Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 70, No. 434, December, 1851

Something of this character had Randal heard of the Baron, and he now gazed, first at his card, and then at him, with – admiration.

"I met a friend of yours at Borrowwell's the other day," resumed the Baron – "Young Hazeldean. Careful fellow – quite a man of the world."

As this was the last praise poor Frank deserved, Randal again smiled.

The Baron went on – "I hear, Mr Leslie, that you have much influence over this same Hazeldean. His affairs are in a sad state. I should be very happy to be of use to him, as a relation of my friend Egerton's; but he understands business so well that he despises my advice."

"I am sure you do him injustice."

"Injustice! I honour his caution. I say to every man, 'Don't come to me – I can get you money on much easier terms than any one else;' and what's the result? You come so often that you ruin yourself; whereas a regular usurer without conscience frightens you. 'Cent per cent,' you say; 'oh, I must pull in.' If you have influence over your friend, tell him to stick to his bill-brokers, and have nothing to do with Baron Levy."

Here the minister's bell rung, and Randal, looking through the window, saw Dr F. walking to his carriage, which had made way for Baron Levy's splendid cabriolet – a cabriolet in the most perfect taste – Baron's coronet on the dark brown panels – horse black, with such action! – harness just relieved with plating. The servant now entered, and requested Randal to step in; and addressing the Baron, assured him that he would not be detained a minute.

"Leslie," said the minister, sealing a note, "take this back to Lord – , and say that I shall be with him in an hour."

"No other message? – he seemed to expect one."

"I dare say he did. Well, my letter is official, my message is not; beg him to see Mr – before we meet – he will understand – all rests upon that interview."

Egerton then, extending the letter, resumed gravely, "Of course you will not mention to any one that Dr F. was with me: the health of public men is not to be suspected. Hum – were you in your own room or the ante-room?"

"The ante-room, sir."

Egerton's brow contracted slightly. "And Mr Levy was there, eh?"

"Yes – the Baron."

"Baron! true. Come to plague me about the Mexican loan, I suppose. I will keep you no longer."

Randal, much meditating, left the house, and re-entered his hack cab. The Baron was admitted to the statesman's presence.

CHAPTER XIV

Egerton had thrown himself at full length on the sofa, a position exceedingly rare with him; and about his whole air and manner, as Levy entered, there was something singularly different from that stateliness of port common to the austere legislator. The very tone of his voice was different. It was as if the statesman – the man of business – had vanished; it was rather the man of fashion and the idler, who, nodding languidly to his visitor, said, "Levy, what money can I have for a year?"

"The estate will bear very little more. My dear fellow, that last election was the very devil. You cannot go on thus much longer."

"My dear fellow!" Baron Levy hailed Audley Egerton as "my dear fellow." And Audley Egerton, perhaps, saw nothing strange in the words, though his lip curled.

"I shall not want to go on thus much longer," answered Egerton, as the curl on his lip changed to a gloomy smile. "The estate must, meanwhile, bear £5000 more."

"A hard pull on it. You had really better sell."

"I cannot afford to sell at present. I cannot afford men to say, 'Audley Egerton is done up – his property is for sale.'"

"It is very sad when one thinks what a rich man you have been – and may be yet!"

"Be yet! How?"

Baron Levy glanced towards the thick mahogany doors – thick and impervious, as should be the doors of statesmen. "Why, you know that, with three words from you, I could produce an effect upon the stocks of three nations, that might give as each a hundred thousand pounds. We would go shares."

"Levy," said Egerton coldly, though a deep blush overspread his face, "you are a scoundrel; that is your look-out. I interfere with no man's tastes and conscience. I don't intend to be a scoundrel myself. I have told you that long ago."

The Baron laughed, without evincing the least displeasure.

"Well," said he, "you are neither wise nor complimentary, but you shall have the money. But yet, would it not be better," added Levy, with emphasis, "to borrow it, without interest, of your friend L'Estrange?"

Egerton started as if stung.

"You mean to taunt me, sir!" he exclaimed, passionately. "I accept pecuniary favours from Lord L'Estrange! I!"

"Tut, my dear Egerton, I dare say my Lord would not think so ill now of that little act in your life which – "

"Hold!" exclaimed Egerton, writhing. "Hold!"

He stopped, and paced the room, muttering in broken sentences, "To blush before this man! Chastisement, chastisement!"

Levy gazed on him with hard and sinister eyes. The minister turned abruptly.

"Look you, Levy," said he, with forced composure – "you hate me – why, I know not. I have never injured you – never avenged the inexpiable wrong you did me."

"Wrong! – you a man of the world! Wrong! Call it so if you will, then," he added shrinkingly, for Audley's brow grew terrible. "But have I not atoned it? Would you ever have lived in this palace, and ruled this country as one of the most influential of its ministers, but for my management – my whispers to the wealthy Miss Leslie? Come, but for me what would you have been – perhaps a beggar?"

"What shall I be now if I live? Then I should not have been a beggar; poor perhaps in money, but rich – rich in all that now leaves my life bankrupt. Gold has not thriven with me; how should it? And this fortune – it has passed for the main part into your hands. Be patient, you will have it all ere long. But there is one man in the world who has loved me from a boy, and woe to you if ever he learn that he has the right to despise me!"

"Egerton, my good fellow," said Levy, with great composure, "you need not threaten me, for what interest can I possibly have in tale-telling to Lord L'Estrange? As to hating you – pooh! You snub me in private, you cut me in public, you refuse to come to my dinners, you'll not ask me to your own; still, there is no man I like better, nor would more willingly serve. When do you want the £5000?"

"Perhaps in one month, perhaps not for three or four. Let it be ready when required."

"Enough; depend on it. Have you any other commands?"

"None."

"I will take my leave, then. By the by, what do you suppose the Hazeldean rental is worth – net?"

"I don't know, nor care. You have no designs upon that, too?"

"Well, I like keeping up family connections. Mr Frank seems a liberal young gentleman."

Before Egerton could answer, the Baron had glided to the door, and, nodding pleasantly, vanished with that nod.

Egerton remained, standing on his solitary hearth. A drear, single man's room it was, from wall to wall, despite its fretted ceilings and official pomp of Bramah escritoires and red boxes. Drear and cheerless – no trace of woman's habitation – no vestige of intruding, happy children. There stood the austere man alone. And then with a deep sigh he muttered, "Thank heaven, not for long – it will not last long."

Repeating those words, he mechanically locked up his papers, and pressed his hand to his heart for an instant, as if a spasm had shot through it.

"So – I must shun all emotion!" said he, shaking his head gently.

In five minutes more, Audley Egerton was in the streets, his mien erect, and his step firm as ever.

"That man is made of bronze," said a leader of the Opposition to a friend as they rode past the minister. "What would I give for his nerves!"

JOHNSTON'S NOTES ON NORTH AMERICA

Notes on North America, Agricultural, Social, and Economical. By James F. W. Johnston, M.A., F.R.SS.L. and E., &c. Two Vols. post 8vo. William Blackwood & Sons.

Professor Johnston had three objects in view in his visit to the New World. His high reputation as an agricultural chemist had induced the Agricultural Society of New York to request him to give a course of lectures at Albany upon the connection of chemical and geological science with that of the cultivation of land. He had also been commissioned by the Government of New Brunswick to examine and report on the agricultural capabilities of that province. And besides these public duties, he was impelled by a strong desire to study the actual position of the art of husbandry in the fertile regions of the West, and the influence which its progress is likely to exert upon British agriculture.

Our shrewd brother Jonathan, however brilliant his achievements have been in other arts, has not hitherto earned any great reputation as a scientific farmer. Nature has been so bountiful to him, that, with "fresh fields and pastures new" ever before him, he has hitherto had no need to resort to the toilsome processes and anxious expedients – "curis acuens mortalia corda" – of our Old World systems of agriculture. On the newer lands of the Union, at least, the rotations followed, the waste of manures, and the general contempt of all method and economy, are such as would break the heart of a Haddingtonshire "grieve," and in a couple of seasons convert his trim acres into a howling wilderness. What would our respected friend Mr Caird say to a course of cropping like the following, which, though given by Professor Johnston as a specimen of New Brunswick farming, is the usual method followed on most of the new soils of North America? —

"He cuts down the wood and burns it, then takes a crop of potatoes, followed by one of wheat, with grass seeds. Nine successive crops of hay follow in as many years; after which the stumps are taken up, the land is ploughed, a crop of wheat is taken; it is then manured for the first time, or limed, and laid down again for a similar succession of crops of hay. This treatment is hard enough; but the unskilful man, after burning and spreading the ashes, takes two or three more crops of grain, leaves it to sow itself with grass, then cuts hay as long as it bears a crop which is worth cutting – after all which he either stumps and ploughs it, or leaves it to run again into the wilderness state." – (Johnston, vol. i. p. 104.)

Such a system seems, at first sight, to argue a barbarous ignorance of the very first elements of agriculture; and yet, as Professor Johnston remarks, "we English farmers and teachers of agricultural science, with all our skill, should probably, in the same circumstances, do just the same, so long as land was plenty, labour scarce and dear, and markets few and distant." Let no one suppose that our wide-awake kinsman does not know perfectly well what he is about. His apparently rude agricultural practice is regulated by a maxim which some of our Mechists at home would do well to bear in mind – that high farming is bad farming if it is not remunerative. He knows that to manure his land would be to insure the lodging and destruction of his crops, and he therefore leaves his straw to wither in the fields, and lives on in blessed ignorance of the virtues and cost of guano. To plough deep furrows in a virgin soil, saturated with organic matter, would be an idle waste of labour; and the primitive Triptolemus of Michigan scatters the seed upon the surface – or, raising a little mould on the point of a hoe, drops in a few grains of maize, covers them over, and heeds them no more till the golden pyramids are ripe for the knife. The first three crops, thus easily obtained, generally repay to the settler in the wilderness the expense of felling the timber, burning, and cultivating. If he then abandon it, he is at least no loser; but for eight or ten years the soil will still continue to produce crops of natural hay; and then, having extracted from it all that its spontaneous fertility will yield, he sells his possession for what it may bring, and moves off westward to repeat the same exhaustive process on a fresh portion of the forest, leaving to his successor the task of reinvigorating the severely tested powers of the soil by rest and restoratives.

This locust-like progress of the American settler – ever on the move to new lands, and leaving comparative barrenness in his track – must evidently place the case of America beyond the sphere of those ordinary laws of political economy which are applicable in European countries; and Professor Johnston seems to consider the fact of the incessant exhaustion and abandonment of lands as the chief key to a right understanding of the peculiar economical position of the United States. The owner of land in the older and more populous States, who has not learnt to apply a restorative system of culture, derives little benefit from the comparative advantage of situation, while the inhabitants of the towns and villages around him are fed with the surplus spontaneous produce of the far off clearings in Ohio or Missouri. But these in their turn become worn out – and as cultivation travels on westward, the chief centres of agricultural production are gradually receding farther and farther from the chief centres of population and consumption; and this increasing distance, and consequent cost of transport, is every year enhancing the price of grain in the busy and crowded marts of the West – ever filling up with the incessant stream of immigration from Europe. Such is Mr Johnston's view of the present normal condition of the Union in regard to the sustenance of her people; and he makes it the ground-work, as we shall presently see, of certain rather doubtful inferences, of some importance in their bearing on the agriculture of this country. One consequence, however, of any material increase in the price of food in the Eastern States of the Union is very obvious – the proprietor of land in these districts will gradually be enabled to apply, with profit to his exhausted soil, the artificial aids and costlier system of culture followed in Britain. Already this result is apparent in Professor Johnston's account of the energetic spirit of agricultural improvement which is rapidly spreading over most of the New England States. In the keen, restless, and enterprising New Englander, our Old Country farmers will undoubtedly find a more formidable competitor, for the honour of the first place in agricultural advancement, than any they have yet met on this side of the Atlantic. We have seen this year what his invention can produce in mechanical contrivances for economising the labour of the field; and, that he is not indifferent to the aids which science can afford him, is sufficiently proved by the occasion of that visit to America of which Professor Johnston has here given so pleasant and instructive a record. The invitation was not more creditable to the character of the Professor, than to the discernment of the zealous and patriotic men who thus showed how correctly they apprehend the true method of improving their fine country. His engagement was fulfilled during the sitting of the State Legislature at Albany in January 1850, when the hall of the Assembly was given up to him as a lecture-room; the leading members of the Assembly and of the State Agricultural Society were among his auditors, and the greatest public interest was evinced in the important subjects of his prelections.

It is apparent, from many passages of the Notes, that the author has listened too confidingly to the flattering tale – the "canor mulcendas natus ad aures" of the syren of Free Trade. He seems to be gifted with a strong natural faith, and a patriotic confidence in what British enterprise, and especially British agriculture, can achieve in the way of surmounting difficulties. It is not perhaps to be wondered at that one, whose professional pursuits naturally lead him to place a high value upon the aids which science has in store for the agriculturist, should encourage the farmer to think lightly of his present difficulties, and keep up his spirits with the hope of some paulo-post-future prosperity. It must be allowed that the farmer, poor fellow, has not wanted abundance of kind friends to comfort him in his adversity. Generally, however, their consolations – like those of the sympathetic Mrs Gamp – have been rather indefinite – vague moralisings upon his calamity, as if it were some inevitable stroke of Providence, to be bowed to in silent resignation, and hazy anticipations of good luck awaiting him. Others, again – who have professed the greatest friendship for him, and, like the Knight of Netherby, have come down to hearten up the broken-down man by imparting to him some plan of theirs, as sheep-pasturage or the like, for setting him on his legs again – are mentally taking an inventory of his remaining chattels, and calculating when to send the sheriff's officer. But Professor Johnston belongs to neither of these classes of comforters. His opinion, we know, is at least disinterested, and he brings it before us in the shape of a distinct proposition – viz., that the wheat-exporting capabilities of the United States are not so great as have generally been supposed, and that, as they must diminish rather than increase in future, the prospect of competition with American produce need cause no alarm to the British farmer.

This opinion, coming from such an authority, claims a deliberate examination; and the more so that, in the dearth of other gratulatory topics, it has been eagerly laid hold of by the Edinburgh Review, the Economist, and other Free-Trade organs, and vaunted as a complete proof that protective duties are quite unnecessary.

The reasons which Professor Johnston assigns for believing that the present wheat-exporting powers of the United States have been exaggerated, may be passed over with very little comment. The Board of Trade returns leave no room for doubt as to the quantity that has actually reached this country, and it is therefore unnecessary for us to follow him through his hypothetical estimate of the exportable grain, grounded on what they ought to have had to spare for us. We may remark, however, that the data on which his calculations proceed are far from satisfactory. He shows that all the wheat produced in the United States, as given in the estimates of the Patent Office, is inadequate to afford the eight bushels which in England we reckon to be requisite for the annual supply of each inhabitant – the population of the Union being about twenty-one millions, and the produce of wheat one hundred and twenty-seven millions of bushels. He does not overlook altogether the fact that wheat is not in America, as it is with us, almost the sole cereal food of the people; and he admits that a considerable allowance must be made for the consumption of Indian corn instead of wheat. But how much? – That is the question. The compilers of the State Papers at Washington estimate that Indian corn, buckwheat, and other grain, form so large a proportion of the food of the people, that they require only three bushels of wheat per head; and no doubt they have good grounds for this calculation. Professor Johnston, however, without indicating any reason whatever for his assumption, has set down the consumption of each individual at five bushels per annum; and thus, by a stroke of his pen, he reduces the average exportable surplus of the Union to only three millions of quarters.

As to what may be expected in future – Professor Johnston anticipates the gradual diminution of the supply, from the circumstance, already adverted to, of the progressive exhaustion of the newer lands of the Union, and the rapid increase of population in the old. If several of the Western States, he argues, have even already ceased to raise enough wheat for the supply of their present inhabitants, and are compelled to draw largely on the produce of the remote States of Illinois, Ohio, &c. – and if the productive power of these new lands is annually becoming less, the virgin soils more distant, and the transport of subsistence more difficult – if this is the state of matters now, what will it be in 1860, when immigration and natural increase will probably have raised the population of the Union to some thirty-four millions? "It is very safe," he concludes, "to say that in 1860 their wheat-exporting capability will have become so small as to give our British farmers very little cause for apprehension." It may perchance occur to these gentlemen, that the consolation Professor Johnston here offers them is not very cheering after all; and as long as they see the provision stores in every market town piled up with the interloping flour barrels of New York, and their own waggons returning home with their loads unsold, it is not to be wondered at if they are not greatly exhilarated with the prospect of what may possibly happen nine years hence. And slender as is the hope deferred here held out to them, it rests, we fear, on very questionable grounds.

Professor Johnston's opinion is founded on two suppositions: 1st, That the exhaustion of the Western States, on which he dwells so much, is proceeding so rapidly as already to affect the markets of the eastern districts; 2d, That these older districts will be unable to increase the quantity of produce raised within their own boundaries, without so adding to its cost as to prevent its being profitably exported.

As to the first supposition, it may be conceded that, in the course of time, a period must necessarily come when the spontaneous fertility of the newer-settled States will cease to yield grain with the same bountiful abundance it has done hitherto. But, when may that period be expected to arrive? – to what extent has exhaustion already taken place? – and what is the rate of its progress? For a reply, we have only to point to that vast territory, bounded by the lakes on the north and Ohio on the south, comprising the five States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin – a territory eight times the size of England and Wales, with a population about equal to that of Scotland, containing 180,000,000 acres of arable land, a large portion of which is of surprising fertility – and ask whether it is possible to believe that it has already reached the turning point of its wheat-productiveness,1 or can by any possibility do so for centuries to come? Why, the extent of land advertised in these five States for sale, (which forms only a fraction of what still remains in the hands of government,) is greater by a fourth than the whole area of England; and of the territory that has been actually sold, it is estimated that five-sevenths is still unreclaimed from the wilderness. Then look at the means of transport provided for conveying the overflowing abundance of those rich alluvial regions to the markets of the East, by way of the two great outlets – the lakes on the north, and the Mississippi on the south. The cost of such transport is no doubt considerable; the conveyance of a quarter of wheat from the centre of Illinois to Boston, by New Orleans, averages about 16s. 6d. But, nevertheless, so trifling is the original cost of production, that immense quantities of corn do annually reach the eastern seaboard by this route, a considerable portion of which is re-shipped to Liverpool, and sold there at prices greatly below its cost of production in this country. The annexed table2 shows the remarkable fact, that, of the whole quantity of grain exported from the United States in the five years 1842-6, twelve-thirteenths of the wheat, about one-half of the flour, and a large proportion of the Indian corn, came from the two ports of New York and Philadelphia alone. Now, as we know that these large supplies were not grown within the confines of the Eastern States, and must have been brought from the westward, the inference is obvious that the two causes insisted on by Professor Johnston – the distance of the virgin soils, and the expense of transport – are as yet inoperative; or at least that they have not prevented the transmission of grain to the east in such vast quantities, as not only to meet the wants of all the population of that part of the Union, but to afford an average surplus for exportation to other countries equivalent to the annual maintenance of a million and a half of men. We need only mention one other fact, which seems in itself a sufficient refutation of the theory Professor Johnston has taken up. The causes which he thinks are so soon to dry up the supplies now derived from the West are of no recent or sudden emergence. The process of exhaustion on the new lands, and the rapid population of the old, has been going on for many years. If, then, these causes are so influential as he imagines, their effects should at least be apparent in a gradual increase of the prices of bread-stuffs in the Eastern States. Now, no such effect is to be found. On the contrary, we find that, during the last twenty years, the price of wheat, as well as of maize, in the chief marts of the east, has been steadily diminishing, instead of increasing. We extract from the returns published by the Board of Trade the annexed comparison3 of the prices of wheat flour at New York, during two periods, from which it appears that, in the very State where the results of Professor Johnston's hypothesis ought to have been most manifest, the experience of twenty years shows a reduction of price instead of an enhancement, notwithstanding that the latter period in the comparison embraces the years of the potato failure. An examination of similar returns from Baltimore and New Orleans establishes the same fact, namely, that the tendency of prices for twenty years past is not upwards, but downwards– a fact quite irreconcilable with the supposed rapid exhaustion of the wheat soils of the interior.