Kitabı oku: «Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843», sayfa 18

THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN

BY ELIZABETH B. BARRET

 
Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers!
Ere the sorrow comes with years?
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers,
And that cannot stop their tears.
The young lambs are bleating in the meadows,
The young birds are chirping in the nest,
The young fawns are playing with the shadows,
The young flowers are blowing from the west;
But the young young children, O my brothers!
They are weeping bitterly!
They are weeping in the playtime of the others—
In the country of the free.
 
 
Do you question the young children in the sorrow,
Why their tears are falling so?
The old man may weep for his to-morrow
Which is lost in long ago.
The old tree is leafless in the forest—
The old year is ending in the frost;
The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest—
The old hope is hardest to be lost!
But the young young children, O my brothers!
Do ye ask them why they stand
Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers,
In our happy fatherland?
 
 
They look up with their pale and sunken faces,
And their looks are sad to see;
For the man's grief untimely draws and presses
Down the cheeks of infancy.
"Your old earth," they say, "is very dreary—
Our young feet," they say, "are very weak!
Few paces have we taken, yet are weary—
Our grave-rest is very far to seek!
Ask the old why they weep, and not the children;
For the outside earth is cold—
And we young ones stand without, in our bewild'ring,
And the graves are for the old.
 
 
"True," say the young children, "it may happen
That we die before our time!
Little Alice died last year—the grave is shapen
Like a snowball, in the rime.
We look'd into the pit prepared to take her—
Was no room for any work in the close clay!
From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake her,
Crying—'Get up, little Alice, it is day!'
If you listen by that grave in sun and shower,
With your ear down, little Alice never cries;
Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her,
For the new smile which has grown within her eyes.
For merry go her moments, lull'd and still'd in
The shroud, by the kirk-chime!
It is good when it happens," say the children,
"That we die before our time!"
 
 
Alas, the young children! they are seeking
Death in life, as best to have!
They are binding up their hearts away from breaking,
With a cerement from the grave.
Go out, children, from the mine and from the city—
Sing out, children, as the little thrushes do!
Pluck your handfuls of the meadow cowslips pretty—
Laugh aloud to feel your fingers let them through!
But the children say—"Are cowslips of the meadows
Like the weeds anear the mine?¹²
Leave us quiet in the dark of our coal-shadows,
From your pleasures fair and fine.
 
 
"For oh!" say the children, "we are weary—
And we cannot run or leap:
If we cared for any meadows, it were merely
To drop down in them and sleep.
Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping—
We fall upon our face, trying to go;
And underneath our heavy eyelids drooping,
The reddest flower would look as pale as snow.
For, all day, we drag our burden tiring,
Through the coal-dark underground—
Or, all day, we drive the wheels of iron
In the factories, round and round.
 
 
"All day long, the wheels are droning, turning—
Their wind comes in our faces!
Till our hearts turn, and our heads with pulses burning,
And the walls turn in their places!
Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling—
Turns the long light that droppeth down the wall—
Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling—
All are turning all the day, and we with all!
All day long, the iron wheels are droning—
And sometimes we could pray—
'O ye wheels' (breaking off in a mad moaning)
Stop! be silent for to-day!'"
 
 
Ay! be silent! let them hear each other breathing,
For a moment, mouth to mouth;
Let them touch each other's hands, in a fresh wreathing
Of their tender human youth;
Let them feel that this cold metallic motion
Is not all the life God giveth them to use;
Let them prove their inward souls against the notion
That they live in you, or under you, O wheels!
Still, all day, the iron wheels go onward,
As if Fate in each were stark!
And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward,
Spin on blindly in the dark.
 
 
Now, tell the weary children, O my brothers!
That they look to Him, and pray
For the blessed One, who blesseth all the others,
To bless them another day.
They answer, "Who is God that he should hear us,
While this rushing of the iron wheels is stirr'd?
When we sob aloud, the human creatures near us
Pass unhearing—at least, answer not a word;
And we hear not (for the wheels in their resounding)
Strangers speaking at the door.
Is it likely God, with angels singing round him,
Hears our weeping any more?
 
 
"Two words, indeed, of praying we remember;
And, at midnight's hour of harm,
Our Father, looking upward in the chamber,
We say softly for a charm.¹³
We say no other words except our Father!
And we think that, in some pause of angels' song,
He may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather,
And hold both within his right hand, which is strong.
Our Father! If he heard us, he would surely
(For they call him good and mild)
Answer—smiling down the steep world very purely—
'Come and rest with me, my child.'
 
 
"But no," say the children, weeping faster;
"He is silent as a stone,
And they tell us, of his image is the master
Who commands us to work on.
Go to!" say the children; "up in heaven,
Dark, wheel-like, turning clouds are all we find!
Do not mock us! we are atheists in our grieving—
We look up for HIM—but tears have made us blind."
Do ye hear the children weeping and disproving,
O my brothers, what ye teach?
For God's possible is taught by his world's loving—
And the children doubt of each!
 
 
And well may the children weep before ye—
They are weary ere they run!
They have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory
Which is brighter than the sun!
They know the grief of men, but not the wisdom—
They sink in the despair, with hope at calm—
Are slaves, without the liberty in christdom—
Are martyrs by the pang without the palm!
Are worn as if with age; yet unretrievingly
No joy of memory keep—
Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly—
Let them weep—let them weep!
 
 
They look up with their pale and sunken faces,
And their look is dread to see;
For you think you see their angels in their places,
With eyes meant for Deity.
"How long," they say, "how long, O cruel nation!
Will you stand, to move the world, on a child's heart,
Trample down with a mail'd heel its palpitation,
And tread onward to your throne amid the mart?
Our blood splashes upward, O our tyrants!
And your purple shows your path—
But the child's sob curseth deeper in the silence,
Than the strong man in his wrath!"
 

LETTER TO CHRISTOPHER NORTH, ESQ

Respected Christopher,

As an appendage to the "Whippiad," so happily rescued from the fate designed for it by its author, to be embalmed in the never-dying pages of Maga, the following jeu d'esprit, connected with its hero, may not be unacceptable, especially as both productions were generally attributed to the same pen. A note on the line—

 
"And cuckoo mingle with the thoughts of Bell,"
 

towards the end of the first canto, alludes to "a young lady of singular elegance and personal accomplishments," to whom Dr Toe's attentions were supposed not to have been unacceptable. This elegant and accomplished young lady, however, (a certain Miss Bell H–,) is said to have eventually jilted the Doctor, and married her footman; a circumstance which gave rise to the following stanzas:—

 
'Twixt footman John and Dr Toe
A rivalship befell,
Which of the two should be the Beau
To bear away the Belle!
 
 
The Footman won the Lady's heart,
And who can blame her?—No man.
The whole prevail'd against the part:
'Twas Foot-man versus Toe-man.
 

By the way, Christopher, your compositor has "misused the queen's press most damnably" in the quotation from Coriolanus prefixed to the second canto, where he converts the "Great Toe of the Assembly" into its "Great Foe." Rap his knuckles with your crutch, old Gentleman; and tell him, too, that the "Shawstone's party" he speaks of was a very jolly symposium, given by a very hearty fellow of the name of "Rawstorne," whose cognomen stands sic in orig.

Thine ever.

My dear Christopher,

Erigena.

Brazenose Quad., July 15, 1843.

THE REPEAL AGITATION

No popularity does, or can exist which is not liable to collapses. Two-fold infirmity, alike for him who judges, and for him who suffers judgment, will not allow it to be otherwise. Sir Robert Peel, a minister more popular by his tenure of office than any whom this generation will perhaps again behold, has not been able to escape that ordinary trial of human prosperity. Suddenly a great cloud of public danger has gathered around him: upon every path there were seen to lie secret snares: no wisdom could make an election amongst them absolutely safe: he made that election which comparison of the cases and private information seemed to warrant: and immediately, of his own supporters many are offended. We believe it to be a truth, one amongst those new truths whose aspiring heads are even now rising above our horizon, that the office of first minister, either for France or England, is becoming rapidly more trying by the quality of its duties. We talk of energy: we invoke the memories of Pitt and of Chatham: "oh, for one hour," we exclaim, of those great executive statesmen—who "trampled upon impossibilities," or glorified themselves in a "vigour beyond the law!" Looking backwards, we are right: in our gratitude we do not err. But those times are past. For Sir Robert Peel no similar course is open. Changes in the temper of the age, changes in the constitution of public bodies, absolute revolutions in the kind of responsibilities by which a minister is now fettered, forbid us to imagine that any raptures of national sympathy will ever crowd forward to the support of extreme or summary measures, such as once might have been boldly employed. That style of aspiring action presumes some approach to unity in public opinion. But such unity we shall hardly witness again, were a hostile invader even landed on our shores.

Meantime it will add weight to any thing we can offer in behalf of the Irish policy now formally avowed by Government, if we acknowledge ingenuously that for some weeks we ourselves shared in the doubts upon its wisdom, not timidly expressed by weighty Conservatives. We believe it, indeed, natural and honourable that the first movement of feeling upon cases such as those now proceeding in Ireland, should be one of mere summary indignation. Not that scurrility and the basest of personalities from Mr O'Connell are either novelties, or difficult to bear. To hear an old man, a man whose own approach to the period of physical decay, is the one great hope and consolation of all good subjects in Ireland, scoffing at grey hairs in the Duke of Wellington—calling, and permitting his creatures to call, by the name of "vagabonds" or "miscreants," the most eminent leaders of a sister nation, who are also the chosen servants of that mistress whom he professes to honour: this might have been shocking in any man who had not long since squandered his own ability to shock. As it is, these things move only laughter or silent disgust, according to the temper of readers. And we are sure that not merely the priests, or men of education amongst Mr O'Connell's followers, but even the peasantry, must in their hearts perceive how indispensable is a general habit of self-restraint and abstinence from abusive language to the effect of any individual insult These were not the causes of public indignation. Not what Mr O'Connell said, but what he did, kindled the general wrath. To see him marching and countermarching armies, to find him bandying menaces with the Government of this great nation, and proclaiming (openly or covertly) that he would not be the party to strike the first blow, but that assuredly he would strike the second—thinking it little to speak as a traitor, unless also he spoke as an European potentate; this was the spectacle before which the self-control of so many melted away, and which raised the clamour for vindictive justice. It quickened the irritation to know, that hostile foreigners were looking on with deep interest, and every where misinterpreting the true readings of the case. Weeks passed before we could thoroughly reconcile our own feelings to the passive toleration, or apparent apathy, of the Government. Our sense of prudence took the alarm, not less than our feelings. And finally, if both could have acquiesced, our sense of consistency was revolted by what met the public eye; since, if the weak were to be punished, why should the strong be connived at? Magistrates, to the amount of three score, had been dismissed for giving their countenance to the Repeal meetings; and yet the meetings themselves, which had furnished the very principle of the reproach, and the ground of punishment, were neither dispersed nor denounced.

Rarely, however, in politics, has any man final occasion to repent of forbearance. There may be a tempest of provocation towards the policy of rigour; that policy may justify itself to the moral sense of men; modes even of prudence may be won over to sanction it; and yet, after all the largest spirit of civil prudence, such as all of us would approve in any historical case removed from the passions of the times, will suggest a much nobler promise of success through a steady adherence to the counsels of peace, than any which could attend the most efficient prosecution of a hostile intervention. The exceeding weight of the crisis has forced us into a closer comparison than usual of the consequences probably awaiting either course. Usually in such cases, we are content to abide the solutions of time; the rapid motion of events settling but too hastily all doubts, and dispensing with the trouble of investigation. Here, however, the coincidence of feelings, heavily mortified on our own part, with the serious remonstrances in the way of argument from journals friendly to Sir Robert Peel's government, would not suffer us to rest in the uneasy condition of dissatisfied suspense. We found ourselves almost coerced into pursuing the two rival policies, down to their separate issues; and the result has satisfied ourselves, that the minister is right. We shall make an effort for bringing over the reader to our own convictions. Sir Robert, we shall endeavour to show, has not been deficient in proper energy; his forbearance, where it has been most conspicuous, is either absolute—in which case it will be found to justify itself, even at present, to the considerate—or it is but provisional, and waiting for contingencies—in which case it will soon unmask itself more terrifically than either friend or enemy, perhaps, anticipates.

The Minster's defence is best pursued through the turns of his own admirable speech in the recent debates on the grievances of Ireland. But, previously, let us weigh for a moment Mr O'Connell's present position, and the chances that seem likely to have attended any attempt to deal with him by blank resistance. It had been always understood, by watchful politicians, that the Repeal agitation slumbered only until the reinstalment of a Conservative administration. The Whigs were notoriously in collusion at all times, more or less openly, with this "foul conspiracy:"¹⁴ a crime which, in them, was trebly scandalous; for they it was, in times past, who had denounced the conspiracy to the nation as ruinous; in that they were right: but they also it was, who had pointed out the leading conspirator as an individual to national indignation in a royal speech; and in that they degraded, without a precedent, the majesty of that high state-document. Descending thus abjectly, as regarded the traitor, the Whigs were not unwilling to benefit by the treason. They did so. They adulterated with treason during their term of power: the compact being, that Mr O'Connell should guide for the Government their exercise of Irish patronage so long as he guaranteed to them an immunity from the distraction of Irish insubordination. When the Tories succeeded to power, this armistice—this treasonable capitulation with treason—of necessity fell to the ground; and once again Mr O'Connell prepared for war. Cessante mercede cessat opera. How he has conducted this war of late, we all know. And such being the brief history of its origin, embittered to him by the silent expression of defiance, unavoidably couched in any withdrawal of the guilty commerce, we all guess in what spirit he will wish to conduct it for the future. But there presents itself the question of his ability—of his possible resources—for persevering in his one mode of hostility. He would continue his array of mobs, but can he? We believe not. Already the hours of his sorceries are numbered: and now he stands in the situation of an officer on some forlorn outpost, before a superior enemy, and finding himself reduced to half a dozen rounds of ammunition. In such a situation, whatever countenance he may put on of alacrity and confidence, however rapidly he may affect to sustain his fire in the hope of duping his antagonist into a retreat, he cannot surmount or much delay the catastrophe which faces him. More and more reluctantly Mr O'Connell will tell off the few lingering counters on his beadroll: but at length comes the last; after which he is left absolutely without resources for keeping the agitation alive, or producing any effect whatever.

Many fancy not. They suppose it possible that these parades or field-days may be repeated. But let us consider. Already it impresses a character of childishness on these gatherings of peasants; and it is a feeling which begins to resound throughout Ireland, that there is absolutely no business to be transacted—not even any forms to be gone through—and, therefore, no rational object by which such parades can be redeemed from mockery. Were there a petition to be subscribed, a vote to be taken, or any ostensible business to furnish an excuse for the meeting—once, but once only, in each district, it might avail. As it is, we have the old nursery case before us—

 
"The king of France march'd up the hill,
With twenty thousand men,"
 

followed by his most Christian majesty's successful countermarch. The very children in the streets would follow them with hootings, if these fooleries were reiterated. But, if that attempt were made, and in some instances should even succeed, so much the worse for the interests of Repeal. The effect would be fatal. No device could be found more excellent for killing the enthusiasm which has called out such assemblies, than the evidence thus forced upon the general mind—that they were inoperative, and without object, either confessed or concealed. Hitherto the toil and exhaustion of the day had been supported, doubtless, under a belief that a muster of insurrectionary forces was desired, with a view to some decisive course of action, when all should be found prepared. The cautionary order issued for total abstinence from violence had been looked upon, of course, as a momentary or interim restraint. But if once it were understood that this order was absolute, or of indefinite application, the chill to the national confidence would be that of death. For we are not to suppose that the faith and love of the peasantry can have been given, either personally to Mr O'Connell, or to Repeal, as a cause for itself. Both these names represent, indirectly, weightier and dearer objects, which are supposed to stand behind: even Repeal is not valued as an end—but simply as a means to something beyond. But let that idea once give way, let the present hope languish, let it be thrown back to a period distant or unassigned—and the ruin of the cause is sealed. The rural population of Ireland has, it is true, been manœuvred and exhibited merely as a threatening show to England; but, assuredly, on that same day when the Irish peasants, either from their own sagacity, or from newspapers, discover that they have been used as a property by Mr O'Connell, for purposes in which their own interest is hard to be deciphered, indifference and torpor will succeed. For this once, the nationality of Ireland has been too frantically stimulated for the toleration of new delays. Mr O'Connell is at last the martyr of his own success. Should the priestly order refuse to advance further on a road nominally national, but from which, at any moment, the leader may turn off, by secret compromise, into a by-road, leading only to family objects, universal mutiny must now follow. The general will of the priesthood has thus far quelled and overruled the individual will; but that indignant recusants amongst that order are muttering and brooding we know, as well from the necessities of human nature, as from actual letters already beginning to appear in the journals. Under all these circumstances, a crisis is to be dreaded by the central body of Repealers, which body is doubtless exceedingly small. And what will hasten this crisis is the inevitable result from a fact noticed as yet only for ostentation. It is this. The weekly contributions in money, and their sudden overflow, have occasioned some comments in the House of Lords; on the one side with a view to the dishonesty apparent in the management of this money, and to the dark purposes which it may be supposed to mask—on the other, with a view to the increasing heartiness in the service, which it seems to express. It is, however, a much more reasonable comment upon this momentary increase, so occasional and timed to meet the sudden resurrection of energy in the general movement, that the money has flowed so freely altogether under that sane persuasion which also has drawn the peasantry to the meetings—viz. the fixed anticipation of an immediate explosion. Multitudes in the belief, suddenly awakened and propagated through Ireland—that now at length, all further excuses laid aside, the one great national enterprize, so long nursed in darkness, had ripened for execution, and would at last begin to move—have exerted themselves to do what, under other circumstances, they would not have done. Even simple delay would now irritate these men beyond control. They will call for an account. This will be refused, and cannot but be refused. The particular feeling of these men, that they have been hoaxed and swindled, concurring with the popular rage on finding that this storm also, like all before it, is to blow over—if there be faith in human nature, will do more to shake the Repeal speculation than any possible course of direct English resistance. All frauds would be forgiven in an hour of plausible success, or even in a moment of undeniable preparation. But disappointment coming in the rear of extravagant hopes will be fatal, and strike a frost to the heart of the conspiracy. For it cannot be doubted that none of these extra services, whether in money or personal attendance, would have been rendered without express assurances from high quarters, and not merely from fond imaginations founded on appearances, that the pretended regeneration for Ireland was at land.

Now let us see how these natural sequences, from the very nature of the showy demonstrations recently organized, and from the very promises by which they must have been echoed, will operate in relation to the measures of the Government; either those which have been adopted, or those which have been declined. Had the resolution (a fatal resolution, as we now think) been adopted in the cabinet to disperse the meetings by force, blood would have flowed; and a plea, though fraudulent in virtue, would have been established for O'Connell—such as we may suppose to be built upon a fact so liable to perversion. His hands would have been prodigiously strengthened. The bloodshed would have been kept before the eyes of the people for ever, and would have taken innumerable forms. But the worst, ultimately the ruinous, operation of this official intervention would have lain in the plenary excuse from his engagements furnished to Mr O'Connell, and in the natural solution of all those embarrassments which for himself he cannot solve. At present he is at his wits' end to devise any probable scheme for tranquillizing the universal disappointment, for facing the relapse from infinite excitement, and for propitiating the particular fury of those who will now hold themselves to have been defrauded of their money. Leave this tempest to itself, and it will go near to overwhelm the man: or if the local separation of the parties most injured should be so managed as to intercept that result, assuredly it will overwhelm the cause. In the estimate, therefore, of O'Connell, we may rely upon it—that a battalion of foot, or a squadron of horse, appearing in aid of the police to clear the ground at Mallow or at Donnybrook, would have seemed the least questionable godsend that has ever illuminated his experience. "O jubilate for a providential deliverance!" that would have been his cry. "Henceforward be all my difficulties on the heads of my opponents!" But at least, it is argued, the fact would have been against him; the dispersion would have disarmed him, whatever colouring he might have caused it to bear. Not at all. We doubt if one meeting the less would have been held. Ready at all times for such emergencies, the leader would not suffer himself to be found without every conceivable legal quillet, sharpened and retouched, against the official orders. He would have had an interview with the authorities: he would have shown a flaw in the wording of the instructions: he would have rebaptized his assembly, and, where no business goes on, any name will answer: he would have called his mob "a tea-party," or "an agricultural association;" the sole real object concerned, which is the exhibition of vast numbers trained and amenable to instant restraint, would have proceeded under new names. This would no longer have languished when Government had supplied the failing impulse: and in the mean time to have urged that, merely by its numbers, combined with its perilous tendencies, the gathering was unlawful—would have availed nothing: for the law authorities in parliament, right or wrong, have affected doubts upon that doctrine; and, when parliament will not eventually support him, it matters little that a minister of these days would, for the moment, assume the responsibility of a strong measure. Or, if parliament were to legislate anew for this special case, the Repealer would then split his large mobs into many small ones: he would lecture, he would preach, he would sing, in default of other excuses for meeting. No law, he would observe coolly to the magistrate, against innumerable prayer-meetings or infinite concerts. The items would still be reported to one central office: the facit would be the same; and it would tell for the same cause.

Thus it appears that no fact would have resulted against the Repealers, had the Government taken a severe course. Still, may it not be said that a fact, and a strong one, survives on the other side, viz. against the Government, under this forbearing course which they really have taken? What fact? Is it the organization of all Ireland? Doubtless that bears an ominous sound: but it must be considered—that if the leader cannot wield this vast organization for any purposes of his own, and plainly he cannot so long as he acquires no fresh impulses or openings to action from the indiscretion of his opponents, but on the contrary must be ruined—cause and leader, party and partisan chief, by the very 'lock' (or as in America is said, the 'fix') into which he has brought himself, by the pledge which he cannot redeem—far less can that organization be used by others or for any other purpose. It is an organization not secret; not bound by oaths; loose and careless in its cohesion; not being good for its proper object, it is good for no other, and we hear of no one attribute by which it threatens the public peace beyond its numerical extent.

But is that true? Is it numerically so potent as it is represented? We hardly need to say, that the exaggerations upon this point have been too monstrous to call for any pointed exposures. With respect to one of the southern meetings—that at Cork, we believe—by way of applying some scale or measurement to the exaggerations, we may mention that a military man, actually measured the ground after the retirement of the crowd. He ascertained that the ground could barely accommodate twenty-five thousand men standing in regimental order. What was the report of the newspaper? Four to five hundred thousand, as usual. Indeed, we may complain of our English Conservative Journals as, in this point, faithfully reflecting the wildest statements of the Repeal organs. So much strength was apparently given, for the moment, to the Repeal interest by these outrageous fictions, that we, for our own parts, (whilst hesitating as to other points of the Government policy,) did not scruple to tax the Home Minister and the Queen's Lieutenant with some neglect of duty¹⁵ in not sending experienced officers of the army to reconnoitre the meetings in every instance, and authentically to make returns of the numbers present. Since reading the minister's speech, however, we are disposed to think that this neglect was not altogether without design. It appears that Sir Robert relies in part upon these frightful falsehoods for effecting a national service by rousing the fears of the Roman Catholic landholders. In this there is no false refinement; for, having very early done all the mischief they could as incendiary proclamations of power to the working classes, the exaggerations are now, probably, operating with even more effect in an opposite direction upon the great body of the Catholic gentry. Cordially to unite this body with the government of Ireland would, by much, overbalance the fickle support of the peasantry, given for the moment to the cause of disaffection. That disaffection, under its present form, is already, perhaps, on the point of unlocking its union. It cannot be permanent as an organization; for, without hope, no combination can sustain itself, and a disaffection, founded purely upon social causes, can be healed by no Government whatever. But if the Catholic gentry, treated as they now are with fraternal equality, should heartily coalesce with the party promoting a closer British connexion, that would be a permanent gain.