Kitabı oku: «Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 66, No 405, July 1849», sayfa 14

On resuming work in the afternoon, there was even less attention and method observed than before. The classes were then broken up, and private lessons were given in accomplishments, or in some of the useful arts. Drawing dogs and cows, with a master to look after the trees and the hedges; whistling and spitting through a flute; playing on the patience of a violin; turning at a lathe; or fencing with a powerful maître d'armes; – such were the general occupations. It was then, however, that we English withdrew to our Greek and Latin; and, under a kind master, Dr M – , acquired (with the exception of a love for natural history, and a very unambitious turn of mind) all that really could deserve the name of education.

We have now described the sedentary life at the chateau. In the next paper the reader shall be carried to the gymnasium; the drill ground behind the lake; to our small menageries of kids, guinea pigs, and rabbits; be present at our annual ball and skating bouts in winter, and at our bathings, fishings, frog-spearings, and rambles over the Jura in summer.

THE CROWNING OF THE COLUMN, AND CRUSHING OF THE PEDESTAL

It was said in the debate on the Navigation Laws, in the best speech made on the Liberal side, by one of the ablest of the Liberal party, that the repeal of the Navigation Laws was the crowning of the column of free trade. There is no doubt it was so; but it was something more. It was not only the carrying out of a principle, but the overthrow of a system; it was not merely the crowning of the column, but the crushing of the pedestal.

And what was the system which was thus completely overthrown, for the time at least, by this great triumph of Liberal doctrines? It was the system under which England had become free, and great, and powerful; under which, in her alone of all modern states, liberty had been found to coexist with law, and progress with order; under which wealth had increased without producing divisions, and power grown up without inducing corruption; the system which had withstood the shocks of two centuries, and created an empire unsurpassed since the beginning of the world in extent and magnificence. It was a system which had been followed out with persevering energy by the greatest men, and the most commanding intellects, which modern Europe had ever produced; which was begun by the republican patriotism of Cromwell, and consummated by the conservative wisdom of Pitt; which had been embraced alike by Somers and Bolingbroke, by Walpole and Chatham, by Fox and Castlereagh; which, during two centuries, had produced an unbroken growth of national strength, a ceaseless extension of national power, and at length reared up a dominion which embraced the earth in its grasp, and exceeded anything ever achieved by the legions of Cæsar, or the phalanx of Alexander. No vicissitudes of time, no shock of adverse fortune, had been able permanently to arrest its progress. It had risen superior alike to the ambition of Louis XIV. and the genius of Napoleon; the rude severance of the North American colonies had thrown only a passing shade over its fortunes; the power of Hindostan had been subdued by its force, the sceptre of the ocean won by its prowess. It had planted its colonies in every quarter of the globe, and at once peopled with its descendants a new hemisphere, and, for the first time since the creation, rolled back to the old the tide of civilisation. Perish when it may, the old English system has achieved mighty things; it has indelibly affixed its impress on the tablets of history. The children of its creation, the Anglo-Saxon race, will fill alike the solitudes of the Far West, and the isles of the East; they will be found equally on the shores of the Missouri, and on the savannahs of Australia; and the period can already be anticipated, even by the least imaginative, when their descendants will people half the globe.

It was not only the column of free trade which has been crowned in this memorable year. Another column, more firm in its structure, more lasting in its duration, more conspicuous amidst the wonders of creation, has, in the same season, been crowned by British hands. While the sacrilegious efforts of those whom it had sheltered were tearing down the temple of protection in the West, the last stone was put to the august structure which it had reared in the East. The victory of Goojerat on the Indus was contemporary with the repeal of the Navigation Laws on the Thames. The completion of the conquest of India occurred exactly at the moment when the system which had created that empire was repudiated. Protection placed the sceptre of India in our hands, when free trade was surrendering the trident of the ocean in the heart of our power. With truth did Lord Gough say, in his noble proclamation to the army of the Punjaub, on the termination of hostilities, that "what Alexander had attempted they had done." Supported by the energy of England, guided by the principles of protection, restrained by the dictates of justice, backed by the navy which the Navigation Laws had created, the British arms had achieved the most wonderful triumph recorded in the annals of mankind. They had subjugated a hundred and forty millions of men in the Continent of Hindostan, at the distance of ten thousand miles from the parent state; they had made themselves felt alike, and at the same moment, at Nankin, the ancient capital of the Celestial Empire, and at Cabool, the cradle of Mahommedan power. Conquering all who resisted, blessing all who submitted, securing the allegiance of the subjects by the justice and experienced advantages of their government, they had realised the boasted maxim of Roman administration —

"Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos,"

and steadily advanced through a hundred years of effort and glory, not unmixed with disaster, from the banks of the Hoogley to the shores of the Indus – from the black hole of Calcutta to the throne of Aurengzebe.

"Nulla magna civitas," said Hannibal, "diu quiescere potest – si foris hostem non habet, domi invenit: ut praevalida corpora ab externis causis tuta videntur, suis ipsis viribus conficiuntur."¹⁵ When the Carthaginian hero made this mournful reflection on the infatuated spirit which had seized his own countrymen, and threatened to destroy their once powerful dominion, he little thought what a marvellous confirmation of it a future empire of far greater extent and celebrity was to afford. That the system of free trade – that is, the universal preference of foreigners, for the sake of the smallest reduction of price, to your own subjects – must, if persisted in, lead to the dismemberment and overthrow of the British empire, cannot admit of a moment's doubt, and will be amply proved to every unbiassed reader in the sequel of this paper. Yet the moment chosen for carrying this principle into effect was precisely that, when the good effects of the opposite system had been most decisively demonstrated, and an empire unprecedented in magnitude and magnificence had reached its acme under its shadow. It would be impossible to explain so strange an anomaly, if we did not recollect how wayward and irreconcilable are the changes of the human mind: that action and reaction is the law not less of the moral than of the material world; that nations become tired of hearing a policy called wise, not less than an individual called the just; and that if a magnanimous and truly national course of government has been pursued by one party long in possession of power, this is quite sufficient to make its opponents embrace the opposite set of tenets, and exert all their influence to carry them into effect when they succeed to the direction of affairs, without the slightest regard to the ruin they may bring on the national fortunes.

The secret of the long duration and unexampled success of the British national policy is to be found in the protection which it afforded to all the national interests. But for this, it must long since have been overthrown, and with it the empire which was growing up under its shadow. No institutions or frames of government can long exist which are not held together by that firmest of bonds, experienced benefits. What made the Roman power steadily advance during seven centuries, and endure in all a thousand years? The protection which the arms of the legions afforded to the industry of mankind, the international wars which they prevented, the general peace they secured, the magnanimous policy which admitted the conquered states to the privileges of Roman citizens, and caused the Imperial government to be felt through the wide circuit of its power, only by the vast market it opened to the industry of its multifarious subjects, and the munificence with which local undertakings were everywhere aided by the Imperial treasury. Free trade in grain at length ruined it: the harvests of Libya and Egypt came to supersede those of Greece and Italy, – and thence its fall. To the same cause which occasioned the rise of Rome, is to be ascribed the similar unbroken progress of the Russian territorial dominion, and that of the British colonial empire in modern times. What, on the other hand, caused the conquests of Timour and Charlemagne, Alexander the Great and Napoleon, to be so speedily obliterated, and their vast empires to fall to pieces the moment the powerful hand which had created them was laid in the dust? The want of protection to general interests, the absence of the strong bond of experienced benefits; the oppressive nature of the conquering government; the sacrifice of the general interests to the selfish ambition or rapacious passions of a section of the community, whether civil or military, which had got possession of power. It is the selfishness of the ruling power which invariably terminates its existence: men will bear anything but an interference with their patrimonial interests. The burning of 50,000 Protestants by the Duke of Alva was quietly borne by the Flemish provinces: but the imposition of a small direct tax at once caused a flame to burst forth, which carried the independence of the United Provinces. Attend sedulously to the interests of men, give ear to their complaints, anticipate their wishes, and you may calculate with tolerable certainty on acquiring in the long run the mastery of their passions. Thwart their interests, disregard their complaints, make game of their sufferings, and you may already read the handwriting on the wall which announces your doom.

That the old policy of England, foreign, colonial, and domestic, was thoroughly protective, and attended, on the whole, with a due care of the interests of its subjects in every part of the world, may be inferred with absolute certainty from the constant growth, unexampled success, and long existence of her empire. But the matter is not left to inference: decisive proof of it is to be found in the enactments of our statute-book, the treaties we concluded, or the wars we waged with foreign powers. Protection to native industry, at home or in the colonies, security to vested interests, a sacred regard to the rights and interests of our subjects, in whatever part of the world, were the principles invariably acted upon. Long and bloody wars were undertaken to secure their predominance, when threatened by foreign powers. This protective system of necessity implied some restrictions upon the industry, or restraints upon the liberty of action in the colonial dependencies, as well as the mother country – but what then? They were not complained of on either side, because they were accompanied with corresponding and greater benefits, as the consideration paid by the mother country, and received by her distant offspring. Reciprocity in those days was not entirely one-sided; there was a quid pro quo on both sides. The American colonies were subjected to the Navigation Laws, and, in consequence, paid somewhat higher for their freights than if they had been permitted to export and import their produce in the cheaper vessels of foreign powers; but this burden was never complained of, because it was felt to be the price paid for the immense advantages of the monopoly of the English market, and the protection of the English navy. The colonies of France and Spain desired nothing so much, during the late war, as to be conquered by the armies of England, because it at once opened the closed markets for their produce, and restored the lost protection of a powerful navy. The English felt that their colonial empire was in some respects a burden, and entailed heavy expenses both in peace and war; but they were not complained of, because the manufacturing industry of England found a vast and increasing market for its produce in the growth of its offspring in every part of the world, and its commercial navy grew with unexampled rapidity from the exclusive enjoyment of their trade.

Such was the amount of protection afforded in our statute-book to commercial industry, that we might imagine, if there was nothing else in it, that the empire had been governed exclusively by a manufacturing aristocracy. Such was the care with which the interests of the colonies were attended to, that it seemed as if they must have had representatives who possessed a majority in the legislature. To one who looked to the welfare of land, and the protection of its produce, the chapel of St Stephens seemed to have been entirely composed of the representatives of squires. The shipping interest was sedulously fostered, as appeared in the unexampled growth and vast amount of our mercantile tonnage. The interests of labour, the welfare of the poor, were not overlooked, as was demonstrated in the most decisive way by the numerous enactments for the relief of the indigent and unfortunate, and the immense burden which the legislature voluntarily imposed on itself and the nation for the relief of the destitute. Thus all interests were attended to; and that worst of tyrannies, the tyranny of one class over another class, was effectually prevented. It is in this sedulous attention to all the interests of the empire that its long duration and unparalleled extension is to be ascribed. Had any one class or interest been predominant, and commenced the system of pursuing its separate objects and advantages, to the subversion or injury of the other classes in the state, such a storm of discontent must have arisen as would speedily have proved fatal to the unanimity, and with it to the growth and prosperity of the empire.

Two causes mainly contributed to produce this system of catholic protection by the British government to native industry; and to their united operation, the greatness of England is chiefly to be ascribed. The first of these was the peculiar constitution which time had worked out for the House of Commons, and the manner in which all the interests of the state had come silently, and without being observed, to be indirectly but most effectually represented in parliament. That body, anterior to the Reform Bill, possessed one invaluable quality – its franchise was multiform and various. In many burghs the landed interest in their neighbourhood was predominant; in most counties it returned members in the interests of agriculture. In other towns, mercantile or commercial wealth acquired by purchase an introduction, or won it from the influence of some great family. Colonial opulence found a ready inlet in the close boroughs: Old Sarum or Gatton nominally represented a house or a green mound – really, the one might furnish a seat to a representative of Hindostan, the other of the splendid West Indian settlements. The members who thus got in by purchase had one invaluable quality, like the officers who get their commissions in the army in the same way – they were independent. They were not liable to be overruled or coerced by a numerous, ignorant, and conceited constituency. Hence they looked only to the interests of the class to which they belonged, amidst which their fortunes had been made, and with the prosperity of which their individual success was entirely wound up. With what energy these various interests were attended to, with what perseverance the system of protecting them was followed up, is sufficiently evident from the simultaneous growth and unbroken prosperity of all the great branches of industry during the long period of a hundred and fifty years. Talent, alike on the Whig and the Tory side, found a ready entrance by means of the nomination burghs. It is well known that all the great men of the House of Commons, since the Revolution, obtained entrance to parliament in the first instance through these narrow inlets. Rank looked anxiously for talent, because it added to its influence. Genius did not disdain the entrance, because it was not obstructed by numbers, or galled by conceit. No human wisdom could have devised such a system; it rose gradually, and without being observed, from the influence of a vast body of great and prosperous interests, feeling the necessity of obtaining a voice in the legislature, and enjoying the means of doing so by the variety of election privileges which time had established in the House of Commons. The reality of this representation of interests is matter of history. The landed interest, the West India interest, the commercial interest, the shipping interest, the East Indian interest, could all command their respective phalanxes in parliament, who would not permit any violation of the rights, or infringement on the welfare, of their constituents to take place. The combined effect of the whole was the great and glorious British empire, teeming with energy, overflowing with patriotism, spreading out into every quarter of the globe, and yet held together in all its parts by the firm bond of experienced benefits and protected industry.

The second cause was, that no speculative or theoretical opinions had then been broached, or become popular, which proclaimed that the real interest of any one class was to be found in the spoliation or depression of any other class. No gigantic system of beggar my neighbour had then come to be considered as a shorthand mode of gaining wealth. The nation had not then embraced the doctrine, that to buy cheap and sell dear constituted the sum total of political science. On the contrary, protection to industry in all its branches was considered as the great principle of policy, the undisputed dictate of wisdom, the obvious rule of justice. It was acknowledged alike by speculative writers and practical statesmen. The interests of the producers were the main object of legislative fostering and philosophic thought – and for this plain reason, that they constitute the great body of society, and their interests chiefly were thought of. Realised wealth was then, in comparison to what it now is, in a state of infancy; the class of traders and shopkeepers, who grow up with the expenditure of accumulated opulence, was limited in numbers and inconsiderable in influence. It would have been as impossible then to get up a party in the House of Commons, or a cry in the country, in favour of the consumers or against the producers, as it would be now to do the same among the corn producers in the basin of the Mississippi, or among the cotton growers of New Orleans.

It is in the profound wisdom of Hannibal's saying – that great states, impregnable to the shock of external violence, are consumed and wasted away by their own internal strength – that the real cause of the subsequent and extraordinary change, first in the opinions of men, and then in the measures of government, is to be found. Such was the wealth produced by the energy of the Anglo-Saxon race, sheltered and invigorated by the protection-policy of government in every quarter of the globe, that in the end it gave birth to a new class, which rapidly grew in numbers and influence, and was at length able to bid defiance to all the other interests in the state put together. This was the moneyed interest– the class of men whose fortunes were made, whose position was secure, and who saw, in a general cheapening of the price of commodities and reduction of prices, the means of making their wealth go much farther than it otherwise would. This class had its origin from the long-continued prosperity and accumulated savings of the whole producing classes in the state; like a huge lake, it was fed by all the streams and rills which descended into it from the high grounds by which it was surrounded; and the rise of its waters indicated, as a register thermometer, the amount of additions which it was receiving from the swelling of the feeders by which it was formed. But when men once get out of the class of producers, and into that of moneyed consumers, they rapidly perceive an immediate benefit to themselves in the reduction of the price of articles of consumption, because it adds proportionally to the value of their money. If prices can be forced down fifty per cent by legislative measures, every thousand pounds in effect becomes fifteen hundred. It thus not unfrequently and naturally happened, that the son who enjoyed the fortune made by protection came to join the ranks of the free traders, because it promised a great addition to the value of his inheritance. The transition from Sir Robert Peel the father, and staunch supporter of protection, who made the fortune, to Sir Robert Peel the son, who inherited it, and introduced free-trade principles, was natural and easy. Each acted in conformity with the interests of his respective position in society. It is impossible to suppose in such men a selfish or sordid regard to their own interests, and we solemnly disclaim the intention of imputing such. But every one knows how the ablest and most elevated minds are insensibly moulded by the influence of the atmosphere with which they are surrounded; and, at all events, they were a type of the corresponding change going on in successive generations of others of a less elevated class of minds, in whom the influence of interested motives was direct and immediate.

Adam Smith's work, now styled the principia of economical science by the free-traders, first gave token of the important and decisive change then going forward in society. It was an ominous and characteristic title: The Nature and Cause of the Wealth of Nations. It was not said of their wisdom, virtue, or happiness. The direction of such a mind as Adam Smith's to the exclusive consideration of the riches of nations, indicated the advent of a period when the fruits of industry in this vast empire, sheltered by protection, had become so great that they had formed a powerful class in society, which was beginning to look to its separate interests, and saw them in the beating down the price of articles – that is, diminishing the remuneration of other men's industry. It showed that the Plutocracy was becoming powerful. The constant arguments that able work contained, in favour of competition and against monopoly, – its impassioned pleadings in favour of freedom of commerce, and the removal of all restrictions on importation, were so many indications that a new era was opening in society; that the interests of realised wealth were beginning to come into collision with those of creating industry, and that the time was not far distant when a fierce legislative contest might be anticipated between them. It is well known that Adam Smith advocated the Navigation Laws, upon the ground that national independence was of more importance than national wealth. But there can be no doubt that this was a deviation from his principles, and that, if they were established in other particulars, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to succeed in maintaining an exception in favour of the shipping interests, because that was retaining a burden on the colonies, when the corresponding benefit had been voted away.

Although, however, the doctrines of Adam Smith, from their novelty, simplicity, and alliance with democratic liberty, spread rapidly in the rising generation – ever ready to repudiate the doctrines and throw off the restraints of their fathers – yet, so strongly were the producing interests intrenched in the legislature, that a very long period would probably have elapsed before they came to be practically applied in the measures of government, had it not been that, at the very period when, from the triumph of protection-principles during the war, and the vast wealth they had realised in the state, the moneyed interest had become most powerful, a great revolution in the state gave that interest the command of the House of Commons. By the Reform Bill two-thirds of the seats in that house were given to boroughs, and two-thirds of the voters in boroughs, in the new constituency, were shopkeepers or those in their interest. Thus a decisive majority in the house, which, from having the command of the public purse, practically became possessed of supreme power, was vested in those who made their living by buying and selling – with whom cheap prices was all in all. The producing classes were virtually, and to all practical purposes, cast out of the scale. The landed interest, on all questions vital to its welfare, would evidently soon be in a minority. Schedules A and B at one blow disfranchised the whole colonial empire of Great Britain, because it closed the avenue by which colonial wealth had hitherto found an entrance to the House of Commons. Seats could no longer be bought: the virtual representation of unrepresented places was at an end. The greatest fortunes made in the colonies could now get into the house only through some populous place; and the majority of voters in most populous places were in favour of the consumers and against the producers, because the consumers bought their goods, and they bought those of the producers. Thus no colonial member could get in but by forswearing his principles and abandoning the interests of his order. The shipping interest was more strongly intrenched, because many shipping towns had direct representatives in parliament, and it accordingly was the last to be overthrown. But when the colonies were disfranchised, and protection was withdrawn from their industry to cheapen prices at home, it became next to impossible to keep up the shipping interest – not only because the injustice of doing so, and so enhancing freights, when protection to colonial produce was withdrawn, was evident, but because it was well understood, by certain unequivocal symptoms, that such a course of policy would at once lead to colonial revolt, and the dismemberment of the empire.

The authors of the Reform Bill were well aware that under it two-thirds of the seats in the House of Commons were for boroughs: but they clung to the idea that a large proportion of these seats would fall under the influence of the landed proprietors in their vicinity, and thus be brought round to the support of the agricultural interest. It was on that belief that Earl Grey said in private, amidst all his public democratic declamations, that the Reform Bill was "the most aristocratic measure which had ever passed the House of Commons." But in this anticipation, which was doubtless formed in good faith by many of the ablest supporters of that revolution, they showed themselves entirely ignorant of the effect of the great monetary change of 1819, which at that very period was undermining the influence of the owners of landed estates as much as it was augmenting the power of the holders of bonds over their properties. As that bill changed the prices of agricultural produce, at least to the extent of forty per cent, it of course crippled the means and weakened the influence of the landowners as much as it added to the powers of the moneyed interest which held securities over their estates. This soon became a matter of paramount importance. After a few severe struggles, the landowners in most places saw that they were over-matched, and that their burdened estates and declining rent-rolls were not equal to an encounter with the ready money of the capitalists, which that very change had so much enhanced in value and augmented in power. One by one the rural boroughs slipped out of the hands of the landed, and fell under the influence of the moneyed interest. At the same time one great colonial interest, that of the West Indies, was so entirely prostrated by the ruinous measure of the emancipation of the negroes, that its influence in parliament was practically rendered extinct. Thus two of the great producing interests in the state – those of corn and sugar – were materially weakened or nullified, at the very time when the power of their opponents, the moneyed aristocracy, was most augmented.

Experience, however, proved, on one important and decisive occasion, that even after the Reform Bill had become the law of the land, it was still possible, by a coalition of all the producing interests, to defeat the utmost efforts of the moneyed party, even when aided by the whole influence of government. On occasion of the memorable Whig budget of 1841, such a coalition took place, and the efforts of the free-traders were overthrown. A change of ministry was the consequence; but it soon appeared that nothing was gained by an alteration of rulers, when the elements in which political power resided, under the new constitution, remained unchanged.

Sir Robert Peel, and the leaders of the party which now succeeded to power, appear to have been guided by those views in the free-trade measures which they subsequently introduced. They regarded, and with justice, the Reform Bill as, in the language of the Times, "a great fact" – the settlement of the constitution upon a new basis – on foundations non tangenda non movenda, if we would shun the peril of repeated shocks to our institutions, and ultimately of a bloody revolution. Looking on the matter in this light, the next object was to scan the composition of the House of Commons, and see in what party and interest in the state a preponderance of power was now vested. They were not slow in discerning the fatal truth, that the Reform Bill had given a decided majority to the representatives of boroughs, and that a clear majority in these boroughs was, from the embarrassments which monetary change had produced on the landed proprietors, and the preponderance of votes which that bill had given to shopkeepers, vested in the moneyed or consuming interest. Such a state of things might be regretted, but still it existed; and it was the business of practical statesmen to deal with things as they were, not to indulge in vain regrets on what they once were or might have been. It seemed impossible to carry on the government on any other footing than that of concession to the wishes and attention to the interests of the moneyed and mercantile classes, in whose hands supreme power, under the new constitution, was now practically vested. Whether any such views, supposing them well founded, could justify a statesman and a party, who had received office on a solemn appeal to the country, under the most solemn engagement to support the principles of protection, to repudiate those principles, and introduce the measures they were pledged to oppose, is a question on which, it is not difficult to see, but one opinion will be formed by future times.