“We went up the river as slowly as if we had been set as a watchman

therein; and that because the seamen were tossed in spirit through fear

of the press gang, and would not work the vessel; insomuch that none but

a very old man and a young apprentice lad would go up with us to the

mighty city. The master was obliged to hire protected men, and to pay

them three pounds a piece to work us up, which being charged on the

articles we carried, caused our cargo to be of great value before it was

landed. It is wonderful to the discerning eye to perceive how small

things work out large ones;—how, from this single need of protected men,

there arises a tax upon coals to the inhabitants of London of much more

than a million of money. Nor was this the last hinderance. Some lighters

came about us, with willing men ready to empty our cargo upon the wharf.

Grace was written in the face of one of these men, and the master knew

him for an honest and a skilful youth. Yet it was not permitted to

employ him, though he would have performed the work for less than those

who came after him. These last were lightermen who had been apprentices,

and had wrought for seven years on the river. They charge 2_s._ for the

work which others would gladly have done for 8_d._ I never learned

before how far better men that have been apprentices are than other men.

I hope the citizens of London are duly aware of this truth, as they have

to pay so very dearly for it. But these favoured men use their favour in

a way which is not seemly,—persecuting and driving out those that would

also have boats and yield service. I much fear that as some of the elect

misuse their grace in divine things, those who are elected into

corporate bodies misuse the powers which were given them first, as means

of protection against the barons and rich men who used to oppress the

trading and working men in a very ungodly manner. These corporations are

now too much like those barons of old; for they oblige those who consume

to pay for the good of those who are privileged—him who burns coal, for

the great profit of the lighterman. It should not be forgotten that

another office of corporations was formerly, and is now said to be, to

warrant and verify the quality of whatever is sold; but it seems to me

that the best warrant is in the interest of him who produces, knowing

that there shall be no wings of favour under which he may take refuge;

and buyers who are fairly treated will be sure to verify for themselves.

Indeed the one thing which these unhallowed bodies seem now to make

their business—as they therein find their interest—is to entangle the

paths of trade to all others, while they keep a wide and smooth road to

themselves. This is plain to me in the particular of measuring the coal,

which, in old times, might not be done without the permission of the

Lord Mayor, and has always been since permitted as a profitable work to

the Corporation of London. A profitable work it is—no less than 8_d._ a

chaldron being the charge, out of which only 5_d._ goes to the labouring

meters, and the other 3_d._, mounting up to 20,000_l._ a year, goes into

the treasury of the extortioners. Verily the hire which is thus kept

back cries out, not in favour of the meters—for they are well paid—but

of the artizans who owe no such gratitude, in respect of measuring coal,

as that they should pay 20,000_l._ for it. Why, also, should they pay in

their use of coal for the improvements which the Corporation chooses to

make in the city? If money was thus raised to build up what the awful

judgment of fire had laid low, in the time of the profligate Charles,

why should it still be raised, without the choice of the citizens, who

must pay the orphan’s tax of 10_d._ a chaldron till 1838, to improve the

approaches to London Bridge? The citizens, I fancy, would much more

admire the improvement of having coals cheap, and would the more

willingly pay out of what they could better spare for the improvement of

their streets and bridges. It was marvellous indeed to see so common an

article as coal growing into importance as it ascended the river, and

after it was landed, so that it had gained in its passage from just

below London Bridge to the cellars of the houses, as much value again as

it cost altogether in the North. It was marvellous indeed to hear of all

the dues charged by the Corporation, considering that they have no more

natural business with the citizens’ coals than you or I;—the metage, the

orphans’ dues, the market dues, the Lord Mayor’s groundage, the grand

metage, the coal-whippers;—no wonder we see in London what strangers

from the north are surprised to see,—women stooping in their path to

pick up morsels of coal, and tradespeople measuring out a scanty measure

of fuel to their servants, while hundreds of chaldrons are being wasted

within sight of your garden.——Of my invention, it is not good to speak

at this time and in this manner. Much care has been laid upon me

respecting it; it being told me by some who know, that not one patent in

a thousand is good for any thing, owing to the difficulty of making it

out, and the easiness of invading it. As there is also no security

whatever between the time of asking for my patent and its being sealed,

you will discern the reason of my not now enlarging on the particulars

which you are doubtless craving to know. But to put a bridle on the

cravings is a great matter, and I commend it to you in this affair,

trusting to be soon brought face to face; though when, it is not for

blind creatures like us to determine.”

“How wonderfully he has enlarged about some matters!” cried Effie, “and

nothing yet about Cuddie, or whether they have learned any thing about

my poor father.”

The letter went on,

“Having thus told you some few things about myself—(though much remains

respecting the manner of my entrance upon this great city, and the

blessing which has been given upon my Bible-readings in this house,)—I

pass on to matters of a different concernment,—though but little time

remains before I must close up my large packet, written in the evenings

for the solace of my mind. Having, I say, told you of myself,—except

that the left wrist, which was weak, has become somewhat stronger,—I

proceed to mention that I have not met Effie’s father anywhere in the

streets, as she desired I would mention, if such a thing should happen.

It is my purpose to inquire for him whenever I shall be able to go down

to the river side. But when I hear what things are done by the

press-gangs, I have little doubt in my mind that he disappeared in the

same way as Cuddie; which circumstance remains to be related.”

“Mercy! mercy!” cried Effie, “what _does_ he mean about Cuddie?”

Walter ran over very quickly:—“not a seaman to be seen”—“women wringing

their hands on the quays”—“mutiny on board a tender”—“a porter and two

shopkeepers carried off”—“shameful expense”—“every unwilling man costs

several hundred pounds”—“loss by injury of trade“—“dark night,”—“O, here

it is! Dear, dear! Cuddie is impressed, sure enough! How shall we tell

your mother?”

Effie snatched the letter, and read.

“It was a dark night, so I cannot give a very clear account of what

happened,—besides having been for the most part asleep,—which was a

great mercy, as I might have been more alarmed than a chosen Christian

needs be. Besides, they might have taken me, but that I look older, I

believe, in my night cap than in the comeliness of my day attire. By the

blessing of God, I escaped; but my trust well nigh failed me when I

heard a voice waking me with the cry of ‘Uncle Christopher! O, uncle

Christopher!’ I had very nearly given place to wrath when I heard that

cry from over the side of the ship; but on thinking further, it grieved

me yet more that Cuddie, of whom I began to have hopes of grace, should

have leaned, in such an hour, on a broken reed like me. But I feel his

loss much, as he was a great help to me; and there is no knowing when he

may come back. I have not forgotten his cry, and his fellow apprentice

says that never struggle was seen like his, when the gang, having stolen

on board, while almost every one was asleep in the calm, laid hold of

him by head and heels to carry him away. He cried out his mother’s name;

but it has since occurred to me that he may meet his father somewhere

abroad; though, to be sure, the world is so wide that they may very well

miss each other.”

“The air is wider,” said Effie, in a hoarse voice, “and they may meet

there,—both murdered in the same battle.” There was a little more about

Cuddie.

“It was a very calm night, as I said; and before I went to sleep again,

I heard a little splash in the water. It was certainly from the king’s

ship, and the news spread that it was Cuddie who made the noise,—sliding

down the cable, some say to try to get back to us, while others believe

that he sought to drown himself. If he were indeed so given over to

Satan, it may be well for him that he is in trouble, paying the toils

and perils of the body for the sin of the soul. You may tell Effie that

I prayed for him before I went to sleep.”

Effie was in no condition graciously to acknowledge her father-in-law’s

benevolence. Pale, cold, and trembling, she sat in the sunshine which

streamed upon her from the window, looking like a wretch whom the ague

had stricken. Walter had no time now to attend to his father’s further

consolation about the fact that the coal trade can man a navy on an

emergency, and that one coal owner’s possessions alone cause above two

thousand seamen to be in constant readiness for the king’s service.

Neither did he read the concluding account of himself, or of his

father’s notions of him; of his having been in his childhood a bubbling

fountain of iniquity, in his youth a spring yielding sweet and bitter

water, and even yet not past being wholly purified. This last hopeful

hint was unregarded in the sight of Effie’s grief.

It is difficult to imagine now what social life could have been in those

old despotic times when the practice of impressment was general, and the

king could, by the very law of allegiance, dispose of every man’s wealth

and labour as he chose. It is difficult to imagine what comfort there

could have been in daily life when the field labourer did not know, as

he went out at sunrise, whether he would be allowed to return to his

little ones at evening; when the artizan was liable to be carried off

from his work-shop, while his dinner was cooling on the board, and his

wife looking out for him from the door; when the tradesman was apt to be

missing, and not heard of till some king’s messenger came to ransack his

shop of whatsoever his Majesty might be graciously pleased to want; and

when the baron’s lady watched from the terrace her lord going off to the

boar-hunt, and the thought darted through her that he might not greet

her again till he had hunted Saracens, or chased pirates, over many a

strange land and sea. Then, all suffered together, in liability, if not

in fact. All suffered in fact,—whether impressed or not; for all suffer

when property is rendered insecure, and industry discouraged, and

foresight baffled. Nobody now questions this. Nobody denies that it was

right to exempt class after class from such compulsory service; and, so

long ago as the time of Charles I., it was found necessary to emancipate

soldiers from this tyranny,—though there were not a few to predict that

no British king could ever again raise an army,—that England must from

that day bid adieu to victory, and royalty to a throne. Yet, a more

wonderful thing remains than the fame of Blenheim and Waterloo, and the

actual existence of an English monarch—the fact that some are found in

the present day to argue for the enforcement of this tyranny on a single

class, when all other classes have long been relieved from it; to argue

about the navy as their forefathers argued about the army;—that

Britannia will no more rule the waves,—that there will be no more glory

in a sailor-king, no more hope for a maritime people, when impressment

is done away. Why so? If the service is pleasant and profitable,—as

those maintain who see little hardship in impressment,—there is no need

of compulsion to make men enter it,—even on the briefest emergency,—to

judge by the universal readiness to embrace what is honourable and

profitable. If the service be not thus desirable, why it is not? That

smugglers and felons should be delivered over to the king’s officers,

with the admission that five years’ service is a prodigious punishment

for their crimes; that the wages of the king’s service are low, at the

same time that the wages of merchant vessels are raised exorbitantly by

the practice of impressment; that the king’s pressed seamen are

sometimes paid once in five, ten, or fifteen years, while in the

merchant service the payment is regular; that the enforced service may

be perpetual, while all other service has a defined limit,—all this is

surely no necessary part of naval management, while it fully accounts

for the supposed necessity of getting men by force, because they cannot

be had in any other way. All this fully accounts for seamen dispersing

before a press-gang, like a flock of birds from beneath a hawk; it

accounts for their changing their names, dressing in smock frocks,

hiding under beds, and in lofts and closets; but it shames the attempted

justification of impressment. When the trial has been made of the usual

means of rendering this service as desirable as any other, (and its

natural charms are great;) when the attempt has been made to train up,

in time of peace, a supply of seamen to carry on a war, there may be

ground for argument as to whether impressment be or be not necessary. It

is wholly an experimental question, and has as yet been argued only _à

priori_. It is too serious a matter to subject to injury men’s lives and

characters and fortunes, the happiness or existence of their families,

and the industry of a considerable portion of society, through adherence

to a false mode of argumentation, and to modes of procedure too well

suited to a former barbarous age to be congenial with the present. The

more willingly and extensively society is freed from ancient restraints

on its freedom and industry, the more conspicuously stands out,

monstrous in its iniquity, the practice of the impressment of seamen.

CHAPTER V.

NOTHING BUT A VOICE.

In process of time, the Deep Cut was finished, and announced to be

formally opened on a certain day, when the tide should be favourable for

showing it off to the greatest advantage.

It was thought that a damp would be cast over the proceedings by the

present unprosperous state of the coal trade, which seemed to render it

less probable than it had at first appeared that the undertaking would

soon repay its expenses. The war still continued, and with it the

practice of impressment; so that colliers could not be manned but at a

very high cost. Wages in colliers were now just four times what were

given in king’s ships. The difficulty mentioned by uncle Christoper of

getting colliers worked up the Thames was also greater than ever; and

the price of coal rose so much that the demand slackened, week by week.

This was an awkward state of things in which to begin a grand new

experiment; but the cost of the Deep Cut had been already incurred, and

the only thing to be done was to make use of it, as fast as possible.

Some persons wondered that Mr. Otley, who loved a joke, did not make use

of this season of adversity for ridiculing a scheme whose execution he

had been unable to prevent. No light sayings of his upon the matter were

going the round of his neighbourhood; and such members of the Company as

had the honour of his acquaintance, were surprised that they had not yet

been jeered by him about the large attendance they were likely to have

at the opening, from the great number of people about the collieries who

were out of employment. But Mr. Otley was quite as loyally occupied in

another way—in attempting to draw tighter the restraints of the

apprenticeship laws, and to extend the infliction to the flourishing

towns which had grown into their prosperous maturity exempt from the

privilege, or curse, (whichever it might be called,) of a law of

apprenticeship. It was quite the fashion, just now, among loyal men, to

petition after the manner which the rector had adopted; and an opposite

fashion spread, among those who had been tripped up in the ‘old paths,’

of going down to the origin of things, and mounting up to their

consequences. These latter began to discover not only how impracticable

was the apprenticeship law of Elizabeth, how nearly it went to subvert

the common law, how it could retain even a nominal force only by

evasion; but they saw that if parliament should be prevailed on to

enforce it afresh, the next step of the loyal might be to revive the old

statutes, that he who should sell abroad sheep, rams or lambs, should

lose all he had, then part with his left hand, and for a second offence

suffer death; or that a like penalty should be made once more to visit

an exporter of fullers’ earth; or of tobacco-pipe clay, because such

clay is like fullers’ earth.

While Mr. Otley was trotting about the country, representing the

blessings that arise from compelling every merchant ship to have so many

apprentices and no more, and the advantage of keeping businesses within

bounds by allowing the corporations of towns to regulate the number of

apprentices,—that the Sheffield cutler shall take but one, the Norwich

weaver only two, hatters every where, at home and in the colonies, only

two,—while the rector was thus straining his sight into the regions of

times long past, he seemed to have no leisure for observing what was

before his eyes. Long rope-walks were extended beside the sluice; the

boat-builder’s mallet made itself heard from among the rocks; the

fisherman’s cottage began to show itself on the narrow strip of beach

below; and the last finish was being given to the rail-road which led to

the sluice. If there had been no practical evasion of corporation laws,

this supply of skilled labour would not have been in existence to answer

the demand. If all kinds of skilled labour had been subjected to

corporation laws, there would have been no liberty to settle in a new

field, without the loss of such privileges as would not have been risked

on such an uncertainty as the speculation offered at best.

The day of opening was the brightest of April mornings; and it brought

spectators from all parts of the country. Long before the Company’s

train of carriages was looked for, the fruit and gingerbread stalls were

resounding with mirth and gossip. Troops of little children, already as

black as if coal had been their plaything from their birth, were

accosting strangers, to ask for a token to remember the day by.

Business-like-looking men walked straight to the Cut, and seemed to be

computing its width and depth,—most of them expressing great admiration

of the work. To the lover of beauty there was much to admire, when he

had turned his back on the wooden bridge, and the gates, the vehicles of

those who came to see these gates swing open, and the stalls which were

but a temporary feature of the landscape. The hewn rock, raw and bright

coloured as was its upper part, was already more favourably tinted below

by its contact with the water. Small shell fish were clustered upon it,

and weed rested wherever a ledge or crevice could be found. The water in

the inlet showed the purest green, over its deep bottom of white sand,

on which a star-fish here and there was distinctly visible, and from

which the sea-anemone slowly rose, like a variegated parachute, which

astonished the watcher by its tokens of being alive. Now and then a

stray fish came in by mistake, not being aware that any sea path led so

directly into the regions of art. As such a poor wanderer darted from

side to side of the narrow inlet, striking against the rock and

bewildering itself, many a child shouted in glee from the parapet, and

ran to and fro to watch till the fish had disposed of itself, either out

at sea once more, or beneath some friendly shadow.

These new operations must have been very perplexing to the fishy tribes

in general, which might happen to pass that way. Not only was there this

treacherous Cut to beguile them landwards, when they least dreamed of

such a destination, but there was a labyrinth at sea, in the shape of

the foundations of the new pier. The young fry had not yet been taught

by their wiser parents (if indeed the parents knew any better

themselves) to avoid these piles, and the perils that lurked among them:

and young fry of a more powerful species were already kneeling on the

beams of the pier, and catching, through the interstices which were left

between the planks, a goodly prey of infant fish,—the greater part of

which were mercifully thrown over from the end of the pier. Flags waved

from every conspicuous point of the rocks and the works. A medley of

music came from the midst of the throng about the parapet; and all bore

the appearance of a new settlement as completely as if a slice of an

American shore had been once more annexed to his British Majesty’s

dominions.

On the parapet sat one of the last persons who might have been expected

to join in the festivity—little Tim. His mother had taken him to the

ferry-house, to know if any of the family thought of going, and would

take her poor boy, who was fond of doing what other people did, if he

could not see what they saw. Walter meant to go, and he readily took

charge of Tim. Effie did not quite like the tone in which this request

was made. There was a despondency in it which alarmed her, especially as

she knew that there was, just now, a scarcity of work at the pit-mouth,

and low wages to the women and boys employed there. Mrs. Eldred made so

much difficulty about accepting the little she could do for her, that to

press more upon her was certainly to offend her. But Walter feared she

was in great poverty; and when he observed how she was wasted and worn

with long looking for her husband’s return, the apprehension suddenly

crossed him that she had some design to get rid of her miseries in the

most fearful way in which impatience exhibits itself. The idea was but

momentary, however, as she had immediately referred to things to be done

by her own hands, and to be told when she should have more time to stay

with her daughter. Tim had quitted her apron, (which he continued to

hold for guidance, great boy as he was,) surrendered her for Walter, in

the prospect of this trip, and was now seated on the parapet, with

Walter’s arm about him, and apparently enjoying the bustle as much as

those who more reasonably came into it.

“Let me run along by the wall with them!” said he, struggling to be set

down. “Let me run with those boys!”

“Better not, Tim. They are only running to see a fish that swims away

faster than they can follow.”

“I know that; but I can always run along by a wall.”

And away he would go, his brother-in-law keeping an eye upon him, to see

how he defended himself from the knocks and pushes he was exposing

himself to. He managed very well, always being one of the first to turn

when others were about to do so, from his quickness in gathering up the

guiding remarks of those about him. He had generally a word for Walter

when he came back towards him.

“Walter, have you spoken to Adam yet?”

“Adam, no; you don’t suppose Adam is here, do you?”

“Yes, but I do. I am sure it was his voice I just heard from over

yonder. You will see him soon.”

And away went Tim again. The next time it was,—

“The show will soon be here now, Walter.”

“How do you know?”

“Because of the tide coming up. Don’t you hear it,—lap, lap, lap?”

“How do you know it is not going down—if you can hear it at all, in this

din?”

“O, it is quite a different sound, going out; a—a—I can’t tell you what;

but quite a different sound.”

“Poor boy!” said a by-stander. “I wish you could see how pretty the

water looks, with all the gay flags above it, and the smart people.”

“Thank you,” said Tim, and he shuffled off once more.

“Do you think that is the best way of comforting people for such a loss

as that poor boy’s?” asked Walter, who was not the person to ask such a

question, unless roused on poor Tim’s behalf.

“Why, it is what one feels, you see; and what one hears people say every

day,” replied the man.

“Well, that’s true; but I don’t think it is the kindest thing to say. If

you can give him a knowledge of what is going on, it is all very well;

but not merely to put him in mind uselessly that he cannot enjoy it. At

least, such is my rule.”

“And a very good one, I have no doubt. To be sure, to make it one’s own

case for a minute, one can hardly fancy what answer one would make.”

“Ah! it is not every one that could say, like Tim, ‘Thank you,’ and

directly run off to amuse himself.”

“Indeed there are but few; and the great thing is to find out how they

take their misfortune themselves. There are some that look as if they

would knock you down if you do but come near the matter with them; and

others shake all over, or put on a sort of affectation that is worse;

and some like to talk and be talked to about it; and others (and they

are the wisest) just take it simply and naturally, so as to remove one’s

difficulty, almost entirely.”

“Tim is one of these last,” said Walter, patting the boy’s head, as he

came near.

“What am I, Walter?”

“Heating yourself sadly, with getting so pushed about.”

“O, I’ll get cool when the show comes, and I sit on the wall again. But

if you want to go somewhere else, I’ll come any minute; only, the water

is getting so high, it would be a pity to go away and lose our place.”

“So it would. Play away, as you like.”

“Just as if he could see! He talks about the show like any other boy.”

“Ay, and you would be surprised to hear the account he will give his

sister when we go home. He picks up a world of odd things that we let

slip; and that, and his great mistakes together, make his stories very

strange ones sometimes.”

“Yet he seems easy enough to treat and deal with. A kind heart and a

little thought may do all that he wants from us.”

“And all that the others want that you mentioned just now. If we let our

good will have its way, without being held back and twisted by shyness

and doubt, we shall be sure to please people who depend upon kindness

more than any others. The only thing I cannot pardon is the giving way

to shyness when——”

“And yet I should guess you to be shy yourself.”

“Well, so I am; and yet I should be more struck with any body being shy

about helping Tim in his little devices than he himself would, though he

has no shyness. It always strikes me that when these sufferers have had

so much more awkwardness to get over, it is not to be pardoned that we

should renew their trouble with ours. But where is Tim gone now? Slipped

away in a minute! He cannot be far off; but what were we about?”

Walter cast an involuntary fearful glance down the inlet, where nothing

was happening, however, to disturb the solitary sea-gull which was very

quietly balancing itself on the surface.

“Were ye looking for the little blind lad?” asked a woman near. “He met

with a friend in the throng, and they went off together.”

In another minute, Tim merged from behind the awning of a stall, holding

Adam by the right hand, and a huge orange in the left.

“Tim said you were here,” observed Walter, “and I did not believe him.

He heard you half an hour ago.”

“Tim, what did you hear me saying?”

“I did not catch your words, but I was sure it was your voice.”

“I am glad to see you buying oranges, Adam. I suppose this orange came

out of yonder rope-walk.”

“Not it; and it is the last I am likely to buy; and I would not have got

it for any one but Tim. I am not going to lose my settlement, I can tell

you. The place that took such pains to settle me may keep me till there

is work for us all again.”

“Keep you! How?”

“There is no lack of means. There are the rates, and fine corporation

funds.”

“And plenty of your sort of work wanted to be done here, it seems. There

is a great call for rope-makers.”

“And a great call for work among the rope-makers belonging to the town.

But we of the town hold back, you observe, to see who will come forward

first and lose his privileges. For my part, I mean to hold back till I

can be a master, and have apprentices, and do things in proper style;

and then Tim shall turn the wheel, and get money like other lads. Will

you, Tim?”

Walter allowed that it was a thing out of the question to give up a

settlement in a corporate town in exchange for one in a district like

this, whose prosperity must long remain precarious. He scarcely saw how

this precariousness was to be remedied if there was a dearth of workmen

to do the business essential to the improvement of the place, while

there was elsewhere a superabundance of the very sort of workmen wanted.

If it was necessary to give very high wages here for work which received

very low wages elsewhere, it was difficult to perceive how any fair

competition was to be maintained, and the subsistence fund duly

husbanded.

“I suppose,” said he, “you may thank the law that gave you your

apprentice privileges for the low wages you have had of late, Adam?”

“O yes; plenty to thank that law for. People generally complain that it

raises wages higher than natural. I am ready to testify to its sinking

them lower.”

“Both are right, I fancy. Wages are raised, as said, by crafts being

confined to fewer hands than need be; and this mischief goes on from

generation to generation.”

“Why, yes; if they first make it necessary to be an apprentice, and then

forbid the taking more than a certain number of apprentices, it is easy

to see how many willing folks will be hindered of entering into a trade;

and those that are in it may keep up wages as long as their handiwork is

wanted. But when——”

“Ah! when the balance turns, and times are bad, wages may fall to the

very lowest point, or cease, if the craftsmen are hindered from

withdrawing some of their number, and turning their hands to some other

trade. It does seem an uncommonly stupid plan, to be sure; and when men

were beginning to get the better of it, and outgrow and step over it,

what a strange thing it seems that a clergyman, like Mr. Otley, should

be doing his best to fasten us down under it again, tighter than ever!”

“And at the very time that his lady is sending here and sending there

for articles that she cannot content herself to buy in her native place.

If the gentleman does his best to prevent his neighbours working out of

corporation bounds, the least his lady can do is to employ those

neighbours, instead of buying what she wants from a distance.”

“I think so. But what puts such a fancy into her head?”

“She complains that the workmanship of articles is inferior at home to

what it is in newer places. And if it is, who is to blame for it but

those who meddle to spoil competition, and persuade their own workmen

that they have a sure dependence otherwise than on their own skill?”

“I have heard of such a thing happening, in some strict corporate towns,

as the very gentlemen of the corporation themselves passing by their own

people to get their work done in the out-lying villages, and having it

brought in secretly. Such men are guilty, one way or another, it seems

to me. Either let them bestir themselves to have trade allowed to go

free, or submit themselves to the restraints they put on others.”

“They are full as foolish as wrong, however; for what do they do by such

management but bring so many more paupers on themselves to be

maintained? It won’t do to try to persuade their idle workmen to go

elsewhere. The masters elsewhere do not like hiring so as to give a

settlement, any better than we like being so hired. We stick like burrs

to those who fastened us upon them, and they may make what they can of

us.”

“I wonder what they think of all this in other countries.”

“In America (our seamen tell me) they laugh mightily at us for tying our

legs, and then complaining that we cannot walk. In America, they have

none of this mischief of trade corporations and apprenticeships; and how

are they the worse for their absence? If American handiworks, and the

handiworks of our own new, free towns are better (as every one knows

they are) than those of our corporate towns, what can we conclude but

that corporate restraints are bad things? I have half a mind sometimes

to step away into a free country myself.”

“A free country! As if England was not a free country!”

“It is freer than most; and so much freer than it used to be, that I

have hopes of our grandchildren seeing themselves as unfettered in their

callings as the Americans. But just now, none of us are practically

free. Everybody is ready enough to call out about poor Cuddie; and with

just reason. But my case, though not so hard an one as his, is not

altogether to be overlooked beside it. Instead of being forcibly turned

from a labour I like to one that I did not choose, there is a moral

force used to prevent my turning from an unprofitable occupation to a

profitable one. Now, the labour of a man is his birthright,—his sole

property; and any power that comes between him and its exercise is

tyranny. Never mind how it may be softened down, and disused, and in

some places nearly forgotten. As long as there is such a power lying

ready to be put forth against the labourer, that labourer is not a free

man.”

“These powers will grow less and less mischievous as time rolls on. No

corporation in the world can stand against the will of the public to be

supplied with what they want. There will be apprentices enough in

Norwich and Sheffield to keep the trade going as it should, if the world

really wants more knives and stuffs.”

“Yes, yes; and look what a list of great men we have got,—no thanks to

our trade rules! but in spite of them. Think of Arkwright, and Brindley,

and Brunel!”

“And Smeaton, and Rennie, and Watt, and Fergusson, and Hunter. These

were never apprenticed.”

“No, nor many more that have made themselves a great name. My doubt is

whether they would have had such a name if they had been kept listless

and longing,—or downright idle, from having no interest in their seven

years’ work. If,—I will not say I,—but many others, had been kept at our

education a year or two longer, who knows what we might have done in the

world?”

“Especially if you had been born in some of the spirited new towns,

which were little more than villages a hundred years ago, and now rank

far before York, and Canterbury, and Norwich, and Lichfield. As for

London itself, the most blessed day in its existence will be when its

hundred companies dissolve their monopolies, if not themselves. I

venture to say this, because we have before our eyes what has happened

elsewhere. Look at Spain, now full of corporation glories; and France,

where industry and art began to thrive from the day that her corporation

and apprenticeship laws were swept away.”

“In France, I’m told, they have made an experiment of everything, from

the worst meddling to perfect freedom. I do not know that it was ever

settled there, as it is in India, that every man must follow his

father’s profession, but they did some things almost as wise, in old

times.”

“And some with such good intentions as to afford a fine warning against

governments meddling at all with production. In one sense, to be sure,

governments influence production by whatever they do; (which should make

them very careful about every step they take.) But I now mean direct

interference. It seemed only prudent and kind to the people to make

rules about felling trees, some parts of the soil being absolutely good

for nothing unless they had trees in the neighbourhood to encourage

moisture; yet the first consequence of these rules was to prevent people

planting trees.”

“That is good; but the story of the cockchafers is better. Do not you

know that story? Some district abroad, in Switzerland, I think, was

plagued with cockchafers; and to get rid of them, the government obliged

every landholder to furnish certain quantities, in proportion to the

land he held. The landholders paid the poor people for collecting them;

and after a time it was found out that cockchafers were regularly

imported in sacks from the other side of the lake.”

“Very good. But there was one instance among many of positive loss in

France, through meddling with industry, which is a fine warning to such

men as Otley, if they would take it. Before the revolution broke the

corporation fetters of the workpeople, there could be no manufacture of

japanned hardware in France. The process requiring the art and tools of

several different trades, and that a man should be free of them all,

this kind of production was left to strangers.”

“This is very like passing a law that there shall be no new inventions;

or that every man shall follow his father’s occupation.”

“And the practice of these lawmakers agreed with their principle. Did

you ever see an Argand lamp?”

“O, yes. Not so good as some gas lamps.”

“But yet giving out three times as much light at the same cost as any

lamps that were known before. Argand was publicly persecuted by the

company of tinners, locksmiths, and ironmongers, who disputed his right

to make lamps.”

“And if they would do that, they would most likely not admit him of

their company if he had chosen to trouble himself to canvass for it.”

“Then there was Lenoir, the great French philosophical instrument maker.

He set up a little furnace to heat his metals in; and straightway came

certain of the Founders’ Company to pull it down; and Lenoir was obliged

to appeal to the king.”

“There might just as well have been a hot-bed company that would not

have let you grow cucumbers without their help; or a scare-crow company

to prevent your hanging up your old coat among the cherry-trees.”

“And here comes a company that would give you plenty of rope-making to

do, if you would leave your privileges behind you, and bring your skill

to their market.”

“Aye; and then as soon as people at home have forgotten me, and my place

there is fairly filled by some one else, and there begins to be a talk

of business falling off, I may be warned out of this field by some

frightened old woman of a church-warden, or some spiteful overseer, who

will bid me be gone to my own place. No, no. The company must make a hue

and cry for rope-makers indeed, before they will get me to pass out of

bounds. Yet, trespassing out of bounds was what I best liked to do, when

I was not my own master.—How bravely they come on, in their open

carriages, with their flags and their boughs! Well! really it is a

pretty sight.”

“Do look at Tim, with his oak bough as big as himself! He must be a fine

fellow that gave it him,—that tall lad who keeps a hand on Tim’s

shoulder to guide him. I’ll go and take his place. It is not fair that a

stranger should have the trouble of poor Tim.”

“And I think it would be a charity in me to offer myself to some of the

gentlemen as a handshaker. Did you ever see? How the folks are reaching

up to shake hands! The black pitmen, and the keelmen, with their brown

hats in the other hand, and their wives holding up the little ones that

will be pitmen and keelmen some time or other.”

“And Mr. Severn too! Look! there he is on the box of yonder barouche,

smiling and nodding so cheerfully, thin and worn as he looks.”

“Aye: when we make our many trades as free as we boast we already are,

Mr. Severn will get something like a recompense of his toils. In those

days, if he but lives to see them, it will happen always as it happens

by accident to-day, that he will be full in view of the people that are

always ready to welcome him, while Otley slinks away, to follow his own

devices out of sight.—Stand back! stand back, and make way for them! Now

is your time to look to Tim!”

The gates were now beginning gently to open one way, and the little

bridge to swing round the other way. The din was hushed,—music,

laughter, children’s cries, men’s shouts, the whining of dogs, and the

tramp of horses. All was still, except the ripple and lapse of water, as

a thousand eyes were bent to watch the first vessel that ever passed

this way, noiselessly turning the point from the open sea, and gliding

along the Cut. It was the first time that the gazers had ever had an

opportunity of looking down into a vessel so immediately beneath their

feet, (except during the few moments required for shooting a bridge.) It

was a singular sight,—some of the tackle almost sweeping the rocks as it

passed, and its bulk casting a black moving shadow on the bed of pure

sand below the green water. The smutty-faced crew looked up to the

thousand eager faces far above their heads, and gave a silent signal

that all should be ready to cheer when the gates should be passed.

“There it goes!” said Tim, softly, as he sat on the parapet, with

Walter’s arm about his waist, and the vessel passing just beneath him.

“There it goes!” he whispered again, turning his head in due proportion

to its progress.

“Does it graze the rocks or the sand?” asked Walter, wondering at the

boy’s accurate knowledge of what was going on.

“No: but it makes a great stir in the air. I feel the wind upon my face.

Tell me when I may speak, Walter. I have something to tell you.”

A vehement shout now rose on all hands, to put an end to Tim’s scruples

about speaking amidst a dead silence. All the seamen present pushed,

cuffed, and scrambled to get a good sight of the vessel’s farther

progress when she had passed the gates. While the rivalry of blue

jackets and gruff voices was going on, Tim uttered his strange

communication.

“Walter! Walter! I am sure Cuddie is here.”

“My dear boy, what a fancy!”

“Ah! it seems an odd thing; but I heard Cuddie’s voice, just as I heard

Adam’s before.”

“You know Adam’s voice well, hearing it so often as you do. But,

remember, it is four years since you heard Cuddie’s; and I am afraid it

may be more than four years before you hear it again.”

Well! Tim thought it better to be only _almost_ sure.

“Besides,” said Walter, “there is no king’s ship near us now. All the

king’s ships are at the wars.”

Tim had no more to say. The next thing that happened was an outcry on

the skirts of the crowd. Everybody thought it was an accident, and

rushed towards the spot, or, in order to inquire, stopped others who

were doing so. It was only some thief or quarrelsome person, or other

kind of vagabond, that the constables and their helpers had failed to

catch. The fellow had got off. Who was he? what had he done? everybody

asked. Nobody at a distance could tell, and nobody near would tell. It

was hinted that, whatever the offence might be, it was of some popular

kind; and that the offender had been helped by the people to escape. The

incident took a firm hold of Tim’s imagination. He cared no more about

what took place during the next hour than the many spectators present

who belonged to the class that, having eyes, see not. When the parapet

was left to him and Walter, when the tide had gone down, when the train

of carriages had disappeared, he was still plying his brother-in-law

with questions about his conjectures: and when at length advised to go

to sleep in his unaccustomed lodging in a public-house, he went on to

weary the sleepy Walter with—

“I should think he will lie in the fields to-night, while we are so snug

and comfortable here? If he has murdered anybody, perhaps a ghost will

come and scare him? I wonder whether his wife or his mother know where

he is? Every foot that stirs, he will think it is the constable come to

take him up. Do you know, I have been thinking whether that might not

have been Cuddie’s ghost that I heard to-day. They say many seamen are

shot in these wars, and if we should find that Cuddie was killed just at

the very time——What o’clock do you think it was?”

Walter now replied in no sleepy tone. He was not a believer in ghosts,

but his mind was interested, more than he could justify, in Tim’s

persuasion that he had heard Cuddie speak, Tim was so seldom mistaken

about these matters! Yet the war was still prolonged, and if poor Cuddie

was not ere this at the bottom of the sea, he must be too far off on its

surface for the fairy Fine-Ear to have caught the tones of his voice, if

Fine-Ear had been this day among the crowd.

CHAPTER VI.

SLEEPING AND WAKING.

While Walter was settling this matter with his reason, Effie was

sauntering in his garden,—his garden, of late as much improved in beauty

and productiveness as the coal-trade was depressed. Sorry as Effie was

that her mother was not able to get full work, she could not help

rejoicing in the vigour and verdure of Walter’s favourites. Her half

wish to go away had subsided into perfect contentment with remaining,

though uncle Christopher still abode with them. His contempt for them,

in a religious view, signified less as they gathered more years upon

their shoulders. It became easier to act as if his censorious eye was

not upon them, and to take whatever he might do and say as being his

way. He enjoyed exceedingly all the creature comforts that Effie put

before him, though he could not think of spoiling her by any appearance

of acknowledgment of her care, till she should allow him to cater for

her spiritual good. He ate his little fowl, or sipped his evening

cordial, full of pitying amazement that Effie would not let him lead her

devotions, or grant her a gracious permission to sing psalms with

himself and his few chosen friends.

It was a prayer-meeting of this kind which kept Effie abroad late this

evening. The common room was occupied, and it would have appeared

ungracious to shut herself up in her chamber. She therefore carried her

work into the arbour after tea, and sat sewing, and looking abroad, and

plucking little sprigs of one fragrant thing or another, till every bird

within hearing had dropped off from the choir, and left nothing to be

heard but a stray grasshopper, and nothing to be done but to cease

poring over her stitching and take a turn in the green alley. There she

turned and turned again, looking for the young moon and her attendant

star among the fleecy clouds that now parted opportunely, and now melted

into a mass, just when she wanted to see what was behind them. Thinking

that she could catch a reflection of the crescent in a bend of the

river, she ran up the hedge, and leaned over as far as she could,

without falling, head foremost, into the ditch on the other side. She

was very near so falling when a rustle in the same ditch startled her.

She jumped back, expecting to see something follow her. Nothing

appeared, and she satisfied herself that it was only a dog or a stray

pig, or a sheep about to leave a tribute of wool on the briars, in

return for a bite of particularly delicate grass. She turned again along

the alley, and amused herself with planting erect any props that might

have declined from the perpendicular. While doing so, she perceived the

faint, yellow light of a glow-worm on the bank, which her husband gave

her for the indulgence of her own fancies about primroses and blue

hyacinths. Eagerly she kneeled down to watch the creature, and played

with it for some time, now with a gentle finger-tip, and now with a

stout blade of grass. The psalm from within doors meanwhile came,

softened by distance, into a not unpleasing music. Effie’s mind and

heart joined in this music more than her uncle would readily have

believed. She invariably laid aside amusements and light thoughts when

it reached her; and sympathized all the better in the devotions of the

company from their psalms being stripped by distance of all that

appeared to her harsh and unduly familiar in their sentiments and

language. She now instantly arose, leaving the worm to find its way back

to its covert; but—straight before her—stood a man, peeping at her

through the hedge. He ducked, the moment he saw that he was observed,

and she could get no answer to her questions and remarks—“What do you

want?—If you are looking for the ferry, it is just below, to your right

hand.—If you want our people, you had better come round to the gate.”

She retreated towards the house, to shelter herself under the sounds

that issued thence. She had no fear for her safety while in such

neighbourhood; but she pondered the probability of the garden being

robbed. There was little in it at present worth removal; but she thought

she should do what she had done before when left in the guardianship of

her husband’s goods—sit up in the star-light, and look out upon the

garden, till her uncle, who was an early riser, should be heard stirring

in the morning. This measure she presently decided upon; and the

decision brought in so many thoughts of chill, and drowsiness, and

startings, and nervous fancies,—with all of which her watchings had made

her well acquainted,—that when she went back to the arbour for her work

and implements, she snatched them up as if a thief had been in hiding

there, and fled home as if he were following at her heels.

Uncle Christopher had just left the house with his guests, in order to

ferry them over to their own bank of the river. Before putting the

circle of chairs in their places, and depositing the hymn-book on its

shelf, Effie closed and locked both doors of the dwelling. She had not

been seated at her work a minute before there was a tap, and then a push

at the door which opened into the garden.

“Who is there?”

“Effie, Effie, let me in!” said a low voice which thrilled through her.

For the first time since her childhood, a superstitious terror seized

her; and she sat staring, and neither spoke nor moved.

The lattice was not quite fastened, and she saw it open, and a face

appear within it which produced the same effect upon her as the voice

had done.

“O, are ye Cuddie, or are ye not?” cried she, shading her eyes from the

candlelight, and gazing intently.

“Yes, I am Cuddie,” said he mournfully, as he entered by the lattice.

“But it is hard to believe you are Effie, so unwilling to let your own

brother into your own house.”

This was said,—not like the Cuddie of old, but so like her mother, that

Effie no longer doubted.

She poured out a multitude of questions,—Whence did he come? When did he

arrive? Was he here for good, to follow his own business again? And had

her father returned also?

He put aside all her questions, desiring only, for the present, that she

would help him to enter the house when uncle Christopher was gone to

bed. Uncle Christopher would be back in five minutes, and there was no

time to lose in settling how——

“But you are not going away before you have spoken to me, or given one

look that I dare to rest upon. Why, Cuddie——”

“Well, Effie, I am not going to meet uncle Christopher; I can tell you

that. There he lay, muttering his cant, the night I was carried off, and

did not so much as put a foot out of bed to help me. He may talk of how

many souls he has saved. He has lost one, I can tell him; and if I ever

meet him,—and it will be only by chance,—I shall tell him——”

“There he is!” cried Effie, hearing the rattle of the chain by which the

boat was fastened. Cuddie instantly let himself out by the back door,

intimating that he should return to be admitted, as soon as his uncle

could be supposed asleep. This event was not long in happening, as Effie

was not, this evening, very lavish of remarks which might tempt him to

linger over his pipe and glass.

When Cuddie re-entered from the garden, his first act was to desire his

sister to fasten the door at the foot of the stairs, and hang up blinds

against both windows, he standing in the shadow till this was done.

Effie timidly objected to blinding the front window which looked down

upon the ferry; it was not yet too late for the possibility of

passengers. This seemed to serve as a new reason; and she was obliged to

hang up her shawl.

“If you want to know the reason,” whispered her brother,—“I am a

deserter. Hush! No noise! or you will be the death of me, as Adam was

near being this morning.”

“Won’t you sit down?” said Effie,—as she might have spoken to an

intruder from Bedlam.

“Effie, you always used to say what you felt, and all that you felt. Are

you changed too? Come; tell me what you are thinking.”

“I think I am in a dream, and do not know whether you be Cuddie, or a

fancy of my own. O, Cuddie, I have always loved you next to Walter, and

looked upon you as the pride and hope of the family; and as often as I

have started from sleep, these four years past, it has been with

dreaming over again your being taken at dead of night, and especially

your slipping down the cable. The worst moments I have had from the time

you rowed away from this ferry, that bright evening, are those between

sleeping and waking, when I saw you cold and altered before me, and I

could not by any means make you smile. I never,—no I never believed this

last would come true. And now,—and now,” she uttered between her sobs,

“you know what I am thinking about.”

Cuddie cast himself on the ground, laid his head on her knee, as he had

done in many a childish trouble, weeping so that he could not for long

be persuaded to look up.

“You are not altogether altered, I see,” said Effie, striving to speak

cheerfully. “You are not come back the round-faced, weather-brown seaman

I always fancied you would be, but instead, far too much as if you had

been famished. Yet your heart is the same.”

“No, no.”

“O, yes. But you have known want lately, and you are discouraged. I much

fear you have known want.”

“’Tis not that which has bowed my spirit. Effie, I am altogether

heart-broken.”

“Do not dare to say that. We must bear whatever Providence——”

“But it is not Providence that has done it; it is my king and country,”

cried Cuddie, starting up, the flush fading from his face, and leaving

it of a deadly paleness. “If it had been the will of Providence, Effie,

to take a limb from me, I would have made my way home on crutches, with

a stout heart, and none of you should have heard a bitter word from me.

If lightning from above had scorched out my eyes, I would have taken Tim

for an example, and been thankful through the live-long day. If the

fever had laid me low on shipboard, I would have been a man to the last,

knowing that my corpse would make the plunge before midnight. But to

have one’s king and country against one is what is enough to break any

man’s heart that has ever loved either of them.”

“To be sure it is. What have they been doing to you?”

“Things that I do not hold myself bound to bear, as if they were done

according to the will of Providence, and not against it. They first

turned my very heart within me with carrying me away, as if I had been a

black slave; carrying me away from all I cared about, and the occupation

I could most willingly follow. Then, when I had little spirit for my

work, and many bitter thoughts to distract me in it, and hurt my temper,

the next thing they must do is to flog me. What surprises you in that?

Don’t you know that impressment brings flogging? Carry away a man as a

slave, and next thing you must whip him as a thief, and that brings

hanging like a dog. Yes, they flogged me, and my head grew down on my

breast from the time that scornful eyes were for ever upon me. This

morning I have been hunted by my countrymen,—by many an one that I knew

when nobody dared look scornfully on me. It was my own brother’s doing

that they were set on. My country has but one thing more to do with me;

and that is to make away with me for desertion.”

“Then you do not mean to do it yourself, thank God!” cried Effie.

“No, Effie. I have been tempted many a time, from the night I slipped

down the cable, as you mentioned, till this very afternoon, when I hid

in an old coal-pit, and was but too near throwing myself below. I shall

make a trial of what is to be done by going where there is no king, and

where one may forget one’s country. There is not a saint in heaven that

could make me forgive them; but there may be ways of forgetting them. I

will make the trial in America.”

“Then we shall lose the best brother, and my mother the child she has

looked to through every thing, and your king a servant that may ill be

spared during this war.”

“Never mind the king. If he knows no better how to get his subjects to

serve him——”

“Hush, Cuddie! You a seaman, and talk so of your king!”

“I am not a seaman now. However, say the country, if you will: if she

knows no better how to get served than by first making slaves of her

free-born men, let her do as well as she can when they leave her to turn

against her. As soon as she takes a man’s birthright from him, his duty

ceases. Mine was at an end when they carried me off, neck and heels, and

turned me, in one hour, from a brave-hearted boy into a mean-souled

man.”

“No, no.”

“Yes, yes, I say; but though it was so, they had gained no right to

disgrace me. That flogging might possibly have been thought justifiable

by some people, if I had entered the service of my own free will: as I

did not, they had no more right to flog me than the showman yonder has

to goad the lion he enticed into his trap. If that lion should ever get

out a paw to revenge himself, it would go hard with me to help the human

brute.”

Effie was confounded. In casting about for an argument wherewith to stop

this method of discourse, she could find none out of the Bible.

Christian forgiveness of injuries was her plea.

“There is the difference, certainly, between the lion and me,” said

Cuddie: “the Bible is out of the question in his case. It shall be

minded in my own, so far as this:—I will not lift a hand against my

country, and I will go where I may possibly learn to forgive her; but I

cannot do it here, Effie,—even if my life were safe, I could not do it

here. My country loses a stout-bodied, willing-hearted member, and I

lose all I have ever lived for; but there the mischief shall stop, for

me.”

“Aye, for you; but how many more are there lost in like manner? I think

some devil, in the service of our country’s enemies, has come to blind

our eyes, and harden our hearts, and make us a sad wonder for the times

that are to come. Will men believe such a story as yours,—such an one as

my father’s,—a hundred years hence?”

“Yes, they will easily believe, because they will look back to what the

service now is, and how it is regarded, and contrast these things with

what, I trust, will be the state of things in their day. They will look

back and see that merchant seamen are now paid more than they need be,

because naval seamen are paid so much less than they ought to be, and

made subject to violence. If, as I hope, in those days, the one service

will be as desirable as the other, (or the king’s, perhaps, the most so

of the two,) it will be found that our colliers will man a navy at the

first call; and then men will believe that when it was otherwise, there

was some fearful cause of wrong that came in between the king and his

seamen.”

“It does seem, indeed, as if there was no lack of loyalty among our

people, when their minds are not turned from their king by some strange

act; and we hear few complaints of the service from those who go

willingly to it.”

“There is none that would be liked so well, if it had fair play. Besides

the honour of keeping off the enemy, and the glory of helping to

preserve one’s country, there is so much variety, and so many

adventures, and so many hundred thousand eyes looking on, that a

sea-life in his Majesty’s service has many charms. But honour is a

mockery to one’s heart, unless it is won by the heart; and what are

varieties of adventure to him whose body may be roving, but whose spirit

sits, like a gloomy, unseen ghost, for ever by his own fire-side?”

“He who goes of his own will has most likely made provision for those he

has left behind; and then the thought of them will come only when it can

animate him, and never to discourage him.”

“Oh, you should see the difference between the volunteers and certain

slaves like me!—how the one are impatient with the captain till he gets

boldly out in search of the enemy; and how the other would fain have the

vessel creep for ever along the shore, that he might have a chance of

stealing out, and forgetting his present disgraces by daring a worse

reproach still. You should see the difference of their patience on the

watch, and of their courage before a battle.”

“I am sure I should not care to show bravery in a danger I was thrust

into against my will, as I should in one that it was my own choice to

face. I should be apt to get away, if I could.”

“My wish would have been just the opposite, that there might be an end

of me, Effie, if I had happened to be in a battle since I was flogged:

but the battles I was in happened first; and if I was not a downright

coward, I had no spirit to fight as a freeman would. It cooled my blood,

and kept down my heart, to remember the night when they took me in my

sleep to defend others when I was myself defenceless.”

“If it was so with you,—you, who always used to walk first when, as

children, we had to pass neighbour Topham’s bull,—you, that were ready

to go down doubtful places in the mine when nobody else dared, and that

brought out the soldier, just drowning in the current by Cullercoat

Sands,—if it was so with you, how much more it must happen with others,

not naturally so brave! But, Cuddie, do sit down quietly, and tell me,

as if you were telling of being punished for bird-nesting, what it was

that they blamed you for on board ship.”

“Blamed me! They——”

“Yes, yes—I know; but what was it for?”

“I did nothing well, all the time I was there. Whatever might be going

on, I was always thinking of getting away;—just the same, whether I was

on watch, or going into the middle of the fight, or hiding my face in

the blanket, when laid by under my dog punishment. There was enough to

flog me for, if the quality of my service had been all that was looked

to.”

“You that did everything well that you set your hand to, from the time

you were a child! But the getting away you managed cleverly, I dare

say.”

“A good many contrive to do that, notwithstanding all the difficulties

that are put in the way of desertion, and the punishment that visits

it.”

“That punishment cannot always take place, if so many desert. There

would be a constant putting to death.”

“Why, yes; considering that above five thousand able-bodied, and four

thousand ordinary seamen have deserted within two years, the execution

of the whole is a sight that men would be rather unwilling that angels

should look upon.”

“Mercy, mercy! Only think of them all in one crowd before a judge,

pleading how they were torn, many of them, from their busy homes, and

that these same homes were the temptation to desert.”

“Think of them before another kind of judgment-seat, Effie. Where would

the balance of crime be laid then?”

“I think no one would dare to carry there any quarrels that grew up out

of war,” Effie replied. “Whatever noise of war there may be on this

earth, I fancy all will be glad to keep utter silence upon it in another

state.”

“Aye, if they could. But how is it to be kept out of knowledge? How am I

to account for my temper being bitter, that once was kindly; and my

habits being lazy, that once were brisk; and my life being short and

troublesome to everybody, that might have been long and busy for others’

good; and my death being fearful, like an eclipse, when it might have

been as the shutting in of the summer twilight? How am I to account for

all this, without any plea of going out to war on the high seas? Why do

you look at me so, Effie? I cannot bear being so looked at.”

Effie had often tried to fancy the aspect and demeanour of persons under

sentence of death; but she had never imagined anything so awful as the

lot seemed to be when it sat upon her brother. To have seen his corpse

stretched before her would not have been more strange than to look on

his familiar face, to listen to his accustomed voice, and to think that

this motion and this sound were awaiting extinction, while the thinking

part was fluctuating between this world and the next, not in the frame

of calm faith which abides the summons of its Maker, but in the restless

mood which attends upon the tyranny of man. Effie had seen her brother

once awaiting death as the issue of an illness. What she had then beheld

caused her heart now to sink on perceiving the starting eye and curled

lip, which told her that her brother was a less religious man than he

had been,—less humble, less strong, less hopeful, less thoughtful for

others than before. She was not fully aware of the difference of the

cases,—how darkly God’s agency is shrouded in the gloom of man’s

injustice; how the sufferer’s whole nature is outraged by dependence

upon his fellow-man for the breath of life; and how infinitely the agony

of such outrage transcends the throes of dissolution. The humblest

convict may feel this, though he may not be able to express it in words,

as well as the noblest patriot that ever encountered martyrdom; and it

may be this sense of outrage that parches the tongue and enfeebles the

knees of one, while it strings the nerves of another on the way to the

scaffold; while both may equally disregard the parting convulsion, and

long rather than dread to know “the grand secret.”

“No, no, Cuddie, you do not mean that you who sit there are doomed to be

laid in the cold ground so soon, unless you can banish yourself?”

“I do; and for a token—you must either help me away this very hour, or

see me carried off to death, as one of the doomed five thousand. I tell

you I was nearly caught this day. If it had not been for an

acquaintance, more thoughtful than Adam, (who spoke out my name the

moment he saw me,) I should have been beyond hope at this hour. The

whisper passed along, however,—‘a poor deserter,’—and they opened a way

for me, and blocked up the enemy in a crowd, and then gave out that it

was only a petty thief they were running after; and in this manner I got

off for the time.”

“And so you will again. God will not let such as you so perish.”

“I shall not tempt the risk further by staying. God forgive me for

saying so! but I cannot, and I will not, so die.”

“Hush, hush! What would uncle Christopher, what would all religious

people say, if they heard such a word from you as that?”

“They might say that if one man presumes to declare ‘You shall die at my

bidding, for a crime invented by such as myself,’ another man may,

without presumption, say, ‘I will not die for such a cause;’ and that he

may, with as little presumption, do his utmost peaceably to make good

his words. I will be gone this very hour, to make good my word.”

“Our poor mother!”

“Do not tell her that I have been here: she will be for ever hearing the

whoop of my hunters, and fancying my death-groans at midnight. Let her

suppose me fighting creditably, like any honest volunteer, till you hear

what becomes of me.”

“And can you be so near, and yet——”

“O yes; I can do many things that you would have sworn, when we last

parted, that I never could. You do not know, I dare say, what it is to

grow careless of those one most loved,—to be able to pass lightly near a

mother’s door, on one’s way to a new world, and not look in. You——”

“Cuddie, what brought you to see me?”

“What would you say if it was to get Walter to give me a coat that might

disguise me, and you to supply me with food, that might prevent my

needing to speak to any one on the road?”

“I shall not believe any part of your story, if you dare to say so much

that is false,” said Effie, rising, however, to see what her humble

hospitality could furnish. “I did hope, indeed, that there were some,

besides your mother, that you would have thought worth inquiring after.”

“I saw your husband and the others to-day, you know, except uncle

Christopher, and him I will look upon now;” and he snatched the candle

to go up stairs. His sister stopped him eagerly, to inquire whether he

had really seen her husband.

“Aye, that did I. Adam, as I told you, I saw full enough of. And Tim,

poor child, was telling Walter that he had heard my voice just before,

and Walter gave him a world of good reasons why it was impossible, while

I was standing just behind him, as Tim might have seen, if——But how that

boy is grown! And a fine unbroken spirit he seems to have!”

“And without any bitterness, Cuddie, though the burden of affliction is

laid upon him. We may take a lesson from him: for his is not the content

of one that does not know what the blessings are that he must forego. He

tells me sometimes what he remembers about the green fields, and the

blue river, and the star-light nights; and if his remembrance of them

seems more beautiful than the things themselves appear to us, this is

only a proof of the greater depth of his patience. O yes, we may take a

lesson from him!”

“Ah! I thought when I saw him to-day,” said Cuddie, setting down the

candle, as if forgetting his purpose of visiting his uncle’s bed-side,

“when I saw him sitting with his placid face raised, and his ear intent

to learn all that was going on, I thought of the day and night after his

accident, when he was fretting and fretting, as if it was our fault that

he could not see which neighbour it was that came to ask after him, nor

know when it was day or when it was dark.”

“Aye, before he learned to know everybody by the voice, and to tell by

the feel when the sun was going down. It was you, Cuddie, that sat

beside him during those nights, and brought comfort to him as often as

you could step in from your work. Did you think of that, too, when you

looked upon him this day?”

Cuddie seized the candle again, and was going.

“Tim himself remembers your nursing, and he shall not forget it, when

you are no longer a brother and a countryman. He shall never learn from

me that you were here, and left without laying your hand upon his head,

or a kiss upon his forehead.”

“There will be Adam to watch over him, besides you and Walter.”

“And you, when the war is over. You will surely come back, and ply on

this very river, and show yourself in the old port, when the cry after

deserters is over, and the press-gangs are broken up?”

“Never. I shall make myself altogether an American. King George will

never more have me for a subject or a servant; and if he has me for an

enemy, by going to war with America, he may thank his own press-gangs

for it;—and not only on account of me, but of the thousands more that

seek a home in foreign ships because the British navy has been to them

nothing better than a prison.”

Cuddie was some time up stairs while Effie hastened to pack such

provisions as she had in the house. Indifferent as her brother’s manner

was when he came down, she thought there were signs of emotion passed

away.

“You have not insulted his sleep, I am sure, Cuddie? You have not

breathed out ill will over him?”

“No: he first taught me the story of the Prodigal Son, as I remembered

when I saw his Bible near him. Besides, I shall never see him again.—

Now, leave me to make my way over the ferry. You had better let the boat

be found on the opposite side in the morning. They will come hunting for

me here, and you must not be found aiding and abetting in my escape. You

will have uncle Christopher for a witness to my not having been here;

and if he should chance to wake while you are out——”

“Whisht! he is stirring! Hark to his step overhead!”

Cuddie and his basket were past the threshold, the door was closed, and

Effie bending over her work before uncle Christopher’s night-capped head

appeared from the stairs.

“I thought I heard Walter?” said he. “I thought Walter had come home?”

Walter was not to be home till the middle of the next day, the old man

was reminded.

So he had thought; but he had been dreaming, it seemed to him for hours,

of a weary sobbing,—the deep sobbing of a man near him; and when he woke

up from his dream, there was a gleam from the keyhole on the ceiling;

and he next fancied he heard whispers below, so he got up, and partly

dressed himself, and came down——

“And found me just finishing my work, that I was bent upon doing before

I went to bed,” said Effie.

“You are not going to sit up much later, child? If you must watch, you

might as well occupy your watch with holy things.”

Effie thought of the times when Christopher used to spend half the night

in perfecting the invention which had enabled him to gather a good many

carnal comforts about him. She merely said that she was working for her

husband. She would just lock the chain of the boat——

“What! that not done yet? I heard the chain clank just now. Nor the door

fastened, I declare! You are a braver woman than your mother, child.”

Effie did not know that she had anything to fear. Her uncle feared

rheumatism, and therefore hastened to bed again, before she went down to

the boat with her lantern.

Cuddie was just pushing himself off, and would not heed her signs to

stop. She set down her light on the bank, and laying hold of the boat,

scrambled in, at the expense of a wetting. She could never have forgiven

his departure without saying a final farewell. Neither of them spoke

while crossing; and it was necessary to make haste, as some moving

lights on the distant water gave token of the approach of witnesses. The

wind blew chill, the young moon was disappearing, and the few and faint

yellow fires looked dreary as they flickered through the darkness.

Cuddie’s hand had felt cold and clammy as he gave up the oar to Effie.

She had never before attempted to deceive or mislead any one, and she

dreaded meeting uncle Christopher by daylight, as much as if she had

been abroad on a housebreaking expedition. It would be many hours yet

before she could tell Walter; and how often might it be her lot to hear

the family and neighbours speak of Cuddie, and to have to appear to know

no more of him than they! Then the news would come to her mother, sooner

or later, that he was a criminal who had fled for his life. She was very

wretched.

“Cuddie! you are not going without one word?” she cried, seeing him turn

to step out of the boat as it touched the bank.

Without one word he went, for no words would come; but not without

giving her some comfort. The agony of his last embrace eased her heart,

which a light farewell would have well nigh broken. She dwelt upon it

with a strange satisfaction as she recrossed the river; and as she

closed her doors, and put out her light to weep in darkness till the

morning; and when she related the story to her husband; and when, long

after, they heard of the loss of Cuthbert Eldred among others of the

crew of an American merchant vessel; and when, in subsequent years, Tim

and she used to talk of the brother Cuddie who was the gentlest nurse

and playfellow, the most generous brother, and the bravest youth that

ever gave promise of being an honour to his class, and an assistance to

his country in her times of need.

CHAPTER VII.

LOYALTY PREVENTIVES.

Next day, there appeared a sufficient reason for Mrs. Eldred’s great

desire that Tim should attend the opening of the Deep Cut. She was not

found at her old place when Walter went to restore his charge. The

cottage was shut up, and a friendly neighbour came out to deliver to

Walter the message with which she had been entrusted for him. Mrs.

Eldred had for some time found it difficult for her to live and maintain

her blind son, and finding that she and all her family, except her

daughter, had been impoverished by interference with their industry in

one form or another, she had brought herself to do that which, if free,

she would have despised. She had sued for a place in an almshouse,

supported by the vaunted charity of a corporation which caused

infinitely more want than it relieved. She had carefully kept this

secret from Walter and his wife, knowing what efforts they would make to

preserve a proud spirit like hers from the degradation of accepting

charity. But she declared that she felt it, though a misery, no

degradation. If the trade of the collieries was injured by a corporation

in London, so as to deprive her of work, and if her eldest son was

hindered by a corporation nearer home from carrying his labour to the

best market, she felt that a maintenance was due from corporative funds,

and she should receive it without any acknowledgment of obligation till

the labour of the family was once more placed at the disposal of the

family. The reproach of the pauper dress which she and Tim must

henceforth wear must rest with those who had prevented her earning more

honourable apparel; and she hoped her son and daughter would not take

the matter too much to heart. It appeared that Mrs. Eldred had made

these, her explanations, very fully and not very coolly to Mr. Milford,

the surgeon, who had argued the matter with her; not attempting to deny

that her connexions had been interfered with, but pleading that the

interference had been more for good than for evil. But Mr. Milford liked

corporations. An idle brother of his, who had been a great burden upon

him, had been suddenly provided for by a corporation living; and he

himself was still in possession of the Trinity House appointment for

which he had canvassed Mr. Vivian some years before. He contended that

government had, it appeared, (contrary to his expectation,) done a fine

thing in authorizing the company to open the Deep Cut. Everybody knew

how much rope was being manufactured there, and how much more was

wanted; and when told of the impediments to the removal of Adam’s labour

thither, he lauded the arrangements by which Adam could be maintained as

a pauper in his native town, instead of being left to casual charity. He

insisted much on Christopher’s prosperity;—on the benevolence and

usefulness of the interference of government in securing to him the

rewards of his ingenuity, and thus enabling him to assist his connexions

materially, if he would. Mrs. Eldred did not impute it to the government

that Christopher did not seem more inclined to part with his worldly

wealth than if he had openly valued as much as he professed to despise

it: but it was not the less true that Christopher’s constant plea for

economy was his expectation that his patent would be invaded, and that

he should cease to gain by his invention, even if he were not involved

in law proceedings to defend it. The principle of the patent law Mr.

Milford might praise unopposed; and the practical arrangements might be

improved in time; but Mrs. Eldred could not allow it to be right that

Adam should first be made idle by an absurdly long apprenticeship, and

then kept idle by corporation restraints; and she would not acknowledge

herself half so grateful for almshouse bounties as the surgeon thought

her in duty bound to be. Many thanks for their charity, indeed! Mrs.

Eldred said. Many thousands in a year might they well give away,

considering how they prevented the earning of many more thousands; but

the newspapers might as well be silent about their great generosity: for

it behoved bodies of men, as well as individual men, to be just before

they were generous; and there was little justice in tying a man’s hands,

however liberally they might put food into his mouth.

Fain would Walter and his wife have taken home the little lad, who

seemed to have small relish for the almshouse, in anticipation or in

reality. Adam, also, from time to time during the two years which passed

before the peace, offered to take the boy home as often as a supply of

work afforded him a home. But Mrs. Eldred could not part with Tim; nor

could Mr. Severn, still her steady and kind friend, urge upon her a

sacrifice which would have caused her restless mind too dangerous a

leisure. When peace came, there were many symptoms of a revived

querulousness. From the day of the general rejoicings, which offered no

charms to her, she dropped expressions which gave as little pleasure to

everybody as to herself, about Eldred’s being in no hurry to return

home. It was a folly in her to have ever expected it. Had he sent her a

farthing of money, from the day he went away? It was known that he had

changed his ship;—had he come in the interval to visit her and his

children? No, no. She had heard much of the charms of a roving life, and

of naval glory; and, doubtless, no such pleasures could be offered by a

melancholy, distressed family as he could find in the service; and if he

was looking after glory, he would hardly return to the dull duty of

taking care of his own—a duty which his dullest neighbours had been

discharging while he was away. She vehemently silenced poor Tim’s

suggestion that his father might not be still living. She would listen

to no excuses on Eldred’s behalf from Effie or Adam, till the latter had

recourse to his old practice of taking his hat, and walking away; and

Effie, with her usual ingenuousness, declared her uneasiness at hearing

her father so spoken of. The readiest way to bring her mother round was

to appear to agree with her; but Effie could not pay the price of such

disguise, even for the pleasure of hearing her mother speak the

tenderness which lay at her heart.

The rebuke which attends upon querulousness more closely and constantly

than upon almost any other fault, presently arrived. Effie had just left

her in grave compassion, mixed with displeasure; Tim was silently

occupying himself in his new art of netting; and Mrs. Eldred was

stalking about the little room, making a great bustle to carry off her

own excitement, when a few stray words from the court-yard came in at

the open window, and made Tim quit his seat.

“Take care, lad; you will stumble over the chair in the middle of the

room. Why cannot you ask me for what you want?”

Tim steered cautiously round the chair, and gained the lattice.

“There’s one below asking for us, mother,” said he.

“That is impossible. You cannot tell what they are saying below, in all

the noise I am making. There is nobody but Adam that can be wanting us,”

she continued. “I wish Adam would choose better times for coming: he is

always sure to show himself when I am particularly busy, and there is

nothing comfortable about us.”

Tim thought to himself that this was rather strange, so much complaint

as he was accustomed to hear of Adam’s coming so very seldom, and so

often as it happened that his mother was particularly busy, and had

nothing comfortable about her. He made no answer, however, being

convinced that the inquirer below was not Adam. He presently went on,—

“Mother, can you spare a minute, just to look out of the window at this

person in the court?”

There was a something in Tim’s manner that struck her. Instead of

throwing down her brush impatiently, as he expected, she came silently,

and laid her hand on his, as trembling it grasped the sill. She sank

down on a seat after one glance, whispering,—

“My boy, it is your father!”

If Tim could have seen, he would not have known his father. Instead of

the black-skinned, closely-cropped, and somewhat awful-looking person

that he remembered his father, Eldred was now a weather-browned,

blue-jacketed sailor, with a ringlet hanging duly down either cheek, and

a little hat, which set off very favourably his broad, round face, now a

little shaded by anxiety, but evidently meant to express a true sailor’s

joviality. Few eyes but a wife’s would have recognised him at a first

glance. A feeling of pride in him arose as she saw him stand in the

doorway; and it tempered the bitter mortification which, in spite of all

her professions and self-deception, she felt at being found by him in

this place.

When her passion of joy and surprise was over, and her spirits began to

dance in girlish lightness, her feelings of mortification found vent in

a few slight hints of wonder and discontent. Eldred, with his wife

beside him, Tim seated at his feet, and in momentary expectation of

Effie’s arrival, was disposed to take such hints kindly, though not

perhaps with the fidgetty submission which he might have shown in old

times. He had not sailed so much about the world for nothing; nor fought

so hard against the enemy to be drilled at home, as formerly. It was

easy to be a great man to-day, his companions being more disposed to

adore his greatness than to find any flaw in it.

“Send you money!” said he. “Why, you know very well that if I had had

any you would have had it all, as soon as I could send it.”

“You do not mean that you have been working all these years for

nothing?”

“I have got my wages at last; but, besides the hardship of the wages

being so much lower than I had been accustomed to on our river, during

the war, there was the worse hardship of our not being able to get our

dues.”

“There would be few seamen in our colliers if such was the practice

there.”

“And they must go on impressing for the navy as long as it is the

practice in any part of it. Poor Cuddie! How I have been turning it in

my mind whether he would chance to be at home, or whether he would be

gone to London I never fancied his being so far out of reach.”

“Father! were you ever flogged? Did you ever try to desert?” inquired

Tim.

“I flogged! I try to desert!” exclaimed Eldred, amidst a painful

consciousness that his indignation at the words conveyed a reproach to

his dear, absent son. “No, Tim, I had a good ship, and a good captain,

and——”

“And went into the service with more heart than Cuddie,” interrupted

Mrs. Eldred; “and would not give it up till the last minute, and then

were sorry to leave it for home and a dull keel on the Tyne.”

“You are out there, my woman. The time in my life when I had the most

mind to drown myself was when I was stopped in my way to you, a year and

a half ago. You would not have said much of my liking for a sea-life, if

you had seen me,—how I raved for the land as they forced me back from

it, just when I thought five minutes more would have set me ashore.”

“What do you mean? and when?”

“A year and a half ago, as I tell you, when I was impressed a second

time. I never cursed a Frenchman as I cursed the boat with the infernal

gang in it that met us point blank, as we were turning into harbour, and

boarded us. Some of the poor fellows with me let themselves out about

home. I did not, because I knew it would be of no use; but, to be sure,

one or two of them had served as much as twelve years without seeing

their families, and my case was not so bad. But I could have knocked the

gang overboard with my bundle with right good-will. I hated my bundle as

much as I hated them at the moment, because of having to take it back

and unpack it, when I had put it up for home. So you never knew I had

been pressed a second time, love?”

“Knew it, no! If I had, I believe the law would have been altered by

this day. I would have got all the women, injured like myself, to go up

on our knees to the king’s own presence, and we would not have left him

till we had melted his heart, and got his promise to do away the law.”

“The best of it is that the law of the land is against impressment; it

is against violence being offered to an innocent man in any way.”

“Then I suppose there is a particular law to allow impressment.”

“No; no further than that there is a list of those who may be legally

exempted,—seamen on special service, or protected by the proper

authorities, and so on. The marking out in this way who is to go free,

looks like countenancing the practice; but, beyond this, the law is

against the practice. I used to insist on this, at favourable times,

but, as you may suppose, to no purpose, owing, perhaps, in part to my

endeavour to reconcile myself to my lot. The people at home are they

that must make a stir about it. If we pressed men manage to make

ourselves tolerably happy, we are sure to be asked, ‘Where is the

hardship?’ And if we are dull and indolent, (as I fear poor Cuddie was,

and with too much reason,) they despise us and flog us, and ask what the

testimony of a flogged man is worth. So, for the remedy, we must look to

the people at home; and they have, too many of them, some grievances of

their own to complain of. I am sorry indeed to find poor Adam in such an

uncertain state, now high and now low. Is it the danger from the

overseer that keeps him from settling at the Cut?”

“Yes, and reason enough. He has no notion of putting himself at the

mercy of any overseer or churchwarden who might choose to send him home

to his parish on the mere prospect of work falling off. The thought of

it chafes me as much as seeing Mr. Severn still no more than Otley’s

poor curate, when I know that if each had their deserts,—if the people

were allowed to interest themselves in choosing the pastor that would do

his duty best, Mr. Severn would be one of the first in honour and in

place, and Otley (if he had not been anywhere but in the church) would

have had to wait for a flock till he grew as wise as the children that

are now under him, and as sober as our Adam,—and that is not supposing

much.”

“And what does Mr. Severn himself say?”

“Nothing about Otley; but he speaks up for some things that I should

like to see done away. I detest the very name of a corporation, or of

any kind of meddling, after all we have suffered.”

“I think you are wrong there. A corporation may do many fine things, as

long as it keeps to its proper business, which is not to meddle with

industry in any way,—religious or other. But when it is desirable that a

thousand persons should speak with one voice, and that that voice should

be authority, and should go down to the next age,—and when it is wanted

to give a single responsibility (that shall not be always changing) to a

party whose members must change, I think a corporation is the best way

of making many into one. I mean where learning has to be taken care of,

as in the universities, or inferior governments, like those of our great

towns. But when corporations take upon them to favour some, and exclude

others, and to fetter all that belong to them, I will go as far as you

in complaints of them.—Walter seems the most prosperous of you all.”

“Yes: now his garden is not smoked. It was a glad day for him and Effie

when leave was got to sell coal in London by weight. It put an end to

screening and burning. It fell out ill for me, as everything does. But

things will prosper better now,” she continued, after a glance at her

husband’s countenance.

“It seems to me as if Effie was long in coming,” observed Eldred. “How

long will it take you to move out of this place, when she is once here?”

“Move! O, not half an hour.”

“Well, you don’t suppose I mean you to stay another hour here. Make

ready to be a keel-man’s wife again, and leave this room for some poor

creature——”

“That will be more thankful for it than I have ever pretended to be.

But—suppose the press-gang——”

“We are safe till the next war; and by that time, perhaps, there may

have gone up such a cry from the whole empire as will make our rulers

man our navy with men instead of slaves. It cannot be done in a day; but

neither, I hope, shall we go to war in a day; and if we set about

training our willing youth in time, we may have a navy manned against

the day of need as no navy has ever yet been manned. When I was last in

the channel——Bless her dear soul, here is Effie! And Walter behind her!

And his father too! That is what I did not expect. Now, if we had Adam—”

He stopped short, and during the silence, many a tender thought was sent

after Cuddie.

Tim was the first to lead the way out of the alms-house; and no inmate

ever left it followed by so few regrets as his mother. For her part,

having shown no gratitude while in it, she never afterwards forgave the

indignity of having been its inhabitant, though the immediate act of

becoming so was her own.

As for the rest of the family, their interests were so far from being

injured by the growing prosperity of the Deep Cut, that they all

benefited by the impetus given to trade, and the new capital and

enterprise, unfettered by legislative interference, which it put in

motion in their neighbourhood. Their worst grievance henceforth was when

rumours of wars brought tribulation among them. Then schemes of flight

and hiding were whispered abroad, and discussed by the fire-side, and

Tim was regarded half-enviously, not only as usual for his virtuous

cheerfulness, but for his security from the perils and woes of

impressment. There has never since been a war, however; and it is

happily yet possible that before the day of strife shall arrive, if

arrive it must, Great Britain will have incalculably improved her

resources by rendering the service of her sons voluntary, and their

labour wholly free.

_Summary of Principles illustrated in this Volume._

The duty of government being to render secure the property of its

subjects, and their industry being their most undeniable property, all

interference of government with the direction and the rewards of

industry is a violation of its duty towards its subjects.

Such interference takes place when some are countenanced by legislation

in engrossing labours and rewards which would otherwise be open to all;—

as in the case of privileged trading corporations;—

When arbitrary means of preparation are dictated as a condition of the

exercise of industry, and the enjoyment of its fruits,—as in the case of

the apprenticeship law;—

When labourers are compelled to a species of labour which they would not

have chosen,—as in the case of the impressment of seamen.

The same duty—of securing the free exercise of industry—requires that

companies should be privileged to carry on works of public utility which

are not within the reach of individual enterprize,—as in the case of

roads, canals, bridges, &c., and also,

That the fruits of rare ingenuity and enterprize should be secured to

the individual,—according to the design of our patent law.

In the first mentioned instances of interference, the three great evils

arise of

The restraint of fair competition in some cases;

The arbitrary increase of competition in other cases;

The obstruction of the circulation of labour and capital from

employment to employment, and from place to place.

In the last mentioned instances of protection, none of these evils take

place.

THE END.

--------------------------------------------------

London: Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES, Duke-street, Lambeth.

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Transcriber’s Note

Hyphens appearing on a line or page break have beem removed if

the preponderance of other occurrences are unhyphenated.

Those words occurring midline are retained regardless of

other occurences. The following variants were retained:

(day-break/daybreak, noon-day/noonday, star-light/starlight,

ferry-boat/ferryboat, pepper-corns/peppercorns, press-gang/pressgane,

scare-crow/scarecrows, school-boy/schoolboy, ship-board/shipboard,

super-abundance/superabundance, work-shop/workshop).

On some occasions, a word spans a line break, but the hyphen itself has

gone missing. These fragments are joined appropriately without further

notice here.

The compound word ‘mother-country’ appears as many times without the

hyphen as with. Only on p.97 of ‘Cinnamon and Pearls’ do both appear,

and the hyphen is added to the first of those three instances.

On p. 89 of the ‘Cinnamon and Pearls’, a paragraph ends with a closing

quote which has no obvious opening, though the voice seems to have

resumed speaking at some point.

Errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected, and

are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the original.

SOWERS NOT REAPERS.

6.32 [‘/“]Such a sight Replaced.

79.11 let us have corn.[”/’”] Inserted.

103.11 further deficiencies wo[n/u] ensue Inverted.

139.1 [ /b]e a sad thing Restored.

CINNAMON AND PEARLS.

9.13 [“]If it is not too far Added.

75.3 [the faces/wonderful] to Rayo to see Transposed.

75.4 [wonderful/the faces] of those who were most Transposed.

92.29 from the mother[-]country. Added.

A TALE OF THE TYNE.

4.9 [“]Yes, indeed. Added.

4.15 [t/f]ather; bless you!” Transposed.

4 [f/t]one, and with a blush Transposed.

94.14 trouble you to[ /-]night Added.

127.29 chance to be at[!] home Spurious.

128.30 But [ /I ]could have knocked Restored.