Harriet Martineau

“ Ought you not to sell wine at the price it professed to bear in your cellars before the hurricane happened? And why is Italian fruit dear, when in Italy there has been no storm?”
“If we sold our goods at last year’s prices,” replied Charles, “all our wine and our fruit would be exhausted long before we should have a further supply. Is it not better that they should bear such a price as will make people sparing in their use till we have once more an abundance?”
“And is this the reason why there are granaries not yet exhausted, amidst the cries of the people for bread?” ”

“ We will do nothing hastily; but I certainly feel at present as if redemption was offered from a bondage which wears the soul and sickens the heart of man. There’s my poor father——”
“Stay, stay, Frank. What do you mean by bondage?”
“The bondage of poverty, Sir; of hopeless, grinding poverty. What bondage cows a man’s spirit more? What sours and debases and goads him more than to work and work from year to year in vain? If it was a curse upon Adam to get bread by the sweat of his brow, what is it to give the sweat of one’s brow and get no bread?”bread?” ”

“ A figure of a peasant crossed the glades at intervals, and an occasional voice hailed them from overhead, where lookers out were perched on the loftiest trees to watch what course the devastation of the boar and its hunters would take. After a few moments of quiet, a cry burst forth, and was echoed from mouth to mouth through the wood, a heavy plunging tread was heard, and a rushing and crashing in the thicket, which warned Steele to fly to the protection of the largest trunk at hand, while Antoine climbed a tree as nimbly as a squirrel. ”

“ Clamorous, starving crowds besieged the bakers’ shops, and carried off all the bread from their ovens, all the flour from their bins; while the discontented among the mob politicians of the Orleans faction were on the way to snatch the food from the mouths of the hungry and throw it into the river, and to cut the sacks, and mix the flour with the puddles of the streets. ”

“ Again,—the thriving population of our colonies will want more and more of our manufactures, and will send us their agricultural produce in exchange; and I suppose you will not question the advantage of investing our capital in manufactures, and receiving wool and wheat of the best quality in return, instead of laying it out on lands of inferior fertility at home, while the people scantily supply themselves with the coarse manufactures of their own firesides? You will not question the duty of availing ourselves of the advantages of division of labour in the case of our greatest need? ”

“ Never money went away so fast before; and whilst the government was dismayed at its magic property of disappearance, the people grew more and more angry at what they thought the extravagance of their rulers. Neither of them took into the account the scarcity of most of the necessaries of life, and both regarded money as having the same value as ever,—as being, in itself, the thing required to supply the necessities of the state. ”

“ HOME IN A PARADISE. The fair and fertile county of Kent has long suffered peculiarly from the poverty of its labouring population. To the traveller who merely passes through it, it looks like a fruitful garden, capable of affording support to as many inhabitants as can gather round its neat towns, or settle on the borders of its orchards, hop-grounds, and corn-fields; yet it is certain that nowhere,—not in the alleys of Manchester or the cellars of London,—is more abject, hopeless poverty to be found than in some of the country parishes of Kent. ”

“ Let but all preserve the faith they have sworn, and there will be no more sporting with life and property, no absurd playing with baubles while there is a craving for bread, no ruin to the industrious, and sudden wealth to such as speculate on national distress. We may once more estimate the labour of our peasantry, and the value of our own resources, and fix and receive the due reward of each. We may reach that high point of national prosperity in which the ascertainment and due recompense of industry involve each other ”

“ The present opposition of interests, my dear, arises from a scarcity of the prime necessaries of life. If there were food enough for our people, their occupations and interests, be they as various as the minds that adopt them, would assist and promote each other from end to end of society. If there be a scarcity of food, men will snatch from one another’s mouths, be they huddled together in our manufacturing cities, or duly distributed in a Moravian settlement. Where there is plenty, there will be a harmony,—where there is want, there will be an opposition of interests ”

“ Five minutes for preparation was all they would allow, and even Charles at length despaired of further favour. He approached the victim with a calm and serious countenance. The old man looked up.
“Is there no hope?”
“There is always hope. Let us hope that in another state we shall better know how to love and forgive one another. Here, we have a poor understanding of this; but even here we can forgive. They will not now forgive you; but you will leave them that which will make them do so hereafter. Leave them your pardon.”
“O, Alice,—my daughter! Not if they murder Alice.” ”

“ It matters little that it is the fashion to mix up in ignorant minds the odium of holding a sinecure, and the honour of filling a laborious office;—it matters little that all the people have not yet learned to distinguish the caterpillars from the silk-worms of the state; for they will soon learn to hold the servants of the nation in due honour. Meanwhile, all that we want is a more equal distribution of the toils of government. ”

“ At this time, Charles and Marguerite did not allow their children to go out under any guardianship but that of their father, as it was impossible to foresee what might happen in the streets before they could get home again. They were as safe as any could be at such a time;—safer than the few who ventured abroad in carriages at the risk of insult wherever they turned; safer than the sordidly fed and clad, who were seized upon by the agents of faction to augment their mobs, and be made the instruments of violence under the penalty of suffering it themselves. ”

“ If there was no 28choice between the starvation of a number and this state of society, I might be brought to look upon it with some degree of complacency: but when other ways are open,—when the question is,—not whether all shall relapse into barbarism or some starve,—but whether multitudes shall pass their lives in unassisted digging at home, or a few wander to distant parts of this fair earth to leave the many in possession of the blessings of advanced civilization,—I am for applying labour to its highest purposes, and for elevating instead of depressing the pursuits of society. ”

“ At the first opening in the trees, Letitia saw him draw his wife’s arm within his own, and walk with her towards the house.
“It cannot be the blight that has soured him so,” observed lady F—— to her husband. “That must be a mere pretence.”
“Blights destroy other things besides Portugal laurels,” replied her husband. “Did not you see how I was forbidden to enlarge upon hops?”
“What can he have to do with hops? O! I begin to see. Speculation is to be his ruin,—not wine, or gaming.”
“Must he be ruined?” enquired lord F——.
“Yes. There is wide ruin in success, where it comes from speculation. ”

“ At a time when every one should be bent on regulating the labour market, providing for the utmost permanent growth of capital, and lessening the burdens of taxation, we cannot spare any from these grand objects to be urging on the increase of capital at the expense of a much greater increase of population, and amusing themselves with visions of what can never be achieved by the means they propose. Man must and will be better served as the world grows older ”

“ If gentlemen go to one place, and labourers to another, the settlement is sure to pine, like that at the Swan River, and like too many more of the same kind. Whatever expense and trouble may be incurred in locating such imperfect materials of society must be well nigh lost. The true economy, the true benevolence, the true wisdom, of emigration is to send out a company as a swarm of bees goes forth,—under proper leaders, and in a state of organization. ”

“ One class murmurs about tithes, and rages about poor-rates, while another sets law at defiance, and fills the country with news of murderous poaching expeditions, and of midnight fires;—guilty adventures, of which the first brings in only a precarious and dearly bought advantage, and the other is the most effectual method that could be devised for increasing the very evils under which the people are groaning. ”

“ He who has guided, or may guide, the helm of the state, now condescends to steer a less majestic bark on a calmer element; and instead of the prayers, threats and blessings of an empire, bends his ear to the prattle of his little ones, or to the rustling of a startled deer, bounding from the thicket as the vessel nears the shore. Not now too busy to observe whether rain or sunshine be without, the recreated statesman finds in either case equal pleasure and repose. ”

“ Here, such a deficiency is even now questioned by multitudes who declare that we have not a redundant, but only a poor population; that nobody wants food who has enough to give for it; and that therefore it is money, or work that is wanted, and not food. Such observers give alms, or pay their poor neighbours for digging holes and filling them up again, or doing things equally useless; never dreaming that all the while they are taking food from somebody who has earned it by a better kind of toil. ”

“ I think that not all the advantages of society and what is commonly called education, which my children could have in England, will set against the freedom from temptation and from the corrupting sights of human misery which must there come in their way; poor as they must be here, and condemned to jostle their way in the world, and probably to lose a step or two of the rank which their father’s profession leads them to consider as their own. ”

“ Competition is more likely than co-operation to induce prudence and foresight; and it will quicken our activity in carrying our surplus numbers to distant fertile lands, or in bringing the produce of distant fertile lands among our own people, instead of tempting us to waste more and more of our capital continually in turning up inferior lands at home, as the co-operatives would have us do.”
“But were not you telling me that your rent-roll becomes more valuable as time passes? Are not landholders’ incomes increasing perpetually under the present system?” ”

“ But this last danger is growing less every year, and cannot exist long.—Now, since there is evil everywhere, the question is what is the least? I, for one, think them all less than living in England in hopeless poverty, or even than getting a toilsome subsistence there with the sight of hopeless poverty ever before one’s eyes, and the groans or vicious mirth of pauperism echoing through the alleys of all the cities of England. ”

“ It was mournful to look around, and see what had been done within a few minutes;—the clean soil trodden and strewed, the props thrown down, the laden branches snapped off, the ripening fruit crushed and scattered, and the whole laid open to intruders; whether men to steal, or troops of deer to browze. If, by any exertion, these intruders could be kept out, there was hope that some, even a considerable portion, of the expected vintage might be saved, as some rows of vines had not been touched, and others had fallen merely from their supports being removed. ”

“ The duke of Orleans made no opposition. He saw that the game was up for this day, and departed in an opposite direction, having no particular wish to hear the verdict which he knew would be passed upon the bread, or to witness the exultation of the baker.—Before night, Maigrot not only felt his head safe upon his shoulders, but was the most eminent baker in Paris; and, if he had but had any flour remaining, might have boasted such a business as he had till now never thought of aspiring to. ”

“ It is true that too many of our poor neighbours, heartsick at their condition here, have wandered forth with nothing but the clothes on their backs and a hatchet in their hands, without the guidance and assistance which are necessary to their very lives in a new climate and condition of society; but this folly, and the consequent hardship, have nothing to do with emigration. It is to preclude such evils that I would have benefactors like you demonstrate to the people what is essential to a successful emigration, and that emigration is sure to be successful if well conducted. ”