Kitabı oku: «Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 374, December, 1846», sayfa 3

Mr Kohl's volume adverts cursorily to the many institutions still existing in Denmark, which owe their origin to the days of Roman Catholicism, and have been formed upon the model of Catholic establishments. Several Frökenstifts, or lay nunneries, are still in being. They are either qualifications of some ancient monastic foundation, or they have been endowed from time to time by royal or private munificence. Each house has a lady superior, who is either chosen by the king or queen, or succeeds to the office by right of birth – some noble families having, in return for large endowments, a perpetual advowson for a daughter of the house. At these Frökenstifts, none but ladies of noble birth can obtain fellowships. As a large number of such noble ladies are far from wealthy, a comfortable home and a moderate salary are no small advantages. A constant residence within the cloister is not incumbent upon the "fellows;" but a requisition, generally attached to each presentation, obliges them to live in their stift for a certain number of weeks annually. The practice of founding institutions for ladies of noble birth has risen naturally in a country where family is every thing, and wealth is comparatively small: where it is esteemed less degrading to live on royal bounty than to enter upon an occupation not derogatory to any but noble blood. The system of pensioning in Denmark is a barrier to real national prosperity. Independence, self-respect, every consideration is lost sight of in the monstrous notion, that it is beneath a high-born man to earn his living by an honourable profession. Diplomacy, the army, and navy, are the three limited careers open to the aristocracy of Denmark; and since the country is poor, and the nobility, in their pride, rarely or never enrich themselves by plebeian alliances, it follows, of course, that a whole host of younger brothers, and a countless array of married and unmarried patricians, must fall back upon the bounty of the sovereign, administered in one shape or another. The Church and Law are made over to the middle classes. To such an extent is pride of birth carried, that without a title no one can be received at Court. In order, therefore, to admit such as are excluded by the want of hereditary rank, honorary but the most absurd titles are created. "Glatsraad," "Conferenceraad," Councillor of State, Councillor of Conference, carry with them no duties or responsibilities, but they obtain for their possessors the right of entrée, otherwise unattainable. In Germany, the titles of the people, from the under-turnpike-keeper's-assistant's lady, up to the wife of the lord with a hundred tails, are amusing enough. They have been sufficiently ridiculed by Kotzebue; but the distinctions of Denmark go far beyond them. A lady, whose husband holds the rank of major (and upwards) in the army, or of captain (and upwards) in the navy, or is of noble birth, is styled a Frue; her daughter is born a Fröken: but the wife of a private individual, with no blood worth the naming in her veins, is simply Madame, and her daughter's Jomfrue. You might as easily pull down Gibraltar as the prejudice which maintains those petty and frivolous distinctions. It is highly diverting to witness the painful distress of Mr Kohl at hearing ladies of noble birth addressed as Frue Brahe, Frue Rosenkrands, instead of by the sublime title of Gnädige Frau, eternally in the mouths of his own title-loving countrymen. It is singular, however, that whilst the Danes are so tenacious of honorary appellations, they are without those constant quantities, the von and de of Germany and France. The Sture, the Axe, the Trolle, and the other nobles who, for ages, lived like kings in Denmark, were without a prefix to their names. Greve and Baron are words of comparatively modern introduction.

There are about twenty high fiefs in Denmark – the title to hold one of these lordships, which bring with them many important privileges, being the possession of a certain amount of land, rated at the value of the corn it will produce. The owners are exempt from all payment of taxes, not only on their fiefs, but on their other lands: they have the supervision of officials in the district: are exempted from arrest or summons before an inferior court, to which the lesser nobility are liable; and they enjoy the right of appropriating to their own use all treasures found under the earth in their lordships. Next to these come the baronial fiefs; then the stammehuser, or houses of noble stock, all rated according to various measures of corn as the supposed amount of the land's produce; all other seats or estates are called Gaarde, Courts, or Godser, estates. The country residences of the nobility are strikingly elegant and tasteful. They are surrounded by lawns and parks in the English fashion, and often contain large collections of paintings and extensive libraries. Along the upper corridors of the country residences of the nobility are ranged large wooden chests, (termed Kister,) containing the household linen, kept in the most scrupulous order. Many of these Kister are extremely ancient, and richly carved in oak. Every peasant family, too, has its Kiste, which holds the chief place in the sitting-room, and is filled with all the treasure, as well as all the linen, of the household. Amongst other lordly structures, Mr Kohl visited Gysselfelt,³ near Nestned in Zealand. It was built in 1540 by Peter Oxe, and still stands a perfect representation of the fortresses of the time. Its fosses yet surround it – the drawbridges are unaltered: and, round the roof, at equal distances, are the solid stone pipes from which boiling water or pitch has often been poured upon the heads of the assailants below. In the vicinity of this castle is Bregentned, the princely residence of the Counts Moltke. The Moltke are esteemed the richest family in Denmark. Their ancestors having munificently endowed several lay nunneries, the eldest daughter of the house is born abbess-elect of the convent of Gysselfelt: the eldest son is addressed always as "His Excellence." The splendid garden, the fine collection of antiquities, the costly furniture and appointments that distinguish the abode at Bregentned send Mr Kohl into ecstasies. He is equally charmed by the sight of a few cottages actually erected by the fair hands of the noble daughters of the House of Moltke. The truth is, Mr Kohl, republican as he is, is unequal to the sight of any thing connected with nobility. The work of a noble hand, the poor daub representing a royal individual, throws him immediately into a fever of excitement, and dooms his reader to whole pages of the most prosaic eloquence.

The condition of the peasantry of Denmark is described as much better – as indeed it is – than that of the labourers of any other country. If there is no superabundance of wealth in Denmark, there is likewise no evidence of abject poverty. The terms upon which the peasants hold their farms from the landed proprietors are by no means heavy; and their houses, their manner of dressing, and their merry-makings, of themselves certify that their position is easy, and may well bear a comparison with that of their brethren of other countries. Within the last twenty years, great improvements have been effected in agriculture, and the best English machines are now in common use amongst the labourers.

Upon the moral and political condition of the Danish people at large, we will postpone all reflections, until the appearance of Mr Kohl's remaining volumes. We take leave of volume one, with the hope that the sequel of the work will faithfully furnish such interesting particulars as the readers of Mr Kohl have a right to demand, and he, if he be an intelligent traveller, has it in his power to supply. We do not say that this first instalment is without interest. It contains by far too much desultory digression; it has more than a sprinkling of German prosing and egotism: but many of its pages may be read with advantage and instruction. If the work is ever translated, the translator, if he hope to please the English reader, must take his pen in one hand and his shears in the other.

LORD METCALFE'S GOVERNMENT OF JAMAICA

The death of Lord Metcalfe excited one universal feeling – that his country had lost a statesman whom she regarded with the highest admiration, and the warmest gratitude. The Times, and the other public journals, in expressing that feeling, could only give a general and abridged memoir of this great and good man. Every part of his public life – and that life commencing at an unusually early period – stamps him with the reputation of a statesman endowed in an eminent degree with all the qualities which would enable him to discharge the most arduous and responsible duties. Every part of it presents an example, and abounds in materials, from which public men may derive lessons of the most practical wisdom, and the soundest rules for their political conduct. His whole life should be portrayed by a faithful biographer, who had an intimate acquaintance with all the peculiar circumstances which constituted the critical, arduous, and responsible character of the trusts committed to him, and which called for the most active exercise of the great qualities which he possessed. That part of it which was passed in administering the government of Jamaica, is alone selected for comment in the following pages. It is a part, short indeed as to its space, but of sufficient duration to have justly entitled him, if he had distinguished himself by no other public service, to rank amongst the most eminent of those, who have regarded their high intellectual and moral endowments as bestowed for the purpose of enabling them to confer the greatest and most enduring benefits on their country, and who have actively and successfully devoted those qualities to that noble purpose.

No just estimate of the nature, extent, and value of that service, and of those endowments, can be formed, without recalling the peculiar difficulties with which Lord Metcalfe had to contend, and which he so successfully surmounted, in administering the government of Jamaica.

The only part of colonial society known in England, consisted of those West Indian proprietors who were resident here. They were highly educated – their stations were elevated – their wealth was great, attracting attention, and sometimes offending, by its display. It was a very prevalent supposition, that they constituted the whole of what was valuable, or wealthy, or respectable in West Indian colonial society; that those who were resident in the colonies could have no claim to either of these descriptions; and that they were the mere hired managers of the properties of the West Indians resident in England. This notion was entertained by the government. The hospitable invitations from the West Indians in England, which a Governor on the eve of his departure for his colony accepted, served to impress it strongly on his mind. He proceeded to his government with too low an estimate of the character, attainments, respectability, and property of those who composed the community over whom he was to preside. The nobleman or general officer on whom the government had been bestowed, entered on his administration, familiar, indeed, with the Parliament of Great Britain, and with what Mr Burke calls "her imperial character, and her imperial rights," but little acquainted with, and still less disposed to recognise, the rights and privileges of the Colonial Assemblies, although those assemblies, in the estimation of the same great authority, so exceedingly resembled a parliament in all their forms, functions, and powers, that it was impossible they should not imbibe some idea of a similar authority. "Things could not be otherwise," he adds; "and English colonies must be had on those terms, or not had at all." He could not, as Mr Burke did, "look upon the imperial rights of Great Britain, and the privileges which the colonies ought to enjoy under these rights, to be just the most reconcilable things in the world."

The colonists, whose Legislative Assemblies had from the earliest period of their history, in all which regarded their internal legislation, exercised the most valuable privileges of a representative government, would, on their part, feel that the preservation of those privileges not only constituted their security for the enjoyment of their civil and political rights as Englishmen, but must confer on them importance, and procure them respect in the estimation of the government of the parent state. Thus, on the one hand, a governor, in his zeal to maintain the imperial rights, from the jealousy with which he watched every proceeding of the Assembly, and his ignorance of their constitution and privileges, not unfrequently either invaded these privileges, or deemed an assertion of them to be an infringement of the rights of the Imperial Parliament. On the other hand, the Colonists, with no less jealousy, watched every proceeding of the governor which seemed to menace any invasion of the privileges of their Assemblies, and with no less zeal were prepared to vindicate and maintain them. The Governor and the Colonial Assembly regarded each other with feelings which not only prevented him from justly appreciating the motives and conduct of the resident colonists, but confirmed, and even increased the unfavourable impressions he had first entertained. His official communications enabled him to impart to and induce the government to adopt the same impressions. The influence of these feelings, in like manner, on Colonial Assemblies and colonists too frequently prevented them from justly appreciating the motives of the Governor, from making some allowance for his errors, and too readily brought them into collision with him.

It cannot be denied that those impressions exercised on both sides of the Atlantic an influence so strong, as to betray itself in the communications and recommendations, and indeed in the whole policy of the government, as well as in the legislation of the colonies.

This imperfect acquaintance with the character of the resident colonists, and the unfavourable impression with which the proceedings and motives of their Legislative Assemblies were regarded, prevailed amongst the public in Great Britain.

The colonial proprietors resident in Great Britain felt little sympathy, either with the colonial legislatures, or with those resident in the colonies. This want of sympathy may be attributed to a peculiarity which distinguished the planters of British from those of other European colonies. The latter considered the colony in which they resided as their home. The former regarded their residence in it as temporary. They looked to the parent state as their only home, and all their acquisitions were made with a view to enjoyment in that home. This feeling accompanied them to England. It was imbibed by their families and their descendants. The colony, which had been the source of their wealth and rank, was not, as she ought to have been, the object of their grateful affection. They regarded with indifference her institutions, her legislature, her resident community. From this want of sympathy, or from the want of requisite information, they made no effort to remove the unfavourable impressions with which the executive Government and the Assemblies regarded each other, or to promote the establishment of their relations in mutual conciliation and confidence.

Another cause operated very powerfully in exciting a strong prejudice against the inhabitants of our West Indian colonies. The feeling which was naturally entertained against the slave trade and slave colonies was transferred to the resident colonists, and almost exclusively to them. By a numerous and powerful party, slavery had been contemplated in itself, and in the relations and interests which it had created, and its abolition had been endeavoured to be effected as if it were the crime of the colonies exclusively. It was forgotten "that it was," to use the language of Lord Stowel, "in a peculiar manner the crime of England, where it had been instituted, fostered, and encouraged, even to an excess which some of the colonies in vain endeavoured to restrain." Besides the acts passed by the legislatures of Pennsylvania and South Carolina, when those were British colonies, we find that when the Assembly of Jamaica, in 1765, was passing an act to restrain the importation of slaves into the colony, the governor of Jamaica informed the Assembly of that island, that, consistently with his instructions, he could not give his assent to a bill for that purpose, which had then been read twice. In 1774, the Jamaica Assembly attempted to prevent the further importation, by an increase of duties thereon, and for this purpose passed two acts. The merchants of Bristol and Liverpool petitioned against their allowance. The Board of Trade made a report against them. The agent of Jamaica was heard against that report; but, upon the recommendation of the Privy Council, the acts were disallowed, and the disallowance was accompanied by an instruction to the governor, dated 28th February 1775, by which he was prohibited, "upon pain of being removed from his government," from giving his assent to any act by which the duties on the importation of slaves should be augmented – "on the ground," as the instruction states, "that such duties were to the injury and oppression of the merchants of this kingdom and the obstruction of its commerce."

The opposition to the abolition of the slave trade was that of the merchants and planters resident in England, and to their influence on the members of the colonial legislature must be attributed whatever opposition was offered by the latter. In the interval between the abolition of the slave trade and that of slavery, the feelings of prejudice against them grew still stronger. Every specific measure by which this party proposed to ameliorate the condition of the slaves, was accompanied by some degrading and disqualifying remarks on the conduct of the resident inhabitants. An act of individual guilt was treated as a proof of the general depravity of the whole community. In consequence of the enthusiastic ardour with which the abolition of slavery was pursued, all the proposed schemes of amelioration proceeded on the erroneous assumption, that the progress of civilisation and of moral and religious advancement ought to have been as rapid amongst the slave population of the colonies, as it had been in England and other parts of Europe. It was forgotten, that until the slave trade was abolished, the inherent iniquity of which was aggravated by the obstacle it afforded to the progress of civilisation, every attempt to diffuse moral and religious instruction was impeded and counteracted by the superstitions and vices which were constantly imported from Africa. Thus, instead of the conciliation which would have rendered the colonists as active and zealous, as they must always be the only efficient, promoters of amelioration, irritation was excited, and they were almost proscribed, and placed without the pale of all the generous and candid, and just and liberal feelings which characterise Englishmen.

This state of public feeling operated most injuriously in retarding and preventing many measures of amelioration which would have been made in the slave codes of the several colonies.

Jamaica experienced, in a greater degree than any other colony, the effects of those unfavourable impressions with which the motives and proceedings of her legislature were regarded, and of those feelings of distrust and suspicion which influenced the relations of the executive government and the Assembly. Her Assembly was more sensitive, more zealous, more tenacious than any other colony in vindicating the privileges of her legislature, whenever an attempt was made to violate them. The people of Jamaica, when that colony first formed part of the British empire, did not become subjects of England by conquest – they were by birth Englishmen, who, by the invitation and encouragement of their sovereign, retained possession of a country which its former inhabitants had abandoned. They carried with them to Jamaica all the rights and privileges of British-born subjects. The proclamation of Charles II. is not a grant, but a declaration, confirmation, and guarantee of those rights and privileges. The constitution of Jamaica is based on those rights and privileges. It is, to use the emphatic language of Mr Burke, in speaking of our North American colonies, "a constitution which, with the exception of the commercial restraints, has every characteristic of a free government. She has the express image of the British constitution. She has the substance. She has the right of taxing herself through her representatives in her Assembly. She has, in effect, the sole internal government of the colony."

The history of the colony records many attempts of the governor and of the government to deprive her of that constitution, by violating the privileges of her Assembly; but it records also the success with which those attempts were resisted, and the full recognition of those privileges by the ample reparation which was made for their violation. That very success rendered the people of Jamaica still more jealous of those privileges, and more determined in the uncompromising firmness with which they maintained them. But it did not render the governors or the home government less jealous or less distrustful of the motives and proceedings of the Assembly. As the whole expense of her civil, military, and ecclesiastical establishment was defrayed by the colony, with the exception of the salaries of the bishop, archdeacon, and certain stipendiary curates; and as that expense, amounting to nearly £400,000, was annually raised by the Assembly, it might have been supposed that the power of stopping the supplies would have had its effect in creating more confidence and conciliation, but it may be doubted whether it did not produce a contrary effect.

The feelings entertained by the government towards the colonies, were invoked by the intemperate advocates for the immediate abolition of slavery, as the justification of their unfounded representations of the tyranny and oppression with which the planters treated their slaves. Happily, that great act of atonement to humanity, the abolition of slavery, has been accomplished; but the faithful historian of our colonies, great as his detestation of slavery may and ought to be, will yet give a very different representation of the relation which subsisted between master and slave. He will represent the negroes on an estate to have considered themselves, and to have been considered by the proprietor, as part of his family; that this self-constituted relationship was accompanied by all the kindly feelings which dependence on the one hand, and protection on the other, could create; and that such was the confidence with which both classes regarded each other, that, with fearless security, the white man and his family retired to their beds, leaving the doors and windows of their houses unclosed. These kindly feelings, and that confidence, were at length impaired by the increasing attempts to render the employers the objects of hatred. At the latter end of 1831, a rebellion of the most appalling nature broke out amongst the slave population. A district of country, not less than forty miles in extent, was laid waste. Buildings and other property, to the amount of more than a million in value, exclusive of the crops, were destroyed.

In 1833, the act for the abolition of slavery was passed; and it cannot be denied, that the feelings of distrust and jealousy with which government had so long regarded the Assembly and their constituents, accompanied its introduction, progress, and details. They accompanied also the legislative measures adopted by the Assembly for carrying into effect its provisions, and especially those for establishing and regulating the apprenticeship. The manner in which the relative rights and duties of master and apprentices were discharged, was watched and examined with the same unfavourable feelings as if there had existed a design to make the apprenticeship a cover for the revival of slavery – an object which, even had there been persons wicked enough to have desired it, could never have been accomplished. There were persons in Jamaica exercising a powerful influence over the minds of the apprentices, who proclaimed to them their belief, that it was the design of their masters to reduce them to slavery, and who appealed to the suspicion and jealousy of the government as justifying and confirming that belief. Such was the influence of those feelings, that two attempts were made in Parliament to abolish the apprenticeship. They were unsuccessful; but enough had been said and done to fill the minds of the apprentices with the greatest distrust and suspicion of their masters. In June 1838, the Assembly was especially convened for the purpose of abolishing it. The governor, as the organ of her Majesty's government, distinctly told the Assembly that it was impossible to continue the apprenticeship. "I pronounce it," he says, "physically impossible to maintain the apprenticeship, with any hope of successful agriculture." The state to which the colony had been reduced, is told in the answer of the Assembly to this address: "Jamaica does, indeed, require repose; and we anxiously hope, that should we determine to remove an unnatural servitude, we shall be left in the exercise of our constitutional privileges, without interference." The colony was thus compelled to abolish the apprenticeship, although it had formed part of the plan of emancipation – not only that it might contribute to the compensation awarded for the abolition of slavery, but that it might become that intermediate state which might prepare the apprentices for absolute and unrestricted freedom, and afford the aid of experience in such legislation as was adapted to their altered condition. It was again and again described by the Secretary of State for the colonies, in moving his resolutions, "to be necessary not only for the security of the master, but for the welfare of the slave." The apprenticeship was thus abruptly terminated two years before the expiration of the period fixed by the act of the Imperial Parliament for its duration, before any new system of legislation had been adopted, and when the emancipated population had been taught to regard the planters with far less kindly feelings than those which they entertained in their state of slavery.

The difficulties and dangers with which the colony was now threatened were such as would have appalled any prudent man, and would render it no less his interest than his duty to assist the Assembly in surmounting them. It was, however, the misfortune of Jamaica that her governor, from infirmity of body and of temper, far from endeavouring to surmount or lessen, so greatly increased these difficulties and dangers, that it appeared scarcely possible to extricate the colony from them. His conduct in the session of November 1838 was so gross a violation of the rights and privileges of the Assembly, as to leave that body no other alternative but that of passing a resolution, by which they refused to proceed to any other business, except that of providing the supplies to maintain the faith of the island towards the public creditor, until they had obtained reparation for this violation.

This course had obtained the sanction, not only of long usage and practice, but of the government of the parent state. The history of Jamaica abounds in numerous instances where governors, who had by their conduct given occasion for its adoption, had been either recalled, or ordered by the Executive Government to make such communication to the Assembly as had the character of being an atonement for the violation of their privileges, and an express recognition of them. Upon this resolution being passed, the governor prorogued the Assembly. On being re-assembled, they adhered to their former resolution. The governor dissolved the Assembly. A general election took place, when the same members who had composed the large majority concurring on that resolution, were re-elected, and even an addition made to their majority. The Assembly, as might be expected, on being convened, adhered to their former resolution. It was then prorogued until the 10th of July 1839. The government, upon the urgent recommendation of the governor, and influenced by his misrepresentations, proposed to Parliament a measure for suspending the functions of the Legislative Assembly. Unjustifiable and reprehensible as this measure was, yet it is only an act of justice to the government of that day to remember that it originated, not only in the recommendation of the governor, supported also by that of the two preceding governors of Jamaica, but was sanctioned, and indeed urged on it, by several influential Jamaica proprietors and merchants, resident in London. Indeed, until the bill had been some time in the House of Commons, it was doubtful whether it would be opposed by Sir Robert Peel and his adherents. The determination of several members who usually supported the government, to oppose a measure destructive of the representative part of the constitution of this great colony, enabled him and his party to defeat the bill on the second reading. The government being thus left in a minority, resigned; but the attempt of Sir Robert Peel to form a ministry having failed, the former government was restored, and they introduced another bill, equally objectionable in its principles, and equally destructive of the representative branch of the Jamaica constitution. An amendment was proposed on the part of Sir Robert Peel, by the party then considered Conservative; but as the amendment would leave the bill still inconsistent with the rights of this popular branch of the constitution, they were deprived of the support of those who had before united with them in their opposition to the first bill, and they were therefore left in a minority. The bill passed the House of Commons. The amendment, which had been rejected, was adopted by the House of Lords, and the bill was passed. The powerful speeches of Lords Lyndhurst and Brougham, and those of the other noble lords by whom the amendment was supported, afford abundant evidence that they disapproved of the principles of the bill, and were unanswered and unanswerable arguments for its rejection.