LETTER IV.
THE AMERICAN WAR—MESSRS. MASON AND SLIDELL—PRINCE ALBERT—THE WORKING CLASSES—EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN.
I CAN imagine with what anxiety the Australian colonists will have waited for the intelligence by the present mail, and what a healthful feeling of relief will glow in every breast when the first tidings fall upon their ears. Not that the simple apprehension of the cost of war, nor any lower sense of fear, will have occupied the minds of Englishmen in the remote dependencies of the empire any more than the minds of Englishmen at home. But there were so many conflicting interests to be torn and trampled in the threatened strife between England and America, and so much danger of being precipitated upon ground foreign to all the national sympathies—so much that, while it damped all chivalry of spirit, would madden the worst passions of war—that the suspense in which the English people passed from the old to the new year was perfectly awful. The great emotion of the popular mind cannot be gathered from the jarring utterances of the public Press. In every man's face there were the consanguineous signs of uneasiness and a confused grief, and it seemed as if the millions were all looking with the same sorrowful sternness of purpose towards the West. To slightly vary the immortal words of Campbell—
"The nation held its breath
For a time!"
This fearful gloom is passed away, but the public mind is still troubled and restless. It is enough to confound the strongest mind to see the all-reaching strife of blood which is devastating the proud republic of North America, and pronounce where it will end. Let sectional politicians say what they may, the welfare of England is so closely interwoven with the peaceful progress of America, that they cannot be separated without doing violence to the laws of nature. All men whose English feeling rises above their political leanings, though from very different points of view, see or feel this. The pacific settlement of the perilous difference arising out of the Trent exploit has given a tone to this feeling of kindred anxiety more generous towards the North, and apprehensions of further international embarrassments spring chiefly from the force of friendly regard. Beyond all doubt, sympathy with the Federal cause is fresher and more general in England just now than for months past.
The incidents of the seizure of Messrs. Mason and Slidell, and the terms of the demand and surrender of the prisoners, as disclosed in the correspondence between the two Governments, would admit of a wide debate. But one thing is proved, to the discomfiture of the enemies of popular government, that the Executive authority at Washington can decide grave matters by the dictates of his own judgment, unterrified by "mob power." In due course, Messrs. Mason and Slidell were given up to Lord Lyons, and placed again under the British flag, on board the war steamer Rinaldo. Strange to say, there is a strong probability that while I write the rescued captives, who have created so great a sensation in the world, are in eternity. As yet, we have no intelligence of their arrival at Halifax, and it is to be feared that the Rinaldo was lost in a tremendous gale, in which it is supposed she must have been caught the first night she was at sea. Some of the New York papers are almost jubilant over the supposed destruction of these conspicuous traitors.
If Mason and Slidell are saved from the devouring sea, they will have a cold reception in England. The Times has taken the lead, in a terrible strain of denunciation, in warning the people to shun their presence. With the fate of Haynau before their eyes, they had better not be tempted to look in at Barclay and Perkins' brewery. If they are not answerable for fleeing patriotic ladies, it is said that their fillers have been largely concerned in whipping poor, defenceless slaves. English draymen have as little fancy for the latter performance as for the former.
Now that the death of Prince Albert is a fact in history, all classes of the people have reverently set their hands to the work of commemorating his worth. As no prince was ever so universally and deeply mourned, so will the memory of none be monumentally recorded in prouder words of love and admiration. England is becoming a land of statues. It is beautiful to see in the bosom, as it were, of every city and town, the people's statue of the great minister who gave them untaxed bread, with the one word "Peel," in a taste so accordant with the unpretending respect of the poor, inscribed below. A few years hence every English child will have some local statue of Albert the Good, benignly crowning its earliest associations.
The services of Prince Albert were of a kind which the intelligent mechanics of England thoroughly appreciate. Those only who have seen the stalwart workman, with a delicate sensibility mantling his toil-stained face, when men of a condition superior to his own manifest an intelligent interest in his handiwork, will be able to comprehend the fulness of the English artisan's affection for a Prince who was not only acquainted with every branch of manufacturing art, but was himself the successful improver of several of the most beautiful productions of the English workshop. There is a very kingliness in the true type of the English mechanic. What can be more kingly than a sense of sovereignty over material nature? And this sense of innate power—the cunning of his own right hand—when subordinated to a higher sense of moral duty, gives to him a nobleness of life which many in the favoured walks of society can never approach. Thousands of such men—the flower of modern England—are scattered through England's manufactories; and these men, and not the starred and titled, are the chief mourners of the departed Prince.
What strikes one in England as the most remarkable change in the moral aspect of society is the large amount of self-directed effort on the part of the working classes to improve their own condition. We see this on all hands, in temperance societies, in freehold-land societies, in penny banks, in co-operative shops, in workmen's libraries. Some of the finest public buildings in old historical towns are halls owned and managed chiefly by working men. In nearly every town of consequence the working classes have their co-operative provision store. And I have heard a plain mechanic, in a meeting of 6000 people, speak more common sense in ten minutes than all the other speakers put together; and, what was better, carry the meeting with him by the sheer force of his common sense. All this apart from speculative politics, and with a close bearing on the practical realities of life. It is difficult now-a-days to stir the workmen of English towns by a party cry, but their attention is easily caught by a new invention, or a plan for their moral elevation. They have got a taste for public parks, cheap concerts, and Fine Arts exhibitions; and he must be a gifted charmer on public wrongs who could win their ears from Jenny Lind
Not the least important of the efforts for social change is the movement, now rather prominent in England, for extending the field of employment for respectable women. A number of clever young ladies, whom it is simply coarse abuse to be always designating the "strong-minded," have taken the lead in this work with a noble earnestness. In London and Edinburgh they have established printing-offices where the compositors are all young girls. The ladies at the head of this decisive movement in London are Miss Emily Faithful, Miss Bessie Raynor Parkes, and Miss Maria S. Rye. The former presides over a well-organised printing-office at No. 9, Great Coram-street, under the business style of "Emily Faithful and Company;" and she has about twenty lady compositors hard at work. The Victoria Regia, copies of which have no doubt reached Sydney, is a really beautiful specimen of the ladies' typography. But these printing-offices are the least of their establishments. There are 120 middle-class women carrying on the business of a large highly-organised telegraph office in Moorgate-street, under the admirable management of Mrs. Craig; there is a School of Art with 80 women pupils in Gower-street; there is a School of Design with 100 women at work at Brompton. Miss Rye herself has established a Law Copying Office in Lincoln's Inn, where several young women are honourably earning from 15s. to 30s. a-week. It is astonishing to see the fine, clear, lawyer's hand which these fair copyists have acquired by a little practice. Several of the young ladies, too, are studying medicine, and are determined to practise the "healing art." Others are employed in the British Museum deciphering old manuscripts, and one of them, a Mrs. Green, is getting £300 a-year for her work. There are many other ways in which these noble young creatures are seeking to win their share of the higher and more remunerative kinds of employment, and if woman ever approaches the angelic character in this life, surely it is in that sphere of self-imposed and intelligent exertion.
Miss Parkes edits the Englishwoman's Magazine, a monthly publication, printed and managed entirely by women. Among other means of relieving their sisterhood, they have hit upon emigration, and I believe several young women have already arrived at Sydney under the auspices of Miss Rye and her friends.
We have been appalled by a frightful and unprecedented colliery accident, the details of which will be found at great length in the papers. By a sudden accident 215 men and boys were shut up in a coal-pit, without light, without food, and in a poisonous atmosphere, for a whole week, before they could be disentombed. Oh! the wailing and weeping of the doomed women and children above that living grave, throughout those bitter winter nights. The awful result is best told in the decisive sentences of the Electric Telegraph.
London, Jan. 24, 1862.