Chapter 9

Frank Trevelyan, one morning on opening his eyes, was surprised to discover his friend, Mr Vernon Wycherley, (whose lameness was by this time sufficiently amended to permit him to move about with the aid of a stick,) sitting half dressed by his bedside--a very cool attire for so chill a morning, and looking very cold and miserable.

"Hallo! old fellow, what on earth brought you here at this time of day?" asked Frank. "The first morning visit, I believe, you've honoured me with since we took up our quarters in this neighbourhood."

"I'm very wretched," said the poet in a faltering tone--"very unhappy."

"Unhappy!" reiterated Frank; "why, what on earth have you to make you so, unless it be the apprehension that you may jump out of your skin for joy at your splendid prospects! Unhappy indeed!--the notion's too absurd to obtain a moment's credit."

"Can a man suffering under a hopeless attachment for an object too pure almost to tread the earth--can a man, whose affections are set upon an unattainable object, be otherwise than unhappy?" asked Vernon in a solemn tone, no bad imitation of Macready; indeed the speaker, whilst uttering these sentiments, thought it sounded very like it; for he had often seen that eminent tragedian, and greatly admired his style of acting.

"But how have you ascertained that the object is so unattainable?" demanded Frank. "Come now--have you ever yet asked the young lady the question?"

"Asked her!" repeated Vernon, perfectly amazed that his friend could have supposed such a thing possible--"How could I presume that so angelic a creature would love such a fellow as me--or, even supposing such a thing were possible, what would our good friend the squire say to my ingratitude for his great kindness; and to my presumption--a mere younger son without a profession, and scarcely a hundred pounds a-year to call his own, to think of proposing to one of his daughters, who would be an honour to the noblest and richest peer of the realm?"

"Well, well, Vernon--one thing first--and you shall have my answers to all. First, then, as to the fair lady liking you--that I must say, judging from your looks, is what no one would have thought a very probable circumstance; but then your poetical talents must be taken into calculation."

"Oh, don't mention them!" said Vernon. "Worse than good-for-nothing. _She_ esteems such talents very lightly, and I shall even lose the small solace to my sorrows I had hoped they would have afforded me. Even this sad consolation is denied me. My Mary is indifferent to poetry--she holds sonnets upon hopeless love in utter contempt--entertains no higher opinion of the writers of them--and considers publishing any thing of the kind as a downright ungentlemanly act; bringing, as she says it does, a lady's name before the public in the most indelicate and unwarrantable manner."

"But is she really serious in these sentiments?" asked Frank. Oh, Frank, Frank, you're a sad fellow to pump and roast your friend in this way!

"Serious," repeated Vernon, and looking very so himself, "serious--ah! indeed she is--and expressed herself with more warmth upon the subject than I could have supposed a being so mild and amiable was capable of."

"But how came all this?" asked Frank--"what were you talking about that could have caused her to make these remarks?" and this he said in a very grave and quiet tone of voice, trying to entrap his poetic friend into telling him much more than the latter was inclined to do, who, therefore, declined entering more fully into the subject.

"Then, if you won't tell me, I have still the privilege of guessing," rejoined Frank; "and now I've found you out, Master Vernon; you've been attempting acrostics after the Petrarch style[15]--a style in which she didn't approve of being held forth to the admiring notice of the present and future generations. Vernon blushed to the very tips of his fingers, and averted his head that his friend might not perceive how very foolish he was looking, whilst the latter continued--"Very pretty stanzas, I've no doubt. How nice they would have come out in a neat little 12mo, price 2s. 6d., boards. Let me see--M--O--L, Mol--that's three; L--Y, ly--two more, makes Molly; and three and two make five. P--O double T--S, Potts--that's five more, and five and five make ten. But then that's a couple of letters too many. Petrarch's Lauretta, you know, only made eight. Yet, after all, if you liked it, you might leave out the Y and the S at the end of each name, without at all exceeding the usual poetical license. Let me see, M--O double L, Moll; P--O double T, Pott--Moll Pott; or you might retain the Y and leave out the last T--S--or you might"--

Vernon could bear no more; and having risen abruptly with the intention of making a bolt of it, was in the act of hobbling out of the room as fast as his lameness would allow him, when Frank entreated him to stay but one minute; promising to spare his jokes, for that he really wished to speak seriously with him; and, having succeeded in pacifying the enraged poet, proceeded to ask him what he actually intended doing.

"To leave this either to-day or to-morrow," replied Vernon in a tremulous voice, and with a quivering lip.

"But not without breaking your mind to your lady love?"

"Why, alas! should I do so--why pain her by confessing to her my unhappy attachment, which I know it is hopeless to expect her to return."

"I'll be hanged," said Frank, "if I think you know any thing at all about the matter."

"Not know, indeed! How, alas! could any one suppose that an angelic creature like her could love me?"

"Not many, I grant; but then, as old Captain Growler used to say--never be astonished at any thing a woman does in that way--

'Pan may win where Phoebus woos in vain.'

And so the lovely Miss Moll--I beg your pardon, Mary, I mean--may in like manner, do so differently from what any one could have suspected, as to be induced at last to listen to her Vernon's tale of love."

The lover here alluded to hardly knew whether to treat the matter as a joke or to get very angry; and so he did neither, whilst Frank went on--"I'm sure you needn't despair either, as far as looks go. There's pretty, smiling, little Bessie--in my opinion the prettiest girl of the two"--Vernon shook his head with mournful impatience--"Well, you think yours prettiest, and I'll think mine," continued Frank; "that's just as it should be; and as I was about to say, if the lovely Bessie can smile upon your humble servant when he talked of love, I don't see why her sister might not be induced to smile upon his companion if he did the like."

"How! what? Why, you surely don't mean to say that you've told Miss Bessie that you love her?"

"Yes, I do," replied Frank. "I told her so yesterday afternoon as we walked home from church, behind the rest of the party, across the fields. Thought I wouldn't do it then either, as there were so many people about--never said a word about the matter over two fields--helped her over the stiles, too, and talked--no, I be hanged if I think we said a word, either of us--till as I was helping her to jump down the third, out it bounced, all of a sudden."

"And what did you say?" asked Wycherley.

"Catch a weasel asleep, Mr Vernon," was Frank's reply.

"But the squire, how will you manage with him, do you suppose?"

"Managed with him already," replied Frank; "settled every thing last night over a glass of port, after you'd bundled your lazy carcass off to bed. That is, one glass didn't quite complete the business, for it took two or three to get my courage up to concert pitch. Then another or two to discuss the matter--and then a bumper to drink success--and then another glass"--

"Another!" interrupted Vernon; "why, you little drunken rascal, what pretext could you have for that?"

"I've a great mind not to tell you for your rude question," resumed Frank laughing; "but never mind, old fellow, you've borne a great deal from me before now, and there's probably more in store for you yet; so without further preamble I'll at once answer your question, by informing you that the pretext for my last glass was to wet a dry discourse about the affairs of one Mr Vernon Wycherley. Now, hold your tongue, and don't interrupt me, or swallow me either, which you appear to be meditating. And so the squire asked me if I had known him long, and about his principles, religious and moral; his worldly prospects, and so forth. To all of which I replied by stating, that, with the exception of being addicted to flirting a little with the Muses, which old women might consider as only one step removed from absolute profligacy, he was a well-disposed young man, and would doubtless grow wiser as he increased in years; but that his fortune was very limited, and that all his expectations in that way wouldn't fill a nutshell."

"Ah, there's the rub!" interposed Vernon; "how can a poor fellow with my small pittance pretend to aspire to the hand of one with such splendid expectations? My poverty, as I've long foreseen, must mar my every hope, even if every other obstacle could be removed."

"I don't see that exactly," rejoined Frank; "for, when I told the squire what your circumstances actually were, and that you had managed to live creditably upon your small income without getting into debt, he said, if your head wasn't crammed so confoundedly full of poetical nonsense, which set you always hunting after shadows, instead of grasping substances, he should be exceedingly rejoiced to have you for a son-in-law. So, if you could make up your mind to relinquish your love for writing poetry"--

"The poetry be hanged!" interrupted Vernon with considerable vehemence. "I'll cast it to the dogs--the winds--send it to Halifax, Jericho, any where. Oh! my dear Frank, what a happy fellow you've made me!"

"Which just finished the bottle," continued Frank; "and I find that somehow or other I've got a precious headach this morning. I wonder how the squire feels to-day. Will you Vernon, that's a good fellow, give me a glass of water?"

"There's nothing on earth I wouldn't give you now, my dear Frank, except my dear Mary; but do you think she will ever consent?"

"Yes, to be sure she will," answered Frank. "I know she will, and that she is by no means best pleased at your hanging fire so long. I know this to be the fact, though I mustn't tell you how, why, or wherefore; but if you don't propose soon she'll consider you are acting neither fairly nor honourably to her."

"I'll do the deed to-day," said Vernon resolutely.

And so he did.

* * * * *

A very few months more had passed away, before our two heroes were on the same day united to the fair objects of their choice; and the generous old squire settled a handsome sum upon them both, sufficient to supply them with all the essential comforts of life.

"And now, friend Frank," said Vernon Wycherley, "I believe, after all, you will make a convert of me; for I find that the attachment I had indulged in, until despair of obtaining the loved object made me fancy myself the most miserable wretch alive, and that I had incurred the worst evil that could have befallen me, has made me the happiest of mankind, and has indeed turned out to be ALL FOR THE BEST; nor can I think of my blundering fall into the lead shaft in any other light; as, but for that accident, I should probably never have formed the acquaintance to which I owe all my good fortune."

"Then, for the future," said the worthy squire, "let us put all our trust in Heaven, and rest assured that whatever may be the will of Providence, IT'S ALL FOR THE BEST."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 12: _Cornice_--"him."]

[Footnote 13: "Put"--_Cornice_--to take or carry.]

[Footnote 14: Cleverly.]

[Footnote 15: Commencing each line with a letter of the loved one's name.]

THE ROMAN CAMPAGNA.

There is no district in Europe which is more remarkable, or has more strongly impressed the minds of men in modern times, than the ROMAN CAMPAGNA. Independent of the indelible associations with which it is connected, and the glorious deeds of which it has been the theatre, its appearance produces an extraordinary impression on the mind of the beholder. All is silent; the earth seems struck with sterility--desolation reigns in every direction. A space extending from Otricoli to Terracina, above sixty miles in length, and on an average twenty in breadth, between the Apennines and the sea, containing nearly four thousand square miles, in the finest part of Italy, does not maintain a single peasant.[16] A few tombs lining the great roads which issued from the forum of Rome to penetrate to the remotest parts of their immense empire; the gigantic remains of aqueducts striding across the plain, which once brought, and some of which still bring, the pellucid fountains of the Apennines to the Eternal City, alone attest the former presence of man. Nothing bespeaks his present existence. Not a field is ploughed, not a blade of corn grows, hardly a house is to be seen, in this immense and dreary expanse. On entering it, you feel as if you were suddenly transported from the garden of Europe to the wilds of Tartary. Shepherds armed with long lances, as on the steppes of the Don, and mounted on small and hardy horses, alone are occasionally seen following, or searching in the wilds for the herds of savage buffaloes and cattle which pasture the district. The few living beings to be met with at the post-houses, have the squalid melancholy look which attests permanent wretchedness, and the ravages of an unhealthy atmosphere.

But though the curse of Providence seems to have fallen on the land, so far as the human race is concerned, it is otherwise with the power of physical nature. Vegetation yearly springs up with undiminished vigour. It is undecayed since the days of Cincinnatus and the Sabine farm. Every spring the expanse is covered with a carpet of flowers, which enamel the turf and conceal the earth with a profusion of varied beauty. So rich is the herbage which springs up with the alternate heats and rains of summer, that it becomes in most places rank, and the enormous herds which wander over the expanse are unable to keep it down. In autumn this rich grass becomes russet-brown, and a melancholy hue clothes the slopes which environ the Eternal City. The Alban Mount, when seen from a distance, clothed as it is with forests, vineyards, and villas, resembles a green island rising out of a sombre waste of waters. In the Pontine marshes, where the air is so poisonous in the warm months that it is dangerous, and felt as oppressive even by the passing traveller, the prolific powers of nature are still more remarkable. Vegetation there springs up with the rapidity, and flourishes with the luxuriance, of tropical climates. Tall reeds, in which the buffaloes are hid, in which a rhinoceros might lie concealed, spring up in the numerous pools or deep ditches with which the dreary flat surface is sprinkled. Wild grapes of extraordinary fecundity grow in the woods, and ascend in luxuriant clusters to the tops of the tallest trees. Nearer the sea, a band of noble chestnuts and evergreen oaks attests the riches of the soil, which is capable of producing such magnificent specimens of vegetable life; and over the whole plain the extraordinary richness of the herbage, and luxuriance of the aquatic plants, bespeaks a region which, if subjected to a proper culture and improvement, would, like the Delta of Egypt, reward eighty and an hundred fold the labours of the husbandman.

It was not thus in former times. The Campagna now so desolate, the Pontine marshes now so lonely, were then covered with inhabitants. Veiæ, long the rival of Rome, and which was only taken after a siege as protracted as that of Troy by Camillus at the head of fifty thousand men, stood only ten miles from the Capitol. The Pontine marshes were inhabited by thirty nations. The freehold of Cincinnatus, the Sabine farm, stood in the now desolate plain at the foot of the Alban Mount. So rich were the harvests, so great the agricultural booty to be gathered in the plains around Rome, that for two hundred years after the foundation of the city, it was the great object of their foreign wars to gain possession of it, and on that account they were generally begun in autumn. Montesquieu has observed, that it was the long and desperate wars which the Romans carried on for three centuries with the Sabines, Latines, Veientes, and other people in their neighbourhood, which by slow degrees gave them the hardihood and discipline which enabled them afterwards to subdue the world. The East was an easy conquest, the Gauls themselves could be repelled, Hannibal in the end overcome, after the tribes of Latium had been vanquished. But the district in which the hardy races dwelt, who so long repelled, and maintained a doubtful conflict with the future masters of the world, is now a desert. It could not in its whole extent furnish men to fill a Roman cohort. Rome has emerged from its long decay after the fall of the Western Empire; the terrors of the Vatican, the shrine of St Peter, have again attracted the world to the Eternal City; and the most august edifice ever raised by the hands of man to the purposes of religion, has been reared within its walls. But the desolate Campagna is still unchanged.

Novelists and romance-writers have for centuries exhausted their imaginative and descriptive powers in developing the feelings which this extraordinary phenomenon, in the midst of the classic land of Italy, awakens. They have spoken of desolation as the fitting shroud of departed greatness; of the mournful feelings which arise on approaching the seat of lost empire; of the shades of the dead alone tenanting the scene of so much glory. Such reflections arise unbidden in the mind; the most unlettered traveller is struck with the melancholy impression. An eloquent Italian has described this striking spectacle:--"A vast solitude, stretching for miles, as far as the eye can reach. No shelter, no resting-place, no defence for the wearied traveller; a dead silence, interrupted only by the sound of the wind which sweeps over the plain, or the trickling of a natural fountain by the wayside; not a cottage nor the curling of smoke to be seen; only here and there a cross on a projecting eminence to mark the spot of a murder; and all this in gentle slopes, dry and fertile plains, and up to the gates of great city."[17] The sight of the long lines of ruined aqueducts traversing the deserted Campagna, of the tombs scattered along the lines of the ancient _chaussées_ across its dreary expanse, of the dome of St Peter's alone rising in solitary majesty over its lonely hills, forcibly impress the mind, and produce an impression which no subsequent events or lapse of time are able to efface. At this moment the features of the scene, the impression it produces, are as present to the mind of the writer as when they were first seen thirty years ago.

But striking as these impressions are, the Roman Campagna is fraught with instruction of a more valuable kind. It stands there, not only a monument of the past, but a beacon for the future. It is fraught with instruction, not only to the ancient but the modern world. The most valuable lessons of political wisdom which antiquity has bequeathed to modern times, are to be gathered amidst its solitary ruins.

In investigating the causes of this extraordinary desolation of a district, in ancient times the theatre of such busy industry, and which, for centuries, maintained so great and flourishing a rural population, there are several observations to be made on the principle, as logicians call it, of _exclusion_, in order to clear the ground before the real cause is arrived at.

The first of these is, that the causes, whatever they are, which produced the desolation of the Campagna, had begun to operate, and their blasting effect was felt, in _ancient_ times, and long before a single squadron of the barbarians had crossed the Alps. In fact, the Campagna was a scene of active agricultural industry only so long as Rome was contending with its redoubtable Italian neighbours--the Latins, the Etruscans, the Samnites, and the Cisalpine Gauls. From the time that, by the conquest of Carthage, they obtained the mastery of the shore of the Mediterranean, _agriculture_ in the neighbourhood of Rome began to decline. Pasturage was found to be a more profitable employment of estates; and the vast supplies of grain, required for the support of the citizens of Rome, were obtained by importation from Lybia and Egypt, where they could be raised at a less expense. "At, Hercule," says Tacitus, "olim ex Italia legionibus longinquas in provincias commeatus portabantur; _nec nunc infecunditate laboratur: sed Africam potius et Egyptum exercemus, navibusque et casibus vita populi Romani permissa est_."[18] The expense of cultivating grain in a district where provisions and wages were high because money was plentiful, speedily led to the abandonment of tillage in the central parts of Italy, when the unrestrained importation of grain from Egypt and Lybia, where it could be raised at less expense in consequence of the extension of the Roman dominions over those regions, took place. "More lately," says Sismondi, "the gratuitous distributions of grain made to the Roman people, rendered the cultivation of grain in Italy still more unprofitable: it then became absolutely impossible for the little proprietors to maintain themselves in the neighbourhood of Rome; they became insolvent, and their patrimonies were sold to the rich. Gradually the abandonment of agriculture extended from one district to another. The true country of the Romans--central Italy--_had scarcely achieved the conquest of the globe, when it found itself without an agricultural population_. In the provinces peasants were no longer to be found to recruit the legions; as few corn-fields to nourish them. Vast tracts of pasturage, where a few slave shepherds conducted herds of thousands of horned cattle, had supplanted the nations who had brought their greatest triumphs to the Roman people."[19] These great herds of cattle were then, as now, in the hands of a few great proprietors. This was loudly complained of, and signalized as the cancer which would ruin the Roman empire, even so early as the time of Pliny. "Verumque confitentibus," says he, "_latifunda perdidêre Italiam; imo ac provincias_."[20]

All the historians of the decline and fall of the Roman empire, have concurred in ascribing to these two causes--viz. the decay of agriculture and ruin of the agricultural population in Italy, and consequent engrossing of estates in the hands of the rich--the ruin of its mighty dominion. But it is not generally known how wide-spread had been the desolation thus produced; how deep and incurable the wounds inflicted on the vitals of the state--by the simple consequences of its extension, which enabled the grain growers of the distant provinces of the empire to supplant the cultivators of its heart by the unrestricted admission of foreign corn, before the invasion of the northern nations commenced. In fact, however, the evil was done before they appeared on the passes of the Alps; it was the weakness thus brought on the central provinces which rendered them unable to contend with enemies whom they had often, in former times, repelled and subdued. A few quotations from historians of authority, will at once establish this important proposition.

"_Since the age of Tiberius_," says Gibbon, "the decay of agriculture had been felt in Italy; and it was a just subject of complaint, that the laws of the Roman people depended on the accidents of the winds and the waves. In the division and decline of the empire, _the tributary harvests of Egypt and Africa_ were withdrawn; the numbers of the inhabitants continually diminished with the means of subsistence; and the country was exhausted by the irretrievable losses of war, pestilence and famine. Pope Gelasius was a subject of Odoacer, and he affirms, with strong exaggeration, that in Emilia, Tuscany, and the adjacent provinces, the human species was almost extirpated."[21] Again the same accurate author observes in another place--"Under the emperors the agriculture of the Roman provinces was _insensibly ruined_; and the government was obliged to make a merit of remitting tributes which _their subjects were utterly unable to pay_. Within sixty years of the death of Constantine, and on the evidence of an actual survey, an exemption was granted in favour of three hundred and thirty thousand English acres of desert and uncultivated land _in the fertile and happy Campania_, which amounted to an eighth of the whole province. As the footsteps of the barbarians had not yet been seen in Italy, the cause of _this amazing desolation, which is recorded in the laws_,[22] can be ascribed only to the administration of the Roman emperors."[23]

The two things which, beyond all question, occasioned this extraordinary decline of domestic agriculture in Italy before the invasion of the barbarians commenced, were the weight of _direct taxation_, and the _decreasing value of agricultural produce_, owing to the constant importation of grain from Egypt and Lybia, where, owing to the cheapness of labour and the fertility of the soil in those remote provinces, so burdensome did the first become, that Gibbon tells us that, in the time of Constantine, in Gaul it amounted to _nine pounds sterling of gold_ on every freeman.[24] The periodical distribution of grain to the populace of Rome, all of which, from its greater cheapness, was brought by the government from Egypt and Africa, utterly extinguished the market for corn to the Italian farmers, though Rome, at its capture by Alaric, still contained 1,200,000 inhabitants. "All the efforts of the Christian emperors," says Michelet, "to arrest the depopulation of the country, were as nugatory as those of their heathen predecessors had been. Sometimes alarmed at the depopulation, they tried to mitigate the lot of the farmer, to shield him against the landlord; upon this the proprietor exclaimed, _he could no longer pay the taxes_. At other times they strove to chain the cultivators to the soil; but they became bankrupts or fled, and the land became deserted. Pertinax granted an immunity of taxes to such _cultivators from distant provinces_ as would occupy the deserted lands of Italy. Aurelian did the same. Probus, Maximian, and Constantine, were obliged to transport men and oxen from Germany to cultivate Gaul. But all was in vain. _The desert extended daily._ The people in the fields surrendered themselves in despair, as a beast of burden lies down beneath his load and refuses to rise."[25]

Gibbon has told us what it was which occasioned this constant depopulation of the country, and ruin of agriculture in the Italian provinces. "The Campagna of Rome," says he, "about the close of the sixth century, was reduced to a state of _dreary wilderness_, in which the air was infectious, the land barren, and the waters impure. Yet the number of citizens still exceeded the measure of subsistence; _their precarious food was supplied from the harvests of Lybia and Egypt_; and the frequent recurrence of famine, betrayed the inattention of the emperor at Constantinople to the wants of a distant province."[26] Nor was Italy the only province in the heart of the empire which was ruined by those foreign importations. Greece suffered not less severely under it. "In the latter stages of the empire," says Michelet, "_Greece was supported almost entirely by corn raised in the plains of Poland_."[27]

These passages, to which, did our limits permit, innumerable others to the same purpose might be added, explain the causes of the decay and ultimate ruin of agriculture in the central provinces of the Roman empire, as clearly as if one had arisen from the dead to unfold it. It was the weight of _direct taxation_, and the want of remunerating prices to the _grain cultivators_, which occasioned the evil. The first arose from the experienced impossibility of raising additional taxes on industry by indirect taxation: the unavoidable consequence of the contraction of the currency, owing to the habits of hoarding which the frequent incursions of the barbarians produced; and of the free importation of African grain, which the extension of the empire over its northern provinces, and the clamours of the Roman populace for cheap bread, occasioned. The second arose directly from that importation itself. The Italian cultivator, oppressed with direct taxes, and tilling a comparatively churlish soil, found himself utterly unable to compete with the African cultivators, with whom the process of production was so much cheaper owing to the superior fertility of the soil under the sun of Lybia, or the fertilizing floods of the Nile. Thence the increasing weight of direct taxation, the augmented importation of foreign grain, the disappearance of free cultivators in the central provinces, the impossibility of recruiting the legions with freemen, and the ruin of the empire.

And that it was something pressing upon the cultivation of _grain_, not of agriculture generally, which occasioned these disastrous results, is decisively proved by the fact, that, down to the fall of the empire, the cultivation of land _in pasturage_ continued to be a _highly profitable_ employment in Italy. It is recorded by Ammianus Marcellinus, that when Rome was taken by Alaric, it was inhabited by 1,200,000 persons, who were maintained almost entirely by the expenditure of 1780 patrician families holding estates in Italy and Africa, many of whom had above £160,000 yearly of rent from land. Their estates were almost entirely managed in pasturage, and conducted by slaves.[28] Here, then, is decisive evidence, that down to the very close of the empire, the managing of estates _in pasturage_ was not only profitable, but eminently so in Italy--though all attempts at raising grain were hopeless. It is not an unprofitable cultivation which can yield £160,000 a-year, equivalent to above £300,000 annually of our money, to a single proprietor, and maintain 1700 of them in such affluence that they maintained, in ease and luxury, a city not then the capital of the empire, containing 1,200,000 inhabitants, or considerably more than Paris at this time. It was not slavery, therefore, which ruined Italian cultivation; for the whole pasture cultivation which yielded such immense profits was conducted by slaves. It was the Lybian and Egyptian harvests, freely imported into the Tiber, which occasioned the ruin of agriculture in the Latian plains; and, with the consequent destruction of the race of rural freemen, brought on the ruin of the empire. But this importation could not injure pasturage; for cattle Africa had none, and therefore estates in grass still continued to yield great returns.

The second circumstance worthy of notice in this inquiry is, that the cause of the present desolation of the Campagna, whatever it is, is something which is _peculiar to that district_, and has continued to act with as great force in _modern_ as in ancient times. It is historically known, indeed, that the sanguinary contests of the rival houses of Orsini and Colonna, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, produced the most dreadful ravages in the Campagna, and extinguished, for the time at least, any attempts to reclaim or restore to cultivation this desolate region. But many centuries have elapsed since this desolating warfare has entirely ceased; and under the shelter of peace and tranquillity, agricultural industry in other parts of Italy has flourished to such a degree as to render it the garden of the world: witness the rich plain of Lombardy, the incomparable terrace cultivation of the Tuscan hills, the triple harvests of the Terra di Lavoro, near Naples. The desolation of the Campagna, therefore, must have been owing to some causes peculiar to the Roman States, or rather to that part of those states which adjoins the city of Rome; for in other parts of the ecclesiastical territories, particularly in the vicinity of Ancona, and the slope of the Apennines towards Bologna, agriculture is in the most flourishing state. The hills and declivities are there cut out into terraces, and cultivated with garden husbandry in as perfect style as in the mountains of Tuscany. The marches of Ancona contain 426,222 inhabitants, spread over 2111 square miles, which is about 200 to the square mile; but, considering how large a part of the territory is barren rock, the proportion on the fertile parts is about 300 to the square mile, while the average of England is only 260. The soil is cultivated to the depth of two and three feet.[29] It is in vain, therefore, to say, that it is the oppression of the Papal government, the indolence of the cardinals, and the evils of an elective monarchy, which have been the causes of the ruin of agricultural industry in the vicinity of Rome. These causes operate just as strongly in the other parts of the Papal States, where cultivation, instead of being in a languishing, is in the most flourishing condition. In truth, so far from having neglected agriculture in this blasted district, the Papal government, for the last two centuries, has made greater efforts to encourage it than all the other powers of Italy put together. Every successive Pope has laboured at the Pontine marshes, but in vain. Nothing can be more clear, than that the causes which have destroyed agriculture in the Campagna, are some which were known in the days of the Roman Republic; gradually came into operation with the extension of the empire; and have continued in modern times to press upon this particular district of the Papal States, in a much greater degree than among other provinces of a similar extent in Italy.

The last circumstance which forces itself upon the mind, in the outset of this inquiry, is, that the desolation of the Campagna is owing to moral or political, not physical causes. Naturalists and physicians have exhausted all their energies for centuries in investigating the causes of the _malaria_, which is now felt with such severity in Rome in the autumnal months, and renders health so precarious there at that period; and the soil has been analyzed by the most skillful chemists, to see whether there is any peculiarity in the earth, from its volcanic character, which either induces sterility in the crops, or proves fatal to the cultivators. But nothing has been discovered that in the slightest degree explains the phenomena. There is no doubt that the Campagna is extremely unhealthy in the autumnal months, and the Pontine marshes still more so; but that is no more than is the case with every low plain on the shores of the Mediterranean: it obtains in Lombardy, Greece, Sicily, Asia Minor, and Spain, as well as in the Agro Romano. If any one doubt it, let him lie down to sleep in his cloak in any of these places in a night of September, and see what state he is in in the morning. Clarke relates, that intermittent fevers are universal in the Grecian plains in the autumnal months: in Estremadura, in September 1811, on the banks of the Guadiana, nine thousand men fell sick in Wellington's army in three days. The savannas of America, where "death bestrides the evening gale," when first ploughed up, produce intermittent fevers far more deadly than the malaria of the Roman Campagna. But the energy of man overcomes the difficulty, and, ere a few years have passed away, health and salubrity prevail in the regions of former pestilence. It was the same with the Roman Campagna in the early days of the Republic; it is the same now with the Campagna of Naples, and the marshy plains around Parma and Lodi, to the full as unhealthy in a desert state as the environs of Rome. It would be the same with the Agro Romano, if moral causes did not step in to prevent the efforts and industry of man, from here, as elsewhere, correcting the insalubrity of uncultivated nature.

And for decisive evidence that this desolation of the Campagna is owing to moral or political, not physical causes, and that, under a different system of administration, it might be rendered as salubrious and populous as it was in the early days of the Roman Republic, reference may be made to the fact, that in many parts of Italy, equally unhealthy and in this desert state, cultivation has taken place, a dense population has arisen, and the dangerous qualities of the atmosphere have disappeared. Within the last twenty years, the district called Grosseté has been reclaimed, in the most pestilential part of the Maremma of Tuscany, by an industrious population, which has succeeded in introducing agriculture and banishing the malaria; and the ruins of the Roman villas on the banks of the Tiber, near the sea, prove that the Romans went to seek salubrity and the healthful breezes of the sea, where now they could meet with nothing but pestilence and death. The rocky and dry slopes of the Campagna are admirably adapted for raising olives and vines; while the difference of the soil and exposure in different places, promises a similar variety in their wines. The Pontine marshes themselves, and the vast plain which extends from them to the foot of the cluster of hills called the Alban Mount, are not more oppressed by water, or lower in point of level, than the plains of Pisa; and yet there the earth yields magnificent crops of grain and succulent herbs, while the poplars, by which the fields are intersected, support to their very summits the most luxuriant vines. The Campagna of Naples is more volcanic and level than that of Rome; the hills and valleys of Baiæ are nothing but the cones and craters of extinguished volcanoes; and if we would see what such a district becomes when left in a desert state, we have only to go to the Maremma of Pestum, now as desolate and unhealthy as the Pontine marshes themselves. But in the Campagna of Naples an industrious population has overcome all these obstacles, and rendered the land, tenanted only by wild boars and buffaloes in the fourth century, the garden of Europe, known over all the world, from its riches, by the name of the Campagna Felice.

Nay, the Agro Romano itself affords equally decisive proof, that where circumstances will permit the work of cultivation to be commenced so as to be carried on at a profit, the malaria and desolation speedily disappear before the persevering efforts of human industry. In many parts of the district, the custom of granting perpetual leases at a fixed rate prevails, the _Emphyteutis_ of the Roman law, the sources of the prosperity of the cultivators in Upper and Lower Austria, and well known in Scotland under the name of feus. Sismondi has given the following account of the effect of the establishment of a permanent interest in the soil in arresting the effects of the malaria, and spreading cultivation over the land:--"The Emphyteutic cultivator has a permanent interest in the soil: he labours, therefore, unceasingly for the good of his family. He cuts out his slope into terraces, covers it with trees, fruits, and garden-stuffs: he takes advantage of every leisure moment, either in himself, his wife, or children, to advance the common cultivation. Industry and abundance reign around. Whenever you ascend the volcanic hills of Latium, or visit those ravishing slopes which so many painters have illustrated, around the lakes of Castel Gandolfo or Nemi, at L'Aricia, Rocca di Papa, Marino, and Frescati; whenever you meet with a smiling cultivation, healthy air, and the marks of general abundance, you may rest assured the cultivator is proprietor of the fruits of the soil. The bare right of property, or superiority, as the lawyers term it, belongs to some neighbouring lord; but the real property, "il miglioramento," belongs to the cultivator. In this way, in these happy districts, the great estates, the _latifundia_ of Pliny, have been practically distributed among the peasantry; and, whenever this is the case, you hear no more of the malaria. Agriculture has caused to arise in those localities a numerous population, which multiplies with singular rapidity, and for ages has furnished cultivators not only for the mountains where it has arisen, but bands of adventurers, who in every age have filled the ranks of the Italian armies."[30]

But while those examples, to which, did our limits permit, many others might be added, decisively demonstrate that human industry can effectually overcome the physical difficulties or dangers of the Roman Campagna; yet it is clear that some great and overwhelming cause is at work, which prevents agriculture flourishing, by means of tenants or _métayers_, in the plains of the Campagna. The plains, it is true, are in the hands of a few great proprietors, but their tenants are extremely rich, often more so, Sismondi tells us, than their landlords. What is it, then, which for so long a period has chained the Campagna to pasturage, and rendered all attempts to restore it to the plough abortive? The answer is plain: It is the same cause now which binds it to pasturage, which did so under the Romans from the time of Tiberius--_it is more profitable to devote the land to grass than to raise grain._ And it is so, not because the land will not bear grain crops, for it would do now even better than it did in the days of the Etruscans and the Sabines; since so many centuries of intervening pasturage have added so much to its fertility. It is so, because the weakness of the Papal government, yielding, like the Imperial in ancient days, to the cry for cheap bread among the Roman populace, has fed the people, from time immemorial, with foreign grain, instead of that of its own territory. The evidence on this subject is as clear and more detailed in modern, than it was in ancient times; and both throw a broad and steady light on the final results of that system of policy, which purchases the present support of the inhabitants of cities, by sacrificing the only lasting and perennial sources of strength derived from the industry and population of the country.

During the confusion and disasters consequent on the fall of the Empire, after the capture of Rome by the Goths, the Campagna remained entirely a desert; but it continued in the hands of the successors of the great senatorial families who held it in the last days of the Empire. "The Agro Romano," says Sismondi, "almost a desert, had been long exposed to the ravages of the barbarians, who in 846 pillaged the Vatican, which led Pope Leo IV., in the following year, to enclose that building within the walls of Rome. For an hundred years almost all the hills which border the horizon from Rome were crowned with forts; the ancient walls of the Etruscans were restored, or rebuilt from their ruins; the old hill strengths, where the Sabines, the Hernici, the Volscians, the Coriolani, had formerly defended their independence, again offered asylums to the inhabitants of the plains. But the great estates, the bequest of ancient Rome, remained undivided. With the first dawn of history in the middle ages, we see the great house of the Colonna master of the towns of Palestrina, Genazzano, Zagorole; that of Orsini, of the territories of the republics of Veiæ and Ceres, and holding the fortresses of Bracciano, Anguetta, and Ceri. The Monte-Savili, near Albano, still indicates the possessions of the Savili, which comprehended the whole ancient kingdom of Turnus; the Frangipani were masters of Antium, Astura, and the sea-coast; the Gaetani, the Annibaldeschi of the Castles which overlook the Pontine marshes; while Latium was in the hands of a smaller number of feudal families than it had formerly numbered republics within its bounds."[31]

But while divided among these great proprietors, the Roman Campagna was still visited, as in the days of the emperor, with the curse of cheap grain, imported from the other states bordering on the Mediterranean, and was in consequence exclusively devoted to the purposes of pasturage. An authentic document proves that this was the case so far down as the fifteenth century. In the year 1471, Pope Sextus IV. issued a bull, which was again enforced by Clement VII. in 1523, and which bore these remarkable words:--"Considering the frequent famines to which Rome has been exposed in late years, _arising chiefly from the small amount of lands which have been sown or laid down in tillage_, and that their owners _prefer allowing them to remain uncultivated, and pastured only by cattle_, than to cultivate for the use of men, on the ground _that the latter mode of management is more profitable than the former_."[32] The decree ordered the cultivation of a large portion of the Campagna in grain under heavy penalties.

And that this superior profit of pasturage to tillage has continued to the present time, and is the real cause of the long-continued and otherwise inexplicable desolation of this noble region, has been clearly demonstrated by a series of important and highly interesting official decrees and investigations, which, within this half century, have taken place by order of the Papal government. Struck with the continued desolation of so large and important a portion of their territory, the popes have both issued innumerable edicts to enforce tillage, and set on foot the most minute inquiries to ascertain the causes of their failure. It is only necessary to mention one. Pius VI., in 1783, took a new and most accurate survey or _cadastre_ of the Agro Romano, and ordained the proprietors to sow annually 17,000 _rubbi_ (85,000 acres) with grain.[33] This decree, however, like those which had preceded it, was not carried into execution. "The proprietors and farmers," says Nicolai, "equally opposed themselves to its execution; the former declaring that they must have a higher rent for the land if laid down in tillage, than the latter professed themselves able to pay."[34]

To ascertain the cause of this universal and insurmountable resistance of all concerned to the cultivation of the Campagna, the Papal government in 1790 issued a commission to inquire into the matter, and the proprietors prescribe to two memoirs on the subject, which at once explained the whole difficulty. The one set forth the cost and returns of 100 rubbi (500 acres) in grain tillage in the Roman Campagna; the other, the cost and returns of a flock of 2500 sheep in the same circumstances. The result of the whole was, that while the grain cultivation would with difficulty, on an expenditure of 8000 crowns (£2000,) bring in a clear profit _of thirty crowns_ (£7, 10s.) to the farmer, and nothing at all to the landlord, the other would yield between them a profit _of 1972 crowns_, (£496.)[35] Well may Sismondi exclaim:--"These two reports are of the very highest importance. They explain the constant invincible resistance which the proprietors and farmers of the Roman Campagna have opposed to the extension of grain cultivation; they put in a clear light the opposite interest of great capitalists and the interest of the state; they give in authentic details, which I have personally verified, and found to be still entirely applicable and correct, on the causes which have reduced the noble district of the Roman Campagna to its desolate state, and still retain it in that condition. Incredible as the statements may appear, they are amply borne out by everyday experience. In effect, all the farmers whom I have consulted, affirm, that they invariably lose by grain cultivation, and that they never resort to it, but to prevent the land from being overgrown by brushwood or forests, and rendered unfit for profitable pasturage."[36]

Extraordinary as these facts are, as to the difference between the profits of pasturage and tillage in the Agro Romano, it is only by the most rigid economy, and reducing the shepherds to the lowest amount of subsistence consistent with the support of life, that the former yields any profits at all. The wages of the shepherds are only fifty-three francs (£2) for the winter season, and as much for the summer; the proprietors, in addition, furnishing them with twenty ounces of bread a-day, a half-pound of salt meat, a little oil and salt a-week. As to wine, vinegar, or fermented liquors, they never taste any of them from one year's end to another. Such as it is, their food is all brought to them from Rome; for in the whole Campagna there is not an oven, a kitchen, or a kitchen-garden, to furnish an ounce of vegetables or fruits. The clothing of these shepherds is as wretched as their fare. It consists of sheep-skin, with the wool outside; a few rags on their legs and thighs, complete their vesture. Lodging or houses they have none; they sleep in the open air, or nestle into some sheltered nook among the ruined tombs or aqueducts which are to be met with in the wilderness, in some of the caverns, which are so common in that volcanic region, or beneath the arches of the ancient catacombs. A few spoons and coarse jars form their whole furniture; the cost of that belonging to twenty-nine shepherds, required for the 2500 sheep, is only 159 francs (£7.) The sum total of the expense of the whole twenty-nine persons, including wages, food, and every thing, is only 1038 crowns, or £250 a-year; being about £8, 10s. a-head annually. The produce of the flock is estimated at 7122 crowns (£1780) annually, and the annual profit 1972 crowns, or £493.[37]

The other table given by Nicolai, exhibits, on a similar expenditure of capital, the profit of tillage; and it is so inconsiderable, as rarely, and that only in the most favourable situations, to cover the expense of cultivation. The labourers, who almost all come from the neighbouring hills, above the level of the malaria, are obliged to be brought from a distance at high wages for the time of their employment; sometimes in harvest wages are as high as five francs, or four shillings a-day. The wages paid to the labourers on a grain farm on which £2000 has been expended on 500 acres, amount to no less than 4320 crowns, or £1080 sterling, annually; being above four times the cost of the shepherds for a similar expenditure of capital, though they wander over ten times the surface of ground. The labourers never remain in the fields; they set off to the hills when their grain is sown, and only return in autumn to cut it down. They do not work above twenty or thirty days in the year; and therefore, though their wages for that period are so high, they are in misery all the rest of the season. But though so little is done for the land, the price received for the produce is so low, that cultivation in grain brings no profit, and is usually carried on at a loss. The peasants who conduct it never go to Rome--have often never seen it; they make no purchases there; and _the most profitable of all trades in a nation, that between the town and the country, is unknown in the Roman States_.[38]

Here, then, the real cause of the desolation of the Campagna stands revealed in the clearest light, and on the most irrefragable evidence. It is not cultivated for grain crops, because remunerating prices for that species of produce cannot be obtained. It is exclusively kept in pasturage, because it is in that way only that a profit can be obtained from the land. And that it is this cause, and not any deficiency of capital or skill on the part of the tenantry, which occasions the phenomenon, is further rendered apparent by the wealth, enterprize, and information on agricultural subjects, of the great farmers in whose lands the land is vested. "The conductors," says Sismondi, "of rural labour in the Roman States, called _Mercanti di Tenute_ or _di Campagne_, are men possessed of great capital, and who have received the very best education. Such, indeed, is their opulence, that it is probable they will, erelong, acquire the property of the land of which at present they are tenants. Their number, however, does not exceed eighty. They are acquainted with the most approved methods of agriculture in Italy and other countries; they have at their disposal all the resources of science, art, and immense capital; have availed themselves of all the boasted advantages of centralization, of a thorough division of labour, of a most accurate system of accounts, and checking of inferior functionaries. The system of great farms has been carried to perfection in their hands. But, with all these advantages, they cannot in the Agro Romano, _once so populous, still so fertile, raise grain to a profit_. The labourers cost more than they are worth, more than their produce is worth; while on a soil not richer, and under the same climate and government, in the marches of Ancona, agriculture maintains two hundred souls the square mile, in comfort and opulence."[39]

What, then, is the explanation which is to be given of this extraordinary impossibility of raising grain with a profit in the Roman Campagna; while in a similar climate, and under greater physical disadvantages, it is in the neighbouring plains of Pisa, and the Campagna Felice of Naples, the most profitable of all species of cultivation, and therefore universally resorted to? The answer is obvious--It is the cry for cheap bread in Rome, the fatal bequest of the strength of the Imperial, to the weakness of the Papal government, which is the cause. It is the necessity under which the ecclesiastical government felt itself, of yielding every thing to _the clamour for a constant supply of cheap bread for the people of the town_ which has done the whole. It is the ceaseless importation of foreign grain into the Tiber by government, to provide cheap food for the people, which has reduced the Campagna to a wilderness, and rendered Rome in modern, not less than Tadmor in ancient times, a city in the desert.

It has been already noticed, that in the middle of the fifteenth century Sextus IV. issued a decree, ordaining the proprietors of lands in the Campana to lay down a third of their estates yearly in tillage. But the Papal government, not resting on the proprietors of the soil, but mainly, in so far as temporal power went, on the populace of Rome, was under the necessity of making at the same time extraordinary efforts to obtain supplies of foreign grain. A free trade in grain was permitted to the Tiber, or rather the government purchased foreign grain wherever they could find it cheapest, as the emperors had from a similar apprehension done in ancient times, and retailed it at a moderate price to the people. They became themselves the great corn-merchant. This system, of course, prevented the cultivation of the Campagna, and rendered the decree of Sextus IV. nugatory; for no human laws can make men continue a course of labour at a loss to themselves. Thence the citizens of Rome came to depend entirely on foreign supplies of grain for their daily food; and the consumption of the capital had no more influence on the agriculture of the adjoining provinces, than it had on that of Hindostan or China. Again, as in the days of Tacitus, the lives of the Roman people were exposed to the chances of the winds and the waves. As this proved a fluctuating and precarious source of supply, a special board, styled the _Casa Annonaria_, was constituted by government for the regular importation of foreign grain, and retailing of it at a fixed and low price to the people. This board has been in operation for nearly two hundred and fifty years; and it is the system it has pursued which has prevented all attempts to cultivate the Campagna, by rendering it impossible to do so at a profit. The details of the proceedings of this board--this "_chamber of commerce_" of Rome, are so extremely curious and instructive, that we must give them in the authentic words of Sismondi.

"Having failed in all their attempts to bring about the cultivation of the Campagna, the popes of the 17th and 18th centuries endeavoured to secure abundance in the markets by other means. The motive was legitimate and praiseworthy; but the means taken failed in producing the desired effect, because they sacrificed the future to the present, and, _in the anxiety to secure the subsistence of the people, compromised those who raised food for them_. Pope Pius VI., who reigned from 1600 to 1621, instituted the _Casa Annonaria_ of the apostolic chamber, which was charged with the duty of providing subsistence for the inhabitants of Rome. This board being desirous, above all things, of avoiding seditions and discontent, established it as a principle, that whatever the cost of production was, or the price in a particular year, bread should be sold at certain public bake-houses at a certain price. This price was fixed at a Roman baiocco, a tenth more than the sous of France, (1/2 d. English,) for eight ounces of bread. _This price has now been maintained constantly the same for two hundred years_; and it is still kept at the same level, with the difference only of a slight diminution in the weight of the bread sold for the _baiocco_ in years of scarcity.

"As a necessary consequence of this regulation, the apostolic chamber soon found itself under the necessity of taking entire possession of the commerce of grain. It not only bought up the whole which was to be obtained in the country, but provided for the public wants _by large importation_. Regulations for the import and export of grain were made by it; sometimes, it was said, through the influence of those who solicited exemptions. Whether this was the case or not is uncertain, and not very material. What is certain is, that the rule by which the chamber was invariably regulated, viz. _that of consulting no other interest but that of the poor consumer_, is as vicious and ruinous as the one so much approved of now-a-days, of attending only to the interest of the proprietors and producers. Government, doubtless, should attend to the vital matter of the subsistence of the people; but it should do so with a view to the interest of all, not a single section of society.

"At what price soever bread was bought by them, the _Casa Annonaria_ sold it to the bakers at seven Roman crowns (30 f.) the _rubbio_, which weighs 640 kilograms, (1540 lbs.) That price was not much different from the average one; and the apostolic chamber sustained no great loss till 1763, by its extensive operations in the purchase and sale of grain. But at that period the price of wheat began to rise, and it went on continually advancing to the end of the century. Notwithstanding its annual losses, however, the apostolic chamber was too much afraid of public clamour to raise the price of bread. It went on constantly retailing it at the same price to the people; and the consequence was, that its losses in 1797, when the pontifical government was overturned, had accumulated to no less than 17,457,485 francs, or £685,000."[40]

It might naturally have been imagined, that after so long an experience of the effects of a forcible reduction of the price of grain below the level at which it could be raised at a profit by home cultivators, the ecclesiastical government would have seen what was the root of the evil, and applied themselves to remedy it, by giving some protection to native industry. But though the evil of the desolation of the Campagna was felt in its full extent by government in subsequent times; yet as the first step in the right course, viz. protecting native industry by stopping the sales of bread by government at lower prices than it could be raised at home, was likely to occasion great discontent, it was never attempted. Such a step, dangerous in the firmest and best established, was impossible in an elective monarchy of old Popes, feeble cardinals, and a despicable soldiery. They went on deploring the evil, but never once ventured to face the remedy. In 1802, Pius VII., a most public-spirited and active pontiff, issued an edict, in which he declared, "We are firmly persuaded that if we cannot succeed in applying a remedy the abandonment and depopulation of the Campagna will go on increasing, till the country becomes a fearful desert. _Fatal experience leaves no doubt on that point._ We see around us, above all in the Campagna, a number of estates entirely depopulated and abandoned to grass, which, in the memory of man, were rich in agricultural productions, and crowded with inhabitants, as is clearly established by the seignorial rights attached to them. Population had been introduced into these domains by agriculture, which employed a multitude of hands, being in a flourishing state. But now the obstacles opposed to the interior commerce of grain, _and the forced prices fixed by government, have caused agriculture to perish_. Pasturage has come every where to supplant it; and the great proprietors and farmers living in Rome, have abandoned all thought of dividing their possessions among cultivators, and sought only to diminish the cost of the flocks to which they have devoted their estates. But if that system has proved profitable to them, it has been fatal to the state, which it has deprived of its true riches, the produce of agriculture, and of the industry of the rural population."[41] But it was all in vain. The measures adopted by Pius VII. to resuscitate agriculture in the Campagna, have proved all nugatory like those of all his predecessors; the importation of foreign grain into the Tiber, the forced prices at which it was sold by the government at Rome, rendered it impossible to prosecute agriculture to a profit; and the Campagna has become, and still continues, a desert.[42]

Here, then, the real cause of the long-continued desolation of the Agro Romano, both in ancient and modern times, becomes perfectly apparent. It is the cry for cheap bread in Rome which has done the whole. To stifle this cry in the dreaded populace of the Eternal City, the emperors imported grain largely from Egypt and Lybia, and distributed it at an elusory price, or gratuitously, to the people. The unrestricted importation of foreign grain, in consequence of those provinces becoming parts of the empire, enabled the cultivators and merchants of Africa to deluge the Italian harbours with corn at a far cheaper rate than it could be raised in Italy itself, where labour bore a much higher price, in consequence of money being more plentiful in the centre than the extremities of the empire. Thus the market of its towns was lost to the Italian cultivators, and gained to those of Egypt and Lybia, where a vertical sun, or the floods of the Nile, almost superseded the expense of cultivation. Pasturage became the only way in which land could be managed to advantage in the Italian fields; because live animals and dairy produce do not admit of being transported from a distance by sea, with a profit to the importer, and the sunburnt shores of Africa yielded no herbage for their support. Agriculture disappeared in Italy, and with it the free and robust arms which conducted it; pasturage succeeded, and yielded large rentals to the great proprietors, into whose hands, on the ruin of the little freeholders by foreign importation, the land had fallen. But pasturage could not nourish a bold peasantry to defend the state; it could only produce the riches which might attract its enemies. Hence the constant complaint, that Italy had ceased to be able to furnish soldiers to the legionary armies; hence the entrusting the defence of the frontier to mercenary barbarians, and the ruin of the empire.

In modern times the same ruinous system has been continued, and hence the continued desolation of the Campagna, so pregnant with weakness and evil to the Roman states. The people never forgot the distribution of grain by government in the time of the emperors; the Papal authorities never had strength sufficient to withstand the menacing cry for cheap bread. Anxious to keep the peace in Rome, and depending little on the barons of the country, the ecclesiastical government saw no resource but to import grain themselves from any countries where they could get it cheapest, and sell it at a fixed price to the people. This price, down to 1763, was just the price at which _it could be imported with a fair profit_; as is proved by the fact, that down to that period the _Casa Annonaria_ sustained no loss. But it was lower than the rate at which it could be raised even in the fertile plains of the Campagna, where labour was dearer and taxes heavier than in Egypt and the Ukraine, from whence the grain was imported by government; and consequently cultivation could not be carried on in the Agro Romano but at a loss. It of course ceased altogether; and the land, as in ancient times, has been entirely devoted to pasturage, to the extinction of the rural population, and the infinite injury of the state.

And this explains how it has happened, that in other parts of the Papal states, particularly in the marches on the other side of the Apennines, between Bologna and Ancona, agriculture is not only noways depressed, but flourishing; and the same is the case with the slopes of the Alban Mount, even in the Agro Romano. In the first situation, the necessity of bending to the cry for cheap bread in the urban population was not felt, as the marches contained no great towns, and the weight of influence was in the rural inhabitants. There was no _Casa Annonaria_, or fixed price of bread there; and therefore agriculture flourished as it did in Lombardy, the Campagna Felice of Naples, the plain of Pisa, or any other prosperous part of Italy. In the latter, it was in _garden cultivation_ that the little proprietors, as in nearly the whole slopes of the Apennines, were engaged. The enchanting shores of the lakes of Gandolfo and Nemi, the hills around L'Aricia and Marino, are all laid out in the cultivation of grapes, olives, fruits, vegetables, and chestnuts. No competition from without was to be dreaded by them, as at least, until the introduction of steam, it was impossible to bring such productions by distant sea voyages, so as to compete with those raised in equally favourable situations within a few miles of the market at home. In these places, therefore, the peculiar evil which blasted all attempts at grain cultivation in the Campagna was not felt; and hence, though in the Roman states, and subject, in other respects, to precisely the same government as the Agro Romano, they exhibit not merely a good, but the most admirable cultivation.

If any doubt could exist on the subject, it would be removed by two other facts connected with agriculture on the shores of the Mediterranean; one in ancient and one in modern times.

The first of these is that while agriculture declined _in Italy_, as has been shown from the time of Tiberius, until at length nearly the whole plains of that peninsula were turned into grass, it, from the same date, took an extraordinary start in Spain and Lybia. And to such a length had the improvement of Africa, under the fostering influence of the market of Rome and Italy gone, that it contained, at the time of its invasion by the Vandals under Genseric, in the year 430 of the Christian era, twenty millions of inhabitants, and had come to be regarded with reason as the garden of the human race. "The long and narrow tract," says Gibbon, "of the African coast was filled, when the Vandals approached its shores, with frequent monuments of Roman art and magnificence; and the respective degrees of improvement might be accurately measured by the distance from Carthage and the Mediterranean. A simple reflection will impress every thinking mind with the clearest idea of its fertility and cultivation. The country was extremely populous; the inhabitants reserved a liberal supply for their own use; _and the annual exportation_, PARTICULARLY OF WHEAT, _was so regular and plentiful, that Africa deserved the name of the common granary of Rome and of mankind_."[43] Nor had Spain flourished less during the long tranquillity and protection of the legions. In the year 409 after Christ, when it was first invaded by the barbarians, its situation is thus described by the great historian of the _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_. "The situation of Spain, separated on all sides from the enemies of Rome by the sea, by the mountains, and by intermediate provinces, had secured the long tranquillity of that remote and sequestered country; and we may observe, as a sure symptom of _domestic happiness_, that in a period of 400 years, Spain furnished very few materials to the history of the Roman empire. The cities of Merida, Cordova, Seville, and Tarragona, were numbered with the most illustrious of the Roman world. The various plenty of the animal, _vegetable_, and mineral kingdoms was improved and manufactured by the skill of an industrious people, and the peculiar advantages of naval stores contributed to support an extensive and profitable trade." And he adds, in a note, many particulars relative to the _fertility_ and trade of Spain, may be found in Huet's _Commerce des Anciens_, c. 40, p. 228.[44]

These facts are very remarkable, and worthy of the most profound attention; for they point in a decisive manner, they afford the _experimentum crucis_ as to the real cause of the long-continued and frightful decay of Italian agriculture during the reign of the emperors. For here, it appears, that during the four hundred years that the Western Empire endured, while the cultivation of grain in Italy was constantly declining, and at last wholly ceased, insomuch that the country relapsed entirely into a state of nature, or was devoted to the mere raising of grass for sheep and cattle, _agriculture was flourishing in the highest degree in the remoter provinces of the Empire_; and the exportation of grain from Africa had become so great and regular, that it had come to be regarded as the granaries of Rome and of the world! The government was the same, the slavery was the same, in Africa as in Italy. Yet in the one country agriculture rose, during four centuries, to the highest point of elevation; while in the other, during the same period, it sunk to the lowest depression, until it became wellnigh extinct, so far as the raising of grain was concerned. How did this come to pass? It could not have been that the labour of slaves was too costly to raise grain; for it was raised at a great profit, and to a prodigious extent, _almost entirely by slaves_, in Egypt and Lybia. What was it, then, which destroyed agriculture in Italy and Greece, while, under circumstances precisely similar in all respects _but one_, it was, at the very same time, rising to the very highest prosperity in Egypt, Lybia, and Spain? Evidently _that one circumstance_, and that was--that Italy and Greece were the heart of the empire, the theatre of long-established civilization, the abode of opulence, the seat of wealth, the centre to which riches flowed from the extremities of the empire. Pounds were plentiful there, and, consequently, labour was dear; in the provinces pence were few, and, therefore, it was cheap. It was impossible, under a free trade in grain, for the one to compete with the other. It is for the same reason that agricultural labour is now sixpence a-day in Poland, tenpence in Ireland, and two shillings in Great Britain.

The peculiar conformation of the Roman empire, while it facilitated in many respects its growth and final settlement under the dominion of the Capitol, led by a process not less certain, and still more rapid, to its ruin, when that empire was fully extended. If any one will look at the map, he will see that the Roman empire spread outwards from the shores of the Mediterranean. It embraced all the monarchies and republics which, in the preceding ages of the world, had grown up around that inland sea. Water, therefore, afforded the regular, certain, and cheap means of conveying goods and troops from one part of the empire to the other. Nature had spread out a vast system of internal navigation, which brought foreign trade in a manner to every man's door. The legions combated alternately on the plains of Germany, in the Caledonian woods, on the banks of the Euphrates, and at the foot of Mount Atlas. But much as this singular and apparently providential circumstance aided the growth, and for a season increased the strength of the empire, it secretly but certainly undermined its resources, and in the end proved its ruin. The free trade in grain which it necessarily brought with it, when the same dominion stretched over all Spain and Africa, and long-continued peace had brought their crops to compete with the Italian in the supply of the Roman, or the Grecian in that of the Constantinopolitan markets, destroyed the fabric the legions had reared. Italy could not compete with Lybia, Greece with Poland. Rome was supplied by the former, Constantinople by the latter. If the Mediterranean wafted the legions out in the rise of the empire, _it wafted foreign grain in_ in its later stages, and the last undid all that the former had done. The race of _agricultural freemen_ in Italy, the bone and muscle of the legions which had conquered the world, became extinct; the rabble of towns were unfit for the labours, and averse to the dangers of war; mercenaries became the only resource.

The fact in modern times, which illustrates and confirms the same view of the chief cause of the ruin of the Roman empire, is, that a similar effect has taken place, and is at this moment in full operation in Romelia, and all the environs of Constantinople. Every traveller in the East knows that desolation as complete as that of the Campagna of Rome pervades the whole environs of Constantinople; that the moment you emerge from the gates of that noble city, you find yourself in a wilderness, and that the grass comes up to our horse's girths all the way to Adrianople. "Romelia," says Slade, "if cultivated, would become the granary of the East;" _whereas Constantinople depends on Odessa for daily bread_. The burial-grounds, choked with weeds and underwood, constantly occurring in every traveller's route, far remote from habitations, are eloquent testimonials of continued depopulation. The living, too, are far apart; a town about every fifty miles; _a village every ten miles_, is deemed close; and horsemen meeting on the highway regard each other as objects of curiosity.[45] This is the Agro Romano over again. Nor will it do to say, that it is the oppression of the Turkish government which occasions this desolation and destruction of the rural population; for many parts of Turkey are not only well cultivated but most densely peopled; as, for example, the broad tract of Mount Hoemus, where agriculture is in as admirable a state as in the mountains of Tuscany or Switzerland. "No peasantry in the world," says Slade, "are so well off as those of Bulgaria; the lowest of them has abundance of every thing--meat, poultry, eggs, milk, rice, cheese, wine, bread, good clothing, a warm dwelling, and a horse to ride; where is the tyranny under which the Christian subjects of the Porte are generally supposed to dwell? Among the Bulgarians certainly. I wish that, in every country, a traveller could pass from one end to the other, and find a good supper and warm fire in every cottage, as he can in this part of European Turkey."[46] Clarke gives the same account of the peasantry of Parnassus and Olympia; and it is true generally of almost all the _mountain_ districts of Turkey. How, then, does it happen that the rich and level plains of Romelia, at the gates of Constantinople, and thence over a breadth of an hundred and twenty miles to Adrianople, is a desert? Slade has explained it in a word. "_Constantinople depends on Odessa for its daily bread._" The cry for cheap bread in Constantinople, its noble harbour, and ready communication by water with Egypt on the one hand, and the Ukraine on the other, have done the whole. Romelia, like the Campagna of Rome, is a desert, because the market of Constantinople is lost to the Turkish cultivators; because grain can be brought cheaper from the Nile and the Wolga than raised at home, in consequence of the cheapness of labour in those remote provinces; and because the Turkish government, dreading an insurrection in the capital, have done nothing to protect native industry.

There are many countries to whom the most unlimited freedom in the importation of corn can do no injury. There are, in the first place, the great grain countries, such as Poland and the Ukraine: they have no more reason to dread the importation of grain than Newcastle that of coals, or the Scotch Highlands that of moor-game. In the next place, countries which _are poor_ need never fear the importation of corn from abroad; for they have no money to pay for it; and, if they had, it would not be brought in at a profit, because currency being scarce, of course the price will be low. Lastly, Countries which have vast inland tracts, like Russia, Austria, France, and America, especially if no extensive system of water communication exists in their interior, have little reason to apprehend injury from the most unrestricted commerce in grain; because the cost of inland carriage on so bulky and heavy an article as corn is so considerable, that the produce of foreign harvests can never penetrate far into the interior, or come to supply a large portion of the population with food.

The countries which have reason to apprehend injury, and in the end destruction, to their native agriculture, from the unrestricted admission of foreign corn, are those which, though they may possess a territory in many places well adapted for the raising of grain crops, are yet rich, far advanced in civilization, with a narrow territory, and their principal towns on the sea-coast. They have every thing to dread from foreign importation; because both the plenty of currency, which opulence brings in its train, and the heavy public burdens with which it is invariably attended, render labour dear at home, by lowering the value of money, and raising the weight of taxation. If long continued, an unrestricted foreign importation cannot fail to ruin agriculture, and destroy domestic strength in such a state. Italy and Greece stood eminently in such a situation; for all their great towns were upon the sea-coast, their territory was narrow, and being successively the seats of empire, and the centres of long-continued opulence, money was more plentiful, and therefore production dearer than in those remote and poorer states from which grain might be brought to their great towns by sea carriage. In the present circumstances of this country, we would do well to bear in mind the following reflections of Sismondi, "It is not to no purpose that we have entered into the foregoing details concerning the state of agriculture in the neighbourhood of Rome; for we are persuaded that a universal tendency in Europe _menaces us with the same calamities_, even in those countries which at present seem to adopt an entirely opposite system; _only the Romans have gone through the career, while we are only entering upon it_."[47]

The times are past, indeed, when gratuitous distributions of grain will be made to an idle population, as under the Roman emperors, or bread be sold for centuries by government at a fixed and low price, as under their papal successors. But the same causes which produced these effects are still in full operation. The cry for cheap bread in a popular state, is as menacing as it was to the emperors or popes of Rome. The only difference is, the sacrifice of domestic industry is now more disguised. The thing is done, but it is done not openly by public deliveries of the foreign grain at low prices, but indirectly under the specious guise of free trade. Government does not say, "We will import Polish grain, and sell it permanently at thirty-six or forty shillings a quarter;" but it says, "we will open our harbours to the Polish farmers who can do so. We will admit grain duty free from a country where wages are sixpence a-day, and rents half-a-crown an acre." They thus force down the price of grain to the foreign level, augmented only by the cost and profit of importations, as effectually as ever did the emperors or _Casa Annonaria_of Rome.

And what has Rome--the urban population of Rome--for whose supposed interests, and in obedience to whose menacing cry, the Roman market has for eighteen centuries been supplied with foreign bread--what have they gained by this long continuation of government to their wishes? Sismondi has told us in one word--"In Rome there _is no commerce between the town and the country_." They would have foreign grain with its consequences, and _they have had foreign grain with its consequences_. And what have been these consequences? Why, that the Eternal City, which, even when taken by the Goths, had 1,200,000 inhabitants within its walls, can now scarcely number 170,000, and they almost entirely in poverty, and mainly supported by the influx and expenditure of foreigners. The Campagna, once so fruitful and so peopled, has become a desert. No inhabitant of the Roman states buys any thing in Rome. Their glory is departed--it has gone to other people and other lands. And what would have been the result if this wretched concession to the blind and unforeseeing popular clamour had not taken place? Why, that Rome would have been what Naples--where domestic industry is protected--has become; it would have numbered 400,000 busy and active citizens within its walls. The Campagna would have been what the marches of Ancona now are. Between Rome and the Campagna, a million of happy and industrious human beings would have existed in the Agro Romano, independent of all the world, mutually nourishing and supporting each other; instead of an hundred and seventy thousand indolent and inactive citizens of a town, painfully dependent on foreign supplies for bread, and on foreign gold for the means of purchasing it.

Disastrous as have been the consequences of a free trade in grain to the Roman States, alike in ancient and modern times, it was introduced by its rulers in antiquity under the influence of noble and enlightened principles. The whole civilized world was then one state; the banks of the Nile and the plains of Lybia acknowledged the sway of the emperors, as much as the shores of the Tiber or the fields of the Campagna. When the Roman government, ruling so mighty a dominion, permitted the harvests of Africa and the Ukraine to supplant those of Italy and Greece, they did no more than justice to their varied subjects. Magnanimously overlooking local interests and desires, they extended their vision over the whole civilized world, and

"View'd with equal eyes, as lords of all,"

their subjects, whether in Italy, Spain, Egypt, or Lybia. Though the seat of government was locally on the Tiber, they administered for the interest of the whole civilized world, alike far and near. If the Campagna was ruined, the Delta of Egypt flourished! If the plains of Umbria were desolate, those of Lybia and Spain, equally parts of the empire, were waving with grain. But can the same be said of England, now proclaiming a free trade in grain, not merely with her colonies or distant provinces, but with her rivals or her enemies? Not merely with Canada and Hindostan, but with Russia and America? With countries jealous of her power, envious of her fame, covetous of her riches. What should we have said of the wisdom of the Romans, if they had sacrificed Italian to African agriculture in the days of Hannibal? If they had put it into the power of the Carthaginian Senate to have said, "We will not arm our galleys; we will not levy armies; we will prohibit the importation of African grain, and starve you into submission?" How is England to maintain her independence, if the autocrat of Russia, by issuing his orders from St Petersburg, can at any moment stop the importation of ten millions of quarters of foreign grain, that is, a sixth of our whole annual consumption? And are we to render penniless our home customers, not in order to promote the interest of the distant parts of our empire, but in order to enrich and vivify our enemies?

It is said public opinion runs in favour of such a change; that the manufacturing has become the dominant interest in the state; that wages must at all hazards be beat down to the continental level; and that, right or wrong, the thing must be done. Whether this is the case or not, time, and possibly a general election, will show. Sometimes those who are the most noisy, are not the most numerous. Certain it is, that in 1841 a vast majority both of the electors and the people were unanimous in favour of protection. But, be the present opinion of the majority what it may, that will not alter the nature of things--It will not render that wise which is unwise. Public opinion in Athens, in the time of Demosthenes, was nearly unanimous to apply the public funds to the support of the theatres instead of the army, and they got the battle of Chæronea, and subjection by Philip, for their reward. Public opinion in Europe was unanimous in favour of the Crusades, and millions of brave men left their bones in Asia in consequence. The Senate of Carthage, yielding to the wishes of the majority of their democratic community, refused to send succours to Hannibal in Italy; and they brought, in consequence, the legions of Scipio Africanus round their walls. Public opinion in France was unanimous in favour of the expedition to Moscow. "They regarded it," says Segur, "as a mere hunting party of six months;" but that did not hinder it from bringing the Cossacks to Paris. The old Romans were unanimous in their cry for cheap bread, and they brought the Gothic trumpet to their gates from its effects. A vast majority of the electors of Great Britain in 1831, were in favour of Reform: out of 101, 98 county members were returned in the liberal interest; and now they have got their reward, in seeing the Reformed Parliament preparing to abolish all protection to native industry. All the greatest and most destructive calamities recorded in history have been brought about, not only with the concurrence, but in obedience to the fierce demand of the majority. Protection to domestic industry, at home or colonial, is the unseen but strongly felt bond which unites together the far distant provinces of the British empire by the firm bond of mutual interest.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 16: The Agro Romano, the Sabina, the Campagna Maritima, and the Patrimonio di San Pietro, which make up the Campagna of Rome, contain 3881 square miles, or about 3,000,000 acres.--Sismondi's _Essais_, ii, 10.]

[Footnote 17: Barbieri à Sismondi.--Sismondi's _Essais_, li. 11.]

[Footnote 18: Tacitus, _Annal_. xii. 43. But, by Hercules, formerly provisions were sent for the legions from Italy into distant provinces; nor even now is it afflicted by sterility: but we prefer purchasing it from Africa and Egypt, and the lives of the Roman people have been committed to ships and the chances of the waves.]

[Footnote 19: Sismondi, _Essais_, ii. 25.]

[Footnote 20: To confess the truth, the great estates have ruined Italy; ay, and the provinces too.--_Plin_. 1. xviii. c. 6.]

[Footnote 21: Gibbon, vi. c. 36.]

[Footnote 22: "Quingena viginti millia quadringenti duo jugera quæ Campania provincia, juxta inspectorum relationem, in desertis et squalidis locis habere dignoscitur, eisdem provinciabilibus concessum."--_Cod. Theod._ ix. c. 38, c. 2.]

[Footnote 23: Gibbon, iii. c. 18.]

[Footnote 24: _Ibid._ iii. 88. c. 17.]

[Footnote 25: Michelet, _Histoire de France_, i. 104-108.]

[Footnote 26: Gibbon, VIII. c. xiv.]

[Footnote 27: Michelet's _Histoire de France_, i. 277.]

[Footnote 28: Ammianus Marcellinus, c. xvi; see also Gibbon, vi. 264.]

[Footnote 29: Sismondi's _Essais_, ii. 57.]

[Footnote 30: Sismondi's _Essais_, ii. 33.]

[Footnote 31: Sismondi's _Essais_, ii. 29, 30.]

[Footnote 32: Nicolai, _dell' Agro Romano_, ii. 30, 31.]

[Footnote 33: The rubbi is equal to two French hectares, or five English acres.]

[Footnote 34: Nicolai, iii 133.]

[Footnote 35: _Ibid._, c. in. 167. _Et subseq_.]

[Footnote 36: Sismondi's _Essais_, ii, 46, 47.]

[Footnote 37: Nicolai, _dell' Agro Romano_, iii. 167, 175.]

[Footnote 38: Nicolai, iii. 174, 178.]

[Footnote 39: Sismondi's _Essais_, ii, 56, 57.]

[Footnote 40: Nicolai, _del' Agro Romano_, iii. 153. Sismondi's _Essais_, ii. 44.]

[Footnote 41: Motu proprio de Pius VII.--Nicolai, ii. 163, 185.]

[Footnote 42: Sismondi's _Essais_, ii. 71.]

[Footnote 43: Gibbon, chap. 33, Vol. vi. p. 20.]

[Footnote 44: Gibbon, c. 31, Vol. v. p. 351.]

[Footnote 45: Slade's _Travels in the East_, ii 15.]

[Footnote 46: Slade, ii. 97.]

[Footnote 47: Sismondi's _Essais_, ii. 71.]

MR BROOKE OF BORNEO.

[48]On the 19th of August last, some twenty boats belonging to her Majesty's ships, _Agincourt_, _Vestal_, _Dædalus_, _Wolverine_, _Cruiser_, and _Vixen_, and containing about five hundred men, attacked and destroyed in the _Malladu_, a river of the Eastern Archipelago, the forts of Seriff Housman, a notorious and daring pirate, whose crimes had paralysed the commerce of the seas of Borneo, and finally rendered British interference absolutely necessary for the security of British life and property. The action was one of the many that the suppression of piracy in these regions has demanded--was gallantly fought, and full reported in the journals of the time;--a narrow river, with two forts mounting eleven or twelve heavy guns, (and defended by from five hundred to one thousand fighting men,) protected by a strong and well-contrived boom, was the position of the enemy. The English boats took the bull by the horns--cut away part of the boom under a heavy fire; advanced and carried the place in a fight protracted for fifty minutes. The enemy fought well, and stood manfully to their guns. The mate of the _Wolverine_ fell mortally wounded whilst working at the boom, axe in hand; but his death was avenged by a wholesale slaughter of the pirates. At two minutes to nine, those who had remained on board the _Vixen_ heard the report of the first heavy gun, and the first column of black smoke proclaimed that the village was fired. On the evening of the 19th, a detachment of ten boats, with fresh men and officers, quitted the _Vixen_, and arrived at the forts shortly after daylight. The work of destruction was complete. The boom, above spoken of, was ingeniously fastened with the chain-cable of a vessel of three hundred or four hundred tons; other chains, for darker purposes, were discovered in the town; a ship's long-boat; two ship's bells, one ornamented with grapes and vine leaves, and marked "_Wilhelm Ludwig, Bremen_," and every other description of ship's furniture. Some piratical boats were burned, twenty-four brass guns captured; the other guns spiked or otherwise destroyed. Malladu ceased to exist; the power of Seriff Housman was extinguished in a day.

Small wars, as well as great, have their episodes of touching tenderness. Twenty-four hours after the action, a poor woman, with her child of two years of age, was discovered in a small canoe; her arm was shattered at the elbow by a grape-shot, and the poor creature lay dying for want of water, in an agony of pain, with her child playing around her, and endeavouring to derive the sustenance which the mother could no longer give. The unfortunate woman was taken on board the _Vixen_, and in the evening her arm was amputated. On board the _Vixen_ she met with one who offered to convey her to the Borneon town of _Sar[=a]wak_, where she would find protection. To have left her where she was, would have been to leave her to die. To the stranger's kind offers she had but one answer to give. "If you please to take me, I shall go. I am a woman, and not a man; I am a slave, and not a free woman--do as you like." The woman recovered, was grateful for the kindness shown her, and was deposited faithfully and well in the town already named, by the stranger already introduced.

Let us state at once that the object of this article is to bring to public notice, as shortly as we may, the history of this stranger, and to demand for it the reader's warmest sympathy. Full accounts of the doings of her Majesty's ship Dido will no doubt be reported elsewhere, with the several engagements which Mr Keppel's book so graphically describes. Let them receive the attention that they merit. We cannot afford to meddle with them now. "Metal more attractive" lies in the adventures of a man who has devoted his fortune and energies to the cause of humanity, and has purchased with both the amelioration of a large portion of his suffering fellow-creatures.

We know not when, since our boyhood, we have met with an adventurer more ardent and daring, a companion more fascinating and agreeable, than MR BROOKE, the Rajah or Governor of Sar[=a]wak . Essentially British, in as much as he practises our national virtues when circumstances call them into action, he reminds us at all times of those Eastern men, famous in their generation, who delighted us many years ago, and secured our wonder by their devoted love of enterprise, and the moral ascendency that waited on their efforts. In truth, Mr Brooke belongs not to the present generation. His energy, his perseverance, which nothing can subdue, his courage which no dangers can appal, his simplicity which no possession of power and authority can taint, his integrity and honest mind, all belong to a more masculine and primitive age, and constitute a rare exception for our respect and gratitude in this. We take the earliest opportunity afforded us to pay our humble tribute to worth that cannot be questioned, to heroic virtue that cannot be surpassed.

Whatsoever humanity and civilisation may gain in the extermination of odious crimes upon the shores of BORNEO, whatsoever advantages England may hereafter obtain from British settlements in the island, and from a peaceful trade carried on around it, to Mr Brooke, and to that gentleman alone, will belong the glory and the honour of such acquisitions. Inspired by his vigorous nature, but more by the dictates of true benevolence, unaided and unprotected, save by his own active spirit and the blessing of Providence, he undertook a mission on behalf of mankind, with perils before him which the stoutest could not but feel, and achieved a success which the most sanguine could hardly have anticipated.

Mr Brooke was born on the 29th of April 1803, and is therefore now in his 43d year. He is the second son of the late Thomas Brooke, Esq., who held an appointment in the civil service of the East India Company. At an early age he went out to India as a cadet, served with distinction in the Burmese war, was wounded, and returned to England for the recovery of his health. In the year 1830, Mr Brooke relinquished the service altogether, and quitted Calcutta for China, again in search of health. During his voyage, he saw, for the first time, the islands of the Asiatic Archipelago; almost unknown, even at that recent period, to Europeans generally. Such information as was before the world he obtained, and carefully considered; and the result of his reflections was a determination to carry to Borneo, an island of some magnitude, and terribly afflicted in more respects than one, such knowledge and instruction as might help to elevate its people from the depravity in which they lived, and the horrors to which they were hourly subjected. This was in 1830. In the year 1838, he quitted England to fulfil his purpose. For eight years he had patiently and steadily worked towards his object, and gathered about him all that was necessary for its accomplishment. Nothing had been omitted to insure success. A man of fortune, he had been prodigal of his wealth; free from professional and other ties, he had given up his time wholly to the cause. One year was passed in the Mediterranean, that his vessel, _The Royalist_, might be put to the severest tests. Three years were spent in educating a crew worthy of an undertaking that promised so little sudden prosperity, that exacted so much immediate self-denial, threatened so many hardships. The men were happy and contented, cheerful and willing. The vessel belonged to the royal yacht squadron, was a fast sailer, armed with six six-pounders, a number of swivels and small arms, carried four boats, and provisions for as many months. On the 27th of October 1838, the adventurous company left the river. A fortunate passage carried them in safety to Rio Janeiro, and on the 29th of March 1839, they were sailing from the Cape of Good Hope. A six weeks' passage brought them to Java Head, and on the 1st of June they reached that "pivot of the liberal system in the Archipelago," the island of Singapore. It was not until the 27th of July that Mr Brooke quitted Singapore. Five days afterwards, the _Royalist_ was anchored off the coast of Borneo!

At the period of Mr Brooke's arrival, Borneo Proper,[49] once the seat of piracy, which few vessels could approach with safety, was under the government of the rajah MUDA HASSIM. Report spoke favourably of this rajah's character. A vessel had been wrecked on his coast, and the crew, who had been saved with difficulty, had taken shelter in the jungle. Muda Hassim, hearing of their fate, caused them to be brought to his town of Sar[=a]wak, collected as much as could be saved from the wreck, clothed the sufferers, fed them, and sent then free of expense to Singapore. Moreover, for reasons known to himself, the rajah was well disposed towards the English. These important circumstances were borne in mind by Mr Brooke. The rajah was now at Sar[=a]wak, and the adventurer determined to enter the river of that name, and to proceed as far as the town. He was well supplied with presents; gaudy silks of Surat, scarlet cloth, stamped velvet, gunpowder, confectionery, sweets, ginger, jams, dates, and syrups for the governor, and a huge box of China toys for the governor's children. From Mr Brooke's own diary, we extract the following account of his position and feelings at this interesting moment of his still doubtful undertaking:--

"_August 1st._--I am, then, at length, anchored off the coast of Borneo! not under very pleasant circumstances, for the night is pitchy dark, with thunder, lightning, rain, and squalls of wind.

"_2d._--Squally bad night. This morning, the clouds clearing away, was delightful, and offered for our view the majestic scenery of Borneo. At nine got under weigh, and ran in on an east-by-south course four and a half or five miles towards Tanjong Api. Came to an anchor about five miles from the land, and dispatched the boat to take sights ashore, in order to form a base line for triangulation. The scenery may really be called majestic. The low and wooded coast about Tanjong Api is backed by a mountain called Gunong Palo, some 2000 feet in height, which slopes down behind the point, and terminates in a number of hummocks, showing from a distance like islands.

"The coast, unknown, and represented to abound in shoals and reefs, is the harbour for pirates of every description. Here every man's hand is raised against his brother man; and here sometimes the climate wars upon the excitable European, and lays many a white face and gallant heart low on the distant strand.

"_3d._--Beating between Points Api and Datu. The bay, as far as we have seen, is free from danger; the beach is lined by a feathery row of beautiful casuarinas, and behind is a tangled jungle, without fine timber; game is plentiful, from the traces we saw on the sand; hogs in great numbers; troops of monkeys, and the print of an animal with cleft hoofs, either a large deer, tapir, or cow. We saw no game save a tribe of monkeys, one of which, a female, I shot, and another quite young, which we managed to capture alive. The captive, though the young of the black monkey, is greyish, with the exception of the extremities, and a stripe of black down his back and tail.

"We witnessed, at the same time, an extraordinary and fatal leap made by one of these monkeys. Alarmed by our approach, he sprang from the summit of a high tree at the branch of one lower, and at some distance. He leaped short, and came clattering down sixty or seventy feet amid the jungle. We were unable to penetrate to the spot, on account of a deep swamp, to ascertain his fate.

"A river flows into the sea not far from where we landed--the water is sweet, and of that clear brown colour so common in Ireland. This coast is evidently the haunt of native _prahns_, whether piratical or other. Print of men's feet were numerous and fresh, and traces of huts, fires, and parts of boots, some of them ornamented after their rude fashion. A long pull of five miles closed the day.

"_Sunday, 4th._--Performed divine service myself! manfully overcoming that horror which I have to the sound of my own voice before an audience. In the evening landed again more to the westward. Shore skirted by rocks; timber noble, and the forest clear of brushwood, enabling us to penetrate with ease as far as caution permitted. Traces of wild beasts numerous and recent, but none discovered. Fresh-water streams coloured as yesterday, and the trail of an alligator from one of them to the sea. This dark forest, where the trees shoot up straight and tall, and are succeeded by generation after generation varying in stature, but struggling upward, strikes the imagination with pictures trite yet true. It was thus I meditated in my walk. The foot of European, I said, has never touched where my foot now presses--seldom the native wanders here. Here, I, indeed, behold nature fresh from the bosom of creation, unchanged by man, and stamped with the same impress she originally bore! Here I behold God's design when He formed this tropical land, and left its culture and improvement to the agency of man! The Creator's gift as yet neglected by the creature; and yet the time may be confidently looked for when the axe shall level the forest, and the plough turn the ground."

Upon the 5th of August, a boat was sent to the island of Tulang-Talang, where some Malays were seen; they were civil, and offered their assistance. On the following morning the _bandar_ (or chief steward) of the place came off in his canoe, and welcomed the new-comers. He assured them of a happy reception from the Rajah, and took his leave, after having been sumptuously entertained with sweetmeats and syrups, and handsomely provided with three yards of red cloth, some tea, and a little gunpowder. The great man himself, Muda Hassim, was, visited in his town of Sar[=a]wak on the morning of the 15th. He received his visitors in state, seated in his hall of audience, a large shed, erected on piles. Sar[=a]wak is only the occasional residence of the Rajah, and at the time of the ship's arrival he was detained there by a rebellion in the interior. The town was found to be a mere collection of mud-huts, containing about 1500 persons, and inhabited for the most part by the Rajah, his family, and their attendants. The remaining population were poor and squalid. "We sat," says Mr Brooke, "in easy and unreserved converse, out of hearing of the rest of the circle. He expressed great kindness to the English nation; and begged me to tell him _really_, which was the most powerful nation, England or Holland; or, as he significantly expressed, which is the 'cat and which is the rat?' I assured him that England was the mouser, though in this country Holland had most territory. We took our leave after he had intimated his intention of visiting us to-morrow morning."

The visit was duly paid, and as duly returned. Tea, cigars, scissors, knives, and biscuits, were distributed amongst the rajah and his suite, and the friendliest understanding was maintained. Mr Brooke, however, had come to Borneo for more serious business. Ceremonies being over, he dispatched his interpreter, an Englishman, (Mr. Williamson by name,) to the rajah, intimating his desire to travel to some of the Malay towns, and especially into the country of the _Dyaks_. The request, it was fully believed, would be refused; but, to the surprise of the asker, leave was given, with the accompanying assurance, however, that the Rajah was powerless amongst many Dyak tribes, and could not answer for the adventurer's safety. Mr Brooke availed himself of the license, and undertook to provide in other respects for himself. The _Dyaks_ are the aborigines of Borneo, and share the country with the Malays and Chinese who have made their homes in it. "There be land rats, and there be water rats." There be also land Dyaks and water Dyaks; or, to use the language of the country, _Dyak Darrat_ and _Dyak Laut_. Those of the sea vary in their character and prospects, but, for the most part, they are powerful communities, and desperate pirates, ravaging the coasts in immense fleets, and robbing and murdering without discrimination. Their language is similar to the Malay. The name of God amongst them is Battara (the Avatara of the Hindoos.) They bury their dead, and in the graves deposit a large portion of the property of the deceased, consisting of gold ornaments, brass guns, jars, and arms. "Their marriage ceremony consists in two fowls being killed, and the forehead and breast of the young couple being touched with the blood; after which the chief, or an old man, knocks their heads together several times, and the ceremony is completed with mirth and feasting." The Dyak Darrats inhabit an inconsiderable portion of the island, and are composed of numerous tribes, all agreeing in their customs, and speaking the same dialect. They are regarded as slaves by the Malays, and treated and disposed of like beasts of burden. "We do not live," said one, "like men; we are like monkeys; we are hunted from place to place; we have no houses; and when we light a fire, we fear the smoke will draw our enemies upon us." The appearance of these Dyaks, we are told, is very prepossessing. They are of middle height, active, and good-natured in their expression; the women not so good-looking, but as cheerful tempered. "The dress of the men consists of a piece of cloth, about fifteen feet long, passed between the legs, and fastened round the loins, with the ends hanging before and behind; the head-dress is composed of bark cloth, dyed bright yellow, and stuck up in front, so as to resemble a tuft of feathers. The arms and legs are often ornamented with rings of silver, brass, or shell; and necklaces are worn, made of human teeth, or those of bears or dogs, or of white beads, in such numberless strings as to conceal the throat. A sword on one side, a knife and small betel-basket on the other, completes the ordinary equipment of the males; but when they travel, they carry a basket slung from the forehead, on which is a palm mat, to protect the owner and his property from the weather. The women wear a short and scanty petticoat, reaching from the loins to the knees, and a pair of black bamboo stays, which are never removed except the wearer be _enceinte_. They have rings of brass and red bamboo about the loins, and sometimes ornaments on the arms; the hair is worn long; the ears of both sexes are pierced, and ear-rings of brass inserted occasionally; the teeth of the young people are sometimes filed to a point and discoloured, as they say that 'dogs have white teeth.' They frequently dye their feet and hands of a bright red or yellow colour; and the young people, like those of other countries, affect a degree of finery and foppishness, whilst the elders invariably lay aside all ornaments as unfit for a wise person, or one advanced in years." The character given of these Dyaks is highly favourable. They are pronounced grateful for kindness, industrious, honest, simple, mild, tractable and hospitable, when well used. The word of one may be taken before the oath of half a dozen Borneons. Their ideas are limited enough; they reckon with their fingers and toes, and few are arithmeticians beyond counting up to twenty. They can repeat the operation, but they must record each twenty by making a knot in a string.

It was to these people that Mr Brooke made more than one excursion during his first visit to Sar[=a]wak. He met with no disaster, but he stored up useful information for future conduct. Great morality and the practice of many virtues distinguished the tribes he encountered, although degraded as low as oppression and utter ignorance could bring them. The men, he found, married but one wife, and concubinage was unknown in their societies; cases of seduction and adultery were very rare, and the chastity of the Dyak women was proverbial even amongst their Malay rulers. Miserable as was the lot of these people, Mr Brooke gathered from their morality and simplicity, hopes of their future elevation. They have no forms of worship, no idea of future responsibility; but they are likewise free from prejudice of every kind, and therefore open, under skilful hands and tender applications, to the conviction of truth, and to religious impressions. One tribe, the Sibnowans, particularly struck Mr Brooke by their gentleness and sweetness of disposition. But,

"Like the rest of the Dyaks," he informs us, "the Sibnowans _adorn_ their houses with the heads of their enemies; yet with them this custom exists in a modified form. Some thirty skulls," he adds, "were hanging from the roof of one apartment; and I was informed that they had many more in their possession; all however, the heads of enemies, chiefly of the tribe of Sazebus. On enquiring, I was told that it is indispensably necessary a young man should procure a skull before he gets married. On my urging that the custom would be more honoured in the breach than in the observance, they replied, that it was established from time immemorial, and could not be dispensed with. Subsequently, however, Sejugali allowed that heads were very difficult to obtain now, and a young man might sometimes get married by giving presents to his ladye-love's parents; at all times they denied warmly ever obtaining any heads but those of their enemies; adding, they were bad people, and deserved to die.

"I asked a young unmarried man whether he would be obliged to get a head before he could obtain a wife. He replied, 'Yes.' 'When would he get one?' 'Soon.' 'Where would he go to get one?' 'To the Sazebus river.' I mention these particulars in detail, as I think, had their practice extended to taking the head of any defenceless traveller, or any Malay surprised in his dwelling or boat, I should have wormed the secret out of them."

The Dyaks, generally, are celebrated for the manufacture of iron. Their forge is the simplest possible, and is formed by two hollow trees, each about seven feet high, placed upright, side by side, in the ground. From the lower extremity of these, two pipes of bamboo are conducted through a clay bank three inches thick, into a charcoal fire; a man is perched at the top of the trees, and pumps with two pistons, the suckers of which are made with cocks' feathers, which, being raised and depressed alternately, blow a regular stream of air into the fire. The soil cultivated by these people was found to be excellent. In the course of his wanderings, Mr Brooke lighted upon a Chinese colony, who, as is customary with our new allies, were making the most of their advantages. The settlement consisted of thirty men, genuine Chinese, and five women of the mixed breed of Sambas. They had been but four or five months in the country, and many acres were already cleared and under cultivation. The head of the settlement, a Chinese of Canton, spoke of gold mines which were abundant in the Sar[=a]wak mountains, and of antimony ore and diamonds; the former, he said, might be had in any quantities.

Upon his return to Sar[=a]wak, Mr Brooke opened to the rajah the business which had chiefly conducted him to his shores. He informed his highness that, being a private gentleman, he had no interest in the communication he was about to make; and that, being in no way connected with government, his words came with no authority. At the same time, he was, anxious for the interests of mankind, and more especially for the wellbeing of the inhabitants of Borneo, which was the last Malay state possessing any power, that the resources of a country so favoured by Providence should be brought into the fullest play. To this end, he suggested the opening of a trade with individual European merchants. Sar[=a]wak was rich, and the territory around it produced many articles well adapted for commercial intercourse--such as bees' wax, birds' nests, rattans, antimony ore, and sago, which constituted the staple produce of the country. And, in return for such commodities, merchants of Singapore would gladly send from Europe such articles as would be highly serviceable to the people of Borneo--gunpowder, muskets, and cloths. Both parties would be benefited, and the comfort and happiness of the Borneons greatly enhanced. There was much discussion on the proposal, timidity and apprehension characterizing the questions and answers of the Rajah.

The important interview at an end, Mr Brooke prepares for a return to Singapore. "Never," says that gentleman, "was such a blazing as when we left Sar[=a]wak; twenty-one guns I fired to the Rajah, and he fired forty-two to me--at least we counted twenty-four, and they went on firing afterwards, as long as ever we were in sight. The last words the Rajah, Muda Hassim, said, as I took my leave, were--'Tuan Brooke, do not forget me.'"

In August 1840, Mr Brooke arrived in Sar[=a]wak for the second time. He had passed many months in cruising about the Archipelago, obtaining valuable information respecting the language, habits, and history of the race for whom he was concerned, and in collecting specimens of natural history, which are said to be interesting in the highest degree. The position of the Rajah had altered during his absence. The civil war or rebellion which had, in the first instance, forced the governor to reside in Sar[=a]wak, was not yet quelled. The rebels, indeed, were within thirty miles of the rajah, and threatening an immediate attack. Nothing could be more opportune than the return of Mr Brooke at this critical moment. Muda Hassim begged his ancient friend not to desert him in his extremity, and appealed to his honour, as a gentleman from England, whether it would be fair to suffer him to be vanquished by the traitorous revolt of his people. Mr Brooke felt that it would not, and resolved to stand by the governor.

"A grand council of war," writes Mr Brooke in his journal, "was held, at which were present Macota, Subtu, Abong Mia, and Datu Naraja, two Chinese leaders, and myself--certainly a most incongruous mixture, and one rarely to be met with. After much discussion, a move close to the enemy was determined on for to-morrow; and on the following day to take up a position near the defences. To judge by the sample of the council, I should form very unfavourable expectations of their conduct in action. Macota is lively and active; but, whether from indecision or want of authority, undecided. The Capitan China is lazy and silent; Subtu indolent and self-indulgent; Abong Mia and Datu Maraja stupid."

The army set off, and Mr Brooke availed himself of a friendly hill to obtain a view of the country, and of the enemy's forts. The fort of Balidah was the strongest of their defences, and a moment's observation convinced him that a company of military might put an end to the war in a few hours. This fort was situated at the water edge, on a slight eminence on the right bank of a river; a few swivels and a gun or two were in it, and around it a breast-work of wood, six or seven feet high. The remaining defences were even more insignificant; and the enemy's artillery was reported to consist of three six-pounders, and numerous swivels. The number of fighting men amounted to about five hundred, about half of whom were armed with muskets, while the rest carried swords and spears. _Ranjows_ were stuck in every direction. "These ranjows are made of bamboo, pointed fine, and stuck in the ground; and there are, besides, holes of about three feet deep filled with these spikes, and afterwards lightly covered, which are called patobong." The army of the rajah was scarcely more formidable than that of the enemy. It consisted of two hundred Chinese, excellent workmen and bad soldiers, two hundred and fifty Malays, and some two hundred friendly Dyaks; a few brass guns composed the artillery; and the boats were furnished with swivels. Mr Brooke suggested an attack of the detached defences--a proposition that was treated as that of a madman, the Rajah's army having no notion of fighting except from behind a wall. A council of war decided that advances should be made from the hill behind the rajah's fort to Balidah by a chain of posts, the distance being a short mile, in which space the enemy would probably erect four or five forts; "and then," says Mr Brooke, "would come a bombardment, noisy, but harmless."

Insignificant as the account may read, the difficulties of Mr Brooke, as commander-in-chief, were formidable enough, surrounded as he was by perils threatening not only from the enemy, but from the rank cowardice of his supporters, and the envy, spite, hatred, and machinations of his allies, the Rajah's ministers. The operations are admirably described in Mr Brooke's journal. Let it suffice to say, that the energy and bravery of the English leader brought them to a satisfactory issue, and, finally, the war to a happy close. At his intercession the lives of many of the offenders were spared, and the rebels suffered to deliver up their arms, and to return in peace to Sar[=a]wak.

It is now necessary to state, that at the commencement of the war, Muda Hassim, unsolicited by Mr Brooke, had undertaken to confer upon the latter the governorship of Sar[=a]wak, in the event of success crowning the efforts of his "friend from England." Mr Brooke had not demanded from the unfortunate Rajah a written agreement to this effect; nor at the time even desired a recompense, which was likely to bring with it much more of difficulty and vexation than profit and power. He respectfully declined an honour which he informed the Rajah it did not become him to accept whilst his highness was in his hands. The war being over, and Muda Hassim reinstated, the negotiation recommenced. No sooner was it discussed, however, than Mr Brooke informed the rajah that Malay institutions were so faulty, the high being allowed by them so much license, and the poor so oppressed, that any attempt to govern without a removal of abuses, was, on his part at least, impossible; and as a condition of his acceptance, he insisted that the Rajah should use all his exertions to establish the principle, that one man must not take from another, and that all men were free to enjoy the produce of their labour, save and except when they were working for the revenue. This revenue, too, he submitted, it was necessary to fix at a certain amount for three years, as well as the salaries of the government officers. The same rights should be conceded to the Dyak and Malay, and the property of the former must be protected, their taxes fixed, and labour free. The rajah acquiesced in the propriety of these measures, and bargained only for the maintenance of the national faith and customs. Mr Brooke remained in Sar[=a]wak, but the office which had been offered with so much eagerness and pressing love, was after all slow in being conferred. Bad advisers, envious ministers, and weakness in Muda Hassim himself, all prevented the conclusion of a business upon which Mr Brooke had never entered of his own accord; but which, having entered upon it, had rendered him liable for many engagements which his anticipated new position had made essential.

"I found myself," writes Mr Brooke, "clipped like Samson, while delay was heaped upon delay, excuse piled upon excuse. It was provoking beyond sufferance. I remonstrated firmly but mildly on the waste of my money, and on the impossibility of any good to the country whilst the rajah conducted himself as he had done. I might as well have whistled to the winds, or have talked reason to stones. I had trusted--my eyes gradually opened--I feared I was betrayed and robbed, and had at length determined to be observant and watchful." Upon the faith of the Rajah, Mr Brooke had purchased in Singapore a schooner of ninety tons, called _The Swift_, which he had laden with a suitable cargo. Upon its arrival at Sar[=a]wak, the rajah petitioned to have the cargo ashore, assuring Mr Brooke of a good and quick return: part of such return being immediately promised in the shape of antimony ore. Three months elapsed, and the rajah's share in this mercantile transaction had yet to be fulfilled. Disgusted with his treatment, and hopeless of justice, Mr Brooke dispatched the _Swift_ to Singapore; and hearing that the crew of a shipwrecked vessel were detained in Borneo Proper, sent his only remaining vessel, the _Royalist_, to the city of Borneo, in order to obtain such information as might lead to the rescue of his countrymen. "I resolved," the journal informs us, "to remain here, to endeavour, if I could, to obtain _my own_. Each vessel was to return as quickly as possible from her place of destination; and I then determined to give two additional months to the rajah, and to urge him in every way in my power to do what he was bound to do as an act of common honesty. Should these means fail, after making the strongest representations, and giving amplest time, I considered myself free to extort by force what I could not gain by fair means."

"I need hardly remark," writes Captain Keppel, "on the singular courage and disregard of personal safety, and life itself, evinced by my friend on this occasion. At issue with the rajah on points of great temptation to him, beset by intrigues, and surrounded by a fierce and lawless people, Mr Brooke did not hesitate to dispatch his vessels and protectors,--the one on a mission of pure humanity, and the other in calm pursuance of the objects he had proposed to himself to accomplish; and, with three companions, place himself at the mercy of such circumstances, regardless of the danger, and relying on the overruling Providence in which he trusted, to bring him safely through all his difficulties and perils."

On the 16th of August 1841, the Royalist returned, and three days afterwards it was followed by the Swift. The former reported that the prisoners had been heard of in Borneo, but, unfortunately, not released. The Swift was accompanied by the Diana steamer. The formidable squadron alarmed the rajah and his ministers. Mr Brooke learned that the difficulties of the rajah's situation were increased, and his conduct towards himself, in a manner, excused, by the intrigues and evil doings of the latter. Macota, of whom mention has been made, was the most vindictive and unscrupulous amongst them. He had attempted to poison the interpreter of Mr Brooke, and had been discovered as the abettor of even more fearful crimes. Mr Brooke, strengthened by his late arrivals, resolved to bring matters to a crisis, and to test at once the strength of the respective parties. He landed a party of men fully armed, and loaded the ship's guns with grape and canister; he then proceeded to Muda Hassim, protested that he was well disposed towards the rajah, but assured him, at the same time, that neither he nor himself was safe against the practices of the artful and desperate Macota. Muda Hassim was frightened. One of the Dyak tribes took part with Mr Brooke, two hundred of them, with their chiefs, placing themselves unreservedly at his disposal, whilst Macota was deserted by all but his immediate slaves. The Chinese and the rest of the inhabitants looked on. The upshot may be anticipated. The rajah became suddenly active and eager for an arrangement. The old agreement was drawn out, sealed, and signed; guns fired, flags waved, and on the 24th of September 1841 Mr Brooke became Rajah of Sar[=a]wak.

The first acts of Mr Brooke, after his accession to power, were suggested by humanity, and a tender consideration for the savage people whom he so singularly and unexpectedly had been called upon to govern. He inquired into the state of the Dyaks, endeavoured to gain their confidence, and to protect them from the brutal onslaught of the Malays and of each other, and at once relieved them of the burdens of taxation which weighed so cruelly upon them. He opened a court for the administration of justice, at which he presided with the late rajah's brothers, and maintained strict equity amongst the highest and lowest of his people. He decreed that murder, robbery, and other heinous crimes, should, for the future, be punished according to the written law of Borneo; that all men, irrespectively of race, should be permitted to trade and labour according to their pleasure, and to enjoy their gains; that all roads should be open, and that all boats coming to the river should be free to enter and depart without let or hindrance; that trade should be free; that the Dyaks should be suffered to live unmolested; together with other salutary measures for the general welfare. Difficulty and vexation met the governor at every step; but he persevered in his schemes of amelioration, and with a success which is not yet complete, and for years cannot be fairly estimated.

MUDA HASSIM, the former rajah of Sar[=a]wak, was also presumptive heir to the throne of Borneo; but, unfortunately for him, under the displeasure of his nephew, the reigning sultan. The confirmation of Mr Brooke's appointment, it was absolutely necessary to receive from the latter; and Mr Brooke accordingly resolved to pay a visit to the prince, in the first place, to obtain a reconciliation, if possible, with the offending Muda, and secondly, to consolidate his own infant government. There was another object, too. The sultan had power to release the prisoners who had been spared in the wreck already mentioned; and this power Mr Brooke hoped, by discretion, to prevail upon his majesty to exercise. The picture of this potentate is thus drawn by Mr Brooke:

"The sultan is a man past fifty years of age, short and puffy in person, with a countenance which expresses, very obviously, the imbecility of his mind. His right hand is garnished with an extra diminutive thumb--the natural member being crooked and distorted. His mind, indeed, by his face, seems to be a chaos of confusion--without acuteness, without dignity, and without good sense. He can neither read nor write; is guided by the last speaker; and his advisers, as might be expected, are of the lower order, and mischievous from their ignorance and greediness. He is always talking, and generally joking; and the most serious subjects never meet with five minutes' consecutive attention. The favourable side of his character is, that he is good-tempered and good-natured--by no means cruel--and, in a certain way, generous, though rapacious to as high a degree. His rapacity, indeed, is carried to such an excess as to astonish a European, and is evinced in a thousand mean ways. The presents I made him were unquestionably handsome; but he was not content without begging from me the share I had reserved for the other Pangerans; and afterwards, through Mr Williamson, solicited more trifles--such as sugar, penknives, and the like. I may note one other feature that marks the man. He requested as the greatest favour--he urged with the earnestness of a child--that I would send back the schooner before the month Ramban, (Ramadan of the Turks,) remarking, 'What shall I do during the fast without soft sugar and dates?'"

The delivery of the prisoners, and the forgiveness of Muda Hassim, were quickly obtained; the more personal matter found opposition with the advisers of the Crown, but was ultimately conceded. On the 1st of August 1842, the letters to Muda Hassim were sealed and signed; and at the same council the contract, which gave Mr Brooke the government of Sar[=a]wak, was fully discussed; and by ten o'clock at night was signed, sealed and witnessed. Mr Brooke returned to his government and people on the following day.

On the 1st of January 1843, the following entry appears in the diary so often quoted:--"Another year passed and gone!--a year with all its anxieties, its troubles, its dangers, upon which I can look back with satisfaction--a year in which I have been usefully employed in doing good to others. Since I last wrote, the Dyaks have been quiet, settled, and improving; the Chinese advancing towards prosperity; and the Sar[=a]wak people wonderfully contented and industrious, relieved from oppression, and fields of labour allowed them. Justice I have executed with an unflinching hand."

It was in the month of March 1843, at the conclusion of the Chinese war, that Captain Keppel was ordered in the Dido to the Malacca Straits and the island of Borneo. Daring acts of piracy had been committed, and were still committing, on the Borneon coast; and, becoming engaged in the suppression of these crimes, he fell in with the English rajah of Sar[=a]wak, and obtained from him the information which he has recently given to the world, and enabled us to place succinctly before our readers.

The piracy of the Eastern Archipelago is very different to that of the western world. The former obtains an importance unknown to the latter. The hordes who conduct it issue from their islands and coasts in fleets, rove from place to place, intercept the native trade, enslave whole towns at the entrance of rivers, and attack ill-armed or stranded European vessels. The native governments, if they are not participators in the crime, are made its victims, and in many cases, we are told, they are both--purchasing from one set of pirates, and plundered and enslaved by another. Captain Keppel has well related more than one engagement in which he was concerned with the ferocious marauders of these eastern seas--scenes of blood and horror, justified only by the enormity of the offence, and the ultimate advantages likely to be obtained from an extirpation of the deeply-rooted evil. As we have hinted at the commencement of this article, our present object is not so much to draw attention to the battle-scenes described by Mr Keppel, and which may be read with peculiar though painful interest in his book, as to obtain for Mr Brooke, the peaceful and unselfish disposer of so many blessings amongst a benighted and neglected people, that admiration and regard which he has so nobly earned. He has done much, but our government may enable him to do more. He has shown the capabilities of his distant home, and called upon his mother-country to improve them to the uttermost. We hear that her Majesty's government have not been deaf to his appeal, and that aid will be given for the development of his plans, equal to his warmest expectations. We trust it may be so. Nothing is wanting but the assistance which a government alone can afford, to render Borneo a friendly and valuable ally, and to constitute Mr Brooke one of the most useful benefactors of modern times; a benefactor in the best sense of the term--an improver of his species--an intelligent messenger and expounder of God's purpose to man.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 48: _The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido, for the Suppression of Piracy, &c. &c_. By Capt. the Hon. HENRY KEPPEL, R.N. London, 1846.]

[Footnote 49: _Borneo Proper_ is the northern and north-western part of the island, and an independent Malay state.]

THE SMUGGLER'S LEAP.

A PASSAGE IN THE PYRENEES.

"Oh! there's not in this wide world," I exclaimed, quite unintentionally quoting Tom Moore; "there never has been, nor can ever be again, so charming a creature. No nymph, or sylph, or winged Ariel, or syren with song and mirror, was ever so fascinating--no daughter of Eve so pretty and provoking!"

This apostrophe, which certainly appears, now that in cooler moments I recall it, rather rhapsodical, was not uttered _viva voce_, nor even _sotto voce_, seeing that its object, Miss Dora M'Dermot, was riding along only three paces in front of me, whilst her brother walked by my side. It was a mere mental ejaculation, elicited by the surpassing perfections of the aforesaid Dora, who assuredly was the most charming girl I had ever beheld. But for the Pyrenean scenery around us, and the rough ill-conditioned mule, with its clumsy side-saddle of discoloured leather, on which she was mounted, instead of the Spanish jennet or well-bred English palfrey that would best have suited so fair an equestrian, I could, without any great exertion of fancy, have dreamed myself back to the days of the M'Gregor, and fancied that it was Die Vernon riding up the mountain side, gaily chatting as she went with the handsome cavalier who walked by her stirrup, and who might have been Frank Osbaldistone, only that he was too manly-looking for Scott's somewhat effeminate hero. How beautifully moulded was the form which her dark-green habit set off to such advantage; how fairy-like the foot that pressed the clumsy stirrup; how slender the fingers that grasped the rein! She had discarded the heavy riding-hat and senseless bonnet, those graceless inventions of some cunning milliner, and had adopted a head-dress not unusual in the country in which she then was. This was a _beret_ or flat cap, woven of snow-white wool, and surmounted by a crimson tassel spread out over the top. From beneath this elegant _coiffure_ her dark eyes flashed and sparkled, whilst her luxuriant chestnut curls fell down over her neck, the alabaster fairness of which made her white head-dress look almost tawny. Either because the air, although we were still in the month of September, was fresh on the mountains, or else because she was pretty and a woman, and therefore not sorry to show herself to the best advantage, she had twisted round her waist a very long cashmere scarf, previously passing it over one shoulder in the manner of a sword-belt, the ends hanging down nearly to her stirrup; and this gave something peculiarly picturesque, almost fantastical, to her whole appearance.

Upon the second day of my arrival at the baths of St Sauveur, in the Pyrenees, I had fallen in with my old friend and college chum, Jack M'Dermot, who was taking his sister the round of the French watering-places. Dora's health had been delicate, the faculty had recommended the excursion; and Jack, who doated upon his only sister, had dragged her away from the gaieties of London and brought her off to the Pyrenees. M'Dermot was an excellent fellow, neither a wit nor a Solomon; but a good-hearted dog who had been much liked at Trin. Coll., Dublin, where he had thought very little of his studies, and a good deal of his horses and dogs. An Irishman, to be sure, occasionally a slight touch of the brogue was perceptible in his talk; but from this his sister, who had been brought up in England, was entirely free. Jack had a snug estate of three thousand a-year; Miss Dora had twenty thousand pounds from her mother. She had passed two seasons in London; and if she was not already married, it was because not one of the fifty aspirants to her hand had found favour in her bright eyes. Lively and high-spirited, with a slight turn for the satirical, she loved her independence, and was difficult to please.

I had been absent from England for nearly two years, on a continental tour; and although I had heard much of Miss M'Dermot, I had never seen her till her brother introduced me to her at St Sauveur. I had not known her an hour, before I found myself in a fair way to add another to the list of the poor moths who had singed their wings at the perilous light of her beauty. When M'Dermot, learning that, like themselves, I was on a desultory sort of ramble, and had not marked out any particular route, offered me a seat in their carriage, and urged me to accompany them, instead of prudently flying from the danger, I foolishly exposed myself to it, and lo! what might have been anticipated came to pass. Before I had been two days in Dora's society, my doom was sealed; I had ceased to belong to myself; I was her slave, the slave of her sunny smile and bright eyes--talisman more potent than any lamp or ring that djinn or fairy ever obeyed.

A fortnight had passed, and we were at B----. During that time, the spell that bound me had been each day gaining strength. As an intimate friend of her brother, I was already, with Dora, on the footing of an old acquaintance; she seemed well enough pleased with my society, and chatted with me willingly and familiarly; but in vain did I watch for some slight indication, a glance or an intonation, whence to derive hope. None such were perceptible; nor could the most egregious coxcomb have fancied that they were. We once or twice fell in with other acquaintances of her's and her brother's, and with them she had just the same frank friendly manner, as with me. I had not sufficient vanity, however, to expect a woman, especially one so much admired as Miss M'Dermot, to fall in love at first sight with my humble personality, and I patiently waited, trusting to time and assiduity to advance my cause.

Things were in this state, when one morning, whilst taking an early walk to the springs, I ran up against an English friend, by name Walter Ashley. He was the son of a country gentleman of moderate fortune, at whose house I had more than once passed a week in the shooting season. Walter was an excellent fellow, and a perfect model of the class to which he belonged. By no means unpolished in his manners, he had yet a sort of plain frankness and _bonhomie_, which was peculiarly agreeable and prepossessing. He was not a university man, nor had he received an education of the highest order; spoke no language but his own with any degree of correctness; neither played the fiddle, painted pictures, nor wrote poetry. On the other hand, in all manly exercises he was a proficient; shot, rode, walked, and danced to perfection; and the fresh originality, and pleasant tone of his conversation, redeemed any deficiency of reading or accomplishment. In personal appearance he was a splendid fellow, nearly six feet in his boots, strongly, but, at the same time, symmetrically built; although his size of limb and width of shoulder rendered him, at six-and-twenty, rather what is called a fine man, than a slender or elegant one. He had the true Anglo-Saxon physiognomy, blue eyes, and light brown hair that waved, rather than curled, round his broad handsome forehead. And, then, what a mustache the fellow had! (He was officer in a crack yeomanry corps.) Not one of the composite order, made up of pomatum and lamp-black, such as may be seen sauntering down St James's Street on a spring afternoon, with incipient guardsmen behind them--but worthy of an Italian painter or Hungarian hussar; full, well-grown, and glossy. Who was the idiot who first set afloat the notion--now become an established prejudice in England--that mustaches were unseemly? To nine faces out of ten, they are a most becoming addition, increasing physiognomical character, almost giving it where there is none; relieving the monotony of broad flat cheeks, and abridging the abomination of a long upper-lip. Uncleanly, say you? Not a bit of it, if judiciously trimmed and trained. What, Sir! are they not at least as proper looking as those foxy thickets extending from jawbone to temple, which you yourself, each morning of your life, take such pains to comb and curl into shape?

Delighted to meet Ashley, I dragged him off to the hotel, to introduce him to M'Dermot and his sister. As a friend of mine they gave him a cordial welcome, and we passed that day and the following ones together. I soon, however, I must confess, began to repent a little having brought my handsome friend into the society of Dora. She seemed better pleased with him than I altogether liked, nor could I wonder at it. Walter Ashley was exactly the man to please a woman of Dora's character. She was of rather a romantic turn, and about him there was a dash of the chivalrous, well calculated to captivate her imagination. Although perfectly feminine, she was an excellent horsewoman, and an ardent admirer of feats of address and courage, and she had heard me tell her brother of Ashley's perfection in such matters. On his part, Ashley, like every one else who saw her, was evidently greatly struck with her beauty and fascination of manner. I cannot say that I was jealous; I had no right to be so, for Dora had never given me encouragement; but I certainly more than once regretted having introduced a third person into what--honest Jack M'Dermot counting, of course, for nothing--had previously been a sort of _tête-à-tête_ society. I began to fear that, thanks to myself, my occupation was gone, and Ashley had got it.

It was the fifth day after our meeting with Walter, and we had started early in the morning upon an excursion to a neighbouring lake, the scenery around which, we were told, was particularly wild and beautiful. It was situated on a piece of table-land on the top of a mountain, which we could see from the hotel window. The distance was barely ten miles, and the road being rough and precipitous, M'Dermot, Ashley, and myself, had chosen to walk rather than to risk our necks by riding the broken-knee'd ponies that were offered to us. A sure-footed mule, and indifferent side-saddle, had been procured for Miss M'Dermot, and was attended by a wild-looking Bearnese boy, or gossoon, as her brother called him, a creature like a grasshopper, all legs and arms, with a scared countenance, and long lank black hair hanging in irregular shreds about his face.

There is no season more agreeable in the Pyrenees than the month of September. People are very apt to expatiate on the delights of autumn, its mellow beauty, pensive charms, and suchlike. I confess that in a general way I like the youth of the year better than its decline, and prefer the bright green tints of spring, with the summer in prospective, to the melancholy autumn, its russet hues and falling leaves; its regrets for fine weather past, and anticipations of bad to come. But if there be any place where I should be tempted to reverse my judgment, it would be in Southern France, and especially its western and central portion. The clear cloudless sky, the moderate heat succeeding to the sultriness, often overpowering, of the summer months, the magnificent vineyards and merry vintage time, the noble groves of chestnut, clothing the lower slopes of the mountains, the bright streams and flower-spangled meadows of Bearn and Languedoc, render no part of the year more delightful in those countries than the months of September and October.

As before mentioned, Dora rode a little in front, with Ashley beside her, pointing out the beauties of the wild scenery through which we passed, and occasionally laying a hand upon her bridle to guide the mule over some unusually rugged portion of the almost trackless mountain. M'Dermot and I were walking behind, a little puffed by the steepness of the ascent; our guide, whose name was Cadet, a name answered to by every second man one meets in that part of France, strode along beside us, like a pair of compasses with leathern lungs. Presently the last-named individual turned to me--

"_Ces messieurs veulent-ils voir le Saut de lou Contrabandiste?_" said he, in the barbarous dialect of the district, half French, half patois, with a small dash of Spanish.

"_Le Saut du Contrebandier_, the Smuggler's Leap--What is that?" asked Dora, who had overheard the question, turning round her graceful head, and dazzling us--me at least--by a sudden view of her lovely face, now glowing with exercise and the mountain air.

The smuggler's leap, so Cadet informed us, was a narrow cleft in the rock, of vast depth, and extending for a considerable distance across a flank of the mountain. It owed its name to the following incident:--Some five years previously, a smuggler, known by the name of Juan le Negre, or Black Juan, had, for a considerable period, set the custom-house officers at defiance, and brought great discredit on them by his success in passing contraband goods from Spain. In vain did they lie in ambush and set snares for him; they could never come near him, or if they did it was when he was backed by such a force of the hardy desperadoes carrying on the same lawless traffic, that the douaniers were either forced to beat a retreat or got fearfully mauled in the contest that ensued. One day, however, three of these green-coated guardians of the French revenue caught a sight of Juan alone and unarmed. They pursued him, and a rare race he led them, over cliff and crag, across rock and ravine, until at last they saw with exultation that he made right for the chasm in question, and there they made sure of securing him. It seemed as if he had forgotten the position of the cleft, and only remembered it when he got within a hundred yards or thereabouts, for then he slackened his pace. The douaniers gained on him, and expected him to desist from his flight, and surrender. What was their surprise and consternation when they saw him, on reaching the edge of the chasm, spring from the ground with lizardlike agility, and by one bold leap clear the yawning abyss. The douaniers uttered a shout of rage and disappointment, and two of them ceased running; but the third, a man of great activity and courage, and who had frequently sworn to earn the reward set on the head of Juan, dared the perilous jump. He fell short; his head was dashed against the opposite rock, and his horror-struck companions, gazing down into the dark depth beneath, saw his body strike against the crags on its way to the bottom of the abyss. The smuggler escaped, and the spot where the tragical incident occurred was thenceforward known as "_Le Saut du Contrebandier_."

Before our guide had finished his narrative, we were unanimous in our wish to visit its scene, which we reached by the time he had brought the tale to a conclusion. It was certainly a most remarkable chasm, whose existence was only to be accounted for by reference to the volcanic agency of which abundant traces exist in Southern France. The whole side of the mountain was cracked and rent asunder, forming a narrow ravine of vast depth, in the manner of the famous Mexican _barrancas_. In some places might be traced a sort of correspondence on the opposite sides; a recess on one side into which a projection on the other would have nearly fitted, could some Antæus have closed the fissure. This, however, was only here and there; generally speaking, the rocky brink was worn by the action of time and water, and the rock composing it sloped slightly downwards. The chasm was of various width, but was narrowest at the spot at which we reached it, and really did not appear so very terrible a leap as Cadet made it out to be. On looking down, a confusion of bush-covered crags was visible; and now that the sun was high, a narrow stream was to be seen, flowing, like a line of silver, at the bottom; the ripple and rush of the water, repeated by the echoes of the ravine, ascending to our ears with noise like that of a cataract. On large fragment of rock, a few yards from the brink, was rudely carved a date, and below it two letters. They were the initials, so our guide informed us, of the unfortunate douanier who had there met his death.

We had remained for half a minute or so gazing down into the ravine, when Ashley, who was on the right of the party, broke silence.

"Pshaw!" said he, stepping back from the edge, "that's no leap. Why, I'll jump across it myself."

"For heaven's sake!" cried Dora.

"Ashey!" I exclaimed, "don't be a fool!"

But it was too late. What mad impulse possessed him I cannot say; but certain I am, from my knowledge of his character, that it was no foolish bravado or schoolboy desire to show off, that seduced him to so wild a freak. The fact was, but for the depth below, the leap did not look at all formidable; not above four or five feet, but in reality it was a deal wider. It was probably this deceitful appearance, and perhaps the feeling which Englishmen are apt to entertain, that for feats of strength and agility no men surpass them, that convinced Walter of the ease With which he could jump across. Before we could stop him, he took a short run, and jumped.

A scream from Dora was echoed by an exclamation of horror from M'Dermot and myself. Ashley had cleared the chasm and alighted on the opposite edge, but it was shelving and slippery, and his feet slid from under him. For one moment it appeared as if he would instantly be dashed to pieces, but in falling he managed to catch the edge of the rock, which at that place formed an angle. There he hung by his hands, his whole body in the air, without a possibility of raising himself; for below the edge the rock was smooth and receding, and even could he have reached it, he would have found no foot-hold. One desperate effort he made to grasp a stunted and leafless sapling that grew in a crevice at not more than a foot from the edge, but it failed, and nearly caused his instant destruction. Desisting from further effort, he hung motionless, his hands convulsively cramped to the ledge of rock, which afforded so slippery and difficult a hold, that his sustaining himself by it at all seemed a miracle, and could only be the result of uncommon muscular power. It was evident that no human strength could possibly maintain him for more than a minute or two in that position; below was an abyss, a hundred or more feet deep--to all appearance his last hour was come.

M'Dermot and I stood aghast and helpless, gazing with open mouths and strained eyeballs at our unhappy friend. What could we do? Were we to dare the leap, which one far more active and vigorous than ourselves had unsuccessfully attempted? It would have been courting destruction, without a chance of saving Ashley. But Dora put us to shame. One scream, and only one, she uttered, and then, gathering up her habit, she sprang unaided from her mule. Her cheek was pale as the whitest marble, but her presence of mind was unimpaired, and she seemed to gain courage and decision in the moment of peril.

"Your cravats, your handkerchiefs!" cried she, unfastening, as she spoke, her long cashmere scarf. Mechanically M'Dermot and myself obeyed. With the speed of light and a woman's dexterity, she knotted together her scarf, a long silk cravat which I gave her, M'Dermot's handkerchief and mine, and securing--how, I know not--a stone at either extremity of the rope thus formed, she threw one end of it, with sure aim and steady hand, across the ravine and round the sapling already referred to. Then leaning forward till I feared she would fall into the chasm, and sprang forward to hold her back, she let go of the other end. Ashley's hold was already growing feeble, his fingers were torn by the rock, the blood started from under his nails, and he turned his face towards us with a mute prayer for succour. At that moment the two ends of the shawl fell against him, and he instinctively grasped them. It was a moment of fearful suspense. Would the knots so hastily made resist the tension of his weight? They did so; he raised himself by strength of wrist. The sapling bent and bowed, but his hand was now close to it. He grasped it; another powerful effort, the last effort of despair, and he lay exhausted and almost senseless upon the rocky brink. At the same moment, with a cry of joy, Dora fell fainting into her brother's arms.

Of that day's adventures little remains to tell. A walk of a mile brought Ashley to a place where a bridge, thrown over the ravine, enabled him to cross it. I omit his thanks to Dora, his apologies for the alarm he had caused her, and his admiring eulogy of her presence of mind. Her manner of receiving them, and the look she gave him when, on rejoining us, he took her hand, and with a natural and grateful courtesy that prevented the action from appearing theatrical or unusual, pressed it to his lips, were any thing but gratifying to me, whatever they may have been to him. She seemed no way displeased at the freedom. I was most confoundedly, but that Walter did not seem to observe.

The incident that had occurred, and Dora's request, brought our excursion to an abrupt termination, and we returned homewards. It appeared as if this were doomed to be a day of disagreeables. On reaching the inn, I found a letter which, thanks to my frequent change of place, and to the dilatoriness of continental post-offices, had been chasing me from town to town during the previous three weeks. It was from a lawyer, informing me of the death of a relative, and compelling me instantly to return to England to arrange some important business concerning a disputed will. The sum at stake was too considerable for me to neglect the summons, and with the worst possible grace I prepared to depart. I made some violent attempts to induce Ashley to accompany me, talked myself hoarse about fox-hunting and pheasant-shooting, and other delights of the approaching season; but all in vain. His passion for field-sports seemed entirely cooled; he sneered at foxes, treated pheasants with contempt, and professed to be as much in love with the Pyrenees as I began to fear he was with Dora. There was nothing for it but to set out alone, which I accordingly did, having previously obtained from M'Dermot the plan of their route, and the name of the place where he and his sister thought of wintering. I was determined, so soon as I had settled my affairs, to return to the continent and propose for Dora.

Man proposes and God disposes, says the proverb. In my case, I am prepared to prove that the former part of the proverb lied abominably. Instead of a fortnight in London being, as I had too sanguinely hoped, sufficient for the settlement of the business that took me thither, I was detained several months, and compelled to make sundry journeys to the north of England. I wrote several times to M'Dermot, and had one letter from him, but no more. Jack was a notoriously bad correspondent, and I scarcely wondered at his silence.

Summer came--my lawsuit was decided, and sick to death of briefs and barristers, parchments and attorneys, I once more found myself my own master. An application to M'Dermot's London banker procured me his address. He was then in Switzerland, but was expected down the Rhine, and letters to Wiesbaden would find him. That was enough for me; my head and heart were still full of Dora M'Dermot; and two days after I had obtained information, the "Antwerpen" steamer deposited me on Belgian ground.

"Mr M'Dermot is stopping here?" I enquired of, or rather affirmed to, the head waiter at the Four Seasons hotel at Wiesbaden. If the fellow had told me he was not, I believe I should have knocked him down.

"He is, sir. You will find him in the Cursaal gardens with madame _sa soeur_."

Off I started to the gardens. They were in full bloom and beauty, crowded with flowers and _fraüleins_ and foreigners of all nations. The little lake sparkled in the sunshine, and the waterfowl skimmed over it in all directions. But it's little I cared for such matters. I was looking for Dora, sweet Dora--Dora M'Dermot.

At the corner of a walk I met her brother.

"Jack!" I exclaimed, grasping his hand with the most vehement affection, "I'm delighted to see you."

"And I'm glad to see you, my boy," was the rejoinder. "I was wondering you did not answer my last letter, but I suppose you thought to join us sooner."

"Your last letter!" I exclaimed. "I have written three times since I heard from you."

"The devil you have!" cried Jack. "Do you mean to say you did not get the letter I wrote you from Paris a month ago, announcing"----

I did not hear another word, for just then, round a corner of the shrubbery, came Dora herself, more charming than ever, all grace and smiles and beauty. But I saw neither beauty nor smiles nor grace; all I saw was, that she was leaning on the arm of that provokingly handsome dog Walter Ashley. For a moment I stood petrified, and then extending my hand,

"Miss M'Dermot!"----I exclaimed.

She drew back a little, with a smile and a blush. Her companion stepped forward.

"My dear fellow," said he, "there is no such person. Allow me to introduce you to Mrs Ashley."

If any of my friends wish to be presented to pretty girls with twenty thousand pounds, they had better apply elsewhere than to me. Since that day I have forsworn the practice.

MINISTERIAL MEASURES.

Not enviable, in our apprehension, at the present crisis, is the position of a young man whose political education has been framed upon Conservative principles, and whose personal experience and recollections go little further back than the triumph of those principles over others which he has been early taught to condemn. His range of facts may be limited, but at the same time it is very significant. He has seen his party--for a season excluded from power--again re-assume the reigns of government at the call of a vast majority of the nation. He remembers that that call was founded upon the general desire that a period of tranquil stability should succeed to an interval of harassing vacillation; and that the only general pledge demanded from the representatives of the people was an adherence to certain principles of industrial protection, well understood in the main, if not thoroughly and accurately defined. We shall suppose a young man of this stamp introduced into the House of Commons, deeply impressed with the full import and extent of his responsibilities--fortified in his own opinions by the coinciding votes and arguments of older statesmen, on whose experience he is fairly entitled to rely--regarding the leader of his party with feelings of pride and exultation, because he is the champion of a cause identified with the welfare of the nation--and unsuspicious of any change in those around him, and above. Such was, we firmly believe, the position of many members of the present Parliament, shortly before the opening of this session, when, on a sudden, rumours of some intended change began to spread themselves abroad. An era of conversion had commenced. In one and the same night, some portentous dream descended upon the pillows of the Whig leaders, and whispered that the hour was come. By miraculous coincidence--co-operation being studiously disclaimed--Lord John Russell, Lord Morpeth,

"And other worthy fellows that were _out_,"

gave in their adhesion, nearly on the same day, to the League--thereby, as we are told, anticipating the unanimous wish of their followers. Then came, on the part of Ministers, a mysterious resignation--an episodical and futile attempt to re-construct a Whig government--and the return of Sir Robert Peel to power. Still there was no explanation. Men were left to guess, as they best might, at the Eleusinian drama performing behind the veil of Isis--to speculate for themselves, or announce to others at random the causes of this huge mystification. "The oracles were dumb." This only was certain, that Lord Stanley was no longer in the Cabinet.

Let us pass over the prologue of the Queen's speech, and come at once to the announcement of his financial measures by the Minister. What need to follow him through the circumlocutions of that speech--through the ostentatiously paraded details of the measure that was to give satisfaction to all or to none? What need to revert to the manner in which he paced around his subject, pausing ever and anon to exhibit some alteration in the manufacturing tariff? The catalogue was protracted, but, like every thing else, it had an end; and the result, in so far as the agricultural interest is concerned, was the proposed abolition of all protective duties upon the importation of foreign grain.

Our opinion upon that important point has been repeatedly expressed. For many years, and influenced by no other motive than our sincere belief in the abstract justice of the cause, this Magazine has defended the protective principle from the assaults which its enemies have made. Our views were no doubt fortified by their coincidence with those entertained and professed by statesmen, whose general policy has been productive of good to the country; but they were based upon higher considerations than the mere approbation of a party. Therefore, as we did not adopt these views loosely, we shall not lightly abandon then. On the contrary, we take leave to state here, in _limine_, that, after giving our fullest consideration to the argument of those who were formerly, like us, the opponents, but are now the advisers of the change, we can see no substantial reason for departing from our deliberate views, and assenting to the abandonment of a system which truth and justice have alike compelled us to uphold.

We can, however, afford to look upon these things philosophically, and to content ourselves with protesting against the change. Very different is the situation of those Conservative members of Parliament who are now told that their eyes must be couched for cataract, in order that they may become immediate recipients of the new and culminating light. CONVERSION is no doubt an excellent thing; but, as we have hitherto understood it, the quality of CONVICTION has been deemed an indispensable preliminary. Conversion without conviction is hypocrisy, and a proselyte so obtained is coerced and not won. We are not insensible to the nature of the ties which bind a partisan to his leader. Their relative strength or weakness are the tests of the personal excellence of the latter--of the regard which his talents inspire--of the veneration which his sagacity commands. Strong indeed must be the necessity which on any occasion can unloose them; nor can it, in the ordinary case, arise except from the fault of the leader. For the leader and the follower, if we consider the matter rightly, are alike bound to common allegiance: some principle must have been laid down as terms of their compact, which both are sworn to observe; and the violation of this principle on either side is a true annulment of the contract. No mercy is shown to the follower when he deserts or repudiates the common ground of action;--is the leader, who is presumed to have the maturer mind, and more prophetic eye, entitled to a larger indulgence?

Whilst perusing the late debates, we have repeatedly thought of a pregnant passage in Schiller. It is that scene in "The Piccolomini," where Wallenstein, after compromising himself privately with the enemy, attempts to win over the ardent and enthusiastic Max, the nursling of his house, to the revolt. It is so apposite to the present situation of affairs, that we cannot forbear from quoting it.

WALLENSTEIN.

Yes, Max! _I have delay'd to open it to thee, Even till the hour of acting 'gins to strike_. Youth's fortunate feeling doth seize easily The absolute right; yea, and a joy it is To exercise the single apprehension Where the sums square in proof;-- But where it happens, that _of two sure evils One must be taken_, where the heart not wholly Brings itself back from out the strife of duties, _There 'tis a blessing to have no election, And blank necessity is grace and favour._ --This is now present: do not look behind thee,-- It can no more avail thee. Look thou forwards! _Think not! judge not! prepare thyself to act! The Court--it hath determined on my ruin, Therefore will I to be beforehand with them._ We'll join THE SWEDES--right gallant fellows are they, And our good friends.

For "the Swedes" substitute "the League," and there is not one word of the foregoing passage that might not have been uttered by Sir Robert Peel. For, most assuredly, until "the hour of acting" struck, was the important communication delayed; and no higher or more comprehensive argument was given to the unfortunate follower than this, "that of two sure evils one must be taken." But is it, therefor, such a blessing "to have no election," and is "blank necessity," therefore, such a special "grace and favour?"--say, _is_ it necessity, when a clear, and consistent, and honourable course remains open? The evil on one side is clear: it is the loss of self-respect--the breach of pledges--the forfeiture of confidence--the abandonment of a national cause. On the other it is doubtful; it rests but on personal feeling, which may be painful to overcome, but which ought not to stand for a moment in the way of public duty.

Far be it from us to say, that amongst those who have cast their lot on the opposite side, there are not many who have done so from the best and the purest motives. The public career of some, and the private virtues of others, would belie us if we dared to assert the contrary. With them it may be conviction, or it may be an overruling sense of expediency--and with either motive we do not quarrel--but surely it is not for them, the new converts, to insinuate taunts of interested motives and partial construction against those who maintain the deserted principle. "For whom are you counsel now?" interrupted Sir Robert Peel, in the midst of the able, nay chivalrous speech of Mr Francis Scott, the honourable member for Roxburghshire. Admitting that the question was jocularly put and good-humouredly meant, we yet admire the spirit of the reply. "I am asked for whom I am the counsel. I am the counsel for my opinions. I am no delegate in this assembly. I will yield to no man in sincerity. I am counsel for no man, no party, no sect. I belong to no party. I followed, and was proud to follow, that party which was led so gloriously--the party of the constitution, which was led by the Right Honourable Baronet. I followed under his banner, and was glad to serve under it. I would have continued to serve under his banner if he had hoisted and maintained the same flag!" Can it be that the Premier, who talks so largely about his own wounded feelings, can make no allowance for the sorrow, or even the indignation of those who are now restrained by a sense of paramount duty from following him any further? Can he believe that such a man as Mr Stafford O'Brien would have used such language as this, had he not been stung by the injustice of the course pursued towards him and his party:--"We will not envy you your triumph--we will not participate in your victory. Small in numbers, and, it may be, uninfluential in debate, we will yet stand forward to protest against your measures. You will triumph; yes, and you will triumph over men whose moderation in prosperity, and whose patience under adversity has commanded admiration--but whose fatal fault was, that they trusted you. You will triumph over them in strange coalition with men, who, true to their principles, can neither welcome you as a friend, nor respect you as an opponent; and of whom I must say, that the best and most patriotic of them all will the least rejoice in the downfall of the great constitutional party you have ruined, and will the most deplore the loss of public confidence in public men!"

We may ask, are such men, speaking under such absolute conviction of the truth, to be lightly valued or underrated? Are their opinions, because consistent, to be treated with contempt, and consistency itself to be sneered at as the prerogative of obstinacy and dotage? Was there no truth, then, in the opinions which, on this point of protection, the Premier has maintained for so many years; or, if not, is their fallacy so very glaring, that he can expect all the world at once to detect the error, which until now has been concealed even from his sagacious eye? Surely there must be something very specious in doctrines to which he has subscribed for a lifetime, and without which he never would have been enabled to occupy his present place. We blame him not if, on mature reflection, he is now convince of his error. It is for him to reconcile that error with his reputation as a statesman. But we protest against that blinding and coercing system which of late years has been unhappily the vogue, and which, if persevered in, appears to us of all things the most likely to sap the foundations of public confidence, in the integrity as well as the skill of those who are at the helm of the government.

We have given the speech of Wallenstein-let us now subjoin the reply of Piccolomini. Mark how appropriate it is, with but the change of a single word--

MAX.

My General; this day thou makest me Of age to speak in my own right and person. For till this day I have been spared the trouble To find out my own road. _Thee have I follow'd With most implicit, unconditional faith, Sure of the right path if I follow'd thee._ To-day, for the first time, dost thou refer Me to myself, and forcest me to make Election between thee and my own heart-- _Is that a good war, which against the Empire Thou wagest with the Empire's own array?_ O God of heaven! what a change is this! Beseems it me to offer such persuasion To thee, who like the fix'd star of the pole Wert all I gazed at on life's trackless ocean; Oh, what a rent thou makest in my heart! The engrain'd instinct of old reverence, The holy habit of obediency, Must I pluck live asunder from thy name? Oh, do it not!--I pray thee do it not!-- Thou wilt not-- Thou canst not end in this! It would reduce All human creatures to disloyalty Against the nobleness of their own nature. 'Twill justify the vulgar misbelief Which holdeth nothing noble in free-will, And trusts itself to impotence alone, Made powerful only in an unknown power!

These quotations may look strangely in such an article as this; but there are many within the walls of St Stephens's who must acknowledge the force of the allusion, and the truth of the sentiments they convey. The language we intend to use is less that of reproach than sorrow: for whatever may be the practical result of this measure--however it may affect the great industrial interest of the country, it is impossible not to see that, from the mere manner of its proposal, it has disorganized the great Conservative party, and substituted mistrust and confusion for the feeling of entire confidence which formerly was reposed in its leaders.

The change, however has been proposed, and we shall not shrink from considering it. The scheme of Sir Robert Peel is reducible to a few points, which we shall now proceed to review _seriatim_. First--let us regard it with a view to its _nature_; secondly, as to its _necessity_ under existing circumstances.

The Premier states, that this is a great _change_. We admit that fully. A measure which contains within itself a provision, that at the end of three years agricultural industry within this country shall be left without any protection at all, and that, in the interim, the mode of protection shall not only be altered but reduced, is necessarily a prodigious _change_. It is one which is calculated to affect agriculture directly, and home consumption of manufactures indirectly; to reduce the price of bread in this country--otherwise it is a useless change--by the introduction of foreign grain, and therefore to lower the profits of one at least of three classes, the landlord, the tenant, or the labourer, which classes consume the greater part of our manufactures. So far it is distinctly adverse to the agricultural interest, for we cannot exactly understand how a measure can be at once favourable and unfavourable to a particular party--how the producer of corn can be benefited by the depreciation of the article which he raises, unless, indeed, the reduction of the price of the food which he consumes himself be taken as an equivalent. Very likely this is what is meant. If so, it partakes of the nature of a principle, and must hold good in other instances. Apply it to the manufacturer; tell him that, by reducing the cost of his cottons one-half, he will be amply compensated, because in that event his shirts will cost him only a half of the present prices, and his wife and children can be sumptuously clothed for a moiety. His immediate answer would be this: "By no means. I an manufacturing not for myself but for others. I deal on a large scale. I supply a thousand customers; and the profit I derive from that is infinitely greater than the saving I could effect by the reduced price of the articles which I must consume at home." The first view is clearly untenable. We may, therefore, conclude at all events that some direct loss must, under the operation of the new scheme, fall upon the agricultural classes; and it is of some moment to know how this loss is to be supplied. For we take the opening statement of Sir Robert Peel as we find it; and he tells us that _both_ classes, the agriculturists and the manufacturers, are "to make sacrifices." Now, in these three words lies the germ of a most important--nay paramount--consideration, which we would fain have explained to us before we go any further. For, according to our ideas of words, a sacrifice means a loss, which, except in the case of deliberate destruction, implies a corresponding gain to a third party. Let us, then, try to discover who is to be the gainer. Is it the state--that is, the British public revenue? No--most distinctly not; for while, on the one side, the corn duties are abolished, on the other the tariff is relaxed. Is the sacrifice to be a mutual one--that is, is the agriculturist to be compensated by cheaper _home_ manufactures, and the manufacturer to be compensated by cheaper _home-grown bread_? No--the benefit to either class springs from no such source. _The duties on the one side are to be abolished, and on the other side relaxed, in order that the agriculturist may get cheap foreign manufactures, and the manufacturer cheap foreign grain._ If there is to be a sacrifice upon both sides, as was most clearly enunciated, it must just amount to this, that the interchange between the classes at home is to be closed, and the foreign markets opened as the great sources of supply.

Having brought the case of the "mutual sacrifices" thus far, is there one of our readers who does not see a rank absurdity in the attempt to insinuate that a compensation is given to the labourer? This measure, if it has meaning at all, is framed with the view of benefiting the manufacturing interest, of course at the expense of the other. Total abolition of protective duties in this country must lower the price of corn, and that is the smallest of the evils we anticipate;--for an evil it is, if the effect of it be to reduce the labourer's wages--and it must also tend to throw land out of cultivation. _But what will the relaxation of the tariff do?_ Will it lower the price of manufactured goods in this country to the agricultural labourer?--that is, after the diminished duty is paid, can foreign manufactures be imported here _at a price which shall compete with the home manufactures_? If so, the home consumption of our manufactures, which is by far the most important branch of them, is ruined. "Not so!" we hear the modern economist exclaim; "the effect of the foreign influx of goods will merely be a stimulant to the national industry, and a consequent lowering of our prices." Here we have him between the horns of a plain and palpable dilemma. If the manufacturer for the home market will be compelled, as you say he must be, to lower his prices at home, in order to meet the competition of foreign imported manufactured goods, which are still liable in a duty, WHAT BECOMES OF YOUR FOREIGN MARKET AFTER YOU HAVE ANNIHILATED OR EQUALIZED THE HOME ONE? If the foreigner can afford to pay the freight and the duties, and still to undersell you at home, how can you possibly contrive to do the same by him? If his goods are cheaper than yours in this country, when all the costs are included, how can you compete with him in his market? The thing is a dream--a delusion--a palpable absurdity. The fact is either this--that not only the foreign agriculturist but the foreign manufacturer can supply us with either produce cheaper than we can raise it at home--in which case we have not a foreign manufacturing market--or that the idea of "mutual sacrifices" is a mere colour and pretext, and that to all practical intents and purposes the agriculturist is to be the only sufferer.

A great change, however, does not necessarily imply a great measure. This proposal of Sir Robert Peel does not, as far as we can see, embody any principle; it merely surrenders the interests of one class for the apparent aggrandizement of another. We use the word "apparent" advisedly; for, looking to the nature and the extent of home consumption, we believe that the effects of the measure would ultimately be felt most severely by the manufacturers themselves. The agriculturist of Great Britain is placed in a peculiarly bad position. In the first place, he has to rear his produce in a more variable climate, and a soil less naturally productive, than many which exist abroad. In the second place, he has to bear his proportion of the enormous taxation of the country, for the interest of the national debt, and the expense of the executive government--now amounting to nearly fifty millions per annum. It is on these grounds, especially the last, that he requires some protection against the cheap-grown grain of the Continent, with which he cannot otherwise compete; and this was most equitably afforded by the sliding scale, which, in our view, ought to have been adhered to as a satisfactory settlement of the matter. In a late paper upon this subject, we rested our vindication of protection upon the highest possible ground--namely, that it was indispensable for the stability and independence of the country, that it should depend upon its own resources for the daily food of its inhabitants. There is a vast degree of misconception on this point, and the statistics are but little understood. Some men argue as if this country were incapable, at the present time, of producing food for its inhabitants, whilst others assert that it cannot long continue to do so. To the first class we reply with the pregnant fact, that at this moment there is not more foreign grain consumed in Great Britain, than the quantity which is required for production of the malt liquors which we export. To the second we say--if your hypothesis is correct, the present law is calculated to operate both as an index and a remedy; but we broadly dispute your assertions. Agriculture has hitherto kept steady pace with the increase of the population; new land has been taken into tillage, and vast quantities remain which are still improveable. The railways, by making distance a thing of no moment, and by lowering land-carriage, will, if fair play be given to the enterprise of the agriculturist, render any apprehension of scarcity at home ridiculous. As to famine, there is no chance whatever of that occurring, provided the agriculturists are let alone. But, on the contrary, there is a chance not of one future famine, but of many, if the protective duties are removed, and the land at present under tillage permitted to fall back. You talk of the present distress and low wages of the agricultural laborer. It is a favourite theme with a certain section of philanthropists, whose hatred to the aristocracy of this country is only equalled by their ignorance and consummate assurance. Is that, or can that be made--supposing that it generally exists--an argument for a repeal of the corn-laws? If the condition of the labouring man be now indifferent, what will it become if you deprive him of that employment from which he now derives his subsistence? Agriculture is subject to the operation of the laws which govern every branch of industrial labour. It must either progress or fall back--it cannot by possibility stand still. It will progress if you give it fair play; if you check it, it will inevitably decline. What provision do you propose to make for the multitude of labourers who will thus be thrown out of employment? They--the poor--are by far more deeply interested in this question than the rich. Every corn field converted into pasture, will throw some of these men loose upon society. What do you propose do with them? Have you poor's-houses--new Bastilles--large enough to contain them? are they to be desired to leave their homes, desert their families, and seek employment in the construction of railways--a roving and a houseless gang? These are very serious considerations, and they require something more than a theoretical answer. You are not dealing here with a fractional or insignificant interest, but with one which, numerically speaking, is the most important of any in the empire. The number of persons in the United Kingdom immediately supported by agriculture, is infinitely greater than that dependent in like manner upon manufactures. It is a class which you do not count by thousands, but by millions; so that the experiment must be made upon the broadest scale, and the danger of its failure is commensurate. Rely upon it, this is not a subject with which legislators may venture to trifle. If the land of this country is once allowed to recede--as it must do if the power of foreign competition in grain should prove too much for native industry--the consequences may be more ruinous than any of us can yet foresee.

We need hardly say that a period of agricultural depression is of all things that which the manufacturer has most reason to dread. Exportation never can be carried to such a height, that the home consumption shall be a matter of indifference. At present, from eight to nine-tenths of the manufacturing population are dependent for support upon articles consumed at home. Any depression, therefore, of agriculture--any measure which has tendency to throw the other class of labourers out of employment--must be to them productive of infinite mischief. If the customer has no means of buying, the dealer cannot get quit of his goods. This surely is a self-evident proposition; and yet it is now coolly proposed, that for the benefit of the dealer, the resources of the principal customer must be so far crippled that even the employment is rendered precarious.

The abolition of the protective duties upon corn, is unquestionably the leading feature of the scheme which the Premier has brought forward. There are, however, other parts of it with which the agriculturist has little or nothing to do, but which may appear equally objectionable to isolated interests. Such is the proposal to allow foreign manufactured papers to be admitted at a nominal duty, in the teeth of the present excise regulations, which, of themselves, have been a grievous burden upon this branch of home industry--the reduction of the duties upon manufactured silks, linens, shoes, &c.--all of which are now to be brought into direct competition with our home productions. Brandy, likewise, is to supersede home-made spirits, whilst the excise is not removed from the latter. For these and other alterations, it is difficult to find out any thing like a principle, unless indeed some of them are to be considered as baits thrown out to foreign states for the purpose of tempting them to reciprocity. We should, however, have preferred some distinct negotiation on this subject before the reductions were actually made; for we have no confidence in the scheme of tacit subsidies, without a clear understanding or promise of repayment. Indeed the whole success of this measure, if its effects are prospectively traced, must ultimately depend upon its reception by the foreign powers. No doubt, our abandonment of protection upon grain will be considered by them as a valuable boon; for either their agriculture will increase in a ratio corresponding to the decline of our own, which would clearly be their wisest policy, or they will transfer the system of protective duties to the other side of the seas, and establish a sliding scale on exports, which may actually prevent us from getting their grain any cheaper than at present, whilst our public revenue will thereby be materially diminished. Looking to the commercial jealousy of our neighbours--to the Zollverein, the various independent tariffs, and the care and anxiety with which they are shielding their rising manufactures from our competition--we are inclined to think the last hypothesis the more probable of the two. The vast success of English manufacture, and the strenuous efforts which she has latterly made to command the markets of the world, have not been lost upon the European or the American sates. They are now far less solicitous about the improvement of their agriculture, than for the increase of their manufactures; and some of them--Belgium for example--are already beginning in certain branches to rival us. This scheme of concession which is now agitating us will not, as some suppose, resolve itself into a matter of simple barter, as if Britain with the one hand were demanding corn, and with the other were proffering the equivalent of a cotton bale. We are indeed about to demand corn, but the answer of the foreigner will be this,--"You want grain, for your population is increasing, your land has gone out of cultivation, and you cannot support yourselves. Well, we have a superfluity of grain which we can give you--in fact we have grown it for you--but then it is for us to select the equivalent. We shall not take those goods which you offer in exchange. Twelve years ago we set up cotton manufactories. We had not the same advantages which you possessed in coal and iron, and machinery; but labour was cheaper with us, and we have prospered. Our manufactures are now sufficient to supply ourselves--nay, we have begun to export. Your cotton goods, therefore, are worthless to us, and we must have something else for our corn." Gold, therefore, the common equivalent, will be demanded; and the price of corn in this country will, like every other article, be regulated by the amount and the exigency of the demand. The regulating power, however, will not then be with us, but with the parties who furnish the supply.

But, supposing that no protective duties upon the exportation of grain shall be levied abroad--which certainly is the view of the free-traders, and, we presume, also of the Ministry--and, supposing that corn is imported from abroad at no very great rise of price, then the evil will come upon us in all its naked deformity. It is very well for certain politicians to say, that it is an utter absurdity to maintain that cheap bread can affect the interests of the country; but the men who can argue thus, have not advanced a step beyond the threshold of social economy. Let them take the converse of the proposition. If there existed abroad a manufacturing state which could supply the people of this country with clothing and every article of manufactured luxury, at a ratio thirty per cent cheaper than these could be produced in this country, would it be a measure of wise policy to abandon a system of protective duties? Would it be wise in the agriculturist to insist upon such an abandonment, in order that he might wear a cheaper dress, whilst the practical effect of the measure must be to annihilate the capital now invested in manufactures, to starve the workman, and of course to narrow within the lowest limits his capability of purchasing food? In like manner we say, that it is not wise in the manufacturer to co-operate in this scheme; for sooner or later the evil effects of it must fall upon his own head. Cheap bread may be an evil, and a great one. Mr Hudson, no mean authority in the absence of all official information upon the point, but a man who has personally dealt in grain, informs us that the probable price of wheat will be from 35s. to 40s. a quarter. We shall adopt his calculation, and the more readily because we firmly believe that foreign grain will at first be imported at some such price, although the spirit of avarice may combine with the necessity of expending capital in improvement, to raise it considerably afterwards. But let us assume that as the probable starting price. No man who knows any thing at all upon the subject, will venture to say that, at such a price, the agriculture of the country can be maintained. It _must_ go back. The immediate consequence is not a prophecy, but a statement of natural effect. Much land will go out of cultivation. Pauperism will increase in the country on account of agricultural distress, and the home market for manufactures will suffer accordingly.

Is cheap bread a blessing to the labourer, let his labour be what it may? Let us consider that point a little. And, first, what is meant by cheap bread? Cheapness is a relative term, and we cannot disconnect it as a matter of _price_, from the counter element of _wages_. If a labourer earns but a shilling a-day, and the loaf costs seven-pence, he will no doubt be materially benefited by a reduction of twopence upon its price. But if he only earns tenpence, and the loaf is reduced to fivepence, it is clear to the meanest capacity that he is nothing the gainer. Nay, he may be a loser. For the grower of the loaf is more likely, on account of his extra price, to be a purchaser of such commodities as the other labourer is producing, than if he were ground down to the lowest possible margin. But, setting that aside, the consideration comes to be, does price regulate labour, or labour regulate price? In such a country as this, we apprehend there can be no doubt that price is the regulating power. At the present moment, peculiar and extraordinary causes are at work, which, in some degree, render this question of less momentary consequence. Undoubtedly there is a stimulus within the country, caused by new improvement, which alters ordinary calculations, but which cannot be expected to last. We never yet had so great a demand for labour. But let a period of distress come--such as we had four years ago--and the political problem revives. We are undoubtedly an overgrown country. Periods of distress constantly occur. The slightest check in our machinery, sometimes in parts apparently trivial, is sufficient to derange the whole of our industrial system, and to throw the labourer entirely at the mercy of the capitalist. It is _then_ that the relative value of wages and prices is developed. The standard which is invariably fixed upon to regulate the rate of the former, is the price of bread. No class understand this better than the master-manufacturers, who have the command of capital, and are not only the council, but the absolute incarnation of the League. It is in these circumstances that the labouring artisan is driven to the lowest possible rate of wages, which is calculated simply upon the price of the quartern loaf. In order to work he must live. That is a fact which the tyrants of the spinneries do not overlook, but they take care that the livelihood shall be as scant as possible. The labourer is desired to work for his daily bread, to which the wages are made to correspond, and, of course, the cheaper bread is, the greater are the profits of the master.

Where the different industrial classes of a nation purchase from each other, there is a mutual benefit--when either deserts the home market, and has recourse to a foreign one, the benefit is totally neutralized. There is no greater fallacy than the proposition, that it is best to buy in the cheapest and to sell in the dearest market. There is a preliminary consideration to this--which is your best, your steadiest, and your most unfailing customer? None knows better than the manufacturer, that he depends, _ante omnia_, upon the home market. Is not this the very interest which is now assailed and threatened with ruin? There is not a man in this country, whatever be his condition, who would escape without scaith a period of agricultural depression; and how infinitely more dangerous is the prospect, when the period appears to be without a limit! The longer we reflect upon this measure, the more are we convinced of its wantonness, and of the dangerous nature of the experiment upon every industrial class in this great and prospering country.

There is one objection to the Ministerial scheme which, strange to say, is open to both Protectionist and the Free-trader. The landowner has reason to object to it both as an active and a passive measure--it professes to leave him to his own resources, but it does not remove his restrictions. Surely if the foreigner and the colonists are to be permitted to compete on equal terms with him in the production of the great necessary of life, his ingenuity ought to have free scope in other things, more especially as he labours under the disadvantage of an inferior soil and climate. Why may he not be allowed, if he pleases, to attempt the culture of tobacco? The coarser kinds can be grown and manufactured in many parts of England and Scotland, and if we are to have free trade, why not carry out the principle to its fullest extent? Why not allow us to grow hops duty free? Why not relieve us of the malt-tax and of many other burdens? The answer is one familiar to us--the revenue would suffer in consequence. No doubt it would, and so it suffers from every commercial change. But these changes have now gone so far, that--especially if you abolish this protective duty upon corn--we are entitled to demand a return from the present cumbrous, perplexing, and expensive mode of taxation, to the natural cheap and simple one of poll or property-tax. At present no man knows what he is paying towards the expense of government. He is reached in every way indirectly through the articles he consumes. The customs furnish occupation for one most expensive staff; the excise for another; nowhere is the machinery of collection attempted to be simplified. Then comes the assessed-taxes, the income-tax, land-tax--and what not--all collected by different staffs--the cost of the preventive guard is no trifle--in fact, there are as many parasites living upon the taxation of this country as there are insects on a plot of unhealthy rose-trees. If we are to have free trade, let it be free and unconditional, and rid us of these swarms of unnecessary vermin. Open the ports by all means, but open them to every thing. Let the quays be as free for traffic as the Queen's highway; let us grow what we like, consume what we please, and tax us in one round sum according to each man's means and substance, and then at all events there can be no clashing of interests. This is the true principle of free trade, carried to its utmost extent, and we recommend it now to the serious consideration of Ministers.

We have not in these pages ventured to touch upon the interests which the national churches have in this important measure, because hitherto we have been dealing with commercial matters exclusively. May we hope they will be better cared for elsewhere than in our jarring House of Commons.

As to the necessity of the measure, more especially at the present time, we can find no shadow of a reason. We can understand conversions under very special circumstances. Had it been shown that the agriculturists, notwithstanding their protection, were remiss in their duties--that they had neglected improvement--that thereby the people of this country, who looked to them for their daily supply of bread, were stinted or forced pay a most exorbitant price, then there might have been some shadow of an argument for the change at the present moment. We say a shadow, for in reality there is no argument at all. The sliding-scale was constructed, we presume, for the purpose of preventing exorbitant prices, by admitting foreign grain duty free after our averages reached a certain point, _and that point they have never yet reached_. Was, then, the probability of such prices never in the mind of the framers, and was the sliding-scale merely a temporary delusion and not a settlement? So it would seem. The agriculturists are chargeable with no neglect. The attempt some three or four months ago to get up a cry of famine on account of the failure of the crops, has turned out a gross delusion. Every misrepresentation on this head was met by overwhelming facts; and the consequence is, that the Premier did not venture, in his first speech, to found upon a scarcity as a reason for proposing his measure. Something, indeed, was said about the possibility of a pressure occurring before the arrival of the next harvest--it was perhaps necessary to say so; but no man who has studied the agricultural statistics of last harvest, can give the slightest weight to that assertion. His second speech has just been put into our hands. Here certainly he is more explicit. With deep gravity, and a tone of the greatest deliberation, he tells the House of Commons, that before the month of May shall arrive, the pressure will be upon us. We read that announcement, so confidently uttered, with no slight amount of misgiving as to the opinions we have already chronicled, but the next half column put us right. There is, after all, no considerable deficiency in the grain crop. It may be that the country has raised that amount of corn which is necessary for its ordinary consumption, but the potato crop in Ireland has failed! This, then--the failure of the potato crop in Ireland--is the immediate cause, the necessity, of abolishing the protections to agriculture in Great Britain! Was there ever such logic? What has the murrain in potatoes to do with the question of foreign competition, as applied to English, Scottish, nay, Irish corn? We are old enough to recollect something like a famine in the Highlands, when the poor were driven to such shifts as humanity shudders to recall; but we never heard that distress attributed to the fact of English protection. If millions of the Irish will not work, and will not grow corn--if they prefer trusting to the potato, and the potato happens to fail--are _we_ to be punished for that defect, be it one of carelessness, of improvidence, or of misgovernment? Better that we had no reason at all than one so obviously flimsy. If we turn to the petitions which, about the end of autumn, were forwarded from different towns, praying for that favourite measure of the League, the opening of the ports, it will be seen that one and all of them were founded on the assumed fact, that the grain crop was a deficient one. That has proved to be fallacy, and is of course no longer tenable; but now we are asked to take, as a supplementary argument, the state of the potatoes in Ireland, and to apply it not to the opening of the ports for an exigency, but to the total abolition of the protective duties upon grain!

Of the improvidence of the peasantry of Ireland we never entertained a doubt. To such a scourge as this they have been yearly exposed; but how their condition is to be benefited by the repeal of the Corn-laws, is a matter which even Sir Robert Peel has not condescended to explain. For it is a notorious and incontrovertible fact, that if foreign corn were at this moment exposed at their doors duty free, they could not purchase it. We shall give full credit to the government for its intention to introduce the flour of Indian corn to meet, if possible, the exigency. It was a wise and a kind thought, objectionable on no principle whatever; and, had an Order in Council been issued to that effect, we believe there is not one man in the country who would not have applauded it. But why was this not done, more especially when the crisis is so near? If the Irish famine is to begin in May, or even earlier, surely it was not a very prudent or paternal act to mix up the question with another, which obviously could not be settled so easily and so soon. It is rather too much to turn now upon the agriculturists, and say--"You see, gentlemen, what is the impending condition of Ireland. You have it in your power to save the people from the consequences of their own neglect. Adopt our scheme--admit Indian corn free of duty--and you will rescue thousands from starvation." The appeal, we own, would be irresistible, _were it made singly_. But if--mixed up as it were and smothered with maize-flour--the English agriculturist is asked at the same time to pass another measure which he believes to be suicidal to his interest, and detrimental to that of the country, he may well be excused if he pauses before taking so enthusiastic a step. Let us have this maize by all means; feed the Irish as you best can; do it liberally; but recollect that there is also a population in this country to be cared for, and that we cannot in common justice be asked to surrender a permanent interest, merely because a temporary exigency, caused by no fault of ours, has arisen elsewhere.

Apart from this, where was the necessity for the change at the present moment? We ask that question, not because we are opposed to change when a proper cause has been established, but because we have been taught--it would seem somewhat foolishly--to respect consistency, and because we see ground for suspicion in the authenticity of all these sudden and unaccountable conversions. This is the first time, so far as we can recollect, that Ministers, carried into power expressly for their adherence to certain tangible principles, have repudiated these without any intelligible cause, or any public emergency which they might seize as a colourable pretext. The sagacity of some, the high character and stainless honour of others--for we cannot but look upon the whole Cabinet as participators in this measure--render the supposition of any thing like deliberate treachery impossible. It is quite clear from what has already transpired, that the private opinions of some of them remain unchanged. They have no love for this measure--they would avoid it if they could--they cannot look upon its results without serious apprehension. Some of them, we know, care nothing for power--they would surrender, not sacrifice it, at any time cheerfully--most of all at a crisis when its retention might subject them to the reproach of a broken pledge. Neither do we believe that this is a faint-hearted Cabinet, or that its members are capable of yielding their opinions to the _brutum fulmen_ of the League. That body is by no means popular. The great bulk of the manufacturing artisans are totally indifferent to its proceedings; for they know well that self-interest, and not philanthropy, is the motive which has regulated that movement, and that the immediate effect of cheap bread would be a reduction of the workman's wages. We cannot, therefore, admit that any pressure from without has wrought this change of opinion, about which there seems to be a mystery which may never be properly explained. Perhaps it is best that it should remain so. Enough are already implicated in this question, on one side or the other. The facts and the arguments are before us, and we have but to judge between them.

Of the probable fate of this measure we shall venture no opinion. The enormous amount of private business which of late years has been brought before the Houses of Parliament--the importance and the number of the internal improvements which depend upon their sanction, and in which almost every man of moderate means has a stake, are strong probabilities against any immediate dissolution of Parliament, or an appeal to the judgment of the country. But there is no policy equal to truth, no line of conduct at all comparable to consistency. We have not hesitated to express our extreme regret that this measure should have been so conceived and ushered in; both because we think these changes of opinion on the part of public men, when unaccompanied by sufficient outward motives, and in the teeth of their own recorded words and actions, are unseemly in themselves, and calculated to unsettle the faith of the country in the political morality of our statesmen--and because we fear that a grievous, if not an irreparable division has been thereby caused amongst the ranks of the Conservative party. Neither have we hesitated--after giving all due weight to the arguments adduced in its favour--to condemn that measure, as, in our humble judgment, uncalled for and attended with the greatest risk of disastrous consequences to the nation. If this departure from the protective principle should produce the effect of lessening the tillage of our land, converting corn-fields into pasture, depriving the labourer of his employment, and permanently throwing us upon the mercy of foreign nations for our daily supply of corn, it is impossible to over-estimate the evil. If, on the contrary, nothing of this should take place--if it should be demonstrated by experience that the one party has been grasping at a chimera, and the other battling for the retention of an imaginary bulwark, then--though we may rejoice that the delusion has been dispelled--we may well be pardoned some regret that the experiment was not left to other hands. Our proposition is simply this, that if we cannot gain cheap bread without resorting to other countries for it, we ought to continue as we are. Further, we say, that were we to be supplied with cheap bread on that condition, not only our agricultural but our manufacturing interest would be deeply and permanently injured; and that no commercial benefit whatever could recompense us for the sacrifice of our own independence, and the loss of our native resources.

_Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul's Work._

Transcriber's note:

In this etext a macron is represented thus [=a].