Chapter THE FOURTH (2)

“This avowal,” says Lieutenant Waghorn, “most impolitic on my part as
regarded my individual interests, is perhaps the key to much of the
otherwise inexplicable opposition I subsequently met with from those
upon whose most energetic co-operation I had every apparent reason to
rely. I proceeded to Egypt, not only without official recommendation,
but with a sort of official stigma on my sanity!

“The Government nautical authorities reported that the Red Sea was not
navigable; and the East India Company’s naval officers declared, that,
if it _were_ navigable, the North-Westers peculiar to those waters,
and the South-West monsoons of the Indian Ocean, would swallow all
steamers up! And, as if there were not enough to crush me in the eyes
of foreigners and my own countrymen, documents were actually laid
before Parliament, showing that coals had cost the East India Company
twenty pounds per ton, at Suez, and had taken _fifteen months_ to get
there.”

Notwithstanding all these apparently overwhelming allegations, Mr. Waghorn succeeded in convincing the Pasha of the entire practicability of his plans; and having fully gained the confidence of that potentate, he obtained permission to proceed according to his own judgment. By means of his intimate knowledge of the whole route and all its contingencies, Mr. Waghorn saw that coals might be brought readily enough to Alexandria—then up the Nile—then across the Desert on camels—for not more than five pounds per ton. He immediately hastened back to England, and was “fortunate enough” to impress his conviction on this point on a very able public servant, Mr. Melville, Secretary to the East India House; and through his instrumentality one thousand tons of coals were conveyed by the route, and by the means above-mentioned, from the pit’s mouth to the hold of the steamer at Suez, for four pounds three shillings and sixpence.

“From that hour to this (June, 1849), the same plan, at the same, and
even a smaller cost, has been pursued in respect of all the coals of
the East India Company,—the saving in ten years being _three quarters
of a million_ sterling, as between the estimated, and the actual cost
of coal.”

Having now most deservedly obtained the friendship of the Pasha, Mr. Waghorn was enabled to establish mails to India, and to keep that service in his own hands during five years. On one occasion he actually succeeded in getting letters from Bombay to England in _forty-seven days_; and immediately afterwards both the English Government and the Honourable East India Company, at the pressing solicitations of the London, East India, and China Associations (Mr., since Sir George Larpent, Chairman) started mails of their own—taking from Mr. Waghorn the conveyance of letters, without the least compensation for the loss, from that time to this (1849); these authorities having, till then, repeatedly declared that they had no intention of having mails by this route at all.

It should not be omitted, that, during these efforts, Mr. Waghorn feeling that his position in India would be much advantaged, and therefore his means of utility, if he could receive the rank of Lieutenant in the British Navy, made repeated applications to this effect, from 1832 to 1842. But in vain. He thought that his great services might have obtained this reward for him, especially as it would add to his means of usefulness. But no. Government, like the serpent, is a wonderful “wise beast,” and the ways of Ministers are inscrutable. All spoke of his merits, but none rewarded them. At length, in 1842, Lord Haddington, being Head of the Admiralty, did grant this scarce and astonishing honour! Egypt actually beheld the man, who had brought England within forty-seven days of her sands, before any steam system was in operation between the two countries, permitted to write the letters R.N. after his natural name!

In conjunction with others, partners in the undertaking, Lieutenant Waghorn now arranged for the carriage of passengers, the building of hotels at Alexandria, Cairo, and other places, and he soon familiarised the Desert with the novel spectacle of harnessed horses, vans, and all the usual adjuncts of English travelling, instead of the precarious Arab and his primeval camel. These, with packet-boats on the Nile, and the canal (and afterwards with steamers), duly provided with English superintendants, rendered Eastern travel as easy as a journey of the same length in the hot summer of any of the most civilised countries.

Lieutenant Waghorn had now every prospect of making this hitherto undreamed-of novelty as profitable to himself in remuneration of his many arduous labours, as it was serviceable and commodious to the vast numbers of all countries, especially his own, who availed themselves of it. But unfortunately, just when his enterprise, industry, capital, and his possession of Mehemet Ali’s friendship were beginning to produce their natural results, the honourable English Government and the honourable East India Company “gave the monopoly of a chartered contract to an opulent and powerful Company!” Lieutenant Waghorn had coupled with his passenger system the carriage of overland parcels, which was a source of great profit, and through it there was a constant accession to the comforts of the passengers in transit. But it would seem as if the Government and the India House regarded this man only as an instrument to work out advantages for them, in especial, and the world at large, but the moment he had a prospect of obtaining some reward for himself, it was proper to stop him. Had he not been allowed to write Lieutenant before his name, and R.N. after it? What more would he have?

“This Company,” says Waghorn, “already extensive carriers by water,
gleaned from my firm the secret of conducting my business with an
alleged view to supply it on a much more comprehensive scale, and _to
employ us in so doing_; but when nothing more remained to be learned
from us, we were forthwith superseded, though with a useless and
utterly unproductive expenditure, on the part of our successors, of
six times the money we should have required to accomplish the same
end. Overwhelmed by the competition of this giant association, I was
entirely deprived of all advantages of this creation of my own energy,
and left with it a ruin on my hands, though to have secured me at
least the Egyptian transit would not only have been but the merest
justice to an individual, but would have been a material gain to the
British, public, politically and otherwise. In my hand the English
traffic was English, and I venture to say that English it would have
continued to this day, had I not been interfered with. But my
successors gave it up to the Pasha.”

The absence of all circumstantial descriptions and all graphic details in the papers, both printed and in manuscript, we have previously noticed. We had at first made sure of being able to present our readers with a picturesque and exciting narrative of the Life and Adventures of Lieutenant Waghorn—for adventures, in abundance, both on the sea and the Desert, he must assuredly have had; but he does not give us a single peg to hang an action or event upon, not a single suggestion for a romantic scene. Once we thought we had at last discovered among his papers a treasure of this kind. It was a manuscript bound in a strong cover, and having a patent lock. Inside was printed, in large letters, “Private: Daily Remembrancer: Mr. Waghorn.” It contains absolutely nothing of the kind that was evidently at first intended. It is crammed full of newspaper cuttings; and the only memoranda and remembrances are two or three melancholy affairs of bills and mortgages made to pay debts incurred in the public service. So much for his daily journal of events while travelling. He was manifestly so completely a man of action, that he could not afford a minute to note it down. Had it not been for the vexatious oppositions by which he was thwarted, and the painful memorials and petitions he was subsequently compelled, as we shall find, to present in various quarters, we verily believe he would have given us no written records at all of a single thing he did, and all that would have been left, in the course of a few years after his death, would have been the “Overland Route,” and the name of “Waghorn.”

We must now take a cursory view of his labours. To do this in any regular order is hardly possible, partly from the space they would occupy, but yet more from the desultory and unmanageable condition of the papers and documents before us.

During many years he sailed and travelled hundreds of thousands of miles between England and India, more particularly from the year 1827 to 1835, inclusive; passing up and down the Red Sea with mails, before the East India Company had any steam system on that sea. On one very special occasion, on this side the Isthmus, in October 1839, when the news arrived at Alexandria from Bombay, of Sir John (late Lord) Keane’s success at Ghuznee, he managed to obtain the use of the Pasha of Egypt’s own steamer, the Generoso, the very next day after Her Majesty’s steamer left Alexandria; and he personally commanded this vessel, and conveyed the mail to Malta, which was immediately sent on by the Admiral there, to England. Of such acts of special usefulness on occasions of great emergency, numerous instances might be related of him. His services in Egypt are well known to all who dwell there, or have travelled in that country. For the information of such as may not have any personal knowledge of these things, we may mention a few of the most prominent. Lieutenant Waghorn and his partners, without any aid whatever, with the single exception of the Bombay Steam Committee, built the eight halting places on the Desert, between Cairo and Suez; also the three hotels established above them, in which every comfort and even some luxuries were provided and stored for the passing traveller—among which should be mentioned iron tanks with good water, ranged in cellars beneath;—and all this in a region which was previously a waste of arid sands and scorching gravel, beset with wandering robbers and their camels. These wandering robbers he converted into faithful guides, as they are now found to be by every traveller; and even ladies with their infants are enabled to cross and recross the Desert with as much security as if they were in Europe.

He neglected no means of making us acquainted with our position and line of policy in these countries. He wrote and published pamphlets in England to show the justice and sound policy of our having friendly relations with Egypt, in opposition to the undue position of Turkey (1837, 1838); also, to make his countrymen conversant with the character of Mehemet Ali, and with the countries of Egypt, Arabia, and Syria (1840); another on the acceleration of mails between England and the East (1843); and a letter to Earl Grey on emigration to Australia (1848). At this time, in conjunction with Mr. Wheatley, he had established an agency for the Overland Route to India, China, &c., and had offices in Cornhill, which are still in active operation. The enormous subsequent increase of letters to India by the mail, may be inferred from this fact—that in his first arrangement, Lieutenant Waghorn had all letters for India sent to Messrs. Smith and Elder of Cornhill, to be stamped, and then forwarded to him in Alexandria: the earliest despatches amounted to one hundred and eighty-four letters; this number is now more than doubled by the correspondence of Smith and Elder alone, on their own business. They were the first booksellers who rightly appreciated Mr. Waghorn’s efforts; and they cordially co-operated with him.

“When he left Egypt, in 1841, he had established English carriages,
vans, and horses, for the passengers’ conveyance across the Desert
(instead of camels); indeed, he placed small steamers (from England)
on the Nile and the canal of Alexandria. Every fraction of his money
was spent by him in getting more and more facilities; and, had the
saving of money been one of the characteristics of his nature, the
Overland Route would not be as useful as it now is—and this is
acknowledged by all. Mr. Waghorn claimed for himself, and most justly,
the merit of this work: he claimed it without fear of denial; and
stated upon his honour, that no money or means were ever received by
him from either Her Majesty’s Government or the East India Company to
aid it. It grew into life altogether from his having, by his own
energy and private resources, worked the ‘Overland Mails’ to and from
India for two years, (from 1831 to 1834) in his own individual person.
‘Will it be believed,’ says he, ‘that up to that time Mr. Waghorn was
thought and called by many, a Visionary, and by some a Madman?’”

It may very easily be believed that this was thought and said, as it is a common practice with the world when anything extraordinary is performed for the first time; and though it may be hard enough for the individual to bear, we may simply set it down as the first step to the admission of his success. But it is very clear the Pasha was wise enough to recognise the value of the man who had done so much, and not only accorded him his friendship and assistance on all occasions, but sent him on one occasion as his confidential messenger to Khosru Pasha, Grand Vizier to the Sultan at Constantinople, in 1839, as well as to Lord Ponsonby, who was there as Ambassador from England at this time.

Nor did his merit pass unrecognised in his own country; first by the public generally, though, perhaps, first of all by the “Times” newspaper, the proprietors of which were subsequently munificent in their pecuniary assistance of his efforts in the Trieste experiments, as indeed were the morning papers generally. In six successive months he accomplished the gain of thirteen days _viâ_ Trieste over the Marseilles route. Lords Palmerston and Aberdeen, as foreign ministers of England; Lords Ellenborough, Glenelg, and Ripon, and Sir John Hobhouse, as presidents of the India Board, were also fully aware of his labours in bringing about the “Overland Route” through Egypt, and thus giving stability to English interests in our Eastern empire.

And now comes the melancholy end of all these so arduous and important labours. Embarrassed in his own private circumstances from the expenditure of all his own funds, and large debts contracted besides, solely in effecting these public objects, he was compelled, after vainly endeavouring to extricate himself by establishing in London an office of agency for the Overland Route, to apply to the India House and the Government for assistance. His constitution was by this time broken up by the sort of toil he had gone through in the last twenty years, and he merely asked to have his public debts paid, and enough allowed him as a pension to enable him to close his few remaining days in rest. He was still in the prime of life; but prematurely old from his hard work.

In consequence of various memorials and petitions the India House awarded Lieutenant Waghorn a pension of 200_l._ per annum; and the Government did the same. But they would not pay the debts he had contracted in their service. If he had made a bad bargain, he must abide by it, and suffer for it. Both pensions, therefore, were compromised to his creditors, and he remained without any adequate means of support. The following extract, with which we must conclude, is from his last memorial:—

“The immediate origin and cause of my embarrassments was a forfeited
promise on the part of the Treasury and the India House, whereby only
four instead of six thousand pounds, relied on by me, were paid
towards the Trieste Route experiments in the winter of 1846–7, when,
single-handed, and despite unparalleled and wholly unforeseen
difficulties, I eclipsed, on five trials out of six, the long
organised arrangements of the French authorities, specially stimulated
to all possible exertion, and supplied with unlimited means by M.
Guizot. On the first of these six occasions, there arose the breaking
down, on the Indian Ocean, of the steamer provided for me, thereby
trebling the computed expenses through the delay; and when, startled
by this excessive outlay, I hesitated to entail more, the Treasury and
the India House told me to proceed, to do the service well, and make
out my bill afterwards. I did proceed. I did the service not only
well, not only to the satisfaction of my employers, but in a manner
that elicited the admiration of Europe, as all the Continental and
British journals of that period, besides heaps of private
testimonials, demonstrated. My rivals, to whom the impediments in my
path were best known, were loudest in their acknowledgments; and the
only drawback to my just pride was the incredulity manifested in some
quarters, that I could have actually accomplished what (it is
notorious) I did at any time, much less among the all but impassable
roads of the Alps, in the depth of a winter of far more than ordinary
Alpine severity. I presented my bill. _It was dishonoured._ I had made
myself an invalid, had sown the seeds of a broken constitution, in the
performance of that duty. The disappointment occasioned by the
non-payment of the two thousand pounds, has preyed incessantly upon me
since; and now, a wreck alike almost in mind and body, I am sustained
alone by the hope, that the annals of the Insolvent Court will not
have inscribed upon them the Pioneer of the Overland Route, because of
obligations he incurred for the public, by direction of the public
authorities.”

The date of this memorial is June 8th, 1849. High testimonials are appended to it from Lords Palmerston, Aberdeen, Ellenborough, Harrowby, Combermere, Ripon, Sir John Hobhouse, Sir Robert Gordon, and Mr. Joseph Hume. But it did not produce any effect; the debts and the harassing remained; and the pioneer of the Overland Route died very shortly afterwards;—we cannot say of a broken heart, because his constitution had been previously shattered by his labours. Yet it looks sadly like this. He might have lived some years longer. He was only forty-seven. The pension awarded him by the India House he had only possessed eighteen months; and the pension from Government had been yet more tardily bestowed, so that he only lived to receive the first quarter.

At his death both pensions died with him, his widow being left to starve. The India House, however, have lately granted her a pension of fifty pounds; and the Government, naïvely stating, as if in excuse for the extravagance, that it was in consequence of the “eminent services” performed by her late husband, awarded her the sum of twenty-five pounds per annum. This twenty-five pounds having been the subject of many comments from the press, both of loud indignation and cutting ridicule, the Government made a second grant, with the statement that “in consequence of the _extreme_ destitution of Mrs. Waghorn,” a further sum was awarded of fifteen pounds more! This is the fact, and such are the terms of the grant. Why, it reads like an act of clemency towards some criminal or other offender;—“You have been very wicked, you know; but as you are in _extreme destitution_, here are a few pounds more.”

While these above-mentioned petitions, memorials, and struggles for life and honour were going on, great numbers of our wealthy countrymen were rushing with bags of money to pour out at the feet of Mr. Hudson, M.P., in reward for his having made the largest fortune in the shortest time ever known;—and soon after the Government munificence had been bestowed on the destitute widow of Lieutenant Waghorn, the Marquis of Lansdowne and the Marquis of Londonderry, in their places in the House of Lords, eulogised the splendid “military ability” of F. M. the late Duke of Cambridge, speaking in high terms of the great deeds he would have achieved, “if he had only had an opportunity,” and voting a pension of twelve thousand pounds a year to his destitute son, and three thousand pounds a year to his destitute daughter.

We have now beheld the labours, and the reward, of the pioneer of the Overland Route; who, for the establishment of this route and for manifold services subsequently rendered, received the “thanks” of three quarters of the globe, that is to say, of Europe, Asia, and Africa, “besides numberless letters of ‘thanks’ from mercantile communities at every point where Eastern trade is concerned!” His public debts are not paid to this day.

CHIPS.

THE KNOCKING UP BUSINESS.

New wants are being continually invented, and new trades are, consequently, daily springing up. A correspondent brings to light a novel branch of the manufacturing industry of this country, which was revealed to him in Manchester. Lately, he observes, I was passing through a bye-street in Manchester, when my attention was attracted by a card placed conspicuously in the window of a decent-looking house, on which was inscribed, in good text,

“KNOCKING UP DONE HERE AT 2D. A WEEK.”

I stopped a few moments to consider what it could mean, and chose out of a hundred conjectures the most feasible, namely:—that it referred perhaps to the “getting up” of some portion of a lady’s dress, or knocking up some article of attire or convenience in a hurry. I asked persons connected with all sorts of handicrafts and small trades, and could get no satisfaction. I therefore determined to enquire at the “Knocking up” establishment itself. Thither, accordingly, I bent my steps. On asking for the master, a pale-faced asthmatic man came forward. I politely told him the object of my visit, adding, that from so small a return as 2d. a week, he ought to get at least half profit. “Why, to tell you the truth, Sir,” rejoined the honest fellow, “as my occupation requires no outlay or stock in trade, ’tis _all_ profit.” “Admirable profession!” I ejaculated, “If it is no secret, I should like to be initiated; for several friends of mine are very anxious to commence business on the same terms.”

Not having the fear of rivalry before his eyes, he solved the mystery without any stipulations as to secrecy or premium. He said that he was employed by a number of young men and women who worked in factories, to call them up by a certain early hour in the morning; for if they happened to oversleep themselves and to arrive at the mill after work had commenced, they were liable to the infliction of a fine, and therefore, to insure being up in good time, employed him to “knock them up” at two-pence a week.

On further enquiry, he told me that he himself earned fourteen shillings per week, and his son—only ten years old—awoke factory people enough to add four shillings more to his weekly income. He added, that a friend of his did a very extensive “knocking up” business, his connexion being worth thirty shillings per week; and one woman he knew had a circuit that brought her in twenty-four shillings weekly.

There is an old saying, that one half the world does not know how the other half live. I question whether ninety-nine hundredths of your readers will have known till you permit me to inform them how our Manchester friends, in the “Knocking up” line, get a livelihood.

STATISTICS OF FACTORY SUPERVISION.

The Rev. Mr. Baker has recently issued a pamphlet, defending the moral tone of the factory system against the charges brought against it in the Rev. H. Worsley’s Prize Essay on Juvenile Depravity. We purposely abstain from discussing the merits of the controversy, believing that the truth lies between the two extremes advocated respectively by the reverend disputants. Mr. Henry, however, gives a table of statistics, an abstract of which we cannot withhold. It shows the number of spinning and power-loom weaving concerns in the principal manufacturing districts of Lancashire and Cheshire; also, the number of partners, so far as they are known to the public.

It appears that in Ashton-under-Lyne, Dunkinfield, and Moseley, there are fifty-three mills in the hands of ninety-five partners; Blackburn, and its immediate neighbourhood, has fifty-seven mills and eighty partners; Bolton, forty-two mills and fifty-seven partners; Barnley, twenty-five spinning manufactories and forty-six proprietors; at Heywood there are twenty-eight mills in the hands of forty-six masters. Manchester, it would appear, is not so much the seat of manufacture as of merchandise. Though it abounds in warehouses for the sale of cotton goods, there are no more than seventy-eight cotton factories, having one hundred and thirty-nine masters. Oldham has the greatest number of mills; namely, one hundred and fifty-eight, with two hundred and fifty-two proprietors; Preston, thirty-eight mills, sixty-two partners; Stalybridge, twenty cotton concerns and forty-one proprietors; Stockport, forty-seven mills and seventy-six masters; while Warrington has no more than four mills, owned by ten gentlemen. The total number of cotton manufactories in these districts is five hundred and fifty, which belong to nine hundred and four “Cotton Lords.”

Mr. Baker’s “case” is that a proper moral supervision is exercised over the tens of thousands of operatives employed in these factories; and that such supervision is not delegated from principals to subordinates. It would seem, from his showing, that of the nine hundred and four proprietors, no more than twenty-nine do not reside where their concerns are situated; and that of the entire aggregate of mills, there are only four in or near to which no proprietor resides. Lancashire and Cheshire cotton factories, therefore, are as regards absenteeism, the direct antithesis of Irish estates. The consequence is, that while the former are in a state of average, though intermittent prosperity, the latter have gone to ruin.

COMIC LEAVES FROM THE STATUTE BOOK.

The most manifest absurdities while remaining in fashion receive the greatest respect; for it is not till Time affords a retrospect that the full force of the absurdity is revealed. When men and women went about dressed like the characters in the farce of Tom Thumb, we of the present day wonder that they excited no mirth; nor can we now believe that Betterton drew tears as _Cato_ in a full-bottomed wig. A beauty who a dozen years ago excited admiration in the balloon-like costume of that day, would now, if presenting herself in full-blown leg-of-mutton sleeves, excite a smile. The more intelligent natives of Mexico are now more disposed to grin than to shudder, as they once did, at their comical idols. Everybody has heard of the monkey-god of India. In our day, those who once adored and dreaded him, would as readily worship _Punch_, and receive his squeakings for oracles, as to bow down before the Great Monkey.

Amongst the most prominent superstitions in which our forefathers believed, as a commercial opinion and rule of legislation, was “Protection;” and we have not awakened too recently from the delusion which descended from them not to perceive its absurdities, especially on looking over their voluminous legacy, the Statute Book. Before, however, we open some of its most comical pages, let us premise that the question of Protection is not a political one. Of the precise force and meaning of the term, there is a large class of “constant readers” who have no definite idea. The word “Protection” calls up in their minds a sort of phantasmagoria composed chiefly of Corn-law leagues, tedious debates in Parliament, Custom-houses, excisemen, smugglers, preventive-men and mounted coast-guards. They know it has to do with imports, exports, drawbacks, the balance of trade, and with being searched when they step ashore from a Boulogne steamer. Floating over this indefinite construction of the term, they have a general opinion that Protection must be a good thing, for they also associate it most intimately with the guardianship of the law, which protects them from the swindler, and with the policeman, who protects them from the thief. That powerful and patriotic sentiment, “Protection to British Industry,” must, they think, be nearly the same sort of thing, except that it means protection from the tricks of foreigners instead of from those of compatriots. They confess that, believing the whole matter to be a complicated branch of politics, they have had neither time nor patience to “go into it.”

In supposing the question of Free Trade or Protection to be a political one, they are, as we have before hinted, in error. It has no more to do with politics than their own transactions with the grocer and the coal-merchant; for it treats of the best mode of carrying on a nation’s, instead of an individual’s dealings with foreign marts and foreign customers. They are also wrong in supposing that protection to life and property is of the same character as that to which British industry is subjected. The difference can be easily explained; and although doubtless the majority of our readers are quite aware of it, yet for the benefit of the above-described, who are not, we will point it out:—Connected, as everybody knows, with whatever is protected, there must be two parties—A, in whose _favour_ it is protected; and B, _against_ whom it is protected. Legitimate and wholesome protection preserves the property we wish to guard against our enemies; impolitic and unwholesome protection too securely preserves property to us which we are most anxious to get rid of—by sale or barter,—against our best friends, our customers.

These elementary explanations are absolutely essential for the thorough enjoyment of the broad comedy, which here and there lightens up that grave publication, the Statutes at Large.

When the laws had protected English manufacturers, and producers from foreign produce and skill; they, by a natural sequence of blundering, set about protecting the British manufacturing population one against another, and the German jest of the wig-makers, who petitioned their Crown Prince “to make it felony for any gentleman to wear his own hair,” is almost realised. In the palmy days of Protection, a British bookbinder could not use paste, nor a British dandy, hair-powder, because the British farmer had been so tightly protected against foreign corn, that the British public could not get enough of it to make bread to eat.

These were perhaps the most expensive absurdities into which John Bull was driven by his mania for protection, but they were by no means the most ludicrous. Among his other dainty devices for promoting the woollen manufacture, was the law which compelled all dead bodies to be buried in woollen cloth. There may not be many who can sympathise with the agony of Pope’s dying coquette:—

“Odious! In woollen! ’Twould a saint provoke;
Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke.”

But every one must be astounded at the folly of bribing men to invest ingenuity and industry, to bury that which above ground was the most useful and saleable, of all possible articles. The intention was to discourage the use of cotton, which has since proved one of the greatest sources of wealth ever brought into this country.

The strangest and most practical protest of national common sense, against laws enacting protective duties, was the impossibility of compelling people to obey them. To those laws the country has been indebted for the expensive coast-guards, who cannot, after all, prevent smuggling. The disproportionate penalties threatened by protective laws, show how difficult it was to ensure obedience. In 1765, so invincible was the desire of our ladies to do justice to their neat ancles, that a law had to be passed in the fifth of George the Third, (chapter forty-eight,) decreeing that “if any foreign manufactured silk stockings, &c., be imported into any part of the British dominions, they shall be forfeited, and the importers, retailers, or vendors of the same, shall be subject, for every such offence, to a fine of two hundred pounds, with costs of suit.” The wise legislators did not dare to extend the penalties to the fair wearers, who found means to make it worth the while of the vendors to brave and evade the law.

The complicated and contradictory legislation into which the _ignis fatuus_ of Protection led men, made our nominally protective laws not unfrequently laws prohibitive of industry. To protect the iron-masters of Staffordshire, the inhabitants of Pennsylvania (while yet a British colony) were forbidden, under heavy penalties, to avail themselves of their rich coal and iron mines. To protect the tobacco growers of Virginia (also in its colonial epoch) the agriculturists of Great Britain were forbidden to cultivate the plant—a prohibition which is still in force—even now, that the semblance of a reason or excuse for the restriction exists.

The petty details into which these prohibitions of industry, under the pretext of protecting it, descended, can only be conceived by those who have studied the Statutes at Large. An act was passed in the fourth of George the First (the seventh chapter) for the better employing the manufacturers, and encouraging the consumption of raw silk. This act provides “that no person shall make, sell, or set upon any clothes or wearing garments whatsoever, any buttons made of serge, cloth, drugget, frieze, camlet, or any other stuff of which clothes or wearing garments are made, or any buttons made of wool only, and turned in imitations of other buttons, on pain of forfeiting forty shillings per dozen for all such buttons.” And again, in the seventh year of the same George, the twenty-second chapter of that year’s statutes declared that “No tailors shall set on any buttons or button-holes of serge, drugget, &c., under penalty of forty shillings for every dozen of buttons or button-holes so made or set on.... No person shall use or wear on any clothes, garments, or apparel whatsoever, except velvet, any buttons or button-holes made of or bound with cloth, serge, drugget, frieze, camlet, or other stuffs whereof clothes or woollen garments are usually made, on penalty of forfeiting forty shillings per dozen under a similar penalty.” These acts were insisted on by the ancient and important fraternity of metal button-makers, who thought they had a prescriptive right to supply the world with brass and other buttons “with shanks.” Shankless fasteners, made of cloth, serge, &c., were therefore interdicted; and every man, woman, and child, down to the time when George the Third was king, was _obliged_ to wear metal buttons whether they liked them or not, on pain of fine or imprisonment.

The shackles and pitfalls in which men involved themselves in their chase after the illusive idea of universal protection were as numerous, and more fatal than those with which Louis the Eleventh garnished his castle at Plessis-le-Tours. It was impossible to move without stumbling into some of them. British ship-builders were allowed to ply their trade exclusively for British ship-owners; but, in return, they were compelled to buy the dear timber of Canada, instead of that of the Baltic. British ship-owners had exclusive privileges of ocean carriage, but had to pay tribute to the monopoly of British ship-builders and Canadian lumberers. British sailors were exclusively to be employed in English ships, but in return they were at the mercy of the press-gangs. Dubious advantages were bought at a price unquestionably dear and ruinous.

The condition of our country while possessed by the fallacy of protection, can be compared to nothing so aptly, as to a man under the influence of a nightmare. One incongruity pursues another through the brain. There is a painful half-consciousness that all is delusion, and a fear that it may be reality—there is a choking sense of oppression. The victim of the unhealthy dream, tries to shake it off and awaken, but his faculties are spell-bound. By a great effort the country has awakened to the light of day, and a sense of realities.

The way in which the rural population, great and small, were protected against one another, may be well illustrated by an extract from the third of James the First, chapter fourteen. This act was in force so lately as 1827, for it was only repealed by the seventh and eighth of George the Fourth, chapter twenty-seven. The fifth clause of this precious enactment made a man who had not forty pounds a year a “malefactor” if he shot a hare; while a neighbour who possessed a hundred a year, and caught him in the fact, became in one moment his judge and executioner. After reciting that if any person who had not real property producing forty pounds a year, or who had not two hundred pounds’ worth of goods and chattels, shall presume to shoot game, the clause goes on to say—“Then any person, having lands, tenements, and hereditaments, of the clear value of one hundred pounds a year, may take from the person or possession of such malefactor or malefactors, and to his own use for ever keep, such guns, bows, cross-bows, buckstalls, engine-traps, nets, ferrets, and coney dogs,” &c. This is hardly a comic leaf from the statute book. Indignation gives place to mirth on perusing it. Some portions of the game-laws still in force could be enumerated, equally unreasonable and summary.

Most of the statutes contain a comical set of rules of English Grammar, which are calculated to make the wig of Lindley Murray stiffen in his grave with horror; they run thus:—“Words importing the singular number shall include the plural number, and words importing the plural number shall include the singular number. Words importing the masculine gender shall include females. The word ‘person’ shall include a corporation, whether aggregate or sole. The word ‘lands’ shall include messuages, lands, tenements, and hereditaments of any tenure. The word ‘street’ shall extend to and include any road, square, court, alley, and thoroughfare, or public passage, within the limits of the special act. The expression ‘two justices’ shall be understood to mean two or more justices met and acting together.”

Thus ends our chapter of only a few of the mirth provocatives of the Statutes at Large.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. ● Renumbered footnotes. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. ● The caret (^) is used to indicate superscript, whether applied to a single character (as in 2^d) or to an entire expression (as in 1^{st}).