Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 67, No. 416, June 1850

So then, the Noblest having made his speech, and wound up with a significant hint of flogging and pistoling every one of the unfortunate serfs who shall fail to wield the hoe with becoming alacrity, what next? Nothing more, in so far as the interests of the working classes are concerned; at least nothing tangible. Perhaps it would be absurd to expect anything more. The man who can propound a scheme to rid us of pauperism, with all its concomitant misery, would be a greater benefactor to the commonwealth, and to the human race, than a thousand Howards in one. Mr Carlyle is perhaps the most strenuous advocate for work that we ever encountered. He would have made a first-rate taskmaster under the old Egyptian economy. He is, with great reason, indignant at the state to which our West Indian Colonies have been reduced by means of Exeter Hall emancipation, and he scouts emancipation itself as a gross delusion of the fiend. It is to be regretted that his views have been so late of ripening. Time was, when a fair and common-sense protest, advanced by a Liberal philosopher, against the absurdity of attempting to change the hue of the Ethiopian by a single momentary scrubbing, might have been of some actual use: now, it is in vain to recommend a protracted application of the tub. The Noblest, when Mr Carlyle has discovered him and put him forward, will hardly achieve his ends by using the following language, even supposing that he wielded the lightning, and were able to put his threats into execution.

"Beautiful Black Peasantry, who have fallen idle, and have got the Devil at your elbow; interesting White Felonry, who are not idle, but have enlisted into the Devil's regiments of the line, – know that my benevolence for you is comparatively trifling! What I have of that divine feeling is due to others, not to you. A universal Sluggard-and-Scoundrel Protection Society is not the one I mean to institute in these times, where so much wants protection, and is sinking to sad issues for want of it! The scoundrel needs no protection. The scoundrel that will hasten to the gallows, why not rather clear the way for him? Better he reach his goal and outgate by the natural proclivity, than be so expensively dammed up and detained, poisoning everything as he stagnates and meanders along, to arrive at last a hundred times fouler, and swollen a hundred times bigger! Benevolent men should reflect on this. – And you Quashee, my pumpkin, – (not a bad fellow either, this poor Quashee, when tolerably guided!) – idle Quashee, I say you must get the Devil sent away from your elbow, my poor dark friend! In this world there will be no existence for you otherwise. No, not as the brother of your folly will I live beside you. Please to withdraw out of my way, if I am not to contradict your folly and amend it, and put it in the stocks if it will not amend. By the Eternal Maker! it is on that footing alone that you and I can live together. And if you had respectable traditions dated from beyond Magna Charta, or from beyond the Deluge, to the contrary, and written sheepskins that would thatch the face of the world, – behold I, for one individual, do not believe said respectable traditions, nor regard said written sheepskins, except as things which you, till you grow wiser, will believe. Adieu, Quashee; I will wish you better guidance than you have had of late."

The meaning of this passage is, that the black population of our colonies ought no longer to be permitted to dwell in perfect idleness in their provision grounds, rearing pumpkins for their own consumption, without regard to the cultivation of the sugar-cane. As we have already remarked, this view is somewhat of the latest; nevertheless truth, like repentance, can never come too late to be received. Divorced from the folly of his speech, Mr Carlyle's sentiment is sound. Twenty millions of British money, wrung from the hard-taxed labour of our people, were given – for what? Not only to emancipate the Negroes, but to place them in such a position that they could effectually control their former masters – our own colonists and countrymen, to whom our faith was solemnly plighted for the maintenance of their privileges and commerce. Let it be granted that slavery was a gross sin, was it incumbent upon us to elevate the emancipated Blacks so high, that they could control the labour market – to give them the status of untaxed yoemen, without any security for the slightest manifestation of their gratitude? It was more than preposterous that those whose freedom was purchased should be placed in a better position, and invested with more immunity from labour and want, than the great bulk of the people who made the sacrifice in order to secure that freedom; and the result has amply demonstrated the gross folly of the scheme. There are thousands, nay millions of men in Britain and Ireland, whose lot, compared with that of the emancipated Blacks of Jamaica, is one of speechless misery – and yet their cry to be relieved from a competition which is crushing them down to the dust, is unheard and uncared for amidst the din of contending politicians, and the perpetual hum of the busy proselytes of Mammon.

Here we cannot forbear from quoting a characteristic passage from Mr Carlyle's tracts. The idea is not original, but the handling is worthy of Astley's humourist; and we commend it to the special attention of all free-trading philanthropists.

"Certainly Emancipation proceeds with rapid strides among us, this good while; and has got to such a length as might give rise to reflections in men of a serious turn. West Indian Blacks are emancipated, and it appears refuse to work. Irish Whites have long been entirely emancipated; and nobody asks them to work, or on condition of finding them potatoes (which, of course, is indispensable) permits them to work. Among speculative persons, a question has sometimes risen. In the progress of Emancipation, are we to look for a time when all the Horses also are to be emancipated, and brought to the supply-and-demand principle? Horses too have 'motives;' are acted on by hunger, fear, hope, love of oats, terror of platted leather; nay they have vanity, ambition, emulation, thankfulness, vindictiveness; some rude outline of all our human spiritualities, – a rude resemblance to us in mind and intelligence, even as they have in bodily frame. The Horse, poor dumb four-footed fellow, he too has his private feelings, his affections, gratitudes; and deserves good usage; no human master, without crime, shall treat him unjustly either, or recklessly lay on the whip where it is not needed: – I am sure if I could make him 'happy,' I should be willing to grant a small vote (in addition to the late twenty millions) for that object!

"Him, too, you occasionally tyrannise over; and with bad result to yourselves among others; using the leather in a tyrannous, unnecessary manner; withholding, or scantily furnishing, the oats and ventilated stabling that are due. Rugged horse-subduers, one fears they are a little tyrannous at times. 'Am I not a horse, and half-brother?' To remedy which, so far as remediable, fancy – the horses all 'emancipated;' restored to their primeval right of property in the grass of this Globe; turned out to graze in an independent supply-and-demand manner! So long as grass lasts, I daresay they are very happy, or think themselves so. And Farmer Hodge sallying forth, on a dry spring morning, with a sieve of oats in his hand, and agony of eager expectation in his heart, is he happy? Help me to plough this day, Black Dobbin; oats in full measure if thou wilt. 'Hlunh! No – thank!' snorts Black Dobbin; he prefers glorious liberty and the grass. Bay Darby, wilt not thou perhaps? 'Hlunh!' Gray Joan, then, my beautiful broad-bottomed mare, – O Heaven! she too answers Hlunh! Not a quadruped of them will plough a stroke for me. Corn-crops are ended in this world! – For the sake, if not of Hodge, then of Hodge's horses, one prays this benevolent practice might now cease, and a new and a better one try to begin. Small kindness to Hodge's horses to emancipate them! The fate of all emancipated horses is, sooner or later, inevitable. To have in this habitable earth no grass to eat, – in black Jamaica gradually none, as in White Connemara already none; – to roam aimless, wasting the seed-fields of the world; and be hunted home to Chaos, by the dire watch-dogs and dire hell-dogs, with such horrors of forsaken wretchedness as were never seen before! These things are not sport; they are terribly true, in this country at this hour."

One other sham, perhaps the greatest which our age has witnessed, Mr Carlyle accidentally denounces – we mean the late Colonial policy. If the Whigs have an official aptitude for anything, it is the coopering up of Constitutions. Is one colony indignant at some outrage or insult proceeding from headquarters – is another dissatisfied with the conduct of the Governor, and urgent for his recall – is a third aggrieved by the commercial vacillation and fiscal measures of a Parliament in which it has neither voice nor power – the universal panacea is, Give them a Constitution! We hope the present Ministry will profit by the following criticism – not volunteered by us, who neither look upon them with affection, nor entertain any sanguine hope of their conversion to a patriotic policy, – but penned by a writer who, not long ago, was considered by their organs as one of the deepest thinkers of the age.

"Constitutions for the Colonies," says Mr Carlyle, "are now on the anvil; the discontented Colonies are all to be cured of their miseries by Constitutions. Whether that will cure their miseries, or only operate as a Godfrey's Cordial to stop their whimpering, and in the end worsen all their miseries, may be a sad doubt to us. One thing strikes a remote spectator in these Colonial questions: the singular placidity with which the British Statesman at this time, backed by M'Crowdy and the British moneyed classes, is prepared to surrender whatsoever interest Britain, as foundress of those establishments, might pretend to have in the decision. 'If you want to go from us, go; we by no means want you to stay: you cost us money yearly, which is scarce; desperate quantities of trouble too: why not go, if you wish it?' Such is the humour of the British Statesman at this time. – Men clear for rebellion, 'annexation' as they call it, walk openly abroad in our American Colonies; found newspapers, hold platform palaverings. From Canada there comes duly by each mail a regular statistic of Annexationism: increasing fast in this quarter, diminishing in that; – Majesty's Chief Governor seeming to take it as a perfectly open question; Majesty's Chief Governor, in fact, seldom appearing on the scene at all, except to receive the impact of a few rotten eggs on occasion, and then duck in again to his private contemplations. And yet one would think the Majesty's Chief Governor ought to have a kind of interest in the thing? Public liberty is carried to a great length in some portion of her Majesty's dominions. But the question, 'Are we to continue subjects of her Majesty, or start rebelling against her? So many as are here for rebelling, hold up your hands!' Here is a public discussion of a very extraordinary nature to be going on under the nose of a Governor of Canada? How the Governor of Canada, being a British piece of flesh and blood, and not a Canadian lumber-log of mere pine and rosin, can stand it, is not very conceivable at first view. He does it, seemingly, with the stoicism of a Zeno. It is a constitutional sight like few."

With Earl Grey at the head of the Colonial Department, backed and assisted by that pattern of candour, Mr Hawes – with Lord Elgin in Canada, and Lord Torrington in Ceylon – the integrity of the British empire is certainly exposed to peril. But a more dangerous symptom is the spirit which of late years has prevailed in the councils of the nation, and owes its origin to the false views and perverse unpatriotic doctrines of the political economists. They refuse to admit into their calculations any element which may not be reduced to the standard of money-value, and they consider that the worth of a colony is to be measured solely by the returns of its traffic. This is a leading dogma of Free Trade; and no doubt, were Free Trade capable of entire realisation, if the nations of the earth had no other ambition than to buy and sell, after the manner recommended by Mr Cobden, and if reciprocity were a thing universal, a good deal might be urged in its favour. If we apply the same test to Ireland, we shall find that it is greatly for the advantage of the people of Great Britain to pronounce in favour of Repeal, and to allow the young patriots of the Emerald Isle to enter into any kind of relationship which they may choose with the sympathising republicans of France. This is Free Trade in its plain, undisguised form; and to some such consummation as this we must come at last, by virtue of the grand experiment, should that, like Sir Robert Peel's temporary Income Tax, be extended to a limitless perpetuity. At present, in so far as regards the welfare of a great portion of the inhabitants of the country, it is difficult to perceive what advantage they derive from the boasted character of Britons, except the privilege of contributing to the heaviest load of taxation that was ever laid upon the industry of a people. We acknowledge that the Free-traders have planned their scheme with consummate adroitness and dexterity. If their object was, as we believe it was, to sap those principles of high morality, rectitude, honour, and patriotism, which carried Great Britain successfully through the dangers of wild European revolution, anarchy, and war, they could not have hit upon a better or a surer method. Many a disheartened agriculturist has lately asked himself, what is the nature of the ties which bind him imperatively to Britain, when a richer soil and a fairer climate can be found elsewhere, a home not daily harassed by the knock of the tax-gatherer, and the London market ever ready to receive the product of his industry? It is not good that these questions should arise in the minds of our yeomen, for they are calculated to engender a train of thoughts very hostile to the maintenance of that credit which England dare not lose, without forfeiting her reputation, her fame, her honour, and her sway. The thoughts of the colonies have long been bent in a similar direction; and we doubt not that many of them have been amazed to find that, so far from being checked in their preliminary mutterings of revolt, they have the hearty good wishes of the Manchester men in dissolving their connection with the mother country, whenever they may choose to do so. Thus do we stand at present in our home and colonial relations, the clank of the constitution hammer resounding from the cooperage, and dull-eyed Imbecility sitting lazily at the helm.

We must now take our leave of Mr Carlyle, sincerely regretting that we cannot, with any degree of truth, congratulate him either on the tone or the character of his late lucubrations. These pamphlets, take them altogether, are about the silliest productions of the day; and we could well wish, for his sake, that they had never been compiled. Very few people, we imagine, will be disposed to wait with confidence for the avatar of his Noblest and Noblers, such as he has depicted them. Our faith and hopes lie in a different direction; nor have we any wish to see a Cromwell at the head of affairs, supported by a staff of noble young souls, poetical or otherwise, who require to be bought over for the purpose. Towards the close of his fourth pamphlet, our author lets drop a hint from which we gather that it is not impossible that his Noblest may hereafter appear embodied in the person of Sir Robert Peel. All we shall say on that score is, that Sir Robert has already had sufficient opportunity vouchsafed him to exhibit the extent of his qualifications. It is not likely that the Statesman who, in the eve of life, and enjoying the undiminished confidence of his Sovereign, finds himself in the House of Commons without the semblance of a party to support him, can ever make another desperate rally. It would be difficult to find in the annals of history any instance of a leading politician who has been so often trusted, and impossible to find one who has so often abused that trust. Even Mr Carlyle cannot deny the Unveracities of which Sir Robert stands convicted; and although he appears to think that lapses from truth are of so common occurrence as to be venial, we beg to assure him that his opinion is not the general one, nor is it altogether creditable to the morality of the man who ventures to express it. We are sorry to observe that, in the conclusion of this latter tract, Mr Carlyle has condescended to borrow some hints from that most eminent master of modern scurrility, the late Daniel O'Connell. This is, in every respect, to be deplored. Wit is not Mr Carlyle's forte, and this kind of wit, if wit it be, is, when served up at second hand, both nauseous and revolting. At a calmer moment, and on more mature reflection, we feel convinced that Mr Carlyle will blush for the terms which he has allowed himself to apply to so eminent a genius as Mr Disraeli; and that he will in future abstain from testifying his gratitude for a humiliating invitation to dinner in a shape so abject as that of casting personal and low abuse upon the political adversaries of his entertainer.

If Mr Carlyle feels that his vocation is political – if the true spirit of the prophet is stirring within him – he ought to endeavour in the first place to think clearly, and, in the second, to amend his style. At present his thoughts are anything but clear. The primary duty of an author is to have a distinct understanding of the matter which he proposes to enunciate, for unless he can arrive at that, his words must necessarily be mystical and undefined. If men are to be taught at all, let the teaching be simple, and level to the common capacity; and let the teacher be thoroughly conversant with the whole particulars of the lesson. We have a strong suspicion that Cassandra must have been a prophetess reared in the same school as Mr Carlyle. Her predictions seem to have been shrouded in such thorough mysticism, that no one gave her credit for inspiration; and in consequence the warnings which might have saved Troy, were spoken to the empty winds. Here, perhaps, we ought to guard ourselves against a similar charge of indistinctness. We by no means intend to certify that Mr Carlyle is a prophet, or that there is any peculiar Revelation in these Latter-day Pamphlets which can avert the fall of Britain, should that sad catastrophe be foredoomed. We simply wish to express our regret that Mr Carlyle, who may lay claim to the possession of some natural genius and ability, will not allow us the privilege of understanding the true nature of his thoughts, and therefore exposes himself to a suspicion that the indistinctness lies quite as much in the original conception of the ideas, as in the language by means of which they are conveyed.

As to his style, it can be defended on no principle whatever. Richter, who used to be his model, was in reality a first-rate master of language and of verbal music; and although in some of his works, he thought fit to adopt a quaint and abrupt manner of writing, in others he exhibited not only great power, but a harmony which is perhaps the rarest accomplishment of the rhetorical artist. His "Meditation on a Field of Battle," for example, is as perfect a strain of music as the best composition of Beethoven. But in Mr Carlyle's sentences and periods, there is no touch or sound of harmony. They are harsh, cramped, and often ungrammatical; totally devoid of all pretension to ease, delicacy, or grace. In short, we pass from the Latter-day Pamphlets with the sincere conviction that the author as a politician is shallow and unsound, obscure and fantastic in his philosophy, and very much to be reprehended for his obstinate attempt to inculcate a bad style, and to deteriorate the simple beauty and pure significancy of our language.

THE HUNGARIAN JOSEPH

The following poem is intended to commemorate a very interesting episode, which lately enlivened the deliberations of the National Reform Association. The usual knot of Parliamentary orators having somewhat cavalierly left the delegates to their own rhetorical resources, on the third day of conference, and the conversation having taken a doleful turn, owing to the paucity of subscriptions, the Chairman, Sir Joshua Walmsley, thought fit to enliven the spirits of the meeting by the introduction of an illustrious visitor. The following extract from the morning papers will explain the incident, as well as the commemorative verses: —

"The Chairman (Sir J. Walmsley) here left the platform, and shortly afterwards returned, leading a short, stout, elderly, intelligent-looking gentleman, with a very formidable mustache and bushy beard of snowy whiteness, whose appearance created considerable excitement in the audience, and gave rise to great satisfaction in the minds of several delegates, who were under the impression that they beheld Mr Muntz, the hon. member for Birmingham, whose beard is so well known by report to the Liberal party.

"The Chairman. – Gentlemen, you observed that I left the platform for a short time, and returned with a gentleman who is now near me. It is no other than the Joseph Hume of the Hungarians. (Loud cheers, followed by cries of 'Name, name.')

"The chairman did not appear able to afford the desired information, and the venerable Hungarian financier wrote his name on a slip of paper, from which Sir Joshua Walmsley read aloud what sounded like 'Eugene Rioschy.' (Cheers; and voices, 'We don't know it now,' 'I can't tell my wife;' and laughter.)

INo, no! 'tis false! it cannot be!When saw a mortal eyeTwo suns within the firmament,Two glories in the sky?Nay, Walmsley, nay! thy generous heartHath all too wide a room:We'll not believe it, e'en on oath —There's but one Joseph Hume!IIUnsay the word so rashly said;From hasty praise forbear!Why bring a foreign Pompey hereOur Cæsar's fame to share?The buzzard he is lord above,And Hume is lord below,So leave him peerless on his perch,Our solitary Joe!IIIHe may be known, that bearded wight,In lands beyond the foam;He may have fought the fiery fight'Gainst taxes raised at home.And hate of kings, and scorn of peers,May rankle in his soul:But surely never hath he reached"The tottle of the whole."IVYes, he may tell of doughty deeds,Of battles lost and won,Of Austrian imposts bravely spurnedBy each reforming Hun.But dare he say that he hath borneThe jeers of friend and foe,Yet still prosed on for thirty yearsLike our transcendant Joe?VOr hath he stood alone in armsAgainst the guileful Greek,Demanding back his purchase-coinWith oath, and howl, and shriek?Deemed they to hold with vulgar bondsThat lion in the net?One sweep of his tremendous pawCould cancel all their debt.VIHow could we tell our Spartan wivesThat, in this sacred room,We dared, with impious throats, proclaimA rival to the Hume?Our children, in their hour of need,Might style us England's foes,If other chief we owned than one,The member for Montrose.VIIO soft and sweet are Cobden's tonesAs blackbird's in the brake;And Oldham Fox and Quaker BrightA merry music make;And Thompson's voice is clear and strong,And Kershaw's mild and low,And nightingales would hush their trillTo list M'Gregor's flow;VIIIBut Orpheus' self, in mute despair,Might drop his magic reedWhen Hume vouchsafes, in dulcet strains,The people's cause to plead.All other sounds of earth and airAre mute and lost the while;The rasping of a thousand saws,The screeching of the file.IXWith him we'll live, with him we'll die,Our lord, our light, our own;We'll keep all foemen from his face,All rivals from his throne.Though Tory prigs, and selfish Whigs,His onward course assail.Here stand a hundred delegates,All joints of Joseph's tail.XHo, there! remove that hairy HunWith beard as white as snow;We need no rank reformers hereTo cope with honest Joe.Not Muntz, with all his bristly pride,From him our hearts can wean:We know his ancient battle-cry —"Shave close, my friends, and clean!"

MY PENINSULAR MEDAL

BY AN OLD PENINSULAR

PART VII. – CHAPTER XVII

Although I have not specified every place at which we halted, or through which we passed, it may be proper to state that we arrived in due course at St Sever, which was distant only one day's march from the actual headquarters of the British army, Aire on the Adour. Here Pledget interposed his professional authority, and decided that neither Mr Chesterfield nor Jones must proceed farther. They both remained, therefore, under surgical treatment at St Sever. Pledget and Gingham, deeming the road now safe, pushed forward to Aire, leaving the cart to follow with the convoy. At the same time, our numbers experienced a still more considerable diminution. Our cavalry escort, also, received orders to push forward, and started before us in high spirits, with the prospect of immediate operations. The convoy was, accordingly, left with only the infantry as a guard, under Corporal Fraser.