Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 68, No. 417, July, 1850

Most important testimony to the same effect was borne, at the recent meeting in Liverpool, by gentlemen who, from profession and connection, belong to the mercantile and trading classes of the community. It is no vague apprehension of coming evil, no slight or ephemeral touch of distress, which has elicited declarations of opinion so strong as were there expressed. The urgency of the case is felt and acknowledged; and ere long we have not the slightest doubt that demonstrations of similar magnitude and importance will take place in other of the English towns.

From what we have already said, it will be gathered that we recommend no hasty or precipitate movement. Our strength lies in the justice of our cause, and in the palpable failure of the measures against which we have emphatically protested. This is not a question of mere sentiment, regarding which men can long continue to maintain divided opinions. It is a practical question, affecting not only the general welfare of the kingdom, but the property and means of every man who lives and thrives through his industry. It is essentially a labour question, and, as such, it cannot long remain without receiving a distinct solution. In the mean time, however, it is our duty to make preparation for the change which may arrive at no distant period. The various Protection societies which are everywhere organised, offer to those who condemn the present line of policy the best opportunity of concentrating their efforts, and of contributing to the ultimate triumph of the cause. These societies must be supported, for, under existing circumstances, they are of the utmost value. They present a ready channel through which the wishes and situation of the people can be communicated to the legislature or the throne; they establish and preserve communication between neighbouring districts; and they supply useful information, and disseminate sound principles, in quarters where good political knowledge is most especially required. We trust that no one who entertains opinions similar to our own, and who is deeply impressed with the necessity of a return to the just system of Protection, will be backward in lending his aid to these institutions. From the peculiar position of the agricultural party, such combinations are absolutely necessary, in order to arrive at a just estimate of our strength, and the true sentiments of the nation. Private efforts, however energetically made, are ineffectual in compassion with this system of union and of order; and although we know that agitation is in itself a thing distasteful to many, the emergency of the case is such that we are imperatively bound to adopt all legitimate means for the furtherance of our object. It may be that under no circumstances whatever can redress be obtained from the present Parliament. We have already adverted to the peculiar causes which would seem to render such an expectation at best a forlorn hope; yet still that furnishes no reason for relaxing in our efforts. The Whig Ministry – by the confession of men of all parties – has a most precarious tenure of office. Already the House of Peers has passed its gravest censure upon the course of foreign policy which has been pursued – a course of which it is difficult to say whether its most prominent feature is culpable recklessness or glaring dishonesty. We do not know what may be the decision of the House of Commons upon a point of such importance, or whether unscrupulous influence, and the dread of a dissolution, may not overcome the dictates of honour and the force of private judgement in the more popular assembly. But, whatever may be the fiat of the Commons, this at least is clear, that a severe blow has been given to the stability of the Whig Government. Beyond the walls of Parliament they have hardly any support upon a question which threatens to involve us in direct hostility with France; and nothing could have more effectually damaged them, even in this wretched business, than the acerbity of the tone assumed by Lord John Russell with regard to the European powers, who are most justly incensed at the paltering and bad faith of the political incendiary who, to the misfortune of this country, has been intrusted with the management of foreign affairs. Neither the honour nor the interests of Britain are safe in such hands. Therefore we say to the men of the Country Party – Be prepared to act, for no one can tell how soon the moment for action may arrive. Ours is a great cause, and it must not be imperilled by slothfulness or inactivity at a crisis which requires the exertion of all our energies, and the combination of all our powers. Let us but be true to ourselves, and ultimate success is certain. Delusions may for a time have taken hold of the public mind; but the endurance of all delusions is short, and the mist is rapidly dissipating. Let any man compare the state of public feeling as it exists now, with what it was but twelve months ago, and he cannot fail to be impressed with the amazing rapidity of the change. And yet, why should he wonder at it? The industry of the nation is at stake, and what marvel that the people should demand their own?

That cheapness of itself is no blessing, even our opponents admit in the arguments which they try to direct against us. Read their accounts of the squalidness and poverty which prevail in the larger towns – the testimony which has been laboriously collected as to the lamentable fall of wages, and the diminished profits of thousands employed in the lower kinds of handicraft. Undoubtedly competition among themselves has contributed to this state of matters; but in no degree at all commensurate to the great decline which has taken place since we commenced the ruinous system of reducing customs duties. Mr Joseph Hume once ventured to maintain, in the House of Commons, "that England might exist and prosper as a purely manufacturing and commercial country, if it did not grow a single bushel of corn, – if, in exchange for its manufactures and minerals, it imported from the cheap corn-producing countries every quarter of wheat required in this country!" How far that statement is compatible with the ascertained sources of the national wealth, we leave our readers to decide. This much, however, we shall say, that England, so situated, would be a very different country from that which we have known; and that the wildernesses of the West would offer a place of abode infinitely preferable to that which we could enjoy here under the gentle sway of the Millocrats, and the enlightened legislation of the Economists.

1

Histoire des Ducs de Guise. Par Réné de Bouillé, ancien ministre plénipotentiaire. Volume the First. Paris: 1849.

2

Francis of Lorraine was eighteen years old when slain at Pavia. One of his brothers had fallen, at about the same age, at the battle of Marignano.

3

Having ourselves seen the Old Guard on this trying occasion, we can vouch for the general fidelity of Chateaubriand's narrative.

4

Macaulay's Essays, ii. 230.

5

Machabies.

6

M. de Chateaubriand died in 1847, before the Revolution of 1848.

7

Men employed in the stowing of ships' cargoes.

8

Looking into Homer's Iliad here for a passage to correspond with the account given by the naval man, one is somewhat at a loss; but at the end of the second book of the Odyssey there occur lines which might not improbably have been those recited. They are such as might well, in the original, excite longings after sea-life, and revive feelings of the kind most natural to the seafaring character, apparently known to Captain Collins only as "Jones." Will the readers of Maga accept, illustratively, of a rough translation? —

Then to Telemachus glided on board divinest Athenè,Where on the poop she sat, and near her Telemachus rested.Then were the moorings loosed by the mariners coming aboard her,Joyous coming on board, and seated apart on the benches.A fair westerly breeze by the blue-eyed goddess was wafted,Cheerfully rippling along, and over the deep-coloured ocean.Now to his shipmates shouted Telemachus, while to the oar-bladesLeapt the impatient surge, till each at his order obeying,Stepped they the pine-mast then in the mast-hole ready amidships,Firmly staying it both ways down; and next by the well-twisted hide-thongs,Snowily spreading abroad, the sails drew fluttering downward.And in the sail-breast blew the bellying wind with a murmur,The purple wave hissed from the prow of the bark in its motion;Into the riotous wave she plunged, pursuing her voyage.But when their oars they drew back to the galley securely, —The swift, dark-sided bark, as she full on her journey exulted —Then to her foaming beak they brought the o'er-bubbling gobletOf red-hued wine, and poured out on her head a libationTo the immortal gods, that dwell in the sky and in ocean,But to the blue-eyed daughter of Jupiter mostly, Athené.All night then they sailed, till the morning rose on their voyage.

9

Lascar boatswain's mate.

10

It is of importance to keep in view that it never was asserted that the first move, the 26th, had not been sufficiently examined; and it will be immediately seen that that move was adhered to, no attempt being made to recall it. The truth is, that the London Club could not have played a better move than their 27th. Their mistake, as was first discovered by the Edinburgh Club, was in the 26th move, the one adhered to after examination.