Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 66, No 405, July 1849

And, like reapers, descend to the harvest of death."

But this constancy of individuals when suffering under the measures they themselves have introduced, however curious and respectable as a specimen of the unvarying effect of fanaticism, whether religious or social, on the human mind, cannot permanently arrest the march of events; it cannot stop the effect of their own measures, any more than the courage of the Highlanders in 1745 could prevent the final extinction of the Jacobite cause. Let them adhere to free trade and a fettered currency as they like, the advocates of the new measures are daily and hourly losing their influence. Money constitutes the sinews of war not less in social than in national contests. No cause can be long victorious which is linked to that worst of allies, Insolvency. In two years the mercantile classes have destroyed one-half of their own wealth; in two years more, one-half of what remains will be gone. Crippled, discredited, ruined, beat down by foreign competition, exhausted by the failure of domestic supplies, the once powerful mercantile body of England will be prostrate in the dust. All other classes, of course, will be suffering from their fall, but none in the same degree as themselves. It is not improbable that the land may regain its appropriate influence in the state, by the ruin which their own insane measures have brought upon its oppressors. No one will regret the lamentable consequences of such a change, already far advanced in its progress, more than ourselves, who, have uniformly foretold its advent, and strenuously resisted the commercial and monetary changes which, amidst shouts of triumph from the whole Liberal party, were silently but certainly inducing these results.

Confounded at such a series of events, so widely different from what they anticipated and had predicted from their measures, the free-traders have no resource but to lay them all on two external causes, for which they are not, as they conceive, responsible: these causes are, the French and German revolutions, and the potato famine in Ireland.

That the revolutions on the continent of Europe have materially affected the market for the produce of British industry, in the countries where they have occurred, is indeed certain; but are the Liberals entitled to shake themselves free from the consequences of these convulsions? Have we not, for the last thirty years, been labouring incessantly to encourage and extend revolution in all the adjoining states? Did we not insidiously and basely support the revolutions in South America, and call a new world into existence to redress the balance of the old? Was not the result of that monstrous and iniquitous interference in support of the rebels in an allied state, to induce the dreadful monetary catastrophe of December 1825, the severest, till that of 1847, ever experienced in modern Europe? Did we not, not merely instantly recognise the French revolutions of 1830 and 1848, but lend our powerful aid and countenance to extend the laudable example to the adjoining states? Did we not join with France to prevent the King of the Netherlands from regaining the command of Flanders in 1832, and blockade the Scheldt while Marshal Gerard bombarded Antwerp? Did we not conclude the Quadruple Alliance to effect the revolutionising of Spain and Portugal, and bathe both countries for four years with blood, to establish revolutionary queens on both the thrones in the Peninsula? Have we not intercepted the armament of the King of Naples against Sicily, by Admiral Parker's fleet, and aided the insurgents in that island with arms from the Tower? Did we not interfere to arrest the victorious columns of Radetsky at Turin, but never move a step to check Charles Albert on the Mincio? Did we not side with revolutionary Prussia against the Danes, and aid in launching Pio Nono into that frantic career which has spread such ruin through the Italian peninsula? Have we not all but lost the confidence of our old ally, Austria, from our notorious intrigues to encourage the furious divisions which have torn that noble empire? Nay, have we not been so enamoured of revolution, that we could not avoid showing a partiality for it in our own dominions – rewarding and encouraging O'Connell, and allowing monster meetings, till by the neglect of Irish industry we landed them in famine, and by the fanning of Irish passions brought them up to rebellion; – and establishing a constitution in Canada which gave a decided majority in parliament to an alien and rebel race, and, as a necessary consequence, giving the colonial administration to the very party whom, ten years ago, the loyalists put down with true British spirit at the point of the bayonet? All this we have done, and have long been doing, with impunity; and now that the consequences of such multifarious sins have fallen upon us, in the suffering which revolution has at last brought upon the British empire, the Liberals turn round and seek to avoid the responsibility of the disasters produced by their internal policy, by throwing it on the external events which they themselves have induced.

Then as to the Irish famine of 1846, it is rather too much, after the lapse of three years, to go on ascribing the general distress of the empire to a partial failure of a particular crop, which, after all, did not exceed the loss of a twentieth part of the annual agricultural produce of the British Islands. But if the free-traders' principles had been well founded, this failure in Ireland should have been the greatest possible blessing to their party in the state, because it immediately effected that transference of the purchase of a part of the national food from home to foreign cultivators, which is the very thing they hold out as such an advantage, and likely in an especial manner to enlarge the foreign market for our manufactures. It induced the importation of £30,000,000 worth of foreign grain in three months: that, on the principles of the free-traders, should have put all our manufacturers in activity, and placed the nation in the third heaven. Disguise it as you will, the Irish potato-rot was but an anticipation, somewhat more sudden than they expected, of the free-trade rot, which was held out as a certain panacea for all the national evils. And now, when free trade and a restricted currency have not proved quite so great a blessing as they anticipated, the free-traders turn round and lay it all on the substitution of foreign importation for domestic production in Ireland, when that very substitution is the thing they have, by abolishing the corn laws, laboured to effect over the whole empire.

Then as to the state of Ireland, which has at length reached the present unparalleled crisis of difficulty and suffering, the conduct of the Liberals has been, if possible, still more inconsistent and self-condemnatory. For half a century past, they have been incessantly declaiming on the mild, inoffensive, and industrious character of the Irish race; upon their inherent loyalty to the throne; and upon the enormous iniquity of British rule, which had brought the whole misfortunes under which they were labouring on that virtuous people. Nothing but equal privileges, Catholic emancipation, parliamentary reform, burgh reform, and influence at Dublin Castle, we were told, were required to set everything right, and render Ireland as peaceable and prosperous as any part of the British dominions. The conduct of James I. and Cromwell, in planting Saxon and Protestant colonies in Ulster, was in an essential manner held up to detestation, as one of the chief causes of the social and religious divisions which had over since distracted the country. Well, the Liberals have given all these things to the Irish. For twenty years, the island has been governed entirely on these principles. They have got Catholic emancipation, a reduction of the Protestant church, national education, corporate reform, parliamentary reform, monster meetings, ceaseless agitation, and, in fact, all the objects for which, in common with the Liberal party in Great Britain, they have so long contended. And what has been the result? Is it that pauperism has disappeared, industry flourished, divisions died away, prosperity become general? So far from it, divisions never have been so bitter, dissension never so general, misery so grinding, suffering so universal, since the British standards, under Henry II., seven centuries ago, first approached their shores. A rebellion has broken out; anarchy and agitation, by turning the people aside from industry, have terminated in famine; and even the stream of English charity seems dried up, from the immensity of the suffering to be relieved, and the ingratitude with which it has heretofore been received. And what do the Liberals now do? Why, they put it all down to the score of the incurable indolence and heedlessness of the Celtic race, which nothing can eradicate, and cordially support Sir R. Peel's proposal to plant English colonies in Connaught, exactly similar to Cromwell's in Ulster, so long the object of Liberal hatred and declamation! They tell us now that the native Irish are irreclaimable helots, hewers of wood and drawers of water, and incapable of improvement till directed by Saxon heads and supported by the produce of Saxon hands. They forget that it is these very helots whom they represented as such immaculate and valuable subjects, the victims of Saxon injustice and Ulster misrule. They forget that English capitalists and farmers would long since have migrated to Ireland, and induced corn cultivation in its western and southern provinces, were it not that Liberal agitation kept the people in a state of menacing violence, and Liberal legislation took away all prospect of remunerating prices for their grain produce. And thus much for the Crowning of the Column of Free Trade, and Crushing of the Pedestal of the Nation.

POSTSCRIPT

The discussion on the Canadian question, in the House of Lords, has had one good effect. It has elicited from Lord Lyndhurst a most powerful and able speech, in the best style of that great judge and distinguished statesman's oratory; and it has caused Lord Campbell to make an exhibition of spleen, ill-humour, and bad taste, which his warmest friends must have beheld with regret, and which was alone wanting to show the cogent effect which Lord Lyndhurst's speech had made on the house. Of the nature of Lord Campbell's attack on that able and venerable judge, second to none who ever sat in Westminster Hall for judicial power and forensic eloquence, some idea may be formed from the observations in reply of Lord Stanley: —

"I must say for myself, and I think I may say for the rest of the house, and not with the exception of noble lords on the opposite side of it, that they listened to that able, lucid, and powerful speech (Lord Lyndhurst's) with a feeling of anything but pain – a feeling of admiration at the power of language, the undiminished clearness of intellect – (cheers) – the conciseness and force with which my noble and learned friend grappled with the arguments before him, and which, while on the one hand they showed that age had in no degree impaired the vigour of that power, on the other added to the regret at the announcement he made of his intention so seldom to occupy the attention of the house. (Hear, hear.) But I should have thought that if there were one feeling it was impossible for any man to entertain after hearing that speech, it would be a feeling in any way akin to that which led the noble and learned lord to have introduced his answer to that speech by any unworthy taunts. (Loud cheers.) His noble and learned friend's high position and great experience, his high character and eminent ability, might have secured him in the honoured decline of his course from any such unworthy taunts – (great cheering) – as the noble and learned lord has not thought it beneath him on such an occasion to address to such a man. (Renewed cheering.) If the noble and learned lord listened with pain to the able statement of my noble and learned friend, sure am I that there is no friend of the noble and learned lord who must not have listened with deeper pain to what fell from him on this occasion." – Times, 20th June 1849.

And of the feeling of the country, on this uncalled-for and unprovoked attack, an estimate may be formed from the following passage of the Times on the subject: – "This debate has also recalled to the scene of his former triumphs the undiminished energy and vigorous eloquence of Lord Lyndhurst. That it supplied Lord Campbell with the opportunity of making a series of remarks in the worst possible taste on that aged and distinguished peer is, we suspect, a matter on which neither the learned lord nor any of his colleagues will be disposed to look back with satisfaction." – Times, 22d June 1849.

What Lord Campbell says of Lord Lyndhurst is, that he was once a Liberal and he has now become a Conservative: that the time was when he would have supported such a bill as that which the Canadian parliament tendered to Lord Elgin, and that now he opposes it. There is no doubt of the fact: experience has taught him the errors of his early ways; he has not stood all day gazing at the east because the sun rose there in the morning – he has looked around him, and seen the consequences of those delusive visions in which, in common with most men of an ardent temperament, he early indulged. In doing so, he has made the same change as Pitt and Chatham, as Burke and Mackintosh, as Windham and Brougham, as Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey. There are men of a different stamp – men whom no experience can teach, and no facts wean from error – who retain in advanced life the prejudices and passions of their youth, and signalise declining years by increased personal ambition and augmented party spleen. Whatever Lord Lyndhurst may be, he is not one of them. He has not won his retiring allowance by a week's service in the Court of Chancery. He can look back on a life actively spent in the public service, and enjoy in his declining years the pleasing reflection, that the honours and fortune he has won are but the just meed of a nation's gratitude, for important public services long and admirably performed.

The Canadian question, itself, on which ministers so narrowly escaped shipwreck in the House of Peers (by a majority of THREE) appears to us to lie within a very small compass. Cordially disapproving as we do of the bill for indemnifying the rebels which the Canadian ministry introduced and the Canadian parliament passed, we yet cannot see that any blame attaches to Lord Elgin personally for giving the consent of government to the bill. Be the bill good or bad, just or unjust, it had passed the legislature by a large majority, and Lord Elgin would not have been justified in withholding his consent, any more than Queen Victoria would have been in refusing to pass the Navigation Laws Bill. The passing of disagreeable and often unjust laws, by an adverse majority, is a great evil, no doubt; but it is an evil inherent in popular and responsible government, for which the Canadian loyalists equally with the Canadian rebels contended. Let our noble brethren in Canada reflect on this. The Conservatives of England have for long seen a series of measures pass the legislature, which they deem destructive to the best interests of their country; but they never talked of separating from their Liberal fellow-citizens on that account, or blamed the Queen because she affixed the royal assent to their bills. They are content to let time develop the consequences of these acts; and meanwhile they direct all their efforts to enlighten their countrymen on the subject, and, if possible, regain a preponderance in the legislature for their own party. The Canadian loyalists, second to none in the British empire in courage, energy, and public spirit, will doubtless see, when the heat of the contest is over, that it is by such conduct that they will best discharge their duty to their country.

notes

1

The Island of Sardinia. By John Warre Tyndale. 3 vols., post 8vo.

2

"The game agitators are individuals who suffer a little, and see their brethren suffering more, and who have their feelings annoyed; and those who are not hurt at all by game, but will strike at any public wrong." – Speech of Mr Munro, one of the Council of the Association.

3

Lecture on the Game Laws, by R. Wilson, &c., March 22, 1848.

4

Ibid.

5

Ibid.

6

Address in Mr Welford's Influences of the Game Laws.

7

The statute of 1600, prohibiting hunting and hawking to those who had not "the revenues requisit in sik pastimes," is plainly one of a sumptuary tenor, and not properly a game law.

8

It is right to mention, that there is some discrepancy in the estimates of Mr Bright's authorities on this point, of whom Mr Gayford is comparatively moderate; for we have others who, (upon, no doubt, equally sound data,) think two hares is the proper equivalent; and Mr Back of Norfolk is convinced that one hare is worse than a sheep; in other words, that one hare will eat up a statute acre. On the other hand, Mr Berkeley weighed the full stomachs of a large hare, and an average Southdown sheep, and found them as one to fifty-five. So that, if the accounts of Mr Gayford and his confrères are right, we have arrived at a law in physiological science equally new and surprising – that the digestive powers of animals increase in a compound inverse ratio to the capacity of the digestive organs!

9

Scotsman, February 12, 1848.

10

Compare these facts with the preposterous statements which the latest orator of the league, Mr M. Crichton, has been repeating to listening zanies at Greenock, Glasgow, and Edinburgh, that "the commitments arising from game laws amount to ONE-FOURTH of the whole crime of the country."

11

Return of game-law offences during the years 1843-7

12

Evidence, Part i. 1414; ii. 7647, 7651.

13

Shaw, ii. 147.

14

Cicero, De Fin., ii. 1.

15

"No great state can long remain quiet; if it has not an enemy abroad, it finds one at home, as powerful bodies resist all external attacks, but are destroyed by their internal strength." – Livy.

16

"While each separately fights, all are conquered." – Tacitus.

17

– In Re Cruikshanks, in Chancery, Times, June 6th, 1849.

18

– London Gazette, 20th April, 1849.

19