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short of three years' purchase. But this is not a fair statement of
the question. It assumes that the whole expenditure of the country
on account of poor-rates is pure uncompensated outgoing, without
any return. Now this, we admit, is to a great degree the case at
present, but it is so merely from mal-administration; and mainly
from the established mode of managing the poor piecemeal, by each
parish within itself. Undoubtedly every pauper should be chargeable
solely to his own parish, but there is no reason in the world why he
should be set to work within the parish exclusively, where perhaps
there is no employment for him of a more productive character
then drawing gravel. If we had duly-constituted municipal
councils, or, in default of such institutions, an officer named
by the Crown in each county, and bound to find employment
for all the paupers of the county, on public works, in agriculture,
in manufactures, in any manner in short in which their
labour could be turned to greatest account; or what would be still
better, if the poor of the county were farmed by open competition to
private contractors, proper securities being taken that no pauper should
be mulcted of his due allowance or otherwise oppressed; no one,
we believe, who has considered the subject, will doubt, that the
paupers of England might be made to reproduce annually the whole
amount of their maintenance, in the same manner as other labourers
reproduce theirs with considerable profit. In this way the annuity
of twenty-five pounds a-year would be redeemed by the advance of
that sum once only; and therefore the present measure, which
requires an advance of sixty-six pounds for the same purpose, is
unthrifty and unadvisable.
Objections of detail present themselves in great numbers against
the proposed mode of facilitating emigration: but the consideration
which we have just stated applies to the principle, and appears to us
o be decisive.
Yet we are friends to emigration; and are persuaded that from it,
in conjunction with other measures, material relief might be afforded
to the laboring classes from the pressure of their own excessive
competition for employment. But, to be entitled to this praise, the
scheme must be such as to pay the expenses of a second body of
emigrants from the produce of the labour of the first.
Every one admits that the labour of a man in England produces
very little; that the labour of a man in Australia or Canada
produces very much; and that every labouring man, who could be
removed from England to either of these colonies would, by his change
of abode, occasion an increase of the produce of the world which
would suffice in two or three years to repay, with interest, the
expense of his passage. Here then, by general admission, is on the one
hand a value lost, namely what the pauper would have produced at
home, together with the expenses of his passage; on the other hand,
a value created in the colony, exceeding the value lost; and it is actually
given up as an insoluble problem, to make a portion of the gain available
to cover the loss! It is an insult to the human understanding to
pretend that there are no means of making emigration pay for itself. If
the emigration of a moderate number of labourers in the prime of life
were defrayed by an advance from the treasury, and a portion of
what was added to the produce of the colony by their labour, were
exacted in the form of a tax, and appropriated to form a fund for
further emigration, a perennial stream of emigrants might be kept up
without further expense to the mother country, until Canada, South
Africa, and Australia were fully peopled. Whether this drain could
be rendered sufficiently large to prevent overflow—whether
emigration on this principle could ever be sufficient to relieve
overpopulation at home—can scarcely be known before trial; but the
grounds of hope are amply sufficient to render a trial not only
advisable, but imperative.
The best mode which we have seen proposed, of enabling
emigration to pay its own expenses, is that to which Mr. Robert Gouger,
and Mr. Tennant, the member for St. Albans, have so perseveringly
called the public attention—that of fixing a price upon waste land,
the highest which could be levied without so crowding the inhabitants
as to lower wages below their highest rate. There is no difficulty or
disadvantage in this measure. The government of the United States
raises a considerable annual revenue from the sale of unappropriated
land; to the great benefit of the inhabitants, which benefit would be
still greater if the tax were higher, as it is almost certain that the
population of the back settlements is even now far more widely
dispersed than is consistent with the most productive employment of
their labour. The same principle has been adopted in part by the
present ministry, in the colonies of New South Wales and Van
Diemen's Land. All that is wanting is, that the minimum price of
waste land should be higher; that the system should be established
by act of parliament, not by a mere regulation, revocable at the
pleasure of any colonial minister; and finally, that the produce of
the sale of land should be wholly devoted to emigration, and to the
emigration of young couples,, in order that the greatest effect may be
produced on the future growth of population, by the removal of the
smallest number of individuals.
TITHES.—Nothing can more pointedly illustrate the stagnating influence
of our aristocratic institutions on the mind and energies of the community
than our continuance of the tithe-tax, so long after its impolicy and injustice
have been demonstrated. Even Mr. Pitt, who throughout his political
life was the slave of a paltry ambition for place, and the tool of a despicable
faction, meditated its removal. It has been denounced by Bishop
Watson, by Dr. Paley, by Burke, by Malthus, and every writer and
statesman with the least pretension of intelligence and patriotism. It is
supported by the example of no country in Europe. Though England
swarms with separatists, and can hardly be said to have a national religion,
yet, for the maintenance of one handful of spirituals, the whole nation is
insulted, and the operations of rural industry fettered and impeded.—Black
Book.
The tide of thought at the present day certainly does not run
towards poetry. We took up a little volume of sonnets the other day,
written by a very young man, and the first word of the first sonnet, in
capital letters, was "UTILITY." It is lucky for Mr. Bell, the author
of Summer and Winter Hours, that he looks for no reward; he tells
us, that the "happiness he has enjoyed in clothing in words the
"various sentiments it contains, is a sufficient and abiding recompense."
This is well; for though the volume is a pretty one, though
the poems are pretty, and the printing pretty, still prettiness in verse
has become so unmarketable a commodity, that we despair of his
finding many admirers.
The trick of verse-writing is now so ordinary an accomplishment,
that it is not sufficient to be able to cover pages with tolerable rhyme
of well-sounding metre, to cull common-places, or sham sentiment
by the canto—we must have power; we must have true and deep
feeling; or we must have new and curious observations of nature;
the genuine spirit of the man must animate his verse, and it must be
a commanding one. It will not do for young men to look melancholy;
to swear they will be romantic, and instantly imagine the object of
their affection dead buried, forgotten by all but themselves, but by
them to be eternally remembered, &c. &c. If sorrow be the theme,
it must have been felt; if joy, it must first have bounded in their own
veins; if nature be the theme, she must not have been viewed through
other eyes. On these conditions we do not think poetry would be
received with coldness; the fault is not in the public, but in the
canto-mongers—the stringers of cantos, from Byron and Wordsworth.
Mr. Bell is not altogether free from the charge of affecting feelings;
he simply assumes; and much of his poetry has been written before,
in books likely to go down to posterity without his aid; nevertheless,
there are some pleasant copies of verse in his volume, which we
should be glad to snatch from the sullen stream down which the whole
will slowly and surely be carried. The two poems we should select
—the one for its cheerful tone of truth and the second for its
simplicity and moral truth—are, the "Letter to my Cousin," and the
"Picture from Life."
The following stanzas commence the "letter" of which we speak:—
I would write you a dozen letters, coz—
A dozen letters a day;
But I'm growing so old and so stupid, coz,
That I don't know a thing to say:
'Tis a long, long time since we met, dear coz,
And I'm sadly changed since then;
I hardly think you would know me, coz,
I'm so very like other men.
I mind when you used to tell me, coz,
That I never would sober down;
And through my teens and my twenties, coz,
I was wild enough I own;
But, like a regiment of men in red,
They have all march'd by at last;
And the sound of their music and merry tread
In the distance is dying fast.
It is very strange to consider, coz,
What a few short years may do—
They have made a respectable man of me,
And a wife and mother of you.
But, O! that I were a boy again,
And you a girl once more—
When we wander'd together among the woods,
Or pick'd up shells by the shore!
And do you remember the garden seat,
Where we read the Arabian Nights?
And do you remember the neat little room,
Where I made my paper kites?
I am sure you remember the big kite, coz,
That was higher a foot than me;
For you know you let go the string one day,
And it flew away over the sea.
I am sure you remember the pony, too,
That we used to kiss and hug;
And the pup that we thought a Newfoundland pup,
Till it turn'd out a black-nosed pug;
I am sure you remember the dancing-school,
And my pumps always down in the heel,
That were constantly dancing off my feet
In the middle of every reel.
O! what would I not give now, dear coz,
For a single King's birthday!
I see there are squibs and crackers still,
But their magic is gone for aye!
Thus all the hopes of my boyhood, coz,
That rocket-like went forth,
Have blazed for a little and then gone out,
And fallen unmark'd on the earth.
Have the flowers as pleasant a smell, sweet coz,
As they used to have long ago?
When you wander out on a summer night,
Has the air as soft a glow?
Do you stand at the window to count the stars,
Before you lie down to sleep?
Do you pray for your father and mother now,
Then think they may die, and weep?
Ah! what have we got by experience, coz,
And what is a knowledge of life?
It has taught me that I am an author coz,
And that you are another man's wife!
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the examiner / sunday, february 27, 1831 / no. 1204 |
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[[notes_public::"john fonblanques eulogium on brougham" [note in bentham's hand]]] |
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