the Union by which the kingdom of Scotland was reduced to the condition of
a province of England, and Edinburgh, from being the capital of a nation,
to becoming a mere provincial town. By many and enlightened Scotchmen a
federal union would have been preferred; but a legislative one was formed,
and from that date the whole public revenue of Scotland tended towards
London, towards which tended also, and necessarily, all who sought for
place, power, or distinction. An absentee government produced, of course,
absentee landholders, and with each step in this direction there was a
diminution in the demand at home for talent, which thenceforward sought a
market in the great city to which the rents were sent. The connection
between the educated classes of Scotland and the Scottish seats of
learning tended necessarily to decline, while the connection between the
former and the universities of England became more intimate. These results
were, of course, gradually produced, but, as is the case with the stone as
it falls towards the earth, the attraction of centralization grew with the
growth of the city that was built out of the contributions of distant
provinces, while the counteracting power of the latter as steadily
declined, and the greater the decline the more rapid does its progress now
become. Seventy years after the date of the Union, Edinburgh was still a
great literary capital, and could then offer to the world the names of
numerous men of whose reputation any country of the world might have been
proud: Burns and McPherson; Robertson and Hume; Blair and Kames; Reid,
Smith, and Stewart; Monboddo, Playfair, and Boswell; and numerous others,
whose reputation has survived to the present day. Thirty-five years later,
its press furnished the world with the works of Jeffrey and Brougham;
Stewart, Brown, and Chalmers; Scott, Wilson, and Joanna Baillie; and with
those of many others whose reputation was less widely spread, among whom
were Galt, Hogg, Lockhart, and Miss Ferrier, the authoress of "Marriage."
The "Edinburgh Review" and "Blackwood's Magazine," then, to a great
extent, represented Scottish men, and Scottish modes of thought. Looking
now on the same field of action, it is difficult, from this distance, to
discover more than two Scottish authors, Alison and Sir William Hamilton,
the latter all "the more conspicuous and remarkable, as he now," says the
"North British Review" (Feb. 1853), "stands so nearly alone in the ebb of
literary activity in Scotland, which has been so apparent during this
generation." McCulloch and Macaulay were both, I believe, born in
Scotland, but in all else they are English. Glasgow has recently presented
the world with a new poet, in the person of Alexander Smith, but, unlike
Ramsay and Burns, there is nothing Scottish about him beyond his place of
birth. "It is not," says one of his reviewers, "Scottish scenery, Scottish
history, Scottish character, and Scottish social humor, that he represents
or depicts. Nor is there," it continues, "any trace in him of that feeling
of intense nationality so common in Scottish writers. London," as it adds,
"a green lane in Kent, an English forest, an English manorhouse, these are
the scenes where the real business of the drama is transacted."[1]
[Footnote 1: _North British Review_, Aug. 1863.]
The "Edinburgh Review" has become to all intents and purposes an English
journal, and "Blackwood" has lost all those characteristics by which it
was in former times distinguished from the magazines published south of
the Tweed.
Seeing these facts, we can scarcely fail to agree with the Review already
quoted, in the admission that there are "probably fewer leading individual
thinkers and literary guides in Scotland at present than at any other
period of its history since the early part of the last century," since the
day when Scotland itself lost its individuality. The same journal informs
us that "there is now scarcely an instance of a Scotchman holding a
learned position in any other country," and farther says that "the small
number of names of literary Scotchmen known throughout Europe for eminence
in literature and science is of itself sufficient to show to how great an
extent the present race of Scotchmen have lost the position which their
ancestors held in the world of letters." [1]
[Footnote 1: _North British Review_, May, 1853.]
How, indeed, could it be otherwise? Centralization tends to carry to
London all the wealth and all the expenditure of the kingdom, and thus to
destroy everywhere the local demand for books or newspapers, or for men
capable of producing either. Centralization taxes the poor people of the
north of Scotland, and their complaints of distress are answered by an
order for their expulsion, that place may be made for sheep and shepherds,
neither of whom make much demand for books. Centralization appropriates
millions for the improvement of London and the creation of royal palaces
and pleasure-grounds in and about that city, while Holyrood, and all other
of the buildings with which Scottish history is connected, are allowed to
go to ruin. Centralization gives libraries and museums to London, but it
refuses the smallest aid to the science or literature of Scotland.
Centralization deprives the people of the power to educate themselves, by
drawing from them more than thirty millions of dollars, raised by
taxation, and it leaves the professors in the colleges of Scotland in the
enjoyment of chairs, the emoluments of many of which are but $1,200 per
annum. Whence, then, can come the demand for books, or the power to
compensate the people who make them? Not, assuredly, from the mass of
unhappy people who occupy the Highlands, whose starving condition
furnishes so frequent occasion for the comments of their literary
countrymen; nor, as certainly, from the wretched inhabitants of the wynds
of Glasgow, or from the weavers of Paisley. Centralization is gradually
separating the people into two classes--the very rich, who live in
London, and the very poor, who remain in Scotland; and with the progress
of this division there is a gradual decay in the feeling of national
pride, that formerly so much distinguished the people of Scotland. The
London "Leader" tells its readers that "England is a power made up of
conquests over nationalities;" and it is right. The nationality of
Scotland has disappeared; and, however much it may annoy our Scottish
friends[1] to have the energetic and intelligent Celt sunk in the "slow
and unimpressible" Saxon, such is the tendency of English centralization,
everywhere destructive of that national feeling which is essential to
progress in civilization.
[Footnote 1: See Blackwood's Magazine, Sept. 1853, art. "Scotland since
the Union."]
Looking to Ireland, we find a similar state of things. Seventy years
since, that country was able to insist upon and to establish its claim for
an independent government, and, by aid of the measures then adopted, was
rapidly advancing. From that period to the close of the century the demand
for books for Ireland was so great as to warrant the republication of a
large portion of those produced in England. The _kingdom_ of Ireland of
that day gave to the world such men as Burke and Grattan, Moore and
Edgeworth, Curran, Sheridan, and Wellington. Centralization, however,
demanded that Ireland should become a province of England, and from that
time famines and pestilences have been of frequent occurrence, and the
whole population is now being expelled to make room for the "slow and
unimpressible" Saxon race. Under these circumstances, it is matter of
small surprise that Ireland not only produces no books, but that she
furnishes no market for those produced by others. Half a century of
international copyright has almost annihilated both the producers and the
consumers of books.
Passing towards England we may for a moment look to Wales, and then, if we
desire to find the effects of centralization and its consequent
absenteeism, in neglected schools, ignorant teachers, decaying and decayed
churches, and drunken clergymen with immoral flocks, our object will be
accomplished by studying the pages of the "Edinburgh Review" [2] In such a
state of things as is there described there can be little tendency to the
development of intellect, and little of either ability or inclination to
reward the authors of books. In my next, I will look to England herself.
[Footnote 2: April, 1853, art. "The Church in the Mountains."]
LETTER IV.
Arrived in England, we find there everywhere the same tendency towards
centralization. Of the 200,000 small landed proprietors of the days of
Adam Smith but few remain, and of even those the number is gradually
diminishing. Great landed estates have everywhere absentees for owners,
agents for managers, and day laborers for workmen. The small landowner was
a resident, and had a personal interest in the details of the
neighborhood, not now felt by either the owner or the laborer. This state
of things existed to a considerable extent five-and-thirty years ago, but
it has since grown with great rapidity. At that time Great Britain could
exhibit to the world perhaps as large a body of men and women of letters,
with world-wide reputation, as ever before existed in any country or
nation, as will be seen from the following list:--
Byron, Wilson, Clarkson,
Moore, Hallam, Landor,
Scott, Roscoe, Wellington,[1]
Wordsworth, Malthus, Robert Hall,
Rogers, Ricardo, Taylor,
Campbell, Mill, Romilly,
Joanna Baillie, Chalmers, Edgeworth,
Southey, Coleridge, Hannah More,
Gifford, Heber, Dalton,
Jeffrey, Bentham, Davy,
Sydney Smith, Brown, Wollaston,
Brougham, Mackintosh, The Herschels,
Horner, Stewart, Dr. Clarke.
[Footnote 1: Wellington's dispatches place him in the first rank of
historians.]
DeQuincey was then just coming on the stage. Crabbe, Shelley, Keats,
Croly, Hazlitt, Lockhart, Lamb, Hunt, Galt, Lady Morgan, Miss Mitford,
Horace Smith, Hook, Milman, Miss Austen, and a host of others, were
already on it. Many of these appear to have received rewards far greater
than fall now to the lot of some of the most distinguished literary men.
Crabbe is said to have received 3,000 guineas, or $15,000, for his "Tales
of the Hall," and Theodore Hook 2,000 guineas for "Sayings and Doings,"
and, if the facts were so, they prove that poets and novelists were far
more valued then than now. At that time, Croker, Barrow, and numerous
other men of literary reputation co-operated with Southey and Gifford in
providing for the pages of the "Quarterly." All these, men and women, were
the product of the last century, when the small landholders of England yet
counted by hundreds of thousands.
Since then, centralization has made great progress. The landholders now
amount, as we are informed, to only 30,000, and the gulf which separates
the great proprietor from the cultivator has gradually widened, as the one
has become more an absentee and the other more a day laborer. The greater
the tendency towards the absorption of land by the wealthy banker and
merchant, or the wealthy cotton-spinner like Sir Robert Peel, the greater
is the tendency towards its abandonment by the small proprietor, who has
an interest in local self government, and the greater the tendency towards
the centralization of power in London and in the great seats of
manufacture. In all those places, it is thought that the prosperity of
England is dependent upon "a cheap and abundant supply of labor."[1] The
"Times" assures its readers that it is "to the cheap labor of Ireland that
England is indebted for all her great works;" and that note is repeated by
a large portion of the literary men of England who now ask for protection
in the American market against the effects of the system they so generally
advocate.
[Footnote 1: _North British Review_, November, 1852.]
The more the people of Scotland can be driven from the land to take refuge
in Glasgow and Paisley, the cheaper must be labor. The more those of
Ireland can be driven to England, the greater must be the competition in
the latter for employment, and the lower must be the price of labor. The
more the land of England can be centralized, the greater must be the mass
of people seeking employment in London, Liverpool, Manchester, and
Birmingham, and the cheaper must labor be.
Low-priced laborers cannot exercise self-government. All they earn is
required for supplying themselves with indifferent food, clothing, and
lodging, and they cannot control the expenditure of their wages to such
extent as to enable them to educate their children, and hence it is that
the condition of the people of England is as here described:--
"About one half of our poor can neither read nor write. The test of
signing the name at marriage is a very imperfect absolute test of
education, but it is a very good relative one: taking that test, how
stands Leeds itself in the Registrar-General's returns? In Leeds, which is
the centre of the movement for letting education remain as it is, left
entirely to chance and charity to supply its deficiencies, how do we find
the fact? This, that in 1846, the last year to which these returns are
brought down, of 1,850 marriages celebrated in Leeds and Hunslet, 508 of
the men and 1,020 of the women, or considerably more than one half of the
latter, signed their names with marks. 'I have also a personal knowledge
of this fact--that of 47 men employed upon a railway in this immediate
neighborhood, only 14 can sign their names in the receipt of their wages;
and this not because of any diffidence on their part, but positively
because they cannot write.' And only lately, the "Leeds Mercury" itself
gave a most striking instance of ignorance among persons from Boeotian
Pudsey: of 12 witnesses, 'all of respectable appearance, examined before
the Mayor of Bradford at the court-house there, only one man could sign
his name, and that indifferently.' Mr. Neison has clearly shown, in
statistics of crime in England and Wales from 1834 to 1844, that crime is
invariably the most prevalent in those districts where the fewest numbers
in proportion to the population can read and write. Is it not, indeed,
beginning at the wrong end to try and reform men after they have become
criminals? Yet you cannot begin with children, from want of schools.
Poverty is the result of ignorance, and then ignorance is again the
unhappy result of poverty. 'Ignorance makes men improvident and
thoughtless--women as well as men; it makes them blind to the future--
to the future of this life as well as the life beyond. It makes them dead
to higher pleasures than those of the mere senses, and keeps them down to
the level of the mere animal. Hence the enormous extent of drunkenness
throughout this country, and the frightful waste of means which it
involves.' At Bilston, amidst 20,000 people, there are but two struggling
schools--one has lately ceased; at Millenhall, Darlaston, and Pelsall,
amid a teeming population, no school whatever. In Oldham, among 100,000,
but one public day-school for the laboring classes; the others are an
infant-school, and some dame and factory schools. At Birmingham, there are
21,824 children at school, and 23,176 at no school; at Liverpool, 50,000
out of 90,000 at no school; at Leicester, 8,200 out of 12,500; and at
Leeds itself, in 1841 (the date of the latest returns), some 9,600 out of
16,400 were at no school whatever. It is the same in the counties. 'I have
seen it stated that a woman for some time had to officiate as clerk in a
church in Norfolk, there being no adult male in the parish able to read
and write.' For a population of 17,000,000 we have but twelve normal
schools; while in Massachusetts they have three such schools for only
800,000 of population."
Poverty and ignorance produce intemperance and crime, and hence it is that
both so much abound throughout England. Infanticide, as we are told,
prevails to an extent unknown in any other part of the world. Looking at
all these facts, we can readily see that the local demand for information
throughout England must be very small, and this enables us to account for
the extraordinary fact, that in all that country there has been no daily
newspaper printed out of London. There is, consequently, no local demand
for literary talent. The weekly papers that are published require little
of the pen, but much of the scissors. The necessary consequence of this
is, that every young man who fancies he can write, must go to London to
seek a channel through which he may be enabled to come before the public.
Here we have centralization again. Arrived in London, he finds a few daily
papers, but only one, as we are told, that pays its expenses, and around
each of them is a corps of writers and editors as ill-disposed to permit
the introduction of any new laborers in their field as are the
street-beggars of London to permit any interference with their "beat." If
he desires to become contributor to the magazines, it is the same. To
obtain the privilege of contributing his "cheap labor" to their pages, he
must be well introduced, and if he make the attempt without such
introduction he is treated with a degree of insolence scarcely to be
imagined by any one not familiar with the "answers to correspondents" in
London periodicals. If disposed to print a book he finds a very limited
number of publishers, each one surrounded with his corps of authors and
editors, and generally provided with a journal in which to have his own
books well placed before the world. If, now, he succeeds in gaining
favorable notice, he finds that he can obtain but a very small proportion
of the price of his book, even if it sell, because centralization requires
that all books shall be advertised in certain London journals that charge
their own prices, and thus absorb the proceeds of no inconsiderable
portion of the edition. Next, he finds the Chancellor of the Exchequer
requiring a share of the proceeds of the book for permission to use paper,
and further permission to advertise his work when printed.[1] Inquiring to
what purpose are devoted the proceeds of all these taxes, he learns that
the centralization which it is the object of the British cheap-labor
policy to establish, requires the maintenance of large armies and large
fleets which absorb more than all the profits of the commerce they
protect. The bookseller informs him that he must take the risk of finding
paper, and of paying the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the "Times" and
numerous other journals; that every editor will expect a copy; that the
interests of science require that he, poor as he is, shall give no less
than eleven copies to the public; and that the most that can be hoped for
from the first edition is, that it will not bring him in debt. His book
appears, but the price is high, for the reason that the taxes are heavy,
and the general demand for books is small. Cheap laborers cannot buy
books; soldiers and sailors cannot buy books; and thus does centralization
diminish the market for literary talent while increasing the cost of
bringing it before the world. Centralization next steps in, in the shape
of circulating libraries, that, for a few guineas a year, supply books
throughout the kingdom, and enable hundreds of copies to do the work that
should be done by thousands, and hence it is that, while first editions of
English works are generally small, so very few of them ever reach second
ones. Popular as was Captain Marryat, his first editions were, as he
himself informed me, for some time only 1,500, and had not then risen
above 2,000. Of Mr. Bulwer's novels, so universally popular, the first
edition never exceeded 2,500; and so it has been, and is, with others.
With all Mr. Thackeray's popularity, the sale of his books has, I believe,
rarely gone beyond 6,000 for the supply of above thirty millions of
people. Occasionally, a single author is enabled to fix the attention of
the public, and he is enabled to make a fortune--not from the sale of
large quantities at low prices, but of moderate quantities at high prices.
The chief case of the kind now in England is that of Mr. Dickens, who
sells for twenty shillings a book that costs about four shillings and
sixpence to make, and charges his fellow-laborers in the field of
literature an enormous price for the privilege of attaching to his numbers
the advertisements of their works, as is shown in the following paragraph
from one of the journals of the day:--
"Thus far, no writer has succeeded in drawing so large pecuniary profits
from the exercise of his talents as Charles Dickens. His last romance,
"Bleak House," which appeared in monthly numbers, had so wide a
circulation in that form that it became a valuable medium for advertising,
so that before its close the few pages of the tale were completely lost in
sheets of advertisements which were stitched to them. The lowest price for
such an advertisement was £1 sterling, and many were paid for at the rate
of £5 and £6. From this there is nothing improbable in the supposition
that, in addition to the large sum received for the tale, its author
gained some £15,000 by his advertising sheets. The "Household Words"
produces an income of about £4,000, though Dickens, having put it entirely
in the hands of an assistant editor, has nothing to do with it beyond
furnishing a weekly article. Through his talents alone he has raised
himself from the position of a newspaper reporter to that of a literary
Croesus."
[Footnote 1: The tax on advertisements has just now been repealed, but
that tax was a small one when compared with that imposed by
centralization.]
Centralization produces the "cheap and abundant supply of labor" required
for the maintenance of the British manufacturing system, and "cheap labor"
furnishes Mr. Dickens with his "Oliver Twist," his "Tom-all-alone's," and
the various other characters and situation by aid of whose delineation he
is enabled, as a German writer informs us, to have dinners
"at which the highest aristocracy is glad to be present, and where he
equals them in wealth, and furnishes an intellectual banquet of wit and
wisdom which they, the highest and most refined circles, cannot
imitate."
Centralization enables Mr. Dickens to obtain vast sums by advertising the
works of the poor authors by whom he is surrounded, most of whom are not
only badly paid, but insolently treated, while even of those whose names
and whose works are well known abroad many gladly become recipients of the
public charity. In the zenith of her reputation, Lady Charlotte Bury
received, as I am informed, but £200 ($960) for the absolute copyright of
works that sold for $7.50. Lady Blessington, celebrated as she was, had
but from three to four hundred pounds; and neither Marryat nor Bulwer ever
received, as I believe, the selling price of a thousand copies of their
books as compensation for the copyright.[1] Such being the facts in regard
to well-known authors, some idea may be formed in relation to the
compensation of those who are obscure. The whole tendency of the "cheap
labor" system, so generally approved by English writers, is to destroy the
value of literary labor by increasing the number of persons who must look
to the pen for means of support, and by diminishing the market for its
products. What has been the effect of the system will now be shown by
placing before you a list of the names of all existing British authors
whose reputation can be regarded as of any wide extent, as follows:--
Tennyson, Thackeray, Grote, McCulloch,
Carlyle, Bulwer, Macaulay, Hamilton,
Dickens, Alison, J. S. Mill, Faraday.
[Footnote 1: This I had from Captain Marryat himself.]
This list is very small as compared with that presented in the same field
five-and-thirty years since, and its difference in weight is still greater
than in number. Scott, the novelist and poet, may certainly be regarded as
the counterpoise of much more than any one of the writers of fiction in
this list. Byron, Moore, Rogers, and Campbell enjoyed a degree of
reputation far exceeding that of Tennyson. Wellington, the historian of
his own campaigns, would much outweigh any of the historians. Malthus and
Ricardo were founders of a school that has greatly influenced the policy
of the world, whereas McCulloch and Mill are but disciples in that school.
Dalton, Davy, and Wollaston will probably occupy a larger space in the
history of science than Sir Michael Faraday, large, even, as may be that
assigned to him.