Nor is such preparation inconsistent with occasional allusion to

previous argument or retort against interruption; on the contrary, it

is by such extempore effusions or sallies, interwoven in the text of a

prepared oration, that the highest perfection in the art of oratory is

to be attained. If it is wholly prepared, it will appear lifeless and

methodical--it will wear the aspect of a spoken essay. If it is wholly

extempore, it will be diffuse and cumbrous--crowded with repetitions,

and destitute of emphasis. It is by the combination of general

careful composition with occasional felicitous reply that the highest

perfection in this noble art is to be attained; for the first will give

it general power, the last the appearance of extempore conception. By

no other method is it possible to combine the two grand requisites of

the highest species of oratory--emphatic and condensed language--with

those occasional allusions and sudden replies which add so much to its

immediate effect, and give it all the air of being produced at the

moment. It is true, this is a dangerous style to adopt, and many are

the speakers who have broken down under it; for nothing is so apt to

induce confusion in the mind, and forgetfulness of what should follow,

as new introductions into a prepared composition. But where is there

anything great or magnificent achieved in life without difficulty and

danger? and the examples of the ancient orators, by whom both were

overcome, is sufficient to demonstrate that it is not beyond the reach

of genius and perseverance.

Still less is it to be supposed that such a style of speaking is

inconsistent with the most vehement and powerful action, and all the

aids which oratory can derive from intonation, gesture, and animation

in delivery. On the contrary, it is in delivering such speeches that

these may be brought to bear with the happiest effect,--as we daily

see on the stage, where known speeches, every word of which is got by

heart by the actor, and often is familiar to the audience, are every

day repeated with the utmost possible effect, and the most impassioned

action. It is the want of such animation in delivery which is the

great cause of the failure of many able speakers, and nowhere more

than in the pulpit. The common opinion that discourses there must be

delivered in a cold inanimate manner, suitable to the gravity of the

subject and the solemnity of the place, is an entire mistake, and has

contributed, perhaps, more than any other cause, to the vast numbers

whom the Dissenters have succeeded, both in England and Scotland, in

enticing away from the Established Church. It is this animation which

generally follows the delivery of thought extempore, compared with

the cold monotonous style in which written discourses are usually

delivered,--which is one great cause of the signal success which has

attended the efforts of the Methodists and Low Churchmen in England,

and the Free Church clergy in Scotland. The common opinion among the

peasants of Scotland, that the inspiration of Heaven only descends

upon extempore speakers, arises from the same cause. They think the

extempore preacher is inspired because he is animated; they are sure he

who reads his discourse is not so, because he is monotonous. But many

examples prove that it is quite possible to combine the most finished

and elaborate written composition with such intensity of feeling, and

vehemence of action, as will give it the appearance of extempore and

uncontrollable bursts of eloquence. The great effect of Dr Chalmers's

sermons in Scotland, and Mr Irving's in England, were not required to

show that it is by this combination that the highest triumphs in pulpit

oratory are to be attained.

Contrast this with the tame and monotonous way in which too many

learned and unexceptionable sermons were delivered in the days of

Addison, and which, it is to be feared, has not become obsolete since

his time:--

"Our preachers stand stock-still in the pulpit, and will not so

much as move a finger to set off the best sermons in the world.

We meet with the same speaking statues at our bars, and in all

our public places of debate. Our words flow from us in a smooth

continued stream, without those strainings of the voice, motions

of the body, and majesty of the head, which are so much celebrated

in the orators of Greece and Rome. We can talk of life and death

in cold blood, and keep our temper in a discourse which turns

upon everything that is dear to us. Though our zeal breaks out

in the finest tropes and figures, it is not able to stir a limb

about us. It was just the reverse in antiquity. We are told that

the great Latin orator very much impaired his health by this

_laterum contentio_, this vehemence of action, with which he used

to deliver himself. The Greek orator was likewise so very famous

for this particular in rhetoric that one of his antagonists, whom

he had banished from Athens, reading over the oration which had

procured his banishment, and hearing his friends admire it, could

not forbear asking them, if they were so much affected by the bare

reading of it, how much more they would have been charmed had

they heard him actually throwing out such a storm of eloquence.

How cold and dead a figure, in comparison of these two great men,

does our orator often make at the British bar or in the senate! A

deaf man would think he was cheapening a beaver, when, perhaps, he

is talking of the fate of the British nation. It is certain that

proper gestures, and vehement exertions of the voice, cannot be

too much studied by a public orator. They keep the audience awake,

and fix their attention on what is delivered to them, at the same

time that they show that the speaker is in earnest, and affected

himself with what he so passionately recommends to others. In

England, we often see people lulled asleep with cold and elaborate

discourses of piety, who would be transported out of themselves by

the bellowings of enthusiasm."[26]

It is no answer to our observations to say, that our greatest orators

have been bred at the universities, and that the system cannot be very

faulty which has produced Pitt and Fox, Chatham and Burke, Peel and

Stanley. Supposing that all these orators had devoted themselves, at

college, to classical verses, instead of compositions in their own

tongue--which was by no means the case--still, that would by no means

prove that the system of education in which they were bred was not

eminently defective. They became great speakers, not from having been

proficients in "longs and shorts" at Oxford, or in the differential

calculus at Cambridge, but in spite of these acquirements. They learned

the art of speaking in the forum, as Wellington's soldiers learned

the art of war in the field, by practice, in presence of the enemy.

Doubtless a great deal may be done, by able and energetic men, in this

way; but does it follow from this that education is to go for nothing,

and that the old system of sending out officers to begin a campaign and

besiege towns without knowing a ravelin from a bastion, was advisable,

or likely to insure success in the military art? If you have two or

three thousand young men, comprising the élite of the nation, at

certain seminaries, _you cannot help finding your leading statesmen

and orators there_, whatever they learn at them. They would be found

there, though they were taught at them nothing but riding, music, and

dancing. The whole rulers of Persia were found at its schools, though

they learned nothing at them but to ride, to shoot with the bow, and

speak the truth. But it would be rather dangerous to hold that this

proves that seminaries, where nothing else was taught, were the ones

best suited to secure the first place in society for their scholars, or

the blessings of good government to the state.

Nor let it be said that there is no room, as society is now

constituted, for the triumphs of the higher species of eloquence;

that it cannot be attempted at the bar, and would be hooted down in

the House of Commons, where business men now form a large majority,

and business speeches, not the flowers of rhetoric, will alone be

listened to. There is much truth in these observations, although it

will probably be found that, even in courts of justice and in the

Reformed House of Commons, a study of the condensed and cogent style of

ancient eloquence is not the worst passport to success, and is almost

indispensable to the highest triumphs. But supposing the bar and the

senate set aside, as places in which business will alone be tolerated,

are these the _only_ places in which oratory may be practised, in

which opinion may be moulded, and influence by eloquence obtained? Are

there no public meetings held amongst us for the purposes of political

change, social improvement, religious extension, moral amelioration,

charity, or festivity, in which large numbers of the people, and

often of all ranks and both sexes, are brought together, in which

there is ample room for the display of all the graces of oratory, and

in which the most eloquent and impassioned speaker is sure to carry

away the palm? Are not these meetings the "primary assemblies," as it

were, in which the ideas are elaborated, or the principles formed,

which afterwards make their way into the press and the Legislature,

and so determine the course of national policy, or the fate of

national fortunes? Every day, with the increasing popularising of our

institutions, is adding to the influence of eloquence, and multiplying

the situations in which its highest style may be poured forth with the

greatest effect. Above all, is not the pulpit to be found in every

parish, where every week an opportunity is afforded for the most

earnest appeals to the consciences of men--where the highest temporal

and eternal interests are constantly the subject of discussion--where

the most earnest appeals to the feelings are not only allowed, but

commendable--and where a mixed and willing audience is always to be

met with, of both sexes, who receive, not only with patience, but with

gratitude and admiration, the most powerful and moving strains of

eloquence which can be addressed to them? Rely upon it, opportunities

for oratory in its very highest style are not awanting. What is

awanting is due attention early in life to that noble art, the lofty

spirit which arises at great objects, and the energetic will, the

resolute perseverance, which deem the labour of a lifetime a light

price to pay for their attainment.

LAING'S OBSERVATIONS ON EUROPE.

It is not the least merit of Mr Laing's writings that they embrace

much matter within a manageable compass. The objects claiming our

attention are multiplying so fast upon us--the path of the inquirer

is strewn with so many important topics, that he who would keep pace

with the march of knowledge, must be content to throw aside all but

what is really useful for the journey. The volume before us, forming

a sequel to the _Notes of a Traveller_ published by Mr Laing in

1842, fulfils this condition, and comprises within the limits of a

moderate octavo a vast variety of subjects, social and political,

domestic and foreign--population, the division of land, emigration,

militia, university education, Continental railroads, taxes, theatres,

fresco-painting, and a multitude of other topics. Among so many

subjects, there are of course some on which we are unable to concur

in the opinions expressed by the author; and some of his views we can

hardly reconcile with the acute good sense that characterises most of

his observations. But even on matters where we are forced to differ

from him, his remarks are always instructive, original, and suggestive;

and he generally presents both sides of a disputed question with

remarkable impartiality, leaving the reader to form the conclusion for

himself.

There is one circumstance which, in our opinion, greatly enhances the

value of Mr Laing's observations on the social condition of our own

and other countries. The very worst of all travellers is a political

economist--that is, a dogmatist in the science. Whether his _Magnus

Apollo_ be Smith, or Say, or Ricardo, he sees all things through the

spectacles of his favourite theories. Any inquiries he makes are

directed, not to elicit the truth, but to support his pre-formed

opinions; and, of course, no one who goes forth on this errand ever

fails of finding what he seeks. And thus it happens that a Cobden

may traverse Europe from end to end; and at the very time when the

thunderclouds of social convulsion were about to burst in the most

awful storm that has ever shaken civilised nations, he not only

discerns no symptom of the impending hurricane, but beholds nothing but

the smiling prospect of contented industry--the budding spring-time of

universal peace and reciprocity. But, on the other hand, the observer

who is either unacquainted with the doctrines of political economy, or

who affects to consider them only as objects of speculative curiosity,

is, in the opposite way, just as unfit as the pedant in the science to

form correct and comprehensive views of the social condition of foreign

states. He wants the proper rule to direct his observations, and can

hardly attain any but confused and superficial ideas of the meaning of

what he sees around him. He alone is qualified to observe wisely, and

to write instructively, about the institutions and customs of other

nations, who, having worked out for himself the leading principles of

the science, and ascertained their true limits, possesses at the same

time sufficient common sense and independence of judgment to apply

them. Mr Laing seems to us to be gifted in an eminent degree with these

requisites for making good practical use of his theoretical knowledge

of political economy. He appears to be fully aware of the vast amount

of dangerous error that has resulted from a blind and indiscriminate

application of the same abstract laws to all cases, without fully

ascertaining their true character, or making allowance for those

disturbing causes which often render the law wholly irrelevant.

Political economy, like other sciences, has its two parts--the theory

and the application; and it too often happens that a man who is well

read in the first is totally incapable of giving an opinion on the

second, and infinitely the more difficult branch. The platform orator

or newspaper writer thinks that if he can but refer to an abstract

formula borrowed from Ricardo or M'Culloch, it is sufficient to

settle any question of social interests that may come before him--not

considering that these formula and maxims _are_ abstract: and that

their applicability to the affairs of everyday life may be affected by

so many causes that it is scarcely possible to find any actual example

to which they can be applied rigorously, and to their full extent.

And hence the nonsense that is talked and written, under the name of

political economy; hence the absurdities that are enacted under the

idea, that nations can be governed by the square and plummet of its

rules.

"The truth has been missed," says Mr Jones, in the preface to his

work on the Distribution of Wealth, "not because a steady and

comprehensive study of the story and condition of mankind would

not yield truth, but because those who have been most prominent in

circulating error have really turned aside from the task of going

through such an examination at all; have confined the observations

on which they have founded their reasonings to the small portion

of the earth's surface by which they were immediately surrounded;

and have then proceeded at once to erect a superstructure of

doctrines and opinions, either wholly false, or, if partially

true, as limited in their application as the field from which the

materials for them were collected."

Mr Laing supplies us[27] with an apt illustration of the fallacious use

that is very commonly made of general laws, by neglecting to attend

to the special circumstances of each case. It has been laid down as a

maxim by economists, that a government should not attempt to direct,

restrict, or interfere with the employment of capital and industry;

but that every man should be left free to use the portion of them he

possesses, how, where, and when he pleases. Now this maxim may be true

enough in the abstract, and where there are no conditions to limit its

application; but it is not equally true in all political states, nor

in the same state at different times. The social condition of Great

Britain, at the present day, may admit its application more fully than

that of most other nations. But we have only to cross the German Ocean

to find a circumstance easily overlooked--namely, that of climate,

which upsets its relevancy altogether.

A still more striking exemplification of the same fallacy presents

itself too obviously, in the opening of the corn trade in our own

country. "There should be no artificial restrictions on the food of

the people"--that is the abstract axiom on which our legislators

grounded the abolition of all customs on imported grain. Does any

one question the truth of it as a general axiom? Certainly not: and

if we were setting out on a new social system--if the field on which

we had to work was a _tabula rasa_, and we were free in all other

respects, as well as this, to devise a scheme of government for a

nascent community--that maxim would no doubt be kept in view in the

construction of our code. But we have to legislate for a state of

society in which everything else is artificial--in which restrictions

meet us wherever we turn. Our task is not to rear a new edifice, in

the plan of which we could give free scope to our taste and skill; but

to repair, and if possible improve, an ancient fabric, the work of

many different ages, and abounding in all manner of quaint angles and

irregularities. We have to deal with the case of a country burdened

with an enormous weight of general and local taxation, arbitrarily and

unequally distributed,--where the employment of the people, and the

application of their capital and industry, is founded on the faith of

old laws and a settled commercial principle,--above all, a country

where the business of exchange has to be conducted through the most

anomalous medium--the medium of a _fettered currency_. One and all of

these peculiarities in our condition are so many limitations of the

general maxim; and the attempt to carry it out in its full extent,

in defiance of these limitations, can only end in confusion and

disappointment. Political economy is a safe guide in the hands of a

practical legislator, only when he has fully apprehended the truth that

there is not one of its principles, from beginning to end, that may

not be limited by the special condition of each individual state; and

unless he can carry with him this master-principle, so necessary to a

right use of the theory of the science, it is far better and safer for

those whose interests he directs that he should be wholly ignorant of

it, and should trust altogether to common-sense and experience.

There is a very manifest disposition at present, to extend the

jurisdiction of political economy to all public questions--to take

it for granted that, when a case has once been argued and decided

according to its laws, there is no more to be said on the subject.

We are apt to forget that there is in all cases an appeal to another

court, where the inquiry is not as to what is most favourable to the

production of exchangeable Wealth, but what most conduces to the

Happiness of the people; and that, still beyond, there is the last

supreme tribunal on earth of all human actions, where there is but

one law--the universal law of Morality. Are these three jurisdictions

identical? Or are the decrees that issue from them necessarily in

harmony with each other? So, at least, we are told by those who take

the strongest view of the importance of political economy. Their

doctrine is, that whatever promotes one of these objects promotes the

others; and that wealth, happiness, and virtue, though distinguishable

in thought, are mutually and reciprocally united in the history and

experience of nations. To buy cheap and sell dear is the way for a

man to get rich; but the riches of individuals in the aggregate form

national wealth, national wealth produces civilisation, civilisation

promotes happiness and contentment, and happiness and contentment

promote virtue--such is the sorites on which is founded the creed

of a very large section of the present school of economists. That

country in which the means of production are most developed is the soil

where the higher qualities of man's nature will be found flourishing

in greatest perfection. Wealth, then, is the principal thing in the

guidance of private conduct, as well as in the government of nations;

and with all our getting, the chief concern is to get capital. It is

this disposition to submit everything to the test of productiveness

that Sismondi has so aptly designated by the title of _chrematism_.

The views of that great and philosophic writer, as to the inevitable

tendencies of the doctrine, have been already fully explained in our

pages.[28] We allude to them now only to observe how remarkable a

confirmation of his opinions is furnished by the history of the great

Continental states since that review of his doctrines was written.

Is there, then, no way of reconciling the apparent antagonism between

the development of man's industrial powers, and his higher interests

as a rational and accountable being? Are we to conclude that the roads

that lead to wealth, to happiness, and to virtue, are necessarily

divergent? and that national advancement in any one of these paths

implies a departure from the others? No; not necessarily so. Such is

not the doctrine taught by Sismondi, and by those who, with him, impugn

the title of political economy to be considered as the great paramount

rule of social existence. All that they maintain is, that there is

_no necessary agreement_ between these three great springs of human

action; that though the law of morality may, and obviously often does,

concur with the maxims of happiness, and those again with the rules of

political economy, there are nevertheless many questions on which we

are at a loss to reconcile them. The learned Archbishop of Dublin has

an elaborate argument in his _Introductory Lectures_, to show, on _a

priori_ grounds, that the condition most favourable to the exercise

of man's productive energies must also be favourable, not only to the

highest development of his intellectual faculties, but also to his

advancement in moral purity. Now, we venture to think that no such

argument, however ingeniously conducted, can be satisfactory, simply

because IT IS _a priori_. Reason and experience are at variance; and

no _a priori_ deduction will help us out of the practical difficulty.

We, no doubt, all naturally desire and hope--nay, believe--that at

some future time, and in some way at present unknown, the perplexing

contradiction will be explained. Reason affirms unhesitatingly, that

the same Providence which placed so bounteous a store of the physical

materials of wealth at our disposal, can never have designed that

their cultivation should embitter the lives of those who labour,

still less that it should endanger their moral wellbeing; and we look

forward, therefore, with firm faith to a period when these paths,

which to our present sight seem to lead in directions so opposite,

shall all be seen to reunite and terminate in one common end. But, in

the present state of our powers, that insight is yet far from being

attained, and the great problem yet remains to be solved.--What do

we see around us? In this country--whose physical character and the

spirit of whose people seem to destine her for the very home and centre

of production--are there no discordant elements in our condition?

While wealth has increased among us with a rapidity unexampled in the

history of the world, and the struggling energies of all men have been

strained to the uttermost in the race of industry--while, under the

sway of commercial Ministries, legislation has been specially, almost

exclusively, directed to stimulating manufactures in every way, and

removing every obstacle that could be supposed, however indirectly, to

hinder their extension--can we venture to assert that the condition of

the great mass of the people has improved in proportion to our riches?

Are the relations of employers and the employed on so satisfactory a

footing as to give no grounds for anxiety? Has the labourer, by whose

toil all those vast accumulations of capital are created, enjoyed an

equitable share of them? Have his means of domestic comfort increased

in the same ratio as the wealth of his master? Is not the rate of his

remuneration diminishing with every step in our progress? Has not

crime, during the last half century, increased fully ten times as fast

as the numbers of our population? Who can look at these, and a hundred

other similar indications that readily suggest themselves, and say that

all is well; that, as far as the experience of Britain goes, the road

to national wealth has also conducted us to greater happiness and moral

wellbeing? Alas! the evidence is but too convincing that, if there be

any way of reconciling these ends, we at least have not yet found it.

But we repeat that the contrariety between them is not a necessary or

universal one. The conditions of great advancement in commerce and

the industrial arts, are not all or invariably unfavourable to the

innocent enjoyments of life among the labouring people, or hostile to

their higher interests. It is not asserted that wealth is necessarily,

or in itself, injurious; but only the means which we have hitherto

discovered of acquiring it. The Archbishop imputes the converse of

this doctrine to those who venture to deny the supreme importance of

the objects of political economy, and then proceeds to demolish it by

reducing it to absurd consequences. If, says he, it be true that the

riches and civilisation of a community _always_ lead to their moral

degradation, if you really consider national wealth to be an evil, why

do you not set about diminishing it; and, following out the counsels of

Mandeville, burn your fleets, destroy your manufactories, and betake

yourselves to a life of frugal and rustic simplicity? Such a challenge,

we presume to think, has no bearing on the position we have been

supporting; and it would be just as fair an argument on our side of the

question, if we were to turn round and insist that his Grace should

testify to the truth and consistency of the opinions he maintains by

turning our churches into cotton factories, and the University of

Dublin into a Mechanics' Institute. We go no further than to affirm

that, in the experience of our own and the other most civilised nations

of Europe, the rapid augmentation of wealth has not been attended

with a corresponding increase of rational enjoyment, or of moral

improvement, in the mass of the community. Further, we hold that a

legislator must recognise these three objects not only as distinct, but

as subordinate, one to the other: that is to say, the government of a

country is not justified in fostering the interests of the capitalist

in such a way as to trench upon the enjoyments of the common people,

nor in promoting these to the neglect of their moral and religious

instruction. He is not, for example, justified in allowing the employer

to demand from his operatives the utmost amount of daily toil that

he can extract from them, so as to leave them no time for bodily rest

or intellectual culture. All policy that overlooks or contemns this

natural subordination in the ends of human existence, must terminate in

disaster and misery.

We have been partly led into these reflections through the

consideration of a subject which occupies a prominent place in Mr

Laing's _Observations_, and seems, in some respects, to illustrate--

"How wide the limits stand

Between a splendid and a happy land."

The national advantages of small estates, as compared with the scale

of properties most common in this country, have been most fully and

systematically discussed by M. Passy, as well as by Mr Thornton, Mr

Ramsay, and Mr Mill, among our own writers. But Mr Laing has had

the credit of attracting attention to the subject by his extensive

personal inquiries as to the actual results of the Continental plan,

and by showing (what many English readers are slow to believe) that

the "_petite culture_," as pursued in north and central Germany, and

in Belgium, so far from being incompatible with the profitable use of

the land, is, in fact, more productive than the opposite system of

large holdings. These views were strongly expressed in his _Notes of

a Traveller_; and his evidence in favour of peasant proprietorship

is greatly founded on by Mr Mill, in the able defence of that system

which forms part of his work on political economy. The book now before

us takes a more enlarged, and in some respects a different view of

the question, presenting it in all its bearings, favourable and

unfavourable; and thus furnishing the inquirer with all the materials

on which he is left to build his own conclusions.

One who looks at the subject for the first time, and whose beau-ideal

of agricultural perfection is formed on the pattern of Norfolk or

Haddington, finds some difficulty in believing that a country cut

up into small "laird-ships" of from five to twenty acres, can be

advantageously cultivated at all. He naturally takes it for granted

that, as regards efficiency of labour and quantity of produce, the

large scale must always have the advantage of the smaller; and that

the spade and the flail can, in the long run, have no more chance

in competition with the Tweeddale plough and Crosskill's steam

thrashing-machine, than a dray-horse with Flying Dutchman. And in

England, or any country similarly circumstanced, his conclusion would

no doubt be perfectly correct; and yet a visit to Flanders, Holstein,

or the Palatinate, will convince him that the boorish-looking owners

of the patches of farms he finds there, with the clumsiest implements,

and, to his eyes, most uncouth ways of working, do somehow contrive to

raise crops which he, with all his costly engines, and the last new

wrinkle from Baldoon or Tiptree Hall, cannot pretend to match. Their

superiority as to the cereal grains is perhaps questionable; but,

looking to the quantity of produce generally, no impartial observer can

doubt that, after making every allowance for difference of soil and

climate, a given area of land in Belgium _yields more food_ than the

same extent in England. How is this to be accounted for? Let us hear Mr

Laing's explanation.

"The clean state of the crops here (in Flanders)--not a weed

in a mile of country, for they are all hand-weeded out of the

land, and applied for fodder or manure--the careful digging of

every corner which the plough cannot reach; the headlands and

ditch-slopes, down to the water-edge, and even the circle round

single trees close up to the stem, being all dug, and under crop

of some kind--show that the stock of people, to do all this minute

handwork, must be very much greater than the land employs with

us. The rent-paying farmer, on a nineteen years' lease, could not

afford eighteen-pence or two shillings a-day of wages for doing

such work, because it never could make him any adequate return.

But to the _owner of the soil_ it is worth doing such work by his

own and his family's labour at odd hours; because it is adding

to the perpetual fertility and value of his own property.... His

piece of land to him is his savings-bank, in which the value of

his labour is hoarded up, to be repaid him at a future day, and

secured to his family after him."[29]

This is the secret of the marvellous industry that has converted even

the barren sands and marshes of these districts into one continuous

garden. It has been accomplished by what, for want of a better

expression, we may call spontaneous, in opposition to hired labour. The

labourer is himself the owner of the soil, and to one so circumstanced

work assumes quite a different aspect; the spade goes deeper, the

scythe takes a wider sweep, and the muscles lift a heavier burden.

No agricultural chemistry is so potent as the sense of property. The

incentive to his daily toil is not the dismal vision of a parish

workhouse in the background, but an ever-fresh hope for the days

that are before him. His fare may be hard, his clothing coarse, and

indulgences rarely procurable; but his abstinence is voluntary--"_et

saltem pauperies abest_."

There can be no doubt that a much larger proportion of the population

will find employment and subsistence from the land under this system

than under ours. Mr Laing illustrates this by supposing the case of an

estate in Scotland of 1600 arable acres divided into eight farms of 200

acres each; and he assumes that the labour employed on each of these

farms, taking one season with another, is equivalent to that of ten

people all the year round--an estimate which is not far from the truth

on a well-managed farm.[30] Such an estate of 1600 acres will thus

afford constant employment to eighty labourers.

"Now take under your eye a space of land here, in Flanders,

that you judge to be about 1600 acres. Walk over it, examine

it. Every foot of the land is cultivated--dug with the spade or

hoe where horse and plough cannot work; and all is in crop, or

in preparation for crop. In our best farmed districts there are

corners and patches in every field lying waste and uncultivated,

because the large rent-paying farmers cannot afford labour,

superintendence, and manure, for such minute portions of land

and garden-like work as the owner of a small piece of land can

bestow on every corner and spot of his own property. Here the

whole 1600 acres must be in garden-farms of five or six acres;

and it is evident that in the amount of produce from the land,

in the crops of rye, wheat, barley, rape, clover, lucern, and

flax for clothing material, which are the usual crops, the 1600

acres under such garden-culture surpass the 1600 acres under

large-farm cultivation, as much as a kitchen-garden surpasses in

productiveness a common field. On the 1600 acres here in Flanders

or Belgium, instead of the eight farmers with their eighty

farm-servants, there will be from three hundred to three hundred

and twenty families, or from fourteen hundred to sixteen hundred

individuals, each family working its own piece of land; and with

some property in cows, sheep, pigs, utensils, and other stock in

proportion to their land, and with constant employment, and secure

subsistence on their own little estates."[31]

The influence such a mode of life produces on the character of the

people is a consideration of higher moment than its economical

results. And on this point observation seems in general to confirm

the opinion which we should naturally form beforehand. Compared with

the employments of mechanics, that of the husbandman demands a much

higher and more habitual exercise of the faculty of judgment. His

mind is not tied down to the repetition of the same act, chipping a

stone, straightening a wire, watching the whirling of a wheel, from

the beginning of the year to the end, but almost each day brings a

new set of thoughts with it. He cannot proceed a step without forming

processes of induction from his observations, and exercising his reason

as to the connection of the manifold phenomena he sees around him with

their proper causes. The peasant proprietor has to task his inventive

faculties too, in order to turn all his humble resources to the best

advantage; and his success depends more upon his intelligent use of

the limited means at his command, than upon the mere bodily energy of

his labour. Of such a person it is, therefore, truly and pregnantly

said by Mr Laing, that though he may not be able to read or write, he

has an educated mind--a mind trained and disciplined in the school of

nature. And his position favours the development of his moral powers

still more than his intellectual faculties, by teaching him patience,

self-restraint, thought for the future, and, above all, that humility

which can scarcely fail to be felt by one who finds himself ever in

contact with unseen powers and influences beyond his control.

The general diffusion of the means of comfort and of simple enjoyment,

earned by unbought rural industry, is an idea that takes a strong hold

of the imagination. The fancy wanders back to the days of the old

yeomen of England, or further still to Horace's charming pictures of

country life, or to Claudian's Old Man of Verona, thus rendered into

glorious English by Sir John Beaumont:--

"Thrice happy he whose age is spent upon his owne,

The same house sees him old that him a child hath known;

He leans upon his staffe in sand where once he crept--

His memory long descentes of one poor cote hath kept.

* * * * *

Unskilful in affaires, he knows no city neare,

So freely he enjoys the light of heaven more cleare.

The yeeres by sev'rall corne--not consuls he computes;

He notes the spring by floures, and autumne by the fruits--

One space put down the sun, and bring again his rays;

Thus by a certaine orbe he measures out his dayes,

Rememb'ring some greate oke from small beginning spred,

He sees the woode grow old which with himself was bred," &c.

In every man's mind we believe there is a quiet corner, where the

memories or the imaginations of country life take root and thrive

spontaneously. Even the old, hardened, care-worn dweller among the

sights and sins of cities will "babble o' green fields" when all other

earthly things have faded from his mind. In England especially, the

preference for country life amounts almost to a passion; and most of

us are ready enough to admit, without demanding many reasons, that a

people whose chief employment and dependence is the cultivation of

their own lands, will be individually happier than if the scene of

their labours were in the mine or the mill. But let us beware lest our

rural partialities lead us too far.

We may acknowledge that the social condition of a country in which the

land is distributed into small properties, affords, in many respects,

a better chance of contentment to the people than is enjoyed by the

labouring classes generally in Britain. But whether such a system

be adapted to our circumstances, whether its introduction to any

considerable extent be at all practicable here, is obviously quite

another question. The subject has been treated hitherto by British

authors with too little reference to the condition of their own

country. Benevolent enthusiasts talk of peasant-proprietorship as if

it were a harbour of refuge from all our difficulties, as if a return

to that unsophisticated mode of life under which--_ut prisca gens

mortalium_--each man of us should eat and be satisfied with the fruits

reared by his own labour upon his own land, were at once the simplest

and the most obvious remedy for our complicated social evils, and as

easily accomplished as the passing of a railway suspension bill. Even

Mr Laing, we think, in his former works, directed attention perhaps

too exclusively to the benefits which he saw to be connected with the

system in the northern parts of the Continent, without sufficiently

adverting to the causes which render it unsuitable for countries

situated like ours. But this omission has been remedied in the work

before us, in which, after tracing the beneficial results of a minute

subdivision of land property, he turns the picture, and impartially

points out its unfavourable features; and to any one who has been

indulging in the dream that the culture and territorial system of

Belgium or Norway can be transplanted into the soil of England, we

earnestly recommend the study of Mr Laing's sixth chapter. We cannot

afford space to follow him through the adverse side of the argument,

but may state briefly the chief points he brings forward.

In the first place, the condition of a society in which the population

is principally employed in raising their food upon their own little

properties, is necessarily a _stationary_ condition. We speak, be

it observed, of a people principally engaged in this occupation;

for, in proportion as commerce and manufactures increase among them,

labour will become expensive, capital will accumulate in masses, and

the peculiar advantages of the small estate system will gradually

disappear. The estates themselves will cease to be small; for, as

a natural result, men who have made money will add farm to farm,

and create large properties, unless there be some counteracting

influence, such as the law of equal succession in France, to disperse

these accumulations as fast as they arise. Two conditions, then, are

necessary to the continuance of peasant-proprietorship among a people

as a permanent institution. 1st, An imperfect development of trade and

manufactures; and, 2d, a law of inheritance that shall discourage men

from forming large properties and transmitting them to their heirs.

The state of such a community then, we say, is a stationary one. Every

man is like his neighbour, and each succeeding generation is only a

copy of the one that preceded it--contented, it may be, industrious

and peaceable, but incapable of making a single important step in

civilisation. And here we see the nature and extent of that bewildering

contrariety which we have noticed between man's social progress and

his other interests of happiness and morality. We cannot resist the

conviction that the proper destiny of man is, that in every community

each generation should be wiser, as well as better and happier, than

that which has gone before it. But here we have before us a condition

eminently fitted to favour the latter objects, while it acts as a

barrier to all material improvement in the arts, the economical

applications of science, and all the refinements of social life. In

his habits, tastes, and opinions, the _bauer_ of this generation in

the Rhenish provinces, the _udaller_ of Norway, is just the same as

his forefathers were five hundred years ago. His simple wants are

supplied almost entirely by the industry of his own household, and the

travelling pedlar furnishes him with the few articles of luxury in

which he indulges. He is not only the owner, cultivator, and labourer

of the land, but he is usually his own carpenter, builder, saddler,

baker, brewer--often his own clothier, tailor, and shoemaker. Granting,

then, that the gross produce of the soil is greater when cultivated

by a race of petty landowners, than by capitalists employing hired

labour, and that the land will thus maintain a greater number of

agricultural labourers, it is obvious that the _surplus_ produce that

remains for the support of other branches of industry is diminished in

exactly an inverse ratio. The production of commodities for exchange is

therefore inconsiderable; and the growth and circulation of capital are

necessarily slow.

"Petty cultivation, when pushed to its farthest extent, terminates

in spade husbandry, and in it, therefore, the utmost consequences

of a minute subdivision of land must be seen. There is no doubt

that a country cultivated in this way could be made to produce

much more than under any other system of agriculture; and were

food the only necessary of man, it might therefore support a much

larger population from the growth of its own soil. But then the

wealth of this population would be reduced to a bare subsistence;

the whole crop, or nearly all, would be consumed by those employed

in raising it, and there would be little or nothing over to

purchase home or foreign manufactures, the productions of art,

or the works of genius, and no means of supporting a population

engaged in such occupations. And even though persons might be

found willing to addict themselves to the arts and sciences

without expectation of pecuniary reward, yet none would be rich

enough to have leisure to follow such pursuits. Thus, gradually, a

universal barbarism would overspread the land."

Mr Ramsay, from whom we have copied these sentences, and whose

judicious remarks on this subject well deserve the attention of the

inquirer, here supposes the system of petty cultivation carried out to

its utmost limits; but the same consequences, though in a less degree,

will necessarily follow every step in that direction. And in point of

fact, it is precisely the state of matters in those countries of Europe

where agriculture is wholly carried on by peasant proprietors,--where,

consequently, there is no independent and wealthy class to maintain a

home trade; and the trifling commerce that exists is kept alive chiefly

by the demands of that class who live on Government employment, and at

the expense of the public.

We have adverted to the connection between the petty territorial system

and the law of inheritance. If we could suppose the whole surface of

England were to be parcelled out to-morrow into small holdings, and

then placed in the hands of labouring men, it is clear that, while

enterprise and the spirit of accumulation were left as free as at

present, the whole arrangement would be upset before the end of the

twelvemonth; and that, in a few generations at furthest, property would

be found gathered into large masses, just as it is now. Some artificial

means, then, would be necessary for limiting the liberty of disposing

of property--some such contrivance as the compulsory law of equal

succession in France and the Provinces of the Rhine--to provide against

the possibility of the landowner ever becoming wealthy, and rising

above the condition of a peasant. But are we prepared for all the

consequences to which an equal partition of the land among the children

of the peasant proprietor would inevitably lead, and has to a great

extent already led in those countries? In communities such as Norway,

where equal inheritance has grown up with the old institutions of the

nation, and all their domestic customs are intimately connected with

it, its evil effects are in a great measure neutralised by traditionary

usages, which supply the place of law, and prevent the subdivision

of property from reaching a dangerous extreme. But national customs

cannot be adopted _extempore_; and the experience of France is surely

a sufficient proof of the danger of attempting factitiously to adapt

that system of succession to the habits and institutions of an old and

highly civilised nation. And yet, without some such restriction of the

freedom of testation, peasant-proprietorship, as a permanent social

principle, is impossible. It is becoming every day more apparent, that

the compulsory subdivision of landed property is the main source of

the restless and disorganised condition of the French population. The

sons of the peasant proprietor spend their youth in the labours of the

farm, and look to the land alone as the means of their subsistence.

The acre or two that must fall legally to their share at the death of

their father is regarded as a sufficient provision against the chance

of indigence; and they rarely think of seeking employment in other

industrious occupations, or of applying themselves steadily to a trade.

The consequence is, that at that age which, in our country, is the

prime of a working man's life, they find themselves left to the bare

subsistence they can scrape from their miserable inheritance--without

regular occupation, unfit for mercantile pursuits, and ripe for war

and social tumult. Is it possible to imagine a condition more fitted

to foster that reckless and turbulent military spirit--ever ready

to burst the barriers of constitutional law--which lies at the root

of France's social calamities? Subdivision of land property and

perpetual peace--these are the two great elements which our Manchester

lawgivers think are to change the face of civilised Europe. Most truly

does Mr Laing declare, that ingenuity could not have devised two

principles more hostile to each other in their very nature, and more

irreconcilable in the past history of the world, than those which Mr

Cobden and his followers have selected as the twin pillars of their new

social system.

"If Mr Cobden be right in considering this social state (the

universal diffusion of property in land) pacific in its elements

and tendencies, all political economy, as well as all history,

must be wrong!"--(P. 110.)

No state can be pacific, no state can be secure, in which there is

not an intervening class between those who govern and those who are

governed--a class who shall, as our author says, act "like the buffers

and ballast waggons of a railway train," and prevent those violent

jerks and concussions which shake the machine of government to pieces;

and the existence of such a class is excluded by the very notion of

peasant proprietorship. The truth is, there are two, and only two,

kinds of government compatible with the territorial system of France,

and her law of succession. These are, an absolute democracy on the one

hand, and military despotism on the other--the tyranny of one man or of

millions; and between these two polar points of the political compass,

her destinies have been vibrating for the last half century.

Let us turn our view once more homewards. We have frequently and

earnestly endeavoured to impress upon the public that the accumulation

of property, real as well as movable, into vast and unwieldy masses,

has gone too far in our own land. We have consistently opposed that

policy which tends to give capital an undue and factitious influence,

and, in its precipitate zeal to stimulate production, overlooks all

other interests. But we cannot deceive ourselves with the imagination,

that peasant proprietorship is the specific antidote to these evils.

Pleasing as such Arcadian visions may be to the speculative man, who

turns away in weariness and perplexity from the struggle of discordant

and competing interests, no one surely can believe that they can

possibly be realised here, or that the cultivation of the land by

peasant owners can ever become a normal and permanent element in our

social condition. The ingenious reasonings of Mr Mill and Mr Thornton

seem to establish nothing more than that such a state is compatible

with good agriculture, and with that contentment which Mandeville calls

"the bane of industry;" and that nations, like young couples in the

honeymoon--

"Though very poor, may still be very blest."

But no one has seriously set himself to show how a system in such

direct antagonism to all our existing institutions and habits--a system

tantamount to a retrogression of three hundred years in our history,

is to be engrafted on the laws of Great Britain. Some writers, indeed,

are fond of referring obscurely to the great measures of Prince

Hardenberg and Von Stein in Prussia, and to their beneficial results,

as if they formed a precedent and argument for the creation of peasant

estates in this country. But every one who has made himself acquainted

with the true nature and purpose of the change introduced by those

ministers--which was merely a commutation of certain burdens on the

beneficiary owners of the land--knows that no such change is possible

in Britain, simply because there are no such burdens to commute.[32] An

isolated experiment of such plantations may be tried here and there,

and by artificial culture may be kept up for a time: but it can have no

permanent influence on the nation at large. Acts of Parliament cannot

make us forget what we have learnt, and relapse into the condition our

fathers were in before the Revolution. We cannot retrace our steps at

will, and fall back upon some imaginary stage of our past history, when

contentment and rude simplicity are supposed to have overspread the

land. Examples there are, no doubt, of nations once great and opulent,

whose arts, inventions, and civilisation, are now almost forgotten. But

changes like these are not studiously brought about by the politic

enactments of rulers, but by indirect causes of decay; and a people

that has once begun to go back in civilisation must gradually sink into

indigence and barbarism. Whether our past advancement, then, has been

for good or for evil, it is now too late to retreat. The progress of a

society, composed chiefly of peasant landowners, resembles the motion

of an eddy at the margin of a great stream--slowly circling for ever in

the same narrow round. We, more daring than others, have ventured out

into the very centre of the flood where the current rolls strongest;

and to stand still now is as impossible as to breast the Spey when the

winter's snows are melting on the Grampians.

Following Mr Laing's footsteps, we have pointed out some of the dangers

inseparable from a division of the soil into small estates; but we are

very far indeed from considering the tenure of land in this country

as incapable of amendment. It is mischievous as well as visionary to

talk of remodelling our territorial system on the pattern of Prussia

or Belgium, or any other country; but it is also mischievous, and most

impolitic, to create or continue legal impediments to the _natural_

subdivision of property. It is impossible to doubt that a very general

desire prevails among the labouring classes, and those who have laid up

little capitals in banks and friendly societies, to acquire portions

of land suitable to their means of investment. The large prices paid

for such lots when they are found in the market, and the eagerness

with which even such dubious projects as Mr Feargus O'Connor's have

been laid hold of, prove the fact to a certain extent; and it has been

strongly confirmed by the inquiries of the committee which sat last

session for investigating the means available to the working-classes

for the investment of their small savings. The great extension of

allotments, in late years, may perhaps have helped to foster this

disposition; while it shows how anxious these classes are to acquire

the possession of land, even on the most uncertain and unfavourable

tenure. However disapprovingly our political economists may shake their

heads at the progress made by that system, as not squaring with their

doctrines, we cannot doubt that, so far as it has gone, its results

have been eminently beneficial; and the thanks of the nation are due

to that enlightened nobleman who has taken the lead in this course,

and has created, we are told, no less than four thousand holdings

of this description on his estates. But allotments do not meet the

difficulty of finding a field for the secure investment of the smaller

accumulations of industry. The question then is, whether it be right

or safe that so strong and healthful a wish should prevail among the

people, without the means of gratifying it? Let us shut out of view all

the crude and disjointed schemes for a redistribution of property on a

wider basis, and the limitation of the right of testation; and, without

undermining the structure of the law, endeavour to remove those parts

of it which present technical or fiscal impediments to the acquisition

of small properties, and to adapt it generally to the wants of the

community. The amendment of the Scotch entail law, and of the process

of conveyance, as well as the recent remission of part of the burden

of stamp duties, have already cleared away some of those obstacles.

But much remains to be done, especially in England, in simplifying

technical forms, and abridging the expense of conveyances in small

transfers. In this respect, we are still far behind the nations of the

Continent. Until the recent alteration of the stamp duties, the expense

of effecting a sale of land in England, and of creating a mortgage,

was in ordinary circumstances thus proportioned to the value of the

subject:--

Value of Expense of Expense of

Estate. a Sale. a Mortgage.

£50 30 per cent 30 per cent

100 15 ... 20 ...

600 7-1/2 ... 9 ...

1500 5 ... 3 ...

100,000 4 ... 12 ...

Who would ever dream of applying his savings in the purchase of a piece

of land of £50 value, when he must pay £30 more to make a title to it?

The new scale of stamp duties alters the proportion; but the expense

of legal writings, which forms the larger half of the charges above

stated, remains undiminished, and operates as an absolute prohibition

of the sale and purchase of land for investment under £1000 value.

Such are the intricacies of the system, and such the want of a proper

registry,[33] that we are told by the highest authorities that there

is scarcely a title to be met with on which a purchaser can be quite

secure, and which does not afford room for dispute and litigation. Now,

contrast all this with the way in which the transfer of property is

effected abroad. We have before us a copy[34] of an actual conveyance

of a parcel of land in the Duchy of Nassau, the price of which was

£181. The form of the contract extends to only four lines, and contains

a reference to an appended schedule, which specifies briefly in

separate columns the description of the subject, its extent, and its

number on the register. The expense of the whole transaction, including

government charges, was £4, 7s. The sale of a similar estate in England

would, until the other day, have been attended with an expense of about

£24.

But we cannot enter into the specific means by which the exchange

of land properties, especially those of small amount, may yet be

facilitated; our object being merely to show how desirable, and how

strictly coincident with the soundest conservative policy, it is to

remove all discouragements to the natural employment of capital on the

soil of the country.

This leads us to the mention of one of those topics of Mr Laing's

_Observations_, in which his opinions seem to be more ingenious than

correct; we allude to the apparently paradoxical view he takes of the

ultimate consequences of abolishing agricultural protection.

Mr Laing is not an observer who runs any risk of being entangled in the

obvious meshes of the Free-Trade net. He has seen too much of other

countries, and has too just an appreciation of the practical value of

politico-economical theories, to be deceived by the common sophisms of

the Manchester dialectics. No one has more ably exposed the cardinal

fallacy on which the whole system hinges--that a permanently low price

of corn is necessarily beneficial to the people. In the former series

of his _Observations_, published at a time when the common-sense of

the country was beginning to give way before the bold and clamorous

assertions of the League, he showed, by arguments sufficient to have

convinced any one who would have listened to calm reason, that, in a

country like Great Britain, the cheapness of imported corn, though

it may enrich the employer of labour, cannot in the long run be an

advantage to the working man. He pointed out clearly, too, the fallacy

that ran through all the calculations of Dr Bowring and Mr Jacob,

as to the supply of grain which the Northern countries of Europe

could send us, and the price they could afford to take for it. Every

week's experience is now showing the utter worthlessness of the large

mass of estimates and returns compiled by these great statistical

authorities, and confirming what Mr Laing foretold in opposition to

all their calculations--that our principal imports would be drawn from

the countries whose produce reaches us through the Baltic, at prices

which, in ordinary seasons, must uniformly undersell the English grower

in his own markets. The reason assigned by him is a very clear one,

and well deserves the attention of those landowners and farmers at

home, who are still flattering themselves with the belief that the

rates and quantities of the grain imports of the last two years have

been occasioned by temporary causes--that the importers must have been

losing largely, and will soon cease to prosecute an unremunerative

trade.

"Why cannot the British farmer, with his greater skill, capital,

and economy of production, raise vastly greater crops, and

undersell with advantage, at least in the British market, the

foreign grain, which has heavy charges of freight, warehouse rent,

and labourage against it? The reason is this: The foreign grain

brought to England from the Continent or Europe consists either

of rents, quit-rents, or feu-duties, paid in kind by the actual

farmer; or it is the surplus produce of the small estate of the

peasant proprietor. In either case the subsistence of the family

producing it is taken off, and also whatever is required to pay

tithe, rates, and even taxes, which, as well as rent, are not paid

in money, but in _naturalia_--in grain, and generally in certain

proportions of the crops raised. The free surplus for exportation

may be sold at any price in the English market, however low;

because, if it bring in nothing at all, the loss neither deranges

the circumstances nor the ordinary subsistence and way of living

of the farmers producing it. All their rents or payments are

settled in grain; all their subsistence, clothing, and necessary

expenditure are provided for; and the surplus is merely a quantity

which must be sold, because it is perishable; and which, if it

sells well, may enable them to lay out a little more on the

gratifications and tastes of a higher state of civilisation; but

if it sells badly, or for nothing at all, does not affect their

means of reproduction, or even their ordinary habits, enjoyments,

way of living, or stock. They have not paid a price for their corn

in rent, wages, manures, and other outlay of money, as the British

farmer does before he brings his corn to market, _and have,

therefore, no minimum below which they cannot afford to sell it

without ruin_."[35]

Mr Laing's intimate acquaintance with the habits and condition of those

countries, which now seem destined to stand in the same relation to

Great Britain as Numidia did to decaying Rome, has enabled him also

to point out how vain is the expectation that they will permanently

extend the use of our manufactures in proportion to our consumption of

their corn. No one has more forcibly shown the insanity of sacrificing,

for so vague a prospect, the prosperity of those classes who chiefly

maintain the home market.

"The superior importance of the home market for all that the

manufacturing industry of Great Britain produces, compared to

what the foreign market, including even the colonial, takes off,

furnishes one of the strongest arguments against the abolition

of the Corn Laws.... The home consumpt, not the foreign, is

undeniably that which the great mass of British manufacturing

labour and capital is engaged in supplying. Take away from the

home consumers the means to consume--that is, the high and

artificial value of their labour, or rate of wages produced by the

working of the Corn Laws--and you stop this home market. You cut

off the spring from which it is fed. You sacrifice a certain home

market for an uncertain foreign market. You sacrifice four-fifths

for the chance of augmenting one-fifth. If the one-fifth,

the foreign consumpt, should be augmented so as to equal the

four-fifths--the home consumpt--it would still be a question of

very doubtful policy whether it should be so augmented: whether

the means of living of so large a proportion of the productive

classes should be made to depend so entirely upon a demand which

political circumstances might suddenly cut off," &c.[36]

Knowing the opinions held by Mr Laing to be thus adverse to that change

of the law which virtually gave to the _metayeur_ or proprietor of

Holstein, Pomerania, or Poland, a preference in Mark Lane over the

farmer of Norfolk or Lincolnshire, it was with some surprise, and some

apprehension for the consistency of the author, that, in turning over

the table of contents of the volume before us, we came to the following

heading:--"On the abolition of the Corn Laws _as a Conservative

measure_ for the English landed interest."

The process by which he has arrived at the conclusion, that a measure

confessedly so disastrous in its immediate consequences will ultimately

turn out beneficial to one section at least of the landed interest,

seems to be this: He thinks that, in the chief corn-growing countries

of the Continent, cultivation is already so generally extended over all

the soils capable of yielding any return, that the land cannot, in any

circumstances, give employment to a greater number of the inhabitants

than it does already; whereas Great Britain contains, in his opinion, a

much larger proportional area of improvable soil, which forms a reserve

or provision for the future increase of our population. A succession

of bad harvests in Germany or France, or any considerable addition to

their present population, would necessarily reduce these countries, he

believes, to extreme famine and misery; because, the land being already

fully occupied and filled up, and their surplus numbers having no

considerable outlet in manufacturing or commercial industry, they have

no resources to fall back upon in seasons of calamity. But in England

there still remains a large extent of "woods, and groves planted and

preserved for ornament, parks, pleasure-grounds, lawns, shrubberies,

old grass-fields producing only crops for luxury, such as pasture and

hay for the finer breeds of horses;" while a still larger area of

arable ground is left uncultivated in Ireland and Scotland. Hence, as

our population increases, we possess a safety-valve in our untilled

soil which does not exist on the Continent; we have still the means of

subsisting our daily-increasing numbers; and, so long at least as these

means last, it is probable that the owners of the already cultivated

lands will be left in the peaceable enjoyment of their property. But

that possession would not have been secure had the abolition of the

Corn Laws not been conceded at the time it was--the people might have

driven the landowners from their occupations, as they did in the

first French Revolution; "the free importation of food has averted a

similar social convulsion, and has deprived the agitator and hireling

speech-maker of his plea of oppression from class interests, and

conventional laws in favour of the landowners."[37] These seem to be

the grounds on which Mr. Laing regards the abolition of the Corn Laws

as a Conservative measure--"which will preserve, for some generations

at least, to our nobility, gentry, and landed interests, their domains,

their estates, and their proper social interests."

As this line of defence seems to be a favourite one with the straggling

remnant of that party, who, having been the immediate instruments by

which the change was effected, nevertheless still venture to claim

for themselves the title of Conservatives, we may shortly review the

grounds on which it rests. So far as Mr. Laing's adoption of it is

concerned, we may remark that the conclusion, taken by itself, is not

absolutely incongruous with that disapproval of the measure of 1816

which the author has elsewhere expressed so strongly; because, in

fact, he regards the question from two very different points of view.

The political philosopher occupies a very different standing ground

from a minister or senator. From his speculative elevation, his eye

passes over the events and consequences nearest to him, and strives to

penetrate the dim possibilities of the future; and if we look at human

events from this ground, there are perhaps few even of the severest

public calamities that are not followed by some compensatory, though it

may be distant, benefit. If we can shut our eyes to the wretchedness

and desolation caused by a great fire in a crowded town, we may look

forward to a time when the narrow alleys and unwholesome dwellings,

now in ruins before us, shall be replaced by roomy and well-built

habitations, and we may perhaps consider the prospective health and

comforts of the next occupants as counterbalancing the present misery.

It _may_ or it may not prove true, that the concession of 1816 will put

an end to disaffection, and be remembered for generations to come in

the hearts of a contented and grateful people; it _may_ or it may not

secure the aristocracy in the peaceable enjoyment of their patrimonial

estates and privileges.

These, however, are results that every one will admit to be at least

problematical, while there can be no doubt whatever as to the direct

and immediate consequences of the measure. The most obstinate partisan

no longer ventures to question the distress and ruin that is every

day spreading among the larger section of the British people--the

labourers, tenant farmers, and smaller landowners. And now the

sufferers are told to make the most of what is left to them, and be

thankful that they have escaped a revolution. It may, perchance, occur

to them to question whether, in regard to their property at least, the

chances of a revolution would have made their condition much worse

than it is at present. Looking at the estimates of the depreciation of

their possessions, which have been so triumphantly paraded by their

enemies, they may be inclined to doubt whether an insurrection, or even

a foreign invasion, would have cost them greatly more than ninety-one

millions a-year. To the humbler and most oppressed section of the

agricultural body, the congratulation on their escape from a worse fate

than that they now complain of, may sound not unlike the exhortation

of a highwayman who, having stripped his victim of his cash, bids

him bless his stars that he is allowed to get off with whole bones,

and a coat to cover them. It is true, indeed, that the pressure is

not so severely felt by the lords of great domains--cannot indeed be

so; for to the owner of £10,000 a-year the loss of one-fourth of his

income--though it may oblige him to curtail his expenses in matters

of external show, still leaves ample means for the gratification of

his accustomed habits and tastes. But what comfort is it to the owner

of a small estate, who is reduced to the necessity of selling it for

what it will bring--perhaps for some such price as we see recorded

in the transactions of the Encumbered Estates Court of Dublin--or to

the farmer, who is preparing to carry his family and the remnant of

his capital to some other land--or to the labourer, who finds his

earnings cut down to 6s. 6d. a-week--what consolation is it to men so

circumstanced, that the policy which has caused their ruin may possibly

enable the great territorial lords to retain their overgrown estates,

and the privileges of their order, "for some generations to come?" Mr

Laing, observe, does not venture to anticipate more than a respite for

them; and some will be disposed to doubt whether even their permanent

safety, and the perpetuation of their rights, would not be too dearly

purchased at the price we are now paying for it in the ruin of a far

more numerous, and perhaps not less valuable, class of the community.

We have often had occasion to express our opinion as to the alleged

crisis of 1846, which is said to have been so opportunely averted--as

well as to the principle which ought to animate a Government in meeting

such difficulties. We are not of those who think the main business of

a cabinet is to keep on good terms with "the agitator and hireling

speech-maker,"--and that he is the wisest minister who is most adroit

in timing his concessions, and casting off his principles at the

moment they become inconvenient. Any seeming tranquillity, any truce

with the enemies of constitutional order purchased by such a policy,

can never be otherwise than temporary and precarious, because, it

is insincere--insincere on both sides--a hollow compromise between

principle and the expediency of the hour.

When we look to the reasons Mr Laing gives for the opinion we have been

commenting on, they will be found to hang together rather loosely. They

pre-suppose that agitation _de rebus frumentariis_, and specially the

agitation of the League, could only proceed from the pressure of want.

Now, the very week that the Bill passed, the price of wheat was 52s.

2d.--which, curiously enough, is the exact sum fixed on by Mr Wilson as

the natural price of wheat in England. At that time beef was selling

in London at 7s. 3d. a stone. The corn averages for the whole previous

year were a fraction over 49s. 6d. The average of the _ten_ previous

years was 56s. 6d., which, by another strange coincidence, corresponds

to a sixpence with the price admitted by Sir Robert Peel. With such

rates of the chief articles of subsistence, how can it be said that

scarcity was the cause of the Corn-Law agitation? The idea of famishing

millions imploring bread may have been an appropriate figure of speech

in the rabid cantations of an Ebenezer Elliot; but who seriously

believes that the cry of "abolition" was the voice of a starving

people, and not the mere watchword of a faction? Scarcity was only the

pretext for the clamour before which the Government yielded; and is

there any one weak or sanguine enough to believe that, by removing

that pretext, and yielding to that clamour, we have silenced the voice

of discontent, and ruined the trade of the demagogue? Is agrarian

agitation no longer possible? Can we shut our eyes to what is even now

passing in the north of Ireland? The fire which we are told was finally

extinguished in 1846, has reappeared in that quarter, and already

the sparks from it are kindling up in other parts of the empire. The

demand for what is called "fixity of tenure" is but the germ of a new

agitation, the future phases of which, unless it shall be met in a very

different spirit from that which has characterised our recent policy,

it is not difficult to foresee. It will become the new rallying point

of disaffection--the centre of inflammatory action. The old machinery

of the League will be set up anew, and the passions of the people will

again be excited by a course of studious and systematic irritation.

Ministers will hesitate, deprecate, and dally with the difficulty;

rival statesmen will by turns fan the flame, or feebly resist it,

as suits the party tactics of the day; until, at length, some one

more yielding or less scrupulous than his competitors, will discover

that the demand is founded on justice and sound policy--will concede

all that is asked of him, and finally will turn round complacently

and claim the gratitude of his country for having saved it from a

revolution.

Our view, then, of this vindication of abolition, on the ground that

it has averted a social convulsion, is briefly this. The discontent

which then prevailed was not, as it pretended to be, the consequence

of scarcity and dearness of provisions, or of any real grievance,

but was in truth produced and fostered by artificial influences,

which may at any time be again called into action. The spirit of

agitation which then found a convenient pretext in the corn duties,

will not fail to find an equally fit handle to lay hold of on the next

favourable opportunity; and it is vain, therefore, to hope that we

have purchased by our concessions a lasting immunity from disturbance,

or any enduring guarantee for the safety of property on its present

basis. It is on grounds of justice, and not of mere statecraft, that

so great a question must be argued. Had the corn-laws been founded

on injustice and partiality, that surely was in itself an ample and

all-sufficient reason for sweeping them away. But if, on the contrary,

they were productive of no such injustice to the people at large--if

equity, as well as the implied guarantee of a long succession of laws,

demanded an adherence to their principle as a partial compensation

for the disproportionate burdens we have imposed on the land--then

the allegation that their maintenance might have produced a popular

outbreak, is, after all, but a feeble and ambiguous defence for the

Ministry who so readily surrendered them. The _coup d'état_ which

we are now asked to applaud as the crowning act of Conservative

wisdom, sinks into a mere wily evasion of a difficulty by giving over

the interests of the weaker party as a peace-offering to the more

clamorous--a sacrifice of established rights to the "civium ardor prava

jubentium."

It is quite true, as Mr Laing tells us, that there exists a very large

reserve of available land in Great Britain--a reserve quite sufficient,

under proper management, to maintain our population for centuries to

come, even at its present large ratio of increase. But that there

is no similar reserve on the Continent, we beg leave to doubt. The

statement may be true as regards those districts to whose condition

Mr Laing has paid most attention. It may be true of France, and the

peasant-cultivated parts of West Prussia, and the North of Germany;

but can we say that the countries watered by the Vistula, the Bug,

the Dniester--can we say that Livonia, Volhynia, Podolia--that those

vast districts whose produce reaches us through Odessa, (whence it was

shipped to England last winter, at a freight of 6s. a-quarter,) are

already cultivated up to the full measure of their capabilities? The

following comparative statement of the proportion which the cultivated

land bears to the superficial extent of the different countries of

Europe, is taken from the _Annuaire Statistique_ for 1850:--

England, 55 hectares in 100[38]

France, 54 " "

Belgium, 43 " "

Prussia and }

Denmark, } 40 " "

Italy and }

Portugal, } 30 " "

Germany and }

Spain, } 25 " "

Holland and }

Austria, } 20 " "

Russia and }

Poland, } 18 " "

Sweden and }

Norway, } 14 " "

Unless we assume, (which we have no right to do,) that the extent of

irreclaimable mountain, marsh, and sand, is much greater in proportion

to the area of Belgium, Prussia, and Germany, the countries chiefly

referred to by Mr Laing, than it is in Britain, we apprehend that

their reserve is, to say the least, considerably larger than ours.

We must notice also, that our author seems to regard the unreclaimed

land of Britain as if it were a fund on which we can fall back at

any time, when unfavourable harvests abroad shall have curtailed our

accustomed supplies from the countries of the Continent. But a little

consideration will show that, after we have once learnt to trust to

annual foreign supplies, it is utterly vain to expect that their

occasional deficiency will be supplemented, in case of emergency, from

our own spare resources. Land is not like the instruments of production

employed by the manufacturer. People talk of having recourse to our

less fertile soils, as if it were a matter as easily and speedily

accomplished as setting a mill in motion by raising the sluice. But

the ponderous machine of agriculture is not so easily set a-going.

On unreclaimed soils, an expenditure of from £12 to £25 an acre is

required at the very outset. Fences and houses have to be erected,

roads and drains to be formed, roots to be grubbed up, stones to be

removed, before even the seed can be placed in the ground. Taking the

farmer's capital into account, we are probably within the mark when

we assert that £26 an acre, on the average, must be laid out on new

land, before a single bushel can be reaped from it; and, even when

ready for a rotation, an additional preparation of two or three years

is necessary to bring it into a state for bearing wheat. Now, is there

any speculator so insane as to risk such an expenditure on the possible

chance of an occasional and simultaneous failure of the crops on the

Continent? Even if grain were at a famine price, will any one be found

to throw away his money in ploughing up "lawns, woods, shrubberies,

village greens, and waste corners," when the very next season may see

our ports swarming as usual with foreign grain ships, and "buyers firm"

at 35s. a quarter?

A bad harvest is not an event that can be foreseen, and provided

against, in the same way that the thrifty housekeeper lays in an

additional stock of fuel, when there is talk of a strike among the

colliers. The calamity is upon us long before the most skilful and

far-sighted husbandman can arrange his plans and modify his rotations

for the purpose of meeting the emergency. It is out of the question,

then, under the present system at least, to talk of our spare land as

if it were a spare coach-horse, or a spare pair of breeches, ready

for use at any moment. We have taken away the only incitement to

improvement, by taking care that it shall never be profitable. We

have dammed back from our own fields that fertilising stream which

is now spreading over and enriching the land of our neighbours.

And now that we have chosen to throw ourselves on the resources of

other nations--now that we may say, as the Romans did in the days of

Claudian, "pascimur arbitrio Mauri"--we must not wonder if occasionally

the supply turns out to be insufficient. We do not apprehend that a

general scarcity can be of very frequent occurrence; but of this we may

rest assured, that when it does happen, there is no portion of Europe

in which the scourge of famine will be so severely felt as in this

island, and it will then be utterly vain to look for relief from an

expansion of that native agriculture which we have been at such pains

to cripple and discourage.

We should convey to our readers a very incorrect notion of Mr Laing's

work, if we led them to believe that it is wholly occupied with such

subjects as we have been discussing. The commercial, military, and

administrative systems of European governments certainly form his

most important themes; but his remarks on the arts, customs, and

literature of those countries are always amusing, and uttered with a

straightforward and fearless disregard of what other people have said

upon the same topic. He has no respect for conventional opinions in

matters of taste; and he avows an English preference for the solid

utilities and material comforts of everyday life over mere ornament.

In fact, his views on the fine arts generally, are, to say the least,

rather peculiar. The art of fresco-painting seems somehow to excite

his bile more than anything else. His aversion to it is as intense and

contemptuous as that with which Cobbett regarded the opera. It is clear

to us that his digestive organs must have been fearfully disordered

during his visit to Munich. From the Pinakothek to the spittoons in

the Hall of the Graces, nothing seems to have pleased him--all is

tawdry hollow, and out of place--and that æsthetic refinement which

the ex-king of Bavaria took under his especial protection is, in his

eyes, opposed to all common sense and true civilisation. We cannot join

him in regarding the art of the upholsterer as more important than

that of the sculptor, or in thinking the possession of hearth-rugs

and window-curtains, and plenty of earthenware utensils, truer tests

of national civilisation than libraries and picture-galleries. But,

to a certain extent, we are disposed to share in his distrust of

the genuineness of that progress in art which depends on Government

encouragement. The taste which is reared and stimulated in the

artificial air of palaces, instead of attaining a healthy and vigorous

development, often yields little fruit except empty mannerisms. And,

if the labours of the painter and the sculptor be apt to take a

questionable direction under courtly tutelage, there is still more

room to doubt whether any important progress in manufactures, or the

mechanical arts, can be prompted by princely patronage, however well

designed. We have already had proof in England of what enterprise

and ingenuity can accomplish without such aid--it remains to be seen

what advancement they are to make in the leading-strings of court

favour, and under the inspiration of puffs in the _Times_ newspaper,

and promises of medals, with suitable inscriptions, and the bustling

exertions of a semi-official staff of attachés.

Notwithstanding his heretical notions about the value of the fine arts,

in a national point of view, Mr Laing's pictures of Continental life

and scenery, and his criticisms on foreign manners and customs, will

be found full of information and instruction, even by those who have

resided for years in the countries he describes.

WHO ROLLED THE POWDER IN?

A LAY OF THE GUNPOWDER PLOT.

["Upon this the conversation dropped, and soon afterwards Tresham

departed. When he found himself alone, he suffered his rage to

find vent in words. 'Perdition seize them!' he cried: 'I shall

now lose two thousand pounds, in addition to what I have already

advanced; and, as Mounteagle will not have the disclosure made

till the beginning of November, there is no way of avoiding

payment. They would not fall into the snare I laid to throw the

blame of the discovery, when it takes place, upon their own

indiscretion. But I must devise some other plan.'"--AINSWORTH'S

_Life and Times of Guy Fawkes_.]

They've done their task, and every cask

Is piled within the cell:

They've heaped the wood in order good,

And hid the powder well.

And Guido Fawkes, who seldom talks,

Remarked with cheerful glee--

"The moon is bright--they'll fly by night!

Now, sirs, let's turn the key."

The wind without blew cold and stout,

As though it smelt of snow--

But was't the breeze that made the knees

Of Tresham tremble so?

With ready hand, at Guy's command,

He rolled the powder in;

But what's the cause that Tresham's jaws

Are chattering to the chin?

Nor wine nor beer his heart can cheer,

As in his chamber lone

He walks the plank with heavy clank,

And vents the frequent groan.

"Alack!" quoth he, "that this should be--

Alack, and well-a-day!

I had the hope to bring the Pope,

But in a different way.

"I'd risk a rope to bring the Pope

By gradual means and slow;

But Guido Fawkes, who seldom talks,

Won't let me manage so.

That furious man has hatched a plan

That must undo us all;

He'd blow the Peers unto the spheres,

And throne the Cardinal!

"It's time I took from other book

Than his a saving leaf;

I'll do it--yes! I'll e'en confess,

Like many a conscious thief.

And on the whole, upon my soul,

As Garnet used to teach,

When human schemes are vain as dreams,

'Tis always best to peach!

"My mind's made up!" He drained the cup,

Then straightway sate him down,

Divulged the whole, whitewashed his soul,

And saved the British crown:--

Disclosed the walks of Guido Fawkes,

And swore, with pious aim,

That from the first he thought him cursed,

And still opined the same.

Poor Guido died, and Tresham eyed

His dangling corpse on high;

Yet no one durst reflect at first

On him who played the spy.

Did any want a Protestant,

As stiff as a rattan,

To rail at home 'gainst priests at Rome--

Why, Tresham was their man!

'Twas nothing though he'd kissed the Toe

Abroad in various ways,

Or managed rather that his wife's father

Should bear the blame and praise.

Yet somehow men, who knew him when

He wooed the Man of Sin,

Would slightly sneer, and whisper near,

WHO ROLLED THE POWDER IN?

MORAL.

If you, dear youth, are bent on truth

In these degenerate days,

And if you dare one hour to spare

For aught but "Roman Lays;"

If, shunning rhymes, you read the _Times_,

And search its columns through,

You'll find perhaps that Tresham's lapse

Is matched by something new.

Our champion John, with armour on,

Is ready _now_ to stand

(For so we hope) against the Pope,

At least on English land.

'Gainst foreign rule and Roman bull

He'll fight, and surely win.

But--tarry yet--and don't forget

WHO ROLLED THE POWDER IN!

A LECTURE ON JOURNALISM.

BY AN OLD STAGER.

And so, Dick my boy, you are now on the staff of "our Special

Commissioners;" and you are going to favour the public with the

results of your investigations on the subjects of native industry,

free trade, wages, competition, and so forth? Well, it does good to

the heart of an aged veteran of the press like myself, to see the

sphere of our labours, as we used to call it, so capitally enlarged. It

shows me that people are rapidly getting rid of a good many idiotical

prejudices which stood in the way of social progress; and that they

don't care from what quarter their information comes, so that it is

properly spiced and made palatable to their taste. Upon my soul, Dick,

and without any humbug, I almost envy you your present position. Two

years ago when you came up to London, and were entered in the junior

reporting department, you knew as much about political economy as you

do of algebra, and would as soon have handled a red-hot poker as a

volume of parliamentary returns. And now they tell me that you are the

smartest hand going at statistics, and think no more of tossing off

an article on the Currency at a quarter of an hour's notice, than my

cook does of elaborating a pancake! Why, sir, you are a far greater

man than a peer of the realm, or a member of the House of Commons. You

are a whole committee in your own person, for you are going to take

evidence, just wherever you please, and to report upon it too, without

the remotest chance of contradiction. Help yourself, Dick, and pass the

decanter. Here is your very good health, and prosperity to the Fourth

Estate!

You intend to do your duty manfully and impartially? Of course, Dick,

you do. Nobody who has the pleasure of your acquaintance can doubt

it. Your virility is beyond all dispute, and how can you be otherwise

than impartial when you are writing up your own side? You are not

much of a lawyer, perhaps, but common sense will suggest the first

plain rules for leading evidence. Your employers want to show that

everybody is prospering under the cheerful influences of free trade.

They don't, of course, care twopence halfpenny whether their dogma

is right or wrong: they are committed to it, and that is enough.

They give you a certain allowance per week--I hope, by the way, it

is a handsome one--to prosecute your inquiries, and they intend that

the results shall be such as to justify their general assertion. And

no doubt they will justify it, Dick; for I say, and I care not who

knows it, that a cleverer, sharper, more acute and knowing dog than

yourself never dipped goose-quill into a standish. You need not blush

at the compliment. Was it not you who wrote that leader last week,

recommending the agriculturists to regulate their operations on the

same principle which is followed in the factories, and to look to

short and speedy returns as the best means of making money? Ha, ha,

ha! Dick--that certainly was a masterpiece! How the poor devils of

chaw-bacons must have stared when they heard you gravely recommending

them to raise three or four consecutive crops in the year, to turn

the seasons topsy-turvy, and to sow in August that they might reap in

January! No wonder that they are angry, for the best of the joke is,

that a number of people believed you. The Cockneys have got it into

their heads that wheat can be grown by machinery, and I, for one,

shan't be in any hurry to disabuse them. If I were you, I would give

them another leader or two in the same strain, insisting of course that

the agriculturists are a pack of infernal asses, who don't understand

the first principles of their own trade, and that Mechi, the razor-man,

is their only creditable apostle.

Never mind though it may be necessary for you soon to eat in your own

words. Between you and me, Dick--but don't let it go any farther--I

have been of opinion for some time back that Free-trade is a total

delusion. It may be bolstered up for a little longer, but it can't by

possibility last our time. There was too much lying and pulling and

quackery and braggadocio at the outset. I told Cobden so, at the time

when he was descanting upon the blessings of the cheap loaf, but he

would have his own way, and in his very next speech proposed to lay

Manchester alongside of the Mississippi! I said the same thing to

M'Gregor, but he would not be deterred from promising his hearers an

additional two millions per week. And a pretty kettle of fish he has

made of it! I am told that he dares not venture to show his face in

the Gorbals. You see, Dick, all that nonsense is telling confoundedly

against us just now. Wheat is down to zero, in so far as the profits

of cultivation are concerned. The farmers are wellnigh ruined--that is

plain beyond the power of contradiction, and in the course of another

year they will be utterly and effectually spouted. The artisans are

beginning to find out that cheap foreign bread means less labour and

lowered wages, and they complain that they are driven to the wall by

the free importation of foreign goods. If that notion once seizes hold

of their minds--and it is doing so rapidly--it won't be long before

they begin a tremendous agitation on the other side. Yes, Dick; the

Protectionists were right after all, and in the long run they will

carry their point with the general consent of the country. In the mean

time, however, thanks to Sir Robert Peel, we have got into office,

and we shall be consummate idiots if we don't make hay while the sun

shines. You are doing capital service, Dick, by throwing dust in

people's eyes. Keep it up as long as you can. Sneer at facts when you

can't answer them; distort evidence boldly; laugh down the idea of

retrogression; assume the existence of unexampled prosperity, in spite

of every testimony to the contrary; assert even in the face of hostile

elections and powerful gatherings, that the cause of Protection is dead

and coffined--and the odds are that you may still induce a good many

people to believe you. Stout averments, Dick, are capital things, and

the broader you can make them the better. I would advise you, though,

to be chary of statistics. They are dangerous weapons in the hands of

the inexperienced, and you may chance to break your own head, whilst

attempting to tomahawk your antagonist. But if you must use them, apply

to me or Heavywet. We have a prime stock on hand, carefully prepared

for service, and I think we could still put you up to a dodge or two.

By the way, who wrote that song upon Heavywet? You know the one I mean,

beginning with some such words as--

"All in my den, I cooper up the figure-list,

Which I've been working at a twelvemonth and a day.

Where there was a lesser one I substitute a bigger list'

Saying that the true bill is far, far away."

I wish you had seen Heavywet's face when young Fitztape of the Treasury

sang it in his presence on Tuesday last! The old fellow looked as

though the waiter had handed him verjuice instead of curaçoa.

I hope, Dick, you are not above receiving a hint from an old hand, who

has seen some service in his day. I am sure I have every reason to

acknowledge my infinite obligations to the pen which I have wielded

with more or less effect for wellnigh forty years, and which has

not only provided me with food and raiment, but with a snug patent

Government office, which makes me entirely independent of any change

of Ministry. These are the kind of prizes, Dick, which are open to us

literary men, who have the sense to adopt politics as a trade, and to

write up our party, without troubling ourselves about that fantastic

commodity which the parsons term conscience. I never could see why

a public writer should have a conscience any more than a lawyer.

The French fellows are better up to this, and don't even pretend to

its possession. And it must be acknowledged that they are allowed

occasionally far better chances than we have. Only fancy, Dick, you

and I members of a Provisional Government! Wouldn't we have a pluck at

Rothschild and the Bank? Don't your fingers itch at the bare idea of

such close contact with the feathers of the national pigeon? But it is

of no use indulging in those fairy dreams. And after all, I daresay

that neither Etienne Arago, nor Armand Marrast, nor Ferdinand Flocon,

nor Louis Blanc, are half so well off at the present moment as I am,

with my snug salary payable quarterly, and no arrears. It is better not

to be too ambitious, Dick, nor to overshoot the mark; for I have always

remarked that your most prominent men are precisely those who pocket

the least in the long-run. I am for your golden mediocrity, which

insures an easy berth, and the power of offering to a friend a cool

bottle of claret. You like the wine, Dick? Help yourself again; there's

more where that came from.

As I was saying, you should not despise a hint from an old hand.

We ancients may not be quite so smart as you moderns, but we are

tolerably good judges of the taking qualities of an article--we know,

by experience, the sort of thing which is likely to tickle the public

ear. Now, you will forgive me for saying, that in your late writings

you exhibit, now and then, certain marks of precipitancy, which it

might be as safe to avoid. What I mean to express is, that you are too

dashing--too daring--too ready to encounter your antagonist with his

own weapons. You assume the part of Achilles, instead of imitating the

example of Ulysses; you don't touch the Hospitaller's shield, though he

has the worst seat of the party, but you make your lance ring against

the buckler of Brian de Bois-Guilbert. This may be plucky, but it is

not wise. People may applaud you for your hardihood, but it is not a

pleasant thing to be chucked over your horse's croup, among shard, and

mire, and the general laughter of mankind. You made a great mistake

the other day in pitting yourself against Lord Stanley. You might have

known better. You were no more than a baby in the hands of the best

lance of the Temple; and the attempt only ended, as all must have

foreseen, in your own confusion. Don't be angry, Dick. I know you only

obeyed orders, but the result demonstrates, very clearly, the utter

imbecility of the clique under which you have had the misfortune to

serve.

You say you did not write the article about gestures and looks being

more expressive than words? I am aware you did not. I am talking to

a sensible man, and not to an irreclaimable idiot. It is no fault of

yours if the dunderheads, who find the money, will occasionally mistake

their vocation, and commit themselves by using the pen. Such things

are inevitable in journalism; and they are enough to sow the seeds of

decline in the bosom of a printer's devil. But you know very well,

notwithstanding, that you committed yourself most egregiously. You were

laughed at, Dick, and held up to scorn in every paper from Truro to

Caithness. And for what? Why, for attempting pertinaciously to maintain

that a statesman meant and said one thing, whereas he distinctly meant

and said another. Did you seriously expect to impose upon any one by

such a stale device as that--so palpable, and, moreover, so exceedingly

open to contradiction? You might as well expect the public to believe

that the Duke of Wellington has broken his neck on the hunting-field,

in the teeth of a letter from the Field-marshal announcing that he is

well and hearty. Yes; I know very well that John Bull is a gullible

animal, but not to the degree which you assume. You may state, if you

like, that the moon is made of green cheese; or, as some wiseacre

did the other day, that the electric telegraph is to be superseded

by the employment of magnetic snails; but you won't persuade any one

that Ferrand is a friend of Cobden, or that Sir Robert Inglis is a

Jesuit in disguise who is working for the supremacy of the Pope. By

the way, I was wrong in recommending you to persist in your averment

that Protection is dead and coffined. You have, I observe, of late

dedicated at least a couple of Jeremiads each week to that topic, and

there is a degree of ferocity coupled with the announcement revolting

to the feelings of a Christian. You should assume the fact, Dick;

not insist upon it in this absurd manner. If the old lady really is

under the sod, and beyond the power of resuscitation and the reach of

the resurrection-men, e'en let her repose in quiet. In that case she

can do you no further harm, and it would be but decent to give her

the benefit of a final forgiveness, or at all events to leave her to

oblivion. Queen Anne has been defunct for a good many years, but nobody

thinks it necessary to proclaim the fact weekly in a couple of leaders.

You differ from me, do you? Very well, then; carry on in your own way;

all I shall say is, that if your muttered conjurations don't evoke the

shade of the departed saint, in a shape that may appal you consumedly,

you run a mighty risk of calling a counterfeit into being. It is a good

maxim never to put forward anything which the public cannot readily

swallow.

I think that, in one respect, the modern system is decidedly preferable

to the older. Formerly, we used to combat arguments; now, I observe,

you evade them. This I hold to be a great improvement. In the first

place, it saves trouble both to the writer and the reader. It is

not always easy to reply to a fellow who knows his subject a great

deal better than you do. You have to follow him from point to point,

investigate his facts, controvert his reasoning, and take, in short,

such a world of trouble, as would render the life of a gentleman

journalist absolutely insupportable. Milton was occupied nearly a

year with one of his replies to Salmasius,--Selden, I believe, took a

longer time to double up his opponent Grotius. This is slow work, and

you cannot reasonably be expected to submit to it. If anything like

argument is to be brought forward, you are entitled to look for it in

the _Edinburgh Review_, though I do not intend by any means to assume

that your expectations will be realised in that quarter. Costive,

beyond the power of medicine, must be the man who battens on the hard

dough dumplings, dished up quarterly under cover of the Blue and

Yellow! But I forgot--you are not entirely with the Whigs, though you

agree with them as to commercial policy.

You do well, therefore, to avoid argument in all points that require

previous preparation and study. A general slashing style, without

condescending to particulars, is undoubtedly your forte, and I cannot

sufficiently admire your dexterity in avoiding a direct reply. You

have got hold of a capital phrase in answer to everything that can

be advanced against you. No matter how clearly your opponent may

have stated his case, no matter how distinct his logic, or how

incontrovertible his facts, you come down upon him with your pet cry

of "exploded fallacies," and extinguish him at once and for ever.

Very righteously you eschew the trouble of pointing out where, when,

and by whom, the said obnoxious fallacy was exploded. It is perfectly

possible--nay, in nine cases out of ten, absolutely certain, that you

never in your life heard that particular view stated before, and that

you do not comprehend it when stated; still, you continue to occupy

the vantage ground, and pooh-pooh it down as calmly as though it were

one of the Manchester unfulfilled prophecies. This is a pleasant

way of getting out of a dilemma; and the best of it is, that by

generalisation you may contrive to apply your epithet to every fact,

however notorious, which has been brought forward by your antagonist.

For instance, an indignant farmer writes you a letter enclosing a

balance-sheet of his operations for the last year, which shows that,

instead of making any profit, he is out of pocket some ninety or a

hundred pounds; and he argues, quite fairly, that if grain is to

continue at its present rate, in consequence of importations from

abroad, he will be a ruined man before the expiry of his lease, and

his labourers thrown out of employment. Six months ago, your answer

would have been hopeful, courteous, and encouraging. You would have

assured him that the present depression was merely temporary, and that

in the course of a short time wheat must be at sixty shillings. You

are wiser now. You are perfectly aware that any considerable rise in

the value of agricultural produce, under the operation of the present

law, is a pure impossibility; and you resort to no such assurance.

Three months later you would have told him to go to the devil or the

antipodes, whichever he pleased, and not bother the public with his

wicked and insensate clamour. But you are also tolerably aware, by

this time, that the public does not exactly approve of a wholesale

system of expatriation, however admirable it may appear in your eyes;

and that you have exposed yourself, by recommending it, to certain

reflections, which are not very creditable to your character either

as a philanthropist or a Christian. Nor can you much mend the matter

by insisting upon another pet phrase of yours, which did good service

so long as it was new. You cannot always aver that we are in "a

transition state" of society. In the first place, the expression, when

you analyse it, has no meaning. In the second place, granting that

it had a meaning, people are naturally anxious to know, what sort of

state of society is to be consequent on the "transition state"--a

piece of information which neither you nor any one else have it in

your power to supply. So that an ignorant or commonplace person,

who is not versed in the mysteries or resorts of journalism, may be

well excused for wondering in what possible way you can meet the

allegations of Mr Hawbuck. You cannot refuse to print his letter and

his statement, for, if you don't, somebody else will; and either you

lay yourself open to the charge of suppression, or it may be held that

you cannot frame an answer. How valuable, in such a position, is the

shield of "exploded fallacies!" You assume, in your commentary on the

letter, a tone of heartfelt commiseration, not for the circumstances,

but for the prejudices and benighted mental condition of the writer.

"We willingly give a place in our columns to the communication of Mr

Hawbuck, not on account of its intrinsic worth--not because it contains

any novel information--but because it is a fair specimen of that

state of intellectual depression and economical ignorance, which the

existence for so many years of a false protective system has unhappily

fostered, even among that class of agriculturists who are entitled to

the epithet of respectable. Here is a man who, from the general wording

and caligraphy of his letter, appears to have received the advantages

of an ordinary good education--a man who, by his own confession, is

the tenant of a farm for which he pays five hundred pounds a-year of

rent, and upwards--a man who, we doubt not, is most estimable in his

private relations, a kind husband, an indulgent father, and possibly a

considerate master--a man who, not improbably, is on good terms with

the squire, and, it may be, visits at the parsonage--and yet this very

individual, Mr Hawbuck, is complaining that he cannot make ends meet!

We shall not, at the present time, minutely question the accuracy of

his statements. These may be grossly exaggerated, or they may contain

nothing more than a simple narrative of the truth. Assuming the latter

to be the case, we ask our readers, with the most perfect confidence,

whether the whole of the argument which he has attempted to rear upon

such exceedingly slender foundations, is not, from beginning to end,

a tissue of exploded fallacies? Here we have the whole question of

British taxation brought forward, as if it was something new. Hawbuck

ought to know better. His father was taxed before him, and so, we doubt

not, were several antecedent generations of Hawbucks, supposing that

the family lays claim to a respectable agricultural antiquity. Hawbuck

junior--who, we hope, will have more sense than his father--must make

up his mind, in future years, to contribute his quota to the national

burdens, in return for which we receive the inestimable blessings

of good government, [O Dick!] sound legislation, and impartial

administration of the laws. Then Mr Hawbuck, as a matter of course,

acting upon the invariable example of the writers and orators of that

unhappy faction to which he has the misfortune to belong, drags in the

'foreigner,' just as the Dugald creature is dragged into the hut at

Aberfoil by the soldiers of Captain Thornton. This is another exploded

fallacy, which we had fondly hoped was set to rest for ever. It seems

we were mistaken. Mr Hawbuck cannot dispense with the 'foreigner.'

He haunts him ever and anon in the silence of the night like the

Raw-head-and-bloody-bones of the nursery, or like the turnip lantern

placed on the churchyard wall by some juvenile agricultural humourist.

Really it is very distressing that any one should be so persecuted by

a phantom which is the pure growth of mental apprehension and disease.

Mr Hawbuck certainly ought to consult his medical adviser; or, if

distance and the embarrassed state of his affairs preclude him from

applying to the village Galen, perhaps he will allow us to prescribe

for him. A good dose of purgative medicine twice a-week, moderate

diet, abstinence from intoxicating liquors, and change of scene--we

would suggest a visit to Mr Mechi's farm of Tiptree--will work wonders

with our patient. But he must beware of all excitement. He must on

no account attend any gatherings where Mr Ferrand is a speaker, and

he had better refrain from passing his evenings at the Agricultural

Club. He will thus be able to effect considerable retrenchment in

his expenditure by avoiding beer, and Mrs Hawbuck will love him none

the less. By attending to these few simple rules, we are convinced

that a radical cure may be effected. We shall then hear no more of Mr

Hawbuck's complaints, nor will it be necessary again to reprehend him

for the adoption of exploded fallacies. We shall not do the farmers of

Great Britain the injustice to suppose that this gentleman is a type of

their class. We regard him simply as an honest, easy-natured, but very

credulous person, who has been unfortunately imbued with false notions

of political economy, and used as a tool in the hands of others to

promote their interested designs."

There, Dick, is a leader for you cut and dry; and I think you must

admit that it will answer every purpose. In the first place, you won't

hear any more of Hawbuck. Men of his class cannot bear to be laughed

at, so that his only revenge will be a muttered vow to break your head,

if it should ever come knowingly within the sweep of his cudgel. In

the second place, you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you

have raised a laugh, which is at all times equivalent to a triumph in

argument. The majority of your readers will esteem you a very clever

fellow, and henceforward the name of Hawbuck will be the signal for

general cachinnation. It is quite true that Hawbuck's statement is in

no way refuted, or the cause of his distress investigated--but how can

you possibly be expected to occupy your time with his affairs? As a

"special commissioner," indeed, you may treat him more minutely. You

may pry into his pigsty, investigate his stable, criticise his mode of

drainage, disapprove of his rotation of crops, inquire into the wages

which he pays, and decidedly object to his turnips. You may hold him

up as a lamentable victim of that species of wretched farming which,

under the baneful shadow of protection, could do no more than render

British agriculture by far the finest and the most productive in the

world. You may exhort him to lay out more capital--you need not care

about the amount, as he is not likely to ask you for a loan, nor would

you be willing to advance it, if he did, on such dubious security; and

you may abuse him as an obstinate ass, because he does not plough with

a steam-engine. All this you may do with impunity, (provided you never

visit the district again;) and you will be hailed by your own party

as a genuine national benefactor, and as an oracle of agricultural

progress. But don't mix up the two characters--that is, keep statistics

for your report, and general assertions for your leading article.

Hold hard by the doctrine of "exploded fallacies." It will apply

to everything, and every system, which was ever hatched under the

influence of the sun. You may adapt the term to physics quite as

appropriately as to opinions. If you are inclined to set forward as an

exploded fallacy the dogma that climate has any influence upon crops,

you are perfectly entitled to do so, on the authority of the Huxtables

of the present generation.

But I fear that I am exhausting your patience, and, as it is now

rather late, I shall merely add a word of personal advice. Never

attempt to rear up your independent judgment against the wishes of

your proprietors. In ordinary times this caution might be unnecessary,

since few men are sincerely desirous to quarrel with their bread and

butter. But there is a foolish spirit of insubordination visible just

now on the surface of society, against which you ought to guard. Young

men are beginning to fashion out opinions for themselves. The old

traditional landmarks are not sufficient for their guidance; and I,

who am a veteran in politics, find myself not unfrequently bearded

by some pert whippersnapper, just escaped from school, who is now

setting up, as the phrase is, on his own hook, as an earnest man and a

patriot, and who probably expects before long to hold office in that

new Downing Street which has been so seductively prophesied by the

blatant seer of Ecclefechan. I need hardly tell you, Dick, that this

is all mere moonshine--pure flatulency, superinduced by a vegetable

diet upon a stomach naturally feeble. If you wish to see the results

of young independent journalism, you have only to step over to the

Continent. I have been watching the progress of events there with

considerable interest for the last three years, and my only wonder is,

how several scores of able German editors have managed to escape the

gallows. You see what a pass they have arrived at in France. Nobody is

allowed to write an article in the most paltry paper without affixing

his name; and the consequence is, that journalism, as a profession, is

terribly on the decline. I don't like this, I own. I wish to see its

respectability kept up, and its decencies preserved; and I don't think

that can be accomplished by the suppression of the editorial We. People

are very anxious to know what are the opinions of a leading London

journal upon any given point, but I question if they would pay twopence

to ascertain what Jenkins, or Larkins, or Perkins may please to

think, should the names of these gentlemen appear at the end of their

respective lucubrations. Therefore, Dick, stand up for your order, and

do not be led astray by the impulses of individual vanity. Dismiss all

egotism from your mind, and keep in your proper place. Supposing that

you have achieved any notable feat of arms, rest contented with the

consciousness thereof, and don't run about telling the whole world that

it was you who did it. Benvenuto Cellini would have been a precious ass

had he stated during his lifetime that it was he who shot the Constable

Bourbon. He was wiser, and kept the statement for his memoirs. This

would be no world to live in if reviewers were obliged to give up their

names. Fancy Hawbuck at your door, or lurking round the corner, armed

with a pitchfork or a flail! The bare idea is enough to make one's

blood curdle in the veins. Far rather would I evacuate my premises in

the full knowledge that two suspicious gentlemen of the tribe of Gad

were waiting to capture me on a writ.

And now, Dick, good night. You see I have used my privilege of

seniority pretty freely; but you are not the lad I take you for, if you

are offended at a friendly hint. By the way, how do you intend to come

out on the Catholic question--strong or mild? Are you going to back up

Lord John Russell's "noble letter" to the Bishop of Durham?--or do you

intend to twit him with his support of Maynooth, his acknowledgment

in Ireland of the territorial titles of the Papist bishops, and the

rank which he has given them in the Colonies? You don't like to commit

yourself, I suppose? Ah, well; perhaps you are right. But this I

will say for Lord John, that whatever may be his capabilities as a

statesman, he would have made a first-rate editor. Upon my conscience,

sir, I believe that there never lived the man who had a finer finger

for the public pulse. He knows to a scruple the amount of stimulants

or purgatives which the British constitution will bear; and the moment

that the patient becomes uneasy, he changes his mode of treatment. I

should like to see Shiel's countenance when he reads the letter. I have

no doubt that by this time he is convinced that he might have saved

himself the trouble of excising _Dei Gratia_ from the coinage, and that

his tarry in Tuscany will hardly give him a complete opportunity of

studying the relics of ancient art. Seriously, Dick, I look upon the

almost unanimous opinion expressed by the British press, with regard to

this insolent Roman aggression, as by far the best and surest symptom

of its vitality.

THE GREAT UNKNOWN.

A JEST FROM THE GERMAN.