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anywhere hopeless, and this remarkablest Parliament that ever sat will continue an enigma forever. In such circumstances, we call these Notes the most interesting of all Manuscripts. To an English soul who would understand what was really memor. able and godlike in the History of his Country, distinguishing the same from what was at bottom unmemorable and devillike; who would bear in everlasting remembrance the doings of our noble heroic men, and sink into everlasting oblivion the doings of our loud ignoble quacks and sham-heroes,-what other record can be so precious? If English History have nothing to afford us concerning the Puritan Parliament but vague incoherencies, inconceivabilities and darkness visible,-English History, in this Editor's opinion, must be in a poor way!

It has often been a question, Why none of the Dryasdust Publishing Societies, the Camden or some other, has gone into these D'Ewes's Mss. in an efficient spirit, and fished-up somewhat of them? Surely it is the office of such Publishing Societies. Now when Booksellers are falling irrecoverably into the hand-to-mouth system, unable to publish anything that will not repay them on the morrow morning; and in Printed Literature, as elsewhere, matters seem hastening pretty fast towards strange consummations: who else but the Printing Societies is to do it? They should lay aside vain Twaddle and Dilettantism, and address themselves to their function by real Labour and Insight, as above hinted,—of which, alas, there is at present little hope!

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Unhappily the Publishing Societies, generally speaking, are hitherto Dryasdust' ones; almost a fresh nuisance rather than otherwise. They rarely spend labour on a business, rarely insight; they consider that sham-labour, and a twilight of ignorance and buzzard stupidity, backed by prurient desire for distinction, with the subscription of a guinea a year, will do the turn. It is a fatal mistake! Accordingly the Books they print, intending them apparently to be read by some class of human creatures, are wonderful. Alas, they have not the slightest talent for knowing, first of all, what not to print; what, as a thing dead, and incapable of ever interesting or profiting a hu man creature more, ought not to be printed again, to steal away the valuable cash, and the invaluable time and patience of any

It is too bad.

man again! How sorrowful to see a mass of printed Publishings and Republishings, all in clear white paper, bound in cloth and gold lettered; concerning which you have to acknowledge that there should another artist be appointed to go in the rear of them, to fork them swiftly into the oven, and save all men's resources from one kind of waste at least. Mr. Chadwick proposes that sweepers shall go in the rear of all horses in London, and instantly sweep-up their offal, before it be trampled abroad over the pavement to general offence. Yes; but what sweeper shall follow the Dryasdust Printing Societies, the Authors, Publishers, and other Prurient-Stupids of this intellectual Metropolis, who are rising to a great height at present! Horse-offal, say Chadwick and the Philanthropists very justly, if not at once swept-up, is trampled abroad over the pavements, into the sewers, into the atmosphere, into the very lungs and hearts of the citizens: Good Heavens, and to think of Author-offal, and how it is trampled into the very souls of men; and how the rains and the trunkmakers do not get it. abolished for years on years, in some instances !

THE NIGGER QUESTION.

[Precursor to Latter-day Pamphlets.]

[1849.]

OCCASIONAL DISCOURSE ON THE NIGGER QUESTION.1 THE following Occasional Discourse, delivered by we know not whom, and of date seemingly above a year back, may perhaps be welcome to here and there a speculative reader. It comes to us,-no speaker named, no time or place assigned, no commentary of any sort given,— in the handwriting of the so-called "Doctor," properly " Absconded Reporter," Dr. Phelim M'Quirk, whose singular powers of reporting, and also whose debts, extravangancies and sorrowful insidious financeoperations, now winded-up by a sudden disappearance, to the grief of many poor tradespeople, are making too much noise in the police-offices at present! Of M'Quirk's composition we by no means suppose it to be; but from M'Quirk, as the last traceable source, it comes to us;— offered, in fact, by his respectable unfortunate landlady, desirous to make-up part of her losses in this way.

To absconded reporters who bilk their lodgings, we have of course no account to give; but if the Speaker be of any eminence or substantiality, and feel himself aggrieved by the transaction, let him understand that such, and such only, is our connection with him or his affairs. As the Colonial and Negro Question is still alive, and likely to grow livelier for some time, we have accepted the Article, at a cheap marketrate; and give it publicity, without in the least committing ourselves to the strange doctrines and notions shadowed forth in it. Doctrines and notions which, we rather suspect, are pretty much in a "minority of one," in the present era of the world! Here, sure enough, are peculiar views of the Rights of Negroes; involving, it is probable, peculiar ditto of innumerable other rights, duties, expectations, wrongs and disappointments, much argued of, by logic and by grape-shot, in these emancipated epochs of the human mind !-Silence now, however; and let the Speaker himself enter.

My Philanthropic Friends,—It is my painful duty to address some words to you, this evening, on the Rights of Negroes.

1 First printed in Fraser's Magazine, December 1849; reprinted in the form of a separate Pamphlet, London, 1853.

Taking, as we hope we do, an extensive survey of social affairs, which we find all in a state of the frightfulest embroilment, and as it were of inextricable final bankruptcy, just at present; and being desirous to adjust ourselves in that huge upbreak, and unutterable welter of tumbling ruins, and to see well that our grand proposed Association of Associations, the UNIVERSAL ABOLITION-OF-PAIN ASSOCIATION, which is meant to be the consummate golden flower and summary of modern Philanthropisms all in one, do not issue as a universal "Sluggardand-Scoundrel Protection Society," we have judged that, before constituting ourselves, it would be very proper to commune earnestly with one another, and discourse together on the leading elements of our great Problem, which surely is one of the greatest. With this view the Council has decided, both that the Negro Question, as lying at the bottom, was to be the first handled, and if possible the first settled; and then also, what was of much more questionable wisdom, that—that, in short, I was to be Speaker on the occasion. An honourable duty; yet, as I said, a painful one!-Well, you shall hear what I have to say on the matter; and probably you will not in the least like it.

West-Indian affairs, as we all know, and as some of us know to our cost, are in a rather troublous condition this good while. In regard to West-Indian affairs, however, Lord John Russell is able to comfort us with one fact, indisputable where so many are dubious, That the Negroes are all very happy and doing well. A fact very comfortable indeed. West-Indian Whites, it is admitted, are far enough from happy; West-Indian Colonies not unlike sinking wholly into ruin: at home too, the British Whites are rather badly off; several millions of them hanging on the verge of continual famine; and in single towns, many thousands of them very sore put to it, at this time, not to live "well" or as a man should, in any sense temporal or spiritual, but to live at all:-these, again, are uncomfortable facts; and they are extremely extensive and important ones. But, thank Heaven, our interesting Black population,—equalling almost in number of heads one of the Ridings of Yorkshire, and in worth (in quantity of intellect, faculty, docility, energy, and available human valour and value) perhaps one of

the streets of Seven Dials,- -are all doing remarkably well. "Sweet blighted lilies,' -as the American epitaph on the Nigger child has it,-sweet blighted lilies, they are holding-up their heads again! How pleasant, in the universal bankruptcy abroad, and dim dreary stagnancy at home, as if for England too there remained nothing but to suppress Chartist riots, banish united Irishmen, vote the supplies, and wait with arms crossed till black Anarchy and Social Death devoured us also, as it has done the others; how pleasant to have always this fact to fall-back upon: Our beautiful Black darlings are at last happy; with little labour except to the teeth, which surely, in those excellent horse-jaws of theirs, will not fail!

Exeter Hall, my philanthropic friends, has had its way in this matter. The Twenty Millions, a mere trifle despatched with a single dash of the pen, are paid; and far over the sea, we have a few black persons rendered extremely “free” indeed. Sitting yonder with their beautiful muzzles up to the ears in pumpkins, imbibing sweet pulps and juices; the grinder and incisor teeth ready for ever new work, and the pumpkins cheap as grass in those rich climates: while the sugar-crops rot round them uncut, because labour cannot be hired, so cheap are the pumpkins ;—and at home we are but required to rasp from the breakfast-loaves of our own English labourers some slight "differential sugar-duties," and lend a poor half-million or a few poor millions now and then, to keep that beautiful state of matters going on. A state of matters lovely to contemplate, in these emancipated epochs of the human mind; which has earned us not only the praises of Exeter Hall, and loud longeared hallelujahs of laudatory psalmody from the Friends of Freedom everywhere, but lasting favour (it is hoped) from the Heavenly Powers themselves ;—and which may, at least, justly appeal to the Heavenly Powers, and ask them, If ever in terrestrial procedure they saw the match of it? Certainly in the past history of the human species it has no parallel: nor, one hopes, will it have in the future. [Some emotion in the audience; which the Chairman suppressed.]

Sunk in deep froth-oceans of "Benevolence," "Fraternity," "Emancipation-principle," "Christian Philanthropy," and other most amiable-looking, but most baseless, and in the end baleful and all-bewildering jargon,—sad product of a sceptical

VOL. VII.

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