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BY WILLIAM LUCAS SARGANT, Author of ‘ Social Innovators,” “ Apology for Sinking Funds,” &e., &e. VOLUME I. LONDON: WILLIAMS & NORGATE, EUS TEULTDs STREET, COVENT GARDEN. SOUTH FREDERICK ‘STREET, EDINBURGH. 1869. SS oN LOmMavVi» \GoOAS ToGo OKs pb BIRMINGHAM: PRINTED BY JOSIAH ALLEN, JUN., LIVERY STREET. CONTENTS. I.—Characteristics of Manufacturers IJ.—Ireland and the Tenure of Land III.—Limited Democracy IV.—*< Dyslogistic ” V.—Sir Samuel Bentham PAGES 1 to 61 62 to 136 . 137 to 204 . 204 to 225 . 226 to 290 CHARACTERISTICS OF MANUFACTURERS. i HE title I have chosen, invites the obvious but trite form of sarcasm; that truly, though I may be a wit among manufacturers I am only a manufacturer among wits. If I should have any readers, I can assure them that I have not selected this title, as an invitation to scorners. If I should have no readers, I will console myself with a favourite reflection of the Saturday Review; that though my labour is useless to the world, it 1s of excellent use to myself, by diverting my mind from the excessive study of ledgers and prices current, of wages and. tariffs and trades’ unions. Why then, have I declared my ordinary vocation ?P T answer that in reading anonymous and even avowed publications, I often wish that I knew something about the author. Since, as Sir G. C. Lewis has shown, the greater part of our knowledge and even the greater part of our opinions, must be taken on _ trust from others, a reader ought to inquire who it is that is professing to instruct him. In the Quarterly, or in the Hconomist, the editor stands sponsor to the - essayist: as I am unfortunate enough to have no sponsor, I show the colours of my craft. B 2 ESSAY I. The fact which I thus advertise, is of more importance than the announcement of an obscure name. Our opinions are flavoured by our pursuits. A butt of sherry poured into an emptied Madeira cask, contracts a richer bouquet: a political question after passing through the mind of a greyhaired official, comes back again as dry as amontillado, robbed of all sweet savour of enthusiasm. When we are startled by Pascal’s assertion, that the human mind is incapable, without divine inter- vention, of arriving at any moral truth, it is con- solatory to learn that that eminent man began as a mathematician and ended as an ascetic: that his understanding was distorted by his wilful addiction to demonstration, and that his temper was disturbed by early and long continued suffering. T am neither a dry official, nor lke Pascal a morbid mathematician: I do not even desire the hardness of the one, but I would give worlds for a spark of the other’s genius. The evil tendencies caused by my pursuits, are evident without self-accusation: I only claim for myself a sobriety of mind resulting from long acquaintance with men and every-day affairs. Literary men will doubtless be of opinion, that the mental flavour imparted by manufacturing pur- suits, is of no importance to the world. Literature and mercantilism indeed, are by no means rivals, for they do not pursue the same mistress: nor are they absolutely enemies, for they seldom appear in direct collision. When they do come together however, they exhibit an entire incompatibility of ‘temper: the trader says. of the writer—he thinks. himself CHARACTERISTICS OF MANUFACTURERS. 3 so—clever: the writer retorts with a more ample vocabulary of enmity; with Philistine, Epicier, and Ungeist. Notwithstanding this depreciation, manufacturers constitute a highly important element in British society: it 1s the extension of their pursuits which has multiphed the opulence of England during the last hundred years; which has doubled our popula- tion in half a century ; which supplied the resources for the great wars of our fathers; which has enabled us to bear, not without grumbling, but without flmching, the unheard-of debt bequeathed to us. Without our manufactures, we should have fainted long before Austerlitz: Spain must have been left to free herself if she could; and all our glories earned in a righteous cause, the Peninsular campaigns and the crowning battle of Waterloo, had been impossible. There are persons, no doubt, who regard our progress with horror: who, forgetting for a moment their doubled rentrolls,would rejoice to see Manchester and Birmingham brought back again to their condi- tion of a century ago, with numbers a tenth of what they are at present. But here the towns are: not indeed possessing any monopoly of ignorance and vice, but disfigured with deep scars from long continued neglect. We cannot revert to rural felicity, to green fields, to — rough and manly and ignorant squires, to independent yeomanry, to ill supported and superstitious and serf-hke hinds. In these towns, the manufacturers are the true leaders: for it is their enterprise and experience and capital which employ and maintain the artisans; the 4 ESSAY I. artisans whose skilful labour produces those com- modities the distribution of which enriches merchants and retailers. II. HAT are the characteristics of these leaders P There are manufacturers of all sorts: from the cultivated gentleman, who has enjoyed an uni- versity education, and has inherited his plant from his father, to the needy workman, who with more ambition than capital, employs half a dozen persons, sells the goods they jomtly make, and perhaps rises into opulence, perhaps is ruined by the failure of his customers. Between these extremes there are manu- facturers of every degree of fortune and cultivation. The dwellers on the land are in this respect differently circumstanced. Go into a country parish containing a thousand or two thousand souls: you will find perhaps one squire, one clergyman, a dozen or two of farmers, two or three hundred labourers. Here are three distinct classes: the squire and the clergyman constituting the gentry; a second class being formed of the farmers; and a third class of the labourers. Among manufacturers there are but two classes; the artisans and their employers: it is as though in a rural parish we threw together the squire and the clergyman and the farmers, and re- garded them all as one class. If we sought the characteristics of that class, we should have to dis- regard the jollity and conservatism of the game preserving squire, the decorum and kindness of the high and dry vicar: we should have to dwell upon the hospitality of the farmers; ready with their ale CHARACTERISTICS OF MANUFACTURERS. 5. and wine, but chary of their money, just to their labourers but suspicious of education, reverencing the landowners but grumbling at their four-footed fame, IT must resign myself to do the same with manu- facturers: I must look upon all as one class; and disregarding the acquirements and refinement of the few, I must seek the characteristics of the rougher many. The many are, certainly, distinguished by a good _ deal of roughness. In Liverpool it is common to speak of Liverpool gentlemen and Manchester men. Burns perhaps might have thought that a true man was higher in creation than a gentleman: he might have said that gentility was but the guinea’s stamp, and that a base coin might have a finished outside. A Manchester manufacturer being on the Liverpool Exchange, admired the brokers’ jaunty air, their smart ties, and their well trimmed beards: he was © equally impressed with their superficial talk and their indifference to anything not to be found in the Times. Coming away, and reverting to the Fox and the Mask; pity, said he, that so fair a face hath no brains. Now manufacturers have brains, for they cannot live without them. In common with merchants, they must perform the ordinary operations of buying and selling; but average common sense is enough for these. Unlike merchants, they have all the processes of manufacture on their hands. Besides possessing mechanical skill, to be successful, they must produce at the same cost, a rather better and more uniform article than their neighbours, by which means they 6 ESSAY I. will get a better price; and they must be more punctual than their neighbours, by which means they will command a preference in every market. The first requires a superior system of inspection ; the second a superior organization, and a judicious choice of managers. No fool can initiate or even keep up the necessary arrangements: no fool can judiciously fill up the inevitable gaps in his staff. Competition too, is always at work: competition, _not only between one Englishman and another, but between Englishmen and foreigners. In the country, farms are not let to the highest bidders, and all must sell their produce at about the same prices: much attention to detail, some hberality in cultivation, the occasional adoption of a new implement, are all that can safely be thought of. In manufactures, there is direct and untirmg competition, between man and man, between nation and nation. Without lively and sound brains, a manufacturer is beaten out of the field. It is imagined by the thoughtless that British success has resulted inevitably from circumstances. Here was a great James Watt who invented a con- densing and manageable steam engine: here were iron and coal praying us to get them: here was a commercial people ready to import and export materials and goods; a mere land of Cockaigne, say the dilettanti. If this be so, the more is the credit due to dther nations. See what brain has done in Alsace, see what it has done in Switzerland. Manchester brings its cotton wool from Liverpool, about 30 miles: Alsace has to go to Havre, nearly 500 miles. Manchester CHARACTERISTICS OF MANUFACTURERS. 7 finds its markets in crowded Lancashire and York- shire and in the populous midland counties; even London is little more than 200 miles distant: Alsace sends the greater part of its fabrics to Paris, more than 300 miles away. It is the ability of the manu- facturers, aided by long experience, which overcomes these disadvantages; and which has overcome them so thoroughly that the wealth and industrial organ- — ization and beneficence of Mulhouse, are the admira- tion of social reformers. Switzerland, like Alsace, fetches its cotton wool from a port 500 miles off. For the sale of its pro- ductions it is under still greater difficulties than Alsace; for a large part of its mills work for exportation, and its calicoes travel thousands of leagues to compete with those of Great Britam. No doubt, Swiss taxation is very low, varying in the different cantons from a fifth to a tenth of ours per head of population: the rate of wages is also low: trade is free as the air. But without great mental capacity, and admirable administration, these advan- tages would by no means counterbalance the difficul- ties of distance from the seacoast. The manufacturers know that a high rate of profit is impossible: they have proved to their artisans that a high rate of wages 1s impossible: employers and employed are on genial terms; not as in France with workmen erumbling at being exploités by capital, and with masters perpetually complaining of their workmen; nor as in England with masters and men on fair and decent terms but scarcely acquainted with each other. Unless the Swiss manufacturers had brains and hearts, there would soon be an end of their trade. Pee et AiR ALUN IS Bat GN Sas Cy a 8 ESSAY I. But it is with English manufacturers that we are concerned : they have not these difficulties ; their har- bours for importation are near at hand ; their markets are around them; their shipping for foreign trade is at their doors. True; the heroic age of Hnglish manufacturers is past: but it is not so long past; for it is less than a hundred years since Watt took out his first patent; and all the inventions of Ark- wright, Crompton, Cartwright, Boulton, Baskerville, — and scores of others, crowd a moderate period. The abilities developed by carrying their inventions into practice, have been transmitted to the present — generation. There has been no need lately of great mechanical inventions, nor of new organizations of factories. One remarkable period however, has tested the abilities of Lancashire men: the dearth of cotton caused by the American Civil War, was a trial such as seldom occurs to any English population. It must be confessed that during the period which preceded the misfortune, there was an absence of foresight, in refusing to support with liberality the schemes of Mr. Bazley and his friends for opening new sources of supply. It was a singular and blameable apathy, which permitted the vast cotton. manufacture to be based on a material drawn mostly ’ from one country. The doctrine of laissez faire, laissez passer, which, since Quesnay promulgated it, has half regenerated Hurope; the term free-trade, which has come to be the popular English expression for the same thing: these, like all forms of thought generally adopted, have been exaggerated till much mischief has followed. The law of supply and CHARACTERISTICS OF MANUFACTURERS. 9 demand, it was thought, would bring cotton when it was wanted. In the long run, yes! but unfortunately, that long run may sometimes be a very long one, and those who have to wait for the end of it may be ruined or famished. Our forces might have gone to Abyssinia without supplies, and might have trusted to their demand to bring all they wanted: if they could have waited, the supplies would have come, but in the meantime they would have died. There was no doubt that we should have cotton wool enough at last; for if America permanently ceased to grow it, there would be plenty to be had from the East: the hazard was that during the transition period Lancashire would be ruined. The doctrines of laissez favre and of free-trade, like all other doctrines based on observation and not on abstract axioms and postulates, have their limits: and those who apply them universally, instead of taking them as general guides, will occasionally fall into gross errors. In this instance then, the manufacturers’ foresight was in default. But when the mischief arrived, neither brain nor heart was wanting. It is not true indeed, as has been asserted, that throughout Lancashire and Cheshire, of the tens of thousands rendered destitute not one died of want: still further from the truth is it that the opportunity seized of giving school instruction to the neglected and igno- rant, counterbalanced to them the evils of bodily want; as though any school instruction were to be compared in value, with the industrial education which results in honest earning of daily bread; ag though a faculty and love of reading were to be put im the balance against an independent spirit, which 10 ESSAY I. scorns to receive the bread of idleness. The Cotton Dearth was undoubtedly a frightful misfortune, which must have left behind it a heavy legacy of pauperism and corruption. Yet whatever could be done, was done: it was done promptly and thoroughly. There was no silly refusal to receive aid from countrymen or foreigners: but there was no appeal to Parliament for Government aid, such as humiliated the rich landed proprietors, under the comparatively trifling misfortune of the Rinderpest. Our northern fellow subjects showed that in abilities and resolution they had not degenerated. I have already instituted a comparison between Liverpool and Manchester: between the two great Lancashire towns; the one mercantile, the other manufacturing. It might well be conjectured that Liverpool would be far more intelligent and generally instructed: that while the manufacturers were con- fining themselves to the narrow processes of managing their factories, the merchants would be regulating their adventures by studying the shifting politics, the wars and revolutions, of countries far and near; of France and Japan, of Austria and Brazil, of Spain and China. No doubt, you meet in Liverpool many travelled men; and no knowledge 1s so available for conversation as that derived from travelling. Two strangers who have explored Central America, will spend an evening in comparing their experience of Guatemala and Costa Rica and Nicaragua; and in discussing the effects of Walker’s filibustering. But in more important matters I do not find in Liverpool any proofs of superior intelligence. I know no newspaper there which combines such a CHARACTERISTICS OF MANUFACTURERS. iat large circulation with sober and thoughtful writing, as the three manufacturing journals, the Manchester Guardian, the Leeds Mercury, and the Birmingham Daily Post. Liverpool has no association lke the Manchester Statistical Society, which was formed even before the London one, and at whose large annual meetings you now see such leading citizens as the Mayors of Manchester and of Salford. I am told by one thoroughly able to judge, that Liverpool is of all large towns the most indifferent ~ to any proposal for the formation of such a society. The fact is easily explained : the minds of Liverpool men are engrossed by their business: their profits are not made by steady industry but by happy specu- lation: their fortunes do not grow uniformly, but are made or lost by jumps. You ask about the means of some one on ’change :—his father left him thirty thousand pounds, but he has diminished it: by the bye, this last rise in sugar must have put him straight again. Men are perpetually gomg up and down; and are likely enough to experience the vicis- situdes of a speculator elsewhere, who assured me that three times had he lived in a garret, and three times had his wife driven her carriage. At a Liverpool dinner party, the ladies having retired, some general conversation begins: a whisper however, is heard; how was cotton when you left >—Hardening. A dead silence, and for an hour nothing but cotton. A cottonspmner too, feels a great interest in the price of his staple; but the difference of a farthing a pound is to him a trifle when compared with what it is to the speculator, who may be dealing with bales where the manufacturer deals with stones. The . 12 ESSAY I. manufacturer, taught by experience that in common times, with foresight, he can escape loss from fluctu- ations of price; and knowing that he can make a profit by his well ordered factory; finds his mind at ease for the discussion of ordinary topics, or even for reading of a grave character: but what can you expect from the speculator, whose fortune, or perhaps whose solvency, is staked on a rise or fall of cotton ? Can you imagine him passing an evening in earnestly debating the statistics of crime, or the theoretical functions of capital P ; What is true of the textile districts, is still more » true of the hardware towns. Their occupations are such that they scarcely can furnish topics of con- versation: they do not in fact occupy men’s minds in leisure moments. There are a multitude of details which employ the business hours, but which are not thought of agam: there may be a deficiency of orders, a temporary want of profit, an occasional large bad debt; none of them things to be talked of, or even to be much thought of. They are not ereat enough to fill men’s minds; which therefore, have room left for other topics. The hardware towns too, have an advantage in the character of their workmen, caused by the great variety of their trades, and the consequent absence of widely-spread machines. I am not so ignorant as to decry machinery: I am fully aware of the benefits conferred on the world by the prodigious increase in the productiveness of modern labour: I know too, how greatly England is indebted to Watt and Arkwright for the growth and augmented opulence of the last eighty years. But I see clearly CHARACTERISTICS OF MANUFACTURERS. 13 that there are some attendant evils. In adopting spinning machinery and power looms, you create a necessity for employing multitudes of tenders and watchers; that is multitudes of unskilled labourers ; of labourers who grow up without having their facul- ties developed in their daily occupations. When you raise machinery nearly to the level of men, you pull men down nearly to the level of machinery. The cotton districts possess, no doubt, a considerable number of highly intelligent mechanics; such, for ex- ample, as the engineers: but below that class there are crowds of unskilled, thoughtless, ill paid, wretched, men and women and children, unhealthy and drunken and criminal. All towns have many such: those districts have the most, where machinery is most complete and most largely used. An English pro- fessor of my acquaintance, spent much time in learning the details of manufactures: he inspected the great factories, he studied the engineering, he lived for weeks among the hardware workmen. He was surprised and delighted with the innumerable mechanical contrivances found in the Birmingham workshops: he met with as much ingenuity in the making of hooks and eyes, or brass chain, as would command the admiration of the world if it had been applied to the wide spread manufacture of cottons or woollens. In the north, the judicious use of a bit of chalk, laid the foundation of the great fortune of © the Strutts: such an application in a hardware trade, could scarcely have been worth a hundred pounds. In the hardware towns therefore, the proportion of skilled and unskilled labourers is thus reversed: the skilled labourers, the ingenious and trained mechanics, rate ed Tee SAY PCa Sire Rea aR : ; olsen ar ich hes sa * 14 “SHSSAY 1. outnumber the mere drudges. As the class of em- ployers is largely recruited from the cleverest of such workmen, there will be found great mgenuity and mechanical skill among the master class. III. tesco I have compared the manufacturing towns with speculative Liverpool: I am willing to compare them with commercial: London. I need hardly say that the comparison must be between persons of the same class. There are in the metro- polis large numbers of distinguished men who are found nowhere else in England. It can scarcely be said indeed, that the Peers or the members of the House of Commons generally live in London: they for the most part are visitors during the season. Putting these aside however, there are numerous residents of eminence: the judges, the most distin- euished barristers and physicians, the professors of natural science, the periodical writers, the actuaries, the managers of great companies. Curiously enough, we talk of the high centralization of France and Germany; and we forget that in everything but government they are far less centralized than England. Germany has hitherto been split up into scores of princedoms; and a little Court like that of Weimar could attract and permanently hold so vast a genius as Goethe. France has but one imperial court; but its numerous centres such as Rouen, Lyons, Toulouse, have their courts of justice, their local bar, their literary and scientific academies. London therefore, is eminently the metropolis of the CHARACTERISTICS OF MANUFACTURERS. 15 kingdom, and nearly engrosses its literary and legal distinctions. I make no comparison between the manufacturing towns and London in this respect. I only propose to set side by side the manufacturing men of business and the London men of business. Nor do I attempt to do this by means of my own observation; for I know that the field is too wide to allow anyone to inspect more than a corner of it. I will make my appeal to facts patent to all: I will found my estimate of men on their public and well known actions. First, in politics, what has trading London done? ‘The two fundamental changes of this generation, are the reform bill of 1832, and the repeal of the corn laws: the former of these essentially altered the balance of power in the con- stitution ; the latter resuscitated the stagnating commerce of the country, and enabled us to take full advantage of the contemporary invention of railroads and the discoveries of gold. In passing the reform bill it was not London but Birmingham that took the lead: it was the Political Union formed by Mr. Attwood, whose statue adorns or disfigures New Street, by which the strength of the mechanics and their neighbours the miners was concentrated, and the example of rapid and energetic combination was set to the whole country. Again; trading London, I presume, will not advance any claim to having commenced, or even very much aided, the repeal of the corn laws. Here it was Manchester and the textile districts which did the work: which organized the Union called the League: which laboured and struggled for years; Ree As 5s Sa aa ; 16 ESSAY J. which spent its money freely ; whee stirred up even sleepy London, and at last succeeded. More recently, in a social movement not without importance, London tried to take a lead, but could not overcome its apathy and love of ease. Twenty years ago, and for several years afterwards, an ad- mirable band of men who called themselves the Christian Socialists, tried to introduce from Paris the best parts of socialism, modified by the religious spirit which above all other characteristics distin- euishes us from the Parisians. Headed by such generous men as Messrs. Hughes, Ludlow, and Vansittart Neale, backed by the grave authority of Mr. Maurice, aided by the lively genius of Mr. Kingsley in Cheap Clothes and Nasty, and Alton Locke, sparing neither labour nor money, they called into a feeble, flickering, precarious existence, a few small workshops and stores, and ended with estab- lishing a great adult school, called the Working Men’s College. In the unimportant manufacturing town of Rochdale, unknown to the south, except for having produced the greatest popular orator of the day, perhaps the greatest orator of the century, a few workmen clubbing together literally their pence, without any dependence but that on their own un- tutored brains and resolute hearts, carried out the same experiment with such success as to make it celebrated throughout the civilized world. They began as workmen, they have risen to be extensive manufacturers; and they have a right to-claim a commanding superiority over those who in London made the same attempt and failed. We often forget the change that has taken place CHARACTERISTICS OF MANUFACTURERS. 17 in the relation of London to other towns. Macaulay says that at the Revolution London was seventeen times as populous as Bristol, which stood next in numbers: at present, London is only five times as populous as Liverpool or Manchester. In the first sixty years of this century, London increased nearly threefold, Liverpool nearly sixfold. Railroads too, have done much. Emerson divides the English into two categories; Londoners and non-Londoners: but he regards as Londoners those who habitually visit _ the metropolis; that is all the affluent classes. Before we had railway communication, the number of such visitors was relatively small; and Dr. Arnold at Rugby, complained of having to teach boys who had never seen either the sea or London. Dr. Temple, I imagine, has no such difficulty to fight with. - Lacon tells us that Dr. Johnson, sitting in a smoky corner of Bolt Court, found within a radius of half a mile, more energy and ability and intellect, than was possessed by the rest of the island. The Chamberlain of the City, in his Statistical Vindi- cation, has extended the radius of half a mile to a “circumference of ten miles.’ He says that London is the focus of literature and journalism; a state- ment which no one can dispute. He adds that for activity, intelligence, and every business quality, the Londoner is in advance of his provincial brethren. I propose to test this last assertion by well known facts. _ First, let us look at municipal government. I will say nothing derogatory of the Lord Mayor and the Corporation. I am far from joining in the sneers which attend the spectacle maker or wax chandler, | : 18 , ESSAY I. who is elevated to the chair: myself a trader, I rejoice in it; and I feel that if a railsplitter and a tailor could successively conduct the affairs of a very great nation, a retail dealer might make an excellent Lord Mayor. With so little understanding is the world governed! It is one of the glories of free England, that for centuries past, any industrious man might hope to be Lord Mayor: an officer, as old Fuller remarks, in one respect second to none; and one who, in the Stuart times, just as at present, had commonly risen from the lowest ranks. But around the City are the great Parliamentary Boroughs, which have no municipal organization. Marylebone, Lambeth, the Tower Hamlets, are represented in the House of Commons, but have no mayor or magistrates, no town council or alder- men, no legal means of meeting together to manage their own affairs. Self-government, the boast of the Englishman, the thing which the French can neither express in their language nor practise in their daily life, is unknown to the metropolis. at large. Thirty years ago, the great manufacturing towns were in the same unorganized condition; but as soon as the municipal bill passed, they obtained charters of incorporation, and have since spent time and money freely in correcting the evils which con- tinued neglect had caused. London alone has done nothing : not one of its great Parliamentary bse has obtained municipal powers. One of the most discreditable negligences is the bad condition of the Thames. The modern prac- tice of pouring all abominations into the river, is common to most towns: but it might have been * R Sis - ee ee ed CHARACTERISTICS OF MANUFACTURERS. 19 expected from the superior intelligence and activity claimed for commercial London, that the evils would have been recognized and corrected years ago, and that an example would have been set for the less enlightened provinces. It might have been antici- pated too, that legal means would have been found to protect and purify the river in its higher course: but the world learns with astonishment that in some of the reaches, weeds and silt are threatening to choke up the passage and to make water carriage impossible; and that the locks and weirs are in a state of dangerous dilapidation. What is far worse, and more notorious, the drinking water derived from those upper portions, is polluted by the drainage of thirty-two towns. The London water too, is not turned on at all times, as it 1s In some great towns, but has to be collected in private cisterns; and on Sundays is not turned —onatall. While Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, have provided themselves with a plentiful supply of good water, London has gone on lazily drawing from a river which by the general increase of population has become fouler every year. In the supply of gas again, a good example has been set elsewhere, and has not even been followed by the metropolis. A late Committee of the House of Commons reported that both in price and in illuminating power, other towns were far ahead; and that the London Companies ought to be com- pelled to serve the public better. Plymouth gets its gas at 2s. 9d. for a thousand feet; London .pays 4s. 6d.: Birmingham for 3s. (now once more reduced to 2s. 6d.) gets a fair illuminating power; at fat ia wes ier is South 20 : ESSAY I. London at a price more by one half, gets an illumi- nating power of only 12 candles. The cabs, as everyone knows, are nearly the worst in the kingdom: small, dirty, ill horsed, with un- civil drivers; and with the fares so arranged that in a time of pressure, a single person can hardly secure a cab at all. Look also at the administration of the Poor Law: read once more, if you can do it without sickening, the disgusting details of the infirmaries: pauper nurses, dirt and neglect, insufficient medical atten- dance, guardians dining on the rates and deserving poor left to rot. Put these abominations side by side with the comparatively inteligent and humane management by some of the manufacturing towns; and say on which side is the balance of thought- fulness and activity. Hconomy, it is said, is needful, because the rates amount to £1 a head: are they heavier than else- — where? In Paris, the entire local taxation is £4 a head: in our manufacturing towns it may be as in London, about £1 a head: but London is on the average far richer, and has a vastly greater assessable property: and if anyone doubts this, let him remember that nearly half the house tax of England is paid in London. There exist the means of abundant education for all classes: there are charities by the score, utterly useless or corrupting: in other places these would have been diverted to the maintenance of schools. But there are also, great, old fashioned schools, and — wretchedly are their means wasted. We learn some particulars from the Royal Commission of 1861 on | * Ca i a a j CHARACTERISTICS OF MANUFACTURERS. 21 Public Schools. The Charter House we find, had 44 boys on the foundation, and intended to raise this number to 60: there were boarders and day scholars who paid for their education, and who in 1825 had made up the whole numbers to 480; but in 1835 these had dwindled to 99, and even in 1861 had only risen to 136. St. Paul’s, with £9500 a year, educated 153 boys; that number having remained unchanged since the Reformation, when Dean Colet fixed it in honour of the miraculous draught of fishes. What shall we say of traders, so fast asleep that they are incapable of bursting such a cobweb bond as this; and go on with the mystic number unchanged while the children to be instructed have increased tenfold? Compare these doings with those of Manchester, which with £2000 a year educates more boys than St. Paul’s, and attains the highest honours ; compare them with those at the Birming- ham school, which with an income one fourth larger - than that of St. Paul’s, educates not 153 children, but 1800, of whom 600 belong to the middle and upper classes. Where is that superior intelligence and activity of commercial London ?P The alleged intelligence ought to be accompanied by public spirit; by a readiness to come forward in support of patriotic measures: but everyone who has tried, will tell you that London is the most difficult of all places to stir up. I have said that its riches are shown by the fact that it pays nearly half the house tax of England: we might anticipate that such abundant means, combined with such superior intelligence, would cause commercial London, to be the first not merely to establish useful societies, but : RE CC eT pk ESSAY I. also to promote them over the country: we might expect to find a City Propaganda for civilizing Manchester and Birmingham. Take for example, Free Libraries, institutions exempt from the objec- tions urged against most charities, and found in practice a cheap and highly valuable means of educa- tion: doubtless, London City seized on the Act for their establishment, and rushed northward to urge its application. If the City did this, it acted with singular inconsistency; for as I see it stated, up to 1866 not one Free Library was established in _ London. A stranger would imagine, that the great wealth of London would enable it to support every desirable charitable institution, and to come to the assistance of the less rich towns: he would expect to find that the country generally would appeal to the metro- polis for help. I can say from experience that this is the last thing which is usually thought of. In any national calamity such as the Lancashire Cotton Dearth, London gives assistance, just as every other considerable town does: but in ordinary local cases, no one turns to the City for help. Indeed it ig a singular and discreditable fact that London is constantly appealing to the provinces. Out of scores of London circulars which I have received, I have before me one from an Orphan Asylum ; four from homes for neglected boys, as though there were no neglected boys in manufacturing towns; one from the ‘‘ Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and — | Cattle Trough Association.” As I have happily escaped the reputation of a Philanthropist, I infer that these circulars are distributed generally, and } \ : M4 4 : Seats CHARACTERISTICS OF MANUFACTURERS. Pde) that they are favourably received: that in fact, rich London does sponge on the less rich provinces. Had I been a Londoner, I should have blushed at the eulogy of the Spectator, on the occasion of a subscription for the sufferers in London by the cholera. The writer showed what is commonly expected, by his gratified astonishment at seeing subscriptions pouring in at the rate of a thousand pounds a day: now a manufacturing town having one tenth of the population of London and having one twentieth of its means, would be amazed at finding itself praised for pouring in subscriptions at fifty pounds a day: if they came in ten times as fast, then that town might rejoice. This same absence of public spirit is found in all classes. The Journeyman Engineer tells us that the London mechanics are the picked men of the whole country: having employed a good many of them at different times, I am able to say that my own experience does not confirm this opinion: I am quite ready however, to concede that it may be nevertheless true. As these picked men must be, one with another, the best educated of their class, it follows that there must be more artisan intelli- gence in London than elsewhere. But London is to only a small extent a manufacturing town: most of the goods marked London are made in other places ; the cutlery in Sheffield, the sadlery in Walsall, the guns and hardware in Birmingham. The intelligence of the mechanics then, only slightly leavens the mass of the working men. If this were not so, the apathy which prevails would be as- tonishing. There are few more experienced judges . Petey rete Tame ety int ol Mme PE ah it ie a etc haa S oy : teh 24 ESSAY I. of the matter than Mr. Ludlow, who for. twenty years has watched and laboured in the popular cause. Now without any undue disposition to censure; writing, not as a satirist but as a true man; he confesses that the great movements by the working men in their own behalf have had their origin in the provinces. The metropolis has been found in the rear, following the provincial leaders who have borne the burden and danger of the first attack. The commercial inhabitants of the metropolis really believe that when a man calls himself a Londoner, there is no more to be said: he belongs to the greatest and richest city in the world, and that is glory enough for any man. I may be ex- cused for pointing out that a coral reef is a great and wonderful production, but that the msects which have made it are minute and unimportant. The English are a great people, but an Englishman who is idle, careless, and cowardly, is by the contrast made more contemptible. London is a great city: but the commercial Londoners who are content without municipal institutions; who neglect their fine river; who drink foul water and burn weak, sulphureous, gas; who are resigned to dirty cabs and uncivil drivers; who neglect their poor and feast their guardians; who maintain filthy and in- efficient infirmaries; who waste the funds of their multitudinous charities, and permit their ereat endowed schools to misapply their means while the education of the middle classes is shamefully neglected; who even in subscriptions of money are behind the less wealthy provinces; and who are Be CHARACTERISTICS OF MANUFACTURERS. 25 regularly in the rear of all movements in favour of — the working classes: these men cannot shield them- selves behind the greatness of their city, as a cover for their individual idleness and selfishness. ‘The self-sufficiency of commercial London pro- vokes an offensive epithet. Mr. Mill somewhere quotes from Bacon, ‘‘ Opinio copie, inopie maxima causa est.” Dream of wealth, and wake a pauper: flatter your mind and starve it: cockneyism is the parent of imbecility. Of my numerous London friends, scarcely any are tainted with cockneyism: I wish I could say as much for my acquaintance. However, when I am annoyed with the buzzing of one of these, I reflect that self- asserting vanity raises at once a strong presumption against the man who exhibits it: I remind myself that the Red Indian Chief is superb in this way, and decked out in warpaint and feathers, boasts himself the greatest of mortals: I recollect that the Emperor of China is the King of Kings, and Brother of the Sun; a potentate far ereater than Napoleon or Victoria, either of whom could by a word drive him back to his hereditary Tartary. _ Conceit, m short, is the child of ignorance. A magnificent strut might be deemed natural in Louis XIV, during half his life the arbiter of Hurope: the proud Duke of Somerset might be pardoned: but the novus homo should think meanly of himself, or seem to do so. If London citizens possessed the superiority they _ claim, their tone in daily life would be astonishing. A man’s ability exhibits itself very much in the direct influence he exerts over other men. Now 26 ESSAY I. if a London citizen finds himself in what he calls the country, that 1s in any part of the kingdom outside the Bills of Mortality, his alleged superiority ought to make him the natural leader of his new acquaintance. But to lead men, you must please them; you must begin with being modest and un- presuming; not flaunting your excellence in their faces, but leaving them to find it out. Men should be taught as though you taught them not, And things unknown advanced as things forgot. A prig is so unpopular that he can hardly get a fair hearmg. He might mutter to himself with the warpainted Indian, if either of them had ever heard of Pope: Envy will merit like its shade pursue; But like the shadow, proves the substance true. However, there is neither merit nor envy in the case: there is the complacency of ignorance and warpaint, followed by dishke and avoidance. The alleged superiority is sadly in fault. In so numerous a class, there will of course be many exceptions. One, a man of literature, is adopted into a wealthy trading house, and proves himself equal to the business of life: a second, a leading merchant, an early promoter of free trade, a profound student of the laws of price and of banking, acquires vast influence in the City, not by wealth but by genius and virtue: a third, the capable fellow workman of the second, distinguished also by his statistical investigations, is selected by a great banking house to become the managing partner: CHARACTERISTICS OF MANUFACTURERS. © oe others may be found capable of cleverly criticising the Queen’s English, or of pursuing an abstract and neglected branch of literature. But if one swallow does not make a summer, a score of literary traders do not constitute an academy. IV. ie then we compare the manufacturers with the smart brokers and gamblers of Liverpool, or with the smug and self-sufficient traders of the City, we may fairly say that judged by their actions during the last generation, the manufacturing towns have a triumphant preéminence. It is true that in education they have no superiority: nay, though many of them are highly educated, they are on the average inferior, because many of them have begun life as workmen, and more as sons of workmen. The best of them are equal to the best country gentlemen: the worst are equal to the ordinary farmers. There is no indifference to education, however: there is even a general and strong desire for it. I know that this is denied. But the denial pro- ceeds from schoolmasters, who unconsciously ex- aggerate the importance of their own pursuits: who assume that everything ought to be sacrificed to a boy’s schooling. A master of a grammar school complained to me on this matter: the fathers, he said, frequently urged on him particular attention to their sons: but it was not Latin or French or history about which they were anxious: their boys were going im- a 28 ESSAY I. mediately into a counting-house, and it was par- ticularly requested that their writing and arithmetic should be looked after. My reverend friend thought this proved a sordid devotion to the useful m educa- tion, and an indifference to learning for its own sake. As a manufacturer, I see the other side of the shield, and I draw a different inference. A clerk of mine is the father: he consults me on the sub- ject: he is about to offer his son to a merchant. I find that the boy has a competent knowledge of Latin, jabbers a little French, has worked at Colenso’s algebra. Let me see his writing: set him these sums to do. The writing proves to be bad, and the arithmetic inaccurate. I advise the father to put other studies aside, and at whatever cost to get improvement in the beggarly elements. Am I therefore, to be set down as a mere utilitarian P These parents, in sending their boys to the erammar school, have shown that they are not in- different to education; for they might have sent them to inferior schools, where they would have been sure to learn the elements thoroughly. They know that .other boys, on leaving the grammar school, have turned out bad writers or inaccurate arith- meticians: they urge on the master the importance of the lower branches of teaching, believing quite justly that the higher are secure of due attention. Zealous friends of education often overlook such plain facts as these. As regards the lowest classes of society, I hear it said that a boy should not be allowed to work until he can read and write. Ae = rs : - CHARACTERISTICS OF MANUFACTURERS. Ad Wealthy Quakers, frowning at the suggestion of horse race or bet or sixpenny whist, gambled with hundreds of thousands, and lost four millions in seven years: they relieved the satiety of wealth by financing instead of roulette, by hazarding millions instead of hundreds. Their simplicity was cor- rupted: like other gamblers, they began as pigeons and ended as rooks. The gentlemen of the press were indignant and pitiless. When criminal proceedings were instituted ; why, said they, should we maunder over the fate of these great offenders, while we rejoice in the punishment of a shabby swindler or receiver? I answer that when a swindler or a receiver gets his due, I rejoice; and if I am unacquainted with his history, my sympathy is not excited: but if I have known him before as a respectable man, and if I have traced his downward career step by step, and if I find that he acutely feels his degradation, then I do pity lim from my heart. Now I claim the right of feeling for an offender on a large scale, what I feel for an offender on a small scale. Declamations against dishonesty however well founded and useful, often run into exaggeration. Where, we are asked, is the former reputation of the British merchant, whose word was as good as his bond, and whose bond was current through the world? As far as I know, the bond and the word of the British trader are as good and as current as they ever were. Let us see how the merchants of George the Second’s reign were described by Mandeville. “To pass by the innumerable Artifices, by which 4.6 ESSAY I. Buyers and Sellers out-wit one another, that are daily allowed of and practised among the fairest of Dealers, show me the Tradesman that has always discover’d the Defects of his Goods to those that cheapen’d them; nay, where will you find one that has not at one time or other industriously conceal’d them to the detriment of the Buyer? Where is the Merchant that has never against his Conscience extoll’d his Wares beyond their Worth, to make them go off the better? | * Decio, a man of great Figure, that had large Commissions for Sugar from several parts beyond Sea, treats about a considerable parcel of that Com- modity with Alcander an eminent West-India Mer- chant; both understood the Market very well, but could not agree; Decio was a Man of Substance, and thought no body ought to buy cheaper than himself; Alcander was the same, and not wanting Money, stood. for his Price. While they were driving their Bargain at a Tavern near the Hxchange, Alcander’s Man brought his Master a Letter from the West Indies, that inform’d him of a much greater quantity of Sugar coming for Hngland than was expected. Alcander now wish’d for nothing more than to sell at Decio’s price, before the News was publick; but being a cunning Fox, that he might not seem too precipitant, nor yet lose his Customer, he drops the Discourse they were upon, and putting on a Jovial Humour, commends the Agreeableness of the Weather, from whence falling upon the Delight he took in his Gardens, invites Decio to go along with him to his Country-House, that was not above Twelve Miles from London. It was in the Month eed ioe pa aS sey. = Si aa ~ es © copea gy in i ae ee Pe a eee ae ae Ce ee ee CHARACTERISTICS OF MANUFACTURERS, 4,7 of May, and, as it happened, upon a Saturday in © the Afternoon: Decio, who was a single Man, and would have no business in Town before Tuesday, accepts of the other’s Civility, and away they go in Alcander’s Coach. Decio was splendidly entertain’d that Night and the Day following; the Monday Morning, to get himself an Appetite, he goes to take the Air upon a Pad of Alcander’s, and coming back meets with a Gentleman of his Acquaintance, who tells him News was come the Night before that the Barbadoes Fleet was destroy’d by a Storm, and adds, that before he came out it had been confirm’d at Lloyd’s Coffee-House, where it was thought Sugars would rise 25 per Cent. by Change-time. Decio returns to his Friend, and immediately resumes the Discourse they had broke off at the Tavern: Alcander, who thinking himself sure of his Chap, did not design to have moved it till after Dinner, was very glad to see himself so happily prevented; but how desirous soever he was to sell, the other was yet more eager to buy; yet both of them afraid of one another, for a considerable time counterfeited all the Indifference imaginable; ’till at last Decio fired with what he had heard, thought that Delays might prove dangerous, and throwing a Guinea upon the Table, struck the Bargain at Alcander’s Price. The next Day they went to London; the News prov’d true, and Decio got Five Hundred Pounds by his Sugars. Alcander, whilst he had strove to over-reach the other, was paid in his own Coin: yet all this is called fair dealing; but I am sure neither of them would have desired to be done by, as they did to each other.” 48 ESSAY I. Let us come down seventy years later. We imagine, when we see at the present day the frequent cases of peculation and embezzlement, that these are new phenomena. Jeremy Bentham gives us a sample of what happened towards the middle of George the Third’s Reign. ‘“‘ Tt was but the other day that a very respectable society, instituted for the most benevolent of pur- poses, lost in this way more than half its funds. They were in a single hand: board management would have saved them. Is board management therefore necessary? By no means. The man in whose hands they were lodged had nothing of his own: no pecuniary security had been required of him. Legal powers were wanting: no authority to examine him—no court to summon him to. He would give in no accounts: perhaps he had kept none. What he had, he gave: fine sentiments and fine periods in plenty. He was a gentleman: he had given his time for nothing: the same benevo- lence that had prompted others to give their money, had prompted him to receive it. Was such a man to bé questioned? Questions import suspicion. Suspicion, by a man of fine feelings, is only to be answered by defiance. “Not long ago, another man ran away, having been detected in a course of fraud, by which he had gained to the amount of some thousand pounds at the expense of a parish. How came this? He, too, was a gentleman: serving the public without pay, he was not to be suspected. He gave in accounts from time to time, such as they were; but, not being published and distributed, they were accessible CHARACTERISTICS OF MANUFACTURERS. 49 only to a few, who had too much good manners and too much faith to look at them. “‘ Neither is board management, even where carried on without pay, by any means exempt from peculation. I have instances in my eye; but what is not public, cannot be mentioned publicly. Nor ' ean instances be wanting to any one who has read the instructive but melancholy view given by Howard in his book on Lazarettos, of the state of the charities in Ireland. In England, parochial peculation is become proverbial. | ** One of the Scipios, being in a pecuniary office, was called upon for his accounts :—‘ Gentlemen,’ said he, ‘this day so many months, I got a pro- digious victory.’ ‘ Scipio for ever!’ was the cry, ‘and no accounts!’ According to the mob of Scipio’s days, and according to the mob of historians of all days, the author of the motion was a calumniator: according to others, Scipio had a good countenance, and knew the people he had to deal with. In Scipio’s case, were I guilty, and bold enough, I _ would do exactly as Scipio did. Were I innocent, I should regard the obligation of publishing accounts not as a burthen, but as a privilege.” So much for Mandeville and Bentham: for George _ the Second’s reign and for George the Third’s reign. Neither was impeccable. _ I would not yield to Mandeville any more authority than is due to him; but I ask myself whether even a satirist would now attribute to two traders, the one ‘a man of great figure,’ and the other “an eminent merchant,” such laboriously sharp practice in the conduct of their ordinary business, as that, E 50 ESSAY I. described in my quotation? I answer that he might attribute such practice to bookmakers on the turf, to speculators in time bargains, to traders addicted to financing, to reckless adventurers in the Liverpool cotton trade since 1861; but not to persons engaged in the regular course of business. If a writer did attribute such conduct to the ordinary trader, that would seem to me unjust beyond the legitimate bounds of satire. I judge thus, from a rather long experience of mercantile practices. As to peculation and embezzlement, I think it probable that these offences are less common than formerly in public affairs; more common in private affairs: less common in public affairs, because expe- rience has resulted in more stringent checks; more common in private affairs, because the increased scale of business has compelled principals to trust more to subordinates. The absolute number of offences however, proves nothing. How many offences are committed in proportion to the opportunities offered P that is the question. Private peculation and embezzlement are rare in Tipperary, and are unknown in Tartary: we do not therefore laud the untried honesty of Tipperary and Tartary. Coming down the stream of time once more, and ~ comparing the period of thirty years ago with the present, I do not find any change for the worse. Now, as then, half the transactions which take place _ are not confirmed by writing, and are therefore not enforceable under the Statute of Frauds: now, as then, it is a most rare circumstance for either party to a bargain to refuse to fulfil it. | It will be said however, that conceding the accu- pov te ae arte 8 $ ss = = 24 ee XN CHARACTERISTICS OF MANUFACTURERS. ot racy of my statements, enough remains to justify the charge of widespread commercial immorality ; since I have admitted that there exist among certain moneydealers, bankers, makers of time bargains, and speculators in produce, many practices condemned by every code of morals. I reply that the term commercial immorality, conveys to the reader a charge against the com- mercial classes at large, as though an indictment were preferred against traders generally in their ordinary transactions: whereas the misdeeds com- plamed of are confined to certain classes, who at times make a great noise in the world, and therefore divert public attention from the steady current of everyday affairs, carried on for the most part with undeviating honesty. It is im speculating and financing that men’s morals get corrupted. . I must repeat also, that these malpractices are not peculiar to commercial men; but that specula- tion and financing have among its votaries, peers and parsons, physicians and professors, squires and schoolmasters, baronets, barristers, and blacklegs ; all in short who have money or credit with which to pay first calls on concerns that seem capable of being floated at a premium. Commercial Immorality is an ill chosen name if it is intended to express immorality in speculation and financing; an immorality shared by men taken from all classes of society, but indignantly repudiated by the wiser men of the commercial classes. The vice complained of is not commercial immorality but pecumary ummorality. Have we never heard of such a thing as official 52 ESSAY I. corruption? We generally regard the English as being free from this taint; and I believe that com- paratively they are so. Yet we have recently seen two clerks convicted of a conspiracy to obtain a bribe from a contractor for timber. A journal of the highest class has admitted a statement, anony- mous certainly, charging a manufacturer in the north with having offered £5,000 to an officer sent down from London to superintend the fulfilment of a con- tract: and with having offered it as the customary perquisite. I have heard it said that in certain barracks, no forage can be supplied without a douceur to the inferior officers. I hear on all sides that on some railways the salaries of the officers have been eked out to a disgraceful extent, by commissions and by presents from contractors. In all these cases the conscientious trader stands aloof and declines the business: the corruption begins with the officers. I have had a good deal to do with official persons in the way of contracts, and I hope it may please heaven to spare me from any further dealings with them. I have no complaint to make of corruption however: what I dislike is the formality and tedium incident to all their dealings. I have always been fortunate enough to meet with persons of undeviating honesty. Some years ago an Italian called on me, and after discussing private business, told me that he was going on to the Tower to offer some timber. Might he ask a question? After some hesitation he inquired whether he might offer a perquisite to the inspector of small arms. I said he certainly might; but that he would do well to first put the door wide open, that the kicking Mr. Lovell would give him ie, AE Trae Bae ers MRSS NBS re AG Ea GS BA Se Oe ai ae a les hc ee Saar CHARACTERISTICS OF MANUFACTURERS. 53 might be the shortest possible. He thanked me and explained that in every continental state such things were done. Some years later however, there was corruption in connection with that very office, but not on the part of Mr. Lovell, who was a most highminded man. We have not with all our efforts succeeded in eradicating official vice: nor can we expect to do so, since the highest departments of government sometimes commit impudent robberies. Take the case of Greece as lately stated in the Pall Mall Gazette. The three great Powers, as we know, England, France, and Russia, while emanci- pating the Greeks. from the Turkish yoke, advanced large sums of money, or guaranteed the payment of sums advanced by others. But ‘‘ the Powers,” say the Greeks, ‘did not advance the money to Greece to be used as Greece pleased. . . They advanced the money nominally to the Greek government, but they dictated absolutely the mode in which it was to be expended; they subjected it to stoppages and > deductions of every description to gratify their own fancies or to serve their own jobs.” Then follows a summary of the Greek National Debt, taken from the Edinburgh Review; and this proves the truth of the Greek statement. Reached Amount the Greek Advanced. Treasury. £. £. 1823. Lent by London Bankers. . . 800,000 800,000 1825. 5 is "4 of een 0005000) 920,000 1832. Guaranteed by the three Powers | 2,400,000 200,000 Afterwards from Bavaria ..... 200,000 200,000 5,400,000 | 2,120,000 54 ESSAY I. It appears then, that besides arrears of interest, Greece owes nearly 53 millions £: but that the money she actually recetved was little more than 2 millions £. This is an example of financing worthy of our recent Limited Companies. I am not foolish enough to imagine that official corruption, or national corruption, excuses the iniqui- tous proceedings of banks or credit companies or bubble railways: I only contend that pecuniary im- morality is widespread, and is improperly attributed to the commercial classes, as though it were peculiar to them. Some thoughtless people, I believe, appeal to Schedule D of the Income Tax, and ask what sort of morality that 1s which robs the Treasury of a large part of its dues. I concede that by the world at large, to evade a tax is regarded as a venial offence: many persons who will not make a false return, will escape payment if they can do so without lying. -Adam Smith tells us that m his day, if a man affected to hesitate about buymg smuggled goods, his scruple was regarded as “a pedantic piece of hypocrisy,” and exposed the man to be deemed ‘‘a greater knave than most of his neigh- bours.”’ people who go further than evasion. Soon after the income tax was first imposed, a small trader a few miles from Birmingham, was under examination by the Commissioners; and being asked whether he kept a horse, he said he did not. The conversation was overheard by the persons in the anteroom; and as the man came out his neighbours asked him how he dare deny that he kept a horse.—Hush, you fools, Even now there are many vulgar minded _ CHARACTERISTICS OF MANUFACTURERS. 55 answered the man, it’s a mare.—If this were a fair sample of commercial morality, no name would be too bad for it. To get fairly assessed however, 1s no easy matter. About the date of the grotesque le I have quoted, a firm within my own knowledge, made an exact return of their profits: they were required to appear before the Special Commissioner: the local surveyor, who had an interest in raising the amount, never- theless reported himself satisfied: yet the Com- missioner, a mild and weakminded old gentleman, proposed to add several hundred pounds to the assessment, with a threat of requiring the pro- duction of books and papers if this proposal were rejected. Such treatment would not justify the falsifying future returns: but I have no doubt that in the eyes of many persons, it would justify a return so much under the mark as to allow for an anticipated surcharge. Fifty years ago, the makers of exciseable articles generally evaded a part of the tax. A great window glass manufacturer, of scrupulous conscience, ex- plained to me that before his time it was almost impossible to be honest, because every exciseman who was not bribed, looked upon a manufacturer as his natural enemy, and could not be made to believe that he would act honourably. There was a state of avowed war. Hven before the repeal of the duty, matters had been put on a better footing: but there was great difficulty in getting the old subor- dinates to unlearn the lessons of their youth, and to abstain from a little doing of the exciseman. If the 56 ESSAY I. Income-Tax Commissioners assumed all returns to be false, they would go far to make them all false. A recent report of the Inland Revenue Department, attempts to estimate the extent and amount of the evasions: the conclusion is that 3 persons out of 5 make correct returns; but that the fraudulent persons err so grossly that they return less than 44 millions £, instead of 100 millions £. The annual loss to the Treasury, when the tax is 6d. in the &, is the large sum of a million and a half. os The Commissioners arrived at these results, by comparing the returns made under the Income-Tax, with the claims made for compensation, by London traders whose premises had been taken by railways or by the Board of Works. I take the facts from a summary given in the Daily News. The editor suggests that perhaps the Commissioners are wrong in applying to the whole country a rule founded on returns in London, where the Surveyor of Taxes necessarily knows little of the affairs of his neigh- bours; while even in the greatest of other towns, the local Commissioners can form a_ tolerable estimate of the gains of all considerable persons. Besides; it must be remembered that the whole statement is ex parte, and might be much modified by cross examination, or by a House of Commons debate. It might turn out, that the difference arises more from the excessive claims for compensation than from the defect in returns. The immorality may be much the same in both cases; though perhaps we might censure with some leniency, the man who was turned out of his place of business and in his annoyance made an exaggerated claim; and i ia se aa eee Kb : F A he f par CHARACTERISTICS OF MANUFACTURERS. 57 with greater severity another who, left to himself, had actually realized profits under shelter of the government, and had by a he or a trick evaded payment for the services rendered. Conceding however, that there exists a low tone of morality in all such matters: that men, strictly honourable in private life, will not volunteer an income-tax return if their name has slipped out of the surveyor’s list: that others, quite incapable of a false statement, will make no return and will pay only what the Commissioners demand even though this is less than the true amount: that the occupiers of houses worth £200 a year will be quite happy to pay local rates at an assessment of £100: the question still remains whether this is a proof of Commercial Immorality. These evasions and concealments are immoral: eranted; but are they peculiar to commercial people? Schedule D, which robs the Treasury and the tax- payers of half a million or a million and a half a year, does not consist of traders only. There are also barristers, physicians, clergymen, solicitors. I might also mention proctors; and the world has not forgotten the startling evasion of tax by certain gentlemen of this vocation, and the diminished com- pensation they got when their office was abolished. Perhaps we might have expected peculiar strict- ness in the clergy, if we did not know that their Incomes are generally very narrow and much trenched on by parish necessities; and if also we had not learnt by experience, that dogmatic theology little tends to the enforcement of simple honesty. If I talk to one of my clerical friends about a piece of 58 ESSAY I. preferment, I always hear that the Clergy List represents it as so much, and therefore of course it is worth more. I know that the clergy spend beyond their means on education and charity; but I do not believe them to he especially scrupulous. Some few medical men, I am told, make a return beyond their income: they believe that nothing succeeds like success; and they pay the additional tax to advertise a lie. As to solicitors I do not share the vulgar belief that all of them are unscrupulous. On the contrary, I know by experience that the best of them are singularly honourable. No doubt, a solicitor has many opportunities of doing legally, things which are injurious to the client and which are profitable only in swelling the bill of costs: I have known cases of ignorant persons whose little hoard has been thus filched from them, and all under cover of legality. But the better solicitors, educated to scorn petti- fogging, think of their chents only, and leave their bills of costs to honest growth. The profession reminds me in this respect of the American slave- owners, of whom Miss Martineau said, that however much the ordinary ones were damaged in temper, the few who resisted the evil influences were invigorated _ by the successful struggle, and attained an unfailing self-control unknown to less trained men. But I have no reason to think that the lawyers make their income-tax returns more truthfully than the traders. When the tax was imposed in 1842, the solicitors around me met together to determine how the profits should be calculated. Among the number was S—, a wealthy man who would feel with | 4 fis ‘i ie. aa Saag ane AN Tn eae S 2 CHARACTERISTICS OF MANUFACTURERS. 59 Adam Smith’s contemporaries, that it was mere hypocrisy to profess a scruple about evading a tax. After much talk, S— said emphatically that he did not see how he could do it. No S—, said another, your difficulty is not how to do 7, but how to do them. Granting then that a large proportion of persons in Schedule D, pay less than they ought, I still deny that this is any proof of the existence of commercial immorality: I say that it is a proof of immorality among all the taxpayers who earn their incomes; among proctors and bankers, medical men and manu- facturers, clergy and merchants, editors and retail dealers. It is imvidious to attribute to the commercial classes, the dishonest concealments and crooked accounts shared by all classes, in financing and speculation, and to attribute to the commercial classes the evasions of income tax equally practised by all classes who live by their industry, and from which landlords and fundholders are exempt because they lack the opportunity. VI. | SAY then, that there is among manufacturers every variety of culture: that the lowest in the scale has a position like that of the farmer of a few acres, though he is as superior to him in under- standing as the skilled mechanic is superior to the ploughman. But avoiding the extremes, I find that the ordinary manufacturer is intelligent but rather narrow: that he is favourable to school instruction, but justly estimates still more highly that industrial Tig) RS SACS QU Be EIT ot OER ( r ee Ee OSE E Se aoe Ree ae aa eT ' ‘ et ae) Mrs ¥e Phe np eee . * Nh 60 ESSAY I. education which gives skill, steadiness, and a pride of independence: that his mind is not overstrained by pecuniary speculations, because he knows that in the long run he is secure of success through his good and careful management: that he is temperate and domestic; being too intent on his affairs to lose time and health in excesses, and too busy to be driven by ennui into vice: that he is inelegant and careless of zsthetical considerations, but free from those pretences which are the worst of vulgarities: that he is firm and self-reliant; a little dogmatical and impatient of contradiction, and when very suc- cessful apt to run into pursepride: puritanical in his belief, but with a singular tolerance fostered by daily intercourse with Romanists and Unitarians, Baptists and Colensoites, Plymouth Brethren and Ritualists ; giving the foremost place to the clergy of whatever denomination, but jealously repressing priestly inter- ference: that he is radical in his politics, but possessed with a horror of revolution, and free even from that political bitterness, which flourishes most in county and cathedral towns among the excluded classes; ' with abundant loyalty to the throne and respect for the Lords, but resentful of every attempt to curtail individual liberty: that he is on the whole, what the Ohio farmer is to the United States, the back- bone of the nation; sturdy, self-reliant, industrious, enterprising, greedy of success, patriotic, a lover of peace, but a greater lover of the honour of his nation. One may apply to him, as to other traders, what M. Belly has lately said of Americans and middle class Englishmen, as compared with French emigrants. BS ee ne ¥ if 4 4 : i CHARACTERISTICS OF MANUFACTURERS. 61 ** Rien n’est plus triste, au point de vue plastique, que nos groupes chétifs, irréguliers, sans noblesse d’attitude, comparés avec les groupes superbes de cette fiére famille anglo-saxonne qu’on rencontre sur tous les océans. Il y a peut-etre un peu de dureté dans ces masques dédaigneux; mais quelle fermeté de plans, quelle blancheur de teint, quelle abondance de cheveux, quel éclat de vie surtout et quelle vigueur morale dans ces hautes statures! Disons-le franche- ment, ils sentent qu’ils sont des hommes libres, et nous sentons que nous ne le sommes pas!” This almost justifies the rant of Goldsmith, which fired the blood of old Johnson. Pride in their port, defiance in their eye, I see the lords of human kind pass by. IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. I RELAND is the opprobrium of Great Britain. — To readers of foreign literature it is humiliating to see extravagant praises of English institutions, followed by pity and censure of Irish miseries: to find an author heaping up eulogiums of our liberal but regulated government, of our freedom from centrali- zation, of our unshackled press, of our dignified moderation in European politics; and then solacing himself for his laborious candour, by reminding the world of the iniquitous bigotry of our forefathers, and by adopting as grave truth the satirical cartoon of Punch, where Queen Victoria, pointing to maps of Poland and Ireland, says to the Czar Nicholas; Brother, brother, we are both in the wrong. A century ago, the Irish were in ordinary years amply supplied with potatoes: the iron pot con- stantly replenished, was found on the floor of every cabin, though otherwise bare of furniture; and was at the service of parents and children and fowls, without exclusion even of the pig and the beggar. Milk too was commonly obtained. There still con- tinued the cottier system; under which the peasant had a corner of land, with grass enough for a cow, ype eo a pa aia! ae: a WAS Foe wg — ets 7 IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. 63 on condition of working for his landlord when he was wanted, on wages of 4d. or 6d. a day. This organization was a more advanced one than serfdom; in which the peasant is legally bound to the soil, and is required, as still in some provinces of Russia, to give a large part of his time as a corvée to his lord’s service, without any payment of wages. ‘The social condition of the Irish peasants however, was little better than that of serfs: the Protestant squireens of that rough period looking upon the Papists as a conquered race; and in their rollicking humours thinking no more of knocking them down, than a Mandarin thinks of rattling the bamboo on the heads of the people. Unfortunately, as time went on, the social degra- dation remained, while the abundance of food disap- peared. The population multiplied, unrestrained by fears of a family; and in the absence of organized relief of the poor, even driven to early marriage, by the desire of rearing up children to save the parent in his sickness or dotage, from dying on a dungheap. The Irishman felt as the Chinese, that one of the three curses was to want a son in old age. In the pressure which followed, strangers came and competed for the landlord’s work, offering to take the 6d. or 4d. a day without the cow’s grass: thus the cottier system came to an end, and the people generally learnt to depend on wages when they could get them, but more commonly on the potatoes which they could raise for themselves, on a patch of ground rented at an exorbitant rate. Poverty, hunger, and discontent, were universal: mendicancy flourished: secret societies ran riot. 64 ESSAY II. The rebellion of 1798 must have aggravated the. previous animosity of the subject race: the atrocities — of the victorious party, the burnings and floggings — and hangings, might have been forgotten; but the insults and outrages inflicted by the Protestants on the Roman Catholic women, would never be forgiven and would remain as a legacy of hatred even to the present day : just as the wanton oppression practised by the French under Napoleon, still ferments in the minds of the Prussians. During the first half of the present century, the process of gradual deterioration went on: the popu- lation still grew; the overcropped ground became less and less capable of yielding nutritious potatoes ; and at last came that mortal famine, too frightful to dwell upon, which directly, or by the exodus it provoked, reduced the population from about eight to less than six millions of souls. Such an amazing diminution, if it had been predicted and believed, would have been anticipated as a certain cure for want and discontent: yet in fact, it is the reduced population which has indulged in the mischievous follies of Fenianism; and however true it may be that the American civil war formed the leaders who organized that outbreak, it is equally true that it was the existence of combustible materials at home which made the conspiracy dangerous or even possible. Some friends of enlightenment may blame me, if I conjecture that the national system of education has at present aggravated the political difficulty. In my last essay I ventured on an opinion, that the growth of democracy in England had resulted from IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. 65 the advance of material, intellectual, and moral, well- being; which had made men fitter to govern them- selves, and more capable of combining to demand their rights: in the same way, the improved educa- tion of Ireland must have elevated the peasantry above the miseries of the moment; it must have have raised them in the scale of being; it must have Increased their constancy, and their.resolution to fly from the land they hate, to take vengeance on us whom they regard as heretical oppressors, hateful to man and to God. The Southern American States were prudent in denying instruction to negroes whom they resolved to keep in slavery: the English first granted political emancipation to the Irish, and then industriously supplied them with schools; but as yet they have not converted them into friends, and by instructing them they have made their enemies dangerous. I do not regret the course that has been taken: on the contrary, I praise the mag- -nanimity of my countrymen, who corrected the faults of their progenitors without nicely mquiring about immediate results to themselves. In the end we shall reap our just reward, when the Irish, pacified and imured to steady industry, shall have learnt, like the Scotch, to regard themselves as a part of a great and beneficent empire. In the mean time, one circumstance which indicates a growth of intelligence and self-reliance, looks also to a Protestant who is distrustful of clerical influence, full of hope for the future: I mean the diminished influence of the Roman Catholic Church, as exhibited in the Fenian movement. The priests have strong personal sympathies with the peasants, from whose F 66 ESSAY II. ranks indeed most of them have sprung; they share their undying antipathy to the heretical Saxon: but the laws of their church, enforced by their superiors, compel them to denounce Fenianism as an associa- tion held together by secret oaths. The laity, and generally the lower and more superstitious strata of them, have set the priestly censures at defiance: and though it is a frightful spectacle to witness a hatred so bitter that to sate it these men will risk their souls’ salvation, yet there is some compensation in the thought that the lay will is less submissive than formerly to sacerdotal rule. TT: yUCE is the present condition of the peasantry ; and we hear on every side, the question, what should be done? How can we hasten the time when the Irish shall arrive at industry, prudence, well- being, and content? Centuries ago, as we are told, there existed throughout Scotland, apathy, improvi- dence, poverty, and dissatisfaction, such as those we see across the Channel: even when Adam Smith wrote, a hundred years ago, Scottish agricultural wages were lower by a third than the poor six shillings a week of England: since that time, a gradual improvement has taken place; the agricul- tural wages of North and South Britain have been about equalized; and the Scotch have become a singularly thriving and contented race. Time and constancy in well doing, will no doubt bring Ireland up to this standard. A just impatience however, possesses us; and IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. 67 makes it intolerable to wait upon slow footed time: we are not content with less than a rapid cure: where is this to be found P Many excellent persons believe that there is a remedy within our reach: that the “magic of pro- perty”’ has thaumaturgic power enough to regenerate the peasantry: that if we could but convert the renters of land into owners, there would be at once a touch of the wand, such as to confer those virtues which make orderly citizens and good subjects. The German and French peasant proprietors, it is alleged, are industrious, saving, and peaceable; too intent on their own affairs to tolerate revolutionary disturbance: put small patches of land into the absolute possession of Irishmen, and the same good qualities will be developed. The advantages and evils attendant on peasant proprietorship, have been fully discussed ; and may be found treated in the pages of Sismondi, McCulloch, and Mill; as well as in a variety of French treatises, such as the monographs in M. Le Play’s Owvriers Hwropéens, and M. Legoyt’s Morcellement. The French generally perplex the question, by mixing up the political with the economical view of it; by appealing to the principles of ’89, to liberty, equality, frater- nity; and by assuming that as an equal division of landed property is essential to the maintenance of those principles, any economical disadvantages of morcellement, must be disregarded.as comparatively unimportant. In other respects, the French discussions, though interesting, bear little on the Irish question. Under the testamentary provisions of the Code Napoléon, 68 ESSAY II. backed by public sentiment, the land, like all other property, is generally partitioned equally among the children; and as by an absurd provision, still uncor- rected, every child can claim a portion of each separate plot, a parcellaire division is frequently made, and with most injurious consequences. It is stoutly maintained that the number of proprietors does not increase; and we may think that this is not im- probable, when we remember that the population of France is nearly stationary; but the registry, which ought to decide the question, cannot be relied on; for though every new proprietor is careful to be entered, in order to make good his title, the man who parts with his land, has no strong motive for cancelling his previous entry; and therefore it is believed that the same land appears again and again under different names. These collateral issues are of little value for our purpose: we are not at present concerned with any proposal to adopt a system of compulsory partition at death, nor with the important question of a registry of titles. What we want to know, is whether peasant proprietorship 1s a probable and safe cure for Irish social diseases. On the negative side many objections have been adduced: that to a man of small means land is the worst of investments, since it pays far less than five per cent., while the price of it used as farming capital would pay three or four times as much: that the Irish peasant could not be prevented from selling his land under the pressure of bad seasons; nor from mort- gaging it, as the French do to a vast extent: that a father would bring up his sons on his land, and would IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. 69 probably divide and subdivide it recklessly; and that we cannot anticipate an immediate adoption of French prudence as to marriage: that in short the Irish peasantry have not been trained to pos- session, and could only be gradually brought into such habits as would fit them to go alone, without the aiding influence of the richer classes. I do not pretend to enforce these objections: but there is another, which as far as I remember has been unnoticed, and which may possibly weigh with other persons as it does with me. It is alleged that the continental peasant pro- prietors are industrious, frugal, self-denying, careful not to marry and bring up children whom they can- not support: that their only improvidence arises from their passion for land, which they desire as a means of local importance, and which therefore, they too often buy and mortgage. How happy would it be, we are told, if the Irish could be brought to such industry and prudence, even at the expense of a little overcovetousness of property. I will confine my remarks to the country of which I know most, not personally indeed, but by reading and conversation. A French gentleman was one day vehemently insisting on the virtues of the peasants: on their resignation to the scantiest and cheapest food, their parsimony in dress and furniture, their prudence in marriage, their unflagging and extreme industry, their abstinence from all pleasures which could possibly interfere with their gains. I asked my friend whether he regarded insufficient maintenance and excessive work, as good things or bad. Ap- parently, he regarded them as good things, when they 70 ESSAY Il. were voluntary. For myself I regarded them as bad things, whether voluntary or not; and the question arose, whether that was a virtue which led the peasant to condemn himself, his wife, and his children, to lifelong penury, for the sake of pos- Sessing or increasing his little estate. Since that conversation, I have for many years pondered the problem, and I have applied to its solution my observations as a manufacturer, on the mode of life of the higher artisans, who may fairly be ranked with peasant proprietors. It has been my good fortune to witness in the workmen around me, a considerable improvement as to sobriety and prudence: I see less drunkenness and less improvidence than formerly. There cannot be two opinions as to the value of this change. But when I look below the surface, when I divide men into classes, putting the moderately saving together, and the very saving together, I have my doubts as to the superiority of the very saving. I find these latter parsimonious in their own expenditure, slovenly in their appearance, with an industry and a love of gain so possessing them as to shut out the slightest interest in other persons: I see their wives slaves, their children early employed and worked beyond their strength: as to education, reading and writing and arithmetic must be picked up somehow, but any further acquirements do not pay: in short, everything is to yield to getting and saving. I can- not praise such a mode of life: I even deem it detestable: and much as I deprecate improvidence, I find it difficult to believe that avarice is any better; unless we adopt the monstrous paradox of Mandeville, IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. 71 that private vices are public benefits. As a student of political economy, I protest against the doctrine that to heap up capital is the whole economical duty of man: I maintain that to distribute wisely is quite as Important. I find among the middle ranks to which I belong, the same virtue and the same vice; 1n some persons idleness, in many, a reckless expenditure: if I compare these with others, who exhibit a lifelong industry, a sleepless frugality, and an anxious search for profitable investments, a devotion in short to getting rich, a refusal to take any part in municipal affairs or educational and philanthropic enterprises, and an absolute closing of the purse to all appeals on behalf of voluntary institutions, [ am of opinion that the generous and public-spirited man is the far better citizen, even though he should fail to make much provision for his family or for his own old age. Ill. T will be remembered that I am not discussing the subject of peasant proprietorship generally ; but that I am confining myself to the question, whether that organization is favourable to a good moral condition. I concede that it promotes industry, frugality, and prudence in every respect except as to the improvident purchase of land: but I have men- tioned my suspicion that it leads to the odious vice of avarice with its attendant sordidness and selfish- ness; such as I find among some of our own artisans and our own middle classes. I have met with a confirmation of my suspicions 72 ESSAY II. in a statement by a respectable authority, that where the father of a family retains his property in his own hands, the sons make little scruple of openly declaring their impatience for succeeding to the land. Another authority is so remarkable, that I propose to quote it at some length. I refer to a work of M. Ernest Legouvé, a well known writer, and a member of the French Academy: I am happy to see that the popular voice has called for a fourth edition. M. Legouvé’s testimony has the greater weight, because it is not advanced for any political purpose: he is not a publicist but an essayist: he is a moralist at the most, criticismg the parental and filial rela- tions of the day. The book is called Fathers and Children in the Nineteenth Century; and it will be obvious that the treatment of each topic is slight, when I say that in 350 small pages there are 16 essays. Among the titles are Messieurs les Enfans (untranslateable); Journal of a Father; Imagination in Games; Corporal Punishment; Tenderness and Authority. One chapter, that on Aristocratic and Democratic Politeness, proves that the author shares the ordinary French democratic sentiments. He tells us that at a friend’s house he found himself in the company of a nobleman of the Vieille Roche ; who entered into a discussion with the host on aristocratic and demo- cratic manners. The old nobleman had smiled sar- donically at some unpoliteness of the host’s son, and he found himself taken to task for his habitual con- tempt towards the manners of modern Paris. When IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. 73 pressed to justify himself, he exonerated the young man from any special blame, but charged him with being infected with a democratic disorder which he would rather describe than define. *‘ Your son was sitting by a charming girl, but did not speak to her, nor help her, nor pick up her glove. ? “This is his offence,”’ said the father, laughing ; “he was timid and awkward towards a young woman. “‘Stop a bit! If he was bashful with her, he was forward with you. He disputed your opinion and maintained his own, in a free and easy way which astonished me; who always addressed my father as Sir, and uncovered in his presence. After dinner, your son took the easy chair instead of leaving it to - his mother; and placed himself in front of the fire, leaving his sister to warm her pretty little feet as she best might. Other faults are catalogued; and the father con- fesses, as we all must allow, that his son is a lout. A debate follows on politeness generally; and the marquis defines it to be according to circumstances, urbanity, affability, courtesy, deference, or respect : he says that though it may be a small matter, yet he must be allowed to regret its disappearance. “JT should regret it as you do, Monsieur le Marquis, but for the heavy price it costs. “What price ? “he price of sincerity. Come, can you deny that there was much base coin in this current politeness ? was the courtesy more than skin deep, and were not the attentions mere deception ? 5) 74, ESSAY II. “No! there was no deception. There was a little exaggeration: I confess that a 200 france courtesy was worth only ten; but there was no hypocrisy, because no one was duped: the tender was not in base money; at the most it was in assignats. “But we republicans, Monsieur le Marquis, have learned to distrust assignats. Leave us our funda- mental virtue, truth. If the charm of the ancien régime was politeness, the duty of democracy 1s sincerity. Besides, there are two kinds of politeness, the aristocratic and the democratic. ““What’s that? democratic politeness? a new combination of words! **Qne is very superior to the other. “That I am convinced of. “Yes! Democratic politeness is the best. “How? “Is the best, at any rate in principle; imasmuch as reality surpasses appearance. ‘Prove this, I is : Benen es he little “rd ae heart which always exist, and you will hear this kind of soliloquy. ‘Heavens! how well bred I am! With what grace and urbanity have I addressed this tradesman! How kind of me!’ “Not bad! not bad!” said the Marquis, laughing in his own despite. “And your vassals, whom ran sreaneae as rustics ! And your servants whom you treated as rascals! And your tradesmen whom you treated as scamps! And the people whom you treated as a mob! And the citizens whom you treated as—these fellows! IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. 79 And all the shades of contempt, which alongside your politeness, had a certain flourish of imper- tinence. “‘He! He! impertinence,” replied the Marquis, comically; ‘‘my dear sir, do not abuse impertinence, which is the privilege of a few, and is one of the most delicate products of civilization. A man must be well bred to be impertinent in season. So,” added he gaily, ‘‘democracy may be insolent, and is so, but I defy it to be impertinent.” This abridged conversation convinces me, that M. Legouvé, while he sees the offensive side of democratic manners, has no hostility to the principles of ’°89. If therefore, I discover in his remarks about the peasants, sentiments unfavourable to the present morcellement, I exonerate him from the charge of desiring a return to the ancien régime ; and I accept him as an unprejudiced guide. I now pass on to M. Legouvé’s two last essays ; of which one is styled, ‘A village King Lear.” _ We are told first that there is in rural districts generally, a want of sensibility. The author has seen many country funerals, with some mourners sad but none despairing. Death has no terror for them: what have they to regret, and what to fear? Can another life be sadder than they have found this ? A priest visited an old man who was very ill: he pressed him to repent and make confession. ‘‘ What am I to confess, M. le Curé? I have suffered many wrongs and committed none.’’—‘‘ Come, come, Father Patroclus, during your eighty years of life, you must have done something to offend the good God.’’—‘“‘ I indeed, offend the good God! It is he b) 76 ESSAY II. who has done certain things towards me—however, we will say nothing about that: I shall soon see him: let us forget “all that.” As it is with deaths and funerals, so it is with love and marriages: the sentiment of love is unknown. During illness, there is great care, but no tender- ness. A husband was on his deathbed. The wife said to him: “do you understand the doctor? He orders you Malaga wine at five francs a bottle: if that would cure you, have it by all means; but since you can’t get well ‘‘ What?” said the dying man, ‘wine at five francs! do nothing so silly! keep it for the little one.” : This sentiment of love for the little one, is not wanting: it is the only deep feeling left. Conjugal love is an instinct; friendship is a habit; but parental affection remains profound and lively as ever. Unhappily, this affection does not command its just reward: filial love is faint, and reverence is fainter: you may hear a youth of eighteen address his mother as Marianne. But there is worse behind: there is filial eae tude; and the narrator gives an illustration, which I abridge. “Yesterday, the first of December, the proprietor of the Chateau de la Grange, admitted the poor of the parish according to custom to pick up and cut the dead wood in the forest of Rougeot. The sight of the old people staggering under their loads, is always a painful one. J happened this day to walk in the direction of the wood; and on the verge of it I found an old man bending over his stick while he IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. 77 took breath. As I passed, he said in a shamefaced manner: Monsieur, could you give me a pinch of snuff?—I don’t carry snuff, my good friend, but here are some coppers to buy it with—Thank you, Monsieur, but I am not a beggar.—I was touched by the man’s simple emotion, and I hastened to ask pardon.—There is no offence, Monsieur.—As he prepared to move on, I helped to replace his faggot, and I walked by his side down the slope.— Don’t be hurt at my offer, I resumed; I was thinking how fond you countrypeople are of snuffi—Yes, Monsieur, it makes a man forget. So does wine: so does brandy, for that matter (said he sorrowfully) but it is not for everyone to get drunk: some feel disgusted and ashamed.—A just remark, my friend, and unusual.—I never got drunk (said he earnestly). It is too expensive; besides it ruins a man. Buta paper of snuff costs only a halfpenny, and comforts one for a day. As we turned a corner, we met a tall, fair young woman, who cried out—now then, father !—Here I am (said he timidly). I had just time to ask his name.—Boyer, Monsieur.—He went away. To satisfy my curiosity, I called on my neighbour, the mayor, and after relating the incident, asked about the old man.—You are lucky (said the mayor), for this case is Just to your purpose in studying fathers and children of the present century.—True, I am greatly interested in that matter.—Very well, study old Boyer: study his hfe; it will enlighten you on a most interesting point.—What’s that? You must have observed how eagerly the children of to-day are bent on their father’s inheritance during 78 ESSAY II. his lifetime: I mean on succeeding him as a manu- facturer or as a merchant or as a professional man, — as soon as they are of legal age. The motto of most sons is the vulgar phrase, so terrible in its vulgarity —‘out of my way.’—My father was a notary; I served as his clerk till I was forty. My son, at twenty-five, forced me, as our sons know how, to vive him my profession. My brother-in-law had a large business; his son induced him, against his wishes, to give him a partnership for three years, with a covenant to retire in his favour at the end of that time. These three years proved disastrous ; and as the father lost £6,000, he proposed to recoup himself by remaining in the concern three years longer.—‘ Business is business ;’ (said the son) ‘ we agreed for three years, and I insist on the contract.’ Such are sons at present: they climb into our seat, and once there, they reverse our plans, they efface all trace of us, they refuse our advice; above all, they forget our favours and return benefits with in- eratitude. But in the country, the usurpation is more violent and absolute: it is a usurpation of the land, a sur- render of property during life. Formerly, as fewer peasants by far possessed land, the cases of surrender were fewer. The respect attendant on the title of head of the family, both in a man’s own eyes and in those of others, removed the temptation to submit to the humiliation of surrender, and restrained the sons from requiring it. Now, the fathers are richer and the sons are harsher: the fathers are feebler and the sons are more importunate. The history of old Boyer will teach you what are IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. 79 our present domestic morals—Who is old Boyer P— Old Boyer is an example of a hearty, kindly, sober, narrow-minded peasant. He lived to labour.. The quantity of work done in sixty-eight years of life, by this little, lean, shrivelled man, makes one shudder. He was always ready for the hardest tasks. He was noted in the country, as the strongest of mowers, as the most vigorous of reapers, as the most inde- fatigable of ploughmen, as the most thorough of vinedressers, as the sharpest of woodmen. Violent labour exhausts a man but pays him; and old Boyer acquired by the sweat of his brow, two or three acres of arable land, a small vineyard, a nice coppice, the house he lives in, and some money in the savings’ bank. The way he built his house was characteristic. For two or three years, he used his holidays and his spare hours, in trundling on to his land in a wheel- barrow, pieces of millstone and wood, tiles, odd doors or casements bought cheap ; and when he had heaped up enough, he got the building done with no cost but that for wages. I told you that his only passion was for work; but I had forgotten his affection for his little one. Left a widower with a son of five years old, he was both father and mother to him. As soon as the child could bear the fatigue, he took him out to his work. You have perhaps noticed that in the early winter the ploughman in the fields, or the digger on the common, has usually a little companion. Round him, round his spade, flutters mcessantly, or hops _ from twig to twig, a robin twittering with joy. Nothing more gently sociable; he seems bent on delighting the labourer. He follows as if he loved 80 ESSAY II. him ; trusting himself even under the spade, to peck from the clods the worms he feeds on. Well; Boyer’s infant was his redbreast. During the hay- harvest, there he always was, trotting behind his father’s great scythe. Sometimes in a winter fall of timber, I have met with them both at a mealtime; father and child covered with the same cloak, eating the same loaf, drinking at the same bottle, with their feet resting on the same log: in the evening the father returned to the village, carrying his two trophies, the son on his head and the axe over his shoulder: or on a Sunday, seated before his door, with an old black hat on his head (his only luxury), when he dandled his little lad on his knees and smiled, happiness cast on this rough face a ray of beauty.— Your old Boyer touehes me, I replied ; he is igale and genuine. But the son: what is become of the son? J am uneasy, for your words suggest some painful drama.— You are right. Perhaps, Shakespeare’s terrible drama. The son is the husband of the tall young woman you met. On the wedding day, the father divided his property; giving his son the money in the savings-bank, and the house ; reserving however, the best room for himself, and keeping the land, the vineyard, and the coppice. I was at the wedding, and I never saw a gayer one: perhaps I was the only anxious guest. I am not satisfied with the youth: only one fault maybe, but one that includes every vice: he is weak. The daughter-in-law is dis- agreeable. She laughs, labours, and shouts; and seems to have one of those energetic but despotic IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. 81 tempers whose very cordiality is only a means of command. I could not help saying to old Boyer before I left—you have made a mistake.— In what, Monsieur le Maire P— In giving your house to your son. Since you chose to live in common, you should have taken them to lodge with you, instead of becoming their lodger. I fear you have given yourself a rough taskmaster.— My son! my master— Not your son: if he were cut out for a master, I Should not be afraid: but he is of the stuff which makes sheep, not rams. Good bye! God grant that I may be wrong.—I was not wrong— My friend stopped,.as if it was painful to go on. But (said I) what could happen to the old man? Since he had prudently retained his land, he was independent of his children. _ This was fortunate and unfortunate (said the Mayor): for it was about this very property that began the secret and bitter quarrel which still goes on. The daughter-in-law was unfit for a country life. Brought up in a little neighbouring town, she had some knowledge of business and a taste for it: a year after marriage she turned her husband’s ready money into a horse and cart, and frequented the markets to deal in poultry and cattle. By ill luck or mismanagement she got on badly, and in three months the money was gone. Another woman would have repented and stopped. She, like a true gam- bler, said to herself it is money that I want, for with that I would turn silver into gold. Thus she began to covet old Boyer’s property. But this G 82 ESSAY II. property was the old man’s life. He had not so much earned it as conquered it: conquered it inch by inch, ear by ear, vine by vine: conquered it from the very soil. When he had bought the eround, it was a common, and he had cleared it: his other land was a mass of boulders, and he unaided had turned it into a vineyard. It was more than his property, 1t was his work. Beaten by age and sixty years’ toil, he could no longer labour, but he could employ labour and see it: he only lived to watch his land, as he had lived to fertilize it. How then could he be brought to surrender it? how induced to give up talking of my meadow, or my field; to give up making his own wine, bringing home his own harvest, reaping his own corn? These obstacles, as always happens, irritated Marianne’s desires instead of extinguishing them. One day she came into his room, and at once cried out, in a voice half scolding half maternal ;— this can’t go on: you have no more pity for your poor body than for an old spade: I can’t bear to see you killing yourself with your labourers; you are mad to meddle with the work: the other day you got a cold which lasted a fortnight: one of these mornings you will be carried in with a broken arm or leg, and we shall have nothing but. vexation: I can’t let you give me such anxiety, my old father: you must really give over your property to your son. Give my property! (said the old man, terrified). — But who asks you to give itP (said she affec- tionately) the last thing we should wish. I say IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. 83 give it over, for a nice little rent. (And as the old man was going to say something) It must go to him some day I suppose: you don’t mean to disinherit him, do you? et she laughing). Of course not, but. . But what? the land will re aes just the same, you will go on managing it. My husband knows your alte too well as farmer, vinedresser, and woodsman, not to take your advice in everthing. You will lose nothing but the trouble and labour, and you will have the pleasure of seeing your land well worked. What! well worked! (said the old man piqued) does my son think himself a better farmer than I am ? If it was yourself, old father, certainly not: but it is not yourself; it 1s a parcel of lazy strangers who are getting your land out of condition. I know that you are there to direct them; but I must tell you that you have not the eyes and legs you had, to look after these fellows. You he in bed two hours later: you can’t get as far as the wood more than once a day. I don’t complain: by all means spare yourself and prolong your life; that is all we ask: but those drones take advantage of you and are ruining the property. Tell me now; how many casks of wine did you get formerly ? Hight or ten. And how many, the last two years? Three? That’s true. Formerly we reaped six bags of corn, and this year scarcely four. After more bullying and coaxing, with an allusion 84: ESSAY II. happily thrown in about a grandchild, the old man yielded. Four days afterwards, Boyer, his son and daughter-in-law, with two witnesses, appeared before a notary; to declare that the old man sur- rendered all his property to his son, on condition that for his lifetime he should be boarded and lodged, besides receiving a money payment of £16 a year. The price was a fair one, for the wife had not hageled. The notary before receiving the signatures, asked the old man three times, whether he clearly under- stood what he was doing. Seeing some hesitation and sign of regret, he said: Reflect carefully: there is time enough : in another minute it will be too late: are you quite decided P — The old man turned his hat in his hands, and bent — his head. The son looked vacant: the wife said: Heavens! decided! pray Sir, do you suppose we have forced him to come? It is he who has teased us to come: is it not father? The thing is simple: he does it from affection for his son. Then the old man looked up, and the notary again asked, are you decided ?—Yes! (said the old man) I am. . The notary then said to the son and his wife: Understand what the law is: every donation may be revoked of the provisions are not carried out, or in case of ingratitude. You understand, father Boyer ; yf the provisions are not carried out, or in case of imgratitude, every donation may be revoked. The wife rephed, laughing:—don’t be afraid Sir, that law does not touch us. In a quarter of an hour the deed was signed; in IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. 85 an hour old Boyer returned home with his children ; but he returned in the new and fatal character of their creditor. he result was shown in the beginning of this melancholy history; when the author met with the old man stopping to take breath as he staggered under his load of firewood, asking timidly for a pinch of snuff, and trembling at the imperious voice of the village Goneril. IIMS N itself, this fancy sketch proves nothing: no one doubts that many old men are weak and that some daughters-in-law are cruel: Lear was not a peasant proprietor, yet his own daughters turned him out of doors, and exposed his white head to the forked lightning. But in the next essay, M. Legouvé discusses the general topic of filial ingratitude among the French peasants. He sets out with saying that poor Boyer’s case really represents that of thousands of old men. He asserts that though the peasants who have an old father do not all drive him to the poor-box; that though many, through pride, forbid him to accept public aid; yet they leave him in such rags as to provoke private alms: that though they do not refuse him a share of their soup, yet they give him the thinnest part, with the worst place at table: that though they do not lodge him in the brewhouse, yet they put him in the smallest and darkest bed- room: that they grudge him a pair of stockings, and deny him a pennyworth of snuff, while they 86 ESSAY II. dress their daughters in silk gowns: that they do not refuse the annuity they owe him, but filch it bit by bit, and compel him to have recourse to a magistrate: that though they do not drive him to suicide, yet they poison his life with coarse re- proaches; and that though they do not openly speak of him as ‘the old gentleman who lives on,’ yet they continually reckon up his days. The author admits that there are numerous excep- tions: he has seen touching examples of kindness ; fathers well and affectionately treated, even though they were annuitants: but he asserts that ill treat- ment is so general as to be a public scandal. He asks whether the evil is incurable. Is filial ingratitude to be henceforth an endemic plague of the rural districts? Must we deem it the wretched but imevitable consequence of the new principles which regulate family life? If so, those principles are condemned. The evil however, (he says) is not a consequence of those principles, but of their tardy and incomplete development. Formerly, peasant fathers however poor, and though they had surrendered their property, were protected against filial impiety by laws and manners taken together. They had for defenders, not only religious sentiments, but the civil power, the judicial power, and the social power; that is, the clergyman, the mayor, the king’s advocate, the country gentry. The peasants were accessible to influence and to fear. ‘They knew too well the unlimited character of authority, not to tremble and crouch before the threat of a magistrate. IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. 87 At present the country people know perfectly the limits of the law: there is no alarming them with the word justice. As to rich or considerable people, the peasant is shy of them: he envies their wealth : their kindnesses hurt his pride. A sentiment which is only half blameable, since it springs from an independence of mind, leads him to resist their re- monstrances rather than be influenced by them. In short, former manners are shaken or overthrown. How is the evil to be corrected? By the develop- ment of new morals. Democracy has found its principles, but it is still in search of its morals. The next sentence is striking, as bearing directly on the subject of peasant proprietorship. We are not now discussing economical results, but moral results. M. Legouvé’s statement in that respect is distinctly unfavourable, as we shall see: he says that the morals of the country are inferior to those of the towns. ** Democratic morals have sprung up only partially, and that in the towns. We must introduce them into the country. ‘On the ruins of our former society, and in many cases with those ruins, we must found a new society, and the artisans may serve as teachers of the peasants. ‘*T one day asked a contractor whether the artisan neglects his father as the peasant does; whether he ill treats him as the peasant does; whether he drives him to the poor box as the peasant does. *** A carpenter (said he), or a joiner, behave with harshness or ingratitude towards his father? he would be kicked out of his guild.’ “‘ There, if anywhere, is the remedy. The artisan 88 ESSAY II. belongs to a guild: he lives in society: he lives under the eyes of others. He is surrounded on all sides by the great modern fact, which is our hope and safety: association. Now as soon as any class associates, its morality rises. “‘ Hvery association has a reserved fund; here 18 saving: it has a benefit society; there is charity: it has elections ; there is reward: it has a power of control ; there is blame: it has its flag; there is honour. “‘Hvery member feels a responsibility for himself and for all his fellows. In living with others, we learn to live for others as well as for ourselves. “But this community of existence is wanting to the peasant: he is a solitary animal: he works alone; he rests alone; he walks alone; and if he can read, he reads alone. He lives for himself only, because he lives with himself only. Would you raise him from his demoralization, plunge him into a com- munity. I meet with innovators who would sup- press the influence of the clergy, and even the clergy themselves: for my part I would give the clergy as many curates as there are good men within reach. Instead of shutting up the church, which is the ereat temple of meeting, and of communion (most admirable of words), I would attach to the parsonage, not only a school and an almshouse, but also a popular library, a popular lecture hall, and a benefit society: everything which unites and enlightens.” M. Legouvé concludes that association and educa- tion, in other words the development of democratic — manners and addiction to a democratic life, are the means of reconstituting domestic virtues among the rural class. IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. 89 V. | WILL recapitulate what I have written. In an earlier part of this essay, I mentioned that as a manufacturer, I had my doubts about the merits of peasant proprietorship: because, while I heard from my friends, and learnt from books, that this organization made the little owners singularly industrious and frugal, I feared that these qualities might be pushed into vices: I suspected that the peasants might become careless of all pursuits but their business, indifferent to public affairs, deaf to the calls of charity; penurious, mean, and harsh; bent on getting and saving at whatever cost. I assigned as grounds for my apprehension, that I saw among artisans, (persons of a similar rank) a certain number of self-denying and saving men, whose course of life I could not approve; since I found them sacrificmg the real well-being of them- selves and their families, to the one object of heaping up wealth: that I saw among the middle classes examples of the same sordidness, with results which appeared to me simply odious. I had long wished to know whether such vices prevailed among peasant proprietors. I had in fact, found one observer declaring that there did prevail among the young French. peasants, an undissembled and indecent impatience to inherit their father’s goods. I had met lately with a more elaborate account of the present state of affairs: I had found M. Legouvé, in his Fathers and Children, drawing a careful picture of domestic relations among the 90) ESSAY II. peasantry: to this view, unfavourable to the existing order, I was disposed to attach importance, because the author had shown elsewhere that he had not written for a political purpose, and that he was favourable to the democratic principles of ’89. M. Legouvé tells us that the peasants generally want sensibility; a characteristic however, which is found among ignorant people everywhere: he says that in one respect nevertheless, there is little to desire, I mean in parental love; but that unfortu- nately, there is no reciprocal affection, and no rever- ence, on the part of children, who commonly tease and coax their fathers mto giving up their property during their lifetime, and into making themselves dependent on an annuity, which is paid grudgingly, and filched back again. These opinions are illustrated by the case of old Boyer, who by unremitting labour and self-denial has acquired a few acres of land and a house, but has improvidently “‘ put off his shoes before he was going to bed.” M. Legouvé afterwards declares that old Boyer is only a type of a large class; and that old men are constantly ill treated by their children to whom they have surrendered their pro- perty: he believes that town artisans are far better in this respect, and that if they behaved as peasants do to their parents, they would be sent to Coventry by their fellows: he attributes the peasants’ sordid and churlish habits to the isolation of their life; and the only cure he can suggest is to get them to associate together for other occupations and amuse- ments. Now there is much in this essay which should - IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. ' 91 give us pause, before we do anything to introduce among the Irish such a system as this vaunted peasant proprietorship. The “ magic of property” indeed! Strange and black magic that, which isolates a man from his fellows, which devotes him soul and body to the pursuit of gain, which dries up all filial reverence and pity for his father’s white hairs, which drags him down far below the level of the ordinary town artisan ! Crying as are the faults of the Irish, I do not hear it said that they are wanting in filial affection. — Indeed the reverse is generally believed to be true: their friends point with exultation to the remittances from America after the famine-exodus: and it is remarkable that the stream continues to flow; for we find that last year more than half a million sterling was sent, and two-fifths of that sum in passage tickets, entailing further burdens in as- sistance to the emigrants hereafter. Should we, by peasant proprietorship, run the risk of drying up these affections? Ought we to press forward an organization which would isolate these men, and reduce them to the cold and hard state of the French peasant P Again, I hear some of my friends declaiming against the English rural organization, as oppressive to the labourer: they grudge the landlord his rent, and the farmer his profit; they would like to see rent and profit and wages, all in the hands of one man, the tiller of the soil. Now, if they look calmly at the French peasant proprietor, they may learn to doubt whether the combination of the three charac- ters in one man, does produce the good results they 92 ESSAY II. had imagined : they may suspect that our association of men is better than the French isolation. I know that many of our farm labourers are ill fed; but I find that the French peasant proprietor is no better fed: I know that our labourers are ill clothed and ill lodged; I have no reason to think that the peasant proprietors are better clothed, and I believe that many of them are worse housed. If the French standard of comfort were high, it would show itself in the condition of the mere labourer; whereas the rate of wages in France is lower than even in Wiltshire. Our rate of farm wages too, is in several counties comparatively high, and there is a decided tendency to a rise in the worst paid counties: there is no tendency that I know of, to an improvement in the condition of the peasant proprietors, except so far as they get a better market for their smaller productions through the spread of railroads. Our labourers have far better prospects before them than the French proprietors have: they have less anxiety in mature life, and a much less dismal prospect in old age. As a friend to Ireland I would far rather see an extension there of the Hnglish organization, than the introduction of small freeholds. In conclusion, I will appeal to the French author- ities. In the Journal des Economistes I find the following passage. ‘‘ The persons employed in small farming, make up for the inferiority of hand labour by excessive work, by extreme sobriety, and by rigid economy. ‘The women take an active part in field labour: the house is neglected. The only food in general, consists of bread, vegetables, poor cheese, IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. 93 and fruit. When the vinedresser is advanced in age, his frame is bent with labour, and his face is furrowed with wrinkles; but he is proud of his mdependence and of being able to drink some wine.” There is nothing flattering in this picture of exces- sive work, penurious expenditure, women labouring in the fields, an untidy household, a diet without fresh meat or even bacon, and in old age the pride of independence and sour wine. But what says Louis Blanc, the enthusiastic friend of the oppressed, the organizer of labour, the social- istic regenerator of France. ‘The excessive division of the land, will bring us back, if we are not on our guard, to the former territorial domains. It is useless to deny it: the morcellement of the soil means small farming, that is the spade instead of the plough, that is routine in the place of science. The morcellement of the soil drives away from agriculture, both machinery and capital. Without machinery there is no progress: without capital there are no cattle. How then can small undertakings resist the tendency of competition to absorb them ?” ‘“‘ Hvery small proprietor is a day labourer. His own master two days a week, he is his neighbour’s serf the rest of his time. The more he adds to his land the more is he a serf. This is how it happens: a man who owns a few miserable acres of land, which cultivated by himself, brmg him in at the most four per cent., seizes the first opportunity of rounding off his estate. He accomplishes this by borrowing the purchase money at ten or fifteen or twenty per cent.: for in the country, if credit is 94 ESSAY II. scarce, usury abounds. The result is obvious. Thirteen milliards, (more than five hundred millions sterling) are about the amount of the debts charged on the land. Thus, by the side of certain financiers who make themselves the masters of town indus- tries, there are certain usurers who make themselves masters of the soil.” Think you that Irish Celts would do better than French Celts ? PA. VI. |e we decide that peasant proprietorship is unfitted for the regeneration of Ireland, to what organ- ization shall we look ? Let us compare the case of England, by recollect- ing through what changes she has passed. Slavery has always been unknown among us: even serfdom, or villenage, disappeared at an early date in our history. Afterwards, as it seems, the large estates were farmed by the owners, through the agency of bailiffs. Then, for a short time, there prevailed the system of métayers: cultivators who were called colom partiaru ; because while the owner furnished land and some capital, and the cultivator furnished labour and some capital, the produce was _par- titioned between the owner and the cultivator: instead of a bailiff on wages, there was a métayer, who had a personal interest in good management, because part of what was produced belonged to him- self. This system has so long disappeared from IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. 95 England, that it has left no vernacular name, as Adam Smith tells us; though in his time, that is a hundred years ago, it was not extinct in Scotland ; where the name given to these cultivators was ‘ steel- bow-tenants.’ We learn from Professor Rogers’s valuable History, founded mainly on the college rolls, that the Great Plague brought about a vast change in English farming. Hven before the Plague, the colleges had let a good many of their estates instead of managing them by bailiffs; but as their tenants had not the necessary capital, they supplied these tenants with capital just as under the steel-bow system: the colleges however, did not take half or any other fraction of the produce, but took a rent for both land and capital. The Plague, by its frightful ravages, so reduced the population as to make labour scarce; and this gave to industrious people the opportunity of commanding high remuneration for their services, just as happens at present in new colonies. It is not surprising therefore, that this land-and-capital tenancy was short-lived ; and that at the end of fifty years the tenants were able to find their own capital. From that day farms have been let just as they are now. In aftertimes no doubt, a large number of yeomen owned the ground they tilled; though at what period these freeholders came into existence I do not know. At the much later period of the revolution of 1688, as Macaulay tells us, a majority of the farmers were in this condition. At present the majority of the farmers are not owners of their farms: if we put our trust in the Census of 1861, there are several times as many 96 ESSAY II. farmers as landowners; the farmers being set down as 250,000, and the proprietors as little more than 30,000; making eight farmers to one landowner. The stated number of farmers may be pretty nearly accurate: the stated number of landowners 1s certainly far from the truth; and it is so on the face of the return, since it gives more women proprietors than men. It is unquestionable that landed pro- prietors are for the most part men; and as we may believe that the women so set down are accurately classed, it follows that the greater number of the men have been overlooked. The explanation of the | omissions I believe to be this; that a man is classed in the Census according to his principal occupation : I, a manufacturer, though I may own a farm, appear as a manufacturer; you, a physician, though you may have inherited an estate and still possess it, appear as a physician. But the number of traders who are also landowners is very large: many pro- fessional men also, invest their savings in land, and this is especially true of lawyers. Thousands upon thousands of men drop in this way out of the category of landowners although they possess estates: but women who are landowners in their own right, being very seldom engaged in any occu- pation, would nearly all appear in the column of proprietors. We may therefore, believe the Census to be inno- cent of gross lying, when it tells us that the female landed proprietors amount to . . . . 15,685. But we must accuse it of aggravated mendacity when it asks us to believe that the male landed pro- prietors; amount) toyvonlyeic ‘cc 0Gh 26 dala IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. 97 What is the real number of both sexes together I can only conjecture; and in statistics, conjecture 1s a blind guide. Mr. Disraeli on one occasion called the number a quarter of a million: M. Léonce de Lavergne lately estimated it at 200,000; a number which would make the male proprietors twelve times as numerous as the female (assuming that the Census is correct as to the female). I have heard and read a good deal of declamation about the iniquity of the land-laws; by which, it is said, estates are accumulated in a few hands: if these denunciations were confined to the condemna- tion of the law of primogeniture in cases of intestacy, I should regard them as so manifestly Just as to be almost out of the reach of discussion; but since they are extended to the condemnation of all the laws which regulate the descent of land, it may be useful to inquire what are the results as shown by the size and value of estates generally. If we accept M. de Lavergne’s estimate of 200,000 owners, and if we regard these owners as each repre- senting one with another a family of five persons, we have a million persons, directly or indirectly, landed proprietors; or, at the date of the Census, one twentieth of the whole population of England and Wales. As the middle and upper classes together, do not, probably, amount to nearly a fifth of the popu- lation, we should find that of the middle and upper classes taken together one family in four was possessed. ofland. This result may perhaps suggest a doubt as to the accuracy of M. de Lavergne’s statement. If we revert to the Census, which sets down the men as about 15,000 and the women as rather more, H 98 ESSAY II. or both sexes together as about 30,000; and if we take the annual rental at 45 millions £; it follows that on the average each man and woman has £1,500 a year, or a principal of £40,000 to £50,000: if we call the number of owners 200,000, each would have only £225 a year, or a principal of £6,000 to £7,000: but as there are many large estates, and still more of a considerable size, there must also be many far below the average value, that is below £1,500 a year on the one supposition, and £225 a year on the other. Again, as to the size of the properties. Taking 24 millions of acres as the area of English and Welsh cultivated land, 30,000 proprietors would have on the average 800 acres apiece; the higher estimate of 200,000 proprietors would give on the average 120 acres apiece: again recollecting the prevalence of large and considerable estates, we see that the 800 acres, or the 120 acres, must be greatly reduced in the case of a large number of owners. On the question what is the number of owners, I express no opinion; my studies of facts and figures, having rendered me deaf to Conjectural Statistics: all I say is that as there are nearly 16,000 female landowners, there must be very far more than 16,000 male landowners, and very far more than 32,000 landowners of both sexes. One conclusion I do arrive at: that the size and value of estates, one with another, are not such as to justify vehement denunciations of modern engrossing of land. When we compare our own case with that of Rome under the Empire, when a single patrician would have estates so large as to give employment IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. 99 to thousands of slaves, the size of our landed pro- perties seems comparatively modest. Now let us see how it has happened that a farmer consents to live on the estate of another, instead of cultivating his own little patrimony: why he has sold this, and made himself dependent on a landlord. I have long looked at this question with interested eyes, because my own progenitors were Worcester- shire freeholders, who from generation to generation cultivated their paternal acres; but who, a hundred years ago, sold the property, and with the proceeds established the son as a manufacturer in the neigh- _bourmg town of Birmingham. I am myself the eldest son of the eldest son who became the manu- facturer; and if I may assume, what I certainly cannot prove, that under different circumstances he who is now writing would have come into existence, then the estate unsold would have de- volved upon me; and I have missed the satisfaction of being a gentleman farmer on a very small scale. But much as I delight in a rural life, I cannot say that I lament what I have lost; since the lot of a small farmer does not appear to me an enviable one: and if to the eldest son there is nothing to regret, to the younger sons and the daughters there is great cause for rejoicing; since they have escaped from a position in which one of the family took everything, and find themselves in a position where all the members fare alike. Suppose however, that my grandfather, instead of becoming a trader, had become a tenant farmer, and had applied the proceeds of the estate to the pur- chase of cattle and implements and seed. He would, 100 ESSAY II. no doubt, have lost the gratification of feeling that the soil he trod on was his own: on the other hand, he would have enjoyed the advantages of conducting a farm on a large scale instead of a small one, and of being able to make some provision for all his children, instead of making over everything to his eldest son, while turning the others out to seek their fortunes. Let us see what is the pecuniary advantage at the present day, if a small freeholder makes such a change. Take the case of a very small estate; one of 50 acres; and one which has escaped mortgage and family charges: say that the land is good enough, so well situated, and so much improved, as to justify a rent of £2 an acre, or £100 a year for the whole; and that a neighbouring landowner would give at least £3,000 for it: say further that £6 an acre would stock the farm indifferently. The income-tax schedules, as arranged by Sir R. Peel in 1842, assess farmers’ profits at half the rent ; and on fair land such as is here supposed, farmed by the owner, this is probably a liberal estimate: the freeholder’s income would therefore be . . oO’acres ab... .. .: (241) periacre = 1150; The price of the estate when sold would be, as I have assumed, £3,000; and as the farmer on selling, would withdraw his farming capital of £300, he would have at command £3,000 + £300 = £3,300. With this sum he could, as a tenant farmer, stock at least 500 acres of land such as we are dealing with; and as his rent would be £1,000, his profit would bes) ba cist 9’ Suyseud Bad “ghandcal eee Op But his income as a freeholder-farmer was only £150. Therefore, he is better off after the change by £350. IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. 101 That is, his income would grow more than three- fold by his change from freeholder to tenant. Why this happens is easily seen. Land is eagerly desired by the rich: they will therefore give for it a greater price than for other property yielding the same income; for together with the land they get local importance, and a delightful sense of visible and palpable possession. These pleasures are super- fluities which a poor man cannot afford, any more than he can afford a magnificent hunter. If such a horse has come by bequest, he may be unwilling to sell 1t; and much more natural is it to cling to a paternal farm: but a prudent man will place a com- petency and the well being of his family, above even so respectable a sentiment as attachment to an hereditary estate. I will reverse my case, by supposing that I advise a successful tenant farmer to give up his holding and buy a little estate. Why? That he may cease to call anyone his master, and get rid of risks. And what income will he have? INoweaprincipal tm Gai eer co fy Ped, a00. Then Ee he ah sen SR he wame Noweameomen 4 3.27 Pra 2 to 500: hens 4), run ary: L150): The jolly farmer stares at me, and says of me afterwards, that I am one of those scholars who know as much about farming as farmers know of Hebrew. Master indeed! He will have his baker and his tax collector for his masters when he can’t pay them out of his £3 a week to live on; and as for risk, the first bad season would make him mortgage his estate. 102 ESSAY II. I am surprised to find grave and practised econo- mists overlooking these considerations. Hven the late Mr. Nassau Senior, a man imbued with the purest and hardest notions of political science, in- dulged in sentimental regrets at the diminution of small properties; blinding himself to the fact that the change inevitably accompanies the advance of society in wealth and intelligence: he might as well maunder over the disappearance of the fidelity and self-devotion which were formerly found among the Highland Clans. | I have assumed that the estate in question is free from mortgage, but in reality this is improbable: some progenitor, pressed by bad seasons, by a large family, or by improvident habits, will have raised £1,000 or £1,500 on the property; and the interest will reduce the income to a starving point: yet when the estate is sold, the proceeds, after paying off the mortgage, may be enough to stock a con- siderable farm. It will be conceded that small estates must inev- itably change hands from time to time; but it will be asked why they should not be bought by persons of moderate means; and why, on the contrary, they should be commonly bought by great landowners, who seem bent on possessing whole counties. If persons of moderate means are the buyers, the num- ber of estates may remain unchanged, though the owners vary. I reply that in a great many instances it does happen that traders, and lawyers of both branches, do invest their savings in this way. On the other hand, a great landowner has a stronger motive than anyone else for buying parcels of land - IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. 103 contiguous to his own; and if during a minority money has accumulated, or if by unusual prudence of an owner the same thing has happened, a price will be given that puts competition out of the question. I heard of a case in which a young nobleman offered a small owner to fix the worth of his property by valuation, and to give three times that estimate: the owner, being engaged in a suc- cessful business, and valuing the estate as being that of his progenitors, declined to sell it at what- ever price, and it is still held by his family. But if the property had been on sale, the nobleman would have had it. The regularly repeated settlements of large estates, generally protects them from division ; and the pretty frequent purchases of small estates by the great owners, tends to lessen the number. A friend well qualified to judge, tells me that in his opinion, these settlements, though they keep estates from changing hands, yet do not diminish © the number of owners, but actually increase the number: because, if hereditary estates were offered for sale, they would be bought up by millionaires, who could not be prevented from engrossing a number of them. ‘This will be esteemed a paradox: but I certainly have known several cases of successful traders, who have each of them bought many con- siderable estates; and this greed for land could not have been gratified if those properties had been in settlement. The absence of settlement has substi- tuted one millionaire for several former owners. In my previous calculations I may be thought to have put farming profits too high; I have not how- ever, fixed the rate rashly, but after careful dis- 104 ESSAY II. cussion with the accomplished friend I have men- tioned above, who is a great land-agent. In reck- oning the farmer’s income, I have mcluded what he earns by skill and by superintending his subordi- nates, as well as the whole of his profit on capital (not deducting 5 per cent. for terest on capital as is done before profit is reckoned): I have com- pared the whole income obtainable by owning and farming the small estate, with the whole income obtainable by selling the small estate and investing the proceeds in tenant farming. I have reason to believe that a tenant farmer, fairly situated, may earn an income equal to 15 per cent. on the moderate capital he employs. I have thus, for the purpose of comparison, traced the progress of the tenure of land in England: I have noticed that, at an early period, slavery and even serfdom having disappeared, estates were cul- tivated by bailiffs and free labourers for the benefit of the landlord; the produce, in the case of College owners, being sold, and not consumed by the land- lord himself in feeding a host of armed retainers: I have pointed out that afterwards, the bailiffs were turned into tenants, to whom the landlords supplied capital as well as land, charging a fixed rent for both: I have mentioned that the bailiff-tenants, in the course of half a century, had contrived to accumulate or borrow capital for themselves, and had succeeded in taking their farms just as they do now. We see therefore, that the existing practice may plead in its favour the experience of centuries. I have added however, that in 1688, according to Macaulay, a majority of the farmers were also free- IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. 105 holders; though it must not be concluded from this, without further investigation, that the greater part of the land was cultivated by freeholder-farmers, since it might turn out that the great estates were often let to ereat farmers, and that one great farmer might hold as much land as ten average freeholder-farmers. Ina particular district you might have 10 tenant farmers holding.together . . #2 oven, 10,000-acres and 50 freeholder-farmers olaien feseuher 2,500 acres: five times as many freeholders as tenants, but holding together only half as much land. All I state there- fore, is that in 1688, according to Macaulay, farmers were for the most part freeholders: I do not state that in 1688, the land of England was for the most part cultivated by the owners. I have inquired how it has come to pass that the freeholder-farmers have been mostly replaced by tenants, and how far the engrossing of land has gone. I have censured the credulity of those who, trusting the bare figures of the Census, have believed that the present landowners are about 30,000, and who have failed to remark that if the Census is to be taken without correction, a majority of landowners are women. I have quoted the statement of M. Léonce de Lavergne, that the number is about 200,000; though I have declined to commit myself to this or any other result of Conjectural Statistics : limiting myself to this opinion; that as the female landowners are probably about 15,000 or 16,000, the male landowners must be many times that number. : I have then calculated what must be the average area and the average rental of the estates; first on 106 ESSAY II. the estimate of 30,000 owners, and secondly on the estimate of 200,000 owners. I find that on the former supposition, the average estate would consist of 800 cultivated acres, with a rental of £1,500, and that on the latter supposition, the average estate would consist of EO sh 120 cultivated acres, with a rental of £225. Finally, I have expressed my surprise at finding political economists regretting the present English organization; which, as I have shown, is eminently favourable to the material well being of the farmer ; who, while continuing a freeholder, contents himself with 3 per cent. when he might get 15 per cent., and condemns himself to pme on £100 or £150 a year, when he might flourish on £500 a year. I might have also asked these political economists, how it 1s they fail to appreciate this striking application of the division of labours, or distribution of employments : how it is they sigh over arrangements, under which the rich landlord satisfies himself with a low rate of interest supplemented by the pleasures of pos- session, while the industrious tenant gets a fair rate of profit and can provide for his family as well as for himself. These considerations have led me to the belief, that our present organization, commenced centuries ago and growing from one generation to another, is well adapted to English life; and distributes the property of the country in such a way as to cause an abundant productiveness, while it secures the highest rate of remuneration to the industrious classes; who give up the pride of possession and receive the more im- portant gifts of competence and comfort. The land- IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. 107 lord takes 3 per cent., the farmer takes 15 per cent. The farmer, no doubt, works for his income, but so he did when he was owner as well as farmer. The labourer however, say some, is crushed between the two millstones; between the landlord and the farmer. I answer that by the acknowledge- ment of all, the peasant proprietor of the Continent, as compared with our labourer, works harder, is worse fed and is as ill lodged. I may add that English farm wages even in the worst districts have risen in a century at least as much as the cost of living has risen; and in most districts far more than the cost of living has risen: while there is no reason but the ignorance and apathy of the men themselves, (ignorance and apathy soon to disappear) why wages should not rise still further, and to such a degree as will make our labourers the envy of the continental peasants. Schools, railroads, half-time Acts, will harass the farmer into adopting machinery, and will raise the labourer to the mental level of the mechanic, while leaving the labourer the preéminent advantages of out door labour and pure air. ** But look at the independence of the peasant, and contrast it with the serflike condition of our labourer.” I answer that in a previous Part of this essay I have shown what this boasted independence is: that I have appealed to a French writer, himself a democrat, who tells us that the peasant proprietors are narrow minded, intent only on gain, selfish, penurious, pre- maturely covetous of their hereditary acres, and cruelly neglgent of their fathers’ old age. M. Legouvé adds that in moral excellence they are far below the town mechanics; and he attributes this 108 ESSAY Il. inferiority to that very independence which we are asked to admire. If, he says, a mechanic were to treat his old father after the peasant fashion, he would be sent to Coventry: but the peasant is so cut off from the world around him, he lives so entirely for himself, his son, and his minute property, that there is no public opinion, or even class opinion, to coerce him. This may be called Independence, vt vs Isolation. I believe then, that our system of landlord, farmer, and tenant, while, in accordance with the law of division of labours, it seems the best distribution of employments, is also more favourable to the moral condition of the most numerous class, than is the system of peasant proprietors. Our better distri- bution of employments results of course in a higher productiveness, whether the gross or the net yield © be taken. Mr. Caird has lately told us, as to the eross produce of wheat, that while the English average 1s 28 bushels an acre, the French is only 16: an astonishing inferiority in a country possessing every advantage of soil and climate. Vil. te peasant proprietorship and permanent settlement promise few advantages, what other organizations does the world offer for our consideration? In all these inquiries I set aside America, because its inde- finite supply of unoccupied fertile land, takes it out of the category of settled countries. From Russia also I believe we can learn nothing; because of the industrial anarchy caused by the recent and incom- IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. 109 plete emancipation of the serfs: a revolution which _ may take generations to compose, if we compare the case with that of Prussia, where, after Stein’s far milder experiment, it required fifty years to restore agricultural prosperity. France is the country of which we know most; and her peasant proprietors have already engaged our attention, and have been dismissed as unworthy of imitation. But it would be a mistake to suppose that nearly all the land there is divided among small holders. It would be equally erroneous to imagine the system to be of recent date. Arthur Young men- tions that in certain provinces he found districts cut up into morsels, some of them so small as to be covered each by a single spreading tree. This was about the year 1789, Young having been all but present at the taking of the Bastille; and the mor- cellement therefore, was not originated by the social earthquake then commencing, though it was extended by the consequent confiscation of noble estates, the secularization and sale of church property, the abolition of the old land-laws, and the substitution of the Code Napoléon, which compulsorily divided among the children the property of a deceased father. Indeed we know from Adam Smith that the greater part of France was otherwise cultivated: and he is one of the few authors whom we may implicitly trust ; especially in the present case, since he resided long in France with the young Duke of Buccleuch, and this for a considerable time away from Paris, by which means he saw with his own eyes what he tells us. He says that five-sixths of the land were farmed 110 ESSAY II. by métayers: the landlord supplying the land, and all or part of the capital, and receiving in most cases half the produce instead of our rent and interest. Since the métayers occupied five-sixths, there was only one-sixth left for cultivators on other tenures, including peasant proprietors. What proportion is now owned by peasants I can- not say; but it is not such as to exclude extensive holdings of other kinds. In La Beauce for example, a district south of Paris, there are considerable estates held in the English fashion by tenant farmers; and as we are told, with the satisfactory results of a productiveness far above that of France generally, and of wages much higher than the miser- able 6s. a week of other departments. But a larger proportion is still held on the métayer system, @ motié fruit : 1b is even said that that system prevails through a third of France; especially in the south- west and the centre, while in the north-west it is uncommon. Peasant proprietorship is not peculiar to France, but is common in parts of Germany and elsewhere. Métayers also are numerous: indeed we are told that setting aside France and Russia, half of the re- mainder of the Continent is farmed by métayers. That the system is ancient is no proof that it is bad: on the contrary, its long continuance proves it to have been suitable to the actual requirements of the population. That it has been unknown and nameless in England for centuries, is no proof that it is bad; though the very high productiveness of English agriculture, raises a strong presumption in favour of the superiority of our organization; espe- IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. iit cially since we find such a distribution of the produce as gives a larger income to landowners, farmers, and even labourers, than is enjoyed by the corresponding classes in other countries. It seems however, that thé métayer system is approved of under some circumstances. In the — Netherlands, the province of Holland is still farmed in this way, and both the landlords and the tenants are reported to be contented. Another example is given by that eminent writer Sismondi, who was a bitter censor of the English system; having, as it seems, been misled by forming his opinions when this country was out of joint, through the long wars with Napoleon, followed by the fall of prices after 1815, and the deep agricultural distress which en- sued. Sismondi, noticing the tranquillity and com- parative happiness of Tuscany, and finding that the métayer system prevailed there, hastily concluded that that system caused the prosperity of the country. Far more recently, a learned friend of mine, when staying at Florence, had the same opinion propounded to him by a competent authority. Very lately however, a writer of authority pro- nounces against the Tuscan farming; stating that the land is cut up into small lots; that though the soil is naturally fertile it actually produces little; that the peasant gets nothing so good as bread, but only beans, which he washes down with a remainder- wine called acquarello, probably from its marked predominance of water. These people may be con- tented, but they would be better described as resigned to destitution. How would such a practice suit the more manly English? the basis of whose greatness ie ESSAY Il. is an eminently productive agriculture, that coaxes and compels the land to render its treasures, if not to the utmost, at any rate to a high degree. Besides; let the métayer system be judged by what it has done in other countries. I have quoted Adam Smith, as saymg that in his time the system prevailed over five-sixths of France. What sort of prosperity and content resulted, we may learn from the history of Maurepas, Calonne, and Necker; of the Notables and the States-General; of the capture of the Bastille, of the Septembrists, and the bloody doings of the guillotine. These appalling incidents might indeed have oc- curred under any system of farming tenure; though there is a violent presumption against the prevalent system in an agricultural country, when we find the lower classes outside the towns, seizing opportunities of rising on the nobles, of ravaging and massacring, unrestrained by any middle class. If we are curious to see the landowners and their dependents making their bargains and fulfilling them, we may satisfy ourselves by turning over the pages of Arthur Young, a writer quoted as trustworthy, not only by his own countrymen, but by such Frenchmen as De Tocqueville. Arthur Young, as an Englishman, may have been prejudiced against a foreign practice; and as a liberal (unperverted at that time by the doings of Danton and Marat and Robespierre) he may have been prepossessed against the customs of Old France: on the other hand, as a tenant farmer and an unsuccessful one, he painfully felt whatever evils grew out of the English customs of landlord and tenant; and as a man of a pliant and IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. PhS candid intellect, he would have seen any obvious advantages presented to him. Moreover, he gives us statements by which we may judge for ourselves: here is an example. “Métayers. This is the tenure under which, per- haps, seven-eighths of the lands of France are held; it pervades almost every part of Sologne, Berry, &c. In Champagne there are many at tier franc, which is the third of the produce, but in general it is half. The landlord commonly finds half the cattle and half the seed; and the métayer finds labour, implements and taxes; but in some districts the landlord bears a share of these. Near Falaise, in Normandy, I found métayers, where they should least of all be looked for, on the farms which gentlemen keep in their own hands; the consequence there is every gentleman’s farm must be precisely the worst culti- vated of all the neighbourhood: this disgraceful circumstance needs no comment. At Nangis in the Isle of France, I met with an agreement for the landlord to furnish live stock, implements, harness, and taxes; the métayer found labour and his own capitation tax :—the landlord repaired the house and gates; the métayer the windows :—the landlord pro- vided seed the first year; the métayer the last; in the intervening years they supply half and half. Produce sold for money is divided. Butter and cheese used in the métayer’s family, to any amount, compounded for at 5s. a cow. In the Bourbonnois the landlord finds all sorts of live stock; yet the meétayer sells, changes, buys, at his will; the steward keeping an account of these mutations, for the land- lord has half the produce of sales, and pays half the I 114 ESSAY II. purchases. The tenant carts the landlord’s half of the corn to the barn of the chateau, and comes again to take the straw.” What perplexity! what room for fraud on the part of the farmer, and corruption on the part of the steward! I do not wonder at Young’s comment :— “‘ the consequences of this absurd system are striking ; land which in England would let at 10s., pays about 2s. 6d. for both land and live stock.” But this system still exists through a large part of France; and a recent writer has told us the present results as to the district of Périgord, in the south west, now included in the Department of Dordogne. The condition of the métayers, says the writer, as to material well being, is fair: the principal food being like that of English labourers, good bread made of wheat flour, without mixture of oatmeal or potatoes. Indian corn is used for the fowls, and little buck-wheat is grown. Some rye is raised for the sake of the straw. Wine, which is one of the principal productions of Périgord, is found on every table; most of the métayers producing it for them- selves, selling a little sometimes, but generally drinking the whole, as well as a piquette, which is to wine what our very small beer is to ale. Some pork is eaten, and especially in winter: also the flesh of numerous geese preserved in jars. There is this sin- gularity in the diet: that neither butter nor even milk is ever tasted; the cows being used as draught cattle, instead of oxen and horses: and the peasant smiles contemptuously when he is told that in other districts milk is regarded as necessary. The food then, of these métayers is about as good IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. ILA, as that of our Lincolnshire labourers, and far inferior to that of our burly farmers; who would look with contempt on the occasional pork and pickled geese, and would I fear call that piquette by the expressive name of rot-gut. Moreover, these people are sunk in the depths of ignorance, and have not even a desire for instruc- tion. Our farmers, like too many of their landlords, are no friends to the education of their labourers ; but farmers as well as landlords desire instruction for their own sons. The Périgord métayers, pressed to send their little ones to school, are full of excuses: the roads are bad, the children are wanted in the fields, or they have no fit clothes: in short, education is undervalued or disliked. In some families con- sisting of grandfather, father, and children, not one will be found able to read. Agriculture is in a backward state, and the métayers have no desire to improve it. The soil is ploughed and sown, in the primitive mode, with old fashioned implements. Advice is thrown away, civilly heard and forgotten. Such was the métayer system in Arthur Young’s days, and such it is now. It is interesting to find the matter turning up in a novel. Balzac is not often read for instruction, nor would he be recom- mended to the student of Political Heonomy ;_ but incidentally the tenure of land finds its place. In his Lys de la Vallée, he enters into many details, after his usual fashion. The Chatelaine, who repre- sents his favourite character of a suffering angel, has taken the management of the estate out of the hands of her diseased and morbid-minded husband. 116 ESSAY II. Hitherto, the land has been cultivated by métayers ; but the lady, oppressed by the inevitable details, makes great efforts to introduce our practice of landlord and tenant with a fixed rent. Balzac was not a reader of English, which indeed he did not understand; nor was he affected, as far as I know, by an Anglomanie: he treated the conversion of métayers into tenant farmers, as a change manifestly for the better and needing no apology. I hardly imagine that the wildest innovator would propose to introduce the métayer practice into Ireland. What other systems then, do we find in countries where the fertile land is all occupied? In Russia till lately we found serfage very general, and even now it is far from being abolished. In Germany itself serfage was common at the beginning of the present century. No one thinks of reducing the lively Irish to this stagnant condition. Both in Russia and Germany, in abolishing serfage, the governments, I believe, have constituted large numbers of peasant proprietors. I have assigned my reasons for believing that this system is unfit for Treland. I have shown how even in England, a com- paratively thrifty country, small estates have ceased to be held and cultivated by their owners: I have pointed out that a man can get only 3 per cent. by an investment in land, while he can get 15 per cent. by using the same money in farming. But the Irish peasant 1s poorer and more thriftless than the English small farmer: how then can we recommend to the destitute and improvident, a practice which has gradually died out among the comparatively easy and frugal ? IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. elegy, It is conceded that the Irish are improvident: but this, it is said, is the result of their unfortunate cir- cumstances: to cure the vice, confer on them the satisfaction and the responsibilities of property ; and like the continental peasants they will become indus- trious and prudent. That the continental peasants are industrious and frugal no one disputes: that they are on the whole prudent I do not dispute; though a large deduction from their alleged wisdom must be made, for the acknowledged fact of the extravagant amount of mortgages with which their holdings are burdened. A great part of the money thus owing is, I believe, borrowed for the purpose of buying addi- tional land: but I am convinced that an Irish peasant would find many excellent pretexts for mortgaging, besides the passion for further possession. The French peasant is of an unfruitful race, little blessed or troubled with a numerous offspring: the Irish peasant has a fruitfulness such as would earn the congratulations of the Psalmist. Peasant proprietorship has grown wp in France: it existed a century, or centuries ago: it grew after the revolution, and is rooted in the soil. It 1s now pro- posed to introduce it suddenly into Ireland. To make it succeed, there must be an equally sudden change in the habits of the people. Itis hard to believe that this sudden change would take place. We can judge of its probability by recollecting what does happen when the same peasants are placed under circum- stances entirely new, with a perfect freedom from old associations, and with the greatest opportunities of worldly success: we know that in the United States, the crowds of Irish immigrants retain their native 118 ESSAY Il. peculiarities, and do not become the prudent, self- restrained people, which they must needs become to be successful proprietors. A sudden and radical change is not to be hoped for; no! not even under the magic influence of property: and without a sudden and radical change the peasant properties would not survive the first generation. I have besides, expressed an opinion, founded on the statements of French democratic thinkers, that peasant proprietorship in its full vigour, is in one important respect highly objectionable: that it makes men over-fond of getting and saving; that it renders them narrow, selfish, grasping, negligent of filial piety, indifferent to the good opinion of their neigh- bours; with a frugality that runs into penuriousness, and an independence that ends in isolation. We may well shrink from the prospect of the open hearted and kindly Irish turned into cold, mggardly, money- oerubbers. I do not believe that the change is possible: I am quite sure that if it were possible it would be hateful. An ‘‘heroic remedy’ indeed, which would convert a generous nation into a nation of misers ! One other organization has been suggested: that of tenants in perpetuity at a fixed rent: the equiva- lent of that which is: known in Bengal as the ‘*Permanent Settlement.” This measure of Lord Cornwallis has led to singular differences of opinion: it has been extolled by some as a great example of political wisdom; it has been condemned by others as a shortsighted sacrifice of future wealth to present tranquility. Lord Cornwallis will still be esteemed a creat and good Governor, even though this measure a - / IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. 119 should fall into discredit: and I think it tolerably certain that such will be its fate; and that the re- monstrances and protest of Sir Joseph Shore (Lord Teignmouth) will prove to have been well founded. Let us suppose that a hundred years ago, the agricultural rents of England had been payable to government instead of to noblemen and country gentlemen: that the farmers of that time were dis- satisfied because the amount of their rent was variable, and they themselves were thus at the mercy of capricious or corrupt assessors and collectors, who noted every improvement as an excuse for an in- creased demand. Say that to correct these evils, a statesman such as the second Pitt, a follower of Adam Smith and a great peace minister, had procured an Act to the effect that a fair rent for every farm should at once be fixed, and should not from that time be raised. This would have been a Permanent Settlement. It is probable that a great immediate good would have been effected: that a change would have fol- lowed, such as that which was seen after the English commutation of tithes; and on a greater scale, in France, after the removal of the taille: that the farmers, who before the Settlement refused to im- prove their ground, knowing that increased produce meant a rise of rent, would now drain and fence and earnestly till their fields, secure of themselves enjoying the fruits of their industry. We may imagine that the productiveness of farming, low before the Settlement, rose rapidly and reached by the present day, its actual comparatively high standard. Say that the aggregate rental from 120 ESSAY II. being 20 millions £ rose to 45 millions £, giving a surplus of 25 millions £ to the tenants in chief. Who would these tenants in chief be? The lapse of time would have carried off the original holders, and perhaps their sons and grandsons: the land would have passed into the hands of other owners, some of them descendants, some of them buyers of the interests in the land. In some cases the tenants in chief might still farm the land: in most cases they would have let it to poorer persons and would live on the surplus rent; the annual 25 millions £ being an ample sum to maintain a large landed aristocracy. In short our position would be nearly what it now is, except that the landlords would have to pay to the Treasury, 20 millions £ as a Land-Tax. We are told that in Bengal under the Permanent Settlement, this process has taken place: the original tenants in chief have long ago disappeared; their lands held at a fixed rent have passed into the possession of descendants or purchasers; these new owners are able to let the lands at rents far higher than those which they pay under the Settlement, and do in fact let them and live on the surplus rent. We can easily see that the tenants in chief, now become Middlemen, have a strong interest in main- tainng the public peace; and in supporting the British government, under which their title to the surplus rent 1s secure; whereas any native conquering power would probably seize the lands, or at any rate exact a larger portion of the whole rents. There must also be a tendency to foster improvements ; because both the middlemen and their dependents are free from the paralysing dread of being oppressed IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. 121 by government officials. The Settlement is mani- festly favourable both to political quiet and to in- creased productiveness. But if the Cornwallis Settlement was intended to be a measure for permanently raising the condition of the ryot-cultivators, it was ill planned; because it made no effectual provision for preventing the tenants in chief from subletting their lands on terms however oppressive. We are told that in fact the present ryots are squeezed by the middlemen to the utmost: that they live in the greatest poverty; and that inured to misery, they resign themselves to a mode of life in which the barest necessaries fall to their share. Apply this to Ireland: imagine the present culti- vators made permanent tenants, subject to the payment of a fair, estimated rent. Probably, there would be much immediate satisfaction. But how long would it be before these tenants in chief began to sublet their lands to others? Where improve- ments followed the security given to the tenant, there might be room for two rents: where there were no improvements the rackrent would be ex- acted from the misery of the under-tenants. A Permanent Settlement in Ireland would be a measure for the reéstablishment of Middlemen; and as readers of Miss Edgeworth we know what Irish Middlemen are. Again: it is notorious that an Irishman, unre- strained by landlord and agent, will inevitably grant a corner of his land to a son who wants to marry. At present the resource is emigration; but this would probably almost cease, and population would 12 ESSAY II. grow as before, to be periodically thinned by famine and pestilence; renewing those frightful pictures of gaunt men, emaciated women and pining infants, which froze our blood twenty years ago. In con- versation with a friend who is a considerable Irish landlord, I asked him what was to prevent the recurrence of these horrors; he replied that under the provisions of the Poor Law, every landowner is careful to prevent the settlement’ of unnecessary persons in a district, and that therefore the old multiplication of paupers is impossible. In one of Mr. Nassau Senior’s diaries the same notion is presented in this form; that the use of a landlord is to keep down population. But remove the landlord, give the present tenant unchecked command over his holding, and the landlord becomes a mere unproduc- tive consumer, with no duties to perform, and with no power to restrain undue growth of population. An Irish Permanent Settlement then, might be politically useful: at first by satisfying the peasants ; afterwards by creating a class of middlemen, enriched by rackrents, and having therefore strong motives for supporting the imperial government, and dreading a repeal of the union and the possible establishment of a Fenian republic, as changes pregnant with danger to their invidious incomes. But in the ultimate interests of the many such a Settlement would probably be injurious and even fatal; since it would raise up a class of rackrenters, enslaved to Middlemen by arrears of rent, dependent on the precarious potato crop, with no hope of rising above the low social level now existing, and exposed to an imminent danger of falling far below it. IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. 123 Happily, Great Britain has long ceased, as the governing nation, to be content to purchase political peace at the expense of the social happiness of the subject race. We will bear with discontent, dis- affection, ingratitude, insult, Fenianism, civil war itself; rather than for the sake of a treacherous repose, we will give over the Irish peasants a helpless prey to a new race of middlemen; rather than we will have at our doors a nation of white Bengalese ryots; rather than we will live in the dread of other Irish famines to haunt our dreams and poison our waking thoughts. VIII. CONCLUSION. | fie a these premisses I conclude, that the various remedies proposed furnish little hope of curing the deepseated diseases of Ireland. I by no means dispute the general opinion that some changes of law are required: I believe that tenant right may be beneficially adjusted and extended, and that probably the general law of landlord and tenant should be amended. I cannot willingly put in the same category and treat in the same legal fashion, the English tenant who enters on a farm in perfect condition, and who during his tenancy calls on his landlord to do all substantial repairs; and secondly, the Irish tenant who reclaims a piece of bog, and pays a rent for nothing but the permission to do this. Conceding so much, I still protest against the introduction of Peasant Proprietorship, and Perma- 124: ESSAY II. nent Settlement, as organizations tending to social injury and moral corruption. The Irish disease is, I fear, too deep and too chronic to be cured by ‘heroic remedies,’ or by any speedy remedies. As we learn from an excellent translation by Dr. Hodgson, the sagacious Count Cavour laid his finger on the morbid spot; and said truly, that there must needs be dissatisfaction in a country where Protestant Saxons possess the lands, and Roman Catholic Celts till them. The peasants may retort upon us what we have bitterly said of them; that we are to them aliens in blood, aliens in language, and aliens in religion. Vary your tenure as you please, and the incompatibility remains. Though the Orange arrogance of a century ago has been much diluted; though the rollicking, claret- drinking, duelling landlords, have adopted the decent manners of other countries; though the squireen has lost his strong peaty flavour; yet there still remain the two hostile camps, consisting of Protestant land- lords and Roman Catholic peasants. Nothing short of spoliation, confiscation, revolution; a French ’89 or an American ’61; will essentially alter these un- happy conditions. I leave it to others to preach civil war and bloodshed: my own peaceful pursuits, and my convictions formed by the teachings of history, make me prefer the ills we have to the uncertain- ties and horrors of heroic remedies. Since then, none of the measures proposed com- mend themselves to my understanding; since I cannot see any way in which government can advantageously intervene, unless in such ordinary legislation as the amendment of tenant right and of IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. 5 the power of distraining for rent; nothing appears to me to remain but to leave matters to their natural course; and to protect landlords and farmers and labourers in concluding their own bargains. If the working classes are so far advanced in industry and prudence as to fit them to be peasant proprietors or uncontrolled occupiers on rent, then they must be well able to take care of themselves in the far simpler affairs of taking a farm in the English fashion, or in hiring themselves to a farmer ; and happily they have a resource always at hand in emigration, which can be now effected with a facility and certainty of success, quite unknown when there were no brothers or cousins to receive them in a foreign land. It is strange that this application of the non-interference principle, should be opposed mainly by the very men who, in the anti-corn-law agitation, proclaimed as the Magna Charta of industrious men the principle that Government should abstain from meddling with private affairs. If the relation of landlord and tenant were peculiar to Ireland; if it had not worked satis- factorily for hundreds of years in Hngland; if it had not superseded the métayer system in some of the best cultivated parts of France; if it were not found in every fully peopled country ; if it were inconsistent with the great and undisputed principle of the division of labours; there might be a specious argument in favour of interference. But since the organization of landlord and farmer and labourer, is found to pro- duce the greatest productiveness and to furnish the highest material well being to all classes, while the inter-dependence which it produces, results in a higher moral condition than follows from the so- 126s ESSAY II. called independence, but real isolation, attending the systems recommended; on what grounds can Irishmen rest a claim for the British legislature to interpose ? and why should they desire to be set free from the economical laws of Europe ? I know how easy it is to sneer at one who believes in the system of his own country: how easy to represent him as the slave of a narrow patriotism : as an Epicier and a Philistine, who looks round the narrow circle of his own experience, and pronounces that whatever 1s, is right. It is not so easy, though it is quite as just, to sneer at those who are bent on earning a reputation for liberality by maintaining that whatever is, is wrong: who without anxiously balancing conflicting arguments, underrate or con- demn the practices of their own country; and apply their understanding, not to a search after truth, but to a search after those considerations which will sup- port a foregone conclusion. A man who writes to please himself, may safely try to steer his course between these extremes; and having laboured to work out the truth, may bear with equanimity the stock sarcasms of unthinking partisans. Some persons, democrats like myself, persist in dangling before our eyes the example of the United States, where tenant-farming is almost unknown; where everyone can plant himself on an allotment, and in a few years, with the help of his family, become the unincumbered possessor of a competent estate. Such thinkers forget, what it is difficult to keep always in mind, that the existence of an indefi- nite expanse of fertile and unoccupied land, broadly distinguishes the American case from our own. ‘ | IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. Oe To correct that error, let it be imagined that in imitation of the recent Dutch scheme for reclaiming the Zuyder Zee from the ocean, sea-dykes were constructed from Cape Clear to the Land’s End, and from Port Patrick to Carrickfergus: that the Trish Channel were thus converted: into a lake; and that subsequently, this lake being drained were turned into fertile land. The conception of such a utopia, ought not to be difficult in an age when Manchester can carry on a conversation with San Francisco and Calcutta; and when it is proposed to give us the means of passing dryshod from Dover to Calais. | Disregarding other consequences, let us see what would be the probable result as to our farming arrangements; and how rent, profit, and wages would be affected. Young men looking out for farms, would rush to the Channel-Country, where for £100 they could have a good estate. They would offer high wages to labourers. The older farmers, threatened with the loss of their plough- men and wagoners, would raise their wages; just as they now do if great towns grow up in their neighbourhood, and compel them to give 15s. or 17s. instead of 10s. or 12s. The landlords would soon feel the effects. At present, the suburban farmers recoup themselves the additional 5s. a week wages, by their facilities in finding customers and manure at their very doors: under the assumed change, the additional wages would have to come out of rent. Worse than this; the landlords, instead of having a score of applicants for a vacant farm, would find themselves with a score of farms waiting 128 ESSAY II. for an applicant: and the rents would probably fall to such a rate as would pay a fair interest on buildings and improvements, together with a considerable addition for proximity to markets. The actual condition of the United States is something like what I have sketched; with this addition, that the agriculturists, having grown up without the habit of paying rent, regard it with antipathy as something like a badge of servitude; and have in certain cases moved heaven and earth, even to the corrupting of their judiciary, in order to get rid of the rights of landlords. It is futile then, in the absence of my utopian Channel-Country, to compare Great Britain with America in the matter of rent and of the tenure of land. Other publicists have long wistfully regarded peasant proprietorship as the model we ought to copy: I have tried to prove that whatever advan- tages may attach to it, there follows one irremediable disadvantage. Among other alleged benefits is this: that the peasant proprietor, uniting in himself the characters of landlord, tenant, and labourer, lives in a condition of perfect mdependence. It is conceded that ma- terially he fares worse than the British farmer, worse even than the best of the British labourers: but he has, it is said, the supreme advantage of working for himself alone, and is not exposed to the bullymg and oppression of an employer, or to the hauteur of a landlord and the screwing of his agent. J have endeavoured to show that this so- called independence is really isolation; and issues in those unfavourable results which naturally ac- yj IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. 129 company a condition of life in which there is no action of public opinion: I have copied from a hberal French author a sketch from the life, which repre- sents peasant proprietors as narrow and niggardly ; deficient, not only in public spirit, but even in filial gratitude; too proud indeed, to throw their aged parents on the parish, but so devoid of common humanity as openly to long for the succession se- cured to them by the law; and frequently, after wresting from their livmg father a concession of the land (a concession voluntary but far from spon- taneous) treating the old man as a heavy incum- brance, as a worn-out and useless slave whom the law refuses to put out of the way. Now, why should a particular class require this Savage independence, or isolation, which is not possessed or claimed by others? The artisan is dependent upon his employer: if he joms a Benefit Society or a Trades’ Union, he must do as the majority bid him; and as a member of a Codperative Society he must submit to the varying laws of the body. The manufacturer is not isolated; for he must labour to satisfy the wishes of the buyers. ‘The merchant has his foreign correspondents whom he must humour, and entertain on their travels. The banker must treat his customers with attention, and beware of offending even those whom he invites into his sweating-room. The politician is dependent: in an absolute government, on the will and whim of his Prince; in a free government, on the enthusiasm or madness of the people. Why should the cultivator alone escape the fate of K 130 ESSAY II. mankind? Why should we desire that he should escape it, and be cut off from that influence of his fellows, which if sometimes galling, is on the whole salutary and humanizing P I do not deny that peasant proprietors are more prudent than our labourers; though it 1s open to question whether it is their condition which causes their prudence, or whether they continue to be pro- prietors because they are prudent. Their degree of prudence moreover, is sometimes exaggerated ; since, as I find, both in France and Germany, during bad seasons, the hat is sent round among the public for their relief. Nor can I concede that they are so pru- dent as our farmers, if, as seems unquestionable, they have such an insatiable desire for land, as to lead them habitually to buy beyond their means, and to borrow for payment; and this to such an extent as now to be reckoned by miulliards of francs, or hundreds of millions sterling. I do not believe that the Irish peasants would rise to this pitch of improvidence: I make no doubt that they would have their mortgages, or failing these, their unsecured debts: these mortgages or debts however, would be contracted, not by purchasing more land, but by mismanagement of the old. Novelists may be pleased to turn a villain into a hero; to draw a line and say, thus far such a one was capable of every iniquity; suddenly he became virtuous and amiable: divines may convert their penitents into saints: but I cannot be persuaded that the manners and habits of a people can be reversed by the magic wand of any legislation how- ever skilful. Teach the Irish prudence and leave them to get land. IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. 131 Few persons would put back the almanack, and revert to the métayer system. It is true that an Italian statesman, not long ago, in conversation with an able legal friend of mine, pointed to Tuscany, and remarking on the satisfied condition of its rural population, recommended that Great Britain should adopt the métayer system, under which Tuscany was so happy. That Italian reasoned from too narrow an induction: he did not know that in France before ’89, under the same system, which, as we have seen, prevailed over four-fifths or seven- eighths of the country, the rural population had fallen into the most miserable condition, and that during the revolution it jomed in the grossest ex- cesses: nor was he aware that at the present time it is under the same system that the worst cultivated and least prosperous districts of France are farmed. Tuscany proves, what has been proved elsewhere, that under conditions otherwise favourable, the métayer system is compatible with the moderate happiness of the agriculturist: France, both before °89 and lately, proves that the métayer system has no power to counteract the evils attending oppressive feudal rights, absentee landlords, and inconsiderate management of estates. A Permanent Settlement finds more advocates. Some persons urge the British legislature to give up the land to the present tenants, reserving to the owners a fixed rent, guaranteed by the Government: leaving the owners, or almost compelling them, to quit their country houses and live altogether in Dublin, London, or Paris; to cease to employ resi- dent agents; and altogether to abandon the respon- 132 ESSAY II. sibilities and duties of landlords just as much as if their property consisted in Consols. I do not deny that a Permanent Settlement may in a particular case be successful; just as the métayer system, just as any system, may be successful, when it grows naturally out of the circumstances of a country. I find it stated that a Permanent Settle- ment has given satisfaction in one little province of Holland. But in India, on a much larger scale, and after trial during a great part of a century, the contrary result has followed: for though politically the govern- ment has gained the advantage of ranging on the side of order the large and powerful class of Middlemen, yet this strength has been purchased at the terrible price of destitution and misery to the actual culti- vators. And just as in Bengal, the tenants in chief or Middlemen, have ground down the ryots by exacting from them the utmost possible rackrent; so in Ireland, the present tenants, once set free from landlord influence, would pinch and screw their poorer countrymen as Irish Middlemen have done before. Indeed the very name Middleman calls up in our minds a throng of odious associations. I believe then on the whole, that we must not expect from Parliament, any thorough remedy for the chronic diseases attending the relations of Irish landlords and tenants; diseases which under the expectant system, the lapse of centuries may cure. Unfortunately, the landlords are to the tenants aliens in blood, heretics in religion; brethren neither for this world nor for the next. The curse of conquest adheres to the country. National hatreds have an IRELAND AND THE TENURE OF LAND. oe amazing vitality. Servia in the present century, degraded and unlettered, rose, and by a series of sacrifices threw off the Turkish yoke; urged to the task by traditions and legends smouldering in the country for a thousand years: Poland may yet avenge herself on Russia and the “ orthodox” church: even in Wales, there survives after five hundred years, a dim desire for revenge on English oppressors. In Ireland, the traditional hatred felt by dispos- ‘sessed owners, is aggravated by more recent outrages during the rebellion of ’98. Add the jealousies of a peasantry with few occupations besides agriculture : a peasantry intent on every movement of every land- lord, whether Celt or Saxon, Catholic or Protestant : a peasantry that has a secret code of its own, maintained by midnight meetings, and enforced by threats and murders: a peasantry that grudges an acre of land thrown into an owner’s domain, and hates all improvements, as disturbing the sluggish current of existence. Such evils are not to be cor- rected, such a chaotic condition is not to be har- monised, by votes of Lords and Commons. We and our posterity must resolve to wait and watch: to keep the peace between the hostile camps: to act justly and liberally: to be content with alleviation where immediate cure is unattainable. Minor changes, I have said, are desirable: tenant right may probably be legalized and extended. The tenant who has turned a bog into a paddock, appears at least, to have a claim unknown to our farmers, who look to their landlords for all substantial im- provements. In strict justice the peasant has no claim, if he has paid only a nominal rent for a term 134 ESSAY II. of years, on condition of bringing the bog into culti- vation. But illiterate men cannot understand strict Justice: they are governed by their sympathies ; and these are all in favour of the tenant who has created a valuable property for the landlord. The liberal owners take this into consideration, and know that strict justice is sometimes a shocking cruelty. while to sacrifice neatness to perspicuity. In England, criminal justice is set in motion by a complaint of the person injured, just as happens in the case of a civil wrong: we may call this the complainant-system, or the plaimtiff-system. In countries under the civil law, justice is set in motion by an inquest of government: we may call this the inquest-system. These terms, though uncouth, are free from danger of misapprehension. The word selfish is misused by some persons. When we say that a man is selfish we mean that the man pays an undue regard to himself: we mean that he is destitute of a due sympathy with others. Now if a gentleman gives a plot of ground for a church, and when he is praised for the act, replies that his principal motive was to improve his building estate, and that therefore his motive in oiving was a selfish one, he uses the word in a different sense. He does not mean that the act showed an undue regard to himself, but that it was the result of prudence, not of generosity. Bentham would have said that the act was a self-regarding one: another example of sacrificing neatness to clearness. The word is used also with ambiguity when we call a certain system of moral sentiments, the selfish system. In giving the system this title we condemn it beforehand: we tell the inquirer that he is about to investigate a theory which implies that DYSLOGISTIC. 209 men are necessarily wanting in a due regard to their fellows; that if he accepts the theory, he will have to believe that a selfish and a generous man are equally admirable. The self-regarding system indeed, implies no such thing: it only teaches that below selfishness and generosity, (qualities un- doubtedly existing) there is a self-regarding base. The upholders of the system, should guard against the inevitable misapprehension, by protesting against this use of the word selfish. Sensual again, is unhappily applied instead of Sensual. sensuous. A sensual person is one too intent on the pleasures of sense. St. James in our version denounces a certain pseudo-wisdom as “earthly, sensual, devilish.” Johnson quotes from Milton, “From amidst them rose Belial, the dissolutest spirit that fell ; The sensuallest ; and after Asmodai The fleshliest incubus.” If a student of philosophy, familiar with these passages, finds a certain doctrine called sensual, he has a prejudice created in his mind, and notwith- — standing explanation and protest, cannot quite shake it off. This is the natural effect of using the dyslogistic word sensual instead of sensuous, to express a notion where no censure is intended. Asceticism too, unfortunately derives much sup- port from this ambiguous language. Sensual habits are condemned on the authority of scripture, and indeed by the universal consent of moralists. The ascetic preacher, avoiding the distinction between the two meanings of the word, carelessly, or dis- honestly teaches his hearers that all the pleasures P Sensuous. Vanity. 210 ESSAY IV. of sense are sinful; or at any rate, that to dispense with them is the true discipline for the soul. He applies to imnocent and wholesome enjoyments the invectives justly directed against ill regulated enjoyments. Formerly there was a difficulty in avoiding this — danger of misconception, because no second word had obtained currency. Now there is no such excuse, because the word sensuous 18 well understood as having reference to the senses, without any dys- logistic meaning. Sensuous was used by Milton: with a signification, according to Johnson, of “tender, pathetic, full of passion ;”’ but according to Richardson (and I think more correctly) of ‘‘full of sense or bodily feeling.” But with or without such authority, we shall do well to use the word sensuous, when we wish to avoid dispraise. We shall speak of the sensuous part of man’s nature: of a sensuous system of philosophy. The word vanity is often misapplied when pre- dicated of a mental quality. Cicero’s speeches and actions savoured too much of vanity: we mean here that Cicero had an excessive desire of applause. Authors generally are influenced by vanity to write their best: we mean here that authors wish for the applause of their fellow men; we do not mean that they are wrong in wishing it. In the case of Cicero we use vanity in a dyslogistic sense: in the case of authors generally we use it in an indifferent sense. But as our meaning is not to censure authors, we should do better to say that a desire of applause stimulated them to write their best. Vanity is an ill regulated, or excessive desire of applause. DYSLOGISTIC. Salle The word pride shares the same fate. A proud man is an object of aversion; but we praise a working man whose honest pride keeps him from sinking into pauperism. Why not say self-respect ? Pride is an ill regulated or excessive self-respect. Revenge is a word the abuse of which has led to confusion. One of the most characteristic features of Christianity is the precept that no man has a right to revenge. If a man smite thee on the one cheek, turn to him the other also. The Society of Friends, adopting these words literally, have found themselves in strange perplexities. Franklin gleefully relates, how the Quaker assembly of Philadelphia, pressed by the British governor for means of defence against the Indians, refused to find cannon, but voted money to buy fire engines; refused to find gunpowder, but voted money to buy erain. I will myself join the society when I find its members consistent; when I see them adopt all the gospel precepts literally; when they consider the lies how they grow, and taking no thought for the morrow, abandon their warehouses and gran- aries, and cease to deal in corn and money. Many other Christian men confess themselves bound by the gospel denunciations of revenge. A man rising from his family prayers finds a thief in his house: he seizes a stick, perhaps a gun, and rushes at him. The unpremeditated act is excused on the ground of passionate impulse. But after a night’s rest, and more prayers, he goes to the police office to put the detectives on the thief’s track if he has escaped, or to prosecute him if he is caught. The Christian will tell you perhaps, that he acts Pride. Revenge. Christian _ precept. How carried out. 212 ESSAY IV. from public spirit. I do not believe him. What! do you accuse him of revenge? By no means: the word is inapplicable: the Christian 1s only pursuing his rights by just means. What revenge By revenge I understand the ill regulated, or really 8 excessive, pursuit of those rights. But preachers and moralists may be found to tell you, that if a man has robbed you, you have no right to get punishment inflicted on him, as a satisfaction to yourself: you are bound to get the punishment inflicted, but only from public motives: you have no right to rejoice in the man’s punishment, or to regard it as a mitigation of your loss. But take a stronger case: say that a partner has abused your confidence and ruined you and your family; or that a false friend has eloped with your wife. Still you have no right to wish the punishment of your enemy. When a Quaker tells me this, I can only repeat :—sell all thou hast and give it to the poor; make no provision for the morrow; then I will join your sect. ‘To all other such moralists I say, get you into a convent, for the world is not worthy of you. Retribution. 1 But so long as the word revenge is applied to all pursuit of offenders, this confusion of just and of ill regulated pursuit will continue. I contend that a Christian has a right to seek retribution, but not to seek revenge. If a rich man has wilfully damaged my house, I have a right to make him pay the cost of restoring it: I seek reparation. If a poor man has committed the same damage, and cannot pay for it, | have a right to have him punished: I seek retribution. If however, I pursue the poor man in DYSLOGISTIC. oy le a vindictive spirit; if I urge the authorities to inflict on him the heaviest punishment possible; if I drive him from his employment through the gaol into the workhouse; I then seek more than retribution: I seek revenge. The neglect of this distinction has clouded the recent discussions on the theory of punishment. It is the fashion at present to say, that the only correct aims of punishment are public example, and reform of the offender. The just satisfaction of the injured person is forgotten. Under imperfect police ad- ministration, the injured man beats, stabs, or shoots his enemy: in the better parts of Europe, he now appeals to the law. But the administrators of the law should not tell him that he has no right to retribution: they should be well satisfied if he seeks that retribution by legal means. In the English Courts, the practice is in con- formity with my theory. Our “ plaintiff-system,” as distinguished from the continental “‘ inquest-system,” deals with criminal offences as wrongs done to indi- viduals. The injured person is allowed to interfere in behalf of the offender: in some slight cases de- clining to press the charge; in others, begging that only a hight punishment may be awarded. A re- corder or judge, though he may theoretically deny the right of the prosecutor to intervene, feels bound to give, under protest, some weight to such a merciful request. The Court will not so neglect the public interests as to remit all the punishment of a convict, but it will exact less retribution when that will satisfy the prosecutor. I know that many philanthropists hold in con- Recent theory of punish- ment. The English practice. Bentham. Conclusion, revenge, and retribution. Productive and unpro- ductive. 214 ESSAY IV. tempt such old fashioned notions ; and they trium- phantly appeal to Paley’s dictum, that ‘the proper end of human punishment is not the satisfaction of justice, but the prevention of crimes.” Paley’s theory was exactly fitted for the defence of the English law, which threatened capital punishment for stealing a horse out of a field, or a triflimg sum from a shop. ‘The crimes must be prevented by ‘gome means or other.”’’ It is well to remember that Jeremy Bentham took a very different view of the matter. So strongly did he hold that retribution was to be demanded from criminals, that he denied the existence of any distinct boundary between civil suits and criminal prosecutions. In both cases, an injured person resorts to a Court for satis- faction of an injury: in the one case he demands reparation, in the other retribution: but these two things seemed to Bentham so nearly alike as to be undistinguishable. Those who deny the private right of retribution set the great jurist at defiance. I conclude that to demand retribution is no more unchristian than to demand reparation for damage ; and that revenge is excessive retribution. Political Economists seem to me to have applied the word unproductive, without considering that it is a dyslogistic word. A man who should plough and sow the seashore, would employ his time and capital unproductively and madly: a servant who should bury his talent would act unproductively and slothfully: a gambler spends his time and money unproductively and viciously. But Political Hcono- mists apply the word unproductive to the well DYSLOGISTIC. 915 directed efforts of lawyers, physicians, clergymen, and statesmen: to the efforts of all in short, who do not realize their labour in some commodity. Un- productive here means, unproductive of commodities. The world forgets this limitation to commodities, and educated men may be heard, either disparaging pro- fessional services, or else ridiculing Political Hconomy for its classification. Hundreds of other words might be given as examples. Against cunning and crafty, I might set shrewd, penetrating, sagacious, astute: against womanish and effeminate, womanly and feminine. I may say that when a woman is grossly insulted, she is humilated but not disgraced: that when bad men conspire, good men must combine. Americans have fixed on what we call perquisites, the dyslogistic name of stealings. I was lately surprised to find an eminent French author speak of Buffon as more ignorant than Cuvier. Himself a naturalist, he did not mean to disparage either of those great thinkers: he only meant that of certain facts now well known, Buffon knew even less than Cuvier. The French now commonly speak of certain writers as men who vulgarize science, and of their works as vulgarizations: they would call Sir John Herschel a man who had vulgarized astronomy. They do not use these words dyslogistically: they highly praise such a man as Herschel for condescending to such efforts. All they mean is that he has popularized science. In one compound name, the English still employ vulgar in the sense of popular: they say vulgar- Various other words. French authors. Ignorant. Vulgariser. Vénalité. ’ Officieux. Scepticism. Profane history. Trimmer. 216 ESSAY IV. fractions; not without some perplexity to young learners, who, as I can testify, sometimes begin with imagining that vulgar-fractions have something bad about them. In a late publication again, there are some papers on the vénalité of offices. With us, venal means mercenary: both it and venality are dyslogistic. The author I speak of uses venal in its etymological sense of saleable. Our word officious formerly meant, ready to per- form offices good or bad: it is now confined to the bad sense of importunate in services. The French officieuw is not like ours dyslogistic. The word scepticism had long had a bad reputa- tion: it indicated a state of mind closed to the re- ception of evidence: it made the reader revert to the slave in Lucian who denied his own existence till his master beat belief into him. Mr. Buckle au- daciously tried, and not altogether without success, to gain for the sceptic the credit of merely obeying the apostolic command :—prove all things. We still talk of history as divided into sacred and profane: why not call it ecclesiastical and secular ? The word trimmer, as Macaulay tells us, was at first mnocent of ill meaning: the celebrated Harl of Halfax dubbed himself a trimmer, because, fearmg the predominance of any one party, he supported each party when it was weakest; just as a cautious sailor, to trim a boat, throws himself on the side deserted by others. The politic Earl, intent on the public good, deserted to the weaker party: trimmers among us desert to the stronger party; hoping to find place, salary, power or title. DYSLOGISTIC. BA, Trimmer therefore, has now a dyslogistic significa- tion. A more recent example of a trimmer in the Halifax sense is found in Camille Jordan; the friend of Madame de Staél and of Royer Collard. Camille Jordan, gentle in temper, but fierce and stubborn in resistance to wrong and oppression, disgusted with the unspeakable horrors he. witnessed in his native Lyons, at the opening of the revolution of ’89, became a Constitutionalist: disappointed with the selfish career of Napoleon, he adopted the cause of the banished dynasty: during the restoration, alarmed at the reactionary sentiments of the old noblesse, he threw himself into the liberal op- position. Then he died. He was always in oppo- sition: not through a crooked temper, delighting in strife and faction; not steering too nigh the sands to show his wit: but because living in times _ of violent and unmeasured opinions, he desired to trim the state vessel by joming the neglected side. Long may the world see such trimmers, who in favour of liberty and patriotism, desert the party in which profit and honour are to be found! Would that the English had spared the name trimmer its dyslogistic sense ! It may be thought that this formal exposition Value of the of an obvious error is unnecessary: since common ee sense must teach us not to apply to a praiseworthy or an indifferent thing, a term that suggests con- demnation. I reply by pointing to the names of Fitzjames Stephen now, and of Adam Smith formerly, as examples of men who have disregarded the rule. We are told that the study of English Grammar is As grammar. — As logic. So any formal rules. 918 ESSAY Iv. unnecessary, because we see that grammarians write bad English, while non-grammarians write good Enelish. It is quite true that knowledge of gram- mar will not teach a man to write well: many other qualifications are necessary for this. All that grammar teaches is to avoid certain errors and imperfections. So, others object that logicians are capable of unsound reasoning. Again I say, other qualifications are necessary besides knowledge of logic, to fit a man for sound reasoning. But logic teaches us to avoid certain errors in reasoning; and it gives a sagacity and a quickness in detecting fallacies. Other things being equal between two authors, the grammarian will write the better English, and the logician will elaborate the sounder reasoning. I believe it will be the same with the formal rule as to dyslogistic words: it will not teach men to write or to reason; but it will teach them to avoid a common mistake. The word dyslogistic contains a rule: familiarity with it would prevent men from > speaking of inquisitorial and litigious systems when inquest and plaintiff systems are intended: from using selfish for self-regarding; sensual for sensuous; vanity for just desire of applause; pride for self- respect; revenge for retribution; unproductive for unproductive of commodities; womanish or effeminate for womanly or feminine; conspire for combine; ignorant for less informed; venal for saleable ; officious for ready to render services; scepticism for intellectual caution; profane history for secular history; trimming for patriotic self-denial. DYSLOGISTIC. 219 NOTH. | kino people would guess that Bentham was the author of the following passages. “Your predecessors made me a French Citizen: hear me speak like one. War thickens round you: I will show you a vast resource :—HMANCIPATE YOUR COLONIES. You start: hear and you will be reconciled. I say again, Hmancipate your Colonies. Justice, consistency, policy, economy, honour, generosity, all demand it of you: all this you shall see. Conquer, you are still but running the race of vulgar ambition: emancipate, you strike out a new path to glory. Conquer, it 1s by your armies: emancipate, the conquest is your own, and made over yourselves. To give freedom at the expense of others, is but conquest in disguise: to rise superior to conquerors, the sacrifice must be your own.—Reasons you will not find wanting, if you will hear them: some more pressing than you might wish. What is least pleasant among them may pay you best for hearing it. Were it ever so unpleasant, better hear it while it is yet time, than when it is too late, and from one friend than from a host of enemies. If you are kings, you will hear nothing but flattery; if you are republicans, you will hear rugged truths.” “J. B. to the National Convention of France.” 1793. Works, Part IV, pa. 408. 3 The next quotation is more satirical than just; but no one can charge its style with any want of perspicuity. 220 ESSAY Iv. - “Ascetic is a term that has been sometimes applied to monks. It comes from a Greek word which signifies exercise. The practices by which monks sought to distinguish themselves from other men were called their Exercises. These exercises consisted in so many contrivances they had for tormenting themselves. By this they thought to ingratiate themselves with the Deity. For the Deity, said they, is a Being of infinite benevolence: now a being of the most ordinary benevolence 1s pleased to see others make themselves as happy as they can: therefore to make ourselves as unhappy as we can is the way to please the Deity. If any body ask them, what motive they could find for doing all this:—Oh! said they, you are not to imagine that we are punishing ourselves for nothing : we know very well what we are about. You are to know, that for every grain of pain it costs us now, we are to have a hundred grains of pleasure by and by. The case is, that God loves to see us torment ourselves at present: indeed he has as good as told us so. But this is done only to try us, in order just to see how we should behave: which it is plain he could not know without making the experiment. Now then, from the satisfaction it gives him to see us make ourselves as unhappy as we can make ourselves in this present life, we have a sure proof of the satisfaction it will give him to see us as happy as he can make us in a life to come.” Part I, pa. 4, note. Swift would not have been ashamed of the last satire, nor of this. “Tt 1s curious enough to observe the variety of DYSLOGISTIC. Al inventions men have hit upon, and the variety of phrases they have brought forward, im order to conceal from the world, and, if possible, from themselves, this very general and therefore very pardonable, self-sufficiency. “1. One man (Lord Shaftesbury, Hutchinson, Hume, &.) says, he has a thing made on purpose to tell him what is right and what is wrong; and that it is called a moral sense: and then he goes to work at his ease, and says, such a thing is right, and such a thing is wrong—why? ‘because my moral sense tells me it is.’ 2. Another man (Dr. Beattie) comes and alters the phrase: leaving out moral, and putting in com- mon, i the room of it. He then tells you, that his common sense teaches him what is right and wrong, as surely as the other’s moral sense did: meaning by - common sense, a sense of some kind or other, which, he says, 1s possessed by all mankind: the sense of those, whose sense is not the same as the author’s, being struck out of the account as not worth taking. This contrivance does better than the other; for a moral sense, being a new thing, a man may feel about him a good while without being able to find it out: but common sense is as old as the creation ; and there is no man but would be ashamed to be thought not to have as much of it as his neighbours. It has another great advantage: by appearing to share power, it lessens envy: for when a man gets up upon this ground, in order to anathematize those who differ from him, it is not by a sic volo sic jubeo, but by a velitis jubeatis. ) 3. Another man (Dr. Price) comes, and says, that 222 ESSAY IV. as to a moral sense indeed, he cannot find that he has any such thing: that however he has an under- standing, which will do quite as well. This under- standing, he says, is the standard of right and wrong: it tells him so and so. All good and wise ' men understand as he does: if other men’s under- standings differ in any point from his, so much the worse for them: it is a sure sign they are either defective or corrupt. 4, Another man says, that there is an eternal and immutable Rule of Right: that that rule of right dictates so and so: and then he begins giving you his sentiments upon anything that comes uppermost: and these sentiments (you are to take for granted) are so many branches of the eternal Rule of Right. 5. Another man (Dr. Clark), or perhaps the same man (it’s no matter) says, that there are certain prac- tices conformable, and others repugnant, to the Fit- ness of Things; and then he tells you at his leisure, what practices are conformable and what repugnant: just as he happens to like a practice or dislike it. 6. A great multitude of people are continually talking of the Law of Nature; and then they go on giving you their sentiments about what is right and what is wrong: and these sentiments you are to understand, are so many chapters, and sections of the Law of Nature. 7. Instead of the phrase, Law of Nature, you have sometimes Law of Reason, Right Reason, Natural Justice, Natural Equity, Good Order. Any of them will do equally well. This latter is most used in Politics. The three last are much more tolerable than the others, because they do not very explicitly DYSLOGISTIC. 228 claim to be any thing more than phrases: they insist but feebly upon the being looked upon as so many positive standards of themselves, and seem content to be taken, upon occasion, for phrases expressive of the conformity of the thing in question to the proper standard, whatever that may be. On most occasions, however, it will be better to say utility: utility 1s clearer, as referring more explicitly to pain and pleasure. ; 8. We have one philosopher (Woolaston), who says, there is no harm in any thing in the world but in telling a le: and that if, for example, you were to murder your own father, this would only be a par- ticular way of saying, he was not your father. Of course, when this philosopher sees any thing that he does not like, he says, it 1s a particular way of telling ale. It is sayimg, that the act ought to be done, or may be done, when, in truth, it ought not to be done. 9. The fairest and openest of them all is that sort of man who speaks out, and says, I am of the num- ber of the Elect: now God himself takes care to inform the Elect what is right: and that with so good effect, that let them strive ever so, they cannot help not only knowing it but practising it. If there- | fore a man wants to know what is right and what is wrong, he has nothing to do but to come to me. It is upon the principle of antipathy that such and such acts are often reprobated on the score of their being unnatural: the practice of exposing children, established among the Greeks and Romans, was an unnatural practice. Unnatural, when it means any thing, means unfrequent: and there it means some- thing; although nothing to the present purpose. 224 ESSAY 1V. But here it means no such thing: for the frequency of such acts is perhaps the great complaint. It therefore means nothing; nothing, I mean, which there is in the act itself. All it can serve to express is, the disposition of the person who is talking of it : the disposition he is in to be angry at the thoughts of it. Does it merit hisanger? Very likely it may: but whether it does or no is a question, which, to be answered rightly, can only be answered upon the principle of utility. Unnatural, is as good a word as moral sense, or © common sense; and would be as good a foundation for a system. Such an act is unnatural; that is, repugnant to nature: for I do not like to practise it; and, consequently, do not practise it. It is there- fore repugnant to what ought to be the nature of every body else. The mischief common to all these ways of thinking and arguing (which, in truth, as we have seen, are but one and the same method, couched in different forms of words) is their serving as a cloke, and pretence, and aliment, to despotism: if not a des- potism in practice, a despotism in disposition : which is but too apt, when pretence and power offer, to show itself in practice. The consequence is, that with intentions very commonly of the purest kind, a man becomes a torment either to himself or his fellow-creatures. If he be of the melancholy cast (Dr. Price), he sits in silent grief, bewailing their blindness and depravity: if of the irascible (Dr. Beattie), he declaims with fury and virulence against all who differ from him; blowing up the coals of fanaticism, and branding with the charge of cor- DYSLOGISTIC. 225 ruption and insincerity, every man who does not think, or profess to think as he does. If such a man happens to possess the advantages of style, his book may do a considerable deal of mischief before the nothingness of it is understood.” SIR SAMUEL BENTHAM: BRIGADIER-GENERAL IN THE RUSSIAN SERVICE, AND KNIGHT OF THE RUSSIAN ORDER OF ST. GEORGE: INSPECTOR- GENERAL OF BRITISH NAVAL WORKS. IR SAMUEL BENTHAM was born nine years after his celebrated brother Jeremy. His birth on the 11th January 1757, was immediately followed by the loss of his mother. When he was only six years old he was sent to Westminster School. Three years later, his father married the widow of the Rev. John Abbot; of whose two sons, Farr and Charles, Charles was afterwards the eminent Speaker of the House of Commons, who was created Baron Colchester. It appears from the testimony of Jeremy, who was about eighteen at the time of the marriage, that Mrs. Bentham treated Samuel as well as himself with the same warm affection that she exhibited to her own sons. Charles Abbot was Samuel’s especial friend; and in after life the two men had the most perfect mutual confidence, and laboured together for the public service. Mr. Bentham, who was an eminent solicitor, destined both his sons for liberal professions, and brought up Jeremy as a barrister: but he prudently SIR SAMUEL BENTHAM. D7 gave way to Samuel’s decided wish to become a naval architect; and bound him apprentice in his fourteenth year to Mr. Gray, a master shipwright in the Royal Dockyard at Woolwich; who received, besides the apprenticeship premium, £50 a year for his board. When the boy attained the age of four- teen, he was admitted into the royal service. He afterwards removed with Mr. Gray to Chatham. The apprentice was required to work with his own hands at shipbuilding: but he had plenty of time at command for other pursuits; and he was a diligent student of geometry, chemistry, drawing, erammar, and French. When he was only fifteen he invented an improved chain pump; but the Navy Board, while admitting the excellence of the in- vention, declined to adopt it, because they “had already a contract for pumps;”’ and as it is reported, because they had a contractor whom “they did not like to turn off.” After four or five years of diligent application, Samuel Bentham was sent to Caen, with Farr and Charles Abbot, to perfect his knowledge of French: an accomplishment of great importance to him during his subsequent life abroad. I wonder that during all the recent discussions on teaching modern languages in the public schools, this simple practice of sending a boy abroad for a short time has received so little attention. * Ape ; 7 ne ee a F d ¥ a sda Sate itnceten t Agno a aS