Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 67, No. 416, June 1850
Let us now see what sort of government Mr Carlyle would propose for our adoption, guidance, and regeneration. Some kind of shapes are traceable even in fog-banks, and the analogy encourages us to persevere in our Latter-day researches.
Mr Carlyle is decidedly of opinion that it is our business to find out the very Noblest possible man to undertake the whole job. What he means by Noblest is explicitly stated. "It is the Noblest, not the Sham-Noblest; it is God Almighty's Noble, not the Court-Tailor's Noble, nor the Able-Editor's Noble, that must in some approximate degree be raised to the supreme place; he and not a counterfeit – under penalties." This Noblest, it seems, is to have a select series or staff of Noblers, to whom shall be confided the divine everlasting duty of directing and controlling the Ignoble. The mysterious process by means of which "the Noblest" is to be elevated – when he is discovered – is not indicated, but the intervention of ballot-boxes is indignantly disclaimed. "The Real Captain, unless it be some Captain of mechanical Industry hired by Mammon, where is he in these days? Most likely, in silence, in sad isolation somewhere, in remote obscurity; trying if, in an evil ungoverned time, he cannot at least govern himself." There are limits to human endurance, and we maintain that we have a right to call upon Mr Carlyle either to produce this remarkable Captain, or to indicate his whereabouts. He tells us that time is pressing – that we are moving in the midst of goblins, and that everything is going to the mischief for want of this Noblest of his. Well, then, we say, where is this Captain of yours? Let us have a look at him – give us at least a guess as to his outward marks and locality – does he live in Chelsea or Whitehall Gardens; or has he been, since the general emigration of the Stags, trying to govern himself in sad isolation and remote obscurity at Boulogne? If you know anything about him, out with it – if not, why pester the public with these sheets of intolerable twaddle?
As to the Nobler gentry, who are to surround the Noblest, whenever that Cromwell Redivivus shall appear, there is, in Mr Carlyle's opinion, no such pitiable uncertainty. They may not, perhaps, be altogether as plentiful as blackberries on an autumnal hedge, yet nevertheless they are to be found. "Who are available to your offices in Downing Street?" quoth he. "All the gifted souls, of every rank, who are born to you in this generation. These are appointed, by the true eternal 'divine right' which will never become obsolete, to be your governors and administrators; and precisely as you employ them, or neglect to employ them, will your State be favoured of Heaven or disfavoured. This noble young soul, you can have him on either of two conditions; and on one of them, since he is here in the world, you must have him. As your ally and coadjutor; or failing that, as your natural enemy: which shall it be?" Now, this we call speaking to the point. We are acquainted, more or less intimately, with some couple of dozen "noble young souls," all very clever fellows in their way, who have not the slightest objections to take permanent quarters in Downing Street, if anybody will make it worth their while; and we undertake to show that the dullest of them is infinitely superior, in point of intellect and education, to the present Secretary of the Board of Control. But are all the noble young souls, without exception, to be provided for at the public expense? Really, in these economical times, such a proposal sounds rather preposterous; yet even Mr Carlyle does not insinuate that the noble young souls will do any work without a respectable modicum of pay. On the contrary, he seems to admit that, without pay, they are likely to be found in the opposition. Various considerations crowd upon us. Would it have been a correct or a creditable thing for M. Guizot to have placed in office all the noble young souls of the National, simply by way of keeping them out of mischief? The young nobility connected with that creditable print certainly did contrive to scramble into office along the ridges of the barricades, and a very nice business they made of it when they came to try their hands at legislation. But perhaps Mr Carlyle would only secure talent of the very highest description. Well, then, what kind of talent? Are we to look out for the best poets, and make them Secretaries of State? The best Secretaries of State we have known in our day, were about as poor poets as could be imagined; and we are rather apprehensive that the converse of the proposition might likewise be found to hold good.
"How sweet an Ovid was in Melbourne lost!"
sighed a Whig critic, commenting with rapture on some of that nobleman's early lucubrations; and yet, after all, we have no reason to think that the roll of British bards has been impoverished by the accidental exclusion. Flesh and blood could not have endured a second tragedy from Lord John Russell, and yet the present Premier, despite of Don Carlos, is thought by some partial friends to cut a tolerably decent figure as a politician. As to that, we shall venture no opinion. Mr Carlyle, however, is clear for the poets. Listen to his instance.
"From the lowest and broadest stratum of Society, where the births are by the million, there was born, almost in our own memory, a Robert Burns; son of one who 'had not capital for his poor moor-farm of twenty pounds a-year.' Robert Burns never had the smallest chance to get into Parliament, much as Robert Burns deserved, for all our sakes, to have been found there. For the man, – it was not known to men purblind, sunk in their poor dim vulgar element, but might have been known to men of insight who had any loyalty, or any royalty of their own, – was a born-king of men: full of valour, of intelligence and heroic nobleness; fit for far other work than to break his heart among poor mean mortals, gauging beer. Him no ten-pound Constituency chose, nor did any Reforming Premier."
Of course they did not, and why should they? If Burns was alive at the present moment, in the full glory of his intellect and strength, would any sensible constituency think of sending him to Parliament? Of all the trash that Mr Carlyle has ever written – and there is a good deal of it, – this about Robert Burns, whom he calls the "new Norse Thor," not being selected as a statesman, is perhaps the most insufferable. The vocation of a poet is, we presume, to sing; to pour forth his heart in noble, animating, or touching strains; not to discuss questions of policy, or to muddle his brains over Blue Books, or the interminable compilations of Mr Porter. Not so thinks Carlyle. He would have shut up Burns in Downing Street, debarred him from the indulgence of verse, and clapped him at the head of a Board of Poor-law Commissioners. "And the meagre Pitt, and his Dundasses, and red-tape Phantasms (growing very ghastly now to think of) did not in the least know or understand, the impious god-forgetting mortals, that Heroic Intellects, if Heaven were pleased to send such, were the one salvation for the world and for them and all of us." Mr Carlyle seems to have most original notions on the subject of nature's gifts. It would be as reasonable to say that, because a nightingale sings more sweetly than its compeers, it ought to be taken to the house and trained as a regular falcon.
We are very far indeed from wishing to maintain that literary men may not be possessed of every quality which is most desirable in a statesman. But instances of this combination are rare, and on the whole we think that our "Heroic Intellects," and "noble young souls," will acquit themselves most creditably by following out the peculiar bent of their own genius. If they have any political tendency, it will develop itself in due season; but we protest, most strenuously, against a Parliament of men of genius, or a cabinet of literateurs. We have seen quite enough of that in other countries. A more laughable spectacle, if it had not also been painful, than the Frankfort chamber, composed very much of suchlike materials, was never given to public gaze. Old Ludwig Uhland, for all the appearance he made, had better have stuck to his ballads. In France, Victor Hugo, whose name is second in literature to none, cuts a most sorry figure. Even Lamartine is sadly out of his place, though a longer experience of the Chamber saves him from incurring that constant ridicule which is the reward of his dramatic brother. Eugene Sue, we observe, is another noble young soul, who is panting for political renown. Far be it from us to anticipate his final destiny: as to his deservings, there can be little difference of opinion.
It cannot be denied that exceptions, and very plausible ones, might be taken to the very best ministry ever formed, on the score of talent. Nay, even that ministry known by the distinguishing title of "all the Talents," could hardly have borne a searching scrutiny. But, upon the whole, we are by no means convinced that a Cabinet of uniform brilliancy is a thing to be desired. One light would be apt to burn emulously beside another. Moreover talent, though an excellent and admirable quality, is not the only requisite for a statesman. Barrington was one of the cleverest fellows of his day; yet it might have been somewhat hazardous to trust him with the keys of the Treasury. There have been in our own time in the House of Commons divers noble young souls, of great and undoubted talent, whose accession to office would by no means have increased the confidence of the public in Ministers. And there are men now in the House of Commons who, to a certain extent, agree with Mr Carlyle, and complain very bitterly that talent is not allowed to occupy its proper place. At a meeting of the National Reform Association held on 23d April last, Mr W. J. Fox, M.P. for Oldham, is reported to have said – "That the great object they had in view was a social revolution, not gained by blood, or disturbing the constitution, but raising the aristocracy of intelligence and morality to a place beside the cliques which had ruled the country merely by the influence of property and wealth… An open career to talent was a favourite maxim of Napoleon, who, so far as he had acted on it, gave the signal for a great change in the public mind. He hoped that responsibility would assume the place now held by the interests and privileges of family cliques, and that talent would thus be made true to its duties and instincts." Here is another Heroic Intellect quite ready to take office if he can get it, and ready, moreover, to put the ballot-box and all manner of extended suffrage into motion, in order that he may attain his object. We have no doubt that Mr Fox is a very clever person, and also that he is fully imbued with the same gratifying impression; nevertheless, we are free to confess that we would rather see him on the outside, than in the interior of the hen-roost of Downing Street. There may be persons within it who might as well, on public considerations, be out; but there are also many without, who, notwithstanding their vaunted breadth of intellect, should be kept from getting in. Will Mr Fox venture to aver that, in Britain, there is not an open career for talent? Now, as ever, talent will not fail in its aim, provided its possessor is endowed with other qualities and virtues which are requisite to command success by securing confidence and esteem.
Let us now suppose that Mr Carlyle has succeeded in his quest after capable men – that he has fairly bolted his Noblest, like an overgrown badger, from the hole in which he lies presently concealed, and has surrounded him with a staff of the Nobler, including, we presume, the author of the Latter-day Pamphlets. Noblest and Nobler must now go to work in serious earnest, taking some order with the flabby monsters, laughing hyænas, predatory wolves, and blue, or blue and yellow devils, which abound in this New Era. What is the first step to be adopted? We find it in No. I.
We have transcribed already the commencement of the speech to be made by the new British Minister to the assembled paupers – let us hear a few sentences —
"But as for you, my indigent incompetent friends, I have to repeat, with sorrow but with perfect clearness, what is plainly undeniable, and is even clamorous to get itself admitted, that you are of the nature of slaves, – or if you prefer the word of nomadic, and now even vagrant and vagabond servants that can find no master on those terms; which seems to me a much uglier word. Emancipation? You have been emancipated with a vengeance! Foolish souls! I say the whole world cannot emancipate you. Fealty to ignorant unruliness, to gluttonous sluggish Improvidence, to the Beerpot and the Devil, who is there that can emancipate a man in that predicament? Not a whole Reform Bill, a whole French Revolution executed for his behoof alone."
In this style, Noblest proceeds for a page or two, haranguing the unlucky paupers upon the principle that poverty is crime; taunting them with previous doles of Indian meal and money, and informing them that the Workhouses are thenceforward inexorably shut. Finally, he announces that they are to be embodied into industrial regiments, with proper officers; and marched off "to the Irish Bogs, to the vacant desolations of Connaught now falling into Cannibalism, to mis-tilled Connaught, to ditto Munster, Leinster, Ulster, I will lead you; to the English fox covers, furze-grown Commons, New Forests, Salisbury Plains; likewise to the Scotch Hillsides, and bare rushy slopes which as yet feed only sheep." All these are to be tilled by the slave regiments under the following penalties for recusancy. "Refuse to strike into it; shirk the heavy labour, disobey the rules – I will admonish and endeavour to incite you; if in vain, I will flog you; if still in vain, I will at last shoot you, – and make God's Earth, and the forlorn-hope in God's Battle, free of you. Understand it, I advise you!" O rare Thomas Carlyle!
The language in which this significant and notable plan is conveyed, is more original than the plan itself. Other Liberals than Mr Carlyle have propounded the doctrine that the pauper is a slave of the state. A century and a half ago, Fletcher of Saltoun wrote a treatise to that effect, and probably a more determined republican than Fletcher never stepped in upper leathers. But somehow or other, although Scotland was then less scrupulous in matters of personal freedom than the sister kingdom, the scheme was by no means received with acclamation. Heritable jurisdictions were all very well in their way, but the idea of reducing the peasantry to the state of Russian serfdom, was rather more than the free parliament of the Scots Estates could contrive to stomach. It has been very shrewdly remarked that there is a wide circle in politics, whereof the connecting link lies between ultra-liberalism and absolute tyranny. Mr Carlyle, without meaning it, gives us a fair exemplification of this in the present pamphlets. Messrs Cobden and Bright afford us an unmistakeable exemplification of it, in their endeavours to frustrate the operation of the Ten Hours' Bill. M. Ledru Rollin demonstrated it in his circulars, on the occasion of the first French republican election. Liberty is a beautiful term, but its true signification is unknown to the thorough-paced demagogue.
According to the spirit of the British laws, labour can only be enforced as the penalty of crime. Mr Carlyle would change this, and would place the pauper upon precisely the same level as the convict. We are not prepared to say that some important improvements might not be made in the practical operation of the poor-laws. We have read various pamphlets, published in this city and elsewhere, which strenuously recommend the employment of the able-bodied poor in the reclaiming of waste lands, and their immediate removal from the towns. There is, however, much more philanthropy than philosophy in these schemes. In order to discover a proper remedy, we ought in every case to direct our primary attention to the nature and origin of the disease; and this is precisely what our modern philanthropists neglect to do. People do not crowd into towns of their own choice. Give them their free will, and the means of subsistence, and one and all of them will prefer the fresh air, and the sights and sounds of nature, to the stifling atmosphere, the reeking filth, and the discordant cries of the city lanes and courts. But no such free will exists: the balance has not been kept between the country and the towns. No encouragement has been given to the small manufactures, which in former times were the support of villages now rapidly falling into decay. The gigantic power of machinery, set in motion by large capital, has nearly abolished the hand-loom. Worsted knitting, yarn-spinning, straw-plaiting, are now rendered almost profitless occupations. In order to live, the villagers have been forced to migrate to the towns. We need hardly refer to the earliest of the Free-trade measures, which, by substituting Spanish barilla for kelp, threw whole districts of the West Highlands at once into a state of pauperism. At this moment, a new cause is aggravating the evil. The stagnation of agricultural employment occasioned by the abolition of the corn duties, has given a new impetus to rural emigration; and those who cannot afford their passage to foreign parts naturally seek refuge in the towns. In another year – if the experiment should be continued so long – the effects of this last change will become more evident than they are now. The able-bodied ploughman is the last of the agricultural class who will suffer. Those who have already been compelled to change their homes, or to go upon the parish-list, are the cottars, who derived their subsistence from the employment given them by resident proprietors. So long as encouragement to agricultural improvement existed, these poor people never wanted work; but now the calamitous fall in the price of produce, and the prospect of a great diminution of rents, have compelled the landlords to discontinue their improvements, and to reduce the expenses of their establishments to the lowest possible limit. In this way, country labour is lessened, and town labour, by the increasing competition of hands, is cheapened. This is the true secret of all those startling revelations as to the misery, want, and positive oppression of the working classes which have lately appeared in the public journals, and which have engendered in the minds of many a natural despair as to the destiny of a state in which such things are suffered to exist. The remedy undoubtedly is neither an easy nor a speedy one; still, it is by no means to be included in the category of impossibilities. Machinery, which is the first great cause of British pauperism, cannot indeed be checked, but it may very easily be taxed. "An acre of land," says a late eminent writer, "if cultivated, must pay a tithe of its productions to support the religion of the state, and an equal contribution with any other property in respect of the poor, county, and church rates; but mechanical power may exercise its productive faculty ad infinitum, with but a trifling reference or liability to either the one or the other. The building may be rated at £200, £500, or £1000 a-year, but it has a power within it which, as compared with landed property rated at the same amount, will produce a hundredfold as great a return – a principle in legislation as deteriorating in its operation on the masses as it is unjust to individuals." That machinery, which has changed the whole character of our population, and which, in fact, has been the means of creating this stern reality of pauperism, is not taxed upon the principle of its productive power. That it should be so, seems evident upon the smallest reflection. Land is not taxed on the principle of acreage, but on that of value, which again depends entirely on production. Why should not the manufactory be rated in the same manner? It is true that, by such a measure as this, pauperism could not be removed, but it would be materially checked, for the fair proportion of the burden would thus be thrown on the shoulders of those who occasioned it. But nothing effectual can be done until the nation has finally determined what policy it is to pursue for the future, and in all time coming, with respect to native industry. If Free Trade is to go on, pauperism must continue like a Upas tree to spread and overshadow the land. It is not within the range of possibility that this can be otherwise. No church-extension, education, cheap literature, ventilation, sewerage, public baths, or model lodging-houses, can avail to mitigate the evil. It is town competition – made triply worse by the operation of low tariffs – which is driving the working classes to the verge of the pit of despair; and that town competition is increasing, and will increase, so long as a fresh daily supply of hands is driven from country labour. The scheme of the philanthropists to whom we have referred, is to take the surplusage from the towns and to send them to the country. This, in the present state of matters, is about as feasible an undertaking as if we were to try to make a stream of water run up-hill. Why, the misery and indigence which they seek to relieve, is not the result of mere idleness, dissipation, or profligacy – it arises from over-competition in one department of industry, occasioned by the utter want of profitable employment in another. There would be no need of industrial regiments to cultivate the soil, if its cultivation were allowed to be remunerative. But to set our pauper population at work upon anything which will not repay private enterprise is mere delusion. We have said this much upon a topic of the greatest interest, and the utmost importance, because we are convinced that many persons, who are fully impressed with the magnitude of the evil, have mistaken the remedy from the want of a due consideration of the causes from whence that evil has arisen. It is, however, a subject too large for incidental discussion, and we shall probably return to it on a future occasion, when we can state our views without reference to the whimsical vagaries of Mr Carlyle.
So then, the Noblest having made his speech, and wound up with a significant hint of flogging and pistoling every one of the unfortunate serfs who shall fail to wield the hoe with becoming alacrity, what next? Nothing more, in so far as the interests of the working classes are concerned; at least nothing tangible. Perhaps it would be absurd to expect anything more. The man who can propound a scheme to rid us of pauperism, with all its concomitant misery, would be a greater benefactor to the commonwealth, and to the human race, than a thousand Howards in one. Mr Carlyle is perhaps the most strenuous advocate for work that we ever encountered. He would have made a first-rate taskmaster under the old Egyptian economy. He is, with great reason, indignant at the state to which our West Indian Colonies have been reduced by means of Exeter Hall emancipation, and he scouts emancipation itself as a gross delusion of the fiend. It is to be regretted that his views have been so late of ripening. Time was, when a fair and common-sense protest, advanced by a Liberal philosopher, against the absurdity of attempting to change the hue of the Ethiopian by a single momentary scrubbing, might have been of some actual use: now, it is in vain to recommend a protracted application of the tub. The Noblest, when Mr Carlyle has discovered him and put him forward, will hardly achieve his ends by using the following language, even supposing that he wielded the lightning, and were able to put his threats into execution.
"Beautiful Black Peasantry, who have fallen idle, and have got the Devil at your elbow; interesting White Felonry, who are not idle, but have enlisted into the Devil's regiments of the line, – know that my benevolence for you is comparatively trifling! What I have of that divine feeling is due to others, not to you. A universal Sluggard-and-Scoundrel Protection Society is not the one I mean to institute in these times, where so much wants protection, and is sinking to sad issues for want of it! The scoundrel needs no protection. The scoundrel that will hasten to the gallows, why not rather clear the way for him? Better he reach his goal and outgate by the natural proclivity, than be so expensively dammed up and detained, poisoning everything as he stagnates and meanders along, to arrive at last a hundred times fouler, and swollen a hundred times bigger! Benevolent men should reflect on this. – And you Quashee, my pumpkin, – (not a bad fellow either, this poor Quashee, when tolerably guided!) – idle Quashee, I say you must get the Devil sent away from your elbow, my poor dark friend! In this world there will be no existence for you otherwise. No, not as the brother of your folly will I live beside you. Please to withdraw out of my way, if I am not to contradict your folly and amend it, and put it in the stocks if it will not amend. By the Eternal Maker! it is on that footing alone that you and I can live together. And if you had respectable traditions dated from beyond Magna Charta, or from beyond the Deluge, to the contrary, and written sheepskins that would thatch the face of the world, – behold I, for one individual, do not believe said respectable traditions, nor regard said written sheepskins, except as things which you, till you grow wiser, will believe. Adieu, Quashee; I will wish you better guidance than you have had of late."
The meaning of this passage is, that the black population of our colonies ought no longer to be permitted to dwell in perfect idleness in their provision grounds, rearing pumpkins for their own consumption, without regard to the cultivation of the sugar-cane. As we have already remarked, this view is somewhat of the latest; nevertheless truth, like repentance, can never come too late to be received. Divorced from the folly of his speech, Mr Carlyle's sentiment is sound. Twenty millions of British money, wrung from the hard-taxed labour of our people, were given – for what? Not only to emancipate the Negroes, but to place them in such a position that they could effectually control their former masters – our own colonists and countrymen, to whom our faith was solemnly plighted for the maintenance of their privileges and commerce. Let it be granted that slavery was a gross sin, was it incumbent upon us to elevate the emancipated Blacks so high, that they could control the labour market – to give them the status of untaxed yoemen, without any security for the slightest manifestation of their gratitude? It was more than preposterous that those whose freedom was purchased should be placed in a better position, and invested with more immunity from labour and want, than the great bulk of the people who made the sacrifice in order to secure that freedom; and the result has amply demonstrated the gross folly of the scheme. There are thousands, nay millions of men in Britain and Ireland, whose lot, compared with that of the emancipated Blacks of Jamaica, is one of speechless misery – and yet their cry to be relieved from a competition which is crushing them down to the dust, is unheard and uncared for amidst the din of contending politicians, and the perpetual hum of the busy proselytes of Mammon.
Here we cannot forbear from quoting a characteristic passage from Mr Carlyle's tracts. The idea is not original, but the handling is worthy of Astley's humourist; and we commend it to the special attention of all free-trading philanthropists.
"Certainly Emancipation proceeds with rapid strides among us, this good while; and has got to such a length as might give rise to reflections in men of a serious turn. West Indian Blacks are emancipated, and it appears refuse to work. Irish Whites have long been entirely emancipated; and nobody asks them to work, or on condition of finding them potatoes (which, of course, is indispensable) permits them to work. Among speculative persons, a question has sometimes risen. In the progress of Emancipation, are we to look for a time when all the Horses also are to be emancipated, and brought to the supply-and-demand principle? Horses too have 'motives;' are acted on by hunger, fear, hope, love of oats, terror of platted leather; nay they have vanity, ambition, emulation, thankfulness, vindictiveness; some rude outline of all our human spiritualities, – a rude resemblance to us in mind and intelligence, even as they have in bodily frame. The Horse, poor dumb four-footed fellow, he too has his private feelings, his affections, gratitudes; and deserves good usage; no human master, without crime, shall treat him unjustly either, or recklessly lay on the whip where it is not needed: – I am sure if I could make him 'happy,' I should be willing to grant a small vote (in addition to the late twenty millions) for that object!
"Him, too, you occasionally tyrannise over; and with bad result to yourselves among others; using the leather in a tyrannous, unnecessary manner; withholding, or scantily furnishing, the oats and ventilated stabling that are due. Rugged horse-subduers, one fears they are a little tyrannous at times. 'Am I not a horse, and half-brother?' To remedy which, so far as remediable, fancy – the horses all 'emancipated;' restored to their primeval right of property in the grass of this Globe; turned out to graze in an independent supply-and-demand manner! So long as grass lasts, I daresay they are very happy, or think themselves so. And Farmer Hodge sallying forth, on a dry spring morning, with a sieve of oats in his hand, and agony of eager expectation in his heart, is he happy? Help me to plough this day, Black Dobbin; oats in full measure if thou wilt. 'Hlunh! No – thank!' snorts Black Dobbin; he prefers glorious liberty and the grass. Bay Darby, wilt not thou perhaps? 'Hlunh!' Gray Joan, then, my beautiful broad-bottomed mare, – O Heaven! she too answers Hlunh! Not a quadruped of them will plough a stroke for me. Corn-crops are ended in this world! – For the sake, if not of Hodge, then of Hodge's horses, one prays this benevolent practice might now cease, and a new and a better one try to begin. Small kindness to Hodge's horses to emancipate them! The fate of all emancipated horses is, sooner or later, inevitable. To have in this habitable earth no grass to eat, – in black Jamaica gradually none, as in White Connemara already none; – to roam aimless, wasting the seed-fields of the world; and be hunted home to Chaos, by the dire watch-dogs and dire hell-dogs, with such horrors of forsaken wretchedness as were never seen before! These things are not sport; they are terribly true, in this country at this hour."
One other sham, perhaps the greatest which our age has witnessed, Mr Carlyle accidentally denounces – we mean the late Colonial policy. If the Whigs have an official aptitude for anything, it is the coopering up of Constitutions. Is one colony indignant at some outrage or insult proceeding from headquarters – is another dissatisfied with the conduct of the Governor, and urgent for his recall – is a third aggrieved by the commercial vacillation and fiscal measures of a Parliament in which it has neither voice nor power – the universal panacea is, Give them a Constitution! We hope the present Ministry will profit by the following criticism – not volunteered by us, who neither look upon them with affection, nor entertain any sanguine hope of their conversion to a patriotic policy, – but penned by a writer who, not long ago, was considered by their organs as one of the deepest thinkers of the age.