Nuts And Nutcrackers Part 10

"THE INCOME TAX."

Among the many singular objections which have been made to the new property tax, I find Mr. C. Buller stating in the House, that his greatest dislike to the project lay in the exceedingly small amount of the impost. "My wound is great because it is so small," might have been the text of the honourable and learned gentleman's oration. After setting forth most eloquently the varied distresses of the country--its acc.u.mulating debt and heavy taxation--he turns the whole weight of his honest indignation against the new imposition, because, forsooth, it is so "little burdensome, and will inflict so slight an additional load upon the tax-payer." There is an attempt at argument, however, on the subject, which is somewhat amusing; for he continues not only to lament the smallness of the new tax, but the "slight necessity that exists"

even for that. Had we some great national loss to make up, the deficiency of which rendered a call on the united people necessary, then, quoth he, how happily we should stand forward in support of the Const.i.tution. In fact, he deplores, in the most moving terms, that ill off as the country is, yet it is not one-half so bad as it might be, or as he should like to see it. Ah! had we only some disastrous Continental war, devastating our commerce--ruining our Colonies, and eating into the very heart of our national resources--how gladly I should pay this Income Tax; but to remedy a curable evil--to restore, by prompt and energetic measures, the growing disease of the State--is a poor, pettifogging practice, that has neither heroism nor fame to recommend it. I remember hearing that at one of those excellent inst.i.tutions, so appropriately denominated Magdalen Asylums, a poor, but innocent girl, presented herself for admission, pleading her lonely and deserted condition, as a plea for her reception. The patroness, an amiable and excellent person--but somewhat of the complexion of the honourable and learned Member for Liskeard--asked at once, whether she had resolved on a total reformation of her mode of life. The other replied that her habits had been always chaste and virtuous, and that her character had been invariably above reproach. "Ah, in that case," rejoined the lady, "we can't admit you; this inst.i.tution is expressly for the reception of penitents. If you could only qualify for a week or so, there is no objection to your admission."

Is not this exactly Mr. Buller's proposition? "Let us have the Whigs back for a few years longer; let us return to our admirable foreign policy; and when we have successfully embroiled ourselves with America, lost Canada, been beaten in China, driven out of our Eastern possessions, and provoked a war with France, then I 'm your man for an Income Tax; lay it on only heavily; let the nation, already bowed down under the heavy burden of its calamities, receive in addition the gracious boon of enormous taxation." h.o.m.oeopathy teaches us that nothing is so curative in its agency, as the very cause of our present suffering, or something as a.n.a.logous to it as possible; and, like Hahnemann, Mr. Buller administers what the vulgar call "a hair of the dog that bit us," as the most sovereign remedy for all our evils.

The country is like a sick man with a whitlow, for the cure of which his physician prescribes a slight, but clearly necessary, operation. Another medical Dr. Buller is, however, standing by. He at once insinuates his veto; remarks upon the trivial nature of the disease--the un-painful character of the remedy; "but wait," adds he--"wait till the inflammation extends higher; have patience till the hand becomes swollen and the arm affected; and then, when your agony is beyond endurance, and your life endangered, then we 'll amputate the limb high up, and mayhap you may recover, after all."

As for me, it is the only occasion I 'm aware of, where a successful comparison can be inst.i.tuted between honour and the Whigs; for a.s.suredly neither have "any skill in surgery."

A NUT FOR THE "BELGES."

[Ill.u.s.tration: 216]

Every one knows that men in ma.s.ses, whether the same be called boards, committees, aggregate, or repeal meetings, will be capable of atrocities and iniquities, to which, as individuals, their natures would be firmly repugnant. The irresponsibility of a number is felt by every member, and Curran was not far wrong when he said, a "corporation was a thing that had neither a body to be kicked, nor a soul to be d.a.m.ned."

It is, indeed, a melancholy fact, that nations partake much more frequently of the bad than the good features of the individuals composing them, and it requires no small amount of virtue to flavour the great caldron of a people, and make its incense rise gratefully to heaven. For this reason, we are ever ready to accept with enthusiasm anything like a national tribute to high principle and honour. Such glorious bursts are a source of pride to human nature itself, and we hail with acclamation these evidences of exalted feeling, which make men "come nearer to the G.o.ds." The greater the sacrifice to selfish interests and prejudices, the more do we prize the effort. Think for a moment what a sensation of surprise and admiration, wonderment, awe, and approbation it would excite throughout Europe, if, by the next arrival from Boston, came the news that "the Americans had determined to pay their debts!" That at some great congress of the States, resolutions were carried to the effect, "that roguery and cheating will occasionally lower a people in the estimation of others, and that the indulgences of such national practices may be, in the end, prejudicial to national honour;" "that honesty, if not the best, may be good policy, even in a go-a-head state of society;" "that smart men, however a source of well-founded pride to a people, are now and then inconvenient from the very excess of their smartness;" "that seeing these things, and feeling all the unhappy results which mistrust and suspicion by foreign countries must bring upon their com-merce, they have determined to pay something in the pound, and go a-head once more." I am sure that such an announcement would be hailed with illuminations from Hamburg to Leghorn.

American citizens would be cheered wherever they were found; pumpkin pie would figure at royal tables, and twist and c.o.c.ktail be handed round with the coffee; our exquisites would take to chewing and its consequences; and our belles, banishing Rossini and Donizetti, would make the air vocal with the sweet sounds of Yankee Doodle. One cannot at a moment contemplate what excesses our enthusiasm might not carry us to; and I should not wonder in the least if some great publisher of respectable standing might not start a pirated reprint of the _New York Herald_.

Let me now go back and explain, if my excitement will permit me, how I have been led into such extravagant imaginings. I have already remarked, that nations seldom gave evidence of n.o.ble bursts of feeling; still more rarely, I regret to say, do they evince any sorrow for past misconduct--any penitence for by-gone evil.

This would be, indeed, the severest ordeal of a people's greatness; this, the brightest evidence of national purity. Happy am I to say such an instance is before us; proud am I to be the man to direct public attention to the feet. The following paragraph I copy verbatim from the _Times_.

"On the 18th of June, the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo, a black flag was hoisted by the Belgians at the top of the monument erected on the field where the battle was fought."

A black flag, the emblem of mourning, the device of sorrow and regret, waves over the field of Waterloo! Not placed there by vanquished France, whose legions fought with all their chivalry; not hoisted by the proud Gaul, on the plain where, in defeat, he bit the dust; but in penitence of heart, in deep sorrow and contrition, by the Belgians who ran--by the people who fled--by the soldiers who broke their ranks and escaped in terror.

What a n.o.ble self-abas.e.m.e.nt is this; how beautifully touching such an instance of a people's sorrow, and how affecting to think, that while in the halls of Apsley House the heroes were met together to commemorate the glorious day when they so n.o.bly sustained their country's honour, another nation should be in sackcloth and ashes, in all the trappings of woe, mourning over the era of their shame, and sorrowing over their degradation. Oh, if a great people in all the majesty of their power, in all their might of intellect, strength, and riches, be an object of solemn awe and wonder, what shall we say of one whose virtues partake of the humble features of every-day life, whose sacrifice is the tearful offering of their own regrets? Mr. O'Connell may declaim, and p.r.o.nounce his eight millions the finest peasantry in the world--he may extol their virtues from Cork to Carrickfergus--he may ring the changes over their loyalty, their bravery, and their patriotism; but when eulogising the men who a.s.sure him "they are ready to die for their country," let him blush to think of the people who can "cry" for theirs.

A NUT FOR WORKHOUSE CHAPLAINS.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 219]

The bane and antidote of England is her immense manufacturing power--the faculty that enables her to inundate, the whole habitable globe with the products of her industry, is at once the source of her prosperity and poverty--her millionaire mill-owners and her impoverished thousands.

Never was the skill of machinery pushed to the same wonderful--never the results of mechanical invention so astoundingly developed. Men, are but the presiding genii over the wonder-working slaves of their creative powers, and the child, is the volition that gives impulse to the giant force of a mighty engine. Subdivision of labour, carried to an extent almost incredible, has facilitated despatch, and induced a higher degree of excellence in every branch of mechanism--human ingenuity is racked, chemical a.n.a.lysis investigated, mathematical research explored--and all, that Mr. Binns, of Birmingham, may make thirteen minikin pins--while Mr.

Sims, of Stockport, has been making but twelve. Let him but succeed in this, and straightway his income is quadrupled--his eldest son is member for a manufacturing borough, his second is a cornet in the Life Guards--his daughter, with a fortune of one hundred thousand pounds, is married to the heir of a marquisate--and his wife, soaring above the murky atmosphere of the factory, breathes the purer air of western London, and advertises her _soirees_ in the _Morning Post_. The pursuit of wealth is now the grand characteristic of our age and country; and the headlong race of money-getting seems the great feature of the day.

To this end the thundering steamer ploughs the white-crested wave of the broad Atlantic--to this end the clattering locomotive darts through the air at sixty miles the hour--for this, the thousand hammers of the foundry, the ten thousand wheels of the factory are at work--and man, toiling like a galley-slave, scarce takes time to breathe in his mad career, as with straining eyeb.a.l.l.s and outstretched hands, he follows in the pursuit of lucre.

Now, men are imitative creatures; and strange enough, too, they are oftentimes disposed from the indulgence of the faculty to copy things, and adapt them to purposes very foreign to their original destination.

This manufacturing speed, this steeple-chase of printed calico and Paisley wear, is all very well while it is limited to the districts where it began.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 221]

That two hundred and seventy thousand white cotton night-caps, with a blue ta.s.sel on every one of them, can be made in twenty-four hours at Messrs. Twist and Tredlem's factory, is a very gratifying fact, particularly to all who indulge in ornamental headgear--but we see no reason for carrying this dispatch into the Court of Chancery, and insisting that every nod of the woolsack is to decide a suit at law. Yet have the lawyer and the physician both adopted the impetuous practices of the manufacturing world, and Haste, red haste! is now the cry.

Lord Brougham's Chancery practice was only to be equalled by one of Lord Waterford's steeple-chases. He took all before him in a fly--he rode straight, plenty of neck, baulked nothing--up leap or down leap, sunk fence or double ditch, post and rail, or quickset, stone wall, or clay bank, all one to him--go it he would. Others might deny his judgment; he wanted to get over the ground, and _that_ he did do.

The West-end physician, in the same way, visits his fifty patients daily, walks his hospital, delivers a lecture to old ladies about some "curious provision" of nature in the palm of the human hand (for fee-taking); and devoting something like three minutes and twelve seconds to each sick man's case, pockets some twenty thousand per annum by his dispatch.

Speed is now the _El Dorado_. Jelly is advertised to be made in a minute, b.u.t.ter in five, soup seasoned and salted in three seconds of time. Even the Quakers--bless their quiet hearts!--could n't escape the contagion and actually began to walk and talk with some faint resemblance to ordinary mortals. The church alone maintained the even tenor of its way, and moved not in the wild career of the whirlwind world about it. Such was my gratulation, when my eye fell upon the following pa.s.sage of the _Times_. Need I say with what a heavy heart I read it? It is Mr. Rushton who speaks:--

"In the month of December, 1841, he heard that a man had been found dead in the streets of Liverpool; that all the property he possessed had been taken from his person, and that an attempt to trace his ident.i.ty had been made in vain. He was taken to the usual repository for the dead, where au inquest had been held upon him, and from the 'dead house,' as it was called, he was removed to the workhouse burial-ground. The man who drove the hea.r.s.e on the occasion was very old, and not very capable of giving evidence. His attendant was an idiot. It had been represented to Mr. Hodgson and himself that the dead man had been taken in the clothes in which he died and put into a coffin which was too small for him; that a shroud was put over him; that the lid of the coffin would not go down; and that he was taken from the dead-house and buried in the parochial ground, no funeral rites having been performed on the occasion. It had also been communicated to Mr. Hodgson and himself that, after two days, the clergyman who was instructed to perform those rites over the paupers, came and performed one service for the dead over all the paupers who had been buried in the intermediate time."

Now, without stopping to criticise the workhouse equipage, which appears to be driven by a man too old to speak, with an idiot for his companion; nor even to advert to the scant ceremony of burying a man in his daily dress, and in a coffin that would not close on him--what shall we say of the "patent parson power" that buries paupers in detachments, and reads the service over platoons of dead? The reverend chaplain feeling the uncertainty of human life, and knowing how frail is our the to existence, waits in the perfect conviction of a large party before he condescends to appear. Knowing that dead men tell no tales, he surmises also that they don't run away, and so he says to himself--these people are not pressed for time, they 'll be here when I come again--it is a sickly season, and we 'll have a field-day on Sat.u.r.day. Cheap soup for the poor, says Mrs. Fry. Cheap justice, says O'Connell. Cheap clothing, says a tailor who makes new clothes from old, with a machine called a devil--but cheap burial is the boast of the Liverpool chaplain, and he is the most original among them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 225]

A NUT FOR THE "HOUSE."

I have long been of opinion that a man may attain to a very respectable knowledge of Chinese ceremonies and etiquette before he can learn one half the usages of the honourable house. Seldom does a debate go forward without some absurd 'interruption taking place in a mere matter of form.

Now it is a cry of "Order, order," to some gentleman who is subsequently discovered not to have been in the least disorderly, but whom the attack has so completely dumfounded, that he loses his speech and his self-possession, and sits down in confusion, to be sneered at in the morning papers, and hooted by his const.i.tuents when he goes home.

Now some gifted scion of aristocracy makes an essay in braying and c.o.c.k-crowing, both permitted by privilege, and overwhelms the speaker with the uproar. Now it is that intolerable nuisance, old Hume, shouting out "divide," or "adjourn;" or it is Colonel Sibthorpe who counts the house. These ridiculous privileges of members to interfere with the current of public business because they may be sleepy or stupid themselves, are really intolerable, besides being so numerous that the first dozen years of a parliamentary life will scarcely teach a man a t.i.the of them. But of all these "rules of the house," the most unjust and tyrannical is that which compels a man to put up with any impertinence because he has already spoken. It would seem as if each honourable member "went down" with a single ball cartridge in his pouch, which, when fired, the best thing he could do was to go home and wait for another distribution of ammunition; for by remaining he only ran the risk of being riddled without any power to return the fire.

A case of this kind happened a few evenings since:--A Mr. Blewitt--I suppose the composer--made a very absurd motion, the object of which was to inquire "What office the Duke of Wellington held in the present government, and whether he was or was not a member of the cabinet."

Without referring the learned gentleman to a certain erudite volume called the Yearly Almanack and Directory, Sir Robert Peel proceeded to explain the duke's position. He eulogised, as who would not? his grace's sagacity and his wisdom; the importance of his public services, and the great value the ministers, his _confreres_, set upon a judgment which, in a long life, had so seldom been found mistaken; and then he concluded by quoting from one of the duke's recent replies to some secretary or other who addressed him on a matter foreign to his department--"That he was one of the few men in the present day who did not meddle in affairs over which they have no control." "A piece of counsel," quoth Sir Robert, "I would strenuously advise the honourable member to apply to his own case."

Now we have already said that we think Blewitt--though an admirable musician--seems to be a very silly man. Still, if he really did not know what the duke represented in her Majesty's government--if he really were ignorant of what functions he exercised, the information might have been bestowed upon him without a retort like this. In the first place, his query, if a foolish, was at least a civil one; and in the second, it was his duty to understand a matter of this nature: it therefore came under his control, and Sir Robert's application of the quotation was perfectly uncalled-for. Well; what followed? Mr. Blewitt rose in wrath to reply, when the house called out, "Spoke, spoke!" and Blewitt was muzzled; the moral of which is simply this--you ask a question in the house, and the individual addressed has a right to insult you, you having no power of rejoinder, under the etiquette of "spoke." Any flippancy may overturn a man at this rate; and the words "loud laughter," printed in italics in the _Chronicle_, is sure to renew the emotion at every breakfast table the morning after.

Now I am sorry for Blewitt, and think he was badly treated.

A NUT FOR "LAW REFORM."

[Ill.u.s.tration: 229]

Of all the inst.i.tutions of England there is scarcely one more lauded, and more misunderstood, than trial by jury. At first blush, nothing can seem fairer and less objectionable than the unbia.s.sed decision of twelve honest men, sworn to do justice. They hear patiently the evidence on both sides; and in addition to the light derivable from their own intelligence, they have the directing charge of the judge, who tells them wherein the question for their decision lies, what are the circ.u.mstances of which they are to take cognizance, and by what features of the case their verdict is to be guided. Yet look at the working of this much-boasted privilege. One jury brings in a verdict so contrary to all reason and justice, that they are sent back to reconsider it by the judge; another, more refractory still, won't come to any decision at all, and get carted to the verge of the county for their pains; and a third, improving on all former modes of proceeding, has adopted a newer and certainly most impartial manner of deciding a legal question. "Court of Common Pleas, London, July 6.--The Chief Justice (Tindal) asked the ground of objection, and ten of the jurymen answered that in the last case one of their colleagues had suggested that the verdict should be decided by tossing up!" Here is certainly a very important suggestion, and one which, recognising justice as a blind G.o.ddess, is strictly in conformity with the impersonation. Nothing could possibly be farther removed from the dangers of undue influence than decisions obtained in this manner.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 230]

Not only are all the prejudices and party bearings of individual jurors avoided, but an honest and manly oblivion of all the evidence which might bias men if left to the guidance of their poor and erring faculties, is thus secured. It is human to err, says the poet moralist; and so the jurymen in question discovered, and would therefore rather refer a knotty question to another deity than Justice, whom men call Fortune. How much would it simplify our complex and gnarled code, the introduction of this system? In the next place, juries need not be any longer empannelled, the judge could "sky the copper" himself. The only question would be, to have a fair halfpenny. See with what rapidity the much-cavilled court would dispatch public business! I think I see our handsome Chief of the Common Pleas at home here, with his knowing eye watching the vibrations of the coin, and calling out in his sonorous tone, "Head--the plaintiff has it. Call another case." I peep into the Court of Chancery, and behold Sir Edward twirling the penny with more cautious fingers, and then with his sharp look and sharper voice, say, "Tail! Take a rule for the defendant."

No longer shall we hear objections as to the sufficiency of legal knowledge possessed by those in the judgment-seat. There will be no petty likings for this, and dis-likings for that court; no changes of venue; no challenges of the jury; even Lord Brougham himself, of whom Sir Edward remarked, "What a pity it was he did not know a little law, for then he would have known a little of everything"--even he might be a chancellor once more. What a power of patronage it would give each succeeding ministry to know that capacity was of no consequence; and that the barrister of six years' standing could turn his penny as well as the leader in Chancery. Public business need never be delayed a moment; and if the Chief Baron were occupied in chamber, the crier of the court could perform his functions till he came back again.