PART II.

Transcriber's note:

Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).

Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals.

* * * * *

BLACKWOOD'S

Edinburgh

MAGAZINE.

VOL. LXIV.

JULY-DECEMBER, 1848.

[Illustration: Buchanan]

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, EDINBURGH;

AND

37, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.

1848.

BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.

BLACKWOOD'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCXCIII. JULY, 1848. VOL. LXIV.

CONTENTS.

THE LAWS OF LAND. 1

LIFE IN THE "FAR WEST." PART II. 17

AMERICAN THOUGHTS ON EUROPEAN REVOLUTIONS. 31

THE CAXTONS. Part IV. 40

REPUBLICAN FRANCE.--JUNE 1848. 51

COLONISATION. 66

SIBERIA. 76

THE SCOTTISH DEER FORESTS. 92

THE BURIED FLOWER. 108

HUZZA FOR THE RULE OF THE WHIGS. 112

THE NAVIGATION LAWS. 114

EDINBURGH:

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET;

AND 37, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.

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SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.

BLACKWOOD'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCXCIII. JULY, 1848. VOL. LXIV.

THE LAWS OF LAND.

_A Treatise on the Succession to Property vacant by Death._ By J. R.

M'CULLOCH, Esq. London: Longmans, 1848.

Mr M'Culloch's book introduces us to a question much debated in this

age of class jealousy. As soon as we open it, we are straightway

environed with "a barbarous noise of owls and cuckoos, asses,

apes, and dogs," amid whose jargon of phrases rises loudest and

most frequent the cry of "commercial principles." It is a great

grievance, it seems, that land should not be disposed of according

to "commercial principles;" that hill and holt, and moor and dale,

should not pass from seller to buyer with the same readiness as

candles and calicoes. Truly we have enough, and more than enough, of

these same commercial principles in all walks of thought. Even the

pulpit is not free from them. Politics are positively smothered with

them. Ethical science, with the shallowisms of Paley and Bentham

round her neck, struggles feebly with them. The book-keeper is

abroad every where, with an indestructible faith in double entry.

The Spirit of the Age wears a pen behind his ear, and sits on a high

stool with three legs. That the prevailing commercial principles

should have been so long excluded from the absolute possession of

our laws of land, and that those laws should have preserved to a

time like this so much of their feudal character, is a notable proof

of the adaptation of the laws to the general requirements of the

community, and of the steadiness of that social system which is so

essentially linked to the maintenance of these laws.

The cry of complaint to which we have above alluded, is inspired by

many diverse motives. As Mr Cochrane's ragged followers flocked to

Trafalgar Square to denounce the income-tax, so many a man takes up

the shout against the law of primogeniture and entail, as tying up

lands and restricting their sale, who never had the wherewithal to

purchase a single acre if all broad England was in the market. On

the other hand, the purse-proud citizen, sore that ready money is

not yet quite at the top of the tree, and that he does not receive

the same consideration at St James's as in Change Alley, delights to

have some grievance whereon he can vent his spleen; and really, in

some stolid instances, persuades himself that he is kept out of the

land which his gold could buy, through the agency of aristocratical

laws, as if George Robins had been a mythical personage, or the

advertisements of Farebrother, Clark, and Lye were a mockery and

delusion.

But the largest class of assailants are those who come to the

debate fortified with certain specious economical arguments,

generally derived from a one-sided view of some particular effect

of these restrictive laws. To the demolition of these objectors

Mr M'Culloch's work is more immediately addressed; and very

effectually, in our opinion, does it accomplish its end. He has

not, perhaps, treated the subject so widely as it might have been

treated: he has not entered into the indirect social influences that

might be traced to our system of the laws relating to land; but the

economical part of the question he has grasped most completely, and

supported by most able and practical reasoning.

We must, we suppose, look for the text of the work, not where the

text is usually found, but at the end. The following sentence,

which is almost the concluding one, may be taken as the leading

proposition of the work:--

"A powerful and widely-ramified aristocracy like that of

England, not resting for support on any oppressive laws, and

enjoying no privileges but which are for the public advantage,

is necessary to give stability and security to the government,

and freedom to the people. And our laws in regard to succession

being well fitted to maintain such an aristocracy, and, at the

same time, to inspire every other class with the full spirit of

industry and enterprise, to change them would not be foolish

merely, but criminal,--a _lèse majesté_ against the public

interests."--P. 172.

It must not, however, be supposed from this remark, that any portion

of the work is appropriated to a set defence of government by

means of an aristocracy. By an aristocracy we mean the deposition

of political power in the hands of men of leisure and education,

as opposed to the tendency of the Reform Bill, to transfer

the governing functions to the "practical" men of the trading

and moneyed interests, and the analogous claims of Chartism,

founded on Jack Cade's complaint, that the "king's council are

no good workmen." In England, we are pretty sure to have an

aristocracy--that is, the influences which affect government and

legislation will emanate principally from that class which is

socially at the head of the nation; and the question is, whether

we are to have a mere moneyed aristocracy, or one qualified by

those mixed and undefinable conditions which, more than any thing

else, act to keep down the growing and eager ascendency of wealth

_per se_. Among the safeguards of such an aristocracy as we have

described, not the least powerful is to be found in the laws

discussed in the work before us. Mr M'Culloch, as we have said,

assumes the importance to the country of preserving the present

characteristics of British aristocracy; and he therefore proceeds

at once to show how the laws on which he treats operate for this

preservation, and to rebut the objections advanced against them on

the score of their relations to other classes of the community.

One of the most frequent of these objections is, that the laws

in question tend to diminish the productiveness of the land, and

thereby inflict a serious injury on the community at large; that

they prevent, in many instances, the landlord from granting leases

to his tenant beyond the term of his own life; that the tenant, in

consequence, is not willing to incur the outlay of drainage and

other expensive improvements, because he is not secured by a lease;

while the landlord, on the other hand, will not enter into these

expenses, because he does not feel the same interest in his limited

estate which he would in the unconditional fee-simple.

Note first of all the logic of this argument. The tenant, it seems,

will not spend his money in draining without a lease. As, however,

a lease would suffice to induce him so to do, we might naturally

suppose that the landlord's estate for life, or in tail, would be at

least an equal inducement. These reasoners, however, aver, that the

landlord is only to be tempted by the unrestricted fee. According to

this progressive scale, it might be fairly, argued, that the tenant,

on becoming lessee for years, would still require the landlord's

life-interest; and the latter, when seised of the fee, would decline

the requisite expense, except on a guarantee of immortality, and

justify himself by Horace's authority,--

"Tanquam

Sit proprium quidquam puncto quod mobilis horæ

Permutet dominos, et cedat in altera jura."

But the general scope of an argument may be just, though clumsily

stated and fallaciously supported. We are, however, at no loss for

experiments on the largest scale whereby to test the theory here

noticed. We have English agriculture, subjected to a limited law of

entail, contrasted on the one hand with Scottish agriculture, under

a law of perpetual entail, and on the other with that of France and

its compulsory gavelkind. Mr M'Culloch has taken an elaborate view

of the question in its relation to the tillage of the soil in these

three countries respectively, more especially in France. We find,

from the result of his investigation, that,--

"The average produce per acre of the crops of wheat in England

and Wales in good years, has been carefully estimated at

thirty-two bushels an acre, and it is certainly not under thirty

bushels. But in France the produce of wheat, even in the richest

and best cultivated departments, is little more, according to

the official returns and the best private authorities, than

twenty bushels an acre; and at an average of the entire kingdom,

it hardly amounts in a good year to fourteen bushels. This

result is completely decisive. It shows that one acre of land

in England yields, from its being better farmed, considerably

more wheat than two acres in France: and if we took barley or

oats, turnips, beef, or wool for a standard, the difference in

our favour would be seen to be still greater.... If labour were

taken for a standard instead of land, the result would be still

more in our favour. One man and one horse in England produce

more corn and other agricultural produce than three men and

three horses in France. Labour in the latter is misapplied and

wasted."--P. 117.

Again:--

"While two husbandmen in France furnish a surplus of food above

their own consumption adequate for _one_ individual, the same

number of English husbandmen furnish a surplus for no fewer than

_four_ individuals; showing, that, as measured by its capacity

of providing for the other classes of the population, English is

to French agriculture as four to one."--P. 121.

So much for the comparison of French and English agriculture. Let us

now turn to Scotland:--

"In an Appendix to the 'Sketches of the History of Man,'

published in 1774, Lord Kames says, 'The quantity of land that

is locked up in Scotland by entails has damped the growing

spirit of agriculture. There is not produced sufficiency of

corn at home for our consumption; and our condition will become

worse and worse by new entails, till agriculture and industry be

annihilated.' Now the extent of land under entail in Scotland

has been certainly more than doubled, perhaps more than trebled,

since this paragraph was written, and yet agriculture and

manufactures have made a more rapid progress in Scotland in the

interval, and especially during the last thirty years, when

entails were most prevalent, than in England or in any other

country whatever."--P. 71.

Lord Kames, in this respect, seems to have had the same subtle

ingenuity in prophesying counter to the event, as distinguishes Mr

Cobden.

The first part of Mr M'Culloch's volume contains a cursory

historical view of the earliest regulations of succession and

inheritance. Thus, at p. 16, he traces the right of primogeniture,

or preference of the eldest son, to the Mosaic law. We are far from

maintaining that the specific details of the code promulgated on

Sinai are a model of law for all nations; on the contrary, they

were no doubt intended to be such as a wise human law-giver would

frame, and consequently more or less applicable according to the

changes and differences of social organisation. But we do hold that

these laws indicate to mankind principles which are to be observed

in all times and by all nations. Thus, the septennial release of

debts, the return of every man to his possession in the year of

jubilee, the prohibition of interest upon loans except to an alien,

even the poor man's portion in the field and vineyard, may or

may not be regulations adapted to a particular existing state of

society. But they enunciate a principle of mercy and forbearance

towards the poor and unfortunate, of which, we fear, our political

economists and commercial legislators are too apt to lose sight. In

conformity with this view, when we hear the right of primogeniture

assailed as contrary to the law of nature, (by the way, where is

this much-talked-of law of nature to be found?) we may safely appeal

to the express recognition by the Jewish law of "the right of the

first-born as the beginning of his father's strength," to show

that the custom of primogeniture is at all events not repugnant to

instinctive justice or the common-sense of mankind. The old Saxon

law of gavelkind might be better adapted to a superabundance of

land and a thin population; the preference of the youngest son, by

the custom of Borough-English, might well prevail among the far

progenitors of the Saxon race on the steppes of Scythia,[1] when

the elder brothers would be sent forth to roam over the boundless

plain with their flocks and herds, the youngest remaining at home to

be the prop of his father's old age. But in a settled and cultivated

country, and among an advanced people, we maintain succession by

primogeniture to be the most consonant, as a matter of theory, to

the social feelings and requirements of man; and we think our author

has fully established his position as to the beneficial character of

its practical results.

[1] We suspect this custom may be traced in the Scythian legends of

Herodotus. See his 4th book, chapters v., vi., and x.

In the course of his historical survey, Mr M'Culloch has of course

touched on the principle of succession under the Roman law, but

more lightly than we should have expected in reference to a system

which has entered so largely into our Scottish law, and which is

still accepted as a model framework of legal principles in most of

the universities of Christendom. And the slight notice taken traces

an analogy between the feudal and civil principles of succession,

which we think is altogether incorrect. Our author, in speaking of

the Roman law of succession, appears to confound in some measure

the Roman term _hæres_ with the English word _heir_. The civilian

definition of _hæres_ is _qui ex testamento succedit in universum

jus testatoris_. In Scotland the word _heir_ has much the same

import:--"The law deems it reasonable," says Erskine, (_Inst._ book

iii. tit. 8, §. 2) "that every fiar shall have the power by deed,

during his life, to declare who shall have the lands after his

death: and the person so favoured is called the _heir_." Whereas the

feudal notion of the word _heir_ preserved in the English law, is of

one upon whom the estate is cast, after the death of his ancestor,

by act of law and right of blood. In other words, _hæres_ is he who

is appointed by the will of the deceased to succeed to his civil

rights, and, in default of such appointment, the person indicated

by a certain general law. But the _heir_ (in English law) is the

next and worthiest of blood, appointed by the common-law to succeed

to his ancestor; although this rule of succession may be set aside

by the appointment or will of the ancestor, if possessed of the

fee-simple. Bearing in mind this distinction, we shall perceive the

cause of Mr M'Culloch's error when he says--

"The Furian, the Voconian, and the Falcidian laws were passed,

the first two under the republic, and the latter under Augustus,

to secure the interests of children by limiting the power of

fathers to make settlements to their prejudice." P. 6.

Now, the Voconian law, so far from protecting the interests of

children, frequently operated in the case of daughters to prejudice

them;--of this we have a remarkable instance in the case of Annius

Asellus, dwelt upon by Cicero, in the second action against

Verres, _Orat._ i., c. 41--44. The law prevented all registered or

assessed (_censi_) citizens of Rome from appointing a female as

their _hæres_. Again, the Furian and Falcidian laws were passed to

secure the person nominated as _hæres_ from being prejudiced by

the excessive amount of legacies under the will. Hence, if a man

died leaving only daughters, he was prohibited by the Voconian law

from appointing any of them as his _hæres_; and the other two laws

restrained him from appointing a nominal _hæres_, and leaving his

property to his daughters by way of legacies (_legata_.)

In truth, the English notion of heirship, as succession by right

of blood, seems to be entirely due to the northern nations and the

feudal system. Under both systems, however, it is observable how

the progress of legislation and society has been to increase the

privileges and diminish the duties of the constituted successor. For

as, in tenure by chivalry, the heir was rather the person to whom,

in consequence of proximity of blood, the lord might look for the

performance of the military services, than the fortunate acquirer of

the property, so the Roman _hæres_ was regarded more in the light

of one on whom devolved the religious, civil, and private duties

of the deceased; frequently so burdensome that the inheritance was

altogether refused, until the heir was guarded by such laws as the

Furian and Falcidian.

While we are in the humour of finding fault, we may notice a

passage in which we think Mr M'Culloch has not dealt fairly with the

English law. It is as follows:--

"In one respect the law of intestacy appears to stand much in

need of revision. It is interpreted so as to give, in many

cases, more to the eldest son than the real estate and his

share of the personalty. Suppose, for example, that a person

dies intestate, leaving an estate worth (say) L.100,000, with

a mortgage made by him upon it for half its value, or £50,000,

and leaving also £50,000 of personal property, in this case the

real estate is obviously worth only £50,000; and consistently

with the principles previously laid down, the eldest son

should succeed to the estate burdened with its debt, and the

personal property be divided among the children generally. But

a different rule has been permitted to grow up. The personal

property of persons dying intestate is the first fund for their

debts, though secured upon their estates; and it is the surplus

only, if there be any, after these debts are paid, that is

divisible among the children, who, in the above case, would be

entitled to nothing. This appears to be in all respects a most

objectionable arrangement."--P. 41.

We cannot see any anomaly here. "It is a rule in equity," says

Cruise, (_Digest_, tit. xv. c. 4,) "that where a person dies,

leaving a variety of funds, one of which must be charged with a

debt, that the fund which received the benefit by the contracting

the debt shall make satisfaction." This seems to us perfectly just

and reasonable, according to the principles of the English law. In

the case put by Mr M'Culloch, the personalty of £50,000 obviously

owes its existence to the mortgage debt; and it is, therefore,

fairly applied to the discharge of that debt. But, _cessante

ratione, cessat etiam lex_; this only applies where the deceased was

himself the mortgager. Where the lands came to him mortgaged, his

personal estate will not be liable, even though he may have made a

covenant to pay it. We may refer the legal reader to the judgment

of Lord King, delivered, with the assistance of Lord Chief-Justice

Raymond and the Master of the Rolls, in Evelyn _v._ Evelyn, 2 P.

Wms. 659. Compare Cope _v._ Cope, 1 Salk. 449. Shafto _v._ Shafto, 2

P. Wms. 664.

Although the custom of primogeniture and the law of entail exercise

a similar influence on our social state, yet, as they may be said

in some measure to go by a different path towards the same end, Mr

M'Culloch has treated them separately. With respect to the first, he

begins by rebutting Adam Smith's sweeping denunciation:--"Nothing

can be more contrary to the real interest of a numerous family, than

a right which, in order to enrich one, beggars all the rest of the

children." _Wealth of Nations_, p. 171.

"On the contrary," says Mr M'Culloch, "we are well convinced

that much of the industry and of the superior wealth and

civilisation of modern Europe, may be ascribed to the influence

of the custom of primogeniture in determining the succession

to estates; and that, were it abolished, or superseded by the

opposite custom of equally dividing landed property among all

the children, or even among all the sons, they would suffer

universally by the change, the youngest as well as the oldest;

while it would most seriously compromise the interests of every

other class."--P. 28.

The truth is, that the right of primogeniture is rather to be

regarded as having for its object the benefit of the community,

than the interest of the particular family. If a man has £50,000

a-year and five sons, it may appear, at first sight, decidedly

more conducive to "the greatest possible happiness of the greatest

possible number," that each of these five sons should have £10,000

a-year, than that one should possess the whole, or bulk, of the

paternal property, and the other four be left to buffet their way

through the world. But it is for the interest of the nation that

its aristocracy should be founded in old families, fortified and

graced by historical associations; and these are only to be kept up

by a devolution of their lands according to the feudal rule. But,

as regards the interest of the particular family, it will appear

on consideration that, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, this

also is most effectually promoted by the law of primogeniture. By

means of this law, the main stock of the family is left in its full

strength as a nucleus round which the younger branches are united,

and from which their members derive alike a great portion of their

status in society, and inducement to advance themselves in their

respective pursuits; and, on the other hand, the professions of

the country are exalted and dignified by the infusion into their

ranks of men of birth and education, who are, at the same time,

dependent on those professions for their advancement. Sir Matthew

Hale, as quoted by Mr M'Culloch, forcibly describes the results

of the opposite system. "This equal division of inheritance," he

says, speaking of the old times of Saxon gavelkind, "did by degrees

bring the inhabitants to a low kind of country living; and families

were broken; and the younger sons which, had they not had these

little parcels of land to apply themselves to, would have betaken

themselves to trades, or to military, or civil, or ecclesiastical

employments, neglecting those opportunities, wholly applied

themselves to those small divisions of land; whereby they neglected

the opportunities of greater advantage of enriching themselves

and the kingdom." And if it should be urged that Sir Matthew Hale

could do little more than form an _à priori_ judgment of the social

condition of England in the days of the Confessor, it should be

remembered that the picture here drawn is precisely applicable to

the state of France at the present day, and may easily be traced to

its similar system of partition. An important public result of the

same system, as regards the landholders in the exercise of their

functions as citizens, may also be observed in that country. The

large body of landed proprietors, amounting to between four and five

millions, so far from being the leaders of the people, are, perhaps,

the most inert and uninfluential class of the whole community. They

pay the bulk of the taxes, and grumble accordingly; but beyond a

vague dread of aristocracy--not unnaturally founded, perhaps, on the

traditions of the vexatious privileges swept away in 1791--they seem

disposed calmly to acquiesce in all the proclamations, charters,

and chimeras that maybe thrust upon them by busier handlers of the

tools of government, and behold revolutions concocted in Paris,

and bursting over their heads, apparently without the remotest

conception that it any wise rests with them to control or guide the

convulsion.

"It has sometimes been contended that the custom of

primogeniture is injurious, from its interesting the leading

families of the country in the support of expensive public

establishments, in which their younger branches are most

commonly placed."--P. 38.

This objection also Mr M'Culloch brings to the test of experiment,

and shows that this bias, if it really exist, is little perceptible,

and that the aristocracy have shown much more zeal to discharge

the functions of the ill-paid offices of the army and navy, than

to get into their hands the lucrative situations connected with

the administration of justice. It was certainly not the immediate

interest of the aristocracy, for instance, to maintain the offices

of the six clerks in Chancery, the profits on which were estimated

for compensation at sums varying, we believe, from £2500 to £1000

per annum.

The law of entail is traceable to the same human instincts as the

law of primogeniture. The clannish feelings of the northern nations,

their notion of representation by blood, and the territorial

character of their citizenship, all combined to produce an anxiety

to perpetuate the old stocks in the homes of their fathers. Nor is

this desire of posthumous control over the transmission of lands

the product, as is sometimes alleged, of an artificial state of

society. Man's possessory instinct essentially connects itself with

the future--_Serit arbores quæ alteri prosint sæculo._ The justice

of gratifying this wish by general laws of the community is not

more impeachable than that of guarding the indefeasible possession

of the owner during his lifetime. It remains to be seen how far the

sanction of entails is consistent with the good of the nation in

general.

Every lawyer knows that the progress of legal decisions in England

has been adverse to entails, and that although the statute De Donis

continues on the statute-book, yet it was long ago rendered almost

nugatory by the introduction of fines and recoveries. Hence the term

entail is now popularly applied to denote the strict settlement of

lands, under provisions which prevent them from passing from the

heirs to whom they are limited; this having been, of old, the result

of an entail properly so called, though it now requires a more

complicated mode of settling, and can only endure (so as to render

the lands inalienable) for a life or any number of lives in being,

and twenty-one years afterwards. This more popular meaning of the

word entail is that which Mr M'Culloch follows--his object being to

treat of the influence of tying up lands from alienation.

Measuring the practice of entails by the rule of utility, Mr

M'Culloch selects two points as the principal topics of discussion.

"In the first place, it is alleged in favour of entails that

they stimulate exertion and economy; that they hold out to

industry and ambition the strongest and safest excitement in the

prospect of founding an imperishable name and a powerful family,

and of being remembered and venerated by endless generations

as their chief and benefactor. And, in the second place, it is

said that entails form the only solid bulwark of a respectable

aristocracy, and prevent generations from being ruined by the

folly or misfortunes of an individual."--P. 78.

The first of these propositions is, no doubt, partially true; but

the motive put forward has not, we think, as a matter of experience,

the force that might, at first sight, be attributed to it. Perhaps

the keenest accumulators of wealth have not been those who have

fixed their capital in a landed estate. The man of business habits

and judicious speculation is drawn to make his fortune in obedience

to a passion which is partly developed, and at all events fostered,

by the pursuit of his life. It cannot be said to arise altogether

from a notion of benefiting posterity, of being the founder of a

house--the man of whom future Fitztomkynses shall be ashamed--that

John Tomkins, merchant, sets at nought all the expostulations of

self-indulgence:

"Tun' mare transilias? tibi tortâ cannabe fulto

Cœna sit in transtro? Veientanumque rubellum

Exhalet vapidâ læsum pice fissilis obba?"

Enormous fortunes were accumulated during the declining days

of the Roman republic. But entails being then unknown, and the

Roman nobility having no territorial position, these fortunes,

usually acquired by oppression and extortion in the provinces, were

squandered in largesses and corruption at home. There was no other

way in which a Roman citizen of great wealth could establish the

influence of his family. He could not, like, all English gentleman,

connect his name with a landed estate, and extend his influence by

those good offices and local duties which lie so immediately open

to a man in that capacity. As an almost necessary consequence, he

sought for power through the demoralisation and corruption of the

holders of the suffrage--causes which contributed more than any

other to the downfall of the republic. By lavishing his gold in this

manner, he obtained, not only political eminence for himself, but

also that power which led to proconsulates and proprætorships among

his heirs, and thus gave them the opportunity of repairing, by fresh

exactions, his diminished revenues.

Hence we should rather view the law of entail as an inducement to a

man to perpetuate his thousands in broad acres than to acquire his

fortune in the first instance. And, in conformity with this view,

it may be observed, that it is more generally the son or other

successor than the architect of the fortune himself who converts the

accumulated wealth into this permanent form.

Mr M'Culloch's second point--the preservation of families by means

of entails--is one of wider interest and more general importance. In

a bustling mercantile community like ours, we cannot too jealously

guard any institution which, directly or indirectly, tends to

preserve distinctions due to something more than mere wealth. And

there can be no doubt that the system of entails has saved many

an ancient line from being thrust from its home of centuries to

a strange spot, and this not only among the titled and wealthy,

but among the yeomanry and "statesmen." In England, of course, a

family may frequently perish through the possession of an estate in

fee-simple passing into the hands of an unthrifty representative

of the line, as the settlements require constant renewal. But in

Scotland the system of perpetual entail exercises a much more potent

influence in their behalf. Mr M'Culloch, though he rebuts many of

the objections urged against the Scottish law, is nevertheless

anxious to see it assimilated in a great measure to that of

England. There is, however, an exception which he would make to

the rule against perpetuity of entails. It is with regard to the

peerage, in which matter we cordially agree with him. There were,

in ancient times, instances of barons who were degraded from their

dignity on account of their lack of sufficient revenue to support

their hereditary title. The independence and the dignity of the

House of Lords would be alike maintained by an enactment enabling,

or even obliging, all peers to tie up by perpetual entail a certain

portion of their estates to accompany the title. Such anomalies

as that of an Earl of Buchan (Lord Erskine's father, see Lord

Campbell's _Lives of the Chancellors_) living in the uppermost flat

of a sixteen-story house, would thereby be avoided with considerable

advantage to the national interests.

Mr M'Culloch, therefore, who quotes Sir William Temple and Dr

Johnson on the same side, would preserve the law of perpetual entail

for the Scottish peerage, and extend it also to that of England.

In other respects he is, as we have above stated, in favour of a

considerable modification of the Scottish law of entail. He admits,

however, the difficulty of dealing with existing entails.

"These have established a right of property not only in the

actual possessors and their families, but, speaking generally,

in a wide circle of collateral heirs; nor could the rights of

the unborn heirs be affected without annulling the clauses in a

great number of settlements, and also in marriage-contracts and

other deeds _inter vivos_. It is, therefore, hardly possible

materially to relax the fetters of entails with strict justice

to all parties, though it might perhaps be slowly and gradually

effected without inflicting any very serious hardship on

any individual. We incline to think that this might be most

easily brought about by saving the rights of living heirs

of entail, and of such heirs as may be born under existing

marriage-contracts. The interests of the possible heirs that

might be prejudiced by the adoption of some such rule as this,

are of so very unsubstantial a description that they might

safely be neglected." P. 78.

At the time we write, a measure is pending before Parliament,

entitled "A Bill for the amendment of the Law of Entail in

Scotland," and endorsed with the names of the Lord-Advocate, Sir

George Grey, and Mr Solicitor-General for Scotland. Whatever

difficulties Mr M'Culloch feels with regard to relaxing the fetters

of entail, it is obvious that the contrivers of this bill are in

nowise hampered by them. They go to work in the most off-hand manner

possible. A short and unobtrusive-looking bill is to drive clean

through all the existing settlements and deeds of tailzie, with

their complicated train of clauses irritant and resolutive, as if no

mortal was concerned in the matter, and estates were the proper toys

of law-makers.

The fact of the quantity of alienable land diminishing in a

commercial country, while trade and population are increasing, is no

doubt a state of things which calls for a remedy, since there must

at some period or another, be a failure of land adequate to meet the

requirements of realised fortunes. If, in the judgment of reasonable

and practical observers, the difficulty could be met by making all

future entails subject to be barred by a process analogous to that

existing in England, we should think there could be no hesitation

in affirming it to be the most just and most expedient course to

introduce such a change, and leave the existing settlements in their

contemplated perpetuity. If, however, it can be clearly established

that already too much land is locked up in the northern kingdom,

and that the soil now free from entail is insufficient to satisfy

the requirements of future buyers, then we should say that the

utmost care and skill were required in framing enactments which

should adapt themselves to the justice of particular cases, and

should, as far as might be, save existing and vested interests in

their delicate multiplicity and connexion. If ever such care and

skill were required, it would be in a measure which interferes

more extensively with vested rights--usually with good reason a

sacred thing in the eye of the law--than any which appears in the

statute-books of the three kingdoms. A statute to convert the Irish

tenants into owners of the fee-simple of their several holdings,

(a project which has been talked of,) would scarcely be a more

startling invasion of the rights of property as they are usually

recognised. We do not, however, intend to impeach the general

provisions of the bill. If, as we before observed, so important a

change was found to be necessary, it is right to make it; and it is

no more than was effected in England by a more gradual process--the

subtle fictions of the law-courts, which virtually got rid of the

statute De Donis. But we can anticipate nothing but uncertainty

and multiplied litigation, from the apparently crude and careless

project now before us.

An instance of the loose wording of this bill strikes the reader

in the very first section. It proposes to enact "that where any

estate in Scotland shall be entailed by a deed of tailzie, dated

on or after the first day of March one thousand eight hundred and

forty-eight, it shall be lawful for any heir of entail, born after

the date of such tailzie, being of full age, and in possession of

such entailed estate in virtue of such tailzie, _to acquire such

estate in fee-simple_, by applying to the Court of Session, &c."

Now, what is this estate which the heir of entail is to acquire in

fee-simple? The estate-tail, for so it is by hypothesis. But to

talk of acquiring an estate-tail in fee-simple is nothing better

than downright nonsense. An estate-tail is, by the origin of the

word, cut or carved (taillé) out of the fee-simple. You may talk of

converting or enlarging the part into the whole, but you cannot talk

of acquiring the part in the entirety of the whole. This is not all;

the bill plunges at once _in medias res_, without favouring us with

any sort of definition of the important phrase, "heir of entail," in

this and other clauses. The same expression in the statute 1 Jac.

VII. c. 32, has already (see _Sandford's Entails_, p. 231) given

rise to no small questioning and litigation, which promise to be

renewed in abundance should this measure pass into a law. Again,

perpetual inalienability is not an incident to all estates-tail.

Lands merely bound by what are called the prohibitive clauses, may

be alienated for a valuable consideration, though not by a voluntary

or (as the Scotch say) gratuitous conveyance. Tailzies, however, to

which no clauses are annexed, do not prevent the heir from conveying

the lands in any manner he pleases. Now, as, the object of this bill

is to relax the bonds of perpetual inalienability, we presume that

only those tailzies which are guarded by the irritant and resolutive

clauses are within its purview. If so, the general expression "deed

of tailzie" should have been distinctly limited. If that expression

should be held to comprehend all deeds of tailzie, which it must of

course do when taken by itself, then the proposed act will exercise

a very extensive disabling power, by restricting the unlimited right

of alienation under tailzies of simple destination,[2] and the right

of alienation for value under tailzies with prohibitive clauses

only introduced, to the peculiar form and instrument pointed out by

this bill, and which we suppose was devised in analogy to the forms

substituted for fines and recoveries by the statute 3 & 4 Will. IV.

c. 74.

[2] See Erskine's _Institutes_, B. iii. tit. 8, §§ 21-25.

We have already seen how Mr M'Culloch would deal with the difficulty

of disturbing the devolution of lands already limited in perpetual

entail--namely, by "saving the rights of living heirs of entail,

and of heirs born under existing marriage-contracts." We think our

author has not, in this passage, expressed himself with due legal

perspicuity and precision. The phrase "living heirs of entail" is

somewhat vague and uncertain; we presume Mr M'Culloch intended the

living issue of the heir of entail in possession, and all living

heirs-substitute and their living issue. Again, what are existing

marriage-contracts? Probably those marriage-contracts are intended,

which are annexed to marriages solemnised before the introduction of

a new system. Both these suggestions, as we have interpreted them,

might with justice, and advantage have formed part of the new law.

It is true that this would, at all events for a considerable period

of time, stop short of that assimilation of the Scottish law to the

English which seems to have been a great object with the framers of

this bill. But the two systems would gradually correspond; and we

hold that there is a principle of justice involved in the upholding

of contracts the objects of which are as yet unfulfilled. Where

an English settler has limited lands to a man for life, remainder

to his first and other sons successively in tail, he knew, at the

time of making the settlement, that it was liable to be barred with

consent of the eldest son on his coming of age. But it was not so

with a Scotch settler who executed a deed of tailzie to several

brothers as successive heirs-substitute; and the legislature has no

right, without the gravest public cause, to step in and defeat his

intention.

But the bill, though intending to give far greater liberty to the

owner of an entailed estate than Mr M'Culloch does, or, as we think,

is consistent with justice, sets about affording him aid in the

most ambiguous and misty manner conceivable. The 2d clause enacts

that the heir of entail in possession, born after the date of the

act, may disentail in the manner provided by the act; and an heir

of entail born before the date of the act may similarly disentail,

"with the consent (and not otherwise) of the heir-substitute next

in succession, and heir-apparent under the entail of the heir in

possession," he being born after the date of the act, and capable of

contracting.

We should recommend the tenant in tail to be very cautious how he

attempts to "acquire his estate in fee-simple" under the provisions

of this clause. He is to obtain the consent of the heir-substitute

next in succession. So far his course is clear. But the same person

is also designated by the term "heir-apparent under the entail of

the heir in possession." Now, is this a qualification of the general

term "heir-substitute next in succession," and must such person,

under the act, be also heir-apparent? If so, what is the particular

qualification required of him under the expression "heir-apparent?"

Adhering to the use of the phrase in popular language, we must take,

as the only circumstances under which the next heir-substitute and

the heir-apparent are one and the same person, the case in which

the first estate under the entail is limited to a man and the heirs

of his body, and the second to his second son and the heirs of his

body; then, supposing the eldest son to die in the lifetime of his

father, the second son would be both the next heir-substitute and

also the heir-apparent. Is this, therefore, the only case within

the act? Scarcely, we should think, was it so intended. Are we,

then, to interpret the word heir-apparent in the sense in which the

phrase heir-presumptive is generally used; and must we suppose that

the cases indicated are those in which there is no issue under the

first entail, and therefore the next heir-substitute is what we

should call heir-presumptive to the person in possession? If so,

what is to become of the numerous cases where there is issue to

take under the existing estate-tail? Or can it be that the issue

in tail is altogether forgotten by this act, and that the person

whose consent is required is merely the next heir-substitute in any

case? We are inclined to think this the most probable explanation of

this unfortunate clause, but can scarcely imagine that it will be

suffered to pass into a law. A further ambiguity, however, arises

with respect to this term heir-apparent, from its having a peculiar

technical meaning in the Scottish law. "He who is entitled," says

Erskine, "to enter heir to a deceased ancestor is, before his actual

entry, styled, both in our statutes and by our writers, _apparent

heir_." If the bill intends any reference to this legal acceptation

of the phrase, we can only understand the person whose consent is

required, to be such person as, being next heir-substitute, would,

on the immediate decease of the possessor, be his apparent heir,

or entitled to enter on the lands. This, again, shuts out all

those estates where the possessor has issue in tail, and would,

consequently, limit the operation of the bill to exceptional

cases. We think we have said enough to convince our readers that

this clause is not likely to set free many entailed estates in

Scotland--at all events, not without a chaos of litigation, in which

the elements of profit will have a tendency to range themselves on

the side of the lawyers.

The person whose consent is to be obtained (whoever that mysterious

person may be) is, as we have seen, to be born after the date of

the act. In conformity with this principle, one would have supposed

that where the next heir-substitute shall have been born before

that date, then it should be necessary to obtain the consent of the

first person entitled to take _per formam doni_, who shall be born

after this date, together with the consent of all those who are to

take before him. The third clause, however, introduces a new form of

protection to the settlement, and merely enacts that, in such cases,

the consent of a certain number of the heirs-substitute is to be

obtained, (the blank left for the number was filled up with the word

"three" in committee of the House of Commons. Nothing said about the

issue in tail, as before.

Where the main enactments of the bill are so incomprehensible, it

is useless to dwell on its details. We can only say, that whatever

evils may be shown to exist under the present law, they will not

only fail to be cured, but must be aggravated tenfold, by such a

product of off-hand legislation--

"Sent before its time

Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,

And that so lamely and unfashionable,"

that it must necessarily die of its own deformity, unless the

law-courts will lick it into shape by their decisions,--a shape (as

it must be) in which its own parents would not know it again.

The law of real property in France exhibits a system so distinctly

antagonistic to our English and Scottish law of entail, that we

cannot be surprised at the attention with which Mr M'Culloch has

investigated its influences.

"According to the law of France, a person with one child may

dispose at pleasure of a moiety of his property, the child

inheriting the other moiety as legitim, or matter of right; a

person having two children can only dispose of a third part

of his property; and those having more than two must divide

three-fourths of their property equally amongst them, one-fourth

part being all that is then left at their disposal. When a

father dies intestate, his property is equally divided among his

children, without respect to sex or seniority. Nothing can be

more distinctly opposed to the principles we have endeavoured

to establish, and to the system followed in this country, than

this law. It is therefore lucky that it is now no novelty. It

has been established for more than half a century, so that we

may trace and exhibit its practical influence over the condition

of the extensive population subject to its operation. Such an

experiment is of rare occurrence, but when made is invaluable.

And if its results should confirm the conclusions already

come to, it will go far to establish them on an unassailable

basis."--P. 80-81.

We have already seen how these results may be traced in the state

of French agriculture. They may also, we think, be discerned in the

relative position which the landholders of France bear to other

classes in the social scale. These, numbering between four and

five millions, ought, as a class, to constitute the leaders of the

nation. So far from this being the case, they are perhaps the most

inert and uninfluential portion of the community, having apparently

had little or no voice in the two revolutions which have swept over

their heads within the last eighteen years, and as little in the

erection, maintenance, or downfall of the Throne of the Barricades.

It yet remains to be seen whether they will continue to accept every

thing which the clubs of Paris are willing to force upon them. As

tax-payers and cultivators of the soil, it can hardly suit them to

be propagandists; as men who have something to lose, they will not

readily give in to the dictatorial vagaries of Ledru Rollin. If,

however, they would hold their own, it is time for them to be up and

doing. France has been governed by a minority before now.

We have always regarded it as one of the main advantages of a

landed aristocracy, that it raises up a principle of social rank

antagonistic to that of mere wealth. In France, the constant

subdivision and transfer of land breaks down this influence,

and causes land to be regarded as a mere marketable article and

equivalent for money.

"In countries where the custom of primogeniture exercises a

powerful influence, families become identified with estates--the

family representing the estate, and the estate the family. The

wealth and consideration enjoyed by the latter depend upon, and

are intimately connected with, the possession of the lands

which have descended to them from their ancestors. They estimate

their value by another than a mere pecuniary standard. They are

attached to them by the oldest and most endearing associations;

and they are seldom parted with except under the most painful

circumstances. Hence the perpetuity of property in England in

the same families, notwithstanding the limited duration of

entails; great numbers of estates being at this moment enjoyed

by those whose ancestors acquired them at or soon after the

Conquest. But in France such feelings are proscribed. Estates

and families have there no abiding connexion; and at the demise

of an individual who has a number of children, his estate can

hardly escape being subdivided. And this effect of the law tends

to imbue the proprietors with corresponding sentiments and

feelings. 'Non seulement,' says M. De Tocqueville, 'la loi des

successions rend difficile aux familles de conserver intacts les

mêmes domaines, mais elle leur òte le désir de le tenter, et

elle les entraîne, en quelque sorte, à coopérer avec elle à leur

propre ruine.'"--P. 85-86.

But Mr M'Culloch dwells more particularly on the injurious effects

to agriculture from the parcelling out of the land into small

properties. He shows that a small proprietor is not so efficient a

cultivator of the soil as a tenant, in which doctrine Arthur Young

had preceded him. He shows, also, that the subdivision of properties

leads to the subdivision of farms, and urges that it is impossible

to have good farming on small patches of land. Of the miseries of an

agricultural system carried on by small farmers on petty holdings,

we have already a sufficient example in Ireland. We cannot but

think, however, that the progress of things in England has too much

swallowed up those little farms of from thirty to fifty acres, which

at one time were common over the country. Not but what capital is

employed at a great disadvantage on these little holdings--but where

there is a general system of good-sized farms, an intermixture, of

smaller farms is not attended with injurious effects proportional

to those which arise where the whole of the land is split up into

minute parcels. And then small farmers furnish a link between the

yeomanry and peasantry, which it is useful to maintain, cheering

the poor man's lot by pointing out to him a path by which lie may

advance from the position of a day-labourer to that of an occupier

of land. On the same principle, we are rejoiced to observe the

gradual extension of the allotment system; although it would have

a still more beneficial effect, we think, if the land was granted

in the shape of a croft about the cottage, thus giving the tenant a

greater interest, and more individual sense of proprietorship, than

when his piece of land is packed, along with a number of others,

into a mass of unsightly patches.

In connexion with the small holdings in Ireland, it should not be

forgotten that this subdivision of the land results mainly from the

practice of sub-letting; and this again has arisen in a great degree

from the practice of granting long leases, the want of which in

England has served, among many other things, for an outcry against

the landlords. Mr M'Culloch has pointed out the evils of too long

leases on the farming tenant, that they superinduce a sense of

security which easily degenerates into indolence. But the influence

on Ireland is even worse, by breaking up the land into small

patches, on which the occupier can but just maintain himself, paying

an exorbitant rent to the middleman. For it is not the eager demand

for land amongst the Irish peasantry, as we sometimes hear, that has

produced this subdivision of the land, but the subdivision that has

produced the demand, by putting the cultivation of the land into the

hands of a class who are unable, through want of skill and capital,

to carry it on; who cannot, therefore, furnish employment for the

labourers, and thus drive them to grasp at little parcels of land

as their only means of securing a wretched subsistence; and this

security, as we know, has more than once proved but a fancied one,

as in the disastrous failure of the potato crop.

While we are on this subject, we may draw the reader's attention

to a very able pamphlet by an Irish gentleman, on Irish matters,

which, though we believe it has never been published, has had

an extensive private circulation. We allude to "An Address to

the Members of the House, of Commons on the Landlord and Tenant

Question, by Warren H. R. Jackson, Esq." The work, though somewhat

tinged with the hard politico-economical school, is written with

great shrewdness of thought and freedom from prejudice, and is well

worthy the careful attention of the honourable House. The writer, in

discussing the vexed question he has taken in hand, fully coincides

with the general principles laid down by Mr M'Culloch. "This," he

says, (speaking of the subdivision of land) "is one of the monster

grievances of Ireland, and you will do little good unless you abate

it." This abatement he would bring about mainly by prospective

laws, as by placing all contracts for subletting _hors la loi_, and

so taking away from the first lessee all power of recovering his

rent from the actual tenant. We cannot but think that this would be

found a most salutary enactment. It should be remembered, that the

occupier is responsible to the owner of the freehold by the power

of distress vested in the latter, and it is but just that he should

be relieved from the liability to pay two rents--a liability which

it is manifest no good farmer would incur, but which the squalid

ravager of the soil in Ireland is always eager for.

It has been said that no further legislative enactment is required

in Ireland, and that administrative wisdom must do what yet

remains to be done. Mr Jackson, however, shows that there are such

deep-seated evils in Ireland as cannot be cured except by the direct

interference of the legislature. But we think he expects too much

from the Sale of Encumbered Estates Bill. An extensive change of

proprietorship would, we are persuaded, be a great evil in Ireland.

There is an attachment in general to the "ould stock" among their

poorer neighbours, which would naturally be followed by a jealousy

and prejudice against the new comers who displaced them. And this

prejudice would of itself neutralise any efforts for improvement

which the landlord might otherwise be disposed to make--although,

in most cases, we should not expect much effort in this direction

from a stranger mortgagee, often an unwilling purchaser, who would

naturally be anxious to contract with those parties from whom he

could obtain his rents with least trouble, leaving them to deal with

the land as they liked, and thereby continuing and increasing the

odious middleman system.

Mr M'Culloch does not confine his examination of the compulsory

partition in France to its influence on agriculture. He has

discerned certain political effects of that and the concomitant

system of which it is a part, with a precision which subsequent

events have elevated into a sort of prophecy. The preface to his

work is dated December 1847, and the work was published, we believe,

early in January. There can, therefore, be no grounds for classing

the following passage with those anticipations which are made after

the event:--

"The aristocratical element is no longer to be found in French

society; and the compulsory division of the soil, while it

prevents the growth of an aristocracy, impresses the same

character of mobility upon landed possessions that is impressed

on the families of their occupiers. Hence the prevalent want of

confidence in the continuance of the present order of things in

France. What is there in that country to oppose an effectual

resistance to a revolutionary movement? Monarchy in France has

been stripped of those old associations and powerful bulwarks

whence it derives almost all its lustre and support in this

and other countries. The throne stands in solitary, though not

unenvied dignity, without the shelter of a single eminence,

exposed to the full force of the furious blasts that sweep

from every point of the surrounding level. There is nothing

intermediate, nothing to hinder a hostile majority in the

Chamber of Deputies from at once subverting the regal branch of

the constitution, or changing the reigning dynasty."--P. 132-133.

Scarcely was the printer's ink dry on this passage when the Throne

of the Barricades was gone. We have given our author full credit

for his sagacity in penetrating into the future, but we think it

would puzzle him to foretell what is to come next. We are disposed

to doubt, however, whether an aristocracy could have preserved the

throne of Louis Philippe. It is true that in our own country William

of Nassau and George of Brunswick maintained their crowns by the

aid of powerful sections of the nobility. But the revolutions which

gave them those crowns were not the volcanic outbursts of popular

force. Under such outbursts, no successful usurper, no "Hero-king,"

no sovereign by the will of the people, has been able to devise a

principle which shall establish his throne in security, and serve

in the stead of that prestige of old hereditary succession, that

grand feudal idea of kingly right, which is the essential fountain

of the reverence that guards royalty. Louis Philippe would have

confirmed his sovereignty by means of the influence exerted upon

interested officials. No sooner was his power shaken in its unstable

equilibrium than the men whom his gold had bought rushed to worship

the rising sun of the young Republic. Napoleon, before him, would

have built up a similar power on military glory: his doom was

sealed when his eagles turned from the field of Leipsic. Cromwell

employed religious fanaticism to the same end: the fanaticism

lasted his time; but we will venture to say that, had he lived, his

protectorate would not have reached the seventeen years allotted to

the democratic King of the French.

Our author is of opinion that, after all, the system of compulsory

partition will fail to guard what has since become the French

Republic:--

"But, though it were possible, which it is not, to obviate

the mischievous influence of the French and other plans for

preventing the increase and continuance of property in the same

families, it may be confidently predicted that they will, in

time to come as hitherto, wholly fail in their grand object of

perpetuating the ascendancy of the democracy. In old settled and

fully peopled countries, where the bulk of the population is

necessarily poor and dependent, an aristocracy is indispensable

for the support of a free system of government--'Il importe à

tous les peuples qui ont la prétention de devenir ou de rester

puissants, d'avoir une aristocratie, c'est-à-dire un corps

héréditaire ou non, qui conserve et perpetue les traditions,

donne de l'esprit de suite à la politique, et se voue à l'art le

plus difficile de tous, qu' aujourd'hui cependant tout le monde

croit savoir sans l'avoir appris, celui de gouverner. Un peuple

sans aristocratic pourra briller dans les lettres et les arts,

mais sa gloire politique me semble devoir être passagère comme

un méteore.' CHEVALIER, _Lettres sur l'Amerique_, ii. 379," pp.

171, 172.

We have already said that we think England certain to have an

aristocracy of some description. The ambition of the people to

advance themselves individually in the social scale will necessarily

lead to a high value being set upon those advanced positions,

and will tend to make them the fulcrum from which the country is

governed. And we can conceive nothing more fatal to our national

organisation than the result which would follow indirectly from the

repeal of these laws. It may be supposed at first sight that no very

vital question is involved here. Let those who suppose so, take a

view of the probable condition of society which would ensue. These,

and other so-called feudalities, being swept away, land becomes

a commercial article, according to the desire of the plutocratic

reformers. Estates are trucked about in the market like bills of

exchange; constantly changing hands, their owners have little

connexion with them or the people that live on them, regarding them

merely in the light of so much realised capital. The old families

gradually become dispossessed; mere wealth is recognised as the

sole qualification for rank and influence; and the leading class

in the state is composed of men who are an aristocracy by virtue

of ready money. Far be it from us to undervalue the enterprise,

integrity, and industry of our merchant manufacturers and tradesmen.

But we will say that when we meet with a man, as we often do among

those classes, endowed with a broad range of thought and high and

noble aims, we regard him as possessing these qualities not as a

consequence, but in spite of a commercial training. The immediate

effects of such training are to narrow the mind and cramp the

soul, not in respect of domestic and social life--for in these,

perhaps, the middle classes are unsurpassed by any other--but in the

provinces of the statesman and the politician.

In these times, it seems to be commonly supposed that a

legislator--like a poet--_nascitur, non fit_. There is a certain

kind of training, the acquisition of a certain cast of thought,

which are requisites for statesmen as a class, as much as his legal

reading for a lawyer, or his apprenticeship for a handicraftsman.

Statesmen, however, have to deal with practical matters; and

therefore we think, as we have before said, that while the

predominance of these requisites in the legislature is essential

to good government, there may with advantage at the same time be

a certain admixture of the men practically versed in commerce

and manufactures. But this should be always a subordinate, not a

leading, element in the principles which regulate the administration

of government.--We repeat, that the counting-house, the loom, and

the anvil, are not the best schools for legislators. For that

office, a man requires leisure and education. We shall be told that

a "Squire" is not necessarily an educated man. We do not maintain

that he is. But, in the first place, as we cannot well have an

education-test, we must go to the class in which, as a class, we

find the highest and most enlarged form of education; and we believe

that this qualification can, without question, be claimed for the

leisure-class, or gentlemen of England. In the second place, it

should be remembered, that if the squire is not always individually

what we should call an educated man, he yet imbibes his thoughts

and notions from those who are such, who give tone to the society

in which he moves. In investigating the characteristics of classes,

it can scarcely be but that a number of exceptions to our general

rules will force themselves upon our attention. Yet, in good truth,

we believe that almost all the individual examples which can be

cited will bear out our estimate. The highest contributions to the

legislature, on the part of the middle or commercial classes, have

been the shrewd practical men of business, men of the stamp of Mr

Hawes. As for the Cobdens and Brights, _et hoc genus omne_, their

only motive principle appears to be the interests of _My Shop_.

Their notion of loyalty, patriotism, and British prosperity, is

nothing but low wages, high profits, and a brisk trade in calicoes.

Many of our readers will recollect a passage in Cicero, (_Off._

i. 42,) in which he reprobates, more or less, all commercial

pursuits, in respect of their operations on the moral insight of

man, and finishes with the praise of the culture of the soil, in

these words: "Omnium rerum ex quibus aliquid acquiritur, nihil est

agriculturâ meliùs, nihil uberiùs, nihil dulciùs, nihil homine

libero digniùs." In this country we should find it difficult to go

along with the feelings of the old Roman republican on these points.

But though we have already expressed our high sense of the social

and domestic virtues of the middle or trading classes, yet we are

most confident in the truth of our position, that the shop is the

worst possible preparation for the senate. We know that there is

a talk abroad about earnest workers, drones of the hive, and so

forth. By all means, let every man work who is fit to work. But it

is not necessary, nor is it desirable, that every man should work

for gain. On the contrary, we hold that a class endowed with leisure

is indispensable, not only for the grace and civilisation, but even

for the moral well-being of a community. That money should become

the one grand loadstar of thought and action is the bane of those

societies where the pursuit of money is the general employment; but

where there is such a leisure-class as we have spoken of, forming

the topmost rank of a nation otherwise chiefly mercantile, there are

numberless influences derived from it which percolate through the

underlying masses, and check or modify the exclusive reverence for

wealth to which they would otherwise be prone. Even a mere blind

respect for rank or title exalts the mind immeasurably as compared

with mammon-worship.

While on the subject of our leisure-class, which is pretty nearly

synonymous with the landed gentry, we must not pass over in silence

a subject in connexion with which the outcry against "the drones

of the hive" is frequently introduced. We refer to the Game-Laws.

The whole question of these laws has been so fully discussed in a

recent Number of this magazine, that we will not attempt in any

way to open that controversy. But they are so commonly coupled

with the Laws of Entail as "feudalities," and as interfering with

the transmission of land according to "commercial principles,"

that we could not altogether omit the mention of them. We will at

this time only observe, that the denunciation of the Game-Laws is

a part of the crusade which Hard-Cash, that arrogant monopolist

who bears no brother near his throne, is waging against all other

objects of interest or devotion. Let it not be supposed that laws

are of minor importance because they relate to the amusements of any

portion of the community. They may derive their importance from that

circumstance as tending to raise up something which shall cope with

the lust of gold. The game-preserving interest is worth maintenance

if only as clashing with mammonism.

While the brawlers about "improvement" and "progress," are heaping

their meaningless abuse upon feudalities, we should be glad to

know what they purpose to do with that greatest feudality of all,

the Crown? Already there are symptoms of an intention to take that

matter in hand. Mr Cobden and some of his Calibans have talked in

the House of Commons about curtailing the "barbarous splendour" of

the throne. They know nothing and care nothing about the historical

association and constitutional truths embodied in the ancient

appendages of royalty. How should they? They want somebody to look

after the police, and take care that no one robs their till; that

is their idea of government. They want a man (some of them being

willing to allow him a small salary, though others think that it

does not pay) to preach to the masses, and tell them not to steal,

and to be content with their wages; that is their idea of the

church. We do not think, however, that the tone of thought prevalent

among the Manchester school is destined yet to lead the mind of

England. And we are the less inclined to look forward to such a

national debasement when we find so enlightened an advocate of

free-trade policy as Mr M'Culloch--the advocate of a theory which we

hold to be erroneous, but not the selfish and greedy clamourer for

the gain of himself and his class--thus coming forward to vindicate

the laws which preserve the hereditary character of our aristocracy,

which lend so efficient an aid in shielding us from the crushing

tread of mammonism, and in preventing "commercial principles" from

introducing the ledger and day-book into our manor houses, and the

counter into our farmers' parlours. In this view we most heartily

thank our author for his noble and energetic contribution to our

National Defences at the present time; and as there is a wide field

open in connexion with the subject he has so powerfully handled,

we cannot take leave of him without expressing a hope that we may

before long listen to him again "on the same side."

LIFE IN THE "FAR WEST."

PART II.

The reader is informed that "Life in the Far West" is _no

fiction_. The scenes and incidents described are strictly true.

The characters are real, (the names being changed in two or

three instances only,) and all have been, and are, well known in

the Western country.

"And Mary Brand herself,--what is she like?"

"She's 'some' now; that _is_ a fact, and the biggest kind of punkin

at that," would have been the answer from any man, woman, or child,

in Memphis County, and truly spoken too; always understanding that

the pumpkin is _the_ fruit to which the _ne-plus-ultra_ of female

perfection is compared by the figuratively speaking westerns.

Being an American woman, of course she was tall, and straight and

slim as a hickory sapling, well formed withal, with rounded bust,

and neck white and slender as the swan's. Her features were small,

but finely chiselled; and in this, it may be remarked, the lower

orders of the American women differ from, and far surpass the same

class in England, or elsewhere, where the features, although far

prettier, are more vulgar and commonplace. She had the bright blue

eye, thin nose, and small but sweetly-formed mouth, the too fair

complexion and dark brown hair, which characterise the beauty of the

Anglo-American, the heavy masses (hardly curls) which fell over her

face and neck contrasting with their polished whiteness. Such was

Mary Brand: and to her good looks being added a sweet disposition,

and all the good qualities of a thrifty housewife, it must be

allowed that she fully justified the eulogiums of the good people of

Memphis.

Well, to cut a love-story short, in the which not a little moral

courage is shown, young La Bonté fell desperately in love with

the pretty Mary, and she with him; and small blame to her, for he

was a proper lad of twenty--six feet in his moccassins--the best

hunter and rifle-shot in the country, with many other advantages too

numerous to mention. But when did the course, &c. e'er run smooth?

When the affair had become a recognised "courting," (and Americans

alone know the horrors of such prolonged purgatory,) they became,

to use La Bonté's words, "awful fond," and consequently about once

a-week had their tiffs and makes-up.

However, on one occasion, at a "husking," and during one of these

tiffs, Mary, every inch a woman, to gratify some indescribable

feeling, brought to her aid jealousy--that old serpent who has

caused such mischief in this world; and by a flirtation over the

corn-cobs with Big Pete, La Bonté's former and only rival, struck

so hard a blow at the latter's heart, that on the moment his brain

caught fire, blood danced before his eyes, and he became like one

possessed. Pete observed and enjoyed his struggling emotion--better

for him had he minded his corn-shelling alone; and the more to annoy

his rival, paid the most sedulous attention to the pretty Mary.

Young La Bonté stood it as long as human nature, at boiling heat,

could endure; but when Pete, in the exultation of his apparent

triumph, crowned his success by encircling the slender waist of the

girl with his arm, and snatched a sudden kiss, he jumped upright

from his seat, and seizing a small whisky-keg which stood in the

centre of the corn-shellers, he hurled it at his rival, and crying

to him, hoarse with passion, "to follow if he was a man," he left

the house.

At that time, and even now, in the remoter states of the western

country, rifles settled even the most trivial differences between

the hot-blooded youths; and of such frequent occurrence and

invariably bloody termination did they become, that they scarcely

produced sufficient excitement to draw together half a dozen

spectators of the duel.

In the present case, however, so public was the quarrel, and so

well known the parties concerned, that not only the people who had

witnessed the affair, but all the neighbourhood thronged to the

scene of action, where, in a large field in front of the house,

the preliminaries of a duel between Pete and La Bonté were being

arranged by their respective friends.

Mary, when she discovered the mischief her thoughtlessness was

likely to occasion, was almost beside herself with grief, but she

knew how vain it would be to attempt to interfere. The poor girl,

who was most ardently attached to La Bonté, was carried, swooning,

into the house, where all the women congregated, and were locked in

by old Brand, who, himself an old pioneer, thought but little of

bloodshed, but refused to let the "women folk" witness the affray.

Preliminaries arranged, the combatants took up their respective

positions at either end of a space marked for the purpose, at forty

paces from each other. They were both armed with heavy rifles, and

had the usual hunting-pouches, containing ammunition, hanging over

the shoulder. Standing with the butts of their rifles on the ground,

they confronted each other, and the crowd drawing away a few paces

only on each side, left one man to give the word. This was the

single word "fire;" and after this signal was given, the combatants

were at liberty to fire away until one or the other dropped.

At the word both the men quickly raised their rifles to the

shoulder, and as the sharp cracks rung instantaneously, they were

seen to flinch, as either felt the pinging sensation of a bullet

entering his flesh. Regarding each other steadily for a few moments,

the blood running down La Bonté's neck from a wound under the

left jaw, whilst his opponent was seen to place his hand once to

his right breast, as if to feel the position of his wound, they

commenced reloading their rifles. As, however, Pete was in the

act of forcing down the ball with his long hickory wiping-stick,

he suddenly dropped his right arm,--the rifle slipped from his

grasp,--and, reeling for a moment like a drunken man,--he fell dead

to the ground.

Even here, however, there was law of some kind or another, and the

consequences of the duel were, that the constables were soon on the

trail of La Bonté to arrest him. He, however, easily avoided them,

and taking to the woods, lived for several days in as wild a state

as the beasts he hunted and killed for his support.

Tired of this, however, he resolved to quit the country, and betake

himself to the mountains, for which life he had ever felt an

inclination.

When, therefore, he thought the officers of justice had tired of

seeking him, and the coast was comparatively clear, he determined to

start on his distant expedition to the Far West.

Once more, before he carried his project into execution, he sought

and had a last interview with Mary Brand.

"Mary," said he, "I'm about to break. They're hunting me like a fall

buck, and I'm bound to quit. Don't think any more about me, for I

shall never come back." Poor Mary burst into tears, and bent her

head on the table near which she was sitting. When again she raised

it, she saw La Bonté, with his long rifle on his shoulder, striding

with rapid steps from the house; and year after year rolled on, and

he never returned.

A few days after this he found himself at St Louis, the emporium

of the fur trade, and the fast rising metropolis of the precocious

settlements of the west. Here, a prey to the agony of mind which

jealousy, remorse, and blighted love mix into a very puchero of

misery, La Bonté got into the company of certain "rowdies," a class

which every western city particularly abounds in; and anxious to

drown his sorrows in any way, and quite unscrupulous as to the

means, he plunged into all the vicious excitements of drinking,

gambling, and fighting, which form the every-day amusements of the

rising generation of St Louis.

Perhaps in no other part of the United States, where indeed humanity

is frequently to be seen in many curious and unusual phases, is

there a population so marked in its general character, and at the

same time divided into such distinct classes, as in the above-named

city. Dating, as it does, its foundation from yesterday,--for what

are thirty years in the growth of a metropolis?--its founders

are now scarcely passed middle life, regarding with astonishment

the growing works of their hands; and whilst gazing upon its busy

quays, piled with grain and other produce of the west, its fleets

of huge steamboats lying tier upon tier alongside the wharves, its

well-stored warehouses and all the bustling concomitants of a great

commercial depot, they can scarcely realise the memory of a few

short years, when on the same spot nothing was to be seen but the

few miserable hovels of a French village--the only sign of commerce

the unwieldy bateaux of the Indian traders, laden with peltries

from the distant regions of the Platte and Upper Missouri. Where

now intelligent and wealthy merchants walk erect, in conscious

substantiality of purse and credit, and direct the commerce of a

vast and numerously-populated region, but the other day stalked,

in dress of buckskin, the Indian trader of the west; and all the

evidences of life, mayhap, consisted of the eccentric vagaries

of the different bands of trappers and hardy mountaineers, who

accompanied, some for pleasure and some as escort, the periodically

arriving bateaux, laden with the beaver skins and buffalo robes

collected during the season at the different trading posts in the

Far West.

These, nevertheless, were the men whose hardy enterprise opened to

commerce and the plough the vast and fertile regions of the West.

Rough and savage though they were, they alone were the pioneers

of that extraordinary tide of civilisation which has poured its

resistless current through tracts large enough for kings to govern;

over a country now teeming with cultivation, where, a few short

years ago, countless herds of buffalo roamed unmolested, the bear

and deer abounded, and where the savage Indian skulked through the

woods and prairies, lord of the unappreciated soil which now yields

its prolific treasures to the spade and plough of civilised man. To

the wild and half-savage trapper, who may be said to exhibit the

energy, enterprise, and hardihood characteristic of the American

people, divested of all the false and vicious glare with which a

high state of civilisation, too rapidly attained, has obscured

their real and genuine character, in which the above traits are

eminently prominent--to these men alone is due the empire of the

West--destined in a few short years to become the most important of

those confederate states which compose the mighty union of North

America.

Sprung, then, out of the wild and adventurous fur trade, St Louis,

still the emporium of that species of commerce, preserves even now,

in the character of its population, many of the marked peculiarities

which distinguished its early founders, who were identified with

the primitive Indian in hardiness and instinctive wisdom. Whilst

the French portion of the population retain the thoughtless levity

and frivolous disposition of their original source, the Americans

of St Louis, who may lay claim to be native, as it were, are as

particularly distinguished for determination and energy of character

as they are for physical strength and animal courage; and are

remarkable, at the same time, for a singular aptitude in carrying

out commercial enterprises to successful terminations, which would

appear to be incompatible with the love of adventure and excitement

which forms so prominent a feature in their character. In St Louis,

nevertheless, and from her merchants, have emanated many commercial

enterprises of gigantic speculation, not confined to its own

locality or the distant Indian fur trade, but embracing all parts of

the continent, and even a portion of the Old World. And here it must

be remembered that St Louis is situated inland, at a distance of

upwards of one thousand miles from the sea, and three thousand from

the capital of the United States.

Besides her merchants and upper class, who form a little

aristocracy even here, she has a large portion of her population

still connected with the Indian and fur trade, who preserve all

their characteristics unacted upon by the influence of advancing

civilisation, and between whom and other classes there is a marked

distinction. There is, moreover, a large floating population of

foreigners of all nations, who must possess no little amount of

enterprise to be tempted to this spot, from whence they spread

over the remote western tracts, still invested by the savage;

and, therefore, if any of their blood is infused into the native

population, the characteristic energy and enterprise is increased,

and not tempered down, by the foreign cross.

But perhaps the most singular of her casual population are the

mountaineers, who, after several seasons spent in trapping, and with

good store of dollars, arrive from the scene of their adventures,

wild as savages, determined to enjoy themselves, for a time, in all

the gaiety and dissipation of the western city. In one of the back

streets of the town is a tavern well known as the "Rocky Mountain

House," and here the trappers resort, drinking and fighting as long

as their money lasts, which, as they are generous and lavish as

Jack Tars, is for a few days only. Such scenes as are enacted in

the Rocky Mountain House, both tragical and comical, are beyond the

powers of pen to describe; and when a fandango is in progress, to

which congregate the coquettish belles from "Vide Poche," as the

French portion of a suburb is nicknamed,--the grotesque endeavours

of the bear-like mountaineers to sport a figure on the light

fantastic toe, and their insertions into the dance of the mystic

jumps of Terpsichorean Indians when engaged in the "medicine"

dances in honour of bear, of buffalo, or ravished scalp,--are such

startling innovations on the choreographic art as would cause the

shade of Gallini to quake and gibber in his pumps.

Passing the open doors and windows of the Mountain House, the

stranger stops short as the sounds of violin and banjo twang upon

his ears, accompanied by extraordinary noises--which sound unearthly

to the greenhorn listener, but which the initiated recognise as an

Indian song roared out of the stentorian lungs, of a mountaineer,

who, patting his stomach with open hands, to improve the necessary

shake, choruses the well-known Indian chant:--

Hi--Hi--Hi--Hi,

Hi-i--Hi-i--Hi-i--Hi-i

Hi-ya--hi-ya--hi-ya--hi-ya

Hi-ya--hi-ya--hi-ya--hi-ya

Hi-ya--hi-ya--hi--hi,

&c. &c. &c.

and polishing off the high notes with a whoop which makes the old

wooden houses shake again, as it rattles and echoes down the street.

Here, over fiery "monaghahela," Jean Batiste, the sallow half-breed

voyageur from the north--and who, deserting the service of the

"North-West," (the Hudson's Bay Company,) has come down the

Mississippi, from the "Falls," to try the sweets and liberty of

"free" trapping--hobnobs with a stalwart leather-clad "boy," just

returned from trapping on the waters of Grand River, on the western

side the mountains, who interlards his mountain jargon with Spanish

words picked up in Taos and California. In one corner a trapper,

lean and gaunt from the starving regions of the Yellow Stone, has

just recognised an old companyero, with whom he hunted years before

in the perilous country of the Blackfeet.

"Why, John, old hos, how do you come on?"

"What! Meek, old 'coon! I thought you were under?"

One from Arkansa stalks into the centre of the room, with a pack of

cards in his hand, and a handful of dollars in his hat. Squatting

cross-legged on a buffalo robe, he smacks down the money, and cries

out--"Ho, boys, hyar's a deck, and hyar's the beaver, (rattling the

coin,) who dar set his hos? Wagh!"

Tough are the yarns of wondrous hunts and Indian perils, of

hairbreadth 'scapes and curious "fixes." Transcendant are the

qualities of sundry rifles, which call these hunters masters; "plum"

is the "centre" each vaunted barrel shoots; sufficing for a hundred

wigs is the "hair" each hunter has "lifted" from Indians' scalps;

multitudinous the "coups" he has "struck." As they drink so do they

brag, first of their guns, their horses, and their squaws, and

lastly of themselves:--and when it comes to that, "ware steel."

La Bonté, on his arrival at St. Louis, found himself one day in no

less a place than this; and here he made acquaintance with an old

trapper about to start for the mountains in a few days, to hunt

on the head waters of Platte and Green River. With this man he

resolved to start, and, having still some hundred dollars in cash,

he immediately set about equipping himself for the expedition. To

effect this, he first of all visited the gun-store of Hawken, whose

rifles are renowned in the mountains, and exchanged his own piece,

which was of very small bore, for a regular mountain rifle. This was

of very heavy metal, carrying about thirty-two balls to the pound,

stocked to the muzzle and mounted with brass, its only ornament

being a buffalo bull, looking exceedingly ferocious, which was not

very artistically engraved upon the trap in the stock. Here, too, he

laid in a few pounds of powder and lead, and all the necessaries for

a long hunt.

His next visit was to a smith's store, which smith was black by

trade and black by nature, for he was a nigger, and, moreover,

celebrated as being the best maker of beaver-traps in St Louis,

and of whom he purchased six new traps, paying for the same twenty

dollars--procuring, at the same time, an old trap-sack, made of

stout buffalo skin, in which to carry them.

We next find La Bonté and his companion--one Luke, better known

as Grey-Eye, one of his eyes having been "gouged" in a mountain

fray--at Independence, a little town situated on the Missouri,

several hundred miles above St Louis, and within a short distance of

the Indian frontier.

Independence may be termed the "prairie port" of the western

country. Here the caravans destined for Santa Fé and the interior

of Mexico, assemble to complete their necessary equipment. Mules

and oxen are purchased, teamsters hired, and all stores and outfit

laid in here for the long journey over the wide expanse of prairie

ocean. Here, too, the Indian traders and the Rocky Mountain trappers

rendezvous, collecting in sufficient force to ensure their safe

passage through the Indian country. At the seasons of departure and

arrival of these bands, the little town presents a lively scene

of bustle and confusion. The wild and dissipated mountaineers get

rid of their last dollars in furious orgies, treating all comers

to galore of drink, and pledging each other, in horns of potent

whisky, to successful hunts and "heaps of beaver." When every cent

has disappeared from their pouches, the free trapper often makes

away with rifle, traps, and animals, to gratify his "dry," (for your

mountaineer is never "thirsty;") and then, "hos and beaver" gone, is

necessitated to hire himself to one of the leaders of big bands, and

hypothecate his services for an equipment of traps and animals. Thus

La Bonté picked up three excellent mules for a mere song, with their

accompanying pack saddles, _apishamores_,[3] and lariats, and the

next day, with Luke, "put out" for Platte.

[3] Saddle-blanket made of buffalo-calf skin.

As they passed through the rendezvous, which was encamped on a

little stream beyond the town, even our young Mississippian was

struck with the novelty of the scene. Upwards of forty huge waggons,

of Connestoga and Pittsburg build, and covered with snow-white

tilts, were ranged in a semicircle, or rather a horse-shoe form,

on the flat open prairie, their long "tongues" (poles) pointing

outwards; with the necessary harness for four pairs of mules, or

eight yoke of oxen, lying on the ground beside them, spread in ready

order for "hitching up." Round the waggons groups of teamsters, tall

stalwart young Missourians, were engaged in busy preparation for the

start, greasing the wheels, fitting or repairing harness, smoothing

ox-bows, or overhauling their own moderate kits or "possibles."

They were all dressed in the same fashion: a pair of "homespun"

pantaloons, tucked into thick boots reaching nearly to the knee, and

confined round the waist by a broad leathern belt, which supported a

strong butcher knife in a sheath. A coarse checked shirt was their

only other covering, with a fur cap on the head.

Numerous camp-fires surrounded the waggons, and by them lounged

wild-looking mountaineers, easily distinguished from the "greenhorn"

teamsters by their dresses of buckskin, and their weather-beaten

faces. Without an exception, these were under the influence of the

rosy god; and one, who sat, the picture of misery, at a fire by

himself--staring into the blaze with vacant countenance, his long

matted hair hanging in unkempt masses over his face, begrimed with

the dirt of a week, and pallid with the effects of ardent drink--was

suffering from the usual consequences of having "kept it up"

beyond the usual point, and now was paying the penalty in a fit of

"horrors"--as _delirium tremens_ is most aptly termed by sailors and

the unprofessional.

In another part, the merchants of the caravan and Indian traders

were superintending the lading of the waggons, or mule packs. These

were dressed in civilised attire, and some bedizened in St Louis

or Eastern City dandyism, to the infinite disgust of the mountain

men, who look upon a bourge-way (bourgeois) with most undisguised

contempt, despising the very simplest forms of civilisation. The

picturesque appearance of the encampment was not a little heightened

by the addition of several Indians from the neighbouring Shawnee

settlement, who, mounted on their small active horses, on which they

reclined, rather than sat, in negligent attitudes, quietly looked on

at the novel scene, indifferent to the "chaff" which the thoughtless

teamsters indulged in at their expense. Numbers of mules and horses

were picketed at hand, while a large herd of noble oxen were being

driven towards the camp--the wo-ha of the teamsters sounding far and

near, as they collected the scattered beasts in order to yoke up.

As most of the mountain men were utterly unable to move from camp,

Luke and La Bonté, with three or four of the most sober, started

in company, intending to wait on "Blue," a stream which runs into

the Caw or Kanzas River, until the "balance" of the band came up.

Mounting their mules, and leading the loose animals, they struck

at once into the park-like prairie, and were out of sight of

civilisation in an instant.

It was the latter end of May, towards the close of the season of

heavy rains, which in early spring render the climate of this

country almost intolerable, at the same time that they serve to

fertilise and thaw the soil, so long bound up by the winter's

frosts. The grass was every where luxuriously green, and gaudy

flowers dotted the surface of the prairie. This term, however,

should hardly be applied to the beautiful undulating scenery of this

park-like country. Unlike the flat monotony of the Grand Plains,

here well wooded uplands clothed with forest trees of every species,

and picturesque dells through which run clear and bubbling streams

belted with gay-blossomed shrubs, every where present themselves;

whilst on the level meadowland, topes of trees with spreading

foliage afforded a shelter to the game and cattle, and well-timbered

knolls rise at intervals from the plain.

Many clear streams dashing over their pebbly beds intersect the

country, from which, in the noonday's heat, the red-deer jump,

shaking their wet sides, as the noise of approaching man disturbs

them; and booming grouse rise from the tall luxuriant herbage at

every step. Where the deep escarpments of the river banks exhibit

the section of the earth, a rich alluvial soil of surprising depth

appears to court the cultivation of civilised man; and in every

feature it is evident that here nature has worked with kindliest and

most bountiful hand.

For hundreds of miles along the western or right bank of the

Missouri does such a country as this extend, to which, for fertility

and natural resources, no part of Europe can offer even feeble

comparison. Sufficiently large to contain an enormous population,

it has, besides, every advantage of position, and all the natural

capabilities which should make it the happy abode of civilised man.

Through this unpeopled country the United States pours her greedy

thousands, to seize upon the barren territories of her feeble

neighbour.

Camping the first night on "Black Jack," our mountaineers here

cut each man a spare hickory wiping-stick for his rifle, and La

Bonté, who was the only greenhorn of the party, witnessed a savage

ebullition of rage on the part of one of his companions, exhibiting

the perfect unrestraint which these men impose upon their passions,

and the barbarous anger which the slightest opposition to the will

excites. One of the trappers, on arriving at the camping-place,

dismounted from his horse, and, after divesting it of the saddle,

endeavoured to lead his mule by the rope up to the spot where

he wished to deposit his pack. Mule-like, however, the more he

pulled the more stubbornly she remained in her tracks, planting

her fore-legs firmly, and stretching out her neck with provoking

obstinacy. If truth be told, it does require the temper of a

thousand Jobs to manage a mule; and in no case does the wilful

mulishness of the animal stir up one's choler more than in the very

trick which this one was playing, and which is a daily occurrence.

After tugging ineffectually for several minutes, winding the rope

round his body, and throwing himself forward and suddenly with all

his strength, the trapper actually foamed with passion; and although

he might have subdued the animal at once by fastening the rope with

a half-hitch round its nose, with an obstinacy equal to that of

the mule itself he refused to attempt it, preferring to vanquish

her by main strength. However, this failed, and with a volley of

blasphemous imprecations the mountaineer suddenly seized his rifle,

and, levelling it at the mule's head, shot her dead.

Passing the Wa-ka-rasha, a well-timbered stream, they met a band

of Osages going "to buffalo." These Indians, in common with some

tribes of the Pawnees, shave the head, with the exception of a ridge

from the forehead to the centre of the scalp, which is "roached" or

hogged like the mane of a mule, and stands erect, plastered with

unguents, and ornamented by feathers of the hawk and turkey. The

naked scalp is often painted in mosaic with black and red, the face

with shining vermilion. They were all naked to the breech-clout,

the warmth of the sun having caused them to throw their dirty

blankets from their shoulders. These Indians not unfrequently levy

contributions on strangers whom they may accidentally meet; but they

easily distinguish the determined mountaineer from the incautious

greenhorn, and think it better to let the former alone.

Crossing Vermilion, they arrived on the fifth day at "Blue," where

they encamped in the broad timber which belts the creek, and there

awaited the arrival of the remainder of the party.

It was two days before they came up; but the day after, fourteen

in number, they started for the mountains, striking a trail which

follows the "Big Blue" in its course through the prairies, which, as

they advance to the westward, are gradually smoothing away into a

vast unbroken expanse of rolling plain. Herds of antelope began to

show themselves, and some of the hunters, leaving the trail, soon

returned with plenty of their tender meat. The luxuriant but coarse

grass they had hitherto seen now changed into the nutritious and

curly buffalo grass, and their animals soon improved in appearance

on the excellent pasture. In a few days, without any adventure, they

struck the Platte River, its shallow waters (from which it derives

its name) spreading over a wide and sandy bed, numerous sand bars

obstructing the sluggish current, and with nowhere sufficient water

to wet the forder's knee.

By this time, but few antelope having been seen, the party became

entirely out of meat; and, one whole day and part of another having

passed without so much as a sage rabbit having presented itself,

not a few objurgations on the buffalo grumbled from the lips of the

hunters, who expected ere this to have reached the land of plenty.

La Bonté killed a fine deer, however, in the river bottom, after

they had encamped, not one particle of which remained after supper

that night, but which hardly took the rough edge off their keen

appetites. Although already in the buffalo range, no traces of these

animals had yet been seen; and as the country afforded but little

game, and the party did not care to halt and lose time in hunting

for it, they moved along hungry and sulky, the theme of conversation

being the well remembered merits of good buffalo meat,--of "fat

fleece," "hump rib," and "tender loin;" of delicious "boudins,"

and marrow bones too good to think of. La Bonté had never seen the

lordly animal, and consequently but half believed the accounts of

the mountaineers, who described their countless bands as covering

the prairie far as the eye could reach, and requiring days of travel

to pass through; but the visions of such dainty and abundant feeding

as they descanted on set his mouth watering, and danced before his

eyes as he slept supperless, night after night, on the banks of the

hungry Platte.

One morning he had packed his animals before the rest, and was

riding a mile in advance of the party, when he saw on one side the

trail, looming in the refracted glare which mirages the plains,

three large dark objects without shape or form, which rose and

fell in the exaggerated light like ships at sea. Doubting what it

could be, he approached the strange objects; and as the refraction

disappeared before him, the dark masses assumed a more distinct

form, and clearly moved with life. A little nearer, and he made

them out--they were buffalo. Thinking to distinguish himself,

the greenhorn dismounted from his mule, and quickly hobbled her,

throwing his lasso on the ground to trail behind when he wished to

catch her. Then, rifle in hand, he approached the huge animals, and,

being a good hunter, knew well to take advantage of the inequalities

of the ground and face the wind; by which means he crawled at length

to within forty yards of the buffalo, who were quietly cropping the

grass, unconscious of danger. Now, for the first time, he gazed upon

the noble beast of which he had so often heard, and longed to see.

With coal-black beard sweeping the ground as he fed, an enormous

bull was in advance of the others, his wild brilliant eyes peering

from an immense mass of shaggy hair, which covered his neck and

shoulder. From this point his skin was bare as one's hand, a sleek

and shining dun, and his ribs well covered with shaking flesh. As

he leisurely cropped the short curly grass he occasionally lifted

his tail into the air, and stamped his foot as a fly or musquito

annoyed him--flapping the intruder with his tail, or snatching at

the itching part with his ponderous head.

When La Bonté had sufficiently admired the animal, he lifted his

rifle, and, taking steady aim, and certain of his mark, pulled the

trigger, expecting to see the huge beast fall over at the report.

What was his surprise and consternation, however, to see the

animal flinch as the ball struck him, but gallop off, followed by

the others, and apparently unhurt. As is generally the case with

greenhorns, he had fired too high, not understanding that the only

certain spot to strike a buffalo is but a few inches above the

brisket, and that above this a shot is rarely fatal. When he rose

from the ground, he saw all the party halting in full view of his

discomfiture; and when he joined them, loud were the laughs, and

deep the regrets of the hungry at his first attempt.

However, they now knew that they were in the country of meat; and a

few miles farther, another band of stragglers presenting themselves,

three of the hunters went in pursuit, La Bonté taking a mule to pack

in the meat. He soon saw them crawling towards the band, and shortly

two puffs of smoke, and the sharp cracks of their rifles showed

that they had got within shot; and when he had ridden up, two fine

buffaloes were stretched upon the ground. Now, for the first time,

he was initiated into the mysteries of "butchering," and watched

the hunters as they turned the carcass on the belly, stretching

out the legs to support it on each side. A transverse cut was then

made at the nape of the neck, and, gathering the long hair of the

boss in one hand, the skin was separated from the shoulder. It was

then laid open from this point to the tail, along the spine, and

the skin was freed from the sides and pulled down to the brisket,

but, still attached to it, was stretched upon the ground to receive

the dissected portions. Then the shoulder was severed, the fleece

removed from along the backbone, and the hump-ribs cut off with a

tomahawk. All this was placed upon the skin; and after the "boudins"

had been withdrawn from the stomach, and the tongue--a great

dainty--taken from the head, the meat was packed upon the mule, and

the whole party hurried to camp rejoicing.

There was merry-making in the camp that night, and the way they

indulged their appetites--or, in their own language, "throw'd" the

meat "cold"--would have made the heart of a dyspeptic leap for joy

or burst with envy. Far into the "still watches of the tranquil

night" the fat-clad "depouille" saw its fleshy mass grow small

by degrees and beautifully less, before the trenchant blades of

the hungry mountaineers; appetising yards of well-browned "boudin"

slipped glibly down their throats; rib after rib of tender hump

was picked and flung to the wolves; and when human nature, with

helpless gratitude, and confident that nothing of superexcellent

comestibility remained, was lazily wiping the greasy knife that had

done such good service,--a skilful hunter was seen to chuckle to

himself as he raked the deep ashes of the fire, and drew therefrom

a pair of tongues so admirably baked, so soft, so sweet, and of

such exquisite flavour, that a veil is considerately drawn over

the effects their discussion produced in the mind of our greenhorn

La Bonté, and the raptures they excited in the bosom of that, as

yet, most ignorant mountaineer. Still, as he ate he wondered,

and wondering admired, that nature, in giving him such profound

gastronomic powers, and such transcendent capabilities of digestion,

had yet bountifully provided an edible so peculiarly adapted to his

ostrich-like appetite, that after consuming nearly his own weight in

rich and fat buffalo meat, he felt as easy and as incommoded as if

he had been lightly supping on strawberries and cream.

Sweet was the digestive pipe after such a feast, and soft the

sleep and deep, which sealed the eyes of the contented trappers

that night. It felt like the old thing, they said, to be once more

amongst the "meat;" and, as they were drawing near the dangerous

portion of the trail, they felt at home; although not a night now

passed but, when they lay down on their buffalo robes to sleep, they

could not be confident that that sleep was not their last--knowing

full well that savage men were hovering near, thirsting for their

lives.

However, no enemies showed themselves as yet, and they proceeded

quietly up the river, vast herds of buffaloes darkening the plains

around them, affording them more than abundance of the choicest

meat; but, to their credit be it spoken, no more was killed than

absolutely required,--unlike the cruel slaughter made by most of the

white travellers across the plains, who wantonly destroy these noble

animals, not even for the excitement of sport, but in cold-blooded

and insane butchery. La Bonté had practice enough to perfect him in

the art, and, before the buffalo range was passed, he was ranked as

a first-rate hunter. One evening he had left the camp for meat, and

was approaching a band of cows for that purpose, crawling towards

them along the bed of a dry hollow in the prairie, when he observed

them suddenly jump away towards him, and immediately after a score

of mounted Indians appeared in sight, whom, by their dress, he

at once knew to be Pawnees and enemies. Thinking they might not

discover him, he crouched down in the ravine; but a noise behind

causing him to turn his head, he saw some five or six advancing up

the bed of the dry creek, whilst several more were riding on the

bluffs. The cunning savages had cut off his retreat to his mule,

which he saw in the possession of one of the Indians. His presence

of mind, however, did not desert him; and seeing at once that to

remain where he was would be like being caught in a trap, (as the

Indians could advance to the edge of the bluff and shoot him from

above,) he made for the open prairie, determined at least to sell

his scalp dearly, and make "a good fight." With a yell the Indians

charged, but halted when they saw the sturdy trapper deliberately

kneel, and, resting his rifle on the wiping-stick, take a steady

aim as they advanced. Full well the Pawnees know, to their cost,

that a mountaineer seldom pulls his trigger without sending a

bullet to the mark; and, certain that one at least must fall, they

hesitated to make the onslaught. Steadily the white retreated with

his face to the foe, bringing the rifle to his shoulder the instant

that one advanced within shot, the Indians galloping round, firing

the few guns they had amongst them at long distances, but without

effect. One young "brave," more daring than the rest, rode out

of the crowd, and dashed at the hunter, throwing himself, as he

passed within a few yards, from the saddle, and hanging over the

opposite side of his horse,--presenting no other mark than his left

foot,--discharged his bow from under the animal's neck, and with

such good aim, that the arrow, whizzing through the air, struck the

stock of La Bonté's rifle, which was at his shoulder, and, glancing

off, pierced his arm, inflicting, luckily, but a slight wound.

Again the Indian turned in his course, the others encouraging him

with loud war-whoops, and once more passing at still less distance,

drew his arrow to the head. This time, however, the eagle eye of

the white caught sight of the action, and suddenly rising from his

knee as the Indian was approaching, hanging by his foot alone over

the opposite side of the horse, he jumped towards the animal with

outstretched arms and a loud yell, causing it to start so suddenly,

and swerve from its course, that the Indian lost his foot-hold, and,

after in vain struggling to regain his position, fell to the ground,

but instantly rose upon his feet and gallantly confronted the

mountaineer, striking his hand upon his brawny chest and shouting

a loud whoop of defiance. In another instant the rifle of La Bonté

had poured forth its contents; and the brave Indian, springing into

the air, fell dead to the ground, just as the other trappers, who

had heard the firing, galloped up to the spot, at sight of whom the

Pawnees, with yells of disappointed vengeance, hastily retreated.

That night La Bonté first lifted hair!

A few days after they reached the point where the Platte divides

into two great forks:--the northern one, stretching to the

north-west, skirts the eastern base of the Black Hills, and sweeping

round to the south rises in the vicinity of the mountain valley

called the New Park, receiving the Laramie, Medicine Bow, and

Sweet-Water creeks. The other, or "South Fork," strikes towards

the mountains in a south-westerly direction, hugging the base of

the main chain of the Rocky Mountains, and, fed by several small

creeks, rises in the uplands of the Bayou Salado, near which is

also the source of the Arkansa. To the forks of the Platte the

valley of that river extends from three to five miles on each side,

being enclosed by steep sandy bluffs, from the summits of which

the prairies stretch away in broad undulating expanse to the north

and south. The "bottom," as it is termed, is but thinly covered

with timber, the cotton-woods being scattered only here and there;

but some of the islands in the broad bed of the stream are well

wooded, which leads to the inference that the trees on the banks

have been felled by Indians who formerly frequented this river as

a chosen hunting-ground. As during the long winters the pasture in

the vicinity is scarce and withered, the Indians feed their horses

on the bark of the sweet cotton-wood, upon which they subsist, and

even fatten. Thus, wherever a village has been encamped, the trunks

of these trees strew the ground, with their upper limbs and smaller

branches peeled of their bark, and looking as white and smooth as if

scraped with a knife.

On the forks, however, the timber is heavier and of greater variety,

some of the creeks being well wooded with ash and cherry, which

break the monotony of the everlasting cotton-wood.

Dense masses of buffalo still continued to darken the plains, and

numerous bands of wolves hovered round the outskirts of the vast

herds, singling out the sick and wounded animals, and preying upon

the calves whom the rifles and arrows of the hunters had bereaved of

their mothers. The white wolf is the invariable attendant upon the

buffalo; and when one of these persevering animals is seen, it is

certain sign that buffalo are not far distant. Besides the buffalo

wolf, there are four distinct varieties common to the plains, and

all more or less attendant upon the buffalo. These are the black,

the gray, the brown, and last and least the _coyote_, or _cayeute_

of the mountaineers, the "wach-unkamănet," or "medicine wolf" of

the Indians, who hold the latter animal in reverential awe. This

little wolf, whose fur is of great thickness and beauty, although of

diminutive size, is wonderfully sagacious, and makes up by cunning

what it wants in physical strength. In bands of from three to thirty

they will not unfrequently station themselves along the "runs" of

the deer and the antelope, extending their line for many miles,--and

the quarry being started, each wolf will follow in pursuit until

tired, when it relinquishes the chase to another relay, following

slowly after until the animal is fairly run down, when all hurry to

the spot and speedily consume the carcass. The cayeute, however, is

often made a tool of by his larger brethren, unless, indeed, he acts

from motives of spontaneous charity. When a hunter has slaughtered

game, and is in the act of butchering it, these little wolves sit

patiently at a short distance from the scene of operations, while

at a more respectful one the larger wolves (the white or gray) lope

hungrily around, licking their chops in hungry expectation. Not

unfrequently the hunter throws a piece of meat towards the smaller

one, who seizes it immediately, and runs off with the morsel in his

mouth. Before he gets many yards with his prize, the large wolf

pounces with a growl upon him, and the cayeute, dropping the meat,

returns to his former position, and will continue his act as long as

the hunter pleases to supply him.

Wolves are so common on the plains and in the mountains, that the

hunter never cares to throw away a charge of ammunition upon them,

although the ravenous animals are a constant source of annoyance to

him, creeping to the camp-fire at night, and gnawing his saddles

and _apishamores_, eating the skin ropes which secure the horses

and mules to their pickets, and even their very hobbles, and not

unfrequently killing or entirely disabling the animals themselves.

Round the camp, during the night, the cayeute keeps unremitting

watch, and the traveller not unfrequently starts from his bed with

affright, as the mournful and unearthly chiding of the wolf breaks

suddenly upon his ear: the long-drawn howl being taken up by others

of the band, until it dies away in the distance, as some straggler

passing within hearing answers to the note, and howls as he lopes

away.

Our party crossed the south fork about ten miles from its juncture

with the main stream, and then, passing the prairie, struck the

north fork a day's travel from the other. At the mouth of an

ash-timbered creek they came upon Indian "sign," and, as now they

were in the vicinity of the treacherous Sioux, they moved along

with additional caution, Frapp and Gonneville, two experienced

mountaineers, always heading the advance.

About noon they had crossed over to the left bank of the fork,

intending to camp on a large creek where some fresh beaver "sign"

had attracted the attention of some of the trappers; and as, on

further examination, it appeared that two or three lodges of that

animal were not far distant, it was determined to remain here a day

or two, and set their traps.

Gonneville, old Luke, and La Bonté, had started up the creek, and

were carefully examining the banks for "sign," when the former, who

was in front, suddenly paused, and looking intently up the stream,

held up his hand to his companions to signal them to stop.

Luke and La Bonté both followed the direction of the trapper's

intent and fixed gaze. The former uttered in a suppressed tone

the expressive exclamation, Wagh!--the latter saw nothing but a

wood-duck swimming swiftly down the stream, followed by her downy

progeny.

Gonneville turned his head, and extending his arm twice with a

forward motion up the creek, whispered--"Les sauvages."

"Injuns, sure, and Sioux at that," answered Luke.

Still La Bonté looked, but nothing met his view but the duck with

her brood, now rapidly approaching; and as he gazed, the bird

suddenly took wing, and, flapping on the water, flew a short

distance down the stream and once more settled on it.

"Injuns?" he asked; "where are they?"

"Whar?" repeated old Luke, striking the flint of his rifle, and

opening the pan to examine the priming. "What brings a duck

a-streakin it down stream, if humans aint behint her? and who's thar

in these diggins but Injuns, and the worst kind; and we'd better

push to camp, I'm thinking, if we mean to save our hair."

"Sign" sufficient, indeed, it was to all the trappers, who, on being

apprised of it, instantly drove in their animals, and picketed

them; and hardly had they done so when a band of Indians made their

appearance on the banks of the creek, from whence they galloped to

the bluff which overlooked the camp at the distance of about six

hundred yards; and crowning this, in number some forty or more,

commenced brandishing their spears and guns, and whooping loud

yells of defiance. The trappers had formed a little breast-work of

their packs, forming a semicircle, the chord of which was made by

the animals standing in a line, side by side, closely picketed and

hobbled. Behind this defence stood the mountaineers, rifle in hand,

and silent and determined. The Indians presently descended the bluff

on foot, leaving their animals in charge of a few of the party, and,

scattering, advanced under cover of the sage bushes which dotted

the bottom, to about two hundred yards of the whites. Then a chief

advanced before the rest, and made the sign for a talk with the

Long-knives, which led to a consultation amongst the latter, as to

the policy of acceding to it. They were in doubts as to the nation

these Indians belonged to, some bands of the Sioux being friendly,

and others bitterly hostile to the whites.

Gonneville, who spoke the Sioux language, and was well acquainted

with the nation, affirmed they belonged to a band called the

Yanka-taus, well known to be the most evil-disposed of that

treacherous nation; another of the party maintaining that they were

Brulés, and that the chief advancing towards them was the well-known

Tah-sha-tunga or Bull Tail, a most friendly chief of that tribe.

The majority, however, trusted to Gonneville, and he volunteered to

go out to meet the Indian, and hear what he had to say. Divesting

himself of all arms save his butcher-knife, he advanced towards

the savage, who awaited his approach, enveloped in the folds of

his blanket. At a glance he knew him to be a Yanka-tau, from the

peculiar make of his moccassins, and the way in which his face was

daubed with paint.

"Howgh!" exclaimed both as they met; and, after a silence of a few

moments, the Indian spoke, asking--"Why the Long-knives hid behind

their packs, when his band approached? Were they afraid, or were

they preparing a dog-feast to entertain their friends? That the

whites were passing through his country, burning his wood, drinking

his water, and killing his game; but he knew that they had now come

to pay for the mischief they had done, and that the mules and horses

they had brought with them were intended as a present to their red

friends.

"He was Mah-to-ga-shane," he said, "the Brave Bear: his tongue was

short, but his arm long; and he loved rather to speak with his bow

and his lance, than with the weapon of a squaw. He had said it: the

Long-knives had horses with them and mules; and these were for him,

he knew, and for his 'braves.' Let the White-face go back to his

people and return with the animals, or he, the 'Brave Bear,' would

have to come and take them; and his young men would get mad and

would feel blood in their eyes; and then he would have no power over

them; and the whites would have to 'go under.'"

The trapper answered shortly.--"The Long-knives," he said, "had

brought the horses for themselves--their hearts were big, but not

towards the Yanka-taus: and if they had to give up their animals, it

would be to _men_ and not _squaws_. They were not 'wah-keitcha,'[4]

(French engagés) but Long-knives; and, however short were the

tongues of the Yanka-taus, theirs were still shorter, and their

rifles longer. The Yanka-taus were dogs and squaws, and the

Long-knives spat upon them."

[4] The French Canadians are called _wah-keitcha_--"bad

medicine"--by the Indians, who account them treacherous and

vindictive, and at the same time less daring than the American

hunters.

Saying this, the trapper turned his back and rejoined his

companions; whilst the Indian slowly proceeded to his people,

who, on learning the contemptuous way in which their threats had

been treated, testified their anger with loud yells; and, seeking

whatever cover was afforded, commenced a scattering volley upon the

camp of the mountaineers. The latter reserved their fire, treating

with cool indifference the balls which began to rattle about them;

but as the Indians, emboldened by this apparent inaction, rushed for

a closer position, and exposed their bodies within a long range,

half-a-dozen rifles rang from the assailed, and two Indians fell

dead, one or two more being wounded. As yet, not one of the whites

had been touched, but several of the animals had received wounds

from the enemy's fire of balls and arrows. Indeed, the Indians

remained at too great a distance to render the volleys from their

crazy fusees any thing like effectual, and had to raise their pieces

considerably to make their bullets reach as far as the camp. After

having lost three of their band killed outright, and many more being

wounded, their fire began to slacken, and they drew off to a greater

distance, evidently resolved to beat a retreat; and retiring to

the bluff, discharged their pieces in a last volley, mounted their

horses and galloped off, carrying their wounded with them. This last

volley, however, although intended as a mere bravado, unfortunately

proved fatal to one of the whites. Gonneville, at the moment, was

standing on one of the packs, in order to get an uninterrupted

sight for a last shot, when one of the random bullets struck him

in the breast. La Bonté caught him in his arms as he was about to

fall, and, laying the wounded trapper gently on the ground,--they

proceeded to strip him of his buckskin hunting-frock, to examine

the wound. A glance was sufficient to convince his companions that

the blow was mortal. The ball had passed through the lungs; and in

a few moments the throat of the wounded man began to swell, as the

choking blood ascended, and turned a livid blue colour. But a few

drops of purple blood trickled from the wound,--a fatal sign,--and

the eyes of the mountaineer were already glazing with death's icy

touch. His hand still grasped the barrel of his rifle, which had

done good service in the fray. Anon he essayed to speak, but, choked

with blood, only a few inarticulate words reached the ears of his

companions, who were bending over him.

"Rubbed--out--at--last," they heard him say, the words gurgling in

his blood-filled throat; and opening his eyes once more, and looking

upwards to take a last look at the bright sun, the trapper turned

gently on his side and breathed his last sigh.

With no other tools than their scalp-knives, the hunters dug a

grave on the banks of the creek; and whilst some were engaged in

this work, others sought the bodies of the Indians they had slain

in the attack, and presently returned with three reeking scalps,

the trophies of the fight. The body of the mountaineer was then

wrapped in a buffalo robe, the scalps being placed on the dead man's

breast, laid in the shallow grave, and quickly covered--without a

word of prayer, or sigh of grief; for, however much his companions

may have felt, not a word escaped them; although the bitten lip and

frowning brow told tale of anger more than sorrow, and vowed--what

they thought would better please the spirit of the dead man than

sorrow--lasting revenge.

Trampling down the earth which filled the grave, they placed upon

it a pile of heavy stones; and packing their mules once more, and

taking a last look of their comrade's lonely resting-place, they

turned their backs upon the stream, which has ever since been known

as "Gonneville's Creek."

If the reader casts his eye over any of the recent maps of the

western country, which detail the features of the regions embracing

the Rocky Mountains, and the vast prairies at their bases, he will

not fail to observe that many of the creeks or smaller streams which

feed the larger rivers,--as the Missouri, Platte, and Arkansa--are

called by familiar proper names, both English and French. These

are invariably christened after some unfortunate trapper, killed

there in Indian fight; or treacherously slaughtered by the lurking

savages, while engaged in trapping beaver on the stream. Thus

alone is the memory of these hardy men perpetuated, at least of

those whose fate is ascertained: for many, in every season, never

return from their hunting expeditions, having met a sudden death

from Indians, or a more lingering fate from accident or disease

in some of the lonely gorges of the mountains, where no footfall

save their own, or the heavy tread of grizzly bear, disturbs the

unbroken silence of these awful solitudes. Then, as many winters

pass without some old familiar faces making their appearance at the

merry rendezvous, their long protracted absence may perhaps occasion

such remarks, as to where such and such a mountain worthy can have

betaken himself, to which the casual rejoinder of "Gone under,

maybe," too often gives a short but certain answer.

In all the philosophy of hardened hearts, our hunters turned from

the spot where the unmourned trapper met his death. La Bonté,

however, not yet entirely steeled by mountain life to a perfect

indifference to human feeling, drew his hard hand across his eye,

as the unbidden tear rose from his rough but kindly heart. He could

not forget so soon the comrade they had lost, the companionship in

the hunt or over the cheerful camp-fire, the narrator of many a

tale of dangers past, of sufferings from hunger, cold, and thirst,

and from untended wounds, of Indian perils, and of a life spent in

such vicissitudes. One tear dropped from the young hunter's eye, and

rolled down his cheek--the last for many a long year.

In the forks of the northern branch of the Platte, formed by the

junction of the Laramie, they found a big village of the Sioux

encamped near the station of one of the fur companies. Here the

party broke up; many, finding the alcohol of the traders an

impediment to their further progress, remained some time in the

vicinity, while La Bonté, Luke, and a trapper named Marcelline,

started in a few days to the mountains, to trap on Sweet Water

and Medicine Bow. They had leisure, however, to observe all the

rascalities connected with the Indian trade, although at this season

(August) hardly commenced. However, a band of Indians having come in

with several packs of last year's robes, and being anxious to start

speedily on their return, a trader from one of the forts had erected

his lodge in the village.

Here, he set to work immediately to induce the Indians to trade.

First, a chief appointed three "soldiers" to guard the trader's

lodge from intrusion; and who, amongst the thieving fraternity,

can be invariably trusted. Then the Indians were invited to have a

drink--a taste of the fire-water being given to all to incite them

to trade. As the crowd presses upon the entrance to the lodge, and

those in rear become impatient, some large-mouthed possessor of many

friends, who has received a portion of the spirit, makes his way,

with his mouth full of the liquor and cheeks distended, through

the throng, and is instantly surrounded by his particular friends.

Drawing the face of each, by turns, near his own, he squirts a small

quantity into his open mouth, until the supply is exhausted, when he

returns for more, and repeats the generous distribution.

When paying for the robes, the traders, in measuring out the liquor

in a tin half-pint cup, thrust their thumbs or the four fingers

of the hand into the measure, in order that it may contain the

less, or not unfrequently fill the bottom with melted buffalo fat,

with the same object. So greedy are the Indians, that they never

discover the cheat, and once under the influence of the liquor,

cannot distinguish between the first cup of comparatively strong

spirit, and the following ones diluted five hundred per cent, and

poisonously drugged to boot.

Scenes of drunkenness, riot, and bloodshed last until the trade

is over, which in the winter occupies several weeks, during which

period the Indians present the appearance, under the demoralising

influence of the liquor, of demons rather than men.

AMERICAN THOUGHTS ON EUROPEAN REVOLUTIONS.

_Boston, May 1848._

A thousand leagues of ocean, my Basil, are indeed between us, but it

is no longer right to reckon distances by leagues. Time is your only

measure. I know of a gentleman who had a home in Paris, while Paris

was capable of homes, and he came every year across the Atlantic,

only to fish for trout. Why do you stare? You know very well that

you have often waited a fortnight for a good day to go a-fishing.

Come, then, pack up your slender reed, and spend such a fortnight

in a steamer. By God's favour you shall be the better for sea air;

and in two weeks from Liverpool, you shall find yourself on the

shores of a lake in the interior of the State of New York, where,

since the fifth day of the creation, the trout have apparently been

multiplying in a manner that would astonish a Malthus. Such is now

that dissociable ocean, which was once thought too great a waste of

waters to be passed by colonial members of parliament representing

the provinces of America. "_Opposuit Natura_;" said Burke, "I cannot

remove the eternal barriers of the creation." But Burke forgot his

Greek:--

"Πολλὰ τὰ δεινὰ, κοὐδεν ανθρώπου δεινότερον πελει·τοῦτο καὶ πολιοῦ

πέραν πόντου χειμερίῳ νοτῳ χωρεί, περιβρυχίοισι περῶν ἐρ' oἴδμασι·"

I know it is an old saw, but it is so freshened by the modern

instance of steamers every week, that it has become quotable once

more; and I have almost a mind to go on with the chorus, and show

that Sophocles may be fairly rendered in favour of railways and

iron-steeds. But the telegraph, Basil! I must even quote a bit of

English for that. As gentle Cowper saith:--

"The tempest itself lags behind,

And the swift-wing'd arrows of light!"

The wires are already stretched from Massachusetts, and almost

from Halifax to the Gulf of Mexico. A spark here, and the lettered

bulletin is reeling off in Louisiana! The fresh news will,

hereafter, be hawked in the streets of Boston and along the wharves

of New Orleans in the same hour. It will soon be sent farther

still; and a British fleet in the Pacific may be served with orders

from the Admiralty Board, not two weeks old. We are fairly in

hand-shaking neighbourhood. I remember when European intelligence

came to us rather as history than as news. It is not so now. While

emotion is yet warm with you, it sets our own hearts throbbing. We,

too, are, in the present tense, with Europe; for the revolutions

of peace have been more wonderful than those of warfare. They have

reunited what strife had sundered, and rendered England and America

again one family.

Talking of revolutions,--how hot the noon of the century is growing!

You will allow, dear Basil, that we in America, are well situated

to be lookers on. With all the security of distance, we have the

advantages of nearness. You are on the stage--we are in the boxes.

You go behind the scenes, and see the wire-working and machinery,

but we get the effect of the spectacle. The great revolutionary

drama is before us, and we can behold it calmly; interested, but not

involved. For a devout or philosophical spectator, America is the

true observatory. Here we can watch "the great Babel, and not feel

the crowd." It is our own fault if, with such advantages, we do not

anticipate the judgment of future ages, and arrive instinctively at

conclusions which those who share the tumult itself must ordinarily

learn in the soberness of after-thoughts, or, perhaps, by a dear

experience.

Did you ask how the doings in France appear in republican eyes?

And pray what do you expect me to answer? You appear to think

republicanism a specific instead of a generic term, and to expect

us to hail the French as our kindred. As well might I suppose that

your monarchical sympathies deeply interest you in the autocracy of

Dahomey and Dârfur. A boy may play with a monkey, without admiring

him; and although the monkey is a biped without feathers, the boy

would not like to have him taken for a younger brother. Believe

me, we are not yet ready to claim fraternity with the Provisional

Government. _How we apples swim_, seems to be their salutation to

America; but, for one, I reject the odorous impeachment. No one is

very cordial, as yet, in returning it. There is a general gaping and

staring; but the prevailing disposition towards France is to wait

and see if she will be decent. You will agree with me, that this

caution is creditable to the _Model Republic_.

In the spectacle before us, believe me, then, we know how to

distinguish the harlequin from the hero, and are not in danger

of clapping hands at the buffoonery of Paris, when we have just

been charmed by the solemn buskin in which London came upon the

stage--reluctant to play her part, but prepared to go through it

nobly. A French melodrama, of men in smocks chanting _Mourir pour la

Patrie_, or priests, in defiled surplices, asperging and incensing

May-poles, must of course suit the tastes of the groundlings; but

such inexplicable dumb-shows are generally understood to be only

the prelude to something tragic that is coming. For one, I look

for solemn monologues from Pio Nono and Lamartine; and, by-and-by,

expect a scene between the Soldan and the Czar. I do not look

without feelings of awe, for I am sure it is the shadow of GOD'S own

hand that is now passing over the nations. It is He that says, as of

old, "remove the diadem and take off the crown; exalt him that is

low, and abase him that is high." I am glad that others recognise

his footsteps in the earth, and therefore was pleased with that

motto lately quoted in Maga, from St Augustine--"GOD is patient,

because He is eternal."

For seventeen years we have been watching the great political

Humpty-Dumpty, in his efforts to come to an equilibrium, and to

stand firm in his place; and the end is, that Humpty-Dumpty is

fallen, according to the oracular rhyme of Mother Goose. What

shall we say of him, except that he was barricaded in, and has

been barricaded out? Laugh as we may at the undefinableness

of legitimacy, one feels that the lack of it makes a great

difference in our disposition towards a discrowned king. Still,

Louis-Philippe is treated with much forbearance, and men think of

his hoar hairs and his eventful life. In one of our newspapers,

a generous word has been spoken for his government, as about the

best that France deserved, and his best measures have been reviewed

with praise. Still, he is much disliked in America. One of his

earliest Claremonts was with us; and when Lafayette made him a

king, Americans felt as if they had a right to be pleased with his

accession. But his quarrel with his benefactor turned the feeling

strongly against him, for Lafayette was revered among us to the

hour of his death. I think there is a general satisfaction with

the fall of the Orleans dynasty; but it certainly has not been

malicious or spiteful. An eminent American, who has lived long in

Paris, has written two letters in the leading democratic newspaper

of New York, in which the fallen monarch is more severely handled

than he has been elsewhere. He is there said to be a much overrated

man--possessed of no great talents, except those which enable him

to dissimulate with the utmost cunning, and to manage with the

basest perfidy. The writer, nevertheless, has no confidence in

the revolution as having destroyed the monarchy; and quotes with

approbation a sentiment which he says was advanced in conversation

with himself, so long ago as 1830, by Odillon Barrot,--"_Enfin,

monsieur, la France a besoin de se sentir gouvernée_." He thinks two

things will work against the Duc de Bordeaux--that he has married an

Austrian, and grown fat; yet he confidently predicts that Henry V.

will one day ascend the throne of his ancestors. "As for a republic

that is to go on harmoniously, and with any thing like tolerable

quiet, law, and order," he concludes, "I hold it to be just as

impracticable as it would be to set up a Doge of Venice and a

Council of Ten in the State of New York. _We hear only the voices of

the revolutionists_, the rest of the nation being temporarily mute.

The day will come, however, when the last will speak."

These sentiments are not singular among us. I am agreeably surprised

by the great moderation of our people and of our press. When the

tidings of the outbreak reached us, it produced excitement, of

course; but there was no echo of the French howl, and remarkably

little enthusiasm, all things considered. You have seen reprinted in

England some of the most foolish things that were said in our most

worthless prints. The press in general behaved with great reserve

and caution. Successive steamers brought continual abatements to

the degree of confidence, or hope, that had been inspired in the

minds of the more ardent; and so general was the candour of the

newspapers, that when those of the Clay party were pettishly accused

of a sympathy with tyranny, the charge was easily met by quotations

from democratic newspapers, equally liable to the imputation, if a

manly reprobation of revolutionary misrule and excess be sufficient

to prove it. The truth is, our country was caught in the trap in

1792. Then, the pulpit and the press strove together in glorifying

France; and the remorse and burning shame that were the consequence,

have left a very salutary impression.

In fact, the violent democracy of Paris is exerting a beneficial

effect upon our people. We see the degrading spectacle, and learn to

value ourselves for a love of law and order. There is a reluctance

to reduce ourselves to the level of such a republic as has sprung up

like a mushroom in a night, and is likely to perish in the same way.

Our own revolution was not one of drunken riot, and street-singing

blouse-men: our constitution is not a mere poetical theory of

liberty and equality, nor a socialist's dream of brotherhood. We

now learn the secret of our strength, and of that comparative

durability which has almost surprised ourselves. We are, after

all, a transplanted slip of old England; nor are we so essentially

changed, my Basil, as even you imagine. The spirit of our people

is indeed democratic; but the spirit of our constitution is imbued

with a stronger element. The facts concerning it will enable you

to see one secret of our comparative success, and to judge whether

France can possibly come to any thing as good. The founders of this

republic were not Frenchmen, but Englishmen; I mean they were of

English stock, and had learned all their notions of liberty from the

history of England. Each province of America had taken shape under

the British constitution; and when the provinces became independent,

the general government was organised in such wise as to supply the

place of that constitution. Its founders did not frame a new and

untried constitution, a _priori_, according to their own schemes;

they simply modified the great principles of British constitutional

law to suit a new state of things, and a peculiar people. A

monarchy was out of the question; but they did not intend to make a

democracy. They only made a republic. The democratic spirit came in

with Jefferson and French politics at the beginning of the present

century. It has become dominant, but by no means triumphant; and

its great obstacle has been the constitution. In the several states

it has changed the constitutions one after the other, introducing

universal suffrage, and other democratic features. But the national

constitution has not been so easily reached; and it is the strength

of the great party with which Clay and Webster are identified, and

which is a constant check on the popular party. It is republican,

but not simply democratic. The executive magistracy is elective;

but the electors are not the people, directly, but electoral

colleges, appointed by the several states; and the office itself is

endowed with prerogatives, some of which are more unlimited than

the corresponding rights of the British crown. Our senate is a mere

modification of the House of Lords: it is a body more select than

the lower house, and not so immediately responsible to constituents;

and its practical working shows the great importance of such a

balance-wheel in any government. There is no working without it, in

spite of what your Roebucks may say. The House of Commons reappears

in our House of Representatives, which, like its great original, is

the safety-valve of popular feeling, and gives sonorous vent to a

mighty pressure of steam and vapour, which would otherwise blow us

to atoms, with a much less endurable noise. The whole fabric of our

law is a precious patrimony derived, with our blood, from England.

Our new states are filling up with emigrants from the continent

of Europe, but they all adopt the law of their older sisters; and

thus the institutions of the immortal Alfred may be found among the

Swedes and Danes of Wisconsin. These, then, are the elements of

our strength; and you observe they partake of the strength of the

British empire, which has been legitimately and naturally imparted

to us, like the mother's life-blood to the daughter of her womb. We

have indeed characteristic peculiarities. We have tried some new

experiments; but let not France suppose she can imitate them. We are

a new country, a sparse population, and our people have their heads

full of subduing the soil, and setting water-wheels in streams, and

making roads and canals. We have no natural taste for insurrection

and confusion, for we have nobody that is idle enough to want such

work. Our new wine, then, has been put into new bottles; and the

fool that attempts to decant it into the old vessels of Europe, will

ruin it and them together.

Our newspapers have pointed out another secret of our strength,

which France cannot possibly enjoy. In spite of that wild prophecy

of Lady Hester Stanhope to Lamartine--so much of which has come

true--Paris is France, and will be France while France holds

together. The city of Washington is not America; and its great acres

of unoccupied building lots are the best thing about it. The State

governments, which could not have been planned beforehand, but are a

natural product of old events--which dispose of all local matters,

and prevent sectional jealousies, which divide and balance power,

and _satisfy small ambition_,--these are the helps, without which

our national existence could not have been prolonged beyond the

lifetime of Washington himself. The threatened disturbance of the

admirable equilibrium which has heretofore been maintained between

North and South, and East and West, by the introduction of Mexican

and Texan states, and the power which it will throw into the hands

of a few persons at the seat of government, is even now our most

alarming danger. We know, from what we see among ourselves, that

governments must take form, not from human devices, but from GOD'S

providences. We ourselves are the results of circumstances: no

scheming patriot could have made us what we are; and no imitative

Frenchman can give to his country a government like ours; nor, if

he could, would it survive beyond the lifetime of some individual,

whose popularity would supply a temporary strength to its essential

weakness. An imported constitution must be a sickly one, in any

country on earth.

For us, then, there is a legitimacy in our institutions which makes

them durable, and dear to all classes of our people. But to be loyal

to our own republic is by no means to be committed to universal

republicanism, far less to be delighted with universal anarchy.

You must pardon our tastes. We are young, and we think a jacket

and shako becoming. We wear our appropriate costume as gracefully

as we can. We are yet the growing, perhaps the awkward, but still

the active boy. But when Europe befools itself, in its dotage, with

republican attire, we lads have a right to laugh. It will do for us

to play leap-frog, or cut any other caper that we choose; but who

can restrain derision when corpulent imbecility assumes an unskirted

coat, and submits its uncovered proportions to hootings and to

kicks, or throws a ponderous summersault that less demonstrates

agility than exposes nakedness!

I speak for myself, and for many, very many of my countrymen. Our

mere populace are of course possessed with the idea that a universal

Yankee-doodle is the panacea for all the miseries of the world. It

has been told them so often by demagogues, that they are pardonable.

But even they would probably allow that the _Chinese_, for instance,

are not yet quite ready for liberty-poles and ballet-boxes, and by

degrees might be brought to confess as much for any country less

remarkable and astonishing than our own. But there is a solid mass

of good sense among us that is not so deceived. It consists of those

who would rejoice to see a rational republic in France, or in any

other country; but who know that, with the exception perhaps of

Holland, such a thing is impossible, and that, in France, reason

is more likely to reappear as the divinified harlot of Notre Dame

than in any more respectable form. As to Great Britain, even our

schoolboys have learned that, with all the stability of empire,

it unites the freedom of a republic; and in spite of some feeling

against John Bull, I scarcely know the man who would not be sorry

to see it suddenly or violently revolutionised. On Irish affairs

opinion is not so sane among us. Few of us know any thing about

them; and for the sake of the starving peasantry of Ireland, there

is some sympathy with its turbulent Gracchi. Believe it, the general

tone of sentiment on this side the Atlantic, among reflecting men,

is far more conservative than you imagine. Indeed, all classes

stand amazed at the democracy of Europe. Our wildest enthusiasts

are outdone, even by some who sit in the House of Commons; and the

rampant socialism of Paris is as unlike the worst excesses of our

elections, as the ferocity of a tiger is unlike the playfulness of

a kitten. Young as we are, we are better mannered; and I must say,

dear Basil, that when the older nations of the world are allowing

themselves such license, we have a right to regard ourselves as

taking new rank, and deserving more credit than has heretofore been

given us, as, after all, a law-loving and law-maintaining people.

You will say, as was said to the trumpeter in Æsop--"No, no,--you

make all the mischief; others cut throats, but you have set them

on." But is the democratic spirit really of American origin?

Our Plymouth orators--the men who annually glorify our earliest

colonists--usually trace it to the Puritans, and through them to

Geneva. At all events, it now infects the world, and those are

the happy and the permanent governments which are prepared for

its violence, by constitutional vents and floodgates. It is not

to be stifled, or dammed up. We believe, therefore, that our own

government is the best for ourselves, and few of us have any fear

for that of England. On British matters we do not feel bound to

judge by our own experiences. We are free to theorise on broader

principles; and many of us form our own opinions, not as cool

and critical foreigners, but as having a deep interest in the

preservation of the institutions of our ancestors. Why should we

not? The study of history carries us, at once, beyond the narrow

limits of threescore years and ten, which is the age of our

national existence, and as soon as we pass that boundary we too

are Britons. The blood of our forefathers ran in English veins, or

flowed for British freedom and sovereignty. This fact is enough to

make our educated and reflecting men speculatively conservative

as to British politics. We know the past, and do not feel the

party-heats of the present in England. Hence I am far from being

alone among my countrymen, in looking at English matters with an

English heart. Even our commercial class have a reason for wishing

internal peace and prosperity to England; and I believe there

is generally something better than selfishness in the prevalent

good-will toward her. I wish you could have watched, as I did, the

feelings of our whole people, while lately, between the arrivals

of two steamers, there was a solemn feeling of surprise as to what

would be the results of the Chartist demonstration! Till the news

came, the stoutest of us held our breath. I assure you, Basil, the

peril of England was observed with a deep anxiety. During all that

time I met not a respectable man who wished to see a revolutionary

result. It was the talk of all circles. Our merchants trembled for

England; our scholars hoped for her; a clerical gentleman assured

me that he daily prayed for her. The press very generally predicted

a triumph of order, but there were some specimens of newspaper

literature that ventured an opposite augury. I wish you could have

seen this city when the result was known. The news was received with

a thrill. There was some laughing at the parturient mountain and

the still-born mouse, but a graver cheerfulness was the reigning

emotion. We deeply felt that, by the mercy of God, the world had

been spared from a conflagration which the match of a madman could

light, but which only another deluge could extinguish. For one, I

was as a watcher by the sea-side, who, after a night of tempest,

waits for the fog to rise, and then thanks God to see the good old

ship coming home, in season, her masts all standing, and her flag

untorn.

I had felt fears, my Basil. What was not imaginable, when Europe

presented the appearance of a table on which empires had fallen

in a day, like card-houses blown down by the breath of children!

I knew that neither France, nor Prussia, nor Austria, nor Italy,

were any thing like England, which is founded on a rock, and knit

together by joints and bands: but I felt that England is no longer

what she was. With a Whig government she is never herself.[5] The

Whigs are more than half Frenchmen. I tell you you seem to me not

half enough afraid of your Whigs; they are worse than your Radicals.

You show some uneasiness under the Jewish Disabilities Bill, but

I wish you could see it as it strikes a looker-on. If time has on

you the effect which distance has on me, you will yet look back on

that measure as you now look back on the great mistake of 1829.

It will haunt you like a nightmare, and you will regard it with

less of anger than of shame and remorse; with the deep conviction

that, if the friends of the constitution had done their duty, it

never would have disgraced a Christian state. True, the Whigs are

responsible for inflicting the blow; but what has been done to avert

it? So far as I know, nothing commensurate with the greatness of

the evil. You seem to give way to it as only one of many inroads

upon old proprieties, which are inevitable, and cannot be withstood.

But is the unchristianising of the state to be spoken of side by

side with even the destruction of colonies, and the discouragement

of agriculture? As it strikes me, it is not a thing of a class, it

stands out a portent, a harbinger, a phenomenon of its own kind. Not

that it surprises me. From Lord John Russell nothing that argues

fatuity and lack of political principle should surprise any one.

To carry out the plans to which he has committed himself, he must

consistently pander to infidels, foster heretics, and subsidise

Jews. To the reforms of the last score of years, there could be no

more fitting sequel than this coalition with a people loaded with

the hereditary burthen of the saving blood of the Crucified. I only

marvel that the bill goes on so slowly. The Baron should have been

long since in his place, and the Easter holidays should have been

disregarded, out of respect to his feelings. It is astonishing

that he is not already an ecclesiastical commissioner. The times

are not now as during a former French revolution, when a British

statesman could say[6]--"the Jews in Change Alley have not yet

dared to hint their hopes of a mortgage on the revenues belonging

to the see of Canterbury." You are always praising your church,

Basil, but allow me to ask, Why you may not live to see a Jewish

rabbi nominated to a bishopric. As I understand it, the obsequious

chapter would be obliged to perform the election, and close all by

anthems to Almighty GOD, ascribing to Him the glory of a gift so

felicitous and so auspicious to the church! It would not be the

first time, I believe, that Lord John has set the _Te Deum_ of

cathedrals going, like the whistles of a juggler's barrel-organ.

Forgive me, Basil; I am not mocking the agonies of your church, but

I am scorning a British minister that can use for her destruction

the powers confided to him for her nourishment and defence. I

have learned my notions of your politics from Edmund Burke, and I

remember what he said in his _Reflections on the French Revolution

of 1792_--for, by the way, revolutions in France must be always

referred to by dates, and will soon be known, like policemen, by

letters and numbers. "The men of England," said that great and

honest man, "the men I mean of light and leading in England, would

be ashamed, as of a silly deceitful trick, to profess any religion

in name which, by their proceedings, they appear to contemn." Does

not Lord John profess to be a Christian? I must caution you, too,

against supposing that I dislike the Israelites. Far from it. In my

own country I am glad that they labour under no disabilities, and I

can testify to their good order, decency, and propriety of behaviour

as citizens. But we have "no past at our back," and nothing in our

system which demands a prior consideration. No, Basil--I honour a

Jew, however much I may pity him. Crying old clothes, or lolling in

a banker's chariot, the Jew is to me a man of sacred associations.

And then--a Jewish gentleman--he makes me think at once of the sons

of Maccabæus and all the Asmoneans; those Hebrews of the Hebrews,

those Tories of Israel! What natural sympathy has a Jewish gentleman

with a Whig? Were I merely covetous of votes I would say--let the

Jews in! I could trust _their_ conscience; I could appeal to their

own feelings; I would put it to them whether their liberalism

would consent to eat pork with the Gentiles, or to call in the

uncircumcised to make laws for the synagogue. We pity the blindness

of the Jews that offered their thirty pieces of silver--but we do

not despise them. Our contempt settles on the head of the Christian

who consented to take them at the bargain.

[5] We fully agree with our correspondent as to the danger of

Whiggery in our councils, but are so far reconciled to the Whigs

being in office at the present crisis, by the knowledge that, had

they been in opposition, they would, to a certain extent, have

fraternised with French Republicans and English Chartists. Who could

doubt that such would have been the conduct of the men who headed

physical force processions, and hounded on window-breaking vagabonds

in the Reform riots of 1830? What amount of profligate partisanship

might not be expected from the men who, when thirsting for office,

solemnly denounced as unconstitutional and unjust the course pursued

by a conservative government towards O'Connell, which identical

course they now, when in power, adopt towards Mitchell, a much less

dangerous criminal?

[6] Burke's _Reflections on the French Revolution_.

You speak of this Jew bill as the first step! Why, yes, the first

step in tragedy; there was a former one in farce. There is Sir Moses

Montefiore! Who made him a knight? "A Jewish knight," said I, at

the time--"hear it, ye dry bones,--ye cross-legged effigies--ye

Paladins--ye Templars! Hear it, Du-Bois-Gilbert,--hear it, Richard

Cœur-de-Lion! Yes, and thou, too, old Roger de Coverley! Hear it,

thou true old English knight; for they that bought thine old clothes

now come for thine old spurs!" So said I--wondering that no one

seemed to wonder. The nineteenth century had not time to stare.

There was not even a London _Punch_ to laugh at such a _Judy_, and

so Moses was belted and spurred, no man gainsaying; and knighthood,

that was Sidney's once, is just the thing for Sir Peter Laurie now.

And if a Jewish knight, why not a Jewish senator! True, there is

something grand in the idea of a nation that never, since the

Wittenagemote, has seen a lawgiver unbaptised; and then there is

still a red cross in the flag of England; and there has been a

pleasing notion that the Christian faith was part and parcel with

the British constitution; and even we in America, averse to church

and state, have long allowed ourselves to admire one exception

to the rule, and to confess the majestic figure made among the

nations by a Christian empire, shining forth in splendid contrast

to surrounding kingdoms, some of them infidel and some of them

superstitious, but she alone the witness to reasonable faith, and

faithful reason. But who regards it in this light? Who among you

stands up to warn his country of the glory that is departing?

Who has said any thing in parliament at all adequate to the

turning-point of a nation's religion? I have looked for some one to

speak as Burke would have spoken, of "uncovering your nakedness,

by throwing off that Christian religion which has hitherto been

your boast and comfort." I have longed to see his promise made

good,--"_we shall never be such fools_ as to call in an enemy to

the substance of any system, to remove its corruptions, to supply

its defects, or to perfect its construction." I read _The Times_,

but as yet I have looked in vain. A few honest remonstrances have

indeed been ventured amid cries of _oh, oh!_ and vociferations of

buck-toothed laughter from the benches that support the honourable

members from Cottonburgh and Calicopolis. But who has stood up as

for altars and fires? I hope, ere this reaches you, the question

will be creditably answered. I hope the Christianity of England will

not die without a struggle. I suspect it will be of no use, but I

look yet for some John of Gaunt in the House of Lords. Imagine him,

my Basil:--

"This sceptred isle,

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,

Renownèd for her deeds as far from home

(For _Christian service_ and _true chivalry_)

As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry

Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son;

This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,

_Dear for her reputation through the world,

Is now--paun'd out to Jews!_"

This is what ought to be said; and I look for it, if not from lords

spiritual, then even from lords temporal. But surely it would well

become the primate's mouth! Of course, it would do little good; but

then the religion of England would fall at least dramatically. It

would make a picture quite as good as the death of Chatham. Do you

remember the lawn-sleeves in that picture? The bishops are "in at

the death,"--but nothing more.

But another steamer has come in with news; and France is all the

talk. The elections are over; the _Modérés_ have triumphed; the

National Assembly has convened, and the Provisional Government is

at an end. _Vive Lamartine!_ Of course the stock of the republic

takes a rise, but holders are not firm. The bloodshed at Rouen,

the _émeutes_ at Elbœuf and Limoges, and the threats of the

_Communistes_, do not precisely inspire confidence. Still, we are

so far surprised, and those who have predicted favourably for

France grow a little more sanguine in their hopes. I am glad to

say that Louis Blanc has no sympathisers here. All are convinced

that Lamartine will make the best of it, and that, if he fails,

the republic will be suffocated and expire in a stench. For one,

it seems to me that Lamartine is not bad enough to encounter

successfully the frantic malice of his opponents, and that their

eventual success is certain. Already, things have very likely taken

a decisive turn, and by the time this letter reaches you, the doings

of the Assembly will have enabled you to conjecture whether the

nation is going by the long way, or the short cut, to Henry Fifth.

As all will be stale before you can read what I now write, I will

not presume to predict the immediate results; but I am sure that the

assembling of such a set as have been returned to the legislature,

would be enough to blow up the strongest government on earth.

Jew, Dominican, pastor and bishop, poet and butcher, all in their

tricoloured sashes--was there ever such a full-blown tulip-bed of

liberty, equality, and fraternity!

The announcement of several clergymen as members of the Assembly

reminds me that there has been some sickly sentiment among us,

about the _piety_ that has been displayed in this revolution.

In Boston we are favoured with some strange types of religions

enthusiasm; in fact, the type of Christianity that prevails among

us is peculiarly our own; and like our improvements in machinery,

deserves the proverbial name of a "Boston notion." Emerson, who is

now illuminating England, may give you some idea of what I mean;

and a queer story that is told of one of his disciples, may furnish

you with an explanation of the fact, that some men see religion

in the sacking of the Tuileries. The youth was at the Opera to

see a celebrated _danseuse_, and excited general attention by his

somewhat extraordinary applause. His enthusiasm so transported

him, that the emotions of his heart became unconsciously audible.

As the dancer began to whirl, he cried, "_Ah, that is poetry!_" As

she stretched her toe to the horizontal, he exclaimed, "_That's

divinity!_" but when she proceeded to an evolution that forced

the ladies to pay attention to their fans, he burst into the

climax--"_That's religion!_" If this be caricature, the Emersonians

richly deserve it. They are laughed at even in Boston. But they

are not alone in thinking well of the piety of Paris, and arguing

from it that there will be no reign of terror; as if there was not

vastly more show of religion in the first revolution! If there is

an archbishop of Paris now, there was formerly a Talleyrand for

high-priest and master of ceremonies. Oh, but they rejoin with a

story! When the blouses were gutting the palace of its pictures

and marbles, they found, among other works of art, an image of the

Crucified. As a blouseman was about to dash it to atoms, there was a

cry, "Save it--save the great teacher of fraternity!" The crucifix

was accordingly saved, and borne about the streets amid songs and

curses, and, very appropriately, "with lanterns and torches."

"_Ah, that's religion!_" says your Emersonian. So, when recreant

priests baptise a liberty-pole, or join a procession of blouses,

with crosses and censers, _that's divinity_, at least. Was ever

hypocrisy so revolting! The nauseous mockery has its only parallel

in the writings of George Sand, who makes a favourite hero and

heroine betake themselves to an adulterous bed, after duly reciting

their prayers, in which the absent husband is very affectionately

remembered. If a revolution thus begun is not destined to go

speedily through all the ripening and rotting of a godless anarchy,

it is to be accounted for only on the principle that "He who is

Eternal can wait." The old scene at Notre Dame may not be actually

revived, and the Bible may not be literally dragged through Paris

again tied to an ass's tail; but the undisguised atrocities of the

first revolution may, after all, be exceeded by the smooth-faced

blasphemies of that which has already degraded the world's Redeemer

into the patron saint of insurrection, and the father of infidel

fraternity.

Poor Lamartine! Is this the man, my Basil, whom you once likened to

Chateaubriand? _Quantum mutatus!_ I knew him, till lately, only as a

poet and a traveller. He certainly went to Palestine with the spirit

of a palmer. He bathed in Siloa with enthusiasm, and almost expired

of feeling under the venerable olive-trees of Gethsemane.

How Frenchy--how intensely French! mass in the morning, and weeping

and sighing,--a revel before nightfall, and desperate gaming. And

this man to be the Cromwell of the commonwealth? He could hardly

have been the Milton, though it would have been more becoming. And

what will be his career? It is a pity Lady Hester Stanhope was not

permitted to consult his stars in full when he met her on Mount

Lebanon, when she praised his handsome foot and arched instep,

and told him he should be very important in the history of the

world. Ah, how certainly he will yet lament, if he does not lament

already, the fulfilment of the oracle! Such weird sisters as Lady

Hester generally tell _only half_, leaving the rest to imagination

and to time. But whether this Phaeton, who has grasped the reins,

is to set the world on fire; whether he, in turn, is only to try

the game of Humpty-Dumpty and to fall; or whether, even as I write

this, he be not already under the foot of Louis Blanc and his

_Communistes_,--what probabilities or improbabilities shall aid my

conjecture? This thing only will I venture as my surmise, though not

my hope, that kings shall reign again in France, as if Lamartine

never lived: that tricoloured cockades shall be made no more, and

lilies be cultivated again: that there will soon be longings for a

sight of the _drapeau blanc_, and a prince of the sons of St Louis:

and that, fat as he is, and Bourbon as he is, and half Austrian as

he has made himself, Henry Duke of Bordeaux will soon be known as

HENRI LE DÉSIRÉ.

Yours ever, my dear Basil,

ERNEST.

THE CAXTONS--PART IV.