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" But farther , it does not appear that Malthus or a ny of his followers have given us any test by which ¦ we may ascertain that we are actually suffering under redundancy of population ; They point to ¦ wide- spread distress , sometimes in one class , sometimes in another ; but this may evidently arise out of m oral , political , commercial causes which have nothing to do with total overpopulation .- The only int elligible test of the last is that propounded by Mr . Lawson , viz ., A people is then beginning to press on the limits of its subsistence , when a larger and larger fraction of its entire power is needed to raise the food of the community . And , tried by
this test , we surely never were so far off from being redundant , as we are at this moment . To say nothing of the relief by Emigration and by Importing food , neither of which has at all come near to its maximum of service , —if England were , the whole w orld , and we did but cultivate it as sagaciously as our best-farmed counties , till we had as much food as we could consume , I believe we should still have a larger proportion of hands free from the toil of food raising than in the reign of the 8 th Henry or the 1 st Edward . Our economic disease , therefore , does not consist in too much population ( which means , too
little power of getting enough food for all ) ; but from various clogs and stoppages in the channels of distribution . If there is food for all , yet one perBon in 100 is either immoral , illtrained , unwise , perverse , or blamelessly unfortunate , so as to miss his food ( and how small a per centage is this !) ; that will make out of our . 30 . millions as many as 30 , 000 persons hovering between food and starvation . Such a mass of misery , collected in heaps in the chief towns , grievously affects the imagination as though there was more population than we were able to feed ; and leads others to speculate on the necessity of reconstructing Society and abolishing Competition . ' *
We would willingly quote the whole of the chapter on Land . Mr . Newman thus energetically sums up his arguments : —'¦* In short , it is clear that no man has , or can have a natural right to land , except as long as he occupies it in person . His right is to the use , and to the use only . All other right is the creation of artificial law . " Some persons do not see the enormous distinction between landowners and land holders ; but ( although there is no distinction for good , there is a terrible one for evil , as may be seen in tha case of ejectments . On this subject hear Mr . Newman : —
" As far as I am aware , to eject the population in mass is a very modern enormity . We think of it as peculiarly Irish : yet nowhere , perhaps , was it done more boldly , more causelessly , and more heartlessly , than from the Sutherland estates of Northern Scotland , early in this century . Between the years 1811 and 1820 , 15 , 000 persons were- driven off the lands of the Marchioness of Stafford , alone ; all their villages were pulled down or burnt , and their fields turned into pasturage . A like process was carried on about the same time by seven or eight neighbouring lords . The human inhabitants were thus ejected , in order thst sheep might take their place ; because some one had persuaded these great landholders that sheep would pay better than human beings !
" This is truly monstrous . It is probable that nothing so shocking could have been ( lone , but for a juggling plea concerning the claims of Political Economy . It is defined as the science of Wealth : rightly . It will not confound itself with Politics right again . It cannot undertake to define what things are , and what are not , private property : it assumes that Political Law regards the lundlord as the landowner , and justifies him in emptying his estates at pleasure . Well : if so , it follows that the rules of mere Economy are no sufficient guide to the conduct of a moral being . If Statesmen , Parliaments , or Courts of Law , have neglected to define
and establish the rights of those who dwell on and cultivate the soil , the landlord cannot plead that neglect to justify his wrong . Grant that , as an Economist , I have no right to ask whether land is or is not private property ; yet , as a politician or as a moralist , I may see that no lord of Sutherland ever could have morall y , or over ought to have legally , a greater right over his estates than the King or Queen had , to whom his ancestor originally did homage for them . A baron , in his highest plenitude of power , has rather less right over the soil , than the King from whom he derived his right : and a king of England might as well claim to drivo all his subjects into the sea , as
a baron to empty his estates . We read how William the Conqueror burnt villages , and ejected the people by hundreds , in order to make a hunting-ground for himself in the New Forest . This deed , which has been execrated by all who reluto it , seemed an extreme of tyranny : yot our Courts of Law , and our 1 ' arliamentH , allow tho sumo thing to bo dono by smaller tyrants ; and the public site by , und mourns to think that people deal ho unkindly with that which is their own ! Here is tho fundamental error , the crude and monstrous assumption , that tho land , which God hfis given to our nation , in or can bo the private property of any one . It is a usurpation exactly similar to that of Slavery . The elavemaflter
calls himself slaveowner , and pleads that he has purchased the slave , and that the law has pronounced slaves to be chattels . We reply that the law is immoral and unjust , and that no number of immoral sales can destroy the rights of man . All this equally applies to land . The land was not regarded as private property by our old law ; it is not to this day treated by the law on the same footing as movables ; and there are many other persons who have rights in a piece of land , besides him who gets rent from it . The lord of the manor has his dues , but this does not annihilate the claims of others . For land is not only a surface that pays rent , but a surface to live upon : and the law ought to have cared , and ought still to care , for those who need the land for life , a « much as for those who have inherited or bought a title to certain fruits from it .
" Political Economy , in . a country which sanctions Slavery , will talk of slaves as of cattle : and rightly , as regards commercial calculations . So , too , among ourselves , Economists have accepted as / act the commercial doctrine of land . Their science is not to blame for it ; but some of them , as individuals , are to blame , for having so much sympathy with the rich , and so little with the poor , as not to see the iniquity of such a state of things ; but rather to panegyrize English industry as living under glorious advantages , —where the labourer on the soil has no tenure in it , no direct and visible interest in its profitable culture , no security that he may not be driven off from it , in order to swell the rental of one who calls himself its owner . "
His views on Taxation are worthy of studious attention , and we extract the following pertinent statement of a cardinal principle of taxation : — The State is so far from desiring to press down into starvation those who have only just enough for life , that it supports by Poor Laws those who have less than enough . The moral ground of such laws I shall afterwards open . But as at least the State is not intended as an engine of oppression to the weak , it cannot ( wilfully and knowingly ) tax those families which barely can fesd themselves . Hence no taxes
can be intended to fall on sinews , bone , and breath , as such , but on property t as such . The moment this is conceded , it foUows that the more property a man has to spare , the more fit a subject for taxation he is , and the higher the per centage which may justly be taken from his surplus . I cannot understand the tone assumed by some writers on this subject , who call it robbery and spoliation to tax greater wealth at a greater per centage . My belief is , that this is intrinsically just , and that it would tend , moreover , to political stability , by removing the odium attached to great wealth with the vulgar . "
There are several passages marked for extract which we are forced to omit , but we send our readers to the volume itself with our emphatic commendation .
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AMERICAN ROMANCE . The Home of the Seven Gables . A Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne . ( Bohn ' o Cheap Series . ) H . G . Bohn . The author of the Scarlet Letter is sure of an audience . Among American writers he deserves special recognition for his originality , not to mention very peculiar powers of romance narrative . In this House of the Seven Gables there is a quaintness , a
wildness , an imagination , and a sort of weird sombreness which seizes hold of the mind , and compels you to follow all the windings of the story , rambling though it be . A certain novelty of scene , too , and of style—a vividness in the presentation of the bodily and mental characteristics of the actorswith a resolute avoidance of the old beaten tracks of commonplace , invest this romance with an unusual interest .
We are taken into New England and made to live in one of its old Puritan towns , under the shadow of an ancient elm , which stands before this House of the Seven Gables ; ( described with a gusto of romance which makes it almost a personuge !) sombre stories of traditions connected with it , deepen tho shadow , and prepare the mind for any amount of congealing horror . On this dark tapestry there arc streaks of silver-light and poetry , and some quaint fantastic colours which only serve to throw tho darkness into stronger relief . Among the quaintnesscH let us mention Hepzibah Pyncheon ,
the stiff timorous old maid , who , stiffened with Pyncheon pride , and standing erect upon her pedestal of gentility , is , nevertheless , reduced to the ludicrous anticlimax of opening a cent shop—and she , the withered old lady , has to sell lollynops and gingerbread to dirty-nosed urchins I Nothing we can point to in fiction is more graphic than the account of the old lady ' s first day ' s shopkeoping I Fortunately , u bright cheery girlher cousin—alights from an omnibus , passes under that shadowing elm into tho ci ™ rk Ilouso of tho { Seven Gables , and throws a beam of sunshine
athwart its darkness , and a beam of happiness into the lives of its inmates . But we shall not attempt an outline of the story , which is only meant as a canvas for the descriptions and the characters . Get the book for yourself—it is to be had for the veriest trifle—and see how graphically Judge Pyncheon , the corpulent , smiling , respectable rascal—Clifford , the half imbecile sensualist and lover of the beautiful—and Phoebe , the bright lithesome maiden , are all described and set in action ; notice , moreover , the author ' power of word painting , amidst some exaggeration . and tine writing ; " and his peculiar power of " moving a horror skilfully , " so that he makes romance credible . By way of whet to your appetite read this character of
JUDGE PYNCHBON " . " The judge , beyond all question , was a man of eminent respectability . The church acknowledged it ; the state acknowledged it . It was denied by nobody . In all the very extensive sphere of those who knew him , whether in his public or private capacities , there was not an individual—except Hepzibah , and some lawless mystic , like the daguerreotypist , and , possibly , a few political opponents—who . would have dreamed of seriously disputing his claim to a high and honorable place in the world's regard . Nor ( we must do him the further justice to say ) did Judge Pyncheon himself , probably , entertain many or frequent doubts that his enviable reputation accorded with his deserts . His conscience , therefore , usually considered the surest witness to a man ' s integrity , —his conscience ,
unless it might be for the little space of five minutes in the twenty-four hours , or , now and then , some black day in the whole year ' s circle , —his conscience bore an accordant testimony with the world ' s laudatory voice . And yet , strong as this evidence may seem to be , we should hesitate to peril our own conscience on the assertion , that the judge and the consenting world were right , and that poor Hepzibah , with her solitary prejudice , was wrong . Hidden from mankind , —forgotten by himself , or buried so deeply under a sculptured and ornamented pile or ostentatious deeds that his daily life could take no note of it , —there may have lurked some evil and unsightly thing . Nay , we could almost venture to say , further , that a daily guilt might have been acted by him , continually renewed , and reddening forth afresh , like the miraculous blood-stain of a murder , without
his necessarily and at every moment being aware of it . " Men of strong minds , great force of character , and a hard texture of the sensibilities , are verycapable of falling into mistakes of this kind . They are ordinarily men to whom forms are of paramount importance . Their field of action lies among the external phenomena of life . They possess vast ability in grasping , and arranging , and appropriating to themselves , the big , heavy , solid unrealities , such as gold , landed estate , offices of trust and emolument , and public honours . With these materials , and with deeds of goodly aspect , done in the public eye , an individual of this class builds up , as it were , a tall and stately edifice , which , in the view ot other people , and ultimately in his own view , is no other than the
man ' s character , or the luan himself . Behold , therefore , a palace ! Its splendid hulls , and suites of spacious apartments , are iloored with a mosaic-work of costly marbles ; its windows , the whole height of each room , admit the sunshine through the most transparent of plute-glass ; its high cornices are gilded , and its ceilings gorgeously painted ; and a lofty dome—through which , from the central pavement , you may gaze up to tli / ; fcky , as with no obstructing medium between— . surmounts the whole . With what fairer and noMor emblem could any man desire to shadow forth his character ? Ah ! but in
some low and obscure nook , —some narrow closet on the ground floor , shut , locked , and bolted , and the key flung away , —or beneath the marble pavement , in a stagnant water-puddle , with the richest pattern of mosaic-work above , —may lie : i corpse half decayed , and still decaying , and diffusing its deathscent all through the palace ! ' 1 he inhabitant will not 1 ) 0 conscious of it , lor it . bus long been his daily breath ! Neither will the visitors , for they smell only the rich odours Avhich the master sedulously scatters through the palace , and the incense which they bring , and delight to burn before him ! Now and
then , perchance comes in a seer , before whose sadly gifted eye the whole structure melts into thin air , leaving only the hidden nook , the bolted closet , with the cobwebs festooned over its forgotten door , or the deadly hole under tho pavement , and the decaying corpse within . Here , then , we are to stick the true emblem of the man ' s character , * wd of the deed that gives whatever reality it possesses to his life . And , beneath the show of n marble palace , that pool of stagnant water , foul with many impurities , and , perhaps , tinged with blood , —that secret abomination , above which , possibly ho may say his prayers , without remembering it , \ n thin man ' s miserable soul !
* ' To apply thiH train of remark somewhat more closely to Judge Pynchoon . We might say ( without in the least imputing crime to u pcriuonugo of liia
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June 21 , 1851 . ] i& $ t ? Lta \* tt . 587
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Leader (1850-1860), June 21, 1851, page 587, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1888/page/15/
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