Egerton had thrown himself at full length on the sofa, a position
exceedingly rare with him; and about his whole air and manner, as
Levy entered, there was something singularly different from that
stateliness of port common to the austere legislator. The very tone
of his voice was different. It was as if the statesman--the man of
business--had vanished; it was rather the man of fashion and the
idler, who, nodding languidly to his visitor, said, "Levy, what
money can I have for a year?"
"The estate will bear very little more. My dear fellow, that last
election was the very devil. You cannot go on thus much longer."
"My dear fellow!" Baron Levy hailed Audley Egerton as "my dear
fellow." And Audley Egerton, perhaps, saw nothing strange in the
words, though his lip curled.
"I shall not want to go on thus much longer," answered Egerton, as
the curl on his lip changed to a gloomy smile. "The estate must,
meanwhile, bear £5000 more."
"A hard pull on it. You had really better sell."
"I cannot afford to sell at present. I cannot afford men to say,
'Audley Egerton is done up--his property is for sale.'"
"It is very sad when one thinks what a rich man you have been--and
may be yet!"
"Be yet! How?"
Baron Levy glanced towards the thick mahogany doors--thick and
impervious, as should be the doors of statesmen. "Why, you know
that, with three words from you, I could produce an effect upon the
stocks of three nations, that might give as each a hundred thousand
pounds. We would go shares."
"Levy," said Egerton coldly, though a deep blush overspread his
face, "you are a scoundrel; that is your look-out. I interfere with
no man's tastes and conscience. I don't intend to be a scoundrel
myself. I have told you that long ago."
The Baron laughed, without evincing the least displeasure.
"Well," said he, "you are neither wise nor complimentary, but you
shall have the money. But yet, would it not be better," added Levy,
with emphasis, "to borrow it, without interest, of your friend
L'Estrange?"
Egerton started as if stung.
"You mean to taunt me, sir!" he exclaimed, passionately. "I accept
pecuniary favours from Lord L'Estrange! I!"
"Tut, my dear Egerton, I dare say my Lord would not think so ill now
of that little act in your life which--"
"Hold!" exclaimed Egerton, writhing. "Hold!"
He stopped, and paced the room, muttering in broken sentences, "To
blush before this man! Chastisement, chastisement!"
Levy gazed on him with hard and sinister eyes. The minister turned
abruptly.
"Look you, Levy," said he, with forced composure--"you hate me--why,
I know not. I have never injured you--never avenged the inexpiable
wrong you did me."
"Wrong!--you a man of the world! Wrong! Call it so if you will,
then," he added shrinkingly, for Audley's brow grew terrible. "But
have I not atoned it? Would you ever have lived in this palace, and
ruled this country as one of the most influential of its ministers,
but for my management--my whispers to the wealthy Miss Leslie? Come,
but for me what would you have been--perhaps a beggar?"
"What shall I be now if I live? _Then_ I should not have been a
beggar; poor perhaps in money, but rich--rich in all that now leaves
my life bankrupt. Gold has not thriven with me; how should it? And
this fortune--it has passed for the main part into your hands. Be
patient, you will have it all ere long. But there is one man in the
world who has loved me from a boy, and woe to you if ever he learn
that he has the right to despise me!"
"Egerton, my good fellow," said Levy, with great composure, "you
need not threaten me, for what interest can I possibly have in
tale-telling to Lord L'Estrange? As to hating you--pooh! You snub me
in private, you cut me in public, you refuse to come to my dinners,
you'll not ask me to your own; still, there is no man I like better,
nor would more willingly serve. When do you want the £5000?"
"Perhaps in one month, perhaps not for three or four. Let it be
ready when required."
"Enough; depend on it. Have you any other commands?"
"None."
"I will take my leave, then. By the by, what do you suppose the
Hazeldean rental is worth--net?"
"I don't know, nor care. You have no designs upon _that_, too?"
"Well, I like keeping up family connections. Mr Frank seems a
liberal young gentleman."
Before Egerton could answer, the Baron had glided to the door, and,
nodding pleasantly, vanished with that nod.
Egerton remained, standing on his solitary hearth. A drear, single
man's room it was, from wall to wall, despite its fretted ceilings
and official pomp of Bramah escritoires and red boxes. Drear and
cheerless--no trace of woman's habitation--no vestige of intruding,
happy children. There stood the austere man alone. And then with a
deep sigh he muttered, "Thank heaven, not for long--it will not last
long."
Repeating those words, he mechanically locked up his papers, and
pressed his hand to his heart for an instant, as if a spasm had shot
through it.
"So--I must shun all emotion!" said he, shaking his head gently.
In five minutes more, Audley Egerton was in the streets, his mien
erect, and his step firm as ever.
"That man is made of bronze," said a leader of the Opposition to a
friend as they rode past the minister. "What would I give for his
nerves!"
JOHNSTON'S NOTES ON NORTH AMERICA.
_Notes on North America, Agricultural, Social, and Economical._ By
JAMES F. W. JOHNSTON, M.A., F.R.SS.L. and E., &c. Two Vols. post
8vo. William Blackwood & Sons.
Professor Johnston had three objects in view in his visit to the
New World. His high reputation as an agricultural chemist had
induced the Agricultural Society of New York to request him to give
a course of lectures at Albany upon the connection of chemical and
geological science with that of the cultivation of land. He had also
been commissioned by the Government of New Brunswick to examine
and report on the agricultural capabilities of that province. And
besides these public duties, he was impelled by a strong desire to
study the actual position of the art of husbandry in the fertile
regions of the West, and the influence which its progress is likely
to exert upon British agriculture.
Our shrewd brother Jonathan, however brilliant his achievements have
been in other arts, has not hitherto earned any great reputation
as a scientific farmer. Nature has been so bountiful to him,
that, with "fresh fields and pastures new" ever before him, he
has hitherto had no need to resort to the toilsome processes and
anxious expedients--"_curis acuens mortalia corda_"--of our Old
World systems of agriculture. On the newer lands of the Union, at
least, the rotations followed, the waste of manures, and the general
contempt of all method and economy, are such as would break the
heart of a Haddingtonshire "grieve," and in a couple of seasons
convert his trim acres into a howling wilderness. What would our
respected friend Mr Caird say to a course of cropping like the
following, which, though given by Professor Johnston as a specimen
of New Brunswick farming, is the usual method followed on most of
the new soils of North America?--
"He cuts down the wood and burns it, then takes a crop of
potatoes, followed by one of wheat, with grass seeds. _Nine
successive crops of hay follow in as many years_; after which
the stumps are taken up, the land is ploughed, a crop of wheat
is taken; it is then manured for the first time, or limed, and
laid down again for a similar succession of crops of hay. This
treatment is hard enough; but the unskilful man, after burning
and spreading the ashes, takes two or three more crops of grain,
leaves it to sow itself with grass, then cuts hay as long as
it bears a crop which is worth cutting--after all which he
either stumps and ploughs it, or leaves it to run again into the
wilderness state."--(_Johnston_, vol. i. p. 104.)
Such a system seems, at first sight, to argue a barbarous ignorance
of the very first elements of agriculture; and yet, as Professor
Johnston remarks, "we English farmers and teachers of agricultural
science, with all our skill, should probably, in the same
circumstances, do just the same, so long as land was plenty, labour
scarce and dear, and markets few and distant." Let no one suppose
that our wide-awake kinsman does not know perfectly well what he is
about. His apparently rude agricultural practice is regulated by a
maxim which some of our _Mechists_ at home would do well to bear in
mind--that high farming is bad farming if it is not remunerative.
He knows that to manure his land would be to insure the lodging
and destruction of his crops, and he therefore leaves his straw
to wither in the fields, and lives on in blessed ignorance of the
virtues and cost of guano. To plough deep furrows in a virgin soil,
saturated with organic matter, would be an idle waste of labour;
and the primitive Triptolemus of Michigan scatters the seed upon
the surface--or, raising a little mould on the point of a hoe,
drops in a few grains of maize, covers them over, and heeds them
no more till the golden pyramids are ripe for the knife. The first
three crops, thus easily obtained, generally repay to the settler
in the wilderness the expense of felling the timber, burning, and
cultivating. If he then abandon it, he is at least no loser; but
for eight or ten years the soil will still continue to produce crops
of natural hay; and then, having extracted from it all that its
spontaneous fertility will yield, he sells his possession for what
it may bring, and moves off westward to repeat the same exhaustive
process on a fresh portion of the forest, leaving to his successor
the task of reinvigorating the severely tested powers of the soil by
rest and restoratives.
This locust-like progress of the American settler--ever on the move
to new lands, and leaving comparative barrenness in his track--must
evidently place the case of America beyond the sphere of those
ordinary laws of political economy which are applicable in European
countries; and Professor Johnston seems to consider the fact of the
incessant exhaustion and abandonment of lands as the chief key to
a right understanding of the peculiar economical position of the
United States. The owner of land in the older and more populous
States, who has not learnt to apply a restorative system of culture,
derives little benefit from the comparative advantage of situation,
while the inhabitants of the towns and villages around him are fed
with the surplus spontaneous produce of the far off clearings in
Ohio or Missouri. But these in their turn become worn out--and as
cultivation travels on westward, the chief centres of agricultural
production are gradually receding farther and farther from the
chief centres of population and consumption; and this increasing
distance, and consequent cost of transport, is every year enhancing
the price of grain in the busy and crowded marts of the West--ever
filling up with the incessant stream of immigration from Europe.
Such is Mr Johnston's view of the present normal condition of the
Union in regard to the sustenance of her people; and he makes it
the ground-work, as we shall presently see, of certain rather
doubtful inferences, of some importance in their bearing on the
agriculture of this country. One consequence, however, of any
material increase in the price of food in the Eastern States of the
Union is very obvious--the proprietor of land in these districts
will gradually be enabled to apply, with profit to his exhausted
soil, the artificial aids and costlier system of culture followed
in Britain. Already this result is apparent in Professor Johnston's
account of the energetic spirit of agricultural improvement which is
rapidly spreading over most of the New England States. In the keen,
restless, and enterprising New Englander, our Old Country farmers
will undoubtedly find a more formidable competitor, for the honour
of the first place in agricultural advancement, than any they have
yet met on this side of the Atlantic. We have seen this year what
his invention can produce in mechanical contrivances for economising
the labour of the field; and, that he is not indifferent to the
aids which science can afford him, is sufficiently proved by the
occasion of that visit to America of which Professor Johnston has
here given so pleasant and instructive a record. The invitation was
not more creditable to the character of the Professor, than to the
discernment of the zealous and patriotic men who thus showed how
correctly they apprehend the true method of improving their fine
country. His engagement was fulfilled during the sitting of the
State Legislature at Albany in January 1850, when the hall of the
Assembly was given up to him as a lecture-room; the leading members
of the Assembly and of the State Agricultural Society were among
his auditors, and the greatest public interest was evinced in the
important subjects of his prelections.
It is apparent, from many passages of the _Notes_, that the author
has listened too confidingly to the flattering tale--the "_canor
mulcendas natus ad aures_" of the syren of Free Trade. He seems to
be gifted with a strong natural faith, and a patriotic confidence
in what British enterprise, and especially British agriculture, can
achieve in the way of surmounting difficulties. It is not perhaps
to be wondered at that one, whose professional pursuits naturally
lead him to place a high value upon the aids which science has in
store for the agriculturist, should encourage the farmer to think
lightly of his present difficulties, and keep up his spirits
with the hope of some paulo-post-future prosperity. It must be
allowed that the farmer, poor fellow, has not wanted abundance of
kind friends to comfort him in his adversity. Generally, however,
their consolations--like those of the sympathetic Mrs Gamp--have
been rather indefinite--vague moralisings upon his calamity, as if
it were some inevitable stroke of Providence, to be bowed to in
silent resignation, and hazy anticipations of good luck awaiting
him. Others, again--who have professed the greatest friendship for
him, and, like the Knight of Netherby, have come down to hearten
up the broken-down man by imparting to him some plan of theirs,
as sheep-pasturage or the like, for setting him on his legs
again--are mentally taking an inventory of his remaining chattels,
and calculating when to send the sheriff's officer. But Professor
Johnston belongs to neither of these classes of comforters. His
opinion, we know, is at least disinterested, and he brings it
before us in the shape of a distinct proposition--viz., that the
wheat-exporting capabilities of the United States are not so great
as have generally been supposed, and that, as they must diminish
rather than increase in future, the prospect of competition with
American produce need cause no alarm to the British farmer.
This opinion, coming from such an authority, claims a deliberate
examination; and the more so that, in the dearth of other
gratulatory topics, it has been eagerly laid hold of by the
_Edinburgh Review_, the _Economist_, and other Free-Trade organs,
and vaunted as a complete proof that protective duties are quite
unnecessary.
The reasons which Professor Johnston assigns for believing that the
_present_ wheat-exporting powers of the United States have been
exaggerated, may be passed over with very little comment. The Board
of Trade returns leave no room for doubt as to the quantity that has
actually reached this country, and it is therefore unnecessary for
us to follow him through his hypothetical estimate of the exportable
grain, grounded on what they _ought_ to have had to spare for us.
We may remark, however, that the data on which his calculations
proceed are far from satisfactory. He shows that all the _wheat_
produced in the United States, as given in the estimates of the
Patent Office, is inadequate to afford the eight bushels which in
England we reckon to be requisite for the annual supply of each
inhabitant--the population of the Union being about twenty-one
millions, and the produce of wheat one hundred and twenty-seven
millions of bushels. He does not overlook altogether the fact that
wheat is not in America, as it is with us, almost the sole cereal
food of the people; and he admits that a considerable allowance must
be made for the consumption of Indian corn instead of wheat. But how
much?--That is the question. The compilers of the State Papers at
Washington estimate that Indian corn, buckwheat, and other grain,
form so large a proportion of the food of the people, that they
require only _three_ bushels of wheat per head; and no doubt they
have good grounds for this calculation. Professor Johnston, however,
without indicating any reason whatever for his assumption, has set
down the consumption of each individual at _five_ bushels per annum;
and thus, by a stroke of his pen, he reduces the average exportable
surplus of the Union to _only_ three millions of quarters.
As to what may be expected in future--Professor Johnston anticipates
the gradual diminution of the supply, from the circumstance, already
adverted to, of the progressive exhaustion of the newer lands of the
Union, and the rapid increase of population in the old. If several
of the Western States, he argues, have even already ceased to raise
enough wheat for the supply of their present inhabitants, and are
compelled to draw largely on the produce of the remote States of
Illinois, Ohio, &c.--and if the productive power of these new lands
is annually becoming less, the virgin soils more distant, and the
transport of subsistence more difficult--if this is the state of
matters now, what will it be in 1860, when immigration and natural
increase will probably have raised the population of the Union to
some thirty-four millions? "It is very safe," he concludes, "to
say that in 1860 their wheat-exporting capability will have become
so small as to give our British farmers very little cause for
apprehension." It may perchance occur to these gentlemen, that the
consolation Professor Johnston here offers them is not very cheering
after all; and as long as they see the provision stores in every
market town piled up with the interloping flour barrels of New York,
and their own waggons returning home with their loads unsold, it is
not to be wondered at if they are not greatly exhilarated with the
prospect of what may possibly happen nine years hence. And slender
as is the hope deferred here held out to them, it rests, we fear, on
very questionable grounds.
Professor Johnston's opinion is founded on two suppositions: 1st,
That the exhaustion of the Western States, on which he dwells so
much, is proceeding so rapidly as already to affect the markets
of the eastern districts; 2d, That these older districts will be
unable to increase the quantity of produce raised within their own
boundaries, without so adding to its cost as to prevent its being
profitably exported.
As to the first supposition, it may be conceded that, in the course
of time, a period must necessarily come when the spontaneous
fertility of the newer-settled States will cease to yield grain with
the same bountiful abundance it has done hitherto. But, when may
that period be expected to arrive?--to what extent has exhaustion
already taken place?--and what is the rate of its progress? For a
reply, we have only to point to that vast territory, bounded by the
lakes on the north and Ohio on the south, comprising the five States
of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin--a territory
eight times the size of England and Wales, with a population about
equal to that of Scotland, containing 180,000,000 acres of arable
land, a large portion of which is of surprising fertility--and
ask whether it is possible to believe that it has already reached
the turning point of its wheat-productiveness,[1] or can by any
possibility do so for centuries to come? Why, the extent of land
advertised in these five States for sale, (which forms only a
fraction of what still remains in the hands of government,) is
greater by a fourth than the whole area of England; and of the
territory that has been actually sold, it is estimated that
five-sevenths is still unreclaimed from the wilderness. Then look
at the means of transport provided for conveying the overflowing
abundance of those rich alluvial regions to the markets of the
East, by way of the two great outlets--the lakes on the north,
and the Mississippi on the south. The cost of such transport is
no doubt considerable; the conveyance of a quarter of wheat from
the centre of Illinois to Boston, by New Orleans, averages about
16s. 6d. But, nevertheless, so trifling is the original cost of
production, that immense quantities of corn do annually reach the
eastern seaboard by this route, a considerable portion of which is
re-shipped to Liverpool, and sold there at prices greatly below its
cost of production in this country. The annexed table[2] shows the
remarkable fact, that, of the whole quantity of grain exported
from the United States in the five years 1842-6, twelve-thirteenths
of the wheat, about one-half of the flour, and a large proportion
of the Indian corn, came from the two ports of New York and
Philadelphia alone. Now, as we know that these large supplies were
not grown within the confines of the Eastern States, and _must_ have
been brought from the westward, the inference is obvious that the
two causes insisted on by Professor Johnston--the distance of the
virgin soils, and the expense of transport--are as yet inoperative;
or at least that they have not prevented the transmission of grain
to the east in such vast quantities, as not only to meet the wants
of all the population of that part of the Union, but to afford an
average surplus for exportation to other countries equivalent to
the annual maintenance of a million and a half of men. We need
only mention one other fact, which seems in itself a sufficient
refutation of the theory Professor Johnston has taken up. The causes
which he thinks are so soon to dry up the supplies now derived
from the West are of no recent or sudden emergence. The process
of exhaustion on the new lands, and the rapid population of the
old, has been going on for many years. If, then, these causes are
so influential as he imagines, their effects should at least be
apparent in a gradual increase of the prices of bread-stuffs in
the Eastern States. Now, no such effect is to be found. On the
contrary, we find that, during the last twenty years, the price of
wheat, as well as of maize, in the chief marts of the east, has been
_steadily diminishing, instead of increasing_. We extract from the
returns published by the Board of Trade the annexed comparison[3]
of the prices of wheat flour at New York, during two periods, from
which it appears that, in the very State where the results of
Professor Johnston's hypothesis ought to have been most manifest,
the experience of twenty years shows a reduction of price instead
of an enhancement, notwithstanding that the latter period in the
comparison embraces the years of the potato failure. An examination
of similar returns from Baltimore and New Orleans establishes the
same fact, namely, that the tendency of prices for twenty years past
is _not upwards, but downwards_--a fact quite irreconcilable with
the supposed rapid exhaustion of the wheat soils of the interior.
[1] The estimated produce of wheat in these five States in the year
1847 was 38,400,000 bushels.
[2] Quantity of bread-stuffs exported from the whole of the United
States, and from the ports of New York and Philadelphia, in the
years 1842-46 inclusive:--
| Wheat | Flour | Indian Corn | Indian Corn
| (bushels.) |(barrels.) | (bushels.) |(Meal barrels.)
|------------+-----------+-------------+---------------
United States, | 2,691,711 | 7,048,356 | 4,764,450 | 1,199,255
|------------+-----------+-------------+---------------
New York, | 1,985,900 | 2,610,944 | 2,443,733 | 242,294
Philadelphia, | 474,788 | 1,055,382 | 677,530 | 565,682
|------------+-----------+-------------+---------------
Total of both ports, | 2,460,688 | 3,666,326 | 3,121,263 | 807,976
[3] Comparative statement of the prices, per barrel, of best wheat
flour at New York, (taken from the _Monthly Averages_) in 1829-33,
and 1844-48:--
FIRST PERIOD.
1829, Dr. 6.23
1830, 5.02
1831, 5.84
1832, 5.70
1833, 5.70
----
Average of five years, 5.69
SECOND PERIOD.
1844, Dr. 4.60
1845, 5.00
1846, 5.16
1847, 6.77
1848, 5.83
----
Average of five years, 5.47
It is much to be regretted that Professor Johnston was unable to
extend his tour to these granary States of the West. It would
have been satisfactory to have had from him an estimate of their
capabilities founded on actual survey and personal observation,
instead of indirect inference. We are quite ready to admit, that
many of the accounts of those regions which have reached us,
drawn up to suit the purposes of speculators in land, are of very
dubious authenticity, and, like the stage-coach in which Mr Dickens
travelled to Buffalo, have "a pretty loud smell of varnish." But,
on the other hand, we cannot discredit the official data supplied
by the State papers--without at least stronger grounds than those
inferences from general geological structure which Professor
Johnston has adduced to disprove the alleged fertility of the State
of Michigan. There can, of course, be no more valuable criterion of
the natural agricultural value of a country than is afforded by its
geology--provided the survey be sufficiently extensive and accurate.
But it is difficult to follow those enthusiasts in the science,
whom we occasionally find drawing the most startling deductions
from very narrow data--and prophesying the future history of the
territory, and even the character of its inhabitants, from a glance
at the bowels of the earth, as the Roman augur foretold the fate of
empires from the entrails of his chickens.
We find, for example, a writer of high standing in America
accounting for a remarkable diminution in the amount of _bastardy_
in Pennsylvania, some thirty years ago, by the fact--that the
settlers at that time _had got off the cold clays and on to the
limestone_! A Scottish geologist, with more apparent reason
perhaps, has founded an argument for an extensive emigration of the
Highlanders on the prevalence of the primitive rocks in the north
and west of Scotland. It is only from a complete and systematic
survey that we can venture to predicate anything with certainty of
the future agricultural powers of a country; and, in the absence of
such trustworthy data, we must be content to estimate the future
wheat-productiveness of Michigan, as well as of the other States
we have named along with it, from what we know of their present
fertility, and of the vast extent that is still uncleared.
As to New York and the other old-settled States of the Union, which
we are told do not now produce enough for their own consumption,
are we to take it for granted that they are always to continue
stationary, and to make no effort to keep pace with the growing
demands of an increasing population? Professor Johnston, we observe
in one passage, has qualified his opinion as to the prospective
dearth of grain by this curious condition--"_Provided no change
takes place in their agricultural system._" But what shadow of a
reason can be given for supposing it will not take place? The area
of New York State is only one-twelfth less than that of England, and
is, at least, no way inferior as to climate or quality of soil. As
far as material means go, it is quite capable of maintaining, under
an improved culture, at least four times its present population of
three millions. The only question is as to the will and ability
of her people to develop these means; and on this point Professor
Johnston's own work is full of multiplied proofs of the zealous and
intelligent spirit of improvement which is extending rapidly all
over the North-Eastern States. We find the central government of the
Confederation occupied in organising the plan of an Agricultural
Bureau on a scale worthy of a great and enlightened nation--a work
that contrasts in a very marked way with the studious neglect which
such subjects meet with from the government of this country.[4] We
find the several State legislatures anxiously encouraging every
species of improvement--that of New York, in particular, devoting
large grants to the support of exhibitions; preparing to found an
Agricultural College; distributing widely and gratuitously the
annual public reports on the state of agriculture; and, finally,
sending to Europe for a celebrated chemist to assist in maturing
their plans, and sitting--senators and great officers of state--at
the feet of a British Gamaliel, laying down the law to them on the
true principles of the all-important science of agriculture. Nor are
the owners of the land asleep. It is a strong indication of their
growing desire for information, that seven or eight agricultural
periodicals are published in the State of New York alone. Professor
Johnston found no less than fifty copies of such papers taken
regularly in a small town in Connecticut of some two thousand
inhabitants; and he had occasion to observe, in his intercourse with
the farmers of New York, their general acquaintance with the geology
of their country, and its relation to the management of their lands.
Their implement-makers, who had already taught us the use of the
horse-rake, the cradle-scythe, and the improved churn, have recently
outstripped us by the invention, or at least the great improvement,
of the reaping-machine, the advantages of which are so appreciated
in the country of its origin that at Chicago 1500 of M'Cormick's
machines were ordered in one year. In short, the proverbial energy,
perseverance, and sagacity that distinguish our Yankee friends,
seem now to be all directed towards effecting a change of system in
the management of land; and the true question is, not whether the
hitherto laggard progress of American agriculture is to be quickened
in future, but whether we shall be able to keep pace with it.
[4] Vol. ii. p. 389.
But then Professor Johnston tells us that improvement is expensive,
and that every process for reviving the dormant powers of the soil,
and preserving their activity, must necessarily be attended with
an addition to the price of the produce, which will thus prevent
its coming into competition with that of England. This view rests
upon a fallacy, which we are sure the author must have drawn from
his reading in political economy, and not from his experience as
an agriculturist. It is an off-shoot from the rent-theory, (the
pestilent root of so much error and confusion,) which, however, we
shall not notice at present, further than by affirming, in direct
contradiction to it, that improvements do _not_ necessarily, nor
generally, involve an increase of price. Even those which require
the greatest outlay--even a complete system of arterial drainage
all over the State of New York, instead of adding to the cost of
wheat, may very probably reduce it, as it has certainly done in
this country. But most of the improvements readily available in
the Eastern States involve scarcely any expenditure at all. The
most obvious and effectual is to save and apply the manure, which
is now wasted or thrown away; and when that proves insufficient,
abundant supplies of mineral manures are easily procurable. On the
exhausted wheat-lands of Virginia, a single dressing of lime or marl
generally doubles the first crop. Deposits of gypsum, and of the
valuable mineral phosphate of lime, seem to be abundant both in New
York and New Jersey. Again, in the former State, where the common
practice is to plough to a depth of _not more than four inches_, the
simple expedient of putting in the plough a few inches deeper would
of itself add one-half to the return of wheat over a very large
district.
On the whole, so far from seeing any reason to anticipate, with
Professor Johnston, a material reduction in the quantity of our
wheat imports from the States, we look rather to see it increased;
and, at all events, we have no hesitation in saying, that to
encourage our English farmers to expect a cessation of competition
from that quarter is to deceive them with very groundless hopes.
We have already dwelt at considerable length on this topic, both
because of the prominent place it occupies in Professor Johnston's
volumes, and of the notice which his speculations upon it have
attracted in this country.
It has been mentioned that a large proportion--probably not less
than one-half--of the cereal food consumed in the States consists
of maize and buckwheat. Mr Johnston always alludes to this fact,
as if the use of these grains were a matter of compulsion--as if
the Americans resorted to them from being unable to afford wheaten
bread. Now, according to the information we have from other sources,
the truth is just the reverse of this. We are told that in the
Eastern and Central States, as well as on the West frontier and
among the slave population, the various preparations of Indian
corn are becoming more relished every year; and that the extension
of its cultivation is to be attributed, not to the failure of the
wheat crops, but to a growing preference for it as an article of
food. In a less degree the use both of oats and buckwheat seems to
be spreading in the States, as well as in our own colonies of New
Brunswick and Canada East; and one can scarcely wonder at the taste
for the latter grain, after reading the appetising descriptions our
author gives of the crisp hot cakes, with their savoury adjuncts
of maple-honey, which so often formed his breakfast during his
wanderings. The general use of these three kinds of grain--maize,
oats, and buckwheat--has somehow come to be considered by political
economists as indicative of a low degree of social advancement.
And yet we know that, in the countries suited to their growth,
a given area of ground cultivated with any of them will return a
greater quantity of nutritious food, at a smaller expense and with
less risk of failure, than if it were cropped with wheat. We are
told that the great objection to them is, that their culture _is
too easy_. Professor Johnston touches upon this notion in some
remarks he makes on the disadvantage of buckwheat as a staple
article of food. The objections to it, he tells us, consist in the
ease with which it can be raised, the rapidity of its growth, and
the small quantity of seed it requires: it induces, he says, like
the potato, an indolent, slovenly, and exhausting culture; and "it
is the prelude of evil, when a kind of food that requires little
exertion to obtain it becomes the staple support of a people."[5]
It may be noticed in passing, that, in point of fact, the results
alleged are at least not universal; for, in regard to this very
grain, we find its cultivation prevalent in some of the best-managed
districts of the hard-working, provident, and intelligent Belgians.
But taking the axiom as it stands, we cannot help suspecting
that there is some fallacy lurking at the bottom of it. Misled
by what we have observed of the Irishman and his potato diet, we
have confounded the _cum hoc_ with the _propter hoc_, and come to
regard an easily-raised food as _the cause_ of that indolence of
which it is only the frequent indication. It were otherwise a most
inexplicable contrariety between the physical and the moral laws
which govern this world, that in every country there should be a
penalty of social wretchedness and degradation attached to the use
of that particular food which its climate and soil are best suited
to produce. Can it be supposed that the blessings of nature are
only a moral snare for us, and that, while she has given to the
American the maize plant--oats to the Scotch Highlander--rice to the
Hindoo--the banana to the inhabitant of Brazil--a regard for their
social well-being requires each of them to renounce these gifts, and
to spend their labour in extorting from the unwilling soil some less
congenial kind of subsistence? Virgil has warned the husbandman--
"Pater ipse colendi
Haud facilem esse viam voluit."
But it were surely a dire aggravation of the difficulties of his
task if his most plentiful harvest were also the most injurious to
his advancement and true happiness. We cannot now, however, examine
the grounds of a doctrine so paradoxical, and have adverted to it
only to remark that it seems destined to meet with a most direct
practical refutation in North America, where we find the habitual
use of what we choose to consider the coarser grains associated
with the highest intelligence and the most rapid development of
social progress. There can be no doubt that the nature of the food
generally used in any nation must exert an important influence
on its prosperity; but it is difficult to understand how that
prosperity should be promoted by the universal use of that variety
which costs most labour. At all events, it is certainly a subject of
very interesting inquiry, in reference to the increasing consumption
among ourselves of wheat--the dearest and most precarious species
of grain, much of it imported from other countries--and its gradual
abandonment in North America, what effect these opposite courses
may have on the future destinies of the two great branches of the
Anglo-Saxon race.
[5] Vol. i. p. 80.
Leaving this as a problem for political economists, let us now
follow him in his visit to the British side of the St Lawrence. His
brief three weeks' survey of the Canadas did not, of course, enable
him to form any very intimate acquaintance with the condition of
these provinces; and he prudently abstains from pronouncing any
judgment upon the vexed topics of Canadian politics. His presence
at the great exhibition, at Kingston, of the Agricultural Society
of Upper Canada, gave him a good opportunity of estimating the
progress that has been made in practical agriculture. The stock,
as well as the implements, there brought forward in competition
for the various premiums, amounting in all to £1000, gave most
satisfactory indications of improvement; while the large attendance,
and the interest taken in the proceedings, sufficiently showed
that the inhabitants of the Upper Province are now awake to the
necessity of agricultural improvement as the main source of their
future prosperity. In a country where eighty per cent of the
whole population are directly engaged in the cultivation of the
soil, the land interest is, or ought to be, predominant. But the
bitter animosity of political parties, and the abortive attempts
of government to soothe and reconcile them, have hitherto stood
much in the way of any combined effort towards the encouragement
of improved cultivation. The art of husbandry is not likely to
thrive in a country where every man is bent on proving himself a
Cincinnatus. Of late, however, public spirit has shown symptoms of
taking a more wholesome direction; and, notwithstanding occasional
ministerial crises and political explosions, which we on this
side the water are sometimes puzzled to understand, all parties
in the province seem now fully aware that the development of the
vast resources of their fertile soil is the only road to permanent
prosperity. The encouragement of local competitions, the provision
for systematic instruction in agriculture in the colleges--which
Professor Johnston tells us is in progress--and the introduction of
elementary lessons in the art as a regular branch of common school
learning, are all steps in the right direction. It is precisely in
such a community as that of Canada that the last-mentioned kind of
instruction is really of essential benefit. From the last census
of Upper Canada, it appears that there are sixty thousand owners
of land in the province, and only ten thousand labourers without
land. The great majority of the boys in the ordinary schools will
become proprietors, and, at the same time, cultivators; and, in such
circumstances, it is of the utmost importance that the youth should
acquire betimes a competent knowledge of the principles on which
his future practice is, or ought to be, founded--such knowledge as
will, at least, enable him to, shake off the traditional prejudices
and slovenly habits which his father may have imported with him from
Harris or the County Kerry.
The querulous and depreciatory tone which our Canadian
fellow-subjects are apt to employ in speaking of their country, and
its prospects, is remarked by Professor Johnston as contrasting
oddly with the unqualified adulation of everything--from the
national constitution to the navy button--which one constantly
hears from his republican neighbour. One consequence of this habit
is, the existence of a prevalent but very mistaken notion that,
in the march of social advancement, Canada has been completely
distanced by the United States. Professor Johnston has been at some
pains to demonstrate, and we think most successfully, that this
impression is entirely erroneous. Indeed, if we only recollect
the history of Canada for the last fifteen years--the disunion of
her own people, and the reckless commercial experiments to which
she has been subjected by the home government, the rapid strides
in improvement--of the Upper Province especially--are almost
marvellous. As a corroboration of what Professor Johnston has said
on the subject, we have thrown together in the subjoined table,
collected from the Government returns, some of the most striking
and decisive evidences of the recent progress of Upper Canada. In
certain particulars, no doubt, she is outstripped by some of those
districts of the States to which from time to time extraordinary
migrations of their unsettled and nomadic population have been
directed. But putting such exceptional cases out of view, the
inhabitants of Canada need fear no comparison with the Union in all
the chief elements of national advancement.
PROGRESS OF UPPER CANADA,--1837-47.
| | |Increase | |Increase
| 1837. | 1842. |per cent.| 1847. |per cent.
|-----------+-----------+---------+-----------+---------
| | | | |
Population, | 396,721 | 486,055 | 22 | 723,332 | 48
Number of cultivated| | | | |
acres assessed for | | | | |
local taxes, | 4,736,268 | 5,548,357 | 17 | 6,477,338 | 16
Number of houses | | | | |
assessed | | | | |
for ditto, | 22,057 | 31,638 | 43 | 42,937 | 35
Value of property | | | | |
assessed, |£4,431,098 |£6,913,341 | 56 |£8,567,001 | 23
Number of carriages | | | | |
kept for pleasure, | 1,627 | 2,188 | 34 | 4,685 | 114
Number of | | | | |
elementary | | | | |
schools, | -- | 927 | -- | 2,464 | 165
Number of scholars | | | | |
in ditto, | -- | 29,961 | -- | 80,461 | 170
Number of cattle, | -- | 504,963 | -- | 565,848 | 12
Number of horses, | -- | 113,675 | -- | 151,389 | 33
Number of sheep, | -- | 575,730 | -- | 833,869 | 45
In looking at the great sources of wealth possessed by these
provinces, our attention is at once arrested by the growing
importance of the St Lawrence as an outlet to the produce, not only
of the Canadas, but of a vast area of the States territory. With the
exception, perhaps, of the Mississippi, no river in the world opens
up so grand a highway for the industry of man as the St Lawrence,
with the chain of vast lakes and innumerable rivers that unite with
it in the two thousand miles of its majestic progress to the ocean.
Never was there an enterprise more worthy of a great nation than
that of surmounting the obstacles to its navigation, and completing
the channels of connection with its tributary waters; and nobly have
the people of Canada executed it. Taking into account the infancy
of their country, and the amount of its population and revenue,
it is not too much to say, with Mr Johnston, that their exertions
to secure water-communication have been greater than those of any
part of the Union, or any country of Europe. The improvements on
the St Lawrence itself, and the canals connected with it, have
already cost the colony two millions and a quarter sterling, in
addition to the expenditure of £800,000 by the home government on
the construction of the Rideau Canal. The results of this liberal
but judicious outlay are already showing themselves, not only by
the rapidly-increasing Canadian traffic on the St Lawrence, but
by its drawing into it, year after year, a larger share of the
commerce of the States. That the influx of trade from the south
must ere long vastly exceed its present amount, is evident from a
consideration of the gigantic projects already completed, or in
course of construction, for effecting an access between the lakes
and the fertile regions of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, &c., already
spoken of, and thus saving the longer and costlier transit by the
Mississippi. One of the Reports of the State of New York thus speaks
of them:--
"Three great canals, (one of them longer than the Erie Canal,)
embracing in their aggregate length about one thousand miles,
are to connect the Ohio with Lake Erie; while another deep and
capacious channel, excavated for nearly thirty miles through
solid rock, unites Lake Michigan with the navigable waters of
the Illinois. In addition to these broad avenues of trade,
they are constructing lines of railroads not less than fifteen
hundred miles in extent, in order to reach with more case and
speed the lakes through which they seek a conveyance to the
seaboard. The circumstance, moreover, is particularly important,
that the public works of each of these great communities
are arranged on a harmonious plan, each having a main line,
supported and enriched by lateral and tributary branches,
thereby bringing the industry of their people into prompt and
profitable action; while the systems themselves are again
united, on a grander scale, with Lake Erie as its common centre."
The various streams of the trade from the interior being thus
collected in the lakes--which form, as it were, the heart of
the system--there are two great channels for its redistribution
and dispersion through the markets of the world. These are the
St Lawrence, and the Erie Canal with the Hudson; and the vital
question as regards the prosperity of Canada is, by which of these
outlets will the concentrated traffic of the lakes find its way to
the ocean? Mr Johnston has devoted considerable attention to this
subject, and assigns two good reasons for believing that the St
Lawrence is destined immensely to increase the share which it has
already secured. In the first place, the American artery is already
surcharged and choked up;--notwithstanding all the efforts that have
been made to expedite the traffic on the Erie Canal, it has been
found wholly inadequate to accommodate the immense trade pouring in
from the west; and, secondly, the route of the St Lawrence, besides
being the more expeditious, is now found to be the cheaper one. In
a document issued by the Executive Council of Upper Canada, it is
mentioned that the Great Ohio Railway Company, having occasion to
import about 11,000 tons of railway iron from England, made special
inquiries as to the relative cost of transport by the St Lawrence
and New York routes, the result of which was the preference of
the former, the saving on the inland transport alone being 11,000
dollars. There seems good reason to expect that a considerable
portion of the Mississippi trade may be diverted into the Canadian
channel; but putting this out of view altogether, it is certain
that the navigation of this glorious river is every year becoming
of greater importance to the United States, as well as to Britain:
let us hope that it is destined ever to bear on its broad breast the
blessings of peace and mutual prosperity to both nations.
After a rapid glance at Lower Canada, Professor Johnston crossed
the St Lawrence, in order to complete the survey of New Brunswick,
which, before leaving England, he had been commissioned to make for
the Government of the colony. We have had no opportunity of seeing
the official Report, in which he has published the detailed results
of his observations; but the valuable information collected in these
volumes has strongly confirmed our previous impression, that the
resources and importance of this fine colony have never yet been
sufficiently appreciated at home. With an area as nearly as possible
equal to that of Scotland, it possesses a much larger surface
available for agriculture. The climate is healthy and invigorating;
it is traversed by numerous navigable rivers; its rocks contain
considerable mineral wealth; and the fisheries on its coasts are
inexhaustible. Imperfectly developed as its resources are, the trade
from the two ports of St John's and St Andrew's alone, exceeds that
of the whole of the three adjoining States of the Union--Maine,
Vermont, and New Hampshire--although its inhabitants do not number
one-sixth of the population of these States. As to the fertility of
the soil, Professor Johnston, by a comparison of authentic returns,
shows that the productive power of the land already cultivated in
the province considerably exceeds the averages of New York, of Ohio,
and of Upper Canada--countries which have hitherto been considered
more favoured both in soil and climate. By classifying the soils in
the several districts, he has estimated that the available land,
after deducting a reserve for fuel, is capable of maintaining in
abundance a population of 4,200,000; while its present number little
exceeds 200,000. In all the course of his travels, he met with but
a few rare instances in which the agricultural settlers did not
express their contentment with their circumstances; and although it
seems still questionable whether farming on a large scale, by the
employment of hired labour, can be made remunerative, the universal
opinion of the experienced persons he consulted testified that, with
ordinary prudence and industry, the poorest settler, who confines
his attention to the clearing and cultivation of land, is sure of
attaining a comfortable independence.
The question naturally occurs--How is it that, with all these
natural advantages and encouragements to colonisation, and with its
proximity to our shores, so very small a proportion--not more than
one in sixty or seventy of the emigrants from Great Britain--make
New Brunswick their destination? Professor Johnston, while he
maintains that, taking population into account, New Brunswick is in
this respect no worse off than Canada, adverts to several causes
of a special nature which may have retarded its settlement. But
the truth is, that the question above started leads us directly to
another of far greater compass and importance--What is the reason
that all our colonies taken together absorb so small a proportion of
our emigrants compared with the United States? What is the nature
of the inducements that annually impel so large a number of our
countrymen to forfeit the character of British subjects, and prefer
a domicile among those who are aliens in laws, interests, and system
of government?
We hardly know how to venture upon anything connected with the
ominous subject of emigration, at a moment when the crowds leaving
our shores, at the rate of nearly a thousand every day, are such
as to startle the most apathetic observer, and shake the faith of
the most dogmatic economist in the truth of his speculations. This
is not the place to inquire what strangely compulsive cause it may
be that has all at once swelled the ordinary stream of emigration
into a headlong torrent.[6] Mayhap it is neither distant, nor
doubtful, nor unforetold. But whatever it may be, there stands the
fact--which we can neither undo, nor, for aught that can be seen at
present, prevent its annual recurrence in future, or say how and
when the waves are to be stayed. "When the Exe runs up the streets
of Tiverton," says a certain noble prophet--whose vaticinations,
however, have not been very felicitous hitherto--"then, and not till
then, may we expect to see the reversal of the free-import system;"
and then, and not till then, we take leave to add, may we hope to
see the ebbing of that tide of British capital and British strength
which is now flowing strongly and steadily into the bay of New York.
[6] Total number of registered emigrants for the twenty-one years from 1825
to 1845 inclusive 1,349,476----Average, 64,260
Do. do. _for the five years_ 1846 _to_ 1850 inclusive,
1,216,557----Average, 243,311
PROPORTION OF BRITISH EMIGRATION TO THE COLONIES AND TO THE UNITED
STATES, 1846-50 INCLUSIVE.
| | | | | | | Quarter |
| Destination. | 1846. | 1847. | 1848. | 1849. | 1850. | ending Sept |
| | | | | | | 30, 1851. |
| +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------------+
| | | | | | | |
| United States | 45.1 | 31.8 | 57.3 | 73.3 | 79.4 | 80.5 |
| British America | 33.4 | 42.5 | 12.5 | 13.9 | 11.7 | 10.8 |
| All other places | 21.5 | 25.7 | 30.2 | 12.8 | 8.9 | 8.7 |
| +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------------+
| Total | 100. | 100. | 100. | 100. | 100. | 100. |
The accompanying abstract, from the returns of the Emigration
Commissioners, exhibits two most remarkable results:--1st, The
proportion of emigration to British America and other destinations
is gradually falling off; 2d, That to the United States is steadily
and rapidly increasing, so that they now receive four out of every
five emigrants who leave our shores. Is this distribution to be
regarded as a matter of indifference in a political point of view?
Are we to understand that it is no concern to us who remain behind,
whether the labour and capital of those who leave us shall go to
fill up the vacuum of our own colonial empire, or to carry new
accessions of wealth and power to those in whose prosperity (to put
the matter mildly) we have only a secondary interest? This question
the consistent Free-Trader is bound to answer unhesitatingly in
the affirmative. In his cosmopolitan philosophy, the interests of
one country are no more to be considered than those of any other.
The theory of absolute freedom of exchange expunges altogether the
idea of nationalism, and regards man, not as a member of this or
that community, but as the denizen of a great universal republic.
Local and historical associations--ties of kindred and of birth--are
only so many obstructions in the way of human progress; and an
Englishman is nothing more than the subject of certain animal
wants and instincts, the gratification of which he must be left to
seek wherever he finds the materials most abundant. Such is Free
Trade in its true scope and ultimate tendency. What shall be said,
then, of the consistency or sincerity of those pseudo-apostles
of the doctrine, who, having been the most active in promoting
that nibbling and piecemeal legislation which they choose to call
freedom of trade--who have been loudest in proclaiming a universal
commercial fraternity, and in denouncing colonies as a wasteful
encumbrance--are now the first to take alarm at the natural and
inevitable result of their own measures, and to call out for a
better regulation of emigration; in other words, for legislative
interference with the free action of those of our countrymen who,
being thrust out of employment in the land of their birth, are so
literally following out the great maxim of buying in the cheapest
market and selling in the dearest?
The text is a tempting one, but we must refrain from wandering
further from the subject with which we started--namely, the
inducements which lead so many of our emigrants to select the United
States as their future home. One of the prevalent causes has been
very well stated by Professor Johnston--that which we may call the
capillary attraction of former emigration:--
"A letter from a connection or acquaintance determines the
choice of a place to go to, and, without further inquiry,
the emigrant starts. Thus for a while, emigration to a given
point, once begun, goes on progressively by a sort of innate
force. Those who go before urge those who follow by hasty and
inaccurate representations; so that, the more numerous the
settlers from a particular district, the more numerous also the
invitations for others to follow, till the fever of emigration
subsides. In other words, in proportion as the home-born
settlers in one of these countries increases, will the number of
home-born emigrants to that country increase--_but for a time
only, if the place have real disadvantages_."--(Vol. ii, p. 204.)
It is vain to shut our eyes to the fact that the government of the
United States offers to the emigrant many real, substantial, and
peculiar advantages. The first and most important aid that can be
given to the intending settler is a complete and accurate survey of
the country; and this has been accomplished by the States government
at great expense, but in so perfect a manner that a purchaser has no
difficulty in at once pointing out, on the official plan, any lot
he may have selected in the most remote corner of the wilderness.
The next point of importance to him is simplicity of conveyance and
security of title; and so effectual and satisfactory is the American
system that litigation in original land-titles is almost unknown.
Then as to the weighty consideration of price--which perhaps ought
to have been first mentioned--the uniform and very low rate in the
States of 5s. 3d. an acre saves infinite trouble, disputation,
and jealousy. Such are some of the temptations held out to the
intending purchaser of land; and it must be confessed that, in each
particular, they present a striking contrast to the difficulties
he has to meet in some of the British colonies--the arbitrary
changes of system, the vexatious delays, and the comparatively
exorbitant charges--which must appear to the settler as if they had
been contrived on purpose to discourage him. When we add to these
the prospects of ready employment in the States held out to other
classes of emigrants, and the stringent laws lately made for their
protection, both on the passage and on their arrival, we cannot be
at a loss to see that the direction which emigration has lately
taken is not the result of chance or caprice, but of a deliberate
comparison of advantages, which the most ignorant can easily
understand and appreciate.
The main object of Professor Johnston's visit being of a scientific
character, his remarks on the general topics of manners and politics
occur only incidentally; but it is impossible for any traveller
to keep clear of such subjects in writing of a country, the
peculiarities of which are pressed upon his notice at every hour of
the day, and at every corner of the street. Rabelais tells us of a
certain island, explored by the mighty Pantagruel, whose inhabitants
lived wholly upon _wind_--that is, being interpreted, on flattery;
and the visitor of the States who finds himself, as it were, pinned
to the wall, and compelled to yield up his admiration at discretion,
may be sometimes tempted to believe that he has made a similar
discovery, and that the flatulent diet of compliment is somehow
congenial to an American appetite. Professor Johnston seems to have
had his candour or his eulogistic powers sometimes severely tested,
if we may guess from his quiet hint, that "it is unpleasant to a
stranger to be always called on to admire and praise what he sees
in a foreign country; and it is a part of the perversity of human
nature to withhold, upon urgent request, what, if unasked, would
have been freely and spontaneously given." He is of course prepared
for the reception which any work, aiming at mere impartiality,
is sure to meet with among Transatlantic critics; and it will,
therefore, not surprise him to find that the above peccant sentence
has been already pounced upon by them as proving _malice prepense_,
and as affording a significant key to all his observations on the
institutions of the States.
The following extract explains the origin of two of those euphonious
party designations in which our neighbours delight, and which may
perchance have puzzled some of our readers:--
"In England, to be a _democrat_ still implies a position at
the very front of the movement party, and a desire to hasten
forward political changes, irrespective of season or expediency.
But among the American democrats there is a Conservative and
a Radical party. The former, who desire to restrain 'the
amazing violence of the popular spirit,' are nicknamed by their
democratic adversaries the '_Old Hunkers_;' the latter, who
profess to have in their hearts 'sworn eternal hostility against
every form of tyranny over the mind of man,' are stigmatised as
'_Barnburners_.' The _New York Tribune_, in reference to the
origin of the names themselves, says that the name 'Hunkers'
was intended to indicate that those on whom it was conferred
had an appetite for a large 'hunk' of the spoils; though we
never could discover that they were peculiar in _that_. On the
other hand, the 'Barnburners' were so named in allusion to
the story of an old Dutchman who relieved himself of rats by
burning his barns, which they infested, just like exterminating
all banks and corporations, to root out the abuses connected
therewith."--(Vol. i. p. 218.)
Equally mysterious is the term "log-rolling," though the thing
itself is not altogether unknown in legislatures nearer home.
"When the trees are felled and trimmed, rolling the logs to the
rivers or streams down which they are to be floated, as soon as
the spring freshets set in, remains to be done. This being the
hardest work of all, the men of several camps will unite, giving
their conjoined strength to the first party on Monday, to the
second on Tuesday, and so on. A like system in parliamentary
matters is called 'log-rolling.' You and your friends help me
in my railroad bill, and I and my friends help you with your
bank charter; or sometimes the Whigs and Democrats, when nearly
balanced, will get up a party log-rolling, agreeing that the
one shall be allowed to carry through a certain measure without
much opposition, provided a similar concession is granted to the
other."--(Vol. ii. p. 297.)
The _Notes_ convey to us the strong impression that Professor
Johnston's visit to the West has operated as a wholesome corrective
of a certain tendency in his political opinions. He seems to have
left home with a warm admiration of American institutions generally,
which, like Slender's love, "it pleased heaven to diminish on
further acquaintance." At all events, he could not avoid being
struck with some of the many perplexities and anomalies that
result from referring everything directly to the popular voice.
In England, whatever dissensions may arise about the enactment of
law, all are agreed in a sensitive jealousy as to the purity of its
administration. The most rampant Radical among us looks upon justice
as far too sacred a thing to be hazarded in the rude chance-medley
of popular election. The keenest partisan feels that, in the lofty
and unswerving integrity of our judges, he possesses a substantial
security and blessing, for the loss of which no place, power, or
parliamentary triumph, could compensate. To one accustomed to regard
with veneration the dignified independence of the judicial office
in Great Britain, nothing will appear more harshly repugnant to
sound policy than the system, lately introduced into some of the New
England States, of appointing all judges, high and low, by the votes
of the electors of the district over which they are to preside, and
for a limited term of years.
"It was deservedly considered a great triumph when the
appointment of judges for life liberated the English bench from
the influence of the Crown, and when public opinion became
strong enough to enforce the selection of the most learned
in the law for the highest judicial offices. Now, passing
over the objection which some will strongly urge, that the
popular electors are not the best judges of the qualifications
of those who aspire to the bench, and that the most popular
legal demagogue may expect to obtain from them the highest
legal appointment, it may be reasonably asked whether popular
influence in seasons of excitement, and on questions of great
moment, may not bias the minds of judges whose appointment is in
the hands of the people?--whether the fear of a coming election
may not deter them from unpopular decisions? The influence of a
popular majority may here as profoundly pollute the fountains
of justice as the influence of the Crown ever did among us at
home."--(Vol. i. p. 150.)
At first sight, it seems quite unaccountable that an enlightened
people should ever have devised or sanctioned a system which so
obviously exposes the bench to the risk of corruption; and one is
at a loss to reconcile a reverence for the law with an ordinance
that subjects her minister to the ordeal of canvassing and cajoling
all and sundry--perhaps the very men who may next day be in the
dock before him. But the root of the anomaly is not hard to find.
Into the purest of republics ambition and cupidity--the love of
office and the love of dollars--will force their way. But then,
under that form of constition, situations of trust and emolument
are necessarily few in comparison to the number of candidates for
them. The offices in the civil departments of the United States
governments are not numerous. The navy employs altogether some five
hundred officers above the rank of midshipman--exactly the number
of our post-captains; and the whole army of the Confederation, rank
and file, musicians and artificers included, is very little over
ten thousand men. There is little temptation to enter the medical
profession, in which learning and experience go for nothing, and a
Brodie is precisely on a level with a "Doctor Bokanky;"--nor the
Church, in which the pastor is hired by the twelvemonth, and is
thought handsomely paid with a wage of £100 a-year. What field,
then, remains for the aspiring spirit but the law?--and what
wonder if the sixteen thousand attorneys, who, we are told, find
a living in the States, and take a leading part in the management
of all public business, should vote "the higher honours of the
profession" far too few to be retained as perpetual incumbencies?
Hence has sprung the device of popular election to, and rotation
in, the sweets of office, which, by "passing it round," and giving
everyone a chance, is designed to render it as generally available
as possible. The constitution of the judiciary is not uniform, but
varies in almost every different state. In New York, the Judges of
Appeals, as well as those of the Supreme and Circuit Courts, are
elected by the people at large, and for a term of eight years,
each leaving office in rotation. In New Jersey they are appointed
for six years by the governor and senate; in Vermont, annually by
the legislature. In Connecticut nearly the same system prevails as
that in Vermont; while in Massachusetts the judges retain office
"during good behaviour." The salaries are not less various, in some
States the remuneration of judges of supreme courts being £500
a-year, which is about the highest rate; and in others so low as
£180. There are no retiring allowances in any case; and as they are
thus liable to be thrown out of office at an uncertain period, or
compelled to vacate it after a short term of years, it can scarcely
be expected that such remuneration will secure the highest grade of
legal acquirements, either for the bench itself, or for the inferior
offices of attorney-generalships and chief-clerkships, which are all
held by the same lax tenure of popular favour. Even if the system
has "worked well," as it is said to have done by American writers,
during the four or five years it has been in operation in New
York--even if it be true that the lawyers of the Empire State have,
by avoiding the snares thrown in their way, given proof individually
of the probity of Cato, and of a constancy worthy of Socrates, we
still say that the State does wrong in putting their virtues to such
a test. Mr Johnston supplies us with an example of the temptation
it holds out to a dangerous pliancy of principle. Most of our
readers must be aware of the existence of an active and noisy party
in the States, who, under the name of "Anti-renters," are seeking
to free themselves from payment of certain reserved _rents_, or
_feu-duties_, as they would be termed in Scotland, which form the
stipulated condition of land tenure in a certain district.
"The question has caused much excitement and considerable
disturbance in the State. It has been agitated in the
legislature and in the courts of law, and the supposed opinion
in regard to it of candidates for legal appointments, is said to
have formed an element which weighed with many in determining
which candidate they would support. During the last canvass
for the office of attorney-general, I met with the following
advertisement in the public journals of the State:--
"'I have repeatedly been applied to by individuals to know my
opinions with regard to the manorial titles, and what course I
intend to pursue, if elected, in relation to suits commenced,
and to be commenced, under the joint resolution of the Senate
and Assembly. I have uniformly replied to these inquiries, that
I regard the manor titles as a public curse which ought not
to exist in a free government, and that if they can be broken
up and invalidated by law, it will give me great pleasure;
and I shall prosecute the pending suits with as much vigour
and industry as I possess, and will commence others, if, on
examination, I shall be satisfied there is the least chance of
success. I regard these prosecutions as a matter of public duty,
and, in this instance, duty squares with my inclination and
wishes. 'L. S. CHATFIELD.'
"Mr Chatfield," adds Professor Johnston, "_is now
attorney-general_; and I was informed that the known opinions of
certain of the old judges on this exciting question was one of
the understood reasons why they were not re-elected by popular
suffrage, when, according to the new constitution, their term of
office had expired."--(Vol. ii. p. 291.)
Here, then, we see the highest law officer of the State openly
"bidding" for office--truckling to faction--and indecently
condescending to enact the part of a "soft-sawderer." That term,
we presume, is the proper American equivalent for the stinging
_soubriquet_ with which Persius stigmatises some Chatfield--some
supple attorney-general of his day--
"PALPO, quem ducit _hiantem_
Cretata ambitio."
When persons of the highest official position scruple not thus
undisguisedly to trim their course according to the "_popularis
aura_," one can scarcely help suspecting a want of firmness of
principle and genuine independence among the classes below them.
De Tocqueville's observations have taught us to doubt whether the
tree of liberty that grows under the shadow of a tyrant majority
can ever attain a healthy stability, however vigorous it may appear
externally. No one questions that the Americans enjoy, under
their institutions, very many of the blessings of a liberal and
cheaply-administered government. You have perfect liberty of speech
and action, so far as the government is concerned. The avowal of
one's opinion is not followed, as in Italy, or in the rival republic
of France, by a hint that your passport is ready, or by the polite
attendance on you, wherever you go, of a mysterious gentleman
in black; but you feel yourself, nevertheless, perpetually "_en
surveillance_," and constrained either to sail with the stream, or
to adopt a reserve and reticence which, to an Englishman, is almost
as irksome as the knowledge that there is a spy sitting at the same
dinner-table with him.
The spirit of Professor Johnston's strictures on such anomalies
will, of course, insure his being set down by his democratic friends
in America as an unmitigated "old hunker;" and he certainly shows
no great liking for practical republicanism. But to find fault with
our neighbours' arrangements, and to be contented with our own, are
two very different things; and, accordingly, our author takes many
opportunities, as he goes along, of showing that he is quite aware
of the innumerable rents in our own old battered tea-kettle of a
constitution, and of the infinite tinkering it will take to make it
hold water.
We should have held him unworthy of the character of a true Briton
if he had omitted the occasion of a grumble at our system of
taxation, though, of course, we differ with him entirely in the view
he takes of the evil. After an elaborate comparison of the taxation
in the United States with that of Great Britain, he sums up all with
the following somewhat sententious apophthegm:--
"The great contrast between the two sections of the Anglo-Saxon
race on the opposite sides of the Atlantic is this--_On the
one side the masses rule and property pays; on the other side
property rules and the masses pay_."--(Vol. ii. 254.)
The sentence sounds remarkably terse and epigrammatic. Most of
such brilliant and highly-condensed crystals of wisdom, however,
will be found on analysis to contain, along with some exaggerated
truth, a considerable residuum of nonsense; and this specimen
before us, we apprehend, forms no exception. Even if the fact so
broadly asserted were indisputable, we should still be inclined to
doubt, after what the author has himself told us, whether the "rule
of the masses" is always an unmixed blessing to a community. He
has seen enough of it to know at least that the preponderance of
popular sway is not incompatible with much social restraint--with
prejudice and narrow-mindedness--with what _he_ considers a false
commercial principle--with a disregard of public faith, and of the
rights of other nations; and lastly, with a contempt of the rights
of humanity itself, and a legalised traffic in our fellow men.
But, if we understand him rightly, he does not so much defend the
abstract excellence of the democratic principle as advocate a nearer
approach, on our part, to the American model of taxation. In the
States, he says, property pays--in England the masses pay;--that
is, if we strip the proposition of its antithetical obscurity, the
owners of property pay less here than they do in America--not only
_absolutely_ less, but less in proportion to the whole amount of
taxation. The calculations on which he founds this assertion are too
long and involved to be quoted at length, but we will endeavour to
abridge them so as to enable the reader to judge of their accuracy.
The taxes in the United States are of three classes: 1st,--the
_national_ taxes, amounting to about six millions a-year, which are
raised chiefly by customs duties on imports; 2d,--the _state_
taxes; 3d,--the _local_ taxes, for the service of the several
counties, cities, and townships. These two last classes are levied
chiefly in the form of an equal rate assessed upon the estimated
value of all property, real and personal.
In order to compare the incidence of the public burdens upon
property in the two countries, Professor Johnston selects the case
of New York State, in which the total taxable property (personal as
well as real) in 1849 was 666,000,000 of dollars, and the amount
of rates levied for state and local taxes 5,500,000 dollars, or
about 4/5 per cent on the gross valuation. Turning then to Great
Britain, (excluding Ireland,) he sets down the fee simple value of
the real property alone in estates above £150 a-year, as rated to
the income-tax, at £2,382,000,000.
"Four-fifths of a per cent (the rate levied in New York) on this
sum would realise £19,000,000 sterling; and were _all_ property,
real and _personal_, in this island below £150 a-year, and the
amount of property in Ireland rated in a similar way, and fairly
collected, our entire revenue of £50,000,000 would probably be
obtained as the revenue of the State of New York now is, by this
one property tax only."--(Vol. ii. p. 257.)
And he thus concludes that, as regards the _absolute_ amount of
taxation, property in Britain escapes for a smaller payment than
that in America.
Now, it must be remarked, on this branch of the comparison, that
before we can form any opinion as to its soundness, it is essential
that we should know on what principles the valuation of property
is conducted in New York. The whole question depends upon this. If
the system of valuation is different in the two countries, there
are no materials on which to build a conclusion. We know what
discrepancies may arise out of the mode of valuation, from the fact
that, while the annual value of _all_ real property in England and
Wales was assessed for the poor-rate, in 1841, at about £62,500,000,
_a portion_ of it only--that over £150 a-year--was valued two years
afterwards, for the income-tax, at nearly £86,000,000. We observe
that Professor Johnston has arrived at the amount of real property
in Britain, by assuming the fee-simple value to be twenty-seven
years' purchase of the income. But in New York, he tells us, the
value of income is calculated at _only sixteen and a half years'_
purchase. The terms of the comparison are, therefore, manifestly
faulty. And mark how this affects the result. The real income of
Great Britain, capitalised at sixteen and a half years' purchase,
would amount to only £1,447,000,000, and, if taxed at the same
rate as in New York, would yield, instead of £19,000,000 only,
£11,500,000, which, as it happens, _is three millions less than
it actually pays_, as may be plainly seen from the undernoted
statement:--
DIRECT AND LOCAL TAXATION OF REAL PROPERTY IN GREAT BRITAIN.
1. Land Tax, £1,164,000
2. Poor and County Rate, (England,) 6,847,205
3. Highway Rate, " 1,169,891
4. Church Rate, " 506,812
5. Proportion of Stamp Duties on deeds affecting real property, 1,200,000
6. Proportion of Legacy Duty affecting do., 300,000
7. Property Tax, 2,600,000
8. Poor Rate, (Scotland,) £577,000--say on real property, 500,000
9. Statute Labour, (Scotland,) 81,226
----------
Total, £14,369,134
_Note._--The first six items are taken from the Report of the
House of Lords on burdens affecting land, and some of them are
below the present amounts. The items affecting Scotland are
obviously defective.
To this extent at least, then, we are justified in correcting
Professor Johnston's calculations, and in affirming with certainty
that the owner of _real property in Britain surrenders a larger
portion of his wealth for the public service than in New York_, or
any other State of the Union. Whether the same can be said of the
British owner of _personal_ property is another question, which we
shall come to by-and-by.
So much for the _absolute_ comparison. But then Professor Johnston
aims also at proving, that while the rich man is better off here,
the poor man is worse--that the "masses" (_i. e._, we presume, those
who are dependent on the wages of labour) pay a larger share of
the public burdens than the same "masses" do in America. And this,
he thinks, is demonstrated by the fact, that the customs duties of
America amount to only a dollar a-head of the whole population,
whereas in Great Britain they are _three_ dollars--three times
heavier. Now, we venture to affirm that, as a contrast between the
position of the labouring man on this side of the Atlantic, and
that of his brother on the other, this statement is quite a nest
of fallacies. In the first place, it proceeds on the assumption (a
very common but erroneous one among our Free-Trade authorities) that
it is the labouring class who pay the bulk of the taxes drawn in
the shape of customs. As this error, however, may be held to affect
both sides of the comparison equally, we have next to notice that,
admitting it to be the case, the fact of the customs being three
dollars a-head in this country, and only one in the States, only
shows that the English labourer pays _absolutely_ more than the
Yankee, which no one ever doubted. It amounts only to this--that
in an old country which has to uphold numerous public institutions
unknown in America, and with a public debt to provide for of some
£800,000,000 sterling, the burden of this, as well as of all other
branches of taxation, is heavier than in the youthful republic,
with a national debt of only £13,000,000. In order to draw a fair
parallel between the cases as regards the poorer classes of both
countries, we must put the question in a different way, and inquire,
what proportion does the amount of customs (assumed as representing
the poor man's share of taxation) bear _to the whole public burdens_
in the two countries respectively? The contrasted account would
then show the matter in a very different aspect from that in which
Professor Johnston has represented it, and would stand thus:--
| GREAT BRITAIN. | UNITED STATES. |
| | |
| National taxes, £50,000,000 | National taxes, £6,000,000 |
| Local ditto,[7] 14,000,000 | Local ditto,[8] 5,680,000 |
| ----------- | ----------- |
| Total, £64,000,000 | Total, £11,680,000 |
| Whereof the poor man's | Whereof the poor man's |
| share, or customs, is £20,000,000 | share, or customs, is £6,000,000 |
| or 32½ per cent. | or 52 per cent. |
| | |
[7] We give this amount as it is usually estimated, although it is
certainly far below the truth.
[8] _The American Almanac_ for 1851.
Even if we were to throw into the scale a large portion of the
excise duties levied in Britain, which Professor Johnston may be
entitled to claim as a peculiar burden on "the masses"--at least
as much as the customs--it would still be apparent, that, if such
payments are to be taken as a fair criterion, _the people's burdens
are not relatively heavier here than in America_. We shall only
add further on this subject, that while many of the less opulent
class of our fellow-citizens have undoubted real grievances
to complain of, and while writers, with worse intentions than
Professor Johnston, are ever ready to exaggerate them, and to foster
discontent, it becomes one of his high character to guard against
allowing a somewhat undisciplined taste for statistics to betray
him into rash general allegations, calculated to produce error and
irritation.
The parallel he has drawn, however, is very instructive on one
point, although he has failed to notice it. He has taken some pains
to prove that, tried by the American standard, our poor men pay too
much, and our owners of real property too little, in both which
conclusions we have shown his grounds to be fallacious; but he takes
no notice of a far more obvious anomaly, the glaring injustice of
which is every day attracting more public comment--the comparative
_immunity of the owners of personal property_ in this country. The
local taxation of the States, it has been seen, is levied by an
equal assessment on property _of all kinds_; and although, from
the character of a great part of the country, the real property
much exceeds the movable in amount, the rate upon both is a uniform
one. No description of possessions is favoured with an invidious
exemption. We will take the assessment of one State as an example,
and copy the following "Items of the valuation of the taxable
property for the State of Iowa, according to the assessor's returns
for 1849." They are as follows:--
"Acres of land--Improvements on land--Town lots and
improvements--_Capital employed in merchandise_--Mills,
manufactories, distilleries, carding machines and tan-yards,
_with the stock employed_--Horses, cattle, sheep, &c.--Pleasure
carriages, watches, pianofortes--_Capital stocks and profits
in any company incorporated or unincorporated_--Property
in boats and vessels--Gold and silver coin, and bank-notes
in actual possession--_Claims for money, or other
consideration--Annuities--Amount of notes, mortgages, &c. All
other personal property over 100 dollars._"
All these descriptions of property contribute alike, dollar
for dollar, towards the expenses of the State, which--be it
remarked--embrace not only the general charges for interest of
debt, and for the support of the legislative, executive, and
judiciary departments, but include also payments for prisons,
asylums, the militia, the public roads, and several other branches
of expenditure, which in this country are saddled either upon real
property or upon the land alone. Let any one look at the items of
the above list printed in italics, and say what portion of such
wealth passes through the national exchequer, or goes to uphold the
public institutions, of Great Britain. The whole annual incomes
above £50 a-year in Great Britain are estimated, on the best
attainable data,[9] to amount to upwards of £352,000,000 sterling,
of which the taxed real income is £86,000,000, or one-fourth part
only. Is there any one with a conscience so elastic as to maintain
that the owners of the other three-fourths contribute fairly to
the support of the State, in proportion to the revenue they enjoy
under its protection? From the investigations of Mr Smee, to whom
we have referred, it appears that while the number of those who
pay the direct taxes is about five hundred thousand, _there are
upwards of one million eight hundred thousand persons in Great
Britain enjoying incomes of above £50 a-year, who do not contribute
one farthing to them_. What is this but a system of iniquitous
exemption of the one class, and of virtual confiscation as to the
other? But the whole subject occupies far too prominent a place in
the public mind to be treated thus incidentally. For the present
then we leave it, thoroughly persuaded that, under a form of
government which acknowledges no distinctions between classes and
interests, so shameless a violation of the plainest principles of
equity cannot long be permitted to continue, and cordially joining
in the wish that no object of less momentous interest--no schemes of
impracticable retrenchment--no wily bait of extended suffrage--no
flourishing of the old red rag of reform, may be suffered to
distract the attention of the public, from the one great paramount
practical reform--A READJUSTMENT OF TAXATION.
[9] See Mr Smee's pamphlet on the Income-Tax.
We owe an apology to Professor Johnston for having deviated somewhat
from the ordinary course of a review. His work has already been so
much and so flatteringly noticed, that to have limited ourselves
to mere abridgment and quotation from the _Notes_ would have
led us over the same ground that has been already exhausted by
other critics. We have therefore preferred discussing some of the
questions of greatest public interest which his observations have
suggested; and if, on some of these, we have been led to dissent
from his opinions, we have done so in no unfriendly spirit, which
indeed would have been impossible in judging of an author whose own
views are always expressed with perfect candour and moderation.
There can be no doubt that, under the unpretending title which he
has chosen to adopt, he has contrived to bring together a larger
mass of varied and valuable information on the present condition of
North America than is to be found in any work yet published.
THE ANSAYRII.
_The Ansayrii (or Assassins;) with Travels in the Further East._
By the Hon. FREDERIC WALPOLE, R.N., Author of _Four Years in the
Pacific_. London: Bentley, 1851.
Hail to the bright East, with all its mysteries, its mighty past,
its pregnant future, its inexhaustible sources of airiest amusement
and most solemn interest! We welcome with pleasure the original and
truly Oriental book before us. It harmonises rather with the poetic
than the historic character of Eastern lands; but in its wild and
dreamy narrative there are to be found vivid and faithful pictures,
such as those that lighted up the charmed reveries of DeQuincey. For
the present we will lay aside the critic's task: we will postpone
all such considerations, and invite the reader to accompany us in a
rapid tour over the varied regions which Mr Walpole has recalled to
our memory and imagination. Let us turn for a little from the "world
that is too much with us," and, ranging away from chilly mists and
gloomy skies, sun our fancy in the lands where Paradise was planted.
Egypt and Palestine appear familiar to us all; they are of common
interest to the whole Christian world--classic lands to every old
villager who can read his Bible, as well as to the profound scholar.
In them, sacred and profane history are so intimately blended
that the latter assumes almost the authenticity of the former.
Herodotus and his followers have actually a people still in the
flesh (if flesh the mummy may be called) to refer to: subterranean
Egypt is still inhabited by the undecayed bodies of the very men
who associated with the Israelites, and forms that were beautiful
and loved three thousand years ago. Imperishable as their old
inhabitants, their temples and their monuments still stand above
them, and will there remain unparalleled, until their long-buried
architects shall rise again.
Passing on to Palestine, we find, memories and associations still
stronger and more striking; for here nature is invested with the
sentiment that in Egypt is awakened by art. Palestine belongs not to
time only, but to eternity; with which, by types and illustrations,
its earthly history is so beautifully blended and aggrandised. Its
literature is inspired truth, its annals are prophecies fulfilled,
and the very face of the land itself vindicates the beauty it _once_
wore, through all the sorrow and desolation that have fallen on it
since. Owing to the metaphorical style of Oriental composition,
every object in nature was used to illustrate or impress by its
analogy; and hence not only the holy mountains, the sacred rivers,
and the battle plains have memories for us, but the very "hyssop
on the wall," the blasted fig-tree, the cedar, the "high rock in
the thirsty land;" every vale, and hill, and lake, and city, is
consecrated by some association with the men who spoke the words of
God--with the time that witnessed His presence in the flesh.
The remorseless Jews were swept from the Promised Land, as their
ancestor was from Eden, for the irreparable sin; and the sword of
the Roman waved over the ruined walls of Jerusalem, forbidding all
return. The Saracen and the Crusader succeeding, add another element
of interest--an English association--to long-tried and suffering
Judea. The Crusaders were rather a warlike emigration than invasion;
they were the angry overflow of discontented Europe, which sought
to vent its spleen and dogmas upon the Infidel. Their ebbing tide
bore back to us the arts and sciences and chivalry of Arabia;
and thus Palestine became the channel for all our best temporal
acquirements, as it had long since furnished us with our eternal
hope.
All this, and more--much more--invests Syria with undying and
exhaustless interest to the student and the traveller; but we
will not linger on such impressions now. We have a lighter task
to fulfil, though we are about to visit the land of Nimrod, of
Abraham's nativity, and of the empire of Semiramis. The pleasant
company in which we travel will speed us on; and, in the old
troubadour fashion, lay and legend will beguile the way. But before
we enter fairly on our pilgrimage to "Ur of the Chaldees" and the
tomb of Nineveh, we shall pause to make some practical observations
on the route which, in its present aspect, may be new to some of our
readers.
EGYPT MAY SOON BE REACHED IN TEN DAYS.[10] This is almost
incredible; still more so, when we add that it may be accomplished
without fatigue, hardship, or self-denial. The traveller even now
embarks at Southampton in one of the Oriental Company's magnificent
steamers, and finds himself landed at Alexandria in fifteen days,
having visited Gibraltar and Malta, besides having travelled three
thousand miles in as much comfort as he would have enjoyed at
Brighton, with far more advantage to his health and spirits, and but
trifling additional expense. For our own parts, we believe that,
before long, sea voyages, instead of sea shores, will be resorted
to, not only by the invalid, but by the epicurean and the idler.
The floating hotels of our ocean steamers afford as comfortable
quarters as any of their more stationary rivals, with the additional
advantage of presenting a change of air and of scenery every morning
that the "lodger" rises.
[10] By the leviathan steamers now building for the Peninsular and
Oriental Steam Company. They are calculated to make from sixteen to
eighteen miles an hour, which would reduce the sea-going part of the
voyage to eight days two hours.
The autumn--the later the _better_--is the _best_ period for
visiting Egypt. October is, on the whole, the best month for
beginning the ascent of the Nile. We will suppose the traveller
landed at Alexandria: he achieves the lions of that suddenly-created
city (except Aboukir Bay) in a few hours, and is ready to start
for Cairo in the mail steamer, with the India-bound passengers who
accompanied him from England. The country in which he now finds
himself, by so sudden a transition, is full of apparent paradoxes;
amongst others, he may be surprised to find that the canal on which
he travels to Atfeh winds considerably, though no engineering
obstacles whatever oppose themselves to a straight course. The
reason of this sinuosity was thus explained to us by Mehemet Ali
himself:--"You ask why my canal is not straight: Ya, Wallah! it is
owing to a bit of bigotry. The dog who made it was a true Believer,
and something more. He said to himself, 'Ya, Seedee, thou art about
to make what Giaours call a canal, and Giaours in their impiety make
such things straight. Now, a canal is made after the fashion of a
river--(Allah pardon us for imitating his works!)--and all rivers
wind: Allah forbid that my canal should be better than His river; it
shall wind too.'"
And so it does.
Landed at Cairo, the traveller of the present day will find a
steamer once a fortnight ready to take him up to the first cataract
and back again, as fast as Young Rapid, or any other son of a
tailor, could desire. But even the rational tourist will be tempted
to send on his Kandjiah, (the old-fashioned Nile boat,) well
found and provisioned, a fortnight or three weeks before him, and
overtake her in the steamer. The Kandjiah voyage up stream is often
wearisome, downward never--as in the descent you are borne softly
along at from three to six miles an hour, even when you sleep. From
the first cataract to the second is only about two hundred miles,
and occupies about three weeks; but to those who can find pleasure
in what is most wild and dreamy and unearthly in scenery and art,
the desert view from Mount Abousir, the temples of Guerf, Hassan,
and Ipsamboul, are worth all the rest of the Nile voyage, except
Thebes and exquisite Philæ.[11] Returned to Alexandria, as we will
suppose, in March, the traveller will be quite early enough for
Syria, whose winter (considering the tented life he is compelled to
lead) is not to be despised. A steamer transports him to Beyrout in
thirty hours; and there our true travel begins.[12]
[11] The mere physical pleasure of the upper voyage has been
thus described--"No words can convey an idea of the beauty and
delightfulness of tropical weather, at least while any breeze
from the north is blowing. There is a pleasure in the very act of
breathing--a voluptuous consciousness that existence is a blessed
thing: the pulse beats high, but calmly; the eye feels expanded;
the chest heaves pleasureably, as if air was a delicious draught
to thirsty lungs; and the mind takes its colouring and character
from sensation. No thought of melancholy ever darkens over us--no
painful sense of isolation or of loneliness, as day after day we
pass on through silent deserts, upon the silent and solemn river.
One seems, as it were, removed into another state of existence; and
all the strifes and struggles of that from which we have emerged
seem to fade, softened into indistinctness. This is what Homer and
Alfred Tennyson knew that the lotus-eaters felt when they tasted
of the mysterious tree of this country, and became weary of their
wanderings:--
'----To him the gushing of the wave
Far, far away, did seem to mourn and rave
On alien shores: and, if his fellow spake,
His voice was thin, as voices from the grave!
And deep asleep he seemed, yet all awake,
And music in his ears his beating heart did make.'
If the day, with all the tyranny of its sunshine and its innumerable
insects, be enjoyable in the tropics, the night is still more so.
The stars shine out with diamond brilliancy, and appear as large as
if seen through a telescope. Their changing colours, the wake of
light they cast upon the water, the distinctness of the milky way,
and the splendour, above all, of the evening star, give one the
impression of being under a different firmament from that to which
we have been accustomed; then the cool delicious airs, with all the
strange and stilly sounds they bear from the desert and the forest;
the delicate scents they scatter, and the languid breathings with
which they make our large white sails appear to pant, as they heave
and languish softly over the water."--(_The Crescent and the Cross_,
vol. i. p. 210.)
[12] The journey from Cairo across the desert by Suez, or at least
thence by Gaza or Sinai to Jerusalem, is performed in the same
manner as it was in the days when Eothen, Dr Robinson, and Lord
Castlereagh described it. The only difference occurs in the route
between Cairo and Suez, which is now performed on wheels in about
twelve hours, and, in the course of eighteen months, is expected to
be easily accomplished in two hours and a half by railway.
Thus, (omitting the somewhat important episode of Egypt,) we find
ourselves transported, in little more than a fortnight, from
the murky fogs and leafless trees of England, to the delicious
temperature and tropical verdure that surrounds the most beautiful
town of the Levant. As every improvement in steam-navigation lessens
its distance from Christendom, Beyrout increases and expands. Nor
must we omit an honest tribute to the iron but even-handed justice
of Ibrahim Pasha, which first rendered it safely accessible to
Europeans. Before his conquest of Syria, the Frank was wont to
skulk anxiously through the town, exposed to insult and unpunished
violence: without the walls, the robber enjoyed as much impunity
as the bigot did within; and, between both, Beyrout became, or
continued to be, a miserable village. Its environs were wild
wastes, where the gipsy alone ventured to pitch his tent, and the
wild dog prowled. Now, pleasant gardens and picturesque kiosks,
or summer-houses, replace the wilderness; the town expands, grows
clean, doubles its population, and welcomes a crowd of shipping to
its port. A more delightful residence, as a refuge from winter, can
scarcely be conceived. An infinite variety of excursions may be made
from hence; and every time the traveller mounts his horse, whether
he be historically, picturesquely, controversially, botanically,
or geologically given, he may return to his flat-roofed home with
some valuable acquisition to his note-book. The views are everywhere
magnificent, and the warm breezes from the bluest of oceans are
tempered by the snowy neighbourhood of the loveliest of mountains.
Five roads of leading interest (besides many a cheering byway
among the hills) branch out from the walls of Beyrout. Damascus is
about eighteen hours off; Jerusalem six days; Djouni, the romantic
residence and burial-place of Lady Hester Stanhope, ten hours;
Baalbec, the flower of all Eastern ruins, eighteen hours, and
Latakia, whither _we_ are bound, five days. These distances may be
accomplished in less time; they are here given at the calculation
of a walking pace, as the roads, or rather paths, are for the most
part steep and difficult; and the baggage-horses, at all events,
can seldom advance more rapidly. One word more of dry detail, and
we shall put ourselves _en route_ for the mountains of the Ansayrii
and the further East. Notwithstanding the advance of civilisation at
Beyrout, where a European consulocracy has established a more than
European equality of privileges between Turks and Christians, the
interior of the country is daily becoming more dangerous to travel
in. Eight years ago, when the stern rule of Ibrahim Pasha had still
left its beneficent traces, the writer of this article wandered over
the length and breadth of the land, attended by a single servant
and a muleteer. Since our Government, for inscrutable reasons,
has restored Syria to the embroilment of its native factions, all
security for the traveller, and indeed for the native, has ceased.
To reach Jerusalem, or even Damascus, in safety, a considerable
escort is now necessary; though the Vale of Baalbec may still be
reached in less warlike fashion from Latakia or Tripoli, if the
traveller is endowed with liberality, courage, and courtesy--the
leading virtues of his profession.
Before we proceed on our travels, let us introduce our guide.
Mr Walpole is a young naval officer, and there is in most of
his narrative a dashing impetuous style, which savours of his
profession. In this there is a certain charm, imparting as it does
an air of frank and fearless confidence in his reader's quick
perception and favourable construction. There is in his writings
what we would also hope is professional--a chivalrous feeling and
generous sentiment, that is never obscured by a sordid thought or
unworthy imputation. As he sees clearly, of course he also sees
faults in men, and minds, and manners; but such discoveries are
made in a tone of regret rather than of triumph; or thrown off in
a strain of good-humoured satire that could not offend even its
objects. His descriptive powers are graphic, and often very vivid;
his humour is very original, being generally tinged with melancholy,
in such sort as that of a philanthropic Jacques might be: finally,
he does not fear to display a profound and manly reverence for
holy things and sacred places. On the other hand, to set against
all these high merits, we must confess that many faults afford
some drawback to his book. It is often incoherent, and deficient
in arrangement. The first volume is rather the groundwork than
the accomplishment of what an author with Mr Walpole's powers and
material should have effected. Most of these faults, however,
may find their excuse in the circumstances under which they were
composed. They smack of the tent, the boat, and the bivouac, as old
wine does of the _borachio_. Whatever they may be, this work is one
that will be widely read; and wherever it is read with appreciation,
it will direct the interest not only to its subject, but its author:
his individuality, unostentatiously and unconsciously, is impressed
on every page; and his genius, however erratic, is unquestionable.
The cockpit, and even the gun-room of a man-of-war, are little
favourable to intellectual effort, or the habit or the love of
learning which it can alone accomplish. We can therefore make
greater allowances for errors in composition, and concede greater
credit for the attainments in languages and general knowledge which
our young author has achieved. This is perhaps still more striking
in a work written by Mr Walpole three years ago, entitled _Four
Years in the Pacific_, which, though written in a midshipman's
berth, abounds in passages of beauty, and in his peculiar and
original humour. Having said so much in his praise and dispraise,
and only premising, in addition, that he speaks Arabic and Turkish,
so as to interpret for himself the quaint unusual thoughts of the
people among whom he lives, we enter upon a survey of what he saw.
We have unwillingly passed over the whole of our author's outward
voyage, which is graphically, and almost dramatically, described.
We shall only refer to one or two passages respecting the Levant.
The following sentence may dispel some fanciful visions of the sunny
climate of Stamboul:--