insolvent, have done so from excessive imprudence of speculation; and
he succeeded in eliciting some cheers and laughter from the House of
Commons, by contrasting in some extreme cases the amount of the debts
brought out in bankruptcy with the assets. Without deeming it necessary
to defend the conduct of all the houses, the affairs of which have
been rendered public by the vast corn trade and railway speculations
into which he plunged the nation, it seems sufficient to observe, that
_all_ fortunes made by credit must, if suddenly arrested in the course
of formation by such a contraction of the currency as we have lately
experienced, exhibit the same, or nearly the same, results. Fortunes,
with the magnitude of which the Right Hon. Baronet and Mr Jones Loyd
are well acquainted, might possibly, if they had been thrown on their
beam-ends suddenly, by such a tornado, have exhibited, when in growth,
not a much more flattering feature. But the "Pilot who weathered the
storm" was then at the helm, and he weathered it for their fortunes not
less than for those of the country. He _aided_ commercial distress in
adversity by increasing, instead of _aggravating_ it by contracting,
the currency. It is credit which has made us what we are, and credit
which must keep us such. Had the monetary system of Sir R. Peel been
adopted forty years ago, as the bullion committee said it should, we
shall tell the Right Hon. Baronet what would have been the result.
Great Britain would have been a province of France: the fortunes of
all its merchants would have been destroyed: the business talents of
Mr Jones Loyd would probably have procured for him the situation of
cashier of the branch of the Bank of France established in London; and
possibly the rhetorical abilities of Sir R. Peel might have raised
him to the station of the English M. De Fontaine, the orator on the
government side in the British Chamber of Deputies, held under an
imperial viceroy on the banks of the Thames.
Sir R. Peel admits his bill has failed in checking improvident
speculation in the nation; nor could he well have maintained the
reverse, when the most extravagant speculations on record, at least in
this island, succeeded, in the _very next year_, the passing of his
bill. Experience has proved that it required to be suspended by the
authority of the executive when the disaster came; and the effect of
that suspension has already been to raise the _three per cents_ from
79 to 86. It is ineffective during prosperity to check imprudence; it
requires to be suspended in adversity, because it aggravates disaster.
This is all on the Right Hon. Baronet's own admission. What good then
has it done, or what can be ascribed to it, to counterbalance the
numerous evils which have followed in its train?
Sir R. Peel says the experience of the last half century proves, that
every period of prosperity is followed by a corresponding period of
disaster, and that it is under one of the latter periods of depression
that the nation is now labouring. We agree with the Right Honourable
Baronet that for thirty years past this has been the case, and we will
tell him the reason why. It is because for that period his principles
have been in operation. But there was a period before that when no such
deplorable alternations of good and evil took place; when the nation
in prosperity was strong without running riot, and the government in
adversity checked disaster, instead of aggravating it. It was the
period from 1793 to 1815, when a currency adequate to the wants of the
nation was supplied for its necessities, and our rulers had not yet
embraced the principle that, in proportion as you increase the work
men have to do, and enlarge their number, you should diminish their
food. It was the period when Mr Pitt or his successors in principle
were at the helm. Three commercial crises came on at that time, all
occasioned by the abstraction of specie for the use of the great armies
then contending on the Continent,--those of 1793, 1797, and 1810. In
the first, the panic was stopped by Mr Pitt's advance of £5,000,000
exchequer bills; in the second, by the suspension of cash payments;
in the third, when gold was so scarce that the guinea was selling
for twenty-five shillings, by the issue of bank-notes to the extent
of £48,000,000. That last period, which under the present system
would at once have ruined the nation, was coincident with its highest
prosperity: with the Torres Vedras campaign, and a revenue raised by
taxes of £65,000,000 yearly. All the panics on record have arisen from
the abstraction of gold in large quantities, and have been cured by the
issue, sometimes speedy, sometimes tardy, of a corresponding amount
of paper. Sir R. Peel's policy doubles the evil, for it at once sends
abroad the cash under his act of 1846, even in the finest seasons,
to buy grain, and, under the act of 1844, at the very same moment
contracts the currency, by the increase of which alone the evil could
be remedied.
Sir R. Peel, however, has completely, as already noticed, instructed
us in the true principles of the currency. It is his policy which has
brought them to light. He contracts the currency when gold is scarce,
and expands it when it is abundant. The true principle is just the
reverse: it is to contract the paper when gold is abundant, and an
expansion of the currency is therefore little needed: and to expand
it when it is scarce, and therefore an addition to it is imperatively
called for. The price of gold will at once tell when the one or the
other requires to be done.
We conclude in the words we used on _this day twenty-two years_, on
Jan. 1, 1826, immediately after the cessation of the dreadful panic
of December 1825:--"It may be that the Ministry is right, and that
all these changes are wise and necessary, but we cannot discover it.
The more accurately we examine, the more firmly we are convinced of
the truth of our own opinions. Time has brought no refutation to us,
whatever it may have done to those from whom we differ; in so far as
experiment has gone, we may point to it in triumph in confirmation
of our principles and predictions. If at the last we be proved to be
in error, we shall at least have the consolation of knowing that we
have not erred from apostasy; that we have not erred in broaching new
doctrines and schemes, and supporting innovation and subversion; that
we have not erred in company with the infidel and revolutionist,--with
the enemies of God and man. We shall have the consolation of knowing
that we have erred in following the parents of England's greatness,--in
defending that under which we have become the first of nations, and in
protecting the fairest fabric that ever was raised under the face of
heaven, to dispense freedom and happiness to our species. Our error
will bring us no infamy, and it will sit lightly on our ashes when we
shall be no more!"
SOMETHING LIKE A COUNTRY-HOUSE.
THERE is an ancient mansion we often go to, just where the hills of
Herefordshire rise confounded with those of Radnor, built in the reign
of James I., but in a style that tells of the traditions of rather an
earlier epoch, and, as common report goes, due to the genius of Inigo
Jones. It is erected in a long line east and west, with the principal
fronts north and south; on either side of the mansion prim-looking
gables rise over the windows of the third storey, and stately chimneys
keep guard on the roof above. The windows are all ample, well and fitly
monialled and transomed. The colour of the stone is a rich warm-tinted
gray, passing on the southern front into orange-shades of glorious hue;
and the whole edifice wears the aspect of nobility and good taste.
Ample gardens with terraces and lawns are spread around, and the tall
avenue of limes that leads down from the ancient gates on the main
road, is answered by a goodly belt of contemporaneous oaks and beeches
circling round the gardens, and shutting them out from the rest of
the estate. When you enter the great hall, you observe large square
bay windows, and, in the recesses, deer-skins spread out for carpets,
with halberts and other arms filling up the corners. The lower rooms
are all wainscoted with black oak, and the furniture, mostly as old
as the mansion itself, is of that solid stately kind which befitted
the dignified style in which our ancestors gloried to live. As you
mount the ample stairs, you find yourself amidst an endless series of
portraits, from the time of the bluff tyrant King Hal, down to the
homely age of good King George,--stiff gentlemen and ladies in doublets
and ruffs,--others with cuirasses and long flowing hair, and black
dresses and love-locks, be-speaking the well known cavalier principles
of the House in the times of the rebellion; and ever and anon gentlemen
in long three-quarter frames, with many a square yard of pink or blue
velvet for their coats, cuffs turned up to their elbows, waistcoats
big enough to make surtouts for any of us degenerate moderns; the
forefinger and thumb of one hand on the pummel of the sword, the other
gently placed on some gilded table,--the head turned disdainfully
aside, or else courting with graceful pride some comely dame in a green
negligé, or habited as a shepherdess,--the Corydon and Chloe of the
court of Queen Anne. The staircase leads to an enormous drawing-room,
that looks as if some three or four other rooms had been thrown into
one, with two bay-windows on one side, and a fireplace--ah! such a
fireplace!--on the other. But here no personages more ancient than
the days of George the Second are allowed to show their canvasses on
the walls,--the great grandfathers and grandmothers of the present
possessors,--the men looking like rakish Quakers, the ladies all in
flimsy white muslin, straw hats, and powdered locks. They may have more
interest for those to whom they are related, but we always consider
them much worse company than their progenitors on the staircase,--those
glories and beauties of an earlier day, whom they are themselves
destined to join hereafter, when thrust out from their present quarters
by a future squire. A stray Sir Joshua may be seen in one corner of the
room, and an early Sir Thomas is by one of the windows. The furniture
here is of that remarkable, rickety kind, which our own dads admired so
much when this nineteenth century of ours was making its appearance,
and which--but we may have bad taste herein--we would willingly consign
_en masse_ to the kitchen fire or the broker's shop.
Not far from the drawing-room door runs off one of the many long
corridors of the mansion, and then at the end is the Closed Chamber.
It has never been opened since the year 1718, when the young lady,
one of the daughters of the house, that used to sleep in it, lost her
lover who had been out for the "right cause," and lost his head for his
loyalty to a dethroned sovereign; and she, poor girl, walked into the
great fish-pond one night, and was found in the tangled weeds by the
old gardener next morning. The squire of that day, her disconsolate
father, had the pond immediately drained off, and it is now one of the
prettiest flower parterres of the garden: but the lady's elm is still
pointed out at one end--a shattered withered trunk--'twas under it the
poor thing's body lay. And now at nightfall, and in the depth of the
night itself, long-drawn sighs and the rustling of stiff silk may be
heard along the passage and by her room-door, while within,--but no
one knows nor even talks of what is within,--all that is really known
is, that once in the autumn, 'tis now fifty years ago, when the old
housekeeper was alive, on a peculiarly still night, while the master
was away up in London, and no one but two or three servants left in the
gloomy mansion, the door of the chamber burst open with a loud noise,
and such a crash was heard within, followed by an unearthly shriek,
that the people in the servants' hall below nearly went out of their
minds through fright. Next morning, when the gardener had called in the
village constable and the smith, and all three had mounted the stairs
and had come to the mysterious door, they found within a wainscoted
room a worm-eaten bed of ancient form, all in a heap on the floor; one
of the windows was broken in, the cobwebs were blowing about in the
wind that whistled through the apartment; over the chimney-piece was a
portrait, so black that it could be hardly made out, only they could
see that it had once shown the lineaments of a young and a female face:
but there was nothing, absolutely nothing to indicate the cause, of
the disturbance during the night. It is true that the smith, as he was
going out, picked up a ribbon near the chimney, which he maliciously
declared he knew to be Betty the housemaid's garter, but nothing more
ever came of it, so the window was mended, the shutters were closed,
and the door has ever since been fastened up with stout coffin screws.
There's not a servant that would go to the end of that passage at night
and listen with her ear at the keyhole, (though they all say they
would not mind doing it at any other door in the house) no, not for a
twelvemonth's extra wages.
We have slept in many a chamber of that goodly and hospitable mansion:
there was the bachelor's room, a nice little square apartment, about
twice as high as it was broad, all panelled in oak, which, however,
some Goth of a squire had painted light blue; with a fireplace that
would let not only the bachelor, but eke the bachelor's better half,
creep inside on a winter's night; and with a curious kind of a bed,
not higher from the ground than your knee, but with thin light posts
spiring up some dozen of feet aloft, and supporting a superfluity
of green damask, enough to make a tent with. In the panel over the
fireplace was an apology for a looking-glass, once deemed no doubt an
uncommonly correct thing, all cut in facettes and diamonds at the
sides and diversified with bouquets of flowers tied by true-lovers'
knots in the middle. 'Twas no doubt a bridal gift to some fair lady in
the time of King Charles, and then might have gloried in a frame of
gold; but now its glories are departed, and, for us at least, it served
no higher purpose than to display the horrors of our bristly chin.
There's no position in the world more comfortable for a bedroom mirror
than over the fireplace; shaving can there be conducted with science
and with gusto. And every other panel opened by some wonderful kind of
fastening, into a cupboard big enough to stow away more habiliments
than ever in our bachelor days we were likely to possess. A quaint
little goggle-eyed commode, tortured into fanciful elegance, filled up
one corner of the room; and a nondescript _table de toilette_ occupied
the other. Here, in a three-cornered arm-chair, the senior piece of
furniture in the whole room, have we watched over the flickering ashes
of the wood-fed fire for hours; and often when we had shaken hands with
our worthy host at ten, have we prolonged our vigil till early morn,
amused with the acute ribaldry of _Tom Jones_, or lost in the intricate
wit of _Tristram Shandy_. The wintry blasts would make the old casement
rattle, but we only gave the flaming log another turn,--crack! crack!
would go the wood, over went another leaf of the book, and so we
continued till taper and eyelid alike failed us.
The Yellow Room was also a capital place to take up your quarters in
for the night; there was very pretty sleeping in that vasty bed, where
some four might snore side by side, and yet never doubt but that they
were each sole occupant of the couch. But it was somewhat melancholy
to turn in there by yourself; your taper, though it burned as bright
as wax could make it, served to illumine only a small portion of the
middle space, while in each corner of the apartment was a mass of black
nonentity, of darkness visible, that might make you superstitious
and ghostlike. It was something like going to bed in Westminster
Hall, and from the fireplace to the bedside, when in the last stage
of dishabille, was quite a journey. But there was such a host of
arm-chairs with soft downy cushions, such a bevy of footstools, such
a goodly couple of ottomans, such a preponderating wardrobe, and such
ample splashing-room on the marble surface of the toilette, that here
you could expatiate in the morning, and could walk in and out and round
the chairs and tables and footstools and ottomans, and back again, for
a mile or two before breakfast, simply while dressing. Here were some
famous pictures of Cupids and Venuses, and a view of the park-gates,
and a drawing of the alcove at the end of the long walk, and an
enormous sampler that must have taken two or three years to work, with
B. W. A.D. 1732, ending the series of devices. Here, too, were some
portly bottles of arquebusade, and elder-flower water always kept over
the mantel-piece, and a set of steps, like a small flight of stairs,
to mount up into bed by; but the books on the shelves were of a staid
and approved description,--Dryden's _Virgil_, _The Spectator_, and _The
Whole Duty of Man_, keeping in countenance the sober black-letter Bible
and Common Prayer, that held their accustomed station by the bedside.
This was the chamber where the neighbouring squires and their dames,
when they "crossed the country in a carriage and four," coming some
five-and-twenty miles to dinner, used to be lodged for the night. It
had once been the nuptial chamber of our worthy host, but he has long
since betaken himself to a quieter and less expansive berth.
Up above, and on the higher storey of the house, runs a long gallery,
from one end right to the other--like the corridor of a barrack--with
bedroom doors opening into it on either side at frequent intervals.
Here are lodged the young ladies and gentlemen of the family; the
governess and the tutor. The nursery is at one extremity, and the
ladies' working-room at the other. The gallery is thickly matted all
the way along; and on its walls are hung all those productions of the
arts which are not judged of sufficient excellence to be admitted down
stairs. There is an enormous map of the estate, and a bird's-eye view
of the house, and the first flower-piece by aunt Mary, when she was a
little girl at school in Bath, and Mr Henry's black spaniel stuffed,
under a glass case. Here, on a wet day, the children can take their
wonted exercise, and have even a game at cricket if necessary; here the
lady's-maid and nurse-maid sit in the afternoon and work; here, any one
who is a very particular friend of the family is allowed to come up
and "see the children;" here you may have a swing or a romp according
as you are inclined; and here, you cannot but confess, that you have
found out one of the most useful and comfortable features of the whole
edifice,--an in-door promenade, a domestic gymnasium.
We have been admitted into every room in the house, big and little,
up stairs and down stairs. We know the quaint little smoking parlour
that was, now turned into the squire's "office," or justice-room. Here
he meets his steward and sits at a desk like any dirty cotton lord in
his factory; here he keeps his guns and fishing rods; and here, on a
small set of shelves, are his books--"Burn's Justice," and "Taplin's
Farriery;" here one of his dogs is sure to be lying before the fire,
and some aged tenant or other is ever coming in to ask for some little
favour or other, which the kind landlord seldom refuses; here he
determines what fields shall be put down in turnips this year, and what
vagabonds shall be put in the stocks; in short it is the sacrarium
of the house,--the place where the _primum mobile_ of the whole is
stationed; and, in our eyes, one of the snuggest and most useful
appendages of the mansion.
Leading out from this room is a door that you might suppose would
conduct you into a closet--but no; it opens on a flight of steps,
down which you descend a little, and then find yourself at the edge
of an opening that looks like a well. This was part of the ancient
manor-house, or castle, which was destroyed in one of the Border feuds,
when the Welch and English, in the time of Owen Glyndwr, used to give
each other rather warm reception. It then formed the dungeon or prison,
which each chieftain of the march country had within his residence,
and where he could detain refractory tenants or unpleasant neighbours.
The worthy squire has now turned it into his Madeira cellar, and keeps
in it a hogshead of the most particular East India that ever left the
island and crossed the Line. He has it under his own special lock and
key; tastes it only now and then, and threatens to keep it in the cask
till his son comes of age.
The real cellars themselves are goodly things to see; none of your
cramped up wee bits of things that they build now-a-days, but where,
besides the usual stock of beer and strong ale, for the general run
of the house and neighbourhood, there is left room enough for stowing
away a hogshead brewed on the birth of each child of the family, and
destined to remain there till they each attain their one-and-twentieth
year. They are fourteen in number, and bear the names of those in whose
honour they were filled; there, then, is Master Thomas and Miss Lucy,
and Miss Susan and Master William; and so on, through the whole of
the rising generation. As for the wine-cellar, 'tis an unfathomable
recess; there is port and claret in it enough for the whole county;
and the fountain in the court might be made to run sherry for a week
before the stock would be exhausted. A pile of champagne-cases stands
at one end, and some dozen bins of the extra particulars are built up
by themselves. It would do good to the heart of any man to wander about
these cellars for a morning.
And it is not far to the church--just beyond the outer garden-hedge
where you cross the deep ha-ha, made to keep rabbits and cattle out,
and close to the clump of birch-trees that rise on the hill,--an
ancient edifice, with a bit of architecture of every period that
English antiquaries can boast of. The tower "ivy-mantled," according
to the most approved rule; the peal of bells thoroughly harmonious,
and allowing triple-bob-majors to be rung on them with the full
swing of the lustiest youths of the village. In the chancel is a
formidable-looking pew, put up in Charles's time, all in black oak,
with quaint figures of angels and dragons, and fantastic flowers,
sprawling over every vacant space. Within, it is right comfortably
carpeted and cushioned; in the midst is a stove to keep out the
cool humours of the church, and to comfort the squire's lady on a
Christmas morning; while round the walls of the little chapel, which
the pew fills, are all the family monuments, from the stiff-necked
and stiff-ruffed knight of the days of the virgin Queen, down to the
full-bottomed wig and portentous bands of the judge in the time of
George II. A little plain white marble slab in one corner bears the
simple inscription,--
MARIA.
1820.
But at this I have often observed that the good lady of the house never
looks; and once, during the sermon, I saw the squire, while listlessly
gazing upon it, allow the tears to glide down his cheeks as though he
was a child.
There's a summer-house at the end of the nut walk, so hidden by bushes
and winding paths, that it is hard to find the entrance,--a low
squat-looking kind of a place, built in the Dutch fashion, with four
windows, one in each side, and with a dome on the top; it stands close
by a pond, and is all grown over with ivy. Indeed, when you arrive at
the door, you have to remove the clematis and damask rose twigs with
your hand, ere you can obtain an entrance. On the walls are numerous
names commemorated both with pencil and knife; and in particular,
under a true lover's knot, are deeply cut the letters M and H. It is
a standing joke at the squire's table between himself and the amiable
hostess--but I never could get to the bottom of it--only if any of the
children or the company should by any chance make even the most distant
allusion to their having been near the summer-house during the day, the
squire immediately calls out, "Let me have a glass of that port!--Mary,
my love, do you remember the summer-house?"--to which the invariable
reply is,--"Henry, dear, I thought you had been more sensible: you
must not, indeed!" However, the gardens are truly delightful,--full of
rich parterres, and clumps of flowering shrubs; with trim-cut walks
of yew and beech, over which the various kinds of the pine tribe and
the cedar of Libanus rear their heads in sombre luxuriance. You may
walk, I forget how many miles, in the garden, without going over the
same ground twice in the same direction; but the gardener is apt to
exaggerate on this head. There is enough variety to occupy the most
fastidious for an afternoon, and beauty enough to occupy the lover of
nature for a week.