high price of food. Under a partnership system, therefore, the operative would find himself with diminished earnings and increased expenditure, aggravated by the proportion of loss which at the end of the year would fall to his share, and which-as he would probably have no means of meeting it—must remain as a debt due from him to his employer, to be repaid when profitable years recurred. The repayment of this debt, which would come before him in this naked form, viz. that his master was realising large profits whilst he was gaining nothing, but simply obliterating an old debt, would create endless dissatisfaction and ill-will; and would, we are certain, lead to a far worse state of feeling between the parties than exists at present. Moreover, it is to be doubted whether the substitution of fluctuating and uncertain for regular earnings, would not rather tend to promote a spirit of gambling and improvidence. We fear that the partnership system demands a degree of moral and social progress which our manufacturing population, clever and intelligent as they are, are yet far from having attained. In the third place, the plan could not be made to work. Putting aside the difficulties which would arise in the case we have supposed, of a workman in debt to his master, perhaps for years together, and the consequent disputes and recriminations which could scarcely fail to arise as to who was responsible for the bad success of the undertaking;-passing over the discouragement of the workman, and his constant temptation to cancel his debt by changing his master, we must not forget, when we come to regard the question with a view to practice, that a factory employs on an average about 500 workpeople. Of these many are floating, come and go as the whim seizes them, some remaining a few months, others only a few weeks. How could their interests be fairly arranged, on the partnership plan? Then, several of the people are careless, lazy, or drunken, and require to be summarily dismissed. But how could you dismiss men who have a reserved claim on the profits of the concern? It is, no doubt, quite possible, and even easy, to give to some of the principal workmen employed in factories, the foremen of the various departments for example, a certain per centage of the yearly profits, in addition to their fixed salary. And this is a plan by no means unfrequently adopted by employers, for the sake of stimulating the care and zeal of those on whom so much depends. But even in these cases, though the men are select and highly educated in comparison with their fellows, no attempt is ever made, we believe, to make them sharers in losses as well as in gains. The share they receive is simply an additional salary or bonus, given when the business is profitable; is, in fact, neither more nor less than an advance in wages, withdrawn when the capitalist can no longer afford to give it. On the whole, therefore, we incline to the belief that the present system of commuting the workman's share of the common profits into a fixed weekly stipend, though not, perhaps, theoretically the most perfect, is, at least, the one which, under the circumstances, is the most beneficial to him, and the only one which is at present practicable. If it does not give him the same interest in his work which a formal partnership might do, it secures to him regular and ample earnings; and greatly tends to evade that heart-burning animosity and those perpetual disputes, which any other arrangement could scarcely fail to produce. Under it we are satisfied that the workman does receive his fair share, if not more than his fair share, of the profits actually realised; and if he expends them with a due regard to economy, he will in a few as a general rule years be able to amass a sum which would enable him to become a capitalist while remaining a workman, - and thus realise some of the benefits of both conditions. The introduction of the continental law which permits partnerships en commandite, as they are called, or partnerships with limited liability on the part of the inferior shareholders, would greatly facilitate this result. We quote Mr. Mill's account of this law. 6 The other kind of limited partnership which demands our ⚫ attention is that in which the managing partner or partners are responsible with their whole fortunes for the engagements of the concern, but have others associated with them who con'tribute only definite sums and are not liable for anything beyond, though they participate in the profits according to 'any rule that may be agreed upon. This is called partnership 'en commandite; and the partners with limited liability, to 'whom, by the French law, all interference in the management ' of the concern is interdicted, are called commanditaires. Such 'partnerships are not permitted by the English law; whoever shares in the profits is liable for the debts to as plenary an 'extent as the managing partner. For such prohibition no ' rational defence has ever, so far as I am aware, been made.'Mill's Pol. Econ. ii. 465. We have already, we fear, overstepped our limits, and with one or two remarks more, we will conclude. * It must be noticed that most of the workmen in factories have already a direct interest in the work, arising from being paid by the work done, not by the day. VOL. LXXXIX. NO. CLXXX. FF men Mary Barton' is called a tale of Manchester life; its scenes are principally laid there, and its characters-masters and are manufacturers. But the fearful contrasts between rich and poor, which it is the great object of the story to depict and darken, together with the moral lessons which the delineations are intended to convey, have long been common to town and country. The chasm which separates the employer and the employed is at least as wide, we apprehend, in Dorsetshire as in Lancashire. Lazarus lies at the gate of Dives in both places by the park palings of the squire as well as on the hall-steps of the cotton lord-and the temptations and provocations the seeds out of which Esthers and John Bartons grow undoubtedly abound in both, though not perhaps quite to the same extent. We cannot need a Crabbe to come again to tell us this. There was nothing in the extremity of their Manchester destitution, which the Davenports, immigrants from Buckinghamshire, are described as dreading so much, as to be sent back to their rural home. Some improbabilities, too, take off considerably from our pleasure in these volumes. We cannot believe that the long coquetting of the heroine, Mary Barton, a weaver's daughter and apprenticed to a milliner, with Henry Carson, a young master manufacturer and one of the beaux of Manchester -still less her long ill-usage of her rough and faithful lover, Jem Wilson, and her sudden and passionate devotion to him are consistent with the sense and spirit all along attributed to her. And though there are many forms in which the devil, 'out of our weakness and our melancholy, abuses us to damn 'us,' we do not think that the manly and tender nature of John Barton should have been made answerable for his perdition. But in concluding, we must again express our sense of the high literary merit of the work, and our conviction also, that both its value and its chance of lasting popularity would have been far greater, had the writer endeavoured to represent the real position of the operative classes, rather than the inaccurate and distorted view of that position as taken by the sour and envious among them; had she, while depicting the distress and privation which they are so often called upon to endure, drawn attention also to those intellectual and moral deficiencies by which this distress is so often caused or aggravated; had she dealt out one measure of kindliness and severity to the rich and poor; and had she spoken of the bitter and malignant feelings she has dramatised, less as sparing and excusing them than as perceiving and deploring their injustice. We yield to none in a hearty appreciation of, indeed a fellow-feeling with, the workers 1849. Miss Strickland's Queens of England: Stuart Series. 435 in every country and of every denomination; but we would show that sympathy-not in idly mourning over sorrows which are common to all ranks, nor in weeping at distresses for which, as for all human evils, there is a compensation and a cure, but -by calling on all our fellow-labourers to brace up their souls for sterner endurance and for hardier exertion; by exhorting them to carry with them through all trials, as their sword and shield, the settled faith that they, and no man else, must do their own work; that the blessings of comfort, independence, and security are not to be mendicated from others, but to be achieved for themselves; that these inestimable blessings are the promised and the sure rewards of steady industry, of resolute frugality, of reflection that looks before and after; that, in fine to quote the language of a great poet-neither the humble nor the powerful must stoop to ask at the hands of others 'A gift of that which is not to be given By all the blended powers of earth and heaven.' ART. VI. Lives of the Queens of England, from the Norman 12 Vols. 12mo. The Series of the Stuarts. IT T is a fact, which many will think extraordinary, that some of the most illiberal and invidious attacks, whether on classes or on individuals, which have been published in our times, have been the work of female writers. Perhaps it might not be difficult to show that a certain degree of this unreasoning and unreasonable asperity is more natural, and therefore less blameable, in the female than in the male character. It is the failing, not of a cold or harsh, but of a sensitive, enthusiastic, and imperfectly disciplined temperament. It is, therefore, precisely the failing which we might expect to find in persons whose affections are tenderly cherished, and whose judgments are not severely exercised; who live surrounded by the endearments of a domestic circle, and unacquainted, except through sympathy for others, with the hardening struggles of political and professional life; and whose minds, however acute and active by nature, are seldom exerted under serious responsibilities, or upon subjects of high practical importance. To such persons, friendly disapprobation and respectful dislike are, and must be, most difficult and painful attitudes of the mind. They cannot bear to divide their esteem and their affection; to think lightly of those by whom their sympathies are attracted, or to admire those by whom they are repelled. And therefore nothing can be more unjust than to cite the prejudices of certain fair politicians against American democrats, or against English dukes and earls, as proofs of an inherently severe or censorious temper. Still it must be admitted that this propensity, though not perhaps an ungraceful or even unamiable infirmity under ordinary circumstances, is singularly unsuited to the office of a public instructor. Every one makes allowance for an affectionate woman who can see nothing but excellence in her husband or son, and nothing but malice and unfairness in their enemies or rivals. But surely the case is altered when the objects of her sympathies and antipathies are political principles, parties, and characters; and when her feelings are given to the world in a didactic work. It is difficult to be attracted or amused by an amiable weakness when it takes so formidable and aggressive a shape; and it becomes the duty of all, upon whose judgment in such matters the public in any degree relies, to do their best to expose the error and its consequences. Ladies who assume masculine functions must learn to assume masculine gravity and impartiality. Or, if they fail to do this, they must prepare to be remonstrated with upon the omission—not, we trust, without the courtesy due to their sex, but assuredly with the plainness required by the interests of truth and justice. The book now before us is the work of a lady whose predilections are those of a high Churchwoman and stanch Royalist. Miss Strickland considers the Church of England as a divine institution, the depositary of apostolic truth, and the representative of apostolic authority; the Sovereign of England as the anointed of God, and responsible to him alone. We do not confound these opinions with that strange mixture of obstinate adherence to antiquity, and timid submission to expediency, which during the last few generations has been known by the name of Toryism. We can have little or no indulgence for the prejudices of men who professed to regard the Church of England as Catholic and Apostolic, while they combined with dissenters and schismatics to persecute the Church of Rome as anti-christian; and who maintained the divine right of kings, while they kept the House of Stuart in exile. But the conscientious belief which boldly sets up a principle, and consistently adopts its consequences, deserves no part of the contempt due to the hypocrisy which has so often raised the cry of Church and Kingnot as the creed of faith and loyalty, but as the unmeaning watchword of a faction. |