Chapter IX: Part IX (2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CANADIAN LOYALTY.
AN ODE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And again:—

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

Finally, the Marquis of Lansdowne said:—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let us next hear the Chancellor of the Exchequer:—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Again:—

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

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