But against this immense accumulation of capital in the States,

against the vast incidental improvements and wealth to the country

that have arisen from manufactures, what have the British colonies

to show? What have the Canadas to arrest the eye of the traveller,

and to prove to him that, though they have pursued the system which

Lord Chatham chalked out for them, of not manufacturing a hob-nail

for themselves--and which the policy of England has ever since

prevented their doing--they have still wherewithal to attest that they

have prospered; and that their labour has been equally rewarded by

agriculture as by manufactures?

From one end of the provinces to the other, in every colony Britain has

in America, there are no evidences of prosperity approaching, much less

equalling that of Massachusetts; there is nothing, in truth, wherewith

to institute a comparison between them. Beyond the towns which are

supported by the trade incident to selling England's goods, there

are none to be found in British America. Beyond the little villages

throughout the provinces, that owe their existence to the necessity for

agencies to collect the profits of the whole products of the country,

and to send them to other lands to be spent, there is no appearance of

labour employed in business, or capital reproducing capital. Probably

one of the best cultivated and most productive districts in Upper

Canada, is the Gore. It is situated at the head of Lake Ontario; has

the beautiful little city of Hamilton for its capital; is composed of

very fair land, and is settled by a population distinguished for their

industry, and for the great comfort and independence it has brought

them. Upon entering this district by the high road from Toronto,

or in passing in a steamer up the north shore of Lake Ontario, the

traveller is struck with the appearance of a little village called

Oakville. It is situated on the bank of the lake, has its neat white

churches, and its little picturesque cottages, looking out upon

the broad lake. A stranger at a distance, from its situation and

appearance, would imagine it one of those villages that spring up so

magically in America,--full of activity, energy, and prosperity. He

visits it, and to his surprise he finds, that though it bears all

the evidences of having been built in a hurry, it bears also all the

tokens of rapid decay--its shops being for the most part unoccupied,

its houses untenanted, and its streets without people. And what may be

the reason, in a district so prosperous as the Gore, and surrounded by

a country teeming with grain, and with still many unused resources,

that this village has so palpably disappointed the expectations if

its founder? It is this,--Oakville was projected and built with a

view to the largest prosperity of the country; and with facilities

and necessities for a trade equal to the cultivation of every lot of

land in the adjacent country that could support a family, and to the

manufacturing into staves and boards, and square timber, of every tree

in the surrounding woods. But the policy of England has rendered it

unprofitable to get out the timber; and free trade has taken away the

inducement to enter into Canadian farming. The consequence is that the

shops, which were built to do an anticipated trade in Oakville, are

now unrequired; and the people, who built houses for the accommodation

of those who were to be engaged in the expected business, have their

houses upon their hands. Nor can any one well acquainted with Upper

Canada fail to recognise in Oakville a faithful picture of many, if not

most, of the towns and villages in the province.

But let us now reverse the picture, and suppose that Oakville, instead

of looking forward to rising, and being supported by the trade incident

to selling England's goods, and the draining of the country's resources

to pay for them, had looked forward to prosperity by manufacturing and

selling goods of its own. Let us suppose that its founder--who, fifteen

years ago, spent some £20,000 in adapting its harbour for ships, that

never had occasion to come; and in building storehouses, for which

there has never been use--had spent the same money in establishing one

of these factories which first formed the nucleus of Lowell or Salem in

Massachusetts. Is it not reasonable to infer, that in the same country,

and among a people having the same necessities, the same results would

have accrued in the Canadas which have accrued in the States? That the

profits of fifteen years' manufacturing would have surrounded Oakville

with mansions, proving the success of enterprise; and filled its

streets with houses, showing that labour had prospered, and the country

had its benefits? Would not its capitalists, instead of empty houses

and ruined hopes, have now the proceeds of well-invested capital, or

see them reproducing wealth in railroads, or public improvements?

But let us suppose, further, that the whole province of Upper Canada

had invested in manufactures, from time to time, for fifty years, the

whole profits that England and other countries have made by the sale

of all the goods to it that it has consumed, and that this capital

had been augmenting and reproducing itself during this period--what

would be the probable result? It is impossible to calculate it. It can

only be measured by the towns that have sprung up, by the railroads

and canals that have been made, and by the vast capital that has

been accumulated in the same period by Massachusetts, and the other

manufacturing states of America.

It is not, therefore, to institutions or to laws, to peculiarities

of race or of situation, that we ascribe the present undeniable

prosperity of the States, or, at all events, of those states which

have manufactured, over the Canadas. It is to the system the one

adopted, of manufacturing what they required, and thus securing to

their country the benefit of the population it required to do so, the

profits of the labour employed in it, and the incidental improvements

it occasioned. It is the system the other followed, or which was

chalked out for them, of spending all they could make in the purchase

of goods manufactured in England, the profits of which all went there

to be spent. The States, by the one system, have made the most of their

country's resources and its labour; the Canadas, by the other, have

made the least. The States have cities, and railroads, and canals,

and elegant mansions, to show for their labour of fifty years; the

Canadas have built elegant mansions, too, by their labour, and have

bought fine countryseats, and have contributed to make railroads, but

they are unfortunately all in England and Scotland. What holds good

of a family, sometimes holds good of a people. There is as much often

accumulated by saving as by making. Probably the making little, and

saving it, will end better than making much and saving little. The

States might have made but little on their produce at first--probably

less, for many years, than the Canadas; but their system inevitably

tended to saving for the country all they did make; whereas the

Canadian system, whatever the provinces made, much or little, as

inevitably tended to the country's losing it: and the consequences are,

the vast difference in the growth of capital in the one country over

the other.

The arguments, however, in favour of England's manufacturing for

the colonies, were not without their speciousness, and, as applied

to other countries, were not without their truth. These were, that

England could manufacture cheaper for the colonies than they could

manufacture for themselves; and, moreover, that the labour the colonies

might apply to manufacturing, could be more profitably employed in

raising produce. But these arguments, as far as the Canadas and all

America are concerned, are fallacious. In a country where the largest

possible reward for labour bears frequently no sort of proportion to

the advantages gained by individuals and the whole commonwealth, by the

mere fact of that labour's being employed in it, the question changes

from what the people save upon a yard of calico, to what the country

loses by towns not being built, by railroads not being made, and by

improvements not taking place that always follow manufactures. It may

be true, that where the greatest possible reward for labour is the only

object sought for or attainable, that a people should find out, and

engage in what pays them best: but where the congregation of a hundred

people in one place raises the value of property there ten thousand

fold--and such has often been the case in the States--and every farmer

adjacent not only gains a market by them, but has his roads improved,

his lands increased in value, double, and triple, and ten times; and

has a thousand conveniences and benefits supplied him by them, that

he never otherwise could have had--then the question arises with him,

Which benefited him most?--the hundred people's manufacturing, and

spreading the profits of their labour around them, or the buying a

few yards of cloth a few shillings cheaper, and keeping the hundred

people away? For every penny that the whole people of the United

States have lost, by buying their own goods, they have made pounds

by making them. And the profits of a mechanic's own labour sink into

utter insignificance, in comparison to the wealth he often acquires

by a single lot of land, upon which he settles down with others, and

which makes him rich by also enriching all around him. To measure,

indeed, the advantages that manufactures have given to America, by the

mere profits of the actual labour employed in them, would be but like

valuing an oak at the price of one of its acorns. Men may compute the

probable profits of labour employed in manufacturing, by computing the

cost of raw material with the expense of manufacturing it, and what it

sold for. But the enormous wealth that has accrued to America,--by the

increase of population incident to manufacturing, by the development

of its resources, and the gigantic improvements that have followed

it--would be utterly out of the reach of all human industry to compute.

But in striking out the system England did for her colonies, she

should, at least have considered whether the benefits she intended

to confer would be really used as benefits; whether the system of

protection to colonial produce was not, in fact, something like that

of indulgent parents giving to their sons pocket-money in addition to

sufficient salaries--which same pocket-money does not generally add to

the morals or property of the recipients. And, in truth, this was in

effect the character of England's colonial protective system. But it

went a little farther than the wisdom displayed by anxious parents;

for, with the gifts, it took good care to furnish temptations to

spend them--a piece of amiable generosity that we would acquit even

all indulgent mothers of. However, this was--whatever England meant,

or expected, to the contrary--practically the effect of the system.

When money was sent out to buy produce or timber, it was always sure

to be accompanied by a proportionate stock of broad cloths and silks,

challis and shawls. Those who could have done very well with Canadian

gray, were induced to buy broad cloths, and often found but these

in the market; for England bought the country's crop, and England's

merchants knew full well what the farmers could afford to pay for.

Women wore silk dresses and satin bonnets, who might have looked

charming enough, before their friends at meeting, in Hoyle's prints,

or before all reasonable beaus at home, in good, honest, home-made

flannel. Brandy and water, too, was too often substituted for wholesome

cider, and fashionable tailors for industrious women. The sliding-scale

of expenditure always went up and down to suit the times. A good year

was marked by an increase of finery and extravagance; a bad one by

debts and law-suits, depressions and complaints--the country gaining

nothing, from year to year, for its labour or its resources. And what

is now the consequence? The system which occasioned the evil is now

done away, but the evil and its results remain. The farmer, unknowing

the cause at first of the declension in his income, went into debt,

thinking, as had often been the case before, that a good year would

follow a bad one; and that he would be able to retrieve by it. But the

next year came, and it was worse than the former. He could not pay his

debts, and he was obliged to mortgage his property, or sell his stock,

to do so. He could no longer get credit from the shopkeeper, and he was

unable to purchase with cash the quantity or the quality of goods he

bought before. The shopkeeper, in his turn depending upon the custom

of the farmer for the sale of his goods, and depending upon receiving

his accounts from him to meet his own, found both fail him together;

was obliged to curtail his business to a miserable remnant; or to shut

up his shop, or to wait for the sheriff to do it for him. Hence the

altered appearance of every part of Canada, both town and country.

Hence the whole streets in Montreal with hardly a single shop open.

Hence those sorry emblems of poverty and retrogression--empty houses

with broken windows, and streets without people, which may be seen in

almost every village in the provinces.

Now, for the system which has produced this state of things, who is

to blame? Clearly and unmistakeably, England. If the colonies, as is

now palpable to all America, have worked but with one arm towards

prosperity, while the States have worked with two, it was England's

manufacturing interests that tied the colonies' arm. The colonies

were, in this respect, wholly in the hands of England. She not only

established a system for them, by which the proceeds of every acre of

land they cleared, and every tree they hewed, went to give work to her

poor, and wealth to her rich, but she reserved the right of thinking

for them as well. Without her, they must have naturally adopted the

course taken by the rest of America. She legislated for them; they

believed her wise, and followed her dictates without thought or

apprehension. They are injured; and she is to blame.

But when Lord Chatham laid the foundation of the system by which the

colonies have been, in effect, prevented manufacturing for themselves,

he established mutuality of interests between them and the mother

country. If he would have England's poor employed, and England's

capitalists enriched by making goods for the colonies, he would have

the colonies profit equally by protection in the English markets.

The partnership, for such it really was, gave to each country its

own particular share of benefits; and the system was such, too, that

the more the profits of the one rose, though by its own individual

efforts, the more it was able to benefit the other. For the more

people engaged in Canadian farming, the more land that became cleared,

and the more timber that was got out, the more English manufactures

were consumed. But we have shown, by comparison, with the States, the

disastrous effect of this system upon the prosperity of the colonies.

We have shown, too, from its own character, that it never was, and

never could have been, of any substantial benefit to them; that it

made them extravagant, without leaving them capital; that it made them

to all intents and purposes poorer, whilst it was expected to make

them richer. And who was this system expressly and avowedly intended

to benefit? Who were, in all seasons, and at all times, whether

good or bad for the colonies, the only benefiters by it? It was the

manufacturers of England. For if the colonies could buy but prints

and cottons, they bought of these all they could pay for, and these

manufacturers had all the profit. If they could buy broad cloths and

silks, they purchased as much as their crops were worth, and often were

induced to draw upon the future, English manufacturers and merchants

getting all the benefit. But after these manufacturers had thus bled

the colonies of all their vitality, in the shape of capital, for

upwards of half a century--after the colonies' right arm had been tied

up so long, for their express benefit, that it became impotent from

want of exercise, these same manufacturers turned round and told their

colonial partners--"We have now made all we can out of you or, if we

have not, we think we can make a little more by free trade than we

can by keeping our honest engagements with you. We are sorry you have

acquired a lamer arm in our service. It is a pity. It can't be helped

now. Good-bye." Yes, it was these manufacturers, who so long bled the

colonies, that turned round to strike them in the end the blow that

should finish them. It was their selfish agitation for years; it was

their constant sounding into the ears of England one unvarying theme;

it was their disregard of all interests, of all duties, and of all

obligations to all men, in one deadly, unwavering struggle for the

attainment of one object, and for one class, that cost the colonies

their solemnly pledged protection--that cost them, we may add, their

respect for the honour and the justice of England.

But we have now, after a digression which has been somewhat of the

longest, come to the point of our argument, and that is this:--Upon

a question so vitally affecting the interests of the colonies, upon

a question that might cost them the institutions of England; upon

a question where all truth and justice demanded that they should

have been in a situation to protect themselves against manufacturing

selfishness, does it not occur to the reader, that the colonies

should have had a representation where it was decided? The measures

that exasperated the old colonies to rebellion, shrink into utter

insignificance, as far as injury or effect are concerned, in comparison

to this one. Here are three millions of people, the main profits of

whose labour for upwards of fifty years have gone to enrich a certain

class of people in England. And here they are now, sacrificed to the

selfishness of that very class, without having the opportunity of

saying a word for themselves. If the legislation of England, for ten

years past, has been pregnant with vaster consequences to her than the

legislation of a century, it has hardly affected her so deeply as it

has affected her North American colonies. If her landowners see ruin,

in it--if her agricultural labourers see in it the means of depriving

them of bread--still her other classes see, or think they see,

advantages in it to counteract the evils, and prosperity to balance the

injury. But in England all have been heard--all have contended, where

giant intellect sways as well as mighty interests; where mind has its

influences as well as matter. But in the colonies, where every interest

and every class saw, in imperial legislation, injustice and ruin,

neither their intellect nor their interests availed them anything. They

were literally placed in the legislative boat of England: they found

that they must either sink or float in it; that legislation happened to

sink them; and though they saw themselves going down, and might, with

their friends, have pulled themselves ashore, they were not allowed an

oar to do so--they were not in a situation to make an effort to save

themselves.

In the face of these deeply important considerations, can it be fairly

said that the colonies have no interest in imperial legislation, and

that there are no interests for imperial legislation to guard in the

colonies? Palpably to all the world, the States have been making

gigantic strides in prosperity, while the colonies have been standing

still. Yet in the British House of Commons, whenever the question of

the colonies has been mooted, has it not been with the view to consider

how the colonies could be made to consume more English manufactures,

rather than how they should prosper by manufactures of their own? Who

has urged the question there, that instead of England's perpetually

sending out goods, and draining the colonies of all the fruits of their

labour, England should send out people to make goods, who in making

them would make the country? Yet this is the root of the depression and

the poverty of the Canadas. And who with this vast country's resources

before him--with its ways and means of making millions independent, and

with the vast facilities for the investment of capital it afforded and

affords--can say that no interests could spring up in it of consequence

to the legislation of England?

It is true that the colonies have had their own parliaments; and it

has been imagined that these parliaments encompassed the whole of

their interests. But when did the colonial legislatures decide that

the colonies should not make a hob-nail for themselves? Yet the want

of making the hob-nails has been the ruin of their prosperity. It is

estimated that the colonies lose upwards of two hundred thousand pounds

a year by the loss of protection: it is but too well known how deeply

this loss has affected them. Yet whose legislation and policy educated

them literally to feel this loss? whose interests were consulted in

giving the protection, and taking it away again, that has been the

cause of all the evil? It was England's. The colonies have been allowed

by their legislatures to shake the leaves of their interests; imperial

legislation has always assailed the trunk. But this is not all;

colonial interests have been, unheard and unheeded, sacrificed to other

interests in England. The destiny of the colonies, without question and

without redress, has been placed in the hands of men who have made a

convenience of their interests, and an argument of their misfortunes,

brought about by these men themselves. Nor could, nor ever can,

whatever may be imagined to the contrary, the connexion of the colonies

be preserved with England, without her policy and her legislation

vitally affecting them. For they must be either English or American;

they must be, as they ever have been, if the connexion is maintained,

made subservient to the interests of England, or their interests must

be identified with hers: and if their interests are identical, their

legislation should be identical also. It is impossible that the flag of

England can long wave over what is all American. If the colonies are to

be wholly independent in their interests of England, it is in the very

nature of things, that their measures and their policy may become, not

only what England might not like, but what might be an actual injury

to her; and what might owe its very success, like much of the policy

of America, to its being detrimental to her interests. And it is as

unnatural as it is absurd to suppose, that England would or could, for

any length of time, extend her protection over a people whose interests

and whose policy might be pulling against her own, whose success might

be marked by her injury, and whose prosperity might increase at the

expense of her adversity.

But, apart from the abstract right of the colonies being represented

where they are, and, we insist, must continue to be, so deeply

concerned, it is time the present humiliating system of understanding

their views or feelings in the English parliament should come to an

end. Upon a vitally important question to them--upon one of these

things that only come up once in a century, or in a people's whole

history--take the following, as an example of the way in which their

opinions and their interests were regarded:--

"DISHONESTY OF PUBLIC MEN. (_From the London Post._)--Mr

Labouchere wished to show that Canada chafed under the

restrictions of the Navigation Laws, and that they would be

satisfied with 'the new commercial principle,' provided the

Navigation Laws were repealed. For this purpose the minister

took a course which he would no more have thought of taking

in the affairs of private life, than he would have thought of

taking purses on the highway. The minister quoted the statement

of three respectable gentlemen at Montreal, which coincided

with his views; and he did not let fall one word from which

the house could have inferred that the opinions thus alluded

to, were not the general mercantile opinions of Montreal. Now,

the minister could scarcely be ignorant that this question

about free trade, and the alteration of the Navigation Laws,

has been the subject of very earnest discussion in Montreal;

and he cannot but have known that Mr Young and Mr Holmes,

however respectable in their position, and influential in their

business, are the leaders of a small minority of the body

to which they belong. Mr Labouchere read a statement to the

House of Commons, which he had the confidence to call 'a proof

irrefragable' of the mercantile public opinion of Montreal

and Upper Canada, when the truth is--as he could not but have

known--that the opinions of that statement are the opinions

of a few persons utterly opposed to the general opinion of

the mercantile body. There was held in Montreal, on the 17th

of last month, the largest public in-door meeting that ever

assembled in that city, at which a string of resolutions was

passed by acclamation, in favour of the policy of protection,

and against the 'new commercial principle' of the government.

That meeting was addressed both by Mr Young and Mr Holmes.

They endeavoured to support the views held by Mr Labouchere,

but against the overwhelming sense of the meeting, from which

they retired in complete discomfiture. We are bound to suppose

that the minister who is head of the British Board of Trade

cannot but be aware of this; and yet he not only conceals it

altogether from the House of Commons, but he reads to that

house the statement of Mr Young and Mr Holmes, as 'proof

irrefragable' of the opinion of the colony of Canada, in favour

of the ministerial policy. The President of the Board of Trade

would as soon cut off his right hand as do anything of the

kind in the ordinary concerns of life; and yet so warped is he

by party politics--so desirous of obtaining a triumph for the

political bigotry which possessed him--that he represents the

mercantile interest of Montreal and Upper Canada as if it were

decidedly on his side, when, if he had told the whole story

fairly and honestly, he would have been obliged to admit that

exactly the contrary was the fact."

Now, if it be necessary for England to understand colonial feelings,

and opinions in order to legislate for them, is this a fair or

honourable way of treating them? Are the interests of these great

provinces to be thus made subservient to political trickery? Is

their destiny of so little importance to Great Britain, that it

should be even in the very nature of things for any man, or any

party, in England, to have it in his or their power thus to insult

their intellect as well as to violate their interests? And is this

circumstance not a counterpart of others that have from time to time

occurred, when Canadian subjects have been before parliament? If we

mistake not, upon another vitally important question to them--the corn

laws--the petitions and the remonstrances even of their governor and

their legislature were, to enable misrepresentation and untruth to

have its influence in a debate, kept back and concealed. A party's

interests in England were at stake; the colonies were sacrificed. Now,

can it be reasonably urged, that the allowing these colonies to speak

for themselves, and to be understood for themselves, in that place and

before that people who literally hold their destiny in their hands,

would be pregnant with more danger to England than this dishonourable

system is to both her and to them? Would it not be better to have

them constitutionally heard than surreptitiously represented? Is it

necessary to the understanding of the wants and wishes of the colonies,

and to the good government of them, that tricking and dishonesty should

triumph over truth and principle, and that the legislative boons which

reach them should be filtered through falsehood and deception? It will

be in the recollection of all who have read the debate in the House

of Lords upon the Navigation Laws, how Lord Stanley exposed these

same Messrs Holmes and Young, mentioned by Mr Labouchere, but who,

on this occasion, in the Lords, were joined with a Mr Knapp. It was

shown by his lordship that these eminent commercial men (who seem to

be the standing correspondents of the present ministry,) wrote what is

called in America a _bunkum_ letter to Earl Grey, to be used in the

House of Lords, making a grand flourish of their loyalty, and a great

case out in favour of the colonial secretary's side of the question.

But it was unfortunately, or rather fortunately, discovered, that

these eminent individuals had been, at the very same time, writing to

their commercial correspondents in London to shape their business for

an early annexation of the colonies to the United States! Yet it is

upon such eminent testimony as this that imperial legislation for the

colonies is founded. This is the way England comes to a sufficient

understanding of a people's interests, to shape a policy which may

change their whole political existence.

But, in addition to these reasons why the colonies themselves should be

represented in England, there may be reasons why England herself might

wish the same thing. May it not be possible, nay, is it not the fact,

that a vast amount of trouble, vexation, and expense might be avoided

by it? How many commissioners sent out to find out difficulties and

to redress grievances,--how many investigations before parliamentary

committees,--how many debates in parliament,--how many expenses of

military operations, might have been avoided, had these colonies been

in a situation from time to time to have explained their own affairs,

and to have allowed their petty squabbles of race and of faction to

have escaped in the safety-valves of imperial legislation? In 1827, it

cost England the time and expense incident to a parliamentary report,

upon the civil government of Lower Canada alone, which extends over

nearly five hundred pages octavo. And this was irrespective, of course,

of the questions and debates which led to it, besides all that grew

out of it. Next came the debates upon the causes of the failure of

the remedies proposed in the report--for the report itself turned out

to be like throwing a little water on a large fire--it only served

to increase the blaze. Then came Lord Gosford, with extensive powers

to settle all difficulties, and, it was hoped, with a large capacity

for understanding them. But he, whatever else he did, succeeded to

admiration in bringing matters to a head; or, being an Irishman,

perhaps he thought he would make things go by contraries--for he came

out to pacify all parties, and he managed to leave them all fighting.

Next came the debates upon, and the cost of, the rebellion, and then

rose the bright star of Canadian hope and prosperity; for the Earl of

Durham was deputed, with a large collection of wisdom, and a pretty

good sprinkling of other commodity as well, to settle the whole

business. But, in sooth, these Canadians must be a sad set, for he

procured them responsible government, and this seems to have set them

clean into the fire.

Now, although it may be true that the colonies might have had but few

interests at first to engage the attention of imperial legislation, yet

it would have been far better to have educated them to understand that

legislation, and to have appreciated England's true greatness through

her institutions--and at the same time, to have England taught, by

practical association and connexion with them, their real worth--than

to have had English legislation largely and perpetually wasted upon

colonial broils, and the colonies as perpetually dissatisfied with

English legislation. The truth is, their system of international

legislation only made the two countries known to each other by means

of their difficulties. The colonies were never taught to look to the

proceedings of the imperial parliament, unless when there was some

broil to settle, or some imperial question to be decided, that was

linked with colonial ruin, and in the decision of which the colonies

had the interesting part to play of looking on. Nor has England ever

thought of, or regarded the colonies, except to hand them over bodily

to some subordinate in the colonial office--unless when they were

forced upon her attention by her pride being likely to be wounded by

her losing them, or by some other equally disagreeable consideration.

The legislative intercourse between them has ever been of the worst

possible kind. Instead of intending to teach the people of England

to respect, to rely upon, and to appreciate the real worth of the

colonies, it has taught them to underrate, to distrust, and to avoid

them. Instead of imperial legislation's forming the character of the

people, as it has formed the character of the people of England, and

giving them principles to cling to, and to hope upon, it has directly

tended to concentrate their attention upon America, and to alienate

their feelings from England.

But it is not alone in the passing of laws, or in the arrangements

of commerce, or the harmonising and combining of interests, that the

colonies would be benefited by imperial representation. They would be

benefited a thousand times more by the intercourse it would occasion

between the two countries. The colonies would then be taught to regard

England as their home. They would read the debates of her parliament as

their own debates; they would feel an interest in her greatness, in her

struggles, and in her achievements, because they would participate in

their accomplishment. The speeches of English statesmen--the literature

of England--her institutions and her history, would then be studied,

understood, and appreciated by them; and instead of the colonies

belonging to the greatest empire in the world, and being the most

insignificant in legislation, they would rise to the glory and dignity

of that empire of which they formed a part--sharing in its intellectual

greatness, its rewards, and the respect that is due to it from the

world. Every person, too, who represented the colonies in England,

would not simply be the representatives of their public policy, or

national interests--he would also represent their vast resources, their

thousand openings for the profitable investment of capital, which the

people of England might benefit by as much as the colonies. The public

improvements now abandoned in the colonies for want of capital to carry

them on, and for want of sufficient confidence in their government on

the part of capitalists, to invest their money in them, would then

become, as similar improvements are in the States, a wide field for

English enterprise to enrich itself in, and for English poverty to

shake off its misery by. If the resources of the colonies--if their

means of making rich, and being enriched, were understood and taken

advantage of--if international legislation, common interests, and a

common destiny, could make the colonies stand upon the same footing to

England as England does to herself, God only call tell the vast amount

of human comfort, independence, and happiness, that might result from

the consummation.

But how can these advantages accrue to England, or to the colonies, as

long as it is understood that, the moment a man plants his foot upon

a colony, that moment he yields up the fee-simple of his forefathers'

institutions--that moment he takes, as it were, a lease of them,

conditioned to hold them by chance, and to regard them as a matter of

temporary convenience and necessity. And who that has observed the

tone of public feeling in England for years, or the spirit of the

debates in her parliament, can deny that this is the case?--who that

now lives in the colonies can deny it? And with such an understanding

as this, and with all education perpetually going on in colonial

legislatures, weaning the feelings and separating the interests of the

colonies from the mother country, how can it be expected that that

interest in England necessary to all true loyalty, and that knowledge

and appreciation of her institutions necessary to all enlightened or

patriotic attachment, can take root, or subsist for any length of time

in the colonies? If the colonies, in truth, are to be made, or to be

kept British, in anything else than in name--if even in name they can

long be kept so--it must be by the infusion of the essential elements

of British character and British principle into them, by means of

British legislation. If they are to be part and parcel of the great

oak, the grafts must be nourished by the same sap that supports the

tree itself. The little boat that is launched on the great sea to shift

for itself, must soon be separated from the great ship. The colonies,

denied all practical participation in the true greatness of England,

and having with them, by virtue of their very name as colonies, the

prestige of instability and insecurity, must, in the very nature of

things, be avoided by all who, though they would be glad to trust the

great ship, cannot rely upon one of its frail boats. The great wings

of England's legislation must be made to cover the North American

colonies, and to warm them into a British existence; or they will be

doomed to stray and to wander, and to be disrespected and uncared for,

until inevitable destiny at last forces them under the wings of another.

Franklin, the profoundest thinker of the many great men connected with

the American Revolution, thus wrote upon this subject:--

"The time has been when the colonies might have been pleased

with imperial representation; they are now indifferent about

it; and if it is much longer delayed, they will refuse it. But

the pride of the English people cannot bear the thought of it,

and therefore it will be delayed. Every man in England seems to

consider himself as a piece of a sovereign over America--seems

to jostle himself into the throne with the King, and talks of

_our subjects in the colonies_. The parliament cannot well and

wisely make laws suited to the colonies, without being properly

and truly informed of their circumstances, ability, temper, &c.

This cannot be without representatives from the colonies; yet

the parliament of England is fond of exercising this power, and

averse to the only means of acquiring the necessary knowledge

for exercising it; which is desiring to be _omnipotent_ without

being _omniscient_.... There remains among the colonists so

much respect, veneration, and affection for Britain, that, if

cultivated prudently, with a kind usage, and tenderness for

their privileges, they might be easily governed by England

still for ages, without force, or any considerable expense. But

I do not see there a sufficient quantity of the wisdom that is

necessary to produce such a conduct, and I lament the want of

it."--_Letter to Lord Kames._

But it is most strange, that while England's policy, and the spirit

of her legislation, have for some years past clearly indicated to

the world, that she expected and seemed disposed to pave the way

for a separation between herself and her colonies, her conduct in

other respects should be so opposed to her views in this. For while

she was foreshadowing in her legislature the independence of her

colonies, she was building, at a heavy expense, garrisons in them

to support her power for all time to come. Within the ten years

last past, garrison quarters, upon a large scale, have been built

at Toronto; and large sums have been laid out upon every fort and

place of defence in the colonies. Surely this must have been done

with some other view than making safe and convenient places for the

stars and stripes to wave on in a few years! Yet when we come to

look back upon England's legislation for the same period, and upon

the spirit evoked by the debates in her parliament, it would really

seem, if she had any rational design in these expenditures at all,

that she must have intended them for the express benefit of her once

rebellious son Jonathan. England, by these defences, would seem to

say to the colonists--"Look there, my lads, and see the emblems of

your protection, and of British rule in America for ever." By her

legislation and free trade policy, she has unequivocally told them,

"that she must buy her bread where she pleases; and they may find a

government where they please." With one hand she has taken her colonies

by the shoulder, and told them they must behave themselves: with the

other, she has shaken hands with them, and told them they may kick up

their heels as they please for all she cares.

But there is a question, upon the satisfactory answering of which rests

the whole matter of whether the colonies can, or cannot, continue

connected with Great Britain. And that question is, can they prosper in

proportion to their abilities to prosper, by that connexion?

We have already partially answered it by showing the benefit that would

inevitably accrue to the colonies from their being represented in the

imperial parliament--by their whole property and worth being, by this

means, placed in the market of the world side by side with the property

and worth of England herself; and by England's capital partially, if

not to all intents and purposes, flowing into the colonies upon the

same footing that it flows through England--_i.e._, upon the principle

of advantageous investment. But we shall prove that they can and should

prosper, to the fullest extent of their capabilities, in connexion with

Britain, in another way.

It is admitted, on all hands, that were their connexion with England

broken off, and were the colonies to become, as it is certain they

would, several States of the American Union, they would prosper, in

proportion to their capabilities, equally with any of the northern

states having no greater advantages in soil or resources. It is

thought, and we believe with truth, that the public improvements which

now lie dormant for want of capital to carry them on, or for want of

sufficient knowledge of, or confidence in, the colonies from without,

to induce the necessary capital to be advanced for them, would be

completed, if the colonies were joined to the States. It is thought,

too, and with equal propriety, that Lower Canada, whose population is

singularly well fitted to prosper and be benefited by manufactures,

would, were it a State, be directed in that course most conducive to

its prosperity. And it is thought--likewise correctly--that the great

resources of Upper Canada, were that province too a State, would

become greatly more available than they now are: its population would

increase; its cities and towns enlarge; and every man having an acre

of land, or a lot in a town in it, would become much better off than

he is at present. This, if the States remain united as they have been,

and prosper as they have done, might be all strictly true. But why is

it that the colonies believe this, and that the States are also of

the same opinion? It is because the colonies know what the Americans

are, and the Americans know what the colonies are capable of. They

understand each other, and they know how they could work together for

good.

But what means would the Americans employ to develop the undeveloped

resources of the colonies, and to secure wealth to themselves, while

they brought prosperity to them? They would simply employ their capital

in them; and they know that it could, and they would see that it

should, be so employed as to secure these results.

But let us now inquire,--Is it impossible to employ the capital of

England in these colonies, so as to effect the same thing? If American

enterprise and skill could cause wealth to spring up in Lower Canada,

and could enrich itself by doing so, is it impossible for English

enterprise and skill to do likewise? If American capitalists could,

beyond any manner of question, accumulate wealth for themselves, and

vastly benefit the Canadas, by constructing railroads through them,

or rather by continuing their own, is it out of the power of English

capitalists to be enriched by the same process? If the Canadas, as we

have said, believe the States can infuse prosperity into them, because

they see the States understand them, and know what they are capable

of, is it impossible for England to understand them also, and to take

advantage of their worth? But then, it will be answered, there is the

difficulty of colonial government. Who will invest his capital for

a period of fifteen or twenty years, where he may be paid off by a

revolution--when, as Moore said of the old colonies--

"England's debtors might be changed to England's foes?"

But suppose the stability of England's own government were imparted

to the colonies, suppose the permanency and the interests of England

became effectually and for ever identified with them--what then? That

there is no reason under heaven left why they should not prosper, to

the fullest extent of their ability to prosper, and that England might

not be benefited by them in proportion.

But even this is but a partial view of the case; for the Americans

would actually borrow the money in England that they would invest in

the colonies, and yet enrich themselves by doing so. The colonies, in

truth--joined to the States--would prosper by diluted benefits, the

Americans reaping all the advantages of the dilution. Connected with

Great Britain--did Britain confide in them as she might, and understand

them as she should, and were they in a situation to inspire that

confidence, and to occasion that understanding--they must inevitably

reap, in many respects, double the benefits they would enjoy with the

States.

_But the States would benefit the colonies all they could. Will

England?_

The scheme of imperial representation for the North American

colonies may be, and doubtless is, open to many objections; and many

difficulties would have to be got over before it could be accomplished.

The first, if not the only great difficulty, is--Would the colonies

bear the burden of taxation, and the responsibility of being part and

parcel of the British empire, for better or for worse, for all time to

come? And could they, if they would?

In considering these questions, it is but fair to view them, not

only in regard to the responsibilities the system we propose would

entail, but also in regard to the responsibilities they would and must

incur by any other system they might adopt. For this may be taken for

granted--they must soon become all American, or all English. They must

enjoy English credit and English permanency, or they must have some

other. A great country, with an industrious, enterprising people,

cannot long remain without credit, without prosperity, and without

either the use or the hope of capital. The Canadas are now in this

situation.

If, then, the colonies should become independent, and it were possible

for them to continue so, they would have to pay for their own

protection. And if they became a republic, they would have to take

their stand with the other powers of the world, and bear the expense

of doing so. If, on the other hand, they were taken into the American

Union, they would have to contribute, in addition to the cost of

their own local or state governments, to the support of the general

government of the whole Union; they would have, too, to contribute

to the forming a navy for the States, such as England has now got;

and they would be obliged to contribute, too, for the construction of

military defences for America, which England is pretty well supplied

with. They would have, in short, to expend upon America a great deal

of what England, in three or four centuries, has been expending upon

herself as a nation.

It may also be fairly presumed, that, with interests every day

becoming more independent of England; with a system of government

which leaves England nothing in America but a name--or, as Lord Elgin

says, a "dignified neutrality," and which really means a dignified

nothingness--with a system of government such as this, every sensible

man must foresee that England will soon get tired of paying largely for

the support of her dignified nothingness in America; that she will--as

indeed she has already done--inquire what right or occasion she has for

protecting colonies from their enemies from without, or, what is much

more serious to her, from themselves within, when she has ceased to

have a single interest in commerce with them; and when she must see--if

the present system be kept up much longer--that every day must separate

her still more widely from them in feeling, and in all the essential

principles that bind a people to each other, or a colony to a mother

country?

In view, therefore, of all these considerations, taken separately or

together, it is but reasonable to suppose that the colonies may soon

be called upon to pay for their own protection from their enemies from

without, or for their own squabbles within, if they must indulge in

such expensive amusements. And the question then arises--Would their

being practically identified with the British empire, participating

in all its greatness, and enjoying the prestige of its stability and

its credit, entail upon them greater cost or responsibility, than they

would have to incur to maintain a puny, helpless independence, or in

becoming states of the American Union?

It is out of our power to make the calculation, as it is impossible

for us to know upon what terms England would agree to the colonies

participating in her government as we propose. It is likewise

impossible for us to tell how much might be saved by removing the

tea-pots, so pregnant with tempests, in the shape of colonial

legislatures; in removing governors to preserve "_dignified

neutrality_;" and courts to keep up the shadow of England's government

in America, the substance having grown "beautifully less" of late

years. But after much thought and investigation, by both ourselves and

others better accustomed to such matters than we are, we have come to

the conclusion--that imperial representation might cost the colonies

nothing more, if as much, as any other change they would have to

make; that England would gain immensely by the change; and that the

proceeds of the vast tracts of country lying north and north-west of

the Canadas, their fisheries, their mineral resources, and their other

unused and unappropriated wealth in timber and other things, might be

converted into a sinking fund by the united governments of England and

her colonies, that, in its effects, might astonish both England and

the world. We can but throw out the suggestion; it is for others to

consider it.

But if the connexion of the colonies with Great Britain is to be made

a mere matter of time and convenience, as to when it shall end, or

how, then it is of little use in hoping much, or thinking deeply,

upon what may be pregnant with such vast consequences to England's

race in America, and even America's own race in it. A time, it would

seem, which has taught Britons to know what their institutions are

worth, must cost them in America these institutions. A time, which has

exhibited, during the principal settlement of the Canadas, the fall

alike of the fabric of the political enthusiast and the fortress of the

despot in Europe, must cost, it seems, the colonies that government

which bore freedom aloft through the wild storm. England has stood upon

a rock, and, after pointing out to her colonies the wreck of human

institutions, she is about to push them off to share the fate she has

taught them so much to dread. If England has the heart to do it, it

must be done. Three millions of people will cease to say "God save the

Queen!" The sun will set upon her empire. Full many an honest tear will

be shed at hearing that it must. Full many a heart will be torn from

what it would but too gladly die for. But the days of chivalry are

gone; the days of memory are fled. The selfish, mercenary nineteenth

century will be marked with the loss of the best jewel in Britain's

crown.

HAMILTON, CANADA WEST,

_August 1849_.

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH, OR THE GLORY OF MOTION.

Some twenty or more years before I matriculated at Oxford, Mr Palmer,

M.P. for Bath, had accomplished two things, very hard to do on our

little planet, the Earth, however cheap they may happen to be held by

the eccentric people in comets: he had invented mail-coaches, and he

had married the daughter[17] of a duke. He was, therefore, just twice

as great a man as Galileo, who certainly invented (or _discovered_) the

satellites of Jupiter, those very next things extant to mail-coaches

in the two capital points of speed and keeping time, but who did _not_

marry the daughter of a duke.

These mail-coaches, as organised by Mr Palmer, are entitled to a

circumstantial notice from myself--having had so large a share in

developing the anarchies of my subsequent dreams, an agency which they

accomplished, first, through velocity, at that time unprecedented;

they first revealed the glory of motion: suggesting, at the same time,

an under-sense, not unpleasurable, of possible though indefinite

danger; secondly, through grand effects for the eye between lamp-light

and the darkness upon solitary roads; thirdly, through animal beauty

and power so often displayed in the class of horses selected for

this mail service; fourthly, through the conscious presence of a

central intellect, that, in the midst of vast distances,[18] of

storms, of darkness, of night, overruled all obstacles into one

steady co-operation in a national result. To my own feeling, this

Post-office service recalled some mighty orchestra, where a thousand

instruments, all disregarding each other, and so far in danger of

discord, yet all obedient as slaves to the supreme _baton_ of some

great leader, terminate in a perfection of harmony like that of

heart, veins, and arteries, in a healthy animal organisation. But,

finally, that particular element in this whole combination which

most impressed myself, and through which it is that to this hour Mr

Palmer's mail-coach system tyrannises by terror and terrific beauty

over my dreams, lay in the awful political mission which at that time

it fulfilled. The mail-coaches it was that distributed over the face

of the land, like the opening of apocalyptic vials, the heart-shaking

news of Trafalgar, of Salamanca, of Vittoria, of Waterloo. These were

the harvests that, in the grandeur of their reaping, redeemed the

tears and blood in which they had been sown. Neither was the meanest

peasant so much below the grandeur and the sorrow of the times as to

confound these battles, which were gradually moulding the destinies of

Christendom, with the vulgar conflicts of ordinary warfare, which are

oftentimes but gladiatorial trials of national prowess. The victories

of England in this stupendous contest rose of themselves as natural

_Te Deums_ to heaven; and it was felt by the thoughtful that such

victories, at such a crisis of general prostration, were not more

beneficial to ourselves than finally to France, and to the nations of

western and central Europe, through whose pusillanimity it was that the

French domination had prospered.

The mail-coach, as the national organ for publishing these mighty

events, became itself a spiritualised and glorified object to an

impassioned heart; and naturally, in the Oxford of that day, all hearts

were awakened. There were, perhaps, of us gownsmen, two thousand

_resident_[19] in Oxford, and dispersed through five-and-twenty

colleges. In some of these the custom permitted the student to keep

what are called "short terms;" that is, the four terms of Michaelmas,

Lent, Easter, and Act, were kept severally by a residence, in

the aggregate, of ninety-one days, or thirteen weeks. Under this

interrupted residence, accordingly, it was possible that a student

might have a reason for going down to his home four times in the year.

This made eight journeys to and fro. And as these homes lay dispersed

through all the shires of the island, and most of us disdained all

coaches except his majesty's mail, no city out of London could pretend

to so extensive a connexion with Mr Palmer's establishment as Oxford.

Naturally, therefore, it became a point of some interest with us, whose

journeys revolved every six weeks on an average, to look a little into

the executive details of the system. With some of these Mr Palmer had

no concern; they rested upon bye-laws not unreasonable, enacted by

posting-houses for their own benefit, and upon others equally stern,

enacted by the inside passengers for the illustration of their own

exclusiveness. These last were of a nature to rouse our scorn, from

which the transition was not _very long_ to mutiny. Up to this time,

it had been the fixed assumption of the four inside people, (as an old

tradition of all public carriages from the reign of Charles II.,) that

they, the illustrious quaternion, constituted a porcelain variety of

the human race, whose dignity would have been compromised by exchanging

one word of civility with the three miserable delf ware outsides. Even

to have kicked an outsider might have been held to attaint the foot

concerned in that operation; so that, perhaps, it would have required

an act of parliament to restore its purity of blood. What words,

then, could express the horror, and the sense of treason, in that

case, which _had_ happened, where all three outsides, the trinity of

Pariahs, made a vain attempt to sit down at the same breakfast-table

or dinner-table with the consecrated four? I myself witnessed such an

attempt; and on that occasion a benevolent old gentleman endeavoured to

soothe his three holy associates, by suggesting that, if the outsides

were indicted for this criminal attempt at the next assizes, the court

would regard it as a case of lunacy (or _delirium tremens_) rather

than of treason. England owes much of her grandeur to the depth of the

aristocratic element in her social composition. I am not the man to

laugh at it. But sometimes it expressed itself in extravagant shapes.

The course taken with the infatuated outsiders, in the particular

attempt which I have noticed, was, that the waiter, beckoning them away

from the privileged _salle-à-manger_, sang out, "This way, my good

men;" and then enticed them away off to the kitchen. But that plan had

not always answered. Sometimes, though very rarely, cases occurred

where the intruders, being stronger than usual, or more vicious than

usual, resolutely refused to move, and so far carried their point, as

to have a separate table arranged for themselves in a corner of the

room. Yet, if an Indian screen could be found ample enough to plant

them out from the very eyes of the high table, or _dais_, it then

became possible to assume as a fiction of law--that the three delf

fellows, after all, were not present. They could be ignored by the

porcelain men, under the maxim, that objects not appearing, and not

existing, are governed by the same logical construction.

Such now being, at that time, the usages of mail-coaches, what was to

be done by us of young Oxford? We, the most aristocratic of people,

who were addicted to the practice of looking down superciliously even

upon the insides themselves as often very suspicious characters,

were we voluntarily to court indignities? If our dress and bearing

sheltered us, generally, from the suspicion of being "raff," (the name

at that period for "snobs,"[20]) we really _were_ such constructively,

by the place we assumed. If we did not submit to the deep shadow of

eclipse, we entered at least the skirts of its penumbra. And the

analogy of theatres was urged against us, where no man can complain

of the annoyances incident to the pit or gallery, having his instant

remedy in paying the higher price of the boxes. But the soundness of

this analogy we disputed. In the case of the theatre, it cannot be

pretended that the inferior situations have any separate attractions,

unless the pit suits the purpose of the dramatic reporter. But the

reporter or critic is a rarity. For most people, the sole benefit is

in the price. Whereas, on the contrary, the outside of the mail had

its own incommunicable advantages. These we could not forego. The

higher price we should willingly have paid, but _that_ was connected

with the condition of riding inside, which was insufferable. The air,

the freedom of prospect, the proximity to the horses, the elevation

of seat--these were what we desired; but, above all, the certain

anticipation of purchasing occasional opportunities of driving.

Under coercion of this great practical difficulty, we instituted a

searching inquiry into the true quality and valuation of the different

apartments about the mail. We conducted this inquiry on metaphysical

principles; and it was ascertained satisfactorily, that the roof of

the coach, which some had affected to call the attics, and some the

garrets, was really the drawing-room, and the box was the chief ottoman

or sofa in that drawing-room; whilst it appeared that the inside,

which had been traditionally regarded as the only room tenantable by

gentlemen, was, in fact, the coal-cellar in disguise.

Great wits jump. The very same idea had not long before struck the

celestial intellect of China. Amongst the presents carried out by

our first embassy to that country was a state-coach. It had been

specially selected as a personal gift by George III.; but the exact

mode of using it was a mystery to Pekin. The ambassador, indeed, (Lord

Macartney) had made some dim and imperfect explanations upon the point;

but as his excellency communicated these in a diplomatic whisper, at

the very moment of his departure, the celestial mind was very feebly

illuminated, and it became necessary to call a cabinet council on the

grand state question--"Where was the emperor to sit?" The hammer-cloth

happened to be unusually gorgeous; and partly on that consideration,

but partly also because the box offered the most elevated seat, and

undeniably went foremost, it was resolved by acclamation that the

box was the imperial place, and, _for the scoundrel who drove, he

might sit where he could find a perch_. The horses, therefore, being

harnessed, under a flourish of music and a salute of guns, solemnly

his imperial majesty ascended his new English throne, having the

first lord of the treasury on his right hand, and the chief jester on

his left. Pekin gloried in the spectacle; and in the whole flowery

people, constructively present by representation, there was but one

discontented person, which was the coachman. This mutinous individual,

looking as blackhearted as he really was, audaciously shouted--"Where

am _I_ to sit?" But the privy council, incensed by his disloyalty,

unanimously opened the door, and kicked him into the inside. He had all

the inside places to himself; but such is the rapacity of ambition,

that he was still dissatisfied. "I say," he cried out in an extempore

petition, addressed to the emperor through a window, "how am I to catch

hold of the reins?"--"Any how," was the answer; "don't trouble _me_,

man, in my glory; through the windows, through the key-holes--how

you please." Finally, this contumacious coachman lengthened the

checkstrings into a sort of jury-reins, communicating with the horses;

with these he drove as steadily as may be supposed. The emperor

returned after the briefest of circuits: he descended in great pomp

from his throne, with the severest resolution never to remount it. A

public thanksgiving was ordered for his majesty's prosperous escape

from the disease of a broken neck; and the state-coach was dedicated

for ever as a votive offering to the God Fo, Fo--whom the learned more

accurately call Fi, Fi.

A revolution of this same Chinese character did young Oxford of that

era effect in the constitution of mail-coach society. It was a perfect

French revolution; and we had good reason to say, _Ca ira_. In fact,

it soon became _too_ popular. The "public," a well known character,

particularly disagreeable, though slightly respectable, and notorious

for affecting the chief seats in synagogues, had at first loudly

opposed this revolution; but when all opposition showed itself to be

ineffectual, our disagreeable friend went into it with headlong zeal.

At first it was a sort of race between us; and, as the public is

usually above 30, (say generally from 30 to 50 years old,) naturally

we of young Oxford, that averaged about 20, had the advantage. Then

the public took to bribing, giving fees to horse-keepers, &c., who

hired out their persons as warming-pans on the box-seat. _That_, you

know, was shocking to our moral sensibilities. Come to bribery, we

observed, and there is an end to all morality, Aristotle's, Cicero's,

or anybody's. And, besides, of what use was it? For _we_ bribed also.

And as our bribes to those of the public being demonstrated out of

Euclid to be as five shillings to sixpence, here again young Oxford

had the advantage. But the contest was ruinous to the principles

of the stable-establishment about the mails. The whole corporation

was constantly bribed, rebribed, and often sur-rebribed; so that a

horse-keeper, ostler, or helper, was held by the philosophical at that

time to be the most corrupt character in the nation.

There was an impression upon the public mind, natural enough from the

continually augmenting velocity of the mail, but quite erroneous,

that an outside seat on this class of carriages was a post of danger.

On the contrary, I maintained that, if a man had become nervous from

some gipsy prediction in his childhood, allocating to a particular

moon now approaching some unknown danger, and he should inquire

earnestly,--"Whither can I go for shelter? Is a prison the safest

retreat? Or a lunatic, hospital? Or the British Museum?" I should

have replied--"Oh, no; I'll tell you what to do. Take lodgings for

the next forty days on the box of his majesty's mail. Nobody can

touch you there. If it is by bills at ninety days after date that you

are made unhappy--if noters and protesters are the sort of wretches

whose astrological shadows darken the house of life--then note you

what I vehemently protest, viz., that no matter though the sheriff

in every county should be running after you with his _posse_, touch

a hair of your head he cannot whilst you keep house, and have your

legal domicile, on the box of the mail. It's felony to stop the mail;

even the sheriff cannot do that. And an _extra_ (no great matter if

it grazes the sheriff) touch of the whip to the leaders at any time

guarantees your safety." In fact, a bed-room in a quiet house seems a

safe enough retreat; yet it is liable to its own notorious nuisances,

to robbers by night, to rats, to fire. But the mail laughs at these

terrors. To robbers, the answer is packed up and ready for delivery

in the barrel of the guard's blunderbuss. Rats again! there _are_

none about mail-coaches, any more than snakes in Von Troil's Iceland;

except, indeed, now and then a parliamentary rat, who always hides

his shame in the "coal-cellar." And, as to fire, I never knew but

one in a mail-coach, which was in the Exeter mail, and caused by an

obstinate sailor bound to Devonport. Jack, making light of the law and

the lawgiver that had set their faces against his offence, insisted on

taking up a forbidden seat in the rear of the roof, from which he could

exchange his own yarns with those of the guard. No greater offence was

then known to mail-coaches; it was treason, it was _læsa majestas_, it

was by tendency arson; and the ashes of Jack's pipe, falling amongst

the straw of the hinder boot, containing the mail-bags, raised a

flame which (aided by the wind of our motion) threatened a revolution

in the republic of letters. But even this left the sanctity of the

box unviolated. In dignified repose, the coachman and myself sat on,

resting with benign composure upon our knowledge--that the fire would

have to burn its way through four inside passengers before it could

reach ourselves. With a quotation rather too trite, I remarked to the

coachman,--

----"Jam proximus ardet

Ucalegon."

But, recollecting that the Virgilian part of his education might

have been neglected, I interpreted so far as to say, that perhaps at

that moment the flames were catching hold of our worthy brother and

next-door neighbour Ucalegon. The coachman said nothing, but by his

faint sceptical smile he seemed to be thinking that he knew better; for

that in fact, Ucalegon, as it happened, was not in the way-bill.

No dignity is perfect which does not at some point ally itself with

the indeterminate and mysterious. The connexion of the mail with the

state and the executive government--a connexion obvious, but yet not

strictly defined--gave to the whole mail establishment a grandeur and

an official authority which did us service on the roads, and invested

us with seasonable terrors. But perhaps these terrors were not the

less impressive, because their exact legal limits were imperfectly

ascertained. Look at those turnpike gates; with what deferential hurry,

with what an obedient start, they fly open at our approach! Look at

that long line of carts and carters ahead, audaciously usurping the

very crest of the road: ah! traitors, they do not hear us as yet,

but as soon as the dreadful blast of our horn reaches them with the

proclamation of our approach, see with what frenzy of trepidation

they fly to their horses' heads, and deprecate our wrath by the

precipitation of their crane-neck quarterings. Treason they feel to

be their crime; each individual carter feels himself under the ban

of confiscation and attainder: his blood is attainted through six

generations, and nothing is wanting but the heads-man and his axe, the

block and the sawdust, to close up the vista of his horrors. What!

shall it be within benefit of clergy, to delay the king's message on

the highroad?--to interrupt the great respirations, ebb or flood, of

the national intercourse--to endanger the safety of tidings running

day and night between all nations and languages? Or can it be fancied,

amongst the weakest of men, that the bodies of the criminals will be

given up to their widows for Christian burial? Now, the doubts which

were raised as to our powers did more to wrap them in terror, by

wrapping them in uncertainty; than could have been effected by the

sharpest definitions of the law from the Quarter Sessions. We, on our

parts, (we, the collective mail, I mean,) did our utmost to exalt the

idea of our privileges by the insolence with which we wielded them.

Whether this insolence rested upon law that gave it a sanction, or

upon conscious power, haughtily dispensing with that sanction, equally

it spoke from a potential station; and the agent in each particular

insolence of the moment, was viewed reverentially, as one having

authority.

Sometimes after breakfast his majesty's mail would become frisky; and

in its difficult wheelings amongst the intricacies of early markets,

it would upset an apple-cart, a cart loaded with eggs, &c. Huge was

the affliction and dismay, awful was the smash, though, after all, I

believe the damage might be levied upon the hundred. I, as far as was

possible, endeavoured in such a case to represent the conscience and

moral sensibilities of the mail; and, when wildernesses of eggs were

lying poached under our horses' hoofs, then would I stretch forth my

hands in sorrow, saying (in words too celebrated in those days from

the false[21] echoes of Marengo)--"Ah! wherefore have we not time to

weep over you?" which was quite impossible, for in fact we had not even

time to laugh over them. Tied to post-office time, with an allowance

in some cases of fifty minutes for eleven miles, could the royal mail

pretend to undertake the offices of sympathy and condolence? Could it

be expected to provide tears for the accidents of the road? If even it

seemed to trample on humanity, it did so, I contended, in discharge of

its own more peremptory duties.

Upholding the morality of the mail, _à fortiori_ I upheld its rights,

I stretched to the uttermost its privilege of imperial precedency, and

astonished weak minds by the feudal powers which I hinted to be lurking

constructively in the charters of this proud establishment. Once I

remember being on the box of the Holyhead mail, between Shrewsbury

and Oswestry, when a tawdry thing from Birmingham, some _Tallyho_ or

_Highflier_, all flaunting with green and gold, came up alongside of

us. What a contrast to our royal simplicity of form and colour is this

plebeian wretch! The single ornament on our dark ground of chocolate

colour was the mighty shield of the imperial arms, but emblazoned in

proportions as modest as a signet-ring bears to a seal of office.

Even this was displayed only on a single pannel, whispering, rather

than proclaiming, our relations to the state; whilst the beast from

Birmingham had as much writing and painting on its sprawling flanks as

would have puzzled a decipherer from the tombs of Luxor. For some time

this Birmingham machine ran along by our side,--a piece of familiarity

that seemed to us sufficiently jacobinical. But all at once a movement

of the horses announced a desperate intention of leaving us behind.

"Do you see _that_?" I said to the coachman. "I see," was his short

answer. He was awake, yet he waited longer than seemed prudent; for the

horses of our audacious opponent had a disagreeable air of freshness

and power. But his motive was loyal; his wish was that the Birmingham

conceit should be full-blown before he froze it. When _that_ seemed

ripe, he unloosed, or, to speak by a stronger image, he sprang his

known resources, he slipped our royal horses like cheetahs, or hunting

leopards after the affrighted game. How they could retain such a

reserve of fiery power after the work they had accomplished, seemed

hard to explain. But on our side, besides the physical superiority,

was a tower of strength, namely, the king's name, "which they upon the

adverse faction wanted." Passing them without an effort, as it seemed,

we threw them into the rear with so lengthening an interval between us,

as proved in itself the bitterest mockery of their presumption; whilst

our guard blew back a shattering blast of triumph, that was really too

painfully full of derision.

I mention this little incident for its connexion with what followed.

A Welshman, sitting behind me, asked if I had not felt my heart burn

within me during the continuance of the race? I said--No; because we

were not racing with a mail, so that no glory could be gained. In fact,

it was sufficiently mortifying that such a Birmingham thing should dare

to challenge us. The Welshman replied, that he didn't see _that_; for

that a cat might look at a king, and a Brummagem coach might lawfully

race the Holyhead mail. "_Race_ us perhaps," I replied, "though even

_that_ has an air of sedition, but not _beat_ us. This would have

been treason; and for its own sake I am glad that the Tallyho was

disappointed." So dissatisfied did the Welshman seem with this opinion,

that at last I was obliged to tell him a very fine story from one of

our elder dramatists, viz.--that once, in some Oriental region, when

the prince of all the land, with his splendid court, were flying their

falcons, a hawk suddenly flew at a majestic eagle; and in defiance of

the eagle's prodigious advantages, in sight also of all the astonished

field-sportsmen, spectators, and followers, killed him on the spot.

The prince was struck with amazement at the unequal contest, and with

burning admiration for its unparalleled result. He commanded that the

hawk should be brought before him; caressed the bird with enthusiasm,

and ordered that, for the commemoration of his matchless courage, a

crown of gold should be solemnly placed on the hawk's head; but then

that, immediately after this coronation, the bird should be led off to

execution, as the most valiant indeed of traitors, but not the less

a traitor that had dared to rise in rebellion against his liege lord

the eagle. "Now," said I to the Welshman, "how painful it would have

been to you and me as men of refined feelings, that this poor brute,

the Tallyho, in the impossible case of a victory over us, should have

been crowned with jewellery, gold, with Birmingham ware, or paste

diamonds, and then led off to instant execution." The Welshman doubted

if that could be warranted by law. And when I hinted at the 10th of

Edward III. chap. 15, for regulating the precedency of coaches, as

being probably the statute relied on for the capital punishment of such

offences, he replied drily--That if the attempt to pass a mail was

really treasonable, it was a pity that the Tallyho appeared to have so

imperfect an acquaintance with law.

These were among the gaieties of my earliest and boyish acquaintance

with mails. But alike the gayest and the most terrific of my

experiences rose again after years of slumber, armed with preternatural

power to shake my dreaming sensibilities; sometimes, as in the slight

case of Miss Fanny on the Bath road, (which I will immediately

mention,) through some casual or capricious association with images

originally gay, yet opening at some stage of evolution into sudden

capacities of horror; sometimes through the more natural and fixed

alliances with the sense of power so various lodged in the mail system.

The modern modes of travelling cannot compare with the mail-coach

system in grandeur and power. They boast of more velocity, but not

however as a consciousness, but as a fact of our lifeless knowledge,

resting upon _alien_ evidence, as, for instance, because somebody

_says_ that we have gone fifty miles in the hour, or upon the evidence

of a result, as that actually we find ourselves in York four hours

after leaving London. Apart from such an assertion, or such a result,

I am little aware of the pace. But, seated on the old mail-coach, we

needed no evidence out of ourselves to indicate the velocity. On this

system the word was--_Non magna loquimur_, as upon railways, but _magna

vivimus_. The vital experience of the glad animal sensibilities made

doubts impossible on the question of our speed; we heard our speed, we

saw it, we felt it as a thrilling; and this speed was not the product

of blind insensate agencies, that had no sympathy to give, but was

incarnated in the fiery eyeballs of an animal, in his dilated nostril,

spasmodic muscles, and echoing hoofs. This speed was incarnated in the

_visible_ contagion amongst brutes of some impulse, that, radiating

into _their_ natures, had yet its centre and beginning in man. The

sensibility of the horse uttering itself in the maniac light of his

eye, might be the last vibration in such a movement; the glory of

Salamanca might be the first--but the intervening link that connected

them, that spread the earthquake of the battle into the eyeball of

the horse, was the heart of man--kindling in the rapture of the fiery

strife, and then propagating its own tumults by motions and gestures to

the sympathies, more or less dim, in his servant the horse.

But now, on the new system of travelling, iron tubes and boilers

have disconnected man's heart from the ministers of his locomotion.

Nile nor Trafalgar has power any more to raise an extra bubble in a

steam-kettle. The galvanic cycle is broken up for ever; man's imperial

nature no longer sends itself forward through the electric sensibility

of the horse; the inter-agencies are gone in the mode of communication

between the horse and his master, out of which grew so many aspects

of sublimity under accidents of mists that hid, or sudden blazes that

revealed, of mobs that agitated, or midnight solitudes that awed.

Tidings, fitted to convulse all nations, must henceforwards travel by

culinary process; and the trumpet that once announced from afar the

laurelled mail, heart-shaking, when heard screaming on the wind, and

advancing through the darkness to every village or solitary house on

its route, has now given way for ever to the pot-wallopings of the

boiler.

Thus have perished multiform openings for sublime effects, for

interesting personal communications, for revelations of impressive

faces that could not have offered themselves amongst the hurried and

fluctuating groups of a railway station. The gatherings of gazers

about a mail-coach had one centre, and acknowledged only one interest.

But the crowds attending at a railway station have as little unity as

running water, and own as many centres as there are separate carriages

in the train.

How else, for example, than as a constant watcher for the dawn, and for

the London mail that in summer months entered about dawn into the lawny

thickets of Marlborough Forest, couldst thou, sweet Fanny of the Bath

road, have become known to myself? Yet Fanny, as the loveliest young

woman for face and person that perhaps in my whole life I have beheld,

merited the station which even _her_ I could not willingly have spared;

yet (thirty-five years later) she holds in my dreams; and though, by

an accident of fanciful caprice, she brought along with her into those

dreams a troop of dreadful creatures, fabulous and not fabulous, that

were more abominable to a human heart than Fanny and the dawn were

delightful.

Miss Fanny of the Bath road, strictly speaking, lived at a mile's

distance from that road, but came so continually to meet the mail,

that I on my frequent transits rarely missed her, and naturally

connected her name with the great thoroughfare where I saw her; I do

not exactly know, but I believe with some burthen of commissions to

be executed in Bath, her own residence being probably the centre to

which these commissions gathered. The mail-coachman, who wore the

royal livery, being one amongst the privileged few,[22] happened to

be Fanny's grandfather. A good man he was, that loved his beautiful

granddaughter; and, loving her wisely, was vigilant over her deportment

in any case where young Oxford might happen to be concerned. Was I

then vain enough to imagine that I myself individually could fall

within the line of his terrors? Certainly not, as regarded any physical

pretensions that I could plead; for Fanny (as a chance passenger from

her own neighbourhood once told me) counted in her train a hundred and

ninety-nine professed admirers, if not open aspirants to her favour;

and probably not one of the whole brigade but excelled myself in

personal advantages.

Ulysses even, with the unfair advantage of his accursed bow, could

hardly have undertaken that amount of suitors. So the danger might

have seemed slight--only that woman is universally aristocratic: it is

amongst her nobilities of heart that she _is_ so. Now, the aristocratic

distinctions in my favour might easily with Miss Fanny have compensated

my physical deficiencies. Did I then make love to Fanny? Why, yes;

_mais oui donc_; as much love as one _can_ make whilst the mail is

changing horses, a process which ten years later did not occupy above

eighty seconds; but _then_, viz. about Waterloo, it occupied five times

eighty. Now, four hundred seconds offer a field quite ample enough for

whispering into a young woman's ear a great deal of truth; and (by

way of parenthesis) some trifle of falsehood. Grandpapa did right,

therefore, to watch me. And yet, as happens too often to the grandpapas

of earth, in a contest with the admirers of granddaughters, how

vainly would he have watched me had I meditated any evil whispers to

Fanny! She, it is my belief, would have protected herself against any

man's evil suggestions. But he, as the result showed, could not have

intercepted the opportunities for such suggestions. Yet he was still

active; he was still blooming. Blooming he was as Fanny herself.

"Say, all our praises why should lords--"

No, that's not the line:

"Say, all our roses why should girls engross?"

The coachman showed rosy blossoms on his face deeper even than his

granddaughter's,--_his_ being drawn from the ale-cask, Fanny's from

youth and innocence, and from the fountains of the dawn. But, in spite

of his blooming face, some infirmities he had; and one particularly,

(I am very sure, no _more_ than one,) in which he too much resembled

a crocodile. This lay in a monstrous inaptitude for turning round.

The crocodile, I presume, owes that inaptitude to the absurd _length_

of his back; but in our Grandpapa it arose rather from the absurd

_breadth_ of his back, combined, probably, with some growing stiffness

in his legs. Now upon this crocodile infirmity of his I planted an

easy opportunity for tendering my homage to Miss Fanny. In defiance

of all his honourable vigilance, no sooner had he presented to us his

mighty Jovian back, (what a field for displaying to mankind his royal

scarlet!) whilst inspecting professionally the buckles, the straps, and

the silver turrets of his harness, than I raised Miss Fanny's hand to

my lips, and, by the mixed tenderness and respectfulness of my manner,

caused her easily to understand how happy it would have made me to

rank upon her list as No. 10 or 12, in which case a few casualties

amongst her lovers (and observe--they _hanged_ liberally in those days)

might have promoted me speedily to the top of the tree; as, on the

other hand, with how much loyalty of submission I acquiesced in her

allotment, supposing that she had seen reason to plant me in the very

rearward of her favour, as No. 199+1. It must not be supposed that

I allowed any trace of jest, or even of playfulness, to mingle with

these expressions of my admiration; that would have been insulting to

her, and would have been false as regarded my own feelings. In fact,

the utter shadowiness of our relations to each other, even after

our meetings through seven or eight years had been very numerous,

but of necessity had been very brief, being entirely on mail-coach

allowance--timed, in reality, by the General Post-Office--and

watched by a crocodile belonging to the antepenultimate generation,

left it easy for me to do a thing which few people ever _can_ have

done--viz., to make love for seven years, at the same time to be as

sincere as ever creature was, and yet never to compromise myself by

overtures that might have been foolish as regarded my own interests,

or misleading as regarded hers. Most truly I loved this beautiful and

ingenuous girl; and had it not been for the Bath and Bristol mail,

heaven only knows what might have come of it. People talk of being

over head and ears in love--now, the mail was the cause that I sank

only over ears in love, which, you know, still left a trifle of brain

to overlook the whole conduct of the affair. I have mentioned the case

at all for the sake of a dreadful result from it in after years of

dreaming. But it seems, _ex abundanti_, to yield this moral--viz. that

as, in England, the idiot and the half-wit are held to be under the

guardianship of Chancery, so the man making love, who is often but a

variety of the same imbecile class, ought to be made a ward of the

General Post-Office, whose severe course of _timing_ and periodical

interruption might intercept many a foolish declaration, such as lays a

solid foundation for fifty years' repentance.

Ah, reader! when I look back upon those days, it seems to me that

all things change or perish. Even thunder and lightning, it pains me

to say, are not the thunder and lightning which I seem to remember

about the time of Waterloo. Roses, I fear, are degenerating, and,

without a Red revolution, must come to the dust. The Fannies of our

island--though this I say with reluctance--are not improving; and the

Bath road is notoriously superannuated. Mr Waterton tells me that the

crocodile does _not_ change--that a cayman, in fact, or an alligator,

is just as good for riding upon as he was in the time of the Pharaohs.

_That_ may be; but the reason is, that the crocodile does not live

fast--he is a slow coach. I believe it is generally understood amongst

naturalists, that the crocodile is a blockhead. It is my own impression

that the Pharaohs were also blockheads. Now, as the Pharaohs and

the crocodile domineered over Egyptian society, this accounts for a

singular mistake that prevailed on the Nile. The crocodile made the

ridiculous blunder of supposing man to be meant chiefly for his own

eating. Man, taking a different view of the subject, naturally met

that mistake by another; he viewed the crocodile as a thing sometimes

to worship, but always to run away from. And this continued until

Mr Waterton changed the relations between the animals. The mode of

escaping from the reptile he showed to be, not by running away, but

by leaping on its back, booted and spurred. The two animals had

misunderstood each other. The use of the crocodile has now been cleared

up--it is to be ridden; and the use of man is, that he may improve the

health of the crocodile by riding him a fox-hunting before breakfast.

And it is pretty certain that any crocodile, who has been regularly

hunted through the season, and is master of the weight he carries, will

take a six-barred gate now as well as ever he would have done in the

infancy of the Pyramids.

Perhaps, therefore, the crocodile does _not_ change, but all things

else _do_: even the shadow of the Pyramids grows less. And often

the restoration in vision of Fanny and the Bath road, makes me too

pathetically sensible of that truth. Out of the darkness, if I happen

to call up the image of Fanny from thirty-five years back, arises

suddenly a rose in June; or, if I think for an instant of the rose

in June, up rises the heavenly face of Fanny. One after the other,

like the antiphonies in a choral service, rises Fanny and the rose

in June, then back again the rose in June and Fanny. Then come both

together, as in a chorus; roses and Fannies, Fannies and roses, without

end--thick as blossoms in paradise. Then comes a venerable crocodile,

in a royal livery of scarlet and gold, or in a coat with sixteen

capes; and the crocodile is driving four-in-hand from the box of the

Bath mail. And suddenly we upon the mail are pulled up by a mighty

dial, sculptured with the hours, and with the dreadful legend of TOO

LATE. Then all at once we are arrived in Marlborough forest, amongst

the lovely households[23] of the roe-deer: these retire into the dewy

thickets; the thickets are rich with roses; the roses call up (as

ever) the sweet countenance of Fanny, who, being the granddaughter

of a crocodile, awakens a dreadful host of wild semi-legendary

animals--griffins, dragons, basilisks, sphinxes--till at length the

whole vision of fighting images crowds into one towering, armorial

shield, a vast emblazonry of human charities and human loveliness

that have perished, but quartered heraldically with unutterable

horrors of monstrous and demoniac natures; whilst over all rises, as a

surmounting crest, one fair female hand, with the fore-finger pointing,

in sweet, sorrowful admonition, upwards to heaven, and having power

(which, without experience, I never could have believed) to awaken the

pathos that kills in the very bosom of the horrors that madden the

grief that gnaws at the heart, together with the monstrous creations

of darkness that shock the belief, and make dizzy the reason of man.

This is the peculiarity that I wish the reader to notice, as having

first been made known to me for a possibility by this early vision of

Fanny on the Bath road. The peculiarity consisted in the confluence

of two different keys, though apparently repelling each other, into

the music and governing principles of the same dream; horror, such

as possesses the maniac, and yet, by momentary transitions, grief,

such as may be supposed to possess the dying mother when leaving her

infant children to the mercies of the cruel. Usually, and perhaps

always, in an unshaken nervous system, these two modes of misery

exclude each other--here first they met in horrid reconciliation.

There was also a separate peculiarity in the quality of the horror.

This was afterwards developed into far more revolting complexities

of misery and incomprehensible darkness; and perhaps I am wrong in

ascribing any value as a _causative_ agency to this particular case

on the Bath road--possibly it furnished merely an _occasion_ that

accidentally introduced a mode of horrors certain, at any rate, to

have grown up, with or without the Bath road, from more advanced

stages of the nervous derangement. Yet, as the cubs of tigers or

leopards, when domesticated, have been observed to suffer a sudden

development of their latent ferocity under too eager an appeal to

their playfulness--the gaieties of sport in _them_ being too closely

connected with the fiery brightness of their murderous instincts--so

I have remarked that the caprices, the gay arabesques, and the lovely

floral luxuriations of dreams, betray a shocking tendency to pass into

finer maniacal splendours. That gaiety, for instance, (for such at

first it was,) in the dreaming faculty, by which one principal point

of resemblance to a crocodile in the mail-coachman was soon made to

clothe him with the form of a crocodile, and yet was blended with

accessory circumstances derived from his _human_ functions, passed

rapidly into a further development, no longer gay or playful, but

terrific, the most terrific that besieges dreams, viz.--the horrid

inoculation upon each other of incompatible natures. This horror has

always been secretly felt by man; it was felt even under pagan forms

of religion, which offered a very feeble, and also a very limited

gamut for giving expression to the human capacities of sublimity or

of horror. We read it in the fearful composition of the sphinx. The

dragon, again, is the snake inoculated upon the scorpion. The basilisk

unites the mysterious malice of the evil eye, unintentional on the

part of the unhappy agent, with the intentional venom of some other

malignant natures. But these horrid complexities of evil agency are

but _objectively_ horrid; they inflict the horror suitable to their

compound nature; but there is no insinuation that they _feel_ that

horror. Heraldry is so full of these fantastic creatures, that, in some

zoologies, we find a separate chapter or a supplement dedicated to

what is denominated heraldic zoology. And why not? For these hideous

creatures, however visionary,[24] have a real traditionary ground in

medieval belief--sincere and partly reasonable, though adulterating

with mendacity, blundering, credulity, and intense superstition. But

the dream-horror which I speak of is far more frightful. The dreamer

finds housed within himself--occupying, as it were, some separate

chamber in his brain--holding, perhaps, from that station a secret

and detestable commerce with his own heart--some horrid alien nature.

What if it were his own nature repeated,--still, if the duality were

distinctly perceptible, even _that_--even this mere numerical double

of his own consciousness--might be a curse too mighty to be sustained.

But how, if the alien nature contradicts his own, fights with it,

perplexes, and confounds it? How, again, if not one alien nature, but

two, but three, but four, but five, are introduced within what once

he thought the inviolable sanctuary of himself? These, however, are

horrors from the kingdoms of anarchy and darkness, which, by their

very intensity, challenge the sanctity of concealment, and gloomily

retire from exposition. Yet it was necessary to mention them, because

the first introduction to such appearances (whether causal, or merely

casual) lay in the heraldic monsters, which monsters were themselves

introduced (though playfully) by the transfigured coachman of the Bath

mail.

GOING DOWN WITH VICTORY.

But the grandest chapter of our experience, within the whole mail-coach

service, was on those occasions when we went down from London with the

news of victory. A period of about ten years stretched from Trafalgar

to Waterloo: the second and third years of which period (1806 and

1807) were comparatively sterile; but the rest, from 1805 to 1815

inclusively, furnished a long succession of victories; the least of

which, in a contest of that portentous nature, had an inappreciable

value of position--partly for its absolute interference with the plans

of our enemy, but still more from its keeping alive in central Europe

the sense of a deep-seated vulnerability in France. Even to tease the

coasts of our enemy, to mortify them by continual blockades, to insult

them by capturing if it were but a baubling schooner under the eyes of

their arrogant armies, repeated from time to time a sullen proclamation

of power lodged in a quarter to which the hopes of Christendom turned

in secret. How much more loudly must this proclamation have spoken in

the audacity[25] of having bearded the _élite_ of their troops, and

having beaten them in pitched battles! Five years of life it was worth

paying down for the privilege of an outside place on a mail-coach,

when carrying down the first tidings of any such event. And it is to

be noted that, from our insular situation, and the multitude of our

frigates disposable for the rapid transmission of intelligence, rarely

did any unauthorised rumour steal away a prelibation from the aroma of

the regular despatches. The government official news was generally the

first news.