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or time in this short month of February, we could show that this was the tap-root of whatever error may have disfigured his Lordship's arguments on this important question. His Lordship quoted the saying of Sir Josiah Child-that" Land and trade were so linked together that it could never be ill with trade but that land should also suffer." True. But it does not therefore follow that, if you surrender all that is demanded by trade, land must necessarily be benefited. On the contrary, the two powers are, by the law of society, antagonistic, and a balance must be struck between them, in reference to an antecedent principle pre-involving their mutual relations. This principle regards both classes, prothetically, so to speak; and their reciprocal well-being depends on the working it out with equity and according to strict rule, so far as the element in which it works will permit. Of this truth, Sir Josiah Child was aware, and hence was careful to add to the former saying, this one also-" It never can be ill with land, but trade must suffer."

The year 1773-4, Lord Brougham tells us, was an extraordinary one for the manufacturing counties. Hear the eloquent terms in which he speaks of the time :-"The mines of this country, abounding with wealth, poured out their rich treasures, and were worked up into innumerable tools of the most exquisite description; rocks were blasted; forests were cleared; and all the rich materials of the mine were worked up into elegant and useful implements; and by the power of steam the potency of human agency was enlarged, and the face of the country exhibited one skilful workshop, abounding with industrious and skilful artisans, and with the worthiest, and I wish I could say, the wealthiest of manufacturers. During all those years, notwithstanding ten years of one war and ten years of another war-notwithstanding the genius of Washington and the success of Napoleon-in defiance of all the fleets that America could crowd upon the water, and in despite of all the competition to which our arts and commerce had been exposed-not all these things could check the efforts of these wonderful

men.

Quos neque Tydides, nec Larissæus Achilles,
Non anni domuere decem, non mille carinæ.

Seeing the consequences of these things, observing that during these selfsame years the price of agricultural produce was exactly doubled, would there be the slightest reason-the smallest vestige of a pretence -to doubt that Josiah Child was right when he said, It never shall be ill with manufacturers, but the land too must feel it.""

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To prove this was of course Lord Brougham's point; to prove the opposite truth was equally of course that of the party opposed to him. "The English farmer," said the Duke of Buckingham, "could not compete with the foreign grower who had greater advantages and fewer difficulties." Earl Stanhope "most fully admitted that there was a great increase of foreign manufactories; he was aware that that increase had taken place in many districts, and that in some that had not been mentioned by the noble and learned lord. Such manufacturers had sprung up; but did the noble and learned lord suppose that if, by any legislative measures, the price of corn were lowered in this

country by one shilling a quarter, it would enable the British manufacturer to compete with the foreigner on the continent?" To undersell foreigners in their own markets, the scale of prices and of wages here must be reduced to the level of the continent. Even then we could not succeed in underselling the foreign market; for would the governments of those countries, to gratify the spirit of inordinate gain which distinguishes the manufacturers of this country, allow such importation to take place when it must utterly crush and extinguish their own manufacturers? Suppose that the English manufacturer could obtain a sort of patent and exclusive privilege, not only in this island and its colonies, but throughout the whole habitable globe, if other nations had the insanity to allow it; and if, which was equally impossible, the subjects of other powers had the baseness to submit to it— still to attain the object it would be requisite to reduce most considerably, not by one shilling, nor by five shillings, but by an enormous amount, the wages of labour in this country. If we reduce considerably the price of provisions, we at once drive out of employment a considerable number of agricultural labourers, and expose them to all the horrors of famine, or consign them to the tender mercies of the New Poor Law. The repeal of the Corn Laws would also revolutionise Ireland, and lead to the Repeal of the Union. In fine, Earl Stanhope concluded with doubting the right of the House of Commons to entertain a subject affecting the rate of wages, seeing that the labouring classes were not represented in that House.

The Duke of Richmond argued that, if the British manufacturers were damaged in the foreign market, and by the improvement which foreigners had introduced into their manufactures, they had themselves to blame in having permitted the exportation of British machinery. By the repeal of the Corn Laws the home market would suffer. Moreover, it had invariably been the case that the rate of wages was always reduced lower than the price of corn. In a few years, also, a great portion of the land would go out of cultivation.

The Duke of Wellington stated that when the Corn Laws were passed in 1804, their object was to afford protection to the agricultural interest of this country. An alteration might affect a large portion of the country; indeed all classes of Her Majesty's subjects. He firmly believed that the laws could not be altered without incurring great risk -without exposing the agricultural interest to great deprivations, and those connected with it to utter ruin; the fact being that agriculture could not exist without protection.

In reply, Lord Brougham denied that the price of labour is governed by the price of wheat; the price of labour is not regulated by the price of provisions, but by the demand and supply of labour itself. It was true enough that the price of provisions did affect labour in a round-about way, by increasing the population; but it was a great delusion to suppose that reduction in the price of labour did not benefit the workman as much as the master. He conceded that the more direct benefit was to the master, but it was ultimately greater to the workman.

Such is a philosophical analysis of the debate; the result of it was, that the existence of antagonist forces was demonstrated in the opposite

propositions adverted to; but the point of reconciliation was never so much as indicated.

In the House of Commons, on Tuesday, 19th Feb., the motion of Mr. Villiers came on. The only thing at all remarkable in the speech of the opener was a quotation from Solomon-" He that withholdeth the corn, the people shall curse him." Nor is it until we come to the speech of Lord Stanley, that we find anything again worthy of notice. "It was said," he remarked," that the Corn Laws were the cause of manufacturing distress; yet was it not proved that the number of manufacturers had increased? Consequently there must have been an increase in the amount of articles manufactured! He dared to say that the manufacturers did not make such large profits as formerly. But could that be expected when the nation lapsed into a state of peace, after a war of unusual duration? Take the case of the growth of a child! Was it to be said, because it grew three inches when it was six or seven years old, that therefore it was to grow in the same proportion at the age of nineteen, when it only grew one? And was it to be contended, that, because manufacturers in their infancy had been more prosperous than in their manhood, that the Corn Laws had been the cause of the change?" This is a most happy illustration, and has almost the face of direct analogical evidence, so germane is it to the question.

To the speech of Sir Robert Peel we have not room to do justice; so eloquent, so just, so comprehensive, yet so logically compact! "This," said he, " is a tenants' question as much as a landlords', and when the house came to the consideration of the main subject, they would find it was a labourers' question! The anticipated good could only arise from a reduction of wages; meantime, the labourer could not be benefited by a general alteration of the Corn Laws." Mr. Villiers had confessed that factories had been established, but with a grave face he added that no profit had been derived from them. Did gentlemen recollect, that when the farmer complained in 1833, that he was pursuing his avocations without profit, what ridicule they had cast upon him? In fine, Sir Robert Peel is of opinion, that, do what we may with the Corn Laws, while there is peace, we cannot make ourselves an exclusive cotton manufactory for the whole civilised world; nor should we repine at the progressive prosperity of other nations. To a feeling so cosmopolitical we cannot do other than respond. The motion was lost by a large majority. Ayes 172. Noes 361. Majority 189.

THE

MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

NEW SERIES-EDITED BY JOHN A. HERAUD, ESQ.

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IN Milton's dramatic efforts, the Greek theatre was always present to his imagination. From the writings of Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the shapes were derived in which his conceptions were embodied. The Greek drama being an effluence from the lyric poem, partook more of enjoyment than of action. The characters, also, were ideal and statuesque, and the whole possessed more of the poet and less of ordinary nature than is proper to the theatrical exhibitions of modern times. We expect repose in an epic, in a drama activity. But there is more activity and variety in the Iliad than in all the tragedies of Eschylus and Sophocles. Euripides, however, summoned the Muse of Tragedy to descend from the pedestal whereon she stood in plastic majesty, in the public places and beneath the open sky, and introduced her to the domestic hearth and the stirring intercourse of familiar occupation. Milton, in his Samson Agonistes, evidently endeavoured to reconcile the distinguishing characteristics of "these three tragick poets unequalled yet by any, and the best rule to all who endeavour to write tragedy." He has subordinated the chorus to the action, and blended both with unexampled skill and effect. But the character of Samson resembles most the Prometheus of Eschylus (which, it has been said, he had before taken as his model for Satan in the Paradise Lost), and the Edipus and Philoctetes of Sophocles. Yet it is not drawn as either of those great poets would have portrayed it. It is modified by the example of Euripides, and still more by the more daring departures, in recent times, from the models of the great fathers of tragedy; and particularly in his own country, by Shakspere, and Beaumont and Fletcher, "those two wild swans that sang together," of whose works several imitations occur in the Samson Agonistes. Though cast in the mould of the ideal, the poet has not elevated the character of Samson above the stature of humanity; but endeavoured, not in vain, to include it within certain limits of individuality; in which he was, perhaps, assisted by the similarity of his hero's fortunes with his own; and it is thought that he found the character a convenient outlet for the expression of his own feelings and opinions. Milton, however, must not be mistaken for an egotist. As a poet, he has nothing in common with that morbid

N. S.-VOL. I.

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representation of self in all his portraitures, which peculiarly distinguished the productions of one who was among the greatest of our own age and country. In whatever he does, indeed, the poet is always conspicuous, but never the man. This, as we have before observed, was also the case with Shakspere, for the purpose of keeping up the variety of the scene. Shakspere, however, produces his character in parts, and exhibits it at intervals; while with Milton it is always present, and, thoroughly elaborated, remains constantly before us; like an animated statue, miraculously eloquent of all the deeds done in the flesh, by the heroic person of whom it is representative.

It is amusing to read Hume's opinion of the genius of Shakspere. whom he describes as "born in a rude age, and educated in the lowest manner, without any instruction either from the world or from books." How it happened that knowledge, at all entrances, became quite shut out from the mind of Shakspere, requires solution; but if it be true, it is only the more astonishing how he contrived to exhibit the creations of his fancy in the moulds of the world in a manner so characteristic of his genius-it is still more surprising that he should have presented them with such ideal attributes as are only supposed producible by cultivated minds. But still the circumstances of Shakspere's early life are such as to justify us in distinguishing him, in all educational acquirements, from his great successor.

These, however, have, by some writers, been stated at too low a mark, and by others exaggerated beyond probability. There are evidences in his works of some acquaintance with the productions of classical antiquity. Certain it is that in many passages he has made excellent use of mythological embellishment, which, as the unlearned had not, in his day, the benefit of classical dictionaries, must have been derived to him from sources more immediate. If he drank not at the original fountains, the kindred spirit in which his allusions are conceived is not the least astonishing peculiarity of his most catholical genius, which by mere intuition could enter thus into the very soul of centuries long since departed, and of countries far away, and existing only as ruins among which lay "the ancient spirit," if not " dead," yet

"carelessly diffused

With languished head unpropt,
As one past hope, abandoned,
In slavish habit, ill-fitted weeds
O'erworn and soiled."

Shakspere's life, however, at no period had been of that scholastic habit, which was the ordinary mode of Milton's existence, and he was compelled, by the necessities of the stage in his times, to present a more popular exhibition of human nature to the audience than was to be found in the productions of Greece. The origin of the English drama was different from that of Greece, and was more of an original creation, for it was not an adaptation of a previous form of poetry to a different end, but a distinct species in itself, originating in specific principles, and the direct result of a peculiar tendency of human nature. Proceeding from that desire of imitation, to which Aristotle ascribes the origin of poetry, it had probably manifested itself before the representation of the

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