LEECHES. 227 27 North. Now, Tickler. [Attempts, unsuccessfully, to perform the same kind office to TICKLER. Your sanguineous system, Timothy, is corrupt. They won't fasten. Shepherd. Wunna they sook him? I find mine hangin cauld frae temple to chaft, and swallin-there's ane o' them played plowp intil the basin. North. Betty-the salt. Shepherd. Strip them, Leezy. There's anither. North. Steady, my dear Timothy, steady; ay! there he does it, a prime worm-of himself a host. Sir John Leech. Shepherd. You're no feared for bluid, Mr De Quinshy? English Opium-Eater. A little so-of my own. Shepherd. I wuss Mr Wordsworth's auld leech-gatherer was here to gie us his opinion o' thae worms. It's a gran' subjeck for a poem-Leech-Gatherin! I think I see the body gaun intil the pool, knee-deep in mud, and bringin them out stickin till his taes. There's whiles mair genius in the choice o' a subjeck, than in the execution. I wunner Mr Wordsworth never thocht o' composin a poem in the Spenserian stanza, or Miltonic blanks, on a "Beggar sittin on a stane by the roadside crackin lice in the head o' her bairn." What's in a name? "A louse By any other name would bite as sharp;" and he micht ca't-for he's fond o' soundin words,-see the "Excursion" passim—“The Plague o' Lice," and the mother o' the brat would personify the ministering angel. Poetry would shed a halo round its pow-consecrate the haunted hair, and beautify the very vermin. English Opium-Eater. I observe that a state of extreme languor has succeeded excitement, and that O'Bronte has now fallen asleep. Hark! a compressed whine, accompanied by a slight general convulsion of the whole muscular system, indicates that the creature is in the dream-world. Shepherd. In dookin! or fechtin—or makin up to a- [JOHN and BETTY carry away the basins, pitchers, phial, Shepherd. Hoo's my face noo? 28 CREDIT: ITS EVILS. North. Quite captivating, James. That dim discoloration sets off the brilliancy of your eyes to great advantage; and I am not sure if the bridge of your nose as it now stands be not an improvement. Shepherd. Weel, weel, let's say nae mair about it. That's richt, Mr Tickler, to hang your silk handkerchy ower your face, like a nun takin the veil. Whare were we at? North. We were discussing the commercial spirit, James, which is now the ruling-the reigning spirit of our age and country. Shepherd. The Fable o' the Bees was an Episode. North. Will you be so good, Tickler, as repeat to Mr Hogg, who I believe was not attending to you at the time, what you said about-Credit. Tickler. I conceive, Mr Hogg, that within these last thirty years the facilities of credit in all the transactions of trade have been carried to a ruinous extent. Credit has been granted from one house of trade to another upon a much less jealous estimate of their respectability than heretofore; and farther, it has been the general spirit of all houses to avail themselves, to a far greater extent than formerly, of their own power of commanding credit, so as greatly to enlarge the proportion of their actual transactions to their actual capital. It has been the effect of the same spirit, that numberless traders in those inferior departments of trade, in which the circulation of their own documents of debt as money was dreamt of, have extensively put them forth; and it has been the last excess of the system, that vouchers of transactions, which had never taken place, have been put into circulation, to no inconsiderable extent, as documents of real debt. English Opium-Eater. Ay, Mr Tickler; and to crown the system, and consummate the work, those houses which are to the Commercial World the especial managers of Credit, and the organs, I may say, of Circulation to the documents of credit, in part acting upon, and in part yielding, to the same spirit, have created, or carried to an extent before unknown, the creation of a species of documents of their own—namely, of debt created, either by the deposit in their hands of such vouchers as you have spoken of (in which case it might be said they enlarged the operations of credit by substituting their own high responsibility for the doubtful or obscure credit of the RAPID COMMERCIAL PROSPERITY. 29 vouchers made over to them ;) or, though in their nature essentially vouchers of debt, they have been granted upon no debt whatever, but as money upon securities more or less scrupulously taken :-In which case, it may be said, that these Houses, as far as they ascertained well their security, and were themselves responsible, availed themselves of a Commercial Form to give the utmost extent to legitimate credit.— But, as far as they acted upon insufficient security, or beyond their own responsibility, that they gave their names to authenticate to the public by false vouchers an unreal and illusory credit. North. Here then, sir, is an indisputable instance of credit acting with injurious force in accelerating the operations of commerce. And methinks, Mr De Quincey, I see in those violent extinctions of credit, and the ruinous consequences they spread around them, the symptoms of a general and fearful disease. I see in the application of such terms as avidity, vehemence of activity, passion-if they are just-to the commercial transactions of a great people, indications of some most disordered condition among them; and above all, I recognise in the change of habits, manners, and character, throughout all the people of the land, which these years have witnessed, an acceleration of commercial activity far beyond what the welfare of society demands-disordering and menacing disorders. Tickler. It is all very bad, sir. See how the fluctuations of commerce, which carry life to one part of a country, and leave distress in another, will be more frequent and extreme, as the activity of commerce increases. English Opium-Eater. Yea: all the powers of Nature proceed by change that change includes destruction and production; but in slow change, the destruction is silent decay; in rapid change, it is a desolation. Shepherd. Said ye, sir, that the prosperity o' commerce includes in it a sort o' destruction? English Opium-Eater. I did. Its improvements are founded on injury; for the improvement is the raising of some above those over whom the improvement is made. Thus we know that many of the great improvements in our manufactures, though they have advanced the prosperity of the country, have spread much injury where they were first introduced; in many places of old-established trade which have made great advancement, many of the old houses have quite sunk; and the outcry of the people, and the remonstrances of the wealthier classes to the authorities of the country against improvement in other places, are all evidence of the inherent tendency of commercial advancement to depress while it raises; and therefore furnish grounds for an opinion that rapid commercial prosperity will be at all times throwing down great numbers into utter indigence and misery, overwhelming by the suddenness of their calamity those who in slower change might have foreseen and escaped one after the other from impending poverty. North. And then, sir, these parts of trade thus suspended, have themselves, perhaps, been rapidly increasing; so that it falls upon a portion of the people in a state of rapid increase, who meet it with a greater shock- -on large families-and families, too, from long habits of indulgence, severer sufferers in distress, and less able to extricate themselves from it. Tickler. Besides, in a country urging on like ours so impetuously in commercial enterprise, there is another consideration. Is there not a sort of sacrifice of the labouring people to the insatiable appetite for wealth of their employers? A most inordinate demand for labour has thus been created; for, observe, Gents, that I consider not this present juncture of affairs at all-But what is the commercial spirit of the age and country? Thus sex and age have been swept into the work with no discrimination. Thus the wife and mother of the family has been called from her own place of duty, to be made an instrument of work,-girls of the tenderest age have been called into the manufactory, and grow up to the age of wives and mothers, with no knowledge of their duties, as instruments of work; and boys that should become the Men of the Community, immersed from their early years in noxious employments, and oppressed with interminable labour, rise up a deteriorated race-susceptible of the appetites of men, but bereft of that vigorous spirit which ought to mark the manhood of a people; and which, if it contains the violence of passion, contains also its generosity; contains, too, the principle of stubborn endurance, and of hardy contention with any severer fortune. And how hung upon that trade, and trembling with every breath that shakes it, is a family which only A PEOPLE'S BULWARK. 31 subsists, while father, and wife, and children, are all racked with employment? What sort of population will that country possess to meet the vicissitudes of trade itself,-and those far greater vicissitudes which the political changes of the world throw into it? English Opium-Eater. Say,-what is the bulwark of a people the foundation of its greatness and the substance of its power?-The virtue of the people; their courage, their independence, the severe fortitude of their souls, their hearts filled with just and strong loves, the power of their happiness. This is the conception we form of the people of this island from north to south. This is the character which all tongues have spoken-which has been avouched from age to agethe traditionary faith received by our childhood; and now we look around, and tremble to discover that the dream has passed away from the land. The overflow of wealth has run through it, unsettling all ancient conditions-breaking up the bonds of life, casting, even upon the husbandman amidst his fields, the restless, ungoverned, aspiring spirit of commerce-dazzling and blinding the imaginations of the people, and scattering among them the vices of prosperity, if it has not brought them its enjoyments. Shepherd. Dinna mak me despond o' the kintra, Mr De Quinshy. Hoo aften, when a's black in natur, outbursts the sun, and the warld's filled wi' licht! Oh man! but there's a majestic meaning in thae twa words- GREAT BRITAIN ! Think ye it 'ill ever hae a Decline and Fa' like the Roman Empire? English Opium-Eater. It seemeth alike to my reason and my imagination, Immortal. Shepherd. And then think, sir, o' the march o' intelleck. That strengthens a state. English Opium-Eater. It does. But not without the flow of feeling. Shepherd. Capital! I was just gaun to hae said that, when you took the words out o' my mouth. English Opium-Eater. We want not, Mr Hogg, a quantity of reasonable, contented, steady, sober, industrious inhabitants-mere Chineses, and nothing more; but we want men, who, if invaded, will spring up as one man-loving their ancestors, who cannot feel their gratitude |