"But you do not think that this is actually the case with our English silk manufacture?"
"I do not; as I prove by becoming an English silk manufacturer myself. For this very reason, I see that there is no need of the protection of government. The interference of government is either hurtful or useless. Foreign goods either are or are not cheaper than home-made goods. If they are cheaper, it is an injury to the buyer to oblige him to purchase at home. If they are not, there is no occasion to oblige him to purchase at home. He will do so by choice."
"Aye; but the buyer is the last person considered in these arrangements. It is hard to discover why, if the merchant can supply more cheaply than the manufacturer, the customer should be taxed to uphold the manufacturer. I have no wish that my customers should be so taxed; for I know that instead of upholding me, they will leave me and buy elsewhere. If they and I are left free to observe the true rule of interest,--to buy in the cheapest market we can discover, and sell in the dearest, we shall find our interests agree, be fast friends, and make commerce the advantageous thing it was designed to be."
"That is, an indirect source of wealth to all. How can rulers help seeing that as nothing is produced by commerce, as it is an indirect source of wealth,--a mere exchange of equivalents of a lower value which become equivalents of a higher value by the exchange,--the more direct the exchange, the more valuable it is to both parties? If a portion of the value is to be paid to a third party for deranging the terms of the bargain, the briskness of exchanges will be impaired in proportion to the diminution of their profit."
"And while my customers are prevented from buying in the cheapest market, I am, by the same interference, hindered,--aye prohibited, selling in the dearest. My customers complain that my silks are higher priced than those of your country; but give me the means of a fair competition with your countrymen, and I will engage to get a higher price,--(that is, more commodities in exchange,)--in some parts of the world than any duchess in London will give me. The price would be lower to the buyer, but higher to me."
"I suppose the excuse for these protections in the beginning was that the infant manufacture might not be hindered by the vast growth of the same manufacture abroad. Your rulers expected that your art would be sooner perfected if fostered."
"And has it proved so? Were we not, three years ago, far inferior to you in the goodness of our fabrics? And if we are now overtaking you, is it not owing to our protection being partly removed? Was not any immediate improvement more than counterbalanced by the waste of establishing and upholding an artificial system, of diverting capital from its natural channels, and of feeding, or half feeding the miserable thousands who were beggared and starving under the fluctuations which our impolicy had caused?--The businesses which have been the most carefully protected,--the West India trade, agriculture, and till lately, the silk trade,--may have been very profitable for a short period, but they have suffered more from fluctuations, have caused more national waste, and more misery to whole classes of people than any that have been less interfered with. The cotton trade is the one to which we owe the power of sustaining our unequalled national burdens, subsistence for 1,400,000 of our population, and incalculable advantages of exchange with countries in many latitudes; and the cotton manufacture has been left unprotected from the very beginning."
"Your ribbon weavers of Coventry do not, however, appear disposed to take care of themselves. How loud are their complaints of distress!"
"And the distress is real: but it belongs to the old system, and it would have been not distress only, but annihilation, if the introduction of the new system had been long delayed. Coventry once believed herself destined to supply the whole world with ribbons. Then she made the sad discovery that she must be content with the home market; and now that this also fails, Coventry complains of the government, instead of bestirring herself. While our cotton men have been bright and brisk, depending on their own exertions, Coventry has been dull and lazy, depending on the prohibitive system. One of her looms prepares five times less ribbons, with an equal amount of manual labour, as your improved French loom; and she is reasonable enough to expect that the world shall buy her ribbons instead of those of her rivals, if our government can but be brought to order the world so to do."
"Her manufacture would plainly have expired outright, if the government had not set her free to improve."
"To be sure it would; and it is not overgracious in Coventry to take this act of justice,--tardy though it be,--as an injury. Coventry and old governments have been in the wrong together. Let the mischief that results be made a lesson to all by referring it to its true cause; and then there may be a chance of such an increase of prosperity as may remove all disposition to recrimination."
"This is exactly what I have long wished to behold in my own country," observed the Frenchman. "Protection has done little less mischief there than here; but unhappily this is a case in which countries are as unwilling to take precedence as court ladies are to yield it. Each country refuses to be first. All cry, 'We will wait till others repeal their prohibitive systems;' as if every new channel of exchange opened were not a good."
"And as if commerce consisted of arbitrary gifts, and not of an exchange of equivalents," replied Culver. "It may be a vexation and disadvantage to us, if you take no hardware and cottons from us; but that is no reason why we should not provide ourselves with your claret and brandy; as, if you cannot receive our hardware and cottons, you will take something else. If you will take nothing of ours, you can sell us nothing of yours, and the injury is as great to you as to us. But we should punish ourselves unnecessarily, if we refused your brandies because you refuse our scissors and knives. It is saying, 'Because we cannot sell cottons, neither will we sell woollens.' It is being like the cross child who sobs, ‘You won't let me have custard, so I won't have any dinner at all.’all.’ If governments will only, as I said before, let the people's purses alone, other governments must necessarily do the same. If your French government lets your people buy cottons in the cheapest market,--that is, here,--our government cannot prevent our getting our claret in exchange in the cheapest market,--that is, at Bordeaux. A much more comfortable and profitable method to both parties than doing without cotton and claret, or paying more for making them at home than they are worth."
"How is it," M. Gaubion now inquired, "that holding the same doctrine with myself as to the principle of trade at large, you can yet be jealous of me because I am a foreigner? I use the word 'jealous' as not too strong; for surely, Mr. Culver, your reception of me was but half-amicable."
Mr. Culvers manner immediately cooled as he observed that there was much room left yet for unfair dealing; much encouragement to underhand schemes. He kept himself clear of accusing any man, while matters were in doubt; particularly a gentleman with whom he had the honour of only a slight acquaintance; but the duty was undeniably still high enough to tempt to a contraband trade. It was unquestionable that smuggling was still carried on, and, to however small an extent, still to the injury of the home manufacturer; and he, being a home manufacturer, must wish to have the offence brought home to the right person. No man could desire more earnestly than he did that such an offence should be precluded by good management; but, till it was so, all who hoped for his friendship must clear themselves from the charge of taking his means of subsistence from under him.
"But how am I to clear myself?" asked M. Gaubion. "This is what I came to ask of you; and but now you advised me to keep quiet. I am not to clear myself; but I am not to have your friendship till I have cleared myself.--I must, I will clear myself, Mr. Culver; and you shall tell me how. Will an oath do it?"
Mr. Culver drily replied that he required no oath.
"You! no. I would not offer my oath to a private individual who would not take my word. It must be to some official person. Tell me, Mr. Culver, will an oath do?"
Mr. Culver believed that oaths were such common things in commercial and Custom-house affairs that they were not thought much of.
"True indeed!" exclaimed the Frenchman; "and alas for those who set up oaths against the plain and acknowledged interests of nations, classes and individuals! How shall the sin of tempting to perjury be wiped from their souls? If my oath will not avail, to what species of proof shall I resort?"
"To none, till there is a distinct charge brought against you, fortified by particulars. It is your interest to keep quiet."
"I will not stay to receive this advice of yours a third time," replied M. Gaubion. "I will go for advice to one who is not jealous of me; and if such an one I cannot find, I will, stranger as I am, act without counsel, without aid against my enemies. I may be compelled to return whence I came, but I will not go till I have justified myself for my country's sake."
He went out hastily, leaving Mr. Culver in no very pleasant mood, in the conflict between his liberal principles and his petty personal jealousies. He hummed a tune as he took up the obnoxious handbill, whistled as he laid it down again, and ended with frowning because it was a close evening, and flinging his pen into a corner because he made a blot on beginning to write.
M. Gaubion found nothing in the streets as he pursued his way home to make him desire Cooper's escort. They were remarkably quiet, and he supposed that the weavers had resorted to their gardens for their evening amusement, or had gone to rest in preparation for the early toil of the next day. When he was within a few hundred yards of his own house, however, a hum came upon his ear, like the murmur of a multitude of voices at a distance. After listening for a moment, and satisfying himself that the cries which mingled with the hum must proceed from some unusual cause, he ran forward, trying to resist the persuasion that all this must have some connexion with himself, and to decide that a fire had probably broken out somewhere in his neighbourhood.
It was now dusk. A few lamps showed a flame uncongenial with the prevailing light, and the lamp-lighter was seen, now flitting from post to post with his ladder on his shoulder, and now pausing for an instant, with his foot on the lowest rung, to listen. A lamp-lighter was a safe person of whom to make inquiry, M. Gaubion thought;--one who had no interest in commercial squabbles, and would not betray him on account of his foreign speech. Of him, therefore, the Frenchman inquired what was going on; but the man could offer only conjecture. He had not yet lighted the lamps in that direction, and he did not think he should carry his lantern much further till he knew whether they had not fire enough and too much already. M. Gaubion passed on for better satisfaction; and as he threaded his way among the loiterers, runners, and gazers, who began to thicken as he proceeded, he longed for an English tongue for one minute, that he might learn that which every one else seemed now to know. He was glad to perceive a woman's head emerge from a vault, and gaze slowly round, as if at a loss to account for the bustle. He took his stand for a minute within hearing of the inquiry which he hoped she would make.
"Why, I say there!" cried she presently, "is there a fire?"
The runner applied to shook his head, and passed on.
"You, there! Can you tell me what it is if it's not a fire?"
The boy snapped his fingers at her, and ran on.
"What, are ye all running after you don't know what? What is it, I say?"
"Come and see, if you can't ask civilly," growled an old man, making his way on his two sticks as fast as he could.
"What care I what's the matter?" muttered the woman, turning to descend once more into the vault.
"O, ask this person!" cried M. Gaubion. "He looks as if he could and would tell us."
"Ask him yourself, can't ye, instead of watching and listening to what I may say. If you have nothing better to do than that, you might go and see for yourself, I think."
As he turned to go away, the lady condescended to make one more effort to satisfy her curiosity.
"It is something about the Frenchman, I don't know exactly what," was the reply. "Something about his having smuggled goods while he pretended to weave them. They are looking for him, to give him three groans, or a ride, or a ducking, or something of the sort."
"Perhaps they won't have to look very long if they come to the right place," observed the woman, with an ill-natured laugh towards M. Gaubion, who did not stay to hear more. When he arrived at the end of his own street, his first impression was that all was quiet, and the place empty; but a moment convinced him that the dark mass extending up and down from his own house, which he had taken for shadow, was in reality a crowd. The occasional movement of a woman with a white cap, or an apron over her head, showed him what the picture really was; and this was the only stir seen for awhile.
"O dear! sir, O sir, is it you? Let me advise you to turn back," said a respectable body who stood at her shop-door, and instantly knew M. Gaubion. "It is as much as your life is worth, sir, to go near. There! here comes somebody out of the crowd, I declare! Bless you, sir, do take care of yourself!" and she stepped backwards, and shut the door full in the gentleman's face.
"You take good care of yourself, at least," thought the persecuted man to himself. "You are afraid even to ask me to shelter myself with you from this storm. But you need not have feared. I must first learn how my sisters are."
This was done by boldly pushing through a crowded thoroughfare into the back row, stepping over a paling or two, taking the liberty of crossing two or three gardens, dispersing a few broods of chickens by the way, climbing a wall, crawling along the roof of an outhouse, where the pigeons wondered at the new companion who had come among them, and finally taking a vigorous leap just by his own back-door. No hue and cry disturbed these manœvres. There was less danger of this than there would have been in the dead of night. All eyes were more securely absent than if they had been closed in sleep, for they were occupied with what was passing in front of the house.
"Mercy on us! here they come in from behind!" cried the terrified kitchen damsels as their master burst open the back-door. "God save us! it's my master himself, and he'll be murdered. O, sir, why did not you stay away?"
"Fasten up that door," said the gentleman. "As one got in that way, more might. Lock and bolt it.--Where is your mistress; and Miss Adèle, where is she?"
"Upstairs, and towards the front, sir; and do you know, Mademoiselle has been to the lower windows, behaving as brave as a general; so miserable about you, sir, all the time. She went down to tell the people that you were not here; but she has been in such a terror every moment, lest you should come and thrust yourself into the midst of it. We have been thinking of all ways to get somebody out to give you warning; but there was nobody but us women. Mademoiselle wished to have gone herself; but, besides that we could not think of such a thing, she was wanted to amuse the people with observing her, as she says. So she keeps about the front windows. We think some help will be here soon, to do away with their idea of waylaying you; but my mistress is in mortal terror, though she is above showing it to the wretches without."
"Well, tell her that I am safe in the house----"
"And upstairs, sir? You will go upstairs out of sight?"
"Willingly: into the loft, if it will make my sisters any easier. But do not go as if you had a piece of news to tell her. Let it drop quietly, that the people may not find out that she is hearing anything particular."
The maid performed her office with some prudence, and brought back a message that Mademoiselle dared not come to speak to him yet; but that if he would go into the back attic, Adèle should visit him presently with some refreshment.
With deep disgust at being compelled thus to skulk on his own premises, the gentleman ascended to the top of the house, and venturing to take a brush from his own chamber as he passed, was occupied in brushing his coat when his younger sister appeared. She nearly let fall the tray she was carrying, as she cried,
"They have had hold of you, after all, I do believe!"
"What! because I look a strange figure? No, my dear. This dust is from the wall I had to get over, and these cobwebs from the top of the outhouse."
"How horrid! But the first thing I am to tell you is----What are you listening to? Yes, it is! It is a band. There are soldiers or somebody coming at last. We thought they never would. We thought nobody would help us.--Stay! where are you going? Into the front room? O, you must not! Indeed, indeed you must not go there!" And Adèle hung her whole weight upon her brother's arm, and screamed.
"Hush! hush! you silly child," he said. "One scream may do more harm than anything I mean to venture. I will only peep from the corner of the blind to see what is coming; that is all."
Adèle sobbed with terror as her brother performed the projected feat.
"Ah, there is some protection coming for us, I suppose, by the crowd making way. And yet the people do not look frightened. Nobody moves off. Music! what wretched music! It cannot possibly belong to a regiment. A drum and two fifes. What is it that they are playing, Adèle?"
Adèle sobbed out that it was the "Dead March in Saul," she believed.
"Ah! so it is! Now, my dear, come here! Do look! It will make you laugh, instead of crying. What is all this about, do you think?"
"What a ridiculous figure!" exclaimed Adèle, laughing. "How can grown-up men play with such a thing?"
"It is meant for me. Do not you see?"
"But you do not wear powder, nor a long pigtail all down your back: and you do not stick out your elbows in that ridiculous way."
"Some people think that all Frenchmen do so; and many in this crowd--most of them, I believe--have never seen me. But you will perceive presently how they would treat me, if they could get hold of me."
M. Gaubion being more inclined to observe in deep silence what was going on than to proffer any further explanations, left his sister to discover for herself that there was a cord round the neck of the effigy, that the piece of wood over its head was meant for a gibbet, and that a double death was to be typified by its fate, preparations being already in progress for a fire in the midst of the crowd.
There was scarcely wood enough collected to broil the effigy thoroughly, and further contributions were speedily brought in from all quarters, as soon as the want was made known. Men from the neighbourhood brought old lumber which their wives had pointed out as being to be spared. Lads brought pales and faggots, no one knew whence. The very children seemed to catch the spirit, casting from their little hands such bits of paper and of shavings as they could pick up. One poor little fellow, however, was less patriotic than his companions. He cried bitterly at seeing his wheelbarrow sacrificed, and pulled his merciless father's coat till a box on the ear struck him dumb and tearless. It was true the barrow was without a wheel, had lost a leg, and presented only one shaft; but still it was his barrow, and had been used to the last for purposes much more congenial to the child's tastes than roasting a Frenchman.--M. Gaubion internally blessed this child,--not for an instant supposing that anything but attachment to his barrow was the cause of his resistance,--but loving him for being the only one unwilling to feed the insulting fire.
"The very children," thought he, "that have smiled and nodded at me, when I stepped out of the way of their marbles, and come confidently to me when their kites have fallen over my wall, are at this moment taught to mock and hate me, they know not why. That boy who is pinning the effigy's name--Mounseer Go-be-hung--on its back, was taught to write by my order. There goes my green wicket!--off its hinges, and into the heap! The lads that pulled it down have often passed through it with my work under their arms, and my money in their pockets.--O, you fiend of a woman! Do you put shavings into your infant's hand, that it too may have a share in the inhospitality of your country? May that infant live to subsist upon my resources, and to make you thank heaven that the Frenchman came among you!--Ah! you are all calling for fire. By heavens, I believe you will get none! Yonder housewife shakes her head; and in the next house they are raking out the fire. There is not a candle to be seen through a window, the whole length of the street. Can it be that my neighbours feel for me? Alas! here is a lighted slip of wood procured at last! Bravo! good woman! brave woman! to empty your pot of beer upon it! Who is that they have laid hands on there? The lamp-lighter; the same that I spoke to. He should not have brought his lantern! They will take it from him. Not they! dash it goes against the wall; and what a yell as its fragments fly! I have friends, I see; but they are of those who have nothing to do with silk-weaving; of those who owe nothing to me, instead of those whom I have benefited. Well; I will not blame the people, but the discipline of jealousy in which they have been brought up.--Here is fire at last! I will not seek to know who gave it. God forgive him!"
It was enough to madden the most gentle who was interested in the case, to see how the effigy was treated in the fire;--poked with pitch-forks, made to dance upon the gibbet, to fold its hands, to turn its labelled back, and nod to the ladies who were supposed to be peeping from some corner of the windows. So searching a glance traversed the whole front of the house from a thousand upturned and gleaming faces, that M. Gaubion felt it necessary to withdraw, and forego the rest of the irritating sight. He could not go out of hearing of his new name,--Mounseer Go-be-hung,--shouted in the intervals between the groans with which the flaming of the last tatters of the effigy was hailed; but the presence of his sister made him calm. He could not agree in the conviction of the housemaid, that he would be a prodigious favourite with the people in a few days; like a master in whose family she had once lived, who was burned in effigy one week, and the next, received amidst the touching of hats wherever he went, the question about wages between him and his men having been settled in the interval. M. Gaubion did not stand so good a chance for popularity;--in the first place, because he was a foreigner; and in the next, because whatever evils the people were suffering from the speculation and overtrading of their masters, could not be remedied so speedily as a dispute about wages could be temporarily settled. As for dissociating foreigners in the minds of the people, from their hardships,--that was likely to be as much a work of time as the removal of the hardships themselves.
Before the crowd had quite ended their grim pastime, the expected interruption happened. An alarm of the approach of the authorities spread from a considerable distance, and all dispersed hither and thither, leaving it to the winds to play with the smouldering embers, and to the gazers from the surrounding windows to watch the last little puffs of smoke, as they wandered into the upper air.--A thundering rap brought down M. Gaubion, grave and stiff, followed by his sisters, grave and pale, to open the door which the servants could not be induced to unlock and unbar.
When everything had been ascertained from the inhabitants of the house which could be told by the young ladies and the trembling, loquacious servants (at length persuaded to look their protectors in the face, instead of peeping at them over the banisters) about the circumstances of the riot, and from their master about its supposed causes, the magistrate departed, with the persons he brought with him, except one constable who was left to guard the house, and a messenger who seemed to come on other business.
He shortly explained his errand. Taking a newspaper from his pocket, he pointed out that the Secretary of the Treasury, and the whole Board of Customs, were charged with being cognizant of the fact of the foreigner's smuggling transactions, and parties to his scheme for ruining the trade of his neighbours. So grave a charge rendered it necessary for his Majesty's government to sift the matter to the bottom, and to ascertain the real state of the case with regard to the Frenchman, as well as to prove their own innocence. It was possible that irregularities on the part of a mercantile firm might have been connived at by some of the inferior servants of the Customs Board; and though it was far from being the intention of the Board to impute such irregularities to M. Gaubion, it was desirable that he should, if possible, put it in their power to acquit him wholly of the charge.
"Thankfully,--most thankfully will I do so," was his reply. "How shall we commence the proceeding?"
"By your accompanying me with the least possible delay to the Treasury, where your accusers will meet you."
"I am ready at this instant. Let us go.--But what kind of proof will be required? Is it necessary to prepare my proofs, or will a clear head and an honest heart suffice for my defence?"
The messenger had no orders but to bring the gentleman himself. It was too late this evening; but he would wait upon him the next morning, to guide him into the presence of his accusers.
This arrangement completely restored M. Gaubion's spirits. His sister was somewhat fluttered by the idea of such an examination as he was to undergo; but assented to its being the thing of all others now to be desired. Adèle could not be talked out of the idea that her brother was going to be tried, and that something very dreadful must happen. She cried herself to sleep, to be awakened by visions of the effigy dancing in the flames. Her brother lost even the oppressive sense of being the object of popular hatred in his satisfaction at being allowed an opportunity of justifying himself, and slept undisturbed by the ghosts of the events of the bygone day.
While Mademoiselle was striving to employ herself diligently the next morning, during her brother's absence, three quarters of her acquaintance came to condole, or to enquire, or to use any pretence which might enable them to satisfy their curiosity. Of the remaining fourth part, some had the kindness to stay at home, and content themselves with a message of enquiry how the family found themselves after the alarm of the last eveninglast evening; while others contented themselves with remaining at home, and not sending, dropping a hint at the breakfast-table that it would be time enough to take notice of past events when it should appear whether the Gaubions could clear themselves, and what would be thought of them henceforward. Mr. Culver left no orders, before he went out, as to what his young people were to do; and when the question was proposed by themselves, there was a difference of opinion. Nurse believed that foreigners were a bad set altogether, and that it would be better to have nothing more to do with any of them. Charlotte thought it would look rather odd to break off intercourse so suddenly; and Lucy offered to vouch for poor Adèle's having done nothing very bad about smuggling, however the case might stand with her brother. The girls agreed that it might be a kindness to take Adèle for the day; and even nurse was open to the argument that it would be very pleasant to hear the whole story of the riot from the very best authority. The debate ended in nurse and Lucy--Lucy as being Adèle's special companion--setting off to bring her back with them;--an object less easy of accomplishment than they had imagined.
Being sent for to speak to them in the hall, Adèle appeared, to urge their proceeding to the dining-room.
"Every body is there," said she, "and you will hear all about it, if you will come in. The room is almost full; but you know most of the people. We never thought of so many coming at once, but it would not do not to see them; it would make them think there is more the matter than there really is; and I am sure they all mean to be very kind. Do come in."
In answer to the suggestion that they could hear every thing much more comfortably from her in Devonshire-square, the little French girl positively declined leaving home this day. She gave so many good reasons for her resolve, that there was nothing for it but following her into the parlour, if they wished to carry home any tidings.
"Such a pity, to be sure," Mrs. Piggins was saying, "when you had painted and made all nice so lately. It is but a month, scarcely a month, I think, Betsy, since I got a daub of green paint on my cloak (all my own carelessness, ma'am; I'm sure I don't mean----) from your green wicket, and now it is pulled down and burned to ashes! and the smoke, I see, has blackened the cornice; so lately as it was painted! We just looked up before we knocked at the door, to find whether the front of the house seemed any-how different; and then Betsy pointed out to me that the cornice was blackened."
"And so brutal it was of the people, Mademoiselle," observed Miss Harvey, "to make you light the pile that was to burn your brother. I wonder how you ever did it,--only that I suppose you could not help yourself."
"O, that is quite a mistake," replied Mademoiselle, smiling. "They asked us for fire, and we told them our fires were out; that was all."
"Well, to be sure!" cried Miss Harvey, looking at her sister, "we were told that they dragged you among them, and made you set the bonfire alight with a torch, and that you cried out loud, 'My hand but not my heart consents.' So this is not true?"
Mademoiselle shook her head.
"Then it may not be true either--It is better to ask at once," said the lady, in answer to her sister's wink and frown, "it may not be true either that M. Gaubion was handcuffed when he was fetched away to the Treasury."
"What is that?" asked Mademoiselle, whose ear did not happen to have ever been met by the word 'handcuffed.'
By gesture, as well as explanation, the sense was made known to her; and then her laugh had as much of indignation as of mirth in it.
"You might have supposed that was false without asking," said the younger Miss Harvey to her sister. "As it was not true that M. Gaubion had his right arm broken, and that Miss Adèle lay without hopes of recovery----"
"I!" exclaimed Adèle; "they did nothing to me; they never thought about me at all."
"So I find, my dear; but that is the way people will talk."
"Now, Mademoiselle," observed good, kind Mr. Belson, "if you are quite sure that neither my wife nor I can do any thing for you, I had better be going, instead of helping to fill your room when you cannot possibly be much disposed for entertaining company. You are very right, my dear,--quite right to open your doors, and let people see how little is to be seen; but there is no need for me to trouble you any longer. When you wish to see my wife, just send across to tell her so, and make any use you like of me. Good morning, ladies."
More visitors came in, and Mademoiselle had again to begin the ten-times-repeated tale.
"And which window was it you first looked out of, ma'am? The first story, did you say? We were told the lower----"
"It is certainly a hackney-coach, Adèle," cried Mademoiselle, who had started from her seat in the midst of that which was being said to her; "it is a hackney-coach with two gentlemen in it."
And without ceremony the two young ladies ran out of the room, closing the door behind them, and leaving their visitors to look wondering and wise upon each other. Miss Harvey stepped to the window in time to see the tenants of the coach alight, whispering to her sister that Mademoiselle had not absolutely denied the story of the handcuffs, after all.
Free in respect of the hands, however, and apparently light of heart, the gentleman alighted, nodding to his sisters, but not entering the house till his slow-paced companion was ready to precede him. The coach was not discharged; the ladies did not at once re-enter the room; and the second person was certainly not a gentleman; but it was impossible to suppose that matters were going wrong, while M. Gaubion wore so cheerful a face. Thus decided the observers in the dining-room.
"Is it all over?--all well over?" whispered Mademoiselle, on meeting her brother.
"All brought to an issue which cannot fail," he replied. "They will have my books; and my books are the best witnesses I could bring,--eloquent, silent witnesses of my innocence."
"They do not believe you then?"
"The Board of Customs does, I am confident; but they cannot refuse to go to the bottom of the matter, now they have begun, and it is very well for me that it should be so; but I cannot stay now; I must not keep the officer waiting----"
"The officer!"
"Yes; I asked for him. Do not look so frightened; I requested that he might come with me, that I might not be suspected of leaving some of my books behind, or destroying any papers. I did propose sending to you for the books; but I thought you might, in your hurry, omit something."
"I am glad you came yourself."
"So am I, as it will satisfy you that the affair must end well. Now that they have brought me to the proof, I am safe."
Mademoiselle could not deny this; yet the thought of an officer being on the premises cast a shade over her face as she returned to her visitors.
One of the ladies proffered the consoling consideration that, if the worst came to the worst, the punishment would be nothing in comparison with what many gentlemen had undergone for treason, and such things. She supposed a fine would be all; and it could not be very difficult for M. Gaubion to pay a fine; and if there should be a short imprisonment added----
"I thought I had explained, madam, that there is no danger of any kind of punishment; there is not even a prosecution; and, if there were, my brother has clear proof to bring forward of the falsehood of the charge. My concern is only on account of its being imagined that he could be so false, so treacherous, as to come and seem to rely on the hospitality of a foreign nation, for the very purpose of injuring their trade. Let his acquittal be as honourable as possible,--as honourable as it will be,--still we can never forget that he has been suspected of this despicable offence against the society he lives in."
As all was now known that could be known within the limits of a decent visit, one after another of the visitors dropped away; those who lingered in the street agreeing with those who overtook, that Mademoiselle was a very sweet creature, certainly, and probably perfectly delightful in her native society; but that she was rather high-flown for this sober country.
Mademoiselle had need of all her high-flown thoughts to sustain her this day. Her brother did not come home to dinner, nor appear at tea-time, nor arrive before the last moment to which Adèle was permitted to sit up, in hopes of his customary evening blessing. A little while before midnight he returned, languid,--whether only in body, or likewise depressed in spirits, his sister could not at first discover. He solemnly assured her that all was going on well; that his books had been minutely examined, and every transaction found to be regular, and every statement correct. The declaration of the amount of his stock was found to be consistent with the number of weavers whose English names stood in his books; and the work declared to be now in their hands tallied with the unfulfilled orders which were registered. Yet all was not over; it remained to send round to the houses which were set down as the abodes of his weavers, in order to discover whether those weavers really lived there, and were actually employed on the work declared to be in their looms. This was to be done to-morrow, and when it should have turned out favourably for the foreigner, it was difficult to conceive of any further pretence being found for doubting his word, or persecuting him as an enemy.
Yet Mademoiselle was certain that her brother was dejected--that his confidence was impaired; and she told him so. He admitted it, and ascribed the change in his spirits to the alteration which had taken place in the relative feelings of himself and his accusers. While it was merely that he was not esteemed by them, his consciousness of innocence was sufficient to bear him up. But he had, since morning, seen so much jealousy, heard so much cavilling, witnessed such unwillingness to relinquish each charge, and such extraordinary ingenuity in imagining methods of fraud which might possibly have been put in practice by him, that he felt he could no longer respect or esteem some among whom he had hoped to live in amity.
It was very painful, he observed, not to be esteemed by them; but not to be permitted to esteem them was an intolerable evil. He did not know what he could do but go away, after all.
"Wait; be patient till the more liberal policy has had time to work," was his sister's advice. "If it be true that the former system made them subtle and jealous, the latter and better system may restore to them the attributes of that brotherhood which must some day prevail. If it is already too late for them to be thus wrought upon, there is hope from their children and successors. Let us remain to prove it."
"It is folly," he replied, "to expect that the blighting effects of a prohibitive system can be removed from the heart and mind, any more than from the fortunes, in the course of one generation, or of many generations; but if we can aid the work of amelioration by staying, let us stay, and convert into friends as many of our neighbours as we can."
The next morning was rather a warm one for the work which M. Gaubion had to do. It is warm work on a freezing winter's day to have one's good faith questioned, and to listen to cross-examinations conducted with the express object of discovering discrepancies in one's statements, and under the certainty that every mistake detected is to be accounted a lie. When to this is added the climbing the stair-cases of Spitalfields, in summer weather, the glare in the streets from long rows of burnished lattices, and the trippings and slippings on cabbage-stalks and leaves in the alleys, any degree of lassitude may be pardoned at the end of the excursion. The Frenchman had to take heed to his steps in more ways than one. He was careful not to dictate to the examiners in any way, and never to precede them in their walks and their clambering. They had with them a plan of Spitalfields, and he left it wholly to them to discover the abodes entered in his books, and to satisfy themselves that the persons named really dwelt there. He stood passive--(whether also patient was best known to himself)--while a consultation was held in the broiling sun whether they should turn this way or that, and how they should discover the right number when there was no visible sign of it. He followed up stairs merely to see that he had fair play, and then, for the first and last time in his life, could not condescend to speak to his own weavers.
Notwithstanding lungs, stomach, and head, Mrs. Ellis was still at work, and still able, by brandishing her brush, to raise clouds as instantaneously as Jupiter himself could cleave them with a motion of his armed right hand. Her locket still shone, only somewhat more coppery than before; and her hair was decidedly grown, its front ringlets now tickling her chin as they danced in the breath of her loom.
"A beautiful piece of velvet, indeed, Mrs. Ellis! Your name is Ellis, I think."
"Alas! yes, sir; and the worse for me that I ever knew the name; much more took it. Such a life as I had with my husband----"
"Well, we did not come to hear about your husband, but about you. You are a person of much more importance to us, Mrs. Ellis."
The lady came out of her loom to make a more extensive curtsey than the space within its bench would allow.
"A beautiful figure that velvet has, to be sure. What house are you weaving it for?"
"Mr. Corbyn's, sir. We all weave for Mr. Corbyn."
The examiners looked at one another, and one of them was disposed to think she meant to say Culver, as there was no manufacturer of the name of Corbyn in the neighbourhood.
"Do you mean Mr. Culver or M. Gaubion, good woman?" asked an impartial examiner.
"Same's he they call Mounseer Go-be-hung," Tom called out from behind.
"What, this gentleman?" and they made way for the Frenchman to show himself. At the sight of him, Tom reddened prodigiously, and poked over his work as if his life depended on his weaving half a yard an hour.
"What are you ashamed of, all in a moment?" asked one of the visitors. "I am afraid you had some hand in the riots the other night, like many an idle boy. Come, tell me; do not you like to light a bonfire?"
"Indeed I can't say that my Tom is any thing better than a middling boy," observed Mrs. Ellis. "Would you believe it, gentlemen, he left his work a full quarter of an hour sooner than he had leave to do, the night of the riot; and when he came home, the skin was off the palm of his hand as clean as if it had been peeled, and he has never had the grace to seem sorry for it."
"Indeed, I don't know who should be sorry for such a misfortune, if he is not," observed a visitor, gravely. "Come, Tom, tell me how it happened. You had been pulling down shutters, or pulling up palings, I am afraid."
"I hadn't though," said Tom, attempting to set the treadles going, but being instantly deprived by his mother of his shuttle.
"Then I doubt you helped to carry the gibbet, and hang the effigy?"
"I didn't though," answered Tom.
"Who hurt your hand so, then? It must have been somebody in a great passion."
"No, 'twarnt; I got it done myself."
"Well, I wonder at your taste. I would always keep a whole skin, if I could."
Tom pulled his forelock respectfully, and went on with his work, his mother shaking her head, as if she thought his case desperate. Other people's leaving off speaking to him was the signal for M. Gaubion to begin.
"I think I saw you, Tom, the night of the riot." Tom looked up.
"Was it not you that cut the rope, and tried to drag the effigy away?"
Tom nodded.
"What did you do next? I was obliged to go from the window then."
"So you war there! I jist crinkle-crankled myself up in the rope, so that they couldn't burn you without me too."
"But they did not burn you, I hope?"
"Jist singed a bit; no more. This," pointing to his hand, "comed of a great nail in the gibbet, that gived me a good hould as long as it lasted."
"So you pulled it out."
"We split the gibbet's self 'mong us; and then 'twar all over with me, and I comed home directly then."
"Why did not you stay to see the sight, when once you found you could not help its going forward?"
"They put me in a rare passion, 'mong 'em; and I didn't want to see nought of their sights."
"What were you in a passion about? What had you to do with it?"
To this question no answer was to be got, but instead thereof an inquiry.
"For all they say, you won't think of going away for sich as they? They'll come round, when they see you don't go off in a huff."
"And if I do go, you will easily get work, Tom. You weave well now, and Mr. Culver and many others will have work to give you."
"No fear," Tom said; but he did not seem to wish M. Gaubion to go away the more for that.
"Do ask her," said one of the visitors to the Frenchman,--"you know her better than we do,--do ask her why, in times like these, she does not live in more comfort. The wonder is that she lets these looms at all in a room where a saucepan-full of cabbage-water stands in a corner, and her peppermint-bottle on the sill, and not a window open."
M. Gaubion did not see that it was any business of his; but Tom overheard the remark, and gave assurance that his mother had so little appetite that she could not eat her breakfast without her little rasher and greens; and that she was so subject to sinking of her inside, that she was obliged to keep her peppermint-bottle beside her.
"And do you take any of it, boy?"
"Why, no, sir: my inside don't sink often till night; and then I go and garden."
"That is better than taking peppermint, depend upon it. Mrs. Ellis, it seems to me a pity that you should bring up both these young folks as weavers. If you were to make this boy something else, there would be a better chance for you all when bad times come; and meanwhile, you could let his loom for half as much as he earns."
Objections sufficient to knock down half-a-dozen such proposals were poured out on the instant, and re-urged so vehemently on the mention of bad times, that it was plain the widow did not anticipate bad times, but thought weaving the best occupation she could bring up her children to. She ended by saying, that to be pretty sure of work, at Tom's age, under such a master as M. Gaubion, was more than he could expect in any other employment; and that if there was any change, she thought she should have the benefit of it. Heaven only knew what she had gone through, from Tom's age till now--in her husband's time especially. She always thought, in her youth, that her's was a hard lot, so much at the loom as she was; but all that was nothing to the confinement afterwards. Her husband was of a jealous temper, God forgive him! and kept at home and within himself sadly; and he could not bear that her acquaintance should be so much more general than his; so that she had more trouble than enough if she moved three yards from her own door, to have a chat with a neighbour. Since she lost him, poor man! (which would have been a great relief but for her having such a family upon her hands,) she had had to work for bread, and for any little comforts which her weak health made necessary; and now, if anybody was to have rest, or any advantage, it should be herself, and not Tom, who was but just----
"But would you apprentice yourself to a gardener, or to learn any new business?" inquired M. Gaubion. "That was what I contemplated for Tom. If he could weave like you,--if this velvet were his work,--I should not propose the change."
The widow laughed at the idea of her boy weaving as well as herself, but would not yet hear of any change. The examiners found that it was time to make a change in the scene of their inquiries; and declaring themselves satisfied that Mrs. Ellis was Mrs. Ellis, and that she lived and wove as declared, they left poor Tom to throw his shuttle amidst reveries of ranunculus, geranium, tulip, and hyacinth.
The names of Dickens and Rogers were down on the list; and it was therefore necessary to go to Cooper's, where their looms stood.
There was not a more cheerful house in all Spitalfields than Cooper's. Short had resumed his ancient song, and sat, with his grizzled hair hanging about his round shoulders, cheerily weaving his fiftieth last piece. Dickens and Rogers were no less busy, and, consequently, equally amiable. No dispute ever arose within these four walls, but when the comparative merits of the masters, English and French, were in question; or when, by chance, any old-world custom was brought into contrast with any new. On such occasions, Mrs. Cooper's good-humour presently charmed away strife; and she contrived, ultimately, to persuade each disputant to be content with his own opinion, as he was with his own species of work. Let him who weaves gros-de-Naples feel himself enlightened in his advocacy of what is modern; and let him who weaves velvet plume himself on his fidelity to what is ancient. Such was her philosophy, communicated in a timely smile, and a gentle word let drop here and there. Ichabod was an admirable auxiliary in restoring peace when his grown-up companions were ruffled. He could at any time be made to imitate the loom's smack and tick, or to look into Rogers's pocket to see what he could find there; or to stroke old Short's cheek, and rock upon his shoulders, regardless of the dusty coat-collar; or to stick a daisy into Dickens's button-hole; after any one of which feats he was blessed, and winked at behind his back, as the rarest child that ever was seen. If, on hot days, a pint of beer was wished for, Ichabod could bring it without spilling, provided it was in a quart pot. Surrounded by both arms, and tightly squeezed against his breast, it arrived safe, Mrs. Cooper removing every stick and straw out of her child's path, that he might get credit and confidence, instead of disgrace and a panic. Cooper, meanwhile, worked away for his wife and boy, trusting to go on to do so, notwithstanding any temporary mischief caused by the speculations of throwsters, and when the discordant prophecies of those about him should have issued in acquiescence in the lasting benefits of an unrestricted commerce.
The examiners were even more tempted to forget their immediate object here than at Mrs. Ellis's. One walked straight up to the clear, bright window, to look out upon the patch of garden-ground behind; while the other took notice of a curious foreign clock (once belonging to Cooper's ancestors), which had been preserved as family property through all chances and changes of fortune. It was true that now either of the almost equally short hands might point as it happened, to six or twelve; that the machine, like other machines, sometimes went to sleep at night, and was now and then drowsy in the day; but the case was inlaid as curiously as ever, and the chimes set all the lively children who might be within hearing chiming, morning, noon, and night. Whatever might be Ichabod's destined education in other respects, he was sure to know enough of German text to read the name of the maker of this clock, and sufficient geography to be able to tell whereabouts on the earth's surface lay the Flemish town where it received its wondrous being.
"You should see my husband's other garden, out of doors, sir," said Mrs. Cooper. "You seem to like this; but it is nothing to the one out of doors. I do not mean for size, but for the beauty of the flowers."
"Ay," observed Short, "he pays ten shillings a year for it; and he does not make half so much out of it as used to be made in my young days."
"I get health and wholesome amusement out of it; and that is enough when one cannot get more. You see, gentlemen, ours is a bad occupation for the health and the nerves. You may see a sort of scared look, they say, that we weavers have, and bent backs, by the time we come to middle age; and even my hands shake so sometimes, at the end of a long day's work, that I should soon begin to feel myself growing old, if I did not turn out to breathe a little, and occupy myself in something pleasant. It is well worth while making a little less money than one might do, and to keep one's health."
"Certainly; if you are lucky enough to be able to afford it."
"Why, sir, our people here do mostly contrive to afford some fancy or another; either a garden like mine, or birds, or flute-playing, or drawing. Drawing for the most part requires a steadier hand than a weaver has; but we hear many a flute far and near in the summer evenings. There are few fancies that may not be found here and there among us: though there are not many men that, having but one child and a managing wife, are so free to afford them as I am."
"The way to afford them is to make them pay," observed old Short. "Folks understood that matter in my time. A root that Cooper here sells for eighteen-pence, used to bring five guineas. Those were the times to grow flowers in."
"I had rather see a hundred roots of any beautiful tulip in a hundred gardens," observed M. Gaubion, "that a hundred owners might enjoy its beauty, than have the single root from which the hundred sprang, even though it might make me envied by all my neighbours, and moreover be worth five or fifty guineas."
"So had I, sir," said Cooper: "for the same reason that I had rather see any useful or pretty article of manufacture growing cheap, and spreading over the world, than have it remain scarce, that I and a few others might have the sale of it to ourselves. My flowers answer their purpose better in giving pleasure to me and mine, than in being wondered at and snatched up for their rarity; and it is the same with things that are wrought by the hand of man. They must be scarce at the beginning; but that scarcity is a necessary fault, not a virtue, as far as their usefulness is concerned. But, as to making them more scarce than they need be, I would not be the man that had to answer for it!"
"Then you deserve the due and true reward of the liberal,--to have plenty while giving others plenty. I see you work for one master, and these neighbours of yours for another. You seem all to be busy enough."
"Yes, sir. Thank God! M. Gaubion has had enough for his people to do; and we,--that is, I,"--nodding with a significant smile towards Short,--"cannot but improve by seeing what is all the same as French work going on under one's eyes. Our fabrics, sir, are quite another thing already to what they were three years ago."
There was indeed a manifest difference between Short's piece (which might be taken as a specimen of what the English fabric had been five years before) and Cooper's, whose work was little, if at all, inferior to that which M. Gaubion's trained men were achieving with his improved apparatus.--That gentleman took no part while the comparison was being made; and when looked for, as his companions were about to leave the room, was found in a corner with Ichabod, cooking dinner in the kitchen of a baby-house which was the little lad's favourite toy. Twice had the jack been wound up, nine times had the goose revolved, and again and again had the lady inhabitant been brought down from her toilet to the kitchen fire, and led from the kitchen to her jointed table, before Ichabod would leave hold of M. Gaubion's right-hand cuff, and allow him to go about other business than his gallant cookery.
"Your little son has his fancy as well as you," the gentleman observed with a smile. "Though far from the age of being worn and weary, Ichabod has his fancy;--the first fancy, I hope, of many."
"It is as much Mr. Short's fancy as Ichabod's, or more," replied Mrs. Cooper. "Mr. Short has been good enough to make the greater part of this toy with his own hands. These little chairs are cut with his own knife; and the looking-glass,--do look, sir, how nicely so small a bit of glass is framed,--this looking-glass is of his making; and so little time as he has now too!"
Short let his shuttle rest while he watched complacently how the grave men of business gathered round his baby-house, to admire one and another of its toys. He did not hear Cooper whisper that Mr. Short seemed to have more time now for the child than when he used to sit over the fire all day, moping because he had nothing to do. Now, it was a regular thing, on a Sunday morning, for the old man to take Ichabod on his knee, and turn over the big bible, that was brought down out of the cupboard, looking at the pictures, and at Short's great-grandfather's handwriting. And there was scarcely an evening that he was not about one little kind-hearted job or another, while the child was asleep, little thinking what treats were preparing for him.
"Well! long may we all be able to afford to keep a fancy!" said one of the visitors. "That is, if the fancy is of a better kind than that of accusing this gentleman here, because he is a foreigner, of practices which it is clear to me he never dreamed of."
All present joined in the wish, and Rogers and Dickens desired no more than to be as free from care, if they lived to old age, as Short was now. He was sure, from his claim of long service, of work from a good master, as long as any work was to be had; and there was little doubt of this whenever the consequences of the first disorder, inevitable on the occasion of a change of system, should be surmounted, and speculation subside into its natural channels. This would soon happen now, and Short need not, they hoped, say any more that he had woven his last piece, till he should find his hand refuse to throw the shuttle, or his feet grow stiff upon the treadles.
M. Gaubion had a bow from the entire audience as he left the room, Short himself being propitiated by his act of winding up the jack.
Others of the gentleman's foes were not so easily won. He very simply supposed, and led his sisters to suppose, that all was well over when the haunts of his weavers had been examined, and his statements found correct. No such thing. Some one was wise enough to discern that this entire method of examination and verification might be a concerted plot;--concerted between the Treasury and the Frenchman.
What was to be done next?
Some proof must be afforded that M. Gaubion had no French goods in his possession.
"A proof easily afforded," replied he. "Go to my warehouse; turn over every piece of silk it contains; and with the first article of foreign manufacture which you can thence produce, I will restore to you my esteem, and forfeit yours."
One, and another, and another, declined the commission, on the plea of want of confidence in their own judgment and experience; though it was scarcely three years since any notable little girl of ten years old could tell a French from an English silk by a mere glance or touch. This new-born modesty was not allowed to be an obstacle to the experiment. M. Gaubion requested that the most acute detector of foreign fabrics on the Customs establishment should precede him to his warehouse, and try what could be found there. As it was impossible to devise a more searching trial of the foreigner's good faith than he had himself proposed, his plan was agreed upon.
Day after day, the inquiry was prosecuted; and M. Gaubion allowed the free range of his warehouse to all the parties concerned, except himself. He began to fancy, naturally enough, that he had mistaken his way on leaving home, and got set down in some country where the Inquisition still thrives, commerce being its subject instead of religion; silks its object instead of creeds; the fabrics of human hands instead of those of human heads. He could very confidently identify the working spirit.
He opposed an invincible patience to the workings of this spirit; and read with a calm eye the Report of the Custom House agent that thirty-seven pieces had been selected from among many hundred as undoubtedly French; and stood by with an unmoved countenance to witness their seizure; and followed with a steady step to the depôt, albeit greeted with insults at every turn, in the neighbourhood where he was known. Unassisted even by his own clerks, that no room might be afforded for a further charge of collusion, he made out from the books to which access was granted on his petition, a list of the weavers of these thirty-seven pieces; issued summonses to them, and went home to await the appearance of those who had to travel from Macclesfield to swear to their own work. His sisters had no more bitter jokes about handcuffs to amuse him with: but it was pretty evident to them, (though their neighbours were not so plain-spoken to the ladies as to their servants,) that it was thought not to look well that the matter was so long in hand; and that that which had been declared so easy of proof should be so tardily acknowledged. Mademoiselle was also quite of the opinion that all this did not look well. For whom it looked ill was another question.
When the Macclesfield weavers arrived to swear to their handiwork, it was remarked with some surprise that they did not appear to bear the same similitude to their Spitalfields' brethren as one race of weavers usually bears to another. Several of them measured more than five feet five; and though some were pale and thin, they did not show the peculiar conformation of shoulders and of face which marks the weaving son and grandson of a weaver. The simple reason of this was, that most of these men had but lately taken to the craft; only in consequence of the magnificent promises held out, and the large speculations entered into, on the determination of parliament to repeal the restrictions of former years. When many thousands of apprentices were advertised for, and a multitude of new hands quarrelled for by ambitious capitalists, the temptation was great to quit employments which were poorly paid, for the sake of the wages which the masters vied with each other in offering. It happened, of course, that many, both of masters and men, were disappointed. The inundation of smuggled silks, caused by the prohibition of pieces of a certain length, prepared for the opened market, was a serious misfortune to the masters; and the immediate extension of sale, in consequence of the greatness of the supply, did not equal their expectations. As their stocks accumulated, some of their men were compelled to betake themselves to other occupations, or to wait for a clearance of the market, complaining, meanwhile, the foolish of the new measures by which a competition was established with the French, the wise of the miscalculations by which the good effects of the new measures had been for a time obscured. M. Gaubion's men alone had no cause for lamentation. The superiority of his goods ensured his immediate prosperity on his settling in England; and of his many workmen, none went back disappointed to an inferior kind of labour, or sat listless, waiting for better times.
These men had something cheerful to say even of those of their brethren whose hopes had been disappointed as to the silk manufacture. It happened "luckily," as they said,--"of course," as M. Gaubion and Mr. Culver agreed,--that there was an increased demand for labour in some other businesses, in exact proportion as French silks sold in our markets. This was natural enough, as the French must have something in return for their goods; and they would of course take those articles which we can produce better than they. It was not the less a happy thing, however, for the poor man, because it was a matter of course, that if one of his sons had to wait for the clearing of the silk market, another who was a cutler, and a third who was a cotton spinner, were in a state of increased prosperity. The fact was, that the distress of the weavers had been greater in 1816 than at any time since, while it was occasioned by causes much more likely to be lasting in their operation, and was in no degree compensated by increased briskness in other departments of British manufacture. The sum and substance of the news from Macclesfield was that some scores of slightly-built cottages were certainly tumbling into ruins, but that many dozens were inhabited which had not been in existence five years before;--that there had undoubtedly been a transference of some hundreds of apprentices from the various branches of the silk manufacture to other departments of labour, but that a much greater number had been added to the silk throwing and weaving population;-and that, if many were still waiting for employment, they were not so many by half as those who had been taken on by other classes of masters.
It could not be otherwise, an officer of the Customs declared, as the imports of raw and thrown silk were already nearly double what they had been in the busiest year under the old system, and as our exports of manufactured silks had increased 300 per cent. since the trade had been thrown open.
"You left your own country just at the right time, sir," observed another officer to M. Gaubion. "The French exports have been declining,--not so fast as ours have risen,--but enough to show that the English need not fear competition with their foreign neighbours."
"But who could have guessed," asked the first, "how amazingly the manufacture would improve in this short time? The heavier sort of fabrics have improved more in three years than in any quarter of a century before. As to gauzes, and ribbons, and other light kinds of goods, the French still surpass us there, and will do so, probably, for a long time to come; but in the substantial and more important fabrics of our looms, we can undersell our neighbours in many countries abroad."
"For which we are partly indebted to this gentleman, whom some of you have taken upon you to persecute," observed a plain-spoken Macclesfield man. "Poor man as I am, I had rather be myself, working under him, than them that have been working against him. And how it came into their heads to suspect him is more than I can guess. Come, gentlemen, I am ready to swear to my piece. That's the piece I wove: I can swear to it, by certain marks, as confidently as my wife could to our eldest by the mole on his arm."
One of the Customs officers could give an account of one circumstance which had aggravated the suspicions against M. Gaubion. A mysterious-looking package had arrived at the Custom-house, addressed to Mademoiselle, and declared to contain a mummy for her museum. This package had been detained for some time, on pretence of its being difficult to assign the duties on an article which it did not appear had been in the contemplation of the framers of the Customs regulations at the period of their origin. A mummy could scarcely be specified as raw produce; and if considered as a manufactured article, it would be difficult to find a parallel by which to judge of the rate of duty for which it was liable. Under this pretence, the package had been detained; but there were suspicions that it enclosed some other stuffing than the linen swathing-bands of Egyptian production, and it was reserved for examination, in case of the whole train of evidence against the gentleman miscarrying. The more it was examined, the more the package looked as if it must conceal prohibited goods in some of its recesses; but the proof was kept for a grand explosion, as the catastrophe of poor M. Gaubion's trials. The gentlemen of the Custom-house had begun now to think that there might be possibly no more dishonesty in this package than in those of M. Gaubion's proceedings which had been already investigated; and the box had therefore been opened and examined this morning, when they found the mummy, the whole mummy, (which was well for Mademoiselle's museum,) and nothing but the mummy, (which was equally well on her brother's account.)