And what are these circumstances? Has England any reason to boast of them? Or rather, has she not reason to blush and to hide her face with shame, as often as they are recalled to her remembrance? Whe were the first pioneers of English commerce, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? What was their character, and what their standing in veridical history? How do they compare with the early Catholic navigators, in honor, elevation of views, and common honesty? If there is any truth in history, as set forth even by such of our own Protestant writers as Irving, Bancroft, and Prescott, the early Catholic navigators were, in general, men of high bearing and chivalrous character, who would not stoop to do a mean thing; while the early English navigators, such as Gosnold, Gilbert, and Weymouth, and, we may add, Raleigh, Drake, and Hawkins, were unscrupulous, bold, bad men, as dishonest as they were enterprising; little better, in fact, than accomplished buccauiers and pirates. Yes, pirates; they deserve no softer name; for they made it a rule to seize upon the property and possessions of the Spaniards, Portuguese, and French, whenever opportunity offered, and in time of profound peace as well as of war. And what is more remarkable, the English government, instead of punishing them for their robberies on the high seas, or their unprincipled aggressions on the often defenseless colonies of its Catholic neighbors, winked at their excesses, and even rewarded them for their boldness and success. If Protestantism inclined England to adopt this line of policy, and if Protestantism formed the character of her early navigators, then is Protestantism fully welcome to all the glory of having laid the foundation of England's commercial greatness in modern times. Perhaps, the secret of her success may be, that, as a nation, she was emancipated by the reformation from the harassing thraldom of a conscience; and her Catholic neighbors, not having been vouchsafed the same amount of light or freedom, still went on in the old fashioned way of doing what is right, and committing consequences to God. We do not assert this as a fact; we merely offer it as a theory,-as plausible at least, and as well founded, as that which ascribes England's modern greatness to her Protestantism. But if Catholicity be true, and Protestantism false, how and why could God's providence permit that the Catholic countries above named should decline, and that Protestant England should attain to so unexampled a prosperity? We might answer this question- which has often puzzled the simple-minded inquirer — by asking another of a similar import: why does God often permit wicked men to accumulate wealth and roll in luxury, while the virtuous are often poor, miserable, and on the verge of starvation? Why are Jews generally wealthy, and Christians often poor and destitute? Is it because the wicked are more the favorites of heaven than the good? Or is it for a precisely contrary reason;-that according to the views of God, who takes in eternity along with time, riches are usually a curse, and poverty a blessing. Is it because the virtuous, who seek after eternal blessings and disparage those of time, are reserved for a higher recompense than this world can bestow; and the wicked, who seek only this world, and have to expect no ulterior reward, are often remunerated for their merely human virtues with merely human and temporal blessings? Is it that the awful saying of our Blessed Lord, in reference to the proud Pharisees who sought only human praise — THEY HAVE RECEIVED THEIR REWARD is verified in their regard? Has England received her reward in this world, and is she to look for nothing beyond it? Are her grasping ambition, and her quenchless desire to accumulate wealth and to extend her power by all means, whether lawful or not, really deserving of any higher reward? The day of judgment will reveal this, and many other awful things, in regard both to individuals and to nations. Till then, other nations less favored may hold up their heads, and bide their time, with bosoms filled with hope. II. But let us look a little more closely into this boasted commercial greatness of England, and see how it affects the masses of the English population, how far it promotes their worldly happiness, and how their social condition compares with that of their Catholic neighbors on the continent of Europe. This will naturally bring us to the examination of the second question proposed above: whether it be really a fact that England and other Protestant nations are so much in advance of Catholic countries in social condition and in the comforts of every day life. Is it, then, true, that superior commercial activity and greater skill in manufactures are the means best calculated to promote the general happiness of a people? Do they enrich the masses, or do they not rather enrich the few at the expense of the many? Look at England, and what do you see? A land of the boldest social contrasts: overgrown fortunes in the few, and squalid misery in the many; splendid palaces, and miserable hovels; men and women rolling in brilliant equipages, and haggard multitudes crying aloud for bread to prevent starvation, at their very carriage windows; speculators amassing enormous wealth in the manufacturing districts, and a mass of wretched operatives worked almost to death, and nearly starving in the midst of their hard labor to sustain life;' immense profits realized by avaricious capitalists, while the price of labor is cut 1 That great poet and humorist, the late Thomas Hood, has admirably hit off the condition of the laboring poor in England, in his "Song of the Shirt." We will insert three stanzas of this whimsical, but feeling little poem, in which the poor, hard-worked female operative is represented as holding a sad soliloquy with herself on her hard condition. The case may apply as well to laborers of the other sex, if not even better. "But why do I talk of death, That phantom of grisly bone; I hardly fear his terrible shape, It seems so like my own: - O God! that bread should be so dear, And flesh and blood so cheap! Work, work, work! My labor never flags; And what are its wages? A bed of straw A crust of bread and rags. That shattered roof and this naked floor A table a broken chair — And a wall so blank, my shadow I thank For sometimes falling there. "O! but to breathe the breath Of the cowslip and primrose sweet With the sky above my head And the grass beneath my feet, For only one short hour. To feel as I used to feel, And the werk that costs a meal!" down to the very starving point: in a word, active industry and bold enterprise everywhere, and yet a laboring population often badly clothed, badly fed, and badly housed, and very far from being either well instructed or moral.' For the truth of this picture, we appeal with confidence to the official reports recently presented to the British parliament, setting forth the condition of the operatives in the manufacturing districts and in the collieries. The philosophic observer will not fail to trace this sad poverty and misery of the laboring population of England to that insatiate spirit of avarice — so common in highly commercial communities—which abstracts money from the pockets of the many to put it into those of the few, who have already more than they can usefully dispose of. Nor can it be denied, that the Protestant principle of private judgment in religious matters, a principle that sets up each man for himself, and, as it were, isolates him from the society in which he lives, has tended greatly to foster a selfish spirit in the rich, to feed their avarice, and to render them insensible to the hardships and plaints of poverty. While England was Catholic, charity was a golden coin which freely circulated everywhere; since she has become Protestant, it is seldom heard of, except at public dinners, or in fashionable subscription lists. Those who do such high-sounding charities" have their reward!" The impoverished and miserable condition of Catholic Ireland is sometimes pointed to, as an instance of the improvidence which Catholicity generates in those who profess its principles; while the superior wealth and thriftiness of the Irish and English Protestant population of the island are proudly set forth, as the natural results of Protestantism. Shame on those who seriously allege this as an argument! What, but English tyranny and Protestant rapacity, brought about this difference in the condition of the Catholic and Protestant Irish? What, but the most heartless avarice and the most grinding oppression, originally caused, and has since perpetuated the miseries of Catholic Ireland? Is it fair or generous first to rob a man of his land and rifle his pockets, and then taunt him with his poverty and degradation? Yet this is precisely what is done by those who strive to make such capital out of the sufferings of poor Ireland. At least three-fourths of the landed estate in Ireland are in the hands of Protestants, who constitute scarcely an eighth of the population; and, in most instances, this property was wrested from the original Catholic proprietors by the most lawless and high-harded violence by confiscation backed by military force. Protestantism has surely no reason to be proud of its ascendency of wealth and influence in Ireland; and the Irish Catholics have much greater reason to boast of their poverty, induced as it was by their firm attachment to the ancient faith, than have Irish Protestants to vaunt their ill-gotten wealth. Protes tant political economists should never even breathe the name of Ireland. lest it should choke their utterance. 1 We will treat this subject in detail in a subsequent article England and France may offer a fairer example of the relative social conditions of two neighboring masses of population, the one Protestant and the other Catholic. Mr. Laing has instituted the comparison between them, and we are willing to abide by his candid judgment in the matter. Considering that he is a British subject, with strong prejudices against both the religion and the policy of France, his authority is surely unexceptionable. We will endeavor to exhibit, in a very condensed form, the results of his observations and reasoning in regard to the social features of each country. The chief point of difference between England and France is connected with the laws of inheritance. In England there exists an hereditary aristocracy who hold, by regular descent from the father to the eldest son, much the largest portion of the landed property. The law provides for this entailment of vast landed estates by the most rigid enactments. A titled landlord is not allowed to divide or diminish his property in lands; he can only use the fruits of them during his life-time, when they descend entire to the oldest son. The natural result of this feature in English social economy is, that the land is in the hands of the few, and that the vast body of the English agricultural population consists of mere tenants, wholly dependent on the great landlords. In France the case is widely different. The law of primogeniture was abolished in 1789; and the effect of the abolition has been, to destroy the hereditary aristocracy with vast entailed estates, and to make at least one-half of the entire population landed proprietors, thereby giving them a direct interest in the soil, and stimulating them to increased industry. According to the statistical returns lately published by M. Dupin, "the amount of arable land at present in France is little more than it was in 1789, but the population is increased by about eight millions; and in consequence of the division of property by the law of succession, one-half of the whole population are proprietors, and, counting their families, two-thirds of the whole are engaged in the direct cultivation of the soil."' The result of this sub-division of property has been-as Mr. Laing clearly proves against Arthur Young and the Edinburg reviewersgreatly to improve the social condition of the French population, to add to their comforts, and to develop to a much greater extent the resources of the soil. Instead of vast estates but half cultivated, France is now cut up into smaller properties, to which the principles of garden culture have been applied. The beneficial changes brought about in little more than half a a century, during which the experiment has been tried, present a very satisfactory proof that the abolition of entailment in estates has been of vast utility to the mass of the people, and afford likewise an earnest of still greater improvement in the social condition of France Nay, more; Mr. Laing proves that the condition of the French people is better and more comfortable than that of the English in similar circumstances. We 1 Quoted by Laing; p 74. will extract a portion of his testimony and reasoning on this curious subject: "What is the condition of their (the French) laboring class at present, compared to that of our own? The only means of comparison is to take one class of men, whose condition is in all countries the same relatively to that of the common laborer, the military and to compare the condition of the common laborer in each country, with that of the common soldier. Now in England, since 1816, no bounty, or even trifling bounty, is required to obtain recruits for the army; and none but men of the best description as to age, health, and stature, are received. The inference to be made is, that the condition of our common soldier is so much better than, or so equal to, the condition of our common laborer, that little or no inducement of bounty is required to make able-bodied men enlist in sufficient numbers. But the condition of our soldier has not been altered for the better since the peace, since 1816. It is the condition of our laboring class that has altered for the worse. In England, as in France, the soldier is fed, paid, lodged, and clothed, precisely as he was five and twenty years ago. But in France, although the term of service is only for six years, so far are the laboring class from such a condition as to enlist without the inducement of bounty, that from 1800 to 2000 francs, or £80 sterling, are usually offered for a recruit, to serve as a substitute for one who is drawn by ballot for the army. Clubs and assurance companies are established all over France, for providing substitutes for the members who may happen to be drawn for the service. The inference to be made is, that here the condition of the common laborer is too good to be exchanged for that of the common soldier, without the inducement of a premium; his labor too valuable to be given for the mere living and pay of the soldier, although the soldier's pay and living are as good, in proportion to the habits of the people and price of provisions, as in England. How ludicrous, as one sits on the deck of a fine steamvessel going down the Saone, or the Rhone, or the Seine, passing every half hour other steam-vessels, and every five or six miles under iron suspension bridges, and past canals, short factory railroads even, and new built factories how laughable now to read the lugubrious predictions of Arthur Young half a century ago, of Birbeck a quarter of a century ago, of the Edinburg Review some twenty years ago, about the inevitable consequences of the French law of succession! A pauper warren!' Look up from the page, and laugh. Look around upon the actual prosperity, the well-being, and the rising industry of this people under their system. Look at the activity on their rivers, at the new factory chimneys against the horizon, at the steamboats, canals, roads, coal works, wherever nature gives any opening to enterprise.' But it is not only in the physical comforts of life, that the bulk of the French people are much better off than that of the English; it is also in matters of higher moment,- in honesty, in politeness, and in the suavity and high tone of social intercourse. Let us again listen to the candid Scotchman: "Let us do justice to the French character. Their self-command, their upon-honor principle, is very remarkable and much more generally diffused than among our own population. THEY ARE, I BELIEVE, A MORE HONEST PEOPLE THAN THE BRITISH. The beggar, who is evidently hungry, respects the fruit upon the road-side within his reach, although there is Pages 77, 9. |