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be enforced as the penalty of crime. Mr Carlyle would change this, and would place the pauper upon precisely the same level as the convict. We are not prepared to say that some important improvements might not be made in the practical operation of the poor-laws. We have read various pamphlets, published in this city and elsewhere, which strenuously recommend the employment of the able-bodied poor in the reclaiming of waste lands, and their immediate removal from the towns. There is, however, much more philanthropy than philosophy in these schemes. In order to discover a proper remedy, we ought in every case to direct our primary attention to the nature and origin of the disease; and this is precisely what our modern philanthropists neglect to do. People do not crowd into towns of their own choice. Give them their free will, and the means of subsistence, and one and all of them will prefer the fresh air, and the sights and sounds of nature, to the stifling atmosphere, the reeking filth, and the discordant cries of the city lanes and courts. But no such free will exists: the balance has not been kept between the country and the towns. No encouragement has been given to the small manufactures, which in former times were the support of villages now rapidly falling into decay. The gigantic power of machinery, set in motion by large capital, has nearly abolished the hand-loom. Worsted knitting, yarn-spinning, straw-plaiting, are now rendered almost profitless occupations. In order to live, the villagers have been forced to migrate to the towns. We need hardly refer to the earliest of the Free-trade measures, which, by substituting Spanish barilla for kelp, threw whole districts of the West Highlands at once into a state of pauperism. At this moment, a new cause is aggravating the evil. The stagnation of agricultural employment occasioned by the abolition of the corn duties, has given a new impetus to rural emigration; and those who cannot afford their passage to foreign parts naturally seek refuge in the towns. In another year – if the experiment should be continued so long – the effects of this last change will become more evident than they are now. The able-bodied ploughman is the last of the agricultural class who will suffer. Those who have already been compelled to change their homes, or to go upon the parish-list, are the cottars, who derived their subsistence from the employment given them by resident proprietors. So long as encouragement to agricultural improvement existed, these poor people never wanted work; but now the calamitous fall in the price of produce, and the prospect of a great diminution of rents, have compelled the landlords to discontinue their improvements, and to reduce the expenses of their establishments to the lowest possible limit. In this way, country labour is lessened, and town labour, by the increasing competition of hands, is cheapened. This is the true secret of all those startling revelations as to the misery, want, and positive oppression of the working classes which have lately appeared in the public journals, and which have engendered in the minds of many a natural despair as to the destiny of a state in which such things are suffered to exist. The remedy undoubtedly is neither an easy nor a speedy one; still, it is by no means to be included in the category of impossibilities. Machinery, which is the first great cause of British pauperism, cannot indeed be checked,
but it may very easily be taxed. "An acre of land," says a late eminent writer, "if cultivated, must pay a tithe of its productions to support the religion of the state, and an equal contribution with any other property in respect of the poor, county, and church rates; but mechanical power may exercise its productive faculty
ad infinitum, with but a trifling reference or liability to either the one or the other. The building may be rated at £200, £500, or £1000 a-year, but it has a power within it which, as compared with landed property rated at the same amount, will produce a hundredfold as great a return – a principle in legislation as deteriorating in its operation on the masses as it is unjust to individuals." That machinery, which has changed the whole character of our population, and which, in fact, has been the means of creating this stern reality of pauperism, is not taxed upon the principle of its productive power. That it should be so, seems evident upon the smallest reflection. Land is not taxed on the principle of acreage, but on that of value, which again depends entirely on production. Why should not the manufactory be rated in the same manner? It is true that, by such a measure as this, pauperism could not be removed, but it would be materially checked, for the fair proportion of the burden would thus be thrown on the shoulders of those who occasioned it. But nothing effectual can be done until the nation has finally determined what policy it is to pursue for the future, and in all time coming, with respect to native industry. If Free Trade is to go on, pauperism must continue like a Upas tree to spread and overshadow the land. It is not within the range of possibility that this can be otherwise. No church-extension, education, cheap literature, ventilation, sewerage, public baths, or model lodging-houses, can avail to mitigate the evil. It is town competition – made triply worse by the operation of low tariffs – which is driving the working classes to the verge of the pit of despair; and that town competition is increasing, and will increase, so long as a fresh daily supply of hands is driven from country labour. The scheme of the philanthropists to whom we have referred, is to take the surplusage from the towns and to send them to the country. This, in the present state of matters, is about as feasible an undertaking as if we were to try to make a stream of water run up-hill. Why, the misery and indigence which they seek to relieve, is not the result of mere idleness, dissipation, or profligacy – it arises from over-competition in one department of industry, occasioned by the utter want of profitable employment in another. There would be no need of industrial regiments to cultivate the soil, if its cultivation were allowed to be remunerative. But to set our pauper population at work upon anything which will not repay private enterprise is mere delusion. We have said this much upon a topic of the greatest interest, and the utmost importance, because we are convinced that many persons, who are fully impressed with the magnitude of the evil, have mistaken the remedy from the want of a due consideration of the causes from whence that evil has arisen. It is, however, a subject too large for incidental discussion, and we shall probably return to it on a future occasion, when we can state our views without reference to the whimsical vagaries of Mr Carlyle.
So then, the Noblest having made his speech, and wound up with a significant hint of flogging and pistoling every one of the unfortunate serfs who shall fail to wield the hoe with becoming alacrity, what next? Nothing more, in so far as the interests of the working classes are concerned; at least nothing tangible. Perhaps it would be absurd to expect anything more. The man who can propound a scheme to rid us of pauperism, with all its concomitant misery, would be a greater benefactor to the commonwealth, and to the human race, than a thousand Howards in one. Mr Carlyle is perhaps the most strenuous advocate for work that we ever encountered. He would have made a first-rate taskmaster under the old Egyptian economy. He is, with great reason, indignant at the state to which our West Indian Colonies have been reduced by means of Exeter Hall emancipation, and he scouts emancipation itself as a gross delusion of the fiend. It is to be regretted that his views have been so late of ripening. Time was, when a fair and common-sense protest, advanced by a Liberal philosopher, against the absurdity of attempting to change the hue of the Ethiopian by a single momentary scrubbing, might have been of some actual use: now, it is in vain to recommend a protracted application of the tub. The Noblest, when Mr Carlyle has discovered him and put him forward, will hardly achieve his ends by using the following language, even supposing that he wielded the lightning, and were able to put his threats into execution.
"Beautiful Black Peasantry, who have fallen idle, and have got the Devil at your elbow; interesting White Felonry, who are not idle, but have enlisted into the Devil's regiments of the line, – know that my benevolence for you is comparatively trifling! What I have of that divine feeling is due to others, not to you. A universal Sluggard-and-Scoundrel Protection Society is not the one I mean to institute in these times, where so much wants protection, and is sinking to sad issues for want of it! The scoundrel needs no protection. The scoundrel that will hasten to the gallows, why not rather clear the way for him? Better he reach his goal and outgate by the natural proclivity, than be so expensively dammed up and detained, poisoning everything as he stagnates and meanders along, to arrive at last a hundred times fouler, and swollen a hundred times bigger! Benevolent men should reflect on this. – And you Quashee, my pumpkin, – (not a bad fellow either, this poor Quashee, when tolerably guided!) – idle Quashee, I say you must get the Devil sent away from your elbow, my poor dark friend! In this world there will be no existence for you otherwise. No, not as the brother of your folly will I live beside you. Please to withdraw out of my way, if I am not to contradict your folly and amend it, and put it in the stocks if it will not amend. By the Eternal Maker! it is on that footing alone that
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