Chapter II: Preface (2)

Poets, divines, and moralists, have asserted this important truth in all ages; but have failed to cure the delusion, though it is at once the cause of the greater part of the miseries of individuals, and of the mischievous errors of governments. Moses guarded against it by new subdivisions of property in every year of jubilee; but the fraternal regulations of the family of Abraham are not conceived to be applicable to the whole family of man, as blended in modern nations; and statesmen and economists now think it better that endless competitions should be encouraged, and indefinite accumulations tolerated, than that industry should be checked by any regard to the personal happiness which might result from moderated and bounded wealth. Hence, he that has health and strength to labour for his own subsistence is not contented unless he can accumulate enough to purchase the labour of others--and he who has enough to purchase the labours of fifty, is miserable if another can purchase the labours of sixty--while he who can purchase the labours of a thousand is still wretched if some other can purchase the labours of two thousand. In the wilds of Africa and America, men suffer every species of misery for want of the impulse created by the reward of labour; whereas the suffering is little less, though varied in kind, from the gradations created in long-established societies by the insatiable cravings of avarice! I am aware that it is hazardous to discuss a subject which probes to the quick the sensibility of pride; yet this is a social problem which merits the consideration of all statesmen who are anxious to promote the happiness of communities; and it ought not to be lost sight of by any future Solon who may be called upon to ameliorate the condition of his country.

At a few yards from the toll-gate of the bridge, on the Western side of the road, stand the work-shops of that eminent, modest, and persevering mechanic, Mr. #Brunel#; a gentleman of the rarest genius, who has effected as much for the Mechanic Arts as any man of his time. The wonderful apparatus in the dock-yard at Portsmouth, by which he cuts blocks for the navy, with a precision and expedition that astonish every beholder, secures him a monument of fame, and eclipses all rivalry. In a small building on the left, I was attracted by the solemn action of a steam-engine of a sixteen-horse or eighty-men power, and was ushered into a room, where it turned, by means of bands, four wheels fringed with fine saws, two of eighteen feet in diameter, and two of them nine feet. These circular saws were used for the purpose of separating veneers, and a more perfect operation was never performed. I beheld planks of mahogany and rose-wood sawed into veneers the sixteenth of an inch thick, with a precision and grandeur of action which really was sublime! The same power at once turned these tremendous saws, and drew their work upon them. A large sheet of veneer, nine or ten feet long by two feet broad, was thus separated in about ten minutes, so even, and so uniform, that it appeared more like a perfect work of Nature than one of human art! The force of these saws may be conceived when it is known that the large ones revolve sixty-five times in a minute; hence, 18 x 3,14 = 56,5 x 65 gives 3672 feet, or two-thirds of a mile in a minute; whereas, if a sawyer's tool give thirty strokes of three feet in a minute, it is but ninety feet, or only the fortieth part of the steady force of Mr. Brunel's saws!

In another building, I was shewn his manufactory of shoes, which, like the other, is full of ingenuity, and, in regard to subdivision of labour, brings this fabric on a level with the oft-admired manufactory of pins. Every step in it is effected by the most elegant and precise machinery; while as each operation is performed by one hand, so each shoe passes through twenty-five hands, who complete from the hide, as supplied by the currier, a hundred pair of strong and well-finished shoes per day. All the details are performed by ingenious applications of the mechanic powers, and all the parts are characterized by precision, uniformity, and accuracy. As each man performs but one step in the process, which implies no knowledge of what is done by those who go before or follow him, so the persons employed are not shoemakers, but wounded soldiers, who are able to learn their respective duties in a few hours. The contract at which these shoes are delivered to government is 6_s._ 6_d._ per pair, being at least 2_s._ less than what was paid previously for an unequal and cobbled article.

While, however, we admire these triumphs of mechanics, and congratulate society on the prospect of enjoying more luxuries at less cost of human labour, it ought not to be forgotten, that the general good in such cases is productive of great partial evils, against which a paternal government ought to provide. No race of workmen being proverbially more industrious than shoemakers, it is altogether unreasonable, that so large a portion of valuable members of society should be injured by improvements which have the ultimate effect of benefitting the whole.

The low price of labour deprives these classes of the power of accumulating any private fund, on which to subsist while they are learning new trades; it seems therefore incumbent on governments to make sufficient provision, from the public stock, for all cases of distress, which arise out of changes of this kind. If governments were benevolent, and vigilant in their benevolence, no members of the community would, under any circumstances, suffer from causes which are productive, or supposed to be productive, of general benefit. I qualify the position by the word _supposed_, because, owing to social monopolies, and to the advantages taken of poverty by the habits of wealth, the mass of the people are less benefited by the introduction of machinery than they ought to be. If a population have been drawn or driven from agriculture to manufactures, and the lands which maintained in humble independance the ancestors of the manufacturers are, in consequence, united into single farms, the manufacturers should not be left without resource, if their trade fails, or their labour is superseded by machinery. Against the ill effects of such changes, paternal governments should provide means of relief, so as to render them as little prejudicial to individuals as possible; and no transitions in the productive value of various labour, should be allowed to destroy the industrious part of the population, or force them to seek subsistence in foreign climes. It being the object of all machinery to save human labour, of course society at large ought to enjoy the benefit; and all who are in danger of suffering for a benefit to be enjoyed by the whole, should be liberally indemnified out of the common stock. Nothing could be more easy than for a board of commissioners or arbitrators to assess on the public such individual losses; and, in cases of great transitions, imposts should be so levied on monopoly as to restore the equilibrium of great branches of industry. For what but for such purposes of equalizing happiness are governments constituted and maintained?

I passed from the premises of Mr. Brunel, to the nearly adjoining ones of Mr. Hodgson, an intelligent maltster and distiller, and the proprietor of the elevated horizontal air-mill, which serves as a landmark for many miles round. But his mill, its elevated shaft, its vanes, and weather or wind boards, curious as they would have been on any other scite, lost their interest on premises once the residence of the illustrious Bolingbroke, and the resort of the philosophers of his day. In ascending the winding flights of its tottering galleries, I could not help wondering at the caprice of events which had converted the dwelling of Bolingbroke into a malting-house and a mill. This house, once sacred to philosophy and poetry, long sanctified by the residence of the noblest genius of his age, honoured by the frequent visits of Pope, and the birthplace of the immortal Essay on Man, is now appropriated to the lowest uses! The house of Bolingbroke become a windmill! The spot on which the Essay on Man was concocted and produced, converted into a distillery of pernicious spirits! Such are the lessons of time! Such are the means by which an eternal agency sets at nought the ephemeral importance of man! But yesterday, this spot was the resort, the hope, and the seat of enjoyment of Bolingbroke, Pope, Swift, Arbuthnot, Thomson, Mallet, and all the contemporary genius of England--yet a few whirls of the earth round the sun, the change of a figure in the date of the year, and the groupe have vanished; while in their place I behold hogs and horses, malt-bags and barrels, stills and machinery!

Alas, said I, to the occupier, and have these things become the representatives of more human genius than England may ever witness on one spot again--have you thus satirized the transitory fate of humanity,--do you thus become a party with the bigotted enemies of that philosophy which was personified in a Bolingbroke and a Pope? No, he rejoined, I love the name and character of Bolingbroke, and I preserve the house as well as I can with religious veneration; I often smoke my pipe in Mr. Pope's parlour, and think of him with due respect as I walk the part of the terrace opposite his room. He then conducted me to this interesting parlour, which is of brown polished oak, with a grate and ornaments of the age of George the First; and before its window stood the portion of the terrace upon which the malt-house had not encroached, with the Thames moving majestically under its wall. I was on holy ground!--I did not take off my shoes--but I doubtless felt what pilgrims feel as they approach the temples of Jerusalem, Mecca, or Jaggernaut! Of all poems, and of all codes of wisdom, I admire the Essay on Man, and its doctrines, the most; and in this room, I exclaimed, it was probably planned, discussed, and written!

Mr. Hodgson assured me, this had always been called "Pope's room," and he had no doubt it was the apartment usually occupied by that great poet, in his visits to his friend Bolingbroke. Other parts of the original house remain, and are occupied and kept in good order. He told me, however, that this is but a wing of the mansion, which extended in Lord Bolingbroke's time to the church-yard, and is now appropriated to the malting-house and its warehouses.

The church itself is a new and elegant structure, but chiefly interesting to me, as containing the vault of the St. John family, in which lies the great Lord, at whose elegant monument, by Roubilliac, I lingered some minutes.

On inquiring for an ancient inhabitant of Battersea, I was introduced to a Mrs. Gilliard, a pleasant and intelligent woman, who told me, she well remembered Lord Bolingbroke; that he used to ride out every day in his chariot, and had a black patch on his cheek, with a large wart over his eye-brows. She was then but a girl, but she was taught to look upon him with veneration as a great man. As, however, he spent little in the place, and gave little away, he was not much regarded by the people of Battersea. I mentioned to her the names of several of his contemporaries, but she recollected none, except that of Mallet, who, she said, she had often seen walking about in the village, while he was visiting at Bolingbroke House. The unassuming dwelling of this gentlewoman affords another proof of the scattered and unrecorded wealth of Britain, in works of superior art. I found in her retired parlour, a fine historical picture, by Vandyke, for which she said she had been offered 500l. but which she refused to part with, not less from a spirit of independence, than from a tasteful estimate of the beauties of the picture.

It was in the warm alluvial plain adjoining this village, the very swamp into which the Britons retreated before Caesar, that the first asparagus was cultivated in England. I could learn no particulars of this circumstance, but such vast quantities are still grown here, that one gardener has fifty acres engaged in the production of this vegetable, and there are above two hundred acres of it within a mile of Battersea church.

Proceeding onward between some ancient walls which bound the grounds of various market gardeners, I was told that here resided the father of Queen Anne Boleyn; but I could not fix any thing with precision on the subject, though it appears from the monument of Queen Elizabeth, in Battersea church, that the Boleyns were related to the St. John's.

A manufacturer of pitch and turpentine politely shewed me over his works. I trembled as I passed among his combustible cauldrons, and not without cause, for the place had recently been burnt to the ground, and it experienced the same fate a second time, but a few weeks after my visit. May we not hope that the applicable powers of heated gas will enable such manufactories to be carried on without the inevitable recurrence of such conflagrations.

This walk brought me to a large distillery, which still bears the name of York House, and was a seat of the Archbishops of York, from the year 1480 to its alienation. Here resided Wolsey, as Archbishop of York--here Henry VIII. first saw Anne Boleyn--and here that scene took place which Shakespeare records in his play of Henry VIII; and which he described truly, because he wrote it for Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn, within fifty years of the event, and must himself have known living witnesses of its verity. Hence it becomes more than probable, that Sir Thomas Boleyn actually resided in the vicinity, and that his daughter was accidentally among the guests at that princely entertainment. I know it is contended, that this interview took place at York House, Whitehall; but Shakespeare makes the King come by Water; and York House, Battersea, was beyond all doubt a residence of Wolsey, and is provided with a creek from the Thames, for the evident purpose of facilitating intercourse by water. Besides, the owner informed me, that a few years since he had pulled down a superb room, called "the ball-room," the pannels of which were curiously painted, and the divisions silvered. He also stated that the room had a dome and a richly ornamented ceiling, and that he once saw an ancient print, representing the first interview of Henry VIII. with Anne Boleyn, in which the room was portrayed exactly like the one that, in modernizing his house, he had found it necessary to destroy.

My polite host took me to his green-house, and shewed me a fine specimen of that wonder of the second degree of organized existence--an American aloe, about to put forth its blossoms. Its vigorous upright stem was twelve feet high, and its head promised a rich profusion of splendid flowers. It is indeed no fable, that this perennial plant grows about a hundred years (a few more or less,) before it blooms; and, after yielding its seed, the stem withers and dies! I could not avoid being struck with the lesson which this centenarian affords to the Pride of man, when, on asking its owner, how he knew that it was a hundred years old, he informed me that "it had been in his possession the half of his life," that is, the mighty period of five-and-twenty years! "That it had previously been the property of the Hon. Mrs. ----," whose name, in spite of her _honour_, is now as lost to fame as she herself is lost to that existence which gave rise to any self-importance! That he "had heard, that, before _her time_, it belonged to Lord ----," a name which I have also forgotten, because it was unnecessary to remember it, the common-place peer having also exhausted the measure of his days since our still-flourishing aloe was in its dawn! "Ah, Sir," said I, "so the aloe has seen out all those who vainly called it their property--They have been swept away, generation after generation, yet it still survives a living commentary on their utter insignificance; and it laughs at the proud assumption of those who called themselves its proprietors, but could not maintain a property in themselves! Just so the same creature of yesterday asserts his property in that ancient globe, which he is destined to enjoy but an hour; and he asserts, that all was made for him, though in another hour he leaves all and becomes again, as to the planet which nurtured him, the nonentity of yesterday.

Pride, the bane of man--I exclaimed, as I passed the gate--what are its claims? Does it arise from fine clothing?--let it be remembered that every part has been stolen from the lowest of Nature's works--that the finest glitter is but a modification of the very surface--and that the garments which this year deck beauty and rank, will in the next be rotting on the dunghill! Does Pride feed on the records of ancestry?--let it visit the family tomb, and examine the bones and dust of that ancestry on which it founds its self-importance! Is Pride derived from titles of distinction?--let it inquire who conferred them--for what--and by what intrigues--and let it be considered, that titles or names confer no inherent quality, and do not alter the nature of any thing to which they are applied! Does an inexperienced girl take a lesson of Pride from her looking-glass?--she may be cured of her foible, by conceiving 10 to be added to the date of the year, or by looking on those ten years older than herself! Is it an office of power which serves as the basis of a lofty and insulting Pride?--let him who fills it remember that he is but the puppet of knaves, or fools; and at best but a mere _servant_ of the public! Does wealth intoxicate the weakness of man?--let it never be forgotten that the possession is distinct from the possessor, and that the most contemptible of the human race have been the accumulators of wealth! Does the name of wisdom, puff up any of its professors?--of such it may truly be said, that their wisdom is foolishness--for none truly wise ever felt, in the researches of man, any ground of arrogance, while pursuits of philosophy serve only to teach humility!--But to what purpose tend such observations? Every man is his own microcosm, and his case, in his own view, is that of no other man! Pride will always find food in self-love, which in spite of exhortations, it will devour with ravenous appetite! If men were immortal, how intolerable would be existence from the arrogance and perpetuity of Pride! While this passion infects and misleads the governors of the world, the only consolation in looking on weak princes, wicked statesmen, unfeeling lawyers, and military butchers, is that, in the course of nature, Death will soon relieve the world from the pest of their influence! And there are few men who would, not prefer death as their own fate, and who would not hail death as a common blessing, rather than live an eternity under the dominion of the weak, the crafty, or the cruel Proud!

The road from York House towards Wandsworth, lay across a Plain of unenclosed fields, which, before the Thames had carved out the boundaries of its course, was, I have no doubt, generally covered with its waters. After the ocean left the land, and the hills became the depositaries of the clouds, how many ages must have elapsed before the beds of rivers were circumscribed as we now see them in England. The water always followed the lowest level, but, being of different quantities at different seasons, vegetation would flourish on the sides occasionally covered, and in time would generate banks; while the stream itself, by carrying off the argillaceous bottom, would add to the depth--the two combined causes producing all the phenomena of bounded rivers.[2] The Thames, after heavy rains, or thaws of snow, still overflows its banks, thereby adding to the vegetable productions of its meadows, which, if not consumed, or carried away by man, would, long ere this, have fixed unalterably the limits of its course. The effect of these inundations in our days, or in past ages, has been to render its banks the fertile scite of all those fine garden-grounds which supply the metropolis so abundantly with fruits and vegetables.

[2] It is difficult to assign limits to the gradual effects
of the circuit of the waters by evaporation and rain on the
creation of land, from the decay of vegetable organizations.
All the rain which falls on such a country as England, from
two to three feet deep per annum, tends to raise the surface
of the soil with the substances generated by it, which we
call solids. How small a portion reaches the rivulets, and
how little returns to the sea! The consideration seems at
least to justify the notion, that the waters desiccate in
spite of the encroachments of currents, and that all things
have proceeded from the silent agency of water.

Some large Distilleries, on the banks of the river, reminded me of the bad policy of governments, which, sacrificing the end to the means, that is, the health and morals of the people to purposes of revenue, tolerates and even encourages manufactories so pernicious. I am aware I may be answered, that the working classes love this poison, and must be gratified; and that in 1813 the duty on British spirits produced L1,636,504. But I reply, first, that it is obligatory on good governments to protect the people against the effects of their vices; and second, that, if the people were not indulged in the ruinous habit of gin-drinking, and destroyed by it in body and mind, they would be able to pay a greater sum to the revenue from productions of a salutary nature. Such are the pernicious effects of drunkenness, and the numerous miseries created by drinking fermented and spirituous liquors, that I have often been tempted to consider it as an atonement for the impostures of Mahomet, that he so forcibly prohibited the practice, and so far succeeded, that a rigid forbearance is observed by his followers, and a Musselman rendered beastly, vicious, and diseased, by habits of drunkenness is never seen. The doctrines of the New Testament and the example of the Founder of our religion inculcate an equal degree of abstemiousness, yet how contrary are the practices of Christians! There seems indeed, in regard to this vice, to be no middle course. Spirituous, and perhaps also fermented, liquors, will be abused, or they must be wholly prohibited; because the stimulus which they create at one time, is sought at another, and the oftener it is repeated, the oftener it is desired and required; till at length it becomes necessary to the sense of well-being, or apparently essential to the power of sustaining the fatigue of life.

In the middle of these fields I passed a handsome house, which appeared to have been empty for a considerable time. On enquiring the cause of a young woman, who passed at the moment; she told me, with an artless countenance, that "_it was haunted_." I smiled, and asked how she knew it. "Ah, Sir," said she, "its nothing to laugh at--every body here-abouts knows it well enough--such strange noises are heard in it, and such lights flit about it at midnight."--Have you seen them? "No, Sir, but I knows those that have, and I'm sure its true." Seeing a labouring man at a distance, I enquired what he knew of the haunted house, when he told me, with a face full of faith, that "he knew gentlefolks laughed at such things, but seeing was believing--that, passing the house one night, he was quite sartain he had seen a light in one of the rooms, and had heard groans---that he got home as well as he could, but all the world should not induce him to pass the house again at that time of the night." "And others," said I, "have perhaps seen the the same?"--"Aye, by goles, have they," exclaimed the fellow with terror in his countenance.--I then told him, I would with pleasure sit up in the house to see these ghosts--"Rather you than I, Sir," said he.--"Nay, nay," said I, "I dare say now for five shillings you would sit up with me!" "Naugh, dang me if I would, nor for the best five pounds in the world, much as I wants money! I don't fear man, but I am naugh match for the devil!--I believes in God, and does nobody any harm; and therefore don't think he'd let the old-one hurt me: but some main wicked ones lived, as I've hard, in that there house, so I'll have naught to do with it; and dang me if any of 'em shall catch me in it after night."

The poor fellow uttered these sentiments with such earnestness, that my risible emotions were converted into pity. I forebore, however, to argue the point with him, for many instances of superstition equally gross had long convinced me that the untaught and half-taught of my countrymen are, in this respect, little superior to the savage tribes, whom we pity, in Tartary, Africa, and America: yet in this instance the man's inference was a consequence of his premises, and his error in these it might have been deemed heretical to expose.

The nursery becomes the means of fixing similar impressions in the families of the most enlightened, and the unformed minds of children propagate in public schools the stories of their nurses. The lowest superstition pervades therefore all ranks, even of a population so comparatively enlightened as that of England; and, being imbibed in infancy and confirmed, through the entire period of youth, no impressions are more strong, or more universally operative. The poet and the priest either encourage the feeling, or do not take any pains to remove it. The agency of spirits and abstract principles, is countenanced by some of the records of religion, and by philosophers and physicians in their reasonings about occult causes, sympathies, coincidencies, and destinies. It is urged in vain, that ghosts and supernatural effects are never seen, except by the weakest or most ignorant of mankind, in ages or states of society when the people might be made to believe any thing; or at times so distant, or places so remote, that the narrators run no risk of detection or exposure. The love of the marvellous, the force of early impressions, the craft of many persons, and the folly of others, will however occasion every village to have its haunted house for ages to come, in spite of the press, and of those discoveries of philosophy which are every day narrowing the sphere of miracles and prodigies.

In considering this subject with the attention that is due to it, it has appeared to me that all the stories of ghosts and super, or, un-natural appearances, may be referred to some of the following causes:

1. To the augmentation produced by fear in any effect on the senses--thus the ear of a terrified man will convert the smallest noise into the report of thunder, or his eye will change the stump of a tree into a monster twenty feet high. As the senses are furnished for protection, their irritability, under the impression of fear, is part of their economy, as the means of preserving our being; but it is absurd to refer back the effects thus augmented, to external causes which might be capable of producing the augmentation. To such an error of the senses and of reasoning, is, however, to be referred half the ghosts and supernaturals of which we hear in village ale-houses, in nurseries and schools.

2. To diseased organs of sensation; as an inflamed eye producing the effect of flashes of light in the dark, or fulness of blood producing a ringing or singing in the ears. Sometimes diseases of the visual organs are accompanied by hallucinations of mind; and persons ill in fevers often see successions of figures and objects flit before their eyes till the disease has been removed. The workings of conscience or nervous affections will also produce diseases of the senses, and such hallucinations of mind as to occasion a person to fancy he sees another, or to be haunted by him. But there is nothing supernatural in all this; it is sometimes a local disease, sometimes an effect of fever, sometimes a nervous affection, and sometimes partial insanity.

3. To natural causes not understood by the parties. Thus, anciently the northern lights were mistaken for armies fighting; meteors and comets for flaming swords, portending destruction or pestilence; the electrified points of swords to the favour of heaven; the motions of the planets to attractive effluvia; and all the effects of the comixture of the gases to benign or diabolical agency, as they happened to produce on the parties good or evil. So in the like manner old houses are generally said to be haunted, owing to the noises which arise from the cracking and yielding of their walls and timbers, and from the protection and easy passage which in the course of time they afford to rats, mice, weasels, &c. whose activity in the night-time affords the foundation of numerous apprehensions and fancies of the credulous.

4. To spontaneous combustions or detonations, which produce occasional lights and noises, or, under unchanged circumstances, recurring lights and noises, chiefly claiming attention in the night. Thus houses shut up and unaired are apt, from the putrefaction of animal and vegetable matter, to generate hydrogen gas, the accidental combustion of which by contact with phosphoric matter, naturally generated in the same situation, will produce those effects of lights and noises heard in empty houses. So Church-yards, Churches in which the dead are buried, Cemeteries, and Ruins of old buildings, must frequently give out large quantities of these gases; and consequently, from exactly similar causes, they are likely to produce the very effects which we witness in the will-o'-the-wisp, or in hydrogen gas when inflamed during calm weather in marshy situations.

5. To the prevailing belief that effects, which cannot readily be accounted for, or which are caused by the contact of the invisible fluids or media always in action in the great laboratory of nature, are produced by the agency of spirits or demons; which belief, concurring with the unknown causes of the effects, and affording a ready solution of difficulties, prevents further inquiry, silences reasoning, and tends in consequence to sustain the prevailing errors and superstitions.

Such are the general causes of ghosts, spirits, charms, miracles, and supernatural appearances. They all arise either from hallucinations of the mind or senses; from the mutual action of the natural, though invisible, powers of gaseous and ethereal fluids; from the delusions of ignorance, implicit faith, or the absence of all reasoning.

While occupied in these speculations, I arrived at the entrance of the populous, industrious, and opulent village of Wandsworth. A reader in the highlands of Scotland, in the mountains of Wales, or the wilds of Connaught, will startle when he hears of a village containing 5,644 inhabitants, and 2,020 houses, in which 620 families are returned as engaged in trade and manufactures. Yet, such are the overgrown villages round our overgrown metropolis. Even in this vicinity, Chelsea contains 18,262 inhabitants; Fulham 5,903; Clapham 5,083; Hammersmith 7,393; Kensington 10,886; Brentford, New and Old, 7,094; and Richmond 5,219. This village of Wandsworth, in truth, is of the size of most second-rate towns in distant counties, its main street, of compact and well-built houses, being half a mile in length, with several collateral ones a quarter of a mile. It also contains, or has in its vicinity, many considerable manufactories, which flourished exceedingly before the silly vanity of ambition and military parade led a nation of merchants to endeavour to dictate to their foreign customers, and forced them to subsist without their commodities! The manufactories of Wandsworth are created or greatly aided by the pure stream of the Wandle, and by the Surry iron rail-way, which runs from Croydon to a spacious and busy wharf, on the Thames at this place. They consist of dyers, calico-printers, oil-mills, iron-founderies, vinegar-works, breweries, and distilleries. I found leisure to inspect the two or three which were employed; and I felt renewed delight on witnessing at this place the economy of horse-labour on the iron rail-way. Yet a heavy sigh escaped me, as I thought of the inconceivable millions which have been spent about Malta, four or five of which might have been the means of extending _double lines of iron rail-ways_ from London to Edinburgh, Glasgow, Holyhead, Milford, Falmouth, Yarmouth, Dover and Portsmouth! A reward of a single thousand would have supplied coaches, and other vehicles of various degrees of speed, with the best tackle for readily turning out; and we might, ere this, have witnessed our mail coaches running at the rate of ten miles an hour, drawn by a single horse, or impelled fifteen miles by Blenkinsop's steam-engine! Such would have been a legitimate motive for overstepping the income of a nation, and the completion of so great and useful a work would have afforded _rational_ grounds for public triumph in general jubilees!

Wandsworth having been the once-famed scene of those humorous popular elections of a mayor, or member for #Garrat#; and the subject serving to illustrate the manners of the times, and abounding in original features of character, I collected among some of its elder inhabitants a variety of amusing facts and documents, relative to the eccentric candidates and their elections.

Southward of Wandsworth, a road extends nearly two miles to the village of Lower Tooting, and nearly midway are a few houses, or hamlet, by the side of a small common, called _Garrat_, from which the road itself is called _Garrat Lane_. Various encroachments on this common led to an association of the neighbours about three-score years since, when they chose a president, or _mayor_, to protect their rights; and the time of their first election, being the period of a new parliament, it was agreed that the mayor should be re-chosen after every general election. Some facetious members of the club gave, in a few years, local notoriety to this election; and, when party spirit ran high in the days of _Wilkes and Liberty_, it was easy to create an appetite for a burlesque election among the lower orders of the metropolis. The publicans at Wandsworth, Tooting, Battersea, Clapham, and Vauxhall, made a purse to give it character; and Mr. Foote rendered its interest universal, by calling one of his inimitable farces, "_the Mayor of Garrat_." I have indeed been told, that Foote, Garrick, and Wilkes, wrote some of the candidates' addresses, for the purpose of instructing the people in the corruptions which attend elections to the legislature, and of producing those reforms by means of ridicule and shame, which are vainly expected from solemn appeals of argument and patriotism.

Not being able to find the members for Garrat in Beatson's Political Index, or in any of the Court Calendars, I am obliged to depend on tradition for information in regard to the early history of this famous borough. The first mayor of whom I could hear was called Sir John Harper. He filled the seat during two parliaments, and was, it appears, a man of wit, for, on a dead cat being thrown at him on the hustings, and a bye-stander exclaiming that it stunk worse than a fox, Sir John vociferated, "that's no wonder, for you see it's a _poll_-cat." This noted baronet was, in the metropolis, a retailer of brick-dust; and, his Garrat honours being supposed to be a means of improving his trade and the condition of his ass, many characters in similar occupations were led to aspire to the same distinctions.

He was succeeded by Sir Jeffrey Dunstan, who was returned for three parliaments, and was the most popular candidate that ever appeared on the Garrat hustings. His occupation was that of buying #OLD WIGS#, once an article of trade like that in old clothes, but become obsolete since the full-bottomed and full-dressed wigs of both sexes went out of fashion. Sir Jeffrey usually carried his wig-bag over his shoulder, and, to avoid the charge of vagrancy, vociferated, as he passed along the streets, "old wigs;" but, having a person like Esop, and a countenance and manner marked by irresistible humour, he never appeared without a train of boys, and curious persons, whom he entertained by his sallies of wit, shrewd sayings, and smart repartees; and from whom, without begging, he collected sufficient to maintain his dignity of mayor and knight. He was no respecter of persons, and was so severe in his jokes on the corruptions and compromises of power, that, under the iron regime of Pitt and Dundas, when freedom was treason, and truth was blasphemy, this political punch, or street-jester, was prosecuted for using what were then called seditious expressions; and, as a caricature on the times, which ought never to be forgotten, he was in 1793 tried, convicted, and imprisoned! In consequence of this affair, and some charges of dishonesty, he lost his popularity, and, at the general election for 1796, was ousted by Sir Harry Dimsdale, muffin-seller, a man as much deformed as himself. Sir Jeffrey could not long survive his fall; but, in death as in life, he proved a satire on the vices of the proud, for in 1797 he died, like Alexander the Great, and many other heroes renowned in the historic page--of suffocation from excessive drinking!

Sir Harry Dimsdale dying also before the next general election, and no candidate starting of sufficient originality of character, and, what was still more fatal, the victuallers having failed to raise a #PUBLIC PURSE#, which was as stimulating a bait to the _independent_ candidates for Garrat, as it is to the _independent_ candidates for a certain assembly; the borough of Garrat has since remained vacant, and the populace have been without a _professed_ political buffoon.

None but those who have seen a London mob on any great holiday can form a just idea of these elections. On several occasions, a hundred thousand persons, half of them in carts, in hackney-coaches, and on horse and ass-back, covered the various roads from London, and choaked up all the approaches to the place of election. At the two last elections, I was told, that the road within a mile of Wandsworth was so blocked up by vehicles, that none could move backward or forward during many hours; and that the candidates, dressed like chimney-sweepers on May-day, or in the mock-fashion of the period, were brought to the hustings in the carriages of peers, drawn by six horses, the owners themselves condescending to become their drivers!

Whether the effect of inculcating useful principles by means of these mock politicians, was compensated by the ridicule thrown on the sacred exertions of patriotism, may perhaps be doubted. These elections served, however, to keep alive the feelings of the people on public questions, and tended to increase those discussions and enquiries which support the arterial circulation of the body politic. The deadly plague of despotism, and the equally fatal disease of ministerial corruption, find victims of their influence only among people who are devoid of moral energies and public spirit, and whose stagnant and torpid condition generates morbid dispositions that invite, rather than resist, the attacks of any public enemy.

I am a friend, therefore, on principle, to the bustle and tumult of popular elections. They are the flint and steel, the animating friction, the galvanic energy, of society. Virtue alone can face them. Vice dreads them as it dreads the light. With uncourtly hands, they tear the mask from Hypocrisy; they arraign at the bar of public opinion, political Culprits, amenable to no other tribunal; and they probe to the quick, the seared consciences of Peculators and Oppressors. If the sycophants of courts, and the sophistical apologists of arbitrary power, should craftily urge that the people are sometimes misled by fraud and falsehood, and therefore unable to distinguish between patriots and plunderers, we should not forget that occasional errors are misfortunes which do not abrogate general rights; and that popular elections are never adopted in well-trained despotisms, as part of the machinery of the state, calculated to subjugate the bodies and minds of their slaves. Do we hear of the suffrages of the people among the Turks, the Russians, the Moors, or the Algerines? Rather, as the means of eliciting the public voice, and of exciting enquiry, are they not of all despotisms, the bane; and of all usurpations and abuses of power, the terror; while, by generating that public spirit which is the animating soul of freedom, they serve as tests of dauntless public virtue, afford the last and the best hope of patriotism, and constitute national schools, in which impressive Lessons of Liberty are taught to the whole people.

In my walk towards Garrat, my attention was attracted by a pretty mansion, which pleased my eye, though the monotonous blows of its adjoining oil-mill annoyed my ear. The owner, Mr. Were, politely exhibited its details; and more mechanical ingenuity than is here displayed could not well be applied to aid the simple operation of extracting oil from linseed. A magnificent water-wheel, of thirty feet, turns a main shaft, which gives motion to a pair of vertical stones, raises the driving-beams, and turns a band which carries the seed, in small buckets, from the floor to the hopper. The shock on the entire nervous system, produced by the noise of the driving-beams as they fall on the wedges, is not to be described. The sense of hearing for the time is wholly destroyed, and the powers of voice and articulation are vainly exerted. The noise is oppressive, though a rebound, comparatively tuneful, takes place, till the wedge is driven home; but afterwards, the blows fall dead, and produce a painful jarr on the nerves, which affected me for several hours with a sense of general lassitude. The gardens of this sensible manufacturer evince considerable taste, and produce that agreeable effect which always results from the combination of comfort, rural beauty, and useful industry. A manufactory in a picturesque situation, surrounded by the usual characters of opulence, is one of the most pleasing features of an English landscape, combining whatever we most admire in nature and art, with moral associations, that produce in the mind a sentiment of perfect satisfaction.

Nearer to Wandsworth, Homer would have found imagery by which to improve his description of the abode of Vulcan; for how feeble must have been the objects of this nature, which a poet could view on the shores of the Mediterranean, compared with the gigantic machinery of an English iron-foundry. The application of the expansive powers of nature, as a moving agent in the steam-engine; the means of generating and concentrating heat in our furnaces; the melting of iron; the casting of the fluid; the colossal powers of the welding hammer, the head of which, though a ton in weight, gives a stroke per second; the power of shears, which cut thick bars of iron like threads; the drawing out of iron hoops by means of rollers, and the boring of cannon, are the every-day business of one of these manufactories, all of which I saw going on at the same instant, without bustle or effort. Iron, the most universal, the most durable, and most economical of the metals, is thus made subservient to the wants of man, at a time when his improvidence in the use of timber has rendered some substitute necessary. New applications are daily made of it, and a new face is, by its means, promised to society. Used as sleepers and bond-pieces in the brick-work of houses, it will extend their duration through many ages; and, as joists, rafters, and plates for roofs, it will defy the assaults of storms and the ravages of fire. As railing for gardens, parks, and other enclosures, it combines elegance with security. As pipes for gas, or for water, it is justly preferred to lead or wood. As frames for windows, it unites lightness with durability. As bedsteads, it excludes vermin; and, as square frames for bridge-pieces, it presents the triumph of human art. Yet these are only a few of its modern applications, for they are illimitable, and a description of the manufactories of Birmingham and Sheffield, of which iron is the staple, would fill a volume. On my remarking to the proprietor of this foundry, that the men mingled themselves with the fire like salamanders; he told me, that, to supply the excessive evaporation, some of them found it necessary to drink eight or ten pots of porter per day. Many of them presented in their brawny arms, which were rendered so by the constant exertion of those limbs; and in their bronzed countenances, caused by the action of the heat and the effluvia, striking pictures of true sons of Vulcan; and, except in occasional accidents, they enjoyed, I was told, general good health, and often attained a hearty old age.

In regard to these manufactories, I learnt, that the application of machinery in them saves two-thirds of the manual labour; or, in other words, that a triple effect is produced by the union of a given number of hands, with appropriate machinery. In this we rejoice; but, from our past experience of the effects, I ask emphatically, #Why#? If in this age the same necessaries and luxuries are produced by one-third of the manual labour which was required in the age of Elizabeth, it is evident that the English of this day ought to subsist as well by working not more than half as much as in the days of Elizabeth, or our boasted machinery is useless. By making the wind, the water, the elastic fluids, and new combinations of the mechanical powers, perform our labour, we compel Nature to work for us; and, though in a northern latitude, we place ourselves in the very situation of the inhabitants of the Tropics, where the ever-bountiful climate feeds the people with slight exertions of manual labour. Yet, is such the effect? Enquire of our labouring classes, who toil for inadequate subsistence from twelve to fifteen hours per day! Does not some malevolent influence then deprive us of the advantages of our ingenuity? Doubtless it is so; and the #Demon of War#, who has so long hovered over this deluded nation, and whose calls for blood and treasure are so insatiable, is the sufficient cause. But on this subject the voice of reason and humanity have been raised so often, that it seems to be as useless as the appeals of a mother, standing on the seashore, to the tempest which is destroying her children in a visible wreck. Infatuated nations are like exhilarated dram-drinkers; they ridicule and despise warning, till a palsy or apoplexy renders them a proverb among their neighbours, and brings on a death-bed, but unavailing, repentance!

I had not time to view any of the other ingenious and valuable manufactories of this place; but, perceiving that the manufacturers formed a numerous and opulent class of inhabitants, and that there were many elegant mansions of families living on their fortunes, besides many respectable shop-keepers, I was induced to seek information in regard to the state of society and mutual intercourse in a country-town possessing such capabilities. On enquiring at the principal Inn, I found that a subscription-assembly was held six times in the year, at an expence of three guineas, but it had only thirty-two subscribers, though within a mile there then were a hundred families that kept their own carriages, and another hundred qualified by habit and manners to give and receive pleasure at such an entertainment. I learnt, however, that this solitary establishment, the only means by which the inhabitants can practically feel that they do not live in a wilderness, is poisoned at its source by a strict ballot, which places the privilege of admission in the discretion of any two or three narrow-minded and impertinent persons, who may have become directors. Of course, no man of sense or delicacy would ever expose himself and family to the insult of being black-balled; and these institutions, which are calculated to promote general happiness, become, in consequence, a source of mortification to the majority of a neighbourhood, and of petty and inadequate gratification to those whose inanity of character, or obsequiousness of manners, have rendered them tolerable to the family, or small junto, who usually take it upon themselves to govern such assemblies.

Some observations on this subject merit record, because happiness is the end of life, the proper business of study, and the true object of all disquisition; and there is no point in which families are rendered more uncomfortable, and in which the spirit of caprice and tyranny is more successfully exerted, than in the institution and conduct of country assemblies; while, at the same time, nothing would be easier than to render them a means of happiness to all who are capable of it. It is evident, that many persons, by habit and education, are ill-adapted to take part in the polite amusements of an assembly; that some men are odious by their vices; and that many females of equivocal character ought not to be allowed to mix with the virtuous part of the sex; consequently, every inhabitant of a district ought not to be admitted to join in amusements which imply the contact of dancing and cards. It is also too certain, that a contemptible and unworthy pride often accompanies the wealth which assumes an ascendancy in assemblies; that scandal and falsehood more commonly govern the decisions of society than charity and truth; and that the base passions of envy and malice mix themselves more or less with all human conduct. What then is the security against the intrusion of the vicious? A ballot, in which one black-ball in ten, or sometimes two or three among the whole body of the subscribers, operate as an exclusion, that is to say, are a means of setting a mark on a family, and placing it at issue with a considerable portion of the neighbourhood! What a pernicious engine for the gratification of pride, scandal, envy, and malice! What an inquisition of the few bad by which to torment the many good! What a dagger in the hands of tolerated assassins! In short, what a perversion of reason, what a disease in the very bosom of society, what a lurking demon stationed at the threshold of every happy family, to blast and thwart the modest ambition of its amiable members! Doubtless, in and near Wandsworth, a mistaken constitution in the system of ballot renders a hundred families uncomfortable, while the thirty-two elect are not benefitted. The principle, therefore, is erroneous, and exclusion should result only from a _majority_ of black-balls. For the honour of our nature we may presume, that a majority of men are not governed by bad passions; at least, our only security consists in its not being so: it may, therefore, be presumed, that a majority of black-balls would be fair evidence of a fault in the candidate rather than in the electors. Perhaps, a simple majority ought to be decisive; but, to guard against the intrigues of bad passions, the decision would be more just if two-thirds were required to be black-balls; for it may be safely trusted, that no third of a respectable assembly will ever vote for the admission of a character truly objectionable.

"But am I to mix," exclaims one of my starch female readers, "with members whom I do not like, or give up my subscription to the assembly." "Unquestionably, Madam; your dislikes ought not to be gratified--your hatred and prejudice are odious vices, which you ought to keep at home, where you can invite whomsoever you like, and reject those whom you dislike; but a public assembly is the property of society, whose happiness ought to be consulted in its arrangements, and which ought to be governed by general rules of morals and justice, and not by the bad passions of the unworthy few."