PART IX.

“More than once that night,” resumed Captain Collins, “I woke up with a start, at thought of our late adventures in the river Nouries—fancying I was still waiting for the turn of tide to bring down the boats or the schooner, and had gone to sleep, when that horrible sound through the cabin skylight seemed full in my ears again. However, the weltering wash of the water under the ship’s timbers below one’s head was proof enough we were well to sea; and, being dog-tired, I turned over each time with a new gusto:—not to speak of the happy sort of feeling that ran all through me, I scarce knew why; though no doubt one might have dreamt plenty of delightful dreams without remembering them, more especially after such a perfect seventh heaven as I had found myself in for a moment or two, when Violet Hyde’s hand first touched mine, and when I carried her in after she had actually saved my life. The broad daylight through our quarter-gallery window roused me at last altogether; and on starting up I saw Tom Westwood half dressed, shaving himself by an inch or two of broken looking-glass in regular nautical style—that’s to say, watching for the rise of the ship—as she had the wind evidently on her opposite beam, and there appeared to be pretty much of a long swell afloat, with a breeze brisk enough to make her heel to it; while the clear horizon, seen shining through the port to north-westward, over the dark blue heave of water, showed it was far on in the morning. “Well, Ned,” said Westwood, turning round, “you seemed to be enjoying it, in spite of the warm work you must have had last night on board here! Why, I thought you had been with us in the boats, after all, till I found, by the good joke the cadets made of it, that that puppy of a mate had left you still locked up, on account of some fancy he had got into his head of your being in partnership with the schooner! For heaven’s sake, though, my dear fellow, wash your face and shave—you look fearfully suspicious just now!” “No wonder!” said I: and I gave him an account of the matter, leaving out most of what regarded the young lady; Westwood telling me, in his turn, so much about their boat expedition as I didn’t know before from the planter. Everything went to certify what I believed all along, ’till this sudden affair in the river. The schooner’s people had plainly some cue in keeping hold of our passengers, but hadn’t expected to see us so soon again, or perhaps at all—as was shown by their hailing the boats at once in a pretended friendly way, whenever they came in sight up the creek; while Ford and the rest shouted with delight, off her bulwarks, at sound of the mate’s voice.

“I tell you what, Collins,” continued Westwood, “this may be all very well for _you_, who are continually getting into scrapes and out of them, and don’t seem to care much whether you ship on board an Indiaman or a corn-brig—you can always find something to do—but to me the service is _everything_!” “Well, well,” said I hastily, “I’m much mistaken if we don’t find something to do in India, Tom,—only wait, and that uncle of yours will make all right; for all we know, there may be news from Europe to meet us, and I must say I don’t like the notion of being born too late for turning out an admiral! I’m sure, for my part, I wish old Nap well out of that stone cage of his!” “No, no, Ned,” said Westwood, “I ought to clear myself at home first, and sorry I am that I gave in to you by leaving England, when I should have faced the consequences whatever they were. Running only made matters worse, Collins!” “No doubt,” I said; “and as it was my fault, why, deuce take me, Tom, if I don’t manage to carry you out scot-free! Depend on it, Captain Duncombe’s friends would have you strung up like a dog, with the interest he had, and sharp as discipline is just now.” Westwood shuddered at the thought. “I fear it would go hard with me, Ned,” said he, “and I shan’t deny that these few weeks have brought me back a taste for life. But, in spite of all, I’d deliver myself up to the first king’s ship we speak, or go home in some Indiaman from the Cape—but for one thing, Collins!” “Ah!” said I, “what’s that?” Westwood gave me a curious half look, and said—“One _person_, I mean, Ned—and I shouldn’t like _her_ to hear of me being—” “Yes, yes,” said I stiffly, “I know.” “It must have been by guess, then!” answered he. “Often as we’ve talked of her during the voyage, I thought you didn’t know we had met frequently in London before you came home, and—and—the fact is, I wasn’t sure you would like _me_ to—” “Westwood,” said I quickly, “Tom Westwood—what I have to ask is—do you love her?” “If ever a man loved a woman, Ned,” was his answer, “I do _her_; but if _you_—” “Have you any chance, then?” I broke out. “Ay, true—true enough, you have the best of chances—your way is as clear as could be, Westwood, if you knew it! Only I _must_ know if she is willing—does she—” “I got leave to write to her in London,” answered Westwood, “and I did so pretty often, you may be sure; but I only had one short little note in answer to the last, I think it was—which I had in my breast that morning on Southsea beach, when I expected the bullet would come through it!” Here Westwood stooped down to his trunk, and took out a rose-coloured note wrapped in a bit of paper; I standing the while fixed to the deck, not able to speak, till he was handing it to me. “No, no!” said I, turning from him angrily, and like to choke, “that’s too much, Mr Westwood—pray keep your own love-letters for your own reading!” “There’s nothing particular in it, Ned,” answered he, flushing a little, “only there’s a few words in it I’d like you to see—don’t look at it just now, but tell me afterwards what you think—you ought to see it, as the matter seems to depend on you, Ned; and if _you_ object, you may be sure, so far as I’m concerned, ’tis all over!” Somehow or other, the look of the little folded piece of paper, with the touch and the scent of it, as Westwood slipped it into my hand, made it stick to me. I caught one glance of the address on the back, written as if fairy fingers had done it, and I suppose I slipped it into my coat as I went out of the berth, meaning to go aloft in the foretop and sicken over the thought at my leisure, of Violet Hyde’s having ever favoured another man so far, and that man Tom Westwood. The strangeness of the whole affair, as I took it, never once struck me; all that I minded was the wretched feeling I had in me, as I wished I could put the Atlantic betwixt me and them all; in fact a hundred things before we sailed, and during the passage, seemed all at once to agree with what I’d just heard; and I’d have given thousands that moment it had been some one else than Westwood, just that I might wait the voyage out coolly, for the satisfaction of meeting him at twelve paces the first morning ashore.

On the larboard side of the berth-gangway, opposite our door, I saw the old planter’s standing half open, and Mr Rollock himself with his shirt and trousers on, taking in his boots. “Hallo, Collins, my boy,” he sang out eagerly, “come here a moment, I’ve got something to show you!” “Look,” said he, standing on tiptoe to see better through the half-port, “there’s something new been put in my picture-frame here overnight, I think—ha! ha!” The first thing that caught my eye, accordingly, was the gleam of a sail rising from over the swell to windward, far away off our larboard quarter; seemingly rolling before the south-easter; while the Indiaman hove her big side steadily out of water, with her head across the other’s course, and gave us a sight of the strange sail swinging to the fair wind, every time we rose on the surge. “What is it, eh?” said the planter turning to me, “back or face, Collins? for, bless me, if I can distinguish tub from bucket, with all this bobbing about—great deal of capital indigo wasted hereabouts, my dear fellow!” “Why, you may make out the two breasts of her royals,” said I—“a brig, I think, sir.” “Not that abominable schooner in her first shape again, I hope!” exclaimed he, “perhaps bringing back the Yankee.” “Too square-shouldered for that, Mr Rollock,” I said; “in fact she seems to be signalling us; yes, by Jove! there’s the long pennant at her fore-royal mast-head—she’s a brig of war. They’re surely asleep, on deck, and we shall have a shot directly, if they don’t look sharp!” “You’d better say nothing about the Yankee’s absence, Collins,” put in the planter, “till we’re fairly away. For my part, I really have no notion of waiting for any one—particularly a fellow who _must_ have some go-ahead scheme in his noddle, which we Indians don’t want. Quietly speaking, my dear fellow, I shall be glad if we’re rid of him!” On my mentioning what sort of “notions” were found in Mr Snout’s berth, and the drowning of his heathen images, the worthy planter went into perfect convulsions, till I thought I should have to slap him on the back to give him breath. “What the deuce!” said he at last; “Daniel must really have something worth his while to expect, before he’d fail to look after such a treasure!” “Ah,” said I, not attending to him, as I heard a stir on deck, “there we go at last, cluing up the topsails, I suppose.” “Seriously, now,” continued Mr Rollock, “I can _not_ fathom that vessel and her designs; but I bless my stars at getting clear off from the company of that tall Frenchman with his mustache—can’t bear a mustache, Collins—always reminds me of those cursed Mahrattas that burnt my factory once. Couldn’t the man shave like a Christian, I wonder? I defy you to enjoy Mulligatawny soup and not make a beast of yourself, with ever so much hair over your mouth. By the way, Collins,” added he, eyeing me, “since I saw you last, you’ve let your whiskers grow, and look more like one of your nauticals than Ford himself!—should scarce have known you! Any of it owing to the fair one up yonder, eh?” And the jolly old chap, whose own huge white whiskers gave him the cut of a royal Bengal tiger, pointed with his thumb over his shoulder towards the roundhouse above, with a wink of his funny round eye, that looked at you like a bird’s. “What do you suppose the Frenchman to be then, sir?” asked I, gloomily. “Oh, either a madman, a spy, or something worse! Just guess what he asked me suddenly one morning,—why, if I weren’t a distinguished _savant_, and wouldn’t like to study the botany of some island! ‘No, Monsieur, not at all,’ replied I, in fearfully bad French. ‘The geology, then?’ persisted he, with a curious gleam in his fierce black eyes—‘does the research of Monsieur lie in that direction?’ ‘Why no,’ I answered carelessly, ‘I don’t care a _sacre_ about stones, or anything of the kind, indeed; indigo is _my_ particular line, which may be called botany, in a way—I’m perhaps prejudiced in favour of it, Monsieur!’ The Frenchman leant his tufted chin on his hand,” continued Mr Rollock, “meditated a bit, then glanced at me again, as if he didn’t care though I were studying sea-weed in the depths of the ocean rolling round us, and stalked down stairs. Then he took to Mrs Brady again, and lastly to the Yankee, whose conversations with him, I fancy, had a twang of both commerce and politics.” “What do you think of it all, Mr Rollock?” inquired I, rather listlessly. “It didn’t strike me at the time,” said the planter, “but now, I just ask you, Collins, if there ain’t a certain great personage studying geology at present in a certain island, not very far away, I suppose, where there’s plenty of it, and deuced little botany, too, I imagine?” To this question of the old gentleman’s I gave nothing but a half stupid sort of stare, thinking as I was at the same time of something else I cared more about.

“By Jupiter! though,” cried I on a sudden, “instead of heaving the ship to, I do believe we’ve set topmast-stu’nsails, judging from the way she pitches into the water; there’s the brig nearing the wind a point or two in chase, too;—why, the fellow that has charge of the deck must be mad, sir!” Next minute the fire out of one of her bow-chasers flashed out behind the blue back of a swell, and the sudden _thud_ of it came rolling down to leeward over the space betwixt us, angrily, so to speak; as the brig’s fore-course mounted with a wave, the sun shining clear on the seams and reef-points, till you caught sight of the anchor hanging from one bow, and the men running in her lee stu’nsail-booms upon the yardarms. The planter and I went on deck at once, where we found a fine breeze blowing, far out of sight of land, the Indiaman rushing ahead stately enough; while our young fourth officer appeared to have just woke up, and the watch were still rubbing their eyes, as if every man had been “caulking it,” after last night’s work. Even Mr Finch, when he came hastily up, seemed rather doubtful what to do, till the salt old third-mate assured him the brig was a British sloop-of-war, as any one accustomed to reckoning sticks and canvass at sea could tell by this time; upon which our topsails were clued up, stu’nsails boom-ended, and the ship hove into the wind to wait for the brig.

When the brig’s mainyard swung aback within fifty fathoms of our weather-quarter, hailing us as she brought to, I had plenty to think of, for my part. There she was, as square-countered and flat-breasted a ten-gun model as ever ran her nose under salt water, or turned the turtle in a Bahama squall; though pleasant enough she looked, dipping as we rose, and prancing up opposite us again with a curtsey, the brine dripping from her bright copper sheathing, the epaulets and gold bands glancing above her black bulwark, topped by the white hammock-cloth; marines in her waist, the men clustering forward to see us, and squinting sharp up at our top-hamper. It made one ashamed, to take in the taunt, lightsome set her spars had, tall and white, with a rake in them, and every rope running clean to its place; not a spot about her, hull or rig, but all English and ship-shape, to the very gather of her courses and top-gallant sails in the lines, and the snowy hollow her two broad topsails made for the wind, as they brought it in betwixt them to keep her steady on the spot. “His Britannic Majesty’s sloop Podargus!” came back in exchange for our mate’s answer; and though ’twas curious to me to think of meeting the uniform again in five minutes, I saw plainly this was one of the nice points that Westwood and I might have to weather. Your brig-cruisers are the very sharpest fellows alive, so far as regards boarding a merchant craft; if they find the least smell of a rat, they’ll overhaul your hold to the very dunnage about the keelson; and I knew that, if they made out Westwood, they’d be sure to have me too; so you may fancy that, during the short time her boat took to drop and pull under our quarter, I was making up my mind as to the course. In fact, I was almost resolved to leave the ship at any rate, feeling as I did after what I’d heard; but while most of the passengers were running about and calling below for their shoes, and what not, the Judge and his daughter came out of the roundhouse, and I caught a single glance from her for a moment, as she turned to look at the brig, that held me at the instant like an anchor in a strong tideway. I kept my breath as the lieutenant’s hand laid hold of the manrope at the head of the side-ladder, expecting his first question; while he swung himself actively on deck, looking round for a second, and followed by another; the wide-awake-looking young middy in the boat folding his arms, and squinting up sideways at the ladies with an air as knowing as if he’d lived fifty years in the world, instead of perhaps thirteen.

The younger of the lieutenants took off his cap most politely, eyeing the fair passengers with as much respect as he gave cool indifference to the cadets; the other, who was a careful-like, working first luff, said directly to Mr Finch—“Well, sir, you seemed inclined to lead us a bit of a chase—but I don’t think,” added he, smiling from the Indiaman to the brig, “you’d have cost us much trouble after all!” Here Finch hurried out his explanation, in a half-sulky way, when the naval man cut him short by saying that “Captain Wallis desired to know” if we had touched at St Helena. “May I ask, sir,” went on the officer, finding we had preferred the Cape, “if _you_ command this vessel—or is the master not on deck—Captain—Captain Wilson, I think you said?” The mate said something in a lower voice, and the lieutenant bared his head more respectfully than before, seeing the Company’s ensign, which had been lowered half-apeak while the boat was under our side; after which Finch drew him to the capstan, telling him, as I guessed, the whole affair of the schooner, by way of a great exploit, with hints of her being a pirate or suchlike. The brig’s officer, however, was evidently too busy a man, and seemingly in too great a hurry to get back, for listening much to such a rigmarole, as he no doubt thought it; they had been at the Cape, and were bound for St Helena again, where she was one of the cruisers on guard; so that what with Finch’s story, and what with the crowd round the second lieutenant, all anxious to get the news, I saw it wouldn’t cost Westwood and me great pains to keep clear of notice. There were some riots in London, and three men hanged for a horrid murder, the Duke of Northumberland’s death, not to speak of a child born with two heads, or something—all since we left England. Then there was Lord Exmouth come home from Algiers, and Fort Hattrass, I think it was, taken in India, which made every cadet prick up his ears; Admiral Plampin was arrived at the Cape of Good Hope, too, in the Conqueror, seventy-four, and on his way steering for St Helena, to take Sir Pulteney Malcolm’s place. All of a sudden, I heard the young luff begin to mention a captain of a frigate’s having been shot two months ago, by his own first lieutenant, on Southsea Beach, and the lieutenant being supposed to have gone off in some outward-bound ship. “By the bye,” said the officer to Mr Rollock, “you must have left about that time—did you touch at Portsmouth?” “Why, yes,” answered the planter, “we did. What were the parties’ names?” I edged over to Westwood near the head of the companion, and whispered to him to go below to our berth, in case of their happening to attend to us more particularly; and the farther apart we two kept, the better, I thought. The officer at once gave Captain Duncombe’s name, but didn’t remember the other, on which he turned to his first lieutenant with, “I say, Mr Aldridge, d’you recollect the man’s name that shot the captain of the N’Oreste, as they called her?” “What, that bad business?” said the other; “no, Mr Moore, I really don’t—I hope he’s far enough off by this time!” My breath came again at this, for it had just come into my mind that Finch, who was close by, had got hold of the name, although he fancied it mine. I was sauntering down the stair, thinking how much may hang at times on a man’s good memory, when I heard the first lieutenant say, “By the bye, though, now I recollect, wasn’t it Westwood?” “Yes, yes, Westwood it was!” said the other; then came an exclamation from Finch, and shortly after he and the first lieutenant stepped down together, talking privately of the matter, I suppose; to the cuddy, where I had gone myself. The lieutenant looked up at me seriously once or twice, then went on deck, and a few minutes afterwards the brig’s boat was pulling towards her again, while the passengers flocked below to breakfast. I saw the thing was settled; the mate could scarce keep in his triumph, as he eyed me betwixt surprise and dislike, though rather more respectfully than before. As for Westwood, he sat down with the rest, quite ignorant of what had turned up; notwithstanding he threw an uneasy look or two through the cuddy port at the brig, still curveting to windward of us, with her mainyard aback: for my part, I made up my mind, in the meanwhile, to bear the brunt of it.

’Twas no matter to me _now_ where I went; whereas, with Westwood, it was but a toss-up betwixt a rope and a prison, if they sent him back to England. No fear of _my_ being tried in his place, of course; but if there had been, why, to get away both from him and _her_, I’d have run the chance! There was a bitter sort of a pleasure, even, in the thought of taking one’s-self out of the way—to some purpose, too, if I saved a fellow like my old schoolmate from a court-martial sentence, and a man far worthier to win the heart of such a creature than myself; while the worst of it was, I was afraid I’d have come to hate Tom Westwood, if we had staid near each other much longer. Accordingly, I no sooner heard the dip of the gig’s oars coming alongside again, than one of the stewards brought me a quiet message from Mr Finch, that he wanted to see me on deck; upon which I rose off my chair just as quietly, and walked up the companion. The fact was—as the fellow could scarce have ventured to look his passengers in the face again after a low piece of work like this—’twas his cue to keep all underhand, and probably lay it to the score of my actions aboard, or something; however, he couldn’t throw any dust of the kind in the second lieutenant’s eyes, who gave him a cold glance as he stepped on deck, and, picking me out at once where I stood, inquired if I were the person. The first mate nodded, whereupon the brig’s officer walked towards me, with a gentlemanly enough bow, and, “I regret to have to state, sir,” said he, “that Captain Wallis desires to see you, _particularly_, aboard the brig.” “Indeed, sir,” answered I, showing very little surprise, I daresay, gloomy as I felt; “then the sooner the better, I suppose.” “Why, yes,” said the lieutenant, seemingly confused lest he should meet my eye, “we’re anxious to make use of this breeze, you—you know, sir.” “Hadn’t Mr Collins—this gentleman—better take his traps with him, Lieutenant Moore?” said Finch, free and easy wise. “No, sir,” said the young officer, sternly, “we can spare time to send for them, if necessary; of course you will keep the Indiaman in the wind, sir, till the brig squares her mainyard.” I gave Finch a single look of sheer contempt, and swung myself down by the manropes from the gangway into the boat; the lieutenant followed me, and next minute we were pulling for the brig’s quarter. The moment I found myself out of the Seringapatam, however, my heart nigh-hand failed me, more especially at sight of the quarter-gallery window I had seen the light from, on the smooth of the swell, that first night we got to sea. I even began to think if there weren’t some way of passing myself clear off, without hauling in Westwood; but it wouldn’t do. Before I well knew, we were on board, and the lieutenant showing me down the after hatchway to the captain’s cabin.

The captain was sitting with one foot upon the carronade in his outer cabin, looking through the port at the heavy Indiaman, as she slued about and plunged in the blue surge, with all sorts of ugly ropes hanging from her bows, dirty pairs of trousers towing clear of the water when she lifted, and rusty stains at her hawse-holes. A stout-built, hard-featured man he was, with bushy black eyebrows, and grizzled black hair and whiskers, not to speak of a queer, anxious, uneasy look in the keen of his eyes when he turned to me. However, he got half up on my coming in, and I saw he was lame a little of one foot, while he overhauled me all over with his eye. “I’m sorry to have to send for you in this way, sir,” said he, rather surprised at my rig, apparently—“curst sorry, sir, and no more about it; but I can’t help it, confound me—_must_ do my duty.” “Certainly, sir,” I said. “In fact,” said Captain Wallis, “the Admiral ordered us to see after you—_him_, that’s to say—at the Cape, you know.” “Ay, ay, sir,” said I, watching the Indiaman’s poop-nettings through the port over his head, as he sat down. “Pooh, pooh,” continued he, “you can’t be the man—just say you don’t belong to the service—confound it, I’ll pass you!” “Why, sir,” said I, “I can’t exactly say _that_.” “I hear you’re Westwood of the Orestes, though,” said he; “now I don’t ask you to say _no_, sir—but everybody knew the Orestes, and I don’t like the thing, I must say—so perhaps you’re able to swear _he_ is not aboard the Indiaman—just now, you know, sir, _just now_, eh?” This tack of his rather dumfoundered me, seeing the captain of the brig meant it well; but deuced unlucky kindness it was, since I couldn’t swear to the very thing he fancied so safe, and his glance was as quick as lightning, so he caught the sense of my blank look in a moment; as I fancied, at least. “The fact is, sir,” added he, “the surgeon told me just now he knows Lieutenant Westwood well enough by sight, so they locked him up! You see we could have made you out at any rate, sir—however, we’ll let the doctor stay till we’re clear of the Indiaman, I think!” “Then you take me for the gentleman you speak of, Captain Wallis?” asked I faintly; for at the same moment I could see a light-coloured dress and a white ribbon fluttering on the Seringapatam’s poop, the look of which sent the blood about my heart. ’Twas hard to settle betwixt a feeling of the kind, and fear for Westwood; it struck me Captain Wallis wasn’t very eager in the affair, and ’twas on my lips to assure him I wasn’t the man. “Harkee,” broke in he, with almost a wink, and a smile ready to break out on his mouth, “the short and the long of it is, I’ll take _you_! We must have somebody to show in the case; though now I remember, there was some one else said to’ve gone off with you—but we won’t trouble _him_! If we’ve brought away the wrong man, why, hang it, so much the better! If you’re Westwood, I can tell you, they’ll run ye up to a yardarm, sir! Much more comfortable than ten years or so in a jail, too, as—as no one knows better than _I_ do myself.” Here the captain’s face darkened, his eye gleamed, and he rose with a limp to ring a hand-bell on the table. “White,” said he to the marine that put his head in at the door, with his hand up to it, “Desire the first lieutenant, from me, to send a boat aboard for this gentleman’s things.” “I’m afraid, sir,” continued he gravely to me, “you’ll have to reckon yourself under arrest,—but you’ll find the gentlemen in the gun-room good company, I hope, for a day or two, till we make St Helena.” I saw the captain’s mind was made up, and for the life of me I didn’t know what to say against it; but speak I could not, so with a stiff bow and a sick sort of a smile I turned out of the door, and walked along to the gun-room, which was empty. I could see the boat soon after under the ship’s side, dipping and rising as they handed down my couple of portmanteaus to the man-o’-war’s-men; the young reefer came down again as nimble as a monkey, with some letters in his hand, took off his cap to some ladies above, and sang out to give way; five or six flashing feathers of the oars in the sunlight, and they were coming round the brig’s stern. The brig was just squaring away her mainyard at the whistle from the boatswain’s mates, when the whole run of the Indiaman’s bulwarks was crowded with the passengers’ and men’s faces, watching the brig gather way to pass ahead; I could hear the officers on deck hail the India mates, wishing them a good voyage; the ladies bowing and waving their handkerchiefs to the British union-jack. Some sort of confusion seemed to get up, however, about the ship’s taffrail, where Rollock, Ford, and some others were standing together; the planter jumped up all at once on the quarter-mouldings nearest the brig, then jumped down again, and his straw hat could be seen hurrying toward the quarterdeck. Next I caught a bright glimpse of Violet Hyde’s face, as the sun shot on it free of the awnings—her eyes wandering with the brig’s motion, I fancied, along the deck above me; till suddenly she seemed to start, and Westwood appeared behind her. The next thing I saw was the black-faced figure-head of the Seringapatam rising below her bowsprit, about sixty yards from the gun-room port where I was, and down she went again with a heavy plash, as Tom Westwood himself leapt up between the knight-heads at the bow, hailing the brig’s deck with a voice like a trumpet, “Ahoy!—the Podargus ahoy!—for mercy’s sake heave to again, sir!” he sung out; “I’m the man you want!” “The Indiaman ahoy!” I heard Captain Wallis himself hail back, “what d’ye say?” The creak of our yards, with the flap of the jib, and the men’s feet, drowned Westwood’s second hail, as it came sharp up to windward; the sailors in the Indiaman’s bows were grinning at him behind, while the first lieutenant of the brig shouted gruffly that she had no time to wait for more letters; and I heard the gun-room steward say to the marine, on going out with the dirty breakfast cloth, he wondered if “that parson cove thought the Pedarkis vanted a chapling!” or was only “vun of these fellers that’s so troublesome to see the French Hemperor!” “Well,” said the marine, “’twas pretty queer if he took the Pedarkis for the ship to carry him there! I don’t think the captain would let a rat into the island, if he could help it!” “Not he,” said the steward; “plenty of ’em in already, Vite, my man—I do think they used to swim off on board here, by the way the cheese vent!” All this time I never stirred from the port, watching with my chin on the muzzle of the gun till the Indiaman was half a mile to windward of us, her big hull still rising and falling on the same swells, topped with clusters of heads; her topsails lowered in honour of the flag, the ensign blowing out half-mast high for the death of Captain Williamson: a long wash of the water ran outside the brig’s timbers, surge after surge, and the plunge at her bows showed how fast she began to run nor’-westward before the wind. You may well fancy my state, after all I’d done for weeks; in fact, one scarce knew the extent of what he’d felt, what he’d looked forward to, till he found himself fairly adrift from it: ’twould even have been nothing, after all, could I just have thought of Violet Hyde as I’d done two hours ago, on waking, with last night in the river on my mind. As it was, ’twould have taken little to make me jump out of the port into the sweep of blue water swelling toward the brig’s counter; the Seringapatam being by this time astern. I couldn’t even see her, or aught save the horizon, to windward; but at this moment the young second lieutenant came below, and, seeing me, he began in a polite enough way, with a kindly manner about it, trying to raise my spirits. “I suppose, sir,” said I, rather sulkily, I daresay, “I can have a berth just now?” “Oh, certainly,” said he, “the steward has orders to see to it at once. Will you come on deck a minute or two, in the meantime, sir?”

I looked back from the ship astern to the brig-of-war’s clean white decks, flush fore and aft, with the men all forward at their stations, neatly dressed in regular man-o’-war style, every one alike—a sight that would have done me good at another time, small as she was by comparison; but the very thought of the Indiaman’s lumbering poop and galleries was too much for me—’twas as if you’d knocked out those two roundhouse doors of hers, and let in a gush of bare sky instead. The ship-shape man-o’-war cut of things was nothing, I fancied, to the snug spot under those top-gallant bulwarks of hers, and the breezy poop all a-flutter with muslin of an evening, where you found books and little basket affairs stuck into the coils of rope: I thought the old Seringapatam never looked so well, as she commenced trimming sail on a wind, beginning to go drive ahead, with a white foam at her bows, and her whole length broadside-on to us. All at once we saw her clue up courses and to’-gallant sails, till she was standing slowly off under the three topsails and jib; the two lieutenants couldn’t understand what she was about, and the captain put the glass to his eye, after which he said something to the second lieutenant, who went forward directly. The next thing I saw was the Indiaman coming up in the wind again for about a minute; she had her stern nearly to us, when the moment after, as she rose upon a long sea, you saw something flash white off her lee-gangway in the sunlight, that dropped against it into the hollow of a wave. The next minute she fell off again with her topsails full, and the first shower of spray was rising across her forefoot, when the flash of a gun broke out of her side, and the sound came down to us; then a second and a third. The brig gave her the same number in answer, and as soon as the smoke betwixt us had cleared away, the ship could be seen under full sail to the south-westward by west. “_That’s_ her poor skipper’s hammock dropped alongside, gentlemen!” said Captain Wallis to his officers; “God be with him!” “Amen!” said the first lieutenant, and we put our caps on again. “Set stu’nsails, Mr Aldridge,” said the captain, limping down the hatchway: as for me, I leant I don’t know how long over the brig’s taffrail, watching the ship’s canvass grow in one, through the width of air betwixt us; my heart full, as may be supposed, not to say what notions came into my head of what might happen to her under Finch’s charge, ere she reached Bombay. No one belonging to the brig spoke to me, out of kindness, no doubt; and the ship was hull-down on the horizon, to my fancy with somewhat of a figure like _hers_, when she stood with the Cashmere shawl over her head in the dusk. Then I went gloomily down to my berth, where I kept close by myself till I fell asleep, though the gun-room steward was sent more than once to ask me to join the officers.

It wasn’t till the next day, in fact, when I went on the quarterdeck at noon, wearied for a fresher gulp of air, that I saw any of them; and the breeze having fallen lighter that morning, they were too busy trimming sail and humouring her to give me much notice. I must say I had seldom seen a commander seem more impatient about the sailing of his craft, in time of peace, than the captain of the Podargus appeared to be; walking the starboard side as fast as the halt in his gait would let him, and the anxious turn of his eyes plainer than before, while he looked from the brig’s spread of stu’nsails to the horizon, through the glass, which, I may say, he never once laid down. From where the brig spoke the Indiamen, to St Helena, would be about two or three days’ sail with a fair wind, at the ordinary strength of the south-east trade; though, at this rate, it might cost us twice the time. I noticed the men on the forecastle look to each other now and then knowingly, at some fresh sign of the captain’s impatience; and the second lieutenant told me in a low voice, with his head over the side near mine, Captain Wallis had been out of sorts ever since they lost sight of the island. “You’d suppose, sir,” said he, laughing, “that old Nap was his sweetheart, by the way he watches over him; and now, I fancy, he’s afraid St Helena may be sunk in blue water while we were away! In fact, Mr Westwood,” added he, “it looks devilish like as if it had come up from Davy Jones, all standing; so I don’t see why it shouldn’t go down to him again some day; I can tell you it’s tiresome work cruising to windward there, though, and we aren’t idle at all!” “Did you ever see the French Emperor yourself, sir?” asked I—for I must say the thought of nearing the prison such a man was in made me a little curious. “Never, sir, except at a mile’s distance,” said the second lieutenant; “indeed, it’s hard to get a pass, unless you know the governor. But I’ve a notion,” continued he, “the governor’s carefulness is nothing to our skipper’s! Indeed, they tell a queer story of how Sir Hudson Lowe was gulled for months together, when he was governor of Capri island, in the Mediterranean. As for the captain, again, you’d seek a long time ere you found a better seaman—he’s as wide awake, too, as Nelson himself—while the curious thing is, I believe, he never once clapped eyes on Bonaparte in his life! But good cause he has to hate him, you know, Mr Westwood!” “Indeed,” said I, taking a moment’s interest in the thing; and I was just going to ask the reason, when the first lieutenant came over to say. Captain Wallis would be glad if I would dine with him in the cabin.

At dinner-time, accordingly, I put on a coat, for the first time, less like those the cadets in the Seringapatam wore, and went aft, where I found the first lieutenant and a midshipman with the captain. He did his best to soften my case, as I saw by his whole manner during dinner; after which, no sooner had the reefer had his one glass of wine, than he was sent on deck to look out to windward. “Well, sir,” said Captain Wallis thereupon, turning from his first luff to me, “I’m sorry for this disagreeable business! I believe you deny being the person at all, though?” “Why, sir,” said I, “I am certainly no more the first lieutenant of the Orestes than yourself, Captain Wallis! ’Twas all owing to a mistake of that India mate, who owed me a grudge.” “Oh, oh, I see!” replied he, beginning to smile, “the whole matter’s as plain as a handspike, Mr Aldridge! But I couldn’t do less, on the information!” “However, sir,” put in the first lieutenant, “there’s no doubt the real man must have been in the ship, or the mistake could not have happened, sir!” “Well—you look at things too square, Aldridge,” said the captain. “All _you_’ve got to do, I hope, sir, is just to prove you’re not Westwood; and if you want still to go out to the East Indies, why, I daresay you won’t be long of finding some outward-bound ship or other off James Town. Only, I’d advise you, sir, to have your case over with Sir Pulteney, before Admiral Plampin comes in—as I fear he would send you to England.” “It matters little to me, sir,” I answered; “seeing the reason I had for going out happens to be done with.” Here I couldn’t help the blood rising in my face; while Captain Wallis’s steady eye turned off me, and I heard him say in a lower key to the lieutenant, he didn’t think it was a matter for a court-martial at all. “Pooh, Aldridge!” said he, “some pretty girl amongst the passengers in the case, I wager!” “Why,” returned Aldridge, carelessly, “I heard Mr Moore say some of the ladies were pretty enough, especially one—some India judge or other’s young daughter—I believe he was in raptures about, sir.” This sort of thing, as you may suppose, was like touching one on the raw with a marlin-spike; when the captain asked me, partly to smooth it over, maybe,—“By the bye, sir, Mr Aldridge tells me there was something about a pirate schooner, or slaver, or some craft of the kind, that frightened your mates—that’s all stuff, I daresay—but what I want to know is, in what quarter you lost sight of her, if you recollect?” “About nor’west by north from where we were at the time, sir,” said I. “A fast-looking craft was she?” asked he. “A thorough-built smooth-going clipper, if ever there was one,” I said. At this the captain mused for a little, till at last he said to his lieutenant—“They daren’t risk it; I don’t think there’s the Frenchman born, man enough to try such a thing by water, Aldridge?” “Help _him_ out, you mean, sir?” said the luff; “why, if he ever got as far as the water’s edge, I’d believe in witchcraft, sir!” “Give a man time, Mr Aldridge,” answered the captain, “and he’ll get out of anything where soldiers are concerned—every year he’s boxed up, sharpens him till his very mind turns like a knife, man! It makes one mad on every point beside, I tell you, sir—whereas after he’s free, perhaps, it’s just on _that only_ his brain has a twist in it!” “No doubt, Captain Wallis,” said Aldridge, glancing over to me, as his commander got up and began walking about the cabin, spite of his halt. “D’ye know,” continued he, “I’ve thought at times what I should like best would be to have _him_ ahead of the brig, in some craft or other, and we hard in chase—I’d go after that man to the North Pole, sir, and bring him back! Without once going aboard to know he was there, I’d send word it was Jack Wallis had him in tow!” “What is Bonaparte like, then, after all, sir?” I asked, just to fill up the break. “I never saw him, nor he me,” replied Captain Wallis, stopping in his walk, “but every day he may have a sight of the brig cruising to windward; and as for the island, we see plenty of _it_, I think, Aldridge?” “Ay, ay, sir,” said Aldridge, “that we do! For my part, I can’t get the ugly stone steeples of it out of my head!” “Well,” continued the captain, “at times, when we’re beating round St Helena of a night, I’ll be hanged if I haven’t thought it began to loom as if the French Emperor stood on the top of it, like a shadow looking out to sea the other way,—and I’ve gone below lest he’d turn round till I saw his face. I’ve a notion, Mr Aldridge, if I once saw his face I’d lose what I feel against him,—just as I used always to fancy, the first five years in the _Temple_, if he were only to see _me_, he would let me out! But they say he’s got a wonderful way of coming over every one, if he likes!” After this, Captain Wallis sat down and passed the decanters, the first lieutenant observing he supposed Bonaparte was a great man in his way, but nothing to Nelson. “Don’t tack them together, Aldridge!” said his commander, quickly; “Nelson was a man all over,—he’d got the feelings of a man, and his faults—but I call _him_, yonder, a perfect demon let loose upon the world! To my mind all the blood those republicans shed, with their murdered king’s at bottom of it, got somehow into him, till he thought no more of human beings, or aught concerning ’em, than I do of so many cockroaches! But the terrible thing was, sir, his infernal schemes, and his cunning—why, he’d twist you one country against another, and get hold of both, like a man bending stun-sail halliards—there were men grew up round him quick as mushrooms, fit to carry out everything he wanted; so one could’nt wonder at him enough, Mr Aldridge, if it was only natural! I can’t tell you anything like what I felt,” he went on, “when I was in Sir Sidney Smith’s ship, cruising down Channel, and we used to see the gunboats and flat-bottoms he got together for crossing the straits—or one night, with poor Captain Wright, that we stood in near enough to get a shot sent at us off the heights—the whole shore about Boulogne was one twinkle of lights and camp-fires, and you heard the sound of the hammers on planks and iron, with the carts and gun-carriages creaking—not to speak of a hum from soldiers enough, you’d have thought, to eat old England up! And where are they now?” “I don’t know, sir, indeed,” said the first lieutenant gravely, supposing by the captain’s look, no doubt, that it was a question. “What, Captain Wallis!” exclaimed I, “were you with Captain Wright, then, sir?” Of course, like every one in the service, I had heard Captain Wright’s story often, with ever so many versions; there was a mystery about his sad fate that made me curious to hear more, of what gave the whole navy, I may say, a hatred to Bonaparte not at all the same you regard a fair enemy with.

“_With_ him, say you, sir?” repeated the captain of the Podargus, “ay was I! I was his first lieutenant, and good cause I had to feel for the end he came to,—as I’ll let you hear. One night Captain Wright went ashore, as he’d often done, into the town of Beville, dressed like a smuggler; for the fact was the French winked at the smuggling, only I must say _we_ used to land men instead of goods. I didn’t like the thing that night, and advised him not to go, as they’d begun to suspect something of late; however, the captain by that time was foolhardy, owing to having run so many risks, and he was bent on going in before we left the coast; though, after all, I believe it was only to get a letter that any fisherman could have brought off. The boat was lying off and on behind a rocky point, and we waited and waited, hearing nothing but the sound of the tide making about the big weedy stones, in the shadow from the lights of the town; when at last the French landlord of the little tavern he put up at, came down upon the shingle and whistled to us. He gave me a message from Captain Wright, with the private word we had between us, saying he wanted me to come up to the town on a particular business. Accordingly, I told the men to shove out again, and away I went with the fellow. No sooner did I open the door of the room, however, than three or four gens-d’-armes had hold of me, and I was a prisoner: as for Captain Weight, I never saw him more. The morning broke as they brought me up on horseback in the middle of them, along the road to Paris, from whence I could make out the cutter heeling to the breeze a mile or two off the land, with two or three gunboats hard in chase.”

“Well, sir, at Paris they clapped me into a long gloomy-like piece of mason-work called the Temple, close alongside of the river, where plenty of our countrymen were; Captain Wright and Sir Sidney Smith himself among the rest, as I found out afterwards. The treatment wasn’t so bad at first; but when you climbed up to the windows, there was nothing to be seen but the top of a wall, and roofs of houses all round, save where you’d a glimpse of the dirty river and some pig-trough of a boat. One day I got a letter from Captain Wright—how they let me have it I don’t well know—saying he was allowed a good deal of comfort in the mean time, but he suspected some devilish scheme in it, to make him betray the British government, or something of the kind; that he’d heard one of the French royalist generals had choked himself in his prison, but never to believe he’d do the same thing, though every night he woke up thinking he heard the key turn in the door. The next thing I heard of was that Captain Wright had made away with himself, sir!” Here Captain Wallis got up again, walking across the cabin, seemingly much moved. “Well, after that I slept with the dinner-knife in my breast, till the jailer took it away; for I thought at the time that poor Wright had been murdered, though I found cause to change my mind when I knew what loneliness does with a man, not to speak of the notion being put before him to take his own life. For a while, too, Captain Shaw was in the same cell; by which time we had such bad food, and so little of it, that one day when a pigeon lighted on the window, which used to come there for a crumb or two every afternoon, right along with the gold gleam of the sun as it shot over the dark houses to that window—I jumped up and caught it. Shaw and I actually tore it in bits, and eat it raw on the spot; though ’twas long ere I could get rid of the notion of the poor bird fluttering and cooing against the bars, and looking at me with its round little soft eye as it pecked off the slab. But what was that to the thought of my old father that had hurt himself to keep me in the navy, and me able, now, to make his last days comfortable—or the innocent young girl I had married the moment I got my commission of first lieutenant, expecting to be flush of prize-money! It even came into my head often, when I sat by myself in the cell they afterwards put me into, alone,—how that little blue pigeon might have carried a letter to England for me—at any rate it was the only thing like a chance, or a friend, I ever saw the whole time I was there,—and foolish as the notion may look, why the window was too high in a smooth wall, for me once to reach it. I heard all Paris humming round the thick of the stone, every day, and sometimes the sound of thousands of soldiers tramping past below, over the next bridge, with music and suchlike—no doubt when the First Consul, as they called him, went off to some campaign or other: then I’d dream I felt the deck under me in a fresh breeze at night, till the soul sickened in me to wake up and find the stones as still as before, and now and then hear the sentries challenging on their rounds.

“Well, one day a fellow in a cloak, with a slouch hat over his forehead, was let in to try, as I thought, if there was anything to be got out of me, as they tried two or three times at first; some spy he was, belonging to that police devil, Fouché. What did he offer me, d’ye think, after beating about the bush for half an hour, but the command of a French seventy-four under the Emperor, as he was by that time, and, if I would take it, I was free! On this I pretended to be thinking of it, when the police-fellow sidled near me, to show a commission signed with the Emperor’s name at the foot.

“In place of taking hold of it, however, I jumped up and seized the villain’s nose and chin before he saw my purpose, stuffed the parchment into his mouth by way of a gag, and made him dance round the cell, with his cloak over his head and his sword dangling alongside of him, to keep his stern clear of my foot; till the turnkey heard the noise, and he made bolt out as soon as the door was opened. You’d wonder how long that small matter served me to laugh over, for my spirit wasn’t broken yet, you see; but even then, in the very midst of it, I would all of a sudden turn sick at heart, and sit wondering when the exchange of prisoners would be made, that I looked for. The worst of it was, at times a horrid notion would come into my head of the French seventy-four being at sea at the moment, and me almost wishing they’d give me the offer over again—I fancied I felt the very creak of her, straining in the trough of a sea, and saw the canvass of her topsails over me, standing on her poop with a glass in my hand,—till she rose on a crest, and there were the Agamemnon’s lighted ports bearing down to leeward upon us, till I heard Nelson’s terrible voice sing out, “Give it to ’em, my lads!” when the flash of her broadside showed me his white face under the cocked hat, and it came whizzing over like a thirty-two pound shot right into my breast, as I sunk to the bottom, and found myself awake in the prison.

“I don’t know how long it was after, but they moved me to another berth, where a man had shot himself through the head, for we actually met his body being carried along the passage; and more than that, sir, they hadn’t taken the trouble to wash his brains off the wall they were scattered on! There I sat one day after another, watching the spot marked by them turn dry, guessing at everything that had gone through them as long as he was alive in the place, till my own got perfectly stupid; I was as helpless as a child, and used to cry at other times when the jailer didn’t bring me my food in time. I fancied they’d forget all about me in England; and as for time, I never counted it, except by the notion I had been two or three years in. At last the turnkey got so used to me, thinking me no doubt such a harmless sort of a poor man, that he would sit by and talk to me, giving accounts of the Emperor’s battles and victories, and such matters. I must say I began to feel as if he was some sort of a God upon earth there was no use to strive against, just as the turnkey seemed to do, more especially when I heard of Nelson’s death; so when he told me, one time, it wouldn’t do for Fouché or the Emperor to let me out yet, I said nothing more. “Will the Emperor not let me out _now_?” asked I, a long time after. “Diable!” said the man, “do you think his Majesty has time to think of such a poor fellow as you, amongst such great matters? No, no, pauvr’ homme!” continued he; “you’re comfortable here, and wouldn’t know what to do if you were out! No fear of your doing as your Capitaine _Ourite_ did, since you’ve lived here so long, monsieur!” “How long is it, now, good Pierre?” asked I, with a sigh, as he was going out at the door; and the turnkey counted on his fingers. “Ulm—Austerlitz—Jena,” said he slowly; “oui, oui—I scarcely thought it so much—it wants only six or seven months of ten years!” and he shut to the door. I sprang up off the bed I was sitting on, wild at the thought—I may say, for a day or two I was mad—ten years! ten years!—and all this time where was my poor innocent Mary, and the child she expected to bear, when I left Exeter—where was my old father? But I couldn’t bear to dwell on it. Yes, Aldridge, by the God above, they had kept me actually _ten years_ there, in that cursed Temple, while _he_ was going on all the time with his victories, and his shows, and his high-flown bulletins! Yet he wasn’t too high, it seems, to stoop to give out, through his tools, how Wright and I had both killed ourselves for fear of bringing in the British government—nor to offer me a seventy-four in a dungeon—_me_, a man used to wind and water, that loved a breeze at sea like life! ’Twas the very devil’s temptation, sir; but I’ll tell you what, both Captain Wright and myself had been with Sir Sidney Smith at Acre, when _he_ was baffled for the first time in his days—_that_ was the thing, I believe from my soul, that he hated us for! _I_ had a right to be exchanged ten times over, though he might have called Wright a spy; but what was my poor wife and her newborn baby, or my old father’s grey hairs, to _him_, and his damnable ambition to make everything his own—and when the very thought of me in my hole at the Temple would strike him in the midst of his victories, where he hadn’t time, forsooth, to trouble himself about a poor man like me! The fact was, I could tell how he offered a British seaman, that had had a finger in nettling him, the command of one of his seventy-fours, which he had nobody fit to manage—and that in a prison where I’d be glad even of fresh air!

“’Twas then, in fact, the purpose rose firmer and firmer in me, out of the fury that was like to drive me mad, how I’d get out of his clutches, and spend my life against the very pitch of his power I knew so well about. Till that time I used to look through the bars of the window at the Seine, without ever fancying escape, low down as it was, compared with my last cell. There was a mark in the stone floor with my walking back and forward, since they put me in; and by this time I had the cunning of a beast, let alone its strength, in regard of anything I took into my head: often I used to think I saw the end of my finger, or the corner of a stone, more like the way a fly sees them, than a man. The turnkey, Pierre, would never let me have a knife to eat my food with, lest I should do as he said all we English were apt to do—kill myself—which, by the way, is a lie; and I think that fiend of an Emperor yonder must have taught them to blame us with their own crime! However, latterly he let me have a fork for half an hour at dinner; and for a quarter of an hour every day, except those when he staid to talk to me as I ate it, did I climb up and work with that fork at the top and bottom of one of the window-bars, taking care not to break the fork, and jumping down, always, in time to finish the meal. It took me four whole months, sir, to loosen them! Such deadly fear as I was in, too, lest he’d find it out, or lest they moved me to another cell—you’d have thought I was fond of the walls round the place, where hundreds of men before me had scrawled their last words; and the one that shot himself had written, “_Liberté—anéantissement!_ Liberty—annihilation!” just over where the spatter of his brains had stuck when he laid his head to the spot! If Pierre had noticed what I’d been about, my mind was made up to kill him, and then make the trial before they missed him; but _that_ I had a horror of, after all, seeing the man had taken a sort of liking to me, and I knew he had a wife.

“Well, at last, one day I had the thing finished; when midnight came I trembled like a leaf, till I began to fear I couldn’t carry it through: I tore my shirt and the blanket in strips, to twist into a line, got out the bar by main force, squeezed through, and let myself down. The line was just long enough to let me swing against the cold wall, over a sentry’s head going round the parapet below; as soon as he was past I dropped on the edge of the wall, and fell along it, my fingers scraping the smooth stone to no purpose, till I was sliding off into the dark, with the river I didn’t know how far below me, though I heard it lapping against some boats at the other side. For a few moments I was quite senseless, from the fall into the water; the splash roused the sentinels, and three or four bullets whizzed into it about me, as I struck out for the shore. Still the night was thick enough to help me clear off among the dark lanes in the city;—and the upshot of it was, that I found out some royalists, who supplied me with a pedlar’s dress; till, in the end, after I can’t tell you how many ticklish chances, where my luck hung upon a hair, I reached the coast, and was taken off to a British frigate. At home, sir—at home, I found I’d been given up long ago for a dead man in Bonaparte’s prisons, and—and—the old man had been buried seven years, Aldridge—but not so long as my—wife. The news of my taking my own life in the Temple saved her the rest—’twas too much for her at the time, Aldridge—both she and her little one had lain in the mould nine years, when I stood looking at the grass under Exeter Cathedral! I was a young man almost, still; but my hair was as grizzled when I got out of the Temple in 1813, as you see it now, and I’ll never walk the deck fairly again. Aldridge,” added the captain of the Podargus, turning round and standing still, with a low sort of a deep whisper, “’tis a strange thing, the Almighty’s way of working—but I never thought—in the Temple yonder, longing for a heave of the water under me—I little thought John Wallis would ever come to keep guard over his Majesty, the Emperor Napoleon!”

When Captain Wallis stopped, the long send of the sea lifting the brig below us, with a wild, yearning kind of ripple from her bows back to her counter, and weltering away astern,—one felt it, I may say, somewhat like an answer to him, for the breeze had begun to freshen: it had got all of a sudden nearly quite dark, too, as is the case inside the tropics, without the moon. “Let’s go on deck, gentlemen,” said the captain, coming to himself; “now clap on those other topmost stuns’ls, Mr Aldridge, and make her walk, sir!” “No saying,” I heard him mutter, as he let us go up before him—“no saying what the want of the Podargus might do, off the island, these dark nights—with water alongside, one can’t be sure—I warrant me if _that man’s_ dreams came true, as mine did, he would be at the head of his thousands again, ruining the whole world, with men rotting out of sight in dungeons while the wind blows! Ay, dreams, young gentleman!” said he to me as we stood on deck; “I’ll never get rid of that prison, in my head, nor the way that dead man’s brain seemed to come into mine, off the wall! But for my part, off St Helena, ’tis Napoleon Bonaparte’s dreams that enter into my head. If you’ll believe it, sir, I’ve _heard_ them as it were creeping and tingling round the black heights of the island at dead of night, like men in millions ready to break out in war music, as I used to hear them go over the bridge near the Temple—or in shrieks and groans; we all the time forging slowly ahead, and the surf breaking in at the foot of the rocks. I know then, _who’s_ asleep at the time up in Longwood!”

The brig-of-war was taking long sweeps and plunges before the wind; the Southern Cross right away on her larboard quarter, and the very same stars spread all out aloft, that I’d watched a couple of nights before, close by Violet Hyde. The whole of what I’d just heard was nothing to me in a single minute, matched with the notion of never seeing her more. Everything I’d thought of since we left England was gone, even one’s heart for the service; and what to do now, I didn’t know. I scarce noticed it commence to rain, till a bit of a squall had come on, and they were hauling down stu’nsails; the dark swells only to be seen rising with the foam on them, and a heavier cover of dull cloud risen off the brig’s beam, as well as ahead; so that you merely saw her canvass lift before you against the thick of the sky, and dive into it again. ’Twas just cleared pretty bright off the stars astern of us, however, wind rather lighter than before the squall, when the captain thought he made out a sail near about the starboard beam, where the clouds came on the water-line; a minute or two after she was plain enough in the clear, though looming nearly end-on, so that one couldn’t well know her rig. Thinking at first sight it might be the schooner, Captain Wallis was for bracing up, to stand in chase and overhaul her; but shortly after she seemed either to yaw a little, or fall off again before the wind like ourselves, at any rate showing three sticks on the horizon with square canvass spread, and evidently a small _ship_. “Some homeward-bound craft meaning to touch at the island!” said Captain Wallis, telling the first lieutenant to keep all fast; by which time she was lost in the dusk again, and I wasn’t long of going below. A fancy had got hold of me for the moment, I can’t deny, of its being the Seringapatam after us, on Westwood’s owning himself; whereupon I persuaded myself Captain Wallis might perhaps take the risk on him of letting us both go. For my part, I felt by this time as if I’d rather be in the same ship with _her_, hopeless though it was, than steer this way for the other side of the Line; and I went down with a chill at my heart like the air about an iceberg.

Not being asleep, however, a sudden stir on deck, an hour or two after that, brought me out of my cot, to look through the scuttle in the side. The brig had hauled her wind from aft onto her starboard quarter, making less way than _before_ it, of course; I heard the captain’s voice near the after-hatchway, too; so accordingly I slipped on my clothes, and went quietly up. The Podargus was running through the long broad swells usual thereabouts, with her head somewhere toward north-east; the officers all up, the whole of the crew in both watches clustered beyond the brig’s fore-course, and the captain evidently roused, as well as impatient; though I couldn’t at first make out the reason of her being off her course. As soon as she fell off a little, however, to my great horror I could see a light far ahead of us, right in the gloom of the clouds, which for a moment you’d have supposed was the moon rising red and bloody, till the heave of the sea betwixt us and it showed how both of us were dipping: and now and then it gave a flaring glimmer fair out from the breast of the fog-bank, while the breeze was sending a brown puff of smoke from it now and then to leeward against the clouds; through which you made a spar or two licking up the flame, and a rag of canvass fluttering across on the yard. ’Twas neither more nor less than a ship on fire—no doubt the vessel seen abeam of us that evening—a sight at which Captain Wallis seemingly forgot his hurry to make St Helena, in the eagerness shown by all aboard to save the poor fellows. Suddenly there was another wild gleam from the burning craft, and we thought it was over altogether, when up shot a wreath of fire and smoke again, then a fierce flash with a blue burst of flame, full of sparks and all sorts of black spots and broken things, as if she had blown up while she heaved the last time on the swell. Everything was pitch dark next minute in her place, as if a big blot of ink had come instead; the brig-of-war herself rolling with a flap of her headsails up against the long heavy bank of cloud that blocked the horizon. “Keep her away, sirrah!” shouted Captain Wallis, and the Podargus surged ahead as before, all of us standing too breathless to speak, but counting the heads of the waves as they flickered past her weather beam. “God’s sake!” exclaimed the captain at last, “this is terrible, Aldridge. If I had only overhauled her, as I meant at first, we might have helped them in time; for no doubt the fire must have been commenced when we noticed her yawing yonder a couple of hours ago, sir.” “I think not, sir,” said his lieutenant, “_we_ were against the clear; and if they’d been in danger _then_, she’d have fired a distress-gun. There couldn’t have been much powder aboard, sir—more likely rum, I think!”

“For heaven’s sake!” continued the captain, “let’s look about—she must surely have had boats out, or something, Mr Aldridge? The best thing we can do is to fire a few times as we bear down—see that bow-gun cleared away, Mr Moore, and do it!”

We might have been about a mile, as was guessed, from where she was last seen, when the brig fired a gun to windward, still standing on under everything. At the second flash that lighted up the belly of the clouds, with the black glitter of the swells below them, I fancied I caught a moment’s glimpse of something two or three miles away. It was too short to say, however; and soon after the twinkle of a light, seemingly hoisted on a spar, was seen little more than half a mile upon the brig’s lee-bow, dipping and going out of sight at times, but plain enough when it rose. Down went the Podargus for the spot, sending the foam off her cut-water; and it was no long time before a wild hail from several voices could be made out almost close aboard. Ten minutes after she was brought to the wind, heaving a rope to the men on a loose raft of casks and spars, as it pitched alongside of her, with the sail hauled down on a spar they had stuck up, and a lantern at the head of it; after which the raft was cast off, and the poor fellows were safe on board.

Two of them seemed to be half-drowned, the one wrapped up in a wet pilot-coat, his face looking white and frightened enough by the glimmer of the lanterns; the other darker a good deal, so far as I could make him out for the crowd about him, and he didn’t seem able to speak; accordingly, both of them were taken at once below to the surgeon. The rest were four half-naked blacks, and a little chap with ear-rings and a seaman’s dress, who was the spokesman on the quarterdeck to the captain’s questions—plainly American by his snuffling sort of drawl. “Are there no more of you afloat?” was the first thing asked, to which the Yankee sailor shook his head. She was an American bark, he said, from a voyage of discovery round the two Capes; he was mate himself, and the skipper, being addicted to his cups, had set a cask of rum on fire; so, finding they couldn’t get it under, besides being wearied at the pumps, on account of an old leak, the men broke into the spirit-room and got dead drunk. He and the blacks had patched up a raft in a hurry for bare life, barely saving the passenger and his servant who had jumped overboard: the passenger was a learned sort of a man, he said, and his servant was a Mexican. Most of this I found next day, from the gun-room officers: however, I heard the mate of the burnt barque inquire of the captain whereabouts they were, as the skipper was the only man who could use a chronometer or quadrant, and the last gale had driven them out of their reckonings a long way. “Somehow south of the Line, I guess?” said he; but, on being told, the fellow gave a bewildered glance round him, seemingly, and a cunning kind of squint after it, as I fancied. “Well,” said he, “I guess we’re considerable unlucky—but I consider to turn in, if agreeable!” The man had a way, in fact, half free-and-easy, half awkward, that struck me; especially when he said, as he went below, he supposed “this was a war-brig,” and hoped there “wasn’t war between the States and the old country?” “No, my man,” said the captain, “you may set your mind at ease on that point—but I’m afraid, nevertheless, we’ll have to land you at St Helena!” “What, mister?” said the American, starting, “that’s where you’ve got Boneyparty locked up? Well now, if you give me a good berth for a few, mister, I guess I’ll rayther ship aboard you, till I get a better! What’s your wage just now, if I may ask, captain?” “Well, well,” said the captain, laughing, “we’ll see to-morrow, my man!”—and the American went below. “Set stu’nsails again, Mr Aldridge,” continued Captain Wallis, “and square yards. Why, rather than have such a fellow in the ship’s company, Aldridge, I’d land him without Sir Hudson’s leave!”

“For my own part, next day, I should have given more notice to our new shipmates while the brig steered fair before the wind—the blacks and the mate leaning about her forecastle, and the other two being expected by the surgeon to come pretty well round before night, though the captain had gone to see them below; but a thing turned up all at once that threw me once more full into the thought of Violet Hyde, till I was perfectly beside myself with the helpless case I was in. The note Tom Westwood had shown me was still in the pocket of my griffin’s coat, though I hadn’t observed it till now; and what did I feel at finding out, that, instead of one from her to Westwood, it was a few words from my own sister, little Jane, saying in a pretty, bashful sort of a way, that her brother Ned must come home before she could engage to anything! You may fancy how I cursed myself for being so blind; but a fellow never thinks his own sister charming at all—and what else could I have done at any rate? All I hoped for was to get aboard of some Indiaman at St Helena, and there was nothing else I wearied to see the island again for. I may say I walked the brig’s lee quarterdeck till daybreak; but anyhow the look-out from the foreyard had scarce sung out “St Helena on the weather-bow!” when I was up, making out the round blue cloud in the midst of the horizon, with a white streak across it, like a bird afloat in the hazy blue, with the clear gleam from eastward off our starboard quarter running round to it.”

CANADIAN LOYALTY. AN ODE.

[Written at Sunrise on New Year’s Morning of 1850, at the head of Lake Ontario, in Western Canada.]

As gleams the sunrise on the deep, And on yon cliffs where eagles sweep, And on the circling forests deep, This morn, which owns the New Year’s birth,— Is there no gratulating strain To hail the advent of thy reign, Thou latest link of Time’s long chain Let down from heaven to this our earth?

Of Britain be that strain;—for she, Stretching her empire o’er the sea, Exalts the lowly, and sets free From thraldom’s bonds the fettered slave; For ever may her children share The smiles of her maternal care; For ever may her vessels bear St George’s standard o’er the wave!

Droop not! Although dark tempests may Obscure awhile the potent ray That to these o’er-sea realms brought day, And Treason walk secure the scene; A second morning o’er the deep Shall call us jubilee to keep, And to old strains each heart shall leap— “God save Britannia’s noble Queen!”

“God save Britannia’s noble Queen!”— Shout it aloud! that strain hath been From east to west, in every scene, Heard by the nations, like a hymn Wafted along from clime to clime, To succour truth, to startle crime, And, with an influence all sublime, To brighten what before was dim.

Hark! ’tis Britannia’s morning gun Heralding thee, thou glorious sun; And, if it peal when daylight’s done, Doth she not well that honour claim? For wheresoe’er thy beams light earth, Thou seest her wisdom and her worth; Glories that own to her their birth, And Trophies of her deathless fame!

From Zembla’s snows to India’s sun, To her the faint, the feeble run, They who Oppression’s grasp would shun, Or Superstition’s horrors blind: There exiles find a country—there Monarchs and serfs alike repair, And, underneath her guardian care, A sure and safe asylum find!

Then think not, demagogues! on whom Strike these first rays which now illume Our land, that, with this year, in gloom Shall Britain’s power eclipsed be seen. No! if she wills it, hearts are here That glory in her high career, That from her side will sunder ne’er, But proudly own one common Queen!

Methinks there glows in Britain yet A feeling, that would grieve to let Thee, sun! upon her empire set, While shouts of rival nations rose:— Our fathers were her sons, and we Are but her offspring o’er the sea; Aye undivided let us be— We scorn to link us with her foes!

Methinks her subjects, side by side, Will long her burdens just divide,— Will long maintain, in matchless pride, Her flag, which aye hath honoured been:— And many a great deed yet be done, And many a glorious field be won, Ere of her empire set the sun. “God save Britannia’s noble Queen.”

AGRICULTURE, COMMERCE, AND MANUFACTURES: OPENING OF THE SESSION.

It rarely happens that the proceedings which occur in parliament, immediately after its reassembling, are so intrinsically important as to sustain the interest invariably excited in the public mind by the approach of the legislative season. Such at least is the case whenever men can predict, almost with certainty, what topics will be alluded to and what avoided in the royal address; what policy Ministers are determined to pursue; and what amount of support they may confidently count on receiving from political friends and auxiliaries. From the opening of the session of 1850 little novelty was to be augured. The Free-traders, having had everything their own way, could not be expected to express any misgiving as to the working of a system which they had so deliberately adopted. The cry of distress from without, loud and general as it was, had not shaken the equanimity of the secret divan of Downing Street; nor perhaps was the complaint deemed as yet articulate enough to require more than a casual notice. The storm might be brewing, but it was not at its height, and there would be time enough to meet it hereafter. What her Majesty’s Ministers had to do was to make out a fair case of prosperity for the present, and to hold out a still brighter prospect for the future. They had plausible materials for doing so. Bullion was plentiful in the vaults of the Bank of England; the exports for the past year had increased largely in amount; the revenue was in no bad condition. Abroad, there was a lull in those hostilities which for the last two years have frightened Europe from its propriety; and, though the victory had not declared itself on the side of those whom the Whigs favoured with their approbation, still tranquillity was something. It gave an augmented market to our manufacturers, and removed those hindrances which threatened to become serious interruptions to commerce. With such materials at command, no one but a most sorry artificer could have failed in constructing a plausible prosperity address. The state of the home market was evidently a subject for future discussion.

Notwithstanding various rumours as to meditated organic changes, it was pretty evident that Ministers had no intention to undertake the conduct of a new Reform bill. Of all the men who ever attempted to ape the character of Peter the Hermit, Sir Joshua Walmsley is at once the dullest and the most self-sufficient. Any crusade, under the auspices of such a preacher, could not be otherwise than abortive: indeed, he failed signally in the first and easiest quality of an agitator—that of enlisting a considerable share of popular sympathy on his side. Nor was finance reform likely to be seriously taken up by the Whigs, inasmuch as one of the earliest effects of such a scheme would necessarily be the reduction of their official salaries. That is a point, however, which they cannot long hope to evade; and it will be forced upon them, sorely against their will, as the inevitable consequence of low prices. They must prepare themselves to submit to a reduction similar to that which has been practised upon the officials of the Great Western Railway, who are put upon a short allowance in consequence of “the reduced prices of the necessaries of life.” The rule admits of general application, and doubtless will be rigidly carried out in the highest as in the lowest places. At present we shall not discuss that matter: we merely refer to it as a sufficiently intelligible reason why financial reform formed no part of the programme of her Majesty’s Ministers. No man expected that it would do so.

Apart from such topics as these, there was little to be looked for in the speech: and accordingly, when it appeared, the speech was as meagre and unsuggestive as such documents usually are. Nor should we have thought it necessary to make it the subject of comment, save for one passage, which may be said to contain its kernel, in so far as the prospects of the home population are concerned:—

“Her Majesty has great satisfaction in congratulating you on the improved condition of commerce and manufactures. It is with regret that her Majesty has observed the complaints which, in many parts of the kingdom, have proceeded from the owners and occupiers of land. Her Majesty greatly laments that any portion of her subjects should be suffering distress; but it is a source of sincere gratification to her Majesty to witness the increased enjoyment of the necessaries and comforts of life which cheapness and plenty have bestowed upon the great body of her people.”

Here there is no distinct admission of agricultural distress. Such distress may or may not exist: all that is known on the subject is, that complaints are made. But, supposing these complaints to be well founded, the great body of the people is reaping the benefit of that cheapness which is the cause of the distress of others. That is the language of the speech.

We think it is much to be regretted that, on an occasion like this, Ministers should have avoided the open and manly course. If they do not believe in the actual existence of such distress, but are of opinion that the great agitation which at present is spread over England, is either an unfounded panic or a factious clamour, it would have been well to have met the statements of their adversaries with a broad and unequivocal denial. If, on the contrary, they are convinced that distress actually does exist, and that it is likely to prove permanent, they have placed themselves in a strange and unprecedented position with regard to the class so complaining. For, in that view, the terms of the speech will hardly admit of any other interpretation, than that it is matter of congratulation to find, that one section of the British public is prospering upon the ruin of another. We do not, of course, believe that the Ministry intended to lay down any such principle; for, if once adopted and carried out, it must lead to the entire disorganisation of society. We think that their peculiar position affords us the true key to their language. On the one hand, they cannot deny that distress actually does exist: on the other, they cannot, in the face of the commercial principles which they have adopted, and the precarious nature of their majority, venture to suggest a remedy. Her Majesty is not even allowed to express sympathy, because sympathy implies suffering—and that admission Ministers are by no means, as yet, prepared to make.

Turning from the speech itself to the addresses, and the reported subsequent debates, we find this view of the matter sufficiently borne out. The Earl of Essex, the mover of the address in the House of Peers, expressed himself in the following terms:—

“Her Majesty had also expressed her deep sympathy with the distress _stated to exist_ in many of our agricultural districts. No man could regret the existence of that distress more than he did; but, in expressing that regret, he must also state his conviction—a conviction which was shared by many wealthy merchants, and by many, he would not say a majority, of landlords—that that distress was not of a permanent, but of a temporary character.”

Lord Methuen, the seconder, took nearly the same view. The Earl of Carlisle said:—

“The degree of his alarm would be somewhat proportioned to the apprehended nature of the distress. If it were temporary, and produced by special and exceptional causes, not liable continually to prevail or constantly to recur, then it would be plain that agriculture was only subject to that variation which every other pursuit, every other profession and branch of industry, every source of emolument, seemed, by a law of the universe, to undergo—that change from which agriculture, in a marked degree, whether protected or unprotected, had never been exempt.”

And again:—

“What he contended was, that, with so very circumscribed limits for the experiment, and with such a marked interference of special and exceptional causes, during the progress of the experiment, it would be altogether preposterous to assume that the experiment had been tested, that it was exhausted, and that a change in the policy of the country ought to be considered, and forthwith entered upon. Neither could he think they were in a situation to pronounce what were the permanent fruits of the great experiment they had agreed to make. It would be impossible to say at what cost corn could be permanently grown in this country, or whether the same amount of foreign importations would always prevail. His own feeling was not one of despondency or despair on the subject. He had no right, on these points, to palm his own opinion on their lordships. All he contended was, that they were not in a condition to determine the questions he had indicated. He could not honestly stop there, however; he could not confine himself to these ambiguous and hypothetical limits: he was bound to tell their lordships that, even if he were convinced that the average price of corn could never ascend higher, still he was not prepared to reverse the policy they had entered upon.”

Finally, the Marquis of Lansdowne said:—

“Adverting to the subject of the amendment, regret must be felt when distress affected any large class of her Majesty’s subjects. When the noble lord (Stanley) went on to say he was convinced the distress, which to a certain degree affected the owners and occupiers of land, was shared by the agricultural community at large, including the labourers, he met the noble lord distinctly with the assertion that, throughout England, the condition of the labourers was generally better.”

Lord Lansdowne then went on to state facts regarding the importation of foreign corn; from which, we presume, he wished his hearers to infer that such importation was on the wane.

“With respect to the importation of foreign corn, it had diminished almost to nothing at present. In the last three months of last year, ending January 5th, the importation was reduced considerably below the importation of the corresponding period in the previous year. He had a return of the importation for the first four weeks of January. In the first four weeks of last year, the importation of all sorts was 1,118,653; for the last four weeks of this year, ending January 28th, only 336,895 quarters had been imported.”

A valuable addition to the above statistics would have been a note of the range of the thermometer during the periods referred to, especially at the Baltic ports. In conclusion, Lord Lansdowne, whilst maintaining the impossibility of any recurrence to the protective system, remarked:—

“He considered the experiment as finally made; but, if he were to see a quantity of acres thrown out of cultivation, and a number of labourers without employment, he would not hesitate to confess himself in the wrong, and he hoped others would not hesitate to do the same. He was not now, however, prepared to go back to their past policy, and to uphold what he believed to be a delusion, or to lay a foundation for that ill feeling and acrimony which had distinguished the discussion of the question out of doors.”

These extracts, from the debate in the House of Lords on the first night of the session, deserve to be recorded for the sake of fixture reference. Every one of the speakers on the Ministerial side proceeded on the assumption that agricultural distress, if it existed, was only temporary, and not permanent, in its character—and, such being the case, that there was no room, or, at all events, no occasion for a remedy.

Turning to the debate in the House of Commons, we find a bolder tone assumed. In their selection of the gentleman who had the honour of moving the address to her Majesty, Ministers gave a very strong indication of their deliberate views. Amongst those who annually renewed the motion for the repeal of the corn laws in the House of Commons, there was one who, with more candour or more discrimination than the rest, had the courage to acknowledge that the result of such a measure must be the “annihilation” of the small farmers. That gentleman, Mr Villiers, was selected as the fittest person to reciprocate to the royal message. We are far from reflecting upon the taste and feeling which suggested such a choice—indeed, we are not sure whether a better one could have been made; for, if the agriculturists are to understand that under no possible circumstances can our recent policy be changed, that assurance could hardly be conveyed more authoritatively than from the lips of the honourable member for Wolverhampton; and accordingly Mr Villiers does not mince the matter. He speaks out loud and bold, and tells the farmers that no amount of distress will make him withdraw one inch from his original position.

“He did not deny that distress existed among the occupiers of the land, and he deeply regretted it; but they were not precluded from retiring from that pursuit with which they were not satisfied. He thought it was some consolation to know that land now fetched as high a value in the market as it ever had brought in the history of this country; that there never was a farm vacant but there were numerous candidates for the tenancy; and that the agricultural labourers, instead of being worse off, were much better off than usual. If ‘the worst come to the worst,’ and the landed proprietor and the occupier should be obliged to proceed in the same business-like way in conducting their pursuits as persons in other businesses in this country, they would have this consolation, that there was no advantage possessed over them by other countries in the raising agricultural produce. The only thing that he (Mr Villiers) could discover, distinguishing the agriculturist here from those of other countries—and that was one which he had under his own control—was the price of land. It certainly was higher here than on the Continent. But in many respects his advantages were great; and the inferiority, where it existed, could be counteracted.”

Statements of this kind carry with them an antidote as well as a bane. We are not sorry to find the foremost champion of the League, and the mover of the address, thus openly setting at defiance physical fact, common sense, and the results of practical experience. He tells the British agriculturist that he is in every respect, except in the price of land, on an equality with the foreign producer. So, then, his climate is as constant, his soil is as rich, the labour he employs is as cheap, his direct burdens are as low, his luxuries are as moderately taxed! He is exposed to no restrictions; there is no malt-tax; he may have his bricks at prime cost; he may grow his own tobacco; he may distil his own spirits; he is not chargeable with income-tax, irrespective of his drawing one shilling of profit from his farm! So says Mr Villiers: and, if this be true, not one of us has a right to complain. But is it true? We shall not insult the intelligence of our readers by entering on a deliberate refutation.

Let us next hear the Chancellor of the Exchequer:—

“He admitted that in some respects, and in several parts of the country, the agricultural interest had suffered; but it was all a question of degree. He did not deny that the degree was considerable, but he did not think it existed to anything approaching the extent that had been represented; and he denied, therefore, that they ought to retrace the steps of their policy; for, though distress existed, he relied on the industry and the energy of the British farmer.”

Then come general opinions, almost amounting to assertions, that the present low price of corn cannot be permanent; and these opinions are fortified by a comparison of the importations in January 1849 with those in January 1850, no notice being taken of any difference between the seasons! Sir Charles Wood next put forth an authority, to which we crave attention:—

“The _Mark-Lane Express_ stated that the price of corn in the Baltic was so high that it would not pay to send it to this country; and the only country from which corn was at present sent to us was France, which, in ordinary years, was not an exporting country. There was good reason to suppose, therefore, that the permanent price of wheat in this country would not range so low as at the present time. Prices were not at present remunerative to the importer, and importation had received a most signal check. The farmer need not, therefore, apprehend that ruin from the operation of free trade which he at present anticipated from prices under 40s. a quarter. What the future price of corn in this country would be, it would be wrong in him (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) to attempt to state, after the mistakes that the most practical and wisest men had fallen into with regard to the importation of corn. But it was worth observing, that at present no importation could take place from those countries from which importation had been most feared, and that the greatest quantities of corn recently received had come from those countries from which no one had anticipated any importation whatever. An honourable member had expressed an opinion that 44s. a quarter was the average price that might be expected to prevail for wheat. Now, he could not agree with those who held the opinion that the agriculturist would be ruined by such a price.”

Here there are two distinct propositions, with regard to which we have a word to say. 1st, Sir Charles Wood, on the authority of the _Mark-Lane Express_, an authority which he afterwards admits will not be disputed, says that the importations are checked, and will be checked, on account of the high price of corn in the Baltic, and, therefore, that the price of wheat in this country will rise. 2d, He thinks that the home agriculturist can carry on production with wheat at 44s. per quarter.

Well, then, let us see what has since been told us on the authority of the _Mark-Lane Express_, so lately as 11th February:—

“The value of wheat having receded, without a check, from week to week since the commencement of the year, has fallen to a point at which growers are very unwilling to sell; and within the last eight days the deliveries have fallen off more or less, which circumstance, and the probability of short supplies during the time farmers shall be engaged preparing the land for the reception of the spring crops, appear to have led to the belief that quotations will not for the present undergo any farther reduction. That a temporary rally may take place is not improbable; but we are by no means sanguine on the subject, and regard any improvement of moment as wholly out of the question. Whatever may be said to the contrary, we maintain that prices of wheat are at present higher on the continent of Europe than is warranted by the result of the last harvest. With average crops, such as those secured in 1849 in most of the large grain-growing countries of Europe, a very considerable surplus must have been produced for export; and as there appears to be no chance of France, Holland, or Belgium requiring supplies from the Baltic, and as our markets hold out little encouragement for calculating on higher prices, the value of the article must, we think, inevitably come down in Russia, Poland, and Germany. Any argument founded on what has occurred in bygone times is no longer applicable, the alteration in our corn laws placing the matter in an entirely new position. For the past to be serviceable in affording materials to form a judgment of the probable future, it is necessary to have a parallel instance; and all calculations founded on what prices have been in years when a different order of things existed, are more likely to mislead than instruct. It is not probable that prices will fall to so low a point as they have done on former occasions, when England has required comparatively small supplies, the removal of our import duties and the repeal of the Navigation Laws being greatly in favour of the foreign grower; but, on the other hand, it may be easily foreseen that with wheat at 35s. per quarter in many of our home markets, British merchants will not purchase abroad on such terms as have been hitherto asked for spring delivery. Speculation may for a time support prices at Dantzic, Rostock, &c., but the value must ultimately be regulated by prices here; and we feel perfectly satisfied that supplies on a much larger scale than we are likely to want will reach us from the Baltic, Black Sea, &c., later in the year.”

Nowhere can be discerned any symptom which might justify us in believing that prices are likely, for any length of time, to take an upward tendency. The importations of last year principally consisted of the yield of an inferior Continental crop—that of 1848. The large crop of 1849 is preparing for us; and how is it possible to suppose that this will be kept back unless an augmented price is given for it? Even the frozen state of the Baltic ports has had no effect in raising prices at home. On the contrary, they are still declining. The average of wheat in the Haddington market of 8th February, was 34s. 1d. The Berks correspondent of _Bell’s Weekly Messenger_ writes thus on the 4th:—“The corn markets are gradually getting lower, and, taking all the sorts of grain together, they are now lower than they have been since the memorable year 1822; and there is, we are sure, less money in circulation in the country than there has been for many years. The occupiers of the soil seem to be the first class doomed to be ruined; but it must be recollected that the farmers will not be the only class.”

But it is of little use for us at present to discuss a point which the experience of a few months must necessarily solve. Sir Charles Wood’s statement, if intended to influence the division, has already served its purpose. Inasmuch, therefore, as the prospects of importation are concerned, we need not speculate farther.

But when Sir Charles assumes a price of 44s. as remunerative for the grower of wheat, he takes his position on other ground. We shall not reiterate our own opinions on this subject, or those of any writer who may be supposed to be favourable to protection. The evidence of adversaries may be more valuable; and the first whom we shall cite is Sir Robert Peel. In 1842, the late Premier indicated his opinion that the remunerative price ranged from 54s. to 58s., and he never wished to see it lower than the former sum. Sir Charles Wood, however, courageously fixes his estimate 10s. beneath that of Sir Robert Peel; and we doubt not that, if the fall should still continue, we shall find him averring hereafter that 34s. per quarter is a price amply remunerative to the British grower.

Our next witness is a gentleman whose testimony must be valuable in the eyes of political economists. We quote from a work originally published in 1839, entitled, _Influences of the Corn Laws_, by JAMES WILSON, Esq. now M.P. for Westbury, and Secretary of the Board of Control. It is a treatise on which we set so much store, that we propose, in an early number of Maga, to subject it to a deliberate review, for the purpose of pointing out the singularly felicitous realisation of the leading prophecies therein contained, and the intimate knowledge displayed by the writer of the subject with which he was dealing. At present we shall confine ourselves strictly to one point.

“This may therefore be called the rate which is fixed by our own internal competition and resources; 52s. 2d. per quarter may be called the prime cost of wheat to the consumer, and that sum, reduced by the charges enumerated, may be called the remunerating price to the landed interest to the exact extent to which they have been remunerated.”—p. 53.

Again:—

“As we shall afterwards show, we take 52s. 2d. to be the proper price for wheat, at which an exactly sufficient amount of production would be kept up, it having been the average price for the last seven years; we therefore take it as the standard price at which wheat can be sold to the consumer. It must be clear that whatever average annual price the farmer receives in any year above that price, he obtains so much profit beyond the average rate; _and that whatever average annual price he receives in any year less than that standard price, he makes so much distinct loss_; and therefore the difference between the profit derived from the higher prices and the loss from the lower prices must show the balance in favour or against the home grower.”—p. 41.

Mr Wilson’s argument we leave for the present untouched; we merely found upon his statement that 52s. 2d. is the proper standard price for British wheat, and that any lower rate of price must entail a loss on the grower. So far, therefore, his views are utterly irreconcilable with those of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Lord John Russell, who addressed the House last, on the Ministerial side, was not very distinct in his admission as to the existence of distress. If there was any, he seemed to think it was caused by corn speculation, and he rang the changes on the old topic of periods of transition and depression. The division was in entire accordance with the debate, for it resulted in the rejection of the amendment on the address, proposed in the following terms, “But humbly to represent to her Majesty that, in many parts of the United Kingdom, and especially in Ireland, the various classes of her Majesty’s subjects connected with the cultivation of the soil are labouring under severe distress, mainly attributable, in our opinion, to recent legislative enactments, the operation of which is aggravated by the severe pressure of local taxation.”

That such an amendment was called for on the part of those who are opposed to the free-trade policy, we think will be generally admitted. It was but right and reasonable that the case of the agriculturist should be brought under the notice of parliament at the very earliest opportunity; not with the view of forcing on an immediate reversal of the national policy, but to obtain, if possible, a distinct acknowledgment of the position in which the most important section of the community is placed. That acknowledgment has not been given. It would almost seem as if the Free-traders, in the intoxication of their headlong career, already considered the great agricultural interest as completely prostrated as the colonies, with regard to which no notice whatever was vouchsafed in the royal speech. Mr Cobden is perfectly furious that the point should be again mooted. He considered protection as defunct, and the ghost of it laid in the Dead Sea; and now, when it starts up before him, a living, thriving, and withal a formidable reality, he has recourse to language unmeet for the mouth of any respectable conjuror. Lord John Russell can do little more than utter a feeble and wholly inapplicable descant upon the advantages of the station of an English gentleman—forgetting all the while that such a station implies the performance of certain duties, of which not the meanest are the advocacy of the rights of the British labourer, and the maintenance of the British constitution. The amendment, as every one anticipated, was rejected; but, notwithstanding, it has served its purpose. It has elicited opinions, a commentary on which will be valuable before the present session is over; it has shown the agricultural interest how little they have to expect from the present Parliament; it has laid the foundation for distinct propositions regarding the equalising and proper adjustment of taxation, which no doubt will be brought forward _seriatim_, and submitted to the consideration of the Commons. If these are rejected, as they probably will be, and if every measure of relief is met by a direct or a virtual negative, it will then be time for the defenders of British interests to lay their complaint at the foot of the throne, and to ask for a dissolution of the present Parliament, in order that the constituencies of Great Britain may have an opportunity of recording their votes for or against the continuance of the present policy.

We shall, of course, be told that the point has been already settled. What is settled? Have not our fiscal regulations been altered year after year; and was there not a settlement disturbed by the repeal of the Corn Laws, at least as deliberate as that which is now assumed to be inviolable? How long is it since “the experiment,” to which we were entreated to give a fair trial, lost its experimental character, and became a law, fenced against repeal as closely as a statute of Darius? Is there a single free-trade prophet who can hold up his head and say that his vaticinations have been fulfilled? Mr M’Gregor prophesied that the nation would become richer, at the ratio of two millions a-week. Mr Economist Wilson prophesied augmented prices to the agriculturist, adding this ingenuous commentary,—“that there is no better evidence of a prosperous community or country, _than the existence of a high average price of provisions_, when the condition of the labourer, as is the case in this country, is relatively better than in other countries; and that, on the contrary, there is no stronger evidence of a miserable and impoverished country, than the existence of low prices of provisions, where the condition of the labourer is comparatively and infinitely worse than in other countries where prices are higher.” Mr Cobden prophesied thus in 1843 and 1844, not once but many times,—“The landlords will (with free trade) have better rents.” “Give us a free trade, and land will be as valuable as it is now.” “I believe that land would be more valuable in this country if you had at once an entire abolition of the Corn Laws.” We could cite similar testimony, uttered by a host of prophets as numerous as those of Baal, but we think the above instances may suffice; and it is on the faith of such vaticinations that we are peremptorily desired to consider the late ruinous measures as fixed and unalterable! The railway and the free-trade delusion reached their highest point in one and the self-same year. We have seen the quacks, impostors, and swindlers of the one system, scouted by the unanimous voice of public reprobation already; the leading partisans of the other cannot long hope to escape the infliction of a similar doom.

It has been said, in various quarters, that we have taken too gloomy a view of the future agricultural prospects of Great Britain. It may be so; but, at all events, we are borne out, and even exceeded, by Mr Villiers. If any man has doubts as to the depression of the agricultural interest, let him peruse carefully the following statement of the mover of the address:—

“He (Mr Villiers) had made a calculation of the saving effected by the people of this country, in consequence of the present reduced price of food. He found that the average price of wheat in 1847 was 69s. 5d.; on the 29th of December 1849, it was 39s. 4d.; the average price of barley in 1847 was 43s., and, in 1849, 25s.; of oats, in 1847, 28s., and in 1849, 15s.; and there had been a corresponding reduction in beans and peas. The usual calculation was, that our population of 30,000,000 consumed one quarter of corn to each person annually; but, taking a low estimate of consumption, and calculating that the population annually consumed 20,000,000 quarters of each of these descriptions of grain, he found that the saving effected by the difference of prices between 1847 and 1849, amounted to £61,000,000. He had also estimated, on the same moderate scale, the saving effected by the difference in the prices of meat, butter, cheese, potatoes, and other articles, in 1847 and 1849, and he found that it amounted to £30,000,000 more; so that there had been a total saving in the expenditure of the people upon food of £91,000,000 between 1847 and 1849. This was the result of free trade _in the very first year of its operation_. And when so large an amount was saved for expenditure on other articles than food, he thought it was no matter of astonishment that the general condition of the people had improved, and that the country was in a flourishing condition.”

We shall not investigate the accuracy of this calculation, nor shall we discuss the soundness of the conclusions. It is enough for us that Mr Villiers holds it to be matter of congratulation that, in one year, “the very first year of the operation of free trade,” agricultural produce has been depreciated to the amount of £91,000,000. This is worth a little consideration. Messrs Cobden, Bright, & Co., have taken much pains of late to impress upon the farmers that the present struggle is “a mere landlord’s question;” that the tenantry have nothing earthly to do with it; and that their sole object ought to be a speedy lowering of the rents. Our statistics, published in the Magazine, although certified by a large body of the leading agriculturists in nearly every district of Scotland, have been designated as “cooked,” by Cockneys who never saw a blade of wheat grow except on a Sunday excursion to Thames Ditton, and by pseudo-political economists, who, when detected in deliberate falsification, have not even the grace to tender a lame apology. The gravity of an insult depends upon the respectability of those who utter it. Foul language from the mouth of a cabman does not excite any rancorous feeling in the bosom of the man who is favoured with the abuse of Jehu; and, therefore, our correspondents, in number more than thirty—gentlemen of the highest respectability and character in Scotland—need not be disturbed by any imputations emanating from the quarters which we are reluctantly compelled to notice. But, since our opponents affect to disbelieve the accuracy of our views and calculations, let them deal with those of Mr Villiers. He puts down the amount of saving in food at £91,000,000, for a single year. The net rental of Great Britain and Ireland is £58,753,615:[9] and it therefore follows, that _supposing no rent whatever to have been paid_, the tenantry must have suffered loss or diminution of profits to the extent of £22,246,385! These are the free-trade calculations—not ours. We do not wonder that the _Times_ did not lose a day in casting discredit upon a statement which, though cheered on the Ministerial side of the house, was, in reality, a more damnatory exposition of free trade than the most ingenious Protectionist could have devised. For our part, we shall not venture to say whether Mr Villiers was right or wrong. A calculation, of this extended nature, might tax the powers of the ablest actuary; but, if it be correct, surely we stand acquitted of all exaggeration; and, what is of far greater importance, no one can henceforth venture to assert that this is a mere “landlord’s question;” since, if all rent were abandoned, the loss to the tenantry, in a single year, would be twenty-two and a quarter millions!

But let us pass in the meantime from the agricultural case, and see what real ground exists for the self-gratulations of ministers on the general prosperous state of the country at the opening of the present session. We quote the paragraph from the royal speech:—“Her Majesty has great satisfaction in congratulating you on the improved condition of commerce and manufactures.” We shall consider the two interests separately.

First, as to commerce, and its main branch, the shipping and shipbuilding interest. The repeal of the Navigation Laws having been effected in the course of last year, it might be premature to form a decided judgment on the working of the new system. Most certainly we have not done so; and we think it would have been only decent had her Majesty’s Ministers exercised a similar discretion. But in order to make out a case of prosperity, the commerce of the country could not be overlooked; and facts, (when they _are_ facts,) however slight, are too valuable to be dispensed with on such an occasion as this. Accordingly, we are told that the shipping interest never was in a state of greater activity and prosperity than now. Mr Villiers opened thus:—

“It was rather early, perhaps, to express any opinions of what would be the general results of that great change; but there was reason to believe that all the anticipations of its advocates would be infinitely more than realised, and that all the fearful predictions of its opponents would be falsified. _The interest most affected by these changes had not been for some years in such a state of activity as it presented at this moment._ In the Thames and Tyne, in the Wear and Clyde, the business of the shipbuilder or shipowner exhibited a more cheering aspect. _From all our dockyards the reports were equally satisfactory_; and many of the gentlemen who had been most prominent in foretelling ruin and destruction from the change, admitted the advantages they were deriving from it.”

The Chancellor of the Exchequer entirely acquiesced in this statement:

“At the present moment no one could find fault with the change which had taken place in the Navigation Laws, if he took the trouble to look at the state of the great shipbuilding ports of this commercial country. He might mention one port, which, above all others, should be regarded as indicating the condition of the shipbuilding interest throughout the seaports of England, namely, Sunderland; but he might also mention Liverpool and the Scotch ports, where the shipbuilding in the year 1849 went on with more rapidity than in any former period; and not only was the quantity of shipping built at these places greater than in any former year, but a better class of vessels was built, vessels calculated and fitted for the long voyage.”

Mr Labouchere, the President of the Board of Trade, was even stronger in his averments:

“He confidently appealed to every member of that house who had considered the subject, and, above all, to the representatives of the great shipping ports of this country, whether it was true to say that the industry of the dockyards had been paralysed by the measure of last session. On the contrary—and this was a subject on which he naturally felt the greatest interest, and which he had looked into with the utmost care—he had never made an assertion in that house with greater confidence, _and he challenged contradiction on the part of any mercantile man or gentleman interested in shipping_, than when he stated his belief that the industry of shipbuilding, that the confidence of the mercantile public in shipowning, that the whole business of the country connected with shipbuilding and shipowning, were in a state most satisfactory and most encouraging to those who did not believe that they were paralysing that important branch of industry by the measures of last session. He believed the fact to be that there were at least as many ships building at this moment as at any period within the last twenty years in this country.”

In the face of such unqualified averments and challenges, on a point necessarily statistical, and in opposition to the President of the Board of Trade, who, from his official position, was the man of all others most likely to be furnished with full and accurate information, it would have been rash in any individual member to have hazarded a flat contradiction. But a question of such vital importance as this is sure to be thoroughly investigated; and we are indebted to that excellent paper, the _Shipping and Mercantile Gazette_, for an elaborate and complete refutation of the whole case so ostentatiously paraded by Government. Our contemporary, we are sure, will not quarrel with us if we transfer into our columns a good deal of the valuable information obtained by so much industry and perseverance, for which the thanks of the whole community are justly due.

“We are prepared,” says the editor of the _Shipping and Mercantile Gazette_, in his leading article of the 31st January, “to prove that the depression in our shipping—in building as well as in freights—has not been so great for years as it is at the present time; in short, that it is _depression_, and not improvement, which is UNIVERSAL, with scarcely ‘the exception of a few ports.’

“With regard to shipbuilding, it is necessary to bear in mind that shipbuilders cannot stop their business all at once; they have yards on lease—materials on hand—and apprentices to maintain; therefore they must be doing a little at almost any risk.

“With a view to obtain correct information upon the subject, we have procured authenticated returns from accredited correspondents at all the ports, which we shall proceed to lay before our readers; merely premising that, as the foreign and colonial trade diminishes in profit, it drives ships into the coasting trade, which, as it will be seen, is suffering severely from the depreciating effects.”

The following are a few of the returns, inserted alphabetically:—

“ABERDEEN, _Feb. 2, 1850_.

“It is vain to try to conceal the very depressed state of the shipping interest at this port at present, everything around us having a dreary and most discouraging aspect. Our docks are full of vessels of every class and size, and nothing for them to do. Freights offering (and they are very few indeed) are not, by any means, at remunerative rates: 30s. to 33s. per load timber from Quebec, or 67s. 6d. per ton guano from Peru, will never pay the shipowner, while he pays the present rate of wages, and gives the usual rations to his seamen. If freights are to be kept down by foreign competition, the British sailor must be brought down to the level of the foreigner; but such a state of things, we hope, will still, by some means or other, be averted.

“Notwithstanding the justly high character our shipbuilders here have attained in the construction of their ships, and the great perfection they have come to in the construction of vessels with the clipper-bow, and which are now making such unparalleled rapid voyages, we believe they have few, if any, orders on hand; and in the absence of such have been building on speculation, and have at this moment a few vessels on the stocks for sale, superb specimens of naval architecture, and no immediate prospect of purchasers. One of our local papers was holding out to us the other day that we need not fear foreign competition, having vessels of such great sailing and carrying qualities. This would be all very well, if guaranteed to this country alone; but it will soon be found that foreigners will get improved vessels as well as we, and, most probably, get our carpenters to go from this country to build them.

“The number of seamen at this port is about 2330, of which at present there are about 280 unemployed. Vessels laid up, 45—a greater number than was ever known in any previous year.”

“BOSTON, _Jan. 26, 1850_.

“Our harbour-master here, who has been upwards of forty years master of vessels out of this port, states that HE NEVER KNEW THE SHIPPING INTEREST AT SO LOW AN EBB AS AT THE PRESENT TIME; and he firmly believes the future prospects are very discouraging. The majority of our vessels are _now_ worked by the masters at _thirds_, and many of them have lost money during the past year—that is, have not made the former wages of £5 per month; in fact, many of them have not made mate’s wages—viz., £3, 5s. per month, who have not reduced their pay more than 5s. per month, and ordinary seamen at the same rate.”

“CAERNARVON, _Jan. 29, 1850_.

“Ours is nearly altogether a coasting trade, engaged principally in the export of slates, which averages about 91,000 tons per annum. During the year 1849 the export declined to 79,000 tons, and at present there are no prospects of its revival. The shipping belonging to the port is in a _most depressed_ condition; freights are very difficult to be had; and when they are offered, the rate is ruinously low—say 9s. per ton to London, 4s. and 5s. to Liverpool, and so on in proportion. Masters of our coasters are remunerated out of the profits of the vessels they command; and so small have been their earnings of late, that some are giving up _the command_, and shipping as _able seamen_, inasmuch as they earn better wages in the latter capacity! Shipbuilding is almost at an end here; no one will invest capital in coasting vessels now, so depressed are freights, and so clouded is the future.”

“CORK, _Jan. 29, 1850_.

“I subjoin a statement of freights, &c., at this port:—

Per load timber. Freights, Quebec, 1847 40s. „ „ 1848 32s. „ „ 1849 30s. per ton. „ W. C. So. America 1848 £4 5 0 „ „ beginning of 1849 3 17 6 „ „ end of 1849 3 7 6

“The other freights are in the same proportion.

“The wages of shipmasters have been reduced _one-third_. A few years back we generally had six or eight vessels on the stocks at this port, AT PRESENT ONLY ONE, and that is an iron screw-steamer, building for the Cork Steam-ship Company. The great majority of the vessels now belonging to this port are colonial built.

“Shipmasters have been obliged to accept of reduced wages in order to obtain employment to enable them to support their families. Several of them who were fortunate in having a little money saved, have commenced _tailoring_, rope-making, acting as coasting pilots, &c. &c.”

“DROGHEDA, _Feb. 1, 1850_.

“There are no ships building here, although we have a good dockyard; nor are there any repairing, although we have an excellent patent slip: there are four or five ships laying up, which the owners will not repair. They would willingly sell, but no person can be got to purchase: in fact, were it not for the purpose of giving employment to the masters and crews, I do think that our vessels would be laid up, for they are not earning one shilling for their owners. It is also my firm belief that, in seven years, one half of our ships will drop away, and what was once a nursery for our navy, will not be so, for in a little time the coasting trade will almost cease to exist, as we have to contend with railways, steamboats, and foreigners driven into our trade by the late change in the law.

“As regards our sailors, they are to be seen every day walking about our quays, anxious to procure employment, but, from the complete annihilation of our trade, they are unable to procure any; consequently they and their families are in a most wretched condition.”

“LIVERPOOL, _Jan. 29, 1850_.

“The shipping trade is exceedingly depressed here, and freights are wholly unremunerative. A Manchester house has just chartered an American ship from Calcutta, at £2, 15s. 6d.

“FREIGHTS ARE AT LEAST 15 PER CENT LOWER, ON THE AVERAGE, THAN THEY WERE LAST YEAR.”

“MARYPORT, _Jan. 29, 1850_.

“Cumberland has long been famed for its celebrity in shipbuilding, its vessels being known to, and appreciated by, the merchants in every region of the globe; but I am sorry to observe that, at the present moment, owing to the unwise repeal of the Navigation Laws, THE SEVERAL SHIPBUILDERS AT MARYPORT, WORKINGTON, AND WHITEHAVEN ARE WITHOUT ANY CONTRACTS—a circumstance strangely at variance with the account which lately appeared in some of the Free-trade journals at Manchester. It was then stated that several eminent merchants of that locality were desirous of building a large amount of tonnage in England; but, owing to the several builders being so full of contracts, they were necessarily obliged to go abroad to build their vessels. It would, however, seem that these gentlemen had entirely forgotten the geographical position of Cumberland, or else we must suppose that they would have deemed it their interest to have made contracts there; unless, indeed, they found, as I strongly suspect they did, that the Continental builder could build cheaper.”

“PLYMOUTH, _Feb. 2, 1850_.

“The shipping interest of this port is in a very depressed state, many vessels being laid up; and, consequently, their crews are out of employment, and our quays quite deserted by shipping. The vessels in actual service are principally employed in the coal trade, and by the owners only, at very reduced freights—at from 5s. to 5s. 6d. from Wales, and from 6s. to 6s. 6d. from the north; others sailing out of other ports at anything but remunerating freights. There are nine shipwrights’ yards in this port, in one of which only one vessel is building for a shipowner; and one sold from another. Two vessels have been for sale for many months past. In each of the others, vessels, varying from 100 to 300 tons, are being built on speculation, but progress very slowly. From a want of that enterprising spirit evinced in times past, there are not half the shipwrights kept in the yards now, and a reduction has already taken place in the wages. Many masters and sailors are also walking the quays unemployed; but we are told, by those who use the old adage of the pinching shoe, that a man may get as much for 10d. now as he could have got for double that sum some time since. Where is the use of things being _so very cheap_, when the poor man is deprived of the means of employment? Our exports are very trifling: manganese at about 6s. to 10s. to Liverpool and Scotland; lead and copper ores 3s. to 7s. per ton! Our imports—principally timber from Quebec, hemp, tar, fruit, &c. The former was 30s. to 32s. per load last year; what it will be this it is impossible to tell, now the foreigner goes into the trade. Six of our vessels (Quebec ships) are gone to Sierra Leone, thereby leaving the trade open to the foreigner. The average wages are from 30s. to 40s. for seamen in the coasting trade, 40s. foreign; £4 to £8 for masters, £2, 10s. to £3 mates, at per month, which are much lower.”

“RUNCORN, _Feb. 1, 1850_.

“The number of vessels belonging to the port of Runcorn is about 70, of the total burthen of about 6500 tons, most of them engaged in the coasting trade. Freights to and from this port are very scarce, and when any are offered they are at a miserably low rate. We should say that freights are, at the least, 25 per cent less than they were in the years 1845, 1846, and 1847. Nearly all the vessels belonging to this port are sailed by the shares—that is, the master takes one half the freight after all port charges are deducted from it, and he has to pay out of his share seamen’s wages, and also to find victuals; the owner has the remaining half, out of which he has to pay all expenses for wear and tear. But the present rates of freight are so very low that the masters cannot keep out of debt, let alone earn anything for themselves, and the owner’s share is not sufficient to keep the vessel in efficient working order. THE SHIPBUILDING TRADE HERE IS IN A MANNER DESERTED: there are only two vessels on the stocks; one has been partially finished for the last twelve months, and the other for the last six months. There is not the slightest inducement for persons to lay out their capital in shipping, there being no certainty of the smallest return.”

“SUNDERLAND, _Feb. 1, 1850_.

“Various statements having lately been published relative to the state of shipbuilding at this port, it is desirable that those interested in knowing how far the statements alluded to are correct, should be made acquainted with the real facts. It is true that at the close of last year there were about 92 ships on the stocks at this port; since that time several of them have been launched: many of them were larger than the average of ships built here, and about two-thirds of them were sold from the builders. Be it, however, understood that of the two-thirds sold, say 60 out of 92, upwards of 30 were purchased by outfitters, or ship-jobbers, who purchase the hulls of ships in order to have the outfit; _they are therefore still in the market_. Many of the shipbuilders, and also outfitters, had great stocks of timber and other materials on hand twelve months ago, previous to the ships in question being put on the stocks. It was then the opinion of the shipbuilders that the project to repeal the Navigation Laws, and grant foreign-built ships British registers, would not be carried, from the general manifestation of feeling against that measure evinced by practical men generally, who best understood the subject. Shipbuilders’ stocks were therefore kept up, and in many instances increased, and remunerating prices for ships were maintained. Since the act was passed which repealed the Navigation Laws, prices have been gradually on the decline. Within the last two years the average price for a ship, A 1 eight years classed, was from £10, 10s. to £11 per ton; now the price for a ship of that character, is from £8, 10s. to £9 per ton. The most respectable shipbuilders of this port freely declare that their trade appears fast hastening to the destructive state of agriculture; and that, if the present line of policy is pursued, all who are engaged in their trade must be great sufferers.”

Letters to the same effect are given by the editor of _The Shipping Gazette_, from correspondents at Aldborough, Bude, Dundalk, Kinsale, Maldon, Padstow, Pwllheli, Strangford, Torquay, Westport, and Woodbridge; so that from the ports all round the British Islands, the cry of distress, caused by the crushing effect of free trade upon the body of British industry, is arising. And this is what our Whig rulers call unexampled prosperity!

From the leading Plymouth journal of 31st Jan. we extract the following letter, which we would venture to recommend to the earnest attention of Mr Labouchere. It contains some statements of a very different complexion from those which appear to have passed through the hands of the officials of the Board of Trade.

“_To the Editor of the West of England Conservative._

“SIR,—My attention having been called to a paragraph in your journal, which states that the shipwrights in one of the principal firms in Plymouth had struck for wages, I have to inform you that the firm is mine.

For several years past I have paid my men 18s. per week on new work, and 21s. per week on old work; and they never lost any time, but by their own fault.

For some time past I have had complaints from many shipowners, that, as their returns were greatly reduced by freights constantly lowering, we, the shipbuilders, must reduce our charges, or they would be compelled to take their ships to other ports. Added to this, a friend of mine, Captain Shapcott, for whom I built a ship two years since, and with which he was so much pleased that he wished me to give him a price for another, of about 230 tons burthen. I accordingly did so; she was to be a first-class vessel, and entitled to class A 1 twelve years, at Lloyd’s. My proposals were sent to a merchant in London, whom Captain Shapcott wished should be the principal owner. This gentleman (Mr Brooking) replied, that as everything was coming down, wages, and materials for shipbuilding, must come down also; and that, unless I would engage to build for £10 per ton, and find a very large number of articles more than I had for the former vessel, he would not contract at all. He also said, that he had been in treaty for a ship to be built for him in Prussia, which he found he could do for £3 per ton cheaper than he could have one in England. I was obliged to decline engaging to build on such terms, as would have occasioned me a loss of some hundreds of pounds.

On Friday, the 18th January, on paying my men, I gave them a memorandum, stating these particulars, and that I imagined they must have been expecting, for some time, that wages would be reduced, not only from what they must know themselves, but also from the great reduction in the price of provisions and clothing. I, at the same time, offered them 17s. per week on new work, and 19s. per week on old work, telling them that, as their labour was their own property, if they could do better, I should have no objection whatever. They all, 29 in number, refused to work; and, I believe, the greater part of them have not been employed since, as I have seen them walking the streets.

Not pretending to be a politician, I can only give my own opinion of the acts of the Legislature; and, from the first, I believed that the abrogation of the Navigation Laws must have the effect of depriving thousands of Englishmen of employment.

Put this case to myself. I have employed more than 100 persons in building and fitting ships; every other class, such as rope-makers, sail-makers, block-makers, boat-builders, coopers, painters, glaziers, chain and anchor makers, provision merchants, and others engaged in putting a ship to sea, have all employ here. A merchant goes abroad and builds (which he will do) at, it may be, a less price, and see the consequence—the foreigner is employed, and our artisans must be idle; it is the natural result. As to the bugbear of Free trade, it will ruin England,—can I compete with a foreigner? He has his timber, his labour, and materials for fitting out his ship infinitely cheaper than I have; he is not oppressed by heavy Government and local taxation; and when his ship comes to England, she has all the privileges of a ship of the first class, which it is in my power to build; and further, by the manner in which Lloyd’s class ships, she will fully stand A 1 with mine.

I contend that it is the duty of Government so to legislate that their artisans should have employment, and any act which deprives them of it, must be detrimental to the nation. That is my firm belief. I must apologise for occupying your columns, but, as you first mentioned the circumstance of my workmen, I thought it right to state the reasons. I am, sir, yours,

WM. MOORE, Shipbuilder.”

There is more than this. Messrs. Lindsay & Co. have published a table of freights for the last four years, which exhibits an average decline ranging from thirty-five to fifty per cent. The following are a few notable instances:—

s. d. s. d. Singapore, from 105 0 to 60 0 Calcutta, 117 6 77 6 Hong Kong, 105 0 55 0 (last quotation from there) Bombay, 95 0 60 0 Ceylon, 95 0 70 0 Mauritius, 84 0 60 0 Callao, 95 0 63 0 Havannah, 85 0 47 6 Odessa, 95 0 42 6 Alexandria, 12 0 5 6 Cronstadt, 32 6 19 0 Quebec, 47 6 32 0

This decline of freights deeply concerns the agriculturist, since it unsettles even those loose and incorrect calculations, which were brought forward by the Free-traders for the purpose of proving that high freights must necessarily act as a powerful check to the importation of foreign corn, in the event of the abolition of the duties.

The challenge so confidently made has been accepted in another quarter. At the great Wiltshire meeting held at Swindon on the 6th February, Mr George Frederick Young spoke as follows:—

“Another point which has been taken as a kind of _cheval de bataille_—a sort of hobby-horse which the Ministers were determined to ride—I am somewhat familiarly acquainted with; I allude to the shipping interest. As they have brought that interest so prominently before parliament, I may, perhaps, be allowed to correct their statements when they are at fault. What were we told about the shipping interest in the House of Lords? I thought that they might have managed to get up returns, to answer the purpose of the occasion, of a somewhat specious character, extending over a large surface, before they asked the house to come to a conclusion. But what did they do? They said that the shipbuilding interest is in a most prosperous state; and that it is prosperous, they deduced from the fact that there were 90 ships building in the port of Sunderland on the 31st of December last. It is the truth that that was the case at that time, but it is not the whole truth; and the whole truth is, that though there were 90 ships building in that great shipbuilding port, 24 of them only were sold, whilst 66 were standing, 31 of them being ready to launch, but could not get purchasers. I find also, that out of 251 ships which were building at the several shipbuilding ports at that date, there were but 66 sold, making nearly 200 out of the 250 that could not obtain purchasers, (hear, hear.) Is that fair? (cries of ‘no,’ and cheers.) Is that the way in which a great public question is to be supported by the Ministers of the Crown? Yet these gentlemen have not thought it to be beneath them to stoop to such paltry prevarication for the purpose of misleading the parliament, (great cheering.) But I will give you yet another instance, which is even more pregnant still. In the course of the debate on the Address in the House of Commons, Mr Labouchere made use of these words in reference to the shipping interest:—‘This was a subject in which he naturally felt the greatest interest, and which he had looked into with the utmost care. He had never made an assertion in that house with greater confidence, and he challenged contradiction’—most unusual on the part of a Minister of the Crown—‘on the part of any mercantile man, or gentleman interested in shipping, when he stated his belief that the industry of shipbuilding—that the confidence of the mercantile public in shipowning—that the whole business of the country connected with shipbuilding and shipowning, was in a state the most satisfactory and encouraging to those who did not believe that they were paralysing that important branch of industry by the measures of last session.’ I will not affect to conceal the part which I took upon reading these words. I viewed the statement with indignation. I knew that it was not a fact; and on Saturday morning, the instant I had seen it in the paper, I drew up this declaration, which was advertised in all the daily journals of London on Monday morning:—

“‘We the undersigned shipowners and others connected with the building and equipment of ships in the port of London, having observed with much surprise that in the debate on the Address in the House of Commons on the 1st inst., the right hon. the President of the Board of Trade confidently stated, and ‘challenged contradiction on the part of any gentleman interested in shipping, that the whole business of the country connected with shipbuilding and shipowning was in a state the most satisfactory and encouraging,’ consider it a duty to declare our conviction that the statement of the right honourable gentleman must have proceeded from misinformation, and is entirely erroneous. We declare that the shipping interest is, on the contrary, at this moment in a state of great depression, no employment being obtained for British ships offering any reasonable prospect of remuneration for the capital embarked and the expenses to be incurred; that the accounts from all the great shipping ports of the world announce a superabundance of tonnage and extremely low rates of freight, rendering the prospect for the present year most discouraging, and that the various trades connected with shipping consequently and necessarily participate in the general depression; and we make this declaration without any party or political motive, and entirely without reference to the causes that have produced the depression we describe, in the desire alone that the legislature and the public should be truly informed as to the real facts of this important question, which appear to be misunderstood by her Majesty’s Government.’

“I will tell you the result. That declaration was advertised to lie at the London Tavern on Monday, Tuesday, and to-day; and upon the very first day it received the signatures of several hundreds of the most eminent men connected with this branch of our national industry, and from among whom I will undertake to say I can pick out twelve names of men who are owners of not less than 100,000 tons of British shipping (cheers.) That the President of the Board of Trade should venture to make such a statement, and challenge contradiction from any one, is, I think, most extraordinary. Is it not calculated to produce this effect—that statements made by the Ministers of the Crown, with whatever confidence, will be received with a little doubt and distrust, and that though they come even from so upright and honourable a man as Mr Labouchere, it will be necessary to substantiate them by something better than mere assertions of belief?”

We are sorry that Mr Labouchere should have committed himself so far. His personal character is beyond suspicion; and we do nothing more than express the universal feeling of his political opponents when we say, that no one will prefer against him the charge of having made a wilful misrepresentation of this nature. But it is the curse of men high in office, that they are surrounded by subordinates, whose share of honourable scruple is of the most convenient elasticity, and who sometimes have a substantial interest in the verification of their hazarded opinions. To this kind of influence Mr Labouchere is peculiarly subjected. The returns on which he founded, with so rash a confidence, had evidently passed through the hands of some veteran statist and figure-monger, and been adapted to suit an immediate purpose, rather than to conform to the actual truth. On no other hypothesis can we account for so strange a perversion of fact; for we believe that, after the evidence cited above, no man, whatever may be his political opinions, will hold that the commerce of the nation is not materially depressed, instead of being, as Ministers represented it, flourishing beyond all precedent.

We next come to the manufacturing interest, which assuredly ought to be in a most prosperous condition. In the course of the bygone year, tranquillity was restored on the Continent, and the interrupted markets were opened with every prospect of a fair demand. Notwithstanding the fall of prices, it might have been supposed that agricultural depression had hardly time to react upon the home market; and food was cheaper than perhaps it has been in Britain within the memory of man. Yet, with all these advantages, it is by no means certain that our manufactures are in a sound condition. The official tables indeed exhibit a large increase of exports, but these tables are quite useless as exponents of actual value. No later than last session, Sir Robert Peel gave a decided testimony on this point.

“Let me observe,” said he, “that nothing can be more unsafe than any inference drawn from the returns which give the declared value of manufactures imported. Owing to the manner in which the accounts of imports and exports are prepared, arguments drawn from that source must be exceedingly fallacious.”

The _Liverpool Standard_, applying itself to the statistics of the cotton trade, has done good service in exposing the nature of the export returns. According to the official statement, there would appear to be an increase of nearly £4,210,000 in the exports of cotton manufactures and yarn; but the _Standard_, going to the fountainhead, has shown that the increase in the entire quantity of cotton _spun_ in Great Britain in 1849, was only a little over one-twelfth of the previous year’s consumption. The conclusions of our contemporary are very forcible:—

“_We place no confidence whatever now in these customs reports. Since the abolition of the half per cent duty on exports_, there is nothing in the world to prevent goods being entered at any prices the shipper pleases. A bale of cotton and other goods may be valued at £5 or £500, without incurring a farthing of increased charges at our ports; and, without imputing to any party the wish to do a moral wrong, and to make out a favourable case in behalf of a particular policy, it is enough to throw discredit upon returns, thus left unprotected against error, to know that extensive malversation can be carried on.”

When we turn for information to the manufacturing districts, we find some mills working on short time, and less employment generally diffused than might be expected in an average year. We hear of nothing but the most gloomy anticipations, contrasting very strangely, indeed, with the triumphant language of Ministers. The depression is not confined to the remoter towns; it exists in Manchester itself, as will be seen from the following statement—the last which has reached us—from the great manufacturing capital:—

(From the _Manchester Guardian_.)

“MANCHESTER, Tuesday, Feb. 12.—We have had a spiritless and rather drooping market. The merchants have shown a growing indisposition for business; looking upon prices as, for the most part, too high to warrant further exports in the present state of supplies in foreign markets. The letters received this morning from Germany give quotations of prices which afford no encouragement for the immediate resumption of operations. There has been some inquiry from the Greeks, but with little result. As to the home dealers, seldom have they been so little seen in the warehouses of the manufacturers. There is evidently a diminished confidence among all classes of buyers as to the maintenance of prices; and a determination to proceed cautiously, buying only for the supply of the most pressing wants, is become general. The business of the day has, consequently, fallen in amount below that of any Tuesday for some time back. Under these circumstances, those spinners and manufacturers whose contracts are drawing to a close have shown a willingness to make some concession in price rather than suffer an offer to pass by them. Water twist may be quoted ⅛d. to ¼d. lower; and in mule yarn the buyer has some advantage in price, except as to fine counts, from No. 60’s upwards. In printing cloths, there is a giving way of about 1½d. per piece, and 3d. in shirting. There is a difference in point of firmness, however, among spinners and manufacturers, and a corresponding irregularity is observable in the quotations. The spinners of water twist, and the manufacturers of domestics, T’s, and some other stout cloths, are so much discouraged by the little prospect there is of an improvement in the unfavourable trade they have so long experienced, that many of them are seriously intending to diminish their production. One or two establishments in Manchester have either stopped altogether or resorted to short time, and an attempt is being made to induce a general adoption of the latter measure in these branches of manufacture. At Rochdale two or three mills have taken one or other of the above courses; and we have before us the names of seven firms at Heywood who have limited the hours of work in their mills.

“STATE OF TRADE.—MANCHESTER, Thursday.—We have no improvement since Tuesday. The demand, whether for cloth or yarn, is not equal to the production, and prices, consequently, tend still in favour of the buyer. Indeed, no considerable sales could be effected without material concessions in price.”

Reading such an account as this, we feel perplexed as to the meaning which the Ministry attach to their favourite term prosperity. We are almost tempted to suppose that they consider want of employment the greatest possible blessing which can befall the labouring man.

This account, it will be observed, is dated posterior to the opening of Parliament. We may therefore be told that the depression had no existence at the time when the royal speech was framed. Such was not the case. The depression was felt much earlier, as appears by the following extract taken from a favourite organ of the Free-traders. On 1st December last, the _Economist_ thus spoke of the cotton trade—

“At the beginning of this year, great expectations were entertained of our home demand. It was argued, and with good reason, that we never yet had a year of general employment and low prices of provisions combined, which was not also a year of very large domestic consumption of manufactured fabrics. This year labour has been in very brisk request, and food has never been so cheap and plentiful since 1836. Yet our expectations from these facts have not been fully answered. The sellers of printing-cloths and medium shirtings report that their home demand has, on the whole, been good; the sellers of domestics report, on the contrary, a decidedly dull business, worse than that of last year; but we believe that all agree that the anticipations with which they began the year have by no means been realised. We suspect the cause to be this:—The depreciation in railway property, the effects of the Irish famine, and the commercial crash in 1847, have impoverished all classes of the community to a much greater extent than has been allowed for in the calculations of our tradesmen. We question whether ‘the power of purchase,’ on the part of the British community, is nearly equal to what it was in 1845.”

We here perfectly coincide in opinion with the _Economist_. The power of purchase, on the part of the British community, is not nearly what it was in 1845; and for that diminution of power, he may thank the operation of the free-trade system. If the calculations of Mr Villiers are correct—if agricultural produce has depreciated to the extent of £91,000,000—there is no necessity whatever for recurring to Irish famine, railway losses, or commercial embarrassment, for an explanation of the unhealthy state of the home market. If we divide the population of the British islands, between agriculture and manufactures, in proportion to the ascertained number of those employed in either pursuit, we shall find that rather more than 18,700,000 are dependent on agriculture; whilst the number of those directly and indirectly drawing their livelihood from manufactures is short of 8,100,000.[10] Any blow levelled at the larger interest must perforce materially affect the lesser; and our decided conviction is, that the manufacturers have yet to learn, through adversity, a wholesome lesson. They have been taught to look to the foreign, or exporting trade, as their chief source of gain; and, in doing so, they have had to face a competition with other countries, which, in the course of a few years, has lowered their profits fully 50 per cent. They are still willing to go on, in the pure reckless spirit of gambling, caring nothing what social mischief they occasion, so long as they can deluge the markets of the world with their bales of calico and cotton. For this end, by an unholy and unprincipled combination, they have contrived to substitute foreign in place of British agricultural labour, whilst, with unparalleled selfishness, they reject all proposals for an equitable distribution of taxation.

The annual amount of the manufacturing productions of this country is estimated at £178,000,000; and it is said that last year we have exported £58,000,000. If this be the case, there remain goods to the value of £120,000,000, to be consumed at home; and the amount of the actual consumption mainly depends upon the consumers’ power of purchase. Mr Villiers tells us that £91,000,000 have been _lost_ to the agricultural classes—for depreciation is neither more nor less than direct loss. It is an obvious fallacy to assume, as Mr Muntz does, that this sum is merely to be considered as transferred from one pocket of the community to another, as a note for five pounds might be. In the latter case, the capital represented by the note is not destroyed; in the former, the agricultural produce having been purchased and consumed at two-thirds of its productive cost, there is clearly a direct loss to the producing party. The annual amount of agricultural produce in this country was estimated, according to former average prices, at £250,000,000; and if this be accepted as true, or even an approximation to the truth, the estimate of Mr Villiers will show a depreciation of more than a third of the value. To that extent, therefore, the power of purchase in the home market is lessened; for if £120,000,000 of manufactures are made to be consumed at home, and the means of the consumers are reduced by £91,000,000, how is it possible that trade can remain in a prosperous condition?

If the dependence of the prosperity of manufactures on the amount of the demand existing in the home market is admitted—and no man yet has attempted to deny that intimate relationship between the agricultural and the manufacturing classes—it will follow, as a clear deduction, that to curtail the means of the consumer is tantamount to limiting the demand. No body of men understood this more clearly than the leading agitators of the League. They knew perfectly well, that agricultural distress must react fearfully upon that numerous section of the manufacturers, who look solely to the home market for the regular consumption of their produce, and who supply the greater number of the retail dealers and shopkeepers, whose means of livelihood depend on their intervention between the makers of the fabric and the buyers. Those leading agitators were independent of the home trade. Their interest lay in pushing exports to the utmost, and in maintaining their hold of the foreign and distant markets, in spite of a fierce competition with France, Germany, and America. That competition had latterly become so serious and formidable, that, in order to maintain their ground, they found it necessary to devise some means whereby operative labour, already brought down to the lowest point of monetary wage, might be stimulated and sustained; and the only scheme available to them was the breaking up of the corn laws, which, in this highly-taxed country, with the accumulated burdens of more than a century and a half pressing upon it, afforded a necessary protection to the British agricultural labourer. For no one can deny that the producers of corn are, like all others, subject to taxation; and all taxation, whether direct or indirect, must be added to the price of the fruits of labour. This was just what the corn laws effected. The consumer paid for the taxation when he purchased the article; and in no branch of industry or trade is another rule recognised. There is a natural price, and an artificial price. The natural price of corn is that for which it can be grown in this country, deducting labour and the grower’s profit, but without any burdens of taxation at all. The artificial price is that which is charged for the produce to the consumer, when the taxation falling upon the land, for state purposes, is added to the natural price. By the repeal of the corn laws, the consumer escaped this taxation, and the whole burden was thrown on the producer and the labourer, who, in consequence of superior natural advantages possessed by the foreigner, can be undersold by him even at the natural price, and who yet are called upon to bear the whole of the artificial cost.

Such a scheme as this—one so manifestly unjust, not only to the agriculturists, but to the manufacturers and the shopkeepers, whose whole dependence was on the home consumers—would never have been carried into execution, had its inevitable results been honestly laid before the public. But there was no honesty in these men. They were fighting a desperate game, without regard to the general interest of the country, so that they could be the individual gainers; and they fought it, as gamblers will do, unscrupulously, falsely, and dishonestly. They durst not have hinted that the immediate effect of the repeal of the corn laws would be a large and permanent depreciation of the value of agricultural produce. Had they done so, the tradesmen and retail dealers whom they chiefly aimed to dupe—because the electoral influence of that class is immensely large—would at once have seen, that, by limiting the general power of their customers to purchase, they were, in fact, depriving themselves of so much of their former profit. Shopkeepers and tradesmen do not live by the export trade: they maintain themselves and their families by distributing the products of labour among the community; and their gains, as well as those of the artisan, are measured by the amount of custom which they receive. Any legislative change, therefore, which could have the effect of diminishing that custom in a serious degree, would necessarily be most detrimental to the interests of this class—a proposition so clear, that no effort of political jesuitry could disguise it. The corn-law repealers knew this, and accordingly they rested their case on different grounds. They maintained that the abolition of the duties on corn would not, and could not, have the effect of curtailing the means or the revenue of the producer. They professed that their sole object was to prevent extravagant fluctuations in price; and they were quite as touching and lachrymose in the pictures which they drew of the evils certain to arise from a range of low prices, as in those descriptive of the opposite extreme. Let us again refresh ourselves with a few sentences from the work of Mr James Wilson—sentences which afford good ground for hope that, upon the next agricultural division, we may find the member for Westbury using his best endeavour to repair some of the mischief which recent legislation has inflicted. The reader will bear in mind that Mr Wilson distinctly enunciated 52s. 2d. to be the proper price for wheat, at which an exactly sufficient amount of production would be kept up.

“It never can be advantageous for the community at large that they should consume the produce of any one party below the cost of production; for a period is not very far distant when the consequences must react, and infallibly produce high prices and great scarcity; and we will show that the evils of the reaction are far greater than any advantage derived from the low prices.”—_Influences of the Corn Laws_, p. 28.

Again:

“Our belief is, that the whole of these generally received opinions are erroneous; that if we had had a free trade in corn since 1815, the average price of the whole period, actually received by the British grower, would have been higher than it has been; that little or no more foreign grain would have been imported; and that if, for the next twenty years, the whole protective system shall be abandoned, _the average price of wheat will be higher than it has been for the last seven years_, (52s. 2d.,) or than it would be in the future with a continuance of the present system; but with this great difference, that prices would be nearly uniform and unaltering from year to year; that the disastrous fluctuations would be greatly avoided, which we have shown in the first proposition to be so ruinous under the present system.”—P. 56.

Perhaps we cannot better illustrate this part of our subject, than by transcribing the second “proposition” laid down by the present Secretary of the Board of Control. It is so unambiguous in its terms that we are saved the necessity of a commentary. Mark, and perpend!

“PROPOSITION THE SECOND.—That the agricultural interest has derived no benefit, but great injury, from the existing laws; and that the fears and apprehensions of the ruinous consequences which would result to this interest by the adoption of a free and liberal policy with respect to the trade in corn, are without any foundation: THAT THE VALUE OF THIS PROPERTY, INSTEAD OF BEING DEPRECIATED, ON THE AGGREGATE WOULD BE RATHER ENHANCED, AND THE GENERAL INTERESTS OF THE OWNERS MOST DECIDEDLY BENEFITED THEREBY.”

We presume that we need go no further in illustration of the line of argument adopted by the exporting manufacturers and their adherents, for the purpose of persuading the tradesmen and artisans that the repeal of the corn laws could not in any way affect the consumers’ power of purchase.

In dealing with the state of the manufacturing interest, we must never lose sight of the fact, that enlarged exports furnish no proof whatever of the prosperity of the home trade. We shall not go the length of adopting a hypothesis, plausibly enough put forward, that increased exports are a natural result of deficiency in the home demand; that where any sudden stimulus is given to a market abroad, goods originally intended for British consumption, but not taken out of stock, are shipped on speculation, and thus augment the declared value of the exports. We shall not make any averment of the kind, however probable it may be—simply because it is not in our power, or that of any man in the country, to prove such an allegation as the general rule. But so far as we can gather, from the voice of the public press, there would appear to be little room for exultation in the present prospects of manufactures. The agricultural depression is yet recent, and its reaction on manufactures, though it began in 1849, will probably not be felt in its real intensity until the present year is well advanced. In estimating the prosperity of manufactures, what we must look to are the wages and the condition of the labourer. The individual profits of the masters are secondary to this consideration; and we shall now proceed to examine whether cheap food has fulfilled its chief recommendation in bettering the condition of the operatives.

In a single number of the _Birmingham Mercury_ for 2d February, now lying before us, we find four separate letters upon this important subject. The first is from the operatives’ committee of the glass-trade, in which they state that “never was there more flint glass manufactured than there is at the present time, and never did the operatives receive less than they do at present for the quantity of work made.” The second is from a person engaged in the pin-trades, also complaining of low wages. The third is an indignant remonstrance from an operative against recent prosperity-statements, in which he says, “the condition of the workmen is such at the present time, that it is important to them to have their condition truly represented, devoid of that colouring which, while it would please some manufacturers, would to the workmen possess no charm whatever. Where a writer’s heart is, there also will his leaning be; and I feel convinced that no operative in this town could fail to see which way these articles incline. Obtaining information from masters about men, and publishing it like accounts from a house proprietor about his houses, or from a farmer about his cows, does not suit those workmen who think, and feel, and wish to be treated in a manner due to their position as producers of articles ministering to the comforts and conveniences of mankind at large.” The fourth proceeds from the committee of the gun-trade, stating that “the year 1849 has perhaps been unparalleled in the history of our trade; for the general depression of our prices, and the suffering of the working men, with the shortness of work, and the very low price at which that work has been done, have reduced us to the most pitiable condition which working and industrious men could be brought to.” Surely these letters are inconsistent with the statement of Mr Villiers, that “when he looked to the working classes, he was gratified to find that both manufacturing and agricultural labourers were either receiving a higher rate of wages, or were able to command a better supply of the comforts of life with their former wages.” Within ten days after that speech was made, an operative strike began at Nottingham. The following letter, addressed to, but not published in, the _Times_, appeared lately in the _Morning Herald_, and remains, so far as we know, uncontradicted:—

“_To the Editor of The Times._

“Sir,—I have read with great interest your able exposures of the butchers and other tradesmen of the metropolis. Will you, with your usual impartiality, give the following facts for free-traders a corner in your journal:—The wages paid in the factory of Messrs Marshal, at Shrewsbury, before and after free trade came into operation, are as follows:—

1846. 1849. Protection. Free Trade. Mechanics, £1 5 0 £0 18 0 Overlookers, 1 0 0 0 14 0 Thread-polishers, 0 12 0 0 8 0 Boys, 0 8 0 0 6 0 Female reelers, 0 6 0 0 4 8

“Messrs Marshal are among the most extensive manufacturers in the kingdom, and this may be taken as a fair specimen of what has been generally done. I should be sorry to make one comment on these facts, but leave it to the judgment of the public to decide whether the operatives of this country, or the manufacturers who employ them, have reaped the benefit of that cheap bread which they promised to the labouring population; and whether what they gave with one hand in the shape of bread, they do not more than take with the other by so large a reduction of wages.—I am, Sir, your obedient Servant,

JOHN PHILLIPS.

“Winsley, near Shrewsbury, Jan 22.”

As to the condition of the agricultural labourers, it would really appear to be needless to enter upon that point. The cry of suffering and distress is universal throughout the length and breadth of the land. How can it be otherwise, when every cargo of foreign grain sent to our shores is in effect so much untaxed foreign labour introduced to beat down the wages of the working man? Mr Bonnar Maurice, at a late meeting at Welshpool, thus described the present condition of the agricultural labourers of England:—

“But there was another class—from their numbers a very important class—and if they took (as they might fairly do) the well or ill doing of that class as an indication of the prosperity or otherwise of the country generally, it was indeed a _most_ important class—he meant the labouring class. They were promised that free trade was to bring within their reach comforts and luxuries which they had not even dreamt of. How was it now with them? Take first the agricultural labourer. A short time ago he was earning 9s. or 10s., or in some counties 12s. a-week; his wife could earn 5s. or 6s., and his boy (if he had one eleven or twelve years of age) about the same. Now numbers are without employment at all; numbers can obtain only occasional employment; and those who are in constant work must be satisfied with 7s. or 8s., and in some places with not more than 6s. a-week, and with little or no aid from their wives and families. With other labourers the case is no better—their employment is becoming more and more scarce; the effects of an unfair competition are reducing the means of giving employment; and those who are suffering from such effects are accordingly lessening the number of their labourers, and reducing their establishments. Thus, scarcity of employment, combined with reduction of wages, is the blessing which free trade brings to the labourer. And so it must be; for what is the real principle of free trade but the unfair encouragement of the foreigner at the expense of the British labourer, the taking away employment from the labourers of our own country, and the giving that employment to the foreigner?”

In Scotland matters are no better. We have many instances of proprietors compelled by the decline of rents to abandon the improvement of their estates, and to relax that employment which was formerly given to labour. This is a great calamity; since it must inevitably tend to swell the poor-rate, already augmenting alarmingly. In the western districts the labour of Irish emigrants, forced from their own country by the same cause, and willing to work at the lowest possible rate of wage which will suffice to sustain existence, is supplanting that of our Scottish peasantry; and as the farmers are nearly driven to the wall by the unprecedented decline in the value of both corn and cattle, they cannot be blamed for putting into practice the noxious free-trade dogma, and availing themselves of labour at the cheapest rate. If this state of matters is to continue, the results may be terrible indeed. The legislature is bound to look to it in time; and, for the general safety, to take heed that the power of labour of the working man, which is his sole capital, is not tampered with too far. We cannot refrain from making another extract from the pages of Mr Wilson, who deprecates agricultural depression upon the express ground of its pernicious effect upon the condition and morals of the labourer. Any fall below 52s. 2d. per quarter of wheat, Mr Wilson estimates as depression. The present averages are under 40s., with no prospect of a rise:—

“It must be obvious that the tendencies experienced by the farmer must immediately influence the labourers he employs. In his successful or advancing years, a good demand exists for labour, and either attracts or retains more to this pursuit than on an average it is capable of maintaining; and thus we find, when the period of diminished cultivation arrives, the strongest evidences of surplus labour, as of surplus stock—distress to a painful degree becomes the lot of the hard-working tiller of the ground, whose only desire is for ‘_leave to toil_;’ but, like his master, he had already toiled too much, and too unprofitably. Ignorant of the real causes of his distress, driven to pinch and want, he becomes too readily the victim of vicious and designing men, and has recourse to many acts of violence and injustice, which, instead of mending his case, can only tend to make it still worse.

“No one can have forgot the terror and dismay which, from this cause, spread through our usually quiet and peaceful rural districts a few years ago, when the agricultural interest was severely depressed; the awful and mysterious midnight fires, which frequently lighted up a whole district at the same moment, consuming the very means of subsistence; anonymous letters followed up by all their threatenings; secret societies to fan and inflame the worst passions; highway robberies and personal attacks; outrages of every description; and all perpetrated by men whose ignorance and misery (from causes over which they had no control) were really much more apt to excite our pity than our blame. But how insensibly all these evidences have vanished with a return to prosperity, although it is impossible that they have not left behind a population of a lower and more debased standard of morals! They are now as quiet as ever, _but the return of distress to their employers will not fail to reduce them once more to a similar condition_.

“It should also be remarked, _that this distress cannot fail naturally to increase the poor-rates_, and the charges of maintaining good order, which must act as a distinct cause of reducing the rents and income of farmer and landlord. In some instances these charges have pressed so heavily at particular times, as to consume the whole rent, and to render land of little or no value, which would otherwise have let at a fair average rate.”

We also learn from Mr Wilson, that extreme cheapness is the reverse of a benefit to the manufacturing operative, inasmuch as it induces habits of luxury which are by no means suited to his welfare. It is not impossible that this view may have led to that salutary reduction of wages, which seems, at the present moment, to be taking place throughout the manufacturing districts of England, and that the diminished supply of money is intended to check that inordinate appetite for cheap loaves and bacon, which is naturally enough engendered by the foreign untaxed supplies pouring in to supersede the production of the home labourer, and to drive him gradually to the workhouse. The member for Westbury says:—

“With the manufacturing labouring classes similar effects occur at opposite periods, when the necessaries of life are pressed to the highest point: they are introduced, _in the years of ruinous cheapness_, to habits of comparative luxury and consumption which their labour cannot, on an average, command; and they, therefore, feel much more the want occasioned by extreme high prices, when they cannot command so much as their labour should produce to them. So the effect is, that _in cheap years his labour commands too much agricultural labour_, and he thus anticipates a part of what should be the consumption of a future day; and in dear years his labour commands too little agricultural labour, and he is obliged to receive proportionably as much too little as before he received too much.”

We are decidedly of opinion that there is much sound sense in the above extract. We never have known a year so characterised by _ruinous cheapness_ of all kinds of provisions as that which has just gone by; the present year holds out no prospect of improvement, but rather indicates a farther decline; and therefore we are not without hope that this important point may be worked out at greater length in the columns of the _Economist_.

The question of wages has led us into a slight digression. Our immediate topic was the dependence of the manufacturers, or at least a large section of them, upon the purchase power of the community; and we have already shown, by the evidence of our opponents, that, in so far as the agriculturists are concerned, their aggregate produce, which constitutes their means, has been diminished by one-third. Now, it must be remembered that _the cost of production_ falls to be deducted altogether from the remaining two-thirds; and that, in the lost third was contained the greater part of the surplusage or profit, which afforded the means of commanding luxuries and superfluities. Of course any diminished power of purchase must tell against the manufacturers, by keeping up their stocks in hand, and lessening the necessity for production. But many of them, failing the home trade, have the chance of a market, though it may be a less profitable one, elsewhere. They can export on consignation if not on order; and late accounts from San Francisco, where bales of British goods are stated to be lying unwarehoused, and exposed to the weather without finding purchasers, show that the export mania may be carried beyond the verge of average recklessness. But the shopkeepers and tradesmen have no such alternative resource. They depend solely upon the consumers of Britain, and any material lowering of the value of home produce reacts upon them in the shape of lessened demand for all articles of luxury in which they deal, and upon the artisan in the form of diminished employment. It may be useful to lay before our readers Mr Spackman’s estimate of the total productions of this country, calculated on the most authentic data _before_ the commencement of the depression.

ANNUAL PRODUCTION OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. Annual value of agricultural productions, £250,000,000 Annual value of manufacturing productions, £177,184,292 From which deduct value of raw material, 50,000,000 ———————————— 127,184,292 Annual value of product of mining interest, 36,121,000 Annual value of profits of shipping interest, 3,637,231 Annual income from Colonies, about 15,000,000 Annual income from foreign trade, 15,000,000 Annual income from fisheries, about 3,000,000 ———————————— Total, £449,942,523 ————————————

This constitutes the whole product of our national wealth. It is the substance of Britain, and from one or other of the above sources does every individual in the land derive his means of support. Out of these all taxation is paid: from these, all professional men, tradesmen, artisans, and dealers, derive their profit and their means. Hitherto, by all wise legislators, the interests of the two leading classes of producers have been considered indissolubly united. The agriculturist supplied the manufacturer with food, and to a considerable extent with raw material; and in return he took annually two-thirds of the manufactured productions. Our exports were exchanged for luxuries, or for articles which could not be produced at home, and the balance in our favour constituted the yearly increment of our wealth. What free trade proposes to do, and, indeed, has partially effected, is the dissolution of the dependence of the two great classes on each other. The manufacturer is invited to seek his food and raw material from the cheapest foreign source; the agriculturist to do the same with respect to foreign manufactures. But the two classes are not upon a par. The agriculturist cannot export any considerable portion of his produce, because he is greatly undersold by the cheap growers of the Continent and America. We observe that, last year, the whole of the exports which can be termed agricultural, were as follows:—

Butter, £210,604 Cheese, 24,912 Wool, sheep and lambs, 535,801 ———————— £771,317

This, it will be seen, is an infinitesimally small portion of our whole products. The manufacturer can export, though not to an extent corresponding to his powers of production. Manufactures have been cheapening year by year, in consequence of augmented foreign competition, and that struggle is likely to go on for years as fiercely as ever. To maintain the export trade in a competition which cannot end otherwise than disastrously, we have been called upon to sacrifice everything. This is the true secret of the lowered tariffs, of the unnatural policy which we have pursued towards our colonies, of the clamour for financial reform which has been so industriously raised. Without speculating as to future operations, which probably will include a direct attack upon the Monarchy and the National Debt, we shall simply draw the attention of our readers to this fact, that, for the sake of increasing the bulk of our exports by the annual value of three, four, or ten millions, (which we have _not achieved_, our exports last year being lower than those of 1845,) we have lowered the annual value of our home productions by ninety-one millions! And the men who have done this call themselves statesmen, and congratulate each other on the results of their singular sagacity!

But, let the manufacturers do what they can, two-thirds of their produce, in round numbers £120,000,000, must still be consumed at home. The shopkeepers are the brokers of this amount of produce. And how is it to be consumed, if the great agricultural interest is to be broken up? No Free-trader alive can answer that question. We perfectly understand the virulence of their organs, and their wrath and rage at the unanswerable case which we have laid before the public in former papers; but no rage or wrath will extricate the Free-traders from their dilemma. They must now explain to the tradesmen and artisans the profitable nature of their scheme. They may take credit, if they please, for increased exportations to the amount of ten millions—let them debit themselves _per contra_ with ninety-one millions of decrease in the power of the home consumers to purchase, and then account to us for the defalcation. We have a high authority behind whom we shall retire for shelter, if again assailed. That redoubted political economist, Mr James Wilson, must in common consistency put forth his ægis before us, and defend, lion-like, his original proposition, “that _individuals_, _communities_, or _countries_, can only be prosperous in proportion to the prosperity of the whole.”

There are other considerations connected with the permanent depreciation of landed property in Great Britain, which are personal to almost every man belonging to the higher and middle classes of society. It has been far too hastily assumed that this is a mere proprietor’s question, or at least one in which the mercantile and professional classes have no direct interest. We propose, towards the conclusion of this article, to examine that matter minutely: in the mean time we shall direct our attention to the official tables of the exports and imports for the last year, which have been thought so favourable to free trade, as almost to justify the celebration of a national jubilee.

In 1848, our exports were short of forty-nine millions; this year they exceed fifty-eight. Such is their declared value; and though we must still hold with Sir Robert Peel, that these tables cannot be entirely relied on for accuracy, we shall consider them simply as they are given us.

In order to estimate the real advantage which the country has derived from the adoption of free trade, it is necessary to revert to the condition in which we stood _before_ the Corn and Navigation Laws were repealed. No one, who reflects upon the state of the Continent in 1848, can be surprised that our exports have been augmented materially by the restoration of tranquillity. That augmentation has nothing whatever to do with free trade. The question which we must now consider is this—have we been materially benefited, or benefited at all, or the reverse, by the substitution of free trade instead of our former system? In order to ascertain that, we must institute a comparison between our situation anterior to free trade, and that which is now made the ground of Ministerial triumph. We shall, therefore, compare the exports and imports of the year 1845, the last protection year, with those of 1849. The fairness of this comparison will not, we presume, be disputed. And first, as to the exports:

From Mr Porter’s Tables, (page 358 of the new edition,) we learn that the real or declared value of British and Irish produce and manufactures, exported in 1845, was £60,111,081. The Government tables, just published, give us the total declared value of the exports for 1849 at £58,848,042. There is, therefore, a deficit of £1,263,039 in 1849, as compared with 1845. Mr M’Gregor, it will be remembered, told us that we were to have _an increase of two millions a-week_: the Government tables show us that we have a decrease of a million and a quarter a-year, comparing the one year with the other! We understand that the whole of the exports are included in the statement just issued. We can form no other conclusion from the large increase of the items inserted, and the small amount of some of them—for example, stockings—which are estimated at £1494 in 1849, in comparison with £39 in 1848; indeed, the words “total declared value,” admit of no other construction. So, then, our exports in the aggregate have not increased, but, on the contrary, have fallen off. We find the declared value of our principal textile exports to be as follows:—

1845. 1849. Cotton manufactures, £19,172,564 £18,834,601 —— yarn, 6,962,626 6,701,920 Linen manufactures, 3,062,006 3,073,903 —— yarn, 1,051,303 737,650 Woollen manufactures, 7,674,672 7,330,475 —— yarn, 1,067,056 1,089,867 ——————————— ——————————— £38,990,227 £37,768,416

The imports, however, are more valuable for our consideration. No idea of their comparative value can be formed from the tables; but the amount is set forth in bulk and number, and we believe our readers will feel astonished at the results. We shall first enumerate those articles which have been brought in to displace British produce.

Animals living, viz.— 1845. 1849. Oxen and bulls, 9,782 21,751 Cows, 6,502 17,921 Calves, 586 13,645 Sheep, 15,846 126,247 Lambs, 112 3,018 Swine and hogs, 1,598 2,653 —————————— —————————— Total animals, 34,426 185,235 Bacon, cwt., 64 384,325 Beef, salted, not corned, 3,540 144,638 — fresh, or slightly salted, 651 5,279 Pork, salted, 1,461 347,352 — fresh, 133 924 Hams, 2,603 9,460 —————————— —————————— Total of meats, cwt., 8,452 891,978 —————————— —————————— Butter, cwt., 240,118 279,462 Cheese, 258,246 390,978 Eggs, number, 75,669,843 97,884,557 —————————— —————————— Corn— Wheat, qrs. 135,670 4,509,626 Barley, 299,314 1,554,860 Oats, 585,793 1,368,673 Rye, 23 256,308 Peas, 82,556 285,487 Beans, 197,919 483,430 Indian corn or maize, 42,295 2,249,571 Buckwheat, 1,105 308 Beer or bigg, 1,749 —————————— —————————— Total grain, qrs., 1,344,675 10,710,012 —————————— —————————— Wheat meal or flour, cwt., 630,255 3,937,219 Barley meal, 224 Oatmeal, 2,224 40,055 Rye meal, 24,031 Pea meal, 300 Bean meal, 2 Indian corn meal, 102,181 Buckwheat meal, 1,095 —————————— —————————— Total flour and meal, cwts., 632,479 4,105,107

These are the free-trade importations which are ruining the British agriculturist. This is the kind of competition which he is called upon to face, with a heavier load of taxation pressing upon him than is known in any other country in the world.

We shall probably be told, however, that this enormous supply of cheap food has enabled the people to extend their consumption of articles of luxury to a large extent. Let us see how that matter stands. We select the common luxuries, which are next to necessaries, for illustration,—and we also add another column, showing the quantities entered for consumption in 1848. By this our readers will be enabled to ascertain the increasing rate of demand for these articles.

1845. 1848. 1849. Coffee, lb., 34,318,095 37,107,279 34,431,074 Tea, 44,183,135 48,735,696 50,024,688 Tobacco and snuff, 26,323,944 27,305,134 27,685,687 Wine, gallons, 6,986,846 6,369,785 6,487,689

It will be observed, that of these articles there is no great additional consumption. We have excepted sugar from the above list, on account of the alteration of the duties since 1845. There was, however, less entered for home consumption in 1849 than in 1848, by 240,067 cwt.

There appears to be nothing else in these tables which calls for special remark. They establish the fact that, under the operation of free trade, we have not yet been able to export as large an amount of manufactures as left this country in the last year of protection; a fact very suggestive, when we regard the enormous increase of the imports. The foreigner is supplanting our agricultural industry, without taking in return an augmented quantity of the produce of our manufacturers.

We cannot, therefore, see that these returns afford us any ground for congratulation. We can draw no good augury for the future from the figures which appear on the import side of the account: on the contrary, they appear to us ominous of calamity and disaster.

The large amount of bullion contained in the vaults of the Bank of England has been triumphantly referred to by the Free-traders as a proof, almost conclusive in itself, that the country is flourishing under the system of unrestricted importations; and the Protectionists have been taunted with the failure of their prediction, that a large import of foreign grain would drain the gold from Britain. These assumptions rest upon a most superficial view of the causes which have combined to restore bullion to the Bank during the last two years; and they argue a total forgetfulness of the calamitous monetary panic of 1847, occasioned by the demand for gold to meet the large importations of foreign grain consequent upon the famine. The ruinous effects of the adverse state of the foreign exchanges upon our commercial and manufacturing classes, in 1847 and 1848, are matters of history; and the unprecedented advice given by the Government to the Bank, to charge _eight per cent_ on its advances, as well as the virtual abrogation of the Bank Act of 1844, are incidents in our mercantile annals too startling to be soon forgotten. It is not difficult, if we keep these things steadily in view, and also take into account the disturbed state of Europe for the last two years, to understand the reason why the returns of bullion have been so great.

The principal sources of the steady accumulation of gold during the last two years, in the face of continued large imports of grain and provisions, may be enumerated as follows:—

1st, The sale of foreign investments by parties in this country, and the stringent enforcement of all moneys due to them abroad.

2d, Forced sales and consignments of British goods at prices ruinously low to the producers.

3d, A considerable reduction in the stock of raw material.

4th, A diminution in the quantity of gold coin required to carry on the internal trade and domestic expenditure of the country. This diminution has been caused by the fall of prices, whereby the same quantity of commodities is represented by less money—by the sudden limitation of the employment of labour—and by the reduced means of the people for ordinary expenditure.

5th, Remittances from foreign countries, caused by the revolutionary movements in most of the Continental states.

6th, The return of the absentees from abroad, whose expenditure has been estimated as high as £20,000,000. Allowing this to be a great exaggeration, and estimating it even at a third of the amount, the result becomes most important.

7th, By other minor causes, amongst which we may particularise the return of sovereigns to this country from Belgium, in consequence of the alteration in the law which regulates the currency there.

When we look to the operation of these causes, some of them being, from their nature, mere temporary expedients, and others arising from political movements over which we had no control, the existence of a large _balance_ of bullion in the coffers of the Bank of England ceases to be an index of the legitimate operations of trade. It is, in fact, nothing more than a balance. Without accurate data as to the quantities of the gold which have been sent into and again exported from this country during the last two years—data which our opponents have no wish whatever to see produced—it would be fallacious to assume that our increased imports of commodities have been met by our extended exports. Indeed, the Government accounts distinctly demonstrate that such is not the case. They prove that our imports are augmenting at a ratio to which the exports bear no manner of proportion; and no man, who will take the pains of considering dispassionately the foregoing tables, can doubt this. How, then, is the balance paid? Not certainly in goods; and if not in goods, in what other shape than money?

The maintenance of the stock of bullion in the Bank depends solely upon the continuance or the recurrence of such unusual accidents as we have enumerated above. We have been large sellers of foreign funds and investments; and we have received from other countries, for the sake of security, important remittances of the precious metals. But until we can restore the balance of trade by raising our exports to the level of the imports, or by restricting the latter, which we are bound to do in every case where large branches of native industry can be affected, we cannot hope permanently to retain the treasure, except at a frightful sacrifice. Further sales and further deposits may combine to keep it here, even for a considerable period; but so soon as confidence is restored abroad, we must look for a steady drain. If our imports shall constantly exceed our exports, which is the tendency of our recent legislation, we shall be forced to correct the balance of trade by drawing upon the accumulations of our more prudent ancestors, who acted on different principles; and so long as the foreign investments of their wealth last us, we may be enabled to continue our spendthrift course, consuming more than we produce. But this must evidently have an end; and, long before that period, the annual diminution of our national means would be felt by all classes of society, and the war between the great bulk of the community and the money power would commence in terrible earnest.

There are, we know, many people who, in spite of all the testimony which has been adduced, and the solemn declaration of the farmers that they cannot carry on cultivation at present prices, refuse to believe that the agricultural interest is virtually doomed to extinction. They say that the farmers are habitual grumblers, and they insinuate that this may be a false alarm. Now, as to grumbling, we suspect it would be impossible to find any body of men, who are exposed to constant fluctuations in the value of their produce, exempt from such a propensity; and we have heard, ere now, something worse than grumbling proceed from the throats of the manufacturers. But we ask those gentlemen whether, supposing America were to carry her avowed purpose into execution, and to stimulate her own population by converting the raw material of cotton into fabrics, instead of sending it four thousand miles across the Atlantic to be spun in Manchester,—and supposing that, in consequence, American calicoes could be offered in the British market at a price lower than the cost of the production of a similar article would be to Mr Cobden or Mr Bright—they imagine that the machinery of Manchester, Rochdale, and Staley Bridge, would still continue in motion? Does not common sense—does not all experience tell us, that a losing trade must be abandoned? And in order to show that agriculture is a losing trade, we need have recourse neither to farmers’ statistics nor to pamphlets, however valuable. We prove it out of the mouths of our adversaries. Here they are:—

SIR ROBERT PEEL, in February 1842, estimated the proper remunerative price of wheat in this country, “allowing for natural oscillations,” as between 54s. and 58s.—on the average, 56s.; and stated, that he, “for one, would never wish to see it vary beyond these two specified values.”

Mr JAMES WILSON, M.P. for Westbury, writing in 1839, stated it as his opinion, that the proper price of wheat was 52s. 2d.; and that, whatever average annual price the farmer received in any year less than that standard price, he made “so much distinct loss.”

Sir CHARLES WOOD, Chancellor of the Exchequer, stated in January 1850, that he did not think “the agriculturist would be ruined with wheat at 44s. a quarter.”

THE AVERAGE PRICE OF WHEAT AT THE HADDINGTON MARKET, ON 8TH FEBRUARY, WAS 34S. 1D.

We know, moreover, that sales of good wheat have been made in Scotland, since that time, at even lower prices.

But is this state of things to continue? We say it must. It is a simple labour and taxation question. You expect the British labourer, who, in every commodity he consumes, pays taxes to Government, to compete with foreign serfs, who pay no taxes at all. You expect the British farmers and landowners to work a worse soil, in a more variable climate, to as much advantage as the foreign grower; and, moreover, to discharge a great portion of the public burdens of the state, to pay their full share of the interest arising from the expenses of every war in which Britain has been engaged since the Revolution of 1688; to support the national church, and to pay an undue proportion for the maintenance of the poor. The cost of cultivating 100 acres of British soil, in Hertfordshire, is estimated at £545—£1 per acre being allowed for rent. The cost of cultivating the same area, in Denmark or the northern states of Germany, is £324, 3s. 4d.—being £220, 16s. 8d., or 40 per cent, cheaper than in England. In this way, if we assume 50s. as the productive cost of British wheat, on an expenditure of £545, for the average here assumed, it will be seen that the expenditure of £324, 3s. 4d. gives 29s. 8d. as the productive cost of German wheat; that the difference in the price of barley between the countries will be as 30s. to 18s.; and of oats, as 20s. to 12s.[11]

This comparison is favourable to our opponents, because, in estimating the cost of British cultivation, a remarkably low rent is assumed; whilst, on the other hand, the wages of labour and other charges are greatly higher in Denmark and North Germany than in Russia, Poland, Wallachia, or Moldavia, from which countries we draw large supplies of grain. What hope is there of a rise of prices? Corn has been brought to its present low ebb by the importation, last year, of enormous supplies from the deficient Continental harvest of 1848. This year we are about to receive the discharge of a cornucopia filled to the very brim, in consequence of an unusually luxuriant crop. We have had experience of a bad year, and we are about to have experience of a good year, heralded by the following significant fact:—“_Bell’s Weekly Messenger_ states, on unquestionable authority, that, a few days ago, one of the principal City houses chartered several vessels at a freight of 6s. per qr., to load wheat at Odessa at 24s. per qr., free on board.” How long is this to go on? Is it proposed, by this precious Ministry of ours, that nothing is to be done until the whole capital of the tenant-farmers is squandered, and the soil has gone out of cultivation? Or are we to understand that nothing whatever will be done, should prices fall lower than now, or even remain at their present level? If the land goes out of cultivation, a large proportion of the whole annual production of Great Britain, giving at present employment to many thousands, must be directly sacrificed; the manufacturers would, in that event, be compelled to close their establishments for the want of a home market; and we should have no revenue left to pay the expenses of the cheapest kind of provisional government, far less the interest of the national debt. Are the Ministry really aware of what they are doing? According to their own admissions—according to the calculations of their supporters—according to the estimates of the leading Free-traders, the tenant-farmers are at this moment cultivating the soil at a prodigious annual loss. No possible reduction of rent can suffice to cure the evil, even if a reduction of rent, which would throw hundreds of thousands out of employment, were no evil in itself. And yet, in this state of matters, the Whigs have thought proper to issue a prosperity address, almost without qualification, in the name of their gracious Sovereign!

We shall now entreat the attention of our readers to a point in which almost every man of ordinary means in this country is vitally interested. For a great many years the benefits to be derived from LIFE INSURANCE, as the best means of providing portions for families, have been acknowledged and largely sought. All classes have participated in these Assurances; and we believe that, in Scotland, it would be difficult to find any considerable number of professional persons, or tradesmen, who do not contribute to the funds of some of the numerous societies. We are not exactly aware what may be the method practised in England, but in Scotland by far the greater portion of the accumulated funds of these societies, amounting to many millions sterling, is lent on the security of the land. The value of the land, as every one knows, must in the aggregate depend on its productive power; and, if present prices are to rule, (and why they should not do so, under present legislation, no mortal man can tell us,) great tracts of the land of this country must go out of cultivation, and consequently be depreciated in value. In that case, how will the creditor fare? There is already a disposition shown, in some quarters, to make the creditor participate in the reduced income of the landed debtor. So hints Lord Drumlanrig, and he is not quite singular in his opinion. This is just repudiation; for could the idea be carried into effect, it would be necessary to apply the same rule to the principal as to the interest, and to provide that the lender of £100 under protection, should not be entitled to claim from his debtor more than £67 under the benign, just, and wholesome operation of free trade. Were this view to be adopted, and the adjustment made on the supposition that rents were only lowered by a third, the family of the man who has insured his life for £100, and regularly paid the premium, would lose rather more than £33. But a reduction of the whole rental of Great Britain and Ireland, to the extent of one-third, would amount to little more than £19,500,000,—a sum utterly insufficient to meet the depreciation, if we adopt the figures of Mr Villiers, or even if we make the largest allowance for exaggeration. The merest tyro in political science knows that land incapable of cultivation is comparatively worthless in price: we have a practical instance of that at present before us in Ireland, where estates have been actually abandoned by their owners. Now, if land at present under tillage should go out of cultivation, on account of the sale of the produce being inadequate to its cost—a catastrophe to which our northern districts are fast approaching—it must become, to all intents and purposes, waste; and the creditor who has lent money on its security will find that, instead of grain-bearing acres, he can take possession of nothing save a wilderness of heather and furze.

Every man, therefore, whose life is insured, has a direct interest in the maintenance of the agricultural prosperity of the country. If _that_ is not maintained, the provision which he has prudently made for his family is placed in extreme jeopardy, and free-trade legislation may utterly neutralise his thrift. Nor let him quarrel with the security, for there is none better. If the land goes down, the tenure of the existence of the Funds is worse than precarious. If the imports of foreign corn and provisions shall augment materially during the next two years, and if “the great experiment,” as it has been called, shall be persevered in so long, the fortunes and apparent destiny of this great country must be materially and radically altered. In any case, there must be a change, and a change of an important description. The unprincipled Currency Act of 1819 has yet to undergo a revision. In spite of _dilettante_ arrangements, and financial hocus-pocus, sedulously invented to blind the eyes of the community to the rottenness and peculation of our present monetary system, that matter must be thoroughly probed and examined by the aid of a clearer light than the lamp of the Jew Ricardo. But, for the present, it would be unwise to complicate the immediate question. Our stand is taken upon the broad basis of justice to native industry. We care not in what form or shape that industry is developed—whether it be applied to agriculture, trade, or manufactures—so long as it is industry seeking but its own, and disclaiming the selfish and sordid end of making an individual profit at the expense, and from the ruin, of other classes of the community. Sometimes, in calmly considering the course of our legislation for the last few years, this reflection irresistibly obtrudes itself—whether men have altogether lost the old feeling of patriotism and devotion, which, more than anything else, placed Britain in her proud position in the scale of the European nations? Certainly, when we read the speeches and harangues of the Free-traders, there is no trace of any such sentiment. They are cosmopolitans, not Britons: and, discarding the landmarks of the Almighty, they seem to hope that the laws of nature will be abrogated, and the doom of Babel reversed, by their own miserable efforts. Their sympathy is of a curious kind. They estimate foreign nations upon a scale founded on the consumption of calico; their notions of liberty undergo a material change, whenever raw cotton or cheap sugar become elements of the calculation of profit. They must have slavery abolished in the West Indian colonies: and yet, having ruined the planters, they are ready to take sugar on the cheapest terms which they dare offer from foreign slave-growing states, and to furnish them with clothing and machinery. Their capital, Manchester, and their principal seats of manufacture, depend for their existence on the continuance of Negro slavery in America, and not a man of these cosmopolitans dare raise his voice to denounce it. Why should he? He can gain popularity cheaper, by retailing gross falsehoods against unreciprocating European states, in every instance where Red Republicanism has reared its head, and been, most fortunately, suppressed. The British labourer has none of his sympathy—he cares not for him in his capacity of a fellow-subject. If the labourer is an agriculturist, our generous philanthropist would rather see him and his family condemned to the union-workhouse, than throw any obstacle in the way of increased serfage in Russia or in Poland. If the labourer is a manufacturer, the cosmopolitan spurns the laws enacted by the gentlemen of England for the protection of the women and children; and, availing himself of a verbal error, claims his right to work human beings, by relays, like cattle in his mill! And these are the men who now regulate the movements, and almost dictate the words, of our British statesmen! In the pages of British history, we meet with instances of degradation which we fain would see cancelled. We know that Charles II. was an acquiescent pensioner of the crown of France, and was content to remain so, at the hazard of the national honour. But we shall search history in vain for so mean a pandering as that which we have seen by Ministers to the interests of an upstart oligarchy—founded on the most perishable basis—scarcely disguising their hostility to the religion and the constitution of the land—trampling on the rights of the poor—denying the claims of Native Industry—and doing their utmost to make these great and glorious kingdoms the habitation of only two classes—one of them being the master-manufacturers, and the other, the operatives, whom they may tread at pleasure under their heel.

_Printed by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh._

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Footnote 1:

_A Letter to the Queen on a Late Court-Martial._ By SAMUEL WARREN, F.R.S. Barrister-at-Law. “I was constrained to appeal unto Cæsar.”

Footnote 2:

“Captain Douglas delivered his defence, before the court-martial which cashiered him, on his thirtieth birth-day.”

Footnote 3:

In justice to Captain Douglas, we must here state, that he clearly proved before the court-martial, that he withheld his statement for two days before the Court of Inquiry, still under the impression that it might be used to damage him in the proceedings before the civil court. That he was justified in doing so is shown by an order from the Horse Guards, 3d July 1809, expressly acknowledging the “right” of any party, before a court of inquiry, “of declining to answer any question, or to make any statement, which might, in his opinion, have proved prejudicial to him in the course of any ulterior inquiry into his conduct.” On the 28th November last also, we may remark that Sir Charles Napier, in an order to the Indian Army, says, in reference to a Court of Inquiry—“If any person happens to be accused of misconduct, he is called on for his statement of the matter in hand, like any other person: he may either appear or refuse to appear, as he pleases, unless ordered by superior authority; and _either answer_ any questions put to him, or _refuse_ to answer.”

If, in the face of these two orders, an officer is to be arraigned before a court-martial for conduct “unbecoming the character of an officer and a gentleman, in having omitted and neglected to make a statement before a Court of Inquiry” which he thought would injure himself, we must say they are a _snare and a delusion for the unwary_, and ought to be expunged forthwith from the Order-books of the army.

Footnote 4:

The only article of war, beside this, which could be supposed, for a moment, to embrace the case, is the 108th, which says, that—“All crimes not capital, and all disorders and neglects which officers and soldiers may be guilty of, _to the prejudice of good order and military discipline_, though not specified in the foregoing cases, or in our Articles of War, shall be taken cognisance of by courts-martial, according to the nature and the degree of the offence.” But it is evident that this article applies to matters of a military nature. If the merely moral delinquency of which Captain Douglas is charged might be described as affecting “good order and military discipline,” there is no act of a man’s life that might not be designated in the same manner.

Footnote 5:

“In the old articles of war the language used was scandalous and infamous conduct, _such as is_ unbecoming the character of an ‘officer and a gentleman.’”

Footnote 6:

Capri.

Footnote 7:

_The Pillars of Hercules; or, a Narrative of Travels in Spain and Morocco in 1848._ By DAVID URQUHART, Esq. M.P. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1850.

_Le Véloce; ou Tanger, Alger, et Tunis._ Par ALEXANDRE DUMAS. Vols. I. and II. Paris: 1849.

Footnote 8:

Alison.

Footnote 9:

Spackman’s _Tables_, p. 185.

Footnote 10:

SPACKMAN’S _Occupations of the People_. _Vide_ Synoptical Table.

Footnote 11:

We are indebted for these calculations to a pamphlet entitled _Observations on the Elements of Taxation, and the Productive Cost of Corn_, by S. SANDARS, which we strongly recommend to the notice of our readers, as one of the most able treatises on the subject which has yet appeared.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. ● Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last chapter. ● Erratum item was corrected. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.