TOO LATE.
On a bright morning of the following May, the stroke of the
wood-cutter’s axe had resounded through Fergusson’s woods from day-break
till the sun was high. More than one fine young tree which had shaken
off the gathered dews at the first greeting of the morning light, now
lay prostrate, no more to be refreshed by midnight dews, no more to
uprear its leafy top in the early sunshine. Such seemed to meet with
little pity in their fall. The very men whose hands had felled them sat
down on their horizontal trunks, and kicked the bark with their clownish
heels, while they munched their bread and cheese. Children dropped into
the green recess from all quarters, to pluck oak boughs and leaves from
the fallen stem, wherewith to ornament their hats, and lead a procession
to the neighbouring Whit Monday fair. These trees should have flourished
twenty, fifty, seventy years longer, if the affairs of their owner had
gone on in a steady and natural course. When Mr. Fergusson had walked
round his plantations to see these oaks put into the ground, his
thoughts had glanced forward to the time when his descendants might give
a last mournful look at the doomed trees, towering stately before their
fall; and now he was compelled himself to sentence them to the axe
before they had attained nearly the fullness of their massive growth.
Frequent and sudden losses during the last few months, and the prospect
of more had obliged Mr. Fergusson to collect all his resources, or
surrender some of his domestic plans. He must sacrifice either a portion
of his woods or the completion of the new buildings at the Abbey. His
oaks must be felled, or his sons give up some of the advantages of
education that he had promised them. It was found impossible to collect
two-thirds of the rent due to him; and the condition of his farms
foretold too plainly that further deficiencies would ensue. Poppies
flourished more luxuriantly than ever this season among the
thin-springing corn in Anderson’s new fields. The sheep had returned to
their old haunts, and could not be kept out by the untended walls and
ricketty gates which reminded the passenger of the field of the
slothful. When Mr. Fergusson was disposed to stop in his walks for
purposes of meditation, he could hardly choose his station better than
within sight of one of Anderson’s enclosures when any rapacious sheep
happened to covet what was within. It was a sight of monotony to behold
one sheep after another follow the adventurous one, each in turn placing
its fore-feet on the breach in the fence, bringing up its hind legs
after it, looking around for an instant from the summit, and then making
the plunge into the dry ditch, tufted with locks of wool. The process
might have been more composing if the field had been another man’s
property, or if the flock had been making its way out instead of in; but
the recollection of the scene of transit served to send the landowner to
sleep more than once, when occurring at the end of the train of anxious
thoughts which had kept him awake. There was little sleepiness, however,
in the tone with which he called his tenant to account for letting his
property thus go to destruction. Mr. Fergusson was as near losing his
temper as he ever was, when he pointed out to Anderson a ditch here that
was choked up in one part and overflowing in another; a gate, whose
stuffing of briars was proved a mockery by the meddling children who had
unhooked it from its lower hinge, and the groping swine which enlarged
the gap thus made; and the cattle-sheds, roofless and grass-grown, which
should be either pulled down or repaired. Anderson’s tone was also high,
as he declared that a half-ruined man could not keep his farm in as
thrifty a manner as a prosperous one; and that if, as soon as he began
to improve the property he held, his funds melted away beneath the
fluctuations of the corn-market, it was unreasonable to expect him to
spend his capital in repairs till he should see whether government would
or would not do something to protect agriculture from the consequences
of vicissitude. Fergusson thought it useless to wait, on this ground.
Government had been protecting agriculture for some hundreds of years,
and yet fluctuations there had always been, and fluctuations there would
always be, to judge by all experience. Anderson was not for this the
less resolved to let his roofless cow-sheds and crumbling fences stand,—
to be rebuilt if government should extend its protecting care,—to stand
as monuments, if agriculture should be neglected.
Monuments of what?—Anderson was a proud man, building for his own and
his family’s honour and glory when he was in prosperity, and finding
something to be proud of in adversity;—Anderson would therefore have
replied—‘monuments of injury.’ Injury from an act of government by which
the starving were rescued from destitution, and the oppressed allowed
one more chance of the redemption of their fortunes. That act which all
other classes received as one of tardy justice,—of absolute necessity,—
Anderson complained of as an act of injury to himself, so deep that he
left certain wrecks of his property to serve as tokens to a future race
of the wrongs he had suffered.
And the fortunes of Anderson _were_ injured,—and injured by the acts of
government, though not, as his wisest friends thought, so much by the
permission of importation as by the preceding restrictions. They rightly
called his wrecks and ruins monuments of his ill-luck in speculation, as
their poorer neighbours called them monuments of the injustice done to
the productive classes by encouraging or compelling the disadvantageous
investment of capital. Both parties were right: but Anderson was induced
to speculate by acts of protection which failed in the proof; and the
disadvantageous application of capital, originating in the same acts,
issued in disaster to all parties. If the interests of Anderson were
placed in apparent or real temporary opposition to those of his
neighbours, the blame rested, not with him, but with the legislation
which had interfered to derange the natural harmonies of social
interests; which had impaired the loyalty and embittered the spirits of
artizans, curtailed the usefulness and enjoyments of manufacturers,
puffed up the farmer with the pride, first of ostentation and then of
injury, and compelled the landowner to lay low his young woods before
they had attained half their growth.
There was but little prospect of improvement in Anderson’s affairs for a
long time to come. There had been enormous importations of corn during
the winter,—importations which in the end proved as ruinous to the
corn-dealer as to the farmer at home. The bargain with foreign
corn-growers having been made in a panic was agreed upon at a panic
price. The foreigners had naturally laid heavy duties on corn, both
because it was known how much the English wanted food, and because what
they bought was not a surplus regularly grown for sale, but a part of
the stock of the countries they bought of. In the midst of a panic, and
in entire uncertainty how long the ports might be open, the corn
importers could not possibly calculate how much would be wanted, any
more than the people ascertain how much was brought in. While all were
thus in the dark, prices fell in the home market, till wheat which sold
at all sold at 50_s._ per quarter, and much was left which was not even
bid for. The importer’s foreign debts must, however, be paid. He was
unwilling to warehouse his wheat, because there was promise of a fine
home harvest for this year, and the perishable nature of his commodity
rendered it unwise for him to store it against some future contingency.
The only thing for him to do, therefore, was to obtain a drawback on
what he had imported, and to export it at a lower price than he had paid
for it, pronouncing himself and every body else a fool that had entered
upon so ruinous a branch of commerce.
This resource of exportation would fail in Anderson’s case, if his
harvest should prove never so flourishing. The high average price at
home, caused by dependence on home growth, disables the home producer
for competition in a foreign market, even if the uncertainty of a sale
attending so irregular a commerce did not deter him from the attempt. A
capricious demand abroad is the necessary consequence of alternate
monopoly and relaxation at home; and when to this uncertainty is added
the impediment of a higher average price, and the disadvantage of the
known desire of the seller to sell, so small a chance of remuneration is
left, that Anderson could not look with any confidence to this mode of
disposing of the superabundance of his next crop. No great increase of
demand at home was to be expected in the course of one season, as people
cannot eat much more bread immediately because there happens to be a
good supply, however certain an ultimate increase of demand may be, as
the consequence of a single fruitful year. All that Anderson could look
forward to, therefore, was waiting in hope of future temporary high
prices, unless, indeed, all parties should grow so wise as to agree upon
a freedom of trade which should secure permanent good profits to the
farmers. Meantime, as capital invested in agricultural improvements is
much less easily withdrawn and converted to other purposes than capital
applied in manufactures, it was but too probable that the profits of
Anderson’s prosperous years were buried in useless drains and fences,
and in stony soils, while he was burdened with an increased rent and a
family now accustomed to a lavish expenditure. It was to be feared that
more of Fergusson’s young oaks must be brought low to supply the
deficiencies of the tenant’s half-yearly payments to his landlord.
The woodmen who sat on the fallen trunks thought little, while enjoying
their meal and their joke, of all that was included in the fact of these
trees having fallen.
Some talked of the work done and to be done this day. Others had
thoughts at liberty for the fair to which so many persons within view
were hastening; and yet others had eyes wherewith to look beyond the
green slope where they were sitting, and to mark signs of the times in
whatever they saw;—the whirling mill, with one or two additional
powdered persons on the steps, or appearing at the windows;—the
multiplication of the smokes of Sheffield;—the laden lighters below
Kirkland’s granaries;—Anderson’s fields, waving green before the
breeze;—sheep and cows grazing where there was to have been corn;—and,
above all, Chatham taking his way to the accustomed quarry, in a very
unaccustomed manner.
“Do look at that fellow, walking as if he was mazed,” said Jack to Hal.
“He is not like one bound for the fair. He is on his way to work,
seemingly; but what a lagging step for one going to his work!”
“Don’t you see ’tis Chatham?”
“No more like Chatham than you. And yet it is,—yes,—that it is! You may
know by the way his arm is stuck in his side. But that is not the gait
Chatham used to have.”
“No, because he never took such a queer walk before. Don’t you know he
has been between four walls all these many months, and has but just got
out? I have heard a man say that knew well, that the blue sky is a new
sky when you have been shut out from it for a long while: and the grass
seems really alive; and as for such boughs as this that dance in the
wind, you could almost think they were going to speak to you.”
“Chatham seems to be fancying some such thing, he pays so little heed.
If he is not going to pass without seeing us!—without once looking up
into the wood! His thoughts are all in the middle of the vale. I’ll step
down, and have a chat with him.”
Before the last mouthful was stuffed into the mouth of the speaker,
however, in preparation for descending to the road, livelier sounds than
any that it was in his power to make, roused Chatham from his reverie. A
train of little boys and girls, who had disappeared a few minutes
before, issued from the neighbouring sawpit, and from behind the piles
of planks which lay around, their hats and bonnets stuck round with
oak-leaves, and their procession of boughs arranged in boy and girl
style. As each one scrambled out of the pit, there was a shout; as they
ranged themselves, there was more shouting; and as they marched down the
green slope on their way to the fair, there was the most shouting of
all.
“I don’t think Chatham seems to relish his walk so much as you thought
for,” said Jack to Hal. “He looks mighty melancholy.”
“What! laughing at the brats. And look! he is nodding to one and
another.”
“Melancholy enough, for all that. For such a fine-made man, he is a
hollow-faced, poor-looking fellow.”
“Just now. When he has been three months at his work, you will see the
difference.”
“It is a lucky thing for him to have stepped into his work so naturally,
as if he had only left it just from Saturday night till Monday morning.
That is more than happens to many men who have been in prison. There was
Joe Wilson never got the better of it, though he was only in a month.
Not a stroke more of work did he get.”
“Because his was for stealing, and nobody could trust him afterwards. In
Chatham’s case, no one thinks he did or meant any harm, considering what
the pressure of the times was. And if the masters believed that he had
really broken the law, they would have had no objection to take him on
again, in consideration of the cause, which they view as in some measure
their own, against the farmers and landlords. Chatham is pretty sure of
work at all times; but if he had been the worst workman in all
Yorkshire, he would have had plenty of masters courting him for having
been punished for helping to bring in corn. It pleases him best,
however, to be going back to his old perch, so as to get the matter
dropped as soon as possible.”
“Ay, ay, for more reasons than one.”
“Not only for the sake of Mary Kay, but because the mischief that he
wanted to set right is over. It cannot be said now that our people
hereabouts want bread; and so the sooner all ill-will is forgotten, the
better. Hoy, oy! how does your dame get you such a wedge of cold meat as
that? She must be a thriftier body than mine.”
“No thrift in the world served to get me cold meat six months ago; but
times have changed since; and, as my wife says, it is mortal hard work I
have to do here.”
“Mortal hard work,—swinging your heels, and looking at people going to
the fair! Mine is as toilsome as yours, neighbour; and yet I have only a
lump of hard cheese with my bread, while droves and droves of bullocks
and sheep are passing within sight to the fair, making one think of
mottled beef and juicy mutton. I wonder when the day will come for the
working man to have his fill of meat, like him that does not work.”
“Chatham will tell you the very day;—whenever this vale, and all our
other vales, are portioned out for the purposes they are most fit for,—
the choice parts for corn, and the meadows for pasture, and the heights
for sheep-walks, and so on; instead of our insisting on growing wheat at
all costs, and so preventing our having as much meat and cheese and
butter and milk as we should like. If we could get our corn where we
please, we should soon find other food growing more plentiful.”
“And a few things besides food. I suppose the Leeds men would take off
all the wool we could grow?”
“Yes; and without bating an ounce of what they get already from abroad;
for where we get corn, there we must carry cloth, among other things.”
“And then we must get more houses run up for our new weavers. By the
way, if our landlords let more land to be built upon, that would fully
make up for any difference from the fields being turned back into
sheep-walks.”
“And with a much better chance of the rents being paid regularly for ten
years together;—which is no small consideration to such men as Fergusson
just now. There’s Chatham walking away without speaking to one of us.
Call him; your voice is loudest. Well done! You make the very cows turn
and low at us. He won’t come. How he points towards his work, as much as
to tell us we ought to be going to ours! All in good time, friend
Chatham. We have not been shut up for months, with our hands before us,
like you.”
“Nor yet been much busier than he, for that matter. ’Tis a pity this
fair did not fall on our idle time. There go the folks in a train, while
we are dawdling here——”
“Then don’t let us dawdle. Off with you, children! We are going to lop
the branches, and you may chance to get an ugly cut if you don’t keep
clear of the hatchet. Come, neighbour.”
“In a minute, neighbour. Bless us! look at that monkey, down in the
road! How the creature dances, like any Christian! And the music sounds
prettily, does not it? I am just like a child for wanting to be off to
the fair. Who is that rogue of a boy plaguing the beast? I think it is
John Kay.”
“Not it. John is in your predicament,—can’t go to the fair till night.
It does seem hard to keep so young a lad sweating among those furnaces
all the week, and on a holyday especially; but he is proud of being on
full work, like a man, and left with the few in charge of the furnaces;
and they say his parents have comfort of him, in respect of his carrying
home his wages.”
“That is very well; for they want all they can get, while that poor
woman goes on pining as she does. She has got very feeble lately.”
“And well she may, taking nothing stronger than tea, after having lived
so differently. She made the change suddenly too. ’Tis not six weeks
since I saw her as bad as she ever was,—trying to reach home.”
“Ay; after striving and striving all the winter to get the better of it,
poor soul! But that falling back seemed to be the finishing of her. She
has never held up her head since, nor ever will, in my opinion, though
she has more reason to hold up her head than for these five years past;
as they say her family are for ever trying to make her think.”
“Poor Kay finds full work and cheap food come too late for him; for
whatever fails to do his wife good brings little comfort to him. For all
he used to do in the way of light words and silly fun, he has made a
good husband; and no man can be more down-hearted than he is to see his
wife in this way. No: that is not his boy John below. He would not let
him be abroad plaguing monkeys when he may be called for any minute to
see his mother die.——Bravo, boy, whoever you be! Little John Kay could
not have done the thing more cleverly.”
“There runs the monkey! Look ye! Through the gap! over the slope in no
time! He will be up in the tree before they can catch him. Did you ever
see man in such a passion as his master? I don’t wonder, having got
within a mile of the fair, and full late too.”
“Ah! but you missed seeing how the lad slipped the chain the very moment
the man beat the poor animal over the nose. Trust the beast for running
away at the first hint! A fine time it will take to get him back again!”
“Look at his red jacket, showing so unnatural on the tree top! Down he
comes again. No, not he! it is only to get farther out on the branch.”
“That is a marked tree that he is upon. Suppose we cut it down next. It
joins no other, and monkey must come down with it or without it.”
The harassed owner of the monkey received this proposal as a very bright
thought. The monkey seemed to be of the same opinion, though not so
fully approving of the idea. He chattered, screamed, whisked the skirts
of his red coat, and clapped his paws together as he saw the workmen
gathering round the tree with shouts, leaving neglected nice bits of
food which monkey would fain have had the benefit of, and shaking their
tools at him in token of what he had shortly to expect.
At the first shock, monkey became perfectly quiet, squatting with his
fore paws clapped together, and looking down, like an amateur observer,
on the progress of the work. In proportion as there was any movement
below, he descended a little way, to look into the matter more closely,
and then returned to his place on the fork of the branch. By the time it
began to totter, a new ecstacy seemed to seize the beast. Again he
mounted to the topmost bough that was strong enough to bear his weight;
and when there, he again jabbered and screamed. Some thought this was
terror at his approaching downfall, and others took it for delight at
seeing the circle divide to leave room for the tree to fall. The master,
however, believed that he saw some object which excited him on the road,
which was hidden by the trees from less exalted spectators.
The master was right. There was a crowd gathering at a short distance,
as was shortly made known by the busy hum which came upon the ears of
those who were standing among the trees on the slope. From end to end of
England was such a tumult of many voices heard when the news arrived
which caused the present assemblage. The agricultural districts took it
very quietly, to be sure; but the manufacturing towns and villages were
all in a ferment throughout the island. Meetings were convened at the
moment of the arrival of the newspapers; and while manufacturers
assembled in town halls, or addressed the people from the balconies of
inn-windows, workmen of all classes met on the green, in the wood, about
the public house, or wherever they could most numerously collect, for
the purpose of declaring their opinions to the government.
The intelligence which caused all this bustle related to what the House
of Commons had been doing and planning about the corn-laws—a House of
Commons which had the year before barely managed to retain the
confidence of the manufacturing classes by throwing out the suggestion
of a Committee of its own, that the prices to which corn must arrive at
home before importation was permitted should be very much raised. A
proposal like this, made at a time when the home price was at least
112_s._ per quarter, showed so determined an intention on the part of
the proposers to render their country wholly self-dependent in the
article of food, (_i. e._ to limit the population and wealth of the
country to a certain bound, which should be agreeable to the
landowners,) that the only chance the House of Commons had of preserving
the allegiance of the bulk of the people was by rejecting the proposal;
and the proposal had been accordingly rejected. The watchfulness of the
people had not, however, been lulled. Their subsequent brief enjoyment
of cheap food had strengthened their vigilance over the operations of
the Commons’ House; and they were the more intent as they knew that the
landowners were suffering cruelly from the reduction of their rents and
the deterioration of their estates; and that these landlords would
probably attribute their losses to the late admission of foreign corn,
rather than to the true cause,—the previous system of restriction. The
event proved such vigilance to be very needful. The late fall of prices
had disclosed an appalling prospect to the owners of land. They found
that their extraordinary methods of legislation had exposed their
country to a much more extensive dependence on foreign supplies than
they had attempted to obviate, and that they had been working hard to
reduce their own rents, and hurt their own estates, by the very means
they had taken to enrich themselves. During such a remarkably fruitful
season as the present (the natural follower of several bad seasons) the
supply would be so plentiful as to cause the poorer soils to be thrown
back into pasturage, the demand meantime increasing (as it had been for
some time increasing) up to the maximum supply; so that on the first
occurrence of a merely average season, the nation would be more
dependent on a foreign supply than it had ever been before. Under this
panic, the House voted a series of resolutions, declaring it expedient
to let exportation alone, and to impose very high duties on importation.
The news of the passing of these resolutions, and of the preparation of
two bills founded upon them, was that which stirred up all England to
remonstrance, and occasioned the Yorkshire graziers to leave their
droves in the fair, and the corn-dealers to quit their resort in the
market, to hear what would be said by the manufacturers who came forth
from their desks, the artificers who poured in from the enjoyment of
their holyday, and the country labourers who dropped down from among the
hills, or converged to the point of meeting from the wide-spreading
fields.
The day being warm and the road dusty, it was natural that the sounds of
the wood-cutters’ labour should suggest to the gathering crowd the idea
of meeting on the grass, in the outskirts of Fergusson’s wood. Mr.
Fergusson and his sons were found in the fair, and they gave permission,
and promised to come presently and hear what was going on. Chatham was
met on the road, just about to turn up towards the quarry; but he was
easily persuaded to go back and help; and the whole party was
approaching when Monkey offered them his uncouth welcome from the top of
the tree.
This tree was left slanting to its fall when the people began to pour in
from the road, and to possess themselves of the trunks which lay about,
in order to pile them into a sort of hustings. The organ-man could find
no one to assist him in catching his monkey, in case the rogue should
vouchsafe to descend from his high place. Nobody could attend to the
monkey now; and if he chose to run off from one side of the tree while
his master was at the other, and lead the chase as far as Sheffield, he
might, for any thing the woodmen seemed to care. Flinging down their
tools, or resting them against their shoulders, they threw themselves
along on the carpet of wild anemones which stretched beneath the trees;
while the more restless mechanics flitted about among the stems,
looking, with their smutted faces and leathern aprons, very unnatural
inhabitants of such a place. Long after Chatham and others began to
enlarge upon the matter which had brought them together, the frowning
brows and eager gesticulations of these men, as they talked low with one
another, showed that they had their own thoughts, and were not met
merely to have notions put into their heads.
“Is it possible to mistake what these men are thinking and feeling?”
asked Chatham of Mr. Fergusson. “If the House of Commons could for once
take their sitting here, with the Speaker on yon bit of grey rock, and
the members on these trunks or on the flowery ground, like the Indians
when they hold a council, they would legislate for these listeners after
another fashion than they now do.”
“Why so? I see, as well as you, that these men are thinking and feeling
strongly; but are they thinking that which should change the policy of a
nation?”
“That which will change the policy of a nation, though not so soon as if
the National Council could for once come here to legislate. Friends!” he
said to some near him, whose sudden silence called the attention of
others beyond them,—“I am telling this gentleman that I believe there is
one thought in the minds of us all, though that thought might be spoken
in many ways. One might say, that he felt himself injured by the high
price of bread last year, and another by the falling off of work—one
might point to the grave of his spirit-broken brother, and another hold
up before us his pining child—one might be angry with our masters for
altering our wages, so that we never know what to depend upon, and
another may be grieved that Anderson should have sharpened his speech,
and that Mr. Fergusson should come among us with so grave a countenance
as this; but there is one plain thought at the bottom of all this,—that
the prime necessary of life is the last thing that should be taxed. I
should not wonder if Mr. Fergusson himself agrees with us there.”
“It depends upon what the object of the tax is,” replied Mr. Fergusson.
“If the corn-tax be laid on to swell the revenue of the state, I grant
that it is the very worst that could be imposed; because, while it
presses so heavily on all as to cramp immeasurably the resources of the
nation, it presses most on those who have little but the prime necessary
of life, and the harder in proportion as they possess little else.”
“In what case will you then justify a corn-tax?”
“When it is laid on to balance an excess of taxes laid on the
agriculturists over those laid on other classes.”
A confusion of voices here arose, in cries of—
“We will take them on ourselves!”
“You and yours shall live duty-free, if you give us corn free.”
“We pay your taxes many times over already.”
“I will work one day in the week for you for nothing but a free corn
trade.”
“I will give you a share of my wages every Saturday night, and my vote,
if you’ll go up to Parliament, and speak our minds there.”
And many a black hand was held out to see if Mr. Fergusson would say
“Done.” He did not quite say this, but he went on,—
“I am sure I can have no objection to a change in our system; for I have
suffered as well as you.”
“Ay, and you would make it up by having corn dearer than ever,” cried
one of the discontented.
“No, I would not, because I am convinced that this would only bring on a
repetition of the same evils some time hence, and in an aggravated form.
I dread, as much as you can do, further fluctuations of this kind, which
have injured us all in turn. More bad seasons followed by plenty, with a
fickle legislation, and those of you who have pined will die; the
masters who have ceased to be rich will be ruined; the farmers who have
now buried some of their capital will find that they have got back a
part only to lose the whole; and, as for me and mine, I should expect
the gates that are now unhinged to be broken up for fuel, and the stones
of my crumbling fences to be used for knocking me off my horse. If in
those days I should go abroad, it would be to rescue my life from your
rage, and not, as now, to economise the income which I can no longer
spend among you. No, no; we must have no more mismanagement like that
which has well nigh ruined us all.”
“What does he mean? Where is he going? Won’t he live at the Abbey any
more?” were the questions which went round, and caught Mr. Fergusson’s
ear.
“I told you,” he said, “that we had all suffered in turn, though I am
far from pretending that we have suffered equally. I assure you that I
spend many an anxious day, and many a sleepless night, in planning how I
may fulfil all my engagements as a member of society, and keep my
promises to my children. These engagements were made when I was
prosperous; and now I am no longer prosperous. My steward comes to me
every quarter-day with a smaller handful of receipts, and a longer bill
of arrears; and wherever I turn, I see with my own eyes, and find many
comforters to tell me, that my property is wasting for want of care, and
that I must sustain great losses hereafter for want of a small
expenditure which cannot be afforded now. If I or my tenants could just
spare a hundred pounds here, and fifty there, and two hundred somewhere
else, it would save me a thousand or two that will have to be spent at
last. But it cannot be done. My sons are entering upon a new stage of a
very expensive but necessary education; and though my daughters have
given up their usual journey to London, I have no hundreds to spare. My
tenants cannot scrape their rent together, and it is folly to ask them
for their fifties.”
“The papers say you have lowered your rents.”
“It is true that I have; and I am sorry the papers take upon themselves
to praise me for it as for an act of generosity. You all know now that I
cannot get my full rents, so that I do not in fact give up any thing
that I might have; and I consider it no more than justice to reduce the
claims which I made when the farmers were in very different
circumstances from those in which they are at present placed. I have no
objection to the newspapers stating the fact, because it may lead others
to follow my example, and may afford a useful lesson to all; but I do
object to the act being lauded as one of generosity, as much as I should
to the House of Commons being praised for giving up the bills now in
question, in case the whole nation should prove to be of your mind about
them.”
“Very fair! very good! Spoken like one of the people!”
“I am one of the people,—taxed as one of the people, I assure you,”
continued Mr. Fergusson. “You offer,—very sincerely, I have no doubt,—to
take the taxes of the landowners upon yourselves, in return for a free
trade in corn. But you know perfectly well that such an arrangement
cannot be made, even if we chose to accept your kind offer.”
“Why not? What prevents, if we are all of a mind?”
Chatham thought that it would take so long to bring all people into one
mind on the point that it would be a quicker and probably equally good
method to allow such a duty on imported corn as would cover the
landlords’ peculiar liabilities. A small duty,—at the most 5_s._ or
6_s._ per quarter,—would be found sufficient, he believed, at the
beginning; and such a duty as this would not materially impede
importation. Under such a system of regular supply, pauperism would
decrease, or ought to decrease, year by year; this would lessen the
burdens of the agriculturist, and open the way for a further reduction
of the duty, which should expire when that equalization of taxation
should take place which must arrive as nations grow wiser.
“Without committing myself as to the amount of duty,” replied Mr.
Fergusson, “I may say that I should not object to some such plan as
Chatham proposes: and I would insist that the duty should, above all
things, be fixed. If a duty is imposed on the basis of the distresses of
the country, it may be right enough that it should be graduated, the
duty lessening as prices rise: but in the case of such a duty as Chatham
advocates,—a mere set-off against our excess of taxation,—it should be
so far fixed as that every one might know beforehand how it would
operate, and all classes be able to make their calculations.”
“Why, yes,” said Chatham. “If any corn-tax is, generally speaking, bad,
none can be so bad as one that makes twice as much uncertainty as there
is occasion for. To impose a duty on the basis, as you say, sir, of the
distresses of the country, seems an odd way of raising money for the
state; and to make such a duty a gambling matter seems to me more odd
still. In the case of such a graduated duty as you speak of, falling as
home prices rise, the corn-dealer’s business becomes an affair of
gambling speculation. He sends for corn when wheat is at one price, and
brings it in when wheat is at another. If the price has fallen, he has
so much more duty to pay that the speculation may ruin him. If the price
has risen, he may make enormous profits that he did not expect. I may
say this much for the corn-dealer, as Kirkland is not here to speak for
himself, that he had much rather pay a constant duty which would leave
him no uncertainties to manage but the supplies of corn at home and
abroad, than take the chance of enormous occasional profits at the risk
of ruinous occasional loss.”
“Ay, Chatham: there you come to a very important part of the question,—
the uncertainty of supply. If you can answer for our having a regular
and unfailing supply of food from abroad, when we have too little for
our people at home, you can answer for more than the House of Commons
can; for they adopt as their principle the safety of lessening our
dependence on foreign countries for food.”
“When they can answer for our having a regular and constantly increasing
supply at home,” replied Chatham, “I may perhaps yield the question to
them. When you can find any member of their committee who will tell me,
at any seed-time, what will be the produce of an average sowing, I will
consent to his making the nation depend on that produce. When you can
bring me proof that the rich harvests of one district are not of use in
repairing the deficiencies of a less favoured district, I will own it to
be as safe to depend for supply on our own little island as on the
collective corn districts of the globe. When you can convince me that we
buy as advantageously by fits and starts as under a system of regular
commerce, I will grant that regularly importing countries have not the
steadiest market.”
A listener observed that Kirkland had lately said, in reference to his
having had to hunt up corn abroad during the scarcity, that there was a
difference of ten per cent. between “Will you sell?” and “Will you buy?”
“Kirkland learned that saying from a greater man than any of us,”
observed Mr. Fergusson. “It was Franklin who said that true saying. But
there are other uncertainties to be considered, besides the variations
of the seasons. Clouds gather over men’s tempers as well as over the
face of the sky. Tempests of passion sweep away the fruits sown between
nations in a season of promise. Springs of kindness are dried up, as
well as fountains of waters. We have not considered the risks of war.”
“Indeed but we have, sir,” replied Chatham, “and we come to the
conclusion that when we are at war with all the nations whom God has
blessed with his sunshine and his rain, we shall not deserve to touch
God’s bounties, and it will be high time that we should be starved off
God’s earth. If we wanted to restrict our own trade, sir, instead of
throwing it open,—if we wanted to forbid our merchants buying of more
than one or two countries, we might believe that war would bring
starvation; but never while our ships may touch at all ports that look
out upon the seas.”
“We do not grow half our own hemp,” said a man with a coil of tow about
his waist. “Has the British navy ever wanted for ropes? If our enemies
at sea ever meant to hurt us, their readiest way would have been to
stint us in cordage; and, since they have not done it during all this
war, it must be, I take it, because they can’t.”
“Certainly,” replied Chatham. “In cases like these, Mr. Fergusson, our
conclusions about the choice of an evil or a danger must be compounded
of the greatness and of the degree of probability. Now here is, under
the old restrictive system, a vast amount of certain evil, which you and
the House of Commons seem to think little of, in comparison with a much
greater evil which it is barely within the line of possibility to
happen. Here are present labourers who have had their spirits bowed and
their bodies worn by want, and who can look out from this green to the
spot where their kindred are laid under the sod, mown down by this sharp
law like meadow flowers under the scythe. Here are present the gentle
who have been made fierce, the once loyal who were made rebels,—ay, and
the proudly innocent who have been disgraced by captivity——”
While Chatham stopped for breath, one and another cried out to Mr.
Fergusson,
“If you think us rude in our speech to you, sir, you may lay it to the
bread-tax.” “Get the bread-tax taken off, and you will hear no more of
the midnight drill.” “Masters and men never would have quarrelled, sir,
but for the bread-tax.”
“From this place, you may see,” Chatham went on, “not only poppies
coming up instead of wheat, and stones strewed where lambs should have
been browsing, but hovels with mouldering thatch where there should have
been slated houses, and a waste wilderness stretching beyond where there
might have been the abodes of thousands of busy, prosperous beings; and
all through the pressure of restrictive law.”
“And where there is not a waste, there will soon be a deserted mansion,”
added Mr. Fergusson. “I told you I was going away. My sons must finish
their education abroad; and we all go together, that we may live within
our means in a manner that we could not do at home. This is one
consequence of the late fluctuations——”
“I can tell you, sir,” said Oliver, showing himself from behind a knot
of his own men,—“I can tell you another consequence that would have
happened if the late fluctuation had not taken place. If prices had not
fallen, and fallen just when they did, I must have gone abroad to live,
where I might work to some purpose,—where my capital might have been
employed in producing wealth, instead of being given to my workmen to
buy dear food. Moreover, if prices now rise again so as to make you
change your mind and stay, I must go; so it comes just to the question,
which of us can best be spared?”
“If it comes to that,” replied Mr. Fergusson, “it is clear that I can
best be spared. Without saying anything about our respective characters
and influence, it is plain that it signifies much less where I spend my
revenue, than whether you invest your capital at home or abroad. If it
must come to this, I am the one to go.”
“And what but a bad state of the law could have brought the matter to
this point?” said Chatham. “What greater curse need a nation have than a
legislation which condemns either the rent-receiver or the capitalist to
banishment?”
Oliver’s men proceeded to agree in whispers that he was not in earnest
about going abroad; that it was only said to make the landlord wonder,
and put the question in a strong light. A man must suffer much and long
before he would leave his own land, and the workmen that were used to
his ways, and all that he had ever been accustomed to.
“True,” said Oliver, overhearing their remarks; “and I have suffered
much and long. It is true that banishment is the last attempt that many
a man will make to improve his fortunes; but it is an attempt which must
and will be made, if the fortunes of our manufacturers continue to
decline. I know all that you can tell me about the hardship to the
workmen who are left behind to be soon driven into the workhouse. I feel
how I should grieve to turn you all off, and shut up my foundry; but it
is one of the natural consequences of a legislation like that which we
have lived under. If our manufactures remain unsold on account of the
cost of feeding the labourers, it is certain that the manufacturers will
carry their capital,—the subsistence-fund of the people,—to some cheaper
land.”
And how much was it supposed that the price of wheat would fall if the
ports were opened? was the question proposed by the workmen, in their
alarm at the idea of manufacturing capital being forced out of the
country.
Six, seven, eight, or, at most, nine shillings, was the utmost fall, on
the average of the last ten years, anticipated by Chatham, Oliver, and
Fergusson,—a fall which, accompanied as it would be with regularity of
supply, and freedom from panic and from the intolerable sense of
oppression, would prove an all-important relief to the manufacturer and
artisan, without doing the landlord and farmer any injury. Such a fall
as this would drive out of cultivation none but the poorest soils, which
ought never to have passed under the plough; there would be an end of
the farmer’s sufferings from vicissitude; and the small reduction of the
landlords’ rents would be much more than compensated by the advantages
which must accrue to them from the growth of a thriving population
within their borders.
Chatham observed that many might object to the estimate just given of
the probable fall of price on opening the ports,—and it was indeed a
matter which required large observation and close calculation; but he,
for one, was not disposed to rest the question on probabilities of this
nature, but rather on the dilemma,—“If the price of corn is heightened
by a restrictive system, why should the nation be taxed for the sake of
the landlords? if not,—why do the landlords fear a free trade in corn?”
“There is yet another consideration,” observed Mr. Fergusson, “and a
very important one, Chatham. You have said nothing of Ireland, while the
fact is that Ireland sends us three times as much corn as she sent us
ten years ago. There seems no reason why so fertile a country should not
supply us with more and more till our prices fall the nine shillings per
quarter we were talking, and even till we are able to export. What do
you say to this?”
“That it is owing to the establishment of a free trade in corn between
us and Ireland that we employ so much more than formerly of her
industry, and enjoy so much more of its fruits. What has been proved so
great a good in the experiment with one country, is the finest possible
encouragement to extend the system to all. If you object, as I see you
are ready to do, that this success with respect to Ireland renders a
further emancipation of the trade unnecessary, I answer, that the
corn-laws are by the same rule unnecessary,—an unnecessary mockery and
irritation of the people. If they are not yet unnecessary because
Ireland does not yet fully supply us,—in exact proportion as they are
not unnecessary, they are hurtful. From this dilemma, Mr. Fergusson, you
cannot escape, and you had best help us to press it upon the House of
Commons. If you will join us, sir, in drawing up our address to
Parliament on the principles we have been arguing about for this hour
past, I rather think we ourselves may find, and may help to show the
House, that landowners and their neighbours have the same interests, and
are willing to be all happy together, if the legislature will let them.
Whenever we see a wealthy and wise landowner taking up the question on
its broad principles, and addressing the legislature, whether from his
seat in the Lords or by petition to the Commons, as a citizen rather
than as one of a protected class, I shall feel a joyful confidence that
these broad principles will soon be recognized and acted upon by the
loftiest members of the state.”
“It is time,” replied a voice from below, “for they have long been
forced upon the lowliest.”
“This is one of the deep things that is better understood by many an one
that has never learned his letters than by some who are boasted of for
their scholarship,” observed another. “Wakeful nights and days of
hardship drive some truths deep and firm into the minds of the veriest
fool, which the wise man, in his luxury, finds it difficult to learn.”
“You say truly enough that it is time,” said a third, with sternness in
his look and tone. “The charity comes too late which sticks bread
between the teeth of a famished man; and the justice we seek will be a
mockery if it does not come in time to prevent another such season of
misery as we have endured, and as they threaten us with again. Yet they
talk of playing the same game over again. Come, Chatham, make haste
down, and draw up what we are to say, and let us sign before the sun
goes down. We have not an hour to lose.”
“Not an hour to lose, as you say, neighbour, when for many it is already
too late. Mend the system as fast as you will, there is many and many a
home where there will never be comfort more.”
Several who were present knew that Chatham must be thinking of Kay’s
family when he said these words. He went on,
“You might as well hope to close up the clefts of yonder ash, and to
make it rich with growing grafts, struck as it was by last year’s
lightning, as to heal the spirit of a man whose fortunes have been
blighted by the curse of partial laws, and to repair his wrongs. For him
it is too late. He stands the monument of social tyranny till his last
hour of decay. For him it is too late; but not yet for others. There are
thousands yet in infancy,—millions yet to be born whose lot depends on
what is done with the corn-laws in our day.”
“Mine and that of my descendants does,” observed Oliver; “though, in one
sense, it is also too late for me. I have lost my place in the market
abroad; and for this my work-people are suffering and will suffer. But
let no chance of recovery be lost through our delay. Come, Chatham; let
us be gone, and give the people the opportunity of declaring their
wishes before they disperse, and fancy that, because dispersed, they
have no power. Let every man raise his voice so that the legislature may
understand.”
All present were so eager to do this that no leisure seemed to be left
for the follies which usually lurk in some corners of all popular
assemblies, from the largest to the smallest. No monkey tricks were
played by any but the monkey, though country clowns and many boys were
present. When the animal, after being well nigh given up in despair by
his irritated master, made a sudden descent on the head and shoulders of
a listener, he was very quietly delivered over to his owner to receive
the chastisement which was prepared for him, and which no one troubled
himself to turn round to witness. All were too busy watching Chatham
writing with a pencil, and on paper furnished by Mr. Fergusson, who sat
beside him on his woodland seat, now agreeing, now dissenting, but in no
case desiring to hinder the full execution of the object for which his
neighbours were assembled.
When a short petition to the Commons’ House against the imposition of
further restrictions on the foreign corn-trade had been drawn up, and
fully agreed to by a large majority, it was carried away with all
expedition to be copied and signed while the fair was yet thronged; and
the wood was found by the noonday sun nearly as quiet as when visited by
the midnight moon;—as nearly so as the blackbird and the linnet would
permit.