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Page 157 of the 2d volume, besides five short lines of scenic direction, contains the following quantity of matter, which, we will stake our own polychronographic pen against her ladyship's two volumes no trifling odds on our part, by the way that we write within the compass of its value, a farthing, and read without our glasses when we have done so :

"Mr. Liston. Five to four the striker marks ! Lord John. Done! Pounds? Mr. Liston. Fives, if you will. Lord John. Done !"

But the reason for this is obvious enough, and we should be very dull not to perceive, and very ungallant not to admit, the excellent and very philosophical account of the affair given by the authoress. Her ladyship though she loves fame, loves not the trouble of seeking it through any of its more arduous approaches, and accordingly she offers the following ingenious and perfectly satisfactory excuse for her lazi

ness:

"An easy chair," she says, vol. 2, p. 101, "is the sybil's tripod; for when the body reposes, the mind is free to make its most gracious excursions. Attention is then undivided; the spirits are concentrated; and a pleasant woman sunk in her fauteuil, gives out her "infinite deal of nothings," with a more powerful effect on her auditors, than can be attained by the most finished coquet."

Now, my dear madam, while you are thus sitting in your "fauteuil," thus pregnant with "an infinite deal of nothings," we would ask you, in sad and sober earnestness, did you, when you meditated the prepetration of these

two volumes, imagine it would be the act of a Christian woman to demand yourself, or suffer your publisher to demand for them the enormous sum of one guinea;-did not the thought strike you, as you looked at the proof sheets, that it would be scarcely honourable to pawn upon "a discerning public" such dreary deserts of blank, white, uncultivated paper, alike depressing to the spirits and hurtful to the eyes, with a little narrow shrivelled stream of type trickling through the centre, that did not always exhibit the usual properties of the liquid element clearness and reflection ?—Ñay, nay, we will not press you to reply; we anticipate the answer your candour would give us, and we must conclude that you had no worthier ambition than to bring out a large mass of paper, while your laziness could devise no more convenient method of complying with the impatient and frequent demands of the printer's Devil for " more copy." There is still another advantage in the deep margins, that her Ladyship may have possibly contemplated. She can get out the next edition in 18mo. without any alteration of the type-we have heard of such things in our day-and there is fortunately no page of errata to detect the

manœuvre.

Another tale yet remains-but we are weary of her ladyship and her writings; she has occupied us too long already, and after having disturbed our ease and almost demolished the placidity of even our good humour, she has the assurance to insult us with an essay on "Temper"-Temper!

"Preach it to mortals of a dust like thineWe are not of thine order."

IRELAND.-No. I.

To point out, to the best of our ability, the means of diminishing the mass of vice and misery which still degrades and desolates our country, to consider its capabilities and resources, together with the modes by which they may be turned to the best account, and to promote the general happiness by suggesting practical methods of improving the physical and social condition of our own people, are the great ends to which we shall briefly address ourselves in this and perhaps some subsequent papers, of a series, which may, we think, be fairly devoted to a topic at once so interesting and so vitally important. A lively writer, on a subject that needs all the enlivening, as well as the enlightenment, it will admit of, to relieve its inherent darkness and dullness, has said, with, at least as much vivacity as truth, that the proper business of every man in every hour is, "Political Economy." Men in these days, he ob

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serveş, cannot contend for ever. times are gone by with the feudal system (in Ireland, perhaps, we should rather date, if at all, from the Catholic question,) when the meat and drink of mankind was quarrelling and fighting. No doubt, the number is now small of those, who believe according to the antique form of political faith, so long devoutedly inculcated in the esoteric doctrines, if not openly avowed in the outward professions, taught in the high places of the earth, that God has made the great bulk of mankind with saddles on their backs and bridles in their mouths, and some few booted and spurred, to ride the rest, according to their own mere motion at caprice and pleasure. Nevertheless, though these vanities, and many other evils great and sore under the sun have passed away, and soberer notions have succeeded to the drunken wantonness of pride and power; it must still be confessed both that the human being taken ab

* Let us not, however, be for an instant misunderstood. We have not a spark of the Spencean philosophy in our composition. We are neither Rockites, nor Owenites, nor St. Simonians; and if any thick-skulled radical fancy for a moment, that he has found in us an advocate or admirer of the political doctrine of community of goods, and fingering other men's purses, he will find himself, as Joey Hume says in his moments of premeditated pecuniary enthusiasm, "most deucedly mistaken.” "As to equality," says a dead bishop, that was a Whig, when Whigs were more respectable men than they are now, (and on such points we love to quote a Whig authority, for the instruction of the mobocracy whenever we can find a Saul among the prophets,) "as to equality, if by it be meant an equality of property or condition, there is no such thing, nor ever was there any such thing in any country since the world began. The Scripture tells us of Pharaoh and his princes in the time of Abraham, when he was forced by famine to go down to Egypt about 430 years after the flood. Abraham himself had at that period men servants and maid servants, and was very rich in cattle, in silver and in gold. He and Lot had herdsmen and servants of various kinds, and they everywhere met with kings who had subjects and soldiers.

The inequality of property and condition, which some silly or bad people are so fond of railing against, existed in the very infancy of the world, and must, from the nature of things, continue to exist to the end of it.

Suppose a ship to be wrecked on an uninhabited island, and that all the officers perished, but that the common men and their wives were saved; there, if anywhere, we may meet with liberty, equality, and the rights of man. What think you would be the consequence? A state of equality, and with it of anarchy, might perhaps subsist for a day; but wisdom, courage, industry, economy, would presently introduce a superiority of some over others; and in order that each man might preserve for himself the cabin he had built, the ground he had tilled, or the fish he had taken, all would agree in the propriety of appointing some one, or more than one, amongst their VOL. II. 3 к

stractedly, is a creature so strange and often unaccountable in his actions, and the motives which influence his conduct, and still more that the society composed of an aggregate of such featherless articulating bipeds, is so exceedingly complicated a machine, that to repair its defects, or to improve its modes of operation, is a task which demands the utmost and ablest efforts of deliberate practical wisdom-a wisdom not to be imposed upon by plausible expedients, which, though when viewed under some one aspect they hold out a confident promise of improvement or relief, yet seen under another, or a more comprehensive view, may be perceived to be illusory, or even pernicious. Qui ad pauca respicit, de facili pronunciat," quoth the prince of ancient philosophers. He that would raise his thoughts to a higher pitch, must not be so narrow-eyed, but take, as from a vantage-ground, a larger and more comprehensive view.

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Now, we are far enough, heaven knows, from setting up for such longsighted sages, or for playing Sir Oracle, at whose portentous lip-droppings, even barking curs must needs be charmed into sacred silence; but we have thought it needful, or expedient, to

premise thus much, in order that it may be quite distinctly understood, that we approach the task which has been set to us, not without due consciousness of its exceeding difficulty, and a becoming diffidence with respect to the conclusions, to which even we ourselves may happen to arrive in the course of our investigations.

Dr. Chalmers has insisted much, and, considered as a general question we think not erroneously, upon the folly of supposing, that the plain highway to the relief of the unprovided inhabitants of any state, is, first and principally, to find them employment. He deplores, in most pathetic terms, and at considerable length, the perverse, but prevalent delusion that the employment in which men are engaged, is the source of their maintenance; whereas every employment, except that of raising food, is only a channel through which men draw their maintenance from the hands of those, who buy the products of their labour. The whole of his very lengthy argument upon this subject is acknowledged to be resolvable into the veriest truism, namely, that a manufacture is creative of nothing beyond its own products; that it should be accredited only with the commodity

number to direct, govern, and protect the whole, by the common strength. Thus, the restriction of liberty, and the destruction of equality, and all the circumstances which shallow reasoners represent as grievances in society, and subversive of the rights of man, would, of necessity, be introduced. No one would be left at liberty to invade his neighbour's property; some would by skill and activity become rich, and they would be allowed to bequeath at their death, their wealth to their children; others would, by idleness and debauchery, remain poor, and having nothing to leave to their children, these, when grown up, would be under the necessity of maintaining themselves by working for their neighbours, till, by prudence and thrift they acquired enough to purchase property of their own, on which they might employ their labour. It is a general law, which God has established throughout the world, that riches and respect should attend prudence and diligence; and as all men are not equal in the faculties of either body or mind, by which riches or respect are acquired, a necessity of superiority and subordination springs from the very nature which God has given us." Thus far, the Whig and liberal Bishop Watson. There's for you, messieurs disciples of the prophets of the mob, who teach, upon the principles of political justice, as interpreted by them, that the handling of Mr. Rothschild's purse should, in fairness, be turn and turn about, instead of being basely confined, as this privilege is at present, to Mr. Rothschild, jun. These weak and wicked promises of impossible advantages are merely meant to attract the working classes the device of designing knaves, who lie, and cheat, and count the oboli. Any reasonable propositions for amending the condition of the poor, are what all good men are always eager to collect, and we do not despair of making some discoveries thereanent even ourselves, and helping to lead the people on to practical improvement, but it is not by idle, lying stories of any Utopian lubber-land paved with twelve-penny loaves, and peopled with roast pigs running about with a knife and fork in their buttocks, and crying" Come eat me," that this or any other good thing can possibly be effected.

* Aristoteles.

which it furnishes to the market, and not with the wealth also which supplies the price of that commodity. It certainly cannot furnish society with both itself and its own equivalent; the latter must come from a distinct and different quarter. When Cornelius O'Hoolaghan, the Wicklow mountain broom-maker, cuts and binds the heath, he does not also, and in addition thereto, produce the penny which Dolly, the housemaid pays for the aforesaid broom in Sackville-street, Dublin. Yet the Doctor bitterly complains, that by confounding in theory those two things, which are so obviously distinct in fact, a false direction has been very generally given, not only to the sentimentalities of amiable, though ancient gentlewomen of either sex, but also to the imaginations of economists, and the policy of statesmen. Three years ago we should have thought it foul scorn to have classed these species in the same category, but time and the Doctor have taught us better. The so-called economists we have always looked upon as a muddy-brained as well as a hardhearted generation; but, for the honour of kingdom-ruling humanity, maugre old Oxenstiern's adage, and our own too sad experience, we would still cling to the persuasion that statesmen should be elevated a grade higher in the scale of intellectual being. Though, after all, perhaps, this satirical rogue of a doctor of divinity does not speak slanders; and some fat-headed porkers of the Althorpean stye, may actually vie in density of skull with animals of the braying breed of Macculloch. Leaving these respectively, however, to wallow in their native mire, or browze upon their country's thistles, each after his kind, all undisturbed at present, let us proceed from the general theories of their vaunted science to the more particular consideration of the case of Ireland.

Now here amongst us, though it must be honestly confessed that we have been, and still are, in defiance of the abstract reasoning of Malthus, prone to increase and multiply after our hearts' imagination; yet, thanks to the Solanum tuberosum,* and some other trifling helps which that bountiful

Providence, in whom we so sturdily put our trust, has bestowed upon us, we have not yet, by a good many years' journey, reached that advanced stage in politico-economic polity, at which population treads close upon the heels of subsistence. On the contrary, the redundancy of human food above the consumption, if not above the wants of the people, has at least kept pace with the rapid growth of our population. Mr. Alexander Nimmo, the late government engineer for Ireland, a man whose great professional skill, sound judgment, and right feeling, conferred inestimable public benefits upon the country, observed, in his evidence upon the inland navigations of Ireland, that they are chiefly remarkable for being undertaken not to facilitate any existing trade, but chiefly to promote agriculture in the fertile districts of the interior, to create a trade where none had previously existed, and to furnish employment for the poor. The success in this way has been wonderful; and though the adventurers themselves have not yet been repaid, and perhaps never will, the benefit to the public, and to the landed property of the kingdom, has been great and manifest. The nation has been saved the payment of the bounty of a hundred thousand pounds a year for bringing corn to Dublin; for, in place of this being the case, that city has now become one of the first corn ports of Europe and Ireland in general, which half a century ago imported corn to the value of half a million sterling annually, has now a surplus produce in that article to the value of four millions per annum, while the whole expenditure, whether in public or private works of navigation, even including the interest paid on loans, hardly amounted to three millions.

It is a curious fact, however, and speaks volumes as to the relative creature-comforts of the population of the two islands, that while Ireland is an exporting country to such an immense extent of agricultural produce, and England an importing one, the number of acres under cultivation in England is more than double the number under far far inferior cultivation in Ireland,

Vulgo dict. pot 8o.

although the population of England exceeds that of Ireland by little more one-third. At the time of the revolution, or the close of the seventeenth century, the wheat produced in England and Wales was estimated to amount to 1,750,000 quarters. At present it is calculated that there are in England and Wales 3,250,000 acres annually cropped with wheat, which at the ordinary average of 23 quarters per acre will yield about nine millions of quarters, and the supply is made up by importation to about 12,000,000 quarters of wheat, and 40,000,000 quarters of all other sorts of grain. Even since the year 1760 the consumption of wheat has, at the very least, trebled, and of butcher's meat quadrupled, an increase so much more rapid than that of the population as to afford tolerably conclusive proof of the improved condition of the people in respect of food. So recently as the middle of the last century, and even later, the agriculture of Scotland, now so justly famous over Europe, was in a far more backward and depressed state than that of Ireland is now. The tenants of the soil were in general destitute alike of capital and skill. Green crops were almost unknown, and wheat there was little or none. It is well known that the cultivation of wheat has increased in Scotland in more than a tenfold proportion even since the year 1780. At present there is scarcely a village in "braid Scotland" that has not its public baker. Aye! there's the rub. Sawnie, like a sensible cannie' chiel, as he is, grows his wheat and eats it too; but Paddy, the true terræ filius, the mere astrictus glebæ, raises the corn only to "rise the rint," too happy if he can secure for the consolation of his own inwards a sufficient supply of the more modest potato.

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Every observant person who traverses our island remarks upon the strange anomaly which everywhere stares one in the face, of land not half productive for want of sufficient cultivation, though crowded with labourers ill-fed for want of employment. In general it has been deemed a sufficient explanation of this acknowledged and crying evil, to observe that capital, the connecting link by which the labour should be brought to bear upon the land, is wanting. But the vague, general assertion of absolute want of

capital in Ireland is neither sufficient nor accurately true. It has been ascertained by the official returns, that the amount of accumulated Irish capital vested in Government securities and transferred from England to Ireland has, in the last seven years, exceeded twenty-one millions, or three millions a year. So far back as the year 1822 we find the Parliamentary Committee on the State of Ireland observing in their report that "The want of capital seems to be generally referred to as the principal cause of the reduced means of employing the people; and this complaint of want of capital is generally accompanied by a statement that capital might, in Ireland, be profitably invested. Assuming this posi tion to be correct, your Committee were naturally led to inquire into the causes which impeded the investment of British capital in Ireland, if that investment could take place with profit. All the witnesses examined imputed this difficulty of inducing British Capitalists to invest their money in Ireland, to the disturbances which have unfortu nately prevailed in that country, by which an impression to a considerable extent has been produced that property is insecure in those districts where disturbances have prevailed." Violà la chose. It is then, manifestly, not so much the want of Capital, either "British or Irish, for neither is deficient, as a want of that feeling of confidence and security without which no rational Capitalist will embark his property in any speculation, that is, in this respect, the bane of Ireland.

Amongst the numerous works on Ireland, with which the press has teemed of late, there is one by Charles Wye Williamson, Esq. upon inland navigation generally, and the river Shannon in particular, which has afforded us great satisfaction, by the clearness of its views, the soundness and accuracy of its information, and the tone of manly good sense which pervades all its statements. On this, and on all other accessible sources, public or private, we mean to draw freely whenever we can find any thing to throw light upon the great deside ratum, of which we are in search, and at present we shall willingly avail ourselves of the lucid summary given by Mr. Williams of the leading features of the state of Ireland, considered in a

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