Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 66, No. 410, December 1849
Setting aside the mere financial consideration of the tariff question; losing sight, for a while, of the great accession of revenue it is universally admitted that Spain would derive from an honest and effectual reduction of her import-duties on manufactures, which she herself can produce only of inferior quality and at exorbitant rates; losing sight, also, of the moral obligation there is upon her to adopt all such measures, not injurious to any great class of the community,13 as shall enable her to pay her way, and acquit her debts to home and foreign creditors, – temporarily averting our view, we say, from these considerations, we fix it upon others whose weight none will deny. What are the chief causes to which the major part of the crime, misery, and degradation prevalent amongst the lower classes in Spain, is attributed, by all impartial observers of her social condition? They are three in number. The demoralisation produced by smuggling; the burdens upon agriculture, and impediments to its progress; the high prices the peasant is compelled to pay for the most necessary manufactures. Upon the evil of smuggling we need not dwell, nor dilate upon the ease of the transition from defrauding the government to robbing upon the highway, and from shooting a douanier to murdering the traveller who may be so rash as to defend his purse. By the lower classes in Spain the smuggler is admired and respected, and his calling is deemed gallant and honourable; by the classes above him he is tolerated, and often employed. His random, perilous, fly-by-night manner of life, made up of alternate periods of violent exertion and excitement, and perfect idleness and relaxation, exactly suits his taste and temperament: it will be hard to wean him from his illicit pursuits, though they should so decline in profit as only to yield him bread, garlic, and tobacco. You must find him occupation profitable and to his taste before you can reclaim him; for he will not dig, and would rather rob than beg. Whenever such import-duties are adopted in Spain as will really stop smuggling, there will undoubtedly be a great increase of crimes against property, innumerable bands of robbers will spring up, and probably there will also be risings under political banners. The present moment is by no means unpropitious for the experiment. The government of Spain has perhaps the power, but we doubt that it has the will. We have shown cause for believing that the recent change will prove delusive, and of small benefit. If we are mistaken – and it is very difficult to decide beforehand of the result of Spanish measures – we shall sincerely rejoice.
We have already observed that, whilst the brunt of taxation is borne in Spain by agriculture, that interest obtains in return scarcely any of the facilities and encouragements to which it is fairly entitled. Spain is the rash child that would run before it can walk, and consequently falls upon its face. She dashes headlong at the greatest and most costly improvements realised by other countries; forgetting that she has stood still whilst they moved onwards, and that a wise man gets a bed to lie upon before troubling himself about a silken coverlet. In all the arts of life Spain is immeasurably inferior to most other European nations. In agricultural implements, in carts and other vehicles of transport, in her methods of elaborating her products, and her means of carrying them, she is centuries behind all the world. Vast tracts of her territory are desolate for want of that irrigation for which modern ingenuity and invention have devised such great facilities: the broad waters of her mighty rivers, which in other countries would be alive with traffic and bordered with villages, are choked and desolate. "The Guadalquivir, navigable in the time of the Romans as far as Cordova, is now scarcely practicable for sailing vessels of a moderate size up to Seville."14 Few are the boats, scanty the dwellings, upon the green waves and flower-grown shores of Tagus and Ebro. When these glorious natural arteries are thus neglected, we need not expect artificial ones. Canals are sadly wanted, and have been often planned, but they have got no farther than the want and the project. As to roads, the main lines are good, but they are few, diverging from the capital to the various frontiers; and the cross-roads (where there are any,) and the country tracks, are mostly execrable, and often impassable for wheels. But all this, we are informed by the Revue des Deux Mondes, is on the eve of a thorough change. "Labour, like credit," says that periodical, in its article on Spain, "has received a beneficial impulse. The roads are repaired, the means of water-conveyance are being improved or terminated, railroads are begun. The creation of a vast system (ensemble) of adjacent roads will soon connect all parts of the territory with these vivifying arteries." We scarcely know which is most admirable; the cleverness that contrives to condense so many misstatements into so few words, or this tone of candour, conviction, and philanthropical exultation. As regards the impulse given to Spanish credit, it is but a few days since we read, with some astonishment at the barbarity and impudence of the plan (emanating though it does from a Spanish finance minister), the arrangement by which Mr Bravo Murillo, in order to diminish the acknowledged deficit in the budget for the year 1850, mulcts the army and state functionaries of a month's pay, and pensioners and half-pay men of two months' means of subsistence, besides wiping out, in a still more unceremonious manner, other pressing claims upon the treasury. The budget itself is a truly curious document. The customs' revenue is swollen by the supposed profits of the new tariff; the expenses of the war department are boldly set down at a reduction which must accord rather with Mr Murillo's wish than with his expectations. On the debit side figure also the claims of the public creditor, for much less than is due, certainly, but for far more than will be paid. The result of the estimate is, as usual, most satisfactory, or would be so, at least, if there were the slightest chance of its justification by the actual receipts and expenditure of the year for which it is made. To return, however, to the improvements and public works announced by the Revue des Deux Mondes. We certainly find in the budget a sum of about three hundred thousand pounds – something more than half the involuntary contribution wrung from the unhappy employés and pensioners – set down to roads, railways, and canals. Is this magnificent sum to complete the valuable water-communications and the network of roads promised to expectant Spain? Hardly, even if applied as appropriated, which little enough of it ever will be. As to railways, they are certainly begun, but that is as much as can be said. There is a thirty mile railroad open between Barcelona and Mataro, upon which accidents seem of pretty frequent occurrence; and that said, we have said all. A good many others have been planned, involving the most magnificent projects of tunnels through chains of mountains, viaducts over great rivers, cuttings through dense forests, and the like; and at some of these there may be attempts at work, enough to justify demands for funds; but their termination is altogether another matter in a country where, according to its national proverb, things are begun late, and never finished. Doubtless it is a satisfaction to Spanish pride, when it sees other European countries veined with iron tracks, to be able to talk of Spanish railroads as things that are not only projected, but begun. A great country like Spain must not lag behind in the race of improvement, and its natives would deem themselves humiliated if they did not attempt to have what England, France, and Germany enjoy. Nothing can escape these ambitious hidalgos. They have heard of the electric telegraph, and it is easy to discern, by newspaper paragraphs, that they are agog for the novelty, although the country has just been put to considerable expense by the completion and improvement of the aërial semaphores. These work very well, the Diario Mercantil of Valencia told us the other day; but fogs are a great nuisance, the electric plan is much better and surer, and a German company has offered to lay any length of wires at the rate of two hundred pounds sterling per league; and the Diario trusts the government will keep the matter in view, and adopt the new system, if it can be done without obstacles arising from political disturbances, and from the ignorance and malevolence of the people. If the electric telegraph were to await the completion of the "vivifying arteries" of railroad promised by the more sanguine friends of Spain, the German company would do well to offer its services elsewhere; but evidently there is some notion of carrying the posts and wires across country, over sierras and despoblados, with boards, no doubt, affixed here and there, requesting the public, to "protect the telegraph." How long the posts would stand – how long the wires might escape injury from the superstitious peasantry, or from robbers and smugglers, interested in retarding the transmission of their misdeeds, is another question. Really, to use a popular comparison, the establishment of electric telegraphs on Spanish soil seems to us about as necessary and sensible as to affix a gilt handle to the door of a pig-stye. Not that we would, in any way, assimilate to the unclean beast our friends the Spaniards, whom we greatly esteem, and desire to see more prosperous: but thus it is with them ever. They would fain pass over the rudiments, and attain at a bound that height of civilisation which other nations have reached only by a toilsome and patient progress.
The dearness of most manufactured goods in Spain, and especially of the commonest and, as Englishmen would consider, most essential articles of clothing, is, we are fully convinced, a grave impediment to the moral and physical progress of the lower classes of Spaniards. If, quitting certain frontier districts, where smuggling gains diffuse a fallacious appearance of prosperity, we penetrate into the interior of the country, we behold a rural population sunk in filth and sloth, wrapped in squalid woollen rags, basking listlessly in the sun, dwelling oftentimes in community with their domestic animals. Yet, give him but the means, and no man more than this self-same Spanish peasant loves clean linen and neat attire. If he is dirty and shirtless, and afflicted with vermin and impurities, it is because he has never had the means of being otherwise. How can he, out of his scanty earnings, supply himself with the calico shirt and clean jacket of jean or flannel which, in the countries of their manufacture, are within the reach of the poorest labourer, but whose price is trebled, before they reach him in Spain, by exorbitant smuggling premiums or import-duty, and by an expensive and defective system of transport. We cannot agree with those who assert the Spaniard of the lower class to be a born idler, who will never willingly do more work than procures him the day's frugal meal. We have too great faith in his natural good qualities to receive this opinion otherwise than as a calumny. At any rate, before deciding thus harshly, give him a chance, which he has never yet had; show him the possibility, which he has never yet seen, of attaining, by his own exertions, to comfort and respectability; put the necessaries of life within his reach, which they have never yet been, and spur him, with his own pride, to cleanliness and industry. Teach him, in short, self-respect, which he can hardly feel in his present sunken condition, and, rely upon it, he will make an effort and take a start.
It is not our intention to dwell upon the recent temporary displacement of the Narvaez ministry, at the very moment when its stability and power seemed most assured, when the exultation of its partisans was the loudest, and the subjection of the nation most complete. The singular manner of the change, the ignoble agents by whom it was immediately effected, the obscurity and inaptitude of the individuals who for a moment made their apparition at the helm, to be at the next thrown overboard; the strangely heedless and inconsistent conduct of the young Queen, and the ambiguous attitude of her mother, have found abundant commentators, and the whole episode has been wittily and not unjustly compared to one of those old Spanish comedies based on a palace intrigue. We cannot, however, admit that the entire glory of the curious and abortive plot belongs to the apostolical camarilla which is alleged to exist in the palace, and to consist, amongst others, of the feeble and bigoted king-consort, of a fanatical confessor, a hysterical nun, a jesuitical secretary, and others of similar stamp. Time will probably dissipate part of the mystery that now envelops the affair; but, even now, those accustomed to watch the show will have shrewd suspicious whose are the hands that pulled the wires and made the dull puppets dance. The hands showed little skill, it will perhaps be urged, in the selection and manœuvring of the dolls. This objection will hardly stand. When a juggler misses his trick, it is still something if he hides his arm from his audience. And as to the incapacity of the agents, they were probably not employed until others, abler but less docile, had refused to act. We entertain little doubt in what quarter the attempt was fostered – perhaps concerted. Notwithstanding the outward cordiality of the French and Spanish governments, it is notorious that the old alliance between Queen Christina and a lately deposed monarch still exists, for the attainment of objects dear to both their hearts. In what manner these objects were to be advanced by the recent shuffle of the Spanish political cards, is not at first sight apparent. But we entertain scarcely the shadow of a doubt, that the arch-plotter whose influence has more than once wrought evil to Spain, had a hand in the game. We would be the last to press hardly upon the fallen. Did we feel tempted so to do, we should truly feel ourselves rebuked by the noble example of that illustrious Lady, who has forgotten the treachery of the king in the sorrows of the exile, and has extended that sympathy and kindness to the dweller in the English cottage, which she could not have been expected again to show to the inmate of the French palace. We are guarded, then, in the expression of our regret, that one who, by the pursuit of purely personal objects, has been the cause of great calamities to his native land, should still indulge his dynastic ambition at the expense of the tranquillity of another country, previously indebted to him for much discord and misery. And we deem it a painful sight when a man whose years already exceed the average span of human existence is still engrossed by plans of unscrupulous aggrandisement, still busied with Machiavelian intrigues, still absorbed in the baser things of earth, instead of addressing himself to considerations of higher import, earning by his virtues in adversity that respect refused to his conduct in prosperity, and passing the last days of his life – the posthumous ones of his royalty – resigned, revered, and beloved, like one who preceded him on his throne and in his banishment, and whose name was on his lips in the hour of his fall.
THE GREEN HAND
A "SHORT" YARN. – PART VI
"Well, ma'am," continued the naval man, on again resuming his narrative, "as I told you, the sudden hail of 'Land!' brought us all on deck in a twinkling, in the midst of my ticklish conversation with the Judge." "Hallo! you aloft!" shouted the chief officer himself, "d'ye hear, sirrah! use your eyes before hailing the deck!" "Land, sir!" came falling down again out of the sunlight; "land it is, sir, – broad away on our larboard bow, sir."
By this time it was about half-past nine, or ten o'clock, of the morning. Heading nearly due south-east, as we now were, the Indiaman's bowsprit ran up into the full white blaze of light, in which her flying jib-boom seemed to quiver and writhe far away from her like an eel in water; while the spread of her sails against it loomed twice as large as ordinary, from the sort of hazy double-edged look they had, with a twinkling thread of sun drawing all round them like a frame, as if one saw through a wrong-screwed glass. You'd have thought by the glance under the fore-course, over the ship's head-gratings, she was travelling off quietly into some no-man's-land or other, where it would be so bright we should all have to wear green spectacles: the light breeze being almost direct from nor'west, and so fairly in her favour, with the help of her studding-sails she was making wonderful progress for such a mere breath – about four knots to the hour, as I reckoned. The air aloft appeared in the mean time to be steadying and sucking, though the water kept smooth, and her bows scarce made a noise in it: the wide soft swells of the sea just floated up of a pale blue, and lifted her on, till she went seething gently down into it again; only, if you put your head over the starboard side, and listened, you thought you heard a sort of dull poppling ripple coming along the bends from round her counter. As for the line of horizon on one bow or the other, 'twas hardly to be made out at all, with a streaky white haze overlying it, up in the sky as it were, on both sides, behind the dazzle of light. However, the passengers were fancying all kinds of fine tropical matters lay hidden thereaway; and in fact, what with the notion of land after a long voyage, and what with the faint specks of bright cloud that seemed to be melting far off in the glare – to anyone last from Gravesend, that had never seen anything stranger than Richmond Hill of a Sunday, the whole thing ahead of the ship would have rather an enchanted sort of a look. At length the third mate was seen to shove his spy-glass together in the top-gallant cross-trees, and came slowly down the rigging. "Well, Mr Rickett?" said the chief officer, meeting him as he landed on deck. "Well, sir," said Rickett, "it is land after all, Mr Finch!" The mate rapped out an oath, and took another turn: Macleod screwed his mouth as if he were going to whistle, then pulled his red whiskers instead, and looked queer at Rickett; while Rickett stood peering into his spy-glass as he would have done into his hat, had he still been a foremast-man. The mate's eye met his, then turned to the passengers leaning over the poop-railing; and they all three walked to the capstan, where they began to overhaul the charts, and laid their heads together out of earshot.
Now, whether this said land just made out on the north-east, trended away back to south-east, as the clearer look of the horizon to starboard made one think, it was hard to say – though in that way of it, there were seemingly two plans for widening her distance. Either Finch might think it better to keep hold of a fair wind, and just edge her off enough to drop the point on her weather quarter – when, of course, if things stood as they were, we should soon set a good stretch of water betwixt us and the coast; or else they might brace direct round on the other tack, and head right south-west'ard, out to sea again: though if we were still in it, the current would set us every bit as much in its own direction as ever. Accordingly I sidled nearer to the capstan, and watched anxiously for what the third mate had to propose, after humming and hawing a little, and scratching his head under his cap for half a minute. "At any rate, Mr Finch, sir," said he, "more especially the captain being off charge, I may say, why, I'd advise ye, sir, to – ." Here he dropped his voice; but Finch apparently agreed to what he said.
"Ready about ship there!" said the second mate aloud to the boatswain forward; and in ten minutes afterwards the Seringapatam was fairly round, as I had expected, heading at a right angle to her former course, with the breeze before her starboard beam, and the sun blazing on the other. I walked forward to the bows, and actually started to hear how loud and clear the ripple had got under them of a sudden; meeting her with a plash, as if she were making six or seven knots headway, while the canvass seemed to draw so much stiffer aloft, you'd have supposed the breeze had freshened as soon as the helm was put down. The mates looked over the side and aloft, rubbing their hands and smiling to each other, as much as to say how fast she was hauling off the bad neighbourhood she was in, though the heat was as great as ever, and you didn't feel a breath more air below, nor see the water ruffle. To my notion, in fact, it was just the set of the current against her that seemingly freshened her way, the ship being now direct in its teeth; so that, of course, it would keep bearing her up all the time away north-eastward, with her own leeway to help it; and the less could any one notice the difference betwixt the water going past her side, and her passing the water. This tack of hers, which Rickett, no doubt, thought such a safe plan, might be the very one to put her in a really dangerous way yet; for when they did discover this under-tow, how were they to take her out of it, after all? Probably by trying to stand fair across the stream of it to southward, which, without three times the wind we had, would at best take us out many miles nearer the land it set upon, or leave us perhaps becalmed in the midst of it.
The truth was, that although I hadn't seen what like the land was, and couldn't have said, by the chart, where we were, I began to have a faint notion of whereabouts we possibly soon might be, from what I remembered hearing an old quartermaster in the Iris say, a couple of years before, regarding a particular spot on the south-west coast, where the currents at some seasons, as he phrased it, made a regular race-course meeting. The old fellow gave me also, at the time, some bearings of the nearest coast, with the landmarks at the mouth of a river a little farther north – which, he said, he would know if you set him down there of a dark night, though he had been in his bed at Gosport the minute before, if there was just a right streak of sky to the eastward – namely, a big black rock like two steps, and a block at the foot of them, somewhat the shape of a chipped holy-stone, running down on one side out of a high headland, like an admiral's cocked hat, with six mop-headed trees upon the root of the rock, for all the world like hairs on a wart. Here I recollected how my worthy authority pointed modestly for example to a case of the kind on his own nose. The opposite shore of its mouth was flat, with a heavy white surf; but it shut in so far upon the other, he said, that, steering from the south'ard, one would never know there was a river there at all. The Bambar he called it; but if he meant the Bembarooghe, we could scarcely be near it, or that much toward being abreast of St Helena. For all I saw, indeed, we might have nothing to eastward of us save a hard coast, or else the sandy coast farther down, shoaling out of sight of land! At any rate I knew we must have got into the tail of the great sea-stream from round the Cape of Good Hope, which would, no doubt, split out at sea on Viana's Bank, and turn partly to north-eastward thereabouts; so that it wasn't a very bad guess to suppose we were getting up somewhere near Cape Frio, the likeliest place in the world to find old Bob Martin's "maze," which we used to joke about so in the Iris.
What was done, though, required to be done quickly, and I looked about for Tom Westwood, till I saw him on the poop amongst the rest, talking again to Miss Hyde, as they all crowded towards the lee-quarter to watch the land-haze seemingly dropping stern. My heart swelled as it were into my throat, however, at such an appearance of good understanding betwixt the two, – whereas there was she, an hour ago that very morning, would scarce favour me with a look or a word! – and, for the life of me, I couldn't have spoken to Westwood at the time, much less gone hand in hand; for that matter, he didn't seem to be suspecting aught wrong to trouble himself about. What to say or do, either, I couldn't think; since the more he cut me out, and the less friendly I felt to him, the less could I risk the chance of showing us both up for what we were, – which, of course, would bring him in for the worst of it; as if I, by Jove, were, going to serve him some low trick for the sake of shoving him out with the young lady. Meantime I kept fidgeting about, as if the deck were too hot for me, snatching a glance now and then, in spite of myself, at Violet Hyde's fairy-like figure; so different from the rest of them, as she stretched eagerly from below the awning over the ship's quarter-gallery, trying to make out where the land lay, – now putting her little hand over her eyes to see better, then covering them altogether from the dazzle, as she drew in her head again and shook her bright brown hair in the shadow, answering Westwood – confound him! The Indian servant each time carefully poking out the red and yellow punkah-fringe for a cover over her, while the passengers were one and all ready to cry at not seeing the land, and leaving it behind. The Judge himself was the only man that seemed to have a dim notion of something queer in the whole case; for every few minutes he walked quietly to the break of the poop, where I noticed him cast a doubtful look down upon the "chief officer;" and when the surgeon came up, he asked anxiously how Captain Williamson was, and if he couldn't be seen below. However, the surgeon told him the captain had just fallen for the first time into a good sleep, and there was no admittance, but he was likely to be much better soon.
By this time there was no standing out from under the awnings, and the quarterdeck and poop had to be well swabbed to keep them at all cool, the steam of it rising inside with a pitchy hempen sort of smell you never feel save in the Tropics; the Seringapatam still feeling the breeze aloft, and lifting on the water with a ripple forward, although her big courses went lapping fore and aft every time she swung. The long white haze on the horizon began to melt as the sun heightened, clearing from under the wake of the light, till now you could fairly see the sky to eastward. Near noon, in fact, we had almost dropped the haze altogether on the ship's quarter; and at first I was glad to see how much way she had made in the two hours, when, on second thoughts, and by noticing some marks in the loom of it, I had no doubt but though she might be farther off, why it was only while she set more up to north-eastward, – so that we were actually, so to speak, leaving it by getting nearer! However, as the men were at dinner, and most of the passengers gone off the poop, down to "tiffin," I made up my mind to try what I could do in a quiet way towards making the mate think of it more seriously.
"Ah," said I, in a would-be brisk and confidential kind of way, "glad we're leaving that – a – you know, that land, Mr Finch." "Indeed, sir," said he indifferently. "Oh, you know," said I, "it's all very well for the passengers there to talk fine about land – land – but you and I, Mr Finch, don't need to be told that it's always dangerous at sea, you know." The mate lifted his head and eyed me for a moment or two, between the disgust a sailor feels at seeing a fellow pretend to aught like seamanship, and a particular sort of spite toward me which I'd noticed growing in him for the last few days, – though I daresay my breakfasting that morning in Sir Charles's cabin might have brought it to a height.
"Land dangerous, sir!" answered he carelessly, as he went on wiping his quadrant again; "who put that into your head?" "Oh, well," returned I, just as carelessly, "if it's to leeward of course, – or with a current taking you towards it, – only then. But I've no doubt, Mr Finch, if this wind were to – ah – you know, heave more abaft, that's to say, get stronger, the craft would at least stand still, till you got her – " "What on earth are you talking about, Mr Ford – Collins, I mean?" asked he sharply. "Really, sir, I've got something more to attend to at present, than such trash about a current, and the devil knows what else!" "How, why, Mr Finch!" said I, seemingly surprised in my turn, "are we not in a current just now, then?" "Current!" replied Finch, almost laughing outright, "what does the man mean?" "Why every one thinks so, in the cuddy," said I, as if rather taken aback, and venturing what you fair ladies call a 'fib,' – "ever since we picked up the bottle last night." This, by the bye, had got spread through some of the men to the passengers, though, of course, nobody knew what had been in it yet. "There, I declare now," continued I, pointing to our lee-bow, where I'd had my eyes fixed during the five minutes we spoke, "we can try it again; do you see that bird yonder on the water?" The mate turned his head impatiently, and "Look, watch him, sir," said I. This was a tired man-o'-war bird afloat about twenty fathoms off, with its sharp white wings stretched just clear of the water, and its black eye sparkling in the sunlight, as it came dipping on the long smooth hot-blue swell into the lee of the ship's lofty hull, till you saw its very shadow in the glitter below it. The Indiaman seemed to pass him as if he rode there at anchor; only the curious thing was, that the bird apparently neared her up from leeward, crossing her larboard quarter within a fathom or two, when all of a sudden he got becalmed, as it were, in the wake right astern, and by the time either of us could walk to the ship's taffrail, she was close over him; as if, whenever her hull was end-on, it took his surface-drift away from him, and, what was more, as if the ship kept hold of it – her eighteen feet or so to his little inch of a draught – for it couldn't be owing to the wind. However, the man-o'-war bird took offer of the next swell to get air in his wings, and rose off the heave of it with a sharp bit of a scream, away after some black boobies diving for fish, which no doubt he would catch, as they dropped them at sight of him.