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machinery for hand labour, for, he argues, that, whilst the nation is enriched, whole classes are impoverished, and individuals are deprived by thousands of the means of subsistence. In the midst of all this manufacturing pre-eminence created by machinery, whole families die of hunger, and fall to the charge, not of the manufacturer, who turns to his own profit the greater part of the sum economised by the extinction of their labour, but of the community at large, which does not, like the manufacturer, reap any advantage from the sufferings entailed by the adoption of machinery.

The Baron gives England the credit of having encouraged more than any other nation the spirit of association or partnership, which operates not only on the relations of families, but takes up, as it were, the management of some certain department of public business, assuming all the faculties and powers of a recognized government, and employing arms and making treaties with foreign states; in short, every means of public convenience, from the by-path in the most obscure village, to the docks in the capital, where the vessels of all nations set down their cargoes. Our houses are built, our streets are lighted as they are, altogether from the effect of this spirit of combination.

In speaking of our manufacturing system, the Baron appears to regard it as little better, in a moral and political sense, than the antient feudal system, which it is one of the proudest boasts of modern Europe to have extirpated: this system, the author does not hesitate to declare, enslaves thousands of individuals, condemns them to incessant toil, lays hold of women and children, exposes them to all sorts of demoralization, requires of them services not only disproportioned to their strength, but to the wretched salary granted to them; deprives them of all education, and, exercising supreme control over their lives and limbs, devotes them to endless privations, contrary to all laws, to all government, and to all well-defined rights of property.

This feudality he declares to be nothing more or less than the existing manufacturing power, where dungeons are its workshops, where thousands of unfortunate beings find premature death, long preceded by the most harrassing diseases; these attributable alone to the unwholesome air in which the victims are constantly exposed, and to the excessive labour and ill-treatment which they are under the necessity of enduring. The Baron then proceeds to describe some of the most striking abuses which the Factory Committee of Parliament exposed in their récent reports. But, as this great question, in order to be properly treated, must receive a much larger and more deliberate notice than we can afford it in this incidental way, we shall postpone to a better opportunity the consideration of the important subject.

The author commences his observations on agriculture by condemning the principle on which its system rests in this country

c 2

that principle being the suppression of small farms. This practice is traced by the Baron, partly to that aristocratical spirit which so strikingly pervades all our institutions, and partly from an attention to economy. The result of the large husbandry peculiar to England is, that it places those who, under other circumstances, would be farmers themselves, in a state of bondage, as it were, beneath a large proprietor; and though, from this arrangement, it happens that the farm is better and more evenly cultivated, yet to this cause may be fairly traced much of the misery of the rural population. The Baron D'Haussez ridicules the vulgar idea which represents man as being ever free in England; for, he says, that many an Englishman is placed in circumstances, particularly in remote parts of the country, in which he is any thing but free. The poor man, he goes on to say, lives, literally speaking, attached to the glebe. The farmers combine, not to raise the rate of labour; and, if the labourer wishes to escape a league so adverse to his interests, he is repulsed by all the parishes where he attempts to seek for an asylum and labour, under the pretext that, not being able to give security that he shall not be obliged to have recourse to public charity, he cannot therefore be allowed to increase the charges which weigh upon the community. Poverty thus fixes to the soil which produces it her unfortunate victim, and he and the generations condemned to come after him, have, and shall have for the future, nothing better than an indefinite prospect of slavery and privations.

As a consequence of this perversion of natural principles, the small class of farmers, those who constitute the whole of the agricultural interest of most civilized countries, have entirely disappeared in England. The author's account of the distribution of farms seems to be much nearer the reality than most of his descriptions.

'The division of fields is a part of this system. The estate is cut up into large masses, the centre is devoted to pasturage, to which are generally applied the grounds surrounding the mansion, or residence of the squire. In other words, the grazing-ground forms the park. The limits and bounds, as well as the principal divisions of the property, are marked by belts of trees, of about one hundred feet in breadth, divided length-ways by a path, which serves for the common purposes of felling and removing the timber, for exercise, and for sporting. The trees are generally of the fir and alpine species, and are planted young, and very near each other. They are guarded from the cattle by shallow ditches, on the opposite side of which are hawthorn hedges, protected by light paling. This mode of plantation, adopted, moreover, in spots not devoted to a more profitable husbandry, especially in the small ends and angles where the plough cannot penetrate, presents numerous advantages. It is economical, offers vast reserves at a small expense, affords shelter to corn and cattle against the inclemency of the seasons; serves as an asylum to game, favours the

breed, and renders shooting less toilsome. It cannot be sufficiently recommended, and might be very profitably introduced into France. Perhaps the substitution of seed plots would answer just as well for plantation, as the always more expensive process of obtaining young trees from nurseries.'

The subjects which the Baron subsequently considers, are of a miscellaneous character, consisting of chapters on "Parks," "Forests," "Manner of Travelling, "The Breeding, Food, and Employment of Horses." The latter topic leads the author, by an easy transition, to horse-racing in England. He gives an account of the several races of Newmarket and Epsom; next devotes a chapter to our steeple-chace; and, lastly, to the several species of field sports which are common to this country, as coursing, shooting, fox-hunting, &c. From the consideration of the sports of England, the Baron passes to the great subjects of inland conveyance, including all those means of passage and transport which are described under the titles of "Road," "Canal," "Suspension Bridge," and "Railway." The author very fairly admits that the system in England, which places the chief public enterprises in the hands of individuals voluntarily associated together, is infinitely to be preferred to that of France, where all works of general utility are suggested or executed only by government. The result of this difference is, that, in England, no speculation which has general convenience for its object, is entered upon, unless there is a persuasion, amounting to a conviction, on the part of a certain body of intelligent and experienced men, that such a speculation, if carried into practice, will prove successful. In fact, the enterprise is not undertaken until satisfactory information is collected on the feasibility of the plan, and the probability of its realizing all the consequences which are theoretically predicted as the result of its operation. The same prudential considerations are directed, as the author well observes, to the execution of the work. Without an absolute certainty, he justly states, of the degree and extent of the circulation, and, consequently, of the amount of profits, the project assumes only the character of a trial and experiment; but, if it be found productive, it soon receives that character of grandeur and durability which consorts with the importance of the communication and the prospect of the advantages it should procure. This is the manner of proceeding, in a country where good sense is first consulted, and where not a step is taken without being assured of the solidity of the ground on which you tread.

Speaking of the roads of England, the noble author readily yields to them the character of being by far the best in Europe, and particularly superior to those in France: and he endeavours to trace the difference which England exhibits, to the same cause as that which operates in the case just noticed; namely, that these roads are under the control of local authorities, who, for their own

sakes, will be interested in rendering them as substantial and convenient as possible. Some very excellent practical observations on our superior mode of making roads, canals, and railways, are worthy of attention, as they are not expressed in that equivocal language which is so frequently employed by the author, when he professes to eulogize, and in reality only calumniates our country. His meaning cannot be misunderstood, when he goes so far as to sanction such a remonstrance as the following to the French government, which he supposes might, with great propriety, be addressed to it by an intelligent Frenchman, who had visited England, and investigated our practice :-"Send your engineers to England, let them study what is done there. If the systems they observe cannot be adopted as a whole, at least many of the details are susceptible of beneficial application. The roads are better in England, therefore the means resorted to for making them are preferable to those employed in France. They present facilities for all kinds of transport, in which those of France are wanting. Borrow, therefore, what is good in the English system. hastily adopt innovations, but do not entirely set your face against them. Try the system partially; render the application of it more general, when its advantages shall be clearly demonstrated. Set out with this principle, that the mode of making and repairing the roads in France is evidently bad, since it produces such bad results. Ameliorate with prudence, but do not reject ameliorations.'

Do not

We thus conclude our notice of these volumes with that portion of them which refers to England; the remaining, and much the smaller part, being dedicated to the description of the author's journey to Scotland and Ireland respectively. In taking leave of the Baron d'Haussez, we cannot consistently with our real feelings, award him the compliment which would be implied by telling him that we have been much pleased with his acquaintance. It is not because he is a Frenchman, and an enemy of England, that we should condemn him; certainly not: our character as a people is universal property, and is open to the unrestrained criticism of every foreigner who chooses to make us the subject of his observations: but what we blame this author for is, that, under the mask of a pretended friend, he has acted the part of an unsparing foe; and that there never was displayed in the history of literature, a more remarkable resemblance than that now before us, of the portrait drawn by the great poet, Pope, when he sang of one who

could

Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault and hesitate dislike.

23

ART. III.-Essai Sur La Statisque Morale de la France. Par M. A. GUERRY, Avocat a la Cour Royale. 1 vol. 4to., with Seven Tables. Paris: Crochard. 1833.

THIS work contains the substance of a long paper submitted by the author to the French Academy, and it traces, on authentic grounds, many very interesting particulars connected with the statistics of crime throughout the kingdom of France. We should, in the first place, remind the reader that the country just mentioned has long been signalised by the pains which she has taken to ascertain from time to time the amount, together with the relative state of her population. This solicitude first sprang up at the breaking out of the Revolution, when a law was established, whereby the clergy of the various districts of the kingdom were compelled annually to deliver up registers of births, marriages, and deaths, to the mayors. Since 1825, it has been the practise in France, for the Minister of Justice to receive corresponding details regarding crimes and offences; and it is from the latter documents, principally, that the author has drawn the details on which his very curious and interesting classification is founded.

He commences by making five general divisions of the whole kingdom of France, each of which consists of seventeen departments, and these divisions he calls the northern, the southern, eastern, western, and central. He next considers the state of crime in each division, from the years 1825 to 1830 inclusively, and gives, as a general conclusion, this fact, that, during the above six years, the greatest variation in the number of crimes against the person in these divisions, does not exceed one twenty-fifth of their average number. He adds also another inference, to the effect that the maximum of this variation is diminished to a fiftieth proportion so far as regards crimes against property. These conclusions, if attentively considered, will appear very remarkable, for they show that there is an uniform, or constant law, regulating the commission of crimes, whereby the strange phenomenon exists, of the amount of those crimes being almost every year the same. Such a coincidence cannot certainly be the mere effect of chance; it must have its origin in a source much more permanent and defined.

M. Guerry presents us first with a table in which crimes are enumerated according to their frequency: from this table it appears that the yearly average number is, of

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1,900

Crimes against the person
property (about) 5,300

It appears by another table, that, out of every one hundred crimes committed against the person, eighty-six are the acts of men, and fourteen of women; whilst, of the one hundred persons charged.

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