London, Friday, May 23, 1851.
I have been much occupied, through the last fortnight, and shall be for some ten days more, with the Great Exhibition, in fulfillment of the duties of a Juror therein. The number of Americans here (not exhibitors) who can and will devote the time required for this service is so small that none can well be excused; and the fairness evinced by the Royal Commissioners in offering to place as many foreigners (named by the Commissioners of their respective countries) as Britons on the several Juries well deserves to be met in a corresponding spirit. I did not, therefore, feel at liberty to decline the post of Juror, to which I had been assigned before my arrival, though it involves much labor and care, and will keep me here somewhat longer than I had intended to stay. On the other hand, it has opened to me sources of information and facilities for observation which I could not, in a brief visit to a land of strangers, have otherwise hoped to enjoy. I spend each secular day at the Exhibition—generally from 10 to 3 o'clock—and have my evenings for other pursuits and thoughts. I propose here to jot down a few of the notes on London I have made since the sailing of the last steamship.
I attended Divine worship in this celebrated edifice last Sunday morning. Situated near the Houses ofParliament, the Royal Palaces of Buckingham and St. James, and in the most aristocratic quarter of the city, its external appearance is less imposing than I had expected, and what I saw of its interior did not particularly impress me. Lofty ceilings, stained windows, and a barbaric profusion of carving, groining and all manner of costly contrivances for absorbing money and labor, made on me the impression of waste rather than taste, seeming to give form and substance to the orator's simile of "the contortions of the sibyl without her inspiration." A better acquaintance with the edifice, or with the principles of architecture, might serve to correct this hasty judgment; but surely Westminster Abbey ought to afford a place of worship equal in capacity, fitness and convenience to a modern church edifice costing $50,000, and surely it does not. I think there is no one of the ten best churches in New York which is not superior to the Abbey for this purpose.
I supposed myself acquainted with all the approved renderings of the Episcopal morning service, but when the clergyman who officiated at the Abbey began to twang out "Dearly beloved brethren," &c., in a nasal, drawling semi-chant, I was taken completely aback. It sounded as though some graceless Friar Tuck had wormed himself into the desk and was endeavoring, under the pretense of reading the service, to caricature as broadly as possible the alleged peculiarity of Methodistic pulpit enunciation superimposed upon the regular Yankee drawl. As the service proceeded, I became more accustomed and more reconciled to this mode of utterance, but never enough so to like it, nor even the responses, which were given in the same way, but much better. After I came away, I was informed that this semi-chant is termedintoning, and is said to be a revival of an ancient method of rendering the church service. If such be the fact, I can only say that in my poor judgment that revival was an unwise and unfortunate one.
The Service was very long—more than two hours—the Music excellent—the congregation large—the Sermon, so far as I could judge, had nothing bad in it. Yet there was an Eleventh-Century air about the whole which strengthened my conviction that the Anglican Church will very soon be potentially summoned to take her stand distinctly on the side either of Romanism or of Protestantism, and that the summons will shake not the Church only but the Realm to its centre.
In the evening I attended the Ragged School situated in Carter's-field Lane, near the Cattle-Market in Smithfield [where John Rogers was burned at the stake by Catholics, as Catholics had been burned by Protestants before him. The honest, candid history of Persecution for Faith's sake, has never yet been written; whenever it shall be, it must cause many ears to tingle].
It was something past 7 o'clock when we reached the rough old building, in a filthy, poverty-stricken quarter, which has been rudely fitted up for the Ragged School—one of the first, I believe, that was attempted. I should say there were about four hundred pupils on its benches, with about forty teachers; the pupils were at least two-thirds males from five to twenty years old, with a dozen or more adults. The girls were a hundred or so, mainly from three to ten years of age; but in a separate and upper apartment ascending out of the main room, there were some forty adult women, with teachers exclusively of their own sex. The teachers were of various grades of capacity; but, as all teach without pay and under circumstances which forbid the idea of any other than philanthropic or religious attractiveness in the duty, they are all deserving of praise. The teaching is confined, I believe, to rudimental instruction in reading and spelling, and to historic,theologic and moral lessons from the Bible. As the doors are open, and every one who sees fit comes in, stays so long as he or she pleases, and then goes out, there is much confusion and bustle at times, but on the whole a satisfactory degree of order is preserved, and considerable, though very unequal, progress made by the pupils.
But such faces! such garments! such daguerreotypes of the superlative of human wretchedness and degradation! These pupils were gathered from among the outcasts of London—those who have no family ties, no homes, no education, no religious training, but were born to wander about the docks, picking up a chance job now and then, but acquiring no skill, no settled vocation, often compelled to steal or starve, and finally trained to regard the sheltered, well fed, and respected majority as their natural oppressors and their natural prey. Of this large class of vagrants, amounting in this city to thousands, Theft and (for the females) Harlotry, whenever the cost of a loaf of bread or a night's lodging could be procured by either, were as matter-of-course resorts for a livelihood as privateering, campaigning, distilling or (till recently) slave-trading was to many respected and well-to-do champions of order and Conservatism throughout Christendom. And the outcasts have ten times the excuse for their moral blindness and their social misdeeds that their well-fed competitors in iniquity ever had. They have simply regarded the world as their oyster and tried to open its hard shells as they best could, not indicating thereby a special love of oysters but a craving appetite for food of some kind. It was oyster or nothing with them. And in the course of life thus forced upon them, the males who survived the period of infancy may have averaged twenty-five years of wretched, debased, brutal existence, while the females, of more delicate frame and subjected to additional evils, have usually died much younger. But the gallows, the charity hospitals, the prisons, the work-houses (refuges denied to the healthy and theunconvicted), with the unfenced kennels and hiding-places of the destitute during inclement weather, generally saw the earthly end of them all by the time that men in better circumstances have usually attained their prime. And all this has been going on unresisted and almost unnoticed for countless generations, in the very shadows of hundreds of church steeples, and in a city which pays millions of dollars annually for the support of Gospel ministrations.
The chief impression made on me by the spectacle here presented was one of intense sadness and self-reproach. I deeply realised that I had hitherto said too little, done too little, dared too little, sacrificed too little, to awaken attention to the infernal wrongs and abuses which are inherent in the very structure and constitution, the nature and essence, of civilised Society as it now exists throughout Christendom. Of what avail are alms-giving, and individual benevolence, and even the offices of Religion, in the presence of evil so gigantic and so inwoven with the very framework of Society? There have been here in all recent times charitable men, good men, enough to have saved Sodom, but not enough to save Society from the condemnation of driving this outcast race before it like sheep to the slaughter, as its members pressed on in pursuit of their several schemes of pleasure, riches or ambition, looking up to God for His approbation on their benevolence as they tossed a penny to some miserable beggar after they had stolen the earth from under his feet. How long shall this endure?
The School was dismissed, and every one requested to leave who did not choose to attend the prayer-meeting. No effort was made to induce any to stay—the contrary rather. I was surprised to see that three-fourths (I think) staid; though this was partly explained afterwards by the fact that by staying they had hopes of a night's lodging here and none elsewhere. That prayer-meeting was the most impressive and salutary religious service I have attended for many years. Four or five prayers were made bydifferent teachers in succession—all chaste, appropriate, excellent, fervent, affecting. A Hymn was sung before and after each by the congregation—and well sung. Brief and cogent addresses were made by the superintendent and (I believe) an American visitor. Then the School was dismissed, and the pupils who had tickets permitting them to sleep in the dormitory below filed off in regular order to their several berths. The residue left the premises. We visiters were next permitted to go down and see those who staid—of course only the ladies being allowed to look into the apartment of the women. O the sadness of that sight! There in the men's room were perhaps a hundred men and boys, sitting up in their rags in little compartments of naked boards, each about half-way between a bread-tray and a hog-trough, which, planted close to each other, were to be their resting-places for the night, as they had been for several previous nights. And this is a very recent and very blessed addition to the School, made by the munificence of some noble woman, who gave $500 expressly to fit up some kind of a sleeping-room, so that those who had attended the School should notallbe turned out (as a part still necessarily are) to wander or lie all night in the always cold, damp streets. There are not many hogs in America who are not better lodged than these poor human brethren and sisters, who now united, at the suggestion of the superintendent, in a hymn of praise to God for all His mercies. Doubtless, many did so with an eye to the shelter and hope of food (for each one who is permitted to stay here has a bath and six ounces of bread allowed him in the morning); yet when I contrasted this with the more formal and stately worship I had attended at Westminster Abbey in the morning, the preponderance was decidedly not in favor of the latter.
It seemed to me a profanation—an insult heaped on injury—an unjustifiable prying into the saddest secretsof the great prison-house of human woe—for us visiters to be standing here; and, though I apologised for it with a sovereign, which grain of sand will, I am sure, be wisely applied to the mitigation of this mountain of misery, I was yet in haste to be gone. Yet I leaned over the rail and made some inquiry of a ragged and forlorn youth of nineteen or twenty who sat next us in his trough, waiting for our departure before he lay down to such rest as that place could afford him. He replied that he had no parents nor friends who could help him—had never been taught any trade—always did any work he could get—sometimes earned six-pence to a shilling per day by odd jobs, but could get no work lately—had no money, of course—and had eaten nothing that day but the six ounces of bread given him on rising here in the morning—and had only the like six ounces in prospect between him and starvation. That hundreds so situated should unite with seeming fervor in praise to God shames the more polished devotion of the favored and comfortable; and if these famishing, hopeless outcasts were to pilfer every day of their lives (as most of them did, and perhaps some of them still do), I should pity even more than I blamed them.
The next night gave me a clearer idea of
The Annual meeting of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society was held on Monday evening, in Freemasons' Hall—a very fine one. There were about One Thousand persons present—perhaps less, certainly not more. I thinkJoseph Sturge, Esq., was Chairman, but I did not arrive till after the organization, and did not learn the officers' names. At all events, Mr. Sturge had presented the great practical question to the Meeting—"What can we Britons do to hasten the overthrow ofSlavery?"—and Rev.H. H. Garnett(colored) of our State was speaking upon it when I entered. He named me commendingly to the audience, and the Chairman thereupon invited me to exchange my back seat for one on the platform, which I took. Mr. Garnett proceeded to commend the course of British action against Slavery which is popular here, and had already been shadowed forth in the set resolves afterward read to the meeting. The British were told that they could most effectually war against Slavery by refusing the courtesies of social intercourse to slaveholders—by refusing to hear or recognise pro-slavery clergymen—by refusing to consume the products of Slave Labor, &c. Another colored American—a Rev. Mr.Crummill, if I have his name right,—followed in the same vein, but urged more especially the duty of aiding the Free Colored population of the United-States to educate and intellectually develop their children. Mr.S. M. Peto, M. P. followed in confirmation of the views already expressed by Mr. Garnett, insisting that he could not as a Christian treat the slaveholder otherwise than as a tyrant and robber. And then a very witty negro from Boston (Rev. Mr. Heuston, I understood his name), spoke quite at length in unmeasured glorification of Great Britain, as the land oftruefreedom and equality, where simple Manhood is respected without regard to Color, and where alone he had ever been treated by all as a man and a brother.
By this time I was very ready to accept the Chairman's invitation to say a few words. For, while all that the speakers had uttered with regard to Slavery was true enough, it was most manifest that, whatever effect the course of action they urged might have in America, it could have no other than a baneful influence on the cause of Political Reform in this country. True, it did not always say in so many words that the Social and Political institutions of Great Britain are perfect, but it neverintimated the contrary, while it generally implied and often distinctly affirmed this. The effect, therefore, of such inculcations, is not only to stimulate and aggravate the Phariseeism to which all men are naturally addicted, but actually to impede and arrest the progress of Reform in this Country by implying that nothing here needs reforming. And as this doctrine of "Stand by thyself for I am holier than thou," was of course received with general applause by a British audience, the vices of speaker and hearer reäcted on each other; and, judging from the specimens I had that evening, I must regard American, and especially Afric-American lecturers against Slavery in this country as among the most effective upholders of all the enormous Political abuses and wrongs which are here so prevalent.
When the stand was accorded me, therefore, I proceeded, not by any means to apologize for American Slavery, not to suggest the natural obstacles to its extinction, but to point out, as freely as the audience would bear, some modes of effective hostility to it in addition to those already commended. Premising the fact that Slavery in America now justifies itself mainly on the grounds that the class who live by rude manual toil always are and must be degraded and ill-requited—that there is more debasement and wretchedness on their part in the Free States and in Great Britain itself than there is in the Slave States—and that, moreover, Free laborers will not work in tropical climates, so that these must be cultivated by slaves or not at all—I suggested and briefly urged on British Abolitionists the following course of action:
1. Energetic and systematic exertions to increase the reward of Labor and the comfort and consideration of the depressed Laboring Class here at home; and to diffuse and cherish respect for Man as Man, without regard to class, color or vocation.
2. Determined efforts for the eradication of those Social evils and miseriesherewhich are appealed to and reliedon by slaveholders and their champions everywhere as justifying the continuance of Slavery; And
3. The colonization of our Slave States by thousands of intelligent, moral, industrious Free Laborers, who will silently and practically dispel the wide-spread delusion which affirms that the Southern States must be cultivated and their great staples produced by Slave Labor or not at all.
I think I did not speak more than fifteen minutes, and I was heard patiently to the end, but my remarks were received with no such "thunders of applause" as had been accorded to the more politic efforts of the colored gentlemen. There was in fact repeatedly evinced a prevalent apprehension that Iwouldsay something which it would be incumbent on the audience to resent; but I did not. And I have a faint hope that some of the remarks thus called forth will be remembered and reflected on. I am sure there is great need of it, and that denunciations of Slavery addressed by London to Charleston and Mobile will be far more effective after the extreme of destitution and misery uncovered by the Ragged Schools shall have been banished forever from this island—nay, after the great body of those who here denounce Slavery so unsparingly shall have earnestly, unselfishly, thoroughlytriedso to banish it.
London, Tuesday, May 27, 1851.
To say, as some do, that the English hate the Americans, is to do the former injustice. Even if we leave out of the account the British millions who subsist by rude manual toil, and who certainly regard our country, so far as they think of it at all, with an emotion very different from hatred, there is evinced by the more fortunate classes a very general though not unqualified admiration of the rapidity of our progress, the vastness of our resources, and the extraordinary physical energy developed in our brief, impetuous career. Dense as is the ignorance which widely prevails in Europe with regard to American history and geography, it is still very generally understood that we were, only seventy years since, but Three Millions of widely scattered Colonists, doubtfully contending, on a narrow belt of partially cleared sea-coast, with the mother country on one side and the savages on the other, for a Political existence; and that now we are a nation of Twenty-three Millions, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the cane-producing Tropic to the shores of Lake Superior where snow lies half the year—from Nantucket and the Chesapeake to the affluents of Hudson's Bay and the spacious harbors and sheltered roadsteads of Nootka Sound. And this vast extent of country, the Briton remarks with pride, we have not merely overrun, as theSpanish so rapidly traversed South America, but have really appropriated and in good degree assimilated, so that the far shores of the Pacific, which have but for three or four years felt the tread of the Anglo-American, are now dotted with energetic and thriving marts of Commerce, into whose lap gold mines are pouring their lavish treasures, while a profusion of steamers, ships and smaller watercraft link them closely with each other, with the Atlantic States and the Old World, while their numerous daily journals are aiding to diffuse the English language through the isles of the immense Pacific, and their "merchant princes" are coolly discussing the advantages of establishing a direct communication by lines of steamships with China and opening the wealth of Japan to the commerce of the civilized world. All this is marked with something of wonder but more of pride by the ruling classes in Great Britain—the pride of a father whose son has beaten him and run away, but who nevertheless hears with interest and gratification that the unfilial reprobate is conquering fame and fortune, and who with beaming eye observes to a neighbor, "A wild boy that of mine, sir, but blood will tell!" If the United States were attacked by any power or alliance strong enough to threaten their subjugation, the sympathy felt for them in these islands would be intense and all but universal.
And yet there is another side of the picture, which in fairness must also be presented. The favored classes in Great Britain, while they heartily admire the American energy and its fruits, do and must neverthelessdread the contagion of our example; and this dread must increase and be diffused as the rapidly increasing power, population and wealth of our country commend it more and more to the attention of the world. While we were some sixty days distant, and heard of mainly in connection with Indian fights or massacres, fatal steamboat explosions or insolvent banks, this contagion was not imminent and didnot seriously alarm; but, now that New-York is but ten days from London, and New-Orleans (by Telegraph) scarcely more, the case is bravely altered, and it becomes daily more and more palpable that the United States and Great Britain cannot both remain as they are. If we in America can have a succession of capable and reputable Chief Magistrates for £5,000 a year, of Chief Justices for £1,000, and of Cabinets at a gross cost of less than £10,000, it is manifest that John Bull, who, loyal as he is, has a strong instinct of thrift and a pride in getting the worth of his money, will not long be content to pay a hundred times as much for his Chief Executive and ten times as much for his Judiciary and Ministry as we do. It is a question, therefore, of the deepest practical interest to the British Nation whether the Americans do really enjoy the advantages of peace, order and security for the rights of person and property through instrumentalities so cheap, and so dependent on moral force only, as those devised and established by Washington and his compatriots. If we have these with a Civil List of less than £1,000,000 sterling, an Army of less than Ten Thousand men, and a Navy (why won't it die and get decently buried?) of a dozen or two active vessels, why should John tax and sweat himself as he does to maintain a Political establishment which costs him over $150,000,000 a year beside the interest on his enormous National Debt? If we, without any Church endowed by law, have as ample and widely diffused provision for Divine worship and Religious instruction as he has, why should he pay tithes to endow Lord Bishops with incomes of £10,000 to £80,000 per annum?—These and similar questions are beginning to be widely pondered here: they refuse to be longer drowned by the blare of trumpets and the resonant melody of "God save the Queen!" I know nobody who objects to that last quoted sentiment, but there are many here, and the number is increasing, who think there is an urgent andpractical need of salvation also for the People—salvation from heavy exactions, unjust burthens and galling distinctions. And, as the interest of the Many in the reform of abuses and the removal of impositions becomes daily more obvious and palpable, so does the instinctive grasp of the Few to keep what they have and get what they can become likewise more muscular and positive. And this instinct absolutely demands a perversion or suppression of the truth with regard to America—with regard especially to the prevalence of order, justice and tranquillity within her borders. And not this only: it is important to this class that it be made to appear that, while Republican institutions may possibly answer for a time in a rude and semi-barbarous community of scattered grain-growers and herdsmen, they are utterly incompatible with a dense population, with general refinement, the upbuilding of Manufactures and the prevalence of the arts of civilized life.
Here, then, is the cue to the cry so early and generally raised, so often and invidiously renewed by the London daily press, of surprise at the meagerness of our country's share in the Great Exhibition. Had any other young nation of Twenty Millions, located three to five thousand miles off, sent a collection so large and so creditable to its industrial proficiency and inventive power, it would have been warmly commended by these same journals; but it is deemed desirable to make an impression on the public mind of Europe adverse to American skill and attainment in the Arts, and hence these representations and sneers.
Yet, gentlemen! what would you have? For years you have been devoting your energies to the task of convincing our people that they should be content to grow Food and Cotton and send them hither in exchange for Wares and Fabrics, especially those of the finer and costlier varieties. You have written reams of essays intended to prove that this course of Industry and Trade is dictated by Nature,by Providence, by Public good; and that only narrow and short-sighted selfishness would seek to overrule it. Well: here are American samples of all the staples you say our Countryoughtto produce and be content with, in undeniable abundance and excellence—Cotton, Wool, Wheat, Flour, Indian Corn, Hams, Beef, &c., &c., yet these you run over with a glance of cool contempt, and say we have nothing in the Exhibition! Is this kind or politic treatment of the supporters of your policy in the States? If a seeming approximation to your Utopia should subject them to such compliments, what may they expect from its perfect consummation? Let all our States become as purely Agricultural as the Carolinas or the lower valley of the Mississippi, and what would then be your estimation of us? If a half-way obedience to your counsels exposes us to such disparagement, what might we fairly expect from a thorough submission?
The vital truth, everywhere demonstrable, is nowhere so palpable as here—that a diversification of Industrial pursuits is essential not only to the prosperity and thrift, but also to the education and intellectual activity of a People. A community which witnesses from year to year the processes of Agricultural labor only, lacks a stimulus to mental cultivation of inestimable value. If Europe were to say to America, "Sit still, and we will send you from year to year all the Wares and Fabrics you need for nothing, on the simple condition that you will not attempt to produce any yourselves," it would be most unwise and suicidal to accept the offer. For we need not more the Wares and Fabrics than the skill which fashions and the taste which beautifies them. We need that multiform capacity and facility of hand and brain which only experience in the Arts can bestow and diffuse. The National Industry is the People's University; to confine it to a few and those the ruder branches is to stunt and stagnate the popular mind—is to arrest the march ofimprovement in Agriculture itself. Hence, nearly or quite all the modern improvements in Cultivation have been made in immediate proximity to a dense Manufacturing population; hence Belgium is now a garden, while Ireland (except the manufacturing North) is to a great extent stagnant and decaying. Other causes doubtless conspire, as in England contrasted with Italy and Spain, to produce these results, but they do not unsettle the general truth that Industry advances through a symmetric and many-sided development or does not advance at all.
We have yet much to learn in the Arts, but the first lesson of all is a well-founded confidence in our own artisans, our own capacities, with a patriotic resolution to encourage the former and develop the latter. And this confidence is abundantly justified even by what is exhibited here. While our show of products is much less than it might and less even than it should have been, those who have really studied it draw thence hope and courage. No other nation exhibits within a similar compass so great a diversity of excellence—no other exhibits so large a proportion of inventions and valuable improvements. Even in the vast apartment devoted to British Machinery, the number and importance of the American inventions exhibited (some of them adapted to new uses or improved upon in this country; others merely incorporated with British improvements), is very striking. I doubt whether England during the last half century has borrowed so many inventions from all the world beside—I am sure she has not from all except France—as she has from the United States. And yet we are blessed with the presence of sundry Americans here who, without having examined our contributions, without knowing anything more about them than they have gleaned fromThe TimesandPunch, aided by a hurried walk through the department, are busily proclaiming that this show makes them ashamed of their country!
Here is the great source of our weakness—a want of proper pride in and devotion to our own Industrial interests. Every sort of patriotism is abundant in America but that which is most essential—that which aids to develop and strengthen the Nation's productive energies. No other people buy Foreign fabrics extensively in preference to the equally cheap and more substantial products of their own looms, yet ours do it habitually. I had testimony after testimony from American merchants on the voyage over, as well as before and since, that foreign fabrics habitually sell in our markets for ten to twenty per cent. more than is asked for equally good American products, while thousands of pieces of the latter are readily sold on the strength of fabricated Foreign marks at prices which they would not command to customers who would not buy them, if their origin were known. This is certainly disgraceful to the seller—what is it to the buyer? The mercantile interest naturally leans toward the more distant production—the margin for profit is larger where an article is brought across an ocean, while the cost of a home made article is so notorious that there is little chance of putting on a large profit. Give American producers the prices now readily paid throughout our country for Foreign fabrics and they will grow rich by manufacturing articles in no respect inferior to the former. But with only a share of the American market, and this mainly for the coarsest and cheapest goods, while the purchasers of the more costly and fanciful, on which the larger profits are made, must have "Fabrique de Paris" or some such label affixed to render them current, our manufacturers have no fair chance. While fools could be found to buy "Cashmere Shawls," costing fifty to a hundred dollars, for five hundred to a thousand, under the absurd delusion that they came from Eastern Asia, the fabrication and the profits were European; let an American begin to make just such Shawls and the secret is out, so the price sinks at once to theneighborhood of the cost of production. So with De Laines, Counterpanes, Brussels Carpetings and fabrics generally; and yet Americans will talk as though the encouragement given by protective Duties to home Manufacturers were given at the expense of our consumers. Vainly are they challenged from day to day to name one single article whereof the production has been transplanted from Europe to America through Protection, which has not thereby been materially cheapened to the American consumer; it suits them better to assume that the duty is a tax on the consumer than to examine the case and admit the truth. But delusion cannot be eternal.
That our Country would at some future day work its way gradually out of its present semi-Colonial dependence on European tastes, European fashions, European fabrication, even though all Legislative encouragement were withheld, I firmly believe. The genius, the activity, the energy, the enterprise of our people conspire to assure it. So the thief, the burglar, the forger, are certain to suffer for their misdeeds though all the penalties of human laws were repealed, and yet I consider state prisons and houses of correction salutary if not indispensable. It is difficult for even an ingenious and inventive race to make improvements in an art or process which has no existence among them. Whitney's Cotton-Gin presupposed the growth of Cotton; Fulton's steamboat the existence of internal commerce and navigation; without Lowell, Bigelow might have invented a new trap for muskrats but not looms for weaving Carpets, Ginghams, Coach-Lace, &c. I deeply feel that our Country owes to mankind the duty of so sustaining her Manufacturing Industry that further and more signal triumphs of her inventive genius may yet be evolved and realised, not merely in the domain of Fabrics but in that of Wares and Metals also, and especially in that of the chief metal, Iron. Had Iron enjoyed for twenty years such a measure of Protection among us as Plain Cottons obtained from 1816 throughMr. Calhoun's minimum of six cents per square yard, we should, in all probability, have been producing Iron by this time as cheaply as drills and sheetings—that is, as cheaply (quality considered) as any nation on the globe—as cheaply as we produce School-Books, Newspapers, and nearly every article whereof the American maker is shielded by circumstances from Foreign competition. Had the Tariff of 1842 but stood unaltered till this time, who believes that even the greenest and silliest American could have fancied himself blushing for the meagerness of his country's share in the Great Exhibition?
London, Thursday, May 29, 1851.
I have now been four weeks in this metropolis, and, though confined throughout nearly every day to the Crystal Palace, I have enjoyed large and various opportunities for studying the English People. I have made acquaintances in all ranks, from dukes to beggars—all ranks, I should say, but that which is esteemed the highest. I have of course seen the Royal family repeatedly at the Exhibition, which is open at all hours to Jurors, and the Queen times her visits so as to be there mainly while it is closed to the public. But I have barely seen her party, as I passed it with a double row of gazers interposed, all eager to catch the sunlight of Majesty, appearing to care little how much she might be annoyed or they abased by their unseemly gaping. I hope no Americans contributed to swell these groups, but after what I have seen here I am by no means sure of it.
A young countrywoman who has not yet been long enough in Europe to forget what it cost our forefathers to be rid of all this, but who had in her own case adequate reasons for desiring a presentation at Court, gave me some days since a graphic account of the ceremonial, which I wish I had committed to paper while it was freshly remembered. It is of course understood that every one presented to her Majesty must appear in full dress—that of gentlemen (not Military) being a Court suit alike costly,fantastic and utterly useless elsewhere, while ladies are expected to appear in richarrowBritishsilk (Free Trade notwithstanding) with a train three yards long (perhaps it is only three feet), with plumes, &c. Thus equipped, they proceed to the Palace, where at the appointed hour the Queen makes her appearance, with her family by her side and backed by a double row of maids of honor, attendants, &c. Each palpitating aspirant to the honor of presentation awaits his or her turn standing, and may thus wait two hours. The Foreign Embassadors have precedence in presenting; others follow; in due season your name is called out; you pass before the Royal presence, make your bow or courtesy, receive the faint suggestion of a response, and pass along and away to make room for the next customer. Unless you belong essentially to the Diplomatic circle (being presented by an Embassador will not answer), you are not allowed to remain and see those behind you take the plunge, but must hasten forthwith from the presence. And, as ordinary Humanity has but one aspect in which it is fit to be gazed on by Royal eyes, you must contrive to quit the presence with your face constantly turned toward it. Now this need not be difficult for those in masculine attire, but to the wearers of the rich Spitalfields silks and trains aforesaid, even though the trains be but three feet long instead of three yards, the evolution must require no moderate share of feminine tact and dexterity. It is consoling to hear that all manage to accomplish it, by dint of severe training through the week preceding the event; though some are so frightened when the awful moment arrives that their ghastly visages and tottering frames evince how narrowly they escape swooning. The fact that it is over in a moment serves materially to mitigate the torture!
"What ridiculous formalities!—What absurd requirements!" exclaims Brother Jonathan. No, sir! You are judging without knowledge or without consideration.These and kindred formalities, considered apart, may be ludicrous, but, regarded as portions of a system, they are essential. In a country where everything gravitates so intensely toward the Throne, there must be impediments to presentation at Court, if the Sovereign is to enjoy any leisure, peace, comfort, or even time for the most pressing public duties. There is and should be no absolute barrier to the presentation of any well-bred, well-behaved person, whether subject or foreigner; and, if it were as easy as visiting the Exhibition, the Queen would be required to hold a drawing-room every day, and devote the whole of it to unmeaning and useless introductions. As the matter is actually managed, those who have any good reason for it undergo the ceremony, with many who have none; while the great majority are content with the knowledge that theymight beadmitted to the august presence if they chose to incur the bother and expense. Those who cherish a moth-like reverence for Royalty indulge it at their own cost and to the advantage of Trade; weavers, costumers and shop-keepers are very glad to pocket the money which the presentee must disburse; and even those ladies who have theentrée, and so attend half a dozen drawing-rooms per annum, are expected to appear at each in a new dress—thus the interests of the shop are never lost sight of. These Court formalities, Brother J., arenotabsurd—very far from it. They are rational, politic, beneficent, indispensable. Whether it is wise or unwise foryouryoung folks to subject themselves to the inevitable expense and vexation for the sake of standing a few feet nearer a Queen, is another affair altogether. When I contrast these presentations with the freedom and ease (except when there is a jam) of our Presidential receptions—when I remember that any whole dress is good enough for the White House, and any honest man or woman (with some not so honest) may go up on a levee night and be introduced to the President and his lady, saunter through the rooms,converse with friends and pass in review half the notables of the Nation—I deeply realize the superiority of Republicanism to Royalty, but without seeking to put the new wine into old bottles. The forms appropriate to our simpler institutions would be utterly unsuitable here—nay, they would be found impossible.
The Queen left London last week for her private residence on the Isle of Wight, I supposed for weeks; but she was back in the Exhibition early on Tuesday morning, and has since been holding a Drawing-Room, giving Dinners, a Concert, &c. with her accustomed activity. She seems resolved to make the Exhibition Summer an agreeable one for the Foreigners in attendance, many of whom are included in her invitations. As the "shilling days" opened meagerly on Monday, to the disappointment (perhaps because) of the general apprehension of a crush, and as the numbers thronging thither have rapidly increased ever since, the Queen's renewed countenance receives a good share of the credit, and her condescension in coming on a "shilling day" is duly commended. It is already plain enough that the attendance consequent on the cheap admission is destined to be enormous. To-day over Fifty Thousand paid their shilling each, over six thousand per hour—to say nothing of the thousands who came in on season tickets, or as exhibitors, jurors, &c. The money taken at the doors to-day must have exceeded $12,000, though no "excursion trains" have yet come in from the Country. These will begin to pour in next week, by which time it is to be hoped that the Juries will have completed their examinations if not their awards; for they will have scanty elbow-room afterward except at early hours in the morning. I presume there will be Fifty Thousand admissions paid for during each of the four "shilling days," of next week. Fridays henceforth the admission is to be 2s. 6d. (60 cents), and Saturdays 5s. ($1.20), and many believe the Palace will be as crowded on these as on other days. I doubt.
"The Guild of Literature and Art" will have already been heard of in America. It is an undertaking of several fortunate authors and their friends to make some provision for their unsuccessful brethren—for those who had the bad luck to be born before their time, as well as those who would apparently have done better by declining to be born at all. The world overflows with writers who would fain transmute their thoughts into bread, and lacking the opportunity, have a slim chance for any bread at all, even the coarsest. No other class has less worldly wisdom, less practical thrift; no other suffers more keenly from "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," than unlucky authors. If anything can be done to mitigate the severity of their fate, and especially if their more favored brethren can do it, there ought to be but one opinion as to its propriety.
And yet I fear the issue of this project. The world is scourged by legions of drones and adventurers who have taken to Literature as in another age they would have taken to the highway—to procure an easy livelihood. They write because they are too lazy to work, or because they would scorn to live on the meager product of manual toil. Of Genius, they have mainly the eccentricities—that is to say, a strong addiction to late hours, hot suppers and a profusion of gin and water, though they are not particular about the water. What Authorship needs above all things is purification from this Falstaff's regiment, who should be taught some branch of honest industry and obliged to earn their living by it. So far, therefore, am I from regretting that every one who wishes cannot rush into print, and joining in the general execration of publishers for their insensibility to unacknowledged merit, that I wish no man could have his book printed until he hadearned the cost thereof bybona fidelabor, and that no one could live by Authorship until after he had practically demonstrated both his ability and willingness to earn his living in a different way. I greatly fear the proposed "Guild," even under the wisest regulations, will do as much harm as good, by aggravating the prevalent tendency toward Authorship among thousands who never asked whether the world is likely to profit by their lucubrations, but only whethertheymay hope to profit by them. If the "Guild" should tend to increase the number of aspirants to the honors and rewards of Authorship, it will incite more misery than it is likely to overcome.
However, this is an attempt to mend the fortunes of unlucky British Authors; and as we Americans habitually steal the productions of British Authorship, and deliberately refuse them that protection to which all producers are justly entitled, I feel myself fairly indebted to the class, by the amount of my reading of their works to which Copyright in America is denied. I meant to have attended the first dramatic entertainment given at Devonshire House in aid of this enterprise, but I did not apply for a ticket (price £5) till too late; so I took care to be in season for next time—that is, Tuesday evening of this week.
The play (as before) was "Not so Bad as We Seem, or Many Sides to a Character," written expressly in aid of the "Guild" by Bulwer, and performed at the town mansion of the Duke of Devonshire, one of the most wealthy and popular of the British nobility. On the former evening the Queen and Royal Family attended, with some scores of the Nobility; this time there was a sprinkling of Duchesses, &c., but Commoners largely preponderated, and the hour of commencing was changed from 9 to 7½P. M.The apartment devoted to the performance is a very fine one, and the whole mansion, though common-place enough in its exterior, is fitted up with a wealth ofcarving, gilding, sculpture, &c., which can hardly be imagined. The scenes were painted expressly in aid of the "Guild," and admirably done. The Duke's private band played before and between the acts, and nothing had been spared on his part to render the entertainment a pleasant one. Every seat was filled, and, at $10 each and no expenses out, a handsome sum must have been realized in aid of the benevolent enterprise.
The male performers, as is well understood, are all Literary amateurs; the ladies alone being actresses by profession. Charles Dickens had the principal character—that of a profligate though sound-hearted young Lord—and he played it very fairly. But stateliness sits ill upon him, and incomparably his best scene was one wherein he appears in disguise as a bookseller tempting the virtue of a poverty-stricken author. Douglas Jerrold was for the nonce a young Mr. Softhead, and seemed quite at home in the character. It was better played than Dickens's. The residue were indifferently good—or rather, indifferently bad—and on the whole the performance was indebted for its main interest to the personal character of the performers. I was not sorry when it was concluded.
After a brief interval for refreshments, liberally proffered, a comic afterpiece, "Mr. Nightingale's Diary," was given with far greater spirit. Dickens personated the principal character—or rather, the four or five principal characters—for the life of the piece is sustained by his appearance successively as a lawyer, a servant, a vigorous and active gentleman relieved of his distempers by water-cure, a feeble invalid, &c., &c. It is long since I saw much acting of any account, but this seemed to me perfect; and I am sure the raw material of a capital comedian was put to a better use when Charles Dickens took to authorship. The other characters were fairly presented, and the play heartily enjoyed throughout.
The curtain fell about half an hour past midnight amidsttumultuous and protracted applause. The company then mainly repaired to the supper room, where a tempting display of luxuries and dainties was provided for them by the munificence of their noble host. I did not venture to partake at that hour, but those who did would be quite unlikely to repent of it—till morning. Thence they were gradually moving off to another superb apartment, where the violins were beginning to give note of coming melody, to which flying feet were eager to respond; but I thought one o'clock in the morning quite late enough for retiring, and so came away before the first set was made up. I do not doubt the dancing was maintained with spirit till broad daylight.