[Illustration:
CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART
Fifth Series
ESTABLISHED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, 1832
CONDUCTED BY R. CHAMBERS (SECUNDUS)
NO. 120.—VOL. III. SATURDAY, APRIL 17, 1886. PRICE 1½_d._]
WHAT IS BI-METALLISM?
One of the great troubles of the commercial and financial world is the
growing scarcity and dearness of gold, concurrently with a growing
abundance and cheapness of silver. That gold is not merely a form of
money, but is also a valuable and useful commodity in itself, goes
without saying. What is true of gold is true also of silver. These two
metals are called ‘precious’ because, of all other metals, the desire
to possess them in a crude form is universal. Let us put it in another
way. All nations do not desire to possess pig-iron, or ingot copper,
or block-tin, because all nations cannot utilise these metals in such
form, however ready they may be to purchase articles made from them.
But all nations above the lowest rank of savagery do desire to possess
gold and silver in the state of bullion, because they can all utilise
these metals in some mode of ornament or in purposes of exchange.
But for obvious reasons the desire for silver is not so large and so
general as the desire for gold.
From an early period in the history of civilisation, gold and silver
have been used as money, and the reason they are valuable as money is
because they have a high intrinsic value. Now, value is a quality which
has been variously defined, but which for our purposes can best be
explained as of two kinds. That is to say, there is exchange value and
intrinsic value. It is a common thing to say that an article is worth
just what it will bring, or sell for. In a certain sense, this is true;
but the ‘worth,’ or value, in such cases is market or exchange value
only. Take, for instance, the value in the book market of some scarce
book or pamphlet for which an extravagant price will be paid by a
bibliomaniac, wholly regardless of its literary merits. Books which are
intellectually worthless will often attain a very high ‘market value.’
_Per contra_, a copy of the Bible may be obtained for sixpence.
In speaking of value, therefore, one must always understand whether
market value or intrinsic worth be meant. The two do not always
coincide. A thing is very often intrinsically worth a great deal more
than it will sell for; and, on the other hand, a thing will often
sell for a great deal more than it is intrinsically worth. No better
examples of the latter can be mentioned than the extravagant prices
which are sometimes paid for pieces of old china, or the extraordinary
sums which were given for bulbs in the days of the Dutch tulip mania.
Now, the peculiar virtue of gold is that it combines the highest
exchange value with the highest intrinsic value. It possesses qualities
which no other substance has; some of these qualities adapt it for
use as money, while it possesses at the same time a value independent
of its worth as money—namely, its intrinsic value. That is to say, a
sovereign is valuable not merely because it will exchange for twenty
shillings, or purchase a pound’s worth of goods, but also because it
can itself, by re-melting it or otherwise, be made an article of use.
The same is true only in a modified degree of silver money. A shilling
can be utilised in the same way as bullion-silver can; but a shilling
does not contain a shilling’s-worth of the metal. This is why silver
coins in this country are called only ‘token-money.’ Their intrinsic
value is not equal to their ‘face’ or exchange value, and therefore
you cannot at law compel a man to receive payment of a debt from you
in silver if the amount be greater than forty shillings sterling.
Silver beyond forty shillings is not what is termed a ‘legal tender.’
A creditor may take silver from you if he likes, just as he may take
a cheque from you if you have a banking account; but you can no more
compel him to receive payment in silver over forty shillings than you
can compel him to take your cheque.[1]
This has been the law of England since 1816; and it is this law
which makes England what is called a mono-metallic country—that is,
possessing one sole standard of value. That standard, as we know, is
gold. But India is also a mono-metallic country, and silver is there
the sole standard, gold not being now minted at all, although gold
coins, such as mohurs, circulate to some extent, and are hoarded as
‘treasure.’ Indeed, in all the Asiatic countries it may be said that
silver is the circulating medium of exchange—that is to say, the actual
form of money. Yet, in all Asiatic countries, gold is more highly
prized than silver, and is more readily taken in payment of a debt,
even if of Western coinage; and this fact is another illustration of
the high intrinsic value of gold in all parts of the world. Strictly
speaking, gold is not ‘money’ in Asia, but it is held more precious
than official money.
Now, there are certain persons who contend that it is a great mistake
on the part of any nation to have a standard of value confined to a
single metal, be it gold or silver, and who further contend that the
existing universal depression of trade is principally due to England
and one or two other countries rejecting silver for purposes of legal
money. These persons are what it is usual to call Bi-metallists, and
they desire to see adopted a universal dual, or, more correctly,
alternative standard.
The theory of bi-metallism is one of French origin. In 1865, certain
European states formally adopted it. These states were France, Belgium,
Italy, and Switzerland; and their combination is known as the ‘Latin
Union.’ The agreement they made among themselves was that each of them
should coin both gold and silver in unrestricted quantities and of
defined fineness, and that both gold and silver money should be ‘legal
tender’ in each state for all debts. That is to say, in the Latin Union
a man may pay a debt of a thousand pounds, or any amount, in silver—if
he likes—instead of being confined to forty shillings-worth of silver,
as with us. In practice, he does not do so, because it is inconvenient
to carry and to count large sums in silver coins. The purpose of
that agreement was to increase the amount of coined currency without
causing an addition to the market value of one metal by concentrating
the demands of mints upon one alone. It necessitated fixing a ratio
of value between the two metals, and the ratio was taken by the Latin
Union to be fifteen and a half parts of silver to one of gold. That is
to say, one ounce of gold was declared by law to be ‘worth’ fifteen and
a half ounces of silver, and _vice versâ_.
It would take too long and too much technicality to follow the
operations of the Latin Union; but it is necessary to explain that one
branch of the agreement had to be departed from after the close of the
Franco-German war. The Germans demanded payment of the whole of the two
hundred millions of the war indemnity _in gold_, and they then adopted
for themselves a gold standard. This is what is meant by saying that
Germany demonetised silver; she became mono-metallic, like England.
The effect of this action on the part of Germany was to cause an extra
demand for gold for mint purposes, and at the same time to throw upon
the markets of the world a vast quantity of silver which was no longer
wanted for coinage. Consequently, the price of silver measured in gold
fell so considerably that the Latin Union could no longer maintain the
ratio of fifteen-and-a-half to one, which they had established. They
therefore agreed among themselves not to coin any more silver—or to
coin only such small quantities as were needed for the convenience of
the people—while, however, they retained the principle of silver money
being ‘legal tender’ as well as gold.
Some years later, the United States government resumed specie
payments—that is to say, they called in the ‘greenbacks,’ or notes for
small amounts which were issued during the war, when coin was scarce,
and began to pay all their debts in gold. In order to do this, they had
to purchase and mint a large quantity of that metal. Between 1873 and
1883, it is estimated that no less than two hundred millions sterling
worth of gold were taken up for coinage over and above the normal
consumption in that way. Thus, the United States required one hundred
millions; Germany, eighty-four millions; and Italy, sixteen millions.
This meant an average extra demand on the ten years of twenty millions
annually.
We must bear these figures in mind in endeavouring to see how gold has
become scarce, and, as it is termed, ‘appreciated in value.’ Besides
the coinage for these and the other states which have to put a certain
quantity of gold through the mints every year in order to keep up their
normal currency, there is the large demand for the metal for employment
in the arts and manufactures. M. de Levaleye estimated a few years
ago that the amount of gold thus used is about ten millions sterling
annually; but in a former article we took fifteen millions sterling as
the figure. The latter we believe to be nearer the mark, and it is the
fact that the use of gold for purposes other than coinage is annually
increasing.
A thing may increase in market value—which, as we have said, is
different from intrinsic value—in two ways—namely, by reason of
enlarged demand, or by reason of diminished supply. Both forces have
operated in the case of gold; for, while the demand has increased in
the manner just shown, the supply has been steadily falling off. In
1852, after the discoveries in California and Australia, the production
of gold was to the value of thirty-six and a half millions sterling;
but now, it is only about half that amount. The decrease in yield is
shown in a very interesting manner by comparing successive periods of
five years. Thus:
Period. | Total Production. | Annual Average.
1852-56 | £150,000,000 | £30,000,000
1857-61 | 123,200,000 | 24,600,000
1862-66 | 114,000,000 | 22,750,000
1867-71 | 109,000,000 | 21,753,000
1871-75 | 77,000,000 | 19,200,000
Between 1875 and 1882 the average remained a little over nineteen
millions annually; but in 1883 the production was only about eighteen
and a quarter millions; and in 1884 it was rather under eighteen
millions sterling. At the close of last year, Mr Samuel Smith, M.P.—a
leading bi-metallist—said that the present production could not be
estimated at much over sixteen millions annually. If our estimate
is correct, that fifteen millions annually are used in the arts and
manufactures, it will be seen what a narrow margin is now left for
coinage.
This is bad enough from a bi-metallist point of view; but worse
remains. Silver has been all the time increasing in amount of
production. We have not the figures for precisely the same periods as
for gold, but the following will suffice to show the growth in the
yield of silver:
Period. | Total Production. | Annual Average.
1852-62 | £90,760,000 | £9,076,000
1863-73 | 124,530,000 | 12,453,000
1874-80 | 110,400,000 | 15,771,428
1881 | ... | 18,800,000
1882 | ... | 20,500,000
1883 | ... | 21,400,000
1884 | ... | 21,400,000
The broad inference from these figures is that the production of
silver has about doubled within the last twenty years. The increase
is mainly, if not entirely, from the development of the mines in the
western States of America; and an American authority estimates that the
production will probably double itself again within the next twenty
years.
Now, the curious fact is, that while the world at once and greedily
absorbs the annual production of gold, it is in present circumstances
unable to utilise all the silver. This metal is actually decreasing
in employment in the arts; and indeed, it is within the observation
of every one that silver-plate is no longer the highly coveted
possession which it once was in middle-class families. One meets now
with ‘solid-silver’ appliances comparatively seldom in general use,
electro-plate having taken their place. Its disuse as money has been
already mentioned.
The result is remarkable. In 1848, the metallic money, current or
hoarded in the world, was estimated at one thousand millions sterling,
of which four hundred millions were gold, and six hundred millions were
silver. In 1870, the metallic money was estimated at fourteen hundred
millions, of which seven hundred and fifty millions were gold, and
six hundred and fifty millions were silver. At present, the metallic
money of the world is estimated at about fifteen hundred and seventy
millions sterling, of which about eight hundred millions are gold, and
seven hundred and twenty millions are silver. It is to be remembered
also that a very small proportion of the gold which is withdrawn for
manufactures and ornaments ever finds its way back into the circulating
arena, because the labour expended on the finished ornament gives it
a higher value than can be obtained out of the melting-pot. In this
connection another interesting point may be noticed, which is, that
it has been ascertained that out of every three thousand sovereigns
coined, one sovereign represents the annual loss by friction; and in
half-sovereigns the annual loss in the same way is one in eighteen
hundred. It may not be generally known that our gold coins circulate
very much in some parts of the East and in South America, and are only
returned to this country when they have lost in weight by friction.
This loss reduces the intrinsic value; but when sent to London, they
are exchangeable at face value, if not excessively abraded.
The effect of this change in the actual production and employment
of gold and silver is to materially alter their relative values.
The value of silver measured in gold has fallen so enormously, that
instead of the ratio being, as was fixed by the Latin Union, fifteen
and a half parts of silver to one of gold, the actual ratio in the
markets of the world is now only about twenty parts of silver to one
of gold. It is estimated that a sovereign will now purchase as much
as thirty shillings would do fifteen years ago; and this is what is
meant by saying that the appreciation of gold is the cause of the
depreciation of prices of commodities. But all this time silver has
remained the legal standard of value of India, and a rupee is still
worth two shillings in that country. That is to say, a rupee has still
the purchasable power of two shillings in India; but in England it is
worth only about one shilling and sevenpence. Therefore, upon every
pound which the Indian remits to this country he must lose twenty per
cent., or about four shillings, for exchange. This is a very serious
loss not only on merchants—many of whom, however, can to some extent
counteract it by sending home goods instead of money, goods which they
buy for silver in Calcutta and sell for gold in London—but also on the
government, which has to send home something like fifteen millions
sterling, gold value, every year, to meet the interest on the public
debts, and the like.
The position, then, is this—that the supply of gold-money is now too
small for the world’s needs, and that all commerce and international
intercourse is being hampered by the restriction of the medium
of exchange. At present, the sole practical medium is gold; and
gold-money, as Mr Goschen has remarked, has three functions to
perform: it has to supply the pocket and till-money of the people;
it has to remain in the vaults of bankers as security for the notes
issued against it; and it has to serve in settling the balances
between nations. The larger the amount of trade which is being done,
the larger must these balances necessarily be—although not in direct
proportion—and the more gold must be required to adjust them. By
analogy of reasoning, the less gold there is in the form of circulating
money, the more must the trade be restricted. If the restriction does
not operate on volume, it must operate on prices, and this in effect is
what has happened.
The subject of concern, then, in the circles of finance throughout the
world is how to rehabilitate silver, as it is termed—that is, how to
replace it in the position which it is claimed the metal should occupy
as money. If the supply of gold is too small for the world, then the
only alternative is to utilise silver more largely, and to give it an
official value in relation to gold. That value cannot now be placed in
the ratio of fifteen-and-a-half to one; but it is thought that common
agreement among the nations might enable the ratio to be fixed at
something like seventeen to one.
The object of the bi-metallists is to bring about an arrangement
between all the nations of Europe and the United States of the same
principle and effect as that adopted by the Latin Union, which we have
described. That is to say, they seek to have the free concurrent
coinage of both gold and silver in a fixed ratio of value, and to have
both metals everywhere decreed unlimited legal tender. The effect of
this would be, they claim, to provide a supply of metallic coinage
amply sufficient for the world’s present and increasing requirements,
while it would prevent those violent fluctuations in exchange which
do so much to disturb our trade with the silver-using countries of
the East and of South America (where the Mexican silver dollar is the
standard). Unless this be done, they assert, gold will become the sole
currency of the world, and will have to perform the work of two metals.
The effects of the consequent depreciation of silver upon India will be
ruinous, and the effects of the consequent appreciation of gold will
be to reduce the value of property in all commodities in this country
still further. The final result, say some, must be panic and revolution.
The arguments _pro_ and _con._ involve technicalities not quite
suitable for our pages. It may be mentioned, however, that those
opposed to bi-metallism say that there is no reason to conclude that
the supply of gold has _permanently_ fallen off; that fresh discoveries
may be made any day; that the effects of the fluctuations of exchange
on trade are exaggerated, and do not, in practice, prevent free
commercial intercourse between countries of quite different currencies;
and that the diminishing use of silver in the arts is an argument
against its use as money. If silver becomes comparatively valueless as
a commodity, how, it is asked, can the ratio of value as money between
it and gold be maintained? The metal would be placed in the anomalous
position of having two values—one at the mints, and another in the
markets—and the consequence would be that the market value would rule,
and people would refuse to take the silver money. This is the case at
present in the United States, where the government is compelled by law
to buy for coinage some five hundred thousand pounds-worth of silver
every month, which silver money lies dead in the treasury because the
people don’t want it.
On the other hand, it may be contended that the very fact of silver
being legalised by all the great nations of the world would impart to
it a value which might re-create a demand for it for other employment.
It may be possible, too, to arrange not a permanent but an adjustable
ratio, to be altered from time to time by joint agreement among the
nations, according as the relative values of the metals are affected by
supply and demand.
Be this as it may, it would seem that all the nations concerned,
including even Germany, who acknowledges having made a mistake in
demonetising silver, are more or less in favour of bi-metallism, and
that all wait for the concurrence of England. In the United States,
the present efforts of the government are directed towards repealing
the law which compels them to coin a certain amount of silver—not that
they do not want a dual currency, but simply because they cannot work
it as long as England persists in adhering to the gold standard. Thus
it would appear that in the great silver question England is, rightly
or wrongly, not as yet prepared to come to a decision. In England,
moreover, counsels are very much divided among experts, while the
general public gives almost no attention to the question whatever. It
is in the hope of stimulating the interest of our readers in a great,
almost a vital matter, that we place this article before them.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The only other legal tender are Bank of England notes. They are a
legal tender for sums above five pounds. The Bank of England itself
must, however, if desired, pay gold.
IN ALL SHADES.
CHAPTER XX.
There was great excitement in the District Court at Westmoreland one
sunny morning, a few days later, for the new judge was to sit and
hear an appeal, West Indian fashion, from a magistrate’s decision in
the case of Delgado _versus_ Dupuy. The little courthouse in the low
parochial buildings of Westmoreland was crowded with an eager throng of
excited negroes. Much buzzing and humming of voices filled the room,
for it was noised abroad among the blacks that Mistah Hawtorn, being a
brown man born, was likely to curry favour with the buckras—as brown
men will—by giving unjust decisions in their favour against the black
men; and this was a very important case for the agricultural negroes,
as it affected a question of paying wages for work performed in the
Pimento Valley cane-pieces.
Rosina Fleming was there among the crowd; and as Louis Delgado, the
appellant in the case, came into court, he paused for a moment to
whisper hurriedly a few words to her. ‘De med’cine hab effeck like I
tell you, Missy Rosina?’ he asked in an undertone.
Rosina laughed and showed her white teeth. ‘Yes, Mistah Delgado, him
hab effeck, sah, same like you tell me. Isaac Pourtalès, him lub me
well for true, nowadays.’
‘Him gwine to marry you, missy?’
Rosina shook her head. ‘No; him can’t done dat,’ she answered
carelessly, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. ‘Him
got anudder wife already.’
‘Ha! Him got wife ober in Barbadoes?’ Delgado muttered. ‘Him doan’t
nebber tell me dat.—Well, Missy Rosy, I want you bring Isaac Pourtalès
to me hut dis one day. I want Isaac to help me. De cup ob de Dupuys is
full dis day; an’ if de new judge gib decision wrongfully agin me, de
Lard will arise soon in all him glory, like him tell de prophets, an’
make de victory for him own people.’
‘But not hurt de missy?’ Rosina inquired anxiously.
‘Yah, yah! You is too chupid, Miss Rosy, I tellin’ you. You tink de
Lard gwine to turn aside in de day ob vengeance for your missy? De
Dupuys is de Lard’s enemy, le-ady, an’ he will destroy dem utterly, men
and women.’
Before Rosina could find time to reply, there was a sudden stir in the
body of the court, and Edward Hawthorn, entering from the private door
behind, took his seat upon the judge’s bench in hushed silence.
‘Delgado _versus_ Dupuy, an appeal from a magistrate’s order, referred
to this court as being under twenty shillings in value.—Who heard the
case in the first instance?’ Edward inquired.
‘Mr Dupuy of Orange Grove and Mr Henley,’ Tom Dupuy, the defendant,
answered quietly.
Edward’s forehead puckered up a little. ‘You are the defendant, I
believe, Mr Thomas Dupuy?’ he said to the young planter with a curious
look.
Tom Dupuy nodded acquiescence.
‘And the case was heard in the first instance by Mr Theodore Dupuy of
Orange Grove, who, if I am rightly informed, happens to be your own
uncle?’
‘Rightly informed!’ Tom Dupuy sneered half angrily—‘rightly informed,
indeed! Why, you know he is, of course, as well as I do. Didn’t we both
call upon you together the other day? I should say, considering what
sort of interview we had, you can’t already have quite forgotten it!’
Edward winced a little, but answered nothing. He merely allowed the
plaintiff to be put in the box, and proceeded to listen carefully
to his rambling evidence. It wasn’t very easy, even for the sharp,
half-Jewish brown barrister who was counsel for the plaintiff, to get
anything very clear or definite out of Louis Delgado with his vague
rhetoric. Still, by dint of patient listening, Edward Hawthorn was
enabled at last to make out the pith and kernel of the old African’s
excited story. He worked, it seemed, at times on Orange Grove estate,
and at times, alternately, at Pimento Valley. The wages on both
estates, as frequently happens in such cases, were habitually far in
arrears; and Delgado claimed for many days, on which, he asserted,
he had been working at Tom Dupuy’s cane-pieces; while Tom Dupuy had
entered a plea of never indebted on the ground that no entry appeared
in his own book-keeper’s account for those dates of Delgado’s presence.
Mr Theodore Dupuy had heard the case, and he and a brother-magistrate
had at once decided it against Delgado. ‘But, I know, sah,’ Delgado
said vehemently, looking up to the new judge with a certain defiant
air, as of a man who comes prepared for injustice, ‘I know I work dem
days at Pimento Valley, becase I keep book meself, an’ put down in him
in me own hand all de days I work anywhere.’
‘Can you produce the book?’ Edward inquired of the excited negro.
‘It isn’t any use,’ Tom Dupuy interrupted angrily. ‘I’ve seen the book
myself, and you can’t read it. It’s all kept in some heathenish African
language or other.’
‘I must request you, Mr Dupuy, not to interrupt,’ Edward Hawthorn said
in his sternest voice. ‘Please to remember, I beg of you, that this
room is a court of justice.’
‘Not much justice here for white men, I expect,’ Tom Dupuy muttered to
himself in a half-audible undertone. ‘The niggers’ll have it all their
own way in future, of course, now they’ve got one of themselves to sit
upon the bench for them.’
‘Produce the book,’ Edward said, turning to Delgado, and restraining
his natural anger with some difficulty.
‘It doan’t no good, sah,’ the African answered, with a sigh of
despondency, pulling out a greasy account-book from his open bosom, and
turning over the pages slowly in moody silence. ‘It me own book, dat I
hab for me own reference, an’ I keep him all in me own handwriting.’
Edward held out his hand commandingly, and took the greasy small volume
that the African passed over to him, with some little amusement and
surprise. He didn’t expect, of course, that he would be able to read
it, but he thought at least he ought to see what sort of accounts the
man kept; they would at anyrate be interesting, as throwing light upon
negro ideas and modes of reckoning. He opened the book the negro gave
him and turned it over hastily with a languid curiosity. In a second,
a curious change came visibly over his startled face, and he uttered
sharply a little sudden cry of unaffected surprise and astonishment.
‘Why,’ he said in a strangely altered voice, turning once more to the
dogged African, who stood there staring at him in stolid indifference,
‘what on earth is the meaning of this? This is Arabic!’
Rosina Fleming, looking eagerly from in front at the curious
characters, saw at once they were the same in type as the writing in
the obeah book Delgado had showed her the evening she went to consult
him at his hut about Isaac Pourtalès.
Delgado glanced back at the young judge with a face full of rising
distrust and latent incredulity. ‘You doan’t can read it, sah?’ he
asked suspiciously. ‘It African talk. You doan’t can read it?’
‘Certainly, I can,’ Edward answered with a smile. ‘It’s very
beautifully and clearly written, and the entries are in good and
accurate Arabic.’ And he read a word or two of the entries aloud, in
proof of his ability to decipher at sight the mysterious characters.
Delgado in turn gave a sudden start; and drawing himself up to his full
height, with newborn pride and dignity, he burst forth at once into
a few sentences in some strange foreign tongue, deep and guttural,
addressed apparently, as Tom Dupuy thought, to the new judge in
passionate entreaty. But in reality the African was asking Edward
Hawthorn, earnestly and in the utmost astonishment, whether it was a
fact that he could really and truly speak Arabic.
Edward answered him back in a few words, rapidly spoken, in the fluent
colloquial Egyptian dialect which he had learned in London from his
Mohammedan teacher, Sheik Abdullah. It was but a short sentence, but it
was quite enough to convince Delgado that he did positively understand
the entries in the account-book. ‘De Lard be praise!’ the African
shouted aloud excitedly. ‘De new judge, him can read de book I keep for
me own reckonin’! De Lard be praise! Him gwine to delibber me!’
‘Did ever you see such a farce in your life?’ whispered Tom Dupuy to
his uncle Theodore. ‘I don’t believe the fellow understands a single
word of it; and I’m sure the gibberish they were talking to one another
can’t possibly be part of any kind of human language even in Africa.
And yet, after all, I don’t know! The fellow’s a nigger himself,
and perhaps he may really have learned from his own people some of
their confounded African lingoes. But who on earth would ever have
believed, Uncle Theodore, we’d have lived to hear such trash as that
talked openly from the very bench in a Queen’s court in the island of
Trinidad!’
Edward coloured up again at the few words which he caught accidentally
of this ugly monologue; but he only said to the eager African: ‘I
cannot speak with you here in Arabic, Delgado; here we must use English
only.’
‘Certainly,’ Tom Dupuy suggested aloud—colonial courts are even laxer
than English ones. ‘We mustn’t forget, of course, Mr Hawthorn, as you
said just now, that this room is a court of justice.’
The young judge turned over the book to conceal his chagrin, and
examined it carefully. ‘What are the dates in dispute?’ he asked,
turning to the counsel.
Delgado and Tom Dupuy in one breath gave a full list of them. Counsel
handed up a little written slip with the various doubtful days entered
carefully upon it in ordinary English numbers. Edward ticked them off
one by one in Delgado’s note-book, quietly to himself, smiling as
he did so at the quaint Arabic translations of the Grove of Oranges
and the Valley of Pimento. Every one of Delgado’s dates was quite
accurately and carefully entered in his own account-book.
When they came to examine Tom Dupuy and his Scotch book-keeper,
their account of the whole transaction was far less definite, clear,
and consistent. Tom Dupuy, with a certain airy lordly indifference,
admitted that his payments were often in arrears, and that his modes of
book-keeping were often somewhat rough and ready. He didn’t pretend to
keep an account personally of every man’s labour on his whole estate,
he said; he was a gentleman himself, and he left that sort of thing, of
course, to his book-keeper’s memory. The book-keeper didn’t remember
that Louis Delgado had worked at Pimento Valley on those particular
disputed mornings; though, to be sure, one naturally couldn’t be quite
certain about it. But if you were going to begin taking a nigger’s word
on such a matter against a white man’s, why, what possible security
against false charges could you give in future to the white planter?
‘How often do you post up the entries in that book?’ Delgado’s counsel
asked the Scotch book-keeper in cross-examination.
The book-keeper was quite as airy and easy as his master in this
matter. ‘Well, whiles I do it at the time,’ he answered quietly, ‘and
whiles I do it a wee bit later.’
‘An’ I put him down ebbery evening, de minute I home, sah, in dis
note-book,’ Delgado shouted eagerly with a fierce gesticulation.
‘You must be quiet, please,’ Edward said, turning to him. ‘You mustn’t
interrupt the witness or your counsel.’
‘Did Delgado work at Pimento Valley yesterday?’ the brown barrister
asked, looking up from the books which Tom Dupuy had been forced to
produce and hand in, in evidence.
The book-keeper hesitated and smiled a sinister smile. ‘He did,’ he
answered after a moment’s brief internal conflict.
‘How is it, then, that the day’s work isn’t entered here already?’ the
brown barrister went on pitilessly.
The book-keeper shuffled with an uneasy shuffle. ‘Ah, well, I should
have entered it on Saturday evening,’ he answered evasively.
Edward turned to Delgado’s note-book. The last day’s work was entered
properly in an evidently fresh ink, that of the previous two days
looking proportionately blacker and older. There could be very little
doubt, indeed, which of the two posted his books daily with the greater
care and accuracy.
He heard the case out patiently and temperately, in spite of Delgado’s
occasional wild outbursts and Tom Dupuy’s constant sneers, and at the
end he proceeded to deliver judgment as calmly as he was able, without
prejudice. It was a pity that the first case he heard should have been
one which common justice compelled him to give against Tom Dupuy, but
there was no helping it. ‘The court enters judgment for the plaintiff,’
he said in a loud clear voice. ‘Delgado’s books, though unfortunately
kept only in Arabic for his own reference, have been carefully and
neatly posted.—Yours, Mr Dupuy, I regret to say, are careless,
inadequate, and inaccurate; and I am also sorry to see that the case
was heard in the first instance by one of your own near relations,
which circumstance, it would have been far wiser, as well as more
seemly, to have avoided.’
Tom Dupuy grew red and pale by turns as he listened in blank surprise
and dismay to this amazing and unprecedented judgment. A black man’s
word taken in evidence in open court against a white gentleman’s! It
was too appalling! ‘Well, well, Uncle Theodore,’ he said bitterly,
rising to go, ‘I expected as much, though it’s hard to believe it. I
knew we should never get decent justice in this court any longer!’
But Delgado stood there, dazed and motionless, gazing with mute wonder
at the pale face of the new judge, and debating within himself whether
it could be really true or not that he had gained his case against the
powerful Dupuy faction. Not that he understood for a moment the exact
meaning of the legal words, ‘judgment for the plaintiff;’ but he saw
at once on Tom Dupuy’s face that the white man was positively livid
with anger and had been severely reprimanded. ‘De Lard be praise!’ he
ejaculated at last. ‘De judge is righteous judge, an’ him lub de black
man!’
Edward would have given a great deal just then if Delgado in the moment
of his triumph had not used those awkward words, ‘him lub de black
man!’ But there was no use brooding over it now; so, as the court was
clearing he merely signed with his finger to Delgado, and whispered
hastily in his ear: ‘Come to me this evening in my own room; I want to
hear from you how and where you learned Arabic.’
CHAPTER XXI.
When Edward made his way, wearied and anxious, into his own room
behind the courthouse, Delgado was waiting for him there, and as the
judge entered, he rose quickly and uttered a few words of customary
salutation in excellent Arabic. Edward Hawthorn observed at once that
a strange change seemed to have come over the ragged old negro. He had
lost his slouching, half-savage manner, and stood more erect, or bowed
in self-respecting obeisance, with a certain obvious consciousness
of personal dignity which at once reminded him of Sheik Abdullah.
He noticed, too, that while the man’s English was the mere broken
Creole language he had learned from the other negroes around him, his
Arabic was the pure colloquial classical Arabic of the Cairo ulemas.
It was astonishing what a difference this change of tongue made in
the tattered old black field-labourer: when he spoke English, he was
the mere ordinary plantation negro; when he spoke Arabic, he was the
decently educated and perfectly courteous African Moslem.
‘You have quite surprised me, Delgado,’ Edward said, still in
colloquial Arabic. ‘I had no idea there were any Africans in Trinidad
who understood the language of the Koran. How did you ever come to
learn it?’
The old African bowed graciously, and expanded his hands with a
friendly gesture. ‘Effendi,’ he answered, ‘Allah is not wholly without
his true followers in any country. Is it not written in your own
book that when Elijah, the forerunner of the Prophet, cried in the
cave, saying: “I alone am left of the worshippers of Allah,” the Lord
answered and said unto him in his mercy: “I have left me seven thousand
souls in Israel which have not bowed the knee to Baal?” Even so, Allah
has his followers left even here among the infidels in Trinidad.’
‘Then you are still a Mussulman?’ Edward cried in surprise.
The old African rose again from the seat into which Edward had politely
motioned him, and folding both his hands reverently in front of him,
answered in a profoundly solemn voice: ‘There is no God but Allah, and
Mohammed is his prophet.’
‘But I thought—I understood—I was told that you were a teacher and
preacher up yonder in the Methodist chapel.’
Delgado shrugged his shoulders with African expressiveness. ‘What can
I do?’ he said, throwing open his hands sideways. ‘They have brought
me here all the way from the Gold Coast. There is no mosque here, no
ulema, no other Moslems. What can I do? I have to do as the other
negroes do.—But see!’ and he drew something carefully from the folds of
his dirty cotton shirt: ‘I have brought a Book with me. I have kept it
sacredly all these years. Have you seen it? Do you know it?’
Edward opened the soiled and dog-eared but carefully treasured volume
that the negro handed him. He knew it at once. It was a copy of the
Koran. He turned the pages over lightly till he came to the famous
chapter of the Seven Treasures; then he began to read aloud a few
verses in a clear, easy, Arabic intonation.
Delgado started when he heard the young judge actually reading the
sacred volume. ‘So you, too, are a Moslem!’ he cried excitedly.
Edward smiled. ‘No,’ he answered; ‘I am no Mussulman. But I have
learned Arabic, and I have read the Koran.’
‘Mussulman or Christian,’ Delgado answered fervently, throwing up his
head, ‘you are a servant of Allah. You have given judgment to-day like
Daniel the Hebrew or like Othman Calif, the successor of the Prophet.
When the great and terrible day of the Lord arrives, Allah will surely
not forget the least among his servants.’
Edward did not understand the hidden meaning of that seemingly
conventional pious tag, so he merely answered: ‘But you haven’t yet
told me, remnant of the faithful, how you ever came to learn Arabic.’
Thus encouraged, Delgado loosed the strings of his tongue, and poured
forth rapidly with African volubility the whole marvellous story of
his life. The son of a petty chieftain on the Guinea coast, he had
been sent in his boyhood by his father, a Mohammedan convert, to the
native schools for the negroes at Cairo, where he had remained till he
was over seventeen years old, and had then returned to his father’s
principality. There, he had gone out to fight in some small war between
two neighbouring negro chieftains, the events of which war he insisted
on detailing to Edward at great length; and having been taken prisoner
by the hostile party, he had at last been sold in the bad old days,
when a contraband ‘ebony-trade’ still existed, to a Cuban slaver. The
slaver had been captured off Sombrero Rock by an English cruiser, and
all the negroes landed at Trinidad. That was the sum and substance
of the strangely romantic story told by the old African to the young
English barrister in the Westmoreland courthouse. Couched in his
childish and ignorant negro English, it would no doubt have sounded
ludicrous and puerile; but poured forth in classical Arabic almost as
pure and fluent as Sheik Abdullah’s own, it was brimful of pathos,
eloquence, interest, and weirdness. Yet strange and almost incredible
as it seemed to Edward’s mind, the old African himself apparently
regarded it as the most natural and simple concatenation of events that
could easily happen to anybody anywhere.
‘And how is it,’ Edward asked at last, in profound astonishment,
lapsing once more into English, ‘that you have never tried to get back
to Africa?’
Delgado smiled an ugly smile, that showed all his teeth, not
pleasantly, but like the teeth of a bulldog snarling. ‘Do you tink,
sah,’ he said sarcastically, ‘dat dem fightin’ Dupuy is gwine to help
a poor black naygur to go back to him own country? Ole-time folk has
proverb; “Mongoose no help cane-rat find de way back to him burrow.”’
Edward could hardly believe the sudden transformation. In a single
moment, with the change of language, the educated African had vanished
utterly, and the plantation negro stood once more undisguised before
him. And yet, Edward thought curiously to himself, which, after all,
was the truest and most genuine of those two contrasted but united
personalities—the free Mussulman, or the cowed and hopeless Trinidad
field-labourer? Strange, too, that while this born African could play
as he liked at fetichism or Christianity, could do obeah or sing psalms
from his English hymn-book, the profoundly penetrating and absorbing
creed of Islam was the only one that had sunk deep into the very
inmost marrow of his negro nature. About that fact, Edward could not
for a moment have the faintest hesitation. Delgado—Coromantyn or West
Indian—was an undoubting Mussulman. Christianity was but a cloak with
which he covered himself outwardly, to himself and others; obeah was
but an art that he practised in secret for unlawful profit: Islam, the
faith most profoundly and intimately adapted to the negro idiosyncrasy,
was the creed that had burnt itself into his very being, in spite of
all changes of outer circumstance. Not that Delgado believed his Bible
the less: with the frank inconsistency of early minds, he held the two
incompatible beliefs without the faintest tinge of conscious hypocrisy;
just as many of ourselves, though Christian enough in all externals,
hold lingering relics of pagan superstitions about horseshoes, and
crooked sixpences, and unlucky days, and the mystic virtues of a
cornelian amulet. Every morning he spelt over religiously a chapter in
the New Testament; and every night, in the gloom of his hut, he read to
himself in hushed awe a few versicles of the holy Koran.
When story and comment were fully finished, the old African rose to go.
As he opened the door, Edward held out his hand for the negro to shake.
Delgado, now once more the plantation labourer, hesitated for a second,
fearing to take it; then at last, drawing himself up to his full
height, and instinctively clutching at his loose cotton trousers, as
though they had been the flowing white robes of his old half-forgotten
Egyptian school-days, he compromised the matter by making a profound
salaam, and crying in his clear Arabic gutturals: ‘May the blessing of
Allah, the All-wise, the merciful, rest for ever on the effendi, his
servant, who has delivered a just judgment!’
In another moment, he had glided through the door; and Edward, hardly
yet able to realise the strangeness of the situation, was left alone
with his own astonishment.
INSTINCT AND REASON.
In the following paper we propose to discard entirely the word
mind as an expression of the faculty of reflection, since it is
frequently misapplied or misunderstood, and its employment is vague
and unsatisfactory. We prefer using a term denoting the receptivity
of ideas through an organic medium by an immaterial force having
the power of acting on the ingestion of ideas, and diffusing its
action through the corresponding media of the nervous system: this we
shall call the intellectual force, and its action is the sequence of
conscious or unconscious cerebration. It is not our purpose to enter
upon a consideration of the higher relations of intellectual action
with so-called spiritual forces, as this would necessarily tend to the
contemplation of an extra element than that more particularly implied
in the attributes of instinct and reason; for by these words, in their
ordinary acceptation, we recognise two separate faculties, independent,
yet coexistent, and capable of harmonious co-operation, but not
necessarily co-ordinate nor coexistent, since the one we contend to be
the natural property of all animated beings; while the other is in part
the result of transmitted intelligence, education, and enlightenment,
conveyed from a higher to a lower power.
Instinct, as the more universally diffused and common endowment, is
to be found throughout the whole range of the animal kingdom; and to
deny its existence in one class of creation and grant it in another
is illogical and contrary to the recognised and established plan of
creation; it is rather a general inheritance; in some forms of life
the chief or sole guide to voluntary action; while in other or higher
forms, partially overlaid, and in a measure superseded, by the faculty
of reason. Yet we should be, we think, altogether wrong in supposing
it non-existent, because, through the cultivation and development of
reasoning power, it is less easily discerned, and less fully exercised
in man, than in the lower animals; for, by inquiry in the lives of
uncivilised humanity, we shall find undoubted proofs of instinct in
the ordinary passages of savage life, as in the choice of food; the
selection of certain herbs for medicinal purposes; the capacity of
tracking a path from one point to another in great distances; the
avoidance of poisonous articles of diet; casual injuries; and, above
all, the clinging to life which is common to all mankind. And even in
civilised beings, we may discern evident traces of the same property
underlying the more ostensible gift of reason, and instinctive, though
otherwise unaccountable, motives leading to definite conclusions.
These may take the forms of likes or dislikes towards outer objects;
impulses, frequently and truly termed unreasonable, because they arise
apart from reason, and are purely instinctive; hence actions that are
simply the outcomes of instinct, not reconcilable to the written laws
of reason or the mandates of civilisation.
In some rare instances of humanity run wild, only a few of which have
been recorded, where, by some accident, a human offspring has grown
up as a denizen of the forest and the companion of wild beasts, the
gift of instinct serves the same purpose it fulfils in the rest of the
creation; and when first brought into contact with civilisation, these
outcasts have apparently evinced few, or none, of the actual attributes
of reason, though these have become perceptible later on through human
companionship and attention. But even centuries of cultivation and the
highest hereditary advantages fail utterly to eliminate or destroy the
inherent property of instinct in man; for not only, as above stated,
is it displayed in the common shrinking from death and the avoidance
of injury and suffering, but it manifests itself in countless other
instances in daily life. Let us regard the union of sexes as one: how
frequently is the choice of a partner in life made through nothing
less than a blind instinct, often apart from any reasoning process, so
much so, that the fact has passed into a proverb that ‘Love is blind.’
And in the common affairs of life, it is often possible to trace an
independent course of action pursued without reference to a reasoning
faculty, rather by a blind adherence to an unseen hidden principle,
which is undoubtedly instinct guiding rather than reason. And this
obedience to an unknown faculty has doubtless, in the history of the
world, played important parts; especially when, in prehistoric times,
man was essentially a predatory animal. On his instinctive love of
fighting for personal aggrandisement, and his instinctive love of the
chase for providing food and clothing, his very existence in a great
measure depended. Indeed, the motives which influence and direct men’s
lives are only, after all, the attributes of instinct, as we commonly
observe portrayed in civilised society; thus, in one, the instinct
of commercial enterprise pushes towards speculation; in another, the
instinct of self-preservation induces precautions of benefit to the
community; again, the instinct of need prompts measures for procuring
supplies of food and clothing. On all hands, human instinct is an
active agent and irrepressible.