Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 1. No 1, June 1850

It does not appear that he wasted or lost any capital, except what he threw away on his farm. He was unlucky, but not imprudent in giving it up when he did. Had he held it a little longer, the Bank Restriction Act would have enriched him at the expense of his landlord; but Burns was an honest man, and, therefore, alike incapable of desiring and foreseeing that enormous villainy.

But he was neglected, we are told. Neglected! No strong man in good health can be neglected, if he is true to himself. For the benefit of the young, I wish we had a correct account of the number of persons who fail of success, in a thousand that resolutely strive to do well. I do not think it exceeds one per cent. By whom was Burns neglected? Certainly not by the people of Scotland: for they paid him the highest compliment that can be paid to an author: they bought his book! Oh, but he ought to have been pensioned. Pensioned! Can not we think of poets without thinking of pensions? Are they such poor creatures, that they can not earn an honest living? Let us hear no more of such degrading and insolent nonsense.

But he was a drunkard, it is said. I do not mean to exculpate him when I say that he was probably no worse, in that respect, than his neighbors; for he was worse if he was not better than they, the balance being against him; and his Almighty Father would not fail to say to him, "What didst thou with the lent talent?" But drunkenness, in his time, was the vice of his country – it is so still; and if the traditions of Dumfries are to be depended on, there are allurements which Burns was much less able to resist than those of the bottle; and the supposition of his frequent indulgence in the crimes to which those allurements lead, is incompatible with that of his habitual drunkenness.

Of Delays. – Fortune is like the market where, many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall; and again, it is sometimes like the Sibyl's offer, who at first offereth the commodity at full, then consumeth part and part, and still holdeth up the price… There is surely no greater wisdom than well to time the beginnings and onsets of things. Dangers are no more light if they once seem light: and more dangers have deceived men than forced them. Nay, it were better to meet some dangers half-way, though they come nothing near, than to keep too long a watch upon their approaches; for if a man watch too long, it is odds he will fall asleep. On the other side, to be deceived with too long shadows – as some have been, when the moon was low and shone on their enemies, and so to shoot off before the time – or to teach dangers to come on, by an over-early buckling toward them, is another extreme. The ripeness or unripeness of the occasion must ever be well weighed; and, generally, it is good to commit the beginnings of all great actions to Argus with his hundred eyes, and the ends to Briareus with his hundred hands; first to watch, and then to speed. —Lord Bacon.

[From the London Examiner.]

THE PARIS ELECTION

All Paris is absorbed in the contest between the stationer Leclerc and Eugene Sue the novelist. Strange it is that the party which pretends to superior intelligence and refinement, should have put forward as their candidate merely a specimen of constabulary violence, an honest policemen, in fact; while the party accused of consisting of the mere dregs of society has selected for its representative one of the most refined and searching intellects of the day. If ever a man became a Socialist from conviction, it has been Sue; for his writings clearly show the progress and the changes of his mind. From depicting high society and influences he acquired a disgust for them; by diving among the vulgar, he discovered virtues whose existence he did not suspect. And though the conclusions he has drawn are erroneous, they would seem to be sincere.

It is remarkable indeed to observe how all the great literary geniuses of the day in France have taken the popular side. We know how boldly Lamartine plunged into it. Victor Hugo has taken the same part, and Eugene Sue. Alexandre Dumas, though in the employ of Louis Philippe in 1830, soon flung aside court livery and conservatism. Emile de Girardin, another man of first rate literary ability, is decidedly Socialist. Beranger, as far as age will permit him, is a stern republican. When a cause thus attracts and absorbs all the floating talent of a country, there is a vitality and respectability in it, more than we are at present inclined to allow to French democratic parties.

That the intellect, that is, the entire working intelligence of the country, has labored on the Democratic, and, we fear even on the Socialist side, is too evident from the fact that the opinions of the latter have gained ground, and not retrograded even in the provinces, where property is subdivided, and where there are few of the indigent classes. In no place is property more generally possessed that in the South of France; and there the results of the last two years have been certainly to strengthen democratic ideas, and to make monarchic ones decline. There is no mistaking, indeed, in what direction the current of ideas has set.

The Conservatives, or Monarchists, or the old political class, whatever one pleases to call them, begin to perceive that they are beaten in the intellectual, the argumentative struggle. They therefore make an appeal to arms. This is evident in all their acts, arguments, and movements. Their efforts are directed to crush the press, proscribe and imprison writers, and abolish meetings and speeches, except those delivered in their own clubs. They give the universities over to the Jesuits, and elect for the Assembly no longer orators, but stout soldiers. Changarnier is the Alpha, and Leclerc the Omega of such a party. Strategy is its policy. It meditates no question of political economy or of trade, but bethinks it how streets are best defended, and how towns are fortified against themselves. A War Minister, a Tax Minister, and a Police Minister – these form the head Cabinet of France. As to foreign policy, trade policy, and the other paraphernalia of government, all this is as much a sham and a humbug, as an assembly must be of which the majority is marshaled and instructed in a club, before it dares proceed to its duties of legislation.

The entire tendency is to change an intellectual and argumentative into a physical struggle. What events may occur, and what fortune prevail in a war of this kind, it is utterly impossible to foretell. For, after all, the results of war depend infinitely upon chance, and still more on the talent of the leader which either party may choose to give itself. Nor is it always the one which conquers first that maintains its ascendency to the last. A war of this kind in France would evidently have many soldiers enlisted on either side, and soldiers in that country make excellent officers. The Conservatives seem to think that the strife will be decided, as of old, in the streets of Paris; and they look to the field of battle, and prepare for it, with a forethought and a vigilance as sanguinary and destructive as it is determined. We doubt, however, whether any quantity of street-fighting in the metropolis can decide a quarrel which becomes every day more embittered and more universal. Socialism will not be put down in a night, nor yet in three days; no nor, we fear, even in a campaign.

Looking on the future in this light, it appears to us of trifling moment whether M. Leclerc or M. Sue carry the Paris election. Some thousand voters, more or less, on this side or on that, is no decision. The terrible fact is, the almost equal division of French society into two camps, either of which makes too formidable a minority to put up with defeat and its consequences, without one day or other taking up arms to advance fresh pretensions and defend new claims.

Mrs. Hemans. – She reminds us of a poet just named, and whom she passionately admired, namely, Shelley. Like him, drooping, fragile, a reed shaken by the wind, a mighty mind, in sooth, too powerful for the tremulous reed on which it discoursed its music – like him, the victim of exquisite nervous organization – like him, verse flowed on and from her, and the sweet sound often overpowered the meaning, kissing it, as it were, to death; like him she was melancholy, but the sadness of both was musical, tearful, active, not stony, silent and motionless, still less misanthropical and disdainful; like him she was gentle, playful, they could both run about their prison garden, and dally with the dark chains which they knew bound them to death. Mrs. Hemans was not indeed a Vates, she has never reached his heights, nor sounded his depths, yet they are, to our thought, so strikingly alike as to seem brother and sister, in one beautiful but delicate and dying family. —Gilfillan.

THE POPE AT HOME AGAIN

The Pope has returned to Rome, but the Papacy is not reinstated. The past can not be recalled. When Pius the Ninth abandoned the territorial seat of the Papal power, he relinquished the post that preserved to that power its place of command throughout many parts of Europe. It was the "Pope of Rome" to whom the many did homage, and the Pope could only be deemed to be "of Rome" so long as he was at Rome: for there can be no doubt that a great part of the spiritual influence possessed by the Sovereign Pontiff has been indissolubly connected with the temporal sovereignty and territorial abode of the Pontificate. Even after his dispossession, for a time, no doubt, heart might have been kept up among his more refined and cultivated followers; but the most faithful peoples have always demanded a tangible standard or beacon of their faith – a pillar of fire or a visible church. When Pius left Rome, the rock became tenantless; the mansion of St. Peter was vacant; a Pope in lodgings was no Pope of Europe. And so it was felt.

But the bodily restoration of Pius the Ninth to the capital of his states is not the restoration of the Pope to his spiritual throne. That can no more be effected. The riddle has been read, in these terrible days of reading and writing – so different from the days when a Papal rustication at Avignon disturbed the Catholic world, and verily shook the Papacy to its foundations even then. Some accounts describe the Pope's return as a triumph, and relate how the Romans submitted themselves in obedient ecstasy to his blessing: it is not true – it is not in the nature of things. It is easy to get up an array of popular feeling, as in a theatre, which shall make a show – a frontage of delight; easy to hire twelve beggars that their feet may be washed. Mr. Anderson of Drury Lane can furnish any amount of popular feeling or pious awe at a shilling a head; and the managers know these things in Rome, where labor is much cheaper than with us. Pius returned to Rome under cover of the French bayonets, to find a people cowed and sulky – contrasting their traditions with the presence of the Gaul, remembering in bitterness the days before the Papacy, and imputing this crowning finish of their disgrace to the Pope forced back upon them.

Even were the people for a moment pleased to see the well-meaning and most unfortunate old man, the days of his inscrutable power are over. Nothing can again be inscrutable that he can hold. While he was away, the tongue of Rome was let loose, and can he make the ear of Rome forget what it heard in those days of license? Can he undo the knowledge which men then attained of each other, and their suppressed ideas? Assuredly not. When he left the keys of St. Peter in his flight, men unlocked the door of the sanctuary, and found out his secret – that it was bare. Political bondage to them will be, not the renewal of pious ignorance, but the rebinding of limbs that have learned to be free.

Nay, were Rome to resume her subjection, the past has been too much broken up elsewhere for a quiet return to the old régime, even in Italy. The ecclesiastical courts have been abolished in Piedmont, and the Sardinian states henceforth stand in point of free discussion on a level with Germany, if not with France. The Pope will be fain to permit more in Genoa or Turin than the eating of eggs during Lent – to permit a canvassing of Papal authority fatal to its existence. But in Tuscany, for many generations, a spirit of free discussion has existed among the educated classes: the reforming spirit of Ricci has never died in the capital of Tuscany, and the memory of Leopold protected the freedom of thought: a sudden and a new value has been given to that prepared state of the Tuscan mind by the existence of free institutions in Piedmont. Giusti will no longer need to traverse the frontier of Italy in search of a printer. With free discussion in two of the Italian states, Milan will not be deaf, nor Naples without a whisper. Italy must sooner or later get to know her own mind, and then the Bishop of Rome will have to devise a new position for himself.

Abroad, in Catholic Europe, there is the same disruption between the past and the future. The Archbishop of Cologne exposed, in his rashness, the waning sanctity of the Church; the Neo-Catholics have exposed its frangible condition. Sectarian distinctions are torn to pieces in Hungary by the temporal conflicts, and the dormant spirit of a national Protestantism survives in sullen hatred to alien rule. Austria proper is pledged to any course of political expediency which may defer the evil day of Imperial accountability, and will probably, in waxing indifferency, see fit to put Lombardy on a spiritual par with Piedmont. France is precarious in her allegiance. Two countries alone remain in unaltered relation to the See of Rome – Spain, the most bigoted of the children of Rome; and Ireland, the most faithful. But Ireland is impotent. And to this day Spain asserts, and preserves, the national independence which she has retained throughout the most arrogant days of Romish supremacy, throughout the tyrant régime of Torquemada. Even court intrigue dares not prostitute the nationality of Spain to Roman influence. Rome is the talk of the world, and the return of Pius to the Vatican can not restore the silent submission of the faithful. He is but to be counted among the "fashionable arrivals." —London Spectator.

Civil Liberty defined. – This is not the liberty which we can hope, that no grievance ever should arise in the commonwealth; that let no man in this world expect; but when complaints are freely heard, deeply considered, and speedily reformed, then is the utmost bound of civil liberty attained that wise men look for. —John Milton.

[From the London Examiner.]

THE AUSTRALIAN COLONIES

The Jutland and Sleswick pirates, who fourteen centuries ago performed the great achievement of conquering and colonizing Britain, have since, in the persons of their descendants, achieved the still greater feat of colonizing and settling, while they are in a fair way of conquering and occupying, a whole continent, to the destruction or absorption of every other race. The Anglo-Saxon population of America, in fact, constitutes, at this moment, a people more numerous and mighty than any European nation of the period when their emigration commenced. The very same people is now engaged in achieving another great, although not equally great enterprise, the colonization of another continent, Australia; and the Australian colonies, within sixty years of their first foundation, are already calling loudly for self and responsible government, which is, by more than a century, sooner than the American Colonies made a similar claim. We have not the least doubt but that it will be to the mutual and permanent advantage of both parties, that these demands of the Colonists, which are in no respect unreasonable, should be liberally and readily granted.

The better to understand our position in relation to them, let us compare the two continents alluded to. America has a greater extent of territory, and therefore more room for expansion than Australia. Its natural products are more valuable, its soil is more fertile, and its climates more varied and propitious to vegetation. Its greatest superiority over Australia, however, consists in its magnificent water communication – its great rivers, its splendid lakes, its navigable estuaries, and its commodious harbors. Finally, it possesses the vast advantage of being only one-sixth part of the distance that Australia is from the civilization and markets of Europe.

Let us now see what Australia is. It is said to contain three millions of square miles. But of this we take it that about one-half, or all of it that lies north of the twenty-fifth degree of south latitude, is unfit for our use as Europeans, and, most probably, for the profitable use of any people, on account of the comparative sterility of the land, or, what in such a situation is equivalent to sterility, the drought of the climate. But for these great and, we fear, insuperable disadvantages, the tropical portion of Australia might have been peopled from industrious and teeming China, which, with the help of steam navigation, is at an easy distance. Notwithstanding this serious deduction from its available area, Australia has extent enough for the abode of a great people, as what remains is equal to near twenty Britains, or above seven countries as large as France!

The absence of good water communication is the greatest defect of Australia. It has not one great river which at once penetrates deeply into the country and communicates by a navigable course with the sea. The best of its rivers are not equal to those of the fourth or fifth order in America, and it has no lake at all of commercial value. Another almost equally great disadvantage is frequent and long-continued droughts, even of its southern parts, which, however, as strength and wealth increase, may in time be, at least, mitigated by the erection of great works of irrigation, such as those on which the existence of whole populations depend in the warmer regions of Asia.

In salubrity of climate Australia has a great superiority, not only over America, but over every other country. For the rearing of sheep and the production of fine wool, it may be said to possess almost a natural monopoly; and in this respect, it will soon become as necessary to us, and probably as important, as America is for the growth of cotton. Its adaptation for pastoral husbandry is such, indeed, that we have often thought, had it been settled by Tartars or Arabs, or even by Anglo-Saxons of the time of Hengist and Horsa, that it would have been now thinly inhabited by nomade hordes, mere shepherds and robbers, if there was any one to rob. One immense advantage Australia possesses over America, which must not be omitted – the total absence of a servile population and an alien race. In America the bondsmen form a fourth part of the whole population, and in Australia little more than one sixtieth, speedily to vanish all together.

If the comparison between America and Australia have reference to the facility of achieving and maintaining independence, all the advantages are unquestionably on the side of Australia. It is at least six times as far away from Europe; and a military force sufficient to have even a chance of coercing the colonists could not get at them in less than four months, while the voyage would force it to run the gauntlet of the equator and both tropics. When it reached its destination, supposing its landing to be unopposed, it would have to march every step to seek the insurgents, for there is neither river nor estuary to transport it into the interior of the country. The colonists, rifle in hand, and driving their flocks and herds before them to the privation of the invader, would of course take to the bush, and do so with impunity, being without tents or equipage, or risk of starvation, having a wholesome sky over their heads, and abundant food in their cattle. With a thorough knowledge of localities, the colonial riflemen, under such circumstances, would be more than a match for regular troops, and could pick off soldiers with more ease than they bring down the kangaroo or opossum.

We should look, however, to the number and character of the Australian population. In 1828 the total colonial population of Australia was 53,000, of whom a large proportion were convicts. In 1848 it was 300,000, of which the convicts were but 6000. In the two years since, 37,000 emigrants have proceeded thither, and the total population at this moment can not be less than 350,000. It has, therefore, been multiplied in twenty-two years' time by near seven-fold; and if it should go on at this rate of increase, in the year 1872 it will amount to close on two millions and a half, which is a greater population than that of the old American colonies at the declaration of independence, and after an existence of 175 years. Such a population, or the one half of it, would, from numbers, position, and resources, be unconquerable.

Such is a true picture, we conceive, of the position in which we stand in relation to our Australian colonies. Meanwhile, the colonists are loyal, affectionate, and devoted, and (the result of absence and distance) with really warmer feelings toward the mother country than those they left behind them. It will be the part of wisdom on our side to keep them in this temper. They demand nothing that is unreasonable – nothing that it is not equally for their advantage and ours that we should promptly and freely concede. They ask for responsible government, and doing so they ask for no more than what is possessed by their fellow-citizens. They ought to have perfect power over their own resources and their own expenditure; but, in justice and fairness, they ought also to defray their own military charges; and, seeing they have neither within nor without any enemy that can cope with a company of light infantry, the cost ought not to be oppressive to them.

The Australian colonies are, at present, governed in a fashion to produce discontent and recalcitration. They are, consequently, both troublesome and expensive. The nation absolutely gains nothing by them that it would not gain, and even in a higher degree, were they self-governed, or, for that matter, were they even independent. Thus, emigration to them would go on at least in the same degree as it does now. It does so go on, to the self-governed colony of Canada, and to the country which was once colonies, and this after a virtual separation of three quarters of a century.

In like manner will our commercial intercourse with the Australian colonies proceed under self-government. In 1828, the whole exports of Australia amounted only to the paltry sum of £181,000, and in 1845, the last for which there is a return, they had come to £2,187,633, or in seventeen years' time, had been increased by above fourteen-fold, a rapidity of progress to which there is no parallel. At this ratio, of course, they can not be expected to proceed in future; for the Australians, having coal, iron, and wool in abundance, will soon learn to make coarse fabrics for themselves. The finer they will long receive from us, as America, after its long separation, still does. But that the Australian Colonies, under any circumstances, are destined to become one of the greatest marts of British commerce, may be considered as a matter of certainty. The only good market in the world, for the wool, the tallow, the train oil, and the copper ore of Australia, is England; and to England they must come, even if Australia were independent to-morrow; and they must be paid for, too, in British manufactures. Independence has never kept the tobacco of America from finding its best market in England, nor has it prevented American cotton from becoming the greatest of the raw materials imported by England.

A common lineage, a common language, common manners, customs, laws, and institutions, bind us and our Australian brethren together, and will continue to do so, perhaps longer than the British Constitution itself will last. They form, in fact, a permanent bond of union; whereas the influence of patronage, and the trickeries of Conservative legislation, do but provoke and hasten the separation which they are foolishly framed to prevent.

[From the Dublin University Magazine.]

JEWISH VENERATION

The veneration of the Jew for the law is displayed by the grossest superstition, a copy of the Torah or Decalogue being carefully soldered into a narrow tin case, and hung over the entrance to their chambers, as old crones with us nail a horse-shoe to a door; it is even believed to avail as an amulet or charm capable of averting evil, or curing the most obstinate disease. "Ah," said a bed-ridden old Hebrew woman to me, as I visited the mission hospital in Jerusalem, "what can the doctors do for me? If I could only touch the Torah I should be made whole." Not exactly comprehending what she meant, I handed her a little tin-cased copy of the Ten Commandments; she grasped it in her emaciated hands, which trembled with anxiety, and her eyes were lit up with a transient gleam of joy. "Are you made whole?" I inquired; she made no answer, fell back on her pillow, let drop the Torah, and turned from me with a sigh.