Part 6

It may very easily be believed that this was thought and said, as it is a common practice with the world when anything extraordinary is performed for the first time; and though it may be hard enough for the individual to bear, we may simply set it down as the first step to the admission of his success. But it is very clear the Pasha was wise enough to recognise the value of the man who had done so much, and not only accorded him his friendship and assistance on all occasions, but sent him on one occasion as his confidential messenger to Khosru Pasha, Grand Vizier to the Sultan at Constantinople, in 1839, as well as to Lord Ponsonby, who was there as Ambassador from England at this time.

Nor did his merit pass unrecognised in his own country; first by the public generally, though, perhaps, first of all by the “Times” newspaper, the proprietors of which were subsequently munificent in their pecuniary assistance of his efforts in the Trieste experiments, as indeed were the morning papers generally. In six successive months he accomplished the gain of thirteen days _viâ_ Trieste over the Marseilles route. Lords Palmerston and Aberdeen, as foreign ministers of England; Lords Ellenborough, Glenelg, and Ripon, and Sir John Hobhouse, as presidents of the India Board, were also fully aware of his labours in bringing about the “Overland Route” through Egypt, and thus giving stability to English interests in our Eastern empire.

And now comes the melancholy end of all these so arduous and important labours. Embarrassed in his own private circumstances from the expenditure of all his own funds, and large debts contracted besides, solely in effecting these public objects, he was compelled, after vainly endeavouring to extricate himself by establishing in London an office of agency for the Overland Route, to apply to the India House and the Government for assistance. His constitution was by this time broken up by the sort of toil he had gone through in the last twenty years, and he merely asked to have his public debts paid, and enough allowed him as a pension to enable him to close his few remaining days in rest. He was still in the prime of life; but prematurely old from his hard work.

In consequence of various memorials and petitions the India House awarded Lieutenant Waghorn a pension of 200_l._ per annum; and the Government did the same. But they would not pay the debts he had contracted in their service. If he had made a bad bargain, he must abide by it, and suffer for it. Both pensions, therefore, were compromised to his creditors, and he remained without any adequate means of support. The following extract, with which we must conclude, is from his last memorial:—

“The immediate origin and cause of my embarrassments was a forfeited promise on the part of the Treasury and the India House, whereby only four instead of six thousand pounds, relied on by me, were paid towards the Trieste Route experiments in the winter of 1846–7, when, single-handed, and despite unparalleled and wholly unforeseen difficulties, I eclipsed, on five trials out of six, the long organised arrangements of the French authorities, specially stimulated to all possible exertion, and supplied with unlimited means by M. Guizot. On the first of these six occasions, there arose the breaking down, on the Indian Ocean, of the steamer provided for me, thereby trebling the computed expenses through the delay; and when, startled by this excessive outlay, I hesitated to entail more, the Treasury and the India House told me to proceed, to do the service well, and make out my bill afterwards. I did proceed. I did the service not only well, not only to the satisfaction of my employers, but in a manner that elicited the admiration of Europe, as all the Continental and British journals of that period, besides heaps of private testimonials, demonstrated. My rivals, to whom the impediments in my path were best known, were loudest in their acknowledgments; and the only drawback to my just pride was the incredulity manifested in some quarters, that I could have actually accomplished what (it is notorious) I did at any time, much less among the all but impassable roads of the Alps, in the depth of a winter of far more than ordinary Alpine severity. I presented my bill. _It was dishonoured._ I had made myself an invalid, had sown the seeds of a broken constitution, in the performance of that duty. The disappointment occasioned by the non-payment of the two thousand pounds, has preyed incessantly upon me since; and now, a wreck alike almost in mind and body, I am sustained alone by the hope, that the annals of the Insolvent Court will not have inscribed upon them the Pioneer of the Overland Route, because of obligations he incurred for the public, by direction of the public authorities.”

The date of this memorial is June 8th, 1849. High testimonials are appended to it from Lords Palmerston, Aberdeen, Ellenborough, Harrowby, Combermere, Ripon, Sir John Hobhouse, Sir Robert Gordon, and Mr. Joseph Hume. But it did not produce any effect; the debts and the harassing remained; and the pioneer of the Overland Route died very shortly afterwards;—we cannot say of a broken heart, because his constitution had been previously shattered by his labours. Yet it looks sadly like this. He might have lived some years longer. He was only forty-seven. The pension awarded him by the India House he had only possessed eighteen months; and the pension from Government had been yet more tardily bestowed, so that he only lived to receive the first quarter.

At his death both pensions died with him, his widow being left to starve. The India House, however, have lately granted her a pension of fifty pounds; and the Government, naïvely stating, as if in excuse for the extravagance, that it was in consequence of the “eminent services” performed by her late husband, awarded her the sum of twenty-five pounds per annum. This twenty-five pounds having been the subject of many comments from the press, both of loud indignation and cutting ridicule, the Government made a second grant, with the statement that “in consequence of the _extreme_ destitution of Mrs. Waghorn,” a further sum was awarded of fifteen pounds more! This is the fact, and such are the terms of the grant. Why, it reads like an act of clemency towards some criminal or other offender;—“You have been very wicked, you know; but as you are in _extreme destitution_, here are a few pounds more.”

While these above-mentioned petitions, memorials, and struggles for life and honour were going on, great numbers of our wealthy countrymen were rushing with bags of money to pour out at the feet of Mr. Hudson, M.P., in reward for his having made the largest fortune in the shortest time ever known;—and soon after the Government munificence had been bestowed on the destitute widow of Lieutenant Waghorn, the Marquis of Lansdowne and the Marquis of Londonderry, in their places in the House of Lords, eulogised the splendid “military ability” of F. M. the late Duke of Cambridge, speaking in high terms of the great deeds he would have achieved, “if he had only had an opportunity,” and voting a pension of twelve thousand pounds a year to his destitute son, and three thousand pounds a year to his destitute daughter.

We have now beheld the labours, and the reward, of the pioneer of the Overland Route; who, for the establishment of this route and for manifold services subsequently rendered, received the “thanks” of three quarters of the globe, that is to say, of Europe, Asia, and Africa, “besides numberless letters of ‘thanks’ from mercantile communities at every point where Eastern trade is concerned!” His public debts are not paid to this day.

CHIPS.

THE KNOCKING UP BUSINESS.

New wants are being continually invented, and new trades are, consequently, daily springing up. A correspondent brings to light a novel branch of the manufacturing industry of this country, which was revealed to him in Manchester. Lately, he observes, I was passing through a bye-street in Manchester, when my attention was attracted by a card placed conspicuously in the window of a decent-looking house, on which was inscribed, in good text,

“KNOCKING UP DONE HERE AT 2D. A WEEK.”

I stopped a few moments to consider what it could mean, and chose out of a hundred conjectures the most feasible, namely:—that it referred perhaps to the “getting up” of some portion of a lady’s dress, or knocking up some article of attire or convenience in a hurry. I asked persons connected with all sorts of handicrafts and small trades, and could get no satisfaction. I therefore determined to enquire at the “Knocking up” establishment itself. Thither, accordingly, I bent my steps. On asking for the master, a pale-faced asthmatic man came forward. I politely told him the object of my visit, adding, that from so small a return as 2d. a week, he ought to get at least half profit. “Why, to tell you the truth, Sir,” rejoined the honest fellow, “as my occupation requires no outlay or stock in trade, ’tis _all_ profit.” “Admirable profession!” I ejaculated, “If it is no secret, I should like to be initiated; for several friends of mine are very anxious to commence business on the same terms.”

Not having the fear of rivalry before his eyes, he solved the mystery without any stipulations as to secrecy or premium. He said that he was employed by a number of young men and women who worked in factories, to call them up by a certain early hour in the morning; for if they happened to oversleep themselves and to arrive at the mill after work had commenced, they were liable to the infliction of a fine, and therefore, to insure being up in good time, employed him to “knock them up” at two-pence a week.

On further enquiry, he told me that he himself earned fourteen shillings per week, and his son—only ten years old—awoke factory people enough to add four shillings more to his weekly income. He added, that a friend of his did a very extensive “knocking up” business, his connexion being worth thirty shillings per week; and one woman he knew had a circuit that brought her in twenty-four shillings weekly.

There is an old saying, that one half the world does not know how the other half live. I question whether ninety-nine hundredths of your readers will have known till you permit me to inform them how our Manchester friends, in the “Knocking up” line, get a livelihood.

STATISTICS OF FACTORY SUPERVISION.

The Rev. Mr. Baker has recently issued a pamphlet, defending the moral tone of the factory system against the charges brought against it in the Rev. H. Worsley’s Prize Essay on Juvenile Depravity. We purposely abstain from discussing the merits of the controversy, believing that the truth lies between the two extremes advocated respectively by the reverend disputants. Mr. Henry, however, gives a table of statistics, an abstract of which we cannot withhold. It shows the number of spinning and power-loom weaving concerns in the principal manufacturing districts of Lancashire and Cheshire; also, the number of partners, so far as they are known to the public.

It appears that in Ashton-under-Lyne, Dunkinfield, and Moseley, there are fifty-three mills in the hands of ninety-five partners; Blackburn, and its immediate neighbourhood, has fifty-seven mills and eighty partners; Bolton, forty-two mills and fifty-seven partners; Barnley, twenty-five spinning manufactories and forty-six proprietors; at Heywood there are twenty-eight mills in the hands of forty-six masters. Manchester, it would appear, is not so much the seat of manufacture as of merchandise. Though it abounds in warehouses for the sale of cotton goods, there are no more than seventy-eight cotton factories, having one hundred and thirty-nine masters. Oldham has the greatest number of mills; namely, one hundred and fifty-eight, with two hundred and fifty-two proprietors; Preston, thirty-eight mills, sixty-two partners; Stalybridge, twenty cotton concerns and forty-one proprietors; Stockport, forty-seven mills and seventy-six masters; while Warrington has no more than four mills, owned by ten gentlemen. The total number of cotton manufactories in these districts is five hundred and fifty, which belong to nine hundred and four “Cotton Lords.”

Mr. Baker’s “case” is that a proper moral supervision is exercised over the tens of thousands of operatives employed in these factories; and that such supervision is not delegated from principals to subordinates. It would seem, from his showing, that of the nine hundred and four proprietors, no more than twenty-nine do not reside where their concerns are situated; and that of the entire aggregate of mills, there are only four in or near to which no proprietor resides. Lancashire and Cheshire cotton factories, therefore, are as regards absenteeism, the direct antithesis of Irish estates. The consequence is, that while the former are in a state of average, though intermittent prosperity, the latter have gone to ruin.

COMIC LEAVES FROM THE STATUTE BOOK.

The most manifest absurdities while remaining in fashion receive the greatest respect; for it is not till Time affords a retrospect that the full force of the absurdity is revealed. When men and women went about dressed like the characters in the farce of Tom Thumb, we of the present day wonder that they excited no mirth; nor can we now believe that Betterton drew tears as _Cato_ in a full-bottomed wig. A beauty who a dozen years ago excited admiration in the balloon-like costume of that day, would now, if presenting herself in full-blown leg-of-mutton sleeves, excite a smile. The more intelligent natives of Mexico are now more disposed to grin than to shudder, as they once did, at their comical idols. Everybody has heard of the monkey-god of India. In our day, those who once adored and dreaded him, would as readily worship _Punch_, and receive his squeakings for oracles, as to bow down before the Great Monkey.

Amongst the most prominent superstitions in which our forefathers believed, as a commercial opinion and rule of legislation, was “Protection;” and we have not awakened too recently from the delusion which descended from them not to perceive its absurdities, especially on looking over their voluminous legacy, the Statute Book. Before, however, we open some of its most comical pages, let us premise that the question of Protection is not a political one. Of the precise force and meaning of the term, there is a large class of “constant readers” who have no definite idea. The word “Protection” calls up in their minds a sort of phantasmagoria composed chiefly of Corn-law leagues, tedious debates in Parliament, Custom-houses, excisemen, smugglers, preventive-men and mounted coast-guards. They know it has to do with imports, exports, drawbacks, the balance of trade, and with being searched when they step ashore from a Boulogne steamer. Floating over this indefinite construction of the term, they have a general opinion that Protection must be a good thing, for they also associate it most intimately with the guardianship of the law, which protects them from the swindler, and with the policeman, who protects them from the thief. That powerful and patriotic sentiment, “Protection to British Industry,” must, they think, be nearly the same sort of thing, except that it means protection from the tricks of foreigners instead of from those of compatriots. They confess that, believing the whole matter to be a complicated branch of politics, they have had neither time nor patience to “go into it.”

In supposing the question of Free Trade or Protection to be a political one, they are, as we have before hinted, in error. It has no more to do with politics than their own transactions with the grocer and the coal-merchant; for it treats of the best mode of carrying on a nation’s, instead of an individual’s dealings with foreign marts and foreign customers. They are also wrong in supposing that protection to life and property is of the same character as that to which British industry is subjected. The difference can be easily explained; and although doubtless the majority of our readers are quite aware of it, yet for the benefit of the above-described, who are not, we will point it out:—Connected, as everybody knows, with whatever is protected, there must be two parties—A, in whose _favour_ it is protected; and B, _against_ whom it is protected. Legitimate and wholesome protection preserves the property we wish to guard against our enemies; impolitic and unwholesome protection too securely preserves property to us which we are most anxious to get rid of—by sale or barter,—against our best friends, our customers.

These elementary explanations are absolutely essential for the thorough enjoyment of the broad comedy, which here and there lightens up that grave publication, the Statutes at Large.

When the laws had protected English manufacturers, and producers from foreign produce and skill; they, by a natural sequence of blundering, set about protecting the British manufacturing population one against another, and the German jest of the wig-makers, who petitioned their Crown Prince “to make it felony for any gentleman to wear his own hair,” is almost realised. In the palmy days of Protection, a British bookbinder could not use paste, nor a British dandy, hair-powder, because the British farmer had been so tightly protected against foreign corn, that the British public could not get enough of it to make bread to eat.

These were perhaps the most expensive absurdities into which John Bull was driven by his mania for protection, but they were by no means the most ludicrous. Among his other dainty devices for promoting the woollen manufacture, was the law which compelled all dead bodies to be buried in woollen cloth. There may not be many who can sympathise with the agony of Pope’s dying coquette:—

“Odious! In woollen! ’Twould a saint provoke; Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke.”

But every one must be astounded at the folly of bribing men to invest ingenuity and industry, to bury that which above ground was the most useful and saleable, of all possible articles. The intention was to discourage the use of cotton, which has since proved one of the greatest sources of wealth ever brought into this country.

The strangest and most practical protest of national common sense, against laws enacting protective duties, was the impossibility of compelling people to obey them. To those laws the country has been indebted for the expensive coast-guards, who cannot, after all, prevent smuggling. The disproportionate penalties threatened by protective laws, show how difficult it was to ensure obedience. In 1765, so invincible was the desire of our ladies to do justice to their neat ancles, that a law had to be passed in the fifth of George the Third, (chapter forty-eight,) decreeing that “if any foreign manufactured silk stockings, &c., be imported into any part of the British dominions, they shall be forfeited, and the importers, retailers, or vendors of the same, shall be subject, for every such offence, to a fine of two hundred pounds, with costs of suit.” The wise legislators did not dare to extend the penalties to the fair wearers, who found means to make it worth the while of the vendors to brave and evade the law.

The complicated and contradictory legislation into which the _ignis fatuus_ of Protection led men, made our nominally protective laws not unfrequently laws prohibitive of industry. To protect the iron-masters of Staffordshire, the inhabitants of Pennsylvania (while yet a British colony) were forbidden, under heavy penalties, to avail themselves of their rich coal and iron mines. To protect the tobacco growers of Virginia (also in its colonial epoch) the agriculturists of Great Britain were forbidden to cultivate the plant—a prohibition which is still in force—even now, that the semblance of a reason or excuse for the restriction exists.

The petty details into which these prohibitions of industry, under the pretext of protecting it, descended, can only be conceived by those who have studied the Statutes at Large. An act was passed in the fourth of George the First (the seventh chapter) for the better employing the manufacturers, and encouraging the consumption of raw silk. This act provides “that no person shall make, sell, or set upon any clothes or wearing garments whatsoever, any buttons made of serge, cloth, drugget, frieze, camlet, or any other stuff of which clothes or wearing garments are made, or any buttons made of wool only, and turned in imitations of other buttons, on pain of forfeiting forty shillings per dozen for all such buttons.” And again, in the seventh year of the same George, the twenty-second chapter of that year’s statutes declared that “No tailors shall set on any buttons or button-holes of serge, drugget, &c., under penalty of forty shillings for every dozen of buttons or button-holes so made or set on.... No person shall use or wear on any clothes, garments, or apparel whatsoever, except velvet, any buttons or button-holes made of or bound with cloth, serge, drugget, frieze, camlet, or other stuffs whereof clothes or woollen garments are usually made, on penalty of forfeiting forty shillings per dozen under a similar penalty.” These acts were insisted on by the ancient and important fraternity of metal button-makers, who thought they had a prescriptive right to supply the world with brass and other buttons “with shanks.” Shankless fasteners, made of cloth, serge, &c., were therefore interdicted; and every man, woman, and child, down to the time when George the Third was king, was _obliged_ to wear metal buttons whether they liked them or not, on pain of fine or imprisonment.

The shackles and pitfalls in which men involved themselves in their chase after the illusive idea of universal protection were as numerous, and more fatal than those with which Louis the Eleventh garnished his castle at Plessis-le-Tours. It was impossible to move without stumbling into some of them. British ship-builders were allowed to ply their trade exclusively for British ship-owners; but, in return, they were compelled to buy the dear timber of Canada, instead of that of the Baltic. British ship-owners had exclusive privileges of ocean carriage, but had to pay tribute to the monopoly of British ship-builders and Canadian lumberers. British sailors were exclusively to be employed in English ships, but in return they were at the mercy of the press-gangs. Dubious advantages were bought at a price unquestionably dear and ruinous.

The condition of our country while possessed by the fallacy of protection, can be compared to nothing so aptly, as to a man under the influence of a nightmare. One incongruity pursues another through the brain. There is a painful half-consciousness that all is delusion, and a fear that it may be reality—there is a choking sense of oppression. The victim of the unhealthy dream, tries to shake it off and awaken, but his faculties are spell-bound. By a great effort the country has awakened to the light of day, and a sense of realities.