Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

parent contradictions than might be supposed at first glance.

The African slave trade, held by the whole civilized world to be piracy, and deserving the same punishment that is accorded to the banditti of the seas, continues to be carried on with Cuba, under the very eyes and by the connivance of the Spanish authorities there. Annex this island, extend over it the laws of the United States, with its power to sustain them, and the infamous traffic must cease forthwith. It is this hope which renders Cuban annexation desirable to many opponents of slavery; and it is one in which our entire people will heartily sympathize.

But slavery in Cuba is quite a different institution from that which exists in our southern states. Spanish law, so oppressive in many respects towards free subjects, seems to have been especially regardful of the rights of the slave population, as will fully appear from the statement of a few of its provisions. In Cuba the slave has always the liberty of changing his master, or purchasing his freedom; while with us his sale or his emancipation is altogether within the control of the master. There the freedom of the slave child may be always secured by the payment to the master of $25 on the day of christening. If the master neglects this ceremony until the slave becomes of age, still the rule holds good:he is compelled by law to part with his property upon its christening, on the payment of the sum

named.

reference is had at once to the Sindico, who, as in the former case, fixes the price-and from whose decision there is no appeal.

So, also, if a slave considers himself overworked or in any other manner harshly treated by his owner, he has never-failing redress. He goes to the Sindico, makes oath to the facts, and receives a certificate fixing his value, and giving him three days in which to find a new master who suits him better and is willing to pay the price. This provision of law operates well on both master and slave. The former, fully aware that the Sindico will put a low price on the slave if discontented, is led to treat him well; and the slave is spurred to industry and made tractable and well-behaved from the consideration that if he is not so, he will be looked upon as a worthless creature, and will be unable to change masters should he desire it, because none would be willing to purchase him.

These are some of the laws and customs which

greatly modify the practical character of slavery in Cuba. They tend to curtail the power of the masters, and to facilitate emancipation. And as Cuba, if annexed, would unquestionably retain the right of local legislation, these laws would remain substantially unchanged. It is quite natural, therefore, that those at the South, whose views of national policy are governed entirely by its bearing upon slavery, should be unwilling to have a state added to the Union in which the institution exists in so modified a form;-while the opponents of slavery may very well favor its accession on account of the influence it would be likely to exert upon the condition of the slaves in the other Southern States. It is known, also, that many of the influential planters of Cuba are in favor of gradual emancipation: Freedom to every child born of slave parents after a given date, and total emancipation to all who survive twenty-five years," was the spirit of a toast given a year or two since at a dinner of wealthy planters in Havana; and such is believed, by many who are well-informed, to be the view of a large portion of those Cubans in whose hands at some day will rest the destiny of slavery in their native isle. In these facts and opinions may be found a rational explanation of the change of position in regard to Cuba, which has taken place within the past year, between the North and South.

THE CUBAN TREATY.

If a slave, by good fortune in a government lottery, or by industry and prudence, is able to amass one hundred dollars of his own, he has the right to demand of his master to state the price for which he shall be allowed his freedom. The usual price of an able-bodied man is about $500. If the master refuses to set a price, or charges a sum which the slave considers exorbitant, he cites the master before the Sindico Procurador General, who estimates the value of the man and declares the price for which he shall be permitted to purchase his liberty. In all such cases, the Sindico is quite sure to name a price less than would be generally conceded a fair one; and, consequently, the matter is generally agreed upon between the master and slave without reference to the magistrate. The price once fixed can never be increased. If the slave is valued at $500, and pays his master $100, he is then said to be cuartado for $400, and has the right to select his own employment and employer anywhere within his district, paying four fifths of his earnings to his master-the latter providing him with all the necessaries of life. If he pays $200 or $300 on his price, his master collects three fifths or two fifths of his earnings, the slave having the remaining two fifths or three fifths to To ask the United States never to buy, never rehimself to devote to the completion of his emancipa-ceive, never accept this island, is simply folly. All we can do, or expect, or hope, is that their governThe government lotteries to which we have made ment will not abandon those great landmarks of pubincidental allusion are largely patronized by the lic law arising out of the immutable principles of blacks. They are conducted in perfect good faith; morality and justice, or disregard the lighter but useand the tickets are very low-the grand object ful rules of international equity, to acquire even such being to give the slaves opportunity to purchase a prize. All foes of slavery in America, too, will freedom. By this means a negro often obtains the means to purchase himself at once, much to the joy of his fellow-servants-all of whom have an occasional holiday to attend in person the drawing of the lotteries. The slave who has in hand what he supposes to be a fair price for his liberty goes to his master, offers it to him, and becomes free on the instant. If any difference arises as to terms,

tion.

NEARLY all the London journals contain laudatory articles respecting the course pursued by the United States government in relation to the Cuban treaty as proposed by Lord Malmesbury and M. de Turgot. The Times snys:—

Mr. Fillmore

hope that Cuba may not be annexed.
and Mr. Everett have not lost sight of the laws of
nations in this case. It remains to be seen whether
Gen. Pierce and his cabinet will follow their excellent
and admirable example.

The Inquirer says:—

Mr. Everett used his opportunity to the uttermost. He was clearly in the right. Looking merely to the

Through chambers gay and bright, with costly pictures dight,

Where Landseer's strong beast-tamer his fierce creatures doth subdue,

Where Wilkie's veterans listen, with eyes that glow
and glisten,

To the record of his battle-the Gazette of Water-
loo.
Pass along!

soon,

treaty as proposed to him, he was perfectly entitled to say very little about the piratical expeditions, and argue the question on general principles, whether America ought for all time, and under all circumstances, to be debarred from holding Cuba, and whether the precious equivalent offered by France and England was worth her having. His letter to M. de Sartiges is not in the style which we are accustomed to hear diplomatic personages use in Europe. Eloquent, argumentative, and historical it is; sometimes From saloon unto saloon let the tide sweep onward running into disquisition; always open, like everything American, to the charge of being turgid. But the quality which makes it striking in our eyes is the distinctness, the frankness, and the boldness with which it asserts American claims, enunciates the rules of American policy, and vindicates American principles. After a striking résume of the progress of the power of the United States, the gradual elimination of the French and Spanish rule from the American continent, and the annexation of Texas (of which Mr. Everett's opinion is that "there never was an extension of territory more naturally or justifiably made"), the writer continues.

No doubt this is all admirably reasoned. But why was occasion given to Mr. Everett to read us such a lecture? The Executive of the States had already given assurances of its determination to put down every unauthorized attack upon Cuba. Could it be supposed for an instant that the President would fall into Lord Malmesbury's trap, and concede more than we had the least right to claim, in order to give the semblance of a guarantee for the fulfilment of his previous assurances? By no means; and the proud republic, secure in her isolation and her power, is not slow to let the whole world see the position which she is disposed to take. Lord Malmesbury cannot maintain international law by such means. The question for him to consider was, how far England was bound to compel the United States to fulfil their President's assurances with regard to Cuba, in the event of their showing an opposite disposition. Mr. Everett's language on this head is quite satisfactory, and we sincerely hope that no such question as that alluded to may ever come practically before an English cabinet. We think it right, however, to draw attention to the various transactions in which Lord Malmesbury has been concerned as they come to light, that when he is again a candidate for power the character of his past

performances may be duly estimated; and we think it no unfitting occasion, at the same time, to call attention to the latest achievement of the great "mystery" of diplomacy.

APSLEY HOUSE.

From Punch.

THE iron gates set wide, let in the human tide

Of gentle and of simple, of wealthy and of poor, That in numbers ever swelling it may flood the hero's dwelling;

See, it stands not in the court, and it stops not at the door.

Pass along!

It stays not in the hall to look around the wall,

At the range of busts all standing in a still and
stately ring;

On-on the tide keeps flowing, nor pauses in its going
For soldier or for statesman, for Kaiser or for King.
Pass along.

Up the staircase let it flow, past that marble bulk be-
low-

A colossus, seeming huger in that twilight dim and dun ; Who sceptred thus doth stand, globe and victory in hand? 'Tis the conqueror of all, the conquered but of one! Pass along!

Till suddenly it slackens in a long and narrow hall, Where Murillo's bright brown faces, and Velasquez' knightly graces, And Titian's golden sunlights, are glowing on the wallPass along!

Yet pause awhile-for here he welcomed year by year The companions of his triumph, the men of Waterloo;

Mark, curious, the space where his chair they used to
place:

Enough! it is enough-we have seen it, and swept
through-
Pass along!

Through curious treasure-rooms, where are gathered
great heir-looms,

The trophies of his triumphs, rich gifts of price unIn their cases locked and guarded; so great deeds told,

shonld be rewarded

[blocks in formation]

He wrote at that poor table and sat in that mean chair;

How,

He

with secretary near, in close toil and severe

labored, nor his body nor his mind for age
would spare.
Pause awhile!

'Twas on the unpolished face of that rough-hewn old
deal case

He wrote from all his fields how the fight had chanced to fare,

From Oporto's triumph through to the day of Water-
loo

It was with him, and his records of battle still did
bear.
Pause awhile!

In this room, where none have passed since its master
left it last-

Nought touched; the book he laid aside to take it up again;

See the letters of the day after reading laid away-His open inkstand, and the ink scarce dry within his pen.

Pass along!

[blocks in formation]

From the Spectator.

AUSTRALIAN PROBLEMS.

class, who, under the operation of great prizes, find that they are not unable to dig, while they have no occasion to beg. We have already noticed the grand social effect, in the importance which this anomaly has given to the working man; who is now, to a great extent, at the top of the tree in Australia. But it has had some other consequences.

that possess land find themselves liable to some disturbance in the working of that land; and mining associations have great difficulty in holding AUSTRALIA is steadier in the development of her together, if at all. Thus, the great trade of goldresources than we who observe her are in our opin- digging is left almost entirely in the hands of the ion. Mankind will never get over the propensity individual working-men, who are turning out gold to hasten to conclusions; and within the short at the rate of 20,000,0007. a year; a rate still inperiod since the riches of Australia were fully creasing. Thus the great staple remains in the known, we have hazarded conclusions various, | hands of a class not unlike our railway-navigators; and even repeated, in spite of experience as to recruited, however, by numbers of the middle their fallacy. Some months since, there was a cry that the number of emigrants congregated on the barren gold-fields would be sure to induce starvation for themselves and for their fellow-colonists. Although the number was subsequently increased, the threatened starvation has not ensued; and yet the report has been revived lately, still with the same sequel-greater numbers and no starvation. On the contrary, the last accounts show a state of the provision-market far from alarming. At Meroo Creek, in New South Wales, flour, it is true, was selling at 45s. per 100 pounds; but other articles of consumption were not in proportion; maize, for example, was only 12s. 6d. per bushel; tea, 1s. 9d. per pound, and sugar 44d. per pound; so that the cupboard would not entail much greater cost at Meroo Creek than it would in London. In Melbourne, the price of flour, which was not long since, if we remember rightly, 451. a ton, is now quoted at 401.; not very greatly differing from the price at Meroo.

It was said, four or five months back, that the emigration had been overdone-that the labor market would be overstocked; the state of wages has refuted that fallacy in ordinary commerce, and the state of gold-produce has refuted it for the diggings. But it has been said within the week, that now the diggins are glutted-that there are too many hands upon the soil, and that some disaster would ensue unless some new diggins were found; and accordingly the last reports announce the "discovery" of five new diggins. It is a discovery to those who only see before their nose; but science had already scanned the characteristics of the land between Melbourne and Sidney, and had predicted that that range at least, if not a much larger range, will prove to be auriferous. The empirical digger sets forth with his spade, and, unconscious of the larger span of science, "discovers" the details of that general truth.

The commercial operations of capital practically excluded from extensive operations on the gold-field have been necessarily turned to the more ordinary operations of trade; and therefore, by this anomaly, the happiest direction has been given to the action of capital. The gold-production shifts excellently for itself; but capital has been thrown with additional energy into collateral processes of stimulating the agricultural and the ancillary trades of Australia. Such an arrangement would scarcely have been contemplated, and could not have been effected by the clearest dictate of prudence; but it is an accident of the most felicitous kind.

Although there are the utmost inequalities in the returns of digging-some, though not very many, undergoing disappointment, while a comparatively larger number seize magnificent windfalls-yet by far the greatest bulk of the golddigging population attain to a certain level of results; it is computed not only as an average, but as an approximation to the most general fact, that one man can dig up and clear about an ounce a week, and can live upon about half an ounce a week. Thus, by the very vigor with which the problem has been worked practically, the great najority of the working classes in Australia know what probably a working man can make at the gold-fields, and they find that it is not a result at all of a fabulous kind-only about double what a dresser could earn in the factories of Lancashire some twelve years ago. The working mind in Australia, therefore, is the better prepared to Again, we have once or twice had much more meet those enhanced offers of the capitalist that probable apprehensions that the wool crop would have induced a sufficient number in no inconsidfail; but the very panic tended to work its own erable portion of the country to remain for a cure, by inciting the strenuous endeavors of the season at the work of agriculture and wool-shearYorkshire people in this country, and of the gov-ing. The Australian problem is working itself ernment under their urgency, to send out more out, in spite of its suddenness and rapidity, with labor. That, and some concurrent circumstances, a beautiful degree of regularity.

have helped to keep up such a supply of labor, The apprehensions that have been entertained that the wool crop, which was in process of shear-respecting the disturbance of prices by the unpreing when the last detailed accounts came away, cedented augmentation of gold in our circulating was going on well, with every prospect of its being accomplished in New South Wales and South Australia; Melbourne still exhibiting the maximum of disorder.

The state of industry in Australia exhibits one characteristic, quite peculiar to that anomalous land. Although there is abundance of capital anxious to compete for the possession of those rich fields, standing around and awaiting the opportunity of establishing its position, yet it is practically excluded, at present, from the primary occupation of gold-digging; even commercial bodies

medium may evidently be classed with those apprehensions that have already received their refutation from experience. We have already observed the general tendency of this abundance to produce its own counterbalancing. So long as food is produced in proportion, and raw material, which we are drawing in such a fine scale from America-so long as our own manufacturing continues-so long as emigration, coupled with those other causes, keeps up the value of labor in this country-the influx of gold will merely operate as an extended means of expanding the exchanges

of industrial life. The actual state of affairs is, that every living man in this country has a larger proportion of food, clothing, and cash to his own share, than he had before; the nominal rise of "price' is very little more than the index of that general enhancement. If we are richer, we do not think so much of every individual sovereign that enters or leaves our pockets; but, however our comfort improves, there is no sign as yet that sovereigns are becoming a drug in the market utterly contemptible. Prices can always take care of themselves, while the staples of produce are flourishing in due proportion to each other and to population.

From Tait's Magazine

Love in the Moon, a Poem; with some Remarks on that Luminary. By PATRICK SCOTT, author of "Lelio." London: Taylor, Walton, and Maberly. 1853.

No poor-rates need we then advance

To keep our paupers well-
Fed cheaply with an easy glance,

And drunken with a smell.
None would be deaf when all might hear
With open mouth in place of ear;
While on the blind new light by dint
Of this new power would shine;
They'd sit upon the smallest print

And read it with the spine!

The party accomplish their long journey safely under the guidance of the young lover, who leads them into a cavern on the mountain's top, and, by the utterance of a single talismanic word, throws open the rocky portal that bars their view of the sky beyond. In an instant, before their eyes

Like a sun of mightier birth
Glittered the majestic EARTH.
Around its orb the constellations passed
Like subject worlds with reverential pace
Treading the empyreal height,

Where calm, and motionless, and vast
It sat, like the Divinity of Space,
Upon the throne of Night.

MR. SCOTT has a vivid and glowing imagination, a fluency of versification, fine descriptive powers, and a genial humor-of each and all of which the present poem affords sufficient evidence. The The unlooked-for vision banishes the "ancient lovers in this lunar romance are Lunari and hatreds" of the rival houses-their offspring, the Argentine, whose lot is cast on that hemisphere happy lovers, are united in marriage, and a most of the moon which is never turned towards the glorious bridal-feast is held in honor of the occaearth, of whose existence they are consequently sion. ignorant. Their several families, like the Shaksperian Capulets and Montagues, are at deadly feud together, and the prospects of the young couple are anything but flattering. Lunari, in his perplexity, has recourse to a celebrated wizard, who, in answer to his invocation, utters the following oracular prophecy :

Whene'er upon the open skies
A living globe of fire, in size
Than planet, star, or sun more vast,

Shall still and motionless be seen,
Then shall these ancient feuds be past,

And thou shalt wed thy Argentine.

And he directs him to the summit of a certain high mountain as the only place whence he may hope to discover the celestial phenomenon. Lunari, with a great deal of difficulty, persuades the rival houses to accompany him in the search. They set out together at length, though with no great cordiality-for, in his secret heart,

Each took a vow-'t was sure to bind-
That if he failed this sign to find,
He never would again be crossed,
But make up for the time he 'd lost
In this absurdly good endeavor,

And hate his neighbor more than ever. They form a singular travelling-caravan, and, from the peculiarity of their lunar constitutions, are compared to mesmerized beings among us-a comparison which gives the author occasion to suggest

How bright the era which would rise
With true millennial smile

On Britain, should Fate mesmerize
The universal isle!

How blest to find in life, that when
One power were tired or dead,
Its brother sense would kindly then
Do duty in its stead!

And from that time to this, whene'er

A marriage in the Moon takes place, Joined soul to soul, the grateful pair, To give the ritual of their race A more than ceremonial worth, Look up to heaven and bless the Earth.

SMOKING IN PRUSSIA.-If there be one part of the continent more than another where the tourist blesses the introduction of railways, it is assuredly the interminable sandy plain in the midst of which it pleased the insane fancy of the great Frederick to establish dane, railway-travelling in Germany has its disadvanhis Prussian metropolis. But, like everything muntages; for, to those who, like myself, are abominators of smoking, a journey in a German Gesellschaft railway-carriage is positive misery. It must be that Germans endeavor to stifle their political cares and sorrows in the fumes of tobacco-smoke, for, assuredly, if all were well with them, they would not smoke so incessantly. The practice has become well-nigh universal; and I fully expect to find the women smoking when I next visit Germany. Now, they stoutly maintain that a man is not a man unless he smokes; and a lover would have but a poor chance of success if his sighs were not perfumed by tobacco-smoke. The modern German smokes from morning till night, ay, and sometimes through the night-hours, too, as I know to my cost; for on one occasion lately, when my bed was placed against a door which communicated with the adjoining room in the hotel at which I was staying in Berlin, a stream of smoke came through the keyhole almost uninterruptedly during the night. No place is safe from the pollution. In the bedrooms you will find pieces of sandpaper attached to the walls, with notices requesting smokers to rub their matches on the sandpaper, and not on the walls, which request, however, is little heeded; and in the railwaycarriages you will see, and be considerably inconvenienced by, tin boxes fastened to the sides, bearing the words, Zu Abfall von Cigarren.-Literary Gazette.

LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 461.-19 MARCH, 1853.

From Chambers' Repository.

useful, as Sir John Sinclair; and that no volumes have for many years been produced which embody so impressive an example of patriotism, as Archdeacon Sinclair's memoirs of his life."

Sir John was born on the 10th of May, 1754, at Thurso Castle, an ancient edifice built by the sixth Earl of Caithness. That singular old residence of his ancestors is in the near neighborhood of John o'Groat's House, and stands almost within seamark on the Pentland Firth, where in stormy weather the spray has sometimes passed over the roof. Fish have been caught with a line from the drawing-room window; and vessels been wrecked so close under the turrets, that the voices of the drowning sailors could be heard.

SIR JOHN SINCLAIR, BART. "He is the most indefatigable man in Europe, and the man of the largest acquaintance:" thus said the Abbé Gregoire of the late Sir John Sinclair. He was truly, in many respects, a very extraordinary person; but the basis of all his distinction lay in his benevolent and disinterested desire to be useful in his day and generation. A private gentleman, born in a remote part of the United Kingdom, he became, purely through his zeal for the good of the community, one of the most conspicuous and one of the most honored men of his age. Besides receiving diplomas from twenty-five learned and scientific societies on the continent, he The father of Sir John Sinclair, a learned and had a vote of thanks for his national services de- pious Christian, educated by the celebrated Dr. creed separately to him by twenty-two counties in Watts, lived under a solemn consciousness, from Great Britain, as well as by numerous towns, constitutional symptoms, that he must die very where he was gratefully acknowledged as a gener- suddenly, and made it the subject of his daily feral benefactor to his country. Testimonials were vent prayer, that he might be "always on his publicly presented to him on five different occa-watch-tower, so that when God was pleased to call sions; he became the confidential friend of Pitt, him, he should be ready to answer. In the prime Perceval, Lord Melville, and all the leading states-of life, he was carried off by apoplexy, without men of his time; he served in Parliament during immediate warning; and from that time Sir John thirty years, and was distinguished by having constantly used the form of prayer found among the frequent personal intercourse and correspondence papers of his exemplary parent. with George III., who created him a privy-councillor; as well as by the esteem of George IV., who caused a letter to be written by Sir Herbert Taylor on the occasion of Sir John's decease, expressing his own sympathy with the family on the loss of so distinguished a patriot.

the Lord High-Commissioner came into office, that she was appointed to preside over an Edinburgh Assembly, directed a letter of his own to "Lady Janet Sinclair, Moderator of the General Assembly, Edinburgh."

Sir John was now left, at the early age of sixteen, personally under the guardianship of his only surviving parent, Lady Janet Sinclair, sister to the seventeenth Earl of Sutherland. It is frequently asserted that talent is chiefly inherited from the mother, and in his case it probably was so. Alison, the accomplished author of the Essay on Beloved as well as revered by all the numerous Taste, when himself on his death-bed, in a last tenantry of her son, her memory is still vividly interview with one of his own intimate friends, preserved in Caithness for the extraordinary tact thus expressed himself respecting the subject of and energy with which she managed his affairs. this memoir, whom he had long known and es- Even in that far northern district, no one could be teemed "I reflect and sleepless nights have" too far north" for her! Such was the opinion given me frequent opportunities of reflecting-on entertained at Thurso of her ability for business, the great moral lesson to be derived from Sir John's that a simple-minded gentleman, being told, when admirable life. I consider whether, during the many years in which he flourished, there was any man whom I could fix upon as having labored with the same assiduity, and with the same success, for he benefit of mankind. I think upon that great work, The Statistical Account of Scotland, upon the The following short extract of the letter written difficulties, all but insurmountable, in the way of by Lady Janet to her son, in the immediate prosits completion, and upon the many useful works of pect of death, when she had attained her seventieth the same kind, and the many valuable suggestions year, cannot fail to be deeply interesting:-" to which it gave rise. I think upon the impulse fore this can be delivered to you, I shall bid a final which Sir John has given to agriculture in his adieu to this vain world, to all its concerns, and ative county, in Great Britain, and throughout all my connections in it. . . . May religion and he world. I dwell on his elaborate History of the virtue be the rule of all your actions; and suffer not · 'ublic Revenue, and on the practical wisdom and the temptations or allurements of a vain world to resight of his financial views and recommendations. make you swerve from your duty..... Reside try to reckon up the other departments of useful-as much in Caithness as possible, and do not trust ess in which he exerted himself, the meritorious too much to the management of others. You'll adividuals for whom he procured a reward, and the find few to trust. Even my long experience Keep

-"Be

mportant inventions and discoveries he introduced was not proof against their arts. .. to public notice. I then advert to the disinterest- short accounts with those you employ in every ca edness which appeared in all his various under-pacity. . . . . To be in debt is a most disagreeable takings; and the longer I consider the subject, the situation. To contract it is easy, but how very more I am convinced, that during the last half difficult to repay! It lessens one's importance, century, no man has arisen either so patriotic or so chagrins the temper, and ruins a family. Beware CCCCLXI. LIVING AGE. VOL. XXXVI. 34

« AnteriorContinuar »