Blackwood\'s Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. by Various

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That a _leaf_ might not be _wanting_ to record these vegetable
treasures, the pagoda-topped _papyrus_ nodded to us gracefully, and
offered its services; while, to finish the picture, Angola goats are
browsing amid the green and yellow ribbed _agaves_; and the beautiful
blue sea peeps in through gaps of the wall of _cactus_, whose green
stems are now all fringed with yellow blossoms. Leaving the flower
garden, we enter a labyrinth, and arrive at a small hut, with a closed
door, upon the threshold of which we have scarcely pressed, when the
wicket flies open, and a big brown friar, with long beard and sandals,
starts up in act to frighten us, which he succeeds in doing. This
automaton _Schedoni_ might really well produce abortion, and would not
care if he did: he cannot, we suppose, be placed there as a lawful
instrument of relief, for all the _donzelle_ of Palermo must be _aware_
of, and be used to him. This, however, is thought so good a joke, that
it is repeated with variations; for on releasing another spring a
similar contrivance introduces us to another monk of the same convent,
who is reading a huge tome on the lives of the saints: resenting the
interruption, he raises his head, and fixes his eyes on the intruder, at
the same time beckoning to him with his hand, and intimating that if he
will do him the favour to come a little nearer, he will knock him down
with the folio, as Johnson did Osborn the bookseller.

Another surprise is--but really these are surprising enough--and we came
here to see vegetable rarities, and not the tricks of an overgrown
toyshop.

THE THUNNY FISHERY.

[Greek: Tan baitan apodys eis chymaia taena haleymai,
Hopeth tos Oynnos schopiazeiai 'Olpis o' gripeys.]--THEOC.

The thunny fishery, if not as exciting as that of the whale, is far from
uninteresting to the uninitiated. We were rowing about in want of an
object, when our boatmen proposed to take us to see this animating
species of labour; and off we went to a spot about two miles from shore,
where we came upon a little flotilla of boats, all occupied in the
common pursuit. A large quantity of floating cork announced our arrival
on the fishing ground; then came long lines of buoys, to which the
drop-nets were attached, and at last we drew alongside a small boat,
hailing which, we learn that the net is already half-drawn, and that _la
pipa_ (the sword-fish) is _in_ it. Now, we had long wanted to see a live
sword-fish, but there was no need to stimulate our rowers, who appeared
equally eager that we should assist at the fun, and made great exertions
to reach the spot in time. "_Questa_," says our guide, showing the
boundary of the space circumscribed by walls of net; "_questa e la
camera della morte_, (this is the chamber of death,) _piano, piano_, (or
we shall shoot ahead.") The space thus designated lay between two long
barges, one of which was fixed by anchor, and had few people on board,
while the other was crowded with naked limbs, and fine heads in Phrygian
bonnets, academy figures every man of them. What symmetry of form! what
jet black beard and mustache! what dark flashing eyes! what noses
without reproach! All were in the various combinations of action which
their position demanded, hauling away at what seemed to our impatience
an endless net; by the shortening of which, however, as their boat
received it, layer upon layer, fold upon fold, coil upon coil, they were
slowly bringing up the reticulated wall. As the place of captivity came
nearer, every body was intensely anxious to get a first view of the
fish; and many other boats were coming up alongside of ours, which
fortunately lay right over the meshes of the prison, which was becoming
every second more and more restricted in size. At length some of us
obtained a first view of the _spada_ and his long sword, and testified
our delight with vociferation. The fish, meanwhile, who hates publicity,
backs off, and would back out, to the opposite end of the net, where,
still finding himself an object of unpleasant remark, he tries by
violence to escape sideways; but that is _no go_ even for a sword-fish,
for a sword is his which cannot cut cords, and he soon finds he can make
nothing of it. Smaller and smaller, meanwhile, is becoming the condemned
hold, and greater and greater the perturbation within. The captive fish
begins to swim round and round, and to watch a new opportunity, but it
is too late!--too many are on the look-out for him! Every man gets ready
his hooked pole, and there is more tightening of the tackle! The
terrified fish now rises to the surface, as it were to reconnoitre, and
then down he dives with a lash of his tail, which sends buckets of water
into the boat of the assailants. This dive, of course, only carries him
to the false bottom of the net, and come up presently he must! Every eye
now looks _fishy_, and every man's hand is armed for the first blow. One
tall athletic fellow takes aim, and misses; another is more successful,
and hits. Stunned by the blow, the poor fish flounders on this side and
on that, and the water is discoloured by his blood! One, two, three
pointed poles at once, are again in his flank; and now he rushes about
like a rounded lion, brandishing his tail, and dashing up whirlpools of
water. More Blows! more blood! He rushes desperately at the net, and
running his long snout into the meshes, is hopelessly entangled. It is
all over with him! Countless wounds follow, till he turns over on his
side, and is handed up lifeless into the boat.

"There," says one, "goes fifteen scudi's worth, and no harm done to _the
net_." "Little enough, too; but he is worth two thunny, anyhow," says
another. "Ay! and gives more _sport_," exclaims a third. Such piscatory
eclogue fell upon our ear, when our guide announced to us that we had
now seen every thing. The excitement over, we sat down in our boat to
make a note of what we have written, while the boatmen clave the
phosphorescent water homewards, and landed us neatly at sunset, with
their oars dripping luminous drops at every stroke, in the beautiful
harbour of Palermo.

Some days after we were still more fortunate; we had observed the scouts
with a white hood over their boat, _looking keenly down_ (_vide_ our
quotation from Theocritus) into the deep blue sea, and watching with
all-eyed attention for the apparition of some giant shadow which should
pass athwart the abyss, and give the signal for a new chase, while their
comrades were hauling in an immense miscellaneous _take_ of fish, the
acquisition of the morning. We shot the outpost, (placed to prevent
larger vessels from entering the fishing preserves and injuring the
nets,) and remarked our boatmen uncovering to a small _Madonna_ railed
in alongside. We were just in time on this occasion to see the water
enclosed in the _camera della morte_, already all alive with fish; for a
shoal of _palamide_, and of immense _pesce di moro_, filled the
reticulated chamber. They darted here and there as the net was raising,
and splashed so furiously about, that the whole water became one lather;
meanwhile, the men who had been singing gaily, now prepared their
landing-nets, shouting in a way which certainly _did_ seem to increase
the terror of their prisoners, who redoubled their efforts to escape.

The rich hues of the _palamide_, in shape and colour not unlike our
mackerel, but with longitudinal, in place of transverse, green bands,
were beautiful objects as they were raised all iridescent in their
freshness out of the water, and transferred to the side boat. We also
noticed in the net one or two immense fish, in shape like rounded
parallelograms, with tough shagreen hides, goggle eyes, and two immense
leathery fins placed at the lower part of the abdomen. They kept
flapping these valves up and down, but not offering to strike, though
lugged out by a hook. The haul was a good one, each fish worth a ducat;
and had they, in fact, been at this price converted into coin at once,
the money would have made no mean show in the bottom of the net. The
treacherous _camera della morte_ was emptied quickly, and in one minute
more, down it went again into the depths below.

We should have mentioned a singular practice of the fishermen of the
present day in Sicily, to _pat_ the thunny while he is in the net, as
you pat a horse or dog: They say it makes him docile. This done, they
put their legs across his back, and _ride_ him round the net room, an
experiment few would practise on the dolphin's back, at least in these
days; yet Aulus Gellius relates that there was a dolphin who used to
delight in carrying children on his back through the water, swimming out
to sea with them, and then putting them safe on shore! Now, _but for the
coins_, taking the above custom into consideration, one might have
supposed the ancients' _delphinus_ to have been the modern _thunny_.

THE FISH MARKET.

"Dragged through the mire, and bleeding from the hock," lay a continuous
mass of slaughtered thunny, mouths wide open, bloody sockets, from which
the eyes had been torn to make lamp-oil, gills ripped off to be eaten
fresh, and roes in baskets by their sides. There was also a quantity of
a fish of dirty white belly and dusky back, the _alalonga_, and two huge
_dolphins_, with skins full of lamp-oil. This really ugly creature looks
far better in the _delphin_ title-pages, with his lamp and his "_alere
flammam_" on clean paper, than on the stall; but his very best
appearance is on a fine Sicilian coin, with _Arion on his back_. The
snouts of four large sword-fish were also conspicuous; and there was
thunny enough for all the world: some of the supply, however, was to be
hawked about the streets, in order to which cords are placed under the
belly of a thunny of fifteen cwt., and off he goes slung on a pole, with
a drummer before and a drummer behind, to disturb every street and alley
in Palermo till he is got rid of; not that the stationary market is
quiet; for the noise made in selling the mutest of all animals is in all
countries really remarkable; but who shall do justice to a _Sicilian_
Billingsgate at _mezzogiorno_! "_Trenta sei, trenta sei_," bawls out the
Padrone, cleaving a fish in twain with one stroke of an immense chopper
kept for the purpose. "_Trenta sei, trenta sei_," repeat the two
journeymen accomplices, one counting it on his fingers to secure
accuracy and telegraph the information to distant purchasers, or such as
cannot _hear_ in the noise; another holds up a slice as a specimen;
three fellows at our elbow are roaring "_tutti vivi, tutta vivi_," "_a
sedici, a sedici_." The man of _whitings_, and even he of _sardines_,
have a voice and a figure of their own. As you approach each stall, the
noisy salesmen suspend their voices, and enquire, in gentler accents, if
you intend to buy; if you do not, like the cicada their stunning sound
returns as soon as you are past. We have hinted that the thunny,
"_Integer et cadavere toto_," does not look handsome: vastly less
attractive is he when mutilated. Big as an elephant's thigh, and with
flesh like some black-blooded bullock of ocean breed, his unsavoury meat
attracts a most repulsive assemblage, not only of customers, but of
flies and wasps, which no flapping will keep off from his grumous liver.
The _sword-fish_ cuts up into large bloodless slices, which look on the
stall like so many fillets of very white veal, and might pass for such,
but that the head and shoulders are fixed upon a long lance, high above
the stall, to inform the uninitiated that the delicate looking meat in
question was fed in the pastures of the deep. The _price_ of thunny, a
staple commodity and object of extensive Sicilian commerce, varies
considerably with the supply; as to the demand, it never ceases. During
our stay in Palermo, a whole fish would fetch about eight _scudi_, and
his retail price was about twopence _per English pound_. Think of paying
three or four _francs_ for less than half a pound _sott 'olio_ in Paris.
The supply seems very constant during the season, which, on the Palermo
side of the island, is from May to July, and continues a month later
along the _Messina_ coast; after which, as the fish cease to be seen, it
is presumed here that they have sailed to the African coast. The flesh
of the _spada_ fish is generally double in market price to that of the
thunny, selling during the greater part of June at about fourpence
a-pound. Every thunny is weighed upon landing, and a high tax paid upon
it to the king, who, in consideration thereof, charges his Sicilian
subjects no duty for gunpowder or salt. The fixed fisheries for thunny,
round the Sicilian coast, are upwards of a dozen, the most famous being
that of Messina. At Palermo, however, they sometimes take an immense
strike of several hundred in one expedition. The average weight of a
full grown thunny, is from 1000 to 1200 pounds; of course the men with
poles who land him, can carry him but a little way, and he reaches the
market by relays. Every bit of him is eaten, except his bones and his
eyes, and even these yield a quantity of oil.

The spada, too, is pickled down to his bones--he is in great request for
the hotels, and his eyes, duly salted, are considered a sort of luxury;
in some places these are the perquisite of the fishermen, yielded by
their employers, who farm the fisheries, and having satisfied the king,
make what terms they can with the subject.

* * * * *

COMMERCIAL POLICY--RUSSIA.

From the brief review, in our last Number, of Spain, her commercial
policy, her economical resources, her fiscal rigours, her financial
embarrassments, these facts may be said to have been developed:--In the
first place, that theoretically--that is, so far as legislation--Spain
is the land of restrictions and prohibitions; and that the principle of
protection in behalf, not of nascent, but of comparatively ancient and
still unestablished interests, is recognized, and carried out in the
most latitudinarian sense of absolute interdict or extravagant impost.
Secondly, that under such a system, Spain has continued the exceptional
case of a non or scarcely progressing European state; that the
maintenance and enhancement of fiscal rigours and manufacturing
monopoly, jealously fenced round with a legislative wall of prohibition
and restriction, has neither advanced the prosperity of the quarter of a
million of people in Catalonia, Valencia, and Biscay, in whose exclusive
behalf the great and enduring interests of the remaining thirteen
millions and upwards of the population have been postponed or
sacrificed--nor contributed to strengthen the financial resources of the
government, as proved by the prostrate position and prospects of a
bankrupt and beggared exchequer; that, as the necessary and inevitable
consequence, the progress of agriculture, the ascendant interest of
all-powerful communities and vast territorially endowed states--of
Spain, the almost one only interest and element of vitality, economical
and political--has been impeded, and continues to be discouraged; that
the march of internal improvements is checked or stunted, when not
absolutely stayed; finally, that public morals--the social health of a
great people, inheritors of glorious antecedents, of an historic renown
for those qualities of a high order, the deep-seated sentiment of
personal, as of national honour and dignity, the integrity, fidelity,
and gallantry, which more loftily spurn contaminating approximation with
action springing out of base, sordid, and degrading motives and
associations--have been sapped and corrupted by the debasing influences
of that gigantic system of organized illicit trade which covers Spain
with hordes of _contrabandistas_, more numerous and daring than the
bands of _aduaneros_ and the armies of regulars whom they set at
defiance, and infests the coast of Spain with fleets of smuggling craft,
which all the _guardas costas_, with the ancient armada of Spain, were
it in existence, would be powerless to annihilate. And all this fine
nation, of warm and generous temperament, of naturally noble and
virtuous aspirations, thus desperately to be dismantled of its
once-proud attributes, and demoralized in its character; its exhaustless
riches of soil and climate to be wantonly wasted--per force of false
legislation to be left uncultured--and for why? Shades of the
illustrious Gabarrus and Jovellanos, why? Why, to enable some half dozen
_fabricantes_ of Barcelona to keep less than half-a-dozen steam-engines
at work, which shall turn some few thousands of spindles, spinning and
twisting some few millions of pounds of yarn, by which, after nearly
three quarters of a century that the cotton manufacture has been
planted, "swathed, rocked, and dandled" with legislative fondness into a
rickety nursling, some fifty millions of yards of cotton cloths are said
to be painfully brought forth in the year; the value of which may
probably be equal to the same or a larger quantity of French cottons
introduced by contraband, and consumed in the provinces of Catalonia and
Arragon themselves--the first being sole seat of the cotton manufacture
for all Spain. And for this deplorable consummation, the superabundant
harvests of the waving fields, the luscious floods of the vineyards, the
full flowing yield of the olive groves of Spain--of the wine, the oil,
and the corn, of which nature is more bountiful than in Egypt of
old--the produce and the wealth of the millions, (which, permitted,
would exchange advantageously for foreign products, and, bye all the
value, add to the store of national wealth, and create the means of
reproduction,) are left to run waste and absolutely perish on the
ground, as not worth the cost of transport to markets without demand.
"The production of this soil," observes the Ayuntamiento of Malaga, in
their eloquent _Exposicion_ to the Cortes cited in our last Number,
after referring to their own port and province, in whose elaboration
thousands and thousands of hands are employed, millions and millions of
capital invested, "are consumed, if not in totality, at least with close
approximation, in England;" and after enumerating the wines, oil,
raisins, grapes, oranges, lemons, and almonds, as products so consumed
in this country--"We have active and formidable rivals in France,
Germany, Italy, Portugal, Turkey, the Greek Archipelago, and other
countries. We shall say nothing of the wools, corn and other fruits of
Spain, so important, and some so depressed in England by foreign
competition with those of this province. If the treaties of commerce of
England with Italy and Turkey are carried into effect, the exportation
of our oils and dried fruits will receive its death warrant--_queda
herida demuerte_. France, Germany, and Portugal, accepting favourably
the idea of the British Government, will cause our wines to disappear
from the market; their consumption is already very limited, inasmuch as
the excessive duty, to one-third the amount of which the value of the
wine does not reach, at the mouth of the Thames, prevents the sale of
the inferior dry wines. The same excessive duty tends to diminish the
consumption of our fruits from year to year. Our oil has alone been able
to find vent by favour of the double duty imposed till now upon
Sicilian, superior to ours in quality. But the English speculators are
already shy of purchasing, in the expectation of an assimilation of
duties on oils of whatever origin." The Ayuntamiento proceeds to urge
the necessity of a "beneficial compensation" to British manufactures in
the tariff of Spain, without which, "the flattering perspective" of
prosperous progress for the industry and agriculture of the Andalusias
will be destroyed, and that those vast, rich, and fertile provinces will
become a desolate desert. "The admission or prohibition of foreign woven
cottons," says the _Exposicion_, "is for Malaga and its province of
vital importance under two aspects--of morality and commerce. Until now
we have endured the terrible consequences of prohibition. The exorbitant
gain which it supports is the germ of all the crimes perpetrated in our
country. The man who carries a weapon, who uses it and sheds the blood
of an agent of the law in the defence of his illegally acquired goods,
will not hesitate in shedding the blood of a fellow citizen who may
stand in the way of his desires. And hence the frequent assassinations.
He who with gold seduces others for the increase of his own property and
for antisocial purposes, does not scruple, when fortune is adverse, to
possess himself by violence of the gold of the honest husbandman, or
peaceful trader: from hence the constant robberies in the less
frequented places; from hence the general abuse of carrying prohibited
arms of all sorts, and using them criminally against any one on the
least provocation, already accustomed to use them against the
Government. Who shall venture to enumerate the assassinations, the
robberies, the ruined families, the misfortunes of all kinds, which,
directly and indirectly, spring from contraband trade?"

Such is the _Exposicion_, such the experience, and such the views of a
patriotic and enlightened corporation, representing and ruling over one
of the most populous, wealthy, and industrially disposed districts of
Spain. Our object in prefacing at this length, and with seeming
irrelevance, perhaps, our review of the commercial policy of Russia,
with its bearings on the interests of Great Britain, is to show the
differing action of the same commercial system, in the present case of
the prohibitive and restrictive system in different countries, both in
respect of the mode in which the internal progress and industry of
countries acting upon the same principle are variously affected
themselves and in respect of the nature and extent of the influences of
such action upon those relations of interchange which they entertain, or
might otherwise entertain, with other countries where an opposite or
modified system prevails. In its broad features the system of Russia
varies from that of Spain only in being more rigorous and intractable
still. Both, however, are founded on the same exclusive principle, that
of isolation--that of forcing manufactures at whatever cost--that of
producing all that may be required for domestic consumption--of
exporting the greatest possible maximum--of importing the lowest
conceivable minimum. Starting from the same point, and for the same
goal, it will not be without interest or instruction to accompany and
observe the progress of the one, as we have already endeavoured to
illustrate the fortunes of the other--to present Russia, industrial and
commercial, side by side, or in contrast with Spain, as we have
described her. Your absolute theory men, your free-traders with one
idea, like Lord Howick, your performers in the economic extravaganza now
rehearsing in the Parliament-house under the style of "leave imports
free, and the exports will take care of themselves," may chance to meet
with many strange facts to confound their arbitrary theorems on the
banks of the Neva. Absolute of wisdom, however, as they arrogate to be,
and casehardened as they are, against assaulting results which should
destroy their self-willed principle--a principle, like the laws of the
Medes and Persians, proclaimed to be unchanged and unchangeable--in face
of which facts are powerless and adverse experience contumeliously
scouted, or mendaciously perverted, it is sufficiently obvious that
lessons in political economy will, less than from any quarter of the
globe, perhaps, be accepted from St Petersburg--they will fall upon
unwilling ears--upon understandings obtuse or perverted.

We are not of the number of those who would contend that, under all
times or circumstances, should a principle, or rather the system built
upon a principle, be rigorously upheld in its application intact, sacred
equally from modification on the one hand, as against radical revolution
on the other. It cannot be denied that, under the protective system,
have grown into their present gigantic proportions all the great
manufacturing interests of Great Britain. But, with customary hardihood
of assertion, maintain the economists--in whose wake follow the
harder-mouthed, coarser-minded Cobdens of the League--although
manufactures have flourished under such a system to an extent which has
constituted this country the workshop of the world, they have so
flourished in spite of the system; and, in its absence, left exposed to
free unrestricted competition from abroad, must inevitably have
progressed at a more gigantic rate of speed still. This is asserted to
be in the order of nature, but as nature is every where the same--as the
same broad features and first elements characterize all countries more
or less alike--we ask for examples, for one example only, of the
successful establishment and progress of any one unprotected industry.
The demand is surely limited, and reasonable enough. The mendacious
League, with the Brights and Cobdens of rude and riotous oratory, are
daily trumpeting it in the towns, and splitting the ears of rural
groundlings with the reiterated assertion that, of all others, the
cotton manufacture owes nothing to protection. What!--nothing? Were
general restrictive imposts on foreign manufactures no protection? Was
the virtually prohibited importation of the cotton fabrics of India no
boon? of India, root and branch sacrificed for the advancement of
Manchester? Why, there are people yet alive who can recollect the day
when Manchester cottons could not have stood one hour's competition with
the free, or even 100 per cent taxed fabrics of India.[40] How, indeed,
could competition have been possible, with the wages of weaving and
spinning in India at three-halfpence per day, whilst for equal
quantities and qualities of workmanship, the British weaver was earning
five shillings, and the spinner ten shillings per day on the average? In
1780, Mr Samuel Crompton, the ingenious inventor of the mule frame for
spinning, such as it exists to this day, and is the vast moving machine
of cotton manufacturing greatness, stated that he obtained _fourteen_
shillings per lb. for the spinning and preparation of No. 40 yarn,
twenty-five shillings for No. 60, and two guineas for No. 80. The same
descriptions of yarns are now profitably making at prices ranging from
about tenpence to twentypence per lb. At the same period common calicoes
were saleable at about two shillings per yard, which now may be
purchased for threepence. Will it be said that the Indian spinner and
weaver by hand could not, at the same epoch, have produced their wares
at one-half the price, had not importation, with unrelenting jealousy,
been interdicted? Was the rigid prohibition of the export of machinery
no concession, all exclusively and prodigiously in the interest of the
cotton manufacture, to the zealous promotion and ascendancy of which the
mining and agricultural interests are unhesitatingly, not to say
wantonly, prejudiced, if not absolutely perilled? We say wantonly,
because the free exportation of cotton yarn, tolerated at the same
moment, was an absurd and mischievous violation of the very principle on
which the prohibited exportation of machinery was alone and could be
justified. In face of these incontrovertible facts, of which hereafter,
and now that the record of them is consigned to that wide circulation
through the world which the pages of Blackwood only can afford,
misrepresentation remains without excuse on the question of that
fostering protection to which, in a larger degree, if not exclusively,
the cotton manufacture of Great Britain is indebted for its growth to
its present colossal, mammoth-like, and almost unwieldy grandeur. We do
not, however, whilst re-establishing facts in their purity, dream the
practical impossibility of confounding and disarming the ignorance of
men unfortunately so ill educated and unread, and with intellect so
incapable, apparently, of appreciating instruction, if not wilfully
perverse, as the Cobdens, or of restraining the less coarse but more
fluent flippancy and equally unscrupulous assurance of friend Bright,
from resort to that stock and stale weapon of vulgar minds which is so
readily drawn from the armoury of falsehood. To the end of the chapter
they will lie on, until doomsday arrive, and they sink, like the Henry
Hunts, _et id genus omne_, their at least as well-bred predecessors of
the popularity-hunting school, to their proper level in the cess-pool of
public contempt. Time, which executes justice upon all in the long run,
cannot fail to lay the ghost of cotton and anti-corn law imposture, even
in the troubled waters of the muddy Irk and Irwell, where first conjured
from. And now, having shown how the cotton manufacture of Great Britain
was from its birth cradled, rocked, and dandled into successful
progress; how it was fostered and fenced round with protection and
prohibitive legislation as against competition from abroad; we shall
proceed with our review of the rise and career of _protected_
manufactures in Russia. And we would counsel "one who has whistled at
the plough," whose "farming notes" in the _Morning Chronicle_, when
confined to such matters of practical detail as may be supposed to lie
within the scope of his own experience and comprehension, are not
destitute of interest and information, though with distorted and
exaggerated views, to ponder well before a next reiteration of the
random and absurd assertion that the "corn-law has done to agriculture
_what every law of protection has done for every trade that was ever
practised_--it has induced negligence, and, by its uncertain operation,
has obstructed enterprise." Instead of whistling at the plough, such a
writer almost deserves to be whipped at the cart's tail for so
preposterously dogmatic an assumption. It has yet to be demonstrated,
and the proof is challenged, that ever a great interest, whether
manufacturing or agricultural, was established in any part of the world,
since the creation, without the aids and appliances of legislative and
guernatorial patronage. The degree, the qualification the practical
limitations, which in the progress of time, with social and industrial
changes supervening at home and abroad, may be rendered expedient or
necessary in the application of the principle, constitute quite a
different question, which may be discussed and entertained without any
disparagement of the soundness of the policy, as best adapted to
existing circumstances, of the system when first applied. The theory of
free trade may be, in its entirety, as plausibly it is presented to us,
founded on just principle; the abstract truth and perfection of which
are just as unimpeachable as that of the social theory propounded by
Rousseau in the Savoyard's profession of faith, or that of the "liberty,
equality, and community of property" (to say nothing of women) theory
preached, and practically developed to some extent, in the paganish
philosophies and New Harmony vagaries of the St Simonians, the
Fourierians, and of Robert Owen, in these our days. And yet, from the
beginning of time--whether from the world before the flood, or since the
reconstruction of the world after--never, to this present epoch, has one
single example come down to us of the sober realization of either the
economical abstraction or the social abstraction. Primeval chaos, chaos
existing before all time, could alone have represented the _beau-ideal_
of each. So far indeed as their own demesnes and domains, Laban and
Pharaoh were not without their practical proficiency in the elements of
economical science--for the one knew how to sell his daughters, as the
other his corn, in the "dearest market;" and each to buy his labour and
his money at the "cheapest." And never will these free-trade and social
day-dreams be accomplished to the end of all time; never until chaos
come again; never, unless perchance the Fitzwilliams and the Phillipses,
impregnated with the beatific reveries of socialist Robert Owen, should
throw open, the one, Wentworth hall, with its splendid parks and
spacious domains--the other, his Manchester mills, wonder-working
machinery, and million of capital stock, to joint-stock occupancy, with
common right of possession of the rural labourers who till the ground,
and the urban operatives who ply the shuttle--the producers, in fact, of
all their wealth--share and share alike; themselves, in future,
undertaking the proportion of daily task-work; driving the "teams
afield," or tenting the mule-frame. Should, perhaps, the Phalansterial
system of Fourier preferably suit their taste, they will be entitled to
enter into the "phalanx of harmony," and share _a des degres differents,
dans la repartition des trots facultes--capital, travail, talent_, ...
with the enjoyment of such an apartment in the Phalansterial "palace"
for four hundred families, the minimum of the phalanx being eighty,
which may compare with the quality of _repartition_ corresponding to
them, as expounded by Madame Gatti de Gamond, the principal legatee of
Fourier and his system.

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