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    Untitled Article

    PROTECTION OR ITS EQUIVALENT . Multitudes are running away from the old country to the colonies , and the vast desertion of labour , not only perplexes the farmer at the harvest , but creates a panic among the journalists . M'Cormack ' s reaping-machine is introducing transatlantic ideas to the old agricultural mind , and has been the subject of many trials . At Carlisle Sir James Graham is looking forward to the day when manufacturers shall establish flax-mills in agricultural districts—Sir James , perhaps unconsciously ,

    rivalling Charles Kihgsley ! Protection has made its formal resignation , by the mouth of Mr . Disraeli , at Aylesbury . Striking events , these , to come together ! Leading agriculturists give up ; farmers see their labour deserting ; the labourers , already reduced to a level of pauper wages , see the fields invaded by that rival which neither eats , nor drinks , nor asks wages , nor poor-rates—machinery . Such is the confusion of the agricultural world at a time when Sir James Graham is reiterating the old truism " that the basis of our national prosperity is the produce of the soil . "

    Yes , it is all a matter of produce . The nation which has abundance of the common necessaries of life , is prosperous . " Wealth " alone will not do : England is , perhaps , the wealthiest country under the sun ; but multitudes of her people are running way , because she is not prosperous for them . And yet they leave behind still greater multitudes struggling with pauperism , like the labourers of the fields and the poorer workers of the towns , or struggling with ruin and insolvency , like our farmers and traders .

    This emigration is beginning to visit political observers with the apprehensions which we anticipated in a recent paper . The Times notes with dismay that the number of emigrants , chiefly British , " at New York alone , for the first eight months of this year , has been 192 , 836 , against about three fourths of that number the year before ; " to this must still be added the purely British emigration by the route of the St . Lawrence , and the incessant emigration to the

    Australian colonies . The exodus is immense , is increasing , and is likely to increase . The improvements of ocean steamers will probably bring a twelve days ' passage across the Atlantic " within the means of the common run of emigrants . " The rI \ mes looks forward to a Vast change of our social and industrial system when , " instead of two men looking after one master , one master will be looking after two men . " The Globe notes the fact that , " along with much ignorance , much disaffection is exported from Ireland to our American colonies . " The

    Whig journalist hopes that this may wear off with time ; but there is no ground for the hope . The Irish element in America is manifestly increasing ; already hats it taken possession of the American Athens , Huston , whoso city remains in Irish hands ; and when Irishism is wedded to Native Americanism , animosity to England ia added to

    Republican prejudice . The Standard repeats , not of course avowedly , our own anticipation , that emigration may touch the sources of revenue j not only , let uh add , because tax-payers are sent away , but because , by driving forth our labour , we are diminishing the productive capacity of tho nation . The system in driving our labour forth to alienated colonies , or to colonies whioh our Government in doing itn beat to alienate .

    The process , indeed , cannot bo completed at once ; great numbers of persona are ho reduced in means that they cannot get away . The pauperized labourers of Suffolk or Essex , Dorsetshire or Hampshire , cannot run ; they must remain , and must undergo tho further changes that ard in store for them , immense changes , if we are to judge « y the way in which Pftople talk at agricultural uinneru about manufacturing milln migrating to

    ruf al districts , as Sir James Graham did ; of steam threshing , as Captain Rushout did at Evesham ; or of M'Cormack ' machine , as everybody is talking . Nor will the farmers be scatheless : while improvers are bringing to bear their machinery and improvements , successful or otherwise , farmers will have to pay their rents , will have to stand the racket of bad seasons , will have to take , prices fixe'd by the foreign grower j and even the millers , who used to holds their heads so independently , now find their business sinking under the competition with foreign flour .

    The state of agriculture is not only unsettled , but it is disastrous . The landowner , who has a political as well as a financial game to play , may give up the Protection cause , and knowing that his acres will not run away , may solace himself with distant prospect after the struggle . But the farmers , the labourers ?—they must pay bitterly . They have a right , then , to ask their leaders what they mean ? For Protection did mean something : it intended to secure that which the law of

    " supply and demand" fails to secure—a fair subsistence in return for industry . That the present system fails we see from three great factsagriculture short pi labour , labour fl ying the country , and immense numbers still wanting sufficient food . Protection was right in its object , defective in plan , and it has become impossible ; it has broken down—it is politically extinct . Free Trade has taken its turn , and is called upon to fulfil its promise of feeding the People : it fails—it manifestly tends to increase that most anomalous fact of our actual condition , the coexistence of idle lands , idle hands , and idle mouths .

    The commonplace rejoinder of political ceconomists , that all will be set right by the mere cheapening Of food , is not true either in theory or fact ; that country must ^ ever remai n in a disastrous condition where the labour of large classes is cheaper than the cheapest food ; and that is the condition of our agricultural labourers , of our handloom weavers , and of innumerable town classes . To prevent that cheapening of man below the price of food was the object of Protection , and that just object , we say , must not be abandoned , because

    certain gentlemen leaders are tired of their work , or have been defeated in tactics . Neither the literary amenities of Mr . Disraeli , nor the gout of Lord Derby , nor the extreme mental perplexity of the Duke of Richmond , nor the Arcadian prophecies of Sir James Graham , exonerate those who undertake to be the practical leaders of the working agriculturalists , from the duty of still striving for the object of Protection—a fair subsistence out of honest industry . Nor must that vital object be deferred sine die : Farmers and labourers have a right to ask their leaders what they are going to do ?

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    HIS MAJESTY OF NAPLES AND GLADSTONE . The lengthy and laboured official reply of the Royal Executioner of Naples to the damning proofs of Mr . Gladstone , served up though it be by a well-known artiste for English taste , with a garnishment of spurious reserves and affected qualifications , may suit the laZzaroni of Absolutism ; but it will , we dare to say , but ill appease

    the digestive organs of men accustomed to breathe the keen , untainted air of truth and justice . Space forbids our noticing , at this moment , seriatim , such pretended confutations ; is may be picked out from an ambiguous heap of trifling or tiresome verbiage , winch , if not irrelevant to the charges , is merely insulting to the victims . We content ourselves with asking all honest ' readers whether , if even these official denials hail in effect , to their own extent , demolished so much of the series of

    accusations which were extorted from the conscience of the Conservative statesman as they attempt to impugn , there would not still survive enough , and more than enough of the great impeachment untouched to throw just doubt on the credibility of the whole reply , from the first word to the last , in all efsflential particulars . For the main facts indited by Mr . Gladstone Riibsist in all tjitir atrocity : his

    " errors" detected and exposed by the injured innocence of the lloyal advocates are errors , it seeniH , of name , of number , of locality , of Italian . But the awful Violation of all principles of juBtlee by corrupt tribunals , debased into inatritmtnta of a Royal reign of terror ; the debauched evidence df suborned ftccuaerH ; the blood-stained perjury of the King hirnhftl ? , on and after the first « gift " of a Constitution ; the

    massacres of the 15 th of May ( whilst the Monarch was praying in his Palace ); the exile or imprisonment of two-thirds of the constitutional representatives ; the confiscation of properties ; the brutal indecencies and savage cruelties of the subterranean gaols;—all theae agreeable details , attested by we know not how many eyewitnesses , are evaded by quibbles , or denied altogether . In short , whenever the Royal advocate encounters any statement , so grave and so conclusive that we are anxious to know how it will be met , he in round

    terms denies it . It is only the other day that L'Univers , the approved Jesuit organ of his Most Religious Majesty of Naples , denied that any man s property had been confiscated by the King . By way of reply La Presse cited the names and addresses of exiles who had suffered a confiscation of all they could not bring away . But we pause here to put one question ( we have plenty in reserve ) to the veracious and estimable mouthpiece of Boyal barbarism . If ( as you assert ) , in the month of June of the present year , the number of political prisoners did not exceed

    2024 , how comes it that not only all the ordinary prisons , calculated to contaiti 20 , 000 prisoners , have been long since crammed , but it has been necessary to bring into use more than the ordinary gaol accommodation to satisfy the " activities" the spies and the police ? A fact stronger than any assertion of the Royal advocate . We will , however , in mercy , supply him and our readers with a reply to our question . The long preventive incarceration of suspected prisoners before trial is

    the key to the enigma . The gaols are gorged with political victims who are admitted and entered upon the registers as ordinary criminals . After a preventive detention of many monthsor even , as in the case of Scialoja , for more than a year and a half—the prisoners are brought up for examination , and after some quasi-judicial mockeries are declared out of the ordinary criminal jurisdiction , and so sent back to gaol to wait , under such conditions as Mr . Gladstone has

    described , the good pleasure and the tender mercies of political tribunals . The very small number of 2024 , therefore , which the official reply so triumphantly opposes to the 20 , 000 of Mr . Gladstone , are the political prisoners who , after undergoing a long detention , have at last been brought up for a sort of preliminary trial , and handed over to special jurisdiction as political offenders . The actual number of untried prisoners , on suspicion , the prey of the police , herded with common malefactors , exceeds—far exceeds—the mild apprehensions of Mr . Gladstone .

    But the first and last of questions for us to ask is , what faith are we to place in the veracity of men under whose august patronage the Catechismo Filosifico is recommended to parents and guardians for the social , moral , and religious enlightenment of the Neapolitan youth ? We are told this Catechism of the right divine of perjury and violence was " a private speculation " forsooth ! dedicated to the King and to the Episcopate " before the censure was established , " and " probabl y without the cognizance of the Government . " If English readers are prepared to accept this disputed paternity , on the word of a King and a Jesuit , they will have no difficulty in recognising

    the value to the accused of " twenty-five days of defence "—in a court presided over by Novarro They will believe that the prisons of Naples are " conducted in a regular and judicious manner : " they will believe that the old judge who was dismissed for refusing to falsify his conscience was " removed for reasons out of delicacy not stated : " they will feel tho weight of the " official reply , " insisting that " a man cast for death , whose life has been spared by the clemency of the King , cannot complain that the severe rigour of the law is exercised against him ; they will understand how " every indulgence , consistent with the due execution of the law" has been extended to l ' oerio : in

    a word , they will heartily refuse to believe the word of the English gentleman and the honour of a Conservative statesman , whilst they " take for granted " all the assertions of the " proper authorities " Naples . Whut if thin official reply bo from the pen of that CHthnablo Procurator ** who recently rated the judgeH for " rliHguiaing diwloyulty under the veil of impartiality" ? What if it bo by the revered Novarro hinmelf i

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    EQUALITY IN THE £ YK OF THE LAW . JwstIcib ii represented by alleffdry-loving and crtdttlduM p * lnt 6 W us sightlcs * : but WA beg to correct the mietake . It all depends towards whom

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    There is nothing so revolutionary , because there is nothing so unnatural and convulsive , as the strain to keep things fixed when all the world is by the very law of its creation in eternal progress . —Db . Abnold .

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    ~ . ¦ — . —or—SATURDAY , SEPTEMBER 27 , 1851 .

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    Sept . 27 , 1851 . ] CtH 9 , $ a * 9 t . 919

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 27, 1851, page 919, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1902/page/11/