Chapter X (2)

What, then, is the explanation which is to be given of this extraordinary impossibility of raising grain with a profit in the Roman Campagna; while in a similar climate, and under greater physical disadvantages, it is in the neighbouring plains of Pisa, and the Campagna Felice of Naples, the most profitable of all species of cultivation, and therefore universally resorted to? The answer is obvious--It is the cry for cheap bread in Rome, the fatal bequest of the strength of the Imperial, to the weakness of the Papal government, which is the cause. It is the necessity under which the ecclesiastical government felt itself, of yielding every thing to _the clamour for a constant supply of cheap bread for the people of the town_ which has done the whole. It is the ceaseless importation of foreign grain into the Tiber by government, to provide cheap food for the people, which has reduced the Campagna to a wilderness, and rendered Rome in modern, not less than Tadmor in ancient times, a city in the desert.

It has been already noticed, that in the middle of the fifteenth century Sextus IV. issued a decree, ordaining the proprietors of lands in the Campana to lay down a third of their estates yearly in tillage. But the Papal government, not resting on the proprietors of the soil, but mainly, in so far as temporal power went, on the populace of Rome, was under the necessity of making at the same time extraordinary efforts to obtain supplies of foreign grain. A free trade in grain was permitted to the Tiber, or rather the government purchased foreign grain wherever they could find it cheapest, as the emperors had from a similar apprehension done in ancient times, and retailed it at a moderate price to the people. They became themselves the great corn-merchant. This system, of course, prevented the cultivation of the Campagna, and rendered the decree of Sextus IV. nugatory; for no human laws can make men continue a course of labour at a loss to themselves. Thence the citizens of Rome came to depend entirely on foreign supplies of grain for their daily food; and the consumption of the capital had no more influence on the agriculture of the adjoining provinces, than it had on that of Hindostan or China. Again, as in the days of Tacitus, the lives of the Roman people were exposed to the chances of the winds and the waves. As this proved a fluctuating and precarious source of supply, a special board, styled the _Casa Annonaria_, was constituted by government for the regular importation of foreign grain, and retailing of it at a fixed and low price to the people. This board has been in operation for nearly two hundred and fifty years; and it is the system it has pursued which has prevented all attempts to cultivate the Campagna, by rendering it impossible to do so at a profit. The details of the proceedings of this board--this "_chamber of commerce_" of Rome, are so extremely curious and instructive, that we must give them in the authentic words of Sismondi.

"Having failed in all their attempts to bring about the cultivation of the Campagna, the popes of the 17th and 18th centuries endeavoured to secure abundance in the markets by other means. The motive was legitimate and praiseworthy; but the means taken failed in producing the desired effect, because they sacrificed the future to the present, and, _in the anxiety to secure the subsistence of the people, compromised those who raised food for them_. Pope Pius VI., who reigned from 1600 to 1621, instituted the _Casa Annonaria_ of the apostolic chamber, which was charged with the duty of providing subsistence for the inhabitants of Rome. This board being desirous, above all things, of avoiding seditions and discontent, established it as a principle, that whatever the cost of production was, or the price in a particular year, bread should be sold at certain public bake-houses at a certain price. This price was fixed at a Roman baiocco, a tenth more than the sous of France, (1/2 d. English,) for eight ounces of bread. _This price has now been maintained constantly the same for two hundred years_; and it is still kept at the same level, with the difference only of a slight diminution in the weight of the bread sold for the _baiocco_ in years of scarcity.

"As a necessary consequence of this regulation, the apostolic chamber soon found itself under the necessity of taking entire possession of the commerce of grain. It not only bought up the whole which was to be obtained in the country, but provided for the public wants _by large importation_. Regulations for the import and export of grain were made by it; sometimes, it was said, through the influence of those who solicited exemptions. Whether this was the case or not is uncertain, and not very material. What is certain is, that the rule by which the chamber was invariably regulated, viz. _that of consulting no other interest but that of the poor consumer_, is as vicious and ruinous as the one so much approved of now-a-days, of attending only to the interest of the proprietors and producers. Government, doubtless, should attend to the vital matter of the subsistence of the people; but it should do so with a view to the interest of all, not a single section of society.

"At what price soever bread was bought by them, the _Casa Annonaria_ sold it to the bakers at seven Roman crowns (30 f.) the _rubbio_, which weighs 640 kilograms, (1540 lbs.) That price was not much different from the average one; and the apostolic chamber sustained no great loss till 1763, by its extensive operations in the purchase and sale of grain. But at that period the price of wheat began to rise, and it went on continually advancing to the end of the century. Notwithstanding its annual losses, however, the apostolic chamber was too much afraid of public clamour to raise the price of bread. It went on constantly retailing it at the same price to the people; and the consequence was, that its losses in 1797, when the pontifical government was overturned, had accumulated to no less than 17,457,485 francs, or £685,000."[40]

It might naturally have been imagined, that after so long an experience of the effects of a forcible reduction of the price of grain below the level at which it could be raised at a profit by home cultivators, the ecclesiastical government would have seen what was the root of the evil, and applied themselves to remedy it, by giving some protection to native industry. But though the evil of the desolation of the Campagna was felt in its full extent by government in subsequent times; yet as the first step in the right course, viz. protecting native industry by stopping the sales of bread by government at lower prices than it could be raised at home, was likely to occasion great discontent, it was never attempted. Such a step, dangerous in the firmest and best established, was impossible in an elective monarchy of old Popes, feeble cardinals, and a despicable soldiery. They went on deploring the evil, but never once ventured to face the remedy. In 1802, Pius VII., a most public-spirited and active pontiff, issued an edict, in which he declared, "We are firmly persuaded that if we cannot succeed in applying a remedy the abandonment and depopulation of the Campagna will go on increasing, till the country becomes a fearful desert. _Fatal experience leaves no doubt on that point._ We see around us, above all in the Campagna, a number of estates entirely depopulated and abandoned to grass, which, in the memory of man, were rich in agricultural productions, and crowded with inhabitants, as is clearly established by the seignorial rights attached to them. Population had been introduced into these domains by agriculture, which employed a multitude of hands, being in a flourishing state. But now the obstacles opposed to the interior commerce of grain, _and the forced prices fixed by government, have caused agriculture to perish_. Pasturage has come every where to supplant it; and the great proprietors and farmers living in Rome, have abandoned all thought of dividing their possessions among cultivators, and sought only to diminish the cost of the flocks to which they have devoted their estates. But if that system has proved profitable to them, it has been fatal to the state, which it has deprived of its true riches, the produce of agriculture, and of the industry of the rural population."[41] But it was all in vain. The measures adopted by Pius VII. to resuscitate agriculture in the Campagna, have proved all nugatory like those of all his predecessors; the importation of foreign grain into the Tiber, the forced prices at which it was sold by the government at Rome, rendered it impossible to prosecute agriculture to a profit; and the Campagna has become, and still continues, a desert.[42]

Here, then, the real cause of the long-continued desolation of the Agro Romano, both in ancient and modern times, becomes perfectly apparent. It is the cry for cheap bread in Rome which has done the whole. To stifle this cry in the dreaded populace of the Eternal City, the emperors imported grain largely from Egypt and Lybia, and distributed it at an elusory price, or gratuitously, to the people. The unrestricted importation of foreign grain, in consequence of those provinces becoming parts of the empire, enabled the cultivators and merchants of Africa to deluge the Italian harbours with corn at a far cheaper rate than it could be raised in Italy itself, where labour bore a much higher price, in consequence of money being more plentiful in the centre than the extremities of the empire. Thus the market of its towns was lost to the Italian cultivators, and gained to those of Egypt and Lybia, where a vertical sun, or the floods of the Nile, almost superseded the expense of cultivation. Pasturage became the only way in which land could be managed to advantage in the Italian fields; because live animals and dairy produce do not admit of being transported from a distance by sea, with a profit to the importer, and the sunburnt shores of Africa yielded no herbage for their support. Agriculture disappeared in Italy, and with it the free and robust arms which conducted it; pasturage succeeded, and yielded large rentals to the great proprietors, into whose hands, on the ruin of the little freeholders by foreign importation, the land had fallen. But pasturage could not nourish a bold peasantry to defend the state; it could only produce the riches which might attract its enemies. Hence the constant complaint, that Italy had ceased to be able to furnish soldiers to the legionary armies; hence the entrusting the defence of the frontier to mercenary barbarians, and the ruin of the empire.

In modern times the same ruinous system has been continued, and hence the continued desolation of the Campagna, so pregnant with weakness and evil to the Roman states. The people never forgot the distribution of grain by government in the time of the emperors; the Papal authorities never had strength sufficient to withstand the menacing cry for cheap bread. Anxious to keep the peace in Rome, and depending little on the barons of the country, the ecclesiastical government saw no resource but to import grain themselves from any countries where they could get it cheapest, and sell it at a fixed price to the people. This price, down to 1763, was just the price at which _it could be imported with a fair profit_; as is proved by the fact, that down to that period the _Casa Annonaria_ sustained no loss. But it was lower than the rate at which it could be raised even in the fertile plains of the Campagna, where labour was dearer and taxes heavier than in Egypt and the Ukraine, from whence the grain was imported by government; and consequently cultivation could not be carried on in the Agro Romano but at a loss. It of course ceased altogether; and the land, as in ancient times, has been entirely devoted to pasturage, to the extinction of the rural population, and the infinite injury of the state.

And this explains how it has happened, that in other parts of the Papal states, particularly in the marches on the other side of the Apennines, between Bologna and Ancona, agriculture is not only noways depressed, but flourishing; and the same is the case with the slopes of the Alban Mount, even in the Agro Romano. In the first situation, the necessity of bending to the cry for cheap bread in the urban population was not felt, as the marches contained no great towns, and the weight of influence was in the rural inhabitants. There was no _Casa Annonaria_, or fixed price of bread there; and therefore agriculture flourished as it did in Lombardy, the Campagna Felice of Naples, the plain of Pisa, or any other prosperous part of Italy. In the latter, it was in _garden cultivation_ that the little proprietors, as in nearly the whole slopes of the Apennines, were engaged. The enchanting shores of the lakes of Gandolfo and Nemi, the hills around L'Aricia and Marino, are all laid out in the cultivation of grapes, olives, fruits, vegetables, and chestnuts. No competition from without was to be dreaded by them, as at least, until the introduction of steam, it was impossible to bring such productions by distant sea voyages, so as to compete with those raised in equally favourable situations within a few miles of the market at home. In these places, therefore, the peculiar evil which blasted all attempts at grain cultivation in the Campagna was not felt; and hence, though in the Roman states, and subject, in other respects, to precisely the same government as the Agro Romano, they exhibit not merely a good, but the most admirable cultivation.

If any doubt could exist on the subject, it would be removed by two other facts connected with agriculture on the shores of the Mediterranean; one in ancient and one in modern times.

The first of these is that while agriculture declined _in Italy_, as has been shown from the time of Tiberius, until at length nearly the whole plains of that peninsula were turned into grass, it, from the same date, took an extraordinary start in Spain and Lybia. And to such a length had the improvement of Africa, under the fostering influence of the market of Rome and Italy gone, that it contained, at the time of its invasion by the Vandals under Genseric, in the year 430 of the Christian era, twenty millions of inhabitants, and had come to be regarded with reason as the garden of the human race. "The long and narrow tract," says Gibbon, "of the African coast was filled, when the Vandals approached its shores, with frequent monuments of Roman art and magnificence; and the respective degrees of improvement might be accurately measured by the distance from Carthage and the Mediterranean. A simple reflection will impress every thinking mind with the clearest idea of its fertility and cultivation. The country was extremely populous; the inhabitants reserved a liberal supply for their own use; _and the annual exportation_, PARTICULARLY OF WHEAT, _was so regular and plentiful, that Africa deserved the name of the common granary of Rome and of mankind_."[43] Nor had Spain flourished less during the long tranquillity and protection of the legions. In the year 409 after Christ, when it was first invaded by the barbarians, its situation is thus described by the great historian of the _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_. "The situation of Spain, separated on all sides from the enemies of Rome by the sea, by the mountains, and by intermediate provinces, had secured the long tranquillity of that remote and sequestered country; and we may observe, as a sure symptom of _domestic happiness_, that in a period of 400 years, Spain furnished very few materials to the history of the Roman empire. The cities of Merida, Cordova, Seville, and Tarragona, were numbered with the most illustrious of the Roman world. The various plenty of the animal, _vegetable_, and mineral kingdoms was improved and manufactured by the skill of an industrious people, and the peculiar advantages of naval stores contributed to support an extensive and profitable trade." And he adds, in a note, many particulars relative to the _fertility_ and trade of Spain, may be found in Huet's _Commerce des Anciens_, c. 40, p. 228.[44]

These facts are very remarkable, and worthy of the most profound attention; for they point in a decisive manner, they afford the _experimentum crucis_ as to the real cause of the long-continued and frightful decay of Italian agriculture during the reign of the emperors. For here, it appears, that during the four hundred years that the Western Empire endured, while the cultivation of grain in Italy was constantly declining, and at last wholly ceased, insomuch that the country relapsed entirely into a state of nature, or was devoted to the mere raising of grass for sheep and cattle, _agriculture was flourishing in the highest degree in the remoter provinces of the Empire_; and the exportation of grain from Africa had become so great and regular, that it had come to be regarded as the granaries of Rome and of the world! The government was the same, the slavery was the same, in Africa as in Italy. Yet in the one country agriculture rose, during four centuries, to the highest point of elevation; while in the other, during the same period, it sunk to the lowest depression, until it became wellnigh extinct, so far as the raising of grain was concerned. How did this come to pass? It could not have been that the labour of slaves was too costly to raise grain; for it was raised at a great profit, and to a prodigious extent, _almost entirely by slaves_, in Egypt and Lybia. What was it, then, which destroyed agriculture in Italy and Greece, while, under circumstances precisely similar in all respects _but one_, it was, at the very same time, rising to the very highest prosperity in Egypt, Lybia, and Spain? Evidently _that one circumstance_, and that was--that Italy and Greece were the heart of the empire, the theatre of long-established civilization, the abode of opulence, the seat of wealth, the centre to which riches flowed from the extremities of the empire. Pounds were plentiful there, and, consequently, labour was dear; in the provinces pence were few, and, therefore, it was cheap. It was impossible, under a free trade in grain, for the one to compete with the other. It is for the same reason that agricultural labour is now sixpence a-day in Poland, tenpence in Ireland, and two shillings in Great Britain.

The peculiar conformation of the Roman empire, while it facilitated in many respects its growth and final settlement under the dominion of the Capitol, led by a process not less certain, and still more rapid, to its ruin, when that empire was fully extended. If any one will look at the map, he will see that the Roman empire spread outwards from the shores of the Mediterranean. It embraced all the monarchies and republics which, in the preceding ages of the world, had grown up around that inland sea. Water, therefore, afforded the regular, certain, and cheap means of conveying goods and troops from one part of the empire to the other. Nature had spread out a vast system of internal navigation, which brought foreign trade in a manner to every man's door. The legions combated alternately on the plains of Germany, in the Caledonian woods, on the banks of the Euphrates, and at the foot of Mount Atlas. But much as this singular and apparently providential circumstance aided the growth, and for a season increased the strength of the empire, it secretly but certainly undermined its resources, and in the end proved its ruin. The free trade in grain which it necessarily brought with it, when the same dominion stretched over all Spain and Africa, and long-continued peace had brought their crops to compete with the Italian in the supply of the Roman, or the Grecian in that of the Constantinopolitan markets, destroyed the fabric the legions had reared. Italy could not compete with Lybia, Greece with Poland. Rome was supplied by the former, Constantinople by the latter. If the Mediterranean wafted the legions out in the rise of the empire, _it wafted foreign grain in_ in its later stages, and the last undid all that the former had done. The race of _agricultural freemen_ in Italy, the bone and muscle of the legions which had conquered the world, became extinct; the rabble of towns were unfit for the labours, and averse to the dangers of war; mercenaries became the only resource.

The fact in modern times, which illustrates and confirms the same view of the chief cause of the ruin of the Roman empire, is, that a similar effect has taken place, and is at this moment in full operation in Romelia, and all the environs of Constantinople. Every traveller in the East knows that desolation as complete as that of the Campagna of Rome pervades the whole environs of Constantinople; that the moment you emerge from the gates of that noble city, you find yourself in a wilderness, and that the grass comes up to our horse's girths all the way to Adrianople. "Romelia," says Slade, "if cultivated, would become the granary of the East;" _whereas Constantinople depends on Odessa for daily bread_. The burial-grounds, choked with weeds and underwood, constantly occurring in every traveller's route, far remote from habitations, are eloquent testimonials of continued depopulation. The living, too, are far apart; a town about every fifty miles; _a village every ten miles_, is deemed close; and horsemen meeting on the highway regard each other as objects of curiosity.[45] This is the Agro Romano over again. Nor will it do to say, that it is the oppression of the Turkish government which occasions this desolation and destruction of the rural population; for many parts of Turkey are not only well cultivated but most densely peopled; as, for example, the broad tract of Mount Hoemus, where agriculture is in as admirable a state as in the mountains of Tuscany or Switzerland. "No peasantry in the world," says Slade, "are so well off as those of Bulgaria; the lowest of them has abundance of every thing--meat, poultry, eggs, milk, rice, cheese, wine, bread, good clothing, a warm dwelling, and a horse to ride; where is the tyranny under which the Christian subjects of the Porte are generally supposed to dwell? Among the Bulgarians certainly. I wish that, in every country, a traveller could pass from one end to the other, and find a good supper and warm fire in every cottage, as he can in this part of European Turkey."[46] Clarke gives the same account of the peasantry of Parnassus and Olympia; and it is true generally of almost all the _mountain_ districts of Turkey. How, then, does it happen that the rich and level plains of Romelia, at the gates of Constantinople, and thence over a breadth of an hundred and twenty miles to Adrianople, is a desert? Slade has explained it in a word. "_Constantinople depends on Odessa for its daily bread._" The cry for cheap bread in Constantinople, its noble harbour, and ready communication by water with Egypt on the one hand, and the Ukraine on the other, have done the whole. Romelia, like the Campagna of Rome, is a desert, because the market of Constantinople is lost to the Turkish cultivators; because grain can be brought cheaper from the Nile and the Wolga than raised at home, in consequence of the cheapness of labour in those remote provinces; and because the Turkish government, dreading an insurrection in the capital, have done nothing to protect native industry.

There are many countries to whom the most unlimited freedom in the importation of corn can do no injury. There are, in the first place, the great grain countries, such as Poland and the Ukraine: they have no more reason to dread the importation of grain than Newcastle that of coals, or the Scotch Highlands that of moor-game. In the next place, countries which _are poor_ need never fear the importation of corn from abroad; for they have no money to pay for it; and, if they had, it would not be brought in at a profit, because currency being scarce, of course the price will be low. Lastly, Countries which have vast inland tracts, like Russia, Austria, France, and America, especially if no extensive system of water communication exists in their interior, have little reason to apprehend injury from the most unrestricted commerce in grain; because the cost of inland carriage on so bulky and heavy an article as corn is so considerable, that the produce of foreign harvests can never penetrate far into the interior, or come to supply a large portion of the population with food.

The countries which have reason to apprehend injury, and in the end destruction, to their native agriculture, from the unrestricted admission of foreign corn, are those which, though they may possess a territory in many places well adapted for the raising of grain crops, are yet rich, far advanced in civilization, with a narrow territory, and their principal towns on the sea-coast. They have every thing to dread from foreign importation; because both the plenty of currency, which opulence brings in its train, and the heavy public burdens with which it is invariably attended, render labour dear at home, by lowering the value of money, and raising the weight of taxation. If long continued, an unrestricted foreign importation cannot fail to ruin agriculture, and destroy domestic strength in such a state. Italy and Greece stood eminently in such a situation; for all their great towns were upon the sea-coast, their territory was narrow, and being successively the seats of empire, and the centres of long-continued opulence, money was more plentiful, and therefore production dearer than in those remote and poorer states from which grain might be brought to their great towns by sea carriage. In the present circumstances of this country, we would do well to bear in mind the following reflections of Sismondi, "It is not to no purpose that we have entered into the foregoing details concerning the state of agriculture in the neighbourhood of Rome; for we are persuaded that a universal tendency in Europe _menaces us with the same calamities_, even in those countries which at present seem to adopt an entirely opposite system; _only the Romans have gone through the career, while we are only entering upon it_."[47]

The times are past, indeed, when gratuitous distributions of grain will be made to an idle population, as under the Roman emperors, or bread be sold for centuries by government at a fixed and low price, as under their papal successors. But the same causes which produced these effects are still in full operation. The cry for cheap bread in a popular state, is as menacing as it was to the emperors or popes of Rome. The only difference is, the sacrifice of domestic industry is now more disguised. The thing is done, but it is done not openly by public deliveries of the foreign grain at low prices, but indirectly under the specious guise of free trade. Government does not say, "We will import Polish grain, and sell it permanently at thirty-six or forty shillings a quarter;" but it says, "we will open our harbours to the Polish farmers who can do so. We will admit grain duty free from a country where wages are sixpence a-day, and rents half-a-crown an acre." They thus force down the price of grain to the foreign level, augmented only by the cost and profit of importations, as effectually as ever did the emperors or _Casa Annonaria_of Rome.

And what has Rome--the urban population of Rome--for whose supposed interests, and in obedience to whose menacing cry, the Roman market has for eighteen centuries been supplied with foreign bread--what have they gained by this long continuation of government to their wishes? Sismondi has told us in one word--"In Rome there _is no commerce between the town and the country_." They would have foreign grain with its consequences, and _they have had foreign grain with its consequences_. And what have been these consequences? Why, that the Eternal City, which, even when taken by the Goths, had 1,200,000 inhabitants within its walls, can now scarcely number 170,000, and they almost entirely in poverty, and mainly supported by the influx and expenditure of foreigners. The Campagna, once so fruitful and so peopled, has become a desert. No inhabitant of the Roman states buys any thing in Rome. Their glory is departed--it has gone to other people and other lands. And what would have been the result if this wretched concession to the blind and unforeseeing popular clamour had not taken place? Why, that Rome would have been what Naples--where domestic industry is protected--has become; it would have numbered 400,000 busy and active citizens within its walls. The Campagna would have been what the marches of Ancona now are. Between Rome and the Campagna, a million of happy and industrious human beings would have existed in the Agro Romano, independent of all the world, mutually nourishing and supporting each other; instead of an hundred and seventy thousand indolent and inactive citizens of a town, painfully dependent on foreign supplies for bread, and on foreign gold for the means of purchasing it.

Disastrous as have been the consequences of a free trade in grain to the Roman States, alike in ancient and modern times, it was introduced by its rulers in antiquity under the influence of noble and enlightened principles. The whole civilized world was then one state; the banks of the Nile and the plains of Lybia acknowledged the sway of the emperors, as much as the shores of the Tiber or the fields of the Campagna. When the Roman government, ruling so mighty a dominion, permitted the harvests of Africa and the Ukraine to supplant those of Italy and Greece, they did no more than justice to their varied subjects. Magnanimously overlooking local interests and desires, they extended their vision over the whole civilized world, and

"View'd with equal eyes, as lords of all,"

their subjects, whether in Italy, Spain, Egypt, or Lybia. Though the seat of government was locally on the Tiber, they administered for the interest of the whole civilized world, alike far and near. If the Campagna was ruined, the Delta of Egypt flourished! If the plains of Umbria were desolate, those of Lybia and Spain, equally parts of the empire, were waving with grain. But can the same be said of England, now proclaiming a free trade in grain, not merely with her colonies or distant provinces, but with her rivals or her enemies? Not merely with Canada and Hindostan, but with Russia and America? With countries jealous of her power, envious of her fame, covetous of her riches. What should we have said of the wisdom of the Romans, if they had sacrificed Italian to African agriculture in the days of Hannibal? If they had put it into the power of the Carthaginian Senate to have said, "We will not arm our galleys; we will not levy armies; we will prohibit the importation of African grain, and starve you into submission?" How is England to maintain her independence, if the autocrat of Russia, by issuing his orders from St Petersburg, can at any moment stop the importation of ten millions of quarters of foreign grain, that is, a sixth of our whole annual consumption? And are we to render penniless our home customers, not in order to promote the interest of the distant parts of our empire, but in order to enrich and vivify our enemies?

It is said public opinion runs in favour of such a change; that the manufacturing has become the dominant interest in the state; that wages must at all hazards be beat down to the continental level; and that, right or wrong, the thing must be done. Whether this is the case or not, time, and possibly a general election, will show. Sometimes those who are the most noisy, are not the most numerous. Certain it is, that in 1841 a vast majority both of the electors and the people were unanimous in favour of protection. But, be the present opinion of the majority what it may, that will not alter the nature of things--It will not render that wise which is unwise. Public opinion in Athens, in the time of Demosthenes, was nearly unanimous to apply the public funds to the support of the theatres instead of the army, and they got the battle of Chæronea, and subjection by Philip, for their reward. Public opinion in Europe was unanimous in favour of the Crusades, and millions of brave men left their bones in Asia in consequence. The Senate of Carthage, yielding to the wishes of the majority of their democratic community, refused to send succours to Hannibal in Italy; and they brought, in consequence, the legions of Scipio Africanus round their walls. Public opinion in France was unanimous in favour of the expedition to Moscow. "They regarded it," says Segur, "as a mere hunting party of six months;" but that did not hinder it from bringing the Cossacks to Paris. The old Romans were unanimous in their cry for cheap bread, and they brought the Gothic trumpet to their gates from its effects. A vast majority of the electors of Great Britain in 1831, were in favour of Reform: out of 101, 98 county members were returned in the liberal interest; and now they have got their reward, in seeing the Reformed Parliament preparing to abolish all protection to native industry. All the greatest and most destructive calamities recorded in history have been brought about, not only with the concurrence, but in obedience to the fierce demand of the majority. Protection to domestic industry, at home or colonial, is the unseen but strongly felt bond which unites together the far distant provinces of the British empire by the firm bond of mutual interest.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 16: The Agro Romano, the Sabina, the Campagna Maritima, and the Patrimonio di San Pietro, which make up the Campagna of Rome, contain 3881 square miles, or about 3,000,000 acres.--Sismondi's _Essais_, ii, 10.]

[Footnote 17: Barbieri à Sismondi.--Sismondi's _Essais_, li. 11.]

[Footnote 18: Tacitus, _Annal_. xii. 43. But, by Hercules, formerly provisions were sent for the legions from Italy into distant provinces; nor even now is it afflicted by sterility: but we prefer purchasing it from Africa and Egypt, and the lives of the Roman people have been committed to ships and the chances of the waves.]

[Footnote 19: Sismondi, _Essais_, ii. 25.]

[Footnote 20: To confess the truth, the great estates have ruined Italy; ay, and the provinces too.--_Plin_. 1. xviii. c. 6.]

[Footnote 21: Gibbon, vi. c. 36.]

[Footnote 22: "Quingena viginti millia quadringenti duo jugera quæ Campania provincia, juxta inspectorum relationem, in desertis et squalidis locis habere dignoscitur, eisdem provinciabilibus concessum."--_Cod. Theod._ ix. c. 38, c. 2.]

[Footnote 23: Gibbon, iii. c. 18.]

[Footnote 24: _Ibid._ iii. 88. c. 17.]

[Footnote 25: Michelet, _Histoire de France_, i. 104-108.]

[Footnote 26: Gibbon, VIII. c. xiv.]

[Footnote 27: Michelet's _Histoire de France_, i. 277.]

[Footnote 28: Ammianus Marcellinus, c. xvi; see also Gibbon, vi. 264.]

[Footnote 29: Sismondi's _Essais_, ii. 57.]

[Footnote 30: Sismondi's _Essais_, ii. 33.]

[Footnote 31: Sismondi's _Essais_, ii. 29, 30.]

[Footnote 32: Nicolai, _dell' Agro Romano_, ii. 30, 31.]

[Footnote 33: The rubbi is equal to two French hectares, or five English acres.]

[Footnote 34: Nicolai, iii 133.]

[Footnote 35: _Ibid._, c. in. 167. _Et subseq_.]

[Footnote 36: Sismondi's _Essais_, ii, 46, 47.]

[Footnote 37: Nicolai, _dell' Agro Romano_, iii. 167, 175.]

[Footnote 38: Nicolai, iii. 174, 178.]

[Footnote 39: Sismondi's _Essais_, ii, 56, 57.]

[Footnote 40: Nicolai, _del' Agro Romano_, iii. 153. Sismondi's _Essais_, ii. 44.]

[Footnote 41: Motu proprio de Pius VII.--Nicolai, ii. 163, 185.]

[Footnote 42: Sismondi's _Essais_, ii. 71.]

[Footnote 43: Gibbon, chap. 33, Vol. vi. p. 20.]

[Footnote 44: Gibbon, c. 31, Vol. v. p. 351.]

[Footnote 45: Slade's _Travels in the East_, ii 15.]

[Footnote 46: Slade, ii. 97.]

[Footnote 47: Sismondi's _Essais_, ii. 71.]

MR BROOKE OF BORNEO.

[48]On the 19th of August last, some twenty boats belonging to her Majesty's ships, _Agincourt_, _Vestal_, _Dædalus_, _Wolverine_, _Cruiser_, and _Vixen_, and containing about five hundred men, attacked and destroyed in the _Malladu_, a river of the Eastern Archipelago, the forts of Seriff Housman, a notorious and daring pirate, whose crimes had paralysed the commerce of the seas of Borneo, and finally rendered British interference absolutely necessary for the security of British life and property. The action was one of the many that the suppression of piracy in these regions has demanded--was gallantly fought, and full reported in the journals of the time;--a narrow river, with two forts mounting eleven or twelve heavy guns, (and defended by from five hundred to one thousand fighting men,) protected by a strong and well-contrived boom, was the position of the enemy. The English boats took the bull by the horns--cut away part of the boom under a heavy fire; advanced and carried the place in a fight protracted for fifty minutes. The enemy fought well, and stood manfully to their guns. The mate of the _Wolverine_ fell mortally wounded whilst working at the boom, axe in hand; but his death was avenged by a wholesale slaughter of the pirates. At two minutes to nine, those who had remained on board the _Vixen_ heard the report of the first heavy gun, and the first column of black smoke proclaimed that the village was fired. On the evening of the 19th, a detachment of ten boats, with fresh men and officers, quitted the _Vixen_, and arrived at the forts shortly after daylight. The work of destruction was complete. The boom, above spoken of, was ingeniously fastened with the chain-cable of a vessel of three hundred or four hundred tons; other chains, for darker purposes, were discovered in the town; a ship's long-boat; two ship's bells, one ornamented with grapes and vine leaves, and marked "_Wilhelm Ludwig, Bremen_," and every other description of ship's furniture. Some piratical boats were burned, twenty-four brass guns captured; the other guns spiked or otherwise destroyed. Malladu ceased to exist; the power of Seriff Housman was extinguished in a day.

Small wars, as well as great, have their episodes of touching tenderness. Twenty-four hours after the action, a poor woman, with her child of two years of age, was discovered in a small canoe; her arm was shattered at the elbow by a grape-shot, and the poor creature lay dying for want of water, in an agony of pain, with her child playing around her, and endeavouring to derive the sustenance which the mother could no longer give. The unfortunate woman was taken on board the _Vixen_, and in the evening her arm was amputated. On board the _Vixen_ she met with one who offered to convey her to the Borneon town of _Sar[=a]wak_, where she would find protection. To have left her where she was, would have been to leave her to die. To the stranger's kind offers she had but one answer to give. "If you please to take me, I shall go. I am a woman, and not a man; I am a slave, and not a free woman--do as you like." The woman recovered, was grateful for the kindness shown her, and was deposited faithfully and well in the town already named, by the stranger already introduced.

Let us state at once that the object of this article is to bring to public notice, as shortly as we may, the history of this stranger, and to demand for it the reader's warmest sympathy. Full accounts of the doings of her Majesty's ship Dido will no doubt be reported elsewhere, with the several engagements which Mr Keppel's book so graphically describes. Let them receive the attention that they merit. We cannot afford to meddle with them now. "Metal more attractive" lies in the adventures of a man who has devoted his fortune and energies to the cause of humanity, and has purchased with both the amelioration of a large portion of his suffering fellow-creatures.

We know not when, since our boyhood, we have met with an adventurer more ardent and daring, a companion more fascinating and agreeable, than MR BROOKE, the Rajah or Governor of <sc>Sar[=a]wak</sc>. Essentially British, in as much as he practises our national virtues when circumstances call them into action, he reminds us at all times of those Eastern men, famous in their generation, who delighted us many years ago, and secured our wonder by their devoted love of enterprise, and the moral ascendency that waited on their efforts. In truth, Mr Brooke belongs not to the present generation. His energy, his perseverance, which nothing can subdue, his courage which no dangers can appal, his simplicity which no possession of power and authority can taint, his integrity and honest mind, all belong to a more masculine and primitive age, and constitute a rare exception for our respect and gratitude in this. We take the earliest opportunity afforded us to pay our humble tribute to worth that cannot be questioned, to heroic virtue that cannot be surpassed.

Whatsoever humanity and civilisation may gain in the extermination of odious crimes upon the shores of BORNEO, whatsoever advantages England may hereafter obtain from British settlements in the island, and from a peaceful trade carried on around it, to Mr Brooke, and to that gentleman alone, will belong the glory and the honour of such acquisitions. Inspired by his vigorous nature, but more by the dictates of true benevolence, unaided and unprotected, save by his own active spirit and the blessing of Providence, he undertook a mission on behalf of mankind, with perils before him which the stoutest could not but feel, and achieved a success which the most sanguine could hardly have anticipated.

Mr Brooke was born on the 29th of April 1803, and is therefore now in his 43d year. He is the second son of the late Thomas Brooke, Esq., who held an appointment in the civil service of the East India Company. At an early age he went out to India as a cadet, served with distinction in the Burmese war, was wounded, and returned to England for the recovery of his health. In the year 1830, Mr Brooke relinquished the service altogether, and quitted Calcutta for China, again in search of health. During his voyage, he saw, for the first time, the islands of the Asiatic Archipelago; almost unknown, even at that recent period, to Europeans generally. Such information as was before the world he obtained, and carefully considered; and the result of his reflections was a determination to carry to Borneo, an island of some magnitude, and terribly afflicted in more respects than one, such knowledge and instruction as might help to elevate its people from the depravity in which they lived, and the horrors to which they were hourly subjected. This was in 1830. In the year 1838, he quitted England to fulfil his purpose. For eight years he had patiently and steadily worked towards his object, and gathered about him all that was necessary for its accomplishment. Nothing had been omitted to insure success. A man of fortune, he had been prodigal of his wealth; free from professional and other ties, he had given up his time wholly to the cause. One year was passed in the Mediterranean, that his vessel, _The Royalist_, might be put to the severest tests. Three years were spent in educating a crew worthy of an undertaking that promised so little sudden prosperity, that exacted so much immediate self-denial, threatened so many hardships. The men were happy and contented, cheerful and willing. The vessel belonged to the royal yacht squadron, was a fast sailer, armed with six six-pounders, a number of swivels and small arms, carried four boats, and provisions for as many months. On the 27th of October 1838, the adventurous company left the river. A fortunate passage carried them in safety to Rio Janeiro, and on the 29th of March 1839, they were sailing from the Cape of Good Hope. A six weeks' passage brought them to Java Head, and on the 1st of June they reached that "pivot of the liberal system in the Archipelago," the island of Singapore. It was not until the 27th of July that Mr Brooke quitted Singapore. Five days afterwards, the _Royalist_ was anchored off the coast of Borneo!

At the period of Mr Brooke's arrival, Borneo Proper,[49] once the seat of piracy, which few vessels could approach with safety, was under the government of the rajah MUDA HASSIM. Report spoke favourably of this rajah's character. A vessel had been wrecked on his coast, and the crew, who had been saved with difficulty, had taken shelter in the jungle. Muda Hassim, hearing of their fate, caused them to be brought to his town of Sar[=a]wak, collected as much as could be saved from the wreck, clothed the sufferers, fed them, and sent then free of expense to Singapore. Moreover, for reasons known to himself, the rajah was well disposed towards the English. These important circumstances were borne in mind by Mr Brooke. The rajah was now at Sar[=a]wak, and the adventurer determined to enter the river of that name, and to proceed as far as the town. He was well supplied with presents; gaudy silks of Surat, scarlet cloth, stamped velvet, gunpowder, confectionery, sweets, ginger, jams, dates, and syrups for the governor, and a huge box of China toys for the governor's children. From Mr Brooke's own diary, we extract the following account of his position and feelings at this interesting moment of his still doubtful undertaking:--

"_August 1st._--I am, then, at length, anchored off the coast of
Borneo! not under very pleasant circumstances, for the night is
pitchy dark, with thunder, lightning, rain, and squalls of wind.

"_2d._--Squally bad night. This morning, the clouds clearing away,
was delightful, and offered for our view the majestic scenery of
Borneo. At nine got under weigh, and ran in on an east-by-south
course four and a half or five miles towards Tanjong Api. Came to
an anchor about five miles from the land, and dispatched the boat
to take sights ashore, in order to form a base line for
triangulation. The scenery may really be called majestic. The low
and wooded coast about Tanjong Api is backed by a mountain called
Gunong Palo, some 2000 feet in height, which slopes down behind the
point, and terminates in a number of hummocks, showing from a
distance like islands.

"The coast, unknown, and represented to abound in shoals and reefs,
is the harbour for pirates of every description. Here every man's
hand is raised against his brother man; and here sometimes the
climate wars upon the excitable European, and lays many a white
face and gallant heart low on the distant strand.

"_3d._--Beating between Points Api and Datu. The bay, as far as we
have seen, is free from danger; the beach is lined by a feathery
row of beautiful casuarinas, and behind is a tangled jungle,
without fine timber; game is plentiful, from the traces we saw on
the sand; hogs in great numbers; troops of monkeys, and the print
of an animal with cleft hoofs, either a large deer, tapir, or cow.
We saw no game save a tribe of monkeys, one of which, a female, I
shot, and another quite young, which we managed to capture alive.
The captive, though the young of the black monkey, is greyish, with
the exception of the extremities, and a stripe of black down his
back and tail.

"We witnessed, at the same time, an extraordinary and fatal leap
made by one of these monkeys. Alarmed by our approach, he sprang
from the summit of a high tree at the branch of one lower, and at
some distance. He leaped short, and came clattering down sixty or
seventy feet amid the jungle. We were unable to penetrate to the
spot, on account of a deep swamp, to ascertain his fate.

"A river flows into the sea not far from where we landed--the water
is sweet, and of that clear brown colour so common in Ireland. This
coast is evidently the haunt of native _prahns_, whether piratical
or other. Print of men's feet were numerous and fresh, and traces
of huts, fires, and parts of boots, some of them ornamented after
their rude fashion. A long pull of five miles closed the day.

"_Sunday, 4th._--Performed divine service myself! manfully
overcoming that horror which I have to the sound of my own voice
before an audience. In the evening landed again more to the
westward. Shore skirted by rocks; timber noble, and the forest
clear of brushwood, enabling us to penetrate with ease as far as
caution permitted. Traces of wild beasts numerous and recent, but
none discovered. Fresh-water streams coloured as yesterday, and the
trail of an alligator from one of them to the sea. This dark
forest, where the trees shoot up straight and tall, and are
succeeded by generation after generation varying in stature, but
struggling upward, strikes the imagination with pictures trite yet
true. It was thus I meditated in my walk. The foot of European, I
said, has never touched where my foot now presses--seldom the
native wanders here. Here, I, indeed, behold nature fresh from the
bosom of creation, unchanged by man, and stamped with the same
impress she originally bore! Here I behold God's design when He
formed this tropical land, and left its culture and improvement to
the agency of man! The Creator's gift as yet neglected by the
creature; and yet the time may be confidently looked for when the
axe shall level the forest, and the plough turn the ground."

Upon the 5th of August, a boat was sent to the island of Tulang-Talang, where some Malays were seen; they were civil, and offered their assistance. On the following morning the _bandar_ (or chief steward) of the place came off in his canoe, and welcomed the new-comers. He assured them of a happy reception from the Rajah, and took his leave, after having been sumptuously entertained with sweetmeats and syrups, and handsomely provided with three yards of red cloth, some tea, and a little gunpowder. The great man himself, Muda Hassim, was, visited in his town of Sar[=a]wak on the morning of the 15th. He received his visitors in state, seated in his hall of audience, a large shed, erected on piles. Sar[=a]wak is only the occasional residence of the Rajah, and at the time of the ship's arrival he was detained there by a rebellion in the interior. The town was found to be a mere collection of mud-huts, containing about 1500 persons, and inhabited for the most part by the Rajah, his family, and their attendants. The remaining population were poor and squalid. "We sat," says Mr Brooke, "in easy and unreserved converse, out of hearing of the rest of the circle. He expressed great kindness to the English nation; and begged me to tell him _really_, which was the most powerful nation, England or Holland; or, as he significantly expressed, which is the 'cat and which is the rat?' I assured him that England was the mouser, though in this country Holland had most territory. We took our leave after he had intimated his intention of visiting us to-morrow morning."