Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

and if negroes are best suited to the climate, to import negroes. This is a mode of adjusting the balance between work and laborers, quite in accordance with received principles; it is neither before nor behind the existing moralities of the world; and since it would accomplish the object of making the negroes work more, your contributor at least, it might have been supposed, would have approved of it. On the contrary, this prospect is to him the most dismal of all; for either "the new Africans, after laboring a little," will "take to pumpkins like the others," or if so many of them come that they will be obliged to work for their living, there will be "a black Ireland." The labor market admits of three possible conditions, and not, as this would imply, of only two. Either, first, the laborers can live almost without working, which is said to be the case in Demerara; or, secondly, which is the common case, they can live by working, but must work in order to live; or, thirdly, they cannot by working get a sufficient living, which is the case in Ireland. Your contributor sees only the extreme cases, but no possibility of the medium. If Africans are imported, he thinks there must either be so few of them, that they will not need to work, or so many, that although they work, they will not be able to live.

human nature. It is by analytical examination ( wanted, it is a very obvious idea to import laborers; that we have learned whatever we know of the laws of external nature; and if he had not disdained to apply the same mode of investigation to the laws of the formation of character, he would have escaped the vulgar error of imputing every difference which he finds among human beings to an original difference of nature. As well might it be said, that of two trees, sprung from the same stock, one cannot be taller than another but from greater vigor in the original seedling. Is nothing to be attributed to soil, nothing to climate, nothing to difference of exposure-has no storm swept over the one and not the other, no lightning scathed it, no beast browsed on it, no insects preyed on it, no passing stranger stript off its leaves or its bark? If the trees grew near together, may not the one which, by whatever accident, grew up first, have retarded the other's development by its shade? Human beings are subject to an infinitely greater variety of accidents and external influences than trees, and have infinitely more operation in impairing the growth of one another; since those who begin by being strongest, have almost always hitherto used their strength to keep the others weak. What the original differences are among human beings, I know no more than your contributor, and no less; it is one of the questions not yet satisfactorily answered in the natural his- Let me say a few words on the general quarrel tory of the species. This, however, is well known of your contributor with the present age. Every -that spontaneous improvement, beyond a very low age has its faults, and is indebted to those who grade-improvement by internal development, point them out. Our own age needs this service without aid from other individuals or peoples as much as others; but it is not to be concluded that is one of the rarest phenomena in history; and it has degenerated from former ages, because its whenever known to have occurred, was the result faults are different. We must beware, too, of of an extraordinary combination of advantages; in mistaking its virtues for faults, merely because, as addition doubtless to many accidents of which all is inevitable, its faults mingle with its virtues and trace is now lost. No argument against the ca- color them. Your contributor thinks that the age pacity of negroes for improvement, could be drawn has too much humanity, is too anxious to abolish from their not being one of these rare exceptions. pain. I affirm, on the contrary, that it has too It is curious, withal, that the earliest known civil- little humanity—is most culpably indifferent to the ization was, we have the strongest reason to be- subject; and I point to any day's police reports as lieve, a negro civilization. The original Egyptians the proof. I am not now accusing the brutal porare inferred, from the evidence of their sculptures, tion of the population, but the humane portion; if to have been a negro race: it was from negroes, they were humane enough, they would have contherefore, that the Greeks learnt their first lessons trived long ago to prevent these daily atrocities. in civilization; and to the records and traditions It is not by excess of a good quality that the age of these negroes did the Greek philosophers to the is in fault, but by deficiency-deficiency even of very end of their career resort (I do not say with philanthropy, and still more of other qualities much fruit) as a treasury of mysterious wisdom. wherewith to balance and direct what philanthropy But I again renounce all advantage from facts: it has. An "Universal Abolition of Pain Associwere the whites born ever so superior in intelli- ation" may serve to point a sarcasm, but can any gence to the blacks, and competent by nature to worthier object of endeavor be pointed out than instruct and advise them, it would not be the less that of diminishing pain? Is the labor which ends monstrous to assert that they had therefore a right in growing spices noble, and not that which lessens either to subdue them by force, or circumvent them the mass of suffering? We are told with a triumby superior skill; to throw upon them the toils phant air, as if it were a thing to be glad of, that and hardships of life, reserving for themselves," the Destinies” proceed in a “terrible manner;" under the misapplied name of work, its agreeable and this manner will not cease "for soft sawder

excitements.

Were I to point out, even in the briefest terms, every vulnerable point in your contributor's discourse, I should produce a longer dissertation than

his.

One instance more must suffice. If labor is

or philanthropic stump-oratory;" but whatever the means may be, it has ceased in no inconsiderable degree, and is ceasing more and more: every year the "terrible manner," in some department or other, is made a little less terrible. Is our cholera

comparable to the old pestilence-our hospitals to the old lazar-houses-our workhouses to the hanging of vagrants-our prisons to those visited by Howard? It is precisely because we have succeeded in abolishing so much pain, because pain and its infliction are no longer familiar as our daily bread, that we are so much more shocked by what remains of it than our ancestors were, or than in your contributor's opinion we ought to be.

But (however it be with pain in general) the abolition of the infliction of pain by the mere will of a human being, the abolition, in short, of despotism, seems to be, in a peculiar degree, the occupation of this age; and it would be difficult to show that any age had undertaken a worthier. Though we cannot extirpate all pain, we can, if we are sufficiently determined upon it, abolish all tyranny; one of the greatest victories yet gained over that enemy is slave-emancipation, and all Europe is struggling, with various success, towards further conquests over it. If, in the pursuit of this, we lose sight of any object equally important; if we forget that freedom is not the only thing necessary for human beings, let us be thankful to any one who points out what is wanting; but let us not consent to turn back.

That this country should turn back, in the matter of negro slavery, I have not the smallest apprehension. There is, however, another place where that tyranny still flourishes, but now for the first time finds itself seriously in danger. At this crisis of American slavery, when the decisive conflict between right and iniquity seems about to commence, your contributor steps in, and flings. this missile, loaded with the weight of his reputation, into the abolitionist camp. The words of English writers of celebrity are words of power on the other side of the ocean; and the owners of human flesh, who probably thought they had not an honest man on their side between the Atlantic and the Vistula, will welcome such an auxiliary. Circulated as his dissertation will probably be, by those whose interests profit by it, from one end of the American Union to the other, I hardly know of an act by which one person could have done so much mischief as this may possibly do; and I hold that by thus acting, he has made himself an instrument of what an able writer in the Inquirer justly calls "a true work of the devil."

From the N. Y. Tribune.

THE OLD CLOCK IN THE HALL.

BY R. H. STODDARD.

IT stands in a corner of the room
Behind the door, in the shade and gloom
In a heavy and antique case,

Rich mahogany, maple and oak,

Battered and scratched and dim with smoke, And the hands are bent on the face!

The knob and hinges are red with rust,
The top o' th' mouldings covered with dust,
The panels are yellow with stains,

And a ragged web like a tattered pall
Runs from its side to the sombre wall,
And over the window panes.

The pendulum swings, the wheels go round,
Making a dull, monotonous sound,
As the vanishing moments fleet;

A "tick," like the falling of grains of sand, As Time was pouring from out his hand The dust of years at his feet! Years have vanished-forgotten yearsWith all their sorrows and sins and tears, And left their marks in the hall ;

The old have died, the young grown old-
Generations have gone to mould,

And the clock survives them all.
Beautiful girls have watched the hours,
Knitting at stands, or working flowers
In frames of 'broidery fine-

And mornings, the young folks playing late
Wished the moments fettered to 66
eight,
For the school began at "nine!"
Mothers, with sons in distant lands,
Sorrowing, chid its tardy hands,
And dreamed of the meeting dear-
And wives whose husbands returned at night
Marked the time in the fading light,
And listened for footsteps near!

Blushing brides at their toilets gay,
In snowy robes on the happy day,
Have waited the hour to wed:

And sick folks, tossing on beds of pain,
Gazed at the clock again and again,
And watched beside the dead!

But years have vanished, and others fill
Their place, and the old clock standeth still
Ticking as in its pride:-

Summer and winter, day and night,
A sexton chiming the hours' flight,
Tolling the knell of Time!
January 7, 1849.

From the Churchman.

TO MY INFANT DAUGHTER ON HER BAPTISM.

THE seal is on thy forehead, love;
The cross upon thy brow;
And holy prayer to God above

Is breathing o'er thee now;
An offering to that God in heaven,
Our precious first-born we have given
We cannot draw the future's veil

And look, dear one, for thee,
Into the shadowy gloom beyond,
Upon life's billowy sea.

We know not if thy coming years
Be bright with smiles or dim with tears.

But we have given thee to God,

Be His the guiding arm,

To keep thee 'mid life's tempest waves,

And shield from every harm.

Be His the spirit to control;

His smile the sunlight of thy soul.

And we may watch thy infant steps,
And gently guide them here;
With the bright hope to cheer our hearts
'Mid every troubling fear,
That He to whom our child is given
Will lead her safely home to heaven.

C. E. T.

From the Examiner, of 5 Jan.
EUROPE AT THE CLOSE OF 1849.

is as full of rebellion as Paris. Bohemia insists on a separate constitution. Croatia is even more THERE is no denying two very simple facts- menacing than Bohemia. The Austrian military that the people were masters of Europe in 1848, chiefs, therefore, laugh with some reason at the preand that the soldiers were masters of it in 1849. tension of the civilians to govern by a constitution. The people, or their leaders, certainly did not The land far and wide is too hot for a constitution. show themselves to be overstocked with wisdom One might as well propose a floral exhibition for the task of administration. No wonder-a in the crater of Vesuvius, as to work a constipeople is not made for administering. Those tution in Lombardy, or Hungary, or even Bohemasses, however, even in reform and revolution, mia. Russian and French reäction were needed have had their purpose and their use, in the estab- merely to be directed against resistance in one or lishment of new principles for the regulation of two towns. But all the Austrian empire has government. Having established these, they dis- been a battle-field of reform, of carnage, and bru appear from the stage, hooted off of it perhaps, or tality. The Russians were called on to effect driven from it by bayonets. And yet the most what the Austrians could not; and what the Auspart of what they have proclaimed, and of the trians accomplished after all was by gold, and not laws they have promulgated, remain. by fair fighting. All this is so well known throughout the south-east of Europe, that the existing condition of things there has not one of the characteristics of either subjugation or fear. The present moment is but a truce with the struggles, though not with the barbarities, of war.

Discomfiture could not be more signal, nor the contempt which followed it more great, than that which overwhelmed the people of Paris, of Vienna, of Berlin. Yet we find what these discomfited people declared to be law, remains law. Representative government, universal suffrage, the necessity of popular assent to elections, jury law, a free press, more or less prevail; not one of which the overthrown governments would have dreamed of granting And now the kings of Europe are perplexed in the endeavor to solve the difficult problem consequent on all this to reign by the power of an army, yet according to the forms of representative government.

In cabinets and throughout countries, at present, the great struggle is between civil and military institutions and authority. And this it is which serves the popular cause. For the middle classes, though ever so much in terror of revolution, are still in such equal dread of military domination, that they, along with the civil functionary class, and even the proprietors of land, are bent and determined not to fall under the absolute regime of the soldiers. This it is which constitutes the true element of contention in Paris between Thiers and the president, in Berlin between Brandenberg and the constitutionalists, in Vienna between Schwartzenberg and the emperor's military

coterie.

If we draw a line diagonally across Europe, from the Western Alps to the mouth of the Vistula, we shall probably be of opinion that the events of 1849 have been pretty definitive, and not unsatisfactory in their results for the countries west of that line. Freedom, peace, constitutional development, struggles after commercial, social, and ministerial changes, have been carried on not by arms but by argument. These are hopeful for life and progress in the west, whilst every day the dislike for war and riot, for oppression and licentiousness, grows stronger. We observe here, in a word, a marked prevalence of the tastes, the desires, and the principles of the middle, industrious, enlightened, and civilian class, over the extravagances and tendencies of the two extremes of those below and above them.

But to return to the enslaved and struggling portion of Europe, we doubt even if 1850 will make any settlement of destinies. Russia overbears them most with its baleful power, which its vicinity gives it power to exercise, and to apply unceasingly, whilst the powers of the west can only interfere casually and at intervals, as chance Throughout North Germany we have little permits. In opposing Russia, we are now playdoubt that the civilian element will finally prevailing an unequal game. Austria now is Russian; in France, likewise, unless any spark should fall and what France may be, the court scandal-monupon the old tinder temperament of the people, and gers only know. awaken by-gone pursuits and hopes. For, if people are to be governed by soldiers, it must at least be by soldiers of fame, of greatness, of genius. If one's destiny is to be governed by poor and mediocre people, better have relays of lawyers and trusty politicians, than regiments of sub-lieuten

ants.

The difficulties of Austria are of course far greater than those of any government. It is difficult to say which of its provinces, or what section even of its metropolis, is the most disaffected. Hungary and Lombardy each require a huge army, even to raise taxes and execute the laws. Vienna

For corrupt and bankrupt Austria, Western Europe might have substituted Young Hungary. Whether such an opportunity may ever again occur, whether the Sclavonic race, from the Vistula to the Danube, retain the force to assert their independence, and to bridle the power of the Tartar, remains to be seen. But as for Austria, she lies bound in tyranny, in meanness, and in crime. Nothing can be hoped from her, or her dynasty, but obstruction, falsehood, and treachery. has lost Germany by the imbecility of Metternich, and betrayed Eastern Europe to Russia by the still greater imbecility and guilt of his successors.

She

From the Examiner, 5 Jan.
THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY.

WHO, of the old play-going world, does not remember, and laugh at the remembrance, of Liston's Apollo Belvi, in Killing no Murder, attired as a mourner, with most preposterous hat-band, scarf, and weepers, announcing his own decease, and explaining that the lamented defunct was carried off by sudden death, to which he had all his life been very subject? The Protectionists, with true Listonian face, are playing Apollo Belvi throughout the country, and with every appearance of unimpaired vitality proclaim that they are dead and gone. But the farce is a very old one, has been repeated to weariness, and we cannot call to mind the time when agriculture was not perishing, so subject has it ever been to the chronic complaint of Liston's character, sudden death. For so it is that agricultural man never is, but always to be ruined. He has been poisoned as often as Dickens' Mantalini, and is no whit the worse, or nearer his end after all. What is it that makes rural calamity of so long a life? How is it that it is ever sinking, and never gets to the bottom? When are we to come to the promised wilderness? When is the plough to be deposited in the British Museum as a curiosity belonging to a past and destroyed world? How much longer are sowing and reaping to go on, just as if farmers thought of selling and living by something different from a loss? But this question does not apply to the farmers only, but to all the spoiled children of Protection, who have promised to perish of the removal of their swaddling clothes. The past year was to have been the last year of British shipping. The wooden walls were to have followed the wooden heads of Old England to destruction; but, lo! at the beginning of the first year of the repeal of the navigation laws, and the consequent ruin as predicted of British shipping, we find that the building-yards of the Thames and east coast are so full of work that they cannot meet the demand for new ships, and that at Sunderland there are orders for fifty new vessels of large tonnage. The circular of Messrs. Tonge and Curry, ship-brokers at Liverpool, makes the following statement as to the business at that port, which is significant indeed,

addressed as it is to the interest whose doom was fixed for this year:

The year just closed has been one of unusual anxiety to all persons connected with the building or owning of British shipping, caused by that change in the navigation laws, which enacts, that on and after this day all foreign shipping be admitted to the same privileges as British, with the exception of the coasting trade. See Victoria 12 and 13, cap. 29. The prospect of this sweeping measure was accompanied with doubts and anxieties that have had the effect of checking the operations of the most enterprising, and, as might be expected, of reducing prices considerably; under this pressure of doubt, many vessels have been forced upon the market and sold, in some instances almost without reserve. In comparing the average prices for the year 1849 with the previous year, we find a

reduction upon the whole of about 6 per cent. ; while upon the number of sales there is an increase of 50 per cent.; in our local yards we observed a falling off of about 30 per cent., until the last two months, during which time more contracts have been made, and more keels laid, than we were prepared to expect. So soon as it was decided that the old navigation laws were doomed, an increased disposition to act evinced itself-the "native hue of resolution," which had been "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," revived, and, under the assurance that the position of the British shipowner could not be further compromised, our buyers and builders resolved to be" up and doing.' At present there are eight vessels in course of building in Liverpool; the aggregate tonnage, 2,800 tons; and as our port is essentially more interested in ship-repairing than in ship-building, this is not under the average number in process of construction at one time here.

[ocr errors]

So we are to believe that while there is any uncertainty whether people are to be ruined or not, they remain inert; but when all doubt about the matter is at an end, and the ruin settled and sealed, then they begin to bestir themselves, and to act precisely as if they had improved prospects before them! But we have never observed this course of conduct in the instance of any interest really sinking or superseded. For example, when railroads came into use, innkeepers did not give orders for new post-chaises, and coach-masters did not build new four-horse stage-coaches. It cannot be because they are utterly and irretrievably undone that the ship-owners are now "up and doing," as alleged by Messrs. Tonge and Curry. They are not building ships for fire-wood, or to sell them at a loss, unless, indeed, they act upon the principle of the linen-draper, who protested that he sold every yard of his muslin at a loss, but brought himself home on the quantity.

From the Spectator, 5 Jan. GREAT BRITAIN.

DISTINGUISHED from the staler and minor sub

jects of political activity, this week, is the newlyorganized coalition of independent politicians to obtain the reform of colonial government. The movement is undoubtedly peculiar combining as it does a Lyttelton, a Baring, and a Stafford, a Molesworth, a Milner Gibson, and a Cobden, a Napier, a Walpole, and an Adderley-men of all leading parties; but while it is too formidable to be slighted, the presence of political friends perplexes opponents on every side. The party really in alarm is simply the official party, and that as such; for we hear no note of hostility from any other quarter. But the utmost art is used by the scouts and pickets of the official party to prepare some diversion to the anticipated attack next session. A Mussulman fatalism is employed to represent the present state of colonial affairs as inevitable and inherent in colonial nature. history of every colony that we possess is but one continuous series of difficulties, from its conquest or its settlement to the present hour. The annex

"The

Speed the intercourse of soul with soul,
And waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole.
Alas! we have little else to waft.

Each pro

Which

ation movement in Canada is but the last movement in a varied game begun at the capitulation of Quebec, and carried on by successive generations of statesmen and agitators." While the Dreamers have made others dream; and the enterprise of amending the chaotic condition of rich gambler has ruined the poorer gambler at his affairs is represented as hopeless, the most is made first and last stake. History, in recording the of the heterogeneous elements of the coalition, as crimes of princes, may record perhaps some more one that will not work. But, indeed, of all im- atrocious than those who now rule exhibit; but practicable ideas, that is the most so which sup-no future Tacitus or Suetonius will have patience poses that the actual course of things can continue to describe their obliquity, false promises, defecwithout ending in a break-up; and the fatalist tion from duty, and from even kingly pride. Even whom we quote manifestly looks forward to one that specious glitter, even that reptile's scale at no distant day. The too clever writer makes appears not in the tortuous track they are purTwo of these creatures are, at this an over-candid admission-" While the lions and suing. the lambs of our legislature are thus lying down instant, raising up a threatening crest against each together in paradisaical harmony as to the govern-other-the patron of Haynau and the persecutor ment of our colonies, the greater part of the British of Waldeck. A million of men will be marworld expresses its colonial sympathies by abusing shalled in arms to fight their battles. the Colonial Office, Downing Street, and Lord Grey." He admits the "deep impression" pervading "all classes of politicians, that the ground has shifted under us, and that the mother-country must adapt her policy to the new state of things; the new state being, in fact, a spontaneous development of the colonies themselves." Very true; this is the whole case. The colonies have been misgoverned by generations of statesmen, and our actual ministers have fairly lost hold of all government of the colonies; the whole political world condemns the colonial office and Lord Grey; the colonies have taken the matter into their own hands; and, fearing that the imperial government may be completely deposed, some of the more farseeing and earnest of our public men have united to prevent that disastrous and disgraceful revolution. Virtually the Times confesses that there is no case on the other side-nothing to be said against the occasion or objects of the society for the reform of colonial government.

66

66

A report has obtained some currency, that ministers are about to propose an extension of the franchise," based on a householder " rating." Without calling this extension a tub to the whale," or a measure planned "for rejection," the very friends of ministers who spread the report to their credit, let out that the motive is to divert troublous pursuits-perhaps the financial reform movement, or this formidable colonial movement. A less credible rumor is, that some tory party means to propose— universal suffrage! Vogue la galère. Ministers and ex-ministers emulating the competition of rival playhouse managers!

tests he fights for Germany; each lies.
ever is the winner, Germany will gain nothing.
Two swords will hew her through the centre;
two eagles (vultures rather) will divide and devour

her.

Of what use is any form of government which fails to protect the lives and properties of the people? And what form of government in Europe has done this? That government which Austria, France, and Spain have united to reëstablish, not only failed to protect the lives and properties of the people, but paralyzed their energies and stifled their consciences. Spain and Austria make no pretences to honor or honesty in this aggression; but the President of the French Republic uses these words at the banquet in the Hôtel de Ville : It has often been said that honor finds an echo in France.

Never were words truer. There is mostly an echo where there is a hollow and a vacuity. Honor had an echo, and a very loud one too. every time an oath was taken and every time an oath was violated. I forget how many dozens of them Talleyrand said he remembered to have taken. The best Christians in France, catholic and philosophical, romantic and poetical, swore they would lend

attention from more

From the Examiner.

WHAT WE HAVE AND WHAT WE OWE.

assistance to all nations that invoked them in the

name of liberty; and, within a few months, they bombarded Rome, scattering the patriots who defended her, recalling the Pope who abandoned her, and restoring the Inquisition.

The Americans have declared their sentiments

freely, loudly, widely, consistently, against the violence and perfidy of Russia and Austria. They must do greatly more; they must offer an asylum to whoever, rising up against oppression and indignity, shall, in the absence of law and equity, have slain those who caused it. For it is impossible At the close of this half-century the march of that such iniquities, as certain men in high places intellect is indeed a funeral march. What has have perpetrated, should be unavenged. Conspirbeen obtained by genius or by science for the ben-acies will never more exist; two persons (but efit of mankind? Greater and more glorious dis- preferably one) will undertake the glorious task, coveries have been made within our memory than which not only antiquity applauded, but which ever were made before. We may, with the **Meaning that we shall not deliver up assassins!—L. rapidity of lightning, Age.

« VorigeDoorgaan »