I forget the place, and the occasion also, but I have a kind of misty
recollection of having once, in these nutting excursions of mine, been
excessively eloquent on the subject of the advantages derivable from
division of labour.
Not a walk or condition in life is there to which it has not penetrated;
and while natural talents have become cultivated from finding their most
congenial sphere of operation, immense results have accrued in every art
and science where a higher degree of perfection has been thus attained.
Your doctor and your lawyer now-a-days select the precise portion of
your person or property they intend to operate on. The oculist and the
aurist, and the odontalgist and the pedicurist, all are suggestive of
various local sufferings, by which they bound their skill; and so, the
equity lawyer and the common-law lawyer, the special pleader and the bar
orator, have subdivided knavery, without diminishing its amount. Even in
literature, there are the heavy men who “do” the politics, and the quiet
men who do the statistics, and the rough-and-ready men, who are a
kind of servants-of-all-work, and so on. In universities, there is the
science man and the classical man, the man of simple equations and
the man of spondees. Painting has its bright colourists and its more
sombre-loving artists, and so on--the great camps of party would seem to
have given the impulse to every condition of life, and “speciality” is
the order of the day.
No sooner is a new discovery made, no matter whether in the skies above,
or the dark bowels of the earth, than an opportunity of disagreement
is sure to arise. Two, mayhap three, gentlemen, profess diversity of
opinion; followers are never lacking, let any one be fool enough to turn
leader--and straightway there comes out a new sect, with a Greek name
for a title.
It is only the other day, men began to find out that primitive rocks,
and basalt, ochre, and sandstone, had lived a long time, and must surely
know something of antiquity--if they only could tell it. The stones,
from that hour, had an unhappy time of it--men went about in gangs with
hammers and crowbars, shivering this and shattering that--picking holes
in respectable old rocks, that never had a word said against them, and
peeping into “quarts,” (*) like a policeman.
* Query “quartz.”--Devil.
Men must be quarrelsome, you'd say, if they could fight about
paving-stones--but so they did. One set would have it that the world was
all cinders, and another set insisted it was only slack--and so, they
called themselves Plutonians and Neptunians, and made great converts to
their respective opinions.
Gulliver tells us of “Big-endians” and “Little-endians,” who hated each
other like poison; and thus it is, our social condition is like a row in
an Irish fair, where one strikes somebody, and nobody thinks the other
right.
Oh! for the happy days of heretofore, when the two kings of Brentford
smelled at one nosegay. It couldn't happen now, I promise you.
One of their majesties would have insisted on the petals, and the other
been equally imperative regarding the stamina: they'd have pushed their
claims with all the weight of their influence, and there would have been
soon little vestige of a nosegay between them.
[Illustration: 237]
But to come back, for all this is digression. The subdivision of labour,
with all its advantages, has its reverse to the medal. You are ill, for
instance. You have been dining with the Lord Mayor, and hip-hipping to
the health of her Majesty's ministers; or drinking, mayhap, nine times
nine to the independence of Poland, or civil and religious liberty all
over the globe--or any other fiction of large dinners. You go home, with
your head aching from bad wine, bad speeches, and bad music; your wife
sees you look excessively flushed; your eyes have got an odd kind of
expression, far too much of the white being visible; a half shut-up
look, like a pastry-cook's shop on Sunday; there are evident signs, from
blackness of the lips, that in your English ardour for the navy you
have made a “port-hole” of your mouth; in fact, you have a species of
semi-apoplectic threatening, that bodes ill for the insurance company.
A doctor is sent for--he lives near, and comes at once--with a glance he
recognises your state, and suggests the immediate remedy--the lancet.
“Fetch a basin,” says somebody, with more presence of mind than the
rest.
“Not so fast,” quoth the medico. “I am a pure physician--I don't
bleed: that's the surgeon's affair. I should be delighted to save the
gentleman's life--but we have a bye-law against it in the college.
Nothing could give me more pleasure than to cure you, if it was n't for
the charter. What a pity it is! I 'm sure I wish, with all my heart, the
cook would take courage to open a vein, or even give you a bloody nose
with the cleaver.”
Do you think I exaggerate here? Try the experiment--I only ask that.
Sending for the surgeon does not solve the difficulty; he may be a man
who cuts corns and cataracts--who only operates for strabismus, or makes
new noses for Peninsular heroes. In fact, if you do n't hit the right
number--and it's a large lottery--you may go out of the world without
even the benefit of physic.
This great system, however, does not end with human life. The
coroners--resolved not to be behind their age--have made a great
movement, and shown themselves men worthy of the enlightened era they
live in. Read this:--
“On Friday morning last, a man named Patrick Knowlan, a private in the
3rd Buffs, was discovered lying dead close beneath the platform of
a wharf at the bottom of Holborn-lane, Chatham. It would appear that
deceased had mistaken his way, and fallen from the wharf, which is used
for landing coals from the river, a depth of about eight feet, upon the
muddy beach below, which was then strewn with refuse coal. There was
a large and severe wound upon the left temple, and a piece of coal was
sticking in the left cheek, close below the eye. The whole left side of
the face was much contracted. He had evidently, from the state of his
clothes, been covered with water, which overflows this spot at the
period of spring tides. Although nothing certain is known, it is
generally supposed that he mistook Holborn-lane for the West-lane, which
leads to the barracks, and that walking forward in the darkness he fell
from the wharf. Mr. Lewis, the coroner for the city of Rochester, claims
jurisdiction over all bodies found in the water at this spot; and as the
unfortunate man had evidently been immersed, he thought this a proper
case for the exercise of his office, and accordingly summoned a jury to
sit upon the body at ten o'clock on Friday morning--but on his going to
view the deceased, he found that it was at the King's Arms, Chatham, in
the hands of Bines, the Chatham constable, as the representative of Mr.
Hinde, one of the coroners for the eastern division of the county of
Kent, who refused to give up the key of the room, but allowed Mr. Lewis
and his jury to view the body. They then returned to the Nag's Head,
Rochester, and having heard the evidence of John Shepherd, a fisherman,
who deposed that a carter, going on to the beach for coals, at half-past
seven o'clock on Friday morning, found the body as already described,
the jury returned a verdict of 'Found dead.' Mr. Hinde, the county
coroner, held another inquest upon the deceased, at the King's Arms; and
after taking the evidence of William Whittingham, the carter who found
the body, and Frederick Collins, a corporal of the 3rd Buffs, who stated
that he saw the deceased on the evening preceding his death, and he was
then sober, the jury returned a verdict of 'Accidental death;' each
of the coroners issued a warrant for the interment of the body. The
disputed jurisdiction, it is believed, will now be submitted to the
decision of a higher court, in order to settle what is here considered a
_vexata quostio_.”--Maidstone Journal.
Is not this perfect? Only think of land coroners and water
coroners--imagine the law defining the jurisdiction of the Tellurian as
far forth into the sea as he could sit on a corpse without danger, and
the Neptunian ruling the waves beyond in absolute sway--conceive the
“solidist” revelling in all the accidents that befall life upon the
world's highways, and the “fluidist” seeking his prey like a pearl
diver, five fathoms low, beneath “the deep, deep sea.” What a rivalry
theirs, who divide the elements between them, and have nature's
everlasting boundaries to define the limits of their empire.
I hope to see the time when these great functionaries of law shall be
provided with a suitable costume. I should glory to think of Mr. Hinde
accoutred in emblems suggestive of earth and its habits--a wreath of oak
leaves round his brows; and to behold Mr. Lewis in a garment of marine
plants and sea shells sit upon his corpse, with a trident in his right
hand. What a comfort for the man about to take French leave of life,
that he could know precisely the individual he should benefit, and be
able to go “by land” or “water,” as his taste inclined him.
I have no time here to dwell upon the admirable distinctions of the two
verdicts given in the case I allude to. When the great change I suggest
is fully carried out, the difficulty of a verdict will at once be
avoided, for the jury, like boys at play, will only have to cry out at
each case--“wet or dry.”
There would be probably too much expense incurred in poor localities
by maintaining two officials; and I should suggest, in such cases,
an amphibious coroner--a kind of merman, who should enjoy a double
jurisdiction, and, as they say of half-bred pointers, be able “to take
the water when required.”