108 THE BURIED FLOWER. IN the silence of my chamber, Oft I hear the angel voices O, the garden I remember, In the gay and sunny spring, O the merry burst of gladness! O the light of life that sparkled In those bright and bounteous eyes! O the blush of happy beauty, O the radiant light that girdled Where are now the flowers we tended? For ye, too, were flowers, ye dear ones! To the clear blue heaven above: Smiling on the sun that cheer'd us, Never shaken, save by accents O! 'tis sad to lie and reckon Sever'd-were it sever'd only By an idle thought of strife, Such as time might knit together; Not the broken chord of life! O my heart! that once so truly Where are they who gave the impulse All are wither'd, dropp'd, or low! Seek the birth-place of the lily, Never more shalt thou behold her- Only still I keep her image As a thought that cannot die, O! I fling my spirit backward, Blow, for ever blow, ye breezes, Warble out in spray and thicket, With an anthem to its queen! Lo! she cometh in her beauty, Raven locks, Madonna-braided O'er her sweet and blushing face: Eyes of deepest violet, beaming With the love that knows not shame, Lips, that thrill my inmost being With the utterance of a name. And I bend the knee before her, Early wert thou taken, Mary! O away! my thoughts are earthward! With the saints and angels now. Brighter, fairer far than living, By the light that never fadeth, W. E. A. HUZZA FOR THE RULE OF THE WHIGS! AIR-" Old Rosin the Beau." ALL ye who are true to the altar and throne, And you who don't like it may let it alone, How quietly now we may sleep in our beds, Though fears of rebellion hang over our heads, In the 'nineties we saw (I remember the day) The whole English nation had thought it a jest But as matters now stand in this ill-fated realm, We are strangely compell'd to put men at the helm About popular rights he would make such a rout- The Church-can you doubt what her danger would be Lord John, or his friends, we should certainly see But as long as the Bishops may help out his lease, If Grey were at large, how he'd lay down the law If any of us had made war on Repeal With the weapons that Clarendon tries, By millions of noisy Milesians back'd, How would Monaghan murmur that juries were pack'd !— On Aliens or Chartists to hear them declaim, You'd think Castlereagh come from the dead, Though the mixture of metaphors isn't the same, But the Whigs are becoming respectable men As any that ever kept gigs, They are practising now all they preach'd against then- Go on, my good lads-never think of retreat, You're fulfilling the fate such impostors should meet, Then swallow it fast, for your hour may not last We shall soon, if it pleases the pigs, Give your places to men of a different cast, VOL. LXIV.-NO. CCCXCIII. H THE NAVIGATION LAWS. Na "WHEN the Act of Navigation," says Adam Smith, "was made, though England and Holland were not actually at war, the most violent animosity subsisted between the two nations. It is not impossible, therefore, that some of the regulations of this famous act may have proceeded from national animosity. They are as wise, however, as if they had all been dictated by the most deliberate wisdom. tional animosity, at that particular time, aimed at the very object which the most deliberate wisdom would have recommended, the diminution of the naval power of Holland, the only naval power which could endanger the security of England. The Act of Navigation is not favourable to foreign commerce, or to the growth of that opulence which can arise from it. As defence, however, is of much more value than opulence, the Act of Navigation is perhaps the wisest of all the commercial regulations of England."* Before these pages issue from the press, this, undoubtedly the wisest of all the commercial regulations of Great Britain, and under which the maritime strength and colonial empire of England have risen to a pitch of grandeur unknown in any other age or country, will be numbered among the things which have been. The House of Commons, by a majority, have voted for the repeal of the Navigation Laws. Free trade will soon have done its work, so far, at least, as the House of Commons is concerned. It is gradually but unceasingly advancing, and swallowing up successively all the great interests of the empire, save that of the capitalists, as it moves forward. The agricultural interests will find themselves deprived, in February next, of all protection; and the British cultivator exposed to the competition, without any shield save a nominal duty of 1s. a quarter, of states where wheat can be raised, with a fair profit in average years, at 18s. a quarter, and brought to this country for 10s. at the very utmost of freight. As soon as we have two fine harvests in succes sion, it will be seen to what state this system will reduce British rural production. The West India interests have been next assailed; and our colonies, upon whom free labour has been forced, upon a compensation being given to the proprietors on an average of a fourth of the value of their slaves, are speedily to be exposed, with no protection but a differential duty of 5s. 6d. a hundredweight, diminishing 1s. 6d. a-year, till, in 1854, it disappears, to the competition of slave colonies, where sugar can be raised for £4 a ton, while in the British colonies the measures of government have precluded its being raised for less than £10 a ton. As a natural consequence, cultivation is about to cease in those noble settlements; the forest and the jungle will speedily supplant the smiling plantations, and £100,000,000 worth of British property will be lost beyond redemption. at Domestic manufactures were the same time assailed, though with a more gentle hand than rude produce. Protective duties on them were lowered, though not entirely removed; and the consequence is, that at this time there are 8000 hands wholly unemployed at Manchester, and above 10,000 at Glasgow, and distress to an unparalleled extent pervades the whole commercial and manufacturing classes. Nothing daunted by these calamitous results, so exactly what the opponents of free trade predicted would ensue, so diametrically the reverse of the unbounded prosperity which they promised the nation as the consequence of their changes, the Free-traders, in pursuance of their usual system of preferring their own opinions to the evidence of facts, are preparing to apply the same system to the commercial navy of the country, and, by the repeal of the Navigation Laws, against the opinion of Adam Smith, to depress our shipping interest as much as they encourage that of foreign states, and endanger our national existence, by crippling our own means * Wealth of Nations, iv. e. 2. |