THE IMPERIAL MAGAZINE. DECEMBER, 1834. MEMOIR OF MRS. TROLLOPE. With a Portrait.) THIS Lady is known to the world by two works of her own; the former on the "Domestic Manners of the Americans," the latter a "Narrative of a Tour in Belgium," &c. She is far better known to the world by innumerable reviews, of every diversity and degree of opinion and talent. This principally refers to her first production; and certainly the excitement it occasioned at its first appearance was not a little calculated, if not to compensate for the labour and cost, at least to gratify the vanity of which the race of authors are so shrewdly suspected. Of her latter production, as we have recently given a considerable space in our pages to an examination of its contents, we shall here say nothing. Indeed, in commenting upon the literary character of this Lady, there is a further reason why we should chiefly confine our view to her work on the Domestic Manners of the Americans. It was her first work; it was evidently the most lively, natural, and unconstrained exhibition of her habits as an observer, and her powers as a writer. These powers are at once considerable and curious. At one time the reader meets with that class of objects observed, which a woman's eye alone would catch; and these objects described with such a happy minuteness as leaves small doubt as to the sex of the writer-but anon there is a species of broad farce enacted, an outré style of caricature exhibited, which by no means reminds the reader of a lady's hand. Furthermore, those outrageous lithographs form a very novel adjunct to a female performance, and draw, with a prodigality worthy of Munchausen, upon the faith of the untravelled reader. Her descriptive powers are unquestionably very superior. The gigantic scale of the American scenery; the eager bustle of the jostling, elbowing, progressing American; the uniform commercial stamp of each of the thousand individuals whom the traveller meets in the steam-boats, taking their little five-hundred-mile trips " up the country;" the spick-and-span new aristocracy of New York; "the insensible perspiration" of the never-ending canvass: all these are depicted with the most diverting verisimilitude. To an English reader, who has never seen America, the effect of the representation resembles that of some portraits which we sometimes see, which we feel convinced must be excellent likenesses, though the originals are unknown to us. Some of the most piquant of her dialogues and adventures are indeed a little too good to be true, and are rather more redolent of Sister Trollope than of Brother Jonathan. These, however, are pardonable peccadillos; they are redeemed by a fund of humour, which must have produced laughter enough, one would suppose, to fatten a whole generation. 2D. SERIES, NO. 48.-VOL. IV 3 z 192.-VOL. XVI. The chief objections to Mrs. Trollope's mode of writing are, first, a strong infusion of prejudice, which she has too much honesty to dissimulate. "I speak," says she, "of the population generally, as seen in town and country, among the rich and the poor, in the slave states; and the free states I do not like them; I do not like their principles; I do not like their manners; I do not like their opinions." In the comprehensiveness of this denunciation, so much must of necessity be involved which never did or could come under Mrs. T.'s observation, and which was 66 never dreamt of in her philosophy," that the remark can only be traced to insuperable prejudice. A more serious charge, however, against the writings of Mrs. Trollope, is the sacrifice of religion, and of what we should call morals also, to the prosecution of her main object. It is a dangerous thing to scatter indiscriminate censures against any class of professing Christians, it looks very like an invidious attack upon religion itself. Upon the minds of the thoughtless it produces precisely the same result, and in the mind of the author it may be shrewdly suspected to flow from the same source. Nay, we should go still further: if we see in the pages of an author, any indications that he does not himself possess personal knowledge of, and sense of interest in, the truths of Christianity; if he indicate that he is not himself a Christian,-we must risk the charge of being uncharitable, by altogether denying his admissibility as a witness; we will not allow him to come into court; he labours under something more than absolute ignorance, namely, an obliquity of vision and a delusion of mind. For such an author, therefore, to criticise sermons and exercises of devotion, is just a little more absurd than for a man born deaf to dogmatise about flats and sharps. Again, with respect to morality, we are not much pleased with Mrs. T. for such a declaration as the following. "On entering a slave state, I was immediately comfortable and at my ease." The tender affections in man may, indeed, be extirpated by the storms of avarice and political passions, but we seem to feel a right to look, even in the very wilds of barbarism, to woman's eye for the tear of pity, to woman's heart for the sigh of sympathy, and to woman's life for the prayer of intercession. It is painful in a British lady to look for these in vain. Upon Mrs. Trollope's political views, and on her notions of those of the Americans, it is unnecessary to enter; the truth is, that the essence of the charge which she brings against our transatlantic brethren, is their want of refinement; this, it must be confessed, is not a crime of the first magnitude, nor we fear is it the greatest crime. The Edinburgh Review, however, suggests to the accused party an appropriate defence, in the reply of a great man of antiquity-" True, I can not fiddle, but I can make a small state a great one;" and, in the same article, remarks, with that enviable felicity which is common only in the pages of that work—" Mrs. Trollope addresses the Americans much as Touchstone addresses Corin:- Wast ever at court, shepherd? No, truly. Then thou art damned. Nay, I hope. Truly thou art damned like an ill-roasted egg, all on one side. For not being at court? your reason. Why, if thou never wast at court, thou never saw'st good manners; if thou never saw'st good manners, then thy manners must be wicked; and in wickedness is sin, and in sin is damnation. Thou art in a perilous state, shepherd.' Corin's answer comprises a considerable portion of the proper American reply- Not a whit, Touchstone: those that are good manners at court, are as ridiculous in the country, as the behaviour of the country is most mockable at court.'" ON THE EMPLOYMENT OF CAPITAL AND MACHINERY. AMONGST the circumstances on which the opulence of society depends, the employment of capital holds a distinguished place, and in consequence presents a subject which is worthy of a deliberate examination, not only from the interest which all inquiries bearing immediately on the welfare of society must possess, but from its practical utility, as developing the causes of national opulence, from whence the means are perceived by which the progress of wealth is either advanced or retarded. The employment of capital seems peculiar to the human species; and forms one of the distinguishing features of its character. The formation of man is peculiarly adapted to, and calls for, such employment, as indispensable to his state and condition. Without it, his condition would be far below that of the inferior animals. These are furnished by nature with members admirably constructed for defence, for procuring food, and for performing whatever labour may be neces sary to their well-being but man is sent forth into the world almost defenceless; his hand is not armed like the beak of the bird, or the teeth and claws of the quadruped, and he is under the necessity of resorting to some implement to supply what would otherwise be a defect in his formation. It is obvious that both the tools which man employs to aid his labour, and the materials on which that labour is bestowed, are indispensable in almost every species of industry. What could the husbandman effect without his spade or his plough, or the weaver without his loom? And again, materials must necessarily be provided, out of which to fabricate the articles our wants demand. Without these two descriptions of capital, scarcely any kind of labour could be prosecuted with success, beyond what could be performed by the unaided powers of the hand, and which yielded an immediate return; and our supply would be confined to the herbs, roots, and fruits of the forest, with a few of the more helpless animals which we might be able to outrun and overcome. Without seed to sow the land, a future harvest could never be obtained. Without a store of food previously accumulated to sustain us during the performance of our work, and until the seasons return, or the operations of nature have been completed which give effect to labour, and its produce to that state in which it is fit for use or sale, the cultivation of the soil could not be carried on, tillage must be abandoned, and no separate direction of industry or division of labour could subsist. Without storehouses wherein to lodge the fruits of the earth, they could not be preserved to supply our necessities when the season of production is past. To fell the forest, to pierce the mine, or to traverse the waters, without the aid of capital were impracticable: and the tenants of the deep, the treasures of the mine, and the luxuries of foreign climes would for ever remain inaccessible. The advantages derived from the use of capital are not confined solely to such as is employed to assist labour in the direct production or manipulation of commodities, as the tools, the plant and utensils, the workshops and materials, and in the different branches of business. Similar advantages arise from the use of the floating capital employed and expended in procuring the raw or partly wrought materials, for the workmen to manufacture, in the advance of their wages, conveying goods to market, collecting an assortment of them, and furnishing them in suitable quantities and at convenient seasons to the parties who require them. To present a view of the important functions which this portion of capital fulfils, let us suppose that all at once it were withdrawn; and that each person were obliged to perform himself the services he now receives from this portion of the capital of the farmer, manufacturer, and dealer. It is impossible, consistently with brevity, accurately to trace all the steps which a consumer would be obliged to take to acquire any commodity, if this capital were abstracted from business. It is sufficient to describe them generally. In the way in which capital is now employed, if the consumer is in want of a pair of stockings, they may be had at any time, and of any sort or quality, at a hosier's shop. But if the capital which is employed in conducting and keeping them were abstracted, the consumer would be obliged, in the first instance, to quit his usual occupation, and repair to the sheepfarmer's to procure a quantity of wool. Having bought and paid for the wool, he must then convey it to the carder and spinner, whose wages he must advance. He would next have to go in quest of the thread when spun, to convey it to be dyed, and to pay the dyer. Lastly, he must carry the thread from the dyer to the stocking-maker, pay him his wages, and, when finished, fetch the stockings home. In the instance of commodities which are procurable only by means of a foreign trade, the use of this floating capital is still more essential. Take the case of cotton, sugar, coffee, or other tropical productions, and suppose that the floating capital now employed in purchasing these articles in the countries where they are grown, in conveying them hoe, and storing them in the shops and warehouses of the traders, were altogether withdrawn. In such case, a consumer in want of either of these articles would have to embark for the East or West Indies to purchase the quantity of them he might require. But when difficulties of such magnitude must be surmounted, it would be impossible for any private individual to procure them at all. Taking the first and least difficult of the two cases, and examining the task thus imposed on the consumer, it will be found to consist in two different duties. First, he is compelled to withdraw from his own stock the money with which he pays for the wool, and that with which he pays the carder, spinner, and dyer, some time before he acquires the stockings, which occasions a loss of the profit he might procure by retaining this capital in his own business. Secondly, he is obliged to perform the labour of selecting the wool, of conveying it to be carded and spun, the labour of carrying it to the dyer, and, lastly, that of taking it to the stockingmaker, and fetching it from thence home. The capital expended in improvements upon the soil contributes most essentially to heighten the powers of labour, and aug. ment the quantity of agricultural produce. If previous labour had not cleared away the forests which encumbered our lands, and drained off the waters which caused them to be in part in morasses; if it had not been expended in fencing, manuring, constructing farm-buildings, and the other improvements which have been made upon the land, it would be but a small quantity of useful produce that the industry of the country could raise from it. Obliged to undertake these necessary works, the proper cultivation of the land could not be commenced until they were completed. But since the expenditure of capital was made by which these works were executed, the labour of the husbandman is applied at once to cultivation, and it has contributed in a high degree to augment in every subsequent year the produce of industry. As then the distribution of employments and division of labour can only be established through a previous accumulation of capital, whatever are the benefits derivable from this distribution, from agriculture, from commerce, and the interchange of com. modities, from the use of tools and machines, from the employment of labouring cattle and the natural moving powers, from agricultural improvements, from the sciences and arts, they are all dependent on the possession and employment of capital, and could not be enjoyed but in connexion with, and through its aid. It is plain, likewise, that the quantity and excellence of the produce of labour must mainly depend on the quantity of capital employed; such as the goodness and suitableness of our tools and other instruments of labour, the number and strength of our labouring cattle, the high state of cultivation into which the land has been brought, the commodiousness of our workshops, granaries, and storehouses; the number and power of our machines and engines of every description, and the extent to which the natural powers of wind, water, and steam are applied in industry. When the master is possessed of an ample capital, he is enabled to furnish the workmen with the best implements and most efficient machines that can be had, and to afford him every known facility for carrying on his business to the greatest advantage. The different ways in which advantages result from the employment of capital, may be considered in the four following points of view. the ox, the First. It saves time and labour in the production of almost every commodity. With the aid of a useful tool or machine, a man's work is rendered easy, and his time is saved. Without working harder, he is enabled to do more work, or produce more, than he could have done before. In differ ent countries, the horse, the ass, camel, the rein-deer, and some other ani mals, are trained to labour. Much additional power is acquired from the employ ment of these animals, and a much larger quantity of work is executed. Still greater power is acquired through the use of machinery impelled by water, wind, or steam. These natural agents work while we rest; our horses and machinery perform our labour for us, while we do nothing but look on; or rather they act in conjunction with us, assist our exertions, and lessen the toil we must otherwise undergo; while they multiply the products of our labour immeasurable degree. In every way that an Mr. Gordon, in his Treatise on Locomotion, estimates the number of horses in the United Kingdom at 2,000,000. The power of a horse is usually reckoned as equal to that of six men; which makes the total of horse-power in the United Kingdom equivalent to 12,000,000 of men, greater than all our male population of all ages. |