BLACKWOOD’S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
NO. CCCXCV. SEPTEMBER, 1848. VOL. LXIV.
CONTENTS.
A REVIEW OF THE LAST SESSION, 261
TO A CAGED SKYLARK. BY B. SIMMONS, 290
SONNET.—TO DENMARK, 292
LIFE IN THE “FAR WEST.” PART IV., 293
THE CAXTONS. PART VI., 315
LIFE AND TIMES OF GEORGE II., 327
THE GREAT TRAGEDIAN, 345
THE MOSCOW RETREAT, 359
WHAT WOULD REVOLUTIONISING GERMANY BE AT? 373
EDINBURGH:
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET; AND 37, PATERNOSTER ROW,
LONDON.
_To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed._
SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.
BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
NO. CCCXCV. SEPTEMBER, 1848. VOL. LXIV.
A REVIEW OF THE LAST SESSION.
There is perhaps no body of men confederated in her Majesty’s dominions
who are less properly the subjects of envy than the members of the
present Cabinet. A session, begun under circumstances of unexampled
commercial pressure, continued amidst insurrection abroad and turbulence
at home, and ending with an Irish rebellion, ought surely to have
exhibited some specimens of extraordinary and judicious legislation.
Slovenliness in high places, at no time decorous, is most undecent,
dangerous, and unendurable, at a period when the whole world is drunk
with the revolutionary elixir. France, that old irreclaimable bacchante,
is staggering to and fro, madly bellicose, and threatening incendiarism
in her cups. Germany, once thought too stolid to be roused, is hiccuping
for national unity, and on the fair way of contributing largely to the
overthrow of the equilibrium of power in Europe. The Irish symptoms have
by no means surprised us. The insurrection there is the inevitable fruit
of the measures and policy against which, for the last twenty years, we
have entered our strong and unflinching protest. The shameful truckling
of the Whigs to O’Connell and his scandalous followers; the
unconstitutional fostering of the Roman Catholic Church; and the
conciliation system, which, while it did gross injustice to the people
of England and Scotland, contributed to confirm the spirit of
improvidence and pauperism among the Irish, without in any way securing
their gratitude,—have resulted in a rebellion, imbecile, indeed, and
almost ludicrous in its issue, but not, on that account, less afflicting
to the supporters of order and the crown.
More than once, too, we have been threatened at home by manifestations
of the insurrectionary spirit. In so densely populated a country as
this, it is impossible that commercial distress and slackness can
exist for any length of time, without trying sorely the patience and
the fortitude of the working classes. Such distress undoubtedly did
prevail, towards the close of last year, in a most alarming degree;
and throughout the whole spring there was a vast want of employment in
the manufacturing districts. The completion of some of the great lines
of railway, and in others the partial abandonment or suspension of the
works, caused by the extreme tightness of the money market, also threw
a great deal of unemployed labour on the public; and this evil was
increased by the heterogeneous character of the masses. Irish
immigration has increased to such an extent, that not only in all the
towns of Britain, but almost in every village, especially on the
western coast, there exists a Hibernian colony; unreclaimed by
civilisation—uneducated as the brutes that perish—knowing nothing of
religion, save as an idolatrous form, and professing rebellion as a
principle. This class have always formed a nucleus for disaffection,
and, but for the extreme reluctance of the native labourers to
fraternise with those children of Esau, the results might ere now have
been more serious than we altogether care to contemplate. As it was,
the British demagogue was always sure of finding a ready partisan,
confederate, and coadjutor in the western Celt; and we need hardly say
that the Chartist leaders availed themselves to the full of that
sympathy. We shall presently see how far this state of matters
received the attention of the men in power.
In this critical position we were entitled to expect that the government
would have shown itself fully adequate to the crisis—that the causes of
distress, which lie at the root of turbulence and disaffection, would be
probed with a firm and prudent hand—that every possible relief and
assistance would be given to the home market—and that, above all,
nothing should be done which might tend, in the remotest degree, to
endanger the integrity of the empire. The welfare of Great Britain is a
terrible trust in times like these, and the responsibility of those who
have professed themselves ready to govern, and who, in fact, have rather
claimed the government than received it, is proportionally great.
Let us then take a candid and impartial review of the proceedings which
have characterised this session of Parliament, extending over a period
more fertile in insurrection than any which the world has known. Let us
examine how Lord John Russell and his colleagues have acquitted
themselves in the discharge of their important functions. We shall be
sparing neither of praise nor blame: glad, indeed, if we can find an
opportunity of being lavish of the former, or, in case of neglect, of
stumbling upon an honest excuse.
Our readers cannot have forgotten the circumstances under which this
last session of Parliament commenced. The commercial world has not, for
very many years, felt any thing like a corresponding crisis; and the
change is most remarkable, when we reflect that the depression followed
immediately upon a period of almost unexampled prosperity. Our opinion
is still unchanged, as to the causes which led to this. We pointed out,
in former articles, long before the pressure began, what must be the
inevitable result of a wholesale departure from our older system, of the
adoption of the free-trading economical views, and of the arbitrary
contraction of the currency, as devised by Sir Robert Peel. Every word
we then said has been verified to the letter; and, as we expected, the
very contingencies which we suggested as likely to operate in producing
this unfavourable state of matters, and which actually did subsequently
occur, have been paraded, by the free-traders and extreme bullionists,
as the causes of the whole disaster. It is of great importance that the
public should understand this subject clearly; and, therefore, without
repeating what we have elaborately attempted to demonstrate before, let
us merely remark that the tendency of free trade, and of fettered
currency combined, was to prostrate the whole commercial world, on the
first occurrence of a bad season and a scarcity of food, by stimulating
the exportation of gold, and at the same time by withdrawing its
representative. In fact, Sir Robert Peel constructed his machinery so,
that the result, in the event which we have instanced, could be
calculated on with mathematical certainty. The realised wealth of
Britain was rendered of no avail in this emergency, for the counters
which represented it were amissing, and nothing else would be received
in exchange. Hence arose that total prostration of credit, and
consequent lack of employment, which was so lamentably felt towards the
close of the year 1847.
So intolerable was the pressure that, after much delay and repeated
refusals to interfere, the Whig ministers were compelled to bestir
themselves, and to suspend the operation of the Banking Act, in order to
save the country from actual convulsion. Parliament was summoned about
the middle of November, more, perhaps, for the sake of obtaining a bill
of indemnity for the suspension—a measure which, after all, did not lead
to any infringement of the Act—than with the view of boldly facing the
increasing difficulties of the country. Notwithstanding annual
disappointment, every one waited for the speech from the throne with the
most intense anxiety, trusting that at such a time some comforting
glimpses for the future, some earnest ministerial schemes would be
announced, likely to retrieve the commercial world from its
embarrassment. These expectations were destined to receive an immediate
check. The financial prose of the author of “Don Carlos” was as vague
and unsatisfactory as his halting tragic verse. There was, of course, a
decent show of regret for public calamity, but no vestige of an
intention to interpose any remedial measure. In point of finance, the
only intelligible topic contained in the speech was ominous of the
repeal of the Navigation Laws. Sanitary improvements, the great Whig
hobby, which they are constantly thrusting forward beneath the public
nose, were also recommended. Ireland, then testifying the humane and
Christian disposition of its inhabitants, by a series of the most
cold-blooded and revolting murders, was recommended to the benevolence
of the state. A treaty with the Republic of the Equator, touching the
suppression of the slave-trade, was announced; and the Whigs looked
forward “with confidence to the maintenance of the general peace of
Europe.” A more paltry programme was never yet submitted to the public
eye.
The ministerial move in November, and the suspension of the Banking Act,
for however short a period, was in truth a remarkable circumstance. If
the suspension was right, it must necessarily imply that Sir Robert Peel
was utterly wrong in framing the measure as he did. We know that the Act
is useless for control in times of prosperity, and that it pinches us by
becoming operative under adverse seasons; and it was precisely when the
pinch was felt that the Whigs were forced to suspend it. True—a great
deal of the mischief had by that time been accomplished. Men, every whit
as respectable as the late Premier, had been driven into the Gazette for
the sheer want of temporary accommodation, and property sank in value as
rapidly as the mercury before a storm. But the true nature of the Act
had been felt and condemned by the public; and in no one instance do we
ever recollect to have witnessed a greater unanimity of opinion, hostile
to its endurance and principle, than prevailed, at least beyond the
walls of the House of Commons. If the public were wrong in this
impression, then it followed as a matter of course that the ministry
were highly blameable for the suspension; that Peel’s machine, being a
sound and salutary one, should have been left to do its work, and to
crush down as many victims as it could possibly entangle in its wheels.
But in truth, very few could be found to support such a proposition. If
credit is to be altogether annihilated in this country, whether by
Banking Acts like this, framed and forced upon us contrary to the
experience and in face of the remonstrance of the mercantile classes, or
by anarchy and mob rule, as has been the case in France, we must prepare
to bid an everlasting farewell to our greatness. Credit, it is in vain
to deny, has made the British nation. Credit may, like every thing else,
be pushed too far; but even over-trading is a far less calamity than a
restrictive system, which in a day can destroy the accumulated profits
of years, for the first carries with it its own antidote and cure.
Peel’s banking legislation, we do not hesitate to say, has been
productive of more harm to this country in three years, than has ever
occurred from any known cause within the same period of time; and the
obstinacy with which he has clung to his delusion, the sophistry which
he has invariably employed to shift the responsibility from his
shoulders, and the manœuvring style of his defence, may be consistent
with the character of the man, but are not worthy of the dignity of a
British statesman.
In suspending the operation of the Banking Act, the Whigs tacitly
admitted that, in their opinion, whether lately adopted or not, there
was something fundamentally injurious and wrong with the measure. The
subject was a very serious one. You may bungle sanitary bills, pass
coercive laws, or tamper with the jurisprudence of the country, without
doing more than a limited amount of evil. But the subject of the
currency is so intimately and vitally connected with our whole
commercial greatness, that it must be handled with the utmost
precaution. A leak in a ship is not more dangerous than a flaw in a
monetary statute; and, when once discovered, not a moment should be lost
in repairing it.
Not one member of the present Cabinet was in any way competent for the
task. It is most extraordinary, that the Whigs, after all their official
experience, should exhibit such a singular incapacity in every matter
which has the slightest connexion with finance. They do not seem to
comprehend the subject at all; and if their private affairs were
conducted in the same slovenly fashion as are those of the public when
unfortunately committed to their guidance, we should very soon see the
Gazette adorned with some elegant extracts from the Court Guide. The
only respectable Chancellor of the Exchequer whom they ever produced was
Mr Baring; and he, it is rumoured, was considered too scrupulous to be
admitted to that post again. Besides this, his views upon the currency
were known to be diametrically opposite to those entertained by Sir
Robert Peel. Sir Charles Wood, the worst financier that ever disgraced
the memory of Cocker, had committed himself before the suspension of the
Act, in an especially ridiculous manner. At one time, this gentleman was
quite jocund and hopeful, a firm believer in the existence of a
plethora, and smiled at the idea of a crisis with a happy air of mingled
indifference and satisfaction. Shortly afterwards, however, he took the
alarm, attempted to eat in his own words—an operation which he performed
with most indifferent grace,—and possibly became dimly conscious that a
Chancellor of the Exchequer has more duties to perform than to sign the
receipt for his salary. Sir Charles evidently was not the man to grapple
with the difficulty; and besides this, he could not afford to offend Sir
Robert Peel, or give a triumph to his political opponents, who had all
along denounced the Banking Act as an experiment of a perilous nature.
In this position, the Whigs adopted the safest course for themselves, if
not for the country. They asked for a committee, both in the Lords and
Commons, to consider the question of the currency, taking care, of
course, to nominate members whose opinions were already known. We
thoroughly agree with Mr Herries, that the inquiry was a work of
supererogation. The subject has been already investigated in every
possible way. Blue books have been issued from time to time, containing
an enormous mass of deliberate evidence; and that evidence has been
repeatedly analysed and dissected by writers of great ability and
statistical knowledge on either side. The public mind was perfectly ripe
for decision—indeed, for months the currency had formed almost the sole
topic discussed by the press; and it was peculiarly desirable that we
should no longer be left in a state of uncertainty, or exposed to the
operation of another panic. But such an arrangement did not suit the
Whigs. They were not prepared to come forward with an intelligible plan
for remedying the evil which they had already admitted to exist.—Not
secretly displeased, perhaps, at the general impression that the
Tamworth Baronet had committed a gross and unpardonable blunder, they
were unable to dispense with his support, and extremely unwilling to
give him umbrage—and therefore they took refuge in the convenient scheme
of committees. In vain did Mr Herries, in an able and statesmanlike
speech, point out the danger of delay, and exhibit the true causes of
the distress which had lately prevailed, and which was still weighing
upon the country. In vain did he implore ministers to face the question
manfully. His proposal that the House should proceed at once to the
consideration of the Banking Act, with the view of suspending
permanently its limitations, subject to a wholesome control, was lost by
a majority of forty-one. After a most lengthened examination, the
committees have issued their reports; and the result is another
difference of opinion, which leaves the whole matter open to renewed
discussion. The session has rolled away, and the Banking Act is left
untouched.
We presume that the most confirmed free-trader within the four seas of
Britain will at all events admit this fact, that not one of the glorious
promises held out to us by the political economists and gentlemen of the
Manchester school has as yet been realised. We can hardly expect that
they will be candid enough to confess the fallacy of the views which
they then so enthusiastically maintained; and we doubt not that, in any
discussion, we should still hear some very ingenious explanations to
account for the non-advent of the anticipated blessings. But the boldest
of them will not deny that, in the mean time, all the fiscal changes
have been followed by a decline in our prosperity, a falling-off in
trade, and a consequent defalcation of the revenue. We have certainly
not gained in employment, we have lost money; and the best proof of it
is, the low ebb of the national revenue. Such being the case, it is no
wonder if the budget or financial statement of the minister was expected
with the most intense anxiety, and if, for the time, every other topic
was merged in the consideration of this. Political history does not
contain many episodes equal to that famous discussion—many instances of
utter helplessness like that exhibited by the Premier.
We have already analysed the budget fully in another article,[1] and it
is not worth while now to recur to it for the purposes of exposure. The
deficit was estimated at no less than three millions for the year; and
this large sum was to be made up by the imposition of an augmented
income-tax. Considering what had taken place on the occasion when Sir
Robert Peel first proposed that discreditable and decidedly odious
impost, the assurances that it was to be merely temporary in its
endurance, and the specious pleas of necessity with which it was then
fortified,—it is no matter of surprise that the ministerial plan should
have been received with symptoms of marked disgust, even by those who
usually accord their support to the measures of the present government.
Mr Hume opined that the ministry were mad. Mr Osborne declared his
belief that, had there been a regularly organised Opposition, such a
financial statement would have been the death-warrant of any
administration. Even the Manchester section of the free-traders held
aloof from ministers, just as cowards might do from the support of a
drowning man. For however vexatious the admission might be, they were
bound in common gratitude to have recollected that the change from
indirect to direct taxation was effected mainly at their instance, and
to gratify their everlasting clamour. That change had resulted in a huge
deficit of the revenue; and, it being admitted on all sides that a
revenue must be raised—for we have not yet got the length of talking
openly of the sponge—they, at all events, might have been expected to
say something in favour of their friends, at a crisis of their own
producing. But there is no creature on earth so utterly selfish and
devoid of compunction, as your thorough-paced economical free-trader.
Point merely in the direction of his pocket, and he instantly howls with
terror. Five per cent income-tax was as obnoxious in the eyes of Cobden
and Bright as in those of other men who acted upon sounder principles;
and it is not uninstructive to remark the course which on this occasion
the ex-members of the League thought fit to pursue. It had been long
apparent to them, as it was to every man in the country, that the
revenue of the year must prove insufficient to meet the expenditure.
They knew that the unpalatable fact, when announced in Parliament, would
inevitably lead to a discussion regarding the policy of past measures,
and the wisdom of persisting in a course which hitherto had met with no
reciprocity from foreign countries, but, on the contrary, had been used
to increase the burden of our embarrassments. Such discussion was to be
deprecated and avoided by every possible means; and the readiest way of
effecting this seemed to be the suggestion of a plan whereby the
expenditure might be lessened and brought down to the level of the
revenue. This very desirable result was not so easy of accomplishment;
but nevertheless Mr Cobden undertook the task. The product was worthy of
the author. The wise, politic, and sagacious principle of the
calico-printer was to effect a saving by the material reduction of our
military and naval establishments, and the weakening of the national
arm. We hope our readers have not forgotten, were it merely from the
disgust they must have excited, the silly and egotistic remarks of this
complacent personage touching his travels, his observations, and his
mission as a peaceful regenerator. Free trade, which ought long ago to
have made Great Britain rich, had, according to his experiences, already
pacified the world. There was to be no more war—the French were the most
affectionate and domesticated men upon the face of the earth—and he,
Cobden, and his friend Cremieux, were interchanging congratulatory
letters on the advent of the new millennium. In our March Number for the
present year, we had the satisfaction of bestowing a slight castigation
upon Cobden, to which we beg now to refer those gentlemen who were so
wroth with us for presuming to question the _dicta_ of the oracle of the
West Riding. Within a few days after that article was penned, Europe was
wrapped in insurrection, and Cobden’s correspondent a member of a
revolutionary government! The French free-trader, Cremieux, was a
consenting party to the decree which drove forth the British labourers
from France, without warning and without compensation! The barricades of
June have demonstrated the affectionate and domesticated character of
the race whom Cobden delighteth to honour. If to cut, in cold blood, the
throats of prisoners, to shoot down the messengers of peace in spite of
their sacred calling, to mangle the bodies of the wounded, and these
brothers and countrymen, under circumstances unheard-of, save perhaps in
the tales of African atrocity—if these things constitute domestication,
then by all means let us fall back upon a more erratic and natural state
of society. How would we have stood at this moment, with regard to
Ireland, save for the fact of our being able to overawe rebellion by the
presence of an overwhelming military force? Did ever a man, professing
to be an apostle and a prophet, find himself landed in such a ridiculous
and ignominious posture?
It is strange that the reception which he met with in the House of
Commons, upon the occasion of his first attack upon the army, did not
induce Cobden to pause before committing himself to a second absurdity.
But there are some men whose conceit is of such extravagant a
development, that no experience, no failure, no argument, will induce
them to part with one iota of a preconceived opinion. Such a person is
Cobden. Unabashed by the result of his previous exhibitions, callous to
shame, and impenetrable to ridicule, he again addressed the House on the
subject of the navy estimates, for the purpose of demonstrating the
propriety of an immediate reduction of the fleet. This was too much even
for Lord John Russell, who for once took heart of grace, and
administered a fair allowance of punishment to the arrogant and ignorant
free-trader. But the truth is, Mr Cobden’s career is ended. The _Times_,
once a warm admirer of this confident gentleman, has ceased to vouchsafe
him its protection, as will be seen from the following extract of 11th
August last:—
“What has he done? What have been his tactics? What is the sum and
substance of the statesmanship to which all the world looked forward
so anxiously? Simply this—a depreciation of our military and naval
establishments, and an emulation of America. The first constitutes the
whole gist and pith of the honourable member’s speeches; the latter,
of his policy. England is to disband her fleets and armies, to give up
her colonies, and to enter boldly on a course of Yankee statesmanship.
We would not wrong the hon. gentleman. We refer to his speeches on
Tuesday and Wednesday nights, as well as those delivered at the close
of the last year. What do they amount to? ‘Retrench your expenditure;
give up your ships; abolish the ordnance; send round embassies to
every country and court of Europe; tell them you have disarmed; ask
them to do the same; and then set to work, and tinker up your
constitution on the model of the United States. Do away with open
voting. Destroy the _privilege_ of the suffrage; abolish the virtue of
patriotic courage; give every man a vote, and _make_ every man vote in
secret. Then you will be rich and prosperous; your expenditure will at
once be curtailed, and your commerce will be diffused by the amity of
nations.’ This is the policy which is to save us from ruin, to pay our
debt and confirm our strength. All that we can say is, that one part
of it is well matched to the other; that both equally demonstrate the
ability of the counsellor to advise, as his vaticinations last winter
proved his ability to prophesy.”
And yet this is the person whom the Whigs lauded, and whom Sir Robert
Peel elaborately eulogised for his sagacity!
By a somewhat curious coincidence, the budget was brought forward on the
very week when the French revolution broke out. Mr Cobden’s proposal,
therefore, met with no support; and it must have become evident, even to
the free-traders, that under such a threatening aspect as the Continent
presented, no sane man would agree to a reduction in our military force.
Still that party continued inflexibly opposed to the ministerial measure
for raising an adequate revenue, and, by doing so, we maintain that they
were guilty of an act of political ingratitude. In this situation,
ministers were fain to withdraw their proposal, and to continue the
income-tax as formerly, for a period of three years, without any
definite scheme of making up for the deficiency in the revenue.
In fact, the session has passed away without a budget at all. That which
Lord John Russell tabled, has crumbled away like a thing of gossamer;
and, so far as financial matters are concerned, we are left in the
pleasant impression that we are getting into further debt, and have no
distinct means of paying it. To exhibit the recklessness with which the
Whigs regard all matters connected with revenue, it is sufficient to
remark, that with three millions of deficit admitted, our rulers think
this an advantageous and a proper time to sacrifice about fifty thousand
pounds annually, the produce of duties upon imported copper ore.
Mr Osborne was right. No ministry, had there been a decent Opposition,
could have stood such an exposure. We even go further; for we believe
that—but for the French revolution, and the universal turbulence abroad,
which rendered it absolutely necessary that this country should maintain
a firm front, and exhibit no symptoms of internal weakness or
discord—the present ministry could not have existed for another
fortnight. As it is, we are in some respects glad that they have
continued in office; because, though late, they have been called upon to
act under circumstances which, in future, may give a new and improved
tone to Whig political opinions.
Before quitting the budget, let us say a word or two regarding future
financial prospects. It is no doubt possible that trade may
revive—though, from the present aspect of European affairs, we are not
inclined to be at all sanguine in our expectations. We cannot, it is
quite clear, reduce our effective establishments; for no one can say
what emergency may arise to make us, not mere spectators, but active
partisans in a contest which we shall deeply and long deplore. Economy
we may practise at home, and for once we are of Joseph’s mind. There are
items in our civil and pension list clearly superfluous and
undefensible, and we wish to see these removed, though with a just
regard to vested interests and claims. We are no admirers of such
antiquated offices as that of Hereditary Grand Falconer; and we think
that Mr MacGregor’s inquiry, as to the heirs of the Duke of Schomberg,
who for a century and a half have been billeted upon the country to the
tune of three thousand a-year, deserved at least a courteous reply from
so very determined an economist as the Premier formerly proclaimed
himself. A doorkeeper may surely be maintained at a less annual expense
than the income of a country gentleman; and in many departments even of
government, we have certainly been over lavish of remuneration. But
these retrenchments, though they may give satisfaction to the nation,
can never free it from its embarrassments. The revenue has clearly sunk
to a point when it must be augmented by some decided and effective
measure; and it will well become us all to consider, even without
reference to past disputes, from what quarter the supply is to come. If
the decision, or at all events the expressed feeling, of the House of
Commons can be taken as an index of the popular wish, the nation will
not submit to an augmentation of the income-tax. No increased duties
upon excise can be levied,—indeed the cry is general for the removal of
those which exist. The window-tax—though it might be materially improved
by a more equitable arrangement, and by rating great houses without any
graduated scale—is decidedly unpopular. In fact, all direct taxation is
of an obnoxious character—it is the fertile source of murmur and of
discontent, and it never can be adjusted so as to render it palatable to
the payer.
From what quarter, then, is it possible for us to recruit our revenue?
How are we to provide for casualties, and for a possibly increased
expenditure? That question must be solved in one way or the other, and
that without lack of time. It will not do to go on from year to year
with a continually increasing deficit, the arrears of which shall be
passed to the capital of our national debt—we must raise money, and the
only question is, how to do it.
Within the last six years, says Sir Charles Wood, the nation has
remitted _seven and a half_ millions of annual taxation: since the
peace, says Lord John Russell, more than _thirty-nine millions_ of
annual taxes have been removed. Highly satisfactory this, no doubt—but
what does it prove? Simply that we have pushed the abolition of indirect
taxation too far. We have gone on, year after year, lowering tariffs,
for the purpose of stimulating foreign trade. We have thereby
unquestionably increased our imports, but we have failed in giving any
thing like a corresponding buoyancy to our exports. _Why_ we did this is
not very difficult of comprehension, if we look attentively to the state
of party which has subsisted for the last few years in this country.
Free-trade, in so far as it lessens the cost of production, is clearly
the interest of the master-manufacturer who exports for the foreign
market; but, we repeat, it is the interest of no one else in the
community. Free-trade in certain articles,—that is, in raw material
introduced to this country for the purpose of being manufactured, sold
at home, or exported—is just and commendable. Free-trade in what are
called the necessaries of life, such as corn and cattle, does not tend
to the wealth of the country; but, for the present, we shall leave that
subject in abeyance. Free-trade in luxuries and in manufactured goods,
whenever these latter displace the home labourer in the home market, we
hold to be utterly injurious, and we shall presently state our reasons.
The Manchester school have adopted, preached, and insisted upon free
trade in _all_ these branches. It was their interest to push the cotton
trade to its utmost possible limits, and to undersell all competitors in
every accessible market. Hence their favourite doctrine of cheapness,
which in appearance is so plausible, but which actually is so
fallacious, and the pertinacity with which they have continued to preach
it up. Hence the League, in the formation of which they displayed such
undoubted energy, and the immense sums which they lavished for the
popular promulgation of their creed. To conciliate these men, swollen to
a formidable number, and maintaining their opinions with extreme
plausibility, and no ordinary share of talent, became an important
object to the leaders who were then at the head of the two great parties
of the state. It is in vain to deny that a large body of the middle
classes were concerned in this movement, and, to gain their votes and
support, the unholy race for power began.
Hence our legislation, whether under Peel or Russell, has been directed
for the last six or seven years invariably to one point. The man who
could boast of having removed the greatest amount of taxation was sure
to be the popular favourite; and we all know in what manner, and by what
means, Sir Robert Peel accomplished his share of the work. He first, on
the assurance that it was to be merely temporary, obtained an
income-tax, amply sufficient to redeem the financial deficit which was
the legacy of his predecessors. He next proceeded to make that
income-tax permanent, by paring at, and reducing the tariffs; and
finally, in order that his rival might not have the start of him in
popularity, he threw his party overboard, and consented to the abolition
of the corn-laws.
But there is a point beyond which taxation cannot possibly be remitted;
and that point Sir Robert Peel had reached before he retired from
office. True, the effect of his measures had not yet become apparent,
but they were foreseen by many, and perhaps not unsuspected by himself
towards the close of his tenure of office. Further than as being
consenting parties to those reckless sacrifices of revenue, it would be
unfair to charge the Whigs with having brought us into our present
perplexity. Sir Robert Peel is the real author of this, and he cannot
escape the responsibility.
Now upon two points—viz., the introduction of raw material for
manufacture, and of articles of food—we shall for the present forbear
joining issue with the free-traders. But the third one, that of the
admission of foreign manufactured goods at nearly nominal rates of duty,
is far too important to be passed over, even at the risk of repetition.
The industry of this country is not confined to a few, but flows through
a thousand channels. There are, however, about four great trades in
which Britain can at present, owing to her mineral wealth, machinery,
and capital, compete with decided advantage against any other country in
the world. These are the cotton, the linen, the woollen, and the iron
trade, the exports of which articles amount to rather more than
TWO-THIRDS of the whole exports of the United Kingdom, or in round
numbers from thirty-three to thirty-five millions annually. It is to the
unceasing agitation of men connected with _these_ trades that we owe the
erection of the League, and the progress of free trade which has brought
us to so low a condition.
It is no matter of surprise that the corn-laws were obnoxious to such
persons. With the agricultural interest they had no natural sympathy;
and being always able to command the monopoly of the home market, their
invariable effort has been to stimulate trade abroad to the very utmost
of their power. High wages interfered with their profits; and in order
to command the labour market, they formed their famous scheme for
reducing the price of food, by dealing a blow to agriculture at home,
and opening the ports to the admission of foreign corn. This cry was to
a certain degree popular, especially amongst those who were not
connected with their works; for the more intelligent of the operatives,
to their credit be it said, very early detected the selfishness of the
whole manœuvre, and saw, that with the price of food wages also would
inevitably decline. Foreign corn, however, was not enough for the
appetite of those grasping monopolists. They looked with envy on the
smaller non-exporting trades, who constituted a great portion of the
population, and who were defended in the home market, their only field,
by a reasonable scale of duties. It presently occurred to them, that if,
by any means this scale could be broken down, and the market inundated
with foreign manufactures, they might be enabled to export a larger
quantity of their own fabrics, reduce the price of articles which they
were personally inclined to consume, and finally reap another benefit by
cheapening labour—that is, by forcing a new class, through want of
employment, to compete with their former operatives. These we know to
have been the secret views of the League, and to these ends, for several
years past, they have bent the whole of their energies. How they have
succeeded, let the present state of the labour market tell. The tariffs
of 1846 were expressly framed in their favour. They have done half of
the anticipated work; for by the admission of foreign manufactures into
this country at a reduced rate of duty, they have thrown many thousands
of industrious handicraftsmen into the streets. The small shopkeeper has
been reduced from an employer into a mere retailer, and disaffection has
been engendered through the pressure of absolute misery.
This may seem a highly-coloured picture; but if any man of intelligence
will take the trouble to make himself acquainted with the feelings, and
to listen to the individual histories of persons of the working-class,
he will find it to be strictly true. Four-fifths of the men who were in
attendance at the late Chartist meetings belonged in 1845 to the
non-exporting trades, were then in full employment, and probably as
loyal as any subjects in the kingdom. So, indeed, we believe they are
still, in so far as loyalty to the crown is concerned; for, thank God!
Republicanism has not taken any root in the empire. But they are utterly
discontented with the government, and furious at the apathy with which,
they think, their sufferings are regarded. They find that the repeal of
the corn-laws has done absolutely nothing in their favour. They find
that the lowered tariffs have opened a sluice-gate through which
articles of foreign manufacture have rushed in to swamp them; and they
gloomily, and even savagely, assert, that this state of things is the
result of a combination of the rich against the poor. So it is: but from
that combination the aristocracy and gentlemen of England stand apart.
The headquarters of the grinding-society are at Manchester, Liverpool,
and Sheffield; the machinery it uses are the arms of the League; the
master-spirits of the confederacy are Cobden, Wilson, and Bright.
A very pregnant instance of the sympathy which is felt by the
free-traders and political economists for the suffering of the lower
orders, occurred during a debate towards the beginning of May last. We
specially notice the fact, because it proves that, however two
successive ministers may have forgot their duty to the people, there
exists, in a higher quarter still, the deepest commiseration for their
distress, and an earnest desire to alleviate it in every possible
manner. It appears from official documents that, during the first three
months of the present year, there were entered for home consumption, at
the port of London alone, foreign silk goods worth £400,000, equal to
the employment of 31,000 weavers; lace and needlework worth £40,000, or
sufficient to displace the produce of 4000 workwomen and sempstresses;
and 7000 dozen of boot and shoe fronts, enough to keep 1200 cordwainers
in full employment. So near as we can calculate, the duty payable upon
those articles, under the tariff of 1845, would have amounted to
£88,150: at present it is not more than £65,575, thus entailing a
primary loss of £22,575 to the revenue. Such an influx of goods, at a
peculiarly unprofitable season, was tantamount to displacing the labour
of 36,200 persons, who were to be thrown upon the public charity,
without any other resource. A short time after these facts became known,
an order was issued from the Lord Chamberlain’s office, containing her
Majesty’s commands to the ladies of England, that in attending court
they should appear attired in dresses exclusively the production of
native industry. Yes! our gracious Queen, whose heart is unchilled by
the cold dogmas of political economy, felt like a woman and a sovereign,
and resolved, on her part at least, to rescue from famine and misery so
many thousands of her poorer subjects. It is most gratifying to know
that this exercise of the royal care and benevolence has met with its
best reward, for in the midst of all the distress which has
unfortunately prevailed, the class for whose benefit those timely orders
were issued have been kept in employment and food: the example set from
the throne has been widely and generously followed. But will it be
believed, that this act of mercy gave huge umbrage to the free-traders,
and was fiercely commented on in their journals as a gross infringement
of the principles of enlightened government? Therefore, in the eyes of
the Leaguers, it seems a crime to interfere for the support of the
British workman,—and unjustifiable interference with Providence to give
work to the labouring poor!
But this is not all. Lord John Russell, on being asked in the House of
Commons whether he had any share in suggesting this philanthropic
action, or whether the sole credit of it appertained to his royal
mistress, was not slow in uttering his disclaimer. “_He_ had not advised
the crown in the matter,—he could only say that the order had issued
from the Chamberlain’s office.” After a vain attempt to show that no
extra quantity of goods had been imported, but that the apparent
increase arose solely from the cessation of smuggling, he proceeded to
remark:—“But if more goods _are_ now entered, and thereby a particular
class do suffer inconvenience or distress, _yet these entries must
stimulate the production and exportation of the classes of goods for
which the imports are exchanged_.” There spoke the convert to the
League—the truckler to Cobden and Co.! There, from the lips of a British
minister, fell the most un-British, the most unpatriotic doctrine that
ever yet was enunciated! Said we not truly that the whole object of free
trade is to put down and exterminate the non-exporting trades, for the
exclusive benefit of the few monster monopolies? The Premier concluded
an ungracious, halting, and discreditable speech with the somewhat
unnecessary announcement that, under all circumstances, he thought he
should be the last person to advise her Majesty to make an alteration in
the commercial policy which of late years had been pursued.
We need hardly remark that, in the present instance, the importation of
these foreign goods could in no way “stimulate the production or
exportation” of any kind of British manufacture whatever. The articles
in question were sent from France, at a time when every thing was
unsaleable, and were sold in London for hard cash, at a heavy discount.
Even Cobden need not have grudged this little encouragement to
Spitalfields and Bethnal Green. He did not sell a yard of calico the
less. Gold, and not shirting, was what the French wanted, what they
bargained for, and what they received. But let us see a little more of
the sympathy of the Leaguers for the poor, and respect for the
sovereign, who surely might be left, in matters of this kind, to
exercise some discretion of her own.
Colonel Thompson, representing _an exporting constituency_, was furious
at the alleged interference. “He would ask whether there was any
charity, any humanity, any justice, any policy, any common-sense in
representing hostility to one portion of the manufacturing classes of
the country, to come from a quarter of which he was sure no one in that
House wished to speak otherwise than with feelings of the utmost
affection and reverence?” We are not sure that we quite understand this
outburst of the gallant Colonel, which we copy verbatim from the columns
of the _Spectator_, but, as he talks about charity and humanity with
reference to his waistcoat and pantaloon exporting constituency of
Bradford, we take him to mean that that favoured place should flourish,
and Spitalfields utterly disappear. This is pure Leaguer’s doctrine,
distinctly redolent of the Bastile!
Mr John Bright was also true to his order. The partisan of peace opined
that “there was no difference between driving out workmen, and keeping
out their work: though no order had been issued to exclude foreign work,
yet the effect of the order really given is, that French silks, which
would have been consumed, will not be used, _and English taken instead_.
It should be known, that from the late convulsions, the contingent
depression of trade, and the low price of French silks in France, very
large quantities of them have been purchased and brought to this
country. The announcement in question might therefore entail _great loss
on large capitalists_, and ruin on many of smaller means. The kindness
to the Spitalfields weavers would then be done only at a cost of loss
and injury to other classes.” Quite right, Friend Bright! the first
persons to be guarded are _your_ speculators and _your_ capitalists. The
poor operative, who is not in your line, may starve for any thing you
care. There is a protective spirit about this, which absolutely charms
us. We wonder that Mr Bright did not on a former occasion foresee that
the repeal of the corn-laws might entail great loss on large
proprietors, and ruin on many of smaller means!
Sir William Molesworth considered that “it was _a silly and foolish_
order; and he was informed, on the best authority, that there was not
the slightest chance of its being obeyed.” We leave this remark of
Molesworth without any comment, merely asking his authority for holding
that, to assist in feeding the hungry, and maintaining our poorer
countrymen by the exercise of their own industry, is a silly and a
foolish act; and requesting him to consider how far his chivalrous title
is consistent with such language, when applied to an order emanating
directly from his sovereign.
This little episode is very instructive, as elucidating the views of the
free-traders. The great exporting trades have combined to crush and
annihilate the small handicrafts, and this they are rapidly doing
through the operation of these lowered tariffs. If direct taxation were
to be introduced, and the custom-house virtually abolished, in so far as
regards articles of foreign manufacture, the thing would be done at
once—for no one would wear clumsy English boots when he could get French
ones at a lower price; or British instead of Parisian gloves; or silk
from Spitalfields rather than the less costly fabric of Lyons. The more
honest of the free-traders make no scruple of announcing their views.
They admit that the realisation of their maxim, to sell in the dearest
and buy in the cheapest market, implies the ruin of every non-exporting
trade, and they seem absolutely resolved to push their theory to the
utmost. At present Sir Robert Peel has managed it so, that, without
being absolutely annihilated, the poorer classes are ground down to the
lowest point. We ask the shopkeepers, artisans, and smaller
manufacturers, who have no connexion with the foreign market, whether
this is not truly the case,—and if so, whether they are inclined to
allow this cruel, selfish, and inhuman system to be carried any
further—nay, whether they will not at once resolve to make determined
head against it? But for the obstinate blindness of the political
economists, we would appeal to that dearest of all considerations, their
own safety. Do they really think it possible, even were it politic, to
drive the whole operative industry of Britain into the compass of a few
exporting trades. Can they make millions of men change their habits of a
sudden, and walk from the country towns and villages,—wherein, before
Sir Robert Peel introduced the foreigner to swamp them, they had
supported themselves by the exercise of their craft,—to the factory or
the mine, or the furnace, or the printing work, there to spend the
remainder of their existence in twisting, digging, smelting, and
stamping, for the benefit of Cobden and his confederates? The idea is
absolute madness. Already we see the effects of false and unpatriotic
legislation, in Chartist meetings and processions, in agitations for
universal suffrage, in crime three-fold increased, and in augmented
poor-rates. What are considerations of sanatory reform or of public
instruction compared to these? Will men thank you for soap and tracts,
even should these articles be gratuitous, if you take their labour away
from them, and legislate for one class alone, as has been the case of
late years? Can you expect to make them loyal and peaceable, whilst you
deny them the means of obtaining a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s
labour—whilst you not only encourage, but convert into an actual fact
the idea that a large portion of the poor are oppressed, and drive them
to seek a remedy in attempts to procure a more popular representation?
Free trade has been the great incentive to Chartism, and, unless men
return speedily to their senses, it may chance to be the terrible
promoter of revolution.
But what is to be the real amount of the deficit? No man living can
tell. Lord John Russell estimated it at about three millions, and
subsequently Sir Charles Wood announced that, by sundry savings and
sales of old stores—which latter source of revenue very much resembles
the case of a gentleman parting with his body clothes to make up for his
annual expenditure—it might be reduced to a million and a half. Since
then we have received the official accounts of the trade of the kingdom
for the six months ending 5th July 1848; and we very much fear, from a
perusal of these, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has understated
his difficulties. Our exports, for the sake of which every other
interest has been sacrificed, have fallen off to an alarming extent.
During the corresponding six months of last year the declared value of
our exports was £25,395,243: the whole amount for this period is
£21,571,939, or very nearly FOUR MILLIONS less on the half year! Here is
another staggering instance of the utter futility of free trade. The
decrease of export for the year 1846, as compared with 1845, was about
two millions—and now it is going on at the rate of four millions for
half the time! Was there ever a more pregnant proof of the impossibility
of forcing markets?
Looking to the imports, we find some very curious results. Lord John
Russell took great credit for the increased consumption of sugar
consequent on his West Indian experiments, which we shall presently have
occasion to notice more minutely; and predicted a still further
consumption and increase to the revenue. Let us see how that matter
stands. The following is the total of sugar imported to this country for
the first six months of the last three years respectively.
1846. 1847. 1848.
Sugar unrefined, cwts., 2,956,986 3,967,686 2,960,430
Sugar Refined, 54,249 39,344 50,863
Sugar Candy, 1 1,025 507
Sugar Molasses, 202,264 411,263 191,531
————————— ————————— —————————
3,213,500 4,419,318 3,203,331
————————— ————————— —————————
So that we are absolutely importing _less sugar_ in 1848 than we did in
1846, before Lord John Russell and his sapient colleagues chose to give
the _coup de grace_ to the colonists! So much for increased revenue from
that source.
In the articles of raw material for manufacture there is a considerable
increase; and, should money be obtainable at easy rates throughout the
coming winter, this may be a source of real congratulation. But from
recent symptoms, and the insanity of ministers in refusing to face the
difficulties of the Bank Restriction Acts, we very much dread another
recurrence of tightness, in which case industry must inevitably be
paralysed as before. It is, however, comforting to know that we have a
stock of raw material in hand, and that our condition in that respect
has improved since last year, when the warehouses were nearly drained.
The aggregate amount of cotton, wool, flax, hemp, and silk which have
been imported for the last six months is in the ratio of 28,811,825, to
27,372,502 for the same period in 1847.
But the influx of foreign manufactures is the most singular feature of
all; and we do entreat the most serious consideration of our readers to
this very pressing point. What we have already said regarding the
annihilation of the small trades in this country, by the total
withdrawal of protection, receives the amplest confirmation from these
official tables; and, if we are wise, something must be done, with the
least possible delay, to remedy the evils which have been entailed upon
us, through our blind submission to the pernicious doctrines of the
free-traders. Do honourable members really believe, that by agitating
the ballot, or bringing forward schemes for extended suffrage, they will
give work to the unemployed, or put bread in the mouths of the starving?
If, instead of attempting to gain a little transient popularity by
advocating organic changes, they would seriously address themselves to
the task of revising the tariffs, and so encouraging the home market,
they would be of real use to the country at this momentous time. For
momentous it is most certainly. The discovery of a deliberate plan for
general incendiarism in Liverpool, the mobs in Glasgow, and the
disturbances at Bradford, are all symptoms of disaffection, and all
proceed from one cause—from the sacrifice of native industry at the
shrine of the Moloch of free trade. Even now, while we are writing,
intelligence has arrived of the arrest of armed Chartists in London and
in Manchester; assassination has begun at Ashton, and every post brings
in tidings of some new commotion. Is this a time for Parliament to
separate without any remedial measure? Is this a time to allow our
markets to be inundated with foreign produce; each fresh cargo
displacing our own industry, and further adding to our embarrassment, by
hastening on another monetary crisis by the exportation of bullion in
exchange? This is the work commenced by Peel, and consummated by the
incapable Whigs. God knows how it will end, if wiser, more unselfish,
and more patriotic men are not speedily summoned to take the lead in her
Majesty’s councils.
No account is given, as in former years, of the amount of foreign linen
and woollen manufactures imported, or of several other important
branches of trade upon which Sir Robert Peel abolished the duty. Why
this omission has taken place we do not know, unless it be for the worst
of all reasons, that the results were too startling for disclosure. But
we shall take the statistics of the silk manufactured trade alone, from
which it will be seen that, in two years after the relaxation of the
duties, we have _doubled our imports_, thereby throwing immense numbers
of our own operatives out of employment.
FOREIGN SILK MANUFACTURES, ENTERED UNDER TARIFF OF 1846.
1846. 1847. 1848.
Silk or satin broad stuffs, 64,269 lbs. 85,589 lbs. 141,179 lbs.
Silk ribbons, 79,541 95,906 95,881
Gauze or crape broad stuffs, 4,383 4,053 5,127
Gauze ribbons, 11,268 26,166 26,312
Gauze, mixed, 18 8 39
Mixed ribbons, 687 1,650 1,244
Velvet broad stuffs, 2,935 4,822 6,558
Velvet embossed ribbons, 4,183 3,141 10,530
——————— ——————— ———————
167,284 lbs. 221,335 lbs. 286,870 lbs.
Now if, as it is fair to suppose, the same increase, or even half of it,
has taken place in the importation of other articles upon which the
duties were removed, but which have been quietly withdrawn from the
official tables; these statistics are enough to condemn free trade
before any tribunal in the world. Mark how the matter stands. Here is a
_doubled importation_ of foreign manufactured goods. One half at least
of these goods have come in to displace your home manufacture. The other
half would have come in as formerly to supply the rich, who would have
had to pay a high duty for the gratification of their fancy. That duty,
where reduced, is now lost to the revenue. Who is the gainer, then? No
one, save the rich consumer; whilst, on the other hand, the revenue has
suffered, and home industry has received a prostrating blow. But—say men
of the Cobden school—though the silk weaver, and embroiderer, and
milliner, and plaiter, and shoemaker, and tailor, may have suffered, the
country is no loser, because WE export goods in return for the articles
of import. Do you, gentlemen? Let us turn to the export tables, and see
how your account stands. Recollect, you have undertaken to show us a
corresponding export of your goods to meet the influx of foreign
manufactures. Unless you can do this, your case is utterly worthless,
and you stand as detected impostors.
EXPORT OF PRINCIPAL MANUFACTURES FROM THE UNITED
KINGDOM.
1846. 1847. 1848.
Cotton manufactures, £8,899,272 £9,248,835 £8,023,825
Ditto yarn, 3,523,793 2,628,616 2,214,431
Linen manufactures, 1,389,520 1,502,770 1,413,819
Ditto yarn, 410,277 315,196 236,076
Silk manufactures, 421,910 494,806 263,798
Woollen yarn, 377,160 444,797 291,985
Ditto manufactures, 3,143,550 3,564,754 2,578,470
——————————— ——————————— ———————————
£18,165,482 £18,199,774 £15,022,404
The result is a loss on these articles alone of THREE MILLIONS in six
months, and we are to set that against doubled imports, free of duty,
and displacing British employment! Here are the glorious effects of Sir
Robert’s commercial legislation!
What, then, _has_ gone out to meet the import which is rapidly promoting
Chartism among us, by impoverishing the poorer classes? Just what we
predicted long ago—GOLD; the idol without which men must starve, but
which free trade periodically sweeps from out our grasp. The lowered
tariffs have operated peculiarly unfavourably at the present crisis—not
perhaps so much in the branch of silk manufactures as in others; for it
is remarkable that the increase of import in 1847, over that of 1846, is
quite as large as the increase of the present over the former year; and
had Lord John Russell been alive to the duties of his situation, or
capable of comprehending the effects which a glut of foreign goods must
produce on the home market, he ought instantly to have brought in a bill
augmenting the customs duties, and hurried it through Parliament without
a moment’s unnecessary delay. The madness of encouraging increased
imports, whilst exports are falling, is utterly inconceivable to any who
have not eaten and drunk with Cobden; and it is quite possible that some
who have been admitted to that precious privilege, may agree with us if
they will take the trouble to consider the foregoing tables. We are not
the only sufferers. America is beginning to understand that increased
imports are by no means decisive symptoms of a healthy commercial state;
and the following extract from Transatlantic correspondence, which we
copy from the money article in the _Sun_ newspaper of 16th August last,
is pregnant with meaning in the present posture of affairs.
“The whole of Europe is in a terrible condition, and our only hope is,
that Great Britain may escape the blast which has swept from one end
of the Continent to the other with such devastating effect. If England
escape, we shall continue to find extensive markets for our products,
and our prosperity will be partially preserved. Our markets on the
Continent have almost become extinct, so that the worst in that
particular has already been realised; but, every week or month,
consumption in that section of the world is restricted or limited—so
much the more injurious must be the revolution causing such a state of
things. With the exception of Great Britain, our European export trade
has been literally annihilated; but _unfortunately, our import trade
with these countries_ has not met with a similar fate, but on the
contrary, has rather increased than otherwise. Importers and
speculators in this country have taken advantage of the financial
embarrassments growing out of the Revolution, which the manufacturers
of France and Europe generally have laboured under, and have purchased
of them for cash, goods at one half their cost, and have filled our
markets. _A portion of the specie which has been shipped from this
port within the last four months went abroad for this purpose_; and
while our exports had become reduced to the lowest limit, and exchange
drawn upon previous shipments of produce was coming back protested,
millions of dollars of gold and silver were going forward to purchase
goods which could not be obtained on the usual credit. In this way,
our whole foreign trade has become deranged, and we have thus far
borne the brunt of the commercial revulsions and political revolutions
in Europe.”
What is to be said of a system which swamps our home market, whilst at
the same time it promotes a drain of gold? What is to be said of the
system which makes a drain of gold almost tantamount to national
bankruptcy?
Having hitherto dealt with the subjects of the currency and finance, let
us now glance for a moment at the new legislation for our colonies. We
need not repeat the tale of the disasters into which the West Indies
have been plunged, or the ruin which has befallen many of our own most
respectable citizens, who, to their misfortune, had embarked their
capital and fortunes in sugar-growing estates, trusting to British faith
and protection for at least an adequate return. The veriest zealot could
not have wished to have seen the crime of slavery more bitterly avenged;
but in what a manner! Great Britain, after having made a sacrifice of
twenty millions to emancipate the slave population in her own
colonies,—a sacrifice to her, though not an adequate compensation to the
planters,—after having declared to the whole world her determination no
longer to participate in the profits of forced labour,—after having made
treaties, and equipped armaments for the suppression of the
slave-trade,—suddenly changed her policy, admitted slave-grown sugar
from foreign states, first, at a high, and, latterly, at so low a duty,
that her own colonies, already impoverished, could no longer afford to
defray the cost of production. Here, again, the principle of free trade
has been triumphant and ruinous; here, again, the exporting trades have
carried their point, not only against the interests of the colonists,
but against those of benevolence and Christianity. The cause of the
Blacks has been abandoned for the tempting bribe of cheap sugars, of an
augmented demand for cottons and blankets to supply the gangs of Cuba,
and of machinery for Brazil, to enable the planter more utterly to
prostrate Jamaica.
In February last we reviewed with great care all the evidence which we
could collect regarding the West Indian interest. The conclusion to
which we arrived was contained in the following paragraph:—“And what is
it that our colonists ask? What is the extravagant proposal which we are
prepared to reject at the cost of the loss of our most fertile
possessions, and of nearly two hundred millions of British capital?
Simply this, that in the meantime such a distinctive duty should be
enforced as will allow them to compete on terms of equality with the
slave-growing states. Let this alone be granted, and they have no wish
to interfere with any other fiscal regulation. And what would be the
amount of differential duty required? _Not more, as we apprehend, than
ten shillings the hundredweight._” Having hazarded this statement so
early, it was certainly gratifying to find that an impartial committee
of the House of Commons, reporting four months later, had, after a full
investigation of the whole case,—and of course with official documents
before them, the correctness of which could not admit of a
doubt,—arrived at precisely the same result. The proposition for a
differential duty of ten shillings, which was finally agreed to by the
committee, was actually made by a member whose general opinions are
understood to lean towards the side of free trade,—we mean Sir Thomas B.
Birch, one of the representatives for Liverpool.
This resolution of course implied a direct condemnation of the Whig Act
of 1846, which the West Indians bitterly complained of as a flagrant
breach of faith, and as having put the coping-stone on their
misfortunes. It was the resolution of an independent and intelligent
parliamentary committee, founded upon a mass of evidence derived from
every quarter; and in a matter of this sort, wherein so vast an interest
as that of our most valuable colonies was concerned, it might have been
expected that the report would be treated with deference, even though it
might in some degree impugn the sagacity of a prime minister, by
exposing the results of his former reckless legislation. Such was not
the case. Had the seven wise men of Greece sate upon that committee,
their report would have been utterly indifferent to Lord John, who
immediately came forward with a counter-scheme, which had not even the
merit of consistency to give it colour. He proposed a new sliding-scale
of duties, the result of which will be, that next year the colonists
will have a protection against the slave-owners of seven shillings in
the article of clayed, and five-and-sixpence in that of muscovado
sugar,—the boon to taper away annually, until, in 1854, the protective
duty will be reduced to three shillings on the one article, and two
shillings upon the other. This is the doom of the West Indies,—and we
expect nothing less than an immediate stoppage of the supplies for the
maintenance of the colonial governments. Robbed as they have been,
ruined as they are, and all through a course of most reckless and
unprovoked legislation, it is in vain to hope that any further capital
will be embarked in the cultivation of these islands. For the benefit of
economists at home, and the clamourers for cheap sugar, it may be as
well to record that this new sliding-scale is to be accompanied with a
_loan_ of £500,000, in addition to £160,000 already guaranteed this
session, for the purposes of promoting immigration, and that at a period
when the annual deficit was originally calculated at _three_ millions!
The amendment of Sir John Pakington, founded upon the resolutions of the
committee, was negatived in a full house by the small majority of
fifteen.
This has been by far the most important debate of the session; and at
one time it was confidently expected that ministers would have been
defeated. Sir Robert Peel, however, came to their rescue at the last
stage. Oleaginous and plausible as ever, the wily baronet began his
speech by deploring the misfortunes of the West Indians, repudiating
mere pecuniary considerations, and calling to mind old struggles, in
which these colonies had stood by the side of the mother country. This
sympathetic introduction boded little mercy for the parties it seemed to
favour. Sir Robert had acquiesced in the Act of 1846, and it was now
rather difficult to back out from that position. But soothing measures
might be adopted, the salaries of governors defrayed by the mother
country, and _perhaps_, if, after due consideration, it should be found
expedient to remove the blockading squadron from the coast of Africa,
part of the sums so saved might be devoted to colonial purposes. Then
came a discourse upon the merits of irrigation, which would have done
credit to a lecturer in an agricultural society. Finally, Sir Robert
rested his future hopes for the Indies upon other, and what appear to us
peculiarly objectionable considerations. He has no confidence in the
tranquillity of Cuba and Brazil, and he hints at an insurrection of the
slaves being probable, if emancipation is not granted. We shall not
comment more than lightly upon the decency of such a hint. Desirable as
emancipation may be, it is, to say the least, questionable whether it
would be cheaply bought by so terrible a catastrophe as a general rising
of the black barbarian population against the whites; and in the event
of such a misfortune occurring either in the above slave colonies or in
the United States, it is extremely problematical whether our own dearly
bought emancipation would effectually prevent the contagion from
spreading to the free colonies. But we will tell Sir Robert a fact of
which he ought to be fully cognisant. The greatest enemies and obstacles
to emancipation, in the Spanish and South American States, have been
himself and his free-trading allies. It is well known to many here, and
notorious in the West Indies, that at the very time when the ill-advised
Act permitting slave-grown sugar to be introduced into this country was
produced, negotiations were actually pending in Cuba for the immediate
emancipation of the slaves. The results of that Act were the instant
abandonment of such an idea, the withdrawal of the slaves from the
coffee plantations to the sugar-fields, double work rigorously enforced,
and an enormously increased importation of human beings from the coast
of Africa. With such a bonus held out to the Cuban planter, such a huge
increase of consumption in this country as Lord John Russell gloatingly
contemplates, it would be utter insanity to expect that emancipation can
take place through any other means than blood, rapine, plunder, and
incendiarism. Sir Robert and the free-traders have effectually precluded
any milder method. Had they been true to the principles professed by
this country at the time of our own emancipation, there is every human
reason to believe that by this time Cuba would have been a free colony.
Had that event taken place, slavery, and of course the slave-trade,
would have received its death-blow. But now when we have given, and
continue to give, a direct premium to the abhorred system, when we have
shown that we love its produce so much, as to hold the welfare of our
own colonies as nothing in comparison, it is mere Jesuitry to cant about
the probability of voluntary freedom. This is the worst and most
indefensible argument, if, indeed, it can be brought within the category
of arguments, which has yet been advanced from any quarter in support of
the false legislation and determined opposition of ministers to the just
claims of the colonists.
In the course of the debate a singular discussion arose, which tends to
throw some light upon the management of the Colonial Office. A most
important despatch upon the state of Jamaica had been received from
Governor Grey, and this was withheld from the select committee then
sitting, although Mr Hawes, the Under-secretary for the Colonies, was
directly questioned as to its existence. We do not wish to enter into
the details of this matter, or to cast any imputation upon the probity
of Mr Hawes, who, in explanation, was fain to take shelter under the
plea of a mistake. But the circumstance certainly did look awkward, and
the doubts, not only of the House but of the country, were far from
being removed by the extreme acrimony displayed by the Premier, in his
injudicious defence of his subordinate. Never in our recollection has a
Prime Minister shown so remarkable a want of temper and of courtesy to a
political opponent, as was exhibited by Lord John Russell in his reply
to Lord George Bentinck. We should be glad, for the sake of the utterer,
that the speech could be erased from the pages of Hansard, even were we
to lose, at the same time, the brilliant and withering reply which it
elicited from Mr D’Israeli. A suppression certainly had occurred,
whether through mistake or otherwise; and the matter was thought so
serious that Earl Grey volunteered an explanation in the Upper House. He
had better have let it alone. New charges of suppression were preferred;
and finally Earl Grey admitted that, on one occasion at least, he had
quoted passages from a Jamaica memorial in support of his argument,
totally and purposely omitting to read other sentences, which gave a
different construction to the meaning intended to be conveyed! This is
popularly said to be the method adopted by a certain personage, who
shall be nameless, whenever he has occasion to quote Scripture, and yet
it is practised and defended by a high official functionary! We copy the
remarks of our contemporary the _Spectator_, as very apposite on this
occasion.
“The personal dispute about the conduct of Lord Grey and Mr Hawes, and
the strictures of Lord George Bentinck, which began on Friday last,
have usurped a large share of the week’s debates; not altogether to so
little purpose as most personal squabbles, since it throws
considerable light on the administration of colonial affairs. The
general impression, when all sides have had their say, is, that Mr
Hawes and Lord Grey did not intend to cheat Lord George Bentinck’s
committee by the deliberate suppression of evidence; but the very
statements made by ministers, in defence, unveil reprehensible
practices. It seems that the routine of the Colonial Office is such as
to preclude any security against ‘mistakes’ so grave as the
withholding of most important despatches. And Lord Grey claims, as an
admitted official privilege, to pick out bits of evidence in his
exclusive possession, that make for a particular view, although those
bits may be torn from a context that should perfectly refute that
particular view! In effect, he upholds the doctrine that a government
is not bound to lay before parliament all the information that reaches
the departments, even though that information be not of a secret kind,
but may select such parts as go to bolster up the preconceived
crotchets of the minister for the time being. In this case, Lord Grey
had preconceived crotchets hostile to the West Indian colonies, whom
he treated as if he were the Attorney-General prosecuting a state
criminal. He has carried beyond its usual bounds the spirit of the
_Anti_-Colonial Office, in Downing Street. With this spirit of
animosity the Secretary for the Colonies coupled the most singular
exhibition of personal trifling, and self-worship. He appealed to the
name of his father, as a reason for not accusing himself! and pointed
to the ‘awful warning across the Channel,’ as a reason for not
preferring charges calculated to weaken English statesmen. ‘Don’t talk
of inefficiency or dishonesty,’ cries he—‘it is dangerous; for such
talk has upset governments abroad.’ Yes, shaky and dishonest
governments; but what is Lord Grey afraid of?”
As for the sugar duties, we do not by any means believe that this is a
final settlement of the question. If free trade, indeed, should continue
to progress, there is not much hope for the colonists; but, to the
observant eye, there are unmistakeable symptoms of reaction apparent in
this country, and a very general sympathy for the case of the West
Indians. Our greatest fear is, that irretrievable mischief will be
wrought before there is an opportunity of applying a remedy. It seems
cruel mockery, after all that has happened, to exhort the planters to
persevere, and to prevent those valuable islands from lapsing into a
state of wilderness: and yet there seems no alternative between such
perseverance and abandonment. This only we can say, that should the
commercial principles, which we have advocated throughout, be again
recognised and adopted—should true and not hollow Conservatism once more
triumph over Whig effrontery and weakness, this mighty grievance will
assuredly be the earliest redressed.
Referring again to the speech from the throne as the text for the
parliamentary campaign, we find the Navigation Laws specially marked out
either for modification or repeal. This subject having been fully dealt
with in our July Number, we offer no further remarks upon the policy
which dictated such a plan; indeed, no remarks are necessary, for since
then the measure has been postponed. This is a sorry result for
ministers; for although they plead, in justification, that other
important business had prevented them from forcing on the consideration
of this very serious question, their protestations do not seem to
satisfy the gentlemen who are most clamorous against the shipping
interest of Britain. It has been more than hinted in certain quarters,
that this postponement is a small stroke of Whig policy or prudence, for
the purpose of keeping alive as long as possible a theme of dissension
among the Conservatives. We offer no opinion as to this conjecture,
which may be substantially true or not. Certain it is that the proposal
for the repeal of those laws has been encountered, outside of the House
of Commons, with a storm of disapprobation; and that, if the feeling of
the public, as opposed to the interests of the exporters, has any weight
with the legislature, the ministerial bill will be strangled before it
can receive the royal assent. So great was the anxiety displayed, that
on the day after it became known in Glasgow that the bill was not to be
pushed forward this session, every vessel in the Clyde was decorated
with flags, in token of thankfulness for the respite. We hope that every
advantage will be taken in the interval to force upon the attention of
parliament the resolution of the well-affected people of this country,
to maintain intact that law which has been the source of our naval
supremacy, and which was declared, by no less an authority than Adam
Smith, to be as wise as if it had been dictated by the most deliberate
wisdom.
A considerable number of minor bills have been quietly allowed to drop.
This is not matter of lamentation, for, as far as we could comprehend
the principle of most of them, they were utterly worthless and uncalled
for. The Bill for the Removal of the Jewish Disabilities was, we rejoice
to say, thrown out in the House of Lords, the peers being of opinion
that the British Legislature should continue a Christian assembly. Lord
John, in the plenitude of his zeal for the Sanhedrim, gave notice of a
motion for altering the form of the oaths required to be taken by each
member of Parliament at his admission, and so introducing the Jew by a
convenient little postern. But somehow or other, as the session
progressed, the ardour of the Premier cooled, and Baron Rothschild is at
present left with as little chance of adorning the benches of St
Stephens as ever. Mr Joseph Hume and his party have got up a radical
alliance, for the extension of the suffrage and various other organic
schemes, and it was understood that Sir Joshua Walmsley was to have the
honour of leading the movement. Unfortunately, however, before the day
of debate had arrived, Sir Joshua had been unseated in consequence of
certain acts of bribery which had taken place in connexion with the
borough of Leicester, so that the purists had to march to battle under
the chieftainship of the veteran of Montrose. They were beaten hollow:
but at a later period of the session, the carelessness of ministers gave
a temporary triumph to the same parties, resolutions in favour of the
ballot having been passed by a small majority. This vote is of no
importance whatever, save in so far as it demonstrates the utter
helplessness of the Whigs when left to their own resources.
Whilst upon the subject of shelving, let us remark that the Scottish
Registration and Marriage Bills have shared a similar fate. Of this we
are devoutly glad. Not a single petition has been presented in their
favour; and though no doubt the registration of births, and a stricter
law of marriage, may be desirable, we think it might be quite possible
to accomplish both objects, without creating a new and expensive staff
of functionaries, or holding forth a prospect of entire immunity to
seduction. Possibly at a later period we may take an opportunity of
examining these postponed measures in detail.
Two more questions remain, and then the history of the session is ended.
They are of vast importance—Ireland, and our foreign policy.
The opening of the session found Ireland in a state of agrarian outrage.
Agitation was doing its work, and murder was rife on every hand.
Foremost in stirring up the people, most determined in hounding them on,
were the Roman Catholic priesthood; and we trust that this fact will not
be forgotten by those who are now meditating to buy their silence.
Individuals were openly denounced from the altar, and next day shot down
by the assassin. The most seditious language was used by these cassocked
traitors towards the British government; and even the higher dignitaries
of their church sought to stimulate the passions of the populace by the
most barefaced and impudent misrepresentation. Hear Archdeacon Laffan at
Cashel, upon a Sunday, surrounded by some fifteen thousand of the
peasantry, and backed by that notable worthy, Mr John O’Connell, and
three other members of Parliament—“The Saxon scoundrel, with his
bellyful of Irish meat, could very well afford to call his poor, honest,
starving fellow-countrymen savages and assassins; but if in the
victualling department John Bull suffered one-fifth of the privations to
which the Tipperary men were subject, if he had courage enough, he would
stand upon one side, _and shoot the first man he could meet with a
decent coat on his back_—(Cheers.) But the Saxon had not courage to do
any thing like a man; he growls out like a hungry tiger!” At the time
when this expositor of the Christian doctrine was raving to his
miserable flock, the following was the condition of the Established
clergy. One of them, writing from King’s County, described his
position—“For nearly twenty years I have been a minister of the
Established Church; and during that time I have had nothing whatever to
do with tithes, for my benefice is a chapelry of £90 a-year, and is paid
partly out of land set apart for the purpose, and partly by the
ecclesiastical commissioners of Ireland, from a fund bequeathed to small
livings by Primate Boulter.” He had devoted much attention to the
employment of the poor; had never shown favour or partiality to any one
sect; had lived simply, and attended to his duties; had never brought an
ejectment, or taken any other law proceedings, against a tenant. “What,
then,” continued he, “was my surprise and horror to find an assassin
lying in wait for me for three successive days; and—for this is still
more horrifying—that most of the people of the neighbourhood where I
live have been so far from expressing joy at the escape I have made,
that they show evident disappointment at my not being shot!”
We have often marvelled what must be the impression of foreigners after
reading such speeches as are usually delivered at an Irish assembly, by
men who cannot plead utter ignorance in extenuation of the language they
employ. They must, we presume, imagine that “the Saxon” has taken
forcible possession of the whole of Ireland; that the natives are no
better than serfs—unprotected by any laws, and liable to be beaten,
plundered, and massacred at the pleasure of the invaders; that, on the
approach of each harvest, hordes of the Saxons repair to the fertile
fields of the Celt, reap them with a sickle in the one hand and a musket
in the other, and then carry off the produce, without leaving a single
doit in reparation. He would imagine that the women are forced, the men
defrauded, and the houses pillaged at pleasure; that the Roman Catholics
are hunted down like wild beasts, by armies of bloodthirsty Protestants;
that the exercise of their faith is denied them; and that they are
allowed no voice whatever in the national representation. Some such
conception as this he must form from the harangues which have
constituted the staple of Conciliation Hall for more years than we care
to reckon. But what would be his amazement were he told that Ireland is
governed by precisely the same laws as the sister country; that property
is equally protected, and life endangered only by the brutality of the
Celtic assassin; that Ireland is specially exempted from several of the
taxes which press most heavily upon the industrious classes of Great
Britain; that on the last occasion of famine, upwards of nine millions
of public, and a vast amount of private money, was given for the support
of her poor; that Roman Catholic colleges have been munificently
endowed; that Ireland has her full share of representation in the
imperial Parliament, and that upwards of one half of the time of the
House of Commons is occupied with measures tending to the amelioration
of the Irish people! If he were told all this—and it is no more than the
naked truth—what would be his astonishment? And yet so it is. Ireland
has persisted, and is persisting, in her course of sedition without a
grievance, of murder without provocation, of black and brutal
ingratitude without even the shadow of an excuse!
It is impossible to find language too strong to characterise the guilt
of the individuals, lay or clerical, who have spent the better part of
their mean and mischievous existence in misleading their rude and
ignorant fellow-countrymen. They are the moral nuisances who have always
stood in the way of Ireland’s progression and happiness. But for them,
there would have been no absenteeism, no heart-burning between the
landlord and the tenant. The people would gradually have learned habits
of industry and providence, and instead of whooping through the country
like maniacs, shouting and yelling for repeal, which if granted, would
make an utter hell of Ireland, they would be tilling the ground, or
usefully employed in the development of that capital which no one dare
hazard at present in their mad and turbulent districts. For all these
things we do not blame, but execrate O’Connell and his tribe. The
grasping selfishness of that family has for the last few years been the
greatest curse to Ireland; and the crimes of other and inferior
agitators shrink into insignificance, compared with the moral turpitude
of the men who have deliberately fattened upon their country’s ruin.
Mr John O’Connell, having previously declared his intention of dying on
the floor of the House of Commons rather than permit the passing of a
Coercion Bill to restrain his countrymen from murder, did in effect make
his appearance in St Stephens, but by no means with a suicidal
intention. One of his earliest speeches is worth preserving, as it
exhibits, in a most extraordinary degree, the hereditary power of
mendicancy. “If they had a reverence for human life, let them extend it
to the people of Ireland. Give money. He asked for money. He heard the
laughter of honourable gentlemen; but he could tell them that they ought
to give money, and that it was their duty to do so. Charge them for the
money if they liked, but at all events let them save the lives of the
people. He did not expect to be met otherwise than with laughter; and he
was bound to say that he never saw in that House one single real thought
for the interest of Ireland. (_Great laughter._) He begged to say, that
he had made that remark hastily and hotly, but now he repeated it
deliberately and coolly. Whenever the interests of Ireland came into
competition with those of England, they were invariably sacrificed. And
if he did ask money, had he not a right to do so? In a few nights a
motion would come on, and then he would prove that they owed it!” No man
certainly ever did more credit to his profession. Brought up under the
most able instructor of his age in the art of begging, John O’Connell
exhibited on this occasion talents of the highest order, which would
have made his fortune on the highway, unless some stray traveller should
have mistaken the intentions of the suppliant, and been over ready with
his pistol to prevent an anticipated robbery. The vile ingratitude of
this man is almost equal to his audacity. Great Britain, without the
slightest hope of any return, had impoverished herself for the support
of the Irish, and yet here was the whole acknowledgment! Even on the
score of policy it would have been wiser for Mr O’Connell to have
mitigated his tone.
The Irish Crime and Outrage Bill was introduced by ministers at an early
stage of the session, with the general concurrence of all parties. No
one could doubt that it was especially needed, but few were sanguine
that it would suffice to cure the spirit of disaffection which was
abroad. In fact, Irish agitation has been allowed to proceed to such a
point, that the evil is utterly incurable. What chance is there of
putting a stop to physical force demonstrations, or, in other words, to
open rebellion, whilst another gang of demagogues is permitted to preach
sedition under the guise of moral force, and to fill the minds of their
deluded victims with every species of misrepresentation and wild
hostility to Great Britain? Our system of government towards Ireland has
been timid and weak, and we are now paying the penalty. Our charities
have been given with far too liberal a hand. Ireland has but had to ask,
in order to be relieved by the public money: and this process has been
so often repeated, that what at first was an extraordinary boon, is now
considered in the light of an indefeasible claim. The Irish peasant will
not work, will do nothing to better his own position, because he
believes that, in his hour of need, he will be supported by British
alms. We wish we could believe that this scandalous and sordid spirit
was confined to the peasantry alone. It is not so. A general scramble
takes place on each fresh issue of bounty, and rich and poor, high and
low, among the repealers, press clamorously forward for their share.
Never was money more absurdly, more mischievously misapplied, than the
great government grants on occasion of the famine. Had the proposals of
Lord George Bentinck been agreed to, and the money given by way of loan
for construction of the Irish railroads, not only would the government
have held some security for repayment, or, at all events, a vested
interest in the works, but a useful improvement would have been effected
in the heart of the country, and a new element of civilisation
introduced. But the scheme was rejected, for no other reason, we
believe, than because it was suggested by a political opponent, and the
millions granted by Britain have been squandered in making good roads
bad, in trenching mosses, draining waste lands, and what not. The
expenditure has been lost to this country, and has not had the effect of
awakening the slightest spark of gratitude or respect for the quarter
whence it came. Ireland must be disabused on one point. These grants are
not annual, and cannot be continued. The time has come when Ireland must
be put upon precisely the same footing of taxation with the sister
kingdoms—she must be forced to forego pauperism, and in future to rely
on her industry, and on her own resources. Ireland is at least four
times as fertile in soil as Scotland, and there can be no reason
whatever why she should be exempt from burdens which apply to the
latter, and moreover, like a sturdy beggar, be for ever vociferous for
relief.
The Crime and Outrage Bill in some degree fulfilled its purpose; for
open murder and assassination, if not extinguished, were somewhat
diminished throughout the winter. Still the work of sedition progressed.
Old and Young Ireland, ruffians both, were at loggerheads—the older
section finding a profit in the shape of the weekly rent, the younger
and more conscientious one thirsting for the hour when the dogs of
rebellion might be let loose. The French revolution found Ireland in
this state, and no doubt aided to precipitate the crisis. The visions of
mere repeal gradually faded before the more brilliant and daring
aspiration of an Irish republic! France would probably sympathise with
Erin; and a deputation was sent over to wait upon Lamartine, then in the
zenith of his popularity, for the double purpose of ascertaining the
chances of assistance, and of taking a flying lesson in the art of
constructing barricades. But the members of the French Provisional
Government showed no alacrity in recognising the Irish patriots, and
distinctly refused to interfere. Then it became apparent, that if the
Irish party were determined to rebel, they must do so without foreign
aid and intervention; and on their own ground, and with their own
weapons, be prepared to cope with the Saxon.
It is but fair, in justice to the unfortunate men who, since that time,
have suffered for their almost incredible folly, to state that others,
too crafty or pusillanimous to approach within grasp of the law, were at
least equally guilty in promoting agitation after revolution had been
triumphant in France. John O’Connell thus wrote from Paris a few days
after Louis Philippe had been driven from his throne:—“Speak out, people
of Ireland! Speak from every city—every valley—every hill—every plain!
THE TIME IS COME! The hour has arrived when it is our instant right!
when it is England’s directest and most imperative interest that we
should manage our own affairs in our own Parliament at home!” It matters
not, in a moral point of view, though it might be convenient for
sheltering purposes, that this note of sedition was accompanied with
advice to abstain from crime and bloodshed. Such advice goes for nothing
with the million, as O’Connell well knows; and, furthermore, he knows
this, that of all the phantoms ever conjured up by designing rogues and
mountebanks, this one of Irish repeal is the most unlikely of
realisation. What, then, did the man mean by these words, “_The time is
come!_” save to stir up the people to some demonstration, the issue of
which must have been massacre and bloodshed?
We need hardly allude to the effect of those appeals upon the more
hot-headed and determined of the confederates. They no longer preserved
even the semblance of loyalty, but, with a daring wholly unexampled,
gloried in the name of traitors. At public meetings they recommended the
immediate arming of the people—descanted, in terms of gloating fondness,
upon that “queen of weapons” the pike—and the only point of hesitation
was the precise period of the rising—whether it ought to take place
immediately, or be postponed “until French steamers were letting off
their steam in Falmouth and Portsmouth.” John Mitchell, in the _United
Irishman_, and his coadjutors in the _Nation_, seconded these views in a
series of the most inflammatory and villanous articles. They propounded
deliberate plans for barricading the streets of Dublin; displayed the
most hellish ingenuity in devising implements to be used against the
troops; attempted to persuade their dupes, that, in the event of a
rising, the army would be found on their side; and, in short, set every
law, human and divine, at defiance. At this crisis, ministers failed to
act with that decision which was clearly their duty. They should at once
have suspended the _Habeas Corpus_ Act, and arrested the whole of the
leading agitators. Such a course would have struck terror into the
insurgents, before, emboldened by impunity, and relying upon the want of
unanimity almost sure to prevail among Irish juries, they had dragged
other misled individuals into a participation of their guilt.
March, and a portion of April, passed away before ministers took courage
to introduce the Crown and Government Security Bill, under which
Mitchell was ultimately convicted. In the discussions which took place,
Lord John Russell was evidently sorely hampered by the opinions which he
had expressed when in opposition, and the manifest discrepancy of his
measures with the principles of the Whiggish creed. He showed a
disposition to truckle, when he came to that portion of the bill which
declared that open and advised speaking, of treasonable nature, should
henceforward be treated as felony, and took it merely as a temporary
provision. A bolder front, at such a time, would better have become a
British statesman.
Smith O’Brien and Meagher, two of the most daring leaders of the
faction, were tried at Dublin in the month of May, and escaped, the jury
being in neither case unanimous. These trials may be memorable in the
history of the jurisprudence of Ireland, for they distinctly prove that
the present system of trial is utterly unsuited for that country.
Nothing could be clearer than the evidence against both parties. O’Brien
had recommended the formation of an Irish brigade in the United States.
Meagher’s recommendation was “up with the barricades, and invoke the god
of battles.” Yet in the face of this, the jury could not agree upon
their verdict. Mitchell was the first person convicted under the new
Act. On the 27th of May, he was found guilty, and sentenced to fourteen
years’ transportation.
No effort whatever was made, on the part of the populace, to rescue this
misguided man. He had proclaimed himself a felon, and he was sent forth
to undergo the punishment of his crime. But this example, stringent as
it was, had no effect whatever in repressing the spirit of treason. The
arming went on rapidly as before, or rather in an augmented ratio.
Cargoes of muskets, and other fire-arms, were openly shipped for Dublin,
and exposed for sale; their destination and use were openly admitted,
and yet ministers did not seem to consider it their duty to interfere!
The newspaper war continued. Fresh journals sprang up to replace the
_United Irishman_, and the favourite doctrines of Mitchell were enforced
with a ferocity and earnestness almost equal to his own. Clubs, after
the fashion of those in Paris, were organised throughout the country:
drilling began, and at length rebellion assumed a tangible shape, the
confederate forces having been reviewed by Smith O’Brien at Cork. On the
21st of July, Dublin was proclaimed by the Lord Lieutenant; and
immediately thereafter, and not a moment too soon, ministry were
compelled to suspend the _Habeas Corpus_ Act in Ireland.
As we are not writing a history of this most abortive rebellion, we need
not follow its leaders throughout their ignominious, and even cowardly
career. That a bubble, deemed so gigantic, should have burst with so
miraculously small an explosion, may hereafter be a source of wonder to
the chronicler; at present our only feeling should be gratitude to the
Almighty that this affair has as yet been accompanied with so little
loss of human life. So far, it is well; but it would be absolute madness
to suppose that the spirit of rebellion has been extinguished. The Irish
people have been guilty of a great crime. A large portion of them are,
without any doubt, rebels in their hearts; and they must submit to be
treated as such, until we are satisfied that their stubborn disposition
is removed. Great credit, it seems, is now given in certain quarters to
the Roman Catholic clergy, for the part they took in suppressing the
late disturbances; and we anticipate an immediate burst of laudation,
and perhaps a promise of reward, in return for their disinterested
exertions. If to foster rebellion in every possible manner, whilst there
is the least chance of its success, and to preach it down from the very
moment when the cause appears obviously desperate, be an acceptable
course, we freely admit the claims of the priesthood to the heartfelt
gratitude of Britain: upon no other ground whatever can we see a reason
for their recognition. Let any man consider seriously and impartially
the history and proceedings in Ireland for the last six months, and he
cannot fail, we think, to arrive at the conclusion, that clerical
connivance is visible in every scene of the drama. Smith O’Brien and
Mitchell, being both of them Protestants, may have raised the banner too
early, and may have been sacrificed with little scruple; but we repeat,
that we have no faith in that interference which comes so very late, and
which, without any hyperbole, may be said to have been forced at the
point of the bayonet.
As regards ministers, we think their later measures have been taken with
a fair regard for the interests of the imperial crown. Much they might
have done earlier; but, on the whole, we are not inclined to quarrel
with their conduct. Lord John Russell, in the course of late events, has
received a more wholesome lesson in the practical science of legislation
than was ever vouchsafed him before. His Lordship’s eyes are now, we
hope, opened to the fallacy of some of the cherished Whig propositions.
He has learned that there are times when a government must have recourse
to extraordinary measures, if it is sincere in its wish to maintain the
integrity of the crown and the constitution: and that although the
liberty of the subject, and the freedom of the press, are undoubtedly
most excellent things, and capital toasts at Whig propaganda banquets,
neither of them can be allowed to go so far as to achieve a violent
revolution. If some slight tinge should be apparent on the cheek of the
Premier as he reviews his past career, and reflects on the inconsistency
of his former speeches with his present more energetic conduct, we are
willing to attribute the blush to the most amiable, and certainly the
most honourable of possible motives—the acknowledgment of a cherished
error.
But while we accord with satisfaction this meed of praise to ministers,
it is impossible to forget that the Whig party, by playing into the
hands of O’Connell and his followers, have given a pernicious incentive
to the agitation which has ended in the late revolt. There has been far
too much coquetting and trafficking with the repealers,—far too little
consideration shown for the really loyal and peaceable portion of the
Irish people. Is it possible to expect that any credence will be given
to the idea that the Whigs are sincere and determined in their
opposition to the repeal doctrines, when a high official functionary
like Sir William Somerville, Chief Secretary of State for Ireland, is
found subscribing to the fund raised for defending the return of Mr
Reynolds, the member for Dublin? Is it, we say, decent that a man in the
position of the honourable baronet should be allowed to identify not
only himself, but the government to which he belongs, with a party so
diametrically opposed to the best interests of the British empire? If
the Whigs are determined to put down agitation in Ireland—and put down
it must be, at whatever cost—let them show their sincerity by dropping
all connexion with the agitators. These are not times for
truckling—least of all for party purposes and pretension.
If there is an immediate return to the old system of conciliation—if
that unhappy country is to be left under the impression that Britain is
bound to support her, we may look for another projected rebellion at no
very distant period. Ireland must be taught to depend thoroughly upon
herself. The wages of idleness must no longer be given her under any
circumstances whatever. We are satisfied that the social misery of
Ireland proceeds mainly from the injudicious system of eleemosynary
support, to which she has been so long accustomed; for nowhere else in
the known world is there a land so rich in resources, with a population
so utterly improvident. An end also must be put, by the strong arm of
power, to agitation of every kind. Jury trial requires remodelment; and
we hope that the very first Irish measure which is introduced, will be
one for assimilating the system of jury trial in criminal cases there
with that which has worked so well and satisfactorily in Scotland. Let
fifteen men be impanelled, and let the opinion of the majority be the
verdict. This would effectually prevent those allegations about packing,
which do certainly detract from the moral weight of such convictions as
that of Mitchell: it would strengthen the hands of justice, and be
especially useful as a further preventive of crime. The weal or the
continued misery of Ireland will depend very much upon the character and
complexion of the measures which may be introduced during the next
session of Parliament.
The progress of the revolutions abroad has been any thing but peaceful.
On the Continent, the treaty of Vienna has become a dead letter—a mere
antiquated sheet of parchment, hardly to be appealed to by any of the
conflicting powers. War has broken out in more than one point; and
though, during the last month, there has been some prospect of
compromise, it is in vain to hope that Europe will immediately subside
into its former tranquillity. Hitherto, whatever may be said regarding
the internal economy of France, that country has manifested no
aggressive spirit. Paris, the centre-point of the volcanic eruption, has
kept, and may keep for some time, the soldiery in full employment; and
we are sincerely of opinion that General Cavaignac, now at the head of
affairs in France, has no personal disposition to undertake a war of
conquest. But the position of Germany is very peculiar, and her affairs
so complicated, that we may justly feel alarm as to the issue.
We shall say little of the experiment, so rashly undertaken by a number
of untried constitution craftsmen, for welding together into one
indissoluble mass the political existence of the different Teutonic
tribes. It is a project which, at first sight, may appear sufficiently
imposing; but when we examine it more closely, it seems fraught with
insuperable difficulties. To constitute a Regent for all Germany, in
whose hands is to be lodged the sovereign administration of affairs, is
in fact to dethrone and mediatise the whole of the reigning potentates.
It may be freely conceded that a number of the smaller states might be
absorbed, and their names removed from the map of Europe, without
causing any disturbance of the balance of power; but, with regard to the
larger ones, the case is very different. Will Austria, Prussia, Bavaria,
and Saxony, submit to surrender their independence? Will the kings allow
themselves to be stripped of their authority—of the power to make laws,
to proclaim war and peace, and to levy and command their own armies? We
do not believe it. Austria may not object at this peculiar juncture,
both because she is deeply engaged in war for the recovery of Lombardy,
and because the present Regent is a prince of her imperial family.
Prussia can hardly be the first to dissent, because her monarch had the
credit of originating the idea of German unity, under the illusion that
he would be nominated as the head. But unity is not popular in Prussia,
any more than it is in Bavaria, and the moment is fast approaching when
this bubble also must explode. We might look upon the whole experiment
with feelings of pure curiosity, were it not that incipient unity has
been signalised by an act of the most flagrant aggression. We allude to
the occupation of Schleswig-Holstein by the Germans.
Denmark is one of those small states in which the nationality is of the
most invincible kind. Circumscribed in territorial space, the Danish
people are possessed of a courage and energy which for centuries has
continued undiminished; and the more powerful northern states are bound,
if not by treaty, at least by the strongest ties of policy and
relationship, to assist their gallant neighbours in maintaining their
original position. Russia and Sweden have already declared themselves
open allies of Denmark, and resolute to maintain her against the forces
of Germany. The disposition of England, and, we are glad to say, of
France also, tends towards the same point; and such being the case, we
have great hopes that the Germans will not be mad enough to persevere in
their unjustifiable course. A war in the north of Europe, in which so
many great nations would be engaged, must be a hideous calamity; and
Germany, if wise, should be the last country to provoke it. But, as if
to complicate matters, the parliament at Frankfort have manifested an
intention of embroiling themselves with Holland for one of the ceded
duchies.
It is no purpose of ours to speculate upon events, and therefore we
leave the Danish question without further comment. It will be extremely
gratifying if, after all the demonstration which has been made, and the
actual collision between the Danes and the Germans, peace can be
re-established without having recourse to the armed interference of a
northern confederation; and it would be still more gratifying if this
desirable result should be the effect of British mediation. But, looking
to the south of Europe, we cannot approve of the policy which Great
Britain has since pursued, or the attitude which Lord Palmerston has
chosen to assume towards a friendly foreign power.
Our readers will not have forgotten the surprise and suspicion which was
excited, about a year ago, by the absence of a cabinet minister, who was
understood to be perambulating Italy with a sort of roving commission.
The intention may have been friendly, but the fact was both unusual and
degrading, and gave rise at the time to a multitude of unpleasant
suspicions. Whether Lord Minto travelled in the capacity of
constitution-maker for Italy we know not; but if so, as has more than
once been broadly alleged, his attempts have been utter failures. We
hope it was not by his advice that Charles Albert has done his best to
light up the flames of general war by that ungenerous attack upon
Austria, which has ended so disastrously for himself. Baffled on every
hand—after having sacrificed his army, and squandered his treasure—the
King of Sardinia has been driven back into his own country, amidst the
execrations of those whom he professedly came to emancipate, and without
a hope left of gaining the diadem for which he had perilled so much. The
papal constitution at Rome has by no means fulfilled the hopes of the
liberal advocates. Pius, lately so popular, is trembling in the Vatican,
and the inhabitants of the Eternal City are in as much terror as if
Attila were again at its gates. We repeat that we do not know how much
share British councils may have had in promoting these untoward events;
but this we know, that it would have been far better if Lord Minto had
remained at home. For, in the matter of Naples at least, we have chosen
to take a direct part, which throws suspicion upon the tendency of our
whole negotiations with the Peninsula.
Sicily has chosen to cast off its allegiance to the crown of Naples, and
to elect a sovereign of its own. This is strictly a domestic contest,
and one in which we had no title whatever to interfere. But mark what
has taken place. No sooner was Naples—a country which has also felt the
revolutionary shock—quieted by the granting of a constitution, than King
Ferdinand, desirous of quelling rebellion in Sicily, is intimidated from
sending his squadron for that purpose, by the appearance of a British
fleet off his own territory. Against this unjustifiable demonstration
the King of Naples has protested, declaring that he will hold any armed
interference between himself and his subjects as tantamount to a
declaration of war on the part of the British government. Lord
Stanley—whose conduct throughout the session, on all questions connected
with foreign or colonial affairs, has been pre-eminently distinguished
for temperance, rectitude, and ability, and who has exhibited, in a
remarkable degree, every qualification requisite for the leader of a
great and national party—brought the whole subject before the
consideration of the House of Lords: but the explanations given by Lord
Lansdowne are not calculated to improve our character for good faith,
whilst they may afford a ready apology to other states for any act of
aggression whatever. Also, at a later period of the session, Mr
D’Israeli, in one of those brilliant speeches for which he is
unrivalled, again demanded explanation from the Foreign Secretary, and
took occasion to comment, with sarcastic felicity, on the Minto
pilgrimage to Rome. We shall presently allude to the reply which Lord
Palmerston thought proper to make.
The facts of the case, as admitted by Lord Lansdowne, are shortly
these:—Britain was never asked to mediate formally between the
conflicting parties. The Sicilians stood in the position of rebels,
victorious perhaps on their own soil, but not, on that account, released
from an allegiance which had been formally recognised by Europe. They
proceeded, as all insurgents do, to debate upon some form of government;
and at this point, it seems, the Foreign Office thought fit to use its
influence. Lord Palmerston became a party to the discussions of the
revolted Sicilians, to the extent at least of advising them to select a
monarchical instead of a republican form of government; with an
assurance that, in that event, Britain would recognise the prince who
might be elected by the people.
This is neither more nor less than a recognition of the right of revolt;
and we should like to know upon what principle of the law of nations it
can be defended. It is one thing to acknowledge the right of a nation to
change the character of its institutions,—as for example, in the case of
France, which from a monarchy has become a republic. Were we to undergo
the same organic change, France, doubtless, would recognise us, and
continue the same relations with us under the altered form of
government. But what if France had chosen to espouse the cause of the
Irish confederates? What if—supposing our troops had been defeated by a
general rising, and Smith O’Brien had been proclaimed not only King of
Munster, but of Ireland—General Cavaignac should have assured the
rebels, that he would recognise the descendant of Brian Boru as the
prince elected by the people? Would not that negotiation, that
assurance, be treated by England as an open declaration of hostility,—an
interference which no circumstances could palliate, and for which no
explanation could suffice? We apprehend there can be no difficulty in
answering the question, and yet our position with regard to Naples was
precisely similar.
No official recognition of the independence of Sicily has as yet taken
place. Her Britannic Majesty has accredited no ambassador to that court,
nor does she know any thing more of the King of Sicily than her royal
predecessor did of Theodore King of Corsica. In all Sicilian matters, as
yet, this country nominally recognises the supremacy of King Ferdinand,
who has in no way incurred a forfeiture. Yet at the very moment when
that potentate has completed his preparations for coercing his rebel
subjects, a British fleet appears off his shores, and no explanation has
been vouchsafed of the reasons which have brought it there.
In answer to Lord Malmesbury, who reiterated the question originally put
by Lord Stanley, “Is the fleet of Admiral Parker to interfere with any
expedition which his Neapolitan Majesty may send against his subjects in
Sicily?” Lord Lansdowne distinctly refused explanation. So did Lord
Palmerston in answer to Mr D’Israeli; and he further added, “that it is
not the practice of the government of this country to announce to
parliament what the intentions of the government are.” All that we shall
say upon that point is, that, even during the present session of
parliament, ministers have more than once been particularly eager to
parade their intentions, without even the formality of a question. Such
answers are very apt to make distrustful people recollect that Naples is
but a small state, and not so formidable as some others which have led
the van of revolution. But even supposing that the Whig government are
not prepared to go the length of violating treaties, and breaking
alliances by a direct and forcible interference, this concealment is
peculiarly unwise at a moment when neutrality is of the last importance.
Apart from this question of Sicilian interference, no one wants to know
why Admiral Parker’s fleet is there. It is not alone Lord Stanley or Mr
D’Israeli whose curiosity requires to be gratified. The King of Naples
believes this armament is sent with intentions hostile to him, and he
has a right to know whether Britain proposes to throw an impediment
betwixt him and his revolted dominions. Are ministers aware of the
effect which such ambiguous answers may have upon the future policy of
France? General Oudinot, we know, is at the head of a large army on the
southern frontier of France, and Charles Albert has notoriously
solicited assistance from that quarter. What if the French, drawing
their own deduction from the fact of the fleet being there, and all
explanation refused, should choose to assume that we have exceeded the
bounds of neutrality, and are now coercing the King of Naples?—what if
they should march an army to the support of the Piedmontese, again make
Lombardy a field of battle, and throw all Europe into irretrievable
confusion, by engaging in hostilities with Austria? Is that contingency
so remote that we can afford to indulge in mysteries, and peril the fair
fame of England’s open dealing for a paltry Palmerston intrigue?
If we contemplate seriously the whole course of our foreign policy, in
so far as regards Italy, we cannot fail to be impressed with the idea
that the Whigs have given undue countenance to the late insurrectionary
movements. Great Britain might have come forward honourably at the
commencement of the Lombardy campaign to stop the effusion of blood and
the horrors of war, by the offer of a timely mediation; but no such step
was taken. On the contrary, our Cabinet remained quiescent and looked on
approvingly, so long as success appeared to favour the Sardinian arms:
it is only after the invader has been beaten back, and driven within the
frontiers of his own kingdom—after Austria has redeemed by force all her
Lombard territory, that Lord Palmerston, and his new ally Cavaignac,
have thought fit to tender their good offices. We may safely ask—what
good purpose can be achieved by this very late intervention? Who are the
parties whose quarrel is to be taken up? Mr D’Israeli put the matter
well when he asked,—First, what was to be the principle of this
mediation; secondly, what was to be the motive of the mediation; and
thirdly, what was the end proposed to be attained by the mediation? The
motive, we are assured, is the preservation of peace, and we fully
subscribe to its importance; but on all other matters we are left as
thoroughly in the dark as ever. Really this mystery is, to say the least
of it, tantalising; and we would fain know whether Austria is the party
who has taken the initiative, in securing the advice of two peace-makers
like Palmerston and Cavaignac. Austria has recovered the possessions
guaranteed her by the faith of the leading states of Europe, has put
down insurrection, and driven back in rout and terror the invading
Sardinian over his own frontier. There remains no body of her revolted
subjects in a position to ask for mediation. As for Charles Albert, he
is not, we presume, either King of Italy or Lord of Lombardy, neither
have we heard of any other claim, save that of sympathy, which could
entitle him to enter into the contest. Personally he had no wrong to
avenge; but having chosen to espouse the cause of the rebels, and to
encounter the risks of war, he is surely not entitled, especially after
defeat, to insist upon any conditions. If Austria shall choose, of her
own free will and accord, to cede possession of Lombardy, it will be a
mere act of grace, which cannot be demanded from her by any state in
Europe. But she is clearly entitled to dictate, and not to receive
conditions; and any interference with her guaranteed and fully recovered
rights, either on the part of England or of France, would be tantamount
to a declaration of war.
From first to last, therefore, we condemn the course which has been
pursued by the British foreign minister with reference to the affairs of
Italy, as undignified, unconstitutional, and mischievous. It has
naturally lowered the estimate of our character in the eyes of the
Italian people, whose own fondness for intrigue does not prevent them
from despising that system, when pursued on the part of a strong and
powerful nation. Minto jobbing has proved an utter failure. It may not
indeed have been unproductive in results, for it has materially
stimulated sedition, but certainly it has not tended to the preservation
of peace, or the consolidation of government in Italy.
Lord Palmerston has not been happy for the present year in his foreign
relations. Some gratuitous advice to Spain, which he no doubt tendered
with the best possible intentions, was ignominiously returned upon his
hand; and this affront was followed up by another still more serious,
for our ambassador at Madrid was dismissed. Such are the results of
constant meddling with the institutions of foreign states, or prying
into their domestic arrangements, and of everlastingly tendering
unsolicited and unpalatable advice. We do Lord Palmerston the justice to
believe, that he is the last man in the world who would brook such
conduct at the hands of others. Why then will he persist in acting the
part of Mentor to all the states of Europe, at the risk of attracting
insult to himself, and of materially endangering the character and
position of his country?
Whether we regard the conduct of the present ministry at home or abroad,
in domestic or in foreign relations, we find little to praise, and much
which we must conscientiously condemn. Late events do not seem to have
conveyed to them any important lesson. Diminished exports, want of
reciprocity, and the disorganisation of affairs on the Continent, have
effected as yet no change in their commercial policy. They are still
determined to persevere in the course which they have unfortunately
adopted, and to neglect the home and colonial markets for the desperate
chance of pushing exportation further. By delaying to make any provision
for the relaxation of the odious Bank Restriction Acts—by placing upon
the committee of the House of Commons men whose financial reputation
depended upon the maintenance of these measures—they have again exposed
the country to a recurrence of that crisis which, in November last, was
so near a fatal termination. Who shall answer for it that a fresh drain
of bullion will not take place this autumn? If the harvest shall prove
deficient, such undoubtedly may be the case, and the mercantile world
will be left without the means of accommodation at the moment of its
utmost need.
When we look at the long period of tranquillity which this country has
enjoyed since the peace—when we reflect upon the extension of trade, the
increase of our colonies, the apparent accumulation of wealth at home,
the development of industry, and the enormous social improvements which
have resulted from the progress of science—it seems almost miraculous
that any combination of circumstances should so rapidly have involved us
in financial embarrassments. Those embarrassments are marked by the
price of money and its fluctuations, by the difficulty of accommodation,
by the unprecedented decline in the value of every kind of property, by
the amount of unemployed labour in the market, and by the long list of
bankruptcies. We ask for an explanation of these phenomena, and we are
referred to a failure of the potato crop! The political economists will
not acknowledge the share they have had in the production of such
lamentable results—but, fortunately, they cannot alter dates; and one
thing at least is incontestible, that the commencement of the period of
decline corresponds exactly with that of Sir Robert Peel’s fiscal and
currency measures. It may have been that we were previously in danger
from the want of these, but the country neither knew nor felt it. The
change was made, and since then our prospects have been dark and gloomy.
Parliament has utterly failed, during last session, to suggest any
remedy for the general distress. It must fail so to do, until it is
called together under the auspices of a Cabinet imbued with patriotic
principles, aware of the responsibility of their situation, and
thoroughly resolved to release themselves from the trammels of a system
which has fraud and selfishness for its foundation, and which seeks to
aggrandise a few at the sacrifice of the industrious many. May Heaven
grant that such men may speedily be called to the supreme councils of
the nation, and that this may be the last session, the futilities of
which it is our duty to record, under the imbecile and slovenly
administration of the Whigs!
TO A CAGED SKYLARK, REGENT’S CIRCUS, PICCADILLY.
BY B. SIMMONS.
The city’s stony roar around!
The city’s stifling air!
The London May’s distracting sound,
And dust, and heat, and glare!
She sings to-night who puts to shame
Her fabled sisters’ syren-fame;
And, swarming through one mighty street,
From all opposing points they meet;
And hurrying, whirling, madd’ning on,
The crashing wheels and battling crowd
Are coming still, and still are gone—
The Thunder and the Cloud.
But the gush of faint odours
From apple-tree blooms—
The dew-fall by starlight
In green mossy glooms—
The sob of low breezes
Through hill-lifted pines
Looking miles o’er lone moorlands
While evening declines—
The dying away
Of far bleats at the shealing,
The hum of the night-fly
Where streamlets are stealing—
All are floating, this moment, or mournfully heard,
(Distinct as lutes mid trumpets) round thy cage, heart-breaking Bird!
They heed, nor hear—that seething mass—
But storm and brawl and burst along,
Porter and Peer—the City class—
And high-born Beauty shrined in glass—
The pale Mechanic and his lass—
Thick as the scythe-awaiting grass,
In one discordant throng.
While, loud with many a clanging bell,
Some annual joy the steeples tell,
And waggons’ groan and drivers’ yell
The loud hubbub and riot swell;
Yet still the stunn’d ear drinks, through all, that liquid song.
And far sinks the tumult,
And takes the soft moan
Of billows that shoreward
Are lapsingly thrown,
When the stars o’er the light-house
Set faintly and few,
And the waves’ level blackness
Is trembling to blue.
Wing’d Darling of Sunrise!
How oft at that hour,
Where the grassy lea lovingly
Tufted thy bower,
Thy friends the meek cowslips
Still folded in sleep,
Didst thou burst, and meet Morning
Half way from the deep,
And circle and soar
Till thy small rosy wing
Seem’d a sparkle the far-coming
Splendour might fling!
How lavishly then
On the night-hidden hill
Didst thou rain down thy carol
Deliciously shrill—
Still mounting to Heaven,
As thou didst rejoice
To be nearer the Angels,
Since nearest in voice!
And thy wild liquid warbling,
Sweet Thing! after all,
Leaves thee thus aching-breasted,
A captive and thrall.
For the thymy dell’s freshness and free dewy cloud
A barr’d nook in this furnace-heat and suffocating crowd.
No pause even here to list thy lay;
The human ferment working
Must on with unresisted sway
In bubbling thousands swept away,
Nor near thy cage be left ONE HERMIT-HEARER lurking.
Twin minstrels were ye
Once in sunshine and shade
With _thy_ hymns to the Love-star,
_His_ rhymes to the Maid.
How sweet was it then,
As he linger’d at noon
Beneath trees dropping diamonds
In shower-freshen’d June,
Beloved of the Rainbow!
To mark thee on high,
Where violet and amber
Were arching the sky;
And to deem thou wert singing
Of comfort to him—
Of some Bow yet to brighten
His destiny dim!
From _thy_ Cloud and _his_ Dream
Long the glory is gone,
And the dungeon remains
To each desolate one:
And as vainly as thine would his spirit up-spring,
Beating against his prison-bar with faint and baffled wing.
SONNET.—TO DENMARK.
Again the trumpet-blast of war is blown:
Again the cannon booms along the sea.
Now, may the God of Battles stand by thee,
True-hearted Denmark! struggling for thine own,
For right, and loyalty, and King, and throne,
Against the weight of frantic Germany!
Old Honour is not dead whilst thou art free—
Oh be thou faithful to thy past renown!
May the great spirit of thy heroes dead
Be as a bulwark to thine ancient shore:
And, midst the surge of battle rolling red,
Still be thy banner foremost as of yore;
Prouder than when it waved, to winds outspread,
On the broad bastion-keep of Elsinore!
LIFE IN THE “FAR WEST.”
PART IV.
We have said that La Bonté was a philosopher: he took the streaks of ill
luck which checkered his mountain life in a vein of perfect
carelessness, if not of stoical indifference. Nothing ruffled his
danger-steeled equanimity of temper; no sudden emotion disturbed his
mind. We have seen how wives were torn from him without eliciting a
groan or grumble, (but such _contretemps_, it may be said, can scarcely
find a place in the category of ills;) how the loss of mules and
mustangs, harried by horse-stealing Indians, left him in the
_ne-plus-ultra_ of mountain misery—“afoot;” how packs and peltries, the
hard-earned “beaver” of his perilous hunts, were “raised” at one fell
swoop by freebooting bands of savages. Hunger and thirst, we know, were
commonplace sensations to the mountaineer. His storm-hardened flesh
scarce felt the pinging wounds of arrow-point or bullet; and when in the
midst of Indian fight, it is not probable that any tender qualms of
feeling would allay the itching of his fingers for his enemy’s
scalp-lock, nor would any remains of civilised fastidiousness prevent
his burying his knife again and again in the life-blood of an Indian
savage.
Still, in one dark corner of his heart, there shone at intervals a faint
spark of what was once a fiercely-burning fire. Neither time, that
corroder of all things, nor change, that ready abettor of oblivion, nor
scenes of peril and excitement, which act as dampers to more quiet
memory, could smother this little smouldering spark, which now and
again—when rarely-coming calm succeeded some stirring passage in the
hunter’s life, and left him, for a brief time, devoid of care and victim
to his thoughts—would flicker suddenly, and light up all the nooks and
corners of his rugged breast, and discover to his mind’s eye that one
deep-rooted memory clung there still, though long neglected; proving
that, spite of time and change, of life and fortune,
“On revient toujours à ses premiers amours.”
Often and often, as La Bonté sat cross-legged before his solitary
camp-fire, and, pipe in mouth, watched the blue smoke curling upwards in
the clear cold sky, a well-remembered form appeared to gaze upon him
from the vapoury wreaths. Then would old recollections crowd before him,
and old emotions, long a stranger to his breast, shape themselves, as it
were, into long-forgotten but now familiar pulsations. Again he felt the
soft subduing influence which once, in days gone by, a certain passion
exercised over his mind and body; and often a trembling seized him, the
same he used to experience at the sudden sight of one Mary Brand, whose
dim and dreamy apparition so often watched his lonely bed, or,
unconsciously conjured up, cheered him in the dreary watches of the long
and stormy winter nights.
At first he only knew that one face haunted his dreams by night, and the
few moments by day when he thought of any thing, and this face smiled
lovingly upon him, and cheered him mightily. Name he had quite
forgotten, or recalled it vaguely, and, setting small store by it, had
thought of it no more.
For many years after he had deserted his home, La Bonté had cherished
the idea of again returning to his country. During this period he had
never forgotten his old flame, and many a choice fur he had carefully
laid by, intended as a present for Mary Brand; and many a _gâge d’amour_
of cunning shape and device, worked in stained quills of porcupine and
bright-coloured beads—the handiwork of nimble-fingered squaws—he had
packed in his possible sack for the same destination, hoping a time
would come when he might lay them at her feet.
Year after year wore on, however, and still found him, with traps and
rifle, following his perilous avocation; and each succeeding one saw him
more and more wedded to the wild mountain life. He was conscious how
unfitted he had become again to enter the galling harness of
conventionality and civilisation. He thought, too, how changed in
manners and appearance he now must be, and could not believe that he
would again find favour in the eyes of his quondam love, who, he judged,
had long since forgotten him; and inexperienced as he was in such
matters, yet he knew enough of womankind to feel assured that time and
absence had long since done the work, if even the natural fickleness of
woman’s nature had lain dormant. Thus it was that he came to forget Mary
Brand, but still remembered the all-absorbing feeling she had once
created in his breast, the shadow of which still remained, and often
took form and feature in the smoke-wreaths of his solitary camp-fire.
If truth be told, La Bonté had his failings as a mountaineer, and—sin
unpardonable in hunter law—still possessed, in holes and corners of his
breast seldom explored by his inward eye, much of the leaven of kindly
human nature, which now and again involuntarily peeped out, as greatly
to the contempt of his comrade trappers as it was blushingly repressed
by the mountaineer himself. Thus, in his various matrimonial episodes,
he treated his dusky _sposas_ with all the consideration the sex could
possibly demand from hand of man. No squaw of his ever humped shoulder
to receive a castigatory and marital “lodge-poling” for offence
domestic; but often has his helpmate blushed to see her pale-face lord
and master devote himself to the feminine labour of packing huge piles
of fire-wood on his back, felling trees, butchering unwieldy buffalo—all
which are included in the Indian category of female duties. Thus he was
esteemed an excellent _parti_ by all the marriageable young squaws of
Blackfoot, Crow, and Shoshone, of Yutah, Shian, and Arapaho; but after
his last connubial catastrophe, he steeled his heart against all the
charms and coquetry of Indian belles, and persevered in unblessed
widowhood for many a long day.
From the point where we left him on his way to the waters of the
Columbia, we must jump with him over a space of nearly two years, during
which time he had a most uninterrupted run of good luck; trapping with
great success on the head streams of the Columbia and Yellow Stone—the
most dangerous of trapping ground—and finding good market for his
peltries at the “North-west” posts—beaver fetching as high a price as
five and six dollars a “plew”—the “golden age” of trappers, now, alas,
never to return, and existing only in the fond memory of the
mountaineers. This glorious time, however, was too good to last. In
mountain language, “such heap of fat meat was not going to ‘shine’ much
longer.”
La Bonté was at this time one of a band of eight trappers, whose hunting
ground was about the head waters of the Yellow Stone, which we have
before said is in the country of the Blackfeet. With him were Killbuck,
Meek, Marcelline, and three others; and the leader of the party was Bill
Williams, that old “hard case” who had spent forty years and more in the
mountains, until he had become as tough as the parflêche soles of his
mocassins. They were all good men and true, expert hunters, and
well-trained mountaineers. After having trapped all the streams they
were acquainted with, it was determined to strike into the mountains, at
a point where old Williams affirmed, from the “run” of the hills, there
must be plenty of water, although not one of the party had before
explored the country, or knew any thing of its nature, or of the
likelihood of its affording game for themselves or pasture for their
animals. However, they packed their peltry, and put out for the land in
view—a lofty peak, dimly seen above the more regular summit of the
chain, being their landmark.
For the first day or two their route lay between two ridges of
mountains, and by following the little valley which skirted a creek,
they kept on level ground, and saved their animals considerable labour
and fatigue. Williams always rode ahead, his body bent over his
saddle-horn, across which rested a long heavy rifle, his keen gray eyes
peering from under the slouched brim of a flexible felt-hat, black and
shining with grease. His buckskin hunting-shirt, bedaubed until it had
the appearance of polished leather, hung in folds over his bony carcass;
his nether extremities being clothed in pantaloons of the same material,
(with scattered fringes down the outside of the leg—which ornaments,
however, had been pretty well thinned to supply “whangs” for mending
mocassins or pack-saddles,) which, shrunk with wet, clung tightly to his
long, spare, sinewy legs. His feet were thrust into a pair of Mexican
stirrups, made of wood, and as big as coal-scuttles; and iron spurs of
incredible proportions, with tinkling drops attached to the rowels, were
fastened to his heel—a bead-worked strap, four inches broad, securing
them over the instep. In the shoulder-belt which sustained his
powder-horn and bullet-pouch, were fastened the various instruments
essential to one pursuing his mode of life. An awl, with deer-horn
handle, and the point defended by a case of cherry-wood carved by his
own hand, hung at the back of the belt, side by side with a worm for
cleaning the rifle; and under this was a squat and quaint-looking
bullet-mould, the handles guarded by strips of buckskin to save his
fingers from burning when running balls, having for its companion a
little bottle made from the point of an antelope’s horn, scraped
transparent, which contained the “medicine” used in baiting the traps.
The old coon’s face was sharp and thin, a long nose and chin hob-nobbing
each other; and his head was always bent forward, giving him the
appearance of being hump-backed. He _appeared_ to look neither to the
right nor left, but, in fact, his little twinkling eye was everywhere.
He looked at no one he was addressing, always seeming to be thinking of
something else than the subject of his discourse, speaking in a whining,
thin, cracked voice, and in a tone that left the hearer in doubt whether
he was laughing or crying. On the present occasion he had joined this
band, and naturally assumed the leadership, (for Bill ever refused to go
in harness,) in opposition to his usual practice, which was to hunt
alone. His character was well known. Acquainted with every inch of the
Far West, and with all the Indian tribes who inhabited it, he never
failed to outwit his Red enemies, and generally made his appearance at
the rendezvous, from his solitary expeditions, with galore of beaver,
when numerous bands of trappers dropped in on foot, having been
despoiled of their packs and animals by the very Indians through the
midst of whom old Williams had contrived to pass unseen and unmolested.
On occasions when he had been in company with others, and attacked by
Indians, Bill invariably fought manfully, and with all the coolness that
perfect indifference to death or danger could give, but always “on his
own hook.” His rifle cracked away merrily, and never spoke in vain; and
in a charge—if ever it came to that—his keen-edged butcherknife tickled
the fleece of many a Blackfoot. But at the same time, if he saw that
discretion was the better part of valour, and affairs wore so cloudy an
aspect as to render retreat advisable, he would first express his
opinion in curt terms, and decisively, and, charging up his rifle, would
take himself off, and “cache”[2] so effectually that to search for him
was utterly useless. Thus, when with a large party of trappers, when any
thing occurred which gave him a hint that trouble was coming, or more
Indians were about than he considered good for his animals, Bill was
wont to exclaim—
“Do ’ee hyar now, boys, thar’s sign about? this hos feels like caching;”
and, without more words, and stoically deaf to all remonstrances, he
would forthwith proceed to pack his animals, talking the while to an
old, crop-eared, raw-boned Nez-percé pony, his own particular
saddle-horse, who, in dogged temper and iron hardiness, was a worthy
companion of his self-willed master. This beast, as Bill seized his
apishamore to lay upon its galled back, would express displeasure by
humping its back and shaking its withers with a wincing motion, that
always excited the ire of the old trapper; and no sooner had he laid the
apishamore smoothly on the chafed skin, than a wriggle of the animal
shook it off.
“Do ’ee hyar now, you darned crittur!” he would whine out, “can’t’ee
keep quiet your old fleece now? Isn’t this old coon putting out to save
’ee from the darned Injuns now, do ’ee hyar?” And then, continuing his
work, and taking no notice of his comrades, who stood by bantering the
eccentric trapper, he would soliloquise—“Do ’ee hyar, now? This niggur
sees sign ahead—he does; he’ll be afoot afore long, if he don’t keep his
eye skinned,—_he_ will. _Injuns_ is all about, they ar’: Blackfoot at
that. Can’t come round this child—they can’t, wagh!” And at last, his
pack animals securely tied to the tail of his horse, he would mount, and
throwing the rifle across the horn of his saddle, and without noticing
his companions, would drive the jingling spurs into his horse’s gaunt
sides, and muttering, “Can’t come round this child—they can’t!” would
ride away; and nothing more would be seen or heard of him perhaps for
months, when they would not unfrequently, themselves bereft of animals
in the scrape he had foreseen, find him located in some solitary valley,
in his lonely camp, with his animals securely picketed around, and his
peltries safe.
However, if he took it into his head to keep company with a party, all
felt perfectly secure under his charge. His iron frame defied fatigue,
and, at night, his love for himself and his own animals was sufficient
guarantee that the camp would be well guarded. As he rode ahead, his
spurs jingling, and thumping the sides of his old horse at every step,
he managed, with admirable dexterity, to take advantage of the best line
of country to follow—avoiding the gullies and cañons and broken ground,
which would otherwise have impeded his advance. This tact appeared
instinctive, for he looked neither right nor left, whilst continuing a
course as straight as possible at the foot of the mountains. In
selecting a camping site, he displayed equal skill: wood, water, and
grass began to fill his thoughts towards sundown, and when these three
requisites for a camping ground presented themselves, old Bill sprang
from his saddle, unpacked his animals in a twinkling, and hobbled them,
struck fire and ignited a few chips, (leaving the rest to pack in the
wood,) lit his pipe, and enjoyed himself. On one occasion, when passing
through the valley, they had come upon a band of fine buffalo cows, and,
shortly after camping, two of the party rode in with a good supply of
fat fleece. One of the party was a “greenhorn” on his first hunt, and,
fresh from a fort on Platte, was as yet uninitiated in the mysteries of
mountain cooking. Bill, lazily smoking his pipe, called to him, as he
happened to be nearest, to butcher off a piece of meat and put it in his
pot. Markhead seized the fleece, and commenced innocently carving off a
huge ration, when a gasping roar from the old trapper caused him to drop
his knife.
“Ti-yah,” growled Bill, “do ’ee hyar, now, you darned greenhorn, do ’ee
spile fat cow like that whar you was raised? Them doin’s won’t shine in
this crowd, boy, do ’ee hyar, darn you? What! butcher meat across the
grain! why, whar’ll the blood be goin’ to, you precious Spaniard? Down
the grain I say,” he continued in a severe tone of rebuke, “and let your
flaps be long, or out the juice’ll run slick—do ’ee hyar, now?” But this
heretical error nearly cost the old trapper his appetite, and all night
long he grumbled his horror at seeing “fat cow spiled in that fashion.”
When two or three days’ journey brought them to the end of the valley,
and they commenced the passage of the mountain, their march was
obstructed by all kinds of obstacles; although they had chosen what
appeared to be a gap in the chain, and what was in fact the only
practicable passage in that vicinity. They followed the cañon of a
branch of the Yellow Stone, where it entered the mountain; but from this
point it became a torrent, and it was only by dint of incredible
exertions that they reached the summit of the ridge. Game was
exceedingly scarce in the vicinity, and they suffered extremely from
hunger, having, on more than one occasion, recourse to the parflêche
soles of their mocassins to allay its pangs. Old Bill, however, never
grumbled; he chewed away at his shoes with relish even, and as long as
he had a pipeful of tobacco in his pouch, was a happy man. Starvation
was as yet far off, for all their animals were in existence; but as they
were in a country where it was difficult to procure a remount, each
trapper hesitated to sacrifice one of his horses to his appetite.
From the summit of the ridge, Bill recognised the country on the
opposite side to that whence they had just ascended as familiar to him,
and pronounced it to be full of beaver, as well as abounding in the less
desirable commodity of Indians. This was the valley lying about the
lakes now called Eustis and Biddle, in which are many thermal and
mineral springs, well known to the trappers by the names of the Soda,
Beer, and Brimstone Springs, and regarded by them with no little awe and
curiosity, as being the breathing places of his Satanic
majesty—considered, moreover, to be the “biggest kind” of “medicine” to
be found in the mountains. If truth be told, old Bill hardly relished
the idea of entering this country, which he pronounced to be of “bad
medicine” notoriety, but nevertheless agreed to guide them to the best
trapping ground.
One day they reached a creek full of beaver sign, and determined to halt
here and establish their headquarters, while they trapped in the
neighbourhood. We must here observe, that at this period—which was one
of considerable rivalry amongst the various trading companies in the
Indian country—the Indians, having become possessed of arms and
ammunition in great quantities, had grown unusually daring and
persevering in their attacks on the white hunters who passed through
their country, and consequently the trappers were compelled to roam
about in larger bands for mutual protection, which, although it made
them less liable to open attack, yet rendered it more difficult for them
to pursue their calling without being discovered; for, where one or two
men might pass unseen, the broad trail of a large party, with its
animals, was not likely to escape the sharp eyes of the cunning savages.
They had scarcely encamped when the old leader, who had sallied out a
short distance from camp to reconnoitre the neighbourhood, returned with
an Indian mocassin in his hand, and informed his companions that its
late owner and others were about.
“Do ’ee hyar now, boys, thar’s _Injuns_ knocking round, and Blackfoot at
that; but thar’s plenty of beaver too, and this child means trapping any
how.”
His companions were anxious to leave such dangerous vicinity; but the
old fellow, contrary to his usual caution, determined to remain where he
was—saying that there were Indians all over the country for that matter;
and as they had determined to hunt here, he had made up his mind
too—which was conclusive, and all agreed to stop where they were, in
spite of the Indians. La Bonté killed a couple of mountain sheep close
to camp, and they feasted rarely on the fat mutton that night, and were
unmolested by marauding Blackfeet.
The next morning, leaving two of their number in camp, they started in
parties of two, to hunt for beaver sign and set their traps. Markhead
paired with one Batiste, Killbuck and La Bonté formed another couple,
Meek and Marcelline another; two Canadians trapped together, and Bill
Williams and another remained to guard the camp: but this last, leaving
Bill mending his mocassins, started off to kill a mountain sheep, a band
of which animals was visible.
Markhead and his companion, the first couple on the list, followed a
creek, which entered that on which they had encamped, about ten miles
distant. Beaver sign was abundant, and they had set eight traps, when
Markhead came suddenly upon fresh Indian sign, where squaws had passed
through the shrubbery on the banks of the stream to procure water, as he
knew from observing a large stone placed by them in the stream, on which
to stand to enable them to dip their kettles in the deepest water.
Beckoning to his companion to follow, and cocking his rifle, he
carefully pushed aside the bushes, and noiselessly proceeded up the
bank, when, creeping on hands and knees, he gained the top, and, looking
from his hiding-place, descried three Indian huts standing on a little
plateau near the creek. Smoke curled from the roofs of branches, but the
skin doors were carefully closed, so that he was unable to distinguish
the number of the inmates. At a little distance, however, he observed
two or three squaws gathering wood, with the usual attendance of curs,
whose acuteness in detecting the scent of strangers was much to be
dreaded.
Markhead was a rash and daring young fellow, caring no more for Indians
than he did for prairie dogs, and acting ever on the spur of the moment,
and as his inclination dictated, regardless of consequences. He at once
determined to enter the lodges, and attack the enemy, should any be
there; and the other trapper was fain to join him in the enterprise. The
lodges proved empty, but the fires were still burning and meat cooking
upon them, to which the hungry hunters did ample justice, besides
helping themselves to whatever goods and chattels, in the shape of
leather and mocassins, took their fancy.
Gathering their spoil into a bundle, they sought their horses, which
they had left tied under cover of the timber on the banks of the creek;
and, mounting, took the back trail, to pick up their traps and remove
from so dangerous a neighbourhood. They were approaching the spot where
the first trap was set, a thick growth of ash and quaking-ash concealing
the stream, when Markhead, who was riding ahead, observed the bushes
agitated, as if some animal was making its way through them. He
instantly stopped his horse, and his companion rode to his side, to
inquire the cause of this abrupt halt. They were within a few yards of
the belt of shrubs which skirted the stream; and before Markhead had
time to reply, a dozen swarthy heads and shoulders suddenly protruded
from the leafy screen, and as many rifle barrels and arrows were
pointing at their breasts. Before the trappers had time to turn their
horses and fly, a cloud of smoke burst from the thicket almost in their
faces. Batiste, pierced with several balls, fell dead from his horse,
and Markhead felt himself severely wounded. However, he struck the spurs
into his horse; and as some half-score Blackfeet jumped with loud cries
from their cover, he discharged his rifle amongst them, and galloped
off, a volley of balls and arrows whistling after him. He drew no bit
until he reined up at the camp-fire, where he found Bill quietly
dressing a deer-skin. That worthy looked up from his work; and seeing
Markhead’s face streaming with blood, and the very unequivocal evidence
of an Indian rencontre in the shape of an arrow sticking in his back, he
asked,—“Do’ee feel bad now, boy? Whar away you see them darned
Blackfoot?”
“Well, pull this arrow out of my back, and may be I’ll feel like
telling,” answered Markhead.
“Do ’ee hyar now! hold on till I’ve grained this cussed skin, will ’ee!
Did ’ee ever see sich a darned pelt, now? it won’t take the smoke any
how I fix it.” And Markhead was fain to wait the leisure of the
imperturbable old trapper, before he was eased of his annoying
companion.
Old Bill expressed no surprise or grief when informed of the fate of
poor Batiste. He said it was “just like greenhorns, runnin’ into them
cussed Blackfoot;” and observed that the defunct trapper, being only a
Vide-pôche, was “no account anyhow.” Presently Killbuck and La Bonté
galloped into camp, with another alarm of Indians. They had also been
attacked suddenly by a band of Blackfeet, but, being in a more open
country, had got clear off, after killing two of their assailants, whose
scalps hung at the horns of their saddles. They had been in a different
direction to that where Markhead and his companion had proceeded, and,
from the signs they had observed, expressed their belief that the
country was alive with Indians. Neither of these men had been wounded.
Presently the two Canadians made their appearance on the bluff,
galloping with might and main to camp, and shouting “Indians, Indians,”
as they came. All being assembled, and a council held, it was determined
to abandon the camp and neighbourhood immediately. Old Bill was already
packing his animals, and as he pounded the saddle down on the withers of
his old Rosinante, he muttered,—“Do ’ee hyar, now! this coon ’ull câche,
_he_ will.” So mounting his horse, and leading his pack mule by a
lariat, he bent over his saddle-horn, dug his ponderous rowels into the
lank sides of his beast, and, without a word, struck up the bluff and
disappeared.
The others, hastily gathering up their packs, and most of them having
lost their traps, quickly followed his example, and “put out.” On
cresting the high ground which rose from the creek, they observed thin
columns of smoke mounting into the air from many different points, the
meaning of which they were at no loss to guess. However, they were
careful not to show themselves on elevated ground, keeping as much as
possible under the banks of the creek, when such a course was
practicable; but, the bluffs sometimes rising precipitously from the
water, they were more than once compelled to ascend the banks, and
continue their course along the uplands, whence they might easily be
discovered by the Indians. It was nearly sundown when they left their
camp, but they proceeded during the greater part of the night at as
rapid a rate as possible; their progress, however, being greatly
retarded as they advanced into the mountain, their route lying up
stream. Towards morning they halted for a brief space, but started again
as soon as daylight permitted them to see their way over the broken
ground.
The creek now forced its way through a narrow cañon, the banks being
thickly clothed with a shrubbery of cottonwood and quaking-ash. The
mountain rose on each side, but not abruptly, being here and there
broken into plateaus and shelving prairies. In a very thick bottom,
sprinkled with coarse grass, they halted about noon, and removed the
saddles and packs from their wearied animals, piqueting them in the best
spots of grass.
La Bonté and Killbuck, after securing their animals, left the camp to
hunt, for they had no provisions of any kind; and a short distance
beyond it, the former came suddenly upon a recent mocassin track in the
timber. After examining it for a moment, he raised his head with a broad
grin, and, turning to his companion, pointed into the cover, where, in
the thickest part, they discerned the well-known figure of old Bill’s
horse, browsing upon the cherry bushes. Pushing through the thicket in
search of the brute’s master, La Bonté suddenly stopped short as the
muzzle of a rifle-barrel gaped before his eyes at the distance of a few
inches, whilst the thin voice of Bill muttered—
“Do ’ee hyar now, I was nigh giving ’ee h——: I _was_ now. If I didn’t
think ’ee was Blackfoot, I’m dogged now.” And not a little indignant was
the old fellow that his câche had been so easily, though accidentally,
discovered. However, he presently made his appearance in camp, leading
his animals, and once more joined his late companions, not deigning to
give any explanation as to why or wherefore he had deserted them the day
before, merely muttering, “do ’ee hyar now, thar’s trouble comin’.”
The two hunters returned after sundown with a black-tailed deer; and
after eating the better part of the meat, and setting a guard, the party
were glad to roll in their blankets and enjoy the rest they so much
needed. They were undisturbed during the night; but at dawn of day the
sleepers were roused by a hundred fierce yells, from the mountains
enclosing the creek on which they had encamped. The yells were instantly
followed by a ringing volley, the bullets thudding into the trees, and
cutting the branches near them, but without causing any mischief. Old
Bill rose from his blanket and shook himself, and exclaimed “Wagh!” as
at that moment a ball plumped into the fire over which he was standing,
and knocked the ashes about in a cloud. All the mountaineers seized
their rifles and sprang to cover; but as yet it was not sufficiently
light to show them their enemy, the bright flashes from the guns alone
indicating their position. As morning dawned, however, they saw that
both sides of the cañon were occupied by the Indians; and, from the
firing, judged there must be at least a hundred warriors engaged in the
attack. Not a shot had yet been fired by the trappers, but as the light
increased, they eagerly watched for an Indian to expose himself, and
offer a mark to their trusty rifles. La Bonté, Killbuck, and old Bill,
lay a few yards distant from each other, flat on their faces, near the
edge of the thicket, their rifles raised before them, and the barrels
resting in the forks of convenient bushes. From their place of
concealment to the position of the Indians—who, however, were scattered
here and there, wherever a rock afforded them cover—was a distance of
about a hundred and fifty yards, or within fair rifle-shot. The trappers
were obliged to divide their force, since both sides of the creek were
occupied; but such was the nature of the ground, and the excellent cover
afforded by the rocks and boulders, and clumps of dwarf pine and
hemlock, that not a hand’s-breadth of an Indian’s body had yet been
seen. Nearly opposite La Bonté, a shelving glade in the mountain side
ended in an abrupt precipice, and at the very edge, and almost toppling
over it, were several boulders, just of sufficient size to afford cover
to a man’s body. As this bluff overlooked the trapper’s position, it was
occupied by the Indians, and every rock covered an assailant. At one
point, just over where La Bonté and Killbuck were lying, two boulders
lay together, with just sufficient interval to admit a rifle-barrel
between them, and from this breastwork an Indian kept up a most annoying
fire. All his shots fell in dangerous propinquity to one or other of the
trappers, and already Killbuck had been grazed by one better directed
than the others. La Bonté watched for some time in vain for a chance to
answer this persevering marksman, and at length an opportunity offered,
by which he was not long in profiting.
The Indian, as the light increased, was better able to discern his mark,
and fired, and yelled every time he did so, with redoubled vigour. In
his eagerness, and probably whilst in the act of taking aim, he leaned
too heavily against the rock which covered him, and, detaching it from
its position, down it rolled into the cañon, exposing his body by its
fall. At the same instant, a wreath of smoke puffed from the bushes
which concealed the trappers, and the crack of La Bonté’s rifle spoke
the first word of reply to the Indian challenge. But a few feet behind
the rock, fell the dead body of the Indian, rolling down the steep sides
of the cañon, and only stopped by a bush at the very bottom, within a
few yards of the spot where Markhead lay concealed in some high grass.
That daring fellow instantly jumped from his cover, and, drawing his
knife, rushed to the body, and in another moment held aloft the Indian’s
scalp, giving, at the same time, a triumphant whoop. A score of rifles
were levelled and discharged at the intrepid mountaineer; but in the act
many Indians incautiously exposed themselves, every rifle in the timber
cracked simultaneously, and for each report an Indian bit the dust.
But now they changed their tactics. Finding they were unable to drive
the trappers from their position, they retired from the mountain, and
the firing suddenly ceased. In their retreat, however, they were forced
to expose themselves, and again the whites dealt destruction amongst
them. As the Indians retired, yelling loudly, the hunters thought they
had given up the contest; but presently a cloud of smoke rising from the
bottom immediately below them, at once discovered the nature of their
plans. A brisk wind was blowing up the cañon, and, favoured by it, they
fired the brush on the banks of the stream, knowing that before this the
hunters must speedily retreat.
Against such a result, but for the gale of wind which drove the fire
roaring before it, they could have provided—for your mountaineer never
fails to find resources on a pinch. They would have fired the brush to
leeward of their position, and also carefully ignited that to windward,
or between them and the advancing flame, extinguishing it immediately
when a sufficient space had thus been cleared, and over which the
fire-flame could not leap, and thus cutting themselves off from it both
above and below their position. In the present instance, they could not
profit by such a course, as the wind was so strong that, if once the
bottom caught fire, they would not be able to extinguish it; besides
which, in the attempt, they would so expose themselves that they would
be picked off by the Indians without difficulty. As it was, the fire
came roaring before the wind with the speed of a race-horse, and,
spreading from the bottom, licked the mountain sides, the dry grass
burning like tinder. Huge volumes of stifling smoke rolled before it,
and, in a very few minutes, the trappers were hastily mounting their
animals, driving the packed ones before them. The dense clouds of smoke
concealed every thing from their view, and, to avoid this, they broke
from the creek and galloped up the sides of the cañon on to the more
level plateau. As they attained this, a band of mounted Indians charged
them. One, waving a red blanket, dashed through the cavallada, and was
instantly followed by all the loose animals of the trappers, the rest of
the Indians following with loud shouts. So sudden was the charge, that
the whites had not power to prevent the stampede. Old Bill, as usual,
led his pack mules by the lariat; but the animals, mad with terror at
the shouts of the Indians, broke from him, nearly pulling him out of his
seat at the same time.
To cover the retreat of the others with their prey, a band of mounted
Indians now appeared, threatening an attack in front, whilst their first
assailants, rushing from the bottom, at least a hundred strong,
assaulted in rear. “Do ’ee hyar, boys!” shouted old Bill, “break, or
you’ll go under. This child’s goin’ to câche!” and saying the word, off
he went. _Sauve-qui-peut_ was the order of the day, and not a moment too
soon, for overwhelming numbers were charging upon them, and the mountain
resounded with savage yells. La Bonté and Killbuck stuck together: they
saw old Bill, bending over his saddle, dive right into the cloud of
smoke, and apparently make for the creek bottom—their other companions
scattering each on his own hook, and saw no more of them for many a
month; and thus was one of the most daring and successful bands broken
up that ever trapped in the mountains of the Far West.
It is painful to follow the steps of the poor fellows who, thus
despoiled of the hardly-earned produce of their hunt, saw all their
wealth torn from them at one swoop. The two Canadians were killed upon
the night succeeding that of the attack. Worn with fatigue, hungry and
cold, they had built a fire in what they thought was a secure retreat,
and, rolled in their blankets, were soon buried in a sleep from which
they never awoke. An Indian boy tracked them, and watched their camp.
Burning with the idea of signalising himself thus early, he awaited his
opportunity, and noiselessly approaching their resting-place, shot them
both with arrows, and returned in triumph to his people with their
horses and scalps.
La Bonté and Killbuck sought a passage in the mountain by which to cross
over to the head waters of the Columbia, and there fall in with some of
the traders or trappers of the North-west. They became involved in the
mountains, in a part where was no game of any description, and no
pasture for their miserable animals. One of these they killed for food;
the other, a bag of bones, died from sheer starvation. They had very
little ammunition, their mocassins were worn out, and they were unable
to procure skins to supply themselves with fresh ones. Winter was fast
approaching, the snow already covered the mountains, and storms of sleet
and hail poured incessantly through the valleys, benumbing their
exhausted limbs, hardly protected by scanty and ragged covering. To add
to their miseries, poor Killbuck was taken ill. He had been wounded in
the groin by a bullet some time before, and the ball still remained. The
wound, aggravated by walking and the excessive cold, assumed an ugly
appearance, and soon rendered him incapable of sustained exertion, all
motion even being attended with intolerable pain. La Bonté had made a
shanty for his suffering companion, and spread a soft bed of pine
branches for him, by the side of a small creek at the point where it
came out of the mountain and followed its course through a little
prairie. They had been three days without other food than a piece of
parflêche, which had formed the back of La Bonté’s bullet-pouch, and
which, after soaking in the creek, they eagerly devoured. Killbuck was
unable to move, and sinking fast from exhaustion. His companion had
hunted from morning till night, as well as his failing strength would
allow him, but had not seen the traces of any kind of game, with the
exception of some old buffalo tracks, made apparently months before by a
band of bulls crossing the mountain.
The morning of the fourth day La Bonté, as usual, rose at daybreak from
his blanket, and was proceeding to collect wood for the fire during his
absence while hunting, when Killbuck called to him, and in an almost
inarticulate voice desired him to seat himself by his side.
“Boy,” he said, “this old hos feels like goin’ under, and that afore
long. You’re stout yet, and if thar was meat handy, you’d come round
slick. Now, boy, I’ll be under, as I said, afore many hours, and if you
don’t raise meat you’ll be in the same fix. I never eat dead meat[3]
myself, and wouldn’t ask no one to do it neither; but meat fair killed
is meat any way; so, boy, put your knife in this old niggur’s lights,
and help yourself. It’s ‘poor bull,’ I know, but maybe it’ll do to keep
life in; and along the fleece thar’s meat yet, and maybe my old hump
ribs has picking on ’em.”
“You’re a good old hos,” answered La Bonté, “but this child ain’t turned
niggur yet.”
Killbuck then begged his companion to leave him to his fate, and strive
himself to reach game; but this alternative La Bonté likewise generously
refused, and faintly endeavouring to cheer the sick man, left him once
again to look for game. He was so weak that he felt difficulty in
supporting himself, and knowing how futile would be his attempts to
hunt, he sallied from the camp convinced that a few hours more would see
the last of him.
He had scarcely raised his eyes, when, hardly crediting his senses, he
saw within a few hundred yards of him an old bull, worn with age, lying
on the prairie. Two wolves were seated on their haunches before him,
their tongues lolling from their mouths, whilst the buffalo was
impotently rolling his ponderous head from side to side, his bloodshot
eyes glaring fiercely at his tormentors, and flakes of foam, mixed with
blood, dropping from his mouth over his long shaggy beard. La Bonté was
transfixed; he dared scarcely to breathe lest the animal should be
alarmed and escape. Weak as it was, he could hardly have followed it,
and, knowing that his own and companion’s life hung upon the success of
his shot, he scarcely had strength to raise his rifle. By dint of
extraordinary exertions and precautions, which were totally unnecessary,
for the poor old bull had not a move in him, the hunter approached
within shot. Lying upon the ground, he took a long steady aim, and
fired. The buffalo raised its matted head, tossed it wildly for an
instant, and, stretching out its limbs convulsively, turned over on its
side and was dead.
Killbuck heard the shot, and crawling from under the little shanty which
covered his bed, saw, to his astonishment, La Bonté in the act of
butchering a buffalo within two hundred yards of camp. “Hurraw for you!”
he faintly exclaimed; and exhausted by the exertion he had used, and
perhaps by the excitement of an anticipated feast, fell back and
fainted.
However, the killing was the easiest matter, for when the huge carcass
lay dead upon the ground, our hunter had hardly strength to drive the
blade of his knife through the tough hide of the old patriarch. Then
having cut off as much of the meat as he could carry, eating the while
sundry portions of the liver, which he dipped in the gall-bladder by way
of relish, La Bonté cast a wistful look upon the half-starved wolves,
who now loped round and round, licking their chops, only waiting until
his back was turned to fall to with appetite equal to his own, and
capabilities of swallowing and digesting far superior. La Bonté looked
at the buffalo, and then at the wolves, levelled his rifle and shot one
dead, at which the survivor scampered off without delay.
Arrived at camp, packing in a tolerable load of the best part of the
animal—for hunger lent him strength—he found poor Killbuck lying on his
back, deaf to time, and to all appearance gone under. Having no
sal-volatile or vinaigrette at hand, La Bonté flapped a lump of raw
fleece into his patient’s face, and this instantly revived him. Then
taking the sick man’s shoulder, he raised him tenderly into a sitting
posture, and invited, in kindly accents, “the old hos to feed,”
thrusting at the same time a tolerable slice of liver into his hand,
which the patient looked at wistfully and vaguely for a few short
moments, and then greedily devoured. It was nightfall by the time that
La Bonté, assisted by many intervals of hard eating, packed in the last
of the meat, which formed a goodly pile around the fire.
“Poor bull” it was in all conscience: the labour of chewing a mouthful
of the “tender loin” was equal to a hard day’s hunt; but to them, poor
starved fellows, it appeared the richest of meat. They still preserved a
small tin pot, and in this, by stress of eternal boiling, La Bonté
contrived to make some strong soup, which soon restored his sick
companion to marching order. For himself, as soon as a good meal had
filled him, he was strong as ever, and employed himself in drying the
remainder of the meat for future use. Even the wolf, bony as he was, was
converted into meat, and rationed them several days. Winter, however,
had set in with such severity, and Killbuck was still so weak, that La
Bonté determined to remain in his present position until spring, as he
now found that buffalo frequently visited the valley, as it was more
bare of snow than the lowlands, and afforded them better pasture; and
one morning he had the satisfaction of seeing a band of seventeen bulls
within long rifle-shot of the camp, out of which four of the fattest
were soon laid low by his rifle.
They still had hard times before them, for towards spring the buffalo
again disappeared; the greater part of their meat had been spoiled,
owing to there not being sufficient sun to dry it thoroughly; and when
they resumed their journey they had nothing to carry with them, and had
a desert before them without game of any kind. We pass over what they
suffered. Hunger, thirst, and Indians assaulted them at times, and many
miraculous and hairbreadth escapes they had from such enemies.
The trail to Oregon, followed by traders and emigrants, crosses the
Rocky Mountains at a point known as the South Pass, where a break in the
chain occurs of such moderate and gradual elevation as to permit the
passage of waggons with tolerable facility. The Sweet Water Valley runs
nearly to the point where the dividing ridge of the Pacific and Atlantic
waters throws off its streams to their respective oceans. At one end of
this valley, and situated on the right bank of the Sweet Water, a huge
isolated mass of granitic rock rises to the height of three hundred
feet, abruptly from the plain. On the smooth and scarped surface
presented by one of its sides, are rudely carved the names and initials
of traders, trappers, travellers and emigrants, who have here recorded
the memorial of their sojourn in the remote wilderness of the Far West.
The face of the rock is covered with names familiar to the mountaineers
as those of the most renowned of their hardy brotherhood; while others
again occur, better known to the science and literature of the Old World
than to the unlearned trappers of the Rocky Mountains. The huge mass is
a well-known landmark to the Indians and mountaineers; and travellers
and emigrants hail it as the half-way beacon between the frontiers of
the United States and the still distant goal of their long and perilous
journey.
It was a hot sultry day in July. Not a breath of air relieved the
intense and oppressive heat of the atmosphere, unusual here where
pleasant summer breezes, and sometimes stronger gales, blow over the
elevated plains with the regularity of trade-winds. The sun, at its
meridian height, struck the dry sandy plain and parched the drooping
buffalo-grass on its surface, and its rays, refracted and reverberating
from the heated ground, distorted every object seen through its lurid
medium. Straggling antelope, leisurely crossing the adjoining prairie,
appeared to be gracefully moving in mid-air; whilst a scattered band of
buffalo bulls loomed huge and indistinct in the vapoury distance. In the
timbered valley of the river deer and elk were standing motionless in
the water, under the shade of the overhanging cottonwoods, seeking a
respite from the persevering attacks of swarms of horseflies and
mosquitos; and now and then the heavy splash was heard, as they tossed
their antlered heads into the stream, to free them from the venomous
insects that buzzed incessantly about them. But in the sandy prairie,
beetles of an enormous size were rolling in every direction huge balls
of earth, pushing them with their hind legs with comical perseverance;
cameleons darted about, assimilating the hue of their grotesque bodies
with the colour of the sand: groups of prairie-dog houses were seen,
each with its inmate barking lustily on the roof; whilst under cover of
nearly every bush of sage or cactus a rattlesnake lay glittering in lazy
coil. Tantalising the parched sight, the neighbouring peaks of the lofty
Wind River Mountains glittered in a mantle of sparkling snow, whilst
Sweet Water Mountain, capped in cloud, looked gray and cool, in striking
contrast to the burned up plains which lay basking at its foot.
Resting their backs against the rock, (on which, we have said, are _now_
carved the names of many travellers,) and defended from the powerful
rays of the sun by its precipitous sides, two white men quietly slept.
They were gaunt and lantern-jawed, and clothed in tattered buckskin.
Each held a rifle across his knees, but—strange sight in this
country—one had its pan thrown open, which was rust-eaten and contained
no priming; the other’s hammer was without a flint. Their faces were as
if covered with mahogany-coloured parchment; their eyes were sunken; and
as their jaws fell listlessly on their breasts, their cheeks were
hollow, with the bones nearly protruding from the skin. One was in the
prime of manhood, with handsome features; the other, considerably past
the middle age, was stark and stern. Months of dire privation had
brought them to this pass. The elder of the two was Killbuck, of
mountain fame; the other hight La Bonté.
The former opened his eyes, and saw the buffalo feeding on the plain.
“Ho, boy,” he said, touching his companion, “thar’s meat a-runnin.”
La Bonté looked in the direction the other pointed, stood up, and
hitching round his pouch and powder-horn, drew the stopper from the
latter with his teeth, and placing the mouth in the palm of his left
hand, turned the horn up and shook it.
“Not a grain,” he said—“not a grain, old hos.”
“Wagh!” exclaimed the other, “we’ll have to eat afore long,” and rising,
walked into the prairie. He had hardly stepped two paces, when, passing
close to a sage bush, a rattlesnake whizzed a note of warning with its
tail. Killbuck grinned, and taking the wiping-stick from his
rifle-barrel, tapped the snake on the head, and, taking it by the tail,
threw it to La Bonté, saying, “hyar’s meat, any how.” The old fellow
followed up his success by slaying half a dozen more, and brought them
in skewered through the head on his wiping-stick. A fire was soon
kindled, and the snakes as soon roasting before it; when La Bonté, who
sat looking at the buffalo which fed close to the rock, suddenly saw
them raise their heads, snuff the air, and scamper towards him. A few
minutes afterwards a huge shapeless body loomed in the refracted air,
approaching the spot where the buffalo had been grazing. The hunters
looked at it and then at each other, and ejaculated “Wagh!” Presently a
long white mass showed more distinctly, followed by another, and before
each was a string of animals.
“Waggons, by hos and beaver! Hurrah for Conostoga!” exclaimed the
trappers in a breath, as they now observed two white-tilted waggons,
drawn by several pairs of mules, approaching the very spot where they
sat. Several mounted men were riding about the waggons, and two on
horseback, in advance of all, were approaching the rock, when they
observed the smoke curling from the hunters’ fire. They halted at sight
of this, and one of the two, drawing a long instrument from a case,
which Killbuck voted a rifle, directed it towards them for a moment, and
then, lowering it, again moved forward.
As they drew near, the two poor trappers, although half-dead with joy,
still retained their seats with Indian gravity and immobility of
feature, turning now and then the crackling snakes which lay on the
embers of the fire. The two strangers approached. One, a man of some
fifty years of age, of middle height and stoutly built, was clad in a
white shooting-jacket, of cut unknown in mountain tailoring, and a pair
of trousers of the well-known material called “shepherd’s plaid;” a
broad-brimmed Panama shaded his face, which was ruddy with health and
exercise; a belt round the waist supported a handsome bowie-knife, and a
double-barrelled fowling-piece was _slung_ across his shoulder.
His companion was likewise dressed in a light shooting-jacket, of many
pockets and dandy cut, rode on an English saddle and in _boots_, and was
armed with a superb double rifle, glossy from the case, and bearing few
marks of use or service. He was a tall, fine-looking fellow of thirty,
with light hair and complexion; a scrupulous beard and mustache; a
wide-awake hat, with a short pipe stuck in the band, but not very black
with smoke; an elaborate powder-horn over his shoulder, with a Cairngorm
in the butt as large as a plate; a blue handkerchief tied round his
throat in a sailor’s knot, and the collar of his shirt turned carefully
over it. He had, moreover, a tolerable idea of his very correct
appearance, and wore Woodstock gloves.
The trappers looked at them from head to foot, and the more they looked
the less could they make them out.
“H—!” exclaimed La Bonté emphatically.
“This beats grainin’ bull-hide slick,” broke from Killbuck as the
strangers reined up at the fire, the younger dismounting, and staring
with wonder at the weather-beaten trappers.
“Well, my men, how are you?” he rattled out. “Any game here? By Jove!”
he suddenly exclaimed, seizing his rifle, as at that moment a large
buzzard, the most unclean of birds, flew into the topmost branch of a
cottonwood, and sat, a tempting shot. “By Jove, there’s a chance!” cried
the mighty hunter; and, bending low, started off to approach the unwary
bird in the most approved fashion of northern deer-stalkers. The buzzard
sat quietly, and now and then stretched its neck to gaze upon the
advancing sportsman, who on such occasions threw himself flat on the
ground, and remained motionless, in dread of alarming the bird. It was
worth while to look at the countenance of old Killbuck, as he watched
the antics of the “bourgeois” hunter. He thought at first that the dandy
rifleman had really discovered game in the bottom, and was nothing loth
that there was a chance of his seeing meat; but when he understood the
object of such manœuvres, and saw the quarry the hunter was so carefully
approaching, his mouth grinned from ear to ear, and, turning to La
Bonté, he said, “Wagh! _he’s_ some—_he_ is!”
Nothing doubting, however, the stranger approached the tree on which the
bird was sitting, and, getting well under it, raised his rifle and
fired. Down tumbled the bird; and the successful hunter, with a loud
shout, rushed frantically towards it, and bore it in triumph to the
camp, earning the most sovereign contempt from the two trappers by the
achievement.
The other stranger was a quieter character. He, too, smiled as he
witnessed the exultation of his younger companion, (whose horse, by the
way, was scampering about the plain,) and spoke kindly to the
mountaineers, whose appearance was clear evidence of the sufferings they
had endured. The snakes by this time were cooked, and the trappers gave
their new acquaintances the never-failing invitation to “sit and eat.”
When the latter, however, understood what the viands were, their looks
expressed the horror and disgust they felt.
“Good God!” exclaimed the elder, “you surely cannot eat such disgusting
food?”
“This niggur doesn’t savy what disgustin’ is,” gruffly answered
Killbuck; “but them as carries empty paunch three days an’ more, is glad
to get ‘snake-meat,’ I’m thinkin.”
“What! you’ve no ammunition, then?”
“_Well_, we haven’t.”
“Wait till the waggons come up, and throw away that abominable stuff,
and you shall have something better, I promise,” said the elder of the
strangers.
“Yes,” continued the younger, “some hot preserved soup, hotchpotch, and
a glass of porter, will do you good.”
The trappers looked at the speaker, who was talking Greek (to them.)
They thought the bourgeois were making fun, and did not half like it, so
answered simply, “Wagh! h—’s full of hosh-posh and porter.”
Two large waggons presently came up, escorted by some eight or ten stout
Missourians. Sublette was amongst the number, well known as a mountain
trader, and under whose guidance the present party, which formed a
pleasure expedition at the expense of a Scotch sportsman, was leisurely
making its way across the mountains to the Columbia. As several
mountaineers were in company, Killbuck and La Bonté recognised more than
one friend, and the former and Sublette were old compañeros. As soon as
the animals were unhitched, and camp formed on the banks of the creek, a
black cook set about preparing a meal. Our two trapping friends looked
on with astonishment as the sable functionary drew from the waggon the
different articles he required to furnish forth a feed. Hams, tongues,
tins of preserved meats, bottles of pickles, of porter, brandy, coffee,
sugar, flour, were tumbled promiscuously on the prairie; whilst pots and
pans, knives, forks, spoons, plates, &c. &c. displayed their unfamiliar
faces to the mountaineers. “Hosh-posh and porter” did not now appear
such Utopian articles as they had first imagined; but no one can
understand the relish, but those who have fared for years on simple meat
and water, with which they accepted the invitation of the Capen (as they
called the Scotchman,) to “take a horn of liquor.” Killbuck and La Bonté
sat in the same position as when we first surprised them asleep under
the shadow of Independence Rock, regarding the profuse display of
comestibles with scarce-believing eyes, and childishly helpless by the
novelty of the scene. Each took the proffered half-pint cup, filled to
the brim with excellent brandy—(no tee-totallers they!)—looked once at
the amber-coloured surface, and with the usual mountain pledge of
“here’s luck!” tossed off the grateful liquor at a breath. This prepared
them in some measure for what was yet in store for them. The Scotchman
bestirred the cook in his work, and soon sundry steaming pots were
lifted from the fire, and the skillets emptied of their bread—the
contents of the former poured in large flat pans, while pannikins were
filled with smoking coffee. The two trappers needed no second
invitation, but, seizing each a panful of steaming stew, drew the
butcher knives from their belts, and fell to lustily—the hospitable
Scotchman plying them with more and more, and administering corrective
noggins of brandy the while; until at last they were fain to cry enough,
wiped their knives on the grass, and placed them in their sheaths—a sign
that human nature could no more. How can pen describe the luxury of the
smoke that followed, to lips which had not kissed pipe for many months,
and how the fragrant honey-dew from Old Virginia was relishingly puffed!
But the Scotchman’s bounty did not stop here. He soon elicited from the
lips of the hunters the narrative of their losses and privations, and
learned that they now, without ammunition and scarcely clothed, were on
their way to Platte Fort, to hire themselves to the Indian traders in
order to earn another outfit, wherewith once more to betake themselves
to their perilous employment of trapping. What was their astonishment to
see their entertainer presently lay out upon the ground two piles of
goods, each consisting of a four-point Mackinaw, two tin canisters of
powder, with corresponding lead and flints, a pair of mocassins, a
shirt, and sufficient buckskin to make a pair of pantaloons; and how
much the more was the wonder increased when two excellent Indian horses
were presently lassoed from the cavallada, and with mountain saddle,
bridle, and lariats complete, together with the two piles of goods
described, presented to them “on the prairie” or “gift-free,” by the
kindhearted stranger, who would not even listen to thanks for the most
timely and invaluable present.
Once more equipped, our two hunters, filled with good brandy and fat
buffalo meat, again wended on their way; their late entertainers
continuing their pleasure trip across the gap of the South Pass,
intending to visit the Great Salt Lake, or Timponogos, of the West. The
former were bound for the North Fork of the Platte, with the intention
of joining one of the numerous trapping parties which rendezvous at the
American Fur Company’s post on that branch of the river. On a fork of
Sweet Water, however, not two days after the meeting with the
Scotchman’s waggons, they encountered a band of a dozen mountaineers,
mounted on fine horses, and well armed and equipped, travelling along
without the usual accompaniment of a mulada of pack-animals, two or
three mules alone being packed with meat and spare ammunition. The band
was proceeding at a smart rate, the horses moving with the gait peculiar
to American animals, known as “_pacing_” or “_racking_,” in Indian
file—each of the mountaineers with a long heavy rifle resting across the
horn of his saddle. Amongst them our two friends recognised Markhead,
who had been of the party dispersed months before by the Blackfeet on
one of the head streams of the Yellow Stone, which event had been the
origin of the dire sufferings of Killbuck and La Bonté. Markhead, after
running the gauntlet of numerous Indians, through the midst of whose
country he passed with his usual temerity and utter disregard to danger,
suffering hunger, thirst, and cold—those every-day experiences of
mountain life—riddled with balls, but with three scalps hanging from his
belt, made his way to a rendezvous on Bear River, whence he struck out
for the Platte in early spring, in time to join the band he now
accompanied, who were on a horse-stealing expedition to the Missions of
Upper California. Little persuasion did either Killbuck or La Bonté
require to join the sturdy freebooters. In five minutes they had gone
“files-about,” and at sundown were camping on the well-timbered bottom
of “Little Sandy,” feasting once more on delicate hump-rib and tender
loin.
For California, ho!
Fourteen good rifles in the hands of fourteen mountain men, stout and
true, on fourteen strong horses, of true Indian blood and
training—fourteen cool heads, with fourteen pairs of keen eyes in them,
each head crafty as an Indian’s, directing a right arm strong as steel,
and a heart as brave as grizzly bear’s. Before them a thousand miles of
dreary desert or wilderness, overrun by hostile savages, thirsting for
the white man’s blood; famine and drought, the arrows of wily hordes of
Indians—and, these dangers past, the invasion of the civilised
settlements of whites, the least numerous of which contained ten times
their number of armed and bitter enemies,—the sudden swoop upon their
countless herds of mules and horses, the fierce attack and bloody
slaughter;—such were the consequences of the expedition these bold
mountaineers were now engaged in. Fourteen lives of any fourteen enemies
who would be rash enough to stay them, were, any day you will, carried
in the rifle barrels of these stout fellows; who, in all the proud
consciousness of their physical qualities, neither thought, nor cared to
think, of future perils; and rode merrily on their way, rejoicing in the
dangers they must necessarily meet. Never a more daring band crossed the
mountains; a more than ordinary want of caution characterised their
march, and dangers were recklessly and needlessly invited, which even
the older and more cold-blooded mountaineers seemed not to care to
avoid. They had, each and all, many a debt to pay the marauding Indians.
Grudges for many privations, for wounds and loss of comrades, rankled in
their breasts; and not one but had suffered more or less in property and
person at the hands of the savages, within a few short months. Threats
of vengeance on every Redskin they met were loud and deep; and the wild
war-songs round their nightly camp-fires, and grotesque scalp-dances,
borrowed from the Indians, proved to the initiated that they were, one
and all, “half-froze for hair.” Soon after Killbuck and La Bonté joined
them, they one day suddenly surprised a band of twenty Sioux, scattered
on a small prairie and butchering some buffalo they had just killed.
Before they could escape, the whites were upon them with loud shouts,
and in three minutes the scalps of eleven were dangling from their
saddle-horns.
Struggling up mountains, slipping down precipices, dashing over prairies
which resounded with their Indian songs, charging the Indians wherever
they met them, and without regard to their numbers; frightening with
their lusty war-whoops the miserable Diggers, who were not unfrequently
surprised while gathering roots in the mountain plains, and who,
scrambling up the rocks and concealing themselves, like sage rabbits, in
holes and corners, peered, chattering with fear, as the wild and noisy
troop rode by. Scarce drawing rein, they passed rapidly the heads of
Green and Grand Rivers, through a country abounding in game and in
excellent pasture; encountering in the upland valleys, through which
meandered the well-timbered creeks on which they made their daily camps,
many a band of Yutahs, through whom they dashed at random, caring not
whether they were friends or foes. Passing many other heads of streams,
they struck at last the edge of the desert, lying along the
south-eastern base of the Great Salt Lake, and which extends in almost
unbroken sterility to the foot of the range of the Sierra Nevada—a
mountain chain, capped with perpetual snow, that bounds the northern
extremity of a singular tract of country, walled by mountains and
utterly desert, whose salt lagoons and lakes, although fed by many
streams, find no outlet to the ocean, but are absorbed in the spongy
soil or thirsty sand, which characterise the different portions of this
deserted tract. In the “Grand Basin,” it is reported, neither human nor
animal life can be supported. No oases cheer the wanderer in the
unbroken solitude of the vast wilderness. More than once the lone
trapper has penetrated, with hardy enterprise, into the salt plains of
the basin; but no signs of beaver or fur-bearing animal rewarded the
attempt. The ground is scantily covered with coarse unwholesome grass
that mules and horses refuse to eat; and the water of the springs,
impregnated with the impurities of the soil through which it percolates,
affords but nauseating draughts to the thirsty traveller.
In passing from the more fertile uplands to the lower plains, as they
descended the streams, the timber on their banks became scarcer, and the
groves more scattered. The rich buffalo or _grama_ grass was exchanged
for a coarser species, on which the hard-worked animals soon grew poor
and weak. The thickets of plum and cherry, of box-alder and quaking-ash,
which had hitherto fringed the creeks, and where the deer and bear loved
to resort—the former to browse on the leaves and tender shoots, the
latter to devour the fruit—now entirely disappeared, and the only shrub
seen was the eternal sage bush, which flourishes every where in the
western regions in uncongenial soils where other vegetation refuses to
grow. The visible change in the scenery had also a sensible effect on
the spirits of the mountaineers. They travelled on in silence through
the deserted plains; the hi-hi-hiya of their Indian chants was no longer
heard enlivening the line of march. More than once a Digger of the
Pi-yutah tribe took himself and hair, in safety, from their path, and
almost unnoticed; but as they advanced they became more cautious in
their movements, and testified, by the vigilant watch they kept, that
they anticipated hostile attacks even in these arid wastes. They had
passed without molestation through the country infested by the bolder
Indians. The mountain Yutes, not relishing the appearance of the
hunters, had left them unmolested; but they were now entering a country
inhabited by the most degraded and abject of the western tribes; who,
nevertheless, ever suffering from the extremities of hunger, have their
brutish wits sharpened by the necessity of procuring food, and rarely
fail to levy a contribution of rations, of horse or mule flesh, on the
passenger in their inhospitable country. The brutish cunning and animal
instinct of these wretches is such, that although arrant cowards, their
attacks are more feared than those of bolder Indians. These
people—called the Yamparicas or Root-Diggers—are, nevertheless, the
degenerate descendants of those tribes which once overran that portion
of the continent of North America now comprehended within the boundaries
of Mexico, and who have left such startling evidences in their track of
a comparatively superior state of civilisation. They now form an outcast
tribe of the great nation of the Apache, which extends under various
names from the Great Salt Lake along the table-lands on each side the
Sierra Madre to the tropic of Cancer, where they merge into what are
called the Mexican Indians. The whole of this nation is characterised by
most abject cowardice; and they even refuse to meet the helpless
Mexicans in open fight—unlike the Yutah or Camanche, who carry bold and
open warfare into the territories of their civilised enemy, and never
shrink from hand to hand encounter. The Apaches and the degenerate
Diggers pursue a cowardly warfare, hiding in ambush, and shooting the
passer-by with arrows; or, dashing upon him at night when steeped in
sleep, they bury their arrow to the feather in his heaving breast. As
the Mexicans say, “_Sin ventaja, no salen_;” they never attack without
odds. But they are not the less dangerous enemies on this account; and
by the small bands of trappers who visit their country, they are the
more dreaded by reason of this coward and wolfish system of warfare.
To provide against surprise, therefore, as the hunters rode along,
flankers were extended _en guerilla_ on each side, mounting the high
points to reconnoitre the country, and keeping a sharp look-out for the
Indian sign. At night the animals were securely hobbled, and a
horse-guard posted round them—a service of great danger, as the stealthy
cat-like Diggers are often known to steal up silently, under cover of
the darkness, towards the sentinel, shoot him with their arrows, and,
approaching the animals, cut the hobbles and drive them away unseen.
One night they encamped on a creek where was but little of the coarsest
pasture, and that little scattered here and there; so that they were
compelled to allow their animals to roam farther than usual from camp in
search of food. Four of the hunters, however, accompanied them to guard
against surprise; whilst but half of those in camp laid down to sleep,
the others, with rifles in their hands, remaining prepared for any
emergencies. This day they had killed one of their two pack mules for
food, game not having been met with for several days; but the animal was
so poor, that it scarcely afforded more than one tolerable meal to the
whole party.
A short time before the dawn of day an alarm was given; the animals were
heard to snort violently; a loud shout was heard, followed by the sharp
crack of a rifle, and the tramp of galloping horses plainly showed that
a stampede had been effected. The whites instantly sprang to their arms,
and rushed in the direction of the sounds. The body of the cavallada,
however, had luckily turned, and, being headed by the mountaineers, were
surrounded and secured, with the loss of only three, which had probably
been mounted by the Indians.
Day breaking soon after, one of their band was discovered to be missing;
and it was then found that a man who had been standing horse-guard at
the time of the attack, had not come into camp with his companions. At
that moment a thin spiral column of smoke was seen to rise from the
banks of the creek, telling but too surely the fate of the missing
mountaineer. It was the signal of the Indians to their people that a
“_coup_” had been struck, and that an enemy’s scalp remained in their
triumphant hands.
“H——!” exclaimed the trappers in a breath; and soon imprecations and
threats of revenge, loud and deep, were showered upon the heads of the
treacherous Indians. Some of the party rushed to the spot where the
guard had stood, and there lay the body of their comrade, pierced with
lance and arrow, the scalp gone, and the body otherwise mutilated in a
barbarous manner. Five were quickly in the saddle, mounted upon the
strongest horses, and flying along the track of the Indians, who had
made off towards the mountains with their prize and booty. We will not
follow them in their work of bloody vengeance, save by saying that they
followed the savages to their village, into which they charged headlong,
recovered their stolen horses, and returned to camp at sundown with
thirteen scalps dangling from their rifles, in payment for the loss of
their unfortunate companion.[4]
In their further advance, hunger and thirst were their daily companions;
they were compelled to kill several of their animals for food, but were
fortunate enough to replace them by a stroke of good luck in meeting a
party of Indians returning from an excursion against one of the
Californian settlements with a tolerably large band of horses. Our
hunters met this band one fine morning, and dashed into the midst at
once; half a dozen Indians bit the dust, and twenty horses were turned
over from red to white masters in as many seconds, which remounted those
whose animals had been eaten, and enabled the others to exchange their
worn-out steeds for fresh ones. This fortunate event was considered a
_coup_, and the event was celebrated by the slaughter of a fat young
horse, which furnished an excellent supper that night—a memorable event
in these starveling regions.
They were now devouring their horses and mules at the rate of one every
alternate day; for, so poor were the animals, that one scarcely
furnished an ample meal for the thirteen hungry hunters. They were once
more reduced to the animals they rode on; and after a fast of
twenty-four hours’ duration, were debating on the propriety of drawing
lots as to whose Rosinante should fill the kettle, when some Indians
suddenly appeared making signs of peace upon the bluff, and indicating a
disposition to enter the camp for the purpose of trading. Being invited
to approach, they offered to trade a few dressed elk-skins; but being
asked for meat, they said that their village was a long way off, and
they had nothing with them but a small portion of some game they had
lately killed. When requested to produce this, they hesitated, but the
trappers looking hungry and angry at the same moment, an old Indian drew
from under his blanket several flaps of portable dried meat which he
declared was bear’s. It was but a small ration amongst so many; but,
being divided, was quickly laid upon the fire to broil. The meat was
stringy, and of whitish colour, altogether unlike any flesh the trappers
had before eaten. Killbuck was the first to discover this. He had been
quietly masticating the last mouthful of his portion, the stringiness of
which required more than usual dental exertion, when the novelty of the
flavour struck him as something singular. Suddenly his jaws ceased their
work, he thought a moment, took the morsel from his mouth, looked at it
intently, and dashed it into the fire.
“Man-meat, by G—!” he cried out; and at the words every jaw stopped
work: the trappers looked at the meat and each other.
“I’m dog-gone if it ain’t!” cried old Walker, looking at his piece, “and
white meat at that, wagh!” (and report said it was not the first time he
had tasted such viands;) and the conviction seizing each mind, every
mouthful was quickly spat into the fire, and the ire of the deceived
whites was instantly turned upon the luckless providers of the feast.
They saw the storm that was brewing, and without more ado turned tail
from the camp, and scuttled up the bluffs, where, turning round, they
fired a volley of arrows at the tricked mountaineers, and instantly
disappeared.
However, the desert and its nomade pilferers were at length passed; the
sandy plains became grass-covered prairies; the monstrous cottonwood on
the creeks was replaced by oak and ash; the surface of the country grew
more undulating, and less broken up into cañons and ravines; elk and
deer leaped in the bottoms, and bands of antelope dotted the plains,
with occasional troops of wild horses, too wary to allow the approach of
man. On the banks of a picturesque stream called the San Joaquim, the
party halted a few days to recruit themselves and animals, feasting the
while on the fattest of venison and other game. They then struck to the
south-east for two days, until they reached a branch of the “Las
Animas,” a clear stream running through a pretty valley, well timbered
and abounding in game. Here, as they wound along the river-banks, a
horseman suddenly appeared upon the bluff above them, galloping at a
furious rate along the edge. His dress approached in some degree to
civilised attire. A broad-brimmed sombrero surmounted his swarthy face;
a coloured blanket, through a slit in which his head was thrust, floated
in the air from his shoulders; leathern leggings encased his lower
limbs; and huge spurs jingled on his heels. He rode in a high-peaked
Mexican saddle, his feet thrust in ponderous stirrups, and in his hand
swung a coil of ready lasso, his only offensive arm. One of the trappers
knew a little Spanish, and instantly hailed him.
“_Compadre_,” he shouted, “_por onde va?_” The Californian reined in
suddenly, throwing the horse he rode on its very haunches, and darting
down the bluff, galloped unhesitatingly into the midst of the hunters.
“_Americanos!_” he exclaimed glancing at them; and continued,
smiling—“_Y caballos quieren, por eso vienen tan lejitos. Jesus, que
mala gente!_” “It’s horses you want, and for this you come all this way.
Ah, what rogues you are!”
He was an Indian, employed at the Mission of San Fernando, distant three
days’ journey from their present position, and was now searching for a
band of horses and mules which had strayed. San Fernando, it appeared,
had once before been visited by a party of mountain free-traders, and
the Indian therefore divined the object of the present one. He was, he
told them, “_un Indio, pero mansito_:” an Indian, but a tame one;[5]
“_de mas, Christiano_;” a Christian moreover, (exhibiting a small cross
which hung round his neck.) There were many people about the mission, he
said, who knew how to fight, and had plenty of arms; and there were
enough to “eat up” the “_Americanos, sin frijoles_,” without beans, as
he facetiously observed. For his part, however, he was very friendly to
the _Americanos_; he had once met a man of that nation who was a good
sort of fellow, and had made him a present of tobacco, of which he was
particularly fond. Finding this hint did not take, he said that the
horses and mules belonging to the mission were innumerable—“like that,”
he added, sweeping his hand to all points of the compass over the plain,
to intimate that they would cover that extent; and he could point out a
large herd grazing nearer at hand than the mission, and guarded but by
three _vaqueros_. Regaled with venison, and with a smoke of his coveted
tobacco, he rode off, and made his way to the mission without delay;
conveying the startling intelligence that a thousand Americans were upon
them.
The next morning the thirteen doughty mountaineers quietly resumed their
journey, moving leisurely along towards the object of their expedition.
It will not be out of place here to digress a little, in order to
describe the singular features of the establishments formed in those
remote regions by the Catholic church, as nuclei round which to
concentrate the wandering tribes that inhabit the country, with a view
to give them the benefit of civilised example, and to wean them from
their restless nomadic habits.
The establishment of missions in Upper California is coeval with the
first settlement of Southern Mexico. No sooner had Spanish rule taken a
firm foothold in the Aztec empire, than the avowed primary object of the
military expedition began to be carried into effect. “To save the souls”
of the savage and barbarous subjects of their most Catholic majesties
was ever inculcated upon the governors of the conquered country as the
grand object to be sought after, as soon as tranquillity was partially
restored by the submission of the Mexicans; and the cross, the sacred
emblem of the Catholic faith, was to be upraised in the remotest corners
of the country, and the natives instructed and compelled to worship it,
in lieu of the grotesque images of their own idolatrous religion.
To carry into effect these orthodox instructions, troops of pious
priests, of friars and monks of every order, and even of saintly nuns,
followed in the wake of the victorious armies of Cortez; and girding up
their loins with zealous fervour and enthusiasm, and with an enterprise
and hardihood worthy of buccaneers, they pushed their adventurous way
far into the bowels of the land, preaching devoutly and with commendable
perseverance to savages who did not understand a syllable of what they
so eloquently discoursed; and returning, after the lapse of many months
passed in this first attempt, with glowing accounts of the “_muy buen
indole_,” the very ductile disposition of the savages, and of the
thousands they had converted to “_la santa fé catolica_.”
Ferdinand and Isabel, of glorious memory, at once beat up for
volunteers. Crowds of Franciscan monks, greasy Capuchinos, and nuns of
orthodox odour, joined the band; and saints even of the feminine gender,
long since canonised and up aloft amongst the goodly muster of saints
and martyrs, put foot once more on _terra firma_, and, rosary in hand,
crossed the seas to participate in the good work. As proof of this
latter fact, one Venabides, a Franciscan, whose veracity is beyond
impeachment, declared that, while preaching in the regions now known as
New Mexico, one million Indians from the “rumbo” known as Cibolo, a
mighty nation, approached his temporary pulpit on the Rio Grande, and
requested in a body the favour of being baptised. Struck with the
singularity of this request from Indians with whom he had as yet held no
communication, and with conscientious scruple as to whether he would be
justified in performing such ceremony without their having received
previous instruction, he hesitated a few moments before making an
answer. At this juncture, the Indians espied a medallion which hung
around his neck, bearing the effigy of a certain saint of extraordinary
virtue. At sight of this they fell on their knees before it; and it was
some time before they found words (in what language does not appear) to
explain to the holy father that the original of that effigy, which hung
pendant from his neck, had been long amongst them instructing them in
the elements of the Christian religion, and had only lately disappeared;
informing them that certain reverend men would shortly appear in the
land, who would finish the good work she had devoutly commenced, and
clench the business by baptising the one million miserable sinners who
now knelt before El Padre Venabides.
“Valgame Dios!” reverently exclaimed that worthy man, “qui milagro es
este;” [what a miracle is this I hear;] and casting up his eyes, and
speaking slowly, as if he weighed every word, and taxing his memory of
the historical calendar of saints, continued,—
“_Se murió—aquella—santissima—muger—en el ano 175—es decir—ya
hacen—mil—quatro—cientos—anos._” [That most holy woman died in the year
175, that is to say, one thousand four hundred years ago.]
“Oh, what a strange thing is this!” the padre continues devoutly. “After
so many ages spent in heaven in company of the angels, of most holy men,
and of virgins the most pure; and, perhaps, also in the company of my
worthy and esteemed friend and patron Don Vincente Carvajal y Calvo, who
died a few years ago in San Lucar of Xeres, (bequeathing me certain
arrobas of dry wine, of a class I greatly esteem,—for which act he
deserved to be canonised, and, I have no doubt, is,) the said Don
Vincente Carvajal y Calvo being, moreover, a man of the purest and
holiest thoughts, (Dios mio! what a puchero that man always had on his
table!) this holy woman comes here—to these wild and remote regions;
this holy woman, (who died fifteen hundred years ago,) abandoning the
company of angels, of holy men, and sanctified women and virgins, and
also of Don Vincente Carvajal y Calvo, (that worthy man!)—comes here, I
say, where there are neither pucheros, nor garbanzos, nor dry wine, nor
sweet wine, neither of Xeres, nor of Val de Peñas, nor of Peralta;
where” (sobbed the padre, and bellowed the last word) “there is—nothing
either to eat or to drink. Valgame Purissima Maria! And what is the name
of this holy woman? the world will ask,” continues Venabides. “Santa
Clara of Carmona is her name, one well known in my native country, who
leaves heaven and all its joys, wends her way to the distant wilds of
New Spain, and spends years in inducting the savage people to the holy
faith. Truly a pious work, and pleasing to God!”[6]
Thus spoke Venabides the Franciscan, and no doubt he believed what he
said; and many others in Old Spain were fools enough to believe it too,
for the shaven heads flocked over in greater numbers, and the cry was
ever “still they come.”
Along the whole extent of the table-lands, not an Indian tribe but was
speedily visited by the preaching friars and monks; and, in less than a
century after the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards, these hardy and
enthusiastic frayles had pushed their way into the inhospitable regions
of New Mexico, nearly two thousand miles distant from the valley of
Anahuac. How they succeeded in surmounting the natural obstacles
presented by the wild and barren deserts they traversed; how they
escaped the infinite peril they encountered at every step, at the hands
of the savage inhabitants of the country, with whose language they were
totally unacquainted, is sufficient puzzle to those who, in the present
day, have attempted a journey in the same regions.
However, it is impossible not to admire the hardihood of these holy
pioneers of civilisation, who, totally unfitted by their former mode of
life for undergoing such hardships as they must have anticipated, threw
themselves into the wilderness with fearless and stubborn zeal.
For the most part, however, they found the Indians exceedingly
hospitable and well disposed; and it was not until some time after—when,
receiving from the missionary monks glowing, and not always very
truthful accounts of the riches of the country in which they had located
themselves, the governors of Mexico despatched armed expeditions under
adventurous desperadoes to take and retain possession of the said
country, with orders to compel the submission of the native tribes, and
enforce their obedience to the authority of the whites—that the simple
and confiding Indians began to see the folly they had committed in
permitting the residence amongst them of these superior beings, whom
they had first looked upon as more than mortal, but who, when strong
enough to do so, were not long in throwing off the mask, and proving to
the simple savages that they were much “more human than divine.”
Thus, in the province of New Mexico, Fray Augustin Ruiz, with his
co-preachers Marcos and Venabides, were kindly received by the native
inhabitants, and we have seen how one million (?) Indians came from the
“rumbo” of the Cibolo, ready and willing to receive the baptismal
sacrament. This Cibolo, or Sivulo, as it is written in some old MSS.,
is, by the way, mysteriously alluded to by the monkish historians who
have written on this region, as being a kingdom inhabited by a very
superior class of Indians to any met with between Anahuac and the Vale
of Taos—in the enjoyment of a high state of civilisation, inhabiting a
well-built city, the houses of which were three stories high, and having
attained considerable perfection in the domestic arts. This,
notwithstanding the authority of Don Francisco Vasquez Coronado, who
visited Cibolo, and of Solis and Venegas, who have guaranteed the
assertion, must be received _cum grano salis_; but, at all events, the
civilisation of the mysterious Cibolo may be compared to that of the
Aztec empire, under Montezuma, at the time of the Spanish Conquest, both
being egregiously exaggerated by the historians of the day. Cibolo was
situated on a river called Tegue. At this day, neither name is known to
the inhabitants of New Mexico. If pate-shaven Venabides had held his
tongue, New Mexico might now be in the peaceful possession of the
Catholic Missions, and the property of the Church of Mexico pretty
considerably enhanced by the valuable _placeres_, or gold washings,
which abound in that province. Full, however, of the wonderful miracle
of Santa Clara of Carmona, which had been brought to light through the
agency of the medallion at the end of his rosario, Fray Venabides must
needs return to Spain, and humbug poor old Fernando, and even the more
sensible Isabel, with wonderful accounts of the riches of the country he
had been instrumental in exploring, and of the excellent disposition of
the natives to receive the word of God. Don Juan Oñate was, therefore,
quickly despatched to take possession; and in his train followed twelve
Castilian families of _sangre azul_, to colonise the newly-acquired
territory. The names of these still remain, disgraced by the degenerate
wretches who now bear them, but in whom scarce a drop of blood remains
which ever filtered from the veins of the paladins of Old Castile.
Then commenced the troublous times. The missions were upheld by dint of
steel alone; and, on every occasion, the Indians rose, and often
massacred their white persecutors. The colonists were more than once
driven bodily from New Mexico, and were only reinstated by the aid of
large bodies of armed men.
In California, however, they managed these things better. The wily monks
took care to keep all interlopers from the country, established
themselves in snug quarters, instructed the Indians in agriculture, and
soon gained such an ascendency over them, that no difficulty was
experienced in keeping them under proper and wholesome restraint. Strong
and commodious missions were built and fortified, well stored with arms
and ammunition, and containing sufficient defenders to defy attack.
Luxuriant gardens and thriving vineyards soon surrounded these isolated
stations: the plains waved with golden corn; whilst domestic cattle,
thriving on the rich pasture, and roaming far and near, multiplied and
increased a hundred-fold.
Nothing can be more beautiful than the appearance of one of these
missions, to the traveller who has lately passed the arid and barren
wilderness of the North-west. The _adobe_ walls of the convent-looking
building, surmounted by cross and belfry, are generally hidden in a mass
of luxuriant vegetation. Fig-trees, bananas, cherry, and apple,
leaf-spreading platanos, and groves of olives, form umbrageous vistas,
under which the sleek monks delight to wander; gardens, cultivated by
their own hands, testify to the horticultural skill of the worthy
padres; whilst vineyards yield their grateful produce to gladden the
hearts of the holy exiles in these western solitudes. Vast herds of
cattle roam half-wild on the plains, and bands of mules and horses,
whose fame has even reached the distant table-lands of the Rocky
Mountains, and excited the covetousness of the hunters—and thousands of
which, from the day they are foaled to that of their death, never feel a
saddle on their backs—cover the country. Indians (Mansitos) idle round
the skirts of these vast herds, (whose very numbers keep them together,)
living, at their own choice, upon the flesh of mule, or ox, or horse.
THE CAXTONS.—PART VI.