Part 20

“Is sugar a commodity which we are simply desirous of getting cheap, without any regard to the country or methods of its production? If it be not, then is it clear as argument can make it that such commodity must be altogether removed from the operations of free trade? If it be, then by what monstrous perversion of equity do we control the methods of production adopted by our own producers? Why did we destroy that market in Jamaica which we now seize so eagerly in Brazil? The abstract principles of free trade are as manifestly violated by interference with production as by interference with exportation. If the doctrines of free trade are to find no exception in any suggestions of humanity or reason, then our Anti-slavery Act, and our Emancipation Act, and our vote for the African squadron, are all so many gross contradictions of a principle which we have formally sanctioned. Let those who think so speak out boldly. They have undoubtedly a clear case, if they dared but state it. Let slavery be considered as a practice which humanity condemns, and which civilisation must eventually abolish, but which cannot be permitted to enter into the calculations of a great commercial people. Let the coast squadron be immediately recalled, and the Bights thrown open to the sugar-growers of all nations to procure their labourers on the easiest terms. Let them make as much sugar as they can each for itself, and let the agency by which this article is produced be as much a matter of indifference as in the case of any other article, and _then_ may sugar fairly be subjected to the operations of free trade. If the West Indians then applied for protection, we might well repulse a petition for so obsolete a measure; but to take refuge in such abstract theories now is to blow hot and cold with the same breath—to preach up humanity from one side of the pulpit and economy from the other, taking care the while to appropriate to our own pockets the advantages of the latter doctrine, and to saddle our colonists with the expenses of the former.”

And what is it that our colonists ask? What is the extravagant proposal which we are prepared to reject at the cost of the loss of our most fertile possessions, and of nearly two hundred millions of British capital? Simply this, that in the meantime such a distinctive duty should be enforced as will allow them to compete on terms of equality with the slave-growing states. Let this alone be granted, and they have no wish to interfere with any other fiscal regulation. And what would be the amount of differential duty required? Not more, as we apprehend, than ten shillings the hundred-weight. It has been carefully calculated that the British planter cannot raise and send his sugar to the home market at a lower cost than forty shillings. In consequence of Lord John Russell’s measure, the average price last year has been thirty-eight shillings, and consequently the planter has been manufacturing, not only without profit, but at an actual loss. Next year, or rather after next July, the operation of the reductive scale will increase his loss, supposing him still to cultivate, from two shillings to three and sixpence per hundred-weight and so on until 1851, when he will have to pay _six pounds per ton_ for the privilege of growing sugar, without a single farthing of return!

Is then the request of these men, who are our own fellow-subjects, and citizens, in any way unjust or unreasonable? We have chosen to deprive them of labour, promising them all the while sympathy and protection, and are we not bound in some measure to redeem the pledge? They require a differential duty only until such time as they can command a supply of free and plentiful labour. To this object the attention of government, and of the true philanthropists of the country, ought to be directed. There is a noble field laid open for their exertions. The best means of suppressing altogether the slave-trade, is by promoting, to the uttermost of our power, a free immigration from Africa to our colonies, a measure which we are certain would very soon supersede the necessity of a blockading squadron. For how can we ever expect that such an armament will prove effectual in checking that wicked traffic, whilst, at the same time, we are directly encouraging it, by augmenting the consumpt of its produce in free and scrupulous Britain? Shame, on such contemptible and deceptive policy! Shame on the men who, with liberalism on their lips, are all the while engaged in riveting the fetters of the bondsman! And shame to all of us, if we permit our oldest and most attached colonies to lapse into decay, and thousands of our fellow-subjects to be consigned to ruin! for the sake of a theory which, in this matter at least, has not even the merit of being based upon consistent or intelligible principle!

NOW AND THEN.

(_Now and Then._ By SAMUEL WARREN, F.R.S. Author of “Ten Thousand a-Year,” and the “Diary of a Late Physician.” William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh and London. 1848.)

It would be an unpardonable affectation of modesty indeed, if Maga suffered any considerations whatever to interfere between herself and the cordial recognition of a success achieved by a favourite child, and acknowledged by all the world. Is the parent alone to hold her peace, when crowds are flinging up their caps rejoicing at the triumph of the son? Is nature to resign her dearest prerogative, in order to comply with the unnatural requirements of a dastard hypocrisy? Must we still hear on all sides the honest congratulations of strangers, and are we not to do homage to the grateful spirit within us, by shaking our own flesh and blood by the hand? Flesh and blood revolt from the insinuation! We know, as well as the dullest, that it is a delicate matter for Maga to speak to mankind, as truth and her heart dictate, with respect to some of her progeny. But what has delicacy to do with justice? Was Brutus delicate when he judged his own son, and hung him up for the public good? Maga suffers the world to judge of her offspring, and contents herself with a simple announcement of the happy verdict. It is her duty, as well as her delight, to chronicle the sentence. If she did less, she would do wrong to her own: she might do more, and still be just to her mighty and confiding public.

The author of the volume whose title heads this article, first appeared before the public as a writer in this Magazine in the month of August 1830. He was then but two-and-twenty years of age; yet, in his “Diary of a Late Physician,” he at once took his place in the front ranks of literature, and seized upon the admiration and respect of his contemporaries. The work is too well known to need minute description here. The variety of incident and character, the extraordinary fidelity of delineation, the vigorous style, the touching pathos, the commanding knowledge of men and human passions which it exhibits, are as familiar to our readers as they were surprising in a youth scarcely out of his teens,—a mere tyro in literature,—and, as he himself informs us, a rejected aspirant, in many quarters,[9] for those lofty honours which he has since so bravely and so honourably won. “The Diary of a Physician”—carried on at intervals from the year 1830 to the year 1837—maintained its ground from first to last. Since the last chapter appeared in these pages, the series has been printed and published, reprinted and republished, stereotyped for England, pirated for America, and translated for the Continent. The interest which the powerful tales first excited, is unabated to this hour. The regular and steady demand maintained for the volumes indicates their intrinsic value, and declares, in language as emphatic as any that can appeal to either publishers or authors, the enduring character with which they are impressed.

Footnote 9:

“The first chapter of this ‘Diary’—The Early Struggles—was offered by me successively to the conductors of three leading Magazines in London, and rejected as ‘unsuitable for their pages’ and ‘not likely to interest the public.’ In despair, I bethought myself of the great Northern Magazine. I remember taking my packet to Mr Cadell’s, in the Strand, with a sad suspicion that I should never see or hear any thing more of it; but at the close of the month I received a letter from Mr Blackwood, informing me that he had inserted the chapter, and begging me to make arrangements for immediately proceeding regularly with the series. It expressed his cordial approval of the first chapter, and predicted that I was likely to produce a series of papers well suited for his Magazine, and calculated to interest the public.”—Extract from Preface to the Fifth Edition of the _Diary of a Late Physician_.

In the year 1839, just nine years after the publication of the first number of the “Diary,” appeared also in these pages the first part of Mr Warren’s tale of “Ten Thousand a-Year.” The second production derived no false lustre from the confirmed success of its predecessor. The new tale presented itself in the columns of the Magazine, as the rule is—anonymously. Mr Warren obtained no advantage whatever from his previously well-earned and conscientiously sustained reputation. His second venture had nothing to rely upon but itself; yet, before six months had elapsed, “Ten Thousand a-Year,” by the mere force of its own unquestioned merit, succeeded in arresting public attention to an extent seldom equalled, and never surpassed by publications of a serial nature. For two years that attention never flagged; the public can attest to this remarkable fact: we are ourselves conscious of the avidity with which number after number of this Magazine was sought, whilst one chapter of the History of Tittlebat Titmouse still remained to be told. “Ten Thousand a-Year” was a wholly different performance from the “Diary of a Late Physician.” The latter contained the fruitful germs of at least a dozen novels. Its short histories, designed to convey a solemn and abiding moral, performed their office with the least possible elaboration. Intricacy and subtlety of plot were not considered, in a scheme in which mankind was to be moved and taught by the influence of example. The faults, the weaknesses, the vices of humanity, were displayed in their simplest forms, and no pains were taken to involve them in the entanglements of an artfully contrived narration. Not so, altogether, in the case of “Ten Thousand a-Year.” Here plot became not a subordinate ingredient in the composition; here the salient and strongly-marked features of individual character were not alone considered. It cannot be denied that the second creation of Mr Warren’s genius indicated at once increased strength of mind, experience more extended, knowledge more ripened. The faculties of the man were allied to the energy and passion of the youth, and the former ruled the latter with a severe and salutary grasp. The secret motives of man had been learnt in the interim; human springs of action had been detected in their distant hiding places; the inner soul of the world had been more deeply penetrated, and more closely scanned by the writer’s understanding. The pictures were no longer sketches—the masterstrokes were something more than indications. The vulgarity of Titmouse was shown with the self-denying patience and enlightened industry of a surgeon laying bare the loathsomeness of a repelling sore. What inclination would have shut away for ever, conscientious duty required to be exposed. Vulgarity is exposed in the history of Tittlebat Titmouse, and is utterly crushed. In nothing, however, is the contrast between Mr Warren in 1830, and the same gentleman in 1839, so remarkable as in the conception of Mr Gammon. The character is a perfect emanation of instructed genius; the admixture of good and evil—good in evil, and evil in good—could have been portrayed only by one knowing thoroughly “all qualities with a learned spirit of human dealings.” None but a creator, conscious of his strength, and fortified by the convictions which knowledge and experience give, would have conceived—or if conceived, dared—to exhibit the incomparable portraiture of which we speak. He, Gammon, stands immortalised in Mr Warren’s pages, neither a monster of good nor a monster of evil, but partaking of both qualities; largely of one, and in a smaller degree of the other, as is nature’s wont. Noble amongst the very base, and base amongst the very noble, he is an object of sorrow more than of execration,—of sympathy, not of hate, in his evil associations; of deep pity, not of vengeance, when he mixes for a season with the pure. Wanting religion and the practice of piety, which alone yields the highest moral rectitude, Gammon fails to earn approval even when he most deserves it, and in his brightest moments leaves no better impression on the mind than that of a wretched bundle of foul weeds, steeped for the time in heroism. The seeming incongruities of the character testify at once to its fidelity: the reality of the picture is heightened by the colours which the master, with infinite skill, has selected from his palette.

The incognito of Mr Warren was preserved till towards the close of the work; and upon its completion, being published in a separate form, it shared the well-deserved success of the “Diary of a Physician,” and travelled with it, either in, its original garb or as a translated book, into every quarter of the globe. Be it remembered that, during the whole long period of which we speak, Mr Warren was passing his days in any thing but the luxurious case of an unoccupied gentleman, or of one engaged only in the prosecution of intellectual pleasures. His entrance into life as a public writer was concurrent with his adoption of the most arduous and difficult of all professions. Literature was less his business than his recreation; his chosen evening pastime after the noonday’s enervating heat; his dignified solace, not his painful necessity. In plain words, whilst he used his pen for the amusement and instruction of his fellows, Mr Warren was a laborious legal plodder on his own account in the Temple; first as a special pleader, and afterwards as a counsel; in which last capacity he produced, as a tribute to law as well as to literature, an important standard law-book, held at this moment in high repute.

Now, if what we have said be true,—and if it be not, we shall be glad to be informed of our error—we hold it to be an utter impossibility for Maga either to look coldly upon Mr Warren’s literary career, or to stand mutely by with her hands behind her, when all honest people are vociferously applauding that gentleman upon his first appearance in an entirely new character. If we don’t clap our hands, who shall applaud? Nobody will respect the mother who thinks her child less worthy than the world esteems him. If we should hold our peace, Maga would be despised—not by the world—that would not affect her much, but by her own honest soul, and her eternal sense of right, which would destroy her. We have held our peace long enough. Impatient as we were to be the first to hail our own, to introduce him to his readers in the columns in which first he introduced himself, we have committed violence to our affection, and bided our good time. Maga watched with natural fond anxiety the proceedings of her son. She called to mind their long connexion, and had maternal apprehensions—the best of mothers have them—lest the third appearance of her offspring on the literary stage of life might dim the lustre of his former efforts in the same arena. Moreover, people of a certain age have whims and fancies. Maga, young, buxom, sportive, and healthy as she looks, has reached a matron’s years. Her contemporaries, judging from her feats, and vexed in heart, will not believe it. We cannot wonder at their scepticism; they look old in their infancy. Maga has the playfulness and elasticity of youth in her prime. If she is so sprightly with a load of years upon her, she may live for ever. Honest contemporaries are right; she may—she WILL! But, as we said, folks of a certain age have whims. Men who have prospered under one system are not eager to adopt and try another. The guardianship of Maga, in Maga’s eyes, casts a halo around the doings of her children. Mr Warren had achieved noble triumphs, walking hand-in-hand with her month after month and year after year. If he should deny himself the aid and run alone, might he not fall? We feared he might, till we had read his book, and then our fear was gone. But though fear departed, modesty—Maga’s ancient fault—remained. The proprieties of the case bade her be silent till the world had spoken. Though she was not bound to withhold her smile and warm approval in her royal privacy, sweet decorum forbade a syllable of public praise until her panegyric might no longer sway the universe. The hour for breaking silence has arrived: Maga seizes it proudly and unreservedly, as her custom is: who shall blame her?

Mr Warren has, indeed, achieved a signal and complete success. The opinion which we formed of his new labour, ere it went to press, is confirmed and echoed by the enthusiastic unanimity of the public; by those who read, and by those useful organs which undertake to guide the reader’s taste and judgment. The first few pages of the volume dispel at once all fears as to backsliding or downsinking on the part of the author. Fresh, vigorous, racy, and pure—such are the well-known characteristics of Mr Warren’s style: they are here as they were present in his earliest productions almost twenty years ago. From the first page to the last, there is not the slightest evidence of exhaustion from over-cropping or superfetation. All is new, healthy, wholesome, and genuine: bright as the purest water, clear as the summer’s sky, and as full of holy promise.

We think we discern a sneer upon the bilious and discontented cheeks of a certain class of writers as they read the last two words. We know the gentlemen well. They have been scribbling for the last few years with a “oneness of purpose,” as creditable to their understandings as it is significant of their ulterior designs. “Now and Then” is by no means written for their especial delectation, although, if properly and humbly read by the “earnest” worthies, it would go far to secure their moral improvement. The volume neither laughs at ecclesiastical institutions, nor ridicules the professors of religion. It does not make fun of every thing serious, until the unsophisticated reader is reduced to wondering whether he is not in duty bound to smile when and wherever his previous education had instructed him to weep: it does not consider that a man born on a dunghill has all the virtues of Adam before he transgressed, and that another, brought into life on a bed of down in Grosvenor Square, has, poor devil, in virtue of his good luck, inherited the vices of Satan and of the whole company of fallen divinities. There are a heap of Cockneys now gaining their miserable bread by the promulgation of such doctrines, who will look down with supreme contempt and biting sarcasm upon the book of which we treat; not, mark you, the _believers_ of such doctrines, but simply the mischievous and impious promulgators. Trust them, they prefer the company of the wealthy and the well-to-do, as they love cheese and beer more profoundly than all the moral beauty that the earth contains. Catch them giving sixpence to a beggar on a snowy day, or uttering a syllable of human kindness, which costs them nothing, to a houseless wanderer, no one being by. We hold it to be a great jewel in the coronet of Mr Warren, that he sets his face manfully, in the present instance, against the fashion which all honest men and true must deprecate. The freedom from the prevailing cant which his book exhibits, is most refreshing; the certain upturning of misshapen noses which its very tendency must effect, the greatest compliment yet paid to his honest exertions in the cause of morality, and of the holy faith which he professes.

“Now and Then” is a Christmas book for a Christian people. It is a tale of fiction, which the most devout may read with no fear of insult, and without risk of being obliged to suspend their orthodoxy for the sake of an hour’s pleasant reading. The book invests Christmas with its legitimate Christian associations. It cannot be denied that the tendency of this species of literature, for the last few years, has been to denude the sacred season of all these associations, and to surround it with others which are at once trifling, irreligious, and heathenish. We dwell upon this fact, because there needs some courage boldly to speak God’s truth in an age rapidly verging towards practical infidelity. In Parliament, the once great leader of a greater Christian party publicly denies the necessity of a declaration of Christian faith as the test of a legislator. In our light literature, we find references enough to the goodness of Providence, but a studious avoidance of the name and properties by which that Providence is recognised when we come to our knees by the bed-side or in the sanctuary. There is, we grant, not so much a denial of the essential doctrines of Christianity every where about us save in the church, as a studious and utter disregard of them; but there is imminent peril in this very disregard. Neglect precedes desertion. Let us be duly grateful, we say, to one who, in the modest pages of a simple tale, recalls us to our obligations, and reminds us that the chief of duties here is to cling firmly to the faith by which the world is saved, and to proclaim _first principles_ when that world is basely shrinking from their free and open recognition.

Let us, however, not be misunderstood. “Now and Then” is not a religious novel—popularly so called. Mr Warren is not on the present occasion a “religious novelist,” as controversial divines, usurping the functions of the tale writer are, for want of a better term, absurdly styled. The Christianity which pervades this book is pure and catholic, and has nothing to do with the quarrels of sects and classes: it is applicable to universal humanity. There is no vulgar presumptuous dabbling with controverted points of Scripture, which, appearing in works of fiction, is utterly abominable and ludicrous, even in its futility: but the author, starting with a high and admirable purpose, and keeping that purpose in view to the very last, confines himself strictly and solely to what we all regard as Christianity’s irrevocable and fundamental principles;—great saying truths which none can blink with safety, and which he brings forward with an evident profound sincerity and reverence, impossible to mistake and difficult to slight.

The story, potently simple in itself, opens with marvellous simplicity. We quote from the beginning:—