According to the spirit of the British laws, labour can only be enforced as the penalty of crime. Mr Carlyle would change this, and would place the pauper upon precisely the same level as the convict. We are not prepared to say that some important improvements might not be made in the practical operation of the poor-laws. We have read various pamphlets, published in this city and elsewhere, which strenuously recommend the employment of the able-bodied poor in the reclaiming of waste lands, and their immediate removal from the towns. There is, however, much more philanthropy than philosophy in these schemes. In order to discover a proper remedy, we ought in every case to direct our primary attention to the nature and origin of the disease; and this is precisely what our modern philanthropists neglect to do. People do not crowd into towns of their own choice. Give them their free will, and the means of subsistence, and one and all of them will prefer the fresh air, and the sights and sounds of nature, to the stifling atmosphere, the reeking filth, and the discordant cries of the city lanes and courts. But no such free will exists: the balance has not been kept between the country and the towns. No encouragement has been given to the small manufactures, which in former times were the support of villages now rapidly falling into decay. The gigantic power of machinery, set in motion by large capital, has nearly abolished the hand-loom. Worsted knitting, yarn-spinning, straw-plaiting, are now rendered almost profitless occupations. In order to live, the villagers have been forced to migrate to the towns. We need hardly refer to the earliest of the Free-trade measures, which, by substituting Spanish barilla for kelp, threw whole districts of the West Highlands at once into a state of pauperism. At this moment, a new cause is aggravating the evil. The stagnation of agricultural employment occasioned by the abolition of the corn duties, has given a new impetus to rural emigration; and those who cannot afford their passage to foreign parts naturally seek refuge in the towns. In another year—if the experiment should be continued so long—the effects of this last change will become more evident than they are now. The able-bodied ploughman is the last of the agricultural class who will suffer. Those who have already been compelled to change their homes, or to go upon the parish-list, are the cottars, who derived their subsistence from the employment given them by resident proprietors. So long as encouragement to agricultural improvement existed, these poor people never wanted work; but now the calamitous fall in the price of produce, and the prospect of a great diminution of rents, have compelled the landlords to discontinue their improvements, and to reduce the expenses of their establishments to the lowest possible limit. In this way, country labour is lessened, and town labour, by the increasing competition of hands, is cheapened. This is the true secret of all those startling revelations as to the misery, want, and positive oppression of the working classes which have lately appeared in the public journals, and which have engendered in the minds of many a natural despair as to the destiny of a state in which such things are suffered to exist. The remedy undoubtedly is neither an easy nor a speedy one; still, it is by no means to be included in the category of impossibilities. Machinery, which is the first great cause of British pauperism, cannot indeed be checked, but it may very easily be taxed. "An acre of land," says a late eminent writer, "if cultivated, must pay a tithe of its productions to support the religion of the state, and an equal contribution with any other property in respect of the poor, county, and church rates; but mechanical power may exercise its productive faculty ad infinitum, with but a trifling reference or liability to either the one or the other. The building may be rated at £200, £500, or £1000 a-year, but it has a power within it which, as compared with landed property rated at the same amount, will produce a hundredfold as great a return—a principle in legislation as deteriorating in its operation on the masses as it is unjust to individuals." That machinery, which has changed the whole character of our population, and which, in fact, has been the means of creating this stern reality of pauperism, is not taxed upon the principle of its productive power. That it should be so, seems evident upon the smallest reflection. Land is not taxed on the principle of acreage, but on that of value, which again depends entirely on production. Why should not the manufactory be rated in the same manner? It is true that, by such a measure as this, pauperism could not be removed, but it would be materially checked, for the fair proportion of the burden would thus be thrown on the shoulders of those who occasioned it. But nothing effectual can be done until the nation has finally determined what policy it is to pursue for the future, and in all time coming, with respect to native industry. If Free Trade is to go on, pauperism must continue like a Upas tree to spread and overshadow the land. It is not within the range of possibility that this can be otherwise. No church-extension, education, cheap literature, ventilation, sewerage, public baths, or model lodging-houses, can avail to mitigate the evil. It is town competition—made triply worse by the operation of low tariffs—which is driving the working classes to the verge of the pit of despair; and that town competition is increasing, and will increase, so long as a fresh daily supply of hands is driven from country labour. The scheme of the philanthropists to whom we have referred, is to take the surplusage from the towns and to send them to the country. This, in the present state of matters, is about as feasible an undertaking as if we were to try to make a stream of water run up-hill. Why, the misery and indigence which they seek to relieve, is not the result of mere idleness, dissipation, or profligacy—it arises from over-competition in one department of industry, occasioned by the utter want of profitable employment in another. There would be no need of industrial regiments to cultivate the soil, if its cultivation were allowed to be remunerative. But to set our pauper population at work upon anything which will not repay private enterprise is mere delusion. We have said this much upon a topic of the greatest interest, and the utmost importance, because we are convinced that many persons, who are fully impressed with the magnitude of the evil, have mistaken the remedy from the want of a due consideration of the causes from whence that evil has arisen. It is, however, a subject too large for incidental discussion, and we shall probably return to it on a future occasion, when we can state our views without reference to the whimsical vagaries of Mr Carlyle.
So then, the Noblest having made his speech, and wound up with a significant hint of flogging and pistoling every one of the unfortunate serfs who shall fail to wield the hoe with becoming alacrity, what next? Nothing more, in so far as the interests of the working classes are concerned; at least nothing tangible. Perhaps it would be absurd to expect anything more. The man who can propound a scheme to rid us of pauperism, with all its concomitant misery, would be a greater benefactor to the commonwealth, and to the human race, than a thousand Howards in one. Mr Carlyle is perhaps the most strenuous advocate for work that we ever encountered. He would have made a first-rate taskmaster under the old Egyptian economy. He is, with great reason, indignant at the state to which our West Indian Colonies have been reduced by means of Exeter Hall emancipation, and he scouts emancipation itself as a gross delusion of the fiend. It is to be regretted that his views have been so late of ripening. Time was, when a fair and common-sense protest, advanced by a Liberal philosopher, against the absurdity of attempting to change the hue of the Ethiopian by a single momentary scrubbing, might have been of some actual use: now, it is in vain to recommend a protracted application of the tub. The Noblest, when Mr Carlyle has discovered him and put him forward, will hardly achieve his ends by using the following language, even supposing that he wielded the lightning, and were able to put his threats into execution.
"Beautiful Black Peasantry, who have fallen idle, and have got the Devil at your elbow; interesting White Felonry, who are not idle, but have enlisted into the Devil's regiments of the line,—know that my benevolence for you is comparatively trifling! What I have of that divine feeling is due to others, not to you. A universal Sluggard-and-Scoundrel Protection Society is not the one I mean to institute in these times, where so much wants protection, and is sinking to sad issues for want of it! The scoundrel needs no protection. The scoundrel that will hasten to the gallows, why not rather clear the way for him? Better he reach his goal and outgate by the natural proclivity, than be so expensively dammed up and detained, poisoning everything as he stagnates and meanders along, to arrive at last a hundred times fouler, and swollen a hundred times bigger! Benevolent men should reflect on this.—And you Quashee, my pumpkin,—(not a bad fellow either, this poor Quashee, when tolerably guided!)—idle Quashee, I say you must get the Devil sent away from your elbow, my poor dark friend! In this world there will be no existence for you otherwise. No, not as the brother of your folly will I live beside you. Please to withdraw out of my way, if I am not to contradict your folly and amend it, and put it in the stocks if it will not amend. By the Eternal Maker! it is on that footing alone that you and I can live together. And if you had respectable traditions dated from beyond Magna Charta, or from beyond the Deluge, to the contrary, and written sheepskins that would thatch the face of the world,—behold I, for one individual, do not believe said respectable traditions, nor regard said written sheepskins, except as things which you, till you grow wiser, will believe. Adieu, Quashee; I will wish you better guidance than you have had of late."
The meaning of this passage is, that the black population of our colonies ought no longer to be permitted to dwell in perfect idleness in their provision grounds, rearing pumpkins for their own consumption, without regard to the cultivation of the sugar-cane. As we have already remarked, this view is somewhat of the latest; nevertheless truth, like repentance, can never come too late to be received. Divorced from the folly of his speech, Mr Carlyle's sentiment is sound. Twenty millions of British money, wrung from the hard-taxed labour of our people, were given—for what? Not only to emancipate the Negroes, but to place them in such a position that they could effectually control their former masters—our own colonists and countrymen, to whom our faith was solemnly plighted for the maintenance of their privileges and commerce. Let it be granted that slavery was a gross sin, was it incumbent upon us to elevate the emancipated Blacks so high, that they could control the labour market—to give them the status of untaxed yoemen, without any security for the slightest manifestation of their gratitude? It was more than preposterous that those whose freedom was purchased should be placed in a better position, and invested with more immunity from labour and want, than the great bulk of the people who made the sacrifice in order to secure that freedom; and the result has amply demonstrated the gross folly of the scheme. There are thousands, nay millions of men in Britain and Ireland, whose lot, compared with that of the emancipated Blacks of Jamaica, is one of speechless misery—and yet their cry to be relieved from a competition which is crushing them down to the dust, is unheard and uncared for amidst the din of contending politicians, and the perpetual hum of the busy proselytes of Mammon.
Here we cannot forbear from quoting a characteristic passage from Mr Carlyle's tracts. The idea is not original, but the handling is worthy of Astley's humourist; and we commend it to the special attention of all free-trading philanthropists.
"Certainly Emancipation proceeds with rapid strides among us, this good while; and has got to such a length as might give rise to reflections in men of a serious turn. West Indian Blacks are emancipated, and it appears refuse to work. Irish Whites have long been entirely emancipated; and nobody asks them to work, or on condition of finding them potatoes (which, of course, is indispensable) permits them to work. Among speculative persons, a question has sometimes risen. In the progress of Emancipation, are we to look for a time when all the Horses also are to be emancipated, and brought to the supply-and-demand principle? Horses too have 'motives;' are acted on by hunger, fear, hope, love of oats, terror of platted leather; nay they have vanity, ambition, emulation, thankfulness, vindictiveness; some rude outline of all our human spiritualities,—a rude resemblance to us in mind and intelligence, even as they have in bodily frame. The Horse, poor dumb four-footed fellow, he too has his private feelings, his affections, gratitudes; and deserves good usage; no human master, without crime, shall treat him unjustly either, or recklessly lay on the whip where it is not needed:—I am sure if I could make him 'happy,' I should be willing to grant a small vote (in addition to the late twenty millions) for that object!
"Him, too, you occasionally tyrannise over; and with bad result to yourselves among others; using the leather in a tyrannous, unnecessary manner; withholding, or scantily furnishing, the oats and ventilated stabling that are due. Rugged horse-subduers, one fears they are a little tyrannous at times. 'Am I not a horse, and half-brother?' To remedy which, so far as remediable, fancy—the horses all 'emancipated;' restored to their primeval right of property in the grass of this Globe; turned out to graze in an independent supply-and-demand manner! So long as grass lasts, I daresay they are very happy, or think themselves so. And Farmer Hodge sallying forth, on a dry spring morning, with a sieve of oats in his hand, and agony of eager expectation in his heart, is he happy? Help me to plough this day, Black Dobbin; oats in full measure if thou wilt. 'Hlunh! No—thank!' snorts Black Dobbin; he prefers glorious liberty and the grass. Bay Darby, wilt not thou perhaps? 'Hlunh!' Gray Joan, then, my beautiful broad-bottomed mare,—O Heaven! she too answers Hlunh! Not a quadruped of them will plough a stroke for me. Corn-crops are ended in this world!—For the sake, if not of Hodge, then of Hodge's horses, one prays this benevolent practice might now cease, and a new and a better one try to begin. Small kindness to Hodge's horses to emancipate them! The fate of all emancipated horses is, sooner or later, inevitable. To have in this habitable earth no grass to eat,—in black Jamaica gradually none, as in White Connemara already none;—to roam aimless, wasting the seed-fields of the world; and be hunted home to Chaos, by the dire watch-dogs and dire hell-dogs, with such horrors of forsaken wretchedness as were never seen before! These things are not sport; they are terribly true, in this country at this hour."
One other sham, perhaps the greatest which our age has witnessed, Mr Carlyle accidentally denounces—we mean the late Colonial policy. If the Whigs have an official aptitude for anything, it is the coopering up of Constitutions. Is one colony indignant at some outrage or insult proceeding from headquarters—is another dissatisfied with the conduct of the Governor, and urgent for his recall—is a third aggrieved by the commercial vacillation and fiscal measures of a Parliament in which it has neither voice nor power—the universal panacea is, Give them a Constitution! We hope the present Ministry will profit by the following criticism—not volunteered by us, who neither look upon them with affection, nor entertain any sanguine hope of their conversion to a patriotic policy,—but penned by a writer who, not long ago, was considered by their organs as one of the deepest thinkers of the age.
"Constitutions for the Colonies," says Mr Carlyle, "are now on the anvil; the discontented Colonies are all to be cured of their miseries by Constitutions. Whether that will cure their miseries, or only operate as a Godfrey's Cordial to stop their whimpering, and in the end worsen all their miseries, may be a sad doubt to us. One thing strikes a remote spectator in these Colonial questions: the singular placidity with which the British Statesman at this time, backed by M'Crowdy and the British moneyed classes, is prepared to surrender whatsoever interest Britain, as foundress of those establishments, might pretend to have in the decision. 'If you want to go from us, go; we by no means want you to stay: you cost us money yearly, which is scarce; desperate quantities of trouble too: why not go, if you wish it?' Such is the humour of the British Statesman at this time.—Men clear for rebellion, 'annexation' as they call it, walk openly abroad in our American Colonies; found newspapers, hold platform palaverings. From Canada there comes duly by each mail a regular statistic of Annexationism: increasing fast in this quarter, diminishing in that;—Majesty's Chief Governor seeming to take it as a perfectly open question; Majesty's Chief Governor, in fact, seldom appearing on the scene at all, except to receive the impact of a few rotten eggs on occasion, and then duck in again to his private contemplations. And yet one would think the Majesty's Chief Governor ought to have a kind of interest in the thing? Public liberty is carried to a great length in some portion of her Majesty's dominions. But the question, 'Are we to continue subjects of her Majesty, or start rebelling against her? So many as are here for rebelling, hold up your hands!' Here is a public discussion of a very extraordinary nature to be going on under the nose of a Governor of Canada? How the Governor of Canada, being a British piece of flesh and blood, and not a Canadian lumber-log of mere pine and rosin, can stand it, is not very conceivable at first view. He does it, seemingly, with the stoicism of a Zeno. It is a constitutional sight like few."
With Earl Grey at the head of the Colonial Department, backed and assisted by that pattern of candour, Mr Hawes—with Lord Elgin in Canada, and Lord Torrington in Ceylon—the integrity of the British empire is certainly exposed to peril. But a more dangerous symptom is the spirit which of late years has prevailed in the councils of the nation, and owes its origin to the false views and perverse unpatriotic doctrines of the political economists. They refuse to admit into their calculations any element which may not be reduced to the standard of money-value, and they consider that the worth of a colony is to be measured solely by the returns of its traffic. This is a leading dogma of Free Trade; and no doubt, were Free Trade capable of entire realisation, if the nations of the earth had no other ambition than to buy and sell, after the manner recommended by Mr Cobden, and if reciprocity were a thing universal, a good deal might be urged in its favour. If we apply the same test to Ireland, we shall find that it is greatly for the advantage of the people of Great Britain to pronounce in favour of Repeal, and to allow the young patriots of the Emerald Isle to enter into any kind of relationship which they may choose with the sympathising republicans of France. This is Free Trade in its plain, undisguised form; and to some such consummation as this we must come at last, by virtue of the grand experiment, should that, like Sir Robert Peel's temporary Income Tax, be extended to a limitless perpetuity. At present, in so far as regards the welfare of a great portion of the inhabitants of the country, it is difficult to perceive what advantage they derive from the boasted character of Britons, except the privilege of contributing to the heaviest load of taxation that was ever laid upon the industry of a people. We acknowledge that the Free-traders have planned their scheme with consummate adroitness and dexterity. If their object was, as we believe it was, to sap those principles of high morality, rectitude, honour, and patriotism, which carried Great Britain successfully through the dangers of wild European revolution, anarchy, and war, they could not have hit upon a better or a surer method. Many a disheartened agriculturist has lately asked himself, what is the nature of the ties which bind him imperatively to Britain, when a richer soil and a fairer climate can be found elsewhere, a home not daily harassed by the knock of the tax-gatherer, and the London market ever ready to receive the product of his industry? It is not good that these questions should arise in the minds of our yeomen, for they are calculated to engender a train of thoughts very hostile to the maintenance of that credit which England dare not lose, without forfeiting her reputation, her fame, her honour, and her sway. The thoughts of the colonies have long been bent in a similar direction; and we doubt not that many of them have been amazed to find that, so far from being checked in their preliminary mutterings of revolt, they have the hearty good wishes of the Manchester men in dissolving their connection with the mother country, whenever they may choose to do so. Thus do we stand at present in our home and colonial relations, the clank of the constitution hammer resounding from the cooperage, and dull-eyed Imbecility sitting lazily at the helm.
We must now take our leave of Mr Carlyle, sincerely regretting that we cannot, with any degree of truth, congratulate him either on the tone or the character of his late lucubrations. These pamphlets, take them altogether, are about the silliest productions of the day; and we could well wish, for his sake, that they had never been compiled. Very few people, we imagine, will be disposed to wait with confidence for the avatar of his Noblest and Noblers, such as he has depicted them. Our faith and hopes lie in a different direction; nor have we any wish to see a Cromwell at the head of affairs, supported by a staff of noble young souls, poetical or otherwise, who require to be bought over for the purpose. Towards the close of his fourth pamphlet, our author lets drop a hint from which we gather that it is not impossible that his Noblest may hereafter appear embodied in the person of Sir Robert Peel. All we shall say on that score is, that Sir Robert has already had sufficient opportunity vouchsafed him to exhibit the extent of his qualifications. It is not likely that the Statesman who, in the eve of life, and enjoying the undiminished confidence of his Sovereign, finds himself in the House of Commons without the semblance of a party to support him, can ever make another desperate rally. It would be difficult to find in the annals of history any instance of a leading politician who has been so often trusted, and impossible to find one who has so often abused that trust. Even Mr Carlyle cannot deny the Unveracities of which Sir Robert stands convicted; and although he appears to think that lapses from truth are of so common occurrence as to be venial, we beg to assure him that his opinion is not the general one, nor is it altogether creditable to the morality of the man who ventures to express it. We are sorry to observe that, in the conclusion of this latter tract, Mr Carlyle has condescended to borrow some hints from that most eminent master of modern scurrility, the late Daniel O'Connell. This is, in every respect, to be deplored. Wit is not Mr Carlyle's forte, and this kind of wit, if wit it be, is, when served up at second hand, both nauseous and revolting. At a calmer moment, and on more mature reflection, we feel convinced that Mr Carlyle will blush for the terms which he has allowed himself to apply to so eminent a genius as Mr Disraeli; and that he will in future abstain from testifying his gratitude for a humiliating invitation to dinner in a shape so abject as that of casting personal and low abuse upon the political adversaries of his entertainer.