974 On the Financial Measures of a Reformed Parliament. It may be added, that the proposed By being imposed on the raw ma- [June, by the imposition of a duty on the raw material is much greater in the first class than in the second. The perceived in the splendid shawl difference would hardly have been ly-worked stockings which set off which adorns the figure, or the richthe ankles of the lady of fashion; by the artisan when he came to purbut it would have been sensibly felt chase the coarse shirts, moleskin jackets, or dimity petticoats, which constituted the clothing of himself and his family. Lastly came the duty on steamno other reason but to leave no prinboats, a tax imposed seemingly for ciple of philosophy unviolated, and by fiscal regulations. If there is any no enjoyment of the poor unaffected another by political economy, it is one principle more firmly fixed than the incalculable advantage of an extended, cheap, and rapid internal com munication. In this particular, the conclusions of experience are per of reason; and the beneficial effect fectly in unison with the deductions of rail-roads, canals, and highways, is universally felt and acknowledged. tion of steam to navigation were The wonderful effects of the applicaonly beginning to develope themselves; whole regions were starting into activity under its beneficial influence; the remoter provinces of the empire were brought close to the metropolis by its means, and the disadvantages of climate and soil compensated, in many extensive districts, by mere proximity to the sea-coast. boats had proved of extraordinary and In Scotland, in particular, steamunlooked for utility. The deeply indented coast and numerous islands ing in consequence into life and acof the western counties were starttivity. Every man who had the sea easy journey of the most opulent disat his door found himself within an tricts; and farm produce, hitherto a rapid and increasing sale. Seventy useless for want of a market, found steam-boats daily passed up and daily to Inverary from Glasgow, a down the Clyde; four boats went town not visited, fifteen years ago, by a single public conveyance; cattle shire to London by water; the farm were sent every week from Morayand garden produce of Argyleshire was daily brought to Glasgow; and an immense commerce carried on in potatoes from the Mull of Cantire to Dublin. In the most remote and hitherto unfrequented districts of the West Highlands, the arrival of a steam-boat every day afforded both the means of communication with more civilized quarters, and the opportunity of disposing of the fruits of their industry to advantage; and under the benignant influence of increasing intercourse with mankind, civilisation was advancing, knowledge extending, and the inveterate indolence of the Celtic character giving way to the artificial wants of polished life. Of most of these immense advantages, which Scotland had begun and Ireland might hope to reap from steam-navigation, this country would have been deprived by the proposed duty. The tax of 1s. a-head on all passengers would have doubled, in most cases, in many quadrupled the expense of water conveyance. At the numerous ferries which intersect the Western Highlands, it would have operated as a complete and impassable barrier. With so little local knowledge was this tax originally imposed, that the same duty was laid on a passenger on crossing an inconsiderable ferry, as on a voyage from Edinburgh to London, and the total produce of the tax estimated at L.100,000-whereas it was ascertained, that, in the Frith of Forth alone, its amount would be L.13,000 a-year. It may be added that this was a tax levied peculiarly, and almost exclusively, on the best and most innocent enjoyments of the poor. Many other luxuries degrade the life, and ruin the character, of the lower orders. Tobacco brutalizes their habits, spirits poison the mind as well as weaken the body; but the cheap travelling which steam-navigation introduced produced nothing but beneficial effects. For the pale and sickly mechanic or operative workman to escape from the smoke and contagion of cities, and visit the tranquil and beautiful scenes of the country, was an enjoyment to all of the most innocent, to some of the most elevating kind. None could be brutalized by visiting Inverary, Loch Lomond, or Loch Ness; many might be wakened by such unlooked-for gratification to a sense of the baseness of sensual and the superiority of intellectual enjoyment. The same Budget which proposed to burden these innocent and elevating enjoyments, rendered it cheaper to chew and smoke tobacco; and this was the system of the partisans of intellectual improvement, and the friends of the poor! Such is the celebrated Whig Budget; now happily extinct, except as a monument of rash and ill-considered legislation, and as a warning to future times of what may be anticipated from the continued influence of the same interests which have produced this abortion. The explanation of this measure is to be found in the words with which Lord Althorpe concluded his speech introducing it: "This Budget will be liked by the manufacturers, but not by the fundholder." Ministers were quite aware that they were trenching on the interests both of the capitalist and of the merchant; that they were taxing the colonies, and breaking faith with the public creditor; but they were willing to incur their displeasure to secure the favour of the manufacturers. Such is the consequence of being governed by an administration, who rest on popular favour, and are impelled to sacrifice the best interests of the enpire to maintain their interest with the populace in the great cities. It is in this view, that the consideration of the late Budget is chiefly of value. It points to the course of policy which has been adopted by a popular, and must be followed up by a reforming ministry. The same causes, which, in opposition to principle, philosophy, and expedience, compelled the cabinet into the proposed measures of finance, must operate with increased force, when additional power is given to the popular voice, and greater sway to the manufacturing interest in the legisla ture. The important and vital fact that two-thirds of the whole population of Great Britain are engaged in trade and manufactures, and only one-third in the cultivation of the soil,* is decisive on this point. The increasing Population Returns, 1821. 976 On the Financial Measures of a Reformed Parliament. preponderance of the manufacturing over the agricultural interest, has long been felt in the legislature; but under the new system of introducing all the householders inhabiting a house rented at L.10 a-year and upwards, it will evidently become overwhelming. What the measures are which they will force upon government may be judged of by those which were adopted to conciliate their good-will. Confiscation of the funds, under the name of taxes on transfers or on equitable adjustment: the withdrawing of all protecting duties on the produce of the colonies: the sacrifice of every other interest, to furnish cheap articles of necessity or convenience, to the sovereign multitude in the towns of the empire, will and must be the future policy of the government. The landed interest will be sacrificed by a repeal of the corn laws to procure their favour by the cheap price of bread; the Canadas will be lost, in the attempt to throw open the trade in timber; the West Indies in the conflagration consequent on the sudden emancipation of the negroes, or in the losses arising from a free trade in sugar; the East India interest, deprived of the exclusive trade to China, will be reduced to the doubtful and perilous sovereignty of a distant continent. These effects may not all follow at once-considerable periods may elapse between each successive step; but their ultimate establishment under a reformed parliament is as certain as that night succeeds day. The facts, that a large proportion of the members of the House of Commons who voted against Ministers on the Timber question, supported them on Reform; that the funds maintain their value notwithstanding the tempest with which they are menaced; that the city of London [June, has returned all its members not only in the reforming, but the radical inte rest; and that the landed freeholders have almost everywhere returned reforming candidates at the late elections, are among the most extraordinary incidents of this eventful age. They demonstrate how little the march of intellect has added to the real knowledge of mankind, and how scanty is the stock of political information in the world, notwithstanding the incessant discussions of the newspapers. The fundholders fondly imagine that their dividends ed as a constitutional Parliament: will be as regularly paid by a reformthe shipping owners, that the interest hered to by the sovereign multitude of navigation will be as steadily ad Government: the colonial proprie as by the ancient and stable British will be as securely held together by tors, that the vast fabric of the empire the unstable many, as the stable few; the farmers, that the interests of agriculture will be as well attended to delegates of the manufacturers, as in the Chapel of St Stephen by the the representatives of the landed property. On they go like a flock of sheep, supporting each other in the have returned a Parliament compos cry for reform, until at length they sed of such materials, that even a reforming administration tremble for the consequences. All this has taken place at the very time that the warning fire of revolution was devastating the European continent; and in the had witnessed the church, the cololifetime of the very generation who nies, the commerce, and the landed estates of France, perish in the first gales of their reformed assembly. Well might the Chancellor Oxensapientia regitur mundus. stiern exclaim-Videte quam parva TOM CRINGLE'S LOG.* NEXT morning, we proceeded towards the Spanish headquarters, provided with horses through the kindness of the Captain of the outpost, and preceded by a guide on an ass. He was a moreno, or man of colour, who, in place of bestriding his beast, gathered his limbs under him, and sat crosslegged on it like a tailor; so that when you saw the two "end on," the effect was laughable enough, the flank and tail of the ass appearing to constitute the lower part of the man, as if he had been a sort of composite animal, like the ancient satyr. The road traversed a low swampy country, from which the rank moisture arose in a hot palpable mist, and crossed several shallow lagoons, from two to six feet deep of tepid, muddy, brackish water, some of them half a mile broad, and swarming with wild waterfowl. On these occasions, our friend the Satyr was signalled to make sail ahead on his donkey to pilot us; and as the water deepened, he would betake himself to swimming in its wake, holding on by the tail, and shouting, "Cuidado Burrico, Cuidado que no te ahogas." While passing through the largest of these, we noticed several calabashes about pistol-shot on our right; and as we fancied one of them bobbed now and then, it struck me they might be Indian fishing-floats. To satisfy my curiosity, I hauled my wind, and leaving the track we were on, swam my horse towards the group. The two first that I lifted had nothing attached to them, but proved to be what I thought they were, merely empty gourds floating before the wind; but when I tried to seize the largest, it eluded my grasp in a most incomprehensible manner, and slid away astern of me with a curious hollow gabbling sort of noise, whereupon my palfrey snorted and reared, and nearly capsized me over his bows. What a noble fish, thought I, as I tacked in chase, but my Bucephalus refused to face it. I therefore bore up to join my companions again; but in requital of the disappointment, smashed the gourd in passing with the stick I held in my hand, when, to my unutterable surprise, and amidst shouts of laughter from our moreno, the head and shoulders of an Indian, with a quantity of sedges tied round his neck, and buoyed up by halfa-dozen dead teal fastened by the legs to his girdle, started up before me. "Ave Maria, purisima! you have broken my head, señor." But as the vegetable helmet had saved his scull, of itself possibly none of the softest, a small piece of money spliced the feud between us; and as he fitted his pate with another calabash, preparatory to resuming his cruise, he joined in our merriment, although from a different cause.— "What can these English simpletons see so very comical in a poor Indian catching wild-ducks ?" Shortly after, we entered a forest of magnificent trees, whose sombre shade, on first passing from the intolerable glare of the sun, seemed absolute darkness. The branches were alive with innumerable tropi cal birds and insects, and were laced together by a thick tracery of withes, along which a guana would occa sionally dart, coming nearest of all the reptiles I had seen to the shape of the fabled dragon. But how different from the clean stems, and beautiful green sward of our English woods! Here, you were confined to a quagmire by impervious underwood of prickly pear, penguin, and speargrass; and when we rode under the drooping branches of the trees, that the leaves might brush away the halo of musquitoes, flying ants, and other winged plagues that buzzed about our temples, we found, to our dismay, that we had made bad worse by the introduction of a whole colony of garapatos, or woodticks, into our eyebrows and hair. At length we reached the headquarters at Torrecilla, and were well received by the Spanish commanderin-chief, a tall, good-looking, soldiers See " A Scene on the Costa Firme," in Number for January last. 978 Tom Cringle's Log. like man, whose personal qualities After being furnished with food and raiment, we retired to our quatres, a most primitive sort of couch, being a simple wooden frame, with a piece of canvass stretched over it. However, if we had no mattrasses, we had none of the disagreeables often incidental to them, and fatigue proved a good opiate, for we slept soundly until the drums and trumpets of the troops, getting under arms, awoke us at daylight. The army was under weigh to occupy Carthagena, which had fallen through famine, and we had no choice but to accompany it. I knew nothing of the misery of a siege but by description; the reality even to me, case-hardened as I was by my own recent sufferings, was dreadful. We entered by the gate of the raval, or suburb. There was not a living thing to be seen in the street; the houses had been pulled down, that the fire of the place might not be obstructed in the event of a lodgement in the outwork. We passed on, the military music echoing mournfully amongst the ruined walls, to the main gate, or Puerto de Tierra, which was also open, and the drawbridge lowered. Under the archway, we saw a delicate female, worn to the bone, and weak as an infant, gathering garbage of the most loathsome description, the possession of which had been successfully disputed by a carrion crow. ther on, the bodies of an old man A little farand two small children were putre fying in the sun, while beside them lay a miserable, wasted, dying negro, vainly endeavouring to keep at a distance with a palm branch, a number of the same obscene birds that were already devouring the carcass of one of the infants; before two hours, the faithful servant, and those he attempted to defend, were equally the prey of the disgusting gallinaso.. The houses, as we proceeded, appeared entirely deserted, except where a solitary spectrelike inhabitant appeared at a balcony, and feebly exclaimed, "Viva, los Espanoles! Viva, Fernando Septimo " We saw no domestic animal what[June, soever, not even a cat or a dog; but I will not dwell on these horrible details any longer. One morning, shortly after our argate, we came to a place where four rival, as we strolled beyond the land banquillos (a sort of short bench or stool, with an upright post at one end firmly fixed into the ground), were placed opposite a dead wall. They left long in suspense as to their use; were painted black, and we were not for solemn music, and the roll of muffled drums in the distance, were fearful indications of what we were to witness. Spanish infantry, which, filing off, First came an entire regiment of formed three sides of a square,-the wall near which the banquillos were eight priests, and as many choristers placed forming the fourth; then chanting the service for the dying; next came several mounted officers of the staff, and four firing parties of American prisoners followed, dresstwelve men each. Three Spanish ed in white, with crucifixes in their hands, each supported, more dead than alive, by two priests; but when the fourth victim appeared, we could neither look at nor think of any thing else. Englishman, of the name of S—, On enquiry we found he was an English that is, in all except the place of his birth, for his whole education rents and all his family; but it came had been English, as were his patrial, tha the had been born at Buenos out, accidentally I believe, on his Ayres, and having joined the patriots, this brought treason home to expiate. him, which he was now led forth to appeared crushed down to the very Whilst his fellow-sufferers earth, under their intense agony, so that they had to be supported as they tion, he stepped firmly and manfully tottered towards the place of execuout, and seemed impatient when at the procession was obliged to halt. any time, from the crowding in front, At length they reached the fatal spot, and his three companions in misery being placed astride on the banquillos, their arms were placed round the upright posts, and fastened to them the soldiers. Mr S with cords, their backs being towards walked firmly up to the vacant bench, knelt down, |