Chapter III: Father and Son (4)

"An open rebellion has been crushed at its first outbreak. A
number of its leaders and organisers are in prison, and the
Government, with a forbearance and adhesion to routine ideas
which verges on the simple, and almost approaches the
sublime, intrusts their punishment to the slow and uncertain
processes of the law--to the courage of Irish juries, and the
integrity of Irish witnesses. The Government allows rebels
who have appealed to arms, and been worsted in the conflict,
to retreat behind the shelter of the law. It is content to
meet an armament with an indictment; nay, more, it is content
to submit this indictment to the judgment of men, half of
whom are in the ranks of the rebel army, and the other half
in its power. It may have been well to try this hazardous
experiment; but the result of it could not long be doubtful.
Accordingly, we find that convictions cannot be obtained.
Rebels, whose guilt is as clear as the day, are dismissed
from the dock because juries will not agree upon a
verdict--and are to be kept safe till March 1849, then to be
let loose to recommence their work of mischief with all the
increased audacity which impunity cannot fail to generate.
They have taken arms against the Government, and the
Government will have proved impotent to punish them.

"We are not surprised that Irish juries will not convict
Irish rebels. It is too much to expect that they should do
so, even when fully convinced of, and indignant at, their
guilt. It would be almost too much to ask from Englishmen.
Government have a right to call upon jurors to do their duty,
under ordinary circumstances and in ordinary times. In like
manner, Government has a right to call upon all citizens to
come forward, and act as special constables, in all cases of
civil commotion. But it has no right to send them forth,
unexercised and unarmed, to encounter an organised and
disciplined force, provided with musket and artillery: that
is the business of regular troops. In like manner, Government
has no right to expect jurors to act at the hazard of their
lives and property. The law never contemplated that serving
on a jury should be an office of danger. When it becomes
such, other agencies must be brought into operation.

"It will not suffice to the Government to have acted with
such skill and spirit as to have rendered abortive a
formidable and organised rebellion. It must _crush_ the
rebellious spirit and the rebellious power. This can never be
done by the means of juries. Punishment, to be effectual,
must fall with unerring certainty on every one concerned in
the crime. They must be made to feel that no legal chicanery,
no illegitimate sympathy, can avail to save them. The British
nation, we are sure, will never endure that men who have been
guilty of such crimes as the Irish felons should escape
punishment, and be again let loose on society, to mock and
gibe at the impotence of power. Any termination of the crisis
would be preferable to one so fatal and
disgraceful."--_Economist_, Sept. 12, 1848.

These articles, emanating from such sources, induce us to hope that the long-protracted distractions of Ireland are about to be brought to a close; and that, after having been for above half a century the battle-field of English faction, or cursed with Liberal English sympathy, and its inevitable offspring, Irish agitation and mendacity--the real secret of its sufferings has been brought to light; and that, by being governed in a manner suitable to its character and circumstances, it will at length take its place among the really civilised nations of the world, and become fit for the exercise of those privileges which, prematurely conceded, have proved its ruin.

One circumstance induces the hope that this anticipation maybe realised, and that is, the highly honourable part which the Irish enrolled in the police have taken in the late disturbances; the fidelity of all the Irish in the Queen's service to their colours; and the general pacific conduct which has, with a few exceptions, been observed by the numerous Hibernians settled in Great Britain during the late disturbances. The conduct of the Irish police, in particular, has been in all respects admirable; and it is net going too far to assert, that to their zeal, activity, and gallantry, the almost bloodless suppression of the insurrection is mainly to be ascribed. The British army does not boast a more courageous body of men than the Irishmen in its ranks; and it is well known that, after a time, they form the best officers of a superior kind for all the police establishments in the kingdom. Although the Irish in our great towns are often a very great burden, especially when they first come over, from the vast number of them who are in a state of mendicity, and cannot at first get into any regular employment, yet when they do obtain it, they prove hardworking and industrious, and do not exhibit a greater proportion of crime than the native British with whom they are surrounded. The Irish quickness need be told to none who have witnessed the running fire of repartee they keep up from the fields with travellers, how rapid soever, on the road; their genius is known to all who are familiar with the works of Swift and Goldsmith, of Burke and Berkeley. Of one thing only at present _they are incapable, and that is, self-government_. One curse, and one curse only, has hitherto blasted all their efforts at improvement, and that is, the abuse of freedom. One thing, and one thing only, is required to set them right, and that is, the strong rule suited to national pupilage. One thing, and one thing only, is required to complete their ruin, and that is, repeal and independence. An infallible test will tell us when they have become prepared for self-government, and that is, when they have ceased to hate the Saxon--when they adopt his industry, imitate his habits, and emulate his virtues.

* * * * *

We have spoken of the French and the Irish, and contrasted, not without some degree of pride, their present miserable and distracted state with the steady and pacific condition of Great Britain, during a convulsion which has shaken the civilised world to its foundation. But let it not be supposed that France and Ireland alone have grievances which require redress, erroneous policy which stands in need of rectification. England has its full share of suffering, and more than its deserved share of absurd and pernicious legislation. But it is the glory of this country that we can rectify these evils by the force of argument steadily applied, and facts sedulously brought forward, without invoking the destructive aid of popular passions or urban revolutions. We want neither Red Republicans nor Tipperary Boys to fight our battles; we neither desire to be intrenched behind Parisian barricades nor Irish non-convicting juries; we neither want the aid of Chartist clubs, with their arsenals of rifles, nor Anti-corn-law Leagues, with their coffers of gold. We appeal to the common sense and experienced suffering of our countrymen--to the intellect and sense of justice of our legislators; and we have not a doubt of ultimate success in the greatest social conflict in which British industry has ever been engaged.

We need not say that we allude to the CURRENCY--that question of questions, in comparison of which all others sink into insignificance; which is of more importance, even, than an adequate supply of food for the nation; and without the proper understanding of which all attempts to assuage misery or produce prosperity, to avert disaster or induce happiness, to maintain the national credit or uphold the national independence, must ere long prove nugatory. We say, and say advisedly, that this question is of far more importance than the raising of food for the nation; for if their industry is adequately remunerated, and commercial catastrophes are averted from the realm, the people will find food for themselves either in this or foreign states. Experience has taught us that we can import _twelve millions_ of grain, a full fifth of the national subsistence, in a single year. But if the currency is not put upon a proper footing, the _means of purchasing this grain are taken from the people_--their industry is blasted, their labour meets with no reward--and the most numerous and important class in the community come to present the deplorable spectacle of industrious worth perishing of hunger, or worn out by suffering, in the midst of accumulated stores of home-grown or foreign subsistence.

The two grand evils of the present monetary system are, that the currency provided for the nation is _inadequate_ in point of amount, and _fluctuating_ in point of stability.

That it is inadequate in point of amount is easily proved. In the undermentioned years, the aggregate of notes in circulation in England and Wales, without Scotland and Ireland, was as follows[16]:--

Bank of England and Population,
Provincial Banks. England and Wales.

1814, L47,501,000 13,200,000
1815, 46,272,650 13,420,000
1816, 42,109,620 13,640,000
1817, 43,291,901 13,860,000
1818, 48,278,070 14,100,000

Including the Scotch and Irish notes, at that period about L12,000,000, the notes in circulation were about L60,000,000, and the inhabitants of Great Britain 14,000,000; of the two islands about 19,000,000--or about L3, 4s. a head.

In the year 1848, thirty years afterwards, when the population of the empire had risen to 29,000,000, the exports had tripled, and the imports and shipping had on an average more than doubled, the supply of paper issued to the nation stood thus:--

NOTES.

|Aug.14, 1847|Aug.12, 1848|Increase|Decrease | Population |
+------------+------------+--------+---------+------------+
Bank of England, |L18,784,890 |L18,710,728 | -- | L74,162 | England |
Private Banks, | 4,258,380 | 3,520,990 | -- | 737,390 | and Wales. |
Joint Stock | | | | | 19,500,000 |
Banks, | 2,991,351 | 2,479,951 | -- | 511,400 | |
+------------+------------+--------+---------+ Great |
Total in England,| 26,034,621 | 24,711,669 | -- |1,322,952| Britain and|
... Scotland,| 3,455,651 | 3,035,903 | -- | 419,748| Ireland. |
... Ireland, | 5,097,215 | 4,313,304 | -- | 783,911| 29,500,000 |
-----------------+------------+------------+--------+---------+ |
United Kingdom, | 34,587,487 | 32,060,876 | -- |2,526,611| |

Thus showing a decrease of L1,322,952 in the circulation of
notes in England, and a decrease of L2,526,611 in the
circulation of the United Kingdom, when compared with the
corresponding period last year.[17]--_Times_, Aug. 29, 1848.

Thus, in the last thirty years, the population of Great Britain and Ireland has _increased_ from 19,000,000 to 29,500,000; while its currency in paper has _decreased_ from L60,000,000 to L32,000,000. Above fifty per cent has been added to the people, and above a hundred per cent to their transactions, and the currency by which they are to be carried on has been contracted fifty per cent. Thirty years ago, the paper currency was L3, 5s. a head; now it is not above L1, 5s. a head! And our statesmen express surprise at the distress which prevails, and the extreme difficulty experienced in collecting the revenue! It is no wonder, in such a state of matters, that it is now more difficult to collect L52,000,000 from 29,000,000 of people, than in 1814 it was to collect L72,000,000 from 18,000,000.

The circulation, it is particularly to be observed, is _decreasing_ every year. It was, in August 1848, no less than L2,500,000 _less_ than it was in August 1847, though that was the August _between_ the crisis of April and the crisis of October of that year. And this prodigious and progressively increasing contraction of the currency, and consequent drying up of credit and blasting of industry, is taking place at the precise time when the very legislators who have produced it have landed the nation in the expenditure, in three years, of L150,000,000 on domestic railways, independent of a vast and increasing import trade, which is constantly draining more and more of our metallic resources out of the country! Need it be wondered at that money is so tight, and that railway stock in particular exhibits, week after week, a progressive and most alarming decline.

But, say the bullionists, if we have taken away one-half of your paper, we have given you double the former command of sovereigns; and gold is far better than paper, because it is of universal and permanent value. There can be no doubt that the gold and silver coinage at the Mint has been very much augmented since paper was so much withdrawn; and the amount in circulation now probably varies in ordinary times from L40,000,000 to L45,000,000. There can be as little doubt that the circulation, on its present basis, is capable of fostering and permitting the most unlimited amount of speculations; for absurd adventures never were so rife in the history of England, not even in the days of the South Sea Company, as in 1845, the year which immediately followed Sir R. Peel's new currency measures, by which these dangers were to be for ever guarded against. It is no wonder it was so; for the bill of 1844 aggravates speculation as much in periods of prosperity, as it augments distress and pinches credit in times of adversity. By compelling the Bank of England, and all other banks, to hold constantly in their coffers a vast amount of treasure, which must be issued at a fixed price, it leaves them no resource for defraying its charges but pushing business, and getting out their notes to the uttermost. That was the real secret of the lowering of the Bank of England's discounts to 3 and 2-1/2 per cent in 1845, and of the enormous gambling speculations of that year, from the effects of which the nation is still so severely suffering.

But as gold is made, under the new system, the basis of the circulation beyond the L32,000,000 allowed to be issued in the United Kingdom on securities, what provision does it make for keeping the gold thus constituted the _sole basis of two-thirds of the currency within the country_? Not only is no such provision made, but _every imaginable facility is given for its exportation_. Under the free-trade system, our imports are constantly increasing in a most extraordinary ratio, and our exports constantly diminishing. Since 1844, our imports have _swelled_ from L75,000,000 to L90,000,000, while our exports have _decreased_ from L60,000,000 to L58,000,000, of which only L51,000,000 are British and Irish exports and manufactures.[18] How is the balance paid, or to be paid? _In cash_: and that is the preparation which our legislators have made for keeping the gold, the life-blood of industry and the basis of two-thirds of the circulation, in the country. They have established a system of trade which, by inducing a large and constant importation of food, for which scarcely any thing but gold will be taken, induces a _constant tendency of the precious metals outwards_. With the right hand they render the currency and credit beyond L32,000,000 entirely dependent on keeping the gold in the country, and with the left hand _they send it headlong out of the country to buy grain_. No less than L33,000,000 were sent out in this way to buy grain in fifteen months during and immediately preceding the year 1847. They do this at the very time when, under bills which themselves have passed, and the railways which themselves have encouraged, L150,000,000 was in the next three years to be expended on the extra work of railways! Is it surprising that, under such a system, half the wealth of our manufacturing towns has disappeared in two years; that distress to an unheard-of extent prevails every where; and that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has been obliged to borrow L10,000,000, in the last and present session of Parliament, during general peace?

Let it not be supposed this evil has passed away. It is in full vigour at the present moment. It will never pass away as long as _free trade and a fettered currency_ coexist in this country. The disastrous fact has been revealed by the publication of the Board of Trade returns, that while, during the first six months of this year, our imports have undergone little diminution, our exports have sunk L4,000,000 below the corresponding months in last year. In May alone, the decrease was L1,122,000; in April, L1,467,000.[19] Beyond all doubt our exports, this year, of British produce and manufactures, will sink to L45,000,000, while our imports will reach at least L85,000,000! How is the balance paid? IN SPECIE! And still the monetary laws remain the same, and for every five sovereigns above L32,000,000 lent out, a note must be drawn in! It may be doubted whether a system so utterly absurd and ruinous ever was established in any nation, or persevered in with such obstinacy after its pernicious effects had been ascertained by experience.

The manner in which these disastrous effects resulted, necessarily and immediately, from the combined operation of the bills of 1819 and 1844, is thus clearly and justly stated by Mr Salt, in his late admirable letter to Sir R. Peel on the subject.

"The potato crop failed, and an importation of food became
necessary; the food was imported at a cost not exceeding one
half per cent on the national wealth. It might have been paid
for in goods or in gold, and the limit of the loss would have
been the amount paid--a sum too insignificant, compared to
the national resources, to have been perceptible--and the
national industry could have replaced it in a few weeks.

"But the bill of 1819 had made gold the basis of our whole
system; and, therefore, when the gold was exported to pay for
the food, the whole system was broken up; and the bill
provides that this calamity shall in every case be added to
that of a bad harvest; that the abstraction of an
infinitesimal part of our money shall destroy our whole
monetary system; that the purchase of a small quantity of
food shall cause an immense quantity of starvation, by
destroying the means of distributing the food, and employing
labour. If this were the only evil of the bill, its existence
ought not to be tolerated an hour.

"Instead of placing the national credit and solvency on the
broad and indestructible basis of the national industry and
wealth, you have placed all the great national interest on
gold, the narrowest and most shifting, and therefore the most
unfit, basis it was possible to choose. You could not have
done worse.

"The gold being in quantity perfectly unequal to effect the
exchanges needful for the existence of society, an immense
and disproportioned superstructure of paper money and credit
became a compulsory result, and a certain cause of
perpetually recurring ruin.

"In framing the bill of 1819 you do not appear to have had a
suspicion of this consequence; but in 1844, after an interval
of a quarter of a century, this much seems to have dawned
obscurely in your mind; but, alas! what was your
remedy?--enlarging and securing the too narrow and shifting
basis? Not at all; you crippled and limited the
superstructure. You left us subject to the whole of your
original error, and provided a new one!

"The bill of 1844 provides that, in proportion as the gold
money shall disappear, the paper money shall disappear also!
Out of the money thus doubly reduced, the unhappy people are
compelled to pay unreduced taxes; and out of the inadequate
remnant to discharge unreduced debts, and to provide for the
unreduced necessities of their respective stations. So the
leaven of the law works its way through all society. The
payments cannot be made out of these reduced means, the loss
of the credit follows the loss of the money; the means of
exchange, employment, and consumption are destroyed, and the
world looks with amazement on the consummation of your
work--the wealthiest nation in the world withering up under
the blight of a universal insolvency; an abundance of all
things beyond compute, and a misery and want beyond relief.

"The sole aim of your bill has been to convert paper money
into gold. I have shown how signally you have failed in this
one object, always excepting your special claim of converting
L48,000,000 of paper money into L15,000,000 of gold, for
which mutation I suspect few will thank you. In all other
respects, the whimsicality of your fate has been to establish
a universal inconvertibility. Labour cannot be converted into
wages, East India estates, West India estates, railway
shares, sugar, rice, cotton goods, &c.; in short, all things
are inconvertible except gold. There has been nothing like it
since the days of Midas.

"The facts, sir, are of your creation, not of mine. I cannot
alter or disguise them. You have had confided to your
administration, by our illustrious sovereign, this most
powerful state, of almost unlimited extent and fertility--a
people unrivalled in their knowledge, caution, skill, and
energy, possessed of unlimited means of creating wealth, and
out of all these elements of human happiness your measures
have produced a chaos of ruin, misery, and discontent. You
can scarcely place your finger on the map, and mark a spot in
this vast empire where all the elements of prosperity do not
exist abundantly; you cannot point out one where you have not
produced results of ruin. Every resource is paralysed, every
interest deranged; the very empire is threatened with
dissolution. The Canadas, the West Indies, and Ireland, are
threatening secession, and England has to be garrisoned
against its people as against a hostile force; the very
loyalty of English hearts is beginning to turn into
disaffection. Review once more these vast resources, and
these wretched results, and I trust you will not make the
fatal opinion of your life the only one to which you will
persist in adhering."

This is language at once fearless, but measured--cutting, but respectful, which, on such an emergency, befits a British statesman. There is no appeal to popular passions, no ascribing of unworthy motives, no attempt to evade inquiry by irony; facts, known undeniable facts, are alone appealed to. Inferences, clear, logical, convincing, are alone drawn. If such language was more frequent, _especially in the House of Commons_, the plague would soon be stayed, and its former prosperity would again revisit the British Empire.

In opposition to these damning facts, the whole tactics of the bullionists consist in recurring to antiquated and childish terrors. They call out "Assignats, assignats, assignats!"--they seek to alarm every holder of money by the dread of its depreciation. They affect to treat the doctrine of keeping a fair proportion between population, engagements, and currency, as a mere chimera. In the midst of the deluge, they raise the cry of fire; when wasting of famine, they hold out to us the terrors of repletion; when sinking from atrophy on the way-side, they strive to terrify us by the dangers of apoplexy. The answer to all this tissue of affectation and absurdity is so evident, that we are almost ashamed to state it. We all know the dangers of assignats; we know that they are ruinous when issued to any great extent. So also we know the dangers of apoplexy and intoxication; but we are not on that account reconciled to a regimen of famine and starvation. We know that some of the rich die of repletion, but we know that many more of the poor die of want and wretchedness. We do not want to be deluged with inconvertible paper, which has been truly described as "strength in the outset, but weakness in the end;" but neither do we desire to be starved by the periodical abstraction of that most evanescent of earthly things, a gold circulation. Having the means, from our own immense accumulated wealth, of enjoying that first of social blessings, an _adequate, steady, and safe currency_, we do not wish to be any longer deprived of it by the prejudices of theorists, the selfishness of capitalists, or the obstinacy of statesmen. Half our wealth, engaged in trade and manufactures, has already disappeared, under this system, in two years; we have no disposition to lose the remaining half.

The duty on wheat now is only five shillings a quarter; in February next it will fall to one shilling a quarter, and remain fixed at that amount. The importation of grain, which was felt as so dreadful a drain upon our metallic resources in 1847, may, under that system, be considered as permanent. _We shall be always in the condition in which the nation is when three weeks' rain has fallen in August._ Let merchants, manufacturers, holders of funded property, of railway stock, of bank stock, reflect on that circumstance, and consider what fate awaits them if the present system remains unchanged. They know that three days' rain in August lowers the public funds one, and all railway stock ten per cent. Let them reflect on their fate if, by human folly, _an effect equal to that of three weeks' continuous fall of rain takes place every year_. Let them observe what frightful oscillations in the price of commodities follow the establishing by law a fixed price for gold. Let them ponder on the consequences of a system which sends twelve or fifteen millions of sovereigns out of the country _annually_ to buy grain, and _contracts_ the paper remaining in it at the same time in the same proportion. Let them observe the effect of such a system, coinciding with a vast expenditure on domestic railways. And let them consider whether all these dreadful evils, and the periodical devastation of the country by absurd speculation and succeeding ruin, would not be effectually guarded against, and the perils of an over-issue of paper also prevented, by the simple expedient of treating gold and silver, the most easily transported and evanescent of earthly things, like any other commodity, and making paper always payable _in them_, but _at the price they bear at the moment of presentment_. That would establish a _mixed_ circulation of the precious metals and paper, mutually convertible, and allow an _increased_ issue of the latter to obviate all the evils flowing from the periodical abstractions of the former. To establish the circulation on a gold basis _alone_, in a great commercial state, is the same error as to put the food of the people in a populous community on one root or species of grain. Ireland has shown us, in the two last years, what is the consequence of the one--famine and rebellion; England, of the other--bankruptcy and Chartism.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] Lamartine, _Histoire des Girondins_, i. 83.

[12] The Prefect of Police had published an account of the situation of Paris during the last ten days, in which he states that the most perfect tranquillity prevailed in the capital; that confidence was beginning to revive on every point; that a slow but incontestible progress manifested itself in every branch of industry; and that at no former period, and under no previous regimen, did Paris offer more respect for persons or more security for property. Orders were arriving from the departments. The manufacture of articles of luxury and jewellery partook of that resuscitation, as appears from the returns of the inspector-general of the hall-mark at the mint of Paris. The articles of jewellery completed and ordered during the last five months produced the following receipts:--in April, 9,000f.; May, 11,000f.; June, 17,000f.; July, 19,000f.; August, 36,000f. The number of workmen reduced by distress to reside in lodging-houses had considerably diminished. In the preceding bulletin their number was 31,480; it is now 27,308--17,977 of whom were employed, and 9,331 unoccupied. The houses of confinement contained nearly the same number of ordinary prisoners, and only 4,058 insurgents of June; 2,909 of the latter had been liberated since the 26th of July, and 1,005 conveyed to Havre between the 28th of August and the 4th of September. From the 26th of August to the 5th of September, nine persons committed suicide.--_Times_, Sept. 11, 1848.

[13] We mean those in the south and west. The other, of Ulster, are of British descent, and undistinguished from the rest of the Anglo-Saxon race.

[14] CRIME IN IRELAND.

Serious
Crimes.

Last Quarter of 1829.--Catholic Emancipation passed in March, 300
Do. of 1830.-- Do. 499
Do. of 1831.--Reform Agitation, 814
Do. of 1832.--Reform and Repeal Agitation, 1513

By the Coercion Act the Serious crimes were reduced at once to
a _fourth_ of their number. See _Hansard, Parl. Debates_, Feb.
9, 1834.

[15] "It was not so much through the hostility of the English members, as through the desertion and hostility of the Irish members, (many of them Repealers,) that in February 1847, Ireland lost the opportunity of obtaining a loan of sixteen millions of English gold at L3, 7s. 6d. per cent, to stimulate the construction, by private enterprise, of railways in your country.

"Unanimous in Palace Yard, on one Tuesday in favour of the proposition I then brought forward, on the Thursday se'ennight the same sixty gentlemen, having seen the prime minister at the Foreign Office in the interval, voted two to one in the House of Commons against giving railways to Ireland.

"Out of a hundred and five representatives which Ireland possesses, twenty-eight only, if my memory serves me correctly, would vote for that loan to Ireland. Two-thirds of the Irish representatives present declined the measure--the rest took care to be _non est inventus_ at the division, which was the hour of Ireland's need.

"Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the division list, and you will find many more true friends of Ireland, on that occasion, among the supporters of the Union than among the Repealers.

"Is it surprising that, where Irish representatives voted two to one against the acceptance of that measure, and when but twenty-eight, out of Ireland's hundred and five, could alone be found to say 'ay,' that a majority of Englishmen could not be found willing to make a sacrifice of English interests, to force upon Ireland a boon which the majority of Irish members rejected?

"It is not Repeal of the Union that Ireland wants; she wants men to represent her, who, understanding her material and substantial interests, are able and willing to promote and maintain them; and will not, on the other hand, to gain the shouts of the mob, divert public and parliamentary attention to phantom reforms, that have no substantial virtue in them--or, on the other hand, sell their votes to win the smiles, or may be something more valuable in the gift of the minister of the day.--I am, Sir your humble servant,

"G. BENTINCK."

[16] ALISON'S _Europe_, xx., Appendix.

[17] Small as these numbers are, the amount of notes in circulation is daily still further decreasing. For the week ending 9th September 1848, the amount of notes in circulation of the Bank of England was only L17,844,665. It is no wonder the same journal adds--"The Railway Market was _more depressed than ever_ this afternoon; and prices of all descriptions experienced a considerable fall. London and North Western were done at 105; Great Western stand at 18 to 20 _discount_."--_Times_, 10th Sept. 1848.

[18]

Exports, Declared Value. Imports, Official Value.

1844, L58,584,292 L75,441,565
1845, 60,111,681 85,284,965
1846, 57,786,576 75,958,875
1847, 58,971,106 90,921,866

--_Parl. Returns._

[19]

EXPORTS.

| | | | |
|First half |First half |Increase.|Decrease. |
| of 1847. | of 1848. | | |
+-----------+-----------+---------+----------+
Butter | L62,879 | L71,576 | L8,697 | -- |
Candles | 22,155 | 26,475 | 4,329 | -- |
Cheese | 15,149 | 11,089 | -- | L4,060 |
Coals and culm | 432,497 | 517,925 | 85,420 | -- |
Cotton manufactures | 9,248,835 | 8,023,825 | -- |1,225,010 |
Cotton yarn | 2,628,616 | 2,214,031 | -- | 414,185 |
Earthenware | 429,387 | 365,382 | -- | 64,005 |
Fish, herrings | 37,883 | 31,220 | -- | 6,663 |
Glass | 153,746 | 124,121 | -- | 29,625 |
Hardwares and cutlery | 1,096,956 | 939,523 | -- | 157,433 |
Leather, wrought & | | | | |
unwrought | 163,515 | 119,921 | -- | 43,594 |
Linen manufactures | 1,502,770 | 1,413,819 | -- | 88,951 |
Linen yarn | 315,196 | 236,076 | -- | 79,120 |
Machinery | 541,403 | 398,770 | -- | 142,633 |
Metals--Iron and steel | 2,462,954 | 2,545,650 | 82,696 | -- |
Copper and brass | 849,751 | 546,648 | -- | 303,103 |
Lead | 100,620 | 57,331 | -- | 43,289 |
Tin, unwrought | 72,882 | 73,477 | 595 | -- |
Tin, plates | 235,771 | 259,950 | 24,179 | -- |
Salt | 141,195 | 115,757 | -- | 25,438 |
Silk manufactures | 494,806 | 263,798 | -- | 231,008 |
Soap | 76,686 | 74,166 | -- | 2,520 |
Sugar, refined | 203,628 | 212,298 | 8,670 | -- |
Wool, sheep or lambs' | 95,412 | 58,256 | -- | 37,156 |
Woollen yarn | 444,797 | 291,985 | -- | 152,812 |
Woollen manufactures | 3,564,754 | 2,578,470 | -- | 986,284 |
+-----------+-----------+---------+----------+
|L25,394,243|L21,571,939|L214,585 |L4,036,889|

The entire decrease of exports during the half-year is thus
shown to be L3,822,304.

IMPORTS.

| Imported. | Taken for |
| | Home Consumption. |
| | |
| 1847. | 1848. | 1847. | 1848. |
+----------+----------+----------+----------+
Grain of all descriptions,| | | | |
qrs. | 2,195,579| 1,548,464| 2,547,938| 1,436,463|
Indian corn, qrs. | 2,082,038| 652,788| 2,082,369| 647,470|
Flour and meal, cwts. | 3,382,959| 459,797| 3,860,187| 433,759|
Provisions--Bacon, pork, | | | | |
&c., cwts. | 176,319| 234,398| Free. | Free. |
Butter and cheese, cwts. | 298,568| 291,713| 342,170| 312,394|
Animals, No. | 61,989| 52,345| Free. | Free. |
Eggs, No. |41,299,514|48,791,793|41,276,990|48,786,604|
Cocoa, lbs. | 2,540,298| 2,407,034| 1,764,590| 1,542,119|
Coffee, British, lbs. | 6,394,508|10,227,072|13,545,147|15,158,187|
Ditto, Foreign, lbs. | 5,395,669| 7,704,282| 6,092,252| 3,900,457|
+----------+----------+----------+----------+
Total coffee |11,790,177|17,931,354|19,637,399|19,058,644|
Sugar--West India, cwts. | 1,288,138| 1,091,375| 994,163| 1,212,726|
Mauritius, cwts. | 884,699| 568,475| 617,681| 470,410|
East India, cwts. | 683,901| 679,279| 710,514| 669,196|
Foreign, cwts. | 1,110,948| 621,301| 622,284| 427,542|
+----------+----------+----------+----------+
Total sugar | 3,967,686| 2,960,430| 2,944,642| 2,779,874|
Tea, lbs. |30,999,703|32,788,914|23,101,975|24,365,380|
Rice, cwts. | 676,130| 497,038| Free. | -- |
Ditto, qrs. | 32,343| 31,410| Free. | -- |
Spirits, galls | 4,328,426| 4,525,729| 2,282,072| 2,069,720|
Wines, galls | 3,332,866| 3,380,826| 3,264,521| 3,114,158|
Opium, lbs. | 103,708| 83,693| 27,208| 36,985|
Tobacco, lbs. |11,100,328|10,822,184|13,419,830|13,416,118|
Fruits--Currants, figs, | | | | |
and raisins, cwts. | 189,844| 107,644| 194,951| 236,918|
Lemons and | | | | |
oranges, chests | 209,647| 281,362| 206,058| 261,302|
Ditto, at value, L| 773| 2,961| 12,449| 8,463|
Spices, lbs. | 2,250,664| 3,460,497| 1,564,612| 1,632,833|

BYRON'S ADDRESS TO THE OCEAN.

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage undertakes an Idea--that of a proud spirit, born in a castle, self-driven from the bosom of home, seeking refuge, solace, renovation, from Nature, of sensibilities worn out with enjoyment. Or, he brings into play a neglected, unused sensibility--the joy of the Sublime and the Beautiful. We receive, as given, a mind gifted with extraordinary powers of will and understanding--by the favour of birth, nursed upon the heights of society--conversant with pleasure and passion; and, bearing all this constantly in mind, we must read the poem. From it large passages might be selected, in which the scorn, despite, bitterness that elsewhere break in, disfeaturing beauty and sublimity, are silent; and the passion of divine beholding stands out alone. Is this the character--or what is the character, of the celebrated concluding Address to the Ocean? Few things in modern poetry have been more universally--more indiscriminately admired; be it ours now to recite with you the famous Stanzas--and here, sitting beneath the sea-fronting porch of our Marine Villa, indulge in a confabulatory critique.

The Wanderings are at an end. The real and the imaginary pilgrim, standing together upon Mount Albano, look out upon the blue Mediterranean. He has generously, honourably, magnanimously, thrown upon the ground the checkered mantle of scorn, anger, disappointment, sorrow, and ennui, which had wrapped in disguise his fair stature and features; and he stands a restored, or at least an escaped man, gazing with eye and soul upon the beautiful and majestic sea rolling in its joy beneath his feet. He looks; and he will deliver himself up, as Nature's lone enthusiast, to the delicious, deep, dread, exulting, holy passion of--vary the word as he varies it--The Ocean.

Let us chant--with broken, though haply not unmusical voice--what may be called--the Hymn. That is a high term--let us not anticipate that it has been misapplied. Childe Harold, or Lord Byron--for it here little matters whether a grace of pleased fancy resolve the Two into One, or show the Two side by side, noble forms in brotherly reflection--here is at last the powerful but self-encumbered Spirit with whom we have journeyed so long in sunlight and in storm--delighted, sympathising, wondering at least, or confounded and angry when he will not let us wonder--here He is at last himself, in unencumbered strength, setting like the sun upon the sea he gazes on--the clouds broken through, dispersed, and vanquished, even if a half-tinge of melancholy remembrance hang in the atmosphere, radiant in majestic farewell.

"But I forget.--My pilgrim's shrine is won,
And he and I must part--so let it be,--
His task and mine alike are nearly done;
Yet once more let us look upon the sea;
The midland ocean breaks on him and me,
And from the Alban Mount we now behold
Our friend of youth, that Ocean, which when we
Beheld it last by Calpe's rock unfold
Those waves, we follow'd on till the dark Euxine roll'd

"Upon the blue Symplegades: long years--
Long, though not very many, since have done
Their work on both; some suffering and some tears
Have left us nearly where we had begun:
Yet not in vain our mortal race hath run,
We have had our reward--and it is here;
That we can yet feel gladden'd by the sun,
And reap from earth, sea, joy almost as dear
As if there were no man to trouble what is clear.

"Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place
With one fair Spirit for my minister,
That I might all forget the human race,
And, hating no one, love but only her!
Ye Elements!--in whose ennobling stir
I feel myself exalted--can ye not
Accord me such a being? Do I err
In deeming such inhabit many a spot?
Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot.

"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

"Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean!--roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin--his control
Stops with the shore;--upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.

"His steps are not upon thy paths--thy fields
Are not a spoil for him--thou dost arise,
And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray
And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,
And dashest him again to earth;--there let him lay.

"The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war;
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.

"Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee--
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters wasted them while they were free,
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts:--not so thou,
Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play--
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow--
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

"Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,
Calm or convulsed--in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark-heaving;--boundless, endless, and sublime--
The image of Eternity--the throne
Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime
The monsters of the deep are made; each zone
Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

"And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy
I wanton'd with thy breakers--they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror--'twas a pleasing fear,
For I was as it were a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane--as I do here."

These Stanzas may be separated from the Poem--the feeling of readers innumerable so separates them--as a HYMN TO THE OCEAN. The passage, a great effort of a great poet, intends a final putting forth of all his power--it has been acknowledged and renowned as such; and, if it has failed, a critique showing this, and showing the ground of the failure, maybe useful to you, inexperienced yet in the criticism of poetry, though all alive to its charm.

We observe you delight in the first Four Stanzas--ay, you recite them over again after us--and the voice of youth, tremulous in emotion, is pathetic to the Old Man. He will not seek, by what might seem to you, thus moved, hypercritical objections to some of the words; but, pleased with your pleasure, he is willing to allow you to believe the stanzas entirely good in expression as in thought. For here the morbid disrelish of the sated palate is cleansed away. The obscuring cloud of the overwhelmed heart is dispersed. The joy of the wilderness here claimed is not necessarily more or other than that of every powerful and imaginative spirit, which experiences that solitude is, in simple truth, by a steadfast law of our nature, the condition under which our soul is able to wed itself in impassioned communion effectually to the glorious Universe--where, too, the subjugating footsteps of man, impairing the pure domain of free nature, are not. "Pathless," "lonely,"--of themselves bespeak neither satiety nor hostility: there is "society by the deep sea, and music in its roar!" all quite right. Here is a heart, in its thirst for sympathy, peopling the desert with sympathisers. Here is expansion of the heart; and the spirit that rejoices in the consciousness of life roused into creative activity. For an ear untuned and untuning, here is one that listens out harmonies which you, languid or inept, might not discern. "Pleasure!" "rapture!" "society!" "music!"--a chain of genialities!

"I love not man the less, but nature more,
From these our interviews."

What will you require of kindliest humanity from any poet, from any lover of nature, that is not here? The savage grandeur of earth and sea have their peril--the fleeing of human homes and haunts--the voluptuous banishment self-imposed--the caressing of dear fancies in secret invisible recesses inviolable--these tend all to engendering and nurturing an excessive self-delight akin to an usurping self-love; and the very sublimities of that wonderful intercourse, in which, upon the one part, stands the feeble dwarf Man, in his hour-lived weakness, and upon the other, as if Infinitude itself putting on cognisable forms, the imperishable Hills and the unchangeable Sea--that intercourse in which he, the pigmy, conscious of the divinity within him, feels himself the greater--he infinite, immortal, and these finite and vanishing--the power and exultation of that intercourse may well engender and nourish Pride. Self-love and Pride, tempting, decoying, bewildering, devouring demons of the inhuman Waste! But the self-reproved, repentant pilgrim has well understood these dangers. He knows that the delight of woods and waterfalls, of stars and storms, may alienate man from his fellow-man. He has guarded himself by some wise temperance. He has found here his golden mean. From thus conversing, he "loves not man the less, but nature more." Is this a young Wordsworth, beginning, in the school of nature, to learn the wisdom of humanity?

At all events, here is, for the occasion, the most express and earnest disclaimer of the mood of misanthropy; and we rejoice to hear the Pilgrim speak of interviews

"in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before."

From all! that is, from all the ungracious, the harsh, the unkind, the sore, the embittered, the angry, the miserable! Not, surely, from all the amiable and all the gladsome; and especially not from the whole personality and identity of his character. The picture he had given us of himself was that of a powerful mind, self-set at war with its kind, yet within an exasperated hate ever and anon unfolding undestroyed, sometimes hardly vitiated, some portion of its original ingenerate faculty of love. Here we behold him now as God made him, and no longer possessed by a demon. Change his rhyme into our prose--and you do not dislike our prose--and in sober and sincere sadness the Childe thus speaks--"I steal, under the power of these delicious, renovating, gladdening, hallowing influences, out of myself--out of that evil thing which man had made me--rather, alas! which I had made myself into;--and if long wandering, disuse of humanity, separation from the scene of my wrongs, and this auspicious dominion of inviolate nature have in these past years already amended me--if I have been worse than I am--even that worse and that worst these 'interviews' obliterate and extinguish." The soured milk of human kindness is again sweetened. Or, if that be too much to say, at least man, with all the dissonance that hangs by his name and recollections, is forgotten, suspended--for the time absolutely lost. If this be not the meaning, what is?

"And feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal,"

is indeed powerless writing, and the stanza merited a better close. But the whole stanza protests, proclaims the glad healing power of the natural world over him. He has described this as well as he could, and sums up with saying that by him it is indescribable. "I derive from these communions a rapturous transformation--so great, so wondrous, that my ignorant skill of words is utterly unable to render it; but, at the same time, so self-powerful, that, in despite of this my concealing inability, tones of it will outbreak, make themselves heard, felt, and understood." Thus Byron sets the tune of his Address to the Ocean. The first Four Stanzas, therefore, be their poetry more or less, required, upon this account, enucleation; and further, dear Neophyte, inasmuch as they are particularly humane, they should take their effectual place among evidences which separate him personally from some of his poetical Timons.

You--dear Neophyte--have called the Four Stanzas beautiful,--that is enough for us,--and they recall to your heart--you say--the kindred lines of Coleridge--which we call "beautiful exceedingly."--

"With other ministrations thou! O Nature!
Healest thy wandering and distemper'd child.
Thou pourest on him thy soft influences,
Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets,
Thy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters,
Till he relent, and can no more endure
To be a jarring and a dissonant thing
Amid this general dance and minstrelsy;
But, bursting into tears, wins back his way,
His angry spirit heal'd and harmonised
By the benignant touch of love and beauty."

Thus--we repeat our words--"Byron sets the tune of his Address to the Ocean."

The poem, then, is an Address to the Ocean by a Lover of the Ocean. It seems reasonable, then, to ask, first, what is it natural to expect that such a poem should be? And if it proves to be something remarkably different, then to inquire whether any particular circumstance or condition has intervened which justifies the poet in following an unexpected course.

Now, for natural expectation, the theme is one of eulogy; and one may say, therefore, that praise customarily expresses itself in one or other of two principal ways--namely, directly or indirectly. We praise directly, for instance, when, moved by the contemplation of some great or interesting subject, we single forth, one after another, the qualities of its character, or the facts in its history, which have provoked our love, our admiration, our joy, our gratitude. Upon the other hand, we praise indirectly when we extol the subject of our eulogy by dispraising another foreign subject, which we oppose to the chosen one in the way of relief or foil; whether we establish mere comparison of contrast between the two, or cite an opposition of actual enmity between them--as if, in hymning Apollo, we should insist upon the horror and fury, the earth-pollution and the earth-affliction, of the monster Python.

A moment of reflection satisfies us that both ways are alike natural--both, with occasion, alike unavoidable; but it is impossible to help equally seeing that these two ways of eulogy differ materially from each other in two respects,--the temper of inspiration which dictates, animates, and supports the one or other manner of attributing renown, and the motive justifying the one eulogistic procedure or the other. The temper of direct praise is always wholly genial; that of lauding by illaudation has in it perforce an ungenial element. The motive to direct praise eternally subsists and is there, as long as the subject eulogised subsists and is there. This, then, is the ordinary method. If any thing has just happened that provokes the indirect way--as if Python has just been vanquished--then good and well; or if the poet, by some personal haunting sorrow, or by an unvanquished idiosyncrasy, must arrive at pleasure through pain, so be it: but this method is clearly extraordinary and exceptive to the rule; and the reason for using it must be prominent, definite, and flashing in all men's eyes. The other method never can require justifying--this does always; and if it fail conspicuously in aught, the very opposite effect to that intended is produced, and the eulogy is no laud. You may say, indeed, and say truly, that all eulogy shall be mixed--that naturally and necessarily every subject has its title to favour by sympathy and by antipathy. Which of the two shall predominate? We need scarcely answer that question. The mood of mind in which the Poet sings must be genial and benign, though he may have to deal in fierce invective.

Read then, dearest Neophyte, the first Four Stanzas--recite them again, for you have them by heart. It is not easy to imagine any thing more completely at variance with all that preamble for the hymn than the hymn itself. The poet, imbued, as we have seen, with the love of nature and of man, will breathe on both his benediction. He will glorify the Sea. And how does he attain the transported and affectionate contemplation of the abyss of waters? By the opposition of man's impotence to the might of the sea; by the opposition of the land subjected to man, mixed up in his destinies, and changeable with him, to the ocean free from all change, excepting that of its own moods, the free play of its own gigantic will. For though, philosophically speaking, the immense mass of waters is in itself inert and powerless; lifted into tides by the sun and moon; lifted into storm by raging and invisible winds; yet the poet, lawfully, and by a compulsion which lies alike upon all our minds, apprehends in what is involuntary, self-willed motion, wild changeable moods, a pleasure of rolling--sun, moon, and winds, being for the moment left utterly out of thought; and it may be that Byron here does this well. But, what is the worth, what the meaning of the first Four Stanzas--in which you have delighted, because in them the Bard you love had deliberately and passionately rejected all hostile regard of man, and reclaimed for himself his place among the brotherhood--when we see that hostile regard in all its bitterness, instantaneously return and become the predominating characteristic of the whole wrathful and scornful song?

Was his previous confession of faith utterly false and hollow? If sincere and substantial, what in a moment shattered it?

"Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean--roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee."

This is good in temper so far--nor in aught inconsistent with the spirit pervading the introductory Stanzas; if the ten thousand fleets are presented for the magnificence of the picture. But are they? No, already for spleen. The full verse is

"Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee--_in vain_!"