But how am I to guide you in the midst of this thick and palpable obscure? Are you Tory, Whig, Radical, Chartist, High Church, Low Church, No Church, Snob Church, Rob Church, Up Papist, Down Papist, Voluntary, Involuntary, Intrusionist, Extrusionist, Moderate, Immoderate? Are you in an agricultural district, or in a manufacturing? Slavery, or no slavery? Currency solid, or currency paper? What are you? I know not. I have no means of knowing; and yet you ask me for advice to conduct your paper. I can only return a general answer, and have therefore jotted down in an alphabetical order, that I may not be supposed unduly to prefer any one subject to another, what I think are the prominent, perhaps the exclusive, topics to which the writer of leading articles may be called upon to address himself; and, to supply you with the most appropriate manner of treating them on all sides, I have done so with impartiality. Tros Tyriusque mihi —but I shall not continue the line, for I have some remarks upon the general question elsewhere, when touching upon quotation, as practised by senators and other persons of public appearance. The main topics, then, I take it, are these : I. CATHOLICS. II. CORN. III. CURRENCY. IV. DISSENT. V. EDUCATION. VI. FACTORIES. VII. FINANCE. VIII. FOREIGN AFFAIRS. IX. GOVERNMENT, at home and in colonies. X. INTRUSION. XI. JOBBING. All these are subdivisible into many minor heads. No. I. (Catholics) for example, opens up the whole question of the quarrels and the politics connected with them, which have divided, what is in common parlance called the religious world, some dozen generations of articulate or inarticulate speaking men. No. VIII. (Foreign Affairs) gives us every thing in continental Europe, Asia, Africa, America, Australasia, Melville's Island, the kingdoms of Fife and Kerry, and other foreign parts; besides war, peace, bully, sneak, threaten, skulk, palaver, protocol, and all the other weapons of diplomacy. No. IX. (Government) and No. XI. (Jobbing) embrace the minuter shades of Whig and Tory, in all their varied ramifications,—and so forth. I have omitted to make a separate category of humbug, because it is so mixed up with all these questions, (except No. XV.) that it would be difficult to disentangle it from the general body, and manifestly unjust to allow that the trading professors of any matter of public debate, by which money is to be made or notoriety obtained, excel, in the practice of that inestimable science, their brother merchants in other departments of merchandise. To business :: I. CATHOLICS. I might have called them Papists, as those who like them not are in the wont of doing, but that would have thrown them into the letter P., so to come thirteenth in the series; or Roman Catholics, as the compromisers, who boldly disregard the imputation of committing a bull, are in the habit of designating them, for that would have flung them into R, about the sixteenth; and as I desire to have them first on my list, I take them by the name they give themselves. (Let me here make a parenthesis to observe, that I like them for their courage in taking the name. We sometimes hear people say, that Shakspeare, by asking "What's in a name," insinuates that there is nothing in it. These people are not wise, Tobias. It is not Shakspeare who says anything of the kind, unless we set him down as responsible for every thing that he puts into the mouths of his characters. Shakspeare well knew that there was as much virtue in a name, as Lord Coke found in an &c. ; and when he makes Cassius assure his confederate, that " Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Cæsar," he does it with the full assurance that Cassius is to find out his mistake in the end. Therefore commend I the Catholics for taking to themselves par excellence the sounding name. Depend upon it, it tells somewhere, and that extensively.) I wish to put their article first for this plain reason, viz., that I desire to remark in the beginning of my short thesis, that if you cannot write on the Catholic question, you have completely mistaken your trade. Depart from newspapers: abscond from the pen, unless you use it to write for annuals. You have come into the wrong vocation. Pare a moss, break stones on the road, turn a mangle, go in the Bris tish auxiliary Spanish legion: do any thing, in short, but journalize. You have made a mistake; your blunder is barbarous. I cannot teach in such a case, any more than I could impart a knowledge of landscape-drawing to the blind. If you be No-Popery: idolatry, superstition, inquisition, bloody Mary, Philip II., St Bartholomew, 1641, revocation of Edict of Nantz, 1798, Scallabogue, no faith with heretics, Dr Dens, O'Connell, beggary, perjury, swindling. If Pro-Popery : seven centuries of oppression, religion of seven-eighths of Christian world, seven millions of trampled-upon men, the march of mind, the tolerance of the popes, the ancient faith, the religion of Fénélon, the green fields and bright streams of Ireland, the finest peasantry, the most holy priesthood; oh! ah! ho! hurrah! bleeding heart, true patriot, justice for Ireland. you cannot write this-and there is at least a couple of dozen articles in the above catalogue, every one of them wanting but the merest inflation of the most ordinary gas to swell into the dis mensions of a ballon-monstre—if you cannot do this, I repeat that you have mistaken your business, and should retire from the profession of journalism with as little delay as may be. Why even on our side, and on the other, can write that: I am sure that anybody, Tobias, can fill up the blanks. If II. CORN. A plain-a very plain question. I know that you have never thought any thing about it, except when your weekly bill has informed you that the quartern loaf has risen an extra penny, and therefore left you so much more in debt to the unfortunate baker; but in this, Tobias, you do not differ from the chief speakers and writers on the liberal side of this subject. The main argument in Villiers's three-times spoken speech, for example, could be summoned up advantageously in the above sentence. As the subject is a flowery one-excuse the pun-you may amplify it, as he did, with ornaments of rhetoric, and other nice things of the kind; but after all, it will come to the inconvenience of the extra penny. I shall, however, instruct you so deeply on the matter, that you will pass off as a philosopher of the first water, in half a dozen sentences. It is, I have said, Tobias, a very plain question-I mean for a newspaper man, being purely a question of place. If your paper is in an agricultural district Corn laws: in a manufacturing district-no Corn laws: in a mixed district-strict impartiality; or still better, rigid silence. If you are to be for the Corn laws, you must remark, that it is a most unhappy state for a nation to be dependent on foreigners, who may at any time become enemies, for daily bread. Praise the landed interest of England, and uphold the unpaid magistracy. Here you will have an opportunity of abusing the Morning Chronicle. Quote the lines of Goldsmith, "Princes and peers may flourish and may fade, A breath may make them, as a breath has made; But a bold peasantry, its country's pride, When once 'tis lost, can never be supplied." They have been quoted a thousand times already, but that is a proof of the general impression as to their undeniable truth-and besides, poetry is not generally read in the agricultural districts, so that they may pass for original, and the farmers' daughters copy them in their scrap-books with your name. Every now and then give a discursive history of the fall of states in ancient and modern times; all of which you must attribute to the want of Corn Laws. Carthage had no Corn Laws-she was dependent on foreigners for grain: she fell accordingly. Rome had no Corn Laws: she tumbled, when the Sicilian and other granaries of the empire were lost. And so on. Talk of the serfs in Pomerania, and other corn-producing lands, famishing upon sour cabbage, in the midst of glowing harvests of golden grain-and contrast their condition with that of the bacon-greased countenances of the English farm servants. But in this particular do not be too rash, because you must. always leave a loophole of retreat: there should be a corps de reserve of grumbling kept always in hand, for the farmers, above all people, like to be told they are ruined. Say, then, that the foreign serf is miserable when compared with what the English farmer is," or, at least, was in the best times of the country; and as we trust we shall see him again, when the unwise, unjust, unnatural, and impolitic system of insult and oppression under which he is labouring at present," (and that present will do for any time,)" is abandoned, as it must speedily be, amid the universal indignation of an outraged people." Take care, of course, to speak highly of the Duke of Buckingham, but mind he must not be the only object of applause. The great man in your immediate neighbourhood should be continually panegyrized, and you must hold him up as a pattern for all the gentry of England. This will get you a dinner at the Hall sometimes; and à propos of that, you must make it a point to attend all public dinners, (tickets sent to the office, and no subscription in the evening expected from you,) and, if you can keep sober enough, make a speech. This will give you weight in the country, for though you may talk the greatest nonsense in the world, which, Tobias, is highly probable, you will have the reporting of it yourself; and on the morrow, when cool reflection comes, it is strange if you will not be able to write a speech to pass muster, as well as those which you have to compose for the other orators of the evening. If you be in a manufacturing district, then, of course, manufactures are the main stay of England, and what can be more detestable than to attack the food of the hard-working man-to put on an accursed bread tax-to plant a stab in the vitals of the poor-to deprive the child of sustenance, the mother of and all the rest of that: quote, if you can remember them, or find any one that does, the verses of Ebenezer Elliot, which I understand are of an uncommon kind, not such as are to be met with every day. If you cannot remember them, make them as "I would cut down with hatchet and with axe Those who support this most accursed bread tax; People of England! listen to the cry. that will be quite enough, being exactly as much as the most studious reader ever at any given time read of the visions of Ebenezer. Here, too, you may quote history. Boldly defy any of your corn-law readers to contradict you, when you state that Jerusalem perished in the siege of Titus, for no other reason than that the Jews were not allowed a free import of corn, and that the same may be strongly surmised of other blockaded cities. Take excellent care to puff the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce, or other similar institution, and if he likes your articles, (and in general these gentlemen are as vain as magpies, whom indeed they much resemble in the style and variety of their oratory,) you may perhaps get him to do you a bill. Above all things, give tables-not dinner tables, but tables of figures-in vast abun dance; thus : "In the year 1792, when the price of corn was 38s. 6d. a quarter, the wages of the carpenter-we take carpenters for an obvious reason, because theirs is a trade which must be diffused throughout the kingdom averaged (see the Northampton tables) 17s. 4d. per week; that is to say, 17s. 4d. a-week, being 208 pence"-[be correct in this, for some old schoolmaster in the neighbourhood will take the trouble of reducing it to pence, and denouncing you in the rival journal for the mistake, if you make one, in a letter signed "your's indignantly-PIILOMATH"]-being 208 pence; it follows that he could with these wages purchase 164 pound weight avoirdupois of flour, convertible, (allowing 33d. for yeast and baking, and 0.276 for loss, as calculated by Sir Astley Cooper,) into 159 pounds of solid, substantial, and nutritious bread :-in other words, allowing him to have a wife and five children, which is only a fair proportion for an industrious man, 22 pounds and 5-7ths of a pound per day, or nearly three pounds and a half of bread per individual. It is no wonder that cholera was never heard of among the poorer classes in those days. Now, indeed, we have higher wages. He who in 1840 represents the carpenter of 1792 receives indeed 22s. 2d. (see the Bowring tables) per week; but the price of corn being, by the last Gazette, 78s. 9d. per quarter, it follows that he can procure no more than 29 pounds four ounces of bread per week, being, under circumstances similar to the former case, no more than seven pounds and a third per day, a little more than a pound per individual. We pity at once the heart and the intellect of him who upholds such a system as this." I have read many a paper signed Daniel Hardcastle to this effect, which has made a deep impression upon reflecting readers. "On Tuesday last, a great anti-corn law meeting was held, which, whatever may be our opinion as to the great question under discussion, must be admitted to be of the very highest respectability, whether we consider it in the light of wealth, intelligence, public spirit, or intrinsic worth and character of all who attended. The wellknown, and universally respected merchant, who filled the chair, performed his arduous duties with a skill, talent, and urbanity, which well deserved the unanimous thanks with which the meeting rewarded him at its conclusion. The arguments adduced by the several speakers were not new-what, indeed, can be new upon a subject so long debated?-but were put forth with a talent and energy that cannot be too highly applauded. Differing as we do from the premises of some of the speakers, and from the conclusions of others, as indeed very often these premises and conclusions differed from one another, we cannot refrain from offering these independent remarks. Our own opi nions are too well known to render it neces sary that they should be here repeated" (of course you have taken right good care never to have expressed an opinion at all,)" and we shall conclude by referring our readers to à report of the great anti-corn law debate, which we have given most copiously without regard to trouble or expense-it will be found in our second page-and to the resolutions, for which see advertisement." "Signed by the opulent chairman." (N.B-Take care to get that.) I have underscored the only words that need differ in the two reports, and I advise you keep the article stereotyped if you are placed in so unpleasant a situation as not to know on which side your boat is to be trim med. III. CURRENCY.-Here again, Tobias, of this question I think I may fairly assume you have no personal information. As your salary was paid weekly, you, of course, know of the existence of golden coins; and as they were with lightning rapidity convert ed into metalliques of a lower grade of the silver and copper currency, it is impossible to suppose you can be ignorant. As for paper-it must have been long since, "long, long ago," as the song has it, since you saw, save in distant vision, a bank-note, (your weekly allowance being but £3, 3s.); and your ideas of paper currency are in all probability restricted to an ac quaintance with those stamped parallelograms which you now and then successfully, but far more frequently in vain endeavoured to get discounted on the easy terms of 50 per cent., half in wine or coals. In dense ignorance upon the subject, you do not differ, my dear Tobias, from Mr Samuel Lloyd, Mr Richard Page, Mr William Tooke, Mr Alsager, Mr James Macculloch, and other eminent authorities. I own it is a question, which, talking as an impartial man, I abso lutely hate. It has been the greatest bother I ever remember since I came into the world of politics, and "First vent a scribbling- Tom Moore talks of " Eternal Catholics and Corn," as the great fires of the world, which only proves that Tom Moore was writing of what he knew nothing about. Catholics and Corn are plain questions, as plain as a pike-staff, or Lord Morpeth's countenance. If you were No-Popery, you had only to abuse the Papists-if Pro-Popery, to abuse the Churchmen -(see Article CATHOLICS in this letter) -surely there is no trouble in that. Again, in the Corn question, are not the parties sufficiently defined there too? To be sure, they are. (See Article CORN LAWS, ante.) But here, in the Currency affair, we are most sadly complicated. The Whigs, under the philosophy of the political economists, and the cajolery of the capitalists, are all in favour of what they call a sound currency. Even to your uneducated mind, it may not be necessary to explain that these same Whigs detest Sir Robert Peel. On the other hand, the Tories, led by the landed interest, have a mortal aversion to the sound currency, which, indeed, has left their estates, in many cases, little more than a sound-excuse the pun-and a great veneration of that Baronet aforesaid. This is exceedingly distressing to an impartial, by which I mean, a partial journalist. To a Whig, it is very unpleasant to be obliged to say, "The bill of 1819 is a measure of vast wisdom, and of great benefit to the country;" while, at the same time, he is compelled to add, that "the author of that bill is a man of narrow mind, and contracted intellect, whose whole career has entailed upon the country nothing but mischief." Again, how can a Tory say, "Sir Robert Peel is the most sagacious of men, and the truest of patriots," when he must denounce his bill as an act of pestilent folly, which ruined the nation, and sold it to pawnbrokers? This is a heartbreaking case. If Sir Robert was out of it, the question is easy to manage. On one side-sound currency, real metal, not filthy rags-security against panic-destruction of the hopes of needy speculators-philoso phy, science, enlarged notions, and men of straw. Rob Cobbett's "paper against gold," literally translating his English into your own dialect as well as you can; but do not quote Cobbett, first, because you may pass off the pilfered goods as your own; and secondly, because he is not in favour with the political-economy doctors, whom he used to call "feclosofers," and otherwise batter and maltreat. On the other side, declaim against the dishonesty of forcing people to pay contracts of all kinds made when Consols were perhaps at 50, in the same precise nominal sum now, when they are at 93 or over-lament over the ruin of unhappy mortgagers or others whose estates were burthened in the paper times, which burthens are now to be got rid of in the days of gold and silver; talk of Fred. Robinson's year of panic, hard following the Bill of 1819, which was to have extinguished all panics whatsoever-of Huskisson's forty-eight hours of barter be hard upon Jews, usurers, pawnbrokers, money-lenders, capitalists, bill-brokers, bill-stealers, and other bad characters of that kind—and lift up your leg to bestow a heartfelt and warm salutation upon the Currency quacks. I do not see how you are to do better; but it is, as I have already observed, a distressing question under existing circumstances. The only thing agreeable about it is, that you can write articles which, as nobody understands a word of them, will, on the old principle, omne ignotum pro magnifico, pass off as models of profound wisdom. It was that which made the fortune of Macculloch, and the fame of Torrens. There is also this advantage, that you may steal these gentlemen's lucubrations ready made, as no human being remembers a word they wrote. Macculloch himself was so sure of this, that he actually reprinted one of his own most elaborate essays, and it passed off among his admirers as spick-and-span new. |