"Cannon balls may aid the Truth,But Thought's a weapon stronger"—
he could not countenance the violent measures of some leading Chartists, and would fain infuse into their counsels a more pacific spirit. Advocating their cardinal doctrines, but wishing to base his opinions on actual observation and experiment, he visited the United States in 1841, to inquire into the working of universal suffrage, voting by ballot, equal representation, and frequent elections. Returning to England, he published the results of his investigations, which had convinced him of the practicability of applying the main features of ourCongressional system of representation and election to the House of Commons. At a meeting of anti-corn law deputies, held at Manchester, in November, after the business for which they had assembled was finished, Mr. S. brought forward the subject of "complete suffrage." His lucid and practical views begat a general desire among the deputies for the commencement of a movement for a thorough reform in Parliament. In December following he issued a "Declaration," embracing the outlines of his plan, which ultimately drew to his views a portion of the Chartists, who, throwing off the old name, united with others in adopting that of Complete Suffragists.
In February, 1842, a meeting of delegates was held in London, on the call of Mr. Sturge, cotemporaneously with an immense anti-corn law convention, which had assembled to protest against Mr. Peel's proposed new law. After a full discussion, in which many members of the latter convention participated, the basis was laid for a union between the Corn-Law Repealers and the Complete Suffragists. In April following, a conference was held in Birmingham, mainly through his influence, composed of delegates from England, Scotland, and Ireland. The proceedings of this important body, over which Mr. Sturge presided, gave new energy to the movement commenced at the previous meeting in London. "The National Complete Suffrage Union" was formed by this conference, and Mr. Sturge was chosen its first President. In the course of this year a vacancy happened in the representation of Nottingham, a town containing some four thousand electors. Mr. Sturge was requested to stand as the Radical candidate, merely as an experiment, no one expecting him to succeed. In his address to the electors, he avowed himself in favor of universal suffrage, the severance of the Church from the State, and the total repeal of the corn laws; declared he would not spend a farthing in electioneering purposes, (i. e., bribing and treating,) nor countenance any efforts in his behalf, not sanctionedby the precepts of morality; and urged his friends to employ only such measures, during the canvass, as would make defeat honorable, and add luster to victory. His opponent, Mr. Walter, the proprietor of the London Times, stimulated the exertions of his supporters with a purse of £15,000. At the close of the poll, Mr. Sturge lacked but seventy-four votes of an election. He would have succeeded, but for the extensive bribery and intimidation of his opponent, who, on this account, was unseated on the reässembling of Parliament.
During the last six years, Mr. Sturge has devoted himself, with his characteristic ability, zeal, and munificence, to the promotion of general education, complete suffrage, church reform, corn-law repeal, slave-trade extermination, universal peace, and cognate reforms.
On the summoning of a new Parliament, in 1847, he reluctantly consented to contest Leeds. In the course of his speech at the hustings, his proposer, the venerable Edward Baines, who had long represented the town, said: "I have to propose for your choice, as one of your representatives in Parliament, my friend and your friend, the friend of his country and of the human race, Joseph Sturge. With his principles you are well acquainted. They are the principles of liberty, of humanity, of economy, of equal rights, of freedom of trade and of thought, of voluntary education, of universal peace, and of justice to all mankind, of whatever color and of whatever clime. There are in Parliament an abundance of merchants, of manufacturers, of bankers, of lawyers, of soldiers, of sailors, of ecclesiastical patrons, of peers, and of bishops; but there is a deplorable deficiency of such men as Joseph Sturge." In his address to the electors, Mr. Sturge gave a thorough exposition of his political views, in the face of frowning Whigs and hissing Tories, both of whom brought forward candidates, and made him the object of their common hostility. After a hot contest, he was barely defeated by the concentration of a partof the Tory votes upon one of the Whig candidates; but the result was a moral triumph for Mr. Sturge and his cause.
Mr. Sturge is a member of the Society of Friends, and his beneficent life and amiable deportment are a beautiful embodiment of the principles of that sect. Till within a few years, he was extensively engaged in the corn trade, and has long been one of the most wealthy and influential citizens of Birmingham. Not satisfied with devoting liberal sums and remnants of time to philanthropic objects, he withdrew from a profitable mercantile connection, that he might consecrate all his energies to the advancement of civil and religious liberty. With no pretensions to literary or oratorical excellence, he is able to express his clear and vigorous ideas with terseness and point, both with pen and tongue. His plans, like his mind, are eminently practical; and he goes straight to the subject-matter, stripping off the husk, somewhat regardless of its texture and hue, and piercing at once to the kernel. His mercantile training has given him business habits of the first order, making him as efficient in executing plans as he is shrewd in their formation. A little apt to push aside, not to say push over, obtuseness and sluggishness, yet he mingles his unostentatious activity with such purity of intention and suavity of manner, as not to offend colder and more timid natures, while doing in a day what would occupy a month in their hands. Should he ever enter the House of Commons, he would be found, not among its brilliant, but certainly among its most useful members.
In this chapter it would be impossible to name all who bore a prominent part in the cause now under review. The Society of Friends alone kept an army in the field during the war. And no soldiers did better service than the household troops of George Fox. I may name William Allen, to whose many virtues the Duke of Kent gave the highest evidence, by appointing him one of the guardians of his daughter Victoria—and James Cropper, the munificent Liverpool merchant—andJoseph and Samuel Gurney, the London bankers, the former of whom traveled over the Continent to investigate the state of its prisons, and made the tour of the West Indies, to examine into the condition of the emancipated negroes—and George William Alexander, who has visited France, Denmark, Holland, and Spain, to arouse them to the duty of abolishing slavery.
I can only allude to Thomas Pringle, one of England's sweetest and most graceful poets, who officiated as Secretary of the London Anti-Slavery Society in its infancy, its vigor, and its victory—and Captain Charles Stuart, one of the purest and bravest of mankind, whose voice and pen were sacred to Freedom—and John Scoble, who twice visited the West Indies, and whose chaste oratory on the platform, and terse productions as Secretary of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society were of signal service to the cause. Of George Thompson, whom Lord Brougham pronounced one of the most eloquent men either in or out of Parliament, I shall speak at greater length, in connection with the abolition of East Indian Slavery.
I will close this chapter by briefly noticing a few of the many clergymen who rendered important services to the Anti-Slavery cause.
North of the Tweed, was Rev.Andrew Thomson, D.D., of Edinburgh, a leading minister of the Kirk of Scotland. He has been dead several years. Posthumous fame tells wondrous tales of his overpowering eloquence. The reports of his speeches, which I have read, show him to have been a son of thunder. He did not polish the angles of his sentences so much as Dr. Chalmers, but he possessed in large measure the comprehensive views, argumentative power, and splendid imagination, which distinguished that great divine; while, in directness and point, and ability to arouse and sway the passions of men, he undoubtedly excelled him. Robert Hall never said of Andrew Thomson, that he was a massive door,always turning on its hinges, but never moving onward. A speech of three hours length, delivered by him, in 1830, before the Edinburgh Anti-Slavery Society, in vindication of the principle of immediate as opposed to gradual abolition, and which was widely published, brought over the great body of Scottish Abolitionists to the new doctrine, chiefly through its intrinsic merits, partly, no doubt, because of the high standing of the orator. Its influence crossed the Border, and among its English converts was the celebrated Mr. George Thompson, who soon afterward became a lecturing agent of the London Committee.
The perfect opposite of Dr. Thomson, was the eminent dissenting minister, Rev.Ralph Wardlaw, D.D., of Glasgow. His tall person is the fitting embodiment of his large mind; and his benignant countenance is the index of the purity of his heart. No one ever attended his chapel without pronouncing him a model for the pulpit. One of the best readers that ever opened the sacred Volume, his mellow voice, musical cadence, and chaste delivery, give to the precept or parable he has selected for the exercise a force and reality that never appeared to the hearer before. And his sermon—how harmoniously do strength and simplicity blend, to give vigor and transparency to the argument; and how his felicitous similes and pointed tropes illustrate and adorn it, without confusing the reason or sending off the fancy in a chase after mere imagery.
But, though justly celebrated as a preacher and a divine, he is more widely known for his able advocacy of Voluntaryism, in opposition to Church Establishments, his early and steady services in behalf of negro emancipation, and his devotion to the general cause of civil and religious liberty. Probably no chapel in Scotland has opened its doors to so many secular meetings for the improvement of the human race as his; and usually the venerable pastor is present to give his countenance and voice to the work.
We cannot linger longer on Scottish ground; though if we did, we should certainly be attracted by the erect form and elastic step of Rev.John Ritchie, D.D., of Edinburgh, whose Quaker-cut coat, ample white cravat, jaunty hat, and dangling cluster of watch-seals, would make you assign him now to membership in the Society of Friends, and then to membership in some sporting club, but never to his proper place, at the head of the Secession Church of Scotland. He is an old soldier in the ranks of Freedom; has fought many a hard battle with Negro Slavery and the State Church: is an ardent free trader, universal suffragist, and, in a word, a thorough radical reformer, who can instruct the reason or arouse the feelings of an auditory with capital effect.
We will hasten to English ground, and spend a few moments with a clergyman who, in mental characteristics and oratorical peculiarities, is a cross of the thunder of Dr. Thomson, and the sunshine of Dr. Wardlaw—Rev.John Angell James, of Birmingham. Of Mr. James' course in the early stages of the anti-slavery movement, I cannot speak with certainty. But, during the controversy growing out of the apprenticeship, and in the later efforts for the overthrow of slavery and the slave trade throughout the world, the contributions of his pen and voice to the cause received additional influence from his position as one of the most conspicuous leaders of the Congregational body of Great Britain. He has also been among the foremost of the dissenting clergy in advocating the principle of Voluntaryism, in its application to ecclesiastical affairs and the education of the people. Perhaps, at the present time, he stands at the head of the denomination which he adorns by his talents and virtues. Mr. James has a high reputation as a writer and preacher on both sides of the Atlantic. It was not my fortune to hear him in the pulpit, but I can bear testimony to his power over audiences on the platform. He has the external qualities, the physical embellishments, of anorator: a well-proportioned person—a voice of great compass, and as flexible and rich as a flute—a singularly expressive countenance, polished manners, and a graceful gesticulation. These are the frame and border of that grand and beautiful picture which his strong mind and glowing imagination paint before admiring assemblies. He captivates and converts more by winning grace than conquering power; more by the charms of his rhetoric than the severity of his logic. Let it not be inferred from this that his speeches are devoid of argument. Far from it. They abound in that ingredient, without which all public addresses become the mere sounding brass and tinkling cymbal of an unbridled imagination, or the sound and fury of hollow declamation, signifying nothing but the emptiness of the mere word-spouter. I only mean to say, that his reasoning is not sent into the world bald, but is embellished with artistic skill, and that his speeches bear the hearer onward to conviction in a mixed current of strong argument, elevated sentiment, witty allusions, and happy hits. His appeals to the nobler feelings of the supporters of the cause he is advocating, are fully equaled by his adroitness in sweeping away the objections its opponents have strewed in his path, leaving prostrate antagonists to admire the skill and courtesy with which the victor waved rather than hurled them to the ground. In the select social circle he is as attractive as when eliciting public plaudits on the rostrum; and though an ecclesiastical leader, and ready to defend his religious tenets on suitable occasions, his liberal sentiments and courteous bearing toward all sects, have won him troops of friends in every denomination and class of Christians, from Bishops in lawn to Quakers in drab.
Even an incomplete list of clergymen who bore conspicuous parts in the contests detailed in the last chapter, would be unpardonably defective if it omitted to name Rev.James Howard Hinton, an able Baptist preacher, and the author of a history of this country—and Rev.William Brock, an eloquentdivine of the same denomination—and Rev.William Bevan, of the Congregational church, whose pamphlet on the Apprenticeship did much toward terminating that system—and Rev.John Burnet, of the same church, one of the keenest debaters the English pulpit affords.
British India—Clive and Hastings—East India Company—Its Oppressions and Extortions—Land Tax—Monopolies—Forced Labor and Purveyance—Taxes on Idolatry—Amount of Revenue Extorted—Slavery in India—Famine and Pestilence—The Courts—Rajah of Sattara—Abolition of Indian Slavery—British India Society—General Briggs—William Howitt—George Thompson as an Orator—Lord Brougham's Opinion—Mr. Thompson's Anti-Slavery Career—His Visit to India—His Defense of the Rajah—Advocates Corn-Law Repeal—Is Elected to Parliament.
British India—Clive and Hastings—East India Company—Its Oppressions and Extortions—Land Tax—Monopolies—Forced Labor and Purveyance—Taxes on Idolatry—Amount of Revenue Extorted—Slavery in India—Famine and Pestilence—The Courts—Rajah of Sattara—Abolition of Indian Slavery—British India Society—General Briggs—William Howitt—George Thompson as an Orator—Lord Brougham's Opinion—Mr. Thompson's Anti-Slavery Career—His Visit to India—His Defense of the Rajah—Advocates Corn-Law Repeal—Is Elected to Parliament.
Near the close of the seventeenth century, English ships occasionally skirted the coast of Hindostan, anxious to exchange a roll of flannel or a pack of cutlery for a case of muslins or a bag of spices. A surgeon from one of these vessels was called to attend upon the daughter of the reigning Prince, and succeeded in curing her of a dangerous disease. Being asked what reward he would have for his services, he refused to receive any gift for himself, but solicited commercial privileges for his countrymen. They were granted; and English trading factories were established at Madras and Calcutta. These purely trading posts became the germs of a power which, shooting out its gigantic branches, ultimately spread over the largest and most fertile portion of the peninsula of Hindostan. Robert Clive, a clerk in the Madras factory, laid the foundation of British empire in India. Warren Hastings, a clerk in the factory at Calcutta, erected upon this foundation a towering superstructure, whose blighting shadow now covers a million square miles of territory, inspiring awe in the breastsof a hundred millions of people. The dominion of Britain over this immense area and population is justifiable neither by the mode in which it was obtained, nor the manner in which it has been exercised. Obtained by force, fraud, and cunning, it has been exercised in a spirit of avarice which might tingle the cheek of a Shylock with shame, and of oppression which gives verity to the fabulous tales of Oriental despotisms in the olden time.
The whole of Anglo-India is ruled primarily by the Government of Great Britain, but a large portion of it is governed practically by the English East India Company. These sovereigns in Leadenhall street execute their mandates through a small body of Directors, who acknowledge a slight allegiance to a Board of Control in Downing street. They derive their authority from the Charter of the British Crown, and rule India by permission of the British people. The fundamental principle of their government is, to make India subservient to their pecuniary interests, regardless of its own. Proceeding on the plan of realizing as large a profit as possible on the capital invested, they have taxed the land to the utmost limits of its capacity to pay, making every successive province as it fell into their hands a pretext and a field for higher exactions, and boasting that they have raised the amount of revenue beyond what native rulers were able to extort. They have monopolized every branch of trade that could be made productive, employing in the prosecution the smallest number of laborers, at the lowest rate of wages. The instructions of the Company to their Indian agents have been to make as large remittances as possible. This done, little concern has been felt as to the means employed by the thousand or twelve hundred Englishmen sent thither to enrich their employers and amass private fortunes by plundering the country. The periodical invasion of these hordes of needy adventurers has been like the march of the locusts of Egypt—before them was fertility and beauty; behind them was barrenness and desolation. For the Company to listen tothe complaints of the natives, was a sickly sentimentality unbecoming a great mercantile association; to demand inquiry, was an impertinence; to redress grievances, no part of the obligations imposed by the charter. The Hon. F. J. Shore, who spent fifteen years in India, part of the time as a judge of one of the higher courts, says: "The British Indian Government has been practically one of the most extortionate and oppressive that ever existed in India; one under which injustice has been and may be committed, both by the authorities and by individuals, (provided the latter be rich,) to an almost unlimited extent, and under which redress for injuries is almost unattainable." All unprejudiced authorities agree that Anglo-Indian rule has been worse than that of either of its predecessors, the Hindoos and Mahometans.
From a mass of documents before me, I will select a few items in support and illustration of these general statements.
The great curse of India is theLand Tax. The principle on which the Government acts is, that it is the owner of the soil, and that the occupiers are only tenants at sufferance, though their titles can be traced backward till lost in the haze of antiquity. While under Hindoo rule, the people paid to the Government an annual tax equal to one-sixth of the produce of the soil. The Mahometans, having partially subdued the Hindoo Princes, increased the tax to one-fourth of the produce. Then came the civilized and Christianized English. Asking as a boon the permission to erect two or three warehouses on the coast, they pursued for many years the humble occupation of factors, dealing in silks, muslins, rice, spices, and precious stones. Growing rich, insolent, strong, and rapacious, they overrun the finest provinces, bribing, swindling, butchering the native Princes. Well secured in their regal seats, trading became a secondary occupation, subservient to the arts of diplomacy and the strategy of arms. Having conquered, they resolved to plunder. They apportioned the soil among surveyors and collectors, whose duty it wasto levy and collect the land tax. The cupidity of the conquerors increasing by what it fed upon, they ultimately directed the tax to be fixed at a money value, before the crops were ripe, and to be rated at the highest capacity of the soil in the most fruitful seasons. The result is, that in the most favorable years it absorbs one-third of the produce; in medium years, two-thirds; in years of scarcity, and in unproductive localities, the whole, and more than the whole—the deficiency in the latter case being made up from neighboring farms or districts, or by selling personal property. The average of this tax is variously estimated at from two-thirds to three-fourths of the annual produce. The Company instructs the collectors, that "if the crop be even less than the seed sown, the full tax shall still be demanded. If the occupier be unable to pay, the deficiency is to be made up by assessing it on the entire village or neighborhood. If these be unable to pay it, then on an adjoining village or district—limiting, in such cases, the assessment to ten or twelve per cent. of the value of the land, lest it injure the next year's revenue!" The immediate consequences of this extortion are appalling. Thousands of all classes, ages, and sexes, are turned out of their homes, and wander about in nakedness and want, begging and plundering, selling their children into slavery or giving them to those who will feed and keep them as servants, while other thousands perish of hunger in the jungles and the highways, or are swept off by diseases incident to such squalor. In a single year, famine alone has carried away a million of the population of a land fertilized by a thousand rivers, and fecund of vegetation under the warm blushes of a tropical sun.
Next to the land tax, the most noxious fruit of British rule is a system of GovernmentMonopolies, covering not merely the luxuries, but the necessaries of life. The chief of these are in corn, rice, salt, indigo, and opium. The district washed by the mouths of the Ganges produces immense stores of corn and rice. The sea, in the contiguous district of Madras, throwsup large quantities of the most beautiful salt. But, though the one district furnishes a surplus of what the other is destitute of, they cannot interchange commodities without paying a monopoly tax to the Government, which amounts to a positive prohibition. Even the owner of a plantation bordering on the ocean, whose liberal waves line it with salt, cannot gather in the product without subjecting himself to heavy fines and imprisonment. It is all seized by the Government, and doled out at such prices as to create an annual revenue of from £2,000,000 to £3,000,000. The opium monopoly is still more odious. On the finest corn-lands of Benares, Behar, and part of Bengal, the inhabitants are compelled to grow this pernicious drug, and this alone. The poppy is planted amid curses, its produce is purchased by extortion, carried forth by violence, and sold to work the ruin of millions. The opium being manufactured, the East India Company takes it all, giving the growers such prices as it pleases. Not long ago, while selling it at Calcutta at sixty shillings per pound, it allowed but two shillings per pound to the miserable cultivators. In 1839, it exported to China alone £2,700,926 in value; and for many years past its annual profit from the opium monopoly has been estimated to exceed a million sterling. Other monopolies might be mentioned; but these will suffice as a specimen.
Another branch of British extortion is what is termedForced Labor and Purveyance. In procuring supplies for camps; cattle, sheep, and other food for European soldiers; carriage for troops or civil functionaries; provisions for jails and implements for convict laborers; trains of workmen for the Government and for privileged persons—in short, in any levy for civil or military exigencies, whether in peace or war, the most cruel exactions are practiced. Out rush the myrmidons of Government, or privileged Europeans, and seize cattle, camels, sheep, carts, corn, fruits, and whatever is needed, and wherever found. On highways, at fairs, on farms, they seize onmen, horses, and carriages, to transport their loads, throwing the effects of the owners into the roads; and entering shops and dwellings, they carry off what pleases their fancy, gratifies their appetites, or supplies their necessities. When one of these military or civic cavalcades is passing over the country, it scatters terror far and wide. An eye-witness says: "As soon as the people perceive thecortègeapproaching, accompanied by a police officer, they run and hide themselves. You may see, sometimes, half a village scampering over the fields, pursued by one or more officers in full hue and cry." As long ago as when Hastings traveled in state from Calcutta to Benares, to plunder Cheyte Sing of his treasures and his territories, he expressed his astonishment to see the inhabitants flying at his approach, shutting up their shops, and escaping to the woods. Seventy years have scarcely modified the rigors of the conquering Briton, or abated the terrors of the subdued Indian.
The rapacity of the English rulers cannot be better exemplified than in the fact, that while British societies have sent missionaries to convert the natives to Christianity, and on the first Monday of every month tens of thousands in two hemispheres invoke Divine blessings on "India's coral strand," the East India Company has levied taxes on travelers who would visit the Temple of Juggernaut or bathe in the waters of the Ganges, taxing the devotee before he threw himself under the wheels of the idol, taxing the widow before she leaped on the funeral pile of her husband, taxing the mother before she offered her offspring to the crocodile on the banks of the sacred river, and taxing Hindoos for becoming Christians, and on their refusal to pay, torturing them with thumb-screws, and with standing in the burning sun, bearing heavy stones on their shoulders.
By these and like means, England wrings from this wretched people an annual revenue of more than twenty millions sterling. Besides this amount, there are numerous incidental drains uponthe resources of the country, of which no account is rendered or kept, and untold sums extracted by the unlicensed extortion of individuals and squads, making the naturally fertile and beautiful peninsula that stretches from the snows of the Himalaya mountains to the sands of Cape Comorin, the plundering-ground of England.
And more than this: during ten years of English boasting, immediately following the abolition of slavery in her West India Colonies, that in whatever part of the world her flag floated in dominion, there the air was too pure to be inhaled by a slave, the chattel bondmen of British India were to be counted by millions, held in servitude by permission of British laws, which British power could have revoked at any moment by a dash of the pen.
The calamitous consequences of this long-continued system of oppression and extortion can hardly be overrated. The ancient public works have fallen into decay. Public improvement has languished. The roads, bridges, and canals, are in the most deplorable state. Education and the arts are neglected. Native property-holders are ruined by taxation. The laboring poor sink into the arms of beggary, while surrounded by foreigners who riot in plenty. The earth refuses to yield her natural increase in return for niggardly culture. And the country has been wont to relieve itself of its redundant squalor by famines which sweep its table lands, and by pestilences, which, having depopulated its towns, take to themselves wings, invade distant nations, cross wide oceans, and scourge every part of the world.
In return for all these inflictions, and for a trade which crowds her ports with the richest products of Asia, one would suppose that Great Britain, which boasts of its judicial and municipal institutions, might give to India a tolerable internal government. Not so. It could hardly be more wretched. Its internal affairs are conducted for the same ends for which its taxes are collected—enriching and aggrandizing the rulers.Indians are excluded from every honor, dignity, and station, which the meanest Englishman can be induced to accept. A writer of probity and experience informs us, that the public offices are sinks of every species of villainy, fraud, chicane, favoritism, and injustice. The courts are a libel on the very semblance of justice. Practically, there is no law for the multitude. Often but a single magistrate can be found in a district as large as the State of Connecticut. He cannot hear a tenth of the causes demanding his attention. The distance, the expenses, the hopelessness of getting a hearing, deter thousands from seeking it. Those hardy enough to attempt it, on arriving at many of these tribunals, find them conducted, not in the Hindostanee language, which the suitor understands, nor in the English, which the judge speaks, but in the Persian, which neither suitor nor judge knows a word of. Justice, or ratherjudgment, is sold to the wealthy, and denied to the poor. If an influential native, in the pay of the Company, or an Englishman, is prosecuted, the prosecutor may deem himself fortunate if he and his witnesses are not seized and imprisoned by order of the Court. If the Government prosecutes for a fine or a tax, torture is sometimes applied to extort confession and payment. Judge Shore denounces the inferior courts as sinks of villainy. As to the Supreme Court, sitting at Calcutta, it has been regarded with an undefined and unintelligible horror since the day when Impey, at the instigation of Hastings, sentenced to death Nuncomar, the head of the Hindoo race and religion, on a trumped-up charge of forgery—a venial offense in the code of Indian morals.
And this is a feeble picture of England's government of India, a picture that all the plausible and brilliant extenuations of Macaulay, in his sketches of Clive and Hastings, do not obscure.
I will give an illustration of the mode by which England has extended her territory in India.
In the vicinity of the holy city of Benares, on the banks ofthe sacred Ganges, resides Purtaub Sing, an illustrious Hindoo prince, better known as theRajah of Sattara. He once sat on the throne of Sattara, but for ten years has been the captive of the British Government, subsisting on its charity. He is descended from the renowned Sivajee, whose skill and courage, in the seventeenth century, delivered the Mahrattas from the Mahometan yoke of the successors of Tamerlane, and founded the mighty Mahratta empire. This warlike people, so long the terror of the English in India, made their home in the fastnesses of those mountains whose blue summits watch the distant coast of Malabar, and on the rich table lands stretching eastward from their tops, and the alluvial valleys which slide westward from their base, into the sea of Arabia. In 1817, after a checkered contest of thirty years, during which the cavalry of the Mahrattas often carried dismay and havoc among the white villas sprinkled around Madras, and the rice fields clustering among the mouths of the Ganges, their empire fell before the superior military skill and political intrigues of the British. At that time, Purtaub Sing, a youth of eighteen, was the rightful possessor of the Mahratta throne. By treaty with his conquerors, a small portion of the territory he had lost was allotted to him; he was placed on the throne of Sattara, and made tributary to the Government of Bombay. The mind of the prince was liberal and acute; his habits frugal and temperate; his character humane and noble; and for twenty years his just and beneficent rule rendered his dominions among the happiest and most flourishing in India. For his many virtues and wise administration, the Directors of the East India Company, in 1835, presented him a rich gift and a eulogistic vote of thanks. The neighboring Government of Bombay had long had its greedy eye on this prosperous principality. Having exhausted the arts of flattery and chicane to induce the Rajah to relinquish his throne in favor of a fawning creature of its own, it fastened a quarrel upon him in respect to certain revenues arising under the treaty of 1817.He appealed to the Board of Directors at London. They decided in his favor, and sent their decision to the Governor of Bombay. This was in 1835. The decision was withheld from the Rajah, and he was kept in profound ignorance of the result. The Governor now had recourse to the blackest crimes, to convict him of treasonable designs against the British power in India. Charges were preferred, and he was brought to trial before Commissioners appointed to determine his case. It was in vain that he denied the jurisdiction of the tribunal, and offered to submit the matter to the Board of Directors. He was pronounced guilty by a majority of the Commissioners, on evidence since proved to have been perjured and forged. General Lodwick, the English Resident at his Court, who sat on the Commission, denounced the testimony, as a mass of perjury and forgery. The honest soldier was removed from his post, and Colonel Ovans, an unscrupulous agent of the Bombay Government, appointed in his place. Not daring to punish the Rajah on the strength of such a trial, the new Resident was instructed to spare no pains to entrap the unwary Prince. After two years of vexatious dispute, and fruitless efforts to inveigle him, desperate measures were employed to accomplish the rapacious purposes of the Bombay Government. The Prince was dragged from his bed at midnight, torn from the palace of his ancestors, carried nine hundred miles across the country, and imprisoned in Benares. His estates were confiscated, his private treasure seized, his entire territory secured to the East India Company, and one of its creatures placed on the vacant throne. Twelve hundred of the Rajah's subjects, with tears and lamentations, followed their Prince into exile, leaving their wealth to their persecutors, and bestowing on them their blistering curses. This black crime was perpetrated in 1839. The principal witnesses against the Rajah have since confessed their guilt, disclosed the names of their suborners, and the sums paid for their villainy. In vain has the deposed Prince appealed for justice tothe authorities of the Company, both in England and India. And this is the way that England extends her dominions in India—the England that lifts her red hands in holy horror at Texan annexation and Mexican invasion.
But it would be unjust to suppose that all Englishmen have looked with indifference, much more with approval, on the administration of Indian affairs. From the day when Edmund Burke made the old oaken arches of Westminster Hall ring with his thundering philippics against Warren Hastings, whose splendid administrative qualities for a time dazzled and drew the public eye from his gigantic crimes, down to the day when George Thompson shook the India House by his lightning eloquence in defense of the deposed Rajah of Sattara, a few jealous eyes have watched the rulers of India. It is only within the past ten or twelve years that any considerable portion of the British people has uttered a hearty protest against English oppression in the East, and demanded justice for its Oriental brethren. Some palliation for half a century's indifference may be found in the profound ignorance in which the mass of the English people were steeped in relation to their Indian empire. Till a late period, even men of intelligence supposed the functions of the East India Company were chiefly commercial, and never dreamed that it marshaled an army in the field three times as numerous as that which conquered at Waterloo; that its agents reigned over a population seven-fold that of England, with a power and splendor equaling Roman proconsuls in the days of Cæsar; that it deposed and crowned princes at pleasure, giving away thrones erected by the successors of Tamerlane; that the Great Mogul himself, reposing under the mere shadow of his ancestral greatness, was in reality but the titled pensioner of a Company, whose arms, intrigues, and extortions had scattered terror, strife, and poverty from the pine forests of Afghanistan to the cinnamon groves of Ceylon. But a better day has dawned for India. A people which, in the stormy times of Clive and Surajah Dowlah, of Hastingsand Maharajah Nuncomar, hardly knew the locality of the island that sent out their oppressors, and which, in milder days, found it impossible to waft their complaints across 15,000 miles of ocean, now breathe their petitions in the ears of a listening Parliament, and through generous champions make even the great court of the India House echo the utterance of their wrongs. Many improvements in Indian affairs have already been secured. The eye of an influential party in England is fixed upon Hindostan, never to be withdrawn, till British rule ceases to vex the peninsula, or ceases wholly to exist. Tens of thousands of the best minds in the kingdom would prefer to see that rule instantly shivered in atoms, and the army, with the cowardly plunderers that throng in its train and hide behind its bayonets, driven in defeat and disgrace from India, than that it should exist for a single day, except to make atonement for past offenses. And to no man is this change in public opinion so justly attributable as toGeorge Thompson.
It has already been stated that a better day has dawned on British India. The first purple streaks of the morning were seen when Earl Grey's administration abolished the last remnants of the maritime monopoly of the East India Company, and opened the Indian trade to the whole commercial marine of the kingdom—an important step in a line of policy, which, for many years, had been gradually circumscribing the ancient powers and privileges of the company.[6]The full-orbed sun arose when, ten years later, chattel-slavery ceased in all the vast regions stretching from the highlands whence spring the sources of the Indus and the Ganges, southward to where "the spicy breezes blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle," elevating millions of serfs to the condition of men, and verifying the words of our Whittier, that
——"Every flap of England's flagProclaims that all around are free,From farthest Ind to each blue cragThat beetles o'er the western sea."
This great boon, out of which the slaves of India were defrauded six years by a political trick, in which the Duke of Wellington bore a dishonorable part, was a consequence rather than the cause of a broad and comprehensive movement among the Abolitionists of Great Britain, set on foot by the benevolence of Joseph Pease, and the eloquence of George Thompson, for redressing the wrongs of India. In July, 1839, "The British India Society" was formed, in the presence of a large audience, in Freemason's Hall, Lord Brougham in the chair. Soon after, auxiliary societies were organized in Manchester and Glasgow. Lord Brougham, and Messrs. Clarkson, O'Connell, Cobden, Bright, William Howitt, Joseph Pease, Gen. Briggs, Dr. Bowring, and George Thompson, were among the officers of these associations.
The main objects of the British India Society were declared to be, to inform the public of the history of the British acquisitions in India, and the character of the British rule therein; to make known the condition of the natives; to introduce more extensively the cultivation of cotton, and to develop the resources of the country; to abolish slavery, and put an end to injurious monopolies; to stay the march of famine, and quench the lust of conquest; to mitigate the land tax, and secure for the inhabitants a practical recognition of their claims to the soil; and to awaken in behalf of that distant people the sentiments of a genuine sympathy, and a proper sense of national responsibility in the empire which claims to govern them.
These noble objects have been kept steadily in view during the past ten years. The soul of the enterprise has been Mr. Thompson. He has been greatly aided by Major General John Briggs, a generous and gallant soldier, who spent thirty years in India, traveled over most of the Peninsula, administered theGovernment in several provinces, and has published two able works on the Land Tax, and on the Cotton Trade of India. Mr. William Howitt, so favorably known in our country as a writer of taste and research, has given many of the best productions of his pen to the same cause. Numerous public meetings have been addressed by Brougham, O'Connell, Bowring, Thompson, Briggs, and others; valuable pamphlets issued; and a great amount of startling information spread before the public eye. A radical change in the administration of Indian affairs is demanded by a body daily increasing in numbers and influence, whose advocates have found their way into the Board of Directors, the Court of Proprietors, and the Halls of Parliament.
I will now speak more particularly of Mr. Thompson. At the close of his speech on the occasion of the formation of the British India Society, Lord Brougham said: "I have always great pleasure in listening to Mr. Thompson, who is the most eloquent man and the most accomplished orator whom I know; and as I have no opportunity of hearing him where he ought to speak, inside the walls of Parliament, I am anxious never to lose an opportunity of hearing him, where alone I can hear him, in a public meeting like the present." This is high eulogy, but it will not be deemed extravagant by those who have listened to its subject in his happiest moods.
Mr. T. was bred in a mercantile house in London. While a clerk, business could not prevent the gratification of his fondness for books, nor the cultivation of his remarkable native powers of elocution. He devoured libraries, and mingled in the debating clubs of the metropolis. In 1830, having read the great speech of Rev. Dr. Thomson, of Edinburgh, in favor of immediate emancipation, he embraced the doctrine, and soon after was invited by the London Anti-Slavery Society to traverse the country, and bring its objects before the people. His addresses in Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, and other large towns, drew throngs of hearers; and so great was theirinfluence, that the West India body, taking the alarm, employed Mr. Peter Borthwick (afterward, like Mr. T., elected to Parliament) to meet him, and present the slaveholding view of the question. This was the very stimulus needed to bring out all the powers of Thompson; for Borthwick was an able, ardent, and accomplished advocate. They measured swords on many a field in the presence of thousands, their encounters often extending through several successive evenings. Most unflinchingly and right gallantly did Borthwick bear himself in these conflicts. He was a foeman worthy of the glittering blade of his antagonist, and many a time did he feel its piercing point and excoriating edge. But the advocate of Slavery was not an equal match for the champion of Freedom; and he could hardly have been, had their relative positions been reversed. As it was, he was invariably overthrown. Thompson shook him from the point of his weapon, quivering and bleeding, at every crossing of swords. Many of Mr. Thompson's speeches were reported. They are crowded with passages of power and beauty. Master of the facts of his case; skilled in its logic; expert in the arts of attack and defense; apt in quotations and allusions; fertile in illustrations; singularly perfect in the command of language, still hisfortelay in the power of his appeals to the humanity, the sense of justice, the hatred of oppression, the innate love of liberty, of his hearers. When rapt with his theme, his frame throbbing with emotion, the perspiration dripping from his forehead and hands, his voice pealing like a trumpet, his action as graceful and impetuous as that of a blood-horse on the course, the hearer who, for the moment, could stifle the sentiment that Slavery was the most atrocious system under heaven, might be trusted to sleep quietly on his knapsack in the breach, when it spouted a torrent of fire.
The next year after the passage of the West India abolition act, Mr. Thompson visited this country, where he remained till driven from our shores for advocating the natural equalityof man, and his inalienable right to liberty. We would not permit a foreigner to interfere with our institutions—it was offensive, indelicate, impertinent. Probably Nicholas, the Sultan, Ferdinand, Victoria, Louis Philippe, and Metternich, thought just so when we interfered with Poland, Greece, South America, Ireland, France, and Germany. Not knowing the particulars, I shall not go into the details.
Returning to England, Mr. T. joined his old associates for the overthrow of the West India apprenticeship. When victory crowned their exertions, his brilliant services, with those of the more sober but not less efficient Joseph Sturge, were specially commended by Lord Brougham in one of his great speeches in the House of Peers.
Mr. Thompson now turned his attention to the affairs of British India. Having formed the British India Society, and established auxiliary associations in various parts of England, he, in 1842-3, visited India. His fame as the advocate of the rights of the natives had preceded him. In several parts of the country, he was greeted with long processions of richly-caparisoned elephants and camels, with cymbals and trumpets, and the gorgeous pomp customary in the festivities of orient climes. But he visited India for business, and not for show. He traveled through the upper provinces, held conferences with the people, gathered a store of important information, and, having been personally solicited by the Rajah of Sattara and the Emperor of Delhi, to present their claims before the British Parliament, he returned to England.
On a murky afternoon, in the dingy hall of the Court of Proprietors, in Leadenhall street, which was filled by merchants and speculators in India stocks, eager to pocket the spoils wrung from a people whom they had first conquered and then plundered, a tall man, personally unknown to but few present, rose from one of the back benches, and, with a pile of dog-eared documents before him, proposed to bring the case of the deposed Rajah of Sattara to the consideration of the Court.At this announcement, a few members, not so dozy as the majority, turned their heads to see who this intruder could be. It was not long before he had thoroughly roused these free and easy gentlemen to a full sense of consciousness. Mr. George Thompson (for he was the man) began to spread out the unmitigated rascality of the transactions I have detailed. He was soon interrupted. His right to be there was questioned. But he was the proprietor of a sufficient amount of stock to entitle him to be heard. He went on. He was called to order. He would not come, but still went on. They proposed to take down his offensive words. He begged them to be patient, and he would soon give them something worth taking down. He was declared impertinent. He insisted that his speech was decidedly pertinent. Clamor was tried. His voice pierced the din, with the defiance that "hewouldbe heard." He was denounced as the feed agent of the Rajah. He repelled the charge in a passage of cutting power. He was threatened. But he rode on the surges of too many mobs, in the turbulent days of the West India discussion, to be frightened at a tempest in the East India House. He still held his ground, and kept up a heavy and well-directed fire. The excitement was intense, the turmoil continuing till three o'clock in the morning. It was one of the stormiest sessions which had ever taken place in that stormy hall. It revived the recollection of the days when Lord Clive, the founder of the Anglo-Indian empire, encountered Sullivan, the prince of London merchants, and the chairman of the Company, who had tabled infamous charges against him; or the days when Warren Hastings, laden with rupees and flushed with triumphs, measured powers with his deadly foe, Sir Philip Francis, the author of Junius. Above the war of this tempestuous night, the trumpet-voice of the gallant Thompson was heard, cheering on the band that rallied to the defense of the dethroned Rajah. It was an era in the history of the Indian Court of Proprietors. Justice, humanity, right, honor, were strange words to be echoed from archeswhich had so long looked down on fraud, cruelty, oppression, and avarice. Thanks to George Thompson, these words are becoming more and more familiar in that temple of Mammon.
When the Corn-Law struggle was approaching its crisis, Mr. T. yielded to the solicitations of the League to again advocate its cause before the country. He had been an agent of the League previous to going to India, and his peculiar eloquence contributed essentially to the rapid change of public opinion during the years 1841-2. In the last year of the Corn-Law contest, he fought shoulder to shoulder with Cobden, Villiers, Bright, and Wilson, and no Free Trade chief carried over that triumphant field a brighter blade or a stouter shield than he.
As a testimonial of their regard for his many services in the cause of civil and religious liberty, the Lord Provost and Magistrates of Edinburgh presented him, in June, 1846, with the freedom of their venerable city. A higher honor awaited him. At the general election in 1847, Mr. Thompson was returned to the House of Commons for the Tower Hamlets, by the largest majority, over a popular opponent, obtained by any member of the new House.
In addition to the reforms already mentioned, he is the advocate of Universal Suffrage, of a dissolution of the union of Church and State, of Free Education, of Retrenchment in all departments of the Government. In a word, he is a radical democrat.
I have already spoken of his powers as an orator. His logic is not of the firstly, secondly, thirdly sort—a didactic, pulpit sort of logic—but a sort in which all the numerals are combined, and confounded, and sent home with the accelerated momentum of geometrical progression. His rhetoric is not so systematic as Campbell's, nor so stiff as Blair's, but leaps spontaneously from a fruitful mind, from an observation of men and things active and broad, from a sympathy with the grand in nature, and the beautiful in art. He attacks an opponent with a general pell-mell of argument, fact, appeal, sarcasm,and wit, not the more easily repelled because this onset of "all arms" is not arrayed according to the precise rules of art, but comes from unexpected quarters, and in unanticipated forms. He deals seriously with the great facts of his subject, and specially addresses himself to the higher parts of man's nature—the reason, the conscience, the affections. Yet can he gambol in playful humor, throwing the galling arrow of sarcasm, scattering thejet d'eauof wit, or with a stroke of his crayon, drawing the ludicrous caricature, imitating to the life any peculiarity in the tone or manner of his antagonist—gliding from grave to gay, from lively to severe, with charming grace. His speeches might be set down merely as rare specimens of elocution or declamation, but for one peculiarity. They deal largely with the facts, the details of the case in hand. Hereads upon every topic he discusses. His stores of facts are relieved of all dryness or repulsion in the presentation, by the panoramic style in which he marshals them before the eye, all clad in the garb furnished forth by a rich elocution and lively fancy. Here lies his strength; for a single apposite fact outweighs, with the mass of men, a whole volume of abstract reasoning or florid declamation. His story charms like a well-acted tragedy or well-written novel.
If India shall ever enjoy a Government which protects its rights and promotes its prosperity, its happy millions will pronounce no name with more grateful accents than that of their early friend and advocate, George Thompson.
Cheap Postage—Rowland Hill—His Plan Proposed in 1837—Comparison of the Old and New Systems—Joshua Leavitt—Money-Orders, Stamps, and Envelopes—The Free Delivery—London District Post—Mr. Hume—Unjust Treatment of Mr. Hill by the Government—The National Testimonial.
Cheap Postage—Rowland Hill—His Plan Proposed in 1837—Comparison of the Old and New Systems—Joshua Leavitt—Money-Orders, Stamps, and Envelopes—The Free Delivery—London District Post—Mr. Hume—Unjust Treatment of Mr. Hill by the Government—The National Testimonial.
A sketch of recent British Reforms, even as imperfect as that I am attempting, would be defective without some notice of one of the greatest blessings of the age—Cheap Postage. Not only Britain, but Europe and America, (for they have in some degree partaken of its benefits,) are indebted to Mr.Rowland Hillfor this measure of human improvement and enjoyment. There are two aspects for contemplating this reform. The one, to go into heroics on its vast social, political, commercial, and moral advantages; the other, to go into tables of figures. The former may be called the poetic, the latter, the mathematical, view. I shall avoid both of these extremes.
The high rates of British postage, down to 1840, and which were adjusted much on the same scale as ours, were a dead weight on correspondence. For thirty years previous to that time, the gross receipts of the post-office had remained nearly stationary. Thus, the amount of correspondence by mail continued about the same during a period in which the population of the country increased fifty per cent., commerce and wealth in a nearly equal proportion, and knowledge among the masses, and the facilities of transmission, to even a larger degree. These facts arrested the attention of many minds. But thesagacious Rowland Hill probed to causes and devised remedies. He published his scheme for postal reform in 1837. Its outlines were these. The controlling idea of the post-office establishment should be, the convenience of the people, and not Governmental revenue. It was extortionate for the Government to tax as much for carrying a letter from London to Edinburgh, as a merchant charged for transporting a barrel of flour. The chief labor being expended in making up, opening, and delivering mails, therefore the fact, whether a letter was carried one mile or one hundred miles made comparatively little difference in the expenditures of the department. The number of pieces of which a letter was composed should not regulate the rate of postage, but weight should control. As much postage was lost on letters which were never called for, therefore there should be a distinction between prepaid letters and others; and in large towns there should be a free distribution of prepaid letters, by postmen. There should be no privileged class, with permission to use the post-office free of charge. Guided by these principles, Mr. Hill recommended a uniform rate of postage for all distances—a postage of a penny per half ounce, on letters, if prepaid, irrespective of the number of pieces, and two pence if not paid till delivered, the rate increasing as the weight advanced—a free delivery of prepaid letters in large towns—total abolition of the franking privilege. His scheme embraced great improvements in other respects, such as envelopes, stamps, post-office money-orders, &c. He also insisted, that the increase in the number of letters under his scheme would be sufficient in a few years to carry the net income as high as under the old system.
Now, all this seems very simple and plain—so simple and plain, that those who hourly enjoy its benefits never think of the times when it absorbed a day's wages of a poor Irish laborer in London to send a letter to his wife in Cork, informing her that he was well, and hoped these few lines would find her enjoying the same blessing—when a commercial house inLiverpool paid a yearly tax to the post-office sufficient to discharge the salaries of its clerks—when an editor, happening to be absent from the metropolis, wrote his leaders, to avoid triple postage, on very thin folio post, with very close lines, to the great disgust and vexation of compositors and proof readers—when love letters and money letters were peered into by gossiping and rascally postmasters, to see whether they were double—when a manufacturer, who could send a ream of paper a hundred miles for six pence if it went in the coach box, must pay a shilling per sheet if it went in the coach bag—when a luckless neighbor, about to take a journey of business or pleasure, must conceal his departure to the last moment, or be laden with a portmanteau full of letters, to "save postage"—when—but there is no end to the absurdities, annoyances, and extortions of the old system. And who thanks the genius and perseverance of Rowland Hill for exposing and exploding this relic of the times of the Stuarts, and introducing a reform worthy of the noon of steamers, railways, and electric telegraphs? It is so simple! Columbus is almost as sure of immortality for teaching a bevy of courtly buffoons how to make an egg stand on end, as for giving a new world to Ferdinand and Isabella. It looked very simple—especiallyafter it was done. So did the discovery of the magnetic needle and the new world. It is the capacity which conceives how simple things, which produce great results, can bedone, that is entitled to be called genius. He is both a genius and a practical man who can first conceive and then execute. And such a man is Rowland Hill.
His pamphlet, of 1837, soon attracted the attention of the nation. The next year, several hundred petitions in favor of his plan were presented to Parliament—a select committee was appointed to collect facts—a hundred witnesses were examined—and a report, embodying a great variety of important information, was published, filling three volumes of the Parliamentary papers. After much deliberation, his scheme, havingsuffered considerable mutilation, was adopted in 1839, to take effect early in 1840. In its actual workings, though crippled by half-hearted officials, it has exceeded the expectations of almost everybody except its sagacious originator, working out, during nine years, before millions of eyes, the problems he solved twelve years ago in his closet.
In 1839, the last year of the old system, the letters passing through the British post-office numbered about eighty millions. The average postage was seven pence per letter. The first year of the new system, the number reached one hundred and seventy millions. It steadily advanced, till, in 1848, it had risen to three hundred and fifty millions. The gross receipts of the department in the latter year about equaled those of 1839. The net income of 1839 was about a million and a half sterling; that of 1848, about three-fourths of a million. The increased expense, and consequent diminution of net revenue, under the new system, are owing to the increase of business on old post routes, the opening of new routes, and great improvement on both. The net revenue increased from 1840 to 1848, a period of eight years, one-fourth of a million. Hence, it is safe to presume, that in a few years more, it will equal that of 1839. What a demonstration have we here of the much controverted proposition, that a great diminution in the cost of that which the public needs will so increase consumption, that revenue will not be the loser, while convenience will vastly gain? But, discard the principle of revenue, and make the post-office simply support itself, and England might probably in a few years reduce the rate of postage one-half, while transmitting a mass of letters which would almost defy enumeration. This more than realizes the brightest visions of Mr. Hill.
But, the money view of this great reform is a paltry view. It is well said by Mr. Joshua Leavitt, in his admirable American pamphlet on Cheap Postage: "The people of England expend now as much money for postage, as they did under theold system; but the advantage is, that they get a great deal more service for their money, and it gives a spring to business, trade, science, literature, philanthropy, social affection, and all plans of public utility."[7]Probably the corn laws were repealed two years sooner, because of cheap postage.
Nothing can exceed the convenience of the money-order, the stamp, and the envelope branches of the system. The money-orders are drafts by one post-office upon another, for sums not exceeding £5. They are a sort of post-office bill of exchange, and are largely employed in the transmission of small sums by mail. In 1847, the number issued in England alone was 810,000, amounting to £1,654,000. The department charges a trifling commission for the order—say 3dfor £2. In a country where the brokers are Jews, and the smallest Bank of England notes are £5, this arrangement is very beneficial to the poor. The label stamps, which prepay letters, are convenient to all classes. They are of all rates, and, being first prepared by the department, are kept on sale, not only at all the post-offices, but by shop-keepers of all sorts. They are used, not only to pay postage, but as small change. Indeed, they are used as a kind of circulating medium. The number sold in a year is counted by millions. The envelopes, stamped by the department, and sold like simple stamps, are used not only to enclose letters, but by all sorts of persons and associations, for circulars, advertisements, &c., these being printed on the inside of the envelopes after they are stamped. The great majority of letters are prepaid, because of the diminution in the rate of postage.Gentlemeneverywhere always pay their own postage, when writing on their own business. In England, they also enclose a stamp to prepay the answer. Large commercial houses cause their address to be printed on stamped envelopes,and then send packages of these to their correspondents, to be used when needed.
The free delivery of prepaid letters in the large towns is astonishingly perfect. Almost a stranger among the two millions of London, I once received a letter at my lodgings, from a correspondent to whom my city address was unknown, in three hours after its arrival at the post-office. The postman, when I was in London three months before, had delivered letters to my address, and he now recollected the name and number. Besides the "General Post," which delivers letters coming from the country and foreign parts, there is connected with the department in London, a machine of curious contrivance, and great exploits, called the "District Post." It covers a circle of some twelve miles, from the center, and delivers letters which originate and end within the circle, ten times a day, at dwellings, shops, and offices. In 1848, the number delivered by this post was nearly fifty millions. To these must be added at least a hundred and twenty millions for the General Post, making an aggregate of a hundred and seventy millions of letters delivered in London annually, by the post-office department, a large proportion of which, being prepaid, are delivered free! But there is no end to those statistics, and I leave them.[8]
The committee, when presenting to Mr. Hill, in 1846, the National Testimonial, had ample grounds for pronouncing his reform "a measure which has opened the blessings of a free correspondence to the teacher of religion, the man of science and literature, the merchant and trader, and the whole British nation, especially the poorest and most defenseless portion of it—a measure which is the greatest boon conferred in modern times on all the social interests of the civilized world." The veteran reformer, Joseph Hume, in a letter to Mr. Bancroft, then our minister at St. James, dated in 1848, says: "I amnot aware of any reform, amongst the many reforms I have promoted during the last forty years, that has had, and will have, better results toward the improvement of this country, morally, socially, and commercially."
And how has the benefactor of a great and powerful nation been treated by the British Government? He has shared the general fate of useful inventors and reformers. At the outset he was ridiculed as a dreamer, an enthusiast. After a conviction of the utility of his plan had penetrated the masses of the people, Parliament mutilated it, supplying the exscinded parts with uncongenial inventions of its own. When even thus much of his plan was adopted, he was permitted to have but slight influence in working it out in practice. He should have been appointed Postmaster General; but that station belonged, by prescription, to the nobility—to some Lord Fitztoady or Earl Muttonhead, who could hardly tell a mail bag from a handsaw. Liberal Whig though he was, the great reformer was placed, by a Whig administration, in a minor place, where he could exert only a subordinate influence over postal affairs. And after six years of incessant labor and anxiety, which had impaired his health and wasted his fortune, the Peel government turned him out, though he entreated the Premier to allow him, at any pecuniary sacrifice to himself, to remain and aid in working out his plan. Being now embarrassed in his circumstances, a national subscription in his behalf was started, the net proceeds of which amounted to £13,360. It was presented to him, in 1846, at a public dinner, accompanied by many honeyed words. The reply of Mr. Hill was modest. He gave ample credit for the aid he had received from others in carrying his plan through Parliament, and specially named Messrs. Wallace and Warburton, members of the committee of 1838, Mr. Baring, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Lords Ashburton and Brougham. He delicately alluded to his proscription by the Peel administration, and pointed outthe improvements necessary to give complete efficiency to his reform.
Thirteen thousand pounds, for devising and introducing a measure which has carried blessings to every princely mansion and peasant cabin in three kingdoms! Why, if Rowland Hill had patented a first class washing machine, he could hardly have made less money out of it. Thirteen thousand pounds from a people that smothered the "Divine-Fanny-show-her-legs," as George Thompson called her, with bouquets and bank notes. But if his cotemporaries do not requite his services, posterity will do justice to his memory.