The Sun.
London, England, 1865-10-14 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

TIMES.-Mr. Disraeli has discoursed on agricul-
tiral subjects this year with unwonted brevity, and,
perhaps, with a less triumphant assurance that his
own judgments are infallible and his opponents
among the most foolish or perverse of mankind. It
is the natural and happy result of meetings of all
kinds to produce, if not agreement, at any rate
tolerance. In the various congresses that have been
held this autumn people have talked blandly and
politely about things that used to make them loud
of voice and red of face only a few years ago. If
this goes on in the social, scientific, and ecclesias-
tical worlds, why should not the same effect be
perceived in the discussions on agricultural matters?
Agriculture is now almost entirely divorced from
politics. There is no class which can believe that
it suffers wrong from the monopoly of the land-
owners, and, on the other hand, the owners and oc-
cupiers of land have no ground for the suspicion
that there is an important section of English society
which wishes them ill, or desires to pull down s )me-
thing which ought in justice to them to be con-
served. An Agricultural Association consists now
of a number of people who unite for the purpose of
instructing and aiding one another in prosecuting
the most important department of human industry.
A man of judgment who takes part in the proceed-
ings of such a body knows that he does not act for
a class or section of society ; when he speaks it is
to the whole country, for there is no inhabitant of a
London court, no digger in a north-country coal
mine, who has not a direct interest in anything that
will increase the production of the soil. Those who
manufacture for the belly will always be sure of a
market, and will, indeed, be such important pro-
ducers that their sayings and doings cannot but re-
ceive an attention beyond that which any other
class can command. Mr. Disraeli did not give us
any decided opinions at Amersham the other day,
or any new views ; but he spoke with moderation
and good sense on several points, and even con-
descended to argument on behalf of his old hobby
of giving sovereigns and new coats to labourers, as
if it had not been already demonstrated to all the
world that it is the most noble and graceful way of
rewarding virtue that had ever been devised byman.
With respect to the question of leases, it is impos-
sible not to agree with Mr. Disraeli, for if the ques-
tion were argued for a twelvemonth and a score
of blue-books published upon it, we cannot conceive
that there could be any conclusion except that the
matter should be left in each individual case to the
landlord and the would-be tenant, who are the
parties to the contract, and with whom no one has
any right to interfere. There is a vague feeling, de-
rived doubtless from the aristocratic and almost pa-
triarchal character which has marked English coun-
try life even up to our own day, that the letting of
land should be ruled by other laws than other busi-
ness transactions. But it is for the benefit of the
farmer and of the public as well as of the landlord
that such ideas should be abandoned. Mr. Disraeli
puts the difficulty very plainly :—" If the farmer is
asked whether he will have a lease for a short term
of years, he will give you reasons for
.objecting to
that. On the other hand, the landlord will say that
as the value of land, generally speaking, has been
rising for a long series of years, if he grants a lease
for a long term it will be necessary to enter into
some arrangement by which the rent shall be pro-
portionally and periodically increased." The busi-
ness, then, is merely one to be arranged between
the parties according to their conceptions of their
individual interest, and cannot be subjected to any
universal custom, much less to positive law. It is
easy to see, however, as the number of persons de-
sirous to rent land increases, while the land remains
a constant quantity, the owners will, as a general
rule, be able to impose their own terms and select a
tenant who will assent to them. Mr. Disraeli, of
course, keeps to his theory of raising the rural popu-
lation by munificent gratuities of three pounds for a
life of virtue. The subject has so often been dis-
cussed, and is so purely one of personal taste
and feeling, that we should not have returned to it
were it not for the extraordinary argument by
which, after many years' consideration, Mr. Dis-
raeli thinks proper to recommend his favourite
notion. It is shortly this—that no person,
whether an agricultural labourer or a person in
the highest rank of society, ought to feel other-
wise than pleased when an " Association" takes
uponitself to reward his virtues in his old age ;
and that, in fact, if gentlemen with £5,000 a year
were offered gratuities equivalent to those given to
the farm labourers, they would be glad to get them.
" Recollect," says the right hon. gentleman, "you
must estimate a reward of £3 to a labourer in pro-
portion to his income ; £3 to a labourer with 12s.
a week represents a sum equivalent to £5OO or £6OO
to a gentleman with £5,000 a year. Now, I have
observed that gentlemen in the receipt of £5,000 a
year are not absolutely indifferent to the chances
of receiving £4OO or £5OO extra." If this theory
.be
correct, the world has certainly to thank Mr. Dis-
reali for a great discovery. Why should not all
orders of men be encouraged in the path of duty by
the prospect of five weeks' income at the age of
three sccre and ten or upwards ? Let it be tried at
once, say, with one or two of the oldest Bishops,
the Law Lords, the heads of colleges, and other such
venerable persons. Certainly, £BOO divided between
an aged prelate and an ex-chancellor would not be
too much to encourage persevering good conduct on
the episcopal judicial benches. Until that experi-
ment be tried successfully, we must believe that the
feeling which objects to these gifts to labourers is a
just one, and that the agricultural associations would
do well to confine themselves to giving prizes to skill,
and abandon their purpose of " recognising, reward-
ing, and encouraging merit in that portion of her
Majesty's subjects." The "moral virtues" of la-
bouring people are best rewarded by those with
whom they have worked, and who know more about
them than any association possibly can. Mr. Dis-
raeli's observations on cottage-building are less open
to objection. The difficulty undoubtedly is, that a
well-built cottage is not likely at present to pay
such a rent as will entitle the building of it to be
called a good investment of money. But there are
other considerations, especially when the labourer is
employed on the land ; and with the general ad-
vance of the labourer's condition and wages there is

no reason to doubt that the providing 'accent ac-

commodation for him will be aprudenC as well as a

angles.

philanthropic work. A strong impulse in this di-
rection will no doubt be given by the Act of last
Session, which has done so much to equalise the
burdens on property and satisfy the claims of la-
bour.

TEE " LONDON REVIEW" ON STEEL PENS AND
GOOSE QUILLS.—Ever since men began to think,
and advanced from gesture-language to picture-
writing and word-writing, they have used some
favourite instrument which answered to a pen. The
Hebrews chiselled the law on tables of stone ; the
Greeks engraved their laws on brass ; the Chinese,
before paper was invented, wrote with an iron style
on thin boards or bamboo, and in the present day
they form their characters with great rapidity in
perpendicular columns by means of a pencil-brush
held straight over the paper. Table-books of wood
were used before the time of Homer, and continued
in use long after papyrus-leaves and skins became
ordinary materials. They were usually waxed over
and written upon with a style. Whatever was
written was easily effaced ; and by smoothing the
wax a new and clear surface was supplied. The
Hebrews had books written on skins in the time of
David ; and the lonians wrote on goatskins and
sheepskins when the plant of the biblos was scarce.
The North American Indian " blazed" or wounded
his recording pine-tree with an axe, so as to mark
it with conspicuous white symbols. e also painted
pieces of birch-bark with suggestive pictures, to
remind the singers of the several verses in their
songs or charms. As civilisation advanced, and
pure letters were substituted for pictures by nation
after nation, finer implements became necessary.
The reeds of the ancients were in the hands of
writers as late as the tenth century, and served in
committing their ideas to paper, parchment, or vellum,
prepared from abortive or very young calves. The
oldest certain account we have of quill pens as in-
struments of writing, is in a passage of Isidore, who
died in 636 ; but they were undoubtedly in use a
century earlier. Many ancient manuscripts written
in the sixth century are preserved in the monas-
tery of St. Gall, in Switzerland, and in other
religious houses. They are in Irish, or Latin written
in Irish characters, and exhibit the finest speci-
mens of laborious penmanship. The geometrical
figures with which the letters are rounded, pointed,
and adorned, are equally curious, minute, and cor-
rect. It is evident on inspecting these manuscripts
that quill pens must have been employed long before
caligraphy could have attained such neatness and
perfection. At the same time, it is not always easy
to determine from the writing whether a split reed
or a quill pen was used in any particular manu-
script ; and the terms which expressed both instru-
ments long continued to be ambiguous. A bad
quill pen and a good reed produced nearly the same
effect. When Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths,
subscribed the public decrees with the first four
letters of his name, it would puzzle any antiquary
to say whether he did so with a reed or a pen, pro-
perly so called ; and his perplexity would be no less
if required to state whether, when Jezebel wrote
letters in Ahab's name, she did so with the split
reed still common in the East, or with a pointed
iron style tipped with diamond. At length, how-
ever, the gall-nut, theguin-tree, and copperas formed
a firm alliance ; and Pen and Ink was the result of
the compact. The chisel, the graver, the style, the
axe, the brush, and the reed withdrew their rival
claims, and the supremacy of the goose-quill became
clearly established, at least in the more cultivated
quarters of the globe. In England its undisputed
sway lasted 500 years. It brought in by degrees
an era of its own, which may be called the Age of
Pens. The age of the spear and lance belongs to
primitive times ; the mediaeval epoch was the age
of the sword ; but the pen has proved a mightier
weapon than either lance or sword, and in many
countries of Europe its rule is more supreme than
that of the sceptre. Perhaps the goose herself was
the individual who suffered most from the momen-
tous change. As education grew general, and the
demand for quills increased, the avaricious people
in the farm-yard tugged relentlessly at the live
geese, and scorned the idea of waiting till the
day of their death to reap a harvest of quills. The
clarified quills from Holland were sold at Bs. the
hundred under a heavy duty, and even thirty shil-
lings a hundred were paid at last for the choicest
article. None but schoolboys and artists ever used
split reeds, for they made a rugged line, which,
though picturesque in a drawing-master's outline,
was ill-suited to " up-strokes." The crow-quill
was fit only for etching and the finest penmanship ;
while German text, old English, engrossing and
other 1" black hands" required turkey quills, the
goose quills being too weak for the purpose. With
these exceptions, and that of the swan quill, which
was still rarer, all the run was on the unfortunate
geese. Immense flocks of them were fed in Russia
and Poland for the sake of their quills, and, a quar-
ter of a century ago, about twenty millions were
imported into England annually from those coun-
tries. Indeed, it was evident to thinking men, that
ere long all the available geese in Europe would be
insufficient to supply the English market. Such
was the state of things when a competitor for public
favour arose, destined to achieve in a short time
extensive triumph, and win from the gooscquill
more than half its field of action. This was the steel
pen. Many abortive attempts had been made to
supply the schoolmaster and the clerk's office with
some other instrument besides the quill. In France
they tried bone pens, but without much success.
Then the glass or " fountain pen" came and offered
itself. It was both pen and inkstand. The sable
fluid was to percolate in a perennial stream through
the narrow tube without any trouble on the part of
the writer. For " the first time of asking" it
answered well; but on second use, the tiny duct was
invariably choked up, and nothing could cleanse it.
Then fountain pens were made of brass, the feeding
channel opened and shut, and could be easily
cleaned. But the brass oxidized, and the ink re-
fused to flow on any terms. Thin pliant brass
lacquered over was tried next in imitation of
quill pens, but no one could write with it ; tor-
toise-shell succeeded little better than bone, and the
fashion of arming the nibs of pens made from turkey
quills with rhodium, ruby, and diamond points was
equally a failure. At length the right thing came
to hand. A French mechanic, named Arnoux, had
produced metallic pens in the last century, but steel
pens for writing were first made in this country by
Mr. Wise in 1803. For a considerable time they
were manufactured with flat cheeks, and a patent
was taken out for them in this form in 1812. Dr.
Wollaston's rhodium pen, and the iridium pen of
others, were both flat. About the year 1824, Mr.
Perry began to make steel pens on an improved
plan, and, six years after, they were manufactured
in Birmingham, where some of the largest and finest
steel pen establishments are now flourishing. At
first they were neither good nor cheap. Pens very
inferior to those we now buy at a shilling a gross
were displayed ostentatiously on cardboard squares,
and sold at half-a-crown a dozen. Many large for-
tunes were made, and numberless patents were
taken out. Every possible shape and quality be-
came the subject of a patent, and not half of those
proposed were ever manufactured. A pen-maker,
who was fast becoming a millionaire, once showed
a friend a collection of patented pens, which he had
never made nor intended to make. " I buy the
designs and models," he said, "of the designers.
Then I patent them, and put them to bed. They
are well worth manufacturing ;, indeed, many of
them are better than anything in the market. But
if I were to bring them out, they would only damage
the sale of those I am producing by the million
while I should be at the cost of new machinery
So I let them sleep on ; and if I do not wake them
no one else, you see, can." This was a trait of coin.

mercial policy well deserving consideration in
connection with the subject of patents. Swedish
iron is said to be the lest material for pens.
It is converted into steel on the old plan
in a furnace, or by the new process of Mr.
Bessemer, and subsequently hardened by tilting,
casting into ingots, and rolling it into thin sheets.
The consumption of steel in this way is enormous.
As much as four and twenty years ago it amounted
to 120 tons annually, and was equivalent to about
two hundred millions of pens. This quantity is
now greatly increased in consequence of the penny
postage, and the improvements in steel pen manu-
facture. Some idea of it may be gathered from the
fact, that pens may now be bought by the trade at
fourpence a gross, box included, and that there are
houses which produce twenty, thirty, and even fifty
thousand pens daily througuout the year. The art
of pen-making has never been brought to greater
perfection than in the manufacture of lithographic

‘ crowquill " steel pens. They are very small, as
the term indicates, and are adapted to the finest
shading. Their chief use is in tracing in crimson
lake, and also in lithographic ink on " transfer
paper," which has the remarkable property of dis-
charging all its inked lines on the stone, so to make a
complete transfer of the writing or drawing. The
process by which steel pens are made is too long
and complicated to be described in this place ; but
there is one step in it which particularly strikes
every visitor of a Birmingham or Sheffield factory.
After a great deal of hard treatment they have
undergone in the rolling-mill and the cutting-press,
in the punching, slitting, and curving, in the oven
and the cylinder, the pens have acquired a disagree-
able roughness, which must be removed. For this
purpose they are put into huge tin cans with a
quantity of sawdust. The cans are made to revolve
rapidly by steam, and the pens cleanse and smooth
each other by friction, while the sawdust takes up
all the impurities disengaged. Thus Arthur Hallam
used to say that the form and gloss, the picturesque
of man and man, are merged and ground in the
social mill of great cities, where we are all uncon-
sciously employed in rubbing down each other's