Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 71, No. 438, April 1852

The next act takes us into the actual events of which these are but the shadowings. It is a masked ball at the opera in Paris. There are waltzes, gallops, and polkas, with shouts of demoniac revelry; women career from end to end of the enormous salle, dancing, singing, shrieking; they are dressed in all costumes – as men, as mountebanks – but in all the unmistakable presence of wild enjoyment and a spirit of depravity, worthy of the orgies of Circe. Some gentlemen come in. Among them, M. de Chateau Renaud, whose ambition it is to be considered the greatest roué in Paris; when he fails to triumph over female virtue, he withers a woman's reputation with a lie. He is accused of having boasted, without foundation, of his intimacy with Madame de Lesharre. He bets he will bring her that very night into the supper-room, where there has been prepared a symposium for the prettiest of the debardeurs, and wickedest of the men. Louis dei Franchi is of the party, for Madame de Lesharre has been the object of his love before her marriage, and he has heard of her reported liaison with Chateau Renaud. He invites himself to the supper – is cold, abstracted, severe – and keeps his eye on the boaster's face. The ball is over; the supper-room is gorgeously lighted; the clock strikes four – the appointed hour at which Chateau Renaud had betted he would introduce Madame de Lesharre. Her he had inveigled hither, under the false pretence of restoring to her some letters which she had imprudently, but innocently, written to him before her wedding, and before she had discovered the character of her admirer. He blinds her still; and as the last sound of the clock dies upon the ear, he walks in with Madame de Lesharre upon his arm. There is a shout of derision from the women assembled; a shrug of surprise from the men; the wager is acknowledged to be lost; but Madame de Lesharre, perceiving the shameful trick that has been played, indignantly pours forth her scorn on the pitiful scoundrel who had been guilty of it; recognises her old lover, Louis dei Franchi, and throws herself on his protection. He steps forward, accepts the charge, and is challenged of course by Chateau Renaud, who is the best swordsman in France. Madame do Lesharre retires supported by Louis, and a laugh of contempt and hatred resounds through the room. We are now in the Bois de Boulogne. The scene we had seen in the first act is exactly reproduced here: Louis is lying under the tree; Chateau Renaud is wiping his sword; the seconds are in attitudes of expectation – suddenly the wood opens at the back, and we see Fabian and his mother in the old hall in Corsica, gazing with rigid eyes on the scene before them; and we have now arrived at the exact position we attained half-an-hour ago. The whole of the third act passes in a glade in the forest of Fontainbleau. Chateau Renaud, flying with his second from justice, is upset on the high-road; comes into the wood in search of aid; sends a peasant for a blacksmith to repair the carriage; and sits down, depressed and feverish, on the stump of a tree. Suddenly he looks round, and recognises the scene. It is the place where, five days before, he had had the encounter with Louis dei Franchi, and he is anxious to leave the spot. He is met by Fabian dei Franchi, in form and semblance so exactly similar to Louis, that it amounts almost to identity; a similar accident has happened to his carriage. He looks around, and he also recognises the scene presented to him in the vision. On that intimation, and no other, he has hurried from Corsica, in search of Chateau Renaud; he has found him here. He is calm; there is no room for human passion in a mission so evidently laid upon him by fate. He challenges the murderer. The challenge is refused; he twits him with his crimes – with cowardice – with falsehood – with assassination; and the bravo is compelled to fight. They fence long and warily; they rest by mutual consent. In trying the sword preparatory to the next bout, it breaks in Chateau Renaud's hand. The second declares the combat at an end, for the weapons are unequal. "No!" said Fabian quietly, and breaks his across his knee. They muffle their hands in their handkerchiefs, and seize the broken weapons. The fight is renewed. One must die. Which? They hold the fragments of their blades like daggers, point downward, and at one lucky opening Fabian strikes the blow, and Chateau Renaud falls unpitied, unforgiven – a sacrifice to Corsican honour. "Now I can weep for you, dear Louis," says the conqueror, and covers his face with his hands. Again the murdered Louis crosses the stage in the same mysterious manner as before. The brothers recognise each other; vengeance is obtained, and the curtain falls.

The language contained in this play would occupy about twenty minutes; the duration of the piece is two hours. It is a ghost story put into shape – a chapter of Mrs Radcliffe, done into tableaux vivants. The company at this theatre comprises Mr and Mrs Kean, Mr Wigan, Mr Meadows, Mr Ryder, Mr Bartley, and last, not least, Mr and Mrs Keeley. There is not a barn in England that could not furnish quite good enough representatives of any person in the drama. The speeches are vapid and commonplace; the situations, as regards the development of character, very weak; and it possesses no strength whatever but the admirable stage management of the supernatural and the frightful verisimilitude of the carnival ball. Are these legitimate means of support to a theatre like this? Should the Princess's be reduced to a salle de spectacle—

"Where from below the trap-door demons rise,And from above hang dangling deities?"

But, more than all, it certainly is no place for the production of so revolting a scene as the open license of the ball, or the more quiet but quite as offensive supper-party after it. Real water, real horses, and real elephants have been banished from the stage, it being found that the real things interfere essentially with the truthfulness of the scene. A great distinction should always be taken between mere representation and identity – a difference clearly established and rigidly preserved between the fiction and the fact, or why not have a real fight with true swords? Why not go back at once to Thurtell's gig and Weir's pistol? Now, in the instance of the carnival ball, the resemblance is carried beyond all bounds. It ceases to be an imitation, and becomes a reproduction. We will be bound to say, at no saturnalia in the opera ball-room of Paris was there ever exhibited a wilder scene of revelry and debauch – women, indelicately clothed in male attire, whirl in fantastic attitudes to a noisy crash of music – their voices in the mad excitement of the moment are joined to the noise of the orchestra; petticoats, where preserved at all, assume the dimensions of kilts; it is evidently the crowning hour of the night's festivity – modesty, decorum, propriety, all laid aside, and a grinning buffoon in white gown, with chalk-covered face and ludicrous contortions, adding a new feature of disgust to the display, which is sickening enough already. We can easily imagine that this vivid scene may have injurious effects – that it may be even more hurtful than a visit to the original meeting would have been; for there is probably here a heightening of the attractions of the show, in as much as the dancers are chosen for their beauty, and the dresses selected for the very purpose of captivation and allurement. If such a scene was required at all, it should, certainly, have been produced in a less attractive form. We should not have been so severe on this subject if we did not feel that no theatre in London less needs to depend on such displays for success. No theatre in London has it so completely in its power to show to what noble uses a stage may be applied; for on none is there so near an approach to the ancient glory of the drama in the skill and ensemble of the actors. Exercising talents like these on ghosts and festivals is a mere waste of power. It is turning a steam-engine to the manufacture of pins – of pins that are useless in spite of their polished heads, and poisonous if they penetrate the skin. Let not this one departure from taste be urged against theatrical amusements in general, or the entertainments at this house in particular. It is a French importatation – this ghostly melodrama, this unmeasured ball. But Shakspeare is here with his English heart, and "empire absolute" over the feelings. The poetry of "Twelfth Nigh" alternates with the wondrous picture in the "Merry Wives of Windsor." The gentle Viola speaks in tones that never die away from the memory. Mrs Ford answers smile for smile and grip for grip to Mrs Brook – Caius, for the first time, is the perfect gentleman which only Wigan can depict; and scene after scene floats away before us, till it is only by an effort we wake from a dream of Herne the Hunter's Oak to the harsh realities of eighteen hundred and fifty-two.

In some future communication we will extend our Commissionership to the other theatres, and to various places of amusement not often brought forward 'neath the glimpses of the moon. Beware, then, ye managers and caterers of public shows; be conscious of the importance and responsibilities of your position. When we see talent, enterprise, and skill, not slow shall we be to give the word of cheer; but where we observe the smallest deviation into the coarse or the insipid, remember you have nothing to expect but rebukes sharper than swords.

"A chield's amang ye takin' notes,And, faith, he'll print it."

THE COMMERCIAL DISASTERS OF 1851

(TO THE EDITOR OF BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.)

Sir, – The country is shortly to be called upon to decide the important question whether the policy, under which it has for the last few years been governed, is, or is not, susceptible of some modification; and, as one portion of this question, the soundness of our present commercial policy must undoubtedly be discussed. Indeed, it seems to be taken for granted on all hands that this must be the case; and in a great empire like our own, whose main source of strength has been conceived to rest upon the pre-eminence of its mercantile and industrial character, it would be singular if it could be otherwise. And it would be lamentable, too, and little calculated to inspire the hope of peace for the future, and confidence in the stability of our institutions, should that portion of the question at issue be discussed in any other spirit than that of an anxious and careful desire to arrive at the truth. No policy not based upon the truth has ever long prevailed in any civilised country. No Christian man, conscious as such a man ought to be of the imperfections of merely human judgment, could ever set himself up above his fellows as infallible. We have surely a perfect right to appeal to past experience in order to discover what has been the effect of our policy upon the different interests of the country; and in the following pages I shall endeavour to examine dispassionately what has been that effect upon our mercantile and trading classes, and particularly upon those engaged in conducting our large importing and exporting operations.

It is, of course, an acknowledged principle, that an increased import of foreign commodities, to be a profitable one, must be attended by increased means of consuming in the importing country, and be balanced ultimately by increased exports, at paying prices to the producer. The question, then, so far as the mercantile body is concerned, is simply this, – Have the transactions of the past year been satisfactory to that body, or not? I do not hesitate to say in reply, that, with the solitary exception of the year 1847 – if indeed it be an exception – there has been no such disastrous epoch in the annals of British commerce for the past quarter of a century as the year 1851. If the year 1847 was more disastrous, it was because it was one of monetary revulsion, of potato rot, and of the collapse of absurd railway speculation. During the past year we have had nothing of this kind to encounter. We entered upon 1851 with prognostications, all but unanimous, of a coming year of prosperous business. During the course of the year we had neither civil commotion nor foreign embroilment to trouble the even tenor of our way. Yet we have closed the year with the mercantile and trading interests of Great Britain poorer than they commenced it, by, I am satisfied, at least twenty millions sterling and upwards. During the whole of the past year, the reports of our commercial circulars have told an unvarying tale of declining prices and unprofitable imports. Scarcely a single foreign product has remunerated the merchant, or even realised the cost at which it was purchased abroad; and stocks of all kinds, not only in our seaports, but in every retailer's shop or warehouse throughout the country, have been every week deteriorating in saleable value. In no single commodity of importance has the consumption kept pace with the increase of importations; and had we at any period of the year been visited with monetary difficulty, had the Bank of England not been full of specie, and anxious to extend its accommodation to the public, the losses upon our accumulation of stocks would have been sufficient to prostrate one-half of the mercantile community.

In endeavouring to form an estimate of the actual losses of the year upon imports, I shall commence with the important article Cotton. We entered upon 1851 with a stock, according to Mr Burn's Commercial Glance, of 581,120 bales in the entire kingdom, in the hands of importers, spinners, and speculators, spinners being estimated by Mr Burn to hold 60,000 bales. Messrs G. Holt and Co. of Liverpool, calculate the quantity at 100,000 bales in the hands of spinners and dealers. The bulk of this stock had been purchased at the high prices which had ruled during the last four months of 1850; and, in the first week of January, the price of "fair upland," which may be taken as a standard, was 7⅞d. per lb. Such were the rates ruling in the countries of its growth, it could not have been bought there within at least ¼d. per lb. of that price. Although such stock would naturally find its way gradually into the market, and its place be supplied by fresh imports, and as there was a nearly similar one – estimated by Messrs Holt at 594,000 bales – left at the close of the past year, it will simplify the process of calculation, and at the same time be correct as to the general result, if I treat the stock of January 1851 as having borne the fall of the entire year. The price, then, of fair uplands having been, in the last week of December, 4⅞d. to 5d., and other sorts in nearly that proportion, there would be a reduction of from 2⅞d. to 3d. upon those American sorts which form the bulk of the consumption, and 2⅛d. to 2¼d. upon the next in importance. Bearing in mind that the prices on the 1st of January were not remunerative to the importer, I believe I am within the mark in fixing the loss at £5 per bale of 400 lb. average weight, which, upon the stock of 581,120 bales, amounts to the large sum of £2,905,600 sterling. We now come to the imports of the year, which were, of all kinds, into the United Kingdom, 1,903,506 bales. With respect to these, the first striking fact which presents itself, on a comparison of the prices current in this country and the cotton-growing countries, is that, throughout the whole of the year, the foreign purchases of our importing merchants were made at a large advance over the prices which could be realised on their arrival here. I have gone carefully through files of the most authoritative foreign circulars, and, with respect to American cotton particularly, the unvarying result has been to find prices considerably higher than in the British market. Thus, on the 4th of January, I find "middling to fair" cotton from the Atlantic ports, corresponding with our Liverpool classification of "fair upland," quoted in New York at 13⅞ to 14 cents per lb.; on the 15th, at 14 to 14¼ cents on the 22d, the same; and on the 29th, 13⅞ cents. Assume the average of the month to have been 14 cents, and allowing a penny per lb. for freight, commission, landing charges, &c., which I am assured is too little, the cotton shipped in that month would cost in Liverpool fully 8d. per lb. Prices here, however, began to decline after the first week in January, when fair upland was quoted at 7⅞d.; and on the 31st of that month the quotation was only 7½d. to 7⅝d. On the 14th and 21st of February they were quoted at 7d. to 7⅛d.; and in all March, when the purchases of the month of January would be reaching us, the average was about 7¼d. – showing a loss on importation of ¾d. per lb. In February, prices in America commenced at 13 cents to 13⅛ cents; but on the 1st of May they had fallen to 11 cents to 11½ cents. The early purchases of February, which would cost, landed in Liverpool, about 7⅝d., would probably arrive about the middle of March, when prices here averaged about 7¼d. – a loss of ⅜d. per lb., or nearly 10s. per bale. Those of the closing week of the month – about a week's transactions – might possibly save themselves, if sold in the beginning or middle of April. Throughout March prices rallied in America; and were sustained until nearly the middle of April at from 11¾ cents to 12¼ cents – about 7⅛d. here. Prices in Liverpool, however, had been falling rapidly; and a portion of these purchases arrived in Liverpool in the middle of May, to be sold at 5¾d. to 5⅞d – a loss of above 1¼d. per lb., or £2, 5s. per bale. By the end of April, prices in America had receded slightly; but in the beginning of May there was another attempt to rally them – the quotations being, on the 7th, 11⅜ cents to 11⅝ cents, or about 6¾d. to 6⅞d. here. In the whole of June, however, when the cotton bought at these prices would arrive here, the average in Liverpool was little over 5⅞d. – showing a loss of from 30s. to 35s. per bale. From this point a gradual decline took place in all May, June, July, and August, reaching the lowest point – 8¾ cents to 9 cents – on the 9th of the last month. The decline in America, however, never overtook that experienced here – the bulk of the transactions of these months resulting in a loss. A slight rally again took place in September, and prices were forced up to an average of about 10 cents, or 6d. laid down in this country. No corresponding movement, however, took place here; and the average losses of September shipments would be nearly 25s. per bale. An unprofitable result, less disastrous, however, attended the remainder of the year's arrivals.

The loss has been nearly as serious in our transactions with the East Indies, the length of the voyage operating to aggravate the unhappy position of the importer. Thus cotton orders, transmitted by overland mail in the first three months of the year, whilst prices of Surat were about 4d. to 6½d., would arrive here in June, July, and August, when the quotations were from 1¼d. to 1½d. per lb. less, or from 45s. to 50s. per bale.

The question then arises, At what are we to estimate the loss on imports for the year? And the following circumstance appears to me to have an important bearing upon its solution. The bulk of the arrivals during the year – 1,212,377 bales – took place from the beginning of March to the end of August, the period in which the greatest decline below cost price occurred. Taking this and other circumstances into consideration, I cannot consider that I am exceeding the truth in averaging the loss on importation during the year at ¾d. per lb., or 25s. per bale, upon the whole quantity received, deducting the stock on hand at the close of 1851 – 594,500 bales. This will give upon 1,409,046 bales a loss of £1,761,307, which, with £2,905,600, previously ascertained as the difference between the value of the stock on hand at the commencement of the year, and the same quantity of the article at its close, makes up a total loss upon cotton of £4,667,000. Of this, at the very least, the British merchants' share is four millions sterling!

A large sum might fairly be added to this as the manufacturers' and spinners' share in the loss sustained upon their stocks from the declining prices of the raw material during the whole of the year's operations. I will not, however, enter into detail with respect to this part of my subject; but glance at it briefly when I come to estimate the losses, sustained by holders of produce generally, whilst in transitu from the importers' hands to the marts of its final consumption.

Next in importance to the article of cotton is that of Sugar, a great staple of food, which it has been the express object of our recent legislation to cheapen, regardless whether or not in doing so we inflicted ruin upon the colonial proprietor. It is not within the limits of the inquiry which I have prescribed to myself to trace the course of that legislation which, from whatever motives prompted, bids fair ultimately to reduce our once flourishing tropical possessions to their pristine condition of waste and jungle, and to throw back their coloured population into the barbarism from which, a few years ago, it was the pride of every lover of his kind to see them rapidly emerging. A brief reference to that legislation, however, is necessary, in order to render intelligible the mode in which I have calculated the extent of the past year's losses upon our imports of the article. At the period of emancipation, (1834,) our West Indian colonies, producing for British consumption 3,844,244 cwt. of sugar out of a total import of 4,743,415 cwt. for the year, were owned by a distinct class of proprietors, partly resident, but chiefly consisting of capitalists in this country. Up to that period the "West Indian Interest," as it was termed, was one of the most powerful in Great Britain, and afforded, through its import and export transactions, a most profitable source of employment to our merchants at home, as well as to their numerous branch establishments in the colonies. The measure of that year – exchanging compulsory labour for the apprenticeship system in the first instance, and shortly afterwards for free labour – precipitated the whole of this class into a fearful struggle, required from them to maintain production up to the wants of the home consumer. It was found necessary to import additional labourers to supply the place of those who, on receiving their freedom, had betaken themselves to other avocations than those of the sugar plantation; and every effort of science and improved culture had to be resorted to, in order to keep down the cost of production, and increase the yield of the soil. Whilst immersed in this struggle – a most unprofitable one, as it proved – the Free-Trader stepped in, and introduced the new element of competition with the foreign slave-grown article. The result of the much too sudden rate of reduction of the differential duties then adopted has been to render cultivation utterly unprofitable; and, so far as the original proprietors of the West Indies are concerned, the last measure directed against these unfortunate colonies may be justly termed one of direct confiscation. Under these circumstances, the bulk of the West Indian sugar and other estates have virtually lapsed to mortgagees – principally merchants in this country, who have advanced money upon them for the increased outlay required to keep up and cheapen production; and hence, so far as the West Indies are concerned, it is necessary to treat the importer and planter as one in such an inquiry as the present. There can scarcely be said to be a price at all in the West Indies – the bulk of the exports coming to the British market on the planter's and merchant's account. The same remark applies to coffee, rum, and every other description of West Indian produce. With respect to the produce of the East Indies and Mauritius, there does exist a price at the port of shipment, the articles being bought for the British markets in the ordinary way; and the result of the importation, as a purely mercantile transaction, can therefore be more correctly ascertained.

The importation of sugar during the past year was, in round numbers, 400,000 tons against 330,000 in 1850, and 340,000 in 1849. Of this quantity 270,000 tons consisted of colonial, (two-thirds of which was West Indian,) 110,000 tons of foreign, and 20,000 tons of foreign refined. In a general summary of the year's proceedings, the editor of the London New Price-Current– an authority of high standing – of Tuesday, Jan. 6, remarks: —

"The excess in stock of all sorts is 57,000 – viz., 157,000 tons against 107,000 at the close of 1850. Prices are lower by 7s. to 9s. per cwt. for low to mid prices of colonial, and 5s. to 6s. per cwt. for good to fine."