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CHAPTER III.

ON THE PRINCIPAL DIVISIONS OF THE LABOURING

COMMUNITY.

But

TIME was when our countrymen united every employment; they delved the soil, they wove the fleece. The consequence was, that the agriculture was as crude as the manufacture, and the manufacture was as humble as the agriculture. Great immigrations brought with them their trades, and established among us their staples. These were deemed so helpless at first, that they were defended by incorporation and privilege. now our woollen, cotton, and silk, fabrications have drawn out an immense amount of artizans, and we commonly divide the people into agricultural and manufacturing. Cicero made the same distinction in his day; but while we quote him, we must not thoughtlessly prejudge the case between these classes as he has done. In his Oratoria Partitiones, sect. 25, he writes: "Et quoniam non ad veritatem solum, sed etiam ad opiniones eorum, qui audiunt, accomodanda est oratio; hoc primum intelligamus, hominum duo esse genera; alterum indoctum et agreste, quod anteferat semper utilitatem honestati; alterum expolitum,

quod rebus omnibus dignitatem anteponat. Itaque huic generi laus, honor, gloria, fides, justitia, omnisque virtus; illi autem alteri, quæstus, emolumentum, fructusque proponitur, atque etiam voluptas, quæ maxime est inimica virtuti, bonique naturam fallaciter imitando adulterat."* The whole truth may be in neither allegation, and to balance the opposite columns something may be required to pass from the one to the other.

Perhaps in no land of earth is this distinction of labourers more marked and more equipoised than in our own. Rival interests are supposed to arise between them, and, however only putative, these keep them apart and excite frequent irritation. To adjust all questions of jealousy is the part of the statesman; and he feels his way to be slow and difficult among the competitors. Perhaps a new light begins to fall upon him, a simple light, a light from heaven. If he will follow it, it will save him from a thousand perplexities. It teaches him to leave commerce to the

*

"Since the Oration must be adapted not only for the announcement of truth, but to the opinions of those who listen, we ought to be fully aware that men divide themselves into two classes: the first, ill-taught and rustic, who always prefer the useful to the refined,— the second, the courtly, who set the highest value upon reputation. The whole intentness of the latter is upon fame, nobility, glory, faithfulness, justice, and every excellence: that of the former is on gain, advantage, acquisition, and even that grosser enjoyment, which is most opposed to virtue, and corrupts by its too successful imitation of happiness."

winds and the waves, husbandry to the clouds and the seasons: not to weaken their strength by bounties, nor to hamper their elasticity by protections.

These respective divisions of our population are characterised by particular features. It would seem that the difference is not accidental; but that it arises from the necessary circumstances of the parties, and from the nature of their several occupations.

It immediately strikes us, on comparing the two, that the one is always more condensed and the other more scattered. The first is more civic, the second more rural. The manufacturing town and the commercial port will sometimes exceed in the number of their inhabitants an entire county. It is a crowded hive of men. Every spot is covered with buildings : every nook teems with life. You gaze upon another scene. There are beheld, wide- diffused, the farmhouse and grange of the yeomanry, and the humbler dwellings of their servants. The roads are generally of a kind to prevent easy communication. The meetings of these sons of the soil are the hurried passages of the market. They exist by themselves.

Nor can it be denied that the thick settlement of a population is favourable to its intellectual development. Mind acts upon mind with a necessary force. This effect must be proportioned to proximity and collision. Both these influences are in operation in the supposed case. Men throng upon each other, and the claim of each requires a very nice attention.

Every interest is to be secured. Institutions come easily into existence. These soothe and elevate and polish. When men are dispersed, it is a too common misfortune that mental hebetude succeeds. Associations are almost impossible. Neighbourhood brings not its excitements to improve, nor its inconveniences to redress. A facility of life may induce its stupor. Though agriculture is daily becoming a more scientific pursuit, having its proper chymistry,-guided by new plans of tillage and draining,-receiving manures from distant shores,-holding out the hope of a very enlarged production,—yet, in the ordinary processes of its labour, it has been simple and unarousing. The annual drama awakes poet and moralist, but it can little raise the soul of the hind. He toils on, and, in his round of humble errands, there is little

call for mental effort.

are not imaginative.

His implements are scanty, and
The manufacturing labourer is

always in sight of suggestions to thought and research.
His motive power is as a fairy charm and a giant force;
combining the grace of the altar's incense with the
heaving of the volcano's fury. The presence of such
an agency can scarcely fail to cause reflection.

Since it generally happens that a few powerful minds produce the movements of opinion around them, we need not wonder that the information of the town is generally larger than that of the country. Active spirits look for meet audience and remuneration. They are best supported by the many; out of the many

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they find the appreciating few. The means of knowledge and the stimulants of investigation are discovered in every place of resort. Every town is not, indeed, manufacturing: but manufacture almost invariably colonises in towns.

We cannot, we would not, for the moment suppose, that agricultural pursuits are, of their own nature, unfavourable to intellectual development. They ally themselves with genuine science. They lay open the wonders of the vast laboratory of earth. They seem most necessarily attentive to the moral of the seasons. But we have to discourse of facts. We do not see the equality of the hind and the farmer, with the workman and the manufacturer. We have adduced some of the causes. These operate with no certain influence upon all tillers of the soil. Many of this class, in different parts of the world, are not less intelligent than the citizen and operative. These, however, are dependent upon none other. They are bound by no seigniory nor feudalism. They cultivate their own lands. They are erect in allodial rights. It is difficult to understand, when the principal landed property of a country is in the hands of those who do not occupy it, how the landlord shall not use a power, and the tenantry suffer an ascendancy, which virtually place the respective parties in the relation of a chieftain to his clan.

But against the quick, astute, excitable, intellect, which is commonly allowed to a dense population,at least if that density be the effect of manufactures,

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