In conclusion, we would ask the free-traders themselves, whether the course which has been pursued towards these colonies is equitable or defensible, even on their own acknowledged principles? How far do they intend or propose that these principles should be carried? Is all traffic, even that in human flesh and blood, to be free? If so, let us come to a distinct understanding on the point. If the code of morals maintained by Mr Cobden is of so truly philanthropic and catholic a nature—if “buying in the cheapest and selling in the dearest market” is to be adopted throughout the world as a universal and unexceptionable rule—then, in the name of common sense, let the free-traders be consistent to their creed, let emancipation become a dead letter, and let the slave markets of Africa be thrown open to every customer! Do these gentlemen intend to maintain that there is any thing of free trade in the system, which ties our own colonists hand and foot, prevents them from making use of the capabilities of their soil, dissipates their capital, and then quietly abolishes all distinctive duty between their produce and that of countries which have not chosen to adopt the same system? Is the fleet upon the coast of Africa a symbol of free-trade principles, or the opposite? Why, what a laughing-stock must that be in the eyes of the Spaniards! what an egregious proof of the most silly inconsistency that ever yet was perpetrated by a nation! We will not, forsooth, permit foreign nations to traffic in slaves, and yet we give them the monopoly of our market, knowing all the while that upon that importation alone we are dependent for a cheap supply! We ruin our colonies, transfer our custom to the foreign slave-driver, and with him, as has well been said, cheap sugar means cheap slaves!
We are glad to see that The Times, though differing with us in many economical points, has lately taken up this view, and spoken out with its customary ability. We extract from the number published on 17th January.—
“Is sugar a commodity which we are simply desirous of getting cheap, without any regard to the country or methods of its production? If it be not, then is it clear as argument can make it that such commodity must be altogether removed from the operations of free trade? If it be, then by what monstrous perversion of equity do we control the methods of production adopted by our own producers? Why did we destroy that market in Jamaica which we now seize so eagerly in Brazil? The abstract principles of free trade are as manifestly violated by interference with production as by interference with exportation. If the doctrines of free trade are to find no exception in any suggestions of humanity or reason, then our Anti-slavery Act, and our Emancipation Act, and our vote for the African squadron, are all so many gross contradictions of a principle which we have formally sanctioned. Let those who think so speak out boldly. They have undoubtedly a clear case, if they dared but state it. Let slavery be considered as a practice which humanity condemns, and which civilisation must eventually abolish, but which cannot be permitted to enter into the calculations of a great commercial people. Let the coast squadron be immediately recalled, and the Bights thrown open to the sugar-growers of all nations to procure their labourers on the easiest terms. Let them make as much sugar as they can each for itself, and let the agency by which this article is produced be as much a matter of indifference as in the case of any other article, and then may sugar fairly be subjected to the operations of free trade. If the West Indians then applied for protection, we might well repulse a petition for so obsolete a measure; but to take refuge in such abstract theories now is to blow hot and cold with the same breath—to preach up humanity from one side of the pulpit and economy from the other, taking care the while to appropriate to our own pockets the advantages of the latter doctrine, and to saddle our colonists with the expenses of the former.”
And what is it that our colonists ask? What is the extravagant proposal which we are prepared to reject at the cost of the loss of our most fertile possessions, and of nearly two hundred millions of British capital? Simply this, that in the meantime such a distinctive duty should be enforced as will allow them to compete on terms of equality with the slave-growing states. Let this alone be granted, and they have no wish to interfere with any other fiscal regulation. And what would be the amount of differential duty required? Not more, as we apprehend, than ten shillings the hundred-weight. It has been carefully calculated that the British planter cannot raise and send his sugar to the home market at a lower cost than forty shillings. In consequence of Lord John Russell’s measure, the average price last year has been thirty-eight shillings, and consequently the planter has been manufacturing, not only without profit, but at an actual loss. Next year, or rather after next July, the operation of the reductive scale will increase his loss, supposing him still to cultivate, from two shillings to three and sixpence per hundred-weight and so on until 1851, when he will have to pay six pounds per ton for the privilege of growing sugar, without a single farthing of return!
Is then the request of these men, who are our own fellow-subjects, and citizens, in any way unjust or unreasonable? We have chosen to deprive them of labour, promising them all the while sympathy and protection, and are we not bound in some measure to redeem the pledge? They require a differential duty only until such time as they can command a supply of free and plentiful labour. To this object the attention of government, and of the true philanthropists of the country, ought to be directed. There is a noble field laid open for their exertions. The best means of suppressing altogether the slave-trade, is by promoting, to the uttermost of our power, a free immigration from Africa to our colonies, a measure which we are certain would very soon supersede the necessity of a blockading squadron. For how can we ever expect that such an armament will prove effectual in checking that wicked traffic, whilst, at the same time, we are directly encouraging it, by augmenting the consumpt of its produce in free and scrupulous Britain? Shame, on such contemptible and deceptive policy! Shame on the men who, with liberalism on their lips, are all the while engaged in riveting the fetters of the bondsman! And shame to all of us, if we permit our oldest and most attached colonies to lapse into decay, and thousands of our fellow-subjects to be consigned to ruin! for the sake of a theory which, in this matter at least, has not even the merit of being based upon consistent or intelligible principle!
NOW AND THEN.
(Now and Then. By Samuel Warren, F.R.S. Author of “Ten Thousand a-Year,” and the “Diary of a Late Physician.” William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh and London. 1848.)
It would be an unpardonable affectation of modesty indeed, if Maga suffered any considerations whatever to interfere between herself and the cordial recognition of a success achieved by a favourite child, and acknowledged by all the world. Is the parent alone to hold her peace, when crowds are flinging up their caps rejoicing at the triumph of the son? Is nature to resign her dearest prerogative, in order to comply with the unnatural requirements of a dastard hypocrisy? Must we still hear on all sides the honest congratulations of strangers, and are we not to do homage to the grateful spirit within us, by shaking our own flesh and blood by the hand? Flesh and blood revolt from the insinuation! We know, as well as the dullest, that it is a delicate matter for Maga to speak to mankind, as truth and her heart dictate, with respect to some of her progeny. But what has delicacy to do with justice? Was Brutus delicate when he judged his own son, and hung him up for the public good? Maga suffers the world to judge of her offspring, and contents herself with a simple announcement of the happy verdict. It is her duty, as well as her delight, to chronicle the sentence. If she did less, she would do wrong to her own: she might do more, and still be just to her mighty and confiding public.
The author of the volume whose title heads this article, first appeared before the public as a writer in this Magazine in the month of August 1830. He was then but two-and-twenty years of age; yet, in his “Diary of a Late Physician,” he at once took his place in the front ranks of literature, and seized upon the admiration and respect of his contemporaries. The work is too well known to need minute description here. The variety of incident and character, the extraordinary fidelity of delineation, the vigorous style, the touching pathos, the commanding knowledge of men and human passions which it exhibits, are as familiar to our readers as they were surprising in a youth scarcely out of his teens,—a mere tyro in literature,—and, as he himself informs us, a rejected aspirant, in many quarters,[[9]] for those lofty honours which he has since so bravely and so honourably won. “The Diary of a Physician”—carried on at intervals from the year 1830 to the year 1837—maintained its ground from first to last. Since the last chapter appeared in these pages, the series has been printed and published, reprinted and republished, stereotyped for England, pirated for America, and translated for the Continent. The interest which the powerful tales first excited, is unabated to this hour. The regular and steady demand maintained for the volumes indicates their intrinsic value, and declares, in language as emphatic as any that can appeal to either publishers or authors, the enduring character with which they are impressed.
In the year 1839, just nine years after the publication of the first number of the “Diary,” appeared also in these pages the first part of Mr Warren’s tale of “Ten Thousand a-Year.” The second production derived no false lustre from the confirmed success of its predecessor. The new tale presented itself in the columns of the Magazine, as the rule is—anonymously. Mr Warren obtained no advantage whatever from his previously well-earned and conscientiously sustained reputation. His second venture had nothing to rely upon but itself; yet, before six months had elapsed, “Ten Thousand a-Year,” by the mere force of its own unquestioned merit, succeeded in arresting public attention to an extent seldom equalled, and never surpassed by publications of a serial nature. For two years that attention never flagged; the public can attest to this remarkable fact: we are ourselves conscious of the avidity with which number after number of this Magazine was sought, whilst one chapter of the History of Tittlebat Titmouse still remained to be told. “Ten Thousand a-Year” was a wholly different performance from the “Diary of a Late Physician.” The latter contained the fruitful germs of at least a dozen novels. Its short histories, designed to convey a solemn and abiding moral, performed their office with the least possible elaboration. Intricacy and subtlety of plot were not considered, in a scheme in which mankind was to be moved and taught by the influence of example. The faults, the weaknesses, the vices of humanity, were displayed in their simplest forms, and no pains were taken to involve them in the entanglements of an artfully contrived narration. Not so, altogether, in the case of “Ten Thousand a-Year.” Here plot became not a subordinate ingredient in the composition; here the salient and strongly-marked features of individual character were not alone considered. It cannot be denied that the second creation of Mr Warren’s genius indicated at once increased strength of mind, experience more extended, knowledge more ripened. The faculties of the man were allied to the energy and passion of the youth, and the former ruled the latter with a severe and salutary grasp. The secret motives of man had been learnt in the interim; human springs of action had been detected in their distant hiding places; the inner soul of the world had been more deeply penetrated, and more closely scanned by the writer’s understanding. The pictures were no longer sketches—the masterstrokes were something more than indications. The vulgarity of Titmouse was shown with the self-denying patience and enlightened industry of a surgeon laying bare the loathsomeness of a repelling sore. What inclination would have shut away for ever, conscientious duty required to be exposed. Vulgarity is exposed in the history of Tittlebat Titmouse, and is utterly crushed. In nothing, however, is the contrast between Mr Warren in 1830, and the same gentleman in 1839, so remarkable as in the conception of Mr Gammon. The character is a perfect emanation of instructed genius; the admixture of good and evil—good in evil, and evil in good—could have been portrayed only by one knowing thoroughly “all qualities with a learned spirit of human dealings.” None but a creator, conscious of his strength, and fortified by the convictions which knowledge and experience give, would have conceived—or if conceived, dared—to exhibit the incomparable portraiture of which we speak. He, Gammon, stands immortalised in Mr Warren’s pages, neither a monster of good nor a monster of evil, but partaking of both qualities; largely of one, and in a smaller degree of the other, as is nature’s wont. Noble amongst the very base, and base amongst the very noble, he is an object of sorrow more than of execration,—of sympathy, not of hate, in his evil associations; of deep pity, not of vengeance, when he mixes for a season with the pure. Wanting religion and the practice of piety, which alone yields the highest moral rectitude, Gammon fails to earn approval even when he most deserves it, and in his brightest moments leaves no better impression on the mind than that of a wretched bundle of foul weeds, steeped for the time in heroism. The seeming incongruities of the character testify at once to its fidelity: the reality of the picture is heightened by the colours which the master, with infinite skill, has selected from his palette.