Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine – Volume 53, No. 332, June, 1843

We are now in the middle of the Bay of Naples; the spot from which panoramas have been so often sketched on that noble elevation, the deck of a lofty ship, swinging on her cables. What numberless sites of unparallelled interest are hence visible to the newly arrived and insatiable stranger! Misenum, Baiæ, Puteoli, Gaurus, Vesuvius, Herculaneum, Pompeii! But the office of the cicerone here cannot—alas for Britain!—be confined to the old classics, or the mere indication of places whose very names are things to conjure with! In America, we converse with nature only, whose voice is in her woods and waterfalls; but, in our threadbare Europe, all sites are historical, and chiefly in one sad sense—for Waterloo only brings up the rear of fields illustrated by the wholesale destruction of mankind! In the position which we now occupy, volumes might be written—ay, and have been written.

Look at that proud, impregnable Castle of St Elmo, culminating over all Naples! Look at those sea-washed fortresses which guard the entrance of her harbour! The garrisons of those strong places having, in the year 1799, from the turn of public affairs, judged it expedient to capitulate to Ferdinand and his allies, on conditions which should leave their honour without blemish, and assure their own safety and that of the city; and this capitulation having been solemnly accepted and ratified by Cardinal Ruffo, as the king's legate and plenipotentiary, by the late Sir Edward Foote, as acting commodore of the British force, and by the representatives of two European governments, officially residing in the revolutionized city, and the surrender of the forts having accordingly taken place, it came to pass, in an evil hour, that Lord Nelson, entering the bay as commander-in-chief, took upon himself the odious responsibility of rescinding the British guarantee, and of supporting Ferdinand, powerless but through him, in his refusal to hold himself bound by a convention made by his own viceroy!—thus delivering over the defenceless city to its own implacable sovereign. Then came a political persecution unknown in the annals of mankind; till, hebetes lasso lictore secures, even Naples could bear no more! The noblest blood and the most distinguished talent were no protection at the bar of a special tribunal, with a low-born monster at its head, not surpassed in its atrocities by the revolutionary tyrants of Paris and of Lyons. The ships shared the infamy; the venerable and noble Caraccioli, seventy-five years of age, himself an admiral, was the first piaculum! Summarily condemned by a court-martial held on board Nelson's flag-ship, he was executed like a felon, and cast overboard from a Neapolitan frigate floating on the same anchorage, and subject to the same authority!

But Nelson's star was then in the ascendant; the presence and notorious influence of Emma Hamilton in these frightful transactions, was unaccountably connived at by the British nation. The officer who has been a party to a convention, which his commander-in-chief thinks proper not only to disapprove but to violate, must inevitably suffer in that fame and popularity which our public services so justly cherish. And in the state of men's passions during that memorable war, so that it were against the French, a successful commander-in-chief could do no wrong! Yet here, probably, the matter would have rested; but when, nine years afterwards, Stanier Clarke so little appreciated the duty of a biographer as to relate a transaction susceptible of no excuse, in terms unjustified by the facts, and sought to render his hero immaculate at the expense of others, the excellent officer whose feelings and character had been so cruelly sacrificed, felt himself compelled at last to publish his "Vindication," judicious in every thing but the title. He most properly printed the Convention itself in the original words, and with all the signatures it bore. Such works, however, even when the affairs they refer to are recent, are never read but by friends—or enemies. A late atonement was made by William IV. in conferring on Sir Edward Foote a titular distinction, which the public heed not; but the tables are now turned, and Europe, taught by Cuoco, Coletta, and by Botta, the great historian of Italy, has irrevocably closed this great account. The name of Foote is recorded in all their pages in terms which, had he seen them, might well have consoled him for the past; while the last and most popular biographer of Nelson (Southey) feels himself compelled to admit, and the frank admission does him infinite honour, that this is a passage of his hero's life which the muse of history "must record with sorrow and with shame."

But the sea spray is dashing splendidly on our bows—we are clearing Capri, and have, as we pass it, a fine view of that high and precipitous rock, thinking of Tiberius and the soothsayer Thrasyllus, and of all the monstrous scenes which those unapproachable cliffs concealed from the indignation even of a Roman world. But twilight was already coming on, and the city and the coast were gradually withdrawn from the panorama—dark night came rushing over the deep, an Italian summer's night, and yet with no stars or moon; meanwhile steadily rides our vessel along the Calabrian waters, confident alike of her strength and her bearings, which we soon left her to pursue, and went down to see what the cabin and the company promised below. And thus the hours passed away; and when the suspended lamp began to burn dimly under the skylight, and grey morning found stealthy admittance through the cabin windows, although we had been unable to sleep, the anticipation of all the marvels we were to see in Sicily had answered the purpose of a night's rest, and sent us active and alert on deck to fresh air and the rising sun. Nor were we a moment too soon. A large flotilla of little boats manœuvring between two of larger size, placed to defend the space destined for their operations, were now in the full activity of the thunny and spada fishery; and a most picturesque rock, right over our bow, proved to be no other than Monte Pelegrino, at the foot of which lay Palermo and our breakfast—in short, after a voyage of little more than a summer's night, we are again on terra firma, if that name can be given to volcanic soils, and long before noon are actively engaged in perambulating the streets of the Sicilian capital of the fæcunda Panormos.

Among the most striking peculiarities of the interior or street views, presented to the stranger's eye at Palermo, are its very unusually situated convents, buildings which, even in cities, are commonly and naturally in retirement; but here, in whichever of the most public ways you walk, a number of extraordinary trellised balconies are observed on the upper stories of almost every large house, while business and bustle of all kinds are transacted as usual in the street below. You may well be surprised to see the nunnery over the Marchande de Modes! The unhappy inmates thus tormented by the sight and sound of worldly activity, have not in Palermo even the solace of a garden; and if these places of more than usual mortification have any connexion with the world without, it is by an under-ground passage to some church in the neighbourhood! Thither repair the poor victims of superstition to warble Aves to the Virgin behind their screens, and then back again to their monotonous cloister. There are twenty-four nunneries in the city of Palermo alone, each containing from thirty to sixty women, and there are as many monasteries! With open doors like coffee-houses, full upon the street, are placed at Palermo innumerable consulting shops of so many lawyers; the earliest to begin business, the last to close, you may have the luxury of law at any hour of the day till bedtime. Nay, your Sicilian lawyer, unlike the lazy tradesman who puts up his shutters and sleeps from twelve to four, takes no siesta; his atra janua lilis is always open, and there sit the firm, one listening to a client, another smoking a cigar, a third chatting with an acquaintance over his coffee or the newspaper. Scarcely less mischievous than these sowers of dissension, is the barber-surgeon, who still flourishes in Trinacria. The bleeding arm over the peruke shop is often to be seen in Rome and Naples; but at Palermo almost at every third house, you read Salassatore over a half-naked figure in wood or canvass, erect like Seneca in his bath, or monumentally recumbent, the blood spouting, like so many Tritons, from twenty orifices at once. Led by professional curiosity, we enter one of these open doors; and, desiring the ordinary service of the razor, and intending to ask some questions parenthetically touching the double craft, we have scarcely occupied the chair, when a smart youth comes up with a razor and a lancet, and quietly asks "Which?" Why, surely he could not think of bleeding us without a warrant for our needing it. "Eperchè? Adesso vi le dîrò subito—Why not? I'll tell you whether you want it without a doctor,"—feeling for our pulse. "Non c'è male—not so much amiss," pursued the functionary; "but a few ounces bleeding would do you no harm! Your hand is hot, it must be several months since you were last bled!" "A year." "Too long: you should be bled, at your age, at least twice a-year if you would keep your health!" "What amount of depletion did he recommend?" "Depende—di sei a dieci oncie," at which portion of the dialogue our mouth was shut to all further interrogations by a copious supply of soap-suds, and now he became the tonsor only, and declares against the mode in which we have our hair cut: "They have cut your hair, Signor, à condannato—nobody adopts the toilette of the guillotine now; it should have been left to grow in front à la Plutus, or have been long at the sides à la Nazarène, which is the mode most of our Sicilian gentlemen prefer." We were about to rise, wash, and depart, but an impediment is offered by the artist. "Non l'ho raffinato ancora, Signor, bisogna raffinarlo un poco!" and before we could arrive at the occult meaning of raffinare, his fingers were exploring very technically and very disagreeably the whole surface over which his razor had travelled, and a number of supplementary scrapings were only stopped by an impatient basta of the victim. Still he was unwilling to part with us. Would we like, now that we are on the spot, to lose a few ounces of blood before he takes a stranger in hand, (who is waiting for the one or other operation;) and, as we most positively declined, he turned to the latter to ask him whether he was come for his "piccolo salassio di sei oncie." "Gia!" said Signor Antonio, taking off his coat, and sitting down with as much sangfroid as if he were going to take his breakfast. "Can you shave me?" asks a third party, standing at the door. "Adesso," after I have bled this gentleman. Such are all the interiors where Salassatore is written over the door; they bleed and they shave indifferently, and doing either, talk of the last take of thunny, the opera that has been or is to be, and the meagre skimmings of their permitted newspaper, which begins probably with the advertisement of a church ceremony, and ends always with a charade—for our subscribers!!

CHURCHES

The clergy are wealthy, the bishop's salary is 18,000 scudi, and many of the convents are very opulent; but there is scarcely one of the churches which you care to visit twice. Most of them are disgraced by vulgar ornaments, in which respect they surpass even the worst specimens at Naples! Gilt stucco, cut and stamped into flowery compartments, shows off like a huge twelfth cake! but the Matrice or Duomo, and the Saracenic Chapel of the Palazzo Reale, and the cathedral of Monreale, four miles beyond the town, are noble exceptions; these in their several ways are all interesting, both within and without. The old Siculo-Norman archway of Monreale, and its fine bronze gates crusted with a beautiful hard polished coin-like patina, would repay the excursion, even were the interior less fine. Here we have columns from whose high architraves the Gothic arch springs vigorously; walls perfectly covered with old Byzantine mosaics; a roof of marvellous lightness, and almost modern elegance; still the critic, who is bound by métier to find fault with violated canons, will, we must own, be at no loss for a text in the church of Monreale—a building which is, however, of sufficient importance in ecclesiastical architecture to have been designed, measured, and engraved, in whole and in part, in a splendid volume, published in folio, by the Duke of Serra di Falco.

VISIT TO THE GARDEN OF THE DUKE OF SERRA DI FALCO, NEAR PALERMO

After a delicious half hour's drive through country lanes hedged with cactus, aloes, and pomegranates, we find ourselves in front of a small villa distant about two miles from the sea. As to the house, many an English gentleman, in very moderate circumstances, has a far better; but on passing the archway of this Sicilian country-box into its garden, two trees, which must be astonished at finding themselves out of Brazil—trees of surpassing beauty—are seen on a crimson carpet of their own fallen petals, mixed with a copious effusion of their seeds, like coral. At the northern extremity of Italy (Turin) this Erythinia corallodendron is only a small stunted shrub; nor is it much bigger at Naples, where it grows under cover. Six years in the open air have in Sicily produced the tree before you: it is, in fact, larger than most of our fruit-bearers. We next recognise an agreeable acquaintance, formed two years ago, in the Neapolis Japonicus; it bears a delicate fruit, of the size of a plum, whose yellow, freckled skin contains such a nectar-like juice that the pine-apple itself scarcely excels it. Our fellow-passenger, the infallible voice of a new-made cardinal of the warlike name of Schwarzenburg, who tasted it here, as he told us, for the first time, has already pronounced a similar opinion, and no dissentients being heard, the Japan medlar passed with acclamation. The Buggibellia spectabilis of New Holland, calls you to look at his pink blossoms, which are no other than his leaves in masquerade. We grub up, on the gardener's hint and permission, some of the Cameris humilis, to whose filamentous radicles are attached certain little grains, of great sweetness and flavour. The banana-tree, "Musa paradisaica," which, cooped in our low hot-houses at home, breaks its neck, and might well break its heart, as its annual growth is resisted by the inexorable glass dome, is here no prisoner but an acclimated denizen of sun and air. The Cactus Opuntiæ, or Indian fig, is here for vulgar tastes; and the Cactus cochinellifera for the Luculluses of the day, who could afford to pay for its rearing. The small sneezing plant, a vegetable smelling-bottle, is still employed in headach by the common people of Sicily, who bruise the leaves and sniff their pungency: its vulgar name, malupertusu, is the corruption of Marum del Cortuso, as we find it in the ancient herbal of Durante. The Ferula communis or Saracinisca, a legacy left to the Sicilian pedagogues by their eastern lords, is sold in fagots at the green-grocers, and fulfils the scholastic office of birch; and, being more elastic, must be pleasant to flog with. We recommend it to head masters. The sumac, Rhus coriaria, is not only to be seen here, but every where else in Sicily; and they say there is a daily exportation of one thousand sacks of its ground leaves. The ancients knew it well, and employed it for giving a flavour to their meat, as they do now in Nubia and Egypt, according to Durante, who deems its many virtues deserving of Latin verse. We smell pepper!—a graceful shrub, whose slender twigs stand pencilled out like sea-weed spread upon paper; and the Schinus mollis, a leaf of which we have gathered ignorantly, is the source of the smell. We strew some leaves on the basin of a neighbouring fountain, and amuse ourselves by seeing them swim about as if they were bewitched, parting at the same time with a whitish fluid, which, spreading on the surface of the water, gives it an iridescent hue. The Fuchsia arborescens of Japan flowers here, they say, every month, just as we see him in all his pink luxuriance, and makes himself quite at home; and here is that little blue vegetable butterfly, the Polygala! Who can overlook his winged petals, peeping out of their myrtle-looking bower? Then the geraniums!—not potted, as in Covent-Garden, or the Marché aux Fleurs, but forming vast parti-coloured hedgerows, giving to every pathway its own particular flower and perfume; so that a connoisseur might be taken blindfold and declare where each kind grew. Hedges of geranium seven feet high! Think of that, ye Dicksons and nursery-ground men about Brompton and the King's Road! The stalks a mass of real ligneous matter, fit for the turner's lathe if it were but hard enough. A small mound enables us to look about us more at large; and now we discern the stately bamboo, thicker than your arm, and tall as a small mast; and the sugar-cane, formerly cultivated for his juice, but now looking as if he were ill-used and neglected. His biography (but as it is not auto-biography, and written with his own reed, there may be some mistake) is remarkable. Soon after the annexation of Sicily to Spain in 1420, he was carried from Syracuse into Spanish captivity; he then escaped to Madeira and the Canaries, and at length saved himself in the West Indies. The pistachia is also here, with its five-partite sessile leaf, like a dwarf walnut; the capsule holding the nut containing at present only a white germ, which it will require four months more to bring to nutty maturity. The manna-tree is very like an alder in its general character, but thicker in its stem, and bears the cicatrices of last year's ill treatment; its wounds, however, will not bleed afresh now; but towards August the salassatore of trees will run his steel into its limbs, taking care to place under the bleeding orifices leaves from the cactus hedge hard by to serve as recipients, and drain its juices till it faints.

That a leaf might not be wanting to record these vegetable treasures, the pagoda-topped papyrus nodded to us gracefully, and offered its services; while, to finish the picture, Angola goats are browsing amid the green and yellow ribbed agaves; and the beautiful blue sea peeps in through gaps of the wall of cactus, whose green stems are now all fringed with yellow blossoms. Leaving the flower garden, we enter a labyrinth, and arrive at a small hut, with a closed door, upon the threshold of which we have scarcely pressed, when the wicket flies open, and a big brown friar, with long beard and sandals, starts up in act to frighten us, which he succeeds in doing. This automaton Schedoni might really well produce abortion, and would not care if he did: he cannot, we suppose, be placed there as a lawful instrument of relief, for all the donzelle of Palermo must be aware of, and be used to him. This, however, is thought so good a joke, that it is repeated with variations; for on releasing another spring a similar contrivance introduces us to another monk of the same convent, who is reading a huge tome on the lives of the saints: resenting the interruption, he raises his head, and fixes his eyes on the intruder, at the same time beckoning to him with his hand, and intimating that if he will do him the favour to come a little nearer, he will knock him down with the folio, as Johnson did Osborn the bookseller.

Another surprise is—but really these are surprising enough—and we came here to see vegetable rarities, and not the tricks of an overgrown toyshop.

THE THUNNY FISHERY

Ταν βαιταν αποδυς εις κυματα τηνα αλευμαι
Ωπερ τως Θυννως σκοπιαζεται Ολπις ο γριπευς—Theoc.

The thunny fishery, if not as exciting as that of the whale, is far from uninteresting to the uninitiated. We were rowing about in want of an object, when our boatmen proposed to take us to see this animating species of labour; and off we went to a spot about two miles from shore, where we came upon a little flotilla of boats, all occupied in the common pursuit. A large quantity of floating cork announced our arrival on the fishing ground; then came long lines of buoys, to which the drop-nets were attached, and at last we drew alongside a small boat, hailing which, we learn that the net is already half-drawn, and that la pipa (the sword-fish) is in it. Now, we had long wanted to see a live sword-fish, but there was no need to stimulate our rowers, who appeared equally eager that we should assist at the fun, and made great exertions to reach the spot in time. "Questa," says our guide, showing the boundary of the space circumscribed by walls of net; "questa è la camera della morte, (this is the chamber of death,) piano, piano, (or we shall shoot ahead.") The space thus designated lay between two long barges, one of which was fixed by anchor, and had few people on board, while the other was crowded with naked limbs, and fine heads in Phrygian bonnets, academy figures every man of them. What symmetry of form! what jet black beard and mustache! what dark flashing eyes! what noses without reproach! All were in the various combinations of action which their position demanded, hauling away at what seemed to our impatience an endless net; by the shortening of which, however, as their boat received it, layer upon layer, fold upon fold, coil upon coil, they were slowly bringing up the reticulated wall. As the place of captivity came nearer, every body was intensely anxious to get a first view of the fish; and many other boats were coming up alongside of ours, which fortunately lay right over the meshes of the prison, which was becoming every second more and more restricted in size. At length some of us obtained a first view of the spada and his long sword, and testified our delight with vociferation. The fish, meanwhile, who hates publicity, backs off, and would back out, to the opposite end of the net, where, still finding himself an object of unpleasant remark, he tries by violence to escape sideways; but that is no go even for a sword-fish, for a sword is his which cannot cut cords, and he soon finds he can make nothing of it. Smaller and smaller, meanwhile, is becoming the condemned hold, and greater and greater the perturbation within. The captive fish begins to swim round and round, and to watch a new opportunity, but it is too late!—too many are on the look-out for him! Every man gets ready his hooked pole, and there is more tightening of the tackle! The terrified fish now rises to the surface, as it were to reconnoitre, and then down he dives with a lash of his tail, which sends buckets of water into the boat of the assailants. This dive, of course, only carries him to the false bottom of the net, and come up presently he must! Every eye now looks fishy, and every man's hand is armed for the first blow. One tall athletic fellow takes aim, and misses; another is more successful, and hits. Stunned by the blow, the poor fish flounders on this side and on that, and the water is discoloured by his blood! One, two, three pointed poles at once, are again in his flank; and now he rushes about like a rounded lion, brandishing his tail, and dashing up whirlpools of water. More Blows! more blood! He rushes desperately at the net, and running his long snout into the meshes, is hopelessly entangled. It is all over with him! Countless wounds follow, till he turns over on his side, and is handed up lifeless into the boat.

"There," says one, "goes fifteen scudi's worth, and no harm done to the net." "Little enough, too; but he is worth two thunny, anyhow," says another. "Ay! and gives more sport," exclaims a third. Such piscatory eclogue fell upon our ear, when our guide announced to us that we had now seen every thing. The excitement over, we sat down in our boat to make a note of what we have written, while the boatmen clave the phosphorescent water homewards, and landed us neatly at sunset, with their oars dripping luminous drops at every stroke, in the beautiful harbour of Palermo.

Some days after we were still more fortunate; we had observed the scouts with a white hood over their boat, looking keenly down (vide our quotation from Theocritus) into the deep blue sea, and watching with all-eyed attention for the apparition of some giant shadow which should pass athwart the abyss, and give the signal for a new chase, while their comrades were hauling in an immense miscellaneous take of fish, the acquisition of the morning. We shot the outpost, (placed to prevent larger vessels from entering the fishing preserves and injuring the nets,) and remarked our boatmen uncovering to a small Madonna railed in alongside. We were just in time on this occasion to see the water enclosed in the camera della morte, already all alive with fish; for a shoal of palamide, and of immense pesce di moro, filled the reticulated chamber. They darted here and there as the net was raising, and splashed so furiously about, that the whole water became one lather; meanwhile, the men who had been singing gaily, now prepared their landing-nets, shouting in a way which certainly did seem to increase the terror of their prisoners, who redoubled their efforts to escape.

The rich hues of the palamide, in shape and colour not unlike our mackerel, but with longitudinal, in place of transverse, green bands, were beautiful objects as they were raised all iridescent in their freshness out of the water, and transferred to the side boat. We also noticed in the net one or two immense fish, in shape like rounded parallelograms, with tough shagreen hides, goggle eyes, and two immense leathery fins placed at the lower part of the abdomen. They kept flapping these valves up and down, but not offering to strike, though lugged out by a hook. The haul was a good one, each fish worth a ducat; and had they, in fact, been at this price converted into coin at once, the money would have made no mean show in the bottom of the net. The treacherous camera della morte was emptied quickly, and in one minute more, down it went again into the depths below.

We should have mentioned a singular practice of the fishermen of the present day in Sicily, to pat the thunny while he is in the net, as you pat a horse or dog: They say it makes him docile. This done, they put their legs across his back, and ride him round the net room, an experiment few would practise on the dolphin's back, at least in these days; yet Aulus Gellius relates that there was a dolphin who used to delight in carrying children on his back through the water, swimming out to sea with them, and then putting them safe on shore! Now, but for the coins, taking the above custom into consideration, one might have supposed the ancients' delphinus to have been the modern thunny.

THE FISH MARKET

"Dragged through the mire, and bleeding from the hock," lay a continuous mass of slaughtered thunny, mouths wide open, bloody sockets, from which the eyes had been torn to make lamp-oil, gills ripped off to be eaten fresh, and roes in baskets by their sides. There was also a quantity of a fish of dirty white belly and dusky back, the alalonga, and two huge dolphins, with skins full of lamp-oil. This really ugly creature looks far better in the delphin title-pages, with his lamp and his "alere flammam" on clean paper, than on the stall; but his very best appearance is on a fine Sicilian coin, with Arion on his back. The snouts of four large sword-fish were also conspicuous; and there was thunny enough for all the world: some of the supply, however, was to be hawked about the streets, in order to which cords are placed under the belly of a thunny of fifteen cwt., and off he goes slung on a pole, with a drummer before and a drummer behind, to disturb every street and alley in Palermo till he is got rid of; not that the stationary market is quiet; for the noise made in selling the mutest of all animals is in all countries really remarkable; but who shall do justice to a Sicilian Billingsgate at mezzogiorno! "Trenta sei, trenta sei," bawls out the Padrone, cleaving a fish in twain with one stroke of an immense chopper kept for the purpose. "Trenta sei, trenta sei," repeat the two journeymen accomplices, one counting it on his fingers to secure accuracy and telegraph the information to distant purchasers, or such as cannot hear in the noise; another holds up a slice as a specimen; three fellows at our elbow are roaring "tutti vivi, tutta vivi," "a sedici, a sedici." The man of whitings, and even he of sardines, have a voice and a figure of their own. As you approach each stall, the noisy salesmen suspend their voices, and enquire, in gentler accents, if you intend to buy; if you do not, like the cicada their stunning sound returns as soon as you are past. We have hinted that the thunny, "Integer et cadavere toto," does not look handsome: vastly less attractive is he when mutilated. Big as an elephant's thigh, and with flesh like some black-blooded bullock of ocean breed, his unsavoury meat attracts a most repulsive assemblage, not only of customers, but of flies and wasps, which no flapping will keep off from his grumous liver. The sword-fish cuts up into large bloodless slices, which look on the stall like so many fillets of very white veal, and might pass for such, but that the head and shoulders are fixed upon a long lance, high above the stall, to inform the uninitiated that the delicate looking meat in question was fed in the pastures of the deep. The price of thunny, a staple commodity and object of extensive Sicilian commerce, varies considerably with the supply; as to the demand, it never ceases. During our stay in Palermo, a whole fish would fetch about eight scudi, and his retail price was about twopence per English pound. Think of paying three or four francs for less than half a pound sott 'olio in Paris. The supply seems very constant during the season, which, on the Palermo side of the island, is from May to July, and continues a month later along the Messina coast; after which, as the fish cease to be seen, it is presumed here that they have sailed to the African coast. The flesh of the spada fish is generally double in market price to that of the thunny, selling during the greater part of June at about fourpence a-pound. Every thunny is weighed upon landing, and a high tax paid upon it to the king, who, in consideration thereof, charges his Sicilian subjects no duty for gunpowder or salt. The fixed fisheries for thunny, round the Sicilian coast, are upwards of a dozen, the most famous being that of Messina. At Palermo, however, they sometimes take an immense strike of several hundred in one expedition. The average weight of a full grown thunny, is from 1000 to 1200 pounds; of course the men with poles who land him, can carry him but a little way, and he reaches the market by relays. Every bit of him is eaten, except his bones and his eyes, and even these yield a quantity of oil.

The spada, too, is pickled down to his bones—he is in great request for the hotels, and his eyes, duly salted, are considered a sort of luxury; in some places these are the perquisite of the fishermen, yielded by their employers, who farm the fisheries, and having satisfied the king, make what terms they can with the subject.

COMMERCIAL POLICY—RUSSIA

From the brief review, in our last Number, of Spain, her commercial policy, her economical resources, her fiscal rigours, her financial embarrassments, these facts may be said to have been developed:—In the first place, that theoretically—that is, so far as legislation—Spain is the land of restrictions and prohibitions; and that the principle of protection in behalf, not of nascent, but of comparatively ancient and still unestablished interests, is recognized, and carried out in the most latitudinarian sense of absolute interdict or extravagant impost. Secondly, that under such a system, Spain has continued the exceptional case of a non or scarcely progressing European state; that the maintenance and enhancement of fiscal rigours and manufacturing monopoly, jealously fenced round with a legislative wall of prohibition and restriction, has neither advanced the prosperity of the quarter of a million of people in Catalonia, Valencia, and Biscay, in whose exclusive behalf the great and enduring interests of the remaining thirteen millions and upwards of the population have been postponed or sacrificed—nor contributed to strengthen the financial resources of the government, as proved by the prostrate position and prospects of a bankrupt and beggared exchequer; that, as the necessary and inevitable consequence, the progress of agriculture, the ascendant interest of all-powerful communities and vast territorially endowed states—of Spain, the almost one only interest and element of vitality, economical and political—has been impeded, and continues to be discouraged; that the march of internal improvements is checked or stunted, when not absolutely stayed; finally, that public morals—the social health of a great people, inheritors of glorious antecedents, of an historic renown for those qualities of a high order, the deep-seated sentiment of personal, as of national honour and dignity, the integrity, fidelity, and gallantry, which more loftily spurn contaminating approximation with action springing out of base, sordid, and degrading motives and associations—have been sapped and corrupted by the debasing influences of that gigantic system of organized illicit trade which covers Spain with hordes of contrabandistas, more numerous and daring than the bands of aduaneros and the armies of regulars whom they set at defiance, and infests the coast of Spain with fleets of smuggling craft, which all the guardas costas, with the ancient armada of Spain, were it in existence, would be powerless to annihilate. And all this fine nation, of warm and generous temperament, of naturally noble and virtuous aspirations, thus desperately to be dismantled of its once-proud attributes, and demoralized in its character; its exhaustless riches of soil and climate to be wantonly wasted—per force of false legislation to be left uncultured—and for why? Shades of the illustrious Gabarrus and Jovellanos, why? Why, to enable some half dozen fabricantes of Barcelona to keep less than half-a-dozen steam-engines at work, which shall turn some few thousands of spindles, spinning and twisting some few millions of pounds of yarn, by which, after nearly three quarters of a century that the cotton manufacture has been planted, "swathed, rocked, and dandled" with legislative fondness into a rickety nursling, some fifty millions of yards of cotton cloths are said to be painfully brought forth in the year; the value of which may probably be equal to the same or a larger quantity of French cottons introduced by contraband, and consumed in the provinces of Catalonia and Arragon themselves—the first being sole seat of the cotton manufacture for all Spain. And for this deplorable consummation, the superabundant harvests of the waving fields, the luscious floods of the vineyards, the full flowing yield of the olive groves of Spain—of the wine, the oil, and the corn, of which nature is more bountiful than in Egypt of old—the produce and the wealth of the millions, (which, permitted, would exchange advantageously for foreign products, and, bye all the value, add to the store of national wealth, and create the means of reproduction,) are left to run waste and absolutely perish on the ground, as not worth the cost of transport to markets without demand. "The production of this soil," observes the Ayuntamiento of Malaga, in their eloquent Exposicion to the Cortes cited in our last Number, after referring to their own port and province, in whose elaboration thousands and thousands of hands are employed, millions and millions of capital invested, "are consumed, if not in totality, at least with close approximation, in England;" and after enumerating the wines, oil, raisins, grapes, oranges, lemons, and almonds, as products so consumed in this country—"We have active and formidable rivals in France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Turkey, the Greek Archipelago, and other countries. We shall say nothing of the wools, corn and other fruits of Spain, so important, and some so depressed in England by foreign competition with those of this province. If the treaties of commerce of England with Italy and Turkey are carried into effect, the exportation of our oils and dried fruits will receive its death warrant—queda herida demuerte. France, Germany, and Portugal, accepting favourably the idea of the British Government, will cause our wines to disappear from the market; their consumption is already very limited, inasmuch as the excessive duty, to one-third the amount of which the value of the wine does not reach, at the mouth of the Thames, prevents the sale of the inferior dry wines. The same excessive duty tends to diminish the consumption of our fruits from year to year. Our oil has alone been able to find vent by favour of the double duty imposed till now upon Sicilian, superior to ours in quality. But the English speculators are already shy of purchasing, in the expectation of an assimilation of duties on oils of whatever origin." The Ayuntamiento proceeds to urge the necessity of a "beneficial compensation" to British manufactures in the tariff of Spain, without which, "the flattering perspective" of prosperous progress for the industry and agriculture of the Andalusias will be destroyed, and that those vast, rich, and fertile provinces will become a desolate desert. "The admission or prohibition of foreign woven cottons," says the Exposicion, "is for Malaga and its province of vital importance under two aspects—of morality and commerce. Until now we have endured the terrible consequences of prohibition. The exorbitant gain which it supports is the germ of all the crimes perpetrated in our country. The man who carries a weapon, who uses it and sheds the blood of an agent of the law in the defence of his illegally acquired goods, will not hesitate in shedding the blood of a fellow citizen who may stand in the way of his desires. And hence the frequent assassinations. He who with gold seduces others for the increase of his own property and for antisocial purposes, does not scruple, when fortune is adverse, to possess himself by violence of the gold of the honest husbandman, or peaceful trader: from hence the constant robberies in the less frequented places; from hence the general abuse of carrying prohibited arms of all sorts, and using them criminally against any one on the least provocation, already accustomed to use them against the Government. Who shall venture to enumerate the assassinations, the robberies, the ruined families, the misfortunes of all kinds, which, directly and indirectly, spring from contraband trade?"

Such is the Exposicion, such the experience, and such the views of a patriotic and enlightened corporation, representing and ruling over one of the most populous, wealthy, and industrially disposed districts of Spain. Our object in prefacing at this length, and with seeming irrelevance, perhaps, our review of the commercial policy of Russia, with its bearings on the interests of Great Britain, is to show the differing action of the same commercial system, in the present case of the prohibitive and restrictive system in different countries, both in respect of the mode in which the internal progress and industry of countries acting upon the same principle are variously affected themselves and in respect of the nature and extent of the influences of such action upon those relations of interchange which they entertain, or might otherwise entertain, with other countries where an opposite or modified system prevails. In its broad features the system of Russia varies from that of Spain only in being more rigorous and intractable still. Both, however, are founded on the same exclusive principle, that of isolation—that of forcing manufactures at whatever cost—that of producing all that may be required for domestic consumption—of exporting the greatest possible maximum—of importing the lowest conceivable minimum. Starting from the same point, and for the same goal, it will not be without interest or instruction to accompany and observe the progress of the one, as we have already endeavoured to illustrate the fortunes of the other—to present Russia, industrial and commercial, side by side, or in contrast with Spain, as we have described her. Your absolute theory men, your free-traders with one idea, like Lord Howick, your performers in the economic extravaganza now rehearsing in the Parliament-house under the style of "leave imports free, and the exports will take care of themselves," may chance to meet with many strange facts to confound their arbitrary theorems on the banks of the Neva. Absolute of wisdom, however, as they arrogate to be, and casehardened as they are, against assaulting results which should destroy their self-willed principle—a principle, like the laws of the Medes and Persians, proclaimed to be unchanged and unchangeable—in face of which facts are powerless and adverse experience contumeliously scouted, or mendaciously perverted, it is sufficiently obvious that lessons in political economy will, less than from any quarter of the globe, perhaps, be accepted from St Petersburg—they will fall upon unwilling ears—upon understandings obtuse or perverted.

We are not of the number of those who would contend that, under all times or circumstances, should a principle, or rather the system built upon a principle, be rigorously upheld in its application intact, sacred equally from modification on the one hand, as against radical revolution on the other. It cannot be denied that, under the protective system, have grown into their present gigantic proportions all the great manufacturing interests of Great Britain. But, with customary hardihood of assertion, maintain the economists—in whose wake follow the harder-mouthed, coarser-minded Cobdens of the League—although manufactures have flourished under such a system to an extent which has constituted this country the workshop of the world, they have so flourished in spite of the system; and, in its absence, left exposed to free unrestricted competition from abroad, must inevitably have progressed at a more gigantic rate of speed still. This is asserted to be in the order of nature, but as nature is every where the same—as the same broad features and first elements characterize all countries more or less alike—we ask for examples, for one example only, of the successful establishment and progress of any one unprotected industry. The demand is surely limited, and reasonable enough. The mendacious League, with the Brights and Cobdens of rude and riotous oratory, are daily trumpeting it in the towns, and splitting the ears of rural groundlings with the reiterated assertion that, of all others, the cotton manufacture owes nothing to protection. What!—nothing? Were general restrictive imposts on foreign manufactures no protection? Was the virtually prohibited importation of the cotton fabrics of India no boon? of India, root and branch sacrificed for the advancement of Manchester? Why, there are people yet alive who can recollect the day when Manchester cottons could not have stood one hour's competition with the free, or even 100 per cent taxed fabrics of India.[40 - The cotton piece goods of India were still subject, in 1814, to a duty on importation equal to 85 per cent. This duty was reduced on the 5th of July 1819, but to L.67, 10s. per cent only. Finally, in 1825 the duty was again reduced to 10 per cent, at which it remains. The duty on cotton yarn imported from India was at the same time subject to a duty of 10d. per lb., and so remained till 1831 at least. It must be borne in mind, that India was the only country in the world which, before and during the rise of the cotton manufacture in Great Britain, was, or could be, an exporter of cotton fabrics and yarns.] How, indeed, could competition have been possible, with the wages of weaving and spinning in India at three-halfpence per day, whilst for equal quantities and qualities of workmanship, the British weaver was earning five shillings, and the spinner ten shillings per day on the average? In 1780, Mr Samuel Crompton, the ingenious inventor of the mule frame for spinning, such as it exists to this day, and is the vast moving machine of cotton manufacturing greatness, stated that he obtained fourteen shillings per lb. for the spinning and preparation of No. 40 yarn, twenty-five shillings for No. 60, and two guineas for No. 80. The same descriptions of yarns are now profitably making at prices ranging from about tenpence to twentypence per lb. At the same period common calicoes were saleable at about two shillings per yard, which now may be purchased for threepence. Will it be said that the Indian spinner and weaver by hand could not, at the same epoch, have produced their wares at one-half the price, had not importation, with unrelenting jealousy, been interdicted? Was the rigid prohibition of the export of machinery no concession, all exclusively and prodigiously in the interest of the cotton manufacture, to the zealous promotion and ascendancy of which the mining and agricultural interests are unhesitatingly, not to say wantonly, prejudiced, if not absolutely perilled? We say wantonly, because the free exportation of cotton yarn, tolerated at the same moment, was an absurd and mischievous violation of the very principle on which the prohibited exportation of machinery was alone and could be justified. In face of these incontrovertible facts, of which hereafter, and now that the record of them is consigned to that wide circulation through the world which the pages of Blackwood only can afford, misrepresentation remains without excuse on the question of that fostering protection to which, in a larger degree, if not exclusively, the cotton manufacture of Great Britain is indebted for its growth to its present colossal, mammoth-like, and almost unwieldy grandeur. We do not, however, whilst re-establishing facts in their purity, dream the practical impossibility of confounding and disarming the ignorance of men unfortunately so ill educated and unread, and with intellect so incapable, apparently, of appreciating instruction, if not wilfully perverse, as the Cobdens, or of restraining the less coarse but more fluent flippancy and equally unscrupulous assurance of friend Bright, from resort to that stock and stale weapon of vulgar minds which is so readily drawn from the armoury of falsehood. To the end of the chapter they will lie on, until doomsday arrive, and they sink, like the Henry Hunts, et id genus omne, their at least as well-bred predecessors of the popularity-hunting school, to their proper level in the cess-pool of public contempt. Time, which executes justice upon all in the long run, cannot fail to lay the ghost of cotton and anti-corn law imposture, even in the troubled waters of the muddy Irk and Irwell, where first conjured from. And now, having shown how the cotton manufacture of Great Britain was from its birth cradled, rocked, and dandled into successful progress; how it was fostered and fenced round with protection and prohibitive legislation as against competition from abroad; we shall proceed with our review of the rise and career of protected manufactures in Russia. And we would counsel "one who has whistled at the plough," whose "farming notes" in the Morning Chronicle, when confined to such matters of practical detail as may be supposed to lie within the scope of his own experience and comprehension, are not destitute of interest and information, though with distorted and exaggerated views, to ponder well before a next reiteration of the random and absurd assertion that the "corn-law has done to agriculture what every law of protection has done for every trade that was ever practised—it has induced negligence, and, by its uncertain operation, has obstructed enterprise." Instead of whistling at the plough, such a writer almost deserves to be whipped at the cart's tail for so preposterously dogmatic an assumption. It has yet to be demonstrated, and the proof is challenged, that ever a great interest, whether manufacturing or agricultural, was established in any part of the world, since the creation, without the aids and appliances of legislative and guernatorial patronage. The degree, the qualification the practical limitations, which in the progress of time, with social and industrial changes supervening at home and abroad, may be rendered expedient or necessary in the application of the principle, constitute quite a different question, which may be discussed and entertained without any disparagement of the soundness of the policy, as best adapted to existing circumstances, of the system when first applied. The theory of free trade may be, in its entirety, as plausibly it is presented to us, founded on just principle; the abstract truth and perfection of which are just as unimpeachable as that of the social theory propounded by Rousseau in the Savoyard's profession of faith, or that of the "liberty, equality, and community of property" (to say nothing of women) theory preached, and practically developed to some extent, in the paganish philosophies and New Harmony vagaries of the St Simonians, the Fourierians, and of Robert Owen, in these our days. And yet, from the beginning of time—whether from the world before the flood, or since the reconstruction of the world after—never, to this present epoch, has one single example come down to us of the sober realization of either the economical abstraction or the social abstraction. Primeval chaos, chaos existing before all time, could alone have represented the beau-ideal of each. So far indeed as their own demesnes and domains, Laban and Pharaoh were not without their practical proficiency in the elements of economical science—for the one knew how to sell his daughters, as the other his corn, in the "dearest market;" and each to buy his labour and his money at the "cheapest." And never will these free-trade and social day-dreams be accomplished to the end of all time; never until chaos come again; never, unless perchance the Fitzwilliams and the Phillipses, impregnated with the beatific reveries of socialist Robert Owen, should throw open, the one, Wentworth hall, with its splendid parks and spacious domains—the other, his Manchester mills, wonder-working machinery, and million of capital stock, to joint-stock occupancy, with common right of possession of the rural labourers who till the ground, and the urban operatives who ply the shuttle—the producers, in fact, of all their wealth—share and share alike; themselves, in future, undertaking the proportion of daily task-work; driving the "teams afield," or tenting the mule-frame. Should, perhaps, the Phalansterial system of Fourier preferably suit their taste, they will be entitled to enter into the "phalanx of harmony," and share à des degrés différents, dans la répartition des trots facultés—capital, travail, talent, … with the enjoyment of such an apartment in the Phalansterial "palace" for four hundred families, the minimum of the phalanx being eighty, which may compare with the quality of répartition corresponding to them, as expounded by Madame Gatti de Gamond, the principal legatee of Fourier and his system.

In the course of the discussions which terminated in the treaty of commerce and navigation with Russia, laid before parliament on the opening of the session—the stipulations of which, however, chiefly bore upon the extension of certain reciprocal rights of navigation—the Emperor Nicholas, in answer to representations pressed upon him from this country, for a liberal extension of the same principle to the general commerce of Russia, to foreign imports as well as shipping and exports—to let in a glimmer of the free-trade principle, in fact—replied, as we observed in a former article, that "the system, such as it was, he had received from his predecessors, and it was found to work well for the interests of his empire." The Autocrat, despot as he may be, was not singular in the opinion; for even our esteemed friend Count Valerian Krasinski, distinguished no less for the solidity of his literary attainments than for the liberality of opinion and the patriotism which condemns him to the penalty of exile in a "dear country's cause," who therefore will not be suspected of undue bias in favour of Russian systems, had written and published in an able article on Russia, treating inter alia of the rise and progress of her manufactures and commerce, to the following effect:—"The manufacturers of Russia commenced, as in other countries, with the beginning of its political importance, but have been chiefly indebted for their encouragement and progress to the efforts of the Government … The (protective) system has been steadily adhered to with constantly increasing energy, and the most brilliant success, up to the present time." This was published in 1842. We shall proceed to test the merits of the case by reference to documents of official origin, Russian and British—both to the latest dates to which made up in a sufficiently complete shape for the object in view, and the former in some instances later than any yet published in this country, and, as believed, exclusively in our possession. We shall have to deal with masses of figures; but to the general reader in search of truth, they can hardly fail to be more acceptable than whole pages of allegations and assumptions unsupported by proof, however eloquently worked out to plausible conclusions.

We commence with laying the foundation for a comprehension of the industrial progression of Russia, by a comparative statement of the average imports of a few of the chief articles of consumption, raw materials of manufacture, and manufactures, for two series, of three years each; the first series being the earliest for which official records can be cited, or were perhaps kept. Accidental circumstances, and the special influences which, favourably or unfavourably, may act upon particular years, producing at one time a feverish excess of commercial movement, and at another, a reacting depression as unnatural, are best corrected and balanced by taking averages of years. Thus, the mean term of imports for 1793, 1794, and 1795, may be thus contrasted with that for 1837, 1838, and 1839, of the following commodities:—

During the first triennial period, a large proportion of the sugars imported was in the refined state, the number of sugar refineries being then very limited; in the second period, the imports consisted exclusively of raw sugar for the numerous existing refining establishments, which consumed besides 125,000 poods of beet-root sugar, the produce of the beet-root works established in Southern Russia. Woollen manufactories have so rapidly and extensively increased, that, whereas, comparatively a few years past only, the manufacture of woollens was confined almost exclusively to the coarser sorts for army use, whilst the better qualities for the consumption of the more easy classes, and for export to Asia, were imported from abroad, chiefly from Great Britain; for the fifteen years preceding 1840 the case has been completely altered. The import of foreign woollens has almost altogether ceased for internal consumption in Russia, whilst no woollens but of Russian make are now exported to Asia, and especially China. The export of these home-made woollens figures far above two millions of rubles yearly in the tables of Russian commerce with eastern countries. It will be seen that while the imports of cotton yarn, in the space of forty-two years, had increased in the proportion from 1 to 12 only, that of raw cotton had advanced in the proportion from 1 to 32. The facts are significant of the growing extension both of spinning factories and the cotton manufactories. It is difficult to understand or credit the increased imported values of cotton fabrics here represented, knowing, as we do, the decreased export to Russia in our own tables of values and quantities. But we shall have occasion hereafter, perhaps, to notice some peculiarities in the Russian official system of valuations, which may probably serve to clear up the ambiguity. But although importing foreign cottons for internal consumption, Russia is moreover an exporter of domestic fabrics, to the value of about one million of silver rubles, on the side of Asia. In order to avoid as far as possible the multiplication of figures by the accompanying reduction of the moneys and weights of Russia into English quantities, it may be convenient to state, that the silver ruble is equal to 37½. sterling, and, in commercial reckoning, the pood answers to 36 lbs. avoirdupois.

Limiting our views for the present to the trade in cottons, as the manufacture of cottons is of much more recent growth in Russia than woollen and other manufactures, we find that the exact imports, quantities, or values, of cotton and yarn, are thus quoted in Russian official returns for the three last years to which made up seriatim.

The depressed state of the cotton trade in 1841 in this country, with the very low prices of yarn, from consignments pushed, in consequence, for sale at any rates against advances, were doubtless the cause of the increased imports of yarn, and the decrease in raw cotton, exhibited in the returns for 1841. Otherwise, the import of raw cotton has been comparatively much more on the increase than cotton yarn for some years past. Thus, beginning with 1822, when the cotton industry began more rapidly to develope itself, but omitting the years just given, the imports stood thus:—

Now, it will not be denied that the cotton manufacture in this country has enjoyed supereminent advantages over that of any other in the world, whether we look at the protective scale of duties maintained for half a century in its favour against foreign competition, or regard those glorious inventions and improvements in machinery, of which rigorous prohibitive laws against export, during the same period in force, long secured it a strict, and, even to a more recent period, a quasi monopoly, and gave it a start in the race, which seemed to leave all chance of foreign concurrence, or equal ratio of progression, out of the question altogether. Neither for spinning nor weaving could Russia, in particular, possess any other than machinery of the rudest kind, with hand labour, until perhaps subsequently to 1820. Her tariffs, even by special treaty of commerce, in 1797, were entirely favourable to the entrance and consumption of British fabrics. The prohibitory, or Continental system of Bonaparte, was indeed substituted after the treaty of Tilsit; but in 1816 a new tariff was promulgated, modifying the "prohibiting system of our trade," as the Emperor Alexander, in his ukase on the occasion, expressed it. By this tariff, cotton fabrics of all kinds were taxed twenty-five per cent in value only; cotton yarn, seven and a half copecs per cent; fine woollens, 1 ruble 25 copecs per arschine; kerseymeres and blankets, twenty-five per cent on value; flannels, camlets, druggets, cords, &c., fifteen per cent. How, then, has Russia, subject to all these disadvantages and drawbacks, and so late in the field, fared in comparison with this country, so long and so far before her? Let us take the Russian data first given for the two triennial periods, and ascertain the issue.

The mean annual imports of cotton taken for consumption into Great Britain, deducting exports, may be thus stated in round numbers for the two terms, 1793–4–5 and 1837–8–9.

The ratio of progress of the manufacture, therefore, from one term to the other, of the forty-four years, was not far from eighteenfold.

Reducing the quantities of cotton-yarn imported into Russia into the state of raw cotton, by an allowance of about three ounces in the pound, or nearly seven pounds per pood, for waste in the operations of spinning, we have the following approximate results:—

The ratio of increase from term to term being thus the greater part of fifteenfold.

But as the cotton manufacture, from circumstances referred to of favourable tariffs for importation—comparatively free-trade tariffs—did not begin fairly to shoot forth until 1822, it will be only right to try the question of comparative increase by another list, namely, as between the returns of the consumption of cotton respectively in the two countries for that year, and one of the later years, 1839, 1840, or 1841; but say rather an average of the three. We are unable, however, to strike a corresponding average three years forward from, but inclusive of 1822, for want of the corresponding Russian official returns for two of the years. On the other hand, to take the one year of 1839, when the quantity of cotton taken for consumption in this country was at a low ebb, would be like straining for an effect, which the impartial seeker after truth can have no object in doing, whilst the return for 1840 would be as much in excess the other way. Thus the total quantities of raw cotton taken for consumption in Great Britain were—

The ratio of progression in Great Britain, for the term of eighteen years, was somewhat more than threefold.

The imports of raw cotton, and of cotton-yarn, rendered into cotton by an allowance in addition, at the rate of about three ounces per lb. for waste, or nearly seven pounds per pood, stand thus for Russia in round numbers:—

The ratio of increase in the cotton manufacture of Russia, for the same term of eighteen years, was therefore considerably more than fourfold. And this steady but extraordinary superiority of Russian progression took place in the face of all those prosperity years, when, from 1833 to 1838, the British cotton manufacture was stimulated, and bloated to excess, with the high prices resulting from the flash bank-paper and loan system of the United States, and the mad joint-stock banking freaks of Lancashire.

The average import and consumption of raw cotton in Russia, and of yarn calculated into cotton, was at the rate, on the average of the three years cited, of about, 35,963,000 lbs. per annum;

Which approximates the position of the Russian with that of the cotton manufacture of France as existing in the year 1818, when the consumption of raw cotton is officially stated at, 16,974,159 kilogrammes;

And with that of the cotton manufacture of the United States in 1828, when the quantity consumed at home was stated at about, 35,359,000 lbs.

It will still be insisted, doubtless, as all along it has never failed to be the cuckoo-note of unreflecting theorists, that the manufactures of Russia have flourished, and are flourishing, in spite of protection; that the only effect of protection is to repress their growth and mar their perfection. The assertion stands ready-made, and ever the stock on hand; it is a rash and blindfold speculation upon chance and futurity, at the best; a building without a corner stone; a chateau-d'Espagne nowhere to be found. Where, except in the glowing fictions of Scheherezade, may the personification of such a phantom be detected? History, whether ancient or modern, may be ransacked in vain for one footprint of the realised existence and miraculous economical prodigies worked upon the absolute free-trade principle, in the spontaneous creation, the progress unrivalled, the prosperity Pactolean, of ingenious manufactures. The El-Dorado region has yet to be discovered; will Cobden, like another Columbus in search of new worlds, adventure upon the desperate enterprise, and furnish the writer of romance with apt materials for the frights and freaks of another "phantom ship" on the wide ocean? If so inclined, indeed, we may commend him to an undertaking now, at this present writing, in actual progress, as we learn from assured sources and high quarters, in Paris. A goodly ship of substantial proportions is now preparing in a French port, richly freighted for an interesting voyage with the products of French industry, with destination for the great sea-river of the Amazons, for navigating its thousands of miles of unploughed course, and exploring those realms untold of, those interminable wastes recorded, and those numberless nations as yet unknown, if existing, which coast the vast expanse of its waters to the utmost limits of Brazil, and the very confines of Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia. The King of the French is himself the patron and promoter of this great enterprise. Hasten, then, friend Cobden, erratic and chivalrous as Quixote of old, to "swell the breezes and partake the gale" of an expedition so glorious; for know, that on the banks of the noble Amazons itself, the magnificent queen-river, most worthy in the world of such distinction, have poets, romancers, and chroniclers, undoubting, from all time, sung of and planted the resplendent empire of the El-Dorado itself.

Our design being to demonstrate, by the force of example and contrast, the sophistical absurdity of absolute theories, that, however naturally and harmoniously their parts may be made to correspond in thesis and system as a whole, according to which the same consequences, upon a given principle, should inevitably flow from certain causes, yet that, practically, it is found the same causes do not produce the same effects, even when circumstances are most analogous; that, for instance, the protective, or restrictive system of industry, under the rule of which Spain languishes, notwithstanding the abundant possession of the first materials for the promotion of manufacturing, and the prosperity of agricultural interests, proves, at the other extremity of Europe, the spring of successful progress and industrial accumulation, and renders Russia prosperous, though proportionally not more largely gifted with those natural elements of wealth and production which consist in fertility of soil, in mines of the precious metals, of coal, iron, &c. We shall pursue our task to its completion before we proceed to draw and sum up those conclusions which must follow from the premises established, before we enter in order upon the analysis and dissection of the one absolute principle or theory, by which, in the conceit of certain sage travellers on the royal railroad to wisdom, eager for the end and impatient of the toil of thinking, the economical destinies of all nations should be cut, carved, and adjusted secundum artem, with mathematical precision and uniformity, according to the rule invariable of robber Procrustes, the ancient founder of the sect, who constructed a bed—that is, a system of certain proportions of size—that is, upon a certain principle—upon which he laid his victims; those found too short to fit the dimensions of the pallet, he stretched and tortured into the length required; those too long he fitted by decapitating the superabundance of head and shoulders, or by squaring off the legs and feet; just as economists would sever nations with their invariable system; just as, with their selfish and one-sided, sordid idea, the junta of Leaguers, rule and plummet in hand, would deal with the British empire, with its vast possessions in every clime, on which the sun never sets, peopled by races numerous and diverse of origin as of interests, multifarious, complicated, often conflicting. "L'etât," said Louis le Grand, "c'est moi." "The British empire"—bellows Syntax Cobden—"'tis me and printed calicoes." "The British government and legislature"—exclaims Friend Bright—"'tis I and Rochdale flannel."

It is a strange, and, with our qualified and not exclusive opinions, not less a discouraging complication of affairs with which we have to deal, that, look among the great nations where we will, we find, to a great extent, that the protective system of commerce, where in force, or where it has superseded a quasi free-trade system before in force, has conduced, in no small degree, to the advancement of material interests. The Germanic Customs' Union, that peculiar handicraft creation of Lord Palmerston, is there to confirm the fact, no less than Russia, than France, than Belgium, and other lands. The League themselves ostentatiously proclaim it, whilst pretending to impugn the retention of the very shadow of a shade of the same principle, for the country, above all others, which has grown to greatness under it—the very breath of whose nostrils it has been, during the struggles of infancy and progress to that full-blown maturity, when assuredly it seeks, (and need seek only,) willingly proffers, and readily accepts, equality of condition—reciprocity of interchange, with all the world. "The Manchester manufacturer"—the false nom-de-guerre of a calico printer, who was not a manufacturer at all, and could scarcely distinguish a calico from a cambric at the time of writing, who erst was, is yet, perchance, the trumpeter of Russian policy, Russian principles, and Russian progress in the East and elsewhere—must be grateful for the information we have already afforded on the full careering ascendency of Russian material interests also. His gratitude will expand as he accompanies these pages.

Peter the Great laid the foundations of Russian manufactures, as of the Russian empire itself. He founded manufactories in all the larger cities. But with his death they fell into decay until the reign of Elizabeth. With that epoch began their revival, and the more rigorous revival also of the prohibitory system. Their present imposing appearance and magnitude date, however, from the peace of 1815, the great parent and promoter of all continental manufactures. In 1812 no more than 2,332 manufacturing establishments in the whole empire were in existence, employing 119,000 work-people; in 1835 the number of the former had reached to 6,015, and of the latter to 279,673, the half of the free labourers. At the beginning of 1839, says the report of the department of manufactures and internal commerce—the last which, hitherto, has been made up or come to our hands—the number of factories and manufactories had risen to 6,855, an increase over the year preceding of 405, whilst the number of workmen employed in them was 412,931, an increase over the year before of 35,111. Thus, in the space of three years, from 1835 to the end of 1838, 810 new establishments had been organized, and the number of workmen augmented by one-half. These industrial establishments were non-inclusive of mining works, iron works, &c., and the people employed in them. They were classed as follows:—

The seat of Russian manufactures is principally in the central portion of the empire, in its ancient capital Moscow, and the surrounding provinces. The progress of Moscow itself may be thus briefly sketched, after remarking that in the beginning of 1839 there existed in the government, of which it was the capital city, 1058 manufactories, employing 83,054 work-people. In the 315 manufactories of the neighbouring province of Vladimir, 83,655 work-people were employed; in the equally adjacent province of Kalouga, 164 manufactories gave work to 20,401 workmen. The population of Moscow, the Manchester of Russia, amounted in 1825 to 241,514; in 1827 it had risen to 257,694; in 1830 to 305,631; in 1833 to 333,260; in 1840 to 347,224. The principal manufactories were thus classed for the latter year.

In thirteen of the chief factories there were 263 spinning machines; three cotton factories alone contained 138. Besides these larger establishments, 3122 workshops, not considerable enough to be ranked as manufactories, employed alone 19,638 work-people; and 142 industrial establishments, such as founderies, breweries, distilleries, tallow and soap works, &c., gave bread to thousands more.

The consumption of the principal raw materials of manufacture is thus stated as an average of that and recent preceding years.

The machinery for the manufactories is made for the most part in the founderies and machine-works of Vladimir, Tamboff, Kalouga, and Riazan, but, above all, in the city of Tula and the village of Parlovo. In McCulloch's Statistical Dictionary, the number of steam-engines in the government of Moscow is stated, for 1830, at about 100—in 1820, two only being in existence. On what authority the statement is given does not appear; our own documents, to 1841 inclusive, are silent on that head. For Moscow, with its immediate environs, the total number and the produce of the cotton looms are thus given:—