The Press. — London, England, 1854-01-21 00:00:00

64 it never barked again; the other dog followed,—it was harder to manage, and gave one dismal yell as it yielded its life. Higgins now had some misgivings. " Bull! Fangs ! at hint! at him !" shouted he from without. All silence. "Dogs ! devil ! at him, I say !" Not a word anywhere. Then he fired his remaining pistol straight in the direction where he had seen the man leap ; from hill to hill the sound reverberated, and then died away into perfect silence. Our readers will see by these passages that the authoress of " The Slave Son' has de scriptive merits of her own. Her views upon slavery are tempered with a strong sense of the difficulties with which "race" and " class" have environed the question. While she is decidedly opposed to " slavery," her knowledge of the position of the planters and her own colonial sympathies combine to present to us the proprietors in a much less odious light than they are generally looked upon. Not the least remarkable part of this very interesting volume are the dialogues in which St. Hilaire Cardon mocks at the British humanitarians. We extract a short bit from one of his sar- -•- castle tirades : Mr. Cardcm had it all his own way; it was useless for Mr. Dorset to oppose a remark before the vehemence, the power, the eloquence of expression and gesture, which eminently belonged to the planter. " Prejudice of caste ?—parbleu! they have none—oh no ! And pray what is that stand-off reserve which keeps so effectual a barrier between the moneyed man and the panper,—the noble and the trader,—the master and the servant? Why, you know right well that you would rather die than shake hands before company with the footman who waits at your table, though he may have saved your life in the morning." " Sir ! Mr. Carden 1" " Bah ! I am not speaking personally, I tell you. I only say you because I have no one else to say it to ; you stand for the English nation, and you must listen to me. How do you treat your servants ? Why, as if they had been created merely for your convenience and pleasure. Yon give them wages scarcely adequate to provide them with the decent clothing you require them to appear in. Yon take the health and the strength of their youth ; and how do you reward them in their old age? Do yon pension them and support them, as we do our old negroes? No ! you leave them to rot. What feeds the abominations of the English streets at night? Servants ont of place, sempstreeses, and others who have no future before them. Who prey upon them? Why, I tell you, the most licentious estate of the most licentious planter never presented one4handredth of the nightly horrors of one street of your Babylon. Oh no ! there is no slave-hunting, nor slave-dealing, nor slave buying, nor slave-mnrdering in dear moral England! and that among not these half-brute baboons, but. just among God's loveliest creatures—women, soot among us to lead us to heaven. Pray where are your saints, your excessively virtuous saints, that they suffer these things to be ?" While we cordially praise the freshness and talent of " The Slave Son," we must caution our readers against supposing that the work N equal in ability to " Uncle Tom." Mrs. Stowe excelled in giving language to her va rious characters ; and it is in that respect that Mrs. Wilkins decidedly fails. She is almost totally deficient in dramatic art ; but, on the other hand, her descriptions are very elo quent, and her matter has much novelty for readers of fiction, though much of it may he familiar to persons acquainted with the West Indies. But, with its shortcomings, " The Slave Son " may be strongly recommended as one of the most readable fictions that have been published for a long time. Cobilenic Policy the Internal Enemy of England. The Penes Society, its Combativeness, fte. Ity Alexander Somerville, " One who has Whistled at the Plough." London : Hard wicke. As the events of which this little miscellany chiefly treats occurred a long tint (almost ten years) since, when King Louis Philippe was on the throne of the barricades, before England had borne her Great Duke to the grave, when the Anti-Corn League was in its vigour and the Corn Laws yet existed, it may be as well for the benefit of our younger readers to men tion who Mr. Somerville, the author of this work, is, and what are his antecedents in life, town to the comparative time of the in the Scots ical discus ; committed this offence flogged, but by military moral base- for, tough he was then well kn( world, he has since lived in c( obseu , optavA le, nt the . t. Refor 4 1 4 li ~ ..i Itifiri•alc Robber n ore . i.j 111:7- t iit: - 1 .,.. 4.4 he politii sio , '"(l. j 3 --) ••• .. :o doing a b 7 , 1`.,.., • ••7%.,...._,.: 1- ,',, k e ; fort t he 4 l - I''''''T;Z: o ` e l . ,... , • ' I and fl his 4,1 • , • ; - 4.1. 7- ~ rented I law, ; .* ,,, -- .; 4 1 , %-•: .'• •: , • die:.' •f • '' '—'-^ _.i 11 a ciVirShl2 2; __--~_ ....aw..~^.... l~ THE PRESS. ness. When the British Auxiliary Legion was formed, Mr. Somerville volunteered into it as a non-commissioned officer, and in that capa city distinguished himself. When the Legion was disbanded he was its historian, and the account he wrote of that unfortunate corps was most interesting. Soon after his return to England, Mr. Somerville, whose literary powers are considerable, began to write for newspapers, and in the year 1842 a series of letters appeared in the Morning Chronicle under the signature of " One who has Whistled at the Plough" : Those letters attracted public attention. Mr. Cobden applied in August to the editor of the newspaper for an introduction to the writer. This being effected, an engage ment was made that I, the writer, should collect statistical and other information for Mr•. Cobden for a period of three months. This engagement extended to five years. Mr. Cobden himself shall be witness of the spirit in which I conducted this business. Writing at the end of 1842, he said, " Yon do quite right to treat the aristocracy with respect." I did treat the aristocracy with respect. I did so from principle; from conviction that they had a right to be so treated. With Mr. Cobden [as will presently appear] it was only a policy, which he approved in me because I was writing for agricultural readers. None know but myself what persuasions were used by the Manchester men to make me wr►te otherwise—particularly to damage Lord Ashley, whom they hated for his exertion in behalf of factory operatives. This solicitation came chiefly from the Lancashire Quakers. We have thought it right to let Mr. Somer ville relate in his own words how his connec tion with Mr. Cobden and the Manchester• school commenced, because it seems to us that information acquired in consequence of that engagement should have been sacred ; yet much of this publication is occupied with details of Mr. Somerville's transactions with the chiefs of the League. Still, coming before us as it does, we have no alternative but to comment upon the statements it contains. The work is so desultory that it is impossible to weave a connected narrative from the materials it affords. The first chapter opens with a pungent sketch of the modern men of peace : No institution is too venerable to be wailed ; no rank too illustrious, nor honour too pure, to be sneered at and slandered. No refugee, fleeing from his own revolutions, is ton sanguinary to be an honoured guest and brother, if he has been sufficiently distinguished as the enemy of crowns and of crowned heads. Mr. Cobden left bed and basin of gruel at Midhurat to welcome the arrival of one at Southampton. Three hundred Quakers, and other men of peace in thousands, surrounded the same repre sentative of rebellion and intestine war at Manchester, to give him welcome there. With their applause ringing in his ears, he wont to Mr. Cobden's " homely men ' of a " homely senate which minds its own affairs, and shares in no foreign interventions." There they loaded him with envulry, saddles, swords, state muskets, ammunition, and the most effective of a warrior's implemenot—the sinews of war. Be returned to his English allies, our mcn of peace, and has given such snatches of his time as were not devoted to treasonable plots abroad to the manufacturers of war rockets here. These, the cavalry saddles, muskets, cartridges, and rockets, have been the objects of his solicitude since Cobden and the Peace Societists first crowded around him, as treason to his Sovereign and Government, and chiefship in the most accursed of all wars—a war of races after centuries of inter-marriage—were his only titles to distinction before. Mr. Cobden, the chief of this party, the author asserts is " the most ambitious and " secretive of living public men," although he is continually asserting his humility and candour; playing " homely man " of the senate with such nicety that he stays humbly at home [but takes care the world hears it from platforms several times a year, and that his private visitors, who are compelled to listen. hear it. every day], rather than put on as much " barbaric pomp " as would admit him to the levies of the Speaker of the House of Commons. In consequence of some of the statements of Mr. Somerville respecting the Peace So ciety, we thought it only right to look into a few of their pamphlets. Generally they take the high ground that war is against the tenets of our holy religion, but occasionally they base their opposition to it on the lower ground that, whether England be conquered by a foreign foe, or remain governed as she is at present, the condition of the bulk of the people would remain unchanged. The following extract is from a tract purporting to be the speech of a working man, published by the Peace Society : Like friend Burns, I have no objection to the French coming over, and, if they can find aught in our house that they think worth their while, they're welcome to it. They'll not find a deal in poor people's houses who stand in the same position as me, and I stand in the same position as the principal part of the working classes. What need we care—the ass was right it doesn't matter who follows to drive us if we have no more panniers to carry. SATURDAY, The prineipalwars have always been carried out by th e aristocracy, because they are afraid the people should have time to think, and that, like a clock pendulum that go es swinging backwards and forwards, tick tack, tick tac k there should be nothing but work, work, work, for them. They have secured all the land of the country, and they have secured many things beside, and what they havn't cured the Queen has. Everything belongs to her. It is " The Queen's Army," '' The Queen's Navy," " Th e Queen's Revenue," and " The People's Debt." We have nothing else that's national to divide among us, and so it will be until such time as working men are of sly opinion, that they won't fight, and then h 11 WI end of war. Alluding to these tracts and placards with which the country was inundated when the militia was first embodied, Mr. Somerville says : tray, you have heard this village man of peace, like his brethren, in cities and °entity towns descant, in g uan o. some argument ; quote Mr. Cobden's mis-statement of history and personal invective, affirming the fully of wk. quate defensiveness, and the dishonourable profession of national defenders. _ . _ You have heard him read the letter of good Friend Fry from the newspapers, who, as chief secretary of the Peace Society, rushed to the press when the tint militiaman fell into the hands of the police, rejoicing over one man that had fallen rather than over the rectitude of fifty thousand who had committed no fault. " I say unto you, that joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth more than over ninety and nine just orisons which need no repentance."—St. inks, iv. 7. Such are the gracious words of the Saviour. Bat the disputatious men of peace, who, forsooth, are more scrip tural in spirit and outward life than ordinary men and women, shout for joy over the one militiamen who does wrong at Hammersmith, but are mute over the good bells. viour of fifty thousand, there and elsewhere. A sketch of a man of peace, apart from his polities, we cannot refrain from giving, pre mising only that the author disclaims person alities : From the foregoing it may be inferred that he is a cotton mill-master. He may be ; but the man of peace mar work in other material than cotton ; in leather, iron, timber, cloth, corn, or earth ; but far more probably he handleth not any material. Most probably he stands with hat on head and hands in pocket, between the shoemaker and the leather, the blacksmith and the iron, the joiner and the timber, the tailor and the cloth, the miller and the corn, the baker and the flour. As to the earth, he may work that with his own hands. It is plaster of Paris to mingle in yon bread, the manipulation of which, like hedge-row leaves in the tea of a wicked world, it may be inconvenient. to refer to a second person. He deplores the ignorance as well as the wickedness o the world; but from the world's ignorance of adulterated food, and the trick of falsity in materials of handicraft, ariseth to him much profit. This, in your hearing, he ascribes to the blessing of a special Providence on his meek and peaceful devotion to business. He deplores the vices of the poor; but the fruit of vice is to hint as vintage, it' poverty be its fruit. • • • * For as his mission is to combat and contradict other noon, so is he a contradiction to himself. He is not without some ingredient of good. He would be a devil wholly if he had never done a poi thing, so restlessly active as he is. Ile is not wholly a devil. Rochdale, Mr. Somerville considers, is the peculiar stronghold of the men of peace : he therefore describes it at some -length:— The men of peace, whose own borough this is, look bock on fifteen years of successful turbulence, during which they have kept the vicar, churchmen, respectable moderation, and neutrality, in trouble. They have driven social respectability from parochial and municipal business. , Though professing to he peculiarly scriptural and spiritual in their own sentiments, yet, from " tenderness of con science," they and the motley multitude which they lead have preferred to parochial and municipal offices " fniternal democrats," " torch-light chartists," and " philosophic infidels :" which congruous fraternity, headed and led by brawling " universal brotherhood," have, for the whole time since the elder Bright [now M.P.] was old enough to lead the town tumults, outraged all.moderation and decency of triumph. Imagine what a provincial town of France would bare been in the time of the first revolution [the provincial Robespierres of " liberty " and " public safety " only restrained from using the guillotine] ; the " goddess of reason " and all the adjuncts of revolution present but the guillotine; the clergy mocked; social rank and respectal a• bility shrinking from the offensive presence of brid insolence ! Imagine a reign of disgust, instead of a reign of terror, and you see what Rochdale in England has been for fifteen years under the meek champions of teuder cote science and freedom of opinion. From the Peace Society the author has received provocation sufficient to justify almost any retaliation. When the militia was called out they placarded him all over the kingdom, beneath a picture, in which he was represented as receiving his punishment : They quoted a book written by me in such manner her leave the impression on the reader that I was au of their anti-militia placards, or, at least , the principal person addressing future militia-men to dissuade then! from the service. They did not name the book, nor Wert any clue to the context of the quotation, to show eithei why I was flogged, or wby the book was writttu. I