an exciting incident. A tent on the outskirts of the settlement was
ransacked, and its two inmates speared, by a party of Indians. A dozen
men assembled to follow and take vengeance, chiefly Yankee backwoodsmen,
with two English hunters from Oregon for their leaders. Mr Shaw cleaned
his gun and pistols, put a store of flour in his knapsack, slung his
blanket, and accompanied them, in spite of the arguments of his two
countrymen, who thought him physically unequal to the hardships of the
expedition. On the second day they came upon the Indian camp, consisting
of some thirty men and twenty women. The marauding party had just come
in, and were narrating their exploits—their plunder displayed upon the
ground. The Indians—who seem, for Indians, to have been extremely
incautious, and to have dispensed altogether with vedettes or
sentries—gathered together in a group to sup, when their repast was
unpleasantly interrupted by the crack of the white men’s rifles,
immediately followed by a headlong charge with pistol and bowie-knife.
Five were killed by the first volley, and a number wounded, most of whom
were remorselessly put to death, whilst a few were saved by the
intercession of Oregon Frank and others of the more humanely disposed.
One old squaw had got a bullet in her leg, but as a string of scalps was
amongst her personal ornaments, she excited little compassion. “Knowing
the treachery of Indians,” Mr Shaw artlessly remarks—meaning, we
suppose, the possibility of an attack from the remnant of the party
which he and his friends had so mercilessly decimated—“we loaded our
firearms before sitting down to supper, keeping a watchful eye about us.
The repast, of which we took possession, consisted of roots, venison,
acorn-bread, boiled horse-chestnuts, and a dish of vermin: the former
were very palatable after our fatiguing march, but the slugs and worms
we declined tasting. When we first sat down, some arrows were shot with
great precision into the midst of us: one stuck firm in a large piece of
venison, which we were compelled to throw away for fear of the arrow
being poisoned.” A forced march of sixty miles in twenty-eight hours
saved them from an attack by overwhelming numbers on their way
homewards, and they reached the diggings without loss. There things were
gloomy enough. During their absence a man had had his ear cut off for
larceny; Mac was rather worse than better; the Malay and Celestial were
on the brink of the grave. The overflow of the river had flooded most of
the diggings; Mr Shaw’s was completely inundated, and not a vestige
remained of his hut. “As I viewed,” he says, “the desolation of all
around, I thanked God that I had regained my health, and involuntarily
shuddered at what might otherwise have been my fate, thinking with
sadness upon the probable death of those who accompanied me hither.” It
now appeared that, owing to the rainy season having set in a month
earlier than usual, the provisions in store were insufficient to pass
the winter. Many of the diggers had their own tents and stock of food,
and they might weather it out; others had gold wherewith to buy food, so
long as food there was to buy: this latter class were not secure from
starvation, which would be the almost certain fate of those who had but
the labour of their arms to depend upon. The friendly storekeeper
intended selling off and starting; the two Oregonians were about to
quit—perhaps to try the dry diggings, perhaps to return home through the
mountains—and wished Mr Shaw to accompany them. He had but thirty
dollars left, and his digging was under water. In this perplexity he
took council with Mac, who was in stout spirits, although still an
invalid. He advised a retreat to Stockton. Mr Shaw acquiesced, and as he
would only have expended his slender funds, without benefit to his
friend, by awaiting Mac’s convalescence, he resolved to set out alone
upon the following day. As to Mahomet and the Chinaman, their case was
utterly hopeless. They were dreadfully emaciated, and so delirious that
they did not seem to recognise their old master and fellow-labourer when
he paid them a farewell visit. With painful regret he parted from Mac,
and set out upon his lonely journey across two hundred miles of
wilderness. Here, as in other parts of the book, one cannot but admire
the judgment and resolution of this young fellow, then not out of his
teens, but who displayed, on many occasions, qualities that would do
credit to a man of mature age and far greater experience.
In the midst of a storm of wind and rain, and encumbered by a heavy
load, Mr Shaw took a last look at those diggings where his “golden
dreams” had been so rudely dispelled, and ascended the steep mountain
which commenced his laborious march. His knapsack contained “twelve
yards of jerked beef, dried in strips, six pounds of biscuits, one pound
of beans, and two of flour.” He was further loaded with his blankets and
bag for water, his pistols, gun, and a huge bowie-knife. Road there was
none; the track that there _had_ been was obliterated by the rain; he
steered his course by landmarks. The summer streamlets and mountain
gullies were converted into deep and rapid rivers; cataracts roared down
amongst the rocks, bringing with them avalanches of soil and trees; the
whole surface of the earth was flooded. At dark he was compelled to
halt, lest he should find a grave in some ravine. Establishing his
bivouac beneath a tree, he at first hesitated to light a fire lest it
should attract Indians; but this risk he was compelled to run, in order
to deter wild beasts, for a couple of coyotes and a tiger-cat showed
themselves; and although pretty well used to the howling of wolves, he
could not think without trepidation of the certain results of an
encounter with a grizzly bear, a monster by no means uncommon in those
latitudes, and between which and the ursine specimens we have
opportunities of observing in England there is as wide a difference, as
between a lady’s park palfrey and the mad charger that bore Mazeppa to
the desert. “Their speed being almost equal to that of a horse,
notwithstanding their clumsy appearance and gait, foot-travellers have
no chance with them, as they can climb a tree or gnaw the trunk away
with equal facility. The most marvellous accounts of their bulk are
current amongst hunters. Some of these monsters are said to be the
height of a jackass, and weigh fifteen hundred pounds.” No wonder that,
in hopes of scaring away carnivora of this magnitude, he lit a fire and
risked his scalp. We were puzzled to think how, in the midst of the
deluge he describes, he got his fire to burn. But here nature has been
merciful, and there is a crumb of compensation and comfort for the
drenched wayfarer in California. The gum-trees and firs of the country
are his resource. However wet the weather, he has but to strip the bark
from the base of one of these; the wood underneath is perfectly dry; a
few resinous chips, cut out with a hatchet, are easily persuaded to
flame, and these set light to the foot of the tree, which, once kindled,
burns steadily and gradually, without spreading or blazing, and gives
out a genial heat. Mr Shaw usually selected a tree about three feet in
diameter for his watch-fire, which seems to have been just the right
size to last the night, for “on awaking in the morning,” he says
“agreeably surprised to find myself unmolested, the tree, being almost
burnt through, fell with a crash.” To avoid the risk, otherwise
imminent, of being crushed by the remains of this sylvan fireplace, it
is necessary to select a tree so inclined as to be certain to fall in a
contrary direction to the wind, which serves to keep up the fire and to
keep the embers from the sleeper, who of course lays himself down to
windward.
At about noon on his third day’s march, Mr Shaw found his progress
barred by a swollen stream, nearly a quarter of a mile wide, whose
current raced past at fully seven knots an hour. After patrolling its
banks in quest of a shallower and narrower place, and finding none, he
risked the passage. “Unbuckling the burden on my shoulders, holding it
by a slender cord with one hand, my gun above my head with the other,
and my knife between my teeth, I cautiously entered the water. On
gaining the middle of the stream, I felt with painful anxiety the water
rising higher and higher; and the current, nearly carrying me off my
legs, compelled me reluctantly to use the gun as a support and sounding
rod. The general depth averaged from my waist upwards to my neck; for a
minute I was immersed over head, but regained a footing without
sacrificing my pack, and succeeded in crossing safely.” That night, the
wolves, as if aware of the unserviceable state of his firearms, were
unusually clamorous and daring, and he was awakened at midnight by their
abominable serenade. “From rock to rock their dismal howls were echoed,
responded to in the distance by the fiendish laugh of a jackall. Casting
a look around, a huge shaggy wolf stood within five yards, his eyes
glaring at me like burning coals. Snatching up a firebrand, I hurled it
at him, which made him turn tail and beat a rapid retreat.” By a very
long march the next day he cleared the mountains and got to the
Stanislaus, but not until after dark. “The moonlight was palely
reflected on the silvery surface of the water, which sparkled with the
leaping of salmon; the stream made a hollow murmuring sound, as it
dashed over the rocky obstructions in its bed; and a grove of trees and
shrubs, which overhung the edge, cast a deep shade around. As far as I
could guess, it was at least three quarters of a mile in width.” Near
the ford, which he made correctly, but which, owing to the increase of
the waters, was hardly recognisable, a party of Indians were
salmon-spearing. To the hungry traveller, long unused to better food
than dry biscuit and salt beef, the idea of a slice of fresh-broiled
salmon was most captivating. But although pretty well convinced, from
some Spanish exclamations he overheard, that these were Mission-Indians,
belonging to a friendly and Christian tribe, he thought it as prudent
not to accost them, and plunged into the stream. When about half-way
across, he got out of his depth, was swept away by the current, and
shouted for succour. He was got ashore insensible, but was brought to
life by the exertions of a hideous squaw, who kneeled upon his chest to
pump the water out at his mouth. At first doubtful whether humanity or
hunger had prompted his rescue, and whether he was to be fed or fed
upon, he was soon relieved from the unpleasant doubt by the kindness of
the poor Indians, who wrapped him in blankets and gave him salmon and
maize-cake for supper. A cross tatooed upon his arm (sailor fashion)
increased their regard for him, by convincing them he was a Roman
Catholic; and on learning he was an Englishman, they testified extreme
satisfaction. “The two leading characteristics of the Mission-Indians
are Catholic zeal, and an inherent detestation of Yankees.” After
leaving these hospitable savages, who were bound inland to
winterquarters, Mr Shaw had to traverse the sandy plain which had been
the scene of so much suffering on his march to the diggings. The weather
was now cool, and he was plentifully supplied with water, so all that he
had to put up with was the fatigue of walking through sand into which he
sank ankle-deep at every step. Notwithstanding this disadvantage, he
accomplished thirty-five miles the first day, proving himself a stout
pedestrian. He passed a dead mule, laden with a pack of hosiery, and saw
various skeletons, partly buried in sand-drifts; and the next morning
his route took him by several recently-made graves. That evening he
entered Stockton, heartily glad once more to find himself in a civilised
settlement, but not without misgivings as to how he should manage to
earn a living and get on to San Francisco. It was too late to hunt for
his old shipmates, so he warmed his pot of coffee at a deserted fire,
and then, creeping under a cart, lay down upon some rotten wood and
rushes. Just as he was falling asleep, he was roused by a singular
incident. A hale gigantic man of thirty, who was sleeping near him, was
stung by a venomous insect peculiar to that country, whose sting he knew
to be mortal.
“A convulsive tremor shook his frame, and the perspiration dropped
from his brows, as he stood before a large fire with his hands
clasped, exclaiming, ‘The Lord have mercy on my soul!’ Various
remedies were proposed, but he shook his head: ‘No,’ said he; ‘die I
must,’ and thus philosophically he resigned himself to his fate.
Intelligence of this disaster had a startling effect on most of the
sleepers. I, as well as others, from a morbid anxiety, watched the
gradual working of the venom. The doomed man, with the equanimity of a
Socrates, joined in the conversation, but kept drinking large draughts
of brandy; violent spasms soon came on, and he shouted for more
liquor; his features, seen by the lurid light of the fire, were
horrible to contemplate; and it was not without violent struggles that
he gave up the ghost.”
This melancholy event so disturbed Mr Shaw that he quitted his
sleeping-place beneath the cart, and, after some prowling about, took up
his quarters in a dilapidated tent, containing a forge and anvil. There
he lay down under a bench, upon some iron rubbish, “arranged as
comfortably as could be, for a mattress;” and there, in the morning, he
was awakened by a kick in the ribs from the inhospitable smith who owned
the “location,” and who overwhelmed him with foul language for intruding
into his shop. “As it is useless to expostulate with surly,
ill-conditioned people, I merely made a brisk exit.” In California, a
man who is at all scrupulous about taking human life, and whom nature
has not gifted with the thews and muscles of an athlete, or art endowed
with the pugilistic science of a prize-fighter, must make up his mind to
submit to occasional rough treatment. Not possessing sufficient bodily
strength to pummel the brutal Vulcan who grudged him a nap upon his old
iron, Mr Shaw—whose courage and resolution no one will doubt who reads
his unassuming narrative, but who appears to be of active rather than of
powerful frame—might, had it so pleased him, have had recourse to Colt,
and sent half-a-dozen bullets in rapid succession through the vitals of
his assailant. The chances are that, in the infant state, and with the
provocation given, he would have escaped unpunished, unless, indeed, his
quality of a Britisher had rendered him particularly obnoxious to Judge
Lynch. To thrive in California, or even to hold his own—at least in the
year 1849, and we have shrewd doubts about things having much mended
since that date—a man must not be over-particular about defacing the
image of his Maker, but prompt to revenge his own grievances, and act as
judge and executioner in his own quarrel. There, ascendency and impunity
are too often accorded to brutal violence and cruelty, whilst fair play
is almost unknown. At San Francisco, soon after Mr Shaw’s arrival there,
the influx of thousands of sick and impoverished miners, come in from
the diggings to winter, caused a glut in the labour market, and large
nightly meetings were held—
“Ending in furious tirades, forbidding foreigners to seek employment,
or people to hire them; accusing them of being the cause of a fall in
wages, and holding out deadly threats to all who dared labour under
the fixed rate of payment, ten dollars a-day. These nocturnal
assemblies had in them something appalling, being composed of from
three hundred to a thousand cut-throats, armed with bowie-knives and
firearms, and often intoxicated. The stump-orators and leading
demagogues were usually notorious characters, celebrated not for
mental superiority, but for their extreme democratic principles and
physical powers. On one occasion, an orator, being interrupted in his
harangue by certain remarks derogatory to his person, leaped off his
tub into the midst of the crowd and seized the offender. Fierce was
the struggle, a ring was formed, when, throwing his antagonist down,
the orator jumped on him with his heavy boots! In vain were the
victim’s shrieks of agony—no one ventured to interpose. The
demagogue’s rage being satiated, he remounted the tub and continued
his oration.”
In default of protection from the laws, surely a bowie-knife could find
no more appropriate sheath than between the ribs of such a ruffian.
During Mr Shaw’s brief absence, the town of Stockton had greatly
increased in size. Regular streets of wooden houses had been built;
vessels were discharging cargo, steamers were puffing at the wharf,
strings of mules stood in the streets, laden with goods for the
interior. Dollars were plentiful, but the bakers had formed a league,
and bread was six shillings a loaf. Unable to find any of his shipmates,
Mr Shaw walked down to the quay in search of work. After numerous
unsuccessful attempts, he obtained employment as a rough carpenter. Poor
fellow! he knew little of the trade, and was discharged at night, with
four dollars for his services. Next day he was hired by a sailmaker, to
stitch canvass for tents. Again found inefficient, his services were
dispensed with, but he received seven dollars. Then he turned cook—to a
gang of carpenters who were constructing a foot-bridge. His duties were
to hew wood for firing, to cook beefsteaks and damper, and boil coffee,
five dollars a-day being the stipulated guerdon. His twelve masters were
never satisfied: the steak was always voted tough, or the damper heavy;
and seeing that some of them were determined to grumble till they got
rid of him, he gave warning on the third day, and left without a
character. Once more his own master, he took a stroll through the town,
and visited the hospital—“a silent and sombre tenement, eighty feet long
by fifteen in width, made of tarred canvass, and lighted by two
slush-lamps.” The rain dripped through the roof; about thirty patients,
of all countries, classes, and colours, lay on straw upon the ground,
with only their blankets to cover them. Nurses there were none. Twice
a-day a doctor came—such a doctor as one might expect to find in such a
place. Here lay a man with a gaping wound in the abdomen, received from
a bowie-knife in a drunken fray. When any died, they lay for days
waiting removal—the dead amongst the living. Here Mr Shaw met one of his
shipmates, a young man whom he had left at Stockton when he started for
the diggings, and who had since been driven mad by disease, misfortune,
and despondency. He was seated on the straw, busily untwisting the
threads of his quilt. Mr Shaw hurried to the doctor, stated the
respectability of the maniac’s friends, and the certainty of a handsome
recompense if his health were restored, and he were conveyed on board
the Mazeppa. The humane _medico_ calculated his recovery was
considerable unlikely; and as for the promised reward, why, he was too
far Down-East to trust to that. The poor fellow, who then had lucid
intervals, became totally deranged, and subsequently died. “Insanity, as
may be supposed, is very frequent in this country, where the mind is
liable to very violent shocks, caused by sudden reverses of fortune,
privation, and danger.” Having expended his last dollar in bread for
supper, Mr Shaw, when grievously at a loss for breakfast, was so lucky
as to fall in with a party of sailors, recently paid off from the
American man-of-war Ohio. They had come to Stockton in a whale-boat,
intending to proceed to the diggings; but the narrative of Mr Shaw’s
mishaps made them abandon their project, in which they had already begun
to waver, discouraged by the sight of so many sickly disappointed
miners. Several of these men-of-war’s-men were of English extraction,
and one, Cockney Bill, from the “New Cut, Lambeth,” who was the leading
character amongst them, made Mr Shaw heartily welcome to their mess and
a seat in the whale-boat, in which, after a severe pull, they reached
San Francisco. Here Mr Shaw was fortunate enough to find out the tent of
a passenger by the Mazeppa, who gave him a kind welcome and the shelter
he greatly needed. This was the same man who had got drunk, and set fire
to the grog-store, when they first landed in California. He was now a
steady fellow, and was making money by retailing spirits. Under his
canvass roof, and partly by his assiduous attentions, Mr Shaw got
through a bad attack of fever and ague; having recovered from which, he
went out to look for work. Certainly he was just the lad to rough it, in
any part of the world. Nothing came amiss to him. “My occupations were
manifold,” he says—“discharging cargoes, carrying merchants’ goods,
cutting roads, tent-making, vending fruit, and packing timber. Five was
my usual hour of rising, and, however miserable and dark the morning, I
was at the various ‘points’ in search of occupation, eager to seek, and
willing to accept, any description of work. Having no settled abode, I
lived according to the day’s luck, sleeping wherever chance directed.”
Soon, owing to the mob of labourers and the prevailing agitation, it was
not very safe for a foreigner to seek work, whilst it was decidedly
dangerous to work under wages. “There was a high cliff near the
rendezvous at Miller’s Point, which I carefully avoided at night, as
from this ‘Tarpeian rock’ three poor fellows were hurled who had worked
under wages, or were suspected of having done so. The beach below was
used as a burying-ground; those who perished from want or sickness were
conveyed thither. The labour of digging graves was unnecessary, the
bodies being either covered at high tide with a layer of sand, or
carried out to sea. _When digging sand for the masons_, I exhumed
several bodies in various places.” He had made a contract to work for a
mason for one hundred dollars a-month and his board, including
sleeping-room in the forecastle of a vessel, the driest lodging he had
had since he left the Mazeppa. About this time (the latter autumn of
1849) occurred one of those terrible conflagrations to which San
Francisco has been so liable. Several of the principal gambling-houses
and largest buildings were blazing; from a distance the appearance was
that of an immense burning crater: owing to the direction of the wind,
the whole city was in danger of being burned down. But the mob would not
stir a finger towards extinguishing the flames, until “the rate of
compensation was decided upon.” Highly characteristic is this of that
greed and selfishness which are such prominent symptoms of the
Californian gold-fever. Three dollars an hour was the rate of payment
ultimately fixed. Water was very difficult to procure, and some of the
merchants were said to have paid sixty dollars for a water-cart load.
The loss was estimated at one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Some
of the frame-houses destroyed were three stories high, contained a
hundred rooms, and paid eight thousand dollars ground-rent. The part of
the town burned down being notorious for its gambling-houses, “many
regarded the fire as a visitation of Providence; opposite the scene of
ruin, some zealous preachers were mounted on tubs, crying ‘Woe unto
Sodom and Gomorrah!’ and exhorting the people to turn from the error of
their ways, and erect places of worship. Nor was this calamity without
its good effects, as funds for a church were raised; many calculating
men paying the subscription as they would an insurance, not to promote
the salvation of souls, but in the hope of thereby saving their goods
and chattels.”
His back nearly broken, and his hands cut to pieces by carrying huge
blocks of coral rock, brought from the Sandwich Islands for building
purposes, Mr Shaw, dreading a return of sickness, then very prevalent in
San Francisco, resolved to quit “that city of sordid selfishness and
heartless profligacy,” and to seek shelter for the remainder of the bad
season in some remote _rancho_. A few hours’ walk brought him to the
“Mission of Dolores.” A wing of this old convent had been converted into
an inn, and was kept by a family of Yankee Mormons, in partnership with
the superior. Here Mr Shaw obtained employment; and a laughable
description he gives of his multifarious duties, of his bed upon a soft
plank amongst the rats in the granary, of his breakfasts on brandy
bitters—the favourite morning beverage of the Mormon hostess and her
daughters—of his milking cows and mixing juleps, and of the gambling,
cock-fighting, bullock-hunting, and other diversions of the frequenters
of the tavern. His possession of a tooth-brush, and the use he made of
it, were cause of great wonder to the primitive people amongst whom he
now found himself. The Mormon ladies looked upon him as a superior
being, and were immensely edified by his descriptions of European
habits; his master treated him with confidence and consideration; and
regular diet and freedom from anxiety renovated his strength, although
he was still subject at intervals to a depression of spirits and
weakness in the limbs peculiar to that country. His stay at the sign of
the Bull’s Head, however, was shorter than he had expected, and than his
employers wished. Going into San Francisco to make some purchases, the
captain of the Mazeppa offered him a free cabin passage to Sydney or the
Sandwich Islands—an offer with which he thankfully closed. Owing to the
exorbitant price of labour, the captain, supercargo, and chief mate, had
been obliged to discharge the cargo themselves. A portion of it,
consisting of assortments of musical instruments, ladies’ apparel, and
other commodities useless in California, had not paid charges. “As no
return-freight could be obtained, the Mazeppa was going back in ballast
of sand and rum—this inferior spirit, which would not pay customs’ duty,
being cheaper to buy than stone ballast.” Mr Shaw proposed recruiting
his health at the Sandwich Islands, and returning to the diggings in the
following spring; but he afterwards changed his mind, and went on to
Sydney. His account of the voyage, of his visit to the Sandwich and
Navigator’s Islands, of Mr Pritchard the consul, and of the manners and
customs of the Samoans, is very entertaining. From the first page to the
last, his book is full of incident and interest; and although carelessly
enough written upon the whole, the reader is struck at times by a sort
of vivid simplicity of style, examples of which are afforded by some of
our extracts. As regards California, Mr Shaw has unquestionably
presented us with the black side of the picture; but we have no reason
to think that he has tinted it one shade darker than the facts of the
case fully warrant.
THE EXPERIMENT.
In the moral and political sciences the friends of truth seem doomed to
wage an incessant warfare with the advocates of error and the patrons of
delusion. In these fields of inquiry no ground seems ever to be
incontestibly won, and no conquest so securely made as to defy hostile
challenge. Errors that had been refuted to the satisfaction of all
thinking men, and consigned to the limbo of oblivion, are prone to
appear in vigorous rejuvenescence, and to demand, like the heads of the
fabulous hydra, a second extermination. In physical science the progress
may be slow; but, a step in advance being gained, it can neither be lost
nor questioned. The law of gravitation once proved, the most daring
Pyrrhonist could not deny it without raising a doubt of his sanity; and
the moment Pythagoras offered his hecatomb to the gods, no geometrician
could ever be asked to redemonstrate that the square of the hypotenuse
of a right-angled triangle was equal to the squares of the sides. In
morals, and the mixed science of politics, so much is the case reversed,
that no one position can be held as settled beyond the chance of
subsequent controversy. To repine at such a result would be ridiculous,
and would imply an unpardonable ignorance of an elementary law
regulating every moral and political inquiry. No evidence in favour of
any one proposition in these branches of human knowledge can ever amount
to scientific certainty; and, not amounting to scientific certainty, no
proposition can be determined so that it may not be opened up for fresh
adjudication and discussion. These, accordingly, have ever been the
fields in which moonstruck speculators have delighted to disport; it
being impossible to demonstrate that any experiments made in these
metaphysical regions have resulted in disastrous failures.
The adoption of what, by a pleasant fiction, is called “Free Trade,”
was, at the time, described by some of our wisest statesmen as “an
experiment.” This was the expression used by the Duke of Wellington and
the Marquis of Lansdowne in reference to free trade in corn; and the
Earl of Aberdeen, at an agricultural meeting in Scotland, characterised
it as a “problem.” The language was ominous! To “experiment” on the
largest interest in the kingdom, and that which admittedly forms the
very basis of national prosperity—to experiment on the capital,
industry, and welfare of millions of the most loyal and best conditioned
of the people—was surely a very daring enterprise in the annals of
modern statesmanship. And yet there was candour in the confession.
Tremendous was the “problem;” but in describing it as such, the parties
implied a readiness, in the event of failure, to retrace their steps,
and to retrieve the injury they had been instrumental in inflicting.
But, as an “experiment,” is Free Trade to be ranged in the same category
with one of those problems in morals or in politics to which allusion
has been made, and which, from their very nature, never can admit of
such a certain solution as to render the question at issue no longer
doubtful or debatable? Assuredly not. It is certainly an experiment, the
success or failure of which can be tested by its fruits. It is, in
truth, an _experimentum crucis_, the results of which admit of ocular
demonstration. It may be allowed, indeed, that the Free Trade policy is
a system so vast and complex in itself, and that the influences which
contribute to eliminate its results, more especially in the department
of agriculture, are so many and various, and so slow and operose in
developing themselves, that it would require some time to elapse ere
honest but inexperienced observers could be convinced of the actual
effect of the change. There can be no doubt, for instance, that the
unpreparedness of the Continental nations to avail themselves of the
boon bestowed on them by the British Legislature with such cosmopolitan
liberality, and the diminution of human food caused by the potato
failure, contributed for three years to retard the full effect of Free
Trade on the agriculture of the kingdom.[6] After the natural
consequences of the change began to appear, the depreciation of
agricultural produce was alleged, by the admirers of the Free Trade
policy, to be temporary. This was a dishonest pleading upon the part of
these gentlemen; for the avowed object of their own measure, in
abolishing the Corn Laws, was permanently to cheapen agricultural
produce. If it was not, they were duping the manufacturing world; and if
it was, they were now deceiving the agricultural community, by asserting
that the low price of corn was temporary and evanescent; and on one or
other of the horns of this dilemma they impaled themselves. In such
disingenuous and ambidexter see-saw it is lamentable to think that her
Majesty’s ministers have largely indulged. In the Royal Speech of 1850
the Ministry talked lightly of the “complaints” of the agriculturists;
“And, without sneering, taught the rest to sneer.”
The organs of the Free Trade press took the hint, and enjoyed a
brilliant season of sneering at the Bœotian stupidity and ridiculous
melancholy of the “agricultural mind.” These were halcyon times for the
wits; for then to call a farmer “a chawbacon,” “a clodpole,” “a
horse-shoe idiot,” was enough to prove you endowed with the _mens
divinior_. The experiment, however, proceeds;—another year passes away
and contributes its quota of evidence. A host of new facts have emerged
in the interval; and the truth has assumed so prominent an aspect that
Lord John Russell’s courage, great as it is, begins to quail, and he
feels it necessary to pitch his voice in a lower key. Accordingly, in
the Queen’s Speech of 1851, he admits that “the owners and occupants of
land are suffering,” to the great consternation and manifest
inconvenience of the Free Trade press. To have allowed that the
suffering was permanent in its nature, would have falsified predictions
of his own but lately broached, and would have compelled him, at the
very least, to devote the surplus revenue at his command to the relief
of the agricultural suffering. He suggested, therefore, that the
suffering was temporary, and incidental to the state of transition in
which the agricultural interest was placed; and the other classes being
prosperous, (so he thought,) he expressed his conviction that the
agricultural community must soon participate in the general prosperity.
The Minister has never propounded the reasons on which this conviction
is based, and it may be presumptuous in us to divine what they may be.
Probably he meant to imply that the prosperity of other classes would
enable them to consume more bread and butcher-meat, and would thus
increase the demand for the products of agriculture. According to the
Free Trade writers, the nation, during the past year, has consumed from
nine to ten millions of quarters of bread-stuffs more than it ever did;
but it would seem that John Bull’s stomach is an abyss of measureless
capacity; that his appetite is insatiable, and his powers of deglutition
and digestion are unbounded. But if it were so, how would the national
voracity benefit the British agriculturist, if unlimited supplies of
corn and cattle, at the present prices, as is now proved, can be poured
into our market? The logic of the Minister, too, seems not very
conclusive or infallible. There are about eight millions in the United
Kingdom directly dependent on agriculture for their support, and there
may be about double that number whose prosperity is indissolubly
associated with the prosperity of agriculture; and that might seem an
inference somewhat more reasonable and natural than what the Prime
Minister enunciated, which should suppose that the prosperous classes
might ere long participate in the suffering of the agricultural
community; that an epidemic so widely spread might communicate contagion
to the healthy; that a disease infesting the vital function might extend
itself to the extremities of the body politic. But the suffering is the
concomitant of “a state of transition.” The expression is happily vague
and mysterious. A state of transition from what, to what? is the
question which the experimenters are bound to consider and to answer.
Infallibly it is a state of transition; but a state of transition from
remunerative prices to prices ruinously low—to invested capital
diminished and impaired—to profits obliterated and gone—to suffering
severe and enduring. But in a little while a farther change seems to
take place on the mind of our statesmen, whose opinions on the
agricultural depression are plainly in a state of transition, and who
seem to be watching, in blank ignorance, the evolutions of their own
experiment. The Chancellor of the Exchequer intimated his intention to
devote part of the surplus revenue to the relief of the occupants and
owners of the soil. But if the calamity was temporary and evanescent,
why prescribe a cure that was only admissible in the case of the
suffering being constitutional and permanent? A temporary grant might,
indeed, have been warrantable; but this was not the measure meditated.
To alienate surplus revenue for the purpose of meeting any ephemeral
evil, under which any portion of the community may for a time be
labouring, is surely the merest financial charlatanry. Very true, Sir
Charles Wood withdrew his proffered boon; and for a reason so
exquisitely ludicrous, that the nation for a moment was convulsed with
laughter. He withdrew it because the gratitude of the agriculturists was
not sufficiently intense, and because they had not proclaimed his
generosity in pæans of praise sufficiently enthusiastic! But even after
Sir Charles Wood’s ridiculous recalcitration, Parliament has passed two
measures, trivial in themselves, but implying that the sufferings of the
agriculturists are permanent, and intended to minister to them some
modicum of relief.[7] Upon the whole, we may now take it for granted,
that the present Parliament at last allow that the agricultural
depression is enduring—that the price of grain is permanently lowered.
It is of consequence to fix and determine this position in the
discussion. The manifold delusions long circulated on this subject will
not now avail. The low price of grain was at one time ascribed to an
abundant harvest; at another, the potato failure—the universal solvent
of every agricultural anomaly—was the cause; now it was temporary and
would pass away; and now it is the concomitant of a state of transition.
The period for such poor drivel is gone. On the part of the Free Trade
press it was essentially dishonest and uncandid; the avowed object of
their policy being to cheapen the loaf, and permanently to lower the
price of agricultural produce. The Free Trade writers, however, seem now
unanimously to admit the permanency of the change effected on the price
of grain by the Free Trade measures. The agricultural editorials of the
_Times_ are based upon this change as an admitted fact. A late writer in
the _Edinburgh Review_, in commenting upon Sir E. Bulwer’s _Letters_,
proceeds upon the same hypothesis. Our Free Trade pamphleteers manfully
speculate upon the present low prices of grain, not only as that which
is undeniable, but as what must permanently continue. “The experiment,”
then, has proceeded so far as to develop one result so clearly, as to
admit neither of debate nor denial. The value of grain grown in the
United Kingdom is permanently reduced by the compulsion of an Act of
Parliament; and the permanency of the reduction is as certain as
anything can be that is dependent upon the seasons.
The permanency of the fall being admitted, there fortunately is no room
for mystifying the extent of that fall. The fiars prices of grain,
judicially determined every year in the several counties of Scotland,
and the averages struck in the great grain markets of England, furnish
unchallengeable data, whereby the amount of the fall may be certainly
estimated. Without encumbering the reader with statistics, we may
mention, that after a careful collation of the prices, it would seem
that the prices of grain during the last two years of unmodified Free
Trade have fallen about one-third, when contrasted with its average
price during the twenty preceding years of Protection. In several of the
counties of Scotland, which we have compared, the fall ranges from 30 to
35 per cent. In the great county of Perth, the Yorkshire of Scotland,
and which may be quoted as a fair sample of the Scottish corn market,
the reduction amounts to a fraction more than 33 per cent. It is
unnecessary to dwell upon this part of the case, because we are not
aware that the amount of the fall in the price of grain has ever been
questioned. Indeed, it is scarcely possible that it could be so. It was
the permanency of the reduction that the Free Trade theorists so long
and so strenuously denied—thus repudiating, with reckless effrontery,
the promised blessing of their own policy.
The vital question immediately arises, “Can our national agriculture
withstand such a tremendous diminution of its annual income? The
husbandman, from the very nature of his art, cannot be speedily ruined,
but can he ultimately survive such an abstraction of his means?” The
highfarming fraternity were the first to volunteer a remedy, and to
solve the question. With flippant confidence they propounded their
panacea as the substitute for Protection; but in what high farming
consisted, not two of the teachers were agreed. One summoned the farmer
to grow more corn, another enjoined him to make green crop his
sheet-anchor, and the recreant knight of Netherby avows his partiality
for pasturage. Bullocks were “ungrateful fellows,” but pigs would do it.
Sheep on pasture were profitless, but sheep on “boards” would pay. The
mysterious powers of “ammonia” promised to meet the emergency, when, lo!
Porcius interposed, and converted the subtle agent into laughing-gas!
One wonders how such idle puerilities, such quackish nostrums, could
have deluded, even for a day, any portion of the community, however
ignorant of rural affairs; and yet it is undeniable that they served to
mystify the question, and to prolong for a little while the reign of
delusion. The high farming prescriptions, as a remedy and compensation
for the 35 per cent of loss on the value of agricultural produce, were
most effectually exposed, and they have passed away as entirely as
Cobbet’s crotchet about locusttrees, or the cow-cabbage mania of 1836.
The high farming friends of an injured agriculture have either retired
from public notice, discomfited and abashed, or are totally neglected.
The sufferings of the patient are too poignant to allow him to be even
amused with their fantastic recreations. The Incubrations of Mr Mechi
fail even to awaken a momentary interest, and the farmer of Tiptree Hall
has sunk into a _Mechior insipidus_. It is impossible, however, not to
admire the brave enterprise and manly candour of Mr Mechi. Robbing no
tenant, and experimenting at the expense of his own pocket, he is quite
an experimenter to our mind, and worthy of all approbation. Were,
however, his agricultural adventure to prove profitable, of which there
is an entire lack of evidence, it would be utterly chimerical to suppose
that Mr Mechi’s system could be introduced into the general agriculture
of the country. Mr Mechi’s capital and genius are alike awanting. His
schemes can only be contemplated as curious and interesting, and likely
in their progress to evolve principles which, in better times, may be
made available in improving the art of husbandry. In the mean time, so
far from high farming being in the ascendant, we believe that the
progress of good farming is arrested.
The question how the reduction in the price of grain is to be met,
remains still to be answered. The current and popular answer with the
Free Trade press seems now unanimously to be _by a reduction of rent_.
It is a question, say they, that concerns the landlord alone. The
incidence of the evil can affect him only. In the end he must be the
sole and exclusive sufferer. This doctrine is advanced as an
undeniable truth by one of the latest Free Trade pamphleteers, who has
rushed into the agricultural arena with a juvenile confidence that
nothing but the profoundest ignorance of the subject can explain. The
writer in the _Edinburgh Review_ speaks with more timidity and
hesitation, as if aware of the result to which such a position must
conduct. Sometimes he seems half inclined to deny the extent of the
evil. He apparently fancies that his readers are so stupid as to
forget, or so ignorant as not to know, that the price of wheat, under
Free Trade, has been 40s., while under Protection it was 56s. He
admits, however, although reluctantly, the necessity of a readjustment
of rent. This question has been frequently discussed in our pages;
but, as the received solution of the agricultural difficulty, it may
be well to look at it again. The capital and fatal blunder which such
writers fall into, is by supposing that the rent is the only payment
which the tenant-farmers have to make. But on a grain farm he has
other two payments to make, each of them equal to the rent. The usual
allocation of the total farm-income is tripartite—one-third is the
landlord’s rent, and the other two-thirds meets the farm expenditure,
&c. But if the value of the cereal produce is reduced 30 per cent, and
if the landlord is to be the _sole sufferer_, then the reduction of
rent must be 90 per cent! Is this the readjustment of rent meditated?
If it is meant that the rent should be reduced 30 per cent, and that
this only is the proportion of the loss that properly falls upon the
owner of the soil, then most certainly the landlord is not the only
sufferer. There is still a loss of 60 per cent entailed upon the
farmer and his dependants. It would be a cruel delusion, were it not
utter folly, in Free Trade writers to attempt to deceive practical men
on such a subject. The idea that the landlord should suffer the whole
loss inflicted upon the gross annual income of the farm by Free Trade
is not only visionary, but to us it would seem to be unjust. Before
landlords generally can be brought to consent to sacrifice the 30 per
cent even, what suffering and misery will overtake the tenant-farmers.
Suppose the rent of the farm was £500, then £1500 is the gross sum to
be realised from the farm. The loss entailed on each of the three
parties, the landlord, the tenant, and his dependants, is £150.
Suppose the landlord has relinquished his £150, the farmer has first
to consider whether his profits in the past have been such as to
enable him to bear an annual loss of £150; and if he is satisfied that
he can meet such a defalcation, then the next question he has to
dispose of is, who is to bear the loss of the other £150? Is he sure
that he will be successful in lowering the wages of his ploughmen from
£15 to £10—of his female workers from 9d. a-day to 6d. Will he be able
to reduce the accounts of his manure-merchant, saddler, smith, wright,
grocer, tailor, &c. one-third. The farmer is the paymaster; and if he
cannot bring about such an equalisation of the loss as this over all
the parties implicated, he will continue to be, as he has been, the
great sufferer. If, indeed, there is such an agricultural phenomenon
as a Free Trade farmer who says that he is able to bear _the whole
loss_—that Protection is and was unnecessary—then that man must
evidently have been coining money in the past, and must be now a
Crœsus of wealth. But he convicts himself, too, of having been guilty
of unfair dealing. He has been defrauding the landlord of his just
share of the farm-income; and he has done that on which a curse is
pronounced—he has been keeping back the hire of his labourers. He has
paid them with a third less wages than they ought to have received;
and before he can be rehabilitated as a witness on the question, he
must disgorge his ill-gotten gains. The Free Trade press anxiously
conceal the consequences of their measure to the poor from the
observation of their readers; and they know the reason why. Did they
venture to enter into details, the tendency of their policy to trench
deeply upon the hard-won wages of honest industry would be instantly
seen, and their odious confiscation would expose them to national
reprobation. They content themselves with vaguely asserting that the
landlord must bear the whole loss. This is the solatium which they
administer to the suffering tenant; and they fancy him such an idiot,
and so profoundly ignorant of his own business, as to believe them. If
the owner of the soil is to be the sole sufferer, then it is certain
that, in his position as a proprietor, there must be some economic
anomaly. The principle would not apply to any other owner of property.
If the gross income of a cotton-spinner is reduced 30 per cent, then
who believes that the owner of the mill who has let the building will
alone suffer? Infallibly the spinner and his workpeople will suffer a
depreciation of income. If, however, the landlord is to bear the whole
loss, we conceive that it would be an exaggeration of that loss to
state it in every case at 90 per cent. That may be in reality the
amount of the depreciation accomplished by Free Trade legislation in
the gross income of the farm; but from the great improvements that
have of late years been made in the culture of the soil, and from the
advantages generally enjoyed by the tenant-farmer from the new
manures, and from railway communication—which enables him to transport
not only his grain, but his root-crops, to markets formerly
inaccessible—we conceive that he is able to bear some portion of the
loss. In other words, we conceive, had Parliament not forcibly lowered
the price of agricultural produce, that the farmer, from the causes
mentioned, would have been able to give some rise of wages to the
agricultural labourer, and some rise of rent to the owner of the soil.
Upon this subject, very probably, the reviewer of Sir E. L. Bulwer’s
_Letters_ may be near the mark. The landlord may ponder the following
pregnant sentence:—“The necessity must then be put up with of
returning to the rents, or nearly so, which he drew previous to the
war, and before the successive Corn Laws which followed had enabled
him to occupy, at the general expense, a higher position in society
than is the lot of the landowner in other countries, or than was the
lot of his own father or grandfather.”[8] But since the period
referred to by the reviewer, the rent of land has been doubled, and in
many cases there has been a threefold increase. Any one may satisfy
himself of this fact, as far as this part of the kingdom is concerned,
by comparing the rental as given in Sir John Sinclair’s _Statistical
Account of Scotland_, 1796, with the rental given in the _New
Statistical Account_, 1844.[9] So the consummation of the experiment
which the candid critic points out as awaiting the landlord, is the
confiscation of half his income at the very least. The reviewer,
however, forgets that at the era to which he looks back the wages of
agricultural labour, and the price of the implements of husbandry,
were about a third less than they are now. How, then, are the
labourers and implement-makers not likewise to fall back to the
condition of their fathers and grandfathers? Ah! it would be
unpopular—dangerous, to mention such a contingency. The friend of the
poor, the advocate of the cheap loaf, cannot afford to reveal so much
of the truth! It is false to say that the Corn Laws raised the
landlord’s rent at the general expense. On the contrary, they likewise
greatly increased the wages, and multiplied the comforts of the
industrious classes.
One of the stale and commonplace fallacies repeated _usque ad nauseam_
by the Free Trade economists, and greatly relied on by them, is the
following. Farmers, say they, are inveterate grumblers. They have always
grumbled. They grumbled in 1815, when the price of wheat was 80s.;—and
they give copious quotations from the evidence of practical
agriculturists, taken by Parliamentary Committees, to prove their
charge. The statement, and the intended inference from it, are based,
however, upon an inexcusable ignorance, or a most criminal concealment
of the facts. The unparalleled taxation and other expenses of the
_peculiar_ period referred to, rendered even the 80s. a poor
remuneration to the home-grower. In 1815 the annual expenditure of the
nation amounted to £100,000,000, while the population was only
13,000,000—the rate of contribution being thus about £7, 15s. per head.
At present, the national expenditure is about £52,000,000, and the
population about 20,000,000, (Census 1841)—that is, £2, 12s. per head.
The truth is, with wheat at 56s., we believe that the farmer of the
present day would be better able to maintain his position than the
farmer of 1815 was with wheat at 80s. It is marvellous to consider what
unconscionable drafts the Free Trade sophists make upon the ignorance of
their readers. Abolish taxation and lower wages to the Continental rate,
and the energy and enterprise of the British farmer will enable him,
even with his inferior climate, to compete with the agriculturists of
more favoured climes.
There is another enigma involved in the greatest experiment of modern
times, requiring elucidation. The rent of land is maintained; in some
cases even there is a rise of rent, it is said; and it is triumphantly
added, this settles the question irrevocably, and ends the debate. This
position is supported by individualising vacant farms that have been
re-let at the former rents, or for which the new tenant has promised a
rise of rent. This has been an admirable instrument of delusion in the
hands of the Free Trade press, and we believe that many honest observers
of the experiment, but totally ignorant of rural affairs, have held it
as quite conclusive of the question at issue. Free Trade landlords are
willing to be deluded, and they have greedily swallowed the anodyne,
while the circumstance has contributed to conceal from others the true
state of the case. It seems certainly inexplicable how, with the value
of agricultural produce reduced thirty per cent, there can be any good
reason for a rise of rent, or how, in such circumstances, the old rent
even can be paid, without impairing grievously the income of the farmer
and the wages of the labourer. Is it not the fact, too, that very
generally landlords have been granting reductions of from ten to thirty
per cent to their tenantry? Upon the theory that the rent of land is
rising, this must seem a very Quixotic liberality, and argues a singular
blindness to their own interests. According to the Parliamentary
Returns, the estimated rental of land is £45,755,610. Mr Villiers
stated, in his place in Parliament last year, on unquestionable
authority, that the depreciation in the value of agricultural produce,
effected by Free Trade, amounted to £91,000,000; and yet rent of land is
rising! It may be remarked that it is in Scotland only that we hear of
any rise of rent; and we venture to assert that only a few isolated
cases of this kind in peculiar localities, each one of which is
characterised by specialties of its own, can be pointed out. It is an
immense leap that the Free Trade logician makes, when he concludes from
such premises that the rent of land is rising generally over the
kingdom. If a man is content to reason in this fashion, he may certainly
be able to satisfy himself of the flourishing position of any one branch
of trade, which, nevertheless, is notoriously going to rack and ruin.
The duration of the lease in Scotland is generally for nineteen years.
The farm may have been greatly under-rented, and it may have been
greatly improved during the currency of the lease; and in such a case it
is conceivable, even with present prices, that it may bear some rise of
rent. This is not all. In agriculture, as in other departments of trade,
there are wild speculators who will promise any rent. Whether they will
pay it, remains to be seen. Most probably, too, a few farmers have been
imposed upon by the fallacies of the Free Trade press. They have been
confidently told that the depression was temporary, and would pass away.
They may have believed the philosophers, and acted upon their doctrine.
Sometimes, too, a penniless adventurer, without character or skill,
gives the rise of rent, which an experienced tenant with abundant
capital feels unable to offer. A new tenant was lately asked how he
expected to be able to continue to pay his rent, which he had somewhat
raised. His answer was prompt and full of meaning. “I do not expect to
be able to pay it at present prices. There must be a sweeping reduction
of rent over the country, or there must be a rise in the value of grain
from some cause or other. In either event, I will share in the general
benefit. If neither of these things occur, my farm being in high order,
I will tide over a season or two, and then, whatever be the case with
the farm, I will not be in a worse condition than I at present am.” We
do not hazard these statements at random, but as the result of patient
investigation. They will be found to explain the cases where there has
been an alleged rise of rent; but they do not fully exhibit the present
position of British agriculture. During the last nineteen years an
immense amount of capital has been expended by the tenant-farmers of the
nation in the permanent improvement of the soil. Since 1849, £2,500,000
of the public money has been granted for the purposes of drainage. It is
impossible to ascertain accurately what money from private sources has
been expended for the same purpose. We may safely state it at
£1,500,000, so that £4,000,000 have been lately expended in the drainage
of the soil. It would not be easy to state the exact amount of the
increased value which thorough drainage gives the land; but that it adds
greatly to its productive powers is undeniable. The cost of such
drainage has been from £4 to £8 per imperial acre; the higher price
being incurred until the cost of making tiles was reduced by improved
machinery and the multiplication of tile-works. Taking the average cost
of thorough drainage at £5 per acre, this, at four per cent interest,
burdens the land with 4s. per acre. The £4,000,000, at the same rate,
must have drained 800,000 acres; and these acres, at 4s. per acre, must
give an additional annual rent of £160,000 to meet _the expense of the
drainage alone_. If the old rent, then, is merely maintained, the four
millions have evanished. They have been consumed on the altar of Free
Trade. Besides, however, the fertilising effects of drainage, flowing
from the altered condition of the soil, both mechanically and
chemically, the soil has likewise been enriched by the application of
extraneous manures. Not less than £200,000 worth of bone-dust, and
£800,000 of guano, have been annually applied to it. Guano is supposed
to be evanescent in its action, from its abundance of ammonia; but it
contains fifteen per cent of phosphates, while bone-dust contains
twenty-five per cent, and the fertilising properties of phosphates
continue. The effect of these agencies, not only in themselves, but in
adding to the quantity, and in developing the virtues of the ordinary
farmyard manure, cannot be estimated at less than 3s. per acre; so that,
unless a farm that has been so drained and so manured for years realises
a rise of 7s. per acre of rent at the present date, the rent virtually
has largely declined. We have only adduced two kinds of expenditure, but
more might be stated whereby the value of the soil has been greatly
enhanced. This is the true light in which to contemplate this specious
delusion. Even if it were possible to maintain the old rent, we see what
an immense amount of money has already been expended in the most
extravagant experiment ever indulged in by any nation, and the folly of
which continues to excite the wonder of the greatest statesmen in Europe
and the western continent. We have considered only the value of soil
that has lately received the advantage of thorough drainage; but in the
case of old arable soils, that have not required drainage, the loss will
come out more clearly and observably. Nobody now, saving, perhaps, Sir
James Graham and a few more Free Trade landowners, believes that the
present rents can be maintained; and the Free Trade press with one voice
loudly demand from landowners a “readjustment,” which, when explained,
means the loss of half their income, and degradation from their present
position to the comparative poverty and barbarism of their
“grandfathers.” The owners of the soil have not been more elevated by
the tide of national advancement than the other classes of society: the
very reverse is the case. But in the midst of an alleged national
prosperity, they must retrograde to the position held by their ancestors
a century ago! Will they fall, or, indeed, can they, without dragging
along with them the occupants of the soil, and the millions of others
immediately dependant on its cultivation?
But the Free Trade philosophers are quite disposed to sacrifice the
agricultural community in one vast holocaust at the shrine of their
idol, in order that their experiment may be fairly wrought out; and they
give us the vaunted proof of the undoubted success of their measure, the
immense importation of bread-stuffs into the kingdom, and the
consumption of these by the people. The people have eaten upwards of
nine million quarters of bread-stuffs more than they did before. The
additional supplies are the undeniable measure of the dreadful
privations they suffered in former years! The plausible sophism has been
sported by Parliamentary orators, and expatiated upon by the
experimenters, as an unanswerable vindication of their policy; and, with
a tender care of the poor, they say that with them it is a sacred moral
duty to continue to uphold a measure that for the first time has
furnished the people of this country with a sufficiency of food. Most
laudable and amiable would such benevolence be, were it not indulged at
other people’s expense. The hypothesis is itself sufficiently startling.
It implies that the industrious poor of the kingdom have hitherto been
only half-fed. It implies that the labourer and the mechanic were wont
to rise up from every meal hungry, with their appetite unsated, having
had only half a diet. Does any sane man, not besotted with the
prejudices and passions of the Free Trade experimenters, believe this?
Is it only now that John Bull has had a bellyful? He never had enough to
eat before, it seems; but now he is waxing fat. The idea is certainly
original, and as certainly visionary. We believe that the quality of the
food of the labouring poor has been changed—_not its quantity_. Wheaten
bread is much more largely consumed over the kingdom than it was; but
whether the oaten-meal cake or _porridge_, and the occasional dish of
“flowery” potatoes, were not as nutritious and salubrious food as the
imported substitutes, may admit of serious doubt. Cheap bread must be an
undoubted boon to the labourer, provided he continues to be fully
employed, and provided his wages are not lowered. This latter process is
rapidly taking place among the agricultural labourers of England. Earl
Fitzhardinge, a Free Trade peer, tells us that in his county “the wages
of agricultural labourers are already lower by at least £5 per annum,”
(_Times_, April 1851;) and it is notorious that the manufacturing
capitalists, with grinding rapacity, are screwing down, bit by bit, the
wages of their workpeople; so that immediately the cheap loaf will be to
them a mockery, as it has been a delusion and a snare. In Scotland,
saving where they are paid in _kind_, the agricultural labourers have as
yet scarcely experienced the effects of Free Trade. It is curious,
however, to observe with what stealthy steps the pressure approaches
them. Very many farmers are trying to labour their land with fewer
servants, or are substituting raw lads, at half wages, for the
experienced ploughmen they formerly employed. We have noticed, too,
during the harvest which has just closed under such auspicious
circumstances, that, in many districts where it was not formerly used,
the scythe has suddenly usurped the place of the sickle. Murderous has
been the havoc which the unskilful workmen, unaccustomed to wield the
implement, have in many instances made in the corn-fields. But thus the
farmer has largely abridged his harvest expenditure—and thus, too, very
many labourers have been driven from the harvest-field. To our certain
knowledge, a vast number of female workers in our rural villages and
hamlets have, for the first time this season, wanted employment in
cutting down the corn, who formerly with their harvest earnings paid the
rent of their cottages, or provided themselves with warm clothing
against the inclemency of the season. Our parochial boards may probably
hear more of this during the approaching winter. To postpone his own
impoverishment, the agriculturist is compelled to adopt every
parsimonious expedient; and nothing can be more certain than that
foreign labour, in the shape of foreign produce, will eventually lower
to the Continental level the wages of British labour. Reaping machines
and improved implements are not necessary to effect this result. The
introduction of new and improved implements, instead of diminishing,
rather diverts labour into new channels; but at present, the diminution
of employment arises from the straitened circumstances of the
agriculturist. Before the full effects, however, of the experiment in
this direction can be exhibited, more time must elapse. If, again, we
descend to the unhappy class below the industrious poor, who win and eat
their own bread, do we find fewer begging their bread, and fewer
perishing of inanition and want? How, then, it may be asked, do we
dispose of the immense importation of foreign corn? The answer to this
query may be easily found by any impartial inquirer. We have only to
look to the agricultural condition of Ireland for the past two years to
discover almost the complete solution of the supposed difficulty. From
the agricultural returns it is undeniable that nearly 250,000 acres have
been thrown out of wheat cultivation in Ireland, and it is certain that
in many districts of that country a large extent of acreage formerly in
cultivation has been lying waste. We speak of the years 1849–50. The
_Edinburgh Review_ makes a most feeble and disingenuous attempt to deny,
or rather to explain away the fact, while that sage _Economist_, Mr
Wilson, is at the very time contending in Parliament for the undoubted
existence of the phenomenon, and quotes it as a sufficient explanation
of the depression under which the Irish millers are now labouring. But,
in fact, the position can be demonstrated on grounds independent of the
agricultural returns. Formerly agricultural produce used to be imported
into Liverpool from Ireland in very large quantities; now, with the
exception of live stock, the importation is trivial. Formerly Ireland
used to send both flour and wheat to Glasgow; now the Glasgow market is
supplied with foreign wheat from Leith—quite a new trade. Formerly large
quantities of oats—to the extent, we believe, of 2,000,000 quarters
annually—were shipped from the western ports of Ireland, Galway, and
Limerick, for the London market. Now this trade has dwindled down almost
to nothing, and London is chiefly supplied with feed-oats direct from
Denmark and the Baltic. Formerly Ireland used to export largely—now that
country imports as largely. With an immensely diminished population, how
can this fact be otherwise explained but upon the supposition that there
has been a greatly diminished cultivation? The conclusion, apart from
authoritative statistics, is inevitable. The potato failure in Ireland
would naturally have led to an increased cultivation of wheat; but Free
Trade intervenes, and the Irish and English markets are inundated with
French and American flour: and thus the Irish millers and grain-growers
are depressed and impoverished. To this solution of the imagined dilemma
other considerations may be added. From the extremely low price of
grain, it has of late been largely used in the feeding of stock. In this
way there has undoubtedly been a greatly increased consumption of grain.
In the cotton manufactures a great deal of starch is required. This
article used chiefly to be extracted from the potato; but the being
scarce and dear, and grain plentiful and cheap, it is now manufactured
from wheat. Some years ago Porter stated the quantity required for this
purpose at 200,000 quarters; the quantity at present needed, we have
heard estimated at 500,000 quarters. For this and similar purposes there
has no doubt been a large additional employment of wheat. By means of
these explanatory causes, we are enabled clearly to see how the enormous
importations of foreign corn have been disposed of, without credulously
fancying that the labouring poor have been eating a third more food, and
that until now they have been always under-fed. But the additional
supplies have been consumed, and therefore they have been needed, it is
contended. These supplies, however, would not have been wholly required,
had Free Trade not paralysed the agriculture of Ireland, and depopulated
her shores; and even if they had, Continental nations would have
abundantly supplied our wants, and paid at the same time a reasonable
import duty; thus adding to our revenue, mitigating our intolerable
taxation, and maintaining such a price for our home-grown corn as would
have offered fair remuneration to the cultivators of our soil. The sole
difference seems to be, that we have paid away to the cultivators of
foreign lands, and to the enslaved serfs and degraded labourers of
Continental nations, what we formerly paid to our own people.
But still the cry of the Free Trade philanthropists against what they
call “a bread-tax,” is clamorously proclaimed. There never was a happier
phrase to serve the ends of faction! The compendious watchword suffices
for argument and proof, and appeals directly, as intended, to the angry
passions of the masses. What a horrid thing, say these gentlemen, is a
tax on the bread of the poor! How iniquitous, how cruel, what a sin!
And, their benevolence warming, they launch out into a flood of
grandiloquent indignation at all who venture to gainsay them. They write
and speak as if it were a matter of high principle—a thing as sacred as
the holiest article of their creed, and as soon to be abandoned. Can
these men be honest? They forget, or affect to forget, that by their own
one-shilling duty they are at this moment taxing the bread of the poor
to the amount of some £700,000 per annum. A bread-tax, then, cannot be a
question of such holy import—a matter so vital to their consciences as
they represent it to be. But, in their histrionic horror of a bread-tax,
they are quite callous about taxing the beer of the poor, the butter and
cheese of the poor, the boots and shoes of the poor, the tea and tobacco
of the poor, the knowledge of the poor! What precious morality is this,
and what tender-conscienced gentlemen are these! Never in our memory was
there a more hollow or unprincipled piece of cant palmed upon a great
nation than this hypocritical cry about a bread-tax. In determining to
hold their cheap loaf, it might become these parties to remember, what
they do not now deny, that they are thereby impoverishing ten thousands
of tenant-farmers and their families; that even now in many localities
they are entailing deep injury on the industrious classes, which, if
their policy is persevered in, will grow and extend itself until the
whole rural population are environed in want and misery. In this
recollection, can such kind-hearted politicians eat their “big loaf”
pleasantly and with quiet consciences? In men so kind and good, it is a
marvel that such a morsel has not stuck in their throat long ago. One
principal object of the tax, so odiously nicknamed, was to protect the
poor. It defended them against competition with the serf labour of
Continental countries; and it kept them from the physical, intellectual,
and moral degradation in which the toil-worn sons of labour in many
other lands are so deeply sunk. It gave them employment, and it secured
them “a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work.” “To buy in the cheapest
market, and sell in the dearest,” is the stereotyped dogma of the new
experimental philosophy. Labour is the commodity which the workman has
to sell, and it must be bought at the cheapest cost—at the Russian rate
of 4½d. a-day. This is the pleasant prospect held out by the new friends
of the poor to the industrious classes. The maxim is a selfish and
self-destructive sophism. To buy in the cheapest market cannot be good
to the seller, and selling in the dearest market cannot be good to the
buyer. According to this sapient principle of commerce, the business of
one half of the industrious community is to ruin the other half. It is
playing at the old and pleasant game of “beggar my neighbour.” One limb
of the aphorism cripples the other, and sends it forth a deformed
monster of political immorality. With one class, indeed—the idle,
moneyed, and non-producing class—the maxim ought to be in especial
favour. It suits them precisely, and for them it has been evidently
coined. They have nothing to sell, and they cleave to the first clause
of the rubric, and buy in the cheapest market—a most agreeable
prescription to those who think it immaterial whether the industrious
classes of the nation shall be allowed to live comfortably upon the
fruit of their labour. It requires remarkable courage in the Free Trade
press to uphold the practical wisdom of this theorem. Do they practise
it? Why should we not have our newspapers as cheap as our American
cousins? Did the _Times_, in proof of his sincerity, volunteer to sell
his journal at 3d. when the cry of a cheap press was raised? No: he saw
that that would destroy his profits and his capital, and with admirable
ability he exposed the fallacious clamour. Cheap newspapers, like many
other cheap things, are trashy and noxious, and he demonstrated that,
with the taxes and wages which he paid, he could not, without certain
ruin, furnish the public with cheap editorials. It is the very case and
argument of the agricultural community. With the enormous load of
taxation lying on them, and the wages which they have at present to
disburse, they cannot continue to grow the cheap loaf without ultimate
ruin. The _Times_ itself seems to concede this. In April last, the
_Times_ said of farmers, “If their payments and receipts continue long
at the present rate, they must be utterly ruined;” and more lately (7th
July) it adds, “For nearly two years and a half, agricultural prices
have been below a remunerative level.”
If we had Free Trade in reality, which we cannot have without national
bankruptcy and the destruction of the empire, instead of the selfish and
one-sided legislation called Free Trade, skilfully contrived to
impoverish the many, and to aggrandise a select few, there would have
been no ground for peculiar complaint. Even if rent and wages were so
reduced as to meet the present prices, it must not be forgotten, that,
under the potent influence of the great experiment, an immense amount of
agricultural capital has disappeared. We have seen how the drainage
money has evaporated; and according to a Free Trade authority—Earl
Fitzhardinge, formerly quoted—“in stocking a farm, £600 will buy about
as much stock as £1000 used to do!” That is to say, the existing
tenant-farmers of the nation have been plundered of two-fifths of the
capital which they had invested in stock! And yet Sir J. Graham fancies
that he does a fair and generous thing in refusing all reduction of
rent, and in offering sixty-six of his tenants twenty days to make up
their mind to displenish and depart, (See _Carlisle Patriot_, 12th July
1851,) two-fifths of their means being likely to disappear in the
displenishing process. Sir J. Graham had a prime hand in planning the
experiment. Without the consent of his tenantry, he interpolated and
altered the terms of their agreement. By an Act of Parliament he lowered
prices thirty per cent, and destroyed two-fifths of their invested
capital; and when his tenantry, under a calamity brought about by
himself, ask some relief, he coldly refuses it, and gives them twenty
days to resolve whether they shall remain and undergo a gradual
impoverishment, or get out of the way with their wives and children, and
their goods and chattels, as far as these are recoverable. Was there
ever such bitter mockery—such insulting cruelty? He tells us in a heroic
ecstasy, that he has girded on his armour, and is prepared for a great
“struggle”—(_Times_, 10th February 1851.) He has determined to be a
patriot of the first water, and to defend, at all hazards, the poor
man’s cheap loaf; but lo! he has determined, too, to cheapen it at the
sole expense of his tenantry, and out of the pockets of his neighbours.
This is the magnanimous struggle in which he has embarked; and to aid
him in this he treasonably invoked the British army to rebellion, and
summoned the soldiery to mutiny. We have reason for heartfelt gratitude
that the renegade statesman has exhibited himself in his true colours;
and that all the world now knows the value of his cheap loaf, and of his
fine speeches about the labouring poor. If the Free Trade journalists
are sincere in believing that the only possible remedy of agricultural
distress is a reduction of rent, why have they not exposed the selfish
rapacity of Sir J. Graham, and gibbeted this mock friend of the poor to
the detestation of all honourable and fair-dealing Free-traders? Are
they not aware that their silence suggests the suspicion that, in spite
of their benevolent professions, they, too, care not for the poor, but
only for themselves? Is Sir J. Graham a true type of the Free Trade
landlords of the kingdom? It is a remarkable fact, when compared with
Conservative and Protectionist landlords, that very few of them have
conceded any relief to their suffering tenantry; and yet the former
class have fewer motives on the grounds of equity and honour to grant
relief. They did not, by agitation and interference, alter the terms of
their tenants’ bargains, and deteriorate their property, and they are
innocent of the ruin which has followed in the wake of the experiment.
If Sir J. Graham is a fair representative of his class, then the Free
Trade lairds have resolved, in patriotic generosity, to cheapen the
loaf, but not at their own personal expense, but exclusively and
altogether out of the pockets of their tenantry and neighbours. Cheap
loaf, and cheaper patriotism, and happy illustration of buying in the
cheapest market and selling in the dearest! With the progress of the
experiment the ruin of the tenant-farmers will proceed with rapid
acceleration. But they are not the only parties who can be demonstrated
to be suffering deeply. On one section of landowners the blow has fallen
with unbroken effect. We mean those who farm their own properties. They
constitute a very numerous and influential class of society. They lead
the way in the path of agricultural improvement, and perform many
important duties to the country, such as those of parochial boards and
of the magistracy; they reside on their properties, and shed oftentimes
around them the amenities of hospitality, and the light of cultivated
life; at least they spend their income at home, and are the friends or
counsellors of their poorer neighbours. The experiment has gone straight
to the vitals of this interesting class, and they feel the full measure
of its evil. It might be well of any of our landed potentates, who may
fancy that the complaining farmer is an impostor, to ask a landowner,
who farms his own soil, the effect of Free Trade on agriculture. He
should be a competent and an impartial witness. Sir E. Bulwer Lytton, in
his unanswered and unanswerable _Letters_, states the case of the
parochial clergy of England, and makes a graceful appeal on their
behalf. When the next septennial commutation of their tithes is fixed,
there will be a large infringement on their income, and the day of their
impoverishment approaches. But the parochial clergy of Scotland were at
once seized upon by the experiment, as its immediate victims, and
enclosed incontinently in its remorseless gripe. It may be necessary to
inform our southern readers that the parochial clergy of this part of
the kingdom are almost universally paid in grain: so many quarters are
allocated by the Teind Court, and these are paid, not in kind, but
according to the fiars prices of grain and meal annually struck in the
several counties. The consequence is, that the Scotch clergyman has in
the experiment lost nearly one-third of his stipend. This seems to us an
act of unmitigated confiscation. Heretofore, when Parliament, for the
general good, has thought meet to effect, by statute, some great fiscal
change, they have scrupulously kept inviolate the rights of existing
beneficiaries. If it is determined to reduce the emolument attached to a
judgeship, the salary of the incumbent judge is held sacred. Why was
this principle, at the very least, not acted upon in reference to the
ministers of religion? By an expensive and prolonged curriculum of
education they qualified themselves for the duties of their office, and
they entered on the enjoyment of its meagre emoluments on the faith of
Acts of Parliament as solemn and binding, they believed, as those that
keep the State from bankruptcy, and give the fundholder his annuity.
There are in the Scotch Church what are called small livings. These were
cases in which there was a lack of teind, and by an annual grant from
the Exchequer they are made up to £150 per annum; but, under the fatal
pressure of Free Trade, many stipends not in this class have sunk far
below £150—so low even as £100. It is most painful to hear, as we have
heard, of the penury and difficulty into which many educated men have
thus been plunged. The case of the parochial clergy is clear and
disencumbered, and cannot be concealed or mystified by the specious
plausibilities of the Free Trade press. It is very well for the Free
Trade pamphleteer to attempt to palm upon the tenant-farmer what we
believe to be a pernicious delusion—namely, that the landlord must be
the sole sufferer, and that a reduction of rent will completely meet his
loss; or for the shallow quack to call upon him to farm high, and to
take to science. These remedies at least cannot reach the case we are
now considering. What is the cheap loaf to the clergyman of a parish?
His glebe acres provide the household with that. The wages of his
domestic servants—his contribution to the Ministers’ Widows’ Fund—his
life insurance—his doctor’s bill—the expense of educating his
children—his taxes, are all undiminished; and how, with an income always
small, but now so grievously dilapidated, any frugality can meet the
unavoidable expenditure of his position, seems inexplicable. And, to
quote language as justly applicable to the clergy of Scotland as of
England, “When we remember how the income of these men is for the most
part devoted, the unostentatious charity which they practise, the
popular education they so liberally help to elevate and
diffuse—compelled, by their residence in the country, to spend what they
require for their wants chiefly among the neighbouring traders—I can
conceive nothing more calculated to retard the prosperity and wellbeing
of the rural districts than the impoverishment of that class of
gentlemen, which applies means the most moderate to services the most
useful.”—(Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton’s _Letters_, p. 88.)
We have pleasure in directing attention to the case of the Scotch
clergy, as affected by the Free Trade experiment; and not the less so,
that not a syllable of complaint has as yet been uttered by them. The
cause of their silence is to us not unintelligible. Were they to publish
their suffering, they know that the Free Trade journals, in one
harmonious howl, would denounce them as mercenary wolves, and as the
enemies of the poor—an imputation painful to every generous nature, and
one which, however false, Christian ministers must have felt an anxiety
to avoid, as likely to prove injurious to the success of their pastoral
duties. In silence, therefore, have they suffered; and the right of a
plundered party to complain is with elaborate cruelty denied them. And
will the respectable gentlemen who minister to our Dissenting
congregations not soon be made to feel the pressure? In rural districts,
especially, can the agricultural community be expected to pay their
religious instructors as they did in more prosperous times? The Scottish
people have proverbially a warm regard for their clergymen, and an
earnest effort will be made not to abate their offering; but the
insidious drain upon their resources which Free Trade has opened must
ere long extinguish their means. There is another class, too, whose
meritorious labours have proved of scarcely less value to the
commonwealth, who will speedily be in the fangs of the Free Trade
experimenters. The parochial schoolmasters of Scotland have their
salaries paid according to the average value of oatmeal. By the Act 43
Geo. III. c. 54, the average price over all Scotland is struck once
every twenty-five years, and by that average they are paid. The next
average for the preceding twenty-five years falls to be taken in 1856;
and it appears, from an interesting report on education laid before the
last meeting of the General Assembly of the National Church, that if
prices continue at their present rate, the maximum salary of £34—a
miserable maximum, and disgraceful to the State that doles out such a
driblet of pay to its public teachers—will be reduced in 1856 to £26
sterling! And thus it appears that the religious instructors and
teachers of the people of this kingdom are to be crushed under the
chariot-wheels of the Juggernaut of Free Trade. We believe that there
are very many men who love their country, and hate injustice, who have
never yet calmly considered the effects of Free Trade which can be
proved now to have taken place, and have still less contemplated the
coming and future results of the experiment. If they saw that the
impoverishment of the farmer, the clergyman, and the teacher, had
already been certainly accomplished, they would revolt at the legalised
plunder.
The evil has not reached them, and they may have been bewildered by the
mendacious statistics and specious sophistry of the Free Trade press,
and, with heedless indifference to the ruin of others, they conclude
that the cheap loaf is an excellent thing. The lawyer’s fee and the
doctor’s are as yet unimpaired, and, intact themselves, they may not
have taken time to consider that they are eating their cheap loaf at the
expense of the unoffending agriculturist, and to the impoverishment of
the members of the two other learned professions. The sleek citizen,
with his snug money income, approves of the wisdom of the cheap loaf,
and marvels that there should be any difference on a question so plain.
In the mean time, this may be all very well. But if the laird and the
farmer, the parson and the teacher, are to be compelled to retrograde to
the primitive habits and diminished income of their grandfathers, they
will certainly refuse to proceed alone in the backward path. They are of
too kindly a nature to think for a moment of parting with their friends.
They will insist upon going arm in arm in this journey of declension
with their legal and medical advisers—with the agreeable annuitants and
the comfortable owners of house property. The plaintive morality and
music of the old song _must_ find a response in every bosom:—
“John Anderson my jo, John,
We clamb the hill thegither,
And mony a canty day, John,
We’ve had with ane anither;
Now we maun totter doun, John,
_But hand in hand we’ll go_,
John Anderson my jo.”
If the cheap loaf is indispensable, then, for its production, we must
have an impartial and equitable confiscation of all property and of all
income. If it is a national boon, then, in the name of fair play and
common justice, let the nation pay for it. But while we believe that
many benevolent and just men, from sheer inconsiderateness, remain blind
to the bitter fruits of Free Trade, there are some for whom even such a
poor apology cannot be offered. There are many burning with a hatred,
not only of what is called landlordism, but of the institutions of the
country. They are wise in their generation, and they see that the
experiment is insidiously but surely sapping the foundations of the
empire. To the liberal laird, too, who repudiates the idea of
readjustment, and who extorts from his tenant an undiminished rental,
and pays to his parish minister a third less stipend, Free Trade has
brought clear and unequivocal gain. The day, however, of his retribution
draws near. Nor do we despair of his conversion to sound views regarding
the protection due to our native industry. Sequestrated tenants,
deteriorated farms, and a diminished rental, will purge his “visual
orb,” and dispel the delusive mist in which he has fondly enveloped
himself. We believe that he will not remain insensible to the potent
influence of that text which the great master of satire has thus
celebrated—
“What makes all doctrines plain and clear?
About two hundred pounds a-year.
And that which was proved true before
Prove false again? Two hundred more.”
The experiment proceeds, but not without falsifying every promise held
out by its authors. We have had the curiosity to re-peruse the debates
in Parliament when the Corn Laws were abolished; and not only has not
one of their predictions been verified, but, to the stultification of
the speakers, the very reverse of every one of them has been realised.
The other nations would follow our example, another golden age of
reciprocity would commence, said Sir R. Peel. Our folly has only
confirmed France and America in a course of equitable protection; and,
by the mouths of their greatest statesmen, they have told us that we are
madmen, and are “digging our own graves.” In Prussia, the government of
Dantzig, looking upon Free Trade agitators apparently as enemies of the
country, has lately performed summary justice on some of them, by
committing them to the mercy of the minister of justice. The nation was
to enjoy universal prosperity. The prices of grain would not fall, and
landlords and tenants would not suffer—(Sir R. Peel, Sir J. Graham,
Messrs Villiers, Milner Gibson, Cobden, and Bright.) The fulfilment of
the promise is thus recorded in the Queen’s Speech of 1851: “I have to
lament, however, the difficulties which are still felt by that important
body among my people who are owners and occupants of soil.” And are the
other industrious classes prospering? The income-tax returns, according
to the _Times_, are the infallible test of national prosperity, and they
give the lie to the alleged prosperity. Since the commencement of Free
Trade, the taxable profits of the nation have decreased about one and a
half millions. The labouring poor were promised more abundant employment
and better wages—(Sir R. Peel, Mr Sydney Herbert, and Sir C. Wood.) The
labouring poor are rushing in shiploads from the shores of their native
land, as if it were infested with pestilence and plague. Infatuated men,
thus to flee from prosperity! “The necessity for emigration altogether
is created by the landlords and their Corn Laws,” said the
_Anti-Bread-Tax Circular_, (No. 27, Dec. 1841.) And again, in a
subsequent number: “But, apart from individual suffering, this is a
subject of high and serious import to the State; it betokens a disease
which threatens to end in the permanent weakness, if not destruction, of
the State. We have a remarkable expression on this point in the writings
of John Milton. That great man says, ‘I shall believe there cannot be a
more ill-boding sign to a nation, (God turn the omen from us,) than when
the inhabitants, to avoid insufferable grievances at home, are forced,
by heaps, to forsake their native country,’”—(No. 87, April 1842.) The
divine Milton quoted in the _Anti-Bread-Tax Circular_! Horrid
profanation! But the disastrous portent which “the old man eloquent” so
devoutly deprecated, Free Trade has shed upon the nation. During the
four years immediately preceding Free Trade, the annual average number
of emigrants was 87,000, and the annual average of the last four years
of Free Trade has been 271,000! Nor, since the experiment was
originated, have the seers been more happy in their vaticinations. So
adverse is fortune to the soothsayers, and so unpropitious the stars to
the Free Trade astrologers, that they cannot now venture upon a
prediction without being startled with its prompt refutation. The
Industrial Exhibition in Hyde Park was to be the inaugurating festival
of Free Trade, according to the _Morning Chronicle_; and the _Times_ is
constrained to confess that there is scarcely an article exhibited that
does not enjoy the benefit of protection. Sir J. Graham quotes, as a
proof of the agricultural prosperity, the thriving condition of his
tenantry, and the punctual payment of his rents; and forthwith his
tenantry publish their suffering to the world, and ask a reduction of
rent. The time seems to have arrived when the Free Trade sages should
doff the prophet’s mantle. ’Tis a pity they did not think of prefacing
their prophecies as good old Tiresias did—_Quid dico, aut erit aut non_.
It seems undeniable, then—and indeed, according to their own confession,
this is in a great measure admitted—that the planners and promoters of
the experiment were originally in a state of the profoundest ignorance
regarding its effects, and have been most signally mistaken regarding
its results. If there is any patriotism in them, or any sense of honour,
one course only is open to them—to do justice, namely, to the victims of
their temerity, and to retrace their steps. To talk of a mere fiscal
arrangement as unalterable, as an irrevocable finality—an arrangement,
too, ruinous to agriculture and other branches of home trade—that is
pauperising the educational and religious instructors of the nation, and
expatriating the poor, is a ridiculous mockery, and is contradicted by
all our Parliamentary history. The only measure of importance passed in
last session of Parliament—the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill—was the
retracing of a false step, and the correction of a grave blunder. In his
speech on the bill, the Duke of Wellington, with heroic magnanimity,
admitted this; and the great majority of the Liberal journals have in
this matter retraced their steps, and are writing, and many of them with
great power, in the teeth of the opinions and policy which they
advocated in 1829.
It may be necessary to wait a little longer, that all reasonable men,
who have their country’s welfare at heart, may see more fully the
failure of the experiment. Our past patience has not been without its
reward. The millers of England and Ireland, once enthusiastically Free
Traders, have seen reason to alter their opinions. The shipowners, once
greatly indifferent to the encroachments of Free Trade, have changed
their mind, and have proclaimed the change in no uncertain accents at
Scarborough. The glowing editorials of the great journalist of Free
Trade are pointedly refuted by his income-tax returns, his trade
reports, and his import tables. Intimidation, the last refuge of baffled
demagogues, is now resorted to. Free Trade, it seems, cannot be trusted
to the care of the present electoral body, (humiliating confession!) and
the agricultural constituencies and the electors of our maritime towns
are to be swamped by a new reform bill, that the experiment may proceed
undisturbed. The trumpet of terror was first blown by that false knight
who proposed rebellion to the British soldier, and the smaller
terrorists have taken the key-note from Netherby. The Edinburgh Reviewer
of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton with laughable solemnity mutters dark
threats in the ears of the owners of land. Their apathetic indifference
has doubtless encouraged the strain, and suggested to him that they must
be men of a craven spirit. Our yeomen at least are not cowards, and
suffering gives courage even to timid men.
There are venerated names which once were a tower of strength in the
land. We wait for an avowal from them that an experiment, to the support
of which unparalleled treachery may have originally seduced them, has
totally disappointed their just expectations. With trembling anxiety we
wait for their return to their natural and rightful position, for delay
may be continued until retractation becomes worthless, and until
character and influence are alike shipwrecked. The Newark election, and,
more lately, the conduct of the Suffolk farmers rushing blindfold, in
the bitterness of intolerable suffering and blighted hope, into the arms
of democracy, should teach Conservative landlords a lesson which, if not
bereft of reason, they will speedily improve. But there are some for
whom we cannot wait. We may wait to the Greek Kalends ere the economists
of the Cobden school shall be satisfied of the undeniable and
intolerable suffering of the agricultural community. If the
tenant-farmers of the nation fancy that these men may yet relent, and
extend to them some measure of justice, they are indulging in a fond
imagination. With as much hope of being heard may the sailor sue the
angry surge for safety, or the bleating lamb bespeak the butcher’s pity.
This class of experimenters has so mastered the weakness of humanity,
that they will cut and carve upon their patient until the last drop of
blood has oozed from his tortured body. For the conversion of these
ardent devotees to experimental science, who will proceed until their
victim drops exhausted from the operator’s table, we cannot wait. Nor
can we wait for him who once told us[10] “that the Corn Laws would never
be abolished;” that, if they were, “this was the last country he would
wish to inhabit;” that “despotism itself could not inflict a greater
cruelty on the poor than the system of Free Trade;” and who,
nevertheless, did repeal the Corn Laws, and does now inhabit the
country, and did lately despotically inflict cruelty on his tenantry at
Netherby. For the arch-experimenter we cannot wait. The traitorous
presence would poison even the pleasure of recovered prosperity.
_Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh._
-----
Footnote 1:
1. _Essays written in the Intervals of Business._
2. _The Claims of Labour; an Essay on the Duties of the Employers to
the Employed. To which is added an Essay on the Means of Improving the
Health, &c., of the Labouring Classes._
3. _Friends in Council; a series of Readings, and Discourse thereon._
4. _Companions of my Solitude._
5. _The Conquerors of the New World and their Bondsmen._
Footnote 2:
Further Papers relative to the Affairs of New Zealand, presented to
Parliament, by command of Her Majesty, 26th August 1846, p. 15.
Footnote 3:
_Eight Years in Syria, Palestine, and Asia Minor, from 1842 to 1850._
By F. A. NEALE, Esq., late attached to the Consular Service in Syria.
2 vols. London, 1851.
_Scènes de la Vie Orientale._ Par GERARD DE NERVAL. 2 vols. Paris,
1851.
Footnote 4:
_Golden Dreams and Waking Realities; being the Adventures of a
Gold-Seeker in California and the Pacific Islands._ By WILLIAM SHAW.
London: 1851.
Footnote 5:
_Blackwood’s Magazine_, No. CCCCXI., for January 1850.
Footnote 6:
The Continental nations, however, have perfectly appreciated “the
experiment,” and have earnestly set themselves to take advantage of
our folly. Contrary to the ignorant expectations of our economic
_pundits_, France has already shown what she can do in supplying us
with flour; and from the private correspondence of the _Standard_,
it appears that an unusual breadth of ground in the United States
has, during the past season, been laid under cultivation, and with
the especial view of meeting the demands of the British
market.—(_Standard_, 1st Sept.) And while cultivation is rapidly
advancing abroad, it is receding as rapidly at home. Upwards of a
million of fertile acres in Ireland (the weak limb of the empire,
where the effects of the experiment might naturally be expected
first to appear) have gone out of cultivation under the desolating
influence of our new commercial policy. The candle is thus burning
at both ends!
Footnote 7:
The expense of certain criminal prosecutions, by one of these
measures, has been transferred from the owners of land in Scotland to
the Crown. This is a boon to the landlords. By the other, a tenant is
now liberated from paying income-tax when he has no income. This is a
boon to the tenants!
Footnote 8:
_Edinburgh Review_, July 1850, p. 163.
Footnote 9:
The following table of comparative statistics, taken from the _New
Statistical Account_ of a parish in Perthshire, is instructive.—See
Perthshire, pp. 1191–2.
In 1843. In 1796.
Total rent of parish, £7087, 0s. Total rent of parish, £2460, 14s.
8d. 0d.
Ploughman’s wages, £12; 6½ bolls Ploughman’s wages, with board, per
oatmeal per annum; and 1 Scotch annum, £10.
pint sweet milk per day.
Woman’s wages, with board, £6. Woman’s wages, with board, £4 per
annum.
Price of new cart, £10. Price of new cart, £6.
Harness for do., £3, 10s. Harness for do., £2, 10s.
New plough wood, £3. New plough, £2.
New harrow, 10s. New harrow, 7s.
Footnote 10:
See _Hansard_, 3d series, vol. xlvi.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
● Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last
chapter.
● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.