-offices were filled each morning with small
"suttees"--whose researches after handkerchiefs and snuff-boxes were
of the most active kind; while their full-grown brethren, first
impacted in a funnel of ten inches by eight, were cursing the Commons,
and consigning to all manner of misfortune the benevolent framer of
the bill.