It would be easy to carry these illustrations farther, and to trace the working of the principles we have mentioned through the whole modern system of government in Great Britain. Enough has been said to show that the system is neither founded on the principles contended for by the old Whigs, nor on any appreciation of, or attention to, the national interests, or the dictates of experience in any respect. It has arisen entirely from a blind desire of change, and an opposition to the old system of government, whether of Whig or Tory origin, and a selfish thirst for aggrandisement on the part of the moneyed and commercial classes, whom that system had elevated to riches and power. Experience was not disregarded by this school of politicians; on the contrary, it was sedulously attended to, its lessons carefully marked. But it was considered as a beacon to be avoided, not a light to be followed. Against its conclusions the whole weight of declamation and shafts of irony were directed. It had been thecri de guerreof their enemies, the standard of Mr Pitt's policy; therefore the opposite system was to be inscribed on their banners. It was the ruling principle of their political opponents; and, worst of all, it was the system which, though it had raised the country to power and greatness, had for twenty years excluded themselves from power. Thence the modern system, under which the nation has suffered, and is suffering, such incalculable misfortunes. It has been said, by an enlightened Whig of the old school, that "this age appears to be one in whichevery conceivable follymust be believed andreduced to practicebefore it is abandoned." It is really so; and the reason is, it is an age in which the former system of government, founded on experience and brought about by necessity, has been supplanted by one based on a systematic and invariable determination to change the old system in every particular. The liberals, whether factious or moneyed, of the new school, flattered themselves they were making great advances in political science, when they were merely yielding to the same spirit which made the Calvinists stand up when they prayed, because all the world before them had knelt down, and sit still during psalms, because the Roman Catholics had stood up.
But truth is great, and will prevail; experience is its test, and is perpetually contradicting the theories of man. The year 1848 has been no exception to the maxims of Tacitus and Burke. Dreadful indeed in suffering, appalling in form, are the lessons which it has read to mankind! Ten months have not elapsed, since, by a well-concerted urban tumult, seconded by the treachery of the national guard, the throne of the Barricades was overturned in France—and what do we already see on the continent of Europe? Vienna petitioning for acontinuationof the state of siege, as the only security against the tyranny of democracy: Berlin hailing with rapture the dissolution of the Assembly, and reappearance of the king in the capital: Milan restored to the sway of the Austrians: France seeking, in thequasiimperial crown of Prince Louis Napoleon, with 90,000 soldiers in its capital, a refuge from the insupportable evils of a democratic republic. The year 1848 has added another to the numerous proofs which history affords, that popular convulsions, from whatever cause arising, can terminate only in the rule of the sword; but it has taught two other lessons of incalculable importance to the present and future tranquillity of mankind. These are, that soldiers who in civil convulsions fraternise with the insurgents, and violate their oaths, are theworst enemiesof the people, for they inevitably induce a military despotism, which extinguishes all hopes of freedom. The other is, that the institution of a national guard is in troubled times of all others the most absurd; and that, to put arms into the hands of the people, when warmed by revolutionary passions, is only to light the torch of civil discord with your own hand, and hand over the country to anarchy, ruin, and slavery.
Nor has the year been less fruitful of civil premonitions or lessons of the last importance to the future tranquillity and prosperity of Great Britain. Numerous popular delusions have been dispelled during that period. The dreams of Irish independence have been broken; English Chartism has been crushed. The revolutionists see that the people of Great Britain are not disposed to yield their property to the spoiler, their throats to the murderer, their homes to the incendiary. Free trade and a fettered currency have brought forth their natural fruits—national embarrassment, general suffering, popular misery. One half of the wealth of our manufacturing towns has been destroyed since the new system began. Two years of free trade and a contracted currency have undone nearly all that twenty years of protection and a sufficient currency had done. The great mercantile class have suffered so dreadfully under the effect of their own measures, that their power for good or for evil has been essentially abridged. The colossus which, for a quarter of a century, has bestrode the nation, has been shaken by the earthquake which itself had prepared. Abroad and at home, in peace and in war, delusion has brought forth suffering. The year of revolutions has been theNinth of Thermidor, of liberal principles, for it has brought them to the test of experience.
The extraordinary deficiency recently exhibited by a great Continental nation in two qualities eminently prized by Englishmen—in common consistency, namely, and in common sense—has cast into the shade all previous shortcomings of the kind, making them appear remote and trivial. A people of serfs, ruled for centuries with an iron rod, pillaged for their masters' profit, and lashed at the slightest murmur, were excusable if, on sudden emancipation from such galling thraldom, their joyful gambols exceeded the limits prescribed by public decorum, and by a due regard to their own future prosperity. They might be forgiven for dancing round maypoles, and dreaming of social perfection. It would not be wonderful if they had difficulty in immediately replacing their expelled tyrants by a capable and stable government, and if their brief exhilaration were succeeded by a period of disorganisation and weakness. Such allowances cannot be made for the mad capers of republican France. The deliverance is inadequate to account for the ensuing delirium. The grievances swept away by the February revolution, and which patience, prudence, and moderation, could not have failed ultimately to remove—as thoroughly, if less rapidly—were not so terrible as to justify lunacy upon redress. Nevertheless, since then, the absurdities committed by France, or at least by Paris, are scarcely explicable save on the supposition of temporary aberration of intellect. Unimaginative persons have difficulty in realising the panorama of events, alternately sanguinary and grotesque, lamentable and ludicrous, spread over the last ten months. Europe—the portion of it, that is to say, which has not been bitten by the same rabid and mischievous demon—has looked on, in utter astonishment, at the painful spectacle of a leader of its civilisation galloping, with Folly on its crupper, after mad theories and empty names, and riding down, in the furious chase, its own prosperity and respectability.
We repeat, then, that these great follies of to-day eclipse the minor ones of yesterday. When we see France destroying, in a few weeks, her commerce and her credit, and doing herself more harm than as many years will repair, we overlook the fact, that for upwards of fifteen years she has annually squandered from three to five millions sterling upon an unproductive colony in North Africa. France used not to be petty in her wars, or paltry in her enterprises. If she was sometimes quarrelsome and aggressive, she was wont at least to fasten on foes worthy of her power and resources. Since 1830 she has derogated in this particular. A complication of causes—the most prominent being the vanity characteristic of the nation, the crooked policy of the sovereign, and the morbid love of fighting bequeathed by the warlike period of the Empire—has kept France engaged in a costly and discreditable contest, whose most triumphant results could be but inglorious, and in which she has decimated her best troops, and deteriorated her ancient fame, whilst pursuing, with unworthy ferocity and ruthlessness, a feeble and inoffensive foe. This is no partial or malicious view of the character of the Algerine war. Deliberately, and after due reflection, we repeat, that France has gravely compromised in Africa her reputation as a chivalrous and clement nation, and that she no longer can claim—as once she was wont to do—to be as humane in victory as she is valiant in the fight. For proof of this we need seek no further than in the speeches and despatches of French generals, of men who themselves have served and commanded in Africa. We will judge France by the voices of her own sons, of those she has selected as worthiestto govern her half-conquered colony, and to marshal her legions against a handful of Arabs. More than one of these officers testify, voluntarily or unwittingly, to the barbarity of the system pursued in Africa. What said General Castellane, in his well-known speech in the Chamber of Peers, on the 4th July 1845? "We have reduced the country by an arsenal of axes and phosphorus matches. The trees were cut down, the crops were burned, and soon the mastery was obtained of a population reduced to famine and despair." And elsewhere in the same speech: "Few soldiers perish by the hand of the enemy in this war—a sort ofman-hunton a large scale, in which the Arabs, ignorant of European tactics, having no cannon-balls to exchange against ours, do not fight with equal arms." Monsieur A. Desjobert, long a deputy for the department of the Lower Seine, is the author of a volume, and of several pamphlets, upon the Algerine question. In the most recent of these we find the following remarkable note:—"In February 1837, General Bugeaud said to the Arabs, 'You shall not plough, you shall not sow, nor lead your cattle to the pasture, without our permission.' Later, he gives the following definition of a razzia: 'A sudden irruption, having for its object to surprise the tribes, in order to kill the men, and to carry off the women, children, and cattle.' In 1844, he completes this theory, by saying to the Kabyles, 'I will penetrate into your mountains, I will burn your villages and your crops, I will cut down your fruit-trees.' (Proclamation of the 30th March.) In 1846, rendering an account of his operations against Abd-el-Kader, he says to the authorities of Algiers, 'The power of Abd-el-Kader consists in the resources of the tribes; hence, to ruin his power, we must first ruin the Arabs; therefore have we burned much, destroyed much.' (From theAkhbarnewspaper of February 1846.)" These are significant passages in the mouth of a general-in-chief. Presently, when we come to details, we shall show they were not thrown away upon his subordinates. The extermination of the Arabs was always the real aim of Marshal Bugeaud; he took little pains to cloak his system, and is too great a blunderer to have succeeded, had he taken more. A man of greater presumption than capacity, his audacity, obstinacy, and unscrupulousness knew no bounds. Before this Africanman-hunt, as M. Castellane calls it, he was unknown, except as the Duchess de Berry's jailer, as the slayer of poor Dulong, and as a turbulent debater, whose noisy declamation, and occasional offences against the French language, were a standing joke with the newspapers. A few years elapse, and we find him opposing his stubborn will to that of Soult, then minister at war, and successfully thwarting Napoleon's old lieutenant. This he was enabled to do mainly by the position he had made himself in Africa. He had ridden into power and importance on the shoulders of the persecuted Arabs, by a system of razzias and village-burning, of wholesale slaughter and relentless oppression. Brighter far were the laurels gathered by the lieutenant of the Empire, than those plucked by Louis Philippe's marshal amidst the ashes of Bedouin douars and the corpses of miserable Mussulmans, slain in defence of their scanty birthright, of their tents, their flocks, and the free range of the desert. Poor was the defence they could make against their skilful and disciplined invaders; slight the loss they could inflict in requital of the heavy one they suffered. Again we are obliged to M. Desjobert for statistics, gathered from reports to the Commission of Credits, and from Marshal Bugeaud's own bulletins. From these we learn that the loss in battle of the French armies, during the first ten years of the occupation of Algeria, was an average of one hundred and forty men per annum. In the four following years, eight hundred and eighty-five men perished. The capture of Constantine cost one hundred men, the much-vaunted affair of the Smalanine, the battle of IslyTWENTY-SEVEN! We well remember, for we chanced to be in Paris at the time, the stir produced in that excitable capital by the battle of Isly. No one, unacquainted with the facts, would have doubted that the victory was over a most valiant and formidable foe. People's mouthswere filled with this revival of the military glories of Gaul. Newspapers and picture-shops, poets and painters, combined to celebrate the exploit and sound the victors' praise. One engravingde circonstance, we remember, represented a sturdy French foot-soldier, trampling, like Gulliver, a host of Lilliputian Moors, and carrying a score of them over his shoulder, spitted on his bayonet. "Out of my way!" was the inscription beneath the print—"Les Français seront toujours les Français." Horace Vernet, colourist, by special appointment, to the African campaign, pictorial chronicler of the heroic feats of the house militant of Orleans, prepared his best brushes, and stretched his broadest canvass, to immortalise the marshal and his men. After a few days, two dingy tents and an enormous umbrella were exhibited in the gardens of the Tuileries; these were trophies of the fight—the private property of Mohammed-Abderrhaman, the vanquished prince of Morocco, the real merit of whose conquerors was about as great as that of an active tiger who gloriously scatters a numerous flock of sheep. From one of several books relating to Algeria, now upon our table, we will take a French officer's account of the affair of Isly. The story of Escoffier, a trumpeter who generously resigned his horse to his dismounted captain, himself falling into the hands of the Arabs, whose prisoner he remained for about eighteen months, is told by M. Alby, an officer of the African army. Although a little vivid in the colouring, and comprising two or three very tough "yarns,"—due, we apprehend, to the imagination of trumpeter or author—its historical portion professes to be, and probably is, correct; and, at any rate, there can be no reason for suspecting the writer of depreciating his countrymen's achievements, and understating their merits. The account of the battle, or rather of the chase, for fighting there was none, is given by a deserter from the Spahis, who, after the defeat of the Moors, joined Abd-el-Kader. The Emir and his Arabs took no part in the affair.[10]
"I deserted, with several of my comrades, during the night-march stolen by the French upon the Moors. We sought the emperor's son in his camp, and informed him of the movement making by the French column. The emperor's son had our horses taken away, and gave orders not to lose sight of us. Then he said to us:—
"'Let them come, those dogs of Christians; they are but thirteen thousand strong, and we a hundred and sixty thousand: we will receive them well.'
"The day was well advanced before the Moors perceived the French. Then the emperor's son ordered his horsemen to mount and advance. The French marched in a square. They unmasked their artillery, and the guns sent their deadly charge of grape into the ranks of the Moors, who immediately took to flight, and the French had nothing to do but to sabre them."
"The Moors," says M. Alby, "had fine horses and good sabres; but their muskets were bad; and the men, softened by centuries of peace and prosperity, smoking keef[11]and eating copiously, might be expected to run, as they did, at the first cannon-shot."
It is hard to understand how the loss of the French should have amounted to even the twenty-seven men at which it is stated in their general's bulletin. Did M. Bugeaud, unwilling to admit the facility of his triumph, slay the score and seven with his goosequill? But if the victory was easily won, on the other hand, it was largely rewarded. For having driven before him, by the very first volley from his guns, a horde of overfed barbarians, enervated by sloth and narcotics, and total strangers to the tactics of civilised warfare, the marshal was created a duke! Shade of Napoleon! whether proudly lingering within the trophy-clad walls of theInvalides, or passing in spectral review the dead of Austerlitz and Borodino, suspend your lonely walk, curb your shadowy charger, and contemplate this pitiable spectacle! You, too, gave dukedoms, and lavished even crowns, but you gave them for services worth the naming. Ney and the Moskwa, Massena and Essling, Lannes and Montebello, are words that bear the coupling, and grace a coronet. The names of the places, although all three recall brilliant victories, are far less glorious in their associations than the names of the men. But Bugeaud and Isly! What can we say of them? Truly, thus much—they, too, are worthy of each other.
When reviewing, about two years ago, Captain Kennedy's narrative of travel and adventure in Algeria, we regretted he did not speak out about the mode of carrying on the war, and about the prospects of Algerine colonisation; and we hinted a suspicion that the amenities of French military hospitality, largely extended to a British fellow-soldier, had induced him, if not exactly to cloak, at least to shun laying bare, the errors and mishaps of his entertainers. We cannot make the same complaint of the very pretty book, rich in vignettes and cream-colour, entitled,A Campaign in the Kabylie. Mr Borrer, whom the Cockneys, contemptuous of terminations, will assuredly confound with his great gipsy cotemporary, George Borrow of the Bible, has, like Captain Kennedy, dipped his spoon in French messes. He has ridden with their regiments, and sat at their board, and been quartered with their officers, and received kindness and good treatment on all hands; and therefore any thing that could be construed into malicious comment would come with an ill grace from his pen. But it were exaggerated delicacy to abstain from stating facts, and these he gives in all their nakedness; generally, however, allowing them to speak for themselves, and adding little in the way of remark or opinion. In pursuance of this system, he relates the most horrible instances of outrage and cruelty with a matter-of-fact coolness, and an absence alike of blame and sympathy, that may give an unfavourable notion of his heart, to those who do not accept our lenient interpretation of his cold-blooded style. The traits he sets down, and which are no more than will be found in many French narratives, despatches, and bulletins, show how well the Franco-African army carry out the merciful maxims of Bugeaud.
Mr Borrer, a geographer and antiquary, passed seventeen months in Algeria; and during his residence there, in May 1846, a column of eight thousand French troops, commanded by the Duke of Isly in person, marched against the Kabyles, "that mysterious, bare-headed, leathern-aproned race, whose chief accomplishment was said to be that of being 'crack-shots,' their chief art that of neatly roasting their prisoners alive, and their chief virtue that of loving their homes." It may interest the reader to hear a rather more explicit account of this singular people, who dwell in the mountains that traverse Algeria from Tunis to Morocco—an irregular domain, whose limits it is difficult exactly to define in words. The Kabyles are, in fact, the highlanders of North Africa, and they hold themselves aloof from the Arabs and Europeans that surround them. Concerning them, we find some diversity in the statements of Mr Borrer, and of an anonymous Colonist, twelve years resident at Bougie, whose pamphlet is before us. Of the two, the Frenchman gives them the best character, but both agree as to their industry and intelligence, their frugality and skill in agriculture. They are not nomadic like the Arabs, but live in villages, till the land, and tend flocks. Dwelling in the mountains, they have few horses, and fight chiefly on foot. Divided into many tribes, they are constantly quarreling and fighting amongst themselves, but they forget their feuds and quickly unite to repel a foreign foe. "Predisposed by his character," says the Colonist, "to draw near to civilisation, the Kabyle attaches himself sincerely to the civilised man when circumstances establish a friendly connexion between them. He is still inclined to certain vices inherent in the savage: but of all the Africans, he is the best disposed to live in friendship and harmony with us, which he will do when he shall findhimself in permanent contact with the European population." This is not the general opinion, and it differs widely from that expressed by Mr Borrer. But the Colonist had his own views, perhaps his own interests, to further. He wrote some months previous to the expedition which Mr Borrer accompanied, and which was then not likely to take place, and he strongly advocated its propriety—admitting, however, that public opinion in France was greatly opposed to a military incursion into Kabylia. Himself established at Bougie, of course in some description of commerce, the necessity of roads connecting the coast and the interior was to him quite evident. A good many of his countrymen, whose personal benefit was not so likely to be promoted by causeway-cutting in Algeria, strongly deprecated any sort of road-making that was likely to bring on war with the Kabyles. France began to think she was paying too dear for her whistle. She looked back to the early days of the Orleans dynasty, when Marshal Clausel promised to found a rich and powerful colony with only 10,000 men. She glanced at the pages of theMoniteurof 1837, and there she found words uttered by the great Bugeaud in the Chamber of Deputies. "Forty-five thousand men and one good campaign," said the white-headed warrior, as the Arabs call him, "and in six months the country is pacified, and you may reduce the army to twenty thousand men, to be paid by imposts levied on the colony, consequently costing France nothing." Words, and nothing more—mere wind; the greatestboshthat ever was uttered, even by Bugeaud, who is proverbial for dealing largely in that flatulent commodity. Nine years passed away, and the Commission of the Budget "deplored a situation which compelled France to maintain an army of more than 100,000 men upon that African territory." (Report of M. Bignon of the 15th April 1846, p. 237.) Bugeaud himself had mightily changed his tone, and declared that, to keep Algiers, as large an army would be essential as had been required to conquer it. Lamoricière, a great authority in such matters, confirmed the opinion of his senior. Monsieur Desjobert, and a variety of pamphleteers and newspaper writers, attacked, with argument, ridicule, and statistics, the party known as theAlgérophiles, who made light of difficulties, scoffed at expense, and predicted the prosperity and splendour of French Africa. Algeria, according to them, was to become the brightest gem in the citizen-crown of France. These sanguine gentlemen were met with facts and figures. During 1846, said the anti-Algerines, your precious colony will have cost France 125,000,000 of francs. And they proved it in black and white. There was little chance of the expense being less in following years. Then came the loss of men. In 1840, said M. Desjobert, giving chapter and verse for his statements, 9567 men perished in the African hospitals, out of an effective army of 63,000. Add those invalids who died in French hospitals, or in their homes, from the results of African campaigning, and the total loss is moderately stated at 11,000 men, or more than one-sixth of the whole force employed. Out of these, only 227 died in action. The thing seemed hopeless and endless. What do we get for our money? was the cry. What is our compensation for the decimation of our young men? France can better employ her sons, than in sending them to perish by African fevers. What do we gain by all this expenditure of gold and blood?—The unreasonable mortals! Had they not gained a Duke of Isly and a Moorish pavilion? M. Desjobert surely forgets these inestimable acquisitions when he asks and answers the question—"What remains of all our victories? A thousand bulletins, and Horace Vernet's big pictures."
"How many times," says the same writer, "has not the subjection of the Arabs been proclaimed! In 1844, General Bugeaud gains the battle of Isly. Are the Arabs subdued?
"When the Arabs appear before the judges who dispose of life and death, they confess their faith, and proclaim their hatred of us; and when we are simple enough to tell them that some of their race are devoted to us, they reply, 'Those lie to you, through fear, or for their owninterest; and as often as a scheriff shall come whom they believe able to conquer you, they will follow him, even into the streets of Algiers.' (Examination of Bou Maza's brother, 12th November 1845.) Thus spoke the chief. The common Arab had already said to the Christian, "If my head and thine were boiled in the same vessel, my broth would separate itself from thy broth."
This was discouraging to those who had dreamed of the taming of the Arab; and the more sanguinary mooted ideas of extermination. Such a project, clearly written down, and printed, and placed on Parisian breakfast tables, might be startling; in Algeria it had long been put in practice. What said General Duvivier in hisSolution de la Question d'Algérie, p. 285? "For eleven years they have razed buildings, burned crops, destroyed trees, massacred men, women, and children, with a still-increasing fury." We have already shown that this work of extermination was not carried on with perfect impunity. Here is further confirmation of the fact. "Every Arab killed," says M. Leblanc de Prébois, another officer, who wrote on the Algerian war, and wrote from personal experience, "costs us the death of thirty-three men, and 150,000 francs." Supposing a vast deal of exaggeration in this statement, the balance still remains ugly against the French, for whom there is evidently very little difference between catching an Arab and catching a Tartar. Whilst upon the subject of extermination, Mr Borrer gives an opinion more decidedly unfavourable to his French friends than is expressed in any other part of his book. His estimate of Kabyle virtues differs considerably, it will be observed, from that of the Colonist, and of the two is much nearest the truth.
"The abominable vices and debaucheries of the Kabyle race, the inhuman barbarities they are continually guilty of towards such as may be cast by tempest, or other misfortune, upon their rugged shores; the atrocious cruelties and refined tortures they, in common with the Arab, delight in exercising upon any such enemies as may be so unhappy as to fall alive into their hands, must render the hearts of those acquainted with this people perfectly callous as to what misfortunes may befall them or their country; and many may think that, as far as the advancement of civilisation is concerned, the wiping off of the Kabyle and Arab races of Northern Africa from the face of the earth, would be the greatest boon to humanity. Though, however, they may be fraught with all the vices of the Canaanitish tribes of old, yet the command, 'Go ye after him through the city and smite; let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity; slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women,' is not justifiably issued at the pleasure of man; and we can but lament to see a great and gallant nation engaged in a warfare exasperating both parties to indulge in sanguinary atrocities,—atrocities to be attributed on one side to the barbarous and savage state of those having recourse to them; but on the other, proceeding only from a thirst for retaliation and bloody revenge, unworthy of those enjoying a high position as a civilised people. War is, as we all know, ever productive of horrors: but such horrors may be greatly restrained and diminished by the exertions and example of those in command."
The hoary-headed hero of Isly is not the man to make the exertion, or set the example. At the beginning of 1847, rumours of a projected inroad amongst the Kabyles caused uneasiness and dissatisfaction in Algeria, when such a movement was highly unpopular, as likely to lead to a long and expensive war. The "Commission of Credits," a board appointed by the French Chamber for the particular investigation and regulation of Algerine affairs, applied to the minister of war to know if the rumours were well founded. The minister confessed they were; adding, however, that the expedition would be quite peaceable; but at the same time laying before the commission letters from Bugeaud, "expressing regret that force of arms was not to be resorted to more than was absolutely necessary, the submission of the aborigines being never certainuntil powder had spoken." The marshal evidently "felt like fighting." The Commission protested; theminister rebuked them, bidding them mind their credits, and not meddle with the royal prerogative. Thus unjustly snubbed—for they certainly were minding their credits, by opposing increase of expenditure—the Commission were mute, one of the members merely observing, by way of a last shot, that it was easier to refuse to listen than to reply satisfactorily. In France, public opinion, the Chamber of Deputies, and Marshal Soult, had, on various occasions, declared against attacking the Kabyles. "Nevertheless, a proclamation was issued by Marshal Bugeaud to the inhabitants of the Kabylie, to warn them that the French army was upon the point of entering their territory, 'to cleanse it of those adventurers who there preached the war against France.' The proclamation then went on to state, that the marshal had no desire to fight with them, or to devastate their property; but that, if there were amongst them any who wished for war, they would find him ready to accept it." If a hard-favoured stranger, armed with a horsewhip, walked uninvited into M. Bugeaud's private residence, loudly proclaiming he would thrash nobody unless provoked, the marshal would be likely to resist the intrusion. The Kabyles, doubtless, thought his advance into their territory an equally unjustifiable proceeding. As to the pretext of "the adventurers who preached war," it was unfounded and ridiculous. Such propagandists have never been listened to in Kabylia. "The voice of the Emir Abd-el-Kader himself," says the Colonist, "would not obtain a hearing. Did he not go in person, in 1839, when preparing to break his treaty of peace with us, and preach the holy war? Did he not traverse the valley of the Souman, from one end to the other, to recruit combatants? And what did he obtain from the Kabyles? Hospitality for a few days, coupled with the formal invitation to evacuate the country as soon as possible. Did he succeed better when he lately again tried to raise Kabylia against us?" Mr Borrer confirms this. Marshal Bugeaud himself had said in the Chamber of Deputies, "The Kabyles are neither aggressive nor hostile; they defend themselves vigorously when intruded upon, but they do not attack." The marshal, whose whole public life has been full of contradictions, was the first to intrude upon them, although but a very few years had elapsed since he said in a pamphlet, "The Kabyles are numerous and very warlike; they have villages, and their agriculture is sedentary; already there is too little land to supply their wants; there is no room, therefore, for Europeans in the mountains of Kabylia, and they would cut a very poor figure there." This last prophetic sentence was realised by M. Bugeaud himself, who certainly made no very brilliant appearance when, forgetting his former theory, he hazarded himself in May 1847, at the head of eight thousand men, and with Mr Borrer in his train, amongst the hardy mountaineers of Kabylia.
Hereabouts Mr Borrer quotes, in French, the statement of a member of the Commission already referred to. It is worth extracting, as fully confirming our conviction that the conduct of France in Algeria has been throughout characterised by an utter want of judgment and justice. "The native towns have been invaded, ruined, sacked, by our administration, more even than by our arms. In time of peace, a great number of private estates have been ravaged and destroyed. A multitude of title-deeds delivered to us for verification have never been restored. Even in the environs of Algiers, fertile lands have been taken from the Arabs and given to Europeans, who, unable or unwilling to cultivate their new possessions, have farmed them out to their former owners, who have thus become the mere stewards of the inheritance of their fathers. Elsewhere, tribes, or fractions of tribes, not hostile to us, but who, on the contrary, had fought for us, have been driven from their territory. Conditions have been accepted from them, and not kept—indemnities promised, and never paid—until we have compromised our honour even more than their interests." Such a statement, proceeding from a Frenchman—from one, too, delegated by his government, to examine the state of the colony—is quite conclusive as to administrative proceedings in Algeria. It wouldbe superfluous and impertinent to add another line of evidence. A comment may be appropriate. "Is it not Montesquieu," says Mr Borrer, "in hisEsprit des Lois, who observes—'The right of conquest, though a necessary and legitimate right, is an unhappy one, bequeathing to the conqueror a heavy debt to humanity, only to be acquitted by repairing, as far as possible, those evils of which he has been the cause'?—and Montesquieu was a wise man, and a Frenchman!"
Dismissing this branch of the subject, let us see how the Duke of Isly made "the powder speak" in Kabylia, and try our hand at a rough sketch, taking the loan of Mr Borrer's colours. A strong body of French troops—the 8000 have been increased, since departure, by several battalions and some spahis—are encamped in a rich valley, cutting down the unripe wheat for the use of their horses, whilst, from the surrounding heights, the Kabyles gloomily watch the unscrupulous foragers. "Now 'soft-winged evening,'" as Mr Dawson Borrer poetically expresses himself, "hovers o'er the scene, chasing from woodlands and sand-rock heights the gilded tints of the setting sun." In other words, it gets dark—and shots are heard. The natives, vexed at the liberties taken with their crops, harass the outposts. Their bad powder and overloaded guns have no chance against French muskets. "In the name of the Prophet,HEADS!" Bugeaud the Merciful pays for them ten francs a-piece. Four are presented to him before breakfast. The premium is to make the soldiers alert against horse-stealers. Ten francs being a little fortune to a French soldier, whose pay in hard cash is two or three farthings a-day, Mr Borrer suspects the heads are sometimes taken from shoulders where they have a right to remain. An Arab is always an Arab, whether a horse-stealer or a mere idler. But no matter—a few more or less. Day returns; the column marches; the Kabyles show little of the intrepidity, in defence of their hearths and altars, attributed to them by M. Bugeaud and others. Their horsemen fly before a platoon of French cavalry; the infantry limit their offensive operations to cowardly long shots at the rear-guard. Four venerable elders bring two yoked oxen in token of submission. In general, the inhabitants have disappeared. Their deserted towns appear, in the distance, by no means inferior to many French and Italian villages. The marshal will not permit exploring parties for fear of ambuscade. Night arrives, and passes without incident of note. At three in the morning, the camp is aroused by hideous yells. A sentinel has fired at a horse-thief and broken his leg, and now, mindful of the ten francs, tries to cut off the head of the wounded man, who objects and screams. A bayonet-thrust stops his mouth, and thebill on Bugeaudis duly severed. The next day is passed in skirmishing with the Beni-Abbez, the most numerous tribe of the valley of the Souman, but not a very warlike one—so says the Colonist; and, indeed, they offer but slight resistance, although they, or some other tribes, make a firm and determined attack upon the French outposts in the course of that night. There is more smoke than bloodshed; but the Kabyles show considerable pluck, burn a prodigious number of cartridges, and make no doubt they have nearly "rubbed out" the Christians; in which particular they are rather mistaken—the French, not choosing to leave their camp, having quietly lain down, and allowed the Berber lead to fly over them. At last the assailants' ammunition runs low, and they retire, leaving a sprinkling of dead. Mr Borrer quotes the Koran. "'Those of our brothers who fall in defence of the true faith, are not dead, but live invisible, receiving their nourriture from the hand of the Most High,' says the Prophet."Nourritureis not quite English, at least with that orthography; but no matter for Mr Borrer's Gallicisms, which are many. We rush with him into the Kabyle fire. Here he sits, halted amongst the olive-trees, philosophically lighting his pipe, the bullets whistling about his ears, whilst he admires thesang froidof a prettyvivandière, seated astride upon her horse, and jesting at the danger. The column advances—the Kabyles retreat, fighting, pursued by the French shells, which they hold in particular horror,and call the howitzer thetwice-firing cannon. The object of the advance is to destroy the towns and villages of the Beni-Abbez, the night-attack upon his bivouac affording the marshal a pretext. The villages are surrounded with stiff walls of stones and mud, crowned with strong thorny fences, and having hedges of prickly pear growing at their base; and the gaunt burnoosed warriors make good fight through loop-holes and from the terraces of their houses. But resistance is soon overcome, and the narrow streets are crowded with Frenchmen, ravishing, massacring, plundering; no regard to sex or age; outrage for every woman—the edge of the sword for all.
"Upon the floor of one of the chambers lay a little girl of twelve or fourteen years of age, weltering in gore, and in the agonies of death: an accursed ruffian thrust his bayonet into her. God will requite him.... When the soldiers had ransacked the dwellings, and smashed to atoms all they could not carry off, or did not think worth seizing as spoil, they heaped the remnants and the mattings together and fired them. As I was hastily traversing the streets to regain the outside of the village, disgusted with the horrors I witnessed, flames burst forth on all sides, and torrents of fire came swiftly gliding down the thoroughfares, for the flames had gained the oil. An instant I turned—the fearful doom of the poor concealed child and the decrepid mother flashing on my mind. It was too late.... The unfortunate Kabyle child was doubtless consumed with her aged parent. How many others may have shared her fate!"
At noon, the atmosphere is laden with smoke arising from the numerous burning villages. From one spot nine may be counted, wrapped in flames. There is merry-making in the French camp. Innumerable goatskins, full of milk, butter, figs, and flour, are produced and opened. Some are consumed; more are squandered and strewn upon the ground. Let the Kabyle dogs starve! Have they not audaciously levelled their long guns at the white-headed warrior and his followers, who asked nothing but submission, free passage through the country, corn-fields for their horses, and the fat of the land for themselves? But stay—there is still a town to take, the last, the strongest, the refuge of the women and of the aged. Its defence is resolute, but at last it falls. "Ravished, murdered, burnt, hardly a child escaped to tell the tale. A few of the women fled to the ravines around the village; but troops swept the brushwood; and the stripped and mangled bodies of females might there be seen.... One vast sheet of flame crowned the height, which an hour or two before was ornamented with an extensive and opulent village, crowded with inhabitants. It seemed to have been the very emporium of commerce of the Beni-Abbez; fabrics of gunpowder, of arms, of haïks, burnooses, and different stuffs, were there. The streets boasted of numerous shops of workers in silver, workers in cord, venders of silk, &c." All this the soldiers pillaged, or the fire devoured; then the insatiable flames gained the corn and olive trees, and converted a smiling and prosperous district into a black and barren waste. Bugeaud looked on and pronounced it good, and his men declared the country "well cleaned out," and vaunted their deeds of rapine and violence. "I heard two ruffians relating, with great gusto, how many young girls had been burned in one house, after being abused by their brutal comrades and themselves." Out of consideration for his readers, Mr Borrer says, he writes down but the least shocking of the crimes and atrocities he that day witnessed. We have no inclination to transcribe a tithe of the horrors he records, and at sight of which, he assures us, the blood of many a gallant French officer boiled in his veins. He mentions no attempt on the part of these compassionate officers to curb the ferocity of their men, who had not the excuse of previous severe sufferings, of a long and obstinate resistance, and of the loss of many of their comrades, to allege in extenuation of their savage violence. History teaches us that, in certain circumstances, as, for instance, after protracted sieges, great exposure, and a long and bloody fight, soldiers of all nations are liable to forget discipline, and, maddened by fury, by suffering and excitement, to despisethe admonitions and reprimands of the chiefs—nay, even to turn their weapons against those whom for years they have been accustomed to respect and implicitly obey. But there is no such excuse in the instance before us. A pleasant military promenade through a rich country, fine weather, abundant rations, and just enough skirmishing to give zest to the whole affair, whose fighting part was exceeding brief, as might be expected, when French bayonets and artillery were opposed to the clumsy guns and irregular tactics of the Beni-Abbez—we find nothing in this picture to extenuate the horrible cruelties enacted by the conquerors after their easily achieved victory. Their whole loss, according to their marshal's bulletin, amounted to fifty-seven killed and wounded. This included the loss in the night-attack on the camp. In fact, it was mere child's play for the disciplined French soldiery; and Mr Borrer virtually admits this, by applying to the affair General Castellane's expression of aman-hunt. He then, with no good grace, endeavours to find an excuse for his campaigning comrades. "The ranks of the French army in Africa are composed, in great measure, of the very scum of France." They have condemned regiments in Africa, certainly; the Foreign Legion are reckless and reprobate enough; we dare say the Zouaves, a mixed corps of wild Frenchmen and tamed Arabs, are neither tender nor scrupulous; but these form a very small portion of the hundred thousand French troops in Africa, and there is little picking and choosing amongst the line regiments, who take their turn of service pretty regularly, neither is there reason for considering the men who go to Algeria to be greater scamps than those who remain in France. So this will not do, Mr Borrer: try another tack. "The only sort of excuse for the horrors committed by the soldiery in Algeria, is their untamed passions, and the fire added to their natural ferocity by the atrocious cruelties so often committed by the Arabs upon their comrades in arms, who have been so unhappy as to fall into their power." This is more plausible, although it is a query who began the system of murderous reprisals. Arab treatment of prisoners is not mild. On the evening of the 1st June, some men straggled from the French bivouac, and were captured. "It was said that from one of the outposts the Kabyles were seen busily engaged, in roasting their victims before a large fire upon a neighbouring slope; but whether this was a fact or not, I never learned." It was possibly true. Escoffier tells us how one of his fellow-prisoners, a Jew named Wolf, who fell into the hands of Moorish shepherds, was thrown upon a blazing pile of faggots; and although we suspect the brave trumpeter, or his historian, of occasional exaggeration, there are grounds for crediting the authenticity of this statement. As to Mr Borrer, he guarantees nothing but what he sees with his own eyes, the camp being, he says, full ofblagueurs, or tellers of white lies. The inventions of these mendacious gentry are not always as innocent as he appears to think them. Imaginary cruelties, attributed to an enemy, are very apt to impose upon credulous soldiers, and to stimulate them to unnecessary bloodshed, and to acts of lawless revenge. Many a village has been burned, and many an inoffensive peasant sabred, on the strength of such lying fabrications. In Africa especially, where thelex talionisseems fully recognised, and its enforcement confided to the first straggler who chooses to fire a house or stick an Arab, theblagueursshould be handed over, in our opinion, to summary punishment. On the advance of the French column, a soldier or two, straying from the bivouac to bathe or fish, had here and there been shot by the lurking Kabyles. On its return, "I was somewhat surprised," Mr Borrer remarks, "to observe, in the wake of the column, flames bursting forth from the gourbies (villages) left in our rear. It was well known that the tribe upon whose territory we were riding had submitted, and that their sheikh was even riding at the head of the column." None could explain the firing of the villages. The sheikh, indignant at the treachery of the French, set spurs to his mare, and was off like the wind. The conflagration was traced to soldiers of the rear-guard, desirous to revenge theircomrades, picked off on the previous march. We are not told that the crime was brought home to the perpetrators, or visited upon them. If it was, Mr Borrer makes no mention of the fact, but passes on, as if the burning of a few villages were a trifle scarce worth notice. How were the Kabyles to distinguish between the acts of the private soldier and of the epauleted chief? Their submission had just been accepted, and friendly words spoken to them: their sheikh rode beside the gray-haired leader of the Christians, and marked the apparent subordination of the white-faced soldiery. Suddenly a gross violation occurred of the amicable understanding so recently come to. How persuade them that the submissive and disciplined soldiers they saw around them would venture such breach of faith without the sanction or connivance of their commander? The offence is that of an insignificant sentinel, but the dirt falls upon the beard of Bugeaud; and confidence in the promises of the lying European is thoroughly and for ever destroyed.
A colony, whose mode of acquisition and of government, up to the present time, reflects so little credit upon French arms and administrators, ought certainly to yield pecuniary results or advantages of some kind, which, in a mercenary point of view, might balance the account. France surely did not place her reputation for humanity and justice in the hands of Marshal Bugeaud and of others of his stamp, without anticipating some sort of compensation for its probable deterioration. Such expectations have hitherto been wholly unfulfilled; and we really see little chance of their probable or speedy realisation. The colony is as unpromising, as the colonists are inapt to improve it. The fact is, the work of colonisation has not begun. The French are utterly at a loss how to set about it. All kinds of systems have been proposed. Bugeaud has had his—that of military colonisation, which he maintained, with characteristic stubbornness, in the teeth of public opinion, of the French government, of common sense, and even of possibility. He proposed to take, during ten years, one hundred and twenty thousand recruits from the conscription, and to settle them in Africa, with their wives. He estimated the expense of this scheme at twelve millions sterling. His opponents stated its probable cost at four times that sum. Whichever estimate was correct, it is not worth while examining the plan, which for a moment was entertained by a government commission, but has since been completely abandoned. It presupposes an extraordinary and arbitrary stretch of power on the part of the government that should adopt such a system of compulsory colonisation. We are surprised to find Mr Borrer inclined to favour the exploded plan. General Lamoricière (the terribleBour-à-boiof the Arabs,[12]) proposed to give premiums to agriculturists settling in Algeria, at the rate of twenty-five per cent of their expenses of clearing, irrigation, construction, and plantation. But M. Lamoricière—a very practical man indeed, with his sabre in his fist, and at the head of his Zouaves—is a shallow theorist in matters of colonisation. The staff of surveyors, valuers, and referees essential to carry out his project, would alone have been a heavy additional charge on the unprofitable colony. "M. Lamoricière," says M. Desjobert, "was one of the warmest advocates of the occupation of Bougie," (a seaport of Kabylie,) "and partly directed, in 1833, that fatal expedition." (Fatal, M. Desjobert means, by reason of its subsequent cost in men and money. The town was taken by a small force on the 29th September 1833.) "The soldiers were then told that their mission was agricultural rather than military, that they would have to handle the pick and the spade more frequently than the musket. The unfortunates have certainly handled pick and spade; butit was to dig in that immense cemetery which, each day, swallows up their comrades. Already, in 1836, General d'Erlon, ex-governor of Algiers, demanded the evacuation of Bougie, which had devoured, in three years, three thousand men and seven millions of francs." The demand was not complied with, and Bougie has continued to consume more than its quota of the six thousand men at which M. Desjobert estimates the average annual loss, by disease alone, of the African army. Bougie has not flourished under the tricolor. In former times a city of great riches and importance, it still contained several thousand inhabitants when taken by the French. At the period of Mr Borrer's visit, it reckoned a population of five hundred, exclusive of the garrison of twelve hundred men. To return, however, to the systems of colonisation. When the generals had had their say, it was the turn of the commissions; the commission of Africa, that of the Chamber of Deputies, &c. There was no lack of projects; but none of them answered. The colonial policy of the Orleans government was eminently short-sighted. This is strikingly shown in Mr Borrer's 14th chapter, "A Word upon the Colony." Of the fertile plain of the Metidja, containing about a million and a half acres of arable and pasture land, a very small portion is cultivated. The French found a garden; they have made a desert. "Before the French occupation, vast tracts which now lie waste, sacrificed to palmetta and squills, were cultivated by the Arabs, who grew far more corn than was required for their own consumption; whereas now, they grow barely sufficient: the consequence of which is, that the price of corn is enormous in Algeria at present." Land is cheap enough, but labour is dear, because the necessaries of life are so. Instead of making Algiers a free port, protection to French manufactures is the order of the day, and this has driven Arab commerce to Tunis and Morocco. Rivalry with England—the feverish desire for colonies and for the supremacy of the seas—must unquestionably be ranked amongst the motives of the tenacious retention of such an expensive possession as Algeria. And now the odious English cottons are an obstacle to the prosperity of the colony. To sell a few more bales of French calicoes and crates of French hardware, the wise men at Paris put an effectual check upon the progress of African agriculture. Here, if anywhere, free-trade might be introduced with advantage; in common necessaries, at any rate, and for a few years, till the country became peopled, and the colonists had overcome the first difficulties of their position. It would make very little difference to Rouen and Lyons, whilst to the settlers it would practically work more good than would have been done them by M. Lamoricière'ssubvention, supposing this to have been adopted, and that the heavily-taxed agriculturist of France—in many parts of which country land pays but two and a half or three per cent—had consented to pay additional imposts for the benefit of the agriculturist of Algeria. In the beginning, the notion of the French government was, that its new conquest would colonise itself unassisted; that there would be a natural and steady flow of emigrants from the mother country. In any case this expectation would probably have proved fallacious—at least it would never have been realised to the extent anticipated; but the small encouragement given to such emigration, rendered it utterly abortive. The "stream" of settlers proved a mere dribble. Security and justice, Mr Thiers said, were all that France owed her colony. Even these two things were not obtained, in the full sense of the words. The centralisation system weighed upon Algeria. Everything was referred to Paris. Hence interminable correspondence, and delays innumerable. In the year 1846, Mr Borrer says, twenty-four thousand despatches were received by the civil administration from the chiefbureauin the French capital, in exchange for twenty-eight thousand sent. Instead of imparting all possible celerity to the administrative forms requisite to the establishment of emigrants, these must often wait a year or more before they are put in possession of the land granted. Meanwhile they expend their resources, and are enervated by idleness and disease. The climate ofNorth Africa is ill-adapted to French constitutions. M. Desjobert has already told us the average loss of the army, and General Duvivier, in hisSolution de la Question d'Algérie, fully corroborated his statements. "A man," said the general, "whose constitution is not in harmony with the climate of Africa, never adapts himself to it; he suffers, wastes away, and dies. The expression, that a mass of men who have been for some time in Africa have become inured to the climate, is inexact. They have not become inured to it; they have beendecimated by death.The climate is a great sieve, which allows a rapid passage to everything that is not of a certain force." Supposing 100,000 men sent from France to Algeria for six years' service. At the end of that time, their loss by disease alone, at the rate of six per cent—proved by M. Desjobert to be the annual average—would amount to upwards of 30,000, or to more than three-tenths of the whole. The emigrants fare no better. "They look for milk and honey," says Borrer: "they find palmetta and disease. The villages scattered about the Sahel or Massif of Algiers (a high ground at the back of the city, forming a rampart between the Metidja and the Mediterranean) are, with one or two exceptions, a type of desolation. Perched upon the most arid spots, distant from water, the poor tenants lie sweltering between sun and sirocco." A Mississippi swamp must be as eligible "squatting" ground as this—Arabs instead of alligators, and the Algerine fever in place of Yellow Jack. "At the gates of Algiers, in the villages of the Sahel," said the "Algérie" newspaper of the 22d December 1845, "the colonists desert, driven away by hunger. If any remain, it is because they have no strength to move. In the plain of the Metidja, the misery and desolation are greater still. At Fondouck, in the last five months, 120 persons have died, out of a population of 280." The reporter to the Commission of the French budget of 1837 (Monsieur Bignon) admitted that "the results of the colonisation are almost negative." He could not obtain, he said, an estimate of the agricultural population. At the same period, an Algiers newspaper (La France Algérienne) estimated the European agriculturists at 7000, two-thirds of whom were mere market-gardeners.
It is unnecessary to multiply proofs; and we will here conclude this imperfect sketch of Franco-African colonisation, of its crimes, its errors, and its cost, by extracting a rather remarkable passage from a writer we have more than once referred to, and who, although perhaps disposed to view things in Algeria upon the black side, is yet deserving of credit, as well by his position as by reason of his painstaking research and, so far as we have verified them, accurate statistics.
"The colonists cannot deny," says Monsieur Desjobert in hisAlgérie en1846, "and they admit:
"1º. That Europe alone maintains the 200,000 Europeans in Algeria. In 1846 we are compelled to repeat what General Bernard, minister of war, said in 1838: 'Algeria resembles a naked rock, which it is necessary to supply with everything, except air and water.'
"2º. That so long as we remain in this precarious situation, a naval war, by interrupting the communications, would compromise the safety of our army. In 1846 we repeat M. Thiers' words, uttered in 1837: 'If war surprises you in the state of indecision in which you are, I say that the disgraceful evacuation of Africa will be inevitable.'
"M. Thiers did not speak the whole truth when he talked of evacuation. In such an extremity, evacuation would be impossible. Our army would perish of misery, and its remnant would fall into the hands of the enemy."
Another enemy than the Arabs is here evidently pointed at; that possible foe is now a friend to France, and we trust will long remain so. But on many accounts the sentences we have just quoted are significant, as proceeding from the pen of a French deputy. They need no comment, and we shall offer none. We wait with interest to see if France's African colony prospers better under the Republic of 1848 than it did under the Monarchy of 1830.
And my father pushed aside his books.
O young reader, whoever thou art,—or reader, at least, who hast been young,—canst thou not remember some time when, with thy wild troubles and sorrows as yet borne in secret, thou hast come back from that hard, stern world which opens on thee when thou puttest thy foot out of the threshold of home—come back to the four quiet walls, wherein thine elders sit in peace—and seen, with a sort of sad amaze, how calm and undisturbed all is there? That generation which has gone before thee in the path of the passions—the generation of thy parents—(not so many years, perchance, remote from thine own)—how immovably far off, in its still repose, it seems from thy turbulent youth! It has in it a stillness as of a classic age, antique as the statues of the Greeks. That tranquil monotony of routine into which those lives that preceded thee have merged—the occupations that they have found sufficing for their happiness, by the fireside—in the armchair and corner appropriated to each—how strangely they contrast thine own feverish excitement! And they make room for thee, and bid thee welcome, and then resettle to their hushed pursuits, as if nothing had happened! Nothing had happened! while in thy heart, perhaps, the whole world seems to have shot from its axis, all the elements to be at war! And you sit down, crushed by that quiet happiness which you can share no more, and smile mechanically, and look into the fire; and, ten to one, you say nothing till the time comes for bed, and you take up your candle, and creep miserably to your lonely room.
Now, if in a stage coach in the depth of winter, when three passengers are warm and snug, a fourth, all besnowed and frozen, descends from the outside and takes place amongst them, straightway all the three passengers shift their places, uneasily pull up their cloak collars, re-arrange their "comforters," feel indignantly a sensible loss of caloric—the intruder has at least made a sensation. But if you had all the snows of the Grampians in your heart, you might enter unnoticed: take care not to tread on the toes of your opposite neighbour, and not a soul is disturbed, not a "comforter" stirs an inch! I had not slept a wink, I had not even laid down all that night—the night in which I had said farewell to Fanny Trevanion—and the next morning, when the sun rose, I wandered out—where I know not. I have a dim recollection of long, gray, solitary streets—of the river, that seemed flowing in dull silence, away, far away, into some invisible eternity—trees and turf, and the gay voices of children. I must have gone from one end of the great Babel to the other: but my memory only became clear and distinct when I knocked, somewhere before noon, at the door of my father's house, and, passing heavily up the stairs, came into the drawing-room, which was the rendezvous of the little family; for, since we had been in London, my father had ceased to have his study apart, and contented himself with what he called "a corner"—a corner wide enough to contain two tables and a dumb waiter, with chairsà discretionall littered with books. On the opposite side of this capacious corner sat my uncle, now nearly convalescent, and he was jotting down, in his stiff military hand, certain figures in a little red account-book—for you know already that my uncle Roland was, in his expenses, the most methodical of men.
My father's face was more benign than usual, for, before him lay a proof—the first proof of his first work—his one work—the Great Book! Yes! it had positively found a press. And the first proof of your first work—ask any author whatthatis! My mother was out, with the faithful Mrs Primmins, shopping or marketing no doubt; so, while the brothers were thus engaged, it was natural that my entrance should not make as much noise as if it had been a bomb, or a singer, or a clap of thunder, or the last "great novel ofthe season," or anything else that made a noise in those days. For what makes a noise now? Now, when the most astonishing thing of all is in our easy familiarity with things astounding—when we say, listlessly, "Another revolution at Paris," or, "By the bye, there is the deuce to do at Vienna!"—when De Joinville is catching fish in the ponds at Claremont, and you hardly turn back to look at Metternich on the pier at Brighton!
My uncle nodded, and growled indistinctly; my father—
"Put aside his books; you have told us that already."
Sir, you are very much mistaken, he did not put aside his books, for he was not engaged in them—he was reading his proof. And he smiled, and pointed to it (the proof I mean) pathetically, and with a kind of humour, as much as to say—"What can you expect, Pisistratus?—my new baby! in short clothes—or long primer, which is all the same thing!"
I took a chair between the two, and looked first at one, then at the other, and—heaven forgive me!—I felt a rebellious, ungrateful spite against both. The bitterness of my soul must have been deep indeed to have overflowed in that direction, but it did. The grief of youth is an abominable egotist, and that is the truth. I got up from the chair, and walked towards the window; it was open, and outside the window was Mrs Primmins' canary, in its cage. London air had agreed with it, and it was singing lustily. Now, when the canary saw me standing opposite to its cage, and regarding it seriously, and, I have no doubt, with a very sombre aspect, the creature stopped short, and hung its head on one side, looking at me obliquely and suspiciously. Finding that I did it no harm, it began to hazard a few broken notes, timidly and interrogatively, as it were, pausing between each; and at length, as I made no reply, it evidently thought it had solved the doubt, and ascertained that I was more to be pitied than feared—for it stole gradually into so soft and silvery a strain that, I verily believe, it did it on purpose to comfort me!—me, its old friend, whom it had unjustly suspected. Never did any music touch me so home as did that long, plaintive cadence. And when the bird ceased, it perched itself close to the bars of the cage, and looked at me steadily with its bright intelligent eyes. I felt mine water, and I turned back and stood in the centre of the room, irresolute what to do, where to go. My father had done with the proof, and was deep in his folios. Roland had clasped his red account book, restored it to his pocket, wiped his pen carefully, and now watched me from under his great beetle brows. Suddenly he rose, and, stamping on the hearth with his cork leg, exclaimed, "Look up from those cursed books, brother Austin! What is there in that lad's face? Construethat, if you can!"
And my father pushed aside his books, and rose hastily. He took off his spectacles, and rubbed them mechanically, but he said nothing; and my uncle, staring at him for a moment, in surprise at his silence, burst out,—
"Oh! I see—he has been getting into some scrape, and you are angry! Fie! young blood will have its way, Austin—it will. I don't blame that—it is only when—come here, Sisty! Zounds! man, come here."
My father gently brushed off the captain's hand, and, advancing towards me, opened his arms. The next moment I was sobbing on his breast.
"But what is the matter?" cried Captain Roland, "will nobody say what is the matter? Money, I suppose—money, you confounded extravagant young dog. Luckily you have got an uncle who has more than he knows what to do with. How much?—fifty?—a hundred? two hundred? How can I write the cheque, if you'll not speak?"
"Hush, brother! it is no money you can give that will set this right. My poor boy! have I guessed truly? Did I guess truly the other evening, when—"
"Yes, sir, yes! I have been so wretched. But I am better now—I can tell you all."
My uncle moved slowly towardsthe door: his fine sense of delicacy made him think that even he was out of place in the confidence between son and father.
"No, uncle," I said, holding out my hand to him, "stay; you too can advise me—strengthen me. I have kept my honour yet—help me to keep it still."
At the sound of the word honour Captain Roland stood mute, and raised his head quickly.
So I told all—incoherently enough at first, but clearly and manfully as I went on. Now I know that it is not the custom of lovers to confide in fathers and uncles. Judging by those mirrors of life, plays and novels, they choose better;—valets and chambermaids, and friends whom they have picked up in the street, as I had picked up poor Francis Vivian—to these they make clean breasts of their troubles. But fathers and uncles—to them they are close, impregnable, "buttoned to the chin." The Caxtons were an eccentric family, and never did anything like other people. When I had ended, I lifted my eyes, and said pleadingly, "Now, tell me, is there no hope—none?"
"Why should there be none?" cried Captain Roland hastily—"the De Caxtons are as good a family as the Trevanions; and as for yourself, all I will say is, that the young lady might choose worse for her own happiness."
I wrung my uncles hand, and turned to my father in anxious fear—for I knew that, in spite of his secluded habits, few men ever formed a sounder judgment on worldly matters, when he was fairly drawn to look at them. A thing wonderful is that plain wisdom which scholars and poets often have for others, though they rarely deign to use it for themselves. And how on earth do they get at it? I looked at my father, and the vague hope Roland had excited fell as I looked.
"Brother," said he slowly, and shaking his head, "the world, which gives codes and laws to those who live in it, does not care much for a pedigree, unless it goes with a title-deed to estates."
"Trevanion was not richer than Pisistratus when he married Lady Ellinor," said my uncle.
"True; but Lady Ellinor was not then an heiress, and her father viewed these matters as no other peer in England perhaps would. As for Trevanion himself, I dare say he has no prejudices about station, but he is strong in common sense. He values himself on being a practical man. It would be folly to talk to him of love, and the affections of youth. He would see in the son of Austin Caxton, living on the interest of some fifteen or sixteen thousand pounds, such a match for his daughter as no prudent man in his position could approve. And as for Lady Ellinor"—
"She owes us much, Austin!" exclaimed Roland, his face darkening.
"Lady Ellinor is now what, if we had known her better, she promised always to be—the ambitious, brilliant, scheming woman of the world. Is it not so, Pisistratus?"
I said nothing. I felt too much.
"And does the girl like you?—but I think it is clear she does!" exclaimed Roland. "Fate—fate; it has been a fatal family to us! Zounds, Austin, it was your fault. Why did you let him go there?"
"My son is now a man—at least in heart, if not in years—can man be shut from danger and trial? They found me in the old parsonage, brother!" said my father mildly.
My uncle walked, or rather stumped, three times up and down the room; and he then stopped short, folded his arms, and came to a decision—
"If the girl likes you, your duty is doubly clear—you can't take advantage of it. You have done right to leave the house, for the temptation might be too strong."
"But what excuse shall I make to Mr Trevanion?" said I feebly—"what story can I invent? So careless as he is while he trusts, so penetrating if he once suspects, he will see through all my subterfuges, and—and—"
"It is as plain as a pike-staff," said my uncle abruptly—"and there need be no subterfuge in the matter. 'I must leave you, Mr Trevanion.' 'Why?' says he. 'Don't ask me.' He insists. 'Well then, sir, if you must know, I love your daughter. I have nothing—she is a great heiress. You will not approve of that love, and therefore I leave you!' That is thecourse that becomes an English gentleman—eh, Austin?"
"You are never wrong when your instincts speak, Roland," said my father. "Can you say this, Pisistratus, or shall I say it for you?"
"Let him say it himself," said Roland; "and let him judge himself of the answer. He is young, he is clever, he may make a figure in the world. Trevanionmayanswer, 'Win the lady after you have won the laurel, like the knights of old.' At all events, you will hear the worst."
"I will go," said I, firmly; and I took my hat, and left the room. As I was passing the landing-place, a light step stole down the upper flight of stairs, and a little hand seized my own. I turned quickly, and met the full, dark, seriously sweet eyes of my cousin Blanche.
"Don't go away yet, Sisty," said she coaxingly. "I have been waiting for you, for I heard your voice, and did not like to come in and disturb you."
"And why did you wait for me, my little Blanche?"
"Why! only to see you. But your eyes are red. Oh, cousin!"—and, before I was aware of her childish impulse, she had sprung to my neck and kissed me. Now Blanche was not like most children, and was very sparing of her caresses. So it was out of the deeps of a kind heart that that kiss came. I returned it without a word; and, putting her down gently, ran down the stairs, and was in the streets. But I had not got far before I heard my father's voice; and he came up, and, hooking his arm into mine, said, "Are there not two of us that suffer?—let us be together!" I pressed his arm, and we walked on in silence. But when we were near Trevanion's house, I said hesitatingly, "Would it not be better, sir, that I went in alone. If there is to be an explanation between Mr Trevanion and myself, would it not seem as if your presence implied either a request to him that would lower us both, or a doubt of me that—"
"You will go in alone, of course: I will wait for you—"
"Not in the streets—oh no, father," cried I, touched inexpressibly. For all this was so unlike my father's habits, that I felt remorse to have so communicated my young griefs to the calm dignity of his serene life.
"My son, you do not know how I love you. I have only known it myself lately. Look you, I am living in you now, my first-born; not in my other son—the great book: I must have my way. Go in; that is the door, is it not?"
I pressed my father's hand, and I felt then, that, while that hand could reply to mine, even the loss of Fanny Trevanion could not leave the world a blank. How much we have before us in life, while we retain our parents! How much to strive and to hope for! What a motive in the conquest of our sorrow—that they may not sorrow with us!