Chapter XVI (6)

There is hardly a man in the country, from the peer to the artisan, who is not asking himself at this moment, what he has gained by Free-trade. So far as the agricultural interest is concerned, there is no dubiety on the point. The landlord is dunned for reduction of rent, is discontinuing his improvements, reducing his establishment, and setting his house in order for an altered style of living. The tenant is wellnigh ruined, furious that he has been betrayed, economising labour as he best can, or seriously meditating emigration. The labourer finds his wages reduced, his small comforts curtailed or abolished, work scarce, and the workhouse at no great distance. Let them all take comfort. According to our hopeful economists, this is a mere “transition state of suffering.” What the next state is to be, no prophet of them all can foretell. Meantime certain Solons advocate a wholesale emigration—rather a strange panacea for a nation about to be so prosperous!

Go to the towns or the manufacturing districts, and ask how they are prospering. The cotton trade is threatening to shut up. The travellers are returning disconsolate to their employers with the news that orders are every day becoming more scarce, and money payments even scarcer. There is no joy or exultation now in Leeds or Bradford. The journeymen operatives are combining against the slop system. The _Morning Chronicle_ harrows up the feelings of its readers, by tearful tales of the misery and destitution which prevails throughout the large towns of the empire, and no human being can deny the truth of the appalling statements. Scottish philanthropists, on their midnight visits to the wynds of Edinburgh, are struck with amazement at the squalor and vice which they encounter, and not less with the shoals of destitute creatures who are hurrying, with perverse infatuation, from the free open country to the fated atmosphere of a loathsome city garret. They want to check the stream, and drive the current back again. But whither? In the country there is no work for these people. Machinery has forced the hand-loom from the villages; Free Trade is reducing the wages of the spade to nothing. From the Western Highlands, and from Ireland, those who have money enough left to secure a passage on ship-board are emigrating by thousands—it is, we are told by a correspondent, the briskest trade in Liverpool. Those who have no money left are trooping to the towns, with the prospect before them of a fate which might rend the heart of the most callous. Who would wish to be a statesman, if for the consequences of all his deeds he must be held accountable hereafter?

Ask the master-manufacturers themselves how they are getting on, now that they have succeeded in their darling scheme of securing cheap food, and paralysing the home trade? You may ask if you will, but you will hardly obtain an answer, save through the medium of the trade circulars, all filled with dismal forebodings. Were another Cobden testimonial to be proposed just now, the subscriptions would scarcely purchase many shares in the most depreciated of the lines.

Ask the gentlemen of the railway interest, what cause is in operation to crush down their traffic and annihilate their dividends? They will tell you to a man that it is the universal agricultural depression. Ask the iron-masters how they are thriving? At this moment they are trembling for the stability of their colossal fortunes.

It is utterly impossible that this state of matters can continue much longer. If we do not reverse our mad and desperate policy—and that soon—the pressure of taxation, still retaining its former money-level, whilst the production which contributes to it is depreciated by a half, will become so unendurable, that any remedy, however desperate, will find numerous advocates; and amongst the foremost and most clamorous of these will be the leading sham economists. The stateliest ship, when the water is gaining upon her hold, must perforce part with her guns—the parallel case is being practically exhibited just now, by the efforts of the financial reformers to get rid of our warlike establishments. If we cannot part with our defences, we must do without something else. There is in the mean time a talk of reducing salaries, paring down judicial emoluments, and retrenching diplomatic expenses. Lord John Russell, with no very good grace, has been forced to refer these matters to a committee, for the evident purpose of securing the longest possible period of delay. But the tax-gatherer will not be idle in his function, and still the clamour will increase. Superfluities will go first—but no surrender of superfluities will meet the exigency. Men, when pressed to the last extremity, become reckless of their personal obligations; and we have already heard from various quarters intimations that, if the land is to be permanently depreciated, the creditor who has lent his money on the security of that land must be prepared to share the burden of the loss with the owner. There is a smack of wild justice in this, not at all unpalatable to the taste of a burdened debtor. Sir Robert Peel’s favourite question, “What is a pound?” will be argued afresh, after a fashion little likely to secure the approval of the original propounder of the query. We shall be told, truly enough, that the pound is the mere conventional representation of a certain amount of produce; and a very large body of men will begin to talk of paying off their debts, both private and public, upon a principle which, if once adopted, would destroy the whole credit of the country. Three years ago, Mr Doubleday demonstrated that, if the repeal of the Corn Laws should have the effect of reducing the price of wheat on the average to 4s. or 4s. 6d. per bushel, only two courses are left—either to repeal the taxes down to five-and-twenty millions at most; or to alter the currency law of 1819, and reduce the value of money to half the present value. We have now almost touched the mark.

All this was clearly foreseen and foreshadowed by Mr Alison, in his memorable paper of 1831; and we beg of our readers to peruse with attention the following extract, as of primary importance at the present juncture of affairs:—

“Such a change of prices might be innocuous, if individuals and the
public could begin on a new basis, and there were no subsisting _money
engagements_, which must be provided for at a reduced rate of incomes.
But how is such a state of things to go on, when individuals and the
State are under so many engagements, which cannot be averted without
private or public bankruptcy? This is the question which, in a
complicated state of society such as we live in, where industry is so
dependent on credit, is the vital one to every interest.

“There is hardly an individual possessed of property in the country
who is not immediately or ultimately involved in money engagements.
The landlords are notoriously and proverbially drowned in debt, and it
is calculated that _two-thirds_ of the produce of the soil finds its
way ultimately into the pocket of the public or the private creditor.
Farmers are all more or less involved in engagements either to their
landlords or to the banks who have advanced their money; merchants and
manufacturers have their bills or cash-accounts standing against them,
which must be provided for, whatever ensues with regard to the prices
of the articles in which they deal; and private individuals, even of
wealthy fortunes, have provisions to their wives, sisters, brothers,
or children, which must be made up to a certain money amount, if they
would avert the evils of bankruptcy. Now, if the views of the
Reformers are well founded, and a great reduction is effected in the
price of grain, and consequently in the money-income of every man in
the kingdom, through the free trade in corn, how are these
undiminished money-obligations to be made good out of the diminished
pecuniary resources of the debtors in them? Mr Baring has estimated
that the change in the value of money, consequent on the resumption of
cash-payments, altered prices about 25 per cent; and everybody knows
what widespread, still existing, and irremediable private distress
_that_ change produced. What, then, may be anticipated from the far
greater change which is contemplated as likely to arise from a
free-trade in grain?

“But, serious as these evils are, they are nothing in comparison with
the dreadful consequences which would result to _public credit_ from
the change, and the widespread desolation which must follow a serious
blow to the national faith.

“It is well known with what difficulty the payment of the annual
charge of the National Debt is provided for, even under the present
scale of prices; and how much those difficulties were increased by the
change of prices, and the general diminution of incomes, consequent on
the resumption of cash-payments. Indeed, such was the effect of that
change that, had it not been counterbalanced by a very great increase,
both of our agricultural and manufacturing produce at the same time,
it would have rendered the maintenance of faith with the public
creditor impossible. Now, if such be the present state of the public
debt, even under the unexampled general prosperity which has pervaded
the empire since the peace, and with all the security to the public
faith which arises from the stable, consistent, and uniform rule of
the British aristocracy, how is the charge of the debt to be provided
for under the diminished national income arising from the much
hoped-for change of prices consequent on the Reform Bill and repeal of
the Corn Laws, and the increased national impatience, arising from the
consciousness of the power to cast off the burden for ever?—Great and
reasonable fear may be felt, whether, under any circumstances, the
maintenance of the national faith inviolate is practicable for any
considerable length of time: no doubt can be entertained that, under a
Reform Parliament, and a free trade in grain, it will be impossible.”

We forbear quoting the picture which our author has drawn of the awful consequences which must instantly follow on a crash of the national credit—not because we consider it in any degree overcharged, but because we are now satisfied that the country is alive to its danger. We are too well accustomed to the braggadocio of modern journalism to attach much weight to the expiring vociferations of men who have done their utmost to lead us into the present dilemma; and who now, finding themselves powerless to advise, are vainly attempting to keep up a delusion which the experience of each succeeding week is dissipating with extraordinary rapidity. The most talented of the Free-trading journals virtually confess that the experiment has altogether failed. They are not able to point out one single iota of advantage which has resulted from it, beyond the purely supposititious one that, for a time, it secured the tranquillity of Great Britain. This is at best an ignoble argument in behalf of a bad measure; but we believe it to be utterly without foundation, inasmuch as there probably never was a great question agitated in which less interest was evinced by the masses of the nation than in that of the Corn Laws. But we should be sorry, indeed, to rank the loyalty of the British people so low, or to suppose that the crown of these realms rested upon so weak a foundation, as the adoption of such a view as this must necessarily infer. The journals to which we allude are by no means unconscious of the loss which we have incurred, or of the danger in which we presently stand. The insane boast of Mr Villiers, at the opening of the session, that a depreciation of ninety-one millions had taken place in the annual produce of British labour, found no echo in the columns of our more sharp-sighted contemporaries. They are now attempting to show that this calculation was an utter mistake; that importations are gradually diminishing; and that prices must necessarily rise. Most glad should we be if their views upon this subject were sound; but, unfortunately, stern experience points to a different result. We complain, and that with perfect justice, that they will not face the difficulty, and tell us what is to be done, supposing prices remain as they are. Agricultural quackery has done its utmost, and has been extinguished by the shout of general derision. No man in his senses believes that production can be artificially stimulated, or the earth so manured as to yield double crops to supply the frightful deficiency in the annual balance-sheet of the farmer. Both arms of husbandry are shattered. Cattle-feeding has been made, by Sir Robert Peel’s tariff, as profitless as tillage; and all countries have been invited, and are availing themselves of the invitation, to inundate our markets with their produce. Under such a state of things, what hope is there of recovery—what chance of manufactures reviving, so long as the best customers for manufactures are borne down? Are they not borne down? Let us see. The depreciation of food was stated by Mr Villiers at £91,000,000. The whole land rental of the United Kingdom is, according to a late statistical authority, £58,753,615. Let us suppose that rents are reduced by one-third—a reduction which, considering that mortgages and public burdens still remain undiminished, will cripple the means of most of the proprietors in the kingdom—and the rental will fall to about £39,169,000. Still there will remain a loss of nearly £52,000,000 annually, to be borne by the tenantry; in other words, low prices will have to that extent affected their power of purchase. The real case is even stronger than the hypothetical one, because the farmers, who constitute the larger consuming body, are at present receiving no such remission of rent. Of £178,000,000, the estimated amount of British manufactures, we export £58,000,000, and there remain for home consumption goods to the value of £120,000,000. Upon the sale of these depends not only the prosperity, but the existence of the manufacturers; and yet people are astonished that their wares do not go off as formerly! How, in the name of common sense, can they be expected to go off, when no margin of profit is left, in his own trade, to the great consumer? What these reasonable gentlemen anticipate is this—that the proprietor shall have no surplus from his rent, or the farmer any remuneration from his toil and capital; and yet that they shall continue to purchase all articles of manufacture as before!

We observe that a contemporary journal, which naturally feels rather sore on the subject of the Corn Laws, has twitted Mr Alison with a failure of prophecy, in not having allowed for a sufficient lapse between the passing of the Reform Bill and the notable era when the lion and the lamb coalesced—when Sir Robert Peel finally became a convert to the dazzling discoveries of Mr Cobden. Our respected brother seems to think that Mr Alison must feel disappointed that the march of democracy has been so slow; that the avatar of Free-trade was so long in coming; and that our fields were not, several years ago, abandoned by the disappointed husbandman. For the satisfaction of the kindly critic, we shall quote the following passage, penned in 1832, immediately after the passing of the Reform Bill, and then, perhaps, refresh his memory as to the manner in which the later measure was carried:—

“Dark and disastrous, however, as is the future prospect of the
British empire, we do not think its case hopeless, or that, after
having gone through the degradation, distraction, and suffering which
must follow the destruction of the Constitution, it may not yet
witness in the decline of its days some gleams of sunshine and
prosperity. The laws of nature have now come to aid the cause of
order; its usual suffering will attend the march of revolution;
experience will soon dispel the fumes of democracy; the reign of
Political Unions, of Jacobin Clubs, and tricolor flags, must ere long
come to an end; the suffering, anxiety, and distress consequent on
their despotic rule, the suspension of all confidence, and the ruin of
all credit, must consign them to the dust, amidst the execrations of
their country, if they are not subverted by the ruder shock of civil
warfare and military power. The distress, misery, and stagnation, in
every branch of industry, already consequent on the Reform Bill, have
been so extreme, that they must long ago have led to its overthrow,
not only without the resistance, but with the concurrence, of all the
Reformers who are not revolutionists, had it not been for the delusion
universally spread by the revolutionary journals, that the existing
distress was not owing to Reform, but to the resistance which it had
experienced, and that the danger of revolution, great in the event of
the measure being thrown out, was absolutely nugatory in the event of
its being passed. These two sophisms have alone carried the bill
through the resistance it experienced from the property, education,
and talent of the country, and blinded men’s eyes to the enormous
evils which not only threatened to follow its triumph, but attended
its progress. But these delusions cannot much longer be maintained.
Reform is now victorious: the bill is passed unmutilated and
unimpaired; and its whole consequences _now rest on the heads of its
authors, and its authors alone_. When it is discovered that all the
benefits promised from it are a mere delusion; that stagnation,
distress, and misery have signalised its triumph; that trade does not
revive with the contracted expenditure of the rich, nor confidence
return with the increased audacity of the poor; that the ancient and
kindly relations of life have been torn asunder in the struggle, and
the vehemence of democracy has provided no substitute in their stead;
that interest after interest, class after class, is successively
exposed to the attacks of the revolutionists, and the ancient barrier
which restrained them is removed: the eyes of the nation must be
opened to the gross fraud which has been practised upon it. Then it
will be discovered that the aristocratic interest, and the nomination
boroughs, which supported their influence in the Lower House, were the
real bulwark which protected all the varied interests of the country
from the revolutionary tempest, and that every branch of industry is
less secure, every species of property is less valuable, every
enterprise is more hazardous, every disaster is more irretrievable,
when its surges roll unbroken and unresisted into the legislature.

“It is upon this very circumstance, however, that our chief, and
indeed our only hope of the country is founded. Hitherto the great
body of the middle classes have stood aloof from the contest, or they
have openly joined the reforming party. They were carried away by the
prospect of the importance which they would acquire under the new
Constitution, and did not perceive that it was their own interests
which were defended, their own battle which was fought, their own
existence which was at stake, in the contest maintained by the
Conservative party. Now the case is changed. The old rampart is
demolished, and, unless these middle ranks can create a new one, they
must be speedily themselves destroyed. From the sole of their feet to
the crown of their head, the middle classes of England at present
stand exposed to the revolutionary fire; every shot will now carry
away flesh and blood. Deeply as we deplore the misery and suffering
which the exposure of these unprotected classes to the attacks of
revolution must produce, it is in the intensity of that suffering, in
the poignancy of that distress, that the only chance of ultimate
deliverance is to be found. Periods of suffering are seldom, in the
end, lost to nations, any more than to individuals; and it is years of
anguish that expiate the sin, and tame the passions, of days of riot
and licentiousness.

“The Constitution, indeed, is destroyed, but the men whom the
Constitution formed are not destroyed. The institutions which
protected all the classes of the state, the permanent interests which
coerced the feverish throes of democracy, the conservative weight
which steadied all the movements of the people, are at an end; the
peril arising from this sudden removal of the pressure which hitherto
regulated all the movements of the machine is extreme, but the case is
not utterly hopeless. It is impossible at once to change the habits of
many hundred years’ growth; it is difficult in a few years to root out
the affections and interests which have sprung from centuries of
obligation; it is not in a single generation that the virtues and
happiness, fostered by ages of prosperity, are to be destroyed. As
long as the British character remains unchanged; as long as religion
and moral virtue sway the feelings of the majority of the people; as
long as tranquil industry forms the employment of her inhabitants, and
domestic enjoyments constitute the reward of their exertion,—the cause
of order and civilisation is not hopeless. Revolutions, it is true,
are always effected by reckless and desperate minorities in opposition
to opulent and indolent majorities; but it is the ennobling effect of
civil liberty to nourish a spirit of resistance to oppression, which
outstrips all the calculations of those who ground their views upon
what has occurred in despotic monarchies.”

And so it happened. The reaction throughout the country was complete. The Conservative party rallied; and rallied so effectively, that, with many converts in its ranks, and the rising youth of the new generation to back it, a great majority in the House of Commons was secured, and the leadership intrusted to the hands of one who, in despite of previous lapses, appeared at that time to have earned the distinction by his zeal, and who gained it by the force of his protestations. Had the leader been true to the cause which he then professed, we should have been spared the ungracious duty of commenting upon a solemn treachery, to which history affords no parallel, and the memory of which will live long after the grave has closed above the head of the principal delinquent. How was it possible that such an event could fail again, for a time, to disunite a party, formed out of the ruins of the old one by a rapid and indiscriminate conscription? That dependence and faith which high and chivalrous spirits are so ready to place in one beneath whose colours they have fought—the ready trustingness of youth—the great prestige which surrounds the name of a veteran and successful statesman—the belief in his superior sagacity—the recollection of blandishments and flattery, so prized by the young when proceeding from the lips of honoured age,—all these things combined to break up the Conservative party, and to place the reins of government once more in the hands of the eager Whigs. Perhaps it is better so. There is no risk now of a second betrayal, whatever may be the future fortunes of the Country Party; and on the head of him who caused the social change let the whole consequences rest. England’s political annals have at least gained one character more by the act. The future historian who shall chronicle the transactions of the last five years, whatever be his creed or his politics, will speak with veneration and honour of LORD GEORGE BENTINCK, for whose early fate more honest tears were shed, than have often been paid as a tribute to the patriot who has fallen in battle, the defender of his country’s cause.

We have not left ourselves much room to glance at the three interesting papers in this volume, on the subject of the two French Revolutions of 1830 and 1848. They will be read with profound attention by thousands who may have passed them over cursorily in their anonymous original form; because Mr Alison’s profound and intimate knowledge of the working of French diplomacy, of the turbulent and dangerous element which lies, like molten lava, beneath the surface of French society, and of the secret causes of those outrages which, from time to time, have shaken that unhappy country, must needs give an additional assurance of their value. It is curious to observe how entirely the speculations of the author, as to the consequences which might arise from the first of those sudden revolutions, are borne out by the marvellous issue of the second. The falsity of the system which made the stability of a government and the existence of a dynasty mainly depend upon the doubtful adherence, and still more doubtful valour, of a civic National Guard, was clearly pointed out and exposed at the time when the Liberal press of England was loud in its approbation of the citizen soldiers who had violated their oaths, and the citizen king, who, more fortunate than his worthless father, had succeeded in supplanting his kinsman and rightful sovereign.

“Of the numerous delusions,” wrote Mr Alison in 1831, “which have
overspread the world in such profusion during the last nine months,
there is none so extraordinary and so dangerous as the opinion
incessantly inculcated by the revolutionary press, that the noblest
virtue in regular soldiers is to prove themselves traitors to their
oaths; and that a _national guard_ is the only safe and constitutional
force to which arms can be intrusted. The troops of the line, whose
revolt decided the three days in July in favour of the revolutionary
party, have been the subject of the most extravagant eulogium from the
Liberal press throughout Europe; and even in this country, the
Government journals have not hesitated to condemn, in no measured
terms, the Royal Guard, merely because they adhered, amidst a nation’s
treason, to their honour and their oaths.

“Hitherto it has been held the first duty of soldiers to adhere, with
implicit devotion, to that _fidelity_ which is the foundation of
military duties. Treason to his colours has been considered as foul a
blot on the soldier’s scutcheon as cowardice in the field. Even in the
most republican states, this principle of military subordination has
been felt to be the vital principle of national strength. It was
during the rigorous days of Roman discipline, that their legions
conquered the world; and the decline of the empire began at the time
that the Prætorian Guards veered with the mutable populace, and sold
the empire for a gratuity to themselves. Albeit placed in power by the
insurrection of the people, no men knew better than the French
Republican leaders that their salvation depended on crushing the
military insubordination to which they had owed their elevation. When
the Parisian levies began to evince the mutinous spirit in the camp at
St Menehould in Champagne, which they had imbibed during the license
of the capital, Dumourier drew them up in the centre of his
intrenchments, and, showing them a powerful line of cavalry in front,
with their sabres drawn, ready to charge, and a stern array of
artillery and cannoneers in rear, with their matches in their hands,
soon convinced the most licentious that the boasted independence of
the soldier must yield to the dangers of actual warfare. ‘The armed
force,’ said Carnot, ‘is essentially obedient;’ and in all his
commands, that great man incessantly inculcated upon his soldiers the
absolute necessity of implicit submission to the power which employed
them. When the recreant Constable de Bourbon, at the head of a
victorious squadron of Spanish cavalry, approached the spot where the
rearguard, under the Chevalier Bayard, was covering the retreat of the
French army in the valley of Aosta, he found him seated, mortally
wounded, under a tree, with his eyes fixed on the cross which formed
the hilt of his sword. Bourbon began to express pity for his fate.
‘Pity not me,’ said the high-minded Chevalier; ‘pity those who fight
against their king, their country, and their oath!’

“These generous feelings, common alike to republican antiquity and
modern chivalry, have disappeared during the fumes of the French
Revolution. The soldier who is now honoured is not he who keeps, but
he who violates his oath; the rewards of valour are showered, not upon
those who defend, but on those who overturn the government; the
incense of popular applause is offered, not at the altar of fidelity,
but at that of treason. Honours, rewards, promotion, and adulation,
have been lavished on the troops of the line, who overthrew the
government of Charles X. in July last; while the Royal Guard, who
adhered to the fortune of the fallen monarch with exemplary fidelity,
have been reduced to _beg their bread_ from the bounty of strangers in
a foreign land. A subscription has recently been opened in London for
the most destitute of these defenders of royalty; but the Government
journals have stigmatised, as ‘highly dangerous,’ any indication of
sympathy with their fidelity or their misfortunes.

“If these ancient ideas of honour, however, are to be exploded, they
have at least gone out of fashion in good company. The National Guard
who took up arms to overthrow the throne, have not been long of
destroying the altar. During the revolt of February 1831, _the Cross_,
the emblem of salvation, was taken down from all the steeples in Paris
by the citizen soldiers, and the image of our Saviour effaced, by
their orders, from every church within its bounds! The two principles
stand and fall together. The Chevalier ‘without fear and without
reproach’ died in obedience to his oath, with his eyes fixed on the
Cross; the National Guard lived in triumph, while their comrades bore
down the venerated emblem from the towers of Notre Dame.”

Singular was the retribution which awaited France. The “Ulysses” of Europe, as he has been styled—the old, crafty, insincere, penurious, yet plausible and half-sagacious man, sate in apparent peace upon his throne for wellnigh eighteen years, negotiating alliances, maintaining a fair outward character, pandering to popularity, identifying himself with the _bourgeoisie_, and identifying his sons with the army—and all this to fall at last before the worst planned and most poorly contrived insurrection which was ever attempted in the streets of a European capital. Surrounded by his citizens, the citizen king went down. We know now, from the revelations of De la Hodde and others, what was the true nature and commencement of that beggarly conspiracy. We know that a few hundred suspected and ill-organised Socialists, along with a handful of newspaper editors, not two of whom possessed sufficient personal courage to lay hand on a loaded musket, contrived to overawe Paris, to bully the redoubted National Guard, and to send poor old Ulysses again upon his travels, without much chance of finding a second imperial Ithaca. Farce and tragedy are here so closely interwoven that it is wellnigh impossible to separate their texture. The dethronement of such a king may be a grand European disaster, but it militates nothing against the principle or the sanctity of royalty. It was but a simple Presidency gone a-begging. The King of the Bourse or the Railway Monarch had about them nearly as much of that divinity which should surround the royal character as Louis Philippe, the chosen of the shopkeepers, and the veteran dabbler in the funds. No true greatness, no high nobility of soul, elevated him to the throne of France—ignoble beyond all precedent was the manner in which he was compelled to leave it. The retreat of Charles X. was a triumph compared with his panic-stricken and unfollowed flight.

The following are Mr Alison’s remarks upon the last of these Revolutions. The reader will not fail to observe the extreme similarity between the two astounding Revolutions, and the precise nature of the cause which enabled both of them to be successfully carried through by an otherwise contemptible rabble.

“Who is answerable for this calamitous Revolution, which has thus
arrested the internal prosperity of France, involved its finances in
apparently hopeless embarrassment, thrown back for probably half a
century the progress of real freedom in that country, and perhaps
consigned it to a series of internal convulsions, and Europe to the
horrors of general war for a very long period? We answer without
hesitation, that the responsibility rests with two parties, and two
parties only—the King and the National Guard.

“The King is most of all to blame, for having engaged in a conflict,
and, when victory was within his grasp, allowing it to slip from his
hands from want of resolution at the decisive moment. It is too soon
after these great and astonishing events to be able to form a decided
opinion on the whole details connected with them; but the concurring
statements from all parties go to prove that on the _first_ day the
troops of the line were perfectly steady; and history will record that
the heroic firmness of the Municipal Guard has rivalled all that is
most honourable in French history. The military force was immense; not
less than eighty thousand men, backed by strong forts, and amply
provided with all the muniments of war. Their success on the first day
was unbroken; they had carried above a hundred barricades, and were in
possession of all the military positions of the capital. But at this
moment the indecision of the King ruined everything. Age seems to have
extinguished the vigour for which he was once so celebrated. He shrank
from a contest with the insurgents, paralysed the troops by orders not
to fire on the people, and openly receded before the insurgent
populace, by abandoning Guizot and the firm policy which he himself
had adopted, and striving to conciliate revolution by the _mezzo
termini_ of Count Molé, and a more liberal cabinet. It is with retreat
in the presence of an insurrection, as in the case of an invading
army; the first move towards the rear is a certain step to ruin. The
moment it was seen that the King was giving way, all was paralysed,
because all foresaw to which side the victory would incline. The
soldiers threw away their muskets, the officers broke their swords,
and the vast array, equal to the army which fought at Austerlitz, was
dissolved like a rope of sand. Louis Philippe fell without either the
intrepidity of the royal martyr in 1793, or the dignity of the elder
house of Bourbon in 1830; and if it be true, as is generally said,
that the Queen urged the King to mount on horseback and die as ‘became
a King’ in front of the Tuileries, and he declined, preferring to
escape in disguise to this country, history must record, with shame,
that royalty perished in France without the virtues it was entitled to
expect in the meanest of its supporters.

“The second cause which appears to have occasioned the overthrow of
the monarchy in France, is the general, it may be said universal,
defection of the National Guard. It had been openly announced that
20,000 of that body were to line the Champs Elysées _in their uniform_
on occasion of the banquet; it was perfectly known that that banquet
was a mere pretext for getting the forces of this Revolution together;
and that the intention of the conspirators was to march in a body to
the Tuileries after it was over, and compel the King to accede to
their demands. When they were called out in the afternoon, they
declined to act against the people, and by their treachery occasioned
the defection of the troops of the line, and rendered farther
resistance hopeless. They expected, by this declaration against the
King of their choice, the monarch of the barricades, to secure a
larger share in the government for themselves. They went to the
Chamber of Deputies, intending to put up the Duchess of Orleans as
Regent, and the Count of Paris as King, and to procure a large measure
of reform for the constitution. What was the result? Why, that they
were speedily supplanted by the rabble who followed in their
footsteps, and who, deriding the eloquence of Odillon Barrot, and
insensible to the heroism of the Duchess of Orleans, by force and
violence expelled the majority of the deputies from their seats,
seized on the President’s chair, and, amidst an unparalleled scene of
riot and confusion, subverted the Orleans dynasty, proclaimed a
Republic, and adjourned to the Hotel de Ville to name a Provisional
Government!...

“Here, then, is the whole affair clearly revealed. It was the timidity
of Government, and the defection of the National Guard, which ruined
everything,—which paralysed the troops of the line, encouraged the
insurgents, left the brave Municipal Guards to their fate, and caused
the surrender of the Tuileries. And what has been the result of this
shameful treachery on the part of the sworn defenders of order—this
‘_civic_’ prætorian guard of France? Nothing but this, that they have
destroyed the monarchy, ruined industry, banished capital, rendered
freedom hopeless, and made bankrupt the State! Such are the effects of
armed men forgetting the first of social duties, that of fidelity to
their oaths.”

Of the other papers contained in this volume, that on the subject of “the British Peerage,” written at a time when certain worthy fellows out of doors seemed to be determined that crown, mitre, and coronet should go together into one blazing bonfire, similar to that which lately received the state chair of Louis Philippe—and when certain peers within testified their respect for the dignity and privileges of their order, by doing their best to have it swamped by new creations—will especially challenge notice as a stately, dignified, and elaborate composition. Other essays, such as those on Crime and Transportation, Ireland, the Navigation Laws, and the Commercial Crisis of 1837, evince the care and attention which Mr Alison has bestowed on the leading topics of economy and government with which modern statesmen are inevitably compelled to grapple. Of their intrinsic merit we shall say nothing. They have often been cited as the ablest expositions of the peculiar views which they advocate, and all of them bear the impress of a mind earnest in its convictions, and thoroughly practical in its tendency. Mr Alison does not, like too many writers of the day, content himself with finding out what is faulty, or defective, or radically vicious in any branch of our social economy—he indulges in no vague and pointless declamation; but while he lays bare the wound, distinctly and emphatically inculcates the proper remedy. Many persons there are, of course, who will not subscribe to his doctrines, but we believe there are very few who will question the sincerity or deny the philanthropy of his views. And when it is considered that the three massive volumes, of which this is the first, were composed at intervals of short respite from the toil of an engrossing profession, and form but a small portion of the literary labours of the author, it may be questionable which is most to be wondered at—the largeness of his information, or the unwearied energy of his mind.

These certainly are not the columns in which this work of Mr Alison can be discussed with absolute impartiality, nor is the writer of this article free from a pardonable bias. Where affection, veneration, and gratitude for many wholesome lessons, conveyed with a kindliness which has made those lessons still more valuable, are warm at the heart, criticism is impossible; and it would be absurd and false to feign that we approach this book with any idea of fulfilling the critical function. Yet thus much may we be allowed to say, that for integrity of purpose, honesty of design, clear and unvarying adherence to principles, laboriously sought for and conscientiously adopted—for the virtue and total absence of selfishness which distinguish the patriot, and for the grace and accomplishment which adorn the scholar and the gentleman, it would be difficult to find within the four seas that encircle Britain a superior to the author of these Essays, and of the famous History of Europe.

OVID’S SPRING-TIME
FROM THE TRISTIA.

For once the zephyrs have removed the cold:
One year is over, and a new begun.
So short a winter, I am daily told,
Never yet yielded to this northern sun.
I see the children skipping o’er the green,
Plucking the faint unodorous violet,
A gentle stranger, rarely ever seen.
With other flowers the mead is sparsely set—
Brown birds are twittering with the joy of spring:
The universal swallow, ne’er at rest,
Aye chirping, glances past on purple wing,
And builds beneath the humble eaves her nest.
The plant, which yester-year the share o’erthrew,
Looks up again from out the opening mould;
And the poor vines, though here but weak and few,
Some scantling buds, like ill-set gems, unfold.
W. E. A.

=Dies Boreales.=

No. VII.

CHRISTOPHER UNDER CANVASS.

_Camp at Cladich._

SCENE—_The Wren’s Nest._ TIME—_Three o’clock_ A.M.

NORTH—TALBOYS.

NORTH.

Perturbed Spirit! why won’t you rest? What brings thee here?

TALBOYS.

Seward snores.

NORTH.

Why select Seward?

TALBOYS.

I do not select him—he selects himself—singles himself out from the whole host; so that you hear his Snore loud over that of the Camp—say rather his Snore alone—like Lablache singing a Solo in a chorus.

NORTH.

It must be Buller.

TALBOYS.

Buller began it——

NORTH.

List! How harmonious in the hush the blended Snore of Camp and Village! How tuned to unison—as if by pitch-pipe—with the dreamy din of our lapsing friend here, who by and by will awake into a positive Waterfall.

TALBOYS.

The Snore of either army stilly sounds. At this distance, the Snore disposes to sleep. Seward must have awakened himself—there goes Buller——

NORTH.

Where?

TALBOYS.

Shriller than Seward—quite a childish treble—liker the Snore of a female—

NORTH.

Females never snore.

TALBOYS.

How do you know? I won’t answer for some of them. Lionesses do—not perhaps in their wild state—but in Zoological Gardens.

NORTH.

Not quite so loud, Chanticleer—you will disturb my people.

TALBOYS.

Disturb your people! Why, he has already stirred up the Solar System.

“The Cock that is the Trumpet of the Morn,
Doth, with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat,
Awake the God of Day.”

Taking the distance of the Earth from the Sun, in round numbers, at Ninety-Five Millions of Miles, pretty well for a bird probably weighing some six pounds not merely to make himself heard by the God of Day, but by one single crow to startle Dan Phœbus from his sleep, and force him _nolens volens_ to show his shining morning face at Cladich.

NORTH.

Out of Science, we seldom think of the vastness of the System of the Universe. Our hearts and imaginations diminish it for the delight of love. In our usual moods we are all Children with respect to Nature; and gather up Stars as if they were flowers of the field—to form a coronet for Neæra’s hair.

TALBOYS.

What ailed poor dear Doctor Beattie at Cocks in general? I never could understand the Curse.

“Proud harbinger of Day,
Who scarest my visions with thy clarion shrill,
Fell Chanticleer! who oft hath reft away
My fancied good, and brought substantial ill!
Oh, to thy cursed scream discordant still
Let Harmony aye shut her gentle ear;
Thy boastful mirth let jealous rivals spill,
Insult thy crest, and glossy pinions tear,
And ever in thy dreams the ruthless fox appear.”

You Poets, in your own persons, are a savage set.

NORTH.

I am not a Poet, sir; nor will I allow any man with impunity to call me so.

TALBOYS.

But Doctor Beattie was, and a Professor of Moral Philosophy to boot, at Aberdeen or St Andrews, or some other one of our ancient Universities—for every stone-and-lime building in Scotland is ancient; and. goodness me! hear him cursing cocks, and dooming the whole Gallic race to every variety of cruel and ignominious deaths, in revenge for having been disturbed from his morning dreams by a Gentleman with Comb and Wattles crowing on his own Dunghill, in red jacket, speckled waistcoat, and grey breeks, the admiration of Earochs and How-Towdies.

NORTH.

Doctor Beattie was a true Poet—and had an eye and an ear for Nature. Yet now and then he shut both—

“Hence the scared owl on pinions grey
_Breaks from the rustling boughs_;
And down the lone vale sails away
To more profound repose.”

I have seen that Stanza quoted many thousand times as exquisite. It is criminal. An owl was never heard, scared or unscared, to “break from the rustling boughs.” Silently as a leaf he leaves his perch; you hear no rustle, for he makes none—any more than a ghost.

TALBOYS.

Nor are the other lines good—for they present the image of a long rectilinear flight, which that of an owl in no circumstances is; and, in a fright, he would take the first blind shelter.

NORTH.

Poets seldom err so—yet I remember a mistake of Coleridge’s about that commonest of all birds, the Rook.

“My gentle-hearted Charles! when the last Rook
Bent its straight path along the dusky air
Homewards, I blest it! deeming its black wing
(Now a dim speck, now vanishing in light)
Had crossed the mighty orb’s dilated glory,
When thou stood’st gazing; or, when all was still,
_Flew creaking o’er thy head_; and had a charm
For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom
No sound is dissonant which tells of life!”

TALBOYS.

There is much silliness in the Sibylline Leaves. For Charles read Charlotte. ’Tis more like Love than Friendship—effeminate exceedingly; and, “no sound is dissonant which tells of life,” reminds one of the Sunday Jackasses on Blackheath.

NORTH.

“‘_Flew creaking._’ Some months after I had written this line,” says Coleridge in a note, “it gave me pleasure to find that Bartram had observed the same circumstance of the Savanna Crane. ‘When these birds move their wings in flight, their strokes are slow, moderate, and regular; and even when at a considerable distance, or high above us, we plainly hear the quill-feathers; their shafts and webs, upon one another, creak as _the joints or working of a vessel in a tempestuous sea_.’” That a Rook may fly “creaking” when moulting, or otherwise out of feather, I shall not take upon me to deny; but in ordinary condition, he does not fly “creaking.” Coleridge was wont, in his younger days, to mistake exceptions for general rules. In such a case as this, a moment’s reflection would have sufficed to tell him that there could not have been “creaking” without let or hindrance to flight—and that the flight of a rook is easy and equable—“The blackening train o’ craws to their repose.” What creaking must have been there! But Burns never heard it.

TALBOYS.

One Burns, as an observer of nature, is worth fifty Coleridges.

NORTH.

Not an arithmetical question. Why, even dear Sir Walter himself occasionally makes a slip in this way.

“Beneath the broad and ample bone,
That buckled heart to fear unknown,
A feeble and a tim’rous guest
The field-fare framed her lowly nest!”

The Field-fare is migratory—and does not build here; in Norway, where it is native, it builds in trees—often high up on lofty trees—and in crowds.

TALBOYS.

I believe, sir, they have been known to breed in this country—and perhaps here they build on the ground.

NORTH.

Don’t be nonsensical. Our Great Minstrel knew wood-craft well; and hill-craft and river-craft; yet in his fine picture of Coriskin and Coolin,

“The wildest glen but this can show
Some touch of nature’s genial glow:
On high Benmore green mosses grow,
And heath-bells bud in deep Glencroe,
And copse on Cruachan Ben;
But here, above, around, below,
In mountain or in glen,
Nor tree, nor shrub, nor plant, nor flower,
Nor aught of vegetative power
The weary eye may ken.
For all is rocks at random strewn,
Black waves, bare crags, and banks of stone,
As if were here denied
The summer’s sun, the spring’s sweet dew,
That clothe with many a varied hue
The bleakest mountain’s head;”

would you believe it, that he introduces Deer—_fallow_ Deer!

TALBOYS.

“Call it not vain, they do not err
Who say that, when the Poet dies,
Mute nature mourns her worshipper,
And celebrates his obsequies;
Who say tall cliff and cavern lone
For the departed bard make moan;
That mountains meet in crystal rill,
That flowers in tears of balm distil;
Through his loved groves that breezes sigh,
And oaks in deeper groan reply,
And rivers teach their rushing wave
To murmur dirges round his grave.”

NORTH.

And there the Last Minstrel should have ceased. What follows spoils all—fanciful, fantastic—not imaginative, poetical. The Minstrel is at pains to let us know that

“Mute nature does _not_ mourn her worshipper!”

that not

“O’er mortal urn
These things inanimate can mourn.”

What, then, is the truth? To explain the mystery of flowers distilling tears of balm, we are told that

“The maid’s pale shade, who wails her lot,
That love, true love, should be forgot,
From rose and heather shakes the tear
Upon the gentle Minstrel’s bier—”

The Phantom Knight shrieks upon the wild blast—and the Chief, from his misty throne on the mountains, fills the lonely caverns with his groans—while his

“Tears of rage impel the rill!
All mourn the minstrel’s harp unstrung,
Their name unknown, their praise unsung!”

Had Sir Walter been speaking in his own person he never would have written thus—nor thus contradicted and extinguished the Passion in the stanzas you so feelingly recited. But he puts the words into the lips of an old Harper improvising at a Feast—on which occasion anything will pass for poetry—even to the mind of the true Poet himself—but, believe me, it is sheer nonsense—and by power of contrast recalls Wordsworth’s profound saying—

“The Poets, in their elegies and lays
Lamenting the departed, call the groves—
They call upon the hills and streams to mourn
And senseless rocks; nor idly; for they speak
In these their invocation, with a voice
Obedient to the strong creative power
Of human passion. Sympathies there are
More tranquil, yet perhaps of kindred birth,
That steal upon the meditative mind,
And grow with thought. Beside yon spring I stood,
And eyed its waters till we seemed to feel
One sadness, they and I. For them a bond
Of brotherhood is broken; time has been
When, every day, the touch of human hand
Dislodged the natural sleep that binds them up
In mortal stillness; and they ministered
To human comfort.”

TALBOYS.

Are all these the Cladich Cock and his echoes? No, surely. Farm crows to Farm, from Auchlian to Sonnachan. You might almost believe them bagpipes. And so it is—that is a bagpipe. On which side of the Loch? Why, on neither—beg pardon—on both; forgive me—on the Water;—incredible—in the Camp! No snore can long outlive that—the People are up and doing.

In my mind’s eye I see women slipping easily into petticoats—men laboriously into breeches——

NORTH.

My more Celtic imagination sees chiefly kilts. But pray, may I ask again, Talboys, what brought you here at this untimeous hour of the Morn?

TALBOYS.

I feel that I ought to apologise for my unwelcome intrusion on your privacy, sir; but on my honour I believed you were in the Van. Yesterday I was so engrossed by you and Shakspeare, that during our colloquy I had not a moment to look at the Wren’s Nest.

NORTH.

Its existence is believed in by few of the natives. I know no such place for a murder. There would be no need to bury the body—here at this Table he might be left sitting for centuries—a dead secret in a Safe.

TALBOYS.

No need to bury the body! You have no antipathy, I trust, sir, to me?

NORTH.

We are not responsible for our antipathies——

TALBOYS.

I allow that—but we are for every single murder we commit; and though there may be no need to bury the body, murder will spunk out——

NORTH.

We are willing to run the risk. What infatuation to seek the Lion in his Den—the Wren in his Nest! Sit down, sir, and let us have, in the form of dialogue, your last speech and dying words on Othello.

TALBOYS.

Hamlet, sir?

NORTH.

Othello.

TALBOYS.

Romeo and Juliet?

NORTH.

Othello.

TALBOYS.

Well—Lear let it be.

NORTH.

Mind what you are about, Talboys. There are limits to human forbearance. Swear that after this morning’s breakfast you will never again utter the words Othello—Iago—Cassio—Desdemona——

TALBOYS.

I swear. Meanwhile, let us recur to the Question of Short and Long Time.

NORTH.

When Shakspeare was inditing the Scenes of the “Decline and Fall”—“The Temptation”—“The Seduction”—or whatsoever else you choose to call it—the Sequence of Cause and Effect—the bringing out into prominence and power the successive ESSENTIAL MOVEMENTS of the proceeding transformation were intents possessing his whole spirit. We can easily conceive that they might occupy it absolutely and exclusively—that is to say, excluding the computation and all consideration of actual time. If this be an excessive example, yet I believe that a huddling up of time is a part of the poetical state; that you must, and, what is more, may, crowd into a Theatrical or Epic Day, far more of transaction between parties, and of changes psychological, than a natural day will hold—ay, ten times over. The time on the Stage and in Verse is not literal time. Not it, indeed; and if it be thus with time, which is so palpable, so selfevidencing an entity, what must be the law, and how wide-ranging, for everything else, when we have once got fairly into the Region of Poetry?

TALBOYS.