Chapter II: Part 2

He received me with a hearty greeting, and began to rally me about my travelling companion; but my explanations quieted his raillery, and he went to make his excuses to Marie for his rude message, and to provide her with the best lodging the town afforded. I supped with Lowrine that night, and agreed to do my duty, by joining his troop at once, and sending my betrothed on to Simbirsk, under the care of Savéliitch. Savéliitch had many objections, but I overpowered them; and Marie shed many tears, but I kissed them away before we parted.

The vigorous operations of the following spring brought many reverses to Pougatcheff; at last he was taken. I jumped for joy. I should clasp my beloved Marie once more in my arms. Lowrine laughed at my extravagant delight.

I was about to depart for my father’s house when Lowrine entered my room, and showed me an order for my arrest, and safe conveyance to Kazan, to give evidence against Pougatcheff. This drove me nearly mad with disappointment. There was no evasion to be thought of, and I was escorted on my way to Kazan, between two hussars with drawn swords. I found this place almost in ashes. Here I was at once placed in irons, and locked up in a wretched cell. But my conscience was tranquil, for I had resolved to tell the simple truth about my transactions with Pougatcheff.

On the day after my arrival I appeared before the council. In reply to the questions of my judges--who were evidently prejudiced against me--I told every fact as it had occurred, until I came to Marie, when I suddenly thought that to name her would be to ruin her. I hesitated and was silent. I was then confronted with another prisoner--Chvabrine! He lied my life away; swore that I had been a spy in the service of Pougatcheff, and we were both conducted back to prison.

Meantime, my father had received Marie kindly, and both my parents soon loved her. She explained to them the innocence of my connexion with the rebel chief, and they laughed at my adventures; until one day they received a letter from their relation, Prince Banojik, telling them that I had been convicted; but that, through his interference, my punishment was commuted to perpetual exile in Siberia.

My parents were stricken with grief, and Marie, with the soul of a heroine, started with Palachka and the faithful Savéliitch for St. Petersburg. She heard that the Court was at the summer palace of Tzarskoïé-Selo; and, with the assistance of the wife of a tradesman who served the Empress, gained access to the Palace gardens. Here she met a very agreeable lady, to whom she told her story, mentioning how I suffered because I would not even divulge her own name to exculpate myself. This lady listened attentively, and then promised to take care that the petition on my behalf should be presented to the Empress. A few hours afterwards, Marie was summoned before the Empress herself, in whom she recognised the lady she had met in the garden, and I received my pardon; the Empress being convinced that I was innocent.

Shortly afterwards, we were married.[C]

[C] This story forms the substance of the most popular prose fiction of the Russian poet Pouschkin, who died in eighteen hundred and thirty-nine. He was historiographer to the Emperor Nicholas.

P.N.C.C.

The thing which drove me from my late purchase of Longfield Hall in Cumberland--after nine months’ trial,--back to town, has been a dead secret, until this present writing. My friends have found a mine of reasons to explain the circumstance: either the county families refused to visit us; or our income was not more than enough to maintain our lodge-keeper; or my eldest daughter had made love to the surgeon’s young man at Nettleton; or I could not get on without my billiards and my five to two at whist; or I had been horse-whipped by Lord Wapshaw for riding over his hounds. There was more behind the curtain than people thought; and a thousand other good-natured explanations.

The actual facts are these: We arrived in Cumberland at the close of last autumn, and were as happy for some months as the days were long--and the days were very long indeed; everybody was kind and hospitable to us, and, on our parts, my port became a proverb and my daughters a toast. It was “Blathers, come and take pot-luck,” from almost any neighbour I fell in with on my walks; or, “Mr. Blathers, we see nothing of your good wife and family,” from the archdeacon’s lady, though we had been dining at the Cloisters three times within the fortnight; or “Lord and Lady Wapshaw have the----” but, no; the forms of familiarity, through which the high nobility communicate with their intimates, should not be lightly quoted. In a word, then, I was a popular man and “an accession to the county.”

In the early spring time I began to feel the country gentleman’s first grief; it came over with the swallows and, like them, never left my roof. Two of my acquaintances--men I had never esteemed as evil genii--rode over on an April day to Longfield; Sir Chuffin Stumps and Biffin Biffin of the Oaks; they were unusually cordial--quite empressés, my wife subsequently observed--to all of us, and after luncheon they desired to have some conversation with me in my study; that is the apartment wherein I keep my Landed Gentry, my stomach-pump (a capital thing to have in a country-house), and my slippers, and thither my two guests were ushered.

“It has always been the custom, my dear Blathers,” said the baronet, “for the tenant of Longfield Hall to be the president of the Nettleton Cricket-club; that we should offer, that he should accept that honor, is due to his position in the county” (and indeed there was scarcely a flat piece of ground big enough to play upon in all the district, except in my paddock, I well know). “Lather, your predecessor, was president; Singin was president before him; the Longfields of Longfield were presidents time out of mind; and you--Blathers--you will be president now?”

“Of course you will,” agreed Biffin.

“But, my dear sirs,” said I, “what shall I have to do?--what will be my duties, my--”

“Do!--nothing at all,” interrupted Sir Chuffin Stumps, “positively nothing; you have no duties, only privileges; let us have your ground to play upon; dine with us on Wednesdays in the tent, and on the great match-days; give a crust of bread and a shakedown to a swell from any long distance, now and then; you sit at the head of the festive board--your health is drunk continually--you are appealed to upon all the nice points of the game, and your decision is final. It’s a splendid post!”

“Splendid!” echoed Biffin.

“But I have not played at cricket for this thirty years,” I urged. “I don’t know the rules. I couldn’t see the ball, if you were to give me all creation. I’m as blind as a bat.”

“Ha, ha, very good,” laughed the baronet. “A bat--d’ye see, Biffin,--a bat? Blathers will do, depend upon it; he’ll keep the table in a roar. As for the game, Mr. President, it’s just what it used to be--round instead of under, that’s all; and they cut a good deal oftener and stop much less, perhaps, than they used to do.”

“Dear me,” said I, “then there’s not so many of them as there were, I suppose?”

“And as for near-sight,” pursued Sir Chuffin, “play in spectacles. Bumpshus, our great wicket-keeper, he plays in spectacles; Grogram, your vice-president, he plays in spectacles; it’s considered rather an advantage than otherwise to play in spectacles.”

“Certainly,” echoed Biffin, “it’s a great advantage.”

“So good-bye, Blathers,” said both gentlemen rising; “the first of May is our meeting day, and the tent must be up and everything arranged, of course, by that time; but Grogram will write and let you know every particular.”

And that was how I was made P.N.C.C., almost without a struggle.

In the course of a week I received a letter from Grogram, saying that there would be no difficulty whatever about anything; he would settle about the dining-tent, and the dressing-tent, and the cooking-tent, and I should only have the contracts for food and the wine-tasting to manage; the hiring of a bowler, the cutting and rolling of the grass. The coming matches for the year--I should, of course, arrange about myself; and I must be sure, he wrote, to let all the members of the club know of the day of meeting, and all the playing members of every match-day, and to dun Lord Wapshaw for his two years’-due subscriptions, as the treasurer didn’t like to--with some other little matters; and, by the bye, did I happen to have my cricket toggery complete yet? as, if not, he (Grogram) could let me have a registered belt almost for nothing, because he had grown out of it, he was sorry to say, himself; also some improved galvanised india-rubber leg-guards, and some tubular batting-gloves, and a catapult--remarkably cheap. The postscript said, “of course you will come out in flannels and spike-soles.”

I really thought when I first read this letter that I should have died with anxiety. I showed it to Mrs. Blathers, and she fairly burst into tears, and it was hours before we could either of us look our difficulties calmly in the face. Flannels! I had at that moment upon my person the only description of flannel garment which I possessed--a jerkin coming down no distance at all, and not to be dreamt of as a reception-dress to the club and half the county upon the first of May; spike-soles I did happen to have, being a skater, and set them out accordingly; but what possible use a pair of skates could be for cricket I could not imagine. The rest of the things I sent to Grogram for, who accommodated me with them very good-naturedly for fifteen pounds fifteen shillings. I put them all on--one way and another--but could make no use of the catapult, except to sit in it, and my youngest child had convulsions, because, she sobbed, Pa looked so like that dreadful diver who lived in the pond at the Polytechnic.

I issued all the circulars, and signed myself the obedient servant of two hundred and forty-six strange gentlemen. I set my gardener and my coachman to roll out the cricket-ground. I tasted the bad sherry of the three Nettleton wine-merchants, and made two of them my enemies for life. My advertisements for a bowler were answered by a host of youths, with immense professions and very limited employment; some were from Lord’s, some from the Oval, “the Maribun know’d him well enough,” averred one young gentleman; another--with a great hollow in his hand from constant practice--affirmed, that “if I wanted hart, there I had it, and no mistake;” by which he meant that Art was enshrined in his proper person--and him I chose.

The first of May was as the poets love to paint it: the white tents glittered in sunshine, and the flags fluttered from their tops to a gentle breeze; the wickets were pitched upon the velvet sward, a fiddle and cornopean, concealed in the shrubbery, welcomed every arrival with See the Conquering Hero Comes; and the president’s heart beat high with the sense of his position. I was attired in my full diving-dress, over the Nettleton uniform, and I held a bat in my right hand. The sides were chosen, and the game began; the carriages of the nobility and gentry formed a brilliant circle round the ground; a flying ball, struck by a hand more skilful than common, gave their situation the least touch of peril to enhance it. I myself was placed at one of the wickets, and my new bowler was placed opposite to me; he and I had practised together for a day or two, and he knew the balls I liked. I sent the sixth out to the left with a great bang, to the admiration of all but Grogram--who is a person of saturnine disposition--and got three runs; alas! the unprofessional Wilkins--the swiftest round-hand in the club--then inherited the mission of my destruction by bowling to me; the whizz of his balls absolutely took away my breath, and, if they had struck me, would doubtless have taken away my legs. But I placed the bat resolutely in the earth, and cowered behind it as well as I could manage. At last, after a warning cry of Play!--about as inappropriate a name as he could have called it--a tornado seemed to sweep past me, followed by a smack as of the resistance of flesh, and the wicket-keeper ejaculated “Out!” to my infinite joy.

Then came the happy time of cricket. The danger of the thing being over for that whole innings, you have nothing to do but to lie on the ground with a cigar, and explain how you had intended to have caught that ball, and hit it between long field off and cover point; when you holloa out, “Butter-fingers!” and “Wide!” and “Run it out!” My happiness, however, was but of short duration; the new bowler delivered his deadly weapon against the rest in a manner he had known better than to practise upon me. Wilkins, too, seemed to derive new strength from every bail he struck towards the sky, and reaped the air with that tremendous arm of his more terribly than ever. In an hour and twenty minutes, we were fagging out on our side. The president had his choice of places; and, having observed that the wicket-keepers had either stopped the balls, or much diminished their velocity before they arrived at long-stop, I declared for that happy post. Alas! this was the case no longer. Swift as thought, and infinitely more substantial, the balls rushed with unabated fury beside me; hardly, by leaping into the air, and stretching my legs very wide apart, could I escape the fearful concussion. “Stop ’em! Stop ’em!” screamed the fielders. “Why the deuce don’t he stop ’em?” bawled old Grogram, indignantly. So I waited my opportunity, watching, hat in hand, till one came slower than usual; and then I pounced upon him from behind, as a boy does on a butterfly. The crown of my hat was carried away, indeed, but the missile could not force its way through my person, and I threw it up to the man that hallo’d for it most in triumph; but my reputation as a cricketer was gone for ever.

At dinner I was comparatively successful. Lord Wapshaw was on my right; Sir Chuffin Stumps on my left; two long lines of gentlemen in flannels were terminated, perspectively, by Grogram, opposite; the archdeacon said grace; my new bowler assisted in waiting at table; and everything was upon the most gorgeous scale. Presently, however, the rain came down in torrents, and, in spite of the patent imperviousness of the tent, as vouched for by the vice-president, some umbrellas had to be borrowed from the hall (which were never returned). After dinner, there was a friend of his lordship to be ballotted for, and I distributed the little balls, as directed, and sent round the box. The rule of exclusion was one black ball in ten. There were four black balls to thirty white balls, and I had to publish the fact to all present.

“My friend black-balled, sir?” said the irascible peer. “Impossible! Did you do it?--did you?--did you?” he asked of everybody successively, amidst roars of laughter at his utter want of appreciation of the fundamental end and aim of the institution of vote by ballot. “There must be some mistake, sir,” said he, when they had each and all declined to satisfy such an extraordinary enquiry. “Mr. Blathers, try them again.”

This time there were four white balls to thirty black ones, a melancholy result which I had also to announce. His lordship left the tent--the marquee, somebody observed--like a maniac; and, though I swear I did not blackball his man, he never asked me to Hiltham Castle again from that day to this.

Now the season had begun, I became inundated with letters from the presidents of other cricket-clubs, requesting the N.C.C. to play them on some particular day; which, if it suited Wilkins, was invariably inconvenient to Grogram, and if it pleased Grogram, was sure to be the worst in the year for all the rest. So we were requested to name our own day, in a flippant, skittle-playing, come-on-when-you-like sort of manner, throwing upon me still greater responsibilities. The end of it was that the Levant club came to Nettleton, eat our dinner, drank our wine, and beat us; but refused to play a return match, or to give us any dinner whatever. Swiftly Downham, Esq., the man who has a European reputation as mid-wicket-on, honoured us by his company at Longfield “for a couple of nights,” as he bargained, and stayed a fortnight, smoking regularly in the best bedroom. Swiper, the professional batsman, also favoured us, and left me a cotton pocket-handkerchief with a full-length portrait of himself, in exchange, I hope--or else it was robbery--for a plain white silk one of my own. A whole school came over from Chumleyborough to play us, and nine of them took up their quarters at the hall. Fresh from toffey and gingerbeer as they were, I was fool enough to give them a champagne supper, of which the consequences were positively tremendous. They were all of them abominably ill, and the biggest boy kissed my daughter Florence, mistaking her, as he afterwards stated in apology, for one of the maids.

Wednesday, on which the club met, became my dark day of the week, and cast its shadow before and behind it; it was then that I made feud with Wilkins, by deciding that his balls were wide, and exasperated Grogram by declaring his legs were before wicket. I should not have known how these things were, even could I have seen so far; but I gave judgment alternately, now for the ins and now for the outs, with the utmost impartiality. One fine afternoon my own and favourite bowler absconded with about a dozen of the best bats, quite a forest of stumps, and a few watches belonging to the members of the N.C.C.; this was the drop too much that made my cup of patience overflow. I determined to resign, and I did resign.

Staying at Longfield Hall any longer, having ceased to be the president, I felt was not to be thought of, so I disposed of it. I wrote a cheque for a lot of things, embraced Grogram (whom I dearly love), and left the club my catapult. My last act of office was to appoint another bowler--a black man. He does capitally, Wilkins writes; only--from his having been selected by me from a band of tumblers, I suppose--he will always bowl from under his left leg.

LAVATER’S WARNING.

Trust him little who doth raise
To the same height both great and small,
And sets the sacred crown of praise,
Smiling, on the head of all.

Trust him less who looks around
To censure all with scornful eyes,
And in everything has found
Something that he dare despise.

But for one who stands apart,
Stirr’d by nought that can befall,
With a cold indifferent heart,
Trust him least and last of all.

THE FRIEND OF THE LIONS.

We are in the Studio of a friend of ours, whose knowledge of all kinds of Beasts and Birds has never been surpassed, and to whose profound acquaintance with the whole Animal Kingdom, every modern picture-gallery and every print-shop, at home and abroad, bears witness. We have been wanted by our friend as a model for a Rat-catcher. We feel much honored, and are sitting to him in that distinguished capacity, with an awful Bulldog much too near us.

Our friend is, as might be expected, the particular friend of the Lions in the Zoological Gardens, Regent’s Park, London. On behalf of that Royal Family dear to his heart, he offers--standing painting away at his easel, with his own wonderful vigour and ease--a few words of friendly remonstrance to the Zoological Society.

You are an admirable society (says our friend, throwing in, now a bit of our head, and now a bit of the Bulldog’s), and you have done wonders. You are a society that has established in England, a national menagerie of the most beautiful description, and that has placed it freely and in a spirit deserving of the highest commendation within the reach of the great body of the people. You are a society rendering a real service and advantage to the public, and always most sensibly and courteously represented by your excellent Mitchell.

Then why (proceeds our friend), don’t you treat your Lions better?

In the earnestness of his enquiry, our friend looks harder than usual at the Bulldog. The Bulldog immediately droops and becomes embarrassed. All dogs feel that our friend knows all their secrets, and that it is utterly hopeless to attempt to take him in. The last base action committed by this Bulldog is on his conscience, the moment our friend fixes him. “What? You did, eh?” says our friend to the Bulldog. The Bulldog licks his lips with the greatest nervousness, winks his red eyes, balances himself afresh on his bandy forelegs, and becomes a spectacle of dejection. He is as little like his vagabond self, as that remarkable breed which the French call a bouledogue.

Your birds (says our friend, resuming his work, and addressing himself again to the Zoological Society), are as happy as the day is--he was about to add, long, but glances at the light and substitutes--short. Their natural habits are perfectly understood, their structure is well-considered, and they have nothing to desire. Pass from your birds to those members of your collection whom Mr. Rogers used to call, “our poor relations.” Of course I mean the monkeys. They have an artificial climate carefully prepared for them. They have the blessing of congenial society carefully secured to them. They are among their own tribes and connexions. They have shelves to skip upon, and pigeon-holes to creep into. Graceful ropes dangle from the upper beams of their sitting-rooms, by which they swing, for their own enjoyment, the fascination of the fair sex, and the instruction of the enquiring minds of the rising generation. Pass from our poor relations to that beast, the Hippopotamus--What do you mean?

The last enquiry is addressed, not to the Zoological Society, but to the Bulldog, who has deserted his position, and is sneaking away. Passing his brush into the left thumb on which he holds his palette, our friend leisurely walks up to the Bulldog, and slaps his face! Even we, whose faith is great, expect to see him next moment with the Bulldog hanging on to his nose; but, the Bulldog is abjectly polite, and would even wag his tail if it had not been bitten off in his infancy.

Pass, I was saying (coolly pursues our friend at his easel again), from our poor relations to that impersonation of sensuality, the Hippopotamus. How do you provide for him? Could he find, on the banks of the Nile, such a villa as you have built for him on the banks of the Regent’s canal? Could he find, in his native Egypt, an appropriately furnished drawing-room, study, bath, wash-house, and spacious pleasure-ground, all en suite, and always ready? I think not. Now, I beseech your managing committee and your natural philosophers, to come with me and look at the Lions.

Here, our friend seizes a piece of charcoal and instantly produces, on a new canvas standing on another easel near, a noble Lion and Lioness. The Bulldog (who deferentially resumed his position after having his face slapped), looks on in manifest uneasiness, lest this new proceeding should have something to do with him.

There! says our friend, throwing the charcoal away, There they are! The majestic King and Queen of quadrupeds. The British Lion is no longer a fictitious creature in the British coat of arms. You produce your British Lion every year from this royal couple. And how, with all the vast amount of resources, knowledge, and experience at your command, how do you treat these your great attractions? From day to day, I find the noble creatures patiently wearing out their weary lives in narrow spaces where they have hardly room to turn, and condemned to face in the roughest weather a bitter Nor’-Westerly aspect. Look at those wonderfully-constructed feet, with their exquisite machinery for alighting from springs and leaps. What do you conceive to be the kind of ground to which those feet are, in the great foresight of Nature, least adapted? Bare, smooth, hard boards, perhaps, like the deck of a ship? Yes. A strange reason why you should choose that and no other flooring for their dens!

Why, Heaven preserve us! (cries our friend, frightening the Bulldog very much) do any of you keep a cat? Will any of you do me the favour to watch a cat in a field or garden, on a bright sunshiny day--how she crouches in the mould, rolls in the sand, basks in the grass, delights to vary the surface upon which she rests, and change the form of the substance upon which she takes her ease. Compare such surfaces and substances with the one uniform, unyielding, unnatural, unelastic, inappropriate piece of human carpentery upon which these beautiful animals, with their vexed faces, pace and repace, and pass each other two hundred and fifty times an hour.

It is really incomprehensible (our friend proceeds), in you who should be so well acquainted with animals, to call these boards--or that other uncomfortable boarded object like a Mangle with the inside taken out--a Bed, for creatures with these limbs and these habits. That, a Bed for a Lion and Lioness, which does not even give them a chance of being bruised in a new place? Learn of your cat again, and see how _she_ goes to bed. Did you ever find her, or any living creature, go to bed, without re-arranging to the whim and sensation of the moment, the materials of the bed itself? Don’t you, the Zoological Society, punch and poke your pillows, and settle into suitable places in your beds? Consider then, what the discomfort of these magnificent brutes must be, to whom you leave no diversity of choice, no power of new arrangement, and as to whose unchanging and unyielding beds you begin with a form and substance that have no parallel in their natural lives. If you doubt the pain they must endure, go to museums and colleges where the bones of lions and other animals of the feline tribe who have lived in captivity under similar circumstances, are preserved; and you will find them thickly encrusted with a granulated substance, the result of long lying upon unnatural and uncomfortable planes.

I will not be so pressing as to the feeding of my Royal Friends (pursues the Master), but even there I think you are wrong. You may rely upon it, that the best regulated families of Lions and Lionesses don’t dine every day punctually at the same hour, in their natural state, and don’t always keep the same kind and quantity of meat in the larder. However, I will readily waive that question of board, if you will only abandon the other.

The time of the sitting being out, our friend takes his palette from his thumb, lays it aside with his brush, ceases to address the Zoological Society, and releases the Bulldog and myself. Having occasion to look closely at the Bulldog’s chest, he turns that model over as if he were made of clay (if I were to touch him with my little finger he would pin me instantly), and examines him without the smallest regard to his personal wishes or convenience. The Bulldog, having humbly submitted, is shown to the door.

“Eleven precisely, to-morrow,” says our friend, “or it will be the worse for you.” The Bulldog respectfully slouches out. Looking out of the window, I presently see him going across the garden, accompanied by a particularly ill-looking proprietor with a black eye--my prototype I presume--again a ferocious and audacious Bulldog, who will evidently kill some other dog before he gets home.

THE MANCHESTER STRIKE.

There can be no doubt that the judgment to be formed upon a strike among the operatives in a great factory district, if it is to be worth anything, must be based upon a more difficult chain of reasoning than usually goes to the consideration of irregularities in the appointed course of trade. Perfectly free competition regulates all prices, it is said; and, in most callings, regulates with certainty the price of labour. A self-adjusting power is introduced by it into the usual machinery of commerce. So far as regards labour, the working of it is that, as a rule, every man goes where he can get most value for such work as he can best perform; and every man who wants labour will, to the extent his capital allows, vie with his neighbours in attempting to secure to his service the best labour he can meet with of the sort he wants. That is the ordinary course of trade. Only the true price stands, and that price being the lowest by which men of average capabilities find that they can live, a poor trade entails secret hardships; middling trade a bare subsistence; and none but a very brisk trade affords chance of wealth. So it is with the price of skilled labour; but, with the price of unskilled labour, it is scarcely so. In each class of men possessing special capabilities, there is a given number only, and the aim of each of their employers is to do what he can towards securing for himself, out of that number, the best. For the absolutely unskilled, there can be no competition when a mass of the population, ignorant and in sore need, is pressing forward to receive a dole of such work as it can perform; or, if there be a competition, it is of an inverse kind--a struggle among thousands for the food of hundreds; each striving by the most desperate offer of cheap labour--sometimes even an hour’s work for a farthing--to secure a portion of the necessary subsistence.

Skilled labour is, with but few exceptions, subject to an inevitable law, with which employer and employed alike must be content to bring their operations into harmony. But, with unskilled labour, the compulsion set on the employer is in no proportion to that set on the employed. Wages in that case are not regulated by a just regard to the fair relations between capital and labour; the question among competitors being not who shall, by paying most, attract the most efficient class of servants, and secure the heartiest assistance; but who shall, by paying least, take most advantage of the necessity of people who are struggling for the chance of only a few crumbs of the bread of independence. It thus becomes notorious enough how it is that cheap articles are produced out of the lifeblood of our fellow-creatures. The evil can only be corrected now, by the direct interference of our consciences. Unwholesomely cheap production is a perversion of the common law of trade which will in course of time be blotted out by the advance of education; and there can never be in this country a glut of intelligence and skill, although we may soon have a glut of ignorance. Parallel with the advance of mind, there will run the advance of mind-work, and the diffusion of a right sense of its value will be increased.

Thus it will be seen, that while we believe with all our hearts in the wholesomeness of the great principle of free competition--regard nothing as so really helpful to the labourer, so sure to beget healthy trade and bring out all the powers of the men engaged in it--we do see that there is in society one class, and that a large one, upon which, when men look, they may believe that competition is an evil. The truth is, that the existence of that class, so helpless and so much neglected, is the evil to remove; but while it remains--as wholesome meat may kill a man with a disease upon him--there is an unsound body hurt by it, requiring, O political economist! spoon-meat and medicine, not the substantial bread and beef which doubtless theory can prove and experience affirm, to be the best of nourishment for human bodies. There are fevers among bodies politic as among bodies corporal, and we are disposed to think that half the difficulties opposed to a distinct and general perception of the truths which our economists have ascertained, depend upon the fact that they have not yet advanced--so to speak--from a just theory of nutrition to the formation of a true system of therapeutics. That which will maintain health is not, necessarily, that which will restore it. Often it happens that a blister or a purge, though it would certainly make sound men sick, will make the sick man whole. May it not also be that what is ruinous to all sound trade shall hereafter come to be known as a social medicine possessed, in certain cases, of a healing power, and applicable therefore to some states of disordered system? We believe that a great many discrepancies of opinion may be reconciled by a view like this. Its justice is hardly to be questioned; although, as to the particular applications of it, there is room for any amount of discussion.

Thus, in the case of the Manchester strike, the workmen--though not of the unskilled class--may state that they are unable to feel the working of the principle of competition; that if they do not get what pay they like at one factory, they are not practically at liberty to get the value of their labour in another. Even the population of one mill, thrown out of work, is too large and too special, as to the nature of the various kinds of skill possessed among its people, to be able to find anything like prompt absorption into other factories; but as masters almost always act in groups for the determination of wages, it is the population, not of one mill, but that of five or six, that becomes discontented; and the best proof of the fact that it is practically unable to better itself even though higher wages may be given elsewhere is, that it does not better itself. There is a curious and decided variation in the rates of wages paid in various factories and manufacturing towns; variations artificially increased by strikes, but the existence of which shows, at any rate, to the satisfaction of the operatives, that rates may be arbitrary, and that the natural law does not work easily in their case which brings the price of any article to its just, uniform level. The Manchester masters point out to their men other masters who pay less than they pay; the operatives point on the other hand, to masters paying more. But it is not in their power to carry their own labour to those masters, as it ought to be, for a free working of the principle of competition. Mechanical and accidental difficulties stand completely in the way, and they are aggravated on both sides by habits of imperfect combination. It is just to state these difficulties, and to show that the instinct of the operative may not be altogether reprehensible when it suggests to him that against the worst uneasiness which he feels in the system to which he belongs, a blister or a bloodletting, in the shape of a strike, is the best remedy. He may be very wrong, as a man is apt to be wrong when doctoring himself. There is an excuse for his quackery in the fact that he has, at present, no physician to call in.

The difficulties of the case, as it is felt by employers and employed in our manufacturing districts, is aggravated, as we have said, by imperfect combinations; for, between the trades’ unions and the masters’ associations there is, in truth, a perfect unity of interest. They who reduce the master’s capital, reduce his power of employing labour; they who wrong the labourer by whom they live, reduce his will and power to do work. At present, men and masters are in many cases combatants, because they never have been properly allies; they have not been content to feel that they are fellow-workers, that the man at the helm and the man at the oars are both in the same boat, and that the better they agree together, the more likely they will be to weather out a storm.

In the case of the existing strike at Manchester, we have read carefully the manifestoes, replies, and counter-replies that have been passing between the opposed bodies for the purpose of being laid before the public; and the fact made in them of all others most manifest is--that the points raised in them are points that ought to have been raised very many months ago; discussed and understood between the masters and the men before the strike, and for the prevention of the strike.

Upon the precise points in dispute we cannot undertake to give a definite opinion. From each party to the quarrel we get half a case, and the halves are not such as the public easily will know how to unite into a distinct whole. Rates of wages, as we have already said, do not appear to be uniform, and while the masters in Manchester desire, as we think, most fairly and properly, to bring a certain class of wages, raised unduly by strikes, to its just and natural rate, pointing to some other place in which the rate is low, the men point to a place where the rates are higher than at Manchester, and say, Come let us strike an average between the two. The offer is refused. It may be necessarily and wisely refused. There are evidently many accessory considerations that affect the nominal day’s wages in this place and that. To the public out of Lancashire it cannot be explained fully by manifestoes. Between masters and men, if they were in any habit of maintaining a right mutual understanding it ought not to be possible that any controversy about them could be pushed to the extremity of open breach. The spinners on strike head one of their documents with the last words of Justice Talfourd: “If I were asked what is the greatest want in English society to mingle class with class, I would say in one word, the want of sympathy.” Most true; but need we say that there is sympathy due from workmen towards employer, as well as from employer towards workmen? It is essential to a correction of the evil thus stated that the operative should either generously be the first to give up hostile prejudices, or that at the least he should be altogether prompt to second, heart and soul, every attempt of the master to establish a relation of good-will and confidence with him. Men rarely quarrel except through what is wisely called--misunderstanding.

There is some reason that we will not undertake to give, which causes Lancashire, although by no means the only British factory district, to be the district most afflicted by misunderstandings. Nowhere else are the masters so much obstructed by the dictatorial spirit of the men; nowhere else is the law so much interfered with, by the dictatorial spirit of the masters. In Scotland, Yorkshire, and the west of England, masters and men work generally well together, and the law is more or less obeyed; machinery, for instance, not being, as a rule, obstinately left unfenced.

Many pages of this journal have been devoted already to the discouragement of strikes. We have urged invariably that the one perfect remedy against them is the opening up of more and better opportunities of understanding one another, between man and master. In case we may be supposed to be ignorant of the feelings about which we reason, let it be known that every thought--almost every word--upon this subject given in the paragraphs that follow will be the thought or word, not of a speculative person at a distance, but of a Lancashire millowner. At the time of the disastrous Preston strike, a Preston manufacturer, whose men stood by him honestly and well, published at Manchester, a little pamphlet;[D] which, if its counsel had been taken, would assuredly have made the present strike of Manchester impossible. Mr. Justice Talfourd’s last words, placed lately by the men above their manifesto, was then chosen as a motto by the masters. Coming, this gentleman wrote, into Lancashire from a district where good feeling subsisted between the employer and the employed, it was with the utmost surprise that he found labour and capital to be in a state of antagonism throughout the country. From the time when he first began to employ labour in Lancashire, more than a quarter of a century ago, he has made it his strict business to study the system at work around him, and discover the real causes of the evils that undoubtedly exist; and he has no hesitation in saying, that the main cause is a want of cordial feeling--the absence, in fact, of a good understanding between the parties to the labour-contract. This feeling must be established, he adds, or the case never will be mended. Such understanding does not come by any explanations from third parties; it is produced only by direct and habitual intercourse between the parties too often at issue. The Preston manufacturer says that no doubt the masters in Lancashire help their men to be intelligent by spending money liberally upon schools connected directly or indirectly with their mills. Duty is done amply; and, for duty’s sake, too, to children; but, he adds, what is really wanted is the education of the adult intellect. The minds of children, having been prepared by the rudiments of knowledge to receive ideas (whether good or evil), they are then cast adrift to gather and continue their education by absorbing all the notions, all the prejudices, and all the fallacies with which chance may surround them. A dispute arises; there is no sympathy shown to the operatives by the employers; but much real or pretended sympathy is shown by the delegates, who tell them fine-spun theories about the results of trades’ unions; talk to them in an inflated manner about their rights and wrongs; tell them that a strike is the only way of battling for the right. Such men never interfere without widening the breach, on which they get a footing.

[D] Strikes Prevented. By a Preston Manufacturer. Galt and Co. 1854.

So far, the Preston manufacturer says what we have felt and said on numerous occasions. Now let us see how he not only speaks, but acts, and how the doing looks which illustrates the saying.

In the first place, minor acts of friendship to the men may be mentioned:--He has encouraged them to form a Provident Club in connection with his mill, and given them all help in it that would not compromise their independence; at the same time he has encouraged them also to support the benefit clubs out of doors. He has liked them to be led to accumulate savings, never believing that a store of money in the operative’s power would facilitate a strike, but rather knowing that the provident man who has saved property will be especially unwilling to see it dissipated. He has provided his men with a reading-room and a lending library, and secured a fund for its support, while he has removed a cause of soreness that exists in even well-regulated mills, by devoting to their library the fines levied upon operatives for faults of discipline. Such fines are necessary, and the faults for which they are imposed cost, of course, loss to the millowner for which they are no real compensation; nevertheless, if the master puts such shillings into his own pocket, or, as is sometimes the case, gives them as pocket-money to a son, experience declares that they are grudged, and sometimes counted as extortions. Let the fine go to the common account of the men, and the payer of it, instead of being pitied as the victim of a tyrant, will be laughed at--thanked for his donation to the library, and so forth. Practically, also, the result of this system, as the Preston manufacturer has found, is to reduce the number of the fines. Men would so much rather be victims than butts, that acts of neglect are more determinedly avoided, though we may suggest the general good feeling in the mill as a much better reason for the greater care over the work.

Left to select, by a committee chosen from among themselves, the books to be placed in their library, the men have been found to prefer those which contained useful knowledge--such as manuals of popular science, voyages, and histories.

So much being done to promote among the adults increasing intelligence and good feeling, there remains the most essential thing, the cornerstone of the whole system. It has been the practice of this master to promote weekly discussion--meetings among the operatives in his employment. Topics of the day, opinions of the press, the state of trade, questions concerning competition, discoveries on practical science or mechanics, especially such as affect the cotton-trade; and, lastly, the conduct and discipline of their own mill, provide plenty of matter for the free play of opinion. The master takes every possible opportunity of being present at these meetings; and, from what he has heard in them concerning his own mill, the Preston manufacturer declares that he has derived substantial advantage. It will, very often, he says, happen that the men may fancy themselves to be suffering under a grievance which does not really exist, and which a very little explanation will at once remove. Sometimes, too, a real grievance may be in existence, which the employer needs only to be informed of to remedy. In some mills, this master adds,--such is the fear of the consequence of being thought a grumbler,--that the men will often draw lots to determine who shall be the bearer of a complaint which may have been long seeking expression.

With one extract we will sum up the result of the adoption of this system. “I confess,” says the Preston manufacturer, “that, at the time, having control of a large establishment, I cultivated a habit of meeting and discussing questions with my workmen, both questions affecting the public concernment, and questions relating to our business. I confess that I derived quite as much benefit from these discussions as they did; and how much that was, may be inferred from the fact that, after the institution of that habit, I never had a dispute with my operatives. And I will here say that, at those meetings, I have heard an amount of sound and various information, expressed with a native strength and eloquence such as would have surprised any one not conversant with the Lancashire population. It was from those meetings that I derived the settled conviction which I now entertain, that the operatives do not lack the power, but only the means, of forming sound and independent opinions.”

We believe that we employ ourselves more usefully at this juncture in setting forth general principles like these than in any attempt, by arbitration as third parties in a special case, to introduce that which the Preston manufacturer declares to be only a fresh element of discord.

THE HALL OF WINES.

If you mount the Belvedere of the Jardin des Plantes, at Paris, there is one particular segment of the panorama which forms a very complete and singular picture. The right-hand wing (theatrically speaking) is formed by Jussieu’s famous cedar of Lebanon, planted by his own hands in seventeen hundred and thirty-five; that on the left hand is a clump of yews, firs, and miscellaneous evergreens. The heights of Montmartre crown the horizon; the middle distance is formed by the line of houses that constitute the quays on the right bank of the Seine, broken in the midst by the cupolas of St. Pol, and a little to the left by the barn-like roof of St. Louis dans l’Île. But the whole central space of the landscape is overspread with what might be a lake of brown mud in a half-dried and crumpled state, but which, after a second look, proves a vast expanse of tiled roofs running in parallel rows, and slightly diversified by the tops of trees and by scarcely visible skylights which break up the gray-brown uniformity. That petrified mud-lake consists entirely of the roofs which cover the famous Entrepôt or Halle-aux-Vins, which Napoleon the First propounded (by imperial decree) in eighteen hundred and eight, on the site of the Abbey of St. Victor, where Abelard had listened to the lessons of Guillaume de Champeaux, and where many good bottles of ecclesiastical wine had made their disappearance down monkish throats.

If your curiosity is sufficiently awakened to pay the Entrepôt a nearer visit, you will meet with much to interest. Suppose you walk down Rue Cuvier,--perhaps one of these days we shall have Owen Street, and Faraday Street, in London,--you will reach the Quai Saint Bernard, with the Seine rushing rapidly to the left and in front. You will encounter an eddying stream of pleasure and of business combined, as if the whole population of Paris were dancing a grand Sir Roger de Coverly together; omnibuses flitting backwards and forwards,--Hirondelles, Favorites, Gazelles, Parisiennes; holiday parties laden with eatables, to be washed down, outside the Barrière, by wine untaxed by octroi duty; students and savans bent on taking notes on botany and comparative anatomy; wine merchants and their customers with mouths in tasting trim, bound either for the Halle itself or for Bercy beyond it; troops of children with their nurses and grandmothers, about to spend the afternoon in watching the monkeys; artisans’ cousins from the interior, with hearts palpitating at the hope of beholding living lions, tigers and boa-constrictors, for the first time in their life; not to mention the man who cuts your portrait in black paper, with the Arab who jumps into the air like a goat and lights on his forefeet like a sportive tomcat, on their way to compete with the giantess, the learned pig, and the fortune-telling pony at the foot of the bridge of Austerlitz. From all these mundane follies the Halle-aux-Vins is secluded, in monastic style, by a light railing covered with stout iron network, which allows it to gaze at the Vanity Fair, while it separates it from too familiar contact with the world. It is in the crowd--without being of it--a convenient, friar-like, differenceless distinction. Exclusiveness, however, of whatever kind, is more apparent than real. At the bottom of Rue Cuvier, turn to your right, and you may enter at once, unless you prefer walking along the Quai to the principal entrance, where there is a letter-box, in case you have a billet-doux to post. The principal restriction imposed upon a stranger is, that he is forbidden to smoke amongst the eaux-de-vie.

Well, now that you are inside it, what do you think of it? Is the wine-market of Paris like any thing else? The name of the establishment puts the London Docks into your head; but, beyond their commercial use and distinction, there is no more analogy between the London Docks, and this little bit of fairy-land, than there was between the caverns of Ætna, where Vulcan made pokers and tongs, and the slopes of Parnassus where the Muses danced. The Halle-aux-Vins is not a building, nor a labyrinthine cellar; it is a complete town, as perfect and unique in its way as Pompeii itself. Once a week, indeed, it resembles the city of the dead; it is silent, solitary, and closed. No business is transacted there on Sundays, save only by the restless spirits which will work unseen, and which contrive to make their escape invisibly, however fast they may be imprisoned.

The Halle is the very concentration and impersonation of French vinous hilarity. It would not do for port and sherry, which require a more solid and stately residence; nor is it sufficiently whimsical and mediæval to serve as a rendezvous for Rhenish, Austrian, and Hungarian volunteers in the grand army of Jean Raisin. Rudesheimer, Voeslan, Gumpoldskirchen, or Luttenberg, could not well sojourn comfortably in any place that had not a touch of a ruined castle in its architecture. But the Entrepôt, whose first stone was laid little more than forty years back, no more pretends to an elderly and dignified mien than does the Bal Mabille (by daylight) or the Château des Fleurs. It is as tasteful and as elegant as if intended to serve as a suburban luncheon-place, where you might call for any known wine in the world, to be sipped under the shade of flowering shrubs, to the accompaniment of sandwiches, sausage-rolls, and ices, handed to you by white-aproned waiters or rosy-cheeked and smart-capped damsels.