Illustrations of political economy, Volume 6 (of 9)

CONTENTS.

Chapter I.

TAKING AN ORDER.

Mr. Culver, the silk-manufacturer, arrived at home later than the usual dinner hour, one dark winter day. He had been attending a meeting at the Mansion-house, held on the behalf of the Spitalfields weavers, whose deplorable distress in the middle of the season caused fearful anticipations of what their condition might be before a warmer season and a brisker state of trade should arrive. Mr. Culver's thoughts were occupied, during his slow and sad walk from the Mansion-house to his abode in the neighbourhood of Devonshire-square, by doubts whether a time of activity would ever arrive; or, if it did, how long it would last. Year after year, since he had entered business, had he been flattered with hopes that permanent prosperity would come; that the ladies of England would continue to prize silk fabrics as the most beautiful material for dress; and would grow conscientious enough to refuse smuggled goods, when every conceivable variety could be had from the looms of their own country. These had been Mr. Culver's hopes till of late. Now he began almost to despair, and to acknowledge himself tired out by the alternate perverseness of customers and workmen. As soon as a new fashion was fairly established, and orders abounded, there was sure to follow a strike among the men for wages; they invariably urging that a protected manufacture must be able to yield good wages to the operatives employed in it. As soon as their demands were yielded to, and the price of goods therefore enhanced, the market was deluged with smuggled silks; and while traffic was busy in the shops, the manufacturer was left to sigh over his ruinous stock when the fashion of the season had passed away. Being thus the sport, as he said, of three parties,--the encroaching weavers, the capricious public, and the smuggling shopkeepers,--the manufacturer declared that he stood no chance of prosperity, however ready the taxed millions of his countrymen might be to tell him that they were made to suffer that he might flourish, and that he had no right to complain while so many paid for the protection granted to his manufacture. Mr. Culver found it difficult to be grateful for the vaunted protection which did him no good; and was strongly disposed to resign the favour and his business together. He wished he had done it ten years before, when he might have withdrawn from the manufacture a richer man than now. At present, all the manufactures of the kingdom were in so depressed a state that there was little encouragement to invest his remaining capital in any other concern; and it would, if unemployed, barely suffice for the maintenance of his family--his motherless young family--whose interests depended on himself alone. His chief doubt about leaving off business immediately arose from something that he had heard at the Mansion-house this day, in confirmation of rumours previously afloat,--that it was the intention of government to introduce some important changes into the silk-trade,--to authorize a restricted importation of foreign silks. The rumour had created a prodigious outcry at the meeting, and caused such a contest between certain shopkeepers and manufacturers, such a splitting into two parties, as made it seem probable that the interests of the starving weavers--the objects of the meeting--would be forgotten between them. Mr. Culver was one who wished for the removal of the existing prohibition, seeing and feeling as he did that nothing could be worse than the present state of the trade in England, and believing that the rage for foreign fabrics might subside when they could be easily had, and that it must be a good thing to try a new footing for a manufacture which was at present carried on to the injury of all the parties concerned. If he continued to manufacture, it would be with the hope of this change; but he ended with a doubt whether he ought to play the speculator much longer, and whether there was not something in the nature of the business which would for ever prevent its being in a permanently flourishing state.

When he approached his own house, he saw his girls looking over the blind, as if waiting for him; and, in the background, nurse's high cap, always white, as if by miracle, considering the locality.

"O, papa!" cried Charlotte, "we thought you never would have come."

"I dare say dinner will be overdone, my dear; but never mind. If cook is not vexed, I shall not care."

"But the Bremes' footboy has brought a note for you; and he has called twice since for an answer; and he was obliged to go home without one, after all."

"Such an ugly footboy, papa!" observed Lucy. "Nurse says that when they set up a footboy, they might as well have got one that had not a snub nose just like his master's."

"And such a ridiculous livery, papa! It is so odd to see such a little fellow with knee-breeches, and with buttons on his big coat as large as my doll's saucers! Nurse says----"

"Hold your tongue, my dear. I want to read this note; and when we go to dinner, I have something to talk to you about that signifies more than Mr. Breme's footboy's coat-buttons."

While the note was being read, nurse, who was a privileged person, did not leave the room, but muttered her wonder where the change came from that made shopkeepers now so different from what shopkeepers used to be. She remembered the time when the Bremes would no more have thought of having a footboy than of living in the king's palace. And if shopkeepers' children learned to dance in her young days, they were satisfied with plain white frocks, instead of flaunting in silks and gauze ribbons, like the Miss Bremes. There lay the secret, however. It was of the silks that all the rest came. Every body knew that the Bremes lived by breaking the laws;--that old Breme's shop in town, and his son's at Brighton, were full of unlawful goods.

"And so they will be, nurse," said her master, "as long as the great folks at court, and all the fine ladies who imitate them, buy French goods as fast as they can be smuggled.--Charlotte, see if dinner is coming. I am in a hurry. I have to go out again directly."

"O, papa!" said Lucy, "I thought you had something very particular to tell us; and now you say you are going out directly."

"It must do when I come back to-night, or in the morning. It is nothing very entertaining; but almost anything is better worth telling than all the faults you have to find with what the Bremes say and do. How can it possibly signify to you and me whether their footboy has a snub nose or a sharp one?"

"No, but, papa, it is such a very wicked thing of Mr. Breme to smuggle half the things in his shop, when the poor weavers close by are starving, and he knows it. Nurse says----O, here is the boiled beef! but I can go on telling you while you are helping the others. Nurse says----"

"Nurse," said Mr. Culver, "it is a pity you should stay to cut the child's food. Charlotte will attend to her."

Nurse unwillingly withdrew. Perhaps she would have attempted to stand her ground, if she had known what her master was planning against her. He was at this moment thinking that he must, by some means, put a stop to all this gossip about their neighbours; gossip which, in the case of the Bremes, was strongly tinctured with the malice which it was once thought nurse Nicholas could not bear towards any human being. It would be difficult, he feared, to separate nurse in any degree from those whom she would always consider her charge, even if she should live to see them all grown up; but her influence must be lessened, if he did not mean the girls to grow up the greatest gossips in the neighbourhood. He thought that the return of their brothers from school in the approaching holydays (brothers both older than Charlotte, the eldest girl) would afford a good opportunity for breaking the habit of nurse being in the parlour all day long during his absence. He now began the change by sending her away before dinner, instead of immediately after.

"Old Short has been telling nurse," continued Lucy,--"you know old Short, papa?"

"My dear, he used to weave for me before you were born."

"Well; old Short tells nurse that there is not a loom at work in all Crispin-street, nor has been all this month, while silk pelisses are more the fashion than ever they were. The Bremes had such beautiful pelisses last Sunday at church! You saw them, papa?"

"Not I, my dear. I do not go to church to look at people's pelisses."

"O, well! they are made Paris fashion; and of French silk too. Your silks are not good enough for such high and mighty young ladies, nurse says."

"There will soon be an end of that," observed Charlotte, who attributed her father's gravity to the fact of his manufacture being slighted. "There will soon be an end of all that; and nurse's son is going to help to put an end to it."

"Yes, papa," cried Lucy. "Only think! He is going into the Pretence Service."

"La, Lucy! you mean the Preventive Service," cried Charlotte.

"To prevent prohibited goods being brought on shore; to prevent smugglers' boats from landing. Now you will understand, Lucy, what the Preventive Service means. So Nicholas is to be one of the Coast Guard! I suppose nurse is pleased."

"I hardly know," replied Charlotte. "He says it is very hard service in these times; and I believe she thinks her son fit to be an admiral. He has to guard the Sussex coast; and nurse says there are more smugglers there than any where."

Lucy was of opinion that he should have somebody to help him. He could hardly manage, she thought, to prevent boats landing, if several chose to come together. He must be a very brave man indeed, she thought, to judge by what had been given him to do. No wonder nurse was proud of him! Nicholas sank much in her estimation when she heard that he was not alone to guard the whole Sussex coast, but had companions within sight by day, and within hail by night.

"But do they all earn wages, like Nicholas?" inquired Lucy. "They pay him wages, besides letting him have his pension still, that was given him for being wounded in a battle. I wish old Short, and some of the other poor people he was telling nurse about, could be made guards too. But who pays them?"

"Who do you think pays them? Try and find out."

Charlotte thought that her father and the other manufacturers were the most likely people to pay for the prevention of smuggling, especially as some shopkeepers and the public had no objection to smuggling. But when she remembered how many guards there must be, if they were in sight of one another all along the coast where smuggling went on, she began to think that it must be an expense which would be hardly worth the manufacturers' while. Lucy supposed that if each manufacturer kept one, it might be easily managed. She asked which would cost most,--a Preventive servant or a footboy?

"You think, I suppose," said her father, "that as the Preventive men do not prevent smuggling, after all, we might as well have a footboy, and be as grand as the Bremes. But, do you know, Lucy, I think the Bremes would have much more reason to laugh at us then, than you have now for ridiculing them. I believe Mr. Breme is growing rich; and he must know very well that I am growing poor."

Charlotte asked again about the Coast Guard. She would have been pleased just now to learn that her father had any kind of man-servant in his pay, besides those in the warehouse of whom she knew already. When, however, she was told the annual expense of keeping a guard against smugglers on the coast and at sea, she believed that the cost was beyond the means of all the manufacturers together that she had ever heard of. It was above four hundred thousand pounds a-year,--a sum of which she could as little realize the idea as of so many millions.

"Yes, my dear," said her father, "four hundred thousand pounds are paid every year for not preventing smuggling; for we see that smuggling still goes on."

"How can it be?" asked Lucy. "Do the men go to sleep, so that they do not see the boats coming? Or are they lazy? or are they cowardly? I do not think there will be any more smuggling in Sussex, now that Nicholas is there."

Her father laughed, and told her it would require a much greater man than Nicholas to put a stop to smuggling in Sussex; and that if the Coast Guard could keep their eyes wide open all the twenty-four hours round, and were as active as race-horses, and as brave as lions, they could not prevent smuggling, as long as people liked French goods better than English; and that such would be people's taste as long as French goods were to be had better for the same money than any that were made in England.

Why the English should be so foolish as to make their fabrics less good and less cheap than the French, Mr. Culver could not now stay to explain. He despatched his cheese, tossed off his port, recommended the girls to learn as much as they pleased from nurse about the Preventive Service, and as little as they could about the Bremes' misdeeds, and was off, to see the very man against whom nurse's eloquent tongue had been employed.

Mr. Breme appeared to have something of consequence to display to Mr. Culver, as he turned on the gas in his back-room to an unusual brightness when his friend entered. (They still called themselves friends, though provocations were daily arising in matters of business which impaired their good will, and threatened to substitute downright enmity for it in time.)

"Here, my dear sir," said Breme; "just look----but I wish you had come by daylight: you can't conceive the lustre by daylight;--just look at this piece of goods, and tell me if you ever manufactured anything like it."

Mr. Culver unrolled one end of the piece of silk, ran his finger-tips over the surface, furled and unfurled its breadth, contemplated its pattern, and acknowledged that it was a very superior fabric indeed. He had hardly ever seen such an one from the Lyons looms, and he was sure neither Macclesfield nor Spitalfields had produced it.

"Can Spitalfields produce such an one, or one nearly resembling it?" asked Breme. "That is the question I wanted to ask you, my dear sir. Bring me a specimen which shall pass for French, and you shall have a larger order than has left this house for a twelvemonth past;--provided always that you can furnish it without delay."

There need be no delay, Culver answered; for there were more looms unemployed in Spitalfields than could be set to work by any order that a single house could give. But the inferiority of the British manufacture was the impediment;--an inferiority which seemed almost hopeless. There was not a child of ten years old, dressing her doll in her mamma's odds and ends of silk, that could not tell French from English at a glance. Ay; put her into a dark room, and she would know the difference by the feel.

"You should get rid of this inferiority, my dear sir," said Breme, with an encouraging smile, "and then we shall be most happy to deal exclusively with you. We prefer dealing with neighbours, cœteris paribus, I assure you. You should get rid of this inferiority, and then----"

"Get rid of it! I should like to know how, while our weavers insist on the wages which they fancy can be spared from a protected trade, and will not believe that their prosperity has anything to do with the quality of their work. As long as they fancy their manufacture by law established, they will take no pains to improve it. There is no stimulus to improvement like fair competition."

"Well! your men's wages will soon be no longer by law established; that will be one step gained. You will then compete with Macclesfield and Paisley, which you could not do while your Spitalfields Act was in force. Bestir yourselves, I advise you, or the foreigners will cut you out in every way."

"I shall bestir myself to get our protection removed," observed Culver. "This is our only hope: but in this endeavour you will not join me, Breme. Contraband goods have too many charms for your customers, and bring too much profit to you, to allow you to wish that the trade should be open. Beware, however, that you are not caught some day."

Breme begged to be trusted to take care of himself. As to his fondness for a stock of contraband goods, he would just mention, in confidence, a circumstance which would prove his disposition to encourage the home manufacture.

"When I was last in Paris," said he, "a manufacturer there offered to supply me with any quantity of silk goods, to be deposited in any part of London that I might point out, upon the payment of an insurance of ten per cent. This tempting offer I declined, sir."

"Because you knew you could as easily get the goods without paying the insurance. Very meritorious, indeed, Mr. Breme! However, I am not one to talk about the patriotism, and the loyalty, and all that, involved in the case: for I hold the frequent and unpunished breach of a law to be a sufficient proof that the law is a bad one; and that the true social duty in such transactions is to buy where things are cheapest, and sell where they are dearest; thus relieving those who want to sell, and accommodating those who wish to buy. I am not going to quarrel with you, sir, for buying your silks abroad, if you will only join hands in getting your neighbours freed for a fair competition with France."

"Very liberal, indeed, my dear sir! Very handsome, indeed! It will give me great pleasure if you can accept the order which I have just given you a hint of. By the way, were you at the last India sale?"

"Of course."

"How did the bandanas go?"

"You probably know as well as I. I am no exporter of bandanas."

"Do you mean to insinuate that I am? Retail dealers have something else to do, I assure you."

"O yes;--to sell them when they come back again. But you must know how they are disposed of at the India House, and how much it costs to carry them over to Guernsey, and bring them in again, in spite of the Pretence Service (as my little girl calls it), before you can tell whether to sell them at seven or eight shillings apiece in your back shop."

"Upon my word, sir, you are very wise," said Breme, laughing.

"One learns such wisdom at a dear cost," replied Culver. "Let me see. About 1,000,000 bandanas have been sold at the India House this year, at four shillings apiece. Of these, full 800,000 come back to be sold at seven or eight shillings each; so that the users of bandanas pay a bounty of 800,000 times three shillings a-year to speculators and smugglers, besides their share of the expense of the Blockade and Coast Guard which is employed to prevent their getting their handkerchiefs. It is a beautiful system, truly!"

"Let it work quietly, till those concerned begin to see into it," replied Breme. "You ought not to complain, you know. It is all done to protect your craft."

"If government would please to protect the consumers' money," observed Culver, "they would have more to spend on the produce of my looms. All I ask is that the people's purses may be protected, and we manufacturers left to take care of ourselves. Government has been so long killing us with kindness that I doubt whether we shall ever get over it. However, cut me a pattern of your silk, and I will consult with my cleverest workman, and let you know what we can do."

"Certainly:--that is,--I am sure I may trust your honour."

"My interest, if not my honour. You must know very well that our books are not so full of orders just now as to make us willing to throw a chance one into other hands."

"True, true! But a rival house----"

"Will not interfere with you while you agree to fair terms. I will be off to my factotum, as I call him, in my business matters. I hope Mrs. Breme is well, and the young ladies?"

"The children are well enough; but my wife has not got over the autumn fogs yet. She would not be persuaded to leave Brighton till the royal party had removed; and the consequence is just what I expected. Her chest is so delicate that I doubt whether she will get across the doors this winter. It is really a very animated, an extremely fascinating scene, you know, when the royal household are at hand. Your young folks are flourishing, I hope?"

"Quite so. Good evening. My best respects to your lady."

"Good evening. O, Mr. Culver, just one thing more! You said something about your stock. Have you a good assortment that one might select a few pieces from,--of grave colours,--at moderate prices?"

"O yes. Will you come and see?"

"I think I will," replied Breme, looking round for his hat. "And a good many blacks?"

"Of course; but you had better view them by daylight. You are not thinking of choosing colours to-night?"

"Certainly; but I can examine your prices, and bring home a piece or two of blacks. Here, Smith! Send Johnson after me directly to Mr. Culver's warehouse with his bag. As to these bandanas, Mr. Culver----"

Culver turned quick round upon him with the question,

"Is the King dead?"

"Lord bless my soul, what an idea! His Majesty dead! No, not that I have heard; nor even ill, for anything I know."

Mr. Culver was not quite satisfied; so remarkable was Breme's method of inquiring after his stock of blacks--at the tail of their conversation, and yet with an evident design of immediately possessing himself of some pieces. He was not altogether mistaken. Breme had received private intelligence of the inevitable occurrence of a slight general mourning, and was anxious to have his assortment of black silks ready at once, and the fabric in imitation of his French pattern prepared against the expiration of the short mourning.

Culver was enough on his guard to avoid selling any of his stock quite so low as he might have done if no suspicion had crossed him. When the transaction was concluded, he stepped into Crispin-street, to consult the best skilled of his workmen on the matter of the new order.

Chapter II.

GIVING AN ORDER.

Mr. Culver was not unaccustomed to visit his work-people in their abodes, and knew very well what sights to expect on opening the door; but he had never chanced to look in upon any one of them on an evening of January,--a dull month for trade, and almost the dreariest as to weather. He did not anticipate much that was comfortless in the aspect of Cooper's abode; for Cooper was so good a workman as to be always employed while any business at all was doing. His wife was a more tidy body than many weavers are blessed with; and her baby was far from resembling the miserable little creatures who may be seen in any street in London, with peaked chins, blue lips, and red noses, their ribs bent in with uncouth nursing, and legs bowed from having been made untimely to bear the weight of the swollen body. Mrs. Cooper's baby smiled a smile that was not ghastly, and danced in its father's arms when he had time to play with it, instead of wearing his heart with its cries when he should be sleeping the sleep which follows a day of hard labour.

Knowing all this, Mr. Culver was rather surprised by the first view of Cooper's apartment this night. Its atmosphere was apparently made up of the remains of the orange fog of the morning, the smoke from the chimney which could not make its way into the upper air, that which proceeded from the pipe of the old man who cowered over the dull fire, and that which curled magnificently from the dipped candles on either side the loom:--which candles seemed to yield one-tenth part light, and the rest to be made up of yellow tallow, wick growing into perpetual cauliflowers, and smoke. The loom was going, with its eternal smack and tick, serving, in co-operation with the gap under the door, for as admirable a ventilator as could have been wished for on the hottest day in August. Mrs. Cooper was discharging many offices in her own person; being engaged now in snuffing the rapidly-wasting candles, now in giving a fresh impulse to the rocking cradle, but chiefly in tying the threads of her husband's work, while he was intent, with foot, hands, and eye, on the complicated operations of his craft.

It seemed a somewhat unequal division of labour that these two should have so many tasks upon their hands, while a third was sitting lazily smoking by the fire, who might as well have been tending the baby. But old Short had another occupation, which was vastly important in his own eyes, although it would sometimes have been gladly dispensed with by everybody about him. Old Short was always grumbling. This being an avocation that he had ever found time for in his busiest days, it was not to be supposed that he would neglect it now that he had nothing else to do; and accordingly his voice of complaint arose in all the intervals of Cooper's loom music, and formed a perpetual accompaniment to its softer sounds.

It was matter of some surprise to Mr. Culver, who believed that Cooper and his wife were justified in living comfortably if they chose, that they should continue to give a place at their fireside to a cross old man, to whom they were bound neither by relationship nor friendship. On the present occasion, his first remark, offered in an under-tone, was,

"So you have the old gentleman with you still! He does not grow more pleased with the times, I suppose?"

Cooper winked, and his wife smiled.

"Have you any expectations from him? Or what can induce you to give him house-room? He is very well able to take care of himself, as far as I see."

"Very well, indeed, sir. He is as capable, as to his work, as ever, when he gets any: and it is trying sometimes to hear him talk; but he is not the only person to feel the hardship of the times, sir; and one must put up with a fault or two, for the sake of having a respectable lodger."

"He pays us fairly the little we ask for his share of our fire and our meals," observed the wife; "and we are getting used to that tone of his by degrees;--except, indeed, the baby. One would think baby knew what Short was talking about by its fidgeting and crying when he begins on a fresh complaint."

Short was all this time listening to himself too intently to be aware what was said on the other side of the room. He missed Mr. Culver's expression of concern at Cooper's being obliged to add to his resources by having a boarder, but was roused by the exhibition of the pattern of French silk. He felt too much contempt for it, however, to look closely at it, when he heard what it was. He supposed it was one of the new-fangled fashions people had taken to since the Spitalfields weavers had had their just wages held back from them. He had said what would happen when his brother weavers consented to take less wages than the Act gave them. The manufacture deserved to go down----

"I am quite of your opinion," observed Mr. Culver. "We deserve to go down if we do not mend our methods. Look at the lustre of this pattern, and only feel its substance. We deserve not to prosper if we do not improve our fabrics, with such an example as this before us of what may be done."

"Leave the French to mind their own matters," replied the old man, "and let the English wear what is English, as they should."

"You will find that rather difficult to manage, friend, if they like the French fabric better."

"Never tell me, sir! It is a fancy, and a wicked fancy, that of liking French goods. Why, for wear, there is nothing like our brocades, that there was such a demand for when I was young. There was variety enough, too, in all conscience. There was the double and treble striped, and the strawberry-spotted, and----"

"O yes, I remember, Mr. Short. The first waistcoat I danced a cotillon in was such a strawberry-spotted thing as you describe. Nothing like it for wear, as you say. Down came my little Lucy in it, the other day, to make us laugh; and, to be sure, the colours are as bright as ever. But then, there is nothing like those brocades for price either."

Short hated to hear such grumbling about the prices of things as was always to be heard now that the French had got a footing in the country. In old times, those that could afford to wear silk did not grudge a good price for it.

"Very true; but many more people wear silk now; and they are of a class to whom it is of consequence to pay no more than is necessary."

"Ay; and to please them, you have wrought your web thinner and thinner, till you have made it too thin for even the cheapeners; and now you must learn from the French to give your fabric more substance."

"I am afraid we cannot do that for the same money; hey, Cooper?" said Mr. Culver, watching for the sentence which the weaver should pronounce when he should remove his magnifying glass from his eye, and give judgment on the pattern.

"I think we may do it, sir," pronounced Cooper. "I believe I see the principle of the thing; and I could make a fair imitation, I think. Not with the same body, of course. We cannot afford to put in equal material for the money; but a slighter fabric of the same pattern might sell, I have no doubt."

"If I might put in my word," said Mrs. Cooper, "I should recommend a higher price instead of a slighter fabric. It is more for the substance than the pattern that the French silks are preferred, I have heard say."

"My dear," said her husband, "I cannot pretend to rival a French weaver, if you give me leave to use all the silk that ever passed through a foreigner's loom. That is a point above me. So we had better content ourselves with a likeness as to figure and price.--I cannot conceive," he continued, as he turned the pattern over and over, and held it in various lights, "how the foreigners can afford their silks at such a price as to tempt our shopkeepers to the risk of the contraband trade."

"Never tell me!" cried Short again. "You do not really think that the French sell at the rate our shopkeepers say they do! It is all a trick of the people at home, to spite those they have been jealous of so long. They may starve us; but the law will be too strong for them, sooner or later."

"I rather hope that they may be too strong for the law," replied Mr. Culver. "If we can but get the law altered, our day of prosperity may come again. We might have learned by this time that all our hopes of selling our silks abroad are at an end, unless we improve like our neighbours, instead of wrapping ourselves up in the idea that nobody can ever equal us."

"Ay, I suppose it was under the notion that it was a fine thing to export, that we were forbidden to import silks," observed Cooper; "but if they had only let us have a little free conversation with the French about their manufacture, we might by this time have had something as good as they to sell abroad."

"Or if not silks, something instead, which would have been produced out of what we should have saved from our expensive manufacture. If I had but the capital which is wasted in following our inferior methods, what fine things I would do with it for my family, and, in some sort, for my country!"

"I cannot imagine," Cooper again observed, "how the French afford their goods at the price they do. Whether it is that they have food cheaper, and therefore wages are lower, or whether it is that they have better machinery, I should like to come to a fair trial with them. If we can get upon an equality with them, well and good; there will be buyers at hand for all that we can make. If we cannot compete with them, better know it at once, and turn to something else, than be supplanted by means of a contraband trade, while our masters' money is spent in guarding the coast to no purpose."

"Never tell me!" interposed old Short. "You grumblers always grudge every farthing that is not spent upon yourselves."

"O, yes," replied Cooper, smiling; "we grumblers grudge every half-crown that is laid out on French silks in our neighbourhood; and no wonder, friend."

"It is the Coast Guard I was thinking of," replied the old man. "There is Mrs. Nicholas's son just well settled in the Preventive Service; and now you are for doing away the whole thing. What is to become of the poor lad, I wonder?"

"Cooper will teach him to weave," said Mr. Culver, laughing. "So many more people would wear silks, if we had fair play, that we might make a weaver of a coast guardsman here and there."

Cooper feared it would be a somewhat difficult task to impart his skill to Nicholas, who was not over-bright in learning; but he would attempt more difficult things if they brought any chance of relief from the present unhappy state of affairs. He was as little given to despond as any man; and was more secure than many of his neighbours of being employed as long as there was occupation to be had; but it did make him tremble to look forward, when he reflected how his earnings grew less, quarter by quarter.

"Ay; that is the way," muttered Short. "You let the masters off their bargain about wages, and then you complain that your earnings are small. People's folly is a mystery to me."

"As great a mystery as the black dye,--hey, Mr. Short?" said Mrs. Cooper.

The old man smiled with an air of condescension when Mr. Culver asked, "What of the black dye?"

"Only that Mr. Rose was complaining of seldom having his goods dyed exact to pattern, sir: and the dyer made an excuse about the air;--some stuff that I forget, about the air being seldom two days alike at that time of year. As if the air had anything to do with black dye! No, no,--never tell me!"

"As great a mystery as the mishap with the steam-boat, perhaps, Mr. Short?"

"Why, ay; there is another piece of nonsense, sir. I happened to be at hand when the little steam-boat blew up, five years ago. I saw the planks and things blown clean on shore, sir; and they would have had me believe that it was steam that did it. 'Never tell me,' said I, 'that steam did all that.'"

"How did it happen, then, do you suppose?"

"What is that to me? They might blow it up with gunpowder for anything that I cared. But about the dye,--that is a different matter altogether; and so is the affair of the wages, since our bread depends on the one and the other. And as for throwing open our trade to those French rascals, never tell me that you are not all idiots if you wish for such a thing. I have woven my last piece, sir, if you prevail to bring in a Frenchman to supplant me. Mark my words, sir, I have woven my last piece."

"I hope not, Short. I hope you will weave many another piece before you die, however we may arrange matters with the French. Meantime, if Cooper discovers the secret of yonder pattern, as I think he will, you must find a place for your loom at the other end of the room, and be ready for your share of the work."

Short muttered that new-fangled patterns did not suit old eyes and hands like his. He must starve with the starving, since he could not take his chance with those who were fond of change.--The mention of the starving left the parties no spirits for further conversation on other subjects; and Mr. Culver departed, while Cooper stepped back into his loom, and the old man resumed his pipe, full of contempt for all masters that were caught by a new pattern, and of all workmen that would have anything to say to such innovations. He only wished they would come first to him with their new schemes. He should enjoy bidding them weave for themselves, if they must have new fancies.

Chapter III.

DUMB DUTY.

Cooper had good reason for doubting his capability of teaching Nicholas to weave, and for thinking such a task the worst consequence that could result to him from the abolition or reduction of the Coast Guard. There were, indeed, few things that Nicholas could learn to do, and it was therefore a happy circumstance for himself and his mother that his present appointment had been obtained for him. He had good eyes, and a set of strong limbs, so that he stood as fair a chance as a brighter man of seeing a boat on the waves, and of sustaining his six hours' watch to the satisfaction of his officer, in ordinary times. How he might conduct himself at any crisis,--whether he would do what he ought on seeing a suspicious vessel near the coast, or whether any human power could prevail with him to alter the periods or the mode of his watch without deranging all his faculties,--was another question: but no emergency having arrived since his appointment, Nicholas was, as yet, in very good repute with everybody about him. Lieutenant Storey had never found fault with him; and Mrs. Storey had more than once bestowed a word and a smile on him, in answer to his reverential salutation, and the open-mouthed admiration with which he was perceived to regard his officer's young bride. His mates let him alone except at those lounging times when one person did as well as another to make remarks to about the state of the weather and the water, and the prospects of the fishing below. As for the villagers, they were, from some cause or other, more civil to Nicholas than they usually were to men of his calling; so that he determined, at least once a day, that he was a favourite of fortune, and had uncommon reason to be grateful to Providence. At least once a day;--for so often did he usually rest his knee against a certain big stone on the beach, and look seaward through his telescope: on the first occasion of doing which, it had entered his mind that his mother admired him very much, and that everybody was very kind to him. Each time afterwards that he used the same action, he thought that everybody was very kind to him, and that his mother admired him very much; and he grew fond of this stone, and of using his telescope in that particular place. By a sort of instinct, he rose from his knee, and shot his instrument into its case, as soon as any annoyance was suspected to be approaching; so that he was pretty sure of keeping his periodical mood in its primitive state.

This method of his,--of having a particular time and place fixed in which to enjoy, and another in which to endure,--was vexatious to those who delighted in teasing. The children of the village could never fix Nicholas to his stone; and when he was upon his watch he would bear anything. This being considered a settled matter, they left off attacking him at such times, leaving it to the wind and rain to overthrow his tranquillity if they could. Nicholas was not destined, however, to be always so favoured above his more irritable companions, as he found one bitter February day, when the hardships of the watch were quite enough of themselves for an ordinary stock of patience.

A dense fog hung so low that there was no use in keeping watch on the heights, and the Coast Guard were therefore stationed along the margin, in the exact position for being drenched by the spray, nipped by the wind, and stifled by the fog, as they looked with anxious gaze over the dull sea, which appeared more like a heaving expanse of oil than a congregation of waters. There was small use in peering abroad; for the mist hung like a curtain till within a furlong of the beach. As little comfort was there in looking inland. The near cliffs of Beachy Head seemed icy, and the sea-birds that dwelt there appeared to be cowering in their holes from the cold. The fishermen's huts bore the comfortless aspect that wooden houses always do when their roofs are loaded with snow; and even the station-house, perched on the highest point of the cliffs, seemed deprived for the time of its air of cleanliness and comfort. Just at the moment when the fog fell most chilly, and the spray flew most searchingly, and the rattle of the waves on the shingle sounded most dreary, a troop of children came wandering by, some of the little ones threatening to cry with cold, but the elder ones not having had the spirit of mischief yet starved out of them. They were pupils of Mr. Pim, the village schoolmaster, and were on their way to their several homes from his well-warmed school-room. One of the troop, a brown, handsome, roguish-looking boy, ran up to Nicholas with--

"I say, Mister, sir, what's your name?--what's o'clock?"

Of course, Nicholas made no answer; and the question was put in all forms which could be expected to provoke a reply,--all to no purpose.

"I say, master, let me hold your spy-glass while you blow upon your fingers; you can't hold it. There! bang it goes! Lord! look, there it goes again! He can't hold his spy-glass no more than a baby."

The joke now was to twitch his coat-tail, or otherwise startle Nicholas, so as to cause him to drop his glass as often as his benumbed fingers raised it to the level of his eye.

"Look, look! if his eyes be not running over every time the wind blows. Look! how he blinks away from the fog, every puff that comes! A pretty watch he makes! I say, what is that black thing yonder, sir? It is a boat, as sure as I am alive. You had better look sharp, sir."

"No, not that way," said another; "more to the right, near to that cliff. No, no; this way, to the left. Why, man, you have lost your eyes!"

The rogues were delighted to see that, though Nicholas made no reply, his head wagged from right to left, and from left to right, as they chose to turn it. When he had gazed till the fog had drawn closer round the nearer headlands, and when he wiped his eyes in the cutting wind with his coat-sleeve, till they watered faster than ever, the joke was improved upon. The children crowded together in a sheltered corner, and invited Nicholas to come too, and be comfortable, instead of standing to be buffeted like a sea-gull that knew no better. They tantalized him with accounts of what they were going to do at home,--with mention of hot broth and potatoes, of fire, of shelter, and of everything comfortable that he was not likely to have for nearly six hours to come. Nicholas was immoveable; and when they were tired of plaguing him, and ran off with expressions of insulting pity, he paced his allotted walk without any sign of anger or discontent. His first token of emotion of any kind was a vehement laugh, when he saw what next befel the little brown boy who had begun the attack on him.

The boy's companions had warned him of the uselessness of trying to provoke Nicholas, and had recommended Brady in preference,--Brady, the Irishman, who was known to find it necessary to keep the thought of punishment before him, in order to hold his tongue when jeered by those who would take advantage of his not being able to answer. About Brady, therefore, gathered the small fry; and they pestered him till he turned suddenly round, seized Uriah Faa, the gipsy boy, and laid him sprawling, just in advance of a ninth wave, as it was rolling on. The boy yelled, Brady resumed his walk, the other children scampered off, full of fear and wrath, and Nicholas laughed aloud.

"Really now, I call that very cruel," said a sweet voice behind him. "I would not do such a thing as that for the world; and I should be very sorry to laugh at it. Would not you, Elizabeth?"

"O, yes; but what can you expect from a set of creatures like this Coast Guard, that are put here to plague the people?" replied Elizabeth.

Overwhelmed with grief and shame stood Nicholas, tongue-tied under a charge which wounded him keenly. Elizabeth's contempt did not trouble him very much, though a stranger might have pronounced her a more particular-looking lady than her companion, from her being more gaily dressed, and carrying more grandeur in her air. His grief was that the tender-hearted, sweet-spoken little lady, who never bore ill-will to anybody, should think him cruel. It was his duty to seem to take no notice, and to go on looking out for vessels; but Nicholas could not so play the hypocrite when Mrs. Storey was in question. An observer might have been amused at the look of misery with which he seemed about to ask leave to go down on his knees on the wet shingle, and must have been convinced that no thought of contraband traders was in his mind as he turned to watch the ladies proceeding on their bleak way. Nicholas's only resource was to resolve to speak in defence of his comrade and himself, as soon as his watch should be ended.

In a very short time, it appeared as if the lady's words, as well as the boy's cries, had made themselves heard up the country. From one recess or another of the cliffs dropped picturesque forms, in gipsy guise, all directing their steps towards that part of the beach where Brady and Nicholas were stationed on the margin of the tide. A fisherman or two looked out lazily from the cottages; and their more active wives drew their cloaks about them, and hastened down to see what would ensue on the ducking of a mischievous boy.

"Goodness, Matilda!" cried Elizabeth, "they are coming this way. Mercy! they are going to speak to us. Which way shall we run? What shall we do?"

And without waiting for an answer to her questions, the lady took to flight, and scudded towards the cliff path as fast as her trembling limbs would carry her, screaming by the way, as often as any one person came nearer to her than another. Matilda, not quite foolish enough to follow at the same rate, but very much alarmed, was immediately surrounded by gipsies, vociferating in a language which she did not understand, and pointing so angrily towards the guard, that it was plain she would be safer without their protection than with it. The state of affairs was not improved by the junction of the fishermen's wives.

"O, Mrs. Alexander," cried the lady, addressing the best known face among the latter, "what do these people want with me? What are they going to do?"

"They want you to bear witness, my lady, how the boy Uriah has been used by these cruel-hearted, thieving rogues, that don't care what mischief they do with their hands, while they have never a tongue in their heads, but creep about like spies."

"Perhaps it is very well that the tongues are all on one side," said the trembling lady; "there is no saying how quarrels might otherwise issue, Mrs. Alexander."

"Bless us! how you shake with cold, my lady! Only think what it must be to be laid flat in the water, as Uriah was by yon villain's hands. If they had been frozen off by the wrists, it would only have served him right. One would think you had been in the water too, Ma'am, by your shaking."

"I am in hot water just now," declared Matilda, half laughing. "Cannot you call off these rude people, and prevent their pressing round me? You seem to know them."

"O yes, sure, Ma'am; and you would know them too, if you had been a little longer in this place. It is only old Faa, the gipsy, and his tribe, that come here every winter. The lady that was with you just now knows very well who they are, and where they live, for all her running away so fast."

"I wish she would come back then, for I cannot tell what in the world to say to them. Mr. Faa! Which is Mr. Faa?"

A grisly-looking old gipsy stepped forward.

"You do not suspect me of having caused your boy to be dipped, I hope?"

All bowed, and vociferated their horror at such an idea.

"Neither must you expect me to bid you duck those men. It is a very cold day; and I am so sorry to have witnessed one ducking, that I should be very unwilling to see anybody else laid under water."

This was perhaps the most foolish speech she could have made, as it put into their heads the idea of summary vengeance. She saw her mistake in the increased rage of the people, and the look of defiance that Brady put on. There was little use now in saying that there might have been fault on both sides, and that it was best to forgive and forget. There was no use in offering to tell the Lieutenant what had happened, and in answering for it that such an offence should not happen again; the people were determined to make the most of having the officer's lady on their side, and of the present opportunity of gratifying their hatred of the Coast Guard. All the ungracious acts ever committed there by a coast guard rushed into their remembrance; how one neighbour had been stopped and searched on the beach, and the fire of another put out on the cliff, under the suspicion of its being a signal; how the boat of a third could never come home without being entered by these spies; and how, once upon a time, a person had been shot by a choleric member of the Preventive Force. All these sins seemed likely to be now visited on the heads of Brady and Nicholas, when a mediator appeared in the shape of Pim, the schoolmaster, the most potent personage between the martello towers and Parson Darby's Hole,--a so-called cavern in the cliffs of Beachy Head.

Mr. Pim owed his influence, not to any physical force, though he was the tallest and stoutest man within five miles; nor to wealth, for he professed to have nothing but his village day-school to support his family upon; nor to any connexion with the great, for he was a bluff, homely personage, who did not want or care for anybody's favours; nor to his own superior wit, for no one was aware of his being remarkably endowed in this way. It was partly that he had given to his neighbours all the book-learning that they could boast of, and the little religion that they professed. It was yet more that he had been a long resident with his family, after having early buried his wife among them. But, above all, it was his merry heart, making itself understood by a voice mighty enough to out-bellow the waves at Beachy Head, that was the charm of Mr. Pim. He liked to be told that he should have been a preacher, with such a voice as his, and would forthwith enact the reverend gentleman for a minute or two; but he could never make his splendid voice bring out any thing but little jokes with small wit in them; for the good reason that his brain would supply nothing else. Nothing more was necessary, however, to constitute him the most popular man within his sphere.

"Hi, hi! what is all this about?" was the question that came travelling through the air, as soon as his tall form became visible, approaching from the houses. "What are you buzzing about here for, when your young one is toasting at home, as dry as the cod-sounds that hang over his head? Toasting! aye, at my fire. I met him dripping like a duck, and he would have slunk away; but it was up with him this way;" and he seized upon a boy standing near, and threw him across his shoulder, twisting him about with one hand as if he had been a doll. "This way I carried him home, unwilling enough, to my Rebecca. 'Here, Beck,' says I, 'take him and toast him till I come back to give him a flogging.' And now he is expecting me, so I must be off, as soon as you will please to give over quarrelling, and march home. Flog him! ay, to be sure, for disturbing these men at their duty. It is a fine thing, you gipsy gentlemen, to have put your young folks under the rod; and it would be a thousand pities not to use it. You can't get the impish spirit out of them all in a day."

"But has the boy done wrong?" inquired Mrs. Storey. "Even if he has, he has surely been punished enough."

"Not while ill blood is left, my lady. I never leave off punishing my boys till they laugh with me, and it is all right again. If Mr. Faa will undertake to make his boy laugh as much as he cried half an hour ago, he is welcome to go and fetch him away. But then there must be an end of this silly business. You, sir," to Brady, "thrust your pistol into your pocket, or I will help you to chuck it deeper into the sea than you can go to fetch it."

Brady looked as angry now as the gipsies had done when they heard that Uriah was to be flogged; but neither party could long withstand Pim's authoritative style of good humour. He ended with making everybody laugh, turning the attention of the guard seawards, dispersing the group of complainers in different directions, and adjourning the quarrel, if he could not dissolve it. As he attended the lady to the station-house, he explained to her the little hope there was of establishing a good understanding between the Coast Guard and the country people.

"I pity the poor fellows down below, with all my heart," said he, turning from the first point of the ascent to observe the guard, now again loitering along the margin. "Not so much for being out in the cold, though they slap themselves with their swinging arms like yon flag in a high wind. It is not for the cold I pity them, since a young lady keeps them company in it."

"I seldom stay within all day, especially when Miss Storey is with me," replied Matilda; "but I would not promise to bear this cold for six hours; and I do pity those poor men very much."

"So do I, madam, because they moreover meet cold looks at every turn; which you, not being a spy, will never do."

"But these men are spies only upon those who break the laws. You do not mean that the innocent are not glad to be watched?"

Pim looked sly while he said he knew but of one innocent in all the neighbourhood, and he happened to be among the spies, and so was very popular. Mrs. Storey would go deeper than the pun, however, and asked whether the neighbours generally had need to fear the enforcement of the law.

"I bring up all my scholars so religious, it would do your heart good to see them," replied Pim. "They know the Bible all through, and understand the whole of the Church Catechism, as you will find, if you will give us the honour of a visit some day."

"I will, to morrow, Mr. Pim."

"Suppose we say the end of the week, ma'am, when they are furbished up for the parson. You will be more sure of being pleased towards the end of the week. I make my scholars very moral."

"Then they have no reason to fear spies, I should think."

"Why, as to that, ma'am, it all depends on people's notions of what it is to be moral; and when there is so much difference of opinion on that, it seems natural enough that each party should settle the point as seems most agreeable. I wonder, now, what you think of the gentlefolks that come to Hastings and Brighton, and all the bathing places along this coast."

"I suppose they are much like other gentlefolks, are they not? How do their morals affect those of your scholars?"

"Why, just this way. If ladies in their walks make acquaintance with the fishermen's children, and use that as a pretence for calling on their mothers, and letting drop that they would be glad of a lot of gloves or silk hose from over beyond there, is not it natural for the cottage-girls to think the bargain a very pretty and proper one, when they see the goods brought out of the cupboard? And if gentlemen drop in here and there, as they saunter about, to taste French brandy, or pocket a few cigars, is it not likely that the lads hereabouts, who are fond of adventure at all times, will take the hint, and try their luck at sea on dark nights?"

"But are such practices common among visiters to the coast?"

"Are they not?--And those who do not care to step across a poor man's threshold themselves are ready enough to buy of such as will; of the shop-keepers at Brighton, and others that import largely. Now all this is what the law calls immoral, while the people see no reason to think so."

"And which side do you take,--you who make your scholars so moral?"

"I take neither side in my teaching, but leave the matter to be settled according as the children have friends among the cottagers, or in the coast guard, or the law, or the custom-house. But there is one thing I do try to teach them,--not to quarrel with other people about the right and the wrong, nor to hate anybody, but let the whole thing go on quietly. God knows, it is hard work enough; but I do try. It is hard work; for they hate each of those watchers as if he had cloven feet and a long tail."

"How do you set about making the guard beloved?"

"Nay, nay, that is too much to try. And it is doubly difficult to me from my having a son in the custom-house; which exposes me to be called partial; but I always say, 'Hate them in your hearts as much as you will; but you owe it to your king and country not to show it. Be as civil to the king's servants as you would to his majesty himself.'"

"I am afraid you do not always succeed; I should as soon think of telling a man that he need not mind having a fever; but he must take particular care that his hands be not hot."

"Where we cannot do every thing, ma'am, we must do what we can. How should I prevent the guard being unpopular, when they act as spies every hour of the day and night? And would you have me declare them always in the right when it is their very business to prevent people getting the goods that they want and will have? As long as people will drink brandy, and smoke tobacco, and wear silks and laces, I see no use in preaching to them to buy dear when they can buy cheap. All I pretend to is to make as little harm come of it as possible; to persuade the people to sell their spirits instead of drinking them, and avoid brawls with the enemy they must submit to have set over them."

"With my husband and his men," said Mrs. Storey, smiling at the idea of her husband's being any man's enemy. The notion was almost as absurd (in a different way) in relation to him as to Nicholas.

"You see, ma'am, it is not only that this Coast Guard is a terrible spoil-sport; it is a very expensive thing. When the people pay their taxes, and when they look at the nearest Custom-house,--aye, every time a Preventive officer has a new coat, they remember that they pay for keeping spies over themselves. This is provoking, you will allow; and many's the time they throw it in my teeth,--I having a son in the Custom-house, as I said."

"Why do you not tell them that, if there were no duties, they would lose their trade at the same time that they got rid of their enemies? Do not they see that fishermen would no longer be employed in fetching silks and spirits, if there were no laws to hinder merchants from doing it as cheaply? I should like to see how your neighbours would look if every custom-house was pulled down throughout the country, and every man in the Preventive Service sent about other business."

"Why, then, I suppose, fishermen would be simply fishermen, and my son must come and help me to keep school,--if any school remained for me to keep."

"How would such an arrangement interfere with your school?"

Mr. Pim mysteriously gave the lady to understand that fishermen cannot commonly afford schooling for their children, unless they have some resource beyond their boats and nets. Nobody knew how much of the money circulating in this neighbourhood came through the breach of the laws which some of it was employed to maintain. He went on,--

"It would be some comfort that there would be fewer taxes for us to pay; and if government kept up reasonable duties (which would be but fair) the burden would fall lightly upon all. Government would not be cheated; we should not be insulted with useless taxes and with spies, and----"

"And some of you would have your pockets lightened of much ill-gotten money, and your hearts of much hatred that it is shocking to think of," replied the lady.

"Moreover, we should see less of the gipsies," observed Mr. Pim. "Whether this would be a good or an evil, is a point that some of us might differ upon; but it is certain that they would not settle in bleak places like this in winter, if there were not something likely to happen in the long nights to repay them for the bitterness of the short days. They would not like our bare sandy levels and our cold caverns better than a snug London alley, if there were not good things to be had here that do not fall in their way there."

"You would lose a scholar or two if the gipsies kept away. I cannot think how you persuaded such people to send their children to school."

Pim laughed heartily, but gave no explanation. As they drew near the turf-fence of the station-house, he stopped to contemplate the place, and observed that it was a neat, tight little dwelling, and pleasanter, he should think, for a lady to live in than the martello towers farther on. There was something dreary-looking in those towers, as if they must be cold in winter and hot in summer, perched upon the bare sands, and made up of thick walls with few windows. Whereas, the white station-house seemed just the place which might suitably have plants trained against it now that a lady's fine taste reigned within (supposing the wind would let them grow); and as for its winter evening comforts,--when he saw gleams from the window piercing the darkness, like a lesser beacon, he could only be sorry for the Lieutenant that it was ever necessary to leave such a fire-side as there must be within, to go out amidst scenes where--where--

"Where he is much less welcome," replied Matilda, smiling. "I dare say your people,--fishermen, gipsies, schoolmasters, and all,--would strongly recommend my husband staying where he is comfortable, let what will be doing on the beach."

"And I am sure you should, my lady, as a good wife. If you knew----"

"Do not tell me," replied Matilda, hastily. "I will hear of those things from nobody but my husband himself."

While Mr. Pim was inwardly saying that the lady would scarcely hear from the Lieutenant the worst that could be told, Miss Storey came running to the gate, full of wonder whether all was safe, and what the gipsies had done to Matilda, and how her sister-in-law had prospered since she herself had so valiantly left her side. Matilda did not trouble herself to reply with more civility than Elizabeth deserved; but bestowed all the overplus on the schoolmaster, whom she invited in to enjoy the comforts of shelter and fire.

Mr. Pim could not stay to do more than compliment the lady on her endurance of the sharp cold of the sea-shore. He concluded she would scarcely pass her doors again till milder weather should come.

"O yes, I shall," replied Matilda. "Be the weather what it may, I shall come and visit your daughter, and see how you make your scholars moral, gipsies and all."

The gipsies were the most moral people in the world, to judge by the punctuality and liberality of their payments, Mr. Pim declared; and when the imp was whipped out of them, they made very good scholars. With this explanation, and something between a bow and a nod, the rosy schoolmaster took his leave, and, with his hands behind him, and beginning to whistle before the ladies had turned their backs, shuffled briskly down the slope to the sea-shore.