Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 393, July 1848

With such a book as this before us, we could go on alternately commenting and extracting until we had broken the back of the Number. Even now we are dying to pilfer the account of the late Glengarry's course with "Black Dulochan," and the no less exciting history of the three day's ruse with a roebuck. But abstinence is a virtue which is forced upon us in the present instance, rather from the lack of space than from any exercise of voluntary discretion; and we shall now leave the deer without further molestation for a season, hoping soon to encounter them in person with our rifle somewhere about the skirts of Cairn-Gorm.

This is, we have no hesitation in saying, the best work on deer-stalking which has yet been written; and the amount of information which it contains regarding the habits of the stag and roe, combined with the vivid pictures of which we have made such ample use, cannot fail to render it popular. In an antiquarian point of view, it is also highly interesting; for it embodies a large amount of traditionary lore, sketches of the clans, and fragments of Highland song, of much superior merit to those which have hitherto come into our hands. The disquisitions, too, upon the disappearance of some animals once indigenous to Scotland – such as the wolf, the elk, the wild bull, and the beaver – exhibit a great amount of research, and supply a gap which has long been wanted in the page of natural history.

One word to the authors – though we fear our words must travel a long way before they can reach them in a foreign land. Why should they not recast and add to their second volume, so as to make it a single and unrivalled work upon the noblest sports of the Highlands? If it has proved so fascinating, as in truth we have felt it, in the more cumbrous shape of notes, how much better would it be if issued, not as an appendage to the poems, but in a distinct and articulate form? Perpend upon this, John Sobieski and Charles Edward, at your leisure; and let us add, that we trust some of your more gloomy anticipations may fall short of reality; that the walks of Eilean-Agais, that little Eden of the north, may again be gladdened by your presence; and that the sound of your hunting-horns may once more be heard in the woods of Tarnaway, and on the hills near the sources of the Findhorn.

THE BURIED FLOWER

In the silence of my chamber,When the night is still and deep,And the drowsy heave of oceanMutters in its charmèd sleep,Oft I hear the angel voicesThat have thrill'd me long ago, —Voices of my lost companions,Lying deep beneath the snow.O, the garden I remember,In the gay and sunny spring,When our laughter made the thicketsAnd the arching alleys ring!O the merry burst of gladness!O the soft and tender tone!O the whisper never utter'dSave to one fond ear alone!O the light of life that sparkledIn those bright and bounteous eyes!O the blush of happy beauty,Tell-tale of the heart's surprise!O the radiant light that girdledField and forest, land and sea,When we all were young together,And the earth was new to me!Where are now the flowers we tended?Wither'd, broken, branch and stem;Where are now the hopes we cherish'd?Scatter'd to the winds with them.For ye, too, were flowers, ye dear ones!Nursed in hope and rear'd in love,Looking fondly ever upwardTo the clear blue heaven above:Smiling on the sun that cheer'd us,Rising lightly from the rain,Never folding up your freshnessSave to give it forth again:Never shaken, save by accentsFrom a tongue that was not free,As the modest blossom tremblesAt the wooing of the bee.O! 'tis sad to lie and reckonAll the days of faded youth,All the vows that we believed in,All the words we spoke in truth.Sever'd – were it sever'd onlyBy an idle thought of strife,Such as time might knit together;Not the broken chord of life!O my heart! that once so trulyKept another's time and tune,Heart, that kindled in the spring-tide,Look around thee in the noon.Where are they who gave the impulseTo thy earliest thought and flow?Look around the ruin'd garden —All are wither'd, dropp'd, or low!Seek the birth-place of the lily,Dearer to the boyish dreamThan the golden cups of Eden,Floating on its slumbrous stream;Never more shalt thou behold her —She, the noblest, fairest, best:She that rose in fullest beauty,Like a queen, above the rest.Only still I keep her imageAs a thought that cannot die,He who raised the shade of HelenHad no greater power than I.O! I fling my spirit backward,And I pass o'er years of pain;All I loved is rising round me,All the lost returns again.Blow, for ever blow, ye breezes,Warmly as ye did before!Bloom again, ye happy gardens,With the radiant tints of yore!Warble out in spray and thicket,All ye choristers unseen,Let the leafy woodland echoWith an anthem to its queen!Lo! she cometh in her beauty,Stately with a Juno grace,Raven locks, Madonna-braidedO'er her sweet and blushing face:Eyes of deepest violet, beamingWith the love that knows not shame, —Lips, that thrill my inmost beingWith the utterance of a name.And I bend the knee before her,As a captive ought to bow, —Pray thee, listen to my pleading,Sovereign of my soul art thou!O my dear and gentle lady,Let me show thee all my pain,Ere the words that late were prison'dSink into my heart again.Love, they say, is very fearfulEre its curtain be withdrawn,Trembling at the thought of errorAs the shadows scare the fawn.Love hath bound me to thee, lady,Since the well-remember'd dayWhen I first beheld thee comingIn the light of lustrous May.Not a word I dared to utter —More than he who, long ago,Saw the heavenly shapes descendingOver Ida's slopes of snow:When a low and solemn musicFloated through the listening grove,And the throstle's song was silenced,And the doling of the dove:When immortal beauty open'dAll its grace to mortal sight,And the awe of worship blendedWith the throbbing of delight.As the shepherd stood before themTrembling in the Phrygian dell,Even so my soul and beingOwn'd the magic of the spell;And I watch'd thee, ever fondly,Watch'd thee, dearest, from afar,With the mute and humble homageOf the Indian to a star.Thou wert still the Lady FloraIn her morning garb of bloom;Where thou wert was light and glory,Where thou wert not, dearth and gloom.So for many a day I follow'dFor a long and weary while,Ere my heart rose up to bless theeFor the yielding of a smile, —Ere thy words were few and brokenAs they answer'd back to mine,Ere my lips had power to thank theeFor the gift vouchsafed by thine.Then a mighty gush of passionThrough my inmost being ran;Then my older life was ended,And a dearer course began.Dearer! – O, I cannot tell theeWhat a load was swept away,What a world of doubt and darknessFaded in the dawning day!All my error, all my weakness,All my vain delusions fled:Hope again revived, and gladnessWaved its wings above my head.Like the wanderer of the desert,When, across the dreary sand,Breathes the perfume from the thicketsBordering on the promised land;When afar he sees the palm-treesCresting o'er the lonely well,When he hears the pleasant tinkleOf the distant camel's bell:So a fresh and glad emotionRose within my swelling breast,And I hurried swiftly onwardsTo the haven of my rest.Thou wert there with word and welcome,With thy smile so purely sweet;And I laid my heart before thee,Laid it, darling, at thy feet! —O ye words that sound so hollowAs I now recall your tone!What are ye but empty echoesOf a passion crush'd and gone?Wherefore should I seek to kindleLight, when all around is gloom?Wherefore should I raise a phantomO'er the dark and silent tomb?Early wert thou taken, Mary!In thy fair and glorious prime,Ere the bees had ceased to murmurThrough the umbrage of the lime.Buds were blowing, waters flowing,Birds were singing on the tree,Every thing was bright and glowing,When the angels came for thee.Death had laid aside his terror,And he found thee calm and mild,Lying in thy robes of whiteness,Like a pure and stainless child.Hardly had the mountain violetSpread its blossoms on the sod,Ere they laid the turf above thee,And thy spirit rose to God.Early wert thou taken, Mary!And I know 'tis vain to weep —Tears of mine can never wake theeFrom thy sad and silent sleep.O away! my thoughts are earthward!Not asleep, my love! art thou,Dwelling in the land of gloryWith the saints and angels now.Brighter, fairer far than living,With no trace of woe or pain,Robed in everlasting beauty,Shall I see thee once again,By the light that never fadeth,Underneath eternal skies,When the dawn of resurrectionBreaks o'er deathless Paradise.W. E. A.

HUZZA FOR THE RULE OF THE WHIGS!

Air – "Old Rosin the Beau."All ye who are true to the altar and throne,Come join in this ditty with me;And you who don't like it may let it alone,Or listen a little and see.How quietly now we may sleep in our beds,And waken as merry as grigs;Though fears of rebellion hang over our heads,We're safe while we're ruled by the Whigs.In the 'nineties we saw (I remember the day)Revolution disguised as Reform;But the country was saved in a different way,By the Pilot that weather'd the storm.Our vessel was steer'd by the bravest and best,And, except a few quality sprigs,The whole English nation had thought it a jestTo propose being ruled by the Whigs.But as matters now stand in this ill-fated realm,When old comrades will give us the slip,We are strangely compell'd to put men at the helm.To prevent them from scuttling the ship.Only think, for a moment, if Russell were out,How wild he'd be running his rigs!About popular rights he would make such a rout —'Tis lucky we're ruled by the Whigs.The Church – can you doubt what her danger would beWere Tories at present in power?Lord John, or his friends, we should certainly seeAttacking her posts every hour.But as long as the Bishops may help out his lease,He won't injure a hair of their wigs;Nay, he even proposes the list to increase —So huzza for the rule of the Whigs!If Grey were at large, how he'd lay down the lawOn the cures he for Ireland had found;And swear that he never would rest till he sawHer Establishment razed to the ground.But Grey, while in office, sits muffled and mum,Like a small bird asleep in the twigs;And Ward, in the Commons, is equally dumb —So huzza for the rule of the Whigs!If any of us had made war on RepealWith the weapons that Clarendon tries,What shrieks of indignant invective from ShielAt the wrongs of Old Erin would rise.By millions of noisy Milesians back'd,From the peer to the peasant that digs —How would Monaghan murmur that juries were pack'd! —So huzza for the rule of the Whigs!On Aliens or Chartists to hear them declaim,You'd think Castlereagh come from the dead.Though the mixture of metaphors isn't the same,And the courage and coolness are fled.But the Whigs are becoming respectable menAs any that ever kept gigs,They are practising now all they preach'd against then—So huzza for the rule of the Whigs!Go on, my good lads – never think of retreat,Though annoy'd by a squib or a squirt;You're fulfilling the fate such impostors should meet,And eating your bushel of dirtThen swallow it fast, for your hour may not last —We shall soon, if it pleases the pigs,Give your places to men of a different cast,And get rid of the rule of the Whigs!

THE NAVIGATION LAWS

"When the Act of Navigation," says Adam Smith, "was made, though England and Holland were not actually at war, the most violent animosity subsisted between the two nations. It is not impossible, therefore, that some of the regulations of this famous act may have proceeded from national animosity. They are as wise, however, as if they had all been dictated by the most deliberate wisdom. National animosity, at that particular time, aimed at the very object which the most deliberate wisdom would have recommended, – the diminution of the naval power of Holland, the only naval power which could endanger the security of England. The Act of Navigation is not favourable to foreign commerce, or to the growth of that opulence which can arise from it. As defence, however, is of much more value than opulence, the Act of Navigation is perhaps the wisest of all the commercial regulations of England."8 Before these pages issue from the press, this, undoubtedly the wisest of all the commercial regulations of Great Britain, and under which the maritime strength and colonial empire of England have risen to a pitch of grandeur unknown in any other age or country, will be numbered among the things which have been. The House of Commons, by a majority, have voted for the repeal of the Navigation Laws.

Free trade will soon have done its work, so far, at least, as the House of Commons is concerned. It is gradually but unceasingly advancing, and swallowing up successively all the great interests of the empire, save that of the capitalists, as it moves forward. The agricultural interests will find themselves deprived, in February next, of all protection; and the British cultivator exposed to the competition, without any shield save a nominal duty of 1s. a quarter, of states where wheat can be raised, with a fair profit in average years, at 18s. a quarter, and brought to this country for 10s. at the very utmost of freight. As soon as we have two fine harvests in succession, it will be seen to what state this system will reduce British rural production. The West India interests have been next assailed; and our colonies, upon whom free labour has been forced, upon a compensation being given to the proprietors on an average of a fourth of the value of their slaves, are speedily to be exposed, with no protection but a differential duty of 5s. 6d. a hundredweight, diminishing 1s. 6d. a-year, till, in 1854, it disappears, to the competition of slave colonies, where sugar can be raised for £4 a ton, while in the British colonies the measures of government have precluded its being raised for less than £10 a ton. As a natural consequence, cultivation is about to cease in those noble settlements; the forest and the jungle will speedily supplant the smiling plantations, and £100,000,000 worth of British property will be lost beyond redemption.

Domestic manufactures were at the same time assailed, though with a more gentle hand than rude produce. Protective duties on them were lowered, though not entirely removed; and the consequence is, that at this time there are 8000 hands wholly unemployed at Manchester, and above 10,000 at Glasgow, and distress to an unparalleled extent pervades the whole commercial and manufacturing classes. Nothing daunted by these calamitous results, so exactly what the opponents of free trade predicted would ensue, so diametrically the reverse of the unbounded prosperity which they promised the nation as the consequence of their changes, the Free-traders, in pursuance of their usual system of preferring their own opinions to the evidence of facts, are preparing to apply the same system to the commercial navy of the country, and, by the repeal of the Navigation Laws, against the opinion of Adam Smith, to depress our shipping interest as much as they encourage that of foreign states, and endanger our national existence, by crippling our own means of defence as much as they augment the means of attack in the hands of our enemies. Not content with rendering us dependent for a large part of our bread on foreign nations, they are determined on measures calculated to deprive us of the means of maintaining our naval superiority, or upholding the national independence. They are set upon saying the nation a few millions a-year in freight, though the consequence is, that we shall be alike unable to withstand a pacific blockade or hostile aggression.

Many estimable and thoughtful persons in the country, struck with astonishment at the adoption and determined adherence to such a suicidal policy – alike by our rulers and a powerful party in the country – in the face of the decisive evidence afforded by facts, and the universal distress of the nation, as to its ruinous tendency, have come to the opinion, that we have been struck with a judicial blindness, and that Providence, as a just punishment for our sins, and for the furtherance of its mysterious designs in the general government of mankind, has rendered our own infatuation the means of working out our destruction. They think it affords a marvellous proof of the weakness of the human mind, and the impotence of man against the arm of his Creator, that this vast empire, which has done such mighty things in the annals of history, and which has stood proof against the hostility of the combined world, directed by consummate ability, when its rule was that of justice, should thus crumble away and perish, not from external violence or foreign aggression, but solely from domestic infatuation, when that rule has passed away. And observing that this country has already suffered greater losses, and been more severely crippled in its resources by the effects of three years of free trade and fettered currency policy, than by the whole efforts of France during a war of twenty years – and still the same course is blindly persevered in – they draw the conclusion that the evil is irremediable by human means, and that the nation, if not absolutely shipwrecked, will approach as near the verge of ruin as the providence of God will permit human infatuation to effect.

Without denying that there is much truth in these observations, and humbly acknowledging a Divine superintendence alike in the rise and the decline, the prosperity and decay, of nations, it yet appears more reasonable to trace the extraordinary obstinacy of the ruling party in the nation to the causes which, humanly speaking, seem to have been mainly instrumental in producing it. The fanaticism of the political economists, who, like all other fanatics, are inaccessible to reason or experience, is, without doubt, a main cause of the disastrous policy to which the nation seems now irrevocably pledged. But a still more powerful agent in producing the determined adherence to this system, in the face of the most conclusive evidence of its pernicious tendency, is to be found in the class government which it is now apparent the Reform Bill has imposed upon the nation. It is now unhappily proved that the trading interest, in whom a decisive majority both in the constituency and the number of seats in parliament has been vested by the Reform Bill, are alive, like all other classes, mainly to the suggestions of their own advantage; and that advantage they think is, to buy cheap and sell dear. Whatever we were in the days when Napoleon said it, we are now, if not a nation of shopkeepers, at least a nation ruled by shopkeepers. The colonies are entirely unrepresented. Schedules A and B, sixteen years ago, cut off all their representatives. The landed interest is in a minority, from two-thirds of the seats in the Commons being for boroughs; and those boroughs, owing to the depression of the producing classes by the currency laws, and the vast increase of the trading interests from the same cause, being for the most part under the direction of the commercial part of the community. It is in these circumstances that we are to look for the real causes of the adoption of free-trade principles of late years by our statesmen, and the determined adherence to it, in spite of all experience, by a majority of the House of Commons. Such conduct is the inevitable result of every uniform system of representation, because that lands the government in the class government of the majority, composed of a particular interest. The evil was not felt under the old constitution, because it was not a class government, being based on a multifarious, not a uniform representation. Its defects, as they are now called, i. e. its nomination boroughs, combined with the extension of our colonial and shipping interests, had let in a most efficient representation of all the interests in the empire, as well as that of the inhabitants of those islands, into the House of Commons. It is to this cause that the protection of all interests by the old House of Commons is to be ascribed. Doubtless, under the old system the Corn Laws would have been upheld; but the West Indies would have been saved from ruin, domestic industry rescued from bankruptcy and the Navigation Laws, the palladium of our national independence, preserved from destruction.

That the Navigation Laws have been a great advantage to our shipowners and seafaring interests is self-evident. They afforded superior advantages in conducting the trade of the empire to British over foreign shipowners; and they nursed up, accordingly, the immense and hardy body of British seamen, who have founded and protected our colonial empire, and rendered Great Britain the terror and admiration of the world. What, then, is the great benefit which is anticipated from the repeal of laws, the practical operation of which has been attended with such uniform and unparalleled benefits? The benefit is, that it will save our merchants some millions a-year in the payment of freights. It is calculated by the Free-traders that £30,000,000 yearly is paid by Great Britain for freights; and of this sum, it is thought a fourth, or £7,500,000 yearly, may be saved by the employment of foreign instead of British sailors in the conducting of our commerce, or the reduction of freight and seamen's wages in these islands, which will result from their unrestrained competition. This is the benefit to attain which our Navigation Laws, the nursery of our seamen, are to be sacrificed. And the question to be considered is, – Is the gain real, or apparent only; and, supposing it is real, is it worth the risk with which it is attended?

Is the advantage real, or apparent only? Concede to the Free-traders all they contend for: call the saving to the nation annually in freights, to be effected by free trade in shipping, not £7,500,000 but £10,000,000 annually. The strength of the argument will admit of almost any concession. Admit this, and consider what it is worth, and on whom it is made. It is not worth a fiftieth part of the revenue of the nation, which, in the produce of land and manufactures alone, is above £500,000,000 annually. A week of sunshine in autumn, a favourable set of Fall orders from America, the stoppage of a revolution in Europe, are each worth more to the nation. But, such as it is, from whom is it gained? Why, it is all gained from our own people: it is a saving effected to one class of our inhabitants by impoverishing another class. If our merchants and the purchasers from them pay £20,000,000 a-year for freight of goods sea-borne, instead of £30,000,000 as formerly, undoubtedly there is a saying of £10,000,000 to them, or the consumers who buy from them. But of whom is this saving made? From whom is it derived? Is it not from our shipbuilders, shipowners, and seamen, who get so much the less: either by being driven out of the market by foreign mercantile navies, or by getting their own profits or wages reduced by external competition to that amount? Ten millions now earned by shipowners and sailors in Great Britain, is, on the most favourable supposition for the Free-traders, taken from them, and given to the dealers in or consumers of the commodities which they transport. Is the nation, as a whole, any gainer by that transfer? If ten pounds are taken from John and given to James, are John and James, taken together, any gainers by the transfer? And is not the great family of the nation composed of all its members, not of John only, but of John and James taken together? Is not the repeal of the Navigation Laws, in this view robbing Peter to pay Paul? This is the mighty advantage, for the attainment of which we are going to crush by external competition our mercantile shipping; and endanger the national independence, by withering the nursery of the navy, by which it can alone be maintained! Can there be a stronger proof of how completely, by the operation of the Reform Bill, we have fallen under the influence of class government; and how entirely such class government blinds the vision even of the most clear-sighted, to any thing but the perception of its own immediate interests?

The evidence taken before the Commons' committee, on the comparative cost of building and navigating ships in the north of Europe and in this country, comes to this, that both are about twice as expensive in this country as on the shores of the Baltic. A copper-sheathed vessel, which there costs £4500, cannot here be constructed for less than £9000: a master's wages there, which are £2, 11s. a month, are here £5 for the same period: seamen's, there 7d. a day, besides provisions, &c., are here 1s. 2d. Every thing else is in the same proportion. Shipbuilding and ship-navigating are twice as costly in Great Britain as they are in Norway and Denmark. How could it be otherwise, when they have the materials of ships and rigging at their doors, while we have to transport them to the British shores from Canada or the Baltic; and they are the poor nations, whose money being scarce goes far, and we are the rich one, whose money being comparatively plentiful goes but a little way. Compare the cost of living in London during the season, with what it is in Aberdeen or Inverness, and you will at once see the main cause of the extraordinary difference in the value of money, and consequently in the money-price of articles, in the two situations. The difference in the cost of shipbuilding and seamanship, viz. one half, is nearly the same as the difference in the cost of raising sugar in our free-labour colonies and the foreign slave ones, which is £10 a ton in the former situation, and £4 in the latter. And it is in the perfect knowledge of the entire ruin which the approach even to a free trade in sugar has brought, under these circumstances, upon the British West India islands, that government are prepared to force a similar disastrous competition upon the British shipowners, and through them on the palladium of British independence, the royal navy.