Canada and the States Part 22

"There was a time, and not a very distant one either, when I was utterly ignorant of two things--first, the existence, in my particular case, of the thing called the human stomach; and secondly, the reality of those mysterious telegraphic wires--yclept NERVES. Often nave I sneered at 'bilious subjects,' 'dyspepsia,' and that long string of woes which one hears of, in such luxuriance of description, usually over breakfast, at Clifton, Tonbridge, or Harrogate. Like the old d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough, too, I used 'to thank G.o.d I was born before nerves came into fashion.'

"But 'live and learn.' I have lived; and I have learnt the utter misery which a deranged digestion and jarring nerves, acting and reacting upon each other, can inflict upon their victims. To be laid up in bed for a month with a violent disease is nothing. You are killed or cured; made better, and your illness forgotten even by yourself; or quietly laid under the dust of your mother earth, to lie there in oblivion, the busy world moving on, unheeding, over your cold remains, till the great day of judgment. But to have, as it were, your whole 'mind, body, soul, and strength' turned, with a resistless fascination, into the frightened study of your own dreadful anatomy. To find your courage quail, not before real danger, but at phantoms and shadows--nay, actually at your own horrid self--to feel every act of life and every moment of business a task, an effort, a trial, and a pain. Sometimes to be unable to sleep for a week--sometimes to sleep, but, at the dead of night, to wake, your bed shaking under you from the violent palpitation of your heart, and your pillow drenched with cold sweat pouring from you in streams.

But, worst of all, if you are of a stubborn, dogged, temper, and are blessed with a strong desire to 'get on'--to feel yourself unable to make some efforts at all, to find yourself breaking down before all the world in others, and to learn, at last, in consequence, almost to hate the half-dead and failing carcase tied to your still living will. This, not for months only, but for YEARS. Years, too, in what ought to be your prime of manhood. Ah! old age and incapacity at thirty is a bitter, bitter punishment. Better be dead than suffer it; for you must suffer it alone and in silence--you may not hope for sympathy--you dare not desire it--you see no prospect of relief--you wage a double warfare, with the world and with yourself. I do not, I dare not, exaggerate. Indeed, a lady of a certain age could hardly feel more abashed at the sudden production of her baptismal certificate than I--a man, a matter-of-fact man, a plain, hard-headed, unimaginative man of business--do, at this confession. Suffice it to say, that in the last four years I have lived the life of a soul in purgatory or an inhabitant of the 'Inferno,' and though I have worked like a horse, determined, if possible, to rout out my evil genii--the wave of health has gradually receded, till, at last, an internal voice has seemed solemnly to say, 'Thus far shalt thou go and no farther.'

"If any one, who has not suffered similarly, has patience to read thus far (which is doubtful), before now he has said, with Mr. Burch.e.l.l in the 'Vicar of Wakefield'--'FUDGE.' No matter--I should have so exclaimed once; and I now envy him his healthy ignorance. The history of my derangements is told above in one word: that word is--OVERWORK.

"If any one who may not just like an actual dissection, will look at one of Quain's 'Plates of the Bones, Muscles, and Nerves of the Human Body,' he will see that, growing as it were out of the walls of the stomach, there are, in our wonderful human machine, great bunches of nerves, called, by the medicals, the 'great ganglionic system,' and he will observe that these nerves are in intimate and inseparable connection with the spinal cord, and the brain. Then, if he recollects that a perpetual series of conversations and signals goes on by those agents between the stomach and the brain--that, in fact, the two are talking together every moment (without even the delay of that inappreciable interval for which the electric current lingers on the wires in its wondrous progress of intelligence)--he will see that he cannot abuse either great organ without a 'combination of parties'

against his administration.

"My unfortunate mistake, therefore, was this: I _overworked my brain_. It rebelled. Stomach joined the outbreak. Heart beat to the rescue; and all the other corporal powers sympathised in the attempt to put me down. They would not stand ten days' work a week, and no Sunday,--relieved though the labour might be by the amus.e.m.e.nt of speeches and leading articles.

"The first explosion of the conspiracy laid me fainting at the desk. A sort of truce followed this. I consented for a few days to the terms of the belligerents.

I rested. But resting, I was restless. Unfit to work, I was tormented by an unnatural desire for action. Thus I roused myself early--rode to the office (for I was too weak to walk), buried myself amidst my letters, reports and accounts--and rushed on with the day's duties as if all the work of the world had to be done in that one day, and that one day was the last. But an hour or two usually settled the contest.

Head swam, heart beat, fluttered, stopped, struggled,--knees knocked together,--and out oozed that cold clammy sweat which reminds one of weakness and the grave. So with a pale face, anxious eye, and hollow cheek, I had to quit the desk again and ride mournfully home, the remainder of the day being consumed in a rest, which only increased my melancholy feelings, because it made me more than ever conscious of my feebleness and excitability.

"But by great care and management of myself, by desperate strivings to get a little health, I _did_ improve. Two hours a day at work, two or three times a week, became two or three hours every working day of the week. Then, as a wonderful achievement, at last I managed to endure half a day's business at a time. And at the end of some months (one beautiful day in August, bless the sunlight) I actually did a _whole_ day's work! And so, at last, I got before the wind sufficiently to engage again in the compet.i.tion of business life, with some credit and success. None of those, however, with whom I had to compete, and to whom work (as it should be to every man in health) was easy and pleasant, knew the cost of many of my weary days and nights of labour, or the nervous suffering and physical weakness; in spite of which I endeavoured always to meet my compeers in the working world with pleasantry, or at least with a smile.

"I had many relapses--but I hardly ever laid up for more than an hour or two. In these cases a loll, or rather a rec.u.mbent pant, upon the sofa, and a dose of some bitter tonic, or a strong gla.s.s of brandy, usually brought down the palpitation, and enabled me to set to work again as if nothing had happened. Indeed, as the eels get accustomed to skinning, so I got used to all this; and it became at last an old habit, and bearable.

"Thus I went on from 1846 until 1850. Four years of incessant and various labour, relieved only by the confidence and appreciation of those who directed, and the good feeling of those who were engaged, like me, in the executive management of the great corporation with which, during this (to me) memorable period of my life, I was connected. I need not repeat how thoroughly I was sustained and comforted by the a.s.siduity of one of the best of women. I tried to thank her by making light of my many miseries.

"This sort of life was, however, too great and continued a strain for a rickety machine to last. And at times, when I gave way to those strange thoughts about the use and end of human existence, which crowd upon the mind in nervous disease--it seemed to me as if I could weigh and measure the particles of vitality from my daily diminishing store-- expended in each unnatural effort of labour--as if every stroke of my business craft represented so much of that daily shortening distance which lay between me and the end. I felt the price I was paying for the privilege of labour, and for its remuneration. But I thought, ever, of my wife and little babies, and the thought roused me to a kind of desperation, and made me feel for the time as if I could trample weakness under foot, and tear out, break in pieces, and cast away those miserable, oversensitive organs, which chained, cramped, and hindered me. I like work, too. And I had a sort of shame of confessing myself incapable. I morbidly derided the sympathising regret likely to be shown by my friends, and I pictured the moribund predictions likely to follow a temporary desertion of my post.

"But the estates of my mortal realm stepped in again.

"At the end of a time of hard, anxious, and difficult labours, I went down into the country on business, and was seized, in the streets of a little town, with violent palpitation, and with faintness. I had to take refuge in a shop; to resort to brandy, physic, and a doctor; and, at the close of a day's confinement to my room, to sneak back to London, as miserable as any poor dog, who, having run about all day with a tin kettle at his tail, is, at last, released, to go limping and exhausted home.

"I struggled with this, too, and for some time would not 'give in.' But my face, now, would not answer to my will. It would look pale and miserable. My friends began to commiserate me. This was dreadful. So I at last yielded to the combined movement, of my own convictions of necessity, the wishes of my friends, the orders of my physician, and, most effective of all, the kind commands of one whom I deem it an honour, as it is a necessity, to obey in most things--I went away from business. I went away without hope. I did not expect cure. I believed functional derangement had become, at last, organic disease--and that my days were numbered. I tried the water cure, h.o.m.oeopathy, allopathy-- everything. Some day, I must recount my consultations, on the same Sunday, with Sir James Clarke, Her Majesty's physician, and Dr. Quin, h.o.m.oeopathist, jester, and, as some said, quack."

At the end of five years of my suffering, I went to America. The trip did me good. It did not cure me. I wrote a book--a very little one.

Half-a-crown was its price. The present First Lord of the Treasury, Mr.

W. H. Smith, published it. All the edition was sold. I did not venture another. I will quote some portions of it, as a preface to what is to follow.

When this book was just out of the press, I received the following letters from Mr. Cobden:--

"DUNFORD, NEAR MIDHURST, SUSs.e.x, "_6th January_, 1852.

"MY DEAR WATKIN,

"When lately in Manchester I heard from S. P. Robinson that you had been to the United States; that you had been much struck with what you saw there; that we were being fast distanced by our young rival, &c.

Since then I have seen an extract in a paper from a work published by you; but being in an outlying place here, have no means of informing myself further about it. Now, if the book be not large, and can be sent through the post, I wish you would let me have a copy. I know how unreasonable it is to ask an author to give away his works; for, as Dr.

Johnson said to Thrale, the brewer, in vindication of his own rule never to make a present of his writings, 'You do not give away your porter, Sir;' but I feel very anxious to know what you think of the United States.

"I have long had my notions about what was coming from the West, and recorded my prophecy on my return from America in 1835. People in England are determined to shut their eyes as long as they can; but they will be startled out of their wilful blindness some day by some gigantic facts proving the indisputable superiority of that country in all that const.i.tutes the power, wealth, and real greatness of a people.

"Hoping that you are quite well after your holiday, which you would not allow to be a holiday.

"I remain, very truly yours, "R. COBDEN.

"EDWD. WATKIN, Esq."

In reference to a paragraph in the following, I should mention that in my letter transmitting the book, I had written about my meetings with Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot, and had referred to his visit to the United States.

"DUNFORD, NEAR MIDHURST, "_8th January_, 1852.

"MY DEAR WATKIN,

"Many thanks for your kindness in sending me a copy of your work, which, so far as I have gone, pleases me much. You could not have done a wiser and more patriotic service than to make the people of this country better acquainted with what is going on in the United States.

It is from that quarter, and not from barbarous Russia, or fickle France, that we have to expect a formidable rivalry--and yet that country is less studied or understood in England than is the history of ancient Egypt or Greece. I should like to go once more to America, if only to see Niagara again. But I am a bad sailor, and should dread the turmoil of public meetings when I arrived there.

"My impression of Kossuth's _phrenology_ was that there was not power or animal energy sufficient to account for the ascendancy he acquired over a turbulent aristocracy and a rude uncivilized democracy.

The secret lies evidently in his eloquence, in which he certainly surpa.s.ses any modern orator; and, taking all things into account, he is in that respect probably a phenomenon without equal in past or present times. I fear when the French news reaches America, it will damp the ardour of his friends there, and make them more than ever resolved to 'stand upon their own ground' rather than venture into the quagmire of European politics. It has confirmed me in my non-intervention policy.

It is evident that we know nothing about the political state of even our next neighbours, and how are we likely to be better informed about Germany or Italy? _Their ways are not our ways._ Let us not attempt to judge them by our standard. Let us endeavour to set them a good example. If 36 millions of Frenchmen, or 46 millions of Germans, submit to a despotic Government, it is because they do not really desire anything better.

"If they wished for a different form of Government they could have it.

What presumption in _us_ to think that our interference in the matter can be necessary!

"Believe me, faithfully yours, "RICHARD COBDEN.

"EDWD. WATKIN, Esq."

I venture here a few extracts from my little book of 1851, as detailing my views, new and fresh as they were, on American questions.

"I have presumed to think that these hasty Letters, dest.i.tute as they are of all literary merit, written during a visit to the 'New World,'

may be, just now, worth presenting to 'every-day sort of people,' like myself, who have little time to travel; and, unable to do both, would rather watch the free growth of a new country, than observe the decadence and decrepitude of old ones. For just now, when a large part of our labouring population is strangely awakening to the impression, that a dollar a-day and a vote at elections in the United States are better than eightpence a-day in Ireland; the New Home to which our fellow-countrymen are thus flocking--and in which, somehow or other, they prosper and are independent--is especially interesting.

"Steam navigation and railways have so far reduced the difficulties and uncertainties of Western travel, that it is now as easy and as cheap to spend one's autumn holidays, as I have done, in a trip to America of some eleven thousand miles out-and-home, as fifteen years ago it was to get to John o' Groats and back by land conveyance, or to go a-shooting in Sutherlandshire--which, by-the-bye, is an out of the way and dismal sort of county even yet.

"Every one ought to know how easy it is, and how pleasant and instructive, to travel in the States. But, though many people do know this, the plague of English travellers which annually overspreads Europe, from July to December, and disturbs even the quiet of the Nile, has hardly touched America. And while one cannot enter the drawing-room of any decent house without hearing descriptions of scenery and manners in Germany, Italy, or Russia,--to have visited America almost involves the suspicion of some commercial connection with that country. Yet no other land in the world has so close an alliance with our own; and, while we are culpably ignorant of almost everything but its peculiarities and its vices, no other country studies our history, and watches our progress, with greater interest or more solicitude. Any English youngster will tell you that Americans speak through their noses, spit, and hold slaves; but how few, even of the most intelligent, know that better English is spoken by the ma.s.s of Americans, than by the majority of English citizens, and that education is practically an inst.i.tution of the United States, and universal; though at home it hardly exists as a system, and can never be extended in any truly national direction without exciting a war of parties! Be the reason what it may, we have been in the habit of looking down on America. We shall soon perhaps have to look up to it.

"It is but sixty-two years since the foundation of the Republic. It then consisted of thirteen small States. It now comprises twenty-nine States; without reckoning the new dominions of Oregon, California, New, Mexico, and Texas. Ten years ago its area was 2,000,000 square miles, or more than 1,300,000,000 acres. That area has become, in 1850, 3,252,689 square miles, or 2,081,717,760 acres. It is thus nearly thirty times the size of Great Britain and Ireland.

"The Republic now possesses an ocean coast of 5,140 miles, viz.,--l,920 on the Atlantic, 1,620 on the Pacific, and 1,600 on the Gulf of Mexico.

"Its population in 1790 was less than 4,000,000; in 1840 it stood at 17,000,000; it is now 25,000,000. And if its vast territory, with a more productive soil, and greater resources of all kinds, should some day become as thickly peopled as our own island, it will then contain a population of 800,000,000 of souls speaking the English tongue. If the Federation hold together in peace, why should this result, though distant, be doubtful? For it now comprises almost every variety of soil, climate, vegetable productions, and mineral wealth.

Its 20,000 miles of river and lake navigation--its 10,000 miles of railway--its 4,000 miles of ca.n.a.l--and its 11,000 miles of telegraphic wire--connect every part of its vast territory together, and give to an interminable continent the compactness of a small island. The facilities of communication, too, place at the command of the people of one part of the country the climate of every other. When the thermometer is below zero at New York, a journey of three days will bring the traveller to Savannah, where a genial temperature of 60 degrees, clear skies, and verdant nature, await him. And when a scorching sun is filling New Orleans with fever, the cool weather of the North, and upon the great lakes, is healthy and delightful. The apple bloomed at Natchez, in 1850, as early as the 24th March; while at Montpelier, in Vermont, it bloomed on the 10th June. The distance between the two places is but three or four days' travel.

"One can hardly name a staple article of production which some part or other of the States will not grow--not as a mere garden curiosity, but as an article of profitable cultivation. The champagne of Cincinnati is beginning to be noted, and tea is under experimental cultivation in South Carolina.

"The mineral resources of the country are enormous; and their development is only limited by the present want of capital to work them more efficiently. The coal of Pennsylvania--the iron in various parts of the Union--the copper of Lake Superior--the lead about Galena on the Mississippi; and lastly, the gold of California, which has already put in circulation a coinage of 15,000,000_l_. sterling--all these are but the first tapping of almost boundless resources.