THE AGRICULTURAL INTEREST

THE present Government, having shown itself to be particularly clever in

its management of Indictments for Conspiracy, cannot do better, we think

(keeping in its administrative eye the pacification of some of its most

influential and most unruly supporters), than indict the whole

manufacturing interest of the country for a conspiracy against the

agricultural interest. As the jury ought to be beyond impeachment, the

panel might be chosen among the Duke of Buckingham’s tenants, with the

Duke of Buckingham himself as foreman; and, to the end that the country

might be quite satisfied with the judge, and have ample security

beforehand for his moderation and impartiality, it would be desirable,

perhaps, to make such a slight change in the working of the law (a mere

nothing to a Conservative Government, bent upon its end), as would enable

the question to be tried before an Ecclesiastical Court, with the Bishop

of Exeter presiding. The Attorney-General for Ireland, turning his sword

into a ploughshare, might conduct the prosecution; and Mr. Cobden and the

other traversers might adopt any ground of defence they chose, or prove

or disprove anything they pleased, without being embarrassed by the least

anxiety or doubt in reference to the verdict.

That the country in general is in a conspiracy against this sacred but

unhappy agricultural interest, there can be no doubt. It is not alone

within the walls of Covent Garden Theatre, or the Free Trade Hall at

Manchester, or the Town Hall at Birmingham, that the cry “Repeal the

Corn-laws!” is raised. It may be heard, moaning at night, through the

straw-littered wards of Refuges for the Destitute; it may be read in the

gaunt and famished faces which make our streets terrible; it is muttered

in the thankful grace pronounced by haggard wretches over their felon

fare in gaols; it is inscribed in dreadful characters upon the walls of

Fever Hospitals; and may be plainly traced in every record of mortality.

All of which proves, that there is a vast conspiracy afoot, against the

unfortunate agricultural interest.

They who run, even upon railroads, may read of this conspiracy. The old

stage-coachman was a farmer’s friend. He wore top-boots, understood

cattle, fed his horses upon corn, and had a lively personal interest in

malt. The engine-driver’s garb, and sympathies, and tastes belong to the

factory. His fustian dress, besmeared with coal-dust and begrimed with

soot; his oily hands, his dirty face, his knowledge of machinery; all

point him out as one devoted to the manufacturing interest. Fire and

smoke, and red-hot cinders follow in his wake. He has no attachment to

the soil, but travels on a road of iron, furnace wrought. His warning is

not conveyed in the fine old Saxon dialect of our glorious forefathers,

but in a fiendish yell. He never cries “ya-hip”, with agricultural

lungs; but jerks forth a manufactured shriek from a brazen throat.

Where _is_ the agricultural interest represented? From what phase of our

social life has it not been driven, to the undue setting up of its false

rival?

Are the police agricultural? The watchmen were. They wore woollen

nightcaps to a man; they encouraged the growth of timber, by

patriotically adhering to staves and rattles of immense size; they slept

every night in boxes, which were but another form of the celebrated

wooden walls of Old England; they never woke up till it was too late—in

which respect you might have thought them very farmers. How is it with

the police? Their buttons are made at Birmingham; a dozen of their

truncheons would poorly furnish forth a watchman’s staff; they have no

wooden walls to repose between; and the crowns of their hats are plated

with cast-iron.

Are the doctors agricultural? Let Messrs. Morison and Moat, of the

Hygeian establishment at King’s Cross, London, reply. Is it not, upon

the constant showing of those gentlemen, an ascertained fact that the

whole medical profession have united to depreciate the worth of the

Universal Vegetable Medicines? And is this opposition to vegetables, and

exaltation of steel and iron instead, on the part of the regular

practitioners, capable of any interpretation but one? Is it not a

distinct renouncement of the agricultural interest, and a setting up of

the manufacturing interest instead?

Do the professors of the law at all fail in their truth to the beautiful

maid whom they ought to adore? Inquire of the Attorney-General for

Ireland. Inquire of that honourable and learned gentleman, whose last

public act was to cast aside the grey goose-quill, an article of

agricultural produce, and take up the pistol, which, under the system of

percussion locks, has not even a flint to connect it with farming. Or

put the question to a still higher legal functionary, who, on the same

occasion, when he should have been a reed, inclining here and there, as

adverse gales of evidence disposed him, was seen to be a manufactured

image on the seat of Justice, cast by Power, in most impenetrable brass.

The world is too much with us in this manufacturing interest, early and

late; that is the great complaint and the great truth. It is not so with

the agricultural interest, or what passes by that name. It never thinks

of the suffering world, or sees it, or cares to extend its knowledge of

it; or, so long as it remains a world, cares anything about it. All

those whom Dante placed in the first pit or circle of the doleful

regions, might have represented the agricultural interest in the present

Parliament, or at quarter sessions, or at meetings of the farmers’

friends, or anywhere else.

But that is not the question now. It is conspired against; and we have

given a few proofs of the conspiracy, as they shine out of various

classes engaged in it. An indictment against the whole manufacturing

interest need not be longer, surely, than the indictment in the case of

the Crown against O’Connell and others. Mr. Cobden may be taken as its

representative—as indeed he is, by one consent already. There may be no

evidence; but that is not required. A judge and jury are all that is

needed. And the Government know where to find _them_, or they gain

experience to little purpose.

THREATENING LETTER TO THOMAS HOOD

FROM AN ANCIENT GENTLEMAN

MR. HOOD. SIR,—The Constitution is going at last! You needn’t laugh,

Mr. Hood. I am aware that it has been going, two or three times before;

perhaps four times; but it is on the move now, sir, and no mistake.

I beg to say, that I use those last expressions advisedly, sir, and not

in the sense in which they are now used by Jackanapeses. There were no

Jackanapeses when I was a boy, Mr. Hood. England was Old England when I

was young. I little thought it would ever come to be Young England when

I was old. But everything is going backward.

Ah! governments were governments, and judges were judges, in _my_ day,

Mr. Hood. There was no nonsense then. Any of your seditious

complainings, and we were ready with the military on the shortest notice.

We should have charged Covent Garden Theatre, sir, on a Wednesday night:

at the point of the bayonet. Then, the judges were full of dignity and

firmness, and knew how to administer the law. There is only one judge

who knows how to do his duty, now. He tried that revolutionary female

the other day, who, though she was in full work (making shirts at

three-halfpence a piece), had no pride in her country, but treasonably

took it in her head, in the distraction of having been robbed of her easy

earnings, to attempt to drown herself and her young child; and the

glorious man went out of his way, sir—out of his way—to call her up for

instant sentence of Death; and to tell her she had no hope of mercy in

this world—as you may see yourself if you look in the papers of Wednesday

the 17th of April. He won’t be supported, sir, I know he won’t; but it

is worth remembering that his words were carried into every manufacturing

town of this kingdom, and read aloud to crowds in every political

parlour, beer-shop, news-room, and secret or open place of assembly,

frequented by the discontented working-men; and that no milk-and-water

weakness on the part of the executive can ever blot them out. Great

things like that, are caught up, and stored up, in these times, and are

not forgotten, Mr. Hood. The public at large (especially those who wish

for peace and conciliation) are universally obliged to him. If it is

reserved for any man to set the Thames on fire, it is reserved for him;

and indeed I am told he very nearly did it, once.

But even he won’t save the constitution, sir: it is mauled beyond the

power of preservation. Do you know in what foul weather it will be

sacrificed and shipwrecked, Mr. Hood? Do you know on what rock it will

strike, sir? You don’t, I am certain; for nobody does know as yet but

myself. I will tell you.

The constitution will go down, sir (nautically speaking), in the

degeneration of the human species in England, and its reduction into a

mingled race of savages and pigmies.

That is my proposition. That is my prediction. That is the event of

which I give you warning. I am now going to prove it, sir.

You are a literary man, Mr. Hood, and have written, I am told, some

things worth reading. I say I am told, because I never read what is

written in these days. You’ll excuse me; but my principle is, that no

man ought to know anything about his own time, except that it is the

worst time that ever was, or is ever likely to be. That is the only way,

sir, to be truly wise and happy.

In your station, as a literary man, Mr. Hood, you are frequently at the

Court of Her Gracious Majesty the Queen. God bless her! You have reason

to know that the three great keys to the royal palace (after rank and

politics) are Science, Literature, Art. I don’t approve of this myself.

I think it ungenteel and barbarous, and quite un-English; the custom

having been a foreign one, ever since the reigns of the uncivilised

sultans in the Arabian Nights, who always called the wise men of their

time about them. But so it is. And when you don’t dine at the royal

table, there is always a knife and fork for you at the equerries’ table:

where, I understand, all gifted men are made particularly welcome.

But all men can’t be gifted, Mr. Hood. Neither scientific, literary, nor

artistical powers are any more to be inherited than the property arising

from scientific, literary, or artistic productions, which the law, with a

beautiful imitation of nature, declines to protect in the second

generation. Very good, sir. Then, people are naturally very prone to

cast about in their minds for other means of getting at Court Favour;

and, watching the signs of the times, to hew out for themselves, or their

descendants, the likeliest roads to that distinguished goal.

Mr. Hood, it is pretty clear, from recent records in the Court Circular,

that if a father wish to train up his son in the way he should go, to go

to Court: and cannot indenture him to be a scientific man, an author, or

an artist, three courses are open to him. He must endeavour by

artificial means to make him a dwarf, a wild man, or a Boy Jones.

Now, sir, this is the shoal and quicksand on which the constitution will

go to pieces.

I have made inquiry, Mr. Hood, and find that in my neighbourhood two

families and a fraction out of every four, in the lower and middle

classes of society, are studying and practising all conceivable arts to

keep their infant children down. Understand me. I do not mean down in

their numbers, or down in their precocity, but down in their growth, sir.

A destructive and subduing drink, compounded of gin and milk in equal

quantities, such as is given to puppies to retard their growth: not

something short, but something shortening: is administered to these young

creatures many times a day. An unnatural and artificial thirst is first

awakened in these infants by meals of salt beef, bacon, anchovies,

sardines, red herrings, shrimps, olives, pea-soup, and that description

of diet; and when they screech for drink, in accents that might melt a

heart of stone, which they do constantly (I allude to screeching, not to

melting), this liquid is introduced into their too confiding stomachs.

At such an early age, and to so great an extent, is this custom of

provoking thirst, then quenching it with a stunting drink, observed, that

brine pap has already superseded the use of tops-and-bottoms; and

wet-nurses, previously free from any kind of reproach, have been seen to

stagger in the streets: owing, sir, to the quantity of gin introduced

into their systems, with a view to its gradual and natural conversion

into the fluid I have already mentioned.

Upon the best calculation I can make, this is going on, as I have said,

in the proportion of about two families and a fraction in four. In one

more family and a fraction out of the same number, efforts are being made

to reduce the children to a state of nature; and to inculcate, at a

tender age, the love of raw flesh, train oil, new rum, and the

acquisition of scalps. Wild and outlandish dances are also in vogue (you

will have observed the prevailing rage for the Polka); and savage cries

and whoops are much indulged in (as you may discover, if you doubt it, in

the House of Commons any night). Nay, some persons, Mr. Hood; and

persons of some figure and distinction too; have already succeeded in

breeding wild sons; who have been publicly shown in the Courts of

Bankruptcy, and in police-offices, and in other commodious

exhibition-rooms, with great effect, but who have not yet found favour at

court; in consequence, as I infer, of the impression made by Mr. Rankin’s

wild men being too fresh and recent, to say nothing of Mr. Rankin’s wild

men being foreigners.

I need not refer you, sir, to the late instance of the Ojibbeway Bride.

But I am credibly informed, that she is on the eve of retiring into a

savage fastness, where she may bring forth and educate a wild family, who

shall in course of time, by the dexterous use of the popularity they are

certain to acquire at Windsor and St. James’s, divide with dwarfs the

principal offices of state, of patronage, and power, in the United

Kingdom.

Consider the deplorable consequences, Mr. Hood, which must result from

these proceedings, and the encouragement they receive in the highest

quarters.

The dwarf being the favourite, sir, it is certain that the public mind

will run in a great and eminent degree upon the production of dwarfs.

Perhaps the failures only will be brought up, wild. The imagination goes

a long way in these cases; and all that the imagination _can_ do, will be

done, and is doing. You may convince yourself of this, by observing the

condition of those ladies who take particular notice of General Tom Thumb

at the Egyptian Hall, during his hours of performance.

The rapid increase of dwarfs, will be first felt in her Majesty’s

recruiting department. The standard will, of necessity, be lowered; the

dwarfs will grow smaller and smaller; the vulgar expression “a man of his

inches” will become a figure of fact, instead of a figure of speech;

crack regiments, household-troops especially, will pick the smallest men

from all parts of the country; and in the two little porticoes at the

Horse Guards, two Tom Thumbs will be daily seen, doing duty, mounted on a

pair of Shetland ponies. Each of them will be relieved (as Tom Thumb is

at this moment, in the intervals of his performance) by a wild man; and a

British Grenadier will either go into a quart pot, or be an Old Boy, or

Blue Gull, or Flying Bull, or some other savage chief of that nature.

I will not expatiate upon the number of dwarfs who will be found

representing Grecian statues in all parts of the metropolis; because I am

inclined to think that this will be a change for the better; and that the

engagement of two or three in Trafalgar Square will tend to the

improvement of the public taste.

The various genteel employments at Court being held by dwarfs, sir, it

will be necessary to alter, in some respects, the present regulations.

It is quite clear that not even General Tom Thumb himself could preserve

a becoming dignity on state occasions, if required to walk about with a

scaffolding-pole under his arm; therefore the gold and silver sticks at

present used, must be cut down into skewers of those precious metals; a

twig of the black rod will be quite as much as can be conveniently

preserved; the coral and bells of his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales,

will be used in lieu of the mace at present in existence; and that bauble

(as Oliver Cromwell called it, Mr. Hood), its value being first

calculated by Mr. Finlayson, the government actuary, will be placed to

the credit of the National Debt.

All this, sir, will be the death of the constitution. But this is not

all. The constitution dies hard, perhaps; but there is enough disease

impending, Mr. Hood, to kill it three times over.

Wild men will get into the House of Commons. Imagine that, sir! Imagine

Strong Wind in the House of Commons! It is not an easy matter to get

through a debate now; but I say, imagine Strong Wind, speaking for the

benefit of his constituents, upon the floor of the House of Commons! or

imagine (which is pregnant with more awful consequences still) the

ministry having an interpreter in the House of Commons, to tell the

country, in English, what it really means!

Why, sir, that in itself would be blowing the constitution out of the

mortar in St. James’s Park, and leaving nothing of it to be seen but

smoke.

But this, I repeat it, is the state of things to which we are fast

tending, Mr. Hood; and I enclose my card for your private eye, that you

may be quite certain of it. What the condition of this country will be,

when its standing army is composed of dwarfs, with here and there a wild

man to throw its ranks into confusion, like the elephants employed in war

in former times, I leave you to imagine, sir. It may be objected by some

hopeful jackanapeses, that the number of impressments in the navy,

consequent upon the seizure of the Boy-Joneses, or remaining portion of

the population ambitious of Court Favour, will be in itself sufficient to

defend our Island from foreign invasion. But I tell those jackanapeses,

sir, that while I admit the wisdom of the Boy Jones precedent, of

kidnapping such youths after the expiration of their several terms of

imprisonment as vagabonds; hurrying them on board ship; and packing them

off to sea again whenever they venture to take the air on shore; I deny

the justice of the inference; inasmuch as it appears to me, that the

inquiring minds of those young outlaws must naturally lead to their being

hanged by the enemy as spies, early in their career; and before they

shall have been rated on the books of our fleet as able seamen.

Such, Mr. Hood, sir, is the prospect before us! And unless you, and some

of your friends who have influence at Court, can get up a giant as a

forlorn hope, it is all over with this ill-fated land.

In reference to your own affairs, sir, you will take whatever course may

seem to you most prudent and advisable after this warning. It is not a

warning to be slighted: that I happen to know. I am informed by the

gentleman who favours this, that you have recently been making some

changes and improvements in your Magazine, and are, in point of fact,

starting afresh. If I be well informed, and this be really so, rely upon

it that you cannot start too small, sir. Come down to the duodecimo size

instantly, Mr. Hood. Take time by the forelock; and, reducing the

stature of your Magazine every month, bring it at last to the dimensions

of the little almanack no longer issued, I regret to say, by the

ingenious Mr. Schloss: which was invisible to the naked eye until

examined through a little eye-glass.

You project, I am told, the publication of a new novel, by yourself, in

the pages of your Magazine. A word in your ear. I am not a young man,

sir, and have had some experience. Don’t put your own name on the

title-page; it would be suicide and madness. Treat with General Tom

Thumb, Mr. Hood, for the use of his name on any terms. If the gallant

general should decline to treat with you, get Mr. Barnum’s name, which is

the next best in the market. And when, through this politic course, you

shall have received, in presents, a richly jewelled set of tablets from

Buckingham Palace, and a gold watch and appendages from Marlborough

House; and when those valuable trinkets shall be left under a glass case

at your publisher’s for inspection by your friends and the public in

general;—then, sir, you will do me the justice of remembering this

communication.

It is unnecessary for me to add, after what I have observed in the course

of this letter, that I am not,—sir, ever your