Political economy treats of the production, distribution and consumption, or use, of all the material objects of human desire, which are called by the general name of wealth. Thus, it is a subject which concerns every one of us in our daily lives, and not merely a matter belonging (as its name unfortunately leads many to suppose) entirely to the province of the legislator. The great ma.s.s of mankind are producers of wealth. All are necessarily consumers--for the bare maintenance of existence demands the consumption of wealth. The well-being of the community depends upon the industry and skill with which wealth is produced; upon the distribution of it in such a manner as to encourage future production; and upon the consumption of it with due regard to the claims of the future. It is individuals who, as the business of common life, produce, exchange, divide and consume wealth; it is, therefore, each individual"s business to comprehend the science which treats of his daily life. A science is nothing but a collection of facts, considered in their relationship to each other. Miss Martineau"s plan, in her series, was strictly what I have indicated as being always her aim; namely, to deduce from an abstract science rules for daily life--the secondary, practical or concrete science. It was the union of a scientific basis with practical morals that made this subject attractive to her mind, and led her (in the words of her preface,) to "propose to convey the leading truths of political economy, as soundly, as systematically, as clearly and faithfully, as the utmost painstaking and the strongest attachment to the subject will enable us to do."
She did her work very methodically. Having first noted down her own ideas on the branch of the subject before her, she read over the chapters relating to it in the various standard works that she had at hand, making references as she read. The next thing to do was to draw out as clearly and concisely as possible the truths that she had to ill.u.s.trate; this "summary of principles," as she called it, was affixed to each tale. By this time she would see in what part of the world, and amongst what cla.s.s of people, the principles in question were operating most manifestly; and if this consideration dictated the choice of a foreign background, the next thing to be done was to get from a library works of travel and topography, and to glean hints from them for local coloring.
The material thus all before her in sheets of notes, she reduced it to chapters; sketching out the characters of her _dramatis personae_, their action, and the features of the scenes, and also the political economy which they had to convey either by exemplification or by conversation. Finally, she paged her paper. Then "the story went off like a letter. I did it," she says, "as I write letters; never altering the expression as it came fresh from my brain."
I have seen the original ma.n.u.script of one of the Political Economy Tales. It shows the statement just quoted to be entirely accurate. The writing has evidently been done as rapidly as the hand could move; every word that will admit of it is contracted, to save time. "Socy.,"
"opporty.," "agst.," "abt.," "independce.," these were amongst the abbreviations submitted to the printer"s intelligence; not to mention commoner and more simple words, such as wh., wd., and the like. The calligraphy, though very readable, has a somewhat slipshod look.
Thus, there is every token of extremely rapid composition. Yet the corrections on the MS. are few and trifling; the structure of a sentence is never altered, and there are but seldom emendations even of princ.i.p.al words. The ma.n.u.script is written (in defiance of law and order) on both sides of the paper; the latter being quarto, of the size now commonly called _sermon_ paper, but, in those pre-envelope ages, it was letter paper.
Her course of life in London was as follows: she wrote in the morning, rising, and making her own coffee at seven, and going to work immediately after breakfast until two. From two till four she saw visitors. Having an immense acquaintance, she declined undertaking to make morning calls; but people might call upon her any afternoon. She was charged with vanity about this arrangement; but, with the work on her hands and the compet.i.tion for her company, she really could not do differently. Still, Sydney Smith suggested a better plan; he told her she should "hire a carriage, and engage an inferior auth.o.r.ess to go round in it to drop the cards!" After any visitors left, she went out for her daily "duty walk," and returned to glance over the newspapers, and to dress for dinner. Almost invariably she dined out, her host"s or some other friend"s carriage being commonly sent to fetch her. One or two evening parties would conclude the day, unless the literary pressure was extreme, in which case she would sometimes write letters after returning home. During the whole time of writing her series, she was satisfied with from five to six hours" sleep out of the twenty-four; and though she was not a teetotaller, but drank wine at dinner, still she took no sort of stimulant to help her in her work.
This was the course of life that a woman, of no extraordinary physical strength, was able to maintain with but little cessation or interval for two years. When I look at the thirty-four little volumes which she produced in less than as many months, and when I consider the character of their contents, I am bound to say that I consider the feat of mere industry unparalleled, within my knowledge.
The _Ill.u.s.trations of Political Economy_ are plainly and inevitably damaged, as works of art, by the fact that they are written to convey definite lessons. The fetters in which the story moves are necessarily far closer than in the ordinary "novel with a purpose;" for here the object is not merely to show the results, upon particular characters or upon individual careers, of a certain course of conduct, and thence to argue that in similar special circ.u.mstances all persons would experience similar consequences: but the task here is to show in operation those springs of the social machinery by which we are _all_, generally quite unconsciously, guided in our _every-day_ actions, the natural laws by which _all_ our lives are _inevitably_ governed. To do this, the author was compelled to select scenes from common life, and to eschew the striking and the unusual. Again, it was absolutely necessary that much of the doctrine which had to be taught must be conveyed by dialogue; not because it would not be possible to exemplify in action every theory of political economy--for all those theories have originally been derived from observation of the facts of human history--but because no such a small group of persons and such a limited s.p.a.ce of time as must be taken to _tell a story about_, can possibly display the whole consequences of many of the laws of social science. The results of our daily actions as members of society are not so easily visible as they would be if we could wholly trace them out amongst our own acquaintances or in our own careers. The consequences of our own conduct, good or bad, must _come round_ to us, it is true, but often only as members of the body politic. Thus, they are very often in a form as little distinguishable to the uninstructed mind as we may suppose it would be comprehensible to the brain, if the organs of the body had a separate consciousness, that it was responsible for its own aches arising from the disturbance of the liver consequent upon intemperance. But in a tale it is obviously impossible to show _in action_ any more of the working of events than can be exemplified in one or two groups of persons, all of whom must be, however slightly, personally a.s.sociated. The larger questions and principles at issue must be expounded and argued out in conversations, or else by means of an entire lapse from the ill.u.s.trative to the didactic method. Now, as ordinary people do not go about the world holding long conversations or delivering themselves of dissertations on political economy, it is clear that the introduction of such talks and preachments detracts from the excellence of the story as a work of art. Still less artistically admirable does the fiction become when a lesson is introduced as a separate argument intruded into the course of the tale.
Political economy as a science was then but fifty years old. Adam Smith had first promulgated its fundamental truths in his immortal _Wealth of Nations_, in 1776. Malthus, Ricardo, and one or two others had since added to the exposition of the facts and the relationship between the facts (that is to say, the science) of social arrangements. But it was not then--nor is it, indeed, yet, in an age when the great rewards of physical research have attracted into that field nearly all the best intellects for science of the time--a complete body of reasoned truths. Some of the positions laid down by all the earlier writers are now discredited; others are questioned. In a few pa.s.sages, accordingly, these tales teach theories which would now require revision. It must be added at once that these instances are few and far between. The reasoning, the grasp of the facts of social life and the logical ac.u.men with which they are dissected and explained in these tales are, generally speaking, nearly perfect, and therefore such as all competent students of the subject would at this day indorse. The slips in exposition of the science as it was then understood are _exceedingly_ rare. Greater clearness, and more precision, and better arrangement could hardly have been attained had years been spent upon the work, in revising, correcting, and re-copying, instead of each "Ill.u.s.tration" being written in a month, and sent to press with hardly a phrase amended.
The accuracy and excellence in the presentation of the science were admitted at once by the highest authorities. Mr. James Mill early made honorable amends for his previous doubts as to the possibility of Miss Martineau"s success. Whately and Malthus expressed their admiration of the work. Lord Brougham called upon her, and engaged her pen to ill.u.s.trate the necessity for reform in the treatment of the social canker of pauperism. The Gurneys, and the rest of the Quaker members of Parliament got Mrs. Fry to make an appointment to ask Miss Martineau"s advice as to their action in the House on the same subject, when it was ripe for legislation. The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Lord Althorp) even sent his private secretary (Mr.
Drummond, the author of the world-famous phrase "Property has its duties as well as its rights") to supply Miss Martineau with information to enable her to prepare the public for the forthcoming Budget. The chairman of the Royal Commission on Excise Taxes gave her the ma.n.u.script of the evidence taken, and the draft of the report of the Commission, before they were formally presented to the Ministers of the Crown (a thing without precedent!), in order that she might use the facts to pave the way for the reception of the report in the House and by the people. The whole public of male students of her science paid her work what men consider in their unconscious insolence to be the highest compliment that they _can_ pay a woman"s work: the milder-mannered ones said she had "a masculine intelligence"; the stronger characters went further, and declared that the books were so good that it was impossible to believe them to be written by a woman.
Newspaper critics not infrequently attributed them to Lord Brougham, then Lord Chancellor; that versatile and (at the moment) most popular politician was supposed either to write them all himself, or to supply their main features for the inferior mind to throw into shape.
While statesmen, politicians, thinkers, and students were thus praising the clearness and appreciating the power of the work as political economy, the general public eagerly bought and read the books, both for their bearing on the legislative questions of the day and for their vividness and interest as stories. And indeed, they richly deserved to be read as works of fiction. Remembering the limitations to their artistic excellence previously adverted to, they may be with justice praised for most of the essential features of good novel-writing.
The characters are the strongest point. Clearly individualized, consistently carried out, thinking, speaking, and acting in accordance with their nature, the characters are always personages; and some of them must live long in the memories of those who have made their acquaintance. The sterner virtues in Cousin Marshall, in Lady F----, in Ella of Garveloch, and in Mary Kay, are no less clearly and attractively depicted than the milder and more pa.s.sive ones in the patience of Christian Vanderput, in the unconscious devotion to duty of Nicholas, in the industry and hopefulness of Frank and Ellen Castle, in the wifely love and agony of Hester Morrison, in the quiet public spirit of Charles Guyon, in the proved patriotism of the Polish exiles, and in a dozen other instances. Her feelings and her spirit are at home in depicting these virtues of the character; but none the less does she well succeed in realizing both vice and folly. Her real insight into character was quite remarkable; as Dr. Martineau observed to me, when he said, "My sister"s powers of observation were extraordinary." If, on the one hand, her deafness often prevented her from appreciating the delicacies and the chances of verbal expression (which really reveal so much of the nature) in those around her, so that she was apt to draw sharper lines than most people do between the sheep and the goats in her estimation; on the other hand, she saw more than those whose minds are distracted by sounds, the light and play of the countenance, and the indications of character in trivial actions.
The excellence of her character-drawing in these novels gives abundant evidence that the disqualification was more than counterbalanced by the cultivation of the other faculty.
The unconsciousness of her mental a.n.a.lysis is at once its greatest charm and the best token of its truthfulness. Florence Nightingale realized how fully this was so with reference to the finer qualities of morals. In her tribute to Harriet Martineau"s memory Miss Nightingale justly observes:--
In many parts of her _Ill.u.s.trations of Political Economy_--for example, the death of a poor drinking-woman, "Mrs. Kay,"--what higher religious feeling (or _one should rather say instinct_) could there be? To the last she had religious feeling--in the sense of good working out of evil into a supreme wisdom penetrating and moulding the whole universe; into the natural subordination of intellect and intellectual purposes and of intellectual self to purposes of good, even were these merely the small purposes of social or domestic life.
On the other side of the human character in her delineation of the bad qualities, she as instinctively seeks and finds causes for the errors and evils of the minds she displays. Foolishness, and ignorance, and poverty are traced, entirely without affectation and "cant," in their action as misleading influences in the lives of the poor sinners and sufferers.
The stories told in the _Ill.u.s.trations_ are frequently very interesting. In this respect, there is a notable advance in the course of the series. The earlier tales, such as _Life in the Wilds_ and _Brooke Farm_, are not to be compared, as mere stories, with even those written later on by only eight or nine stirring eventful months, such as _Ireland_ and _The Loom and the Lugger_. Still better are the latest tales. The _Ill.u.s.trations of Taxation_ and _Ill.u.s.trations of Poor-Laws and Paupers_ are, despite the unattractiveness of their topics, of the highest interest. _The Parish_, _The Town_, _The Jerseymen Meeting_, _The Jerseymen Parting_; and _The Scholars of Arnside_, would a.s.suredly be eagerly read by any lover of fiction almost without consciousness that there was anything in the pages except a deeply interesting story.
Archbishop Whately p.r.o.nounced _The Parish_ the best thing she had done. _Vanderput and Snook_, the story dealing with bills of exchange, was the favorite with Mr. Hallam. Lord Brougham, on whose engagement she did the five "Poor-Law" stories, wrote most enthusiastically that they surpa.s.sed all the expectations that her previous works had led him to form. Coleridge told her that he "looked eagerly every month"
for the new number; and Lord Durham recounted to her how one evening he was at Kensington Palace (where the widowed d.u.c.h.ess of Kent was then residing, and devoting herself to that education which has made her daughter the best sovereign of her dynasty), when the little Princess Victoria came running from an inner room to show her mother, with delight, the advertis.e.m.e.nt of the "Taxation" tales; for the young Princess was being allowed to read the _Ill.u.s.trations_, and found them her most fascinating story-books.
Harriet"s experiences, however, were not all quite so agreeable. Mrs.
Marcet, who "had a great opinion of great people--of people great by any distinction, ability, office, birth, and what not--and innocently supposed her own taste to be universal," formed a warm and generous friendship for Miss Martineau, and used to delight in carrying to her the "homages" of the savants and the aristocratic readers of the _Ill.u.s.trations_ in France, where Mrs. Marcet"s acquaintance was extensive. She one day told Miss Martineau, with much delight, that Louis Philippe, the then King of the French, had ordered a copy of the series for each member of his family, and had also requested M. Guizot to have the stories translated, and introduced into the French national schools. This was presently confirmed by a large order from France for copies, and by a note from the officially-appointed translator requesting Harriet Martineau to favor him with some particulars of her personal history, for introduction into a periodical which was being issued by the Government for the promotion of education amongst the French people. The writer added that M.
Guizot wished to have Miss Martineau"s series specially noticed in connection with her own personality, since she afforded the first instance on record of a woman who was not born to sovereign station affecting practical legislation otherwise than through a man.
At the very time that she received this flattering note, Harriet was engaged in writing her twelfth number, _French Wines and Politics_.
The topic treated in this story is that of value, with the subsidiary questions relating to prices and their fluctuations. The tale takes up the period of the great French Revolution, and shows how the fortunes of certain wine-merchants near Bordeaux, and of the head of the Paris house in connection, were affected by the course of that great social convulsion. The scene was unquestionably happily chosen. The circ.u.mstances were abnormal, it is true; but the causes which created such vast fluctuations in prices, and such changes in the value of goods, were, in fact, only the same fundamental causes as are always at the basis of such alterations in price and value; it was merely the rapidity and violence of the movement which were peculiar. The story was well put together; and the "Ill.u.s.tration" was in every way admirable for every possible desirable object, except only for the one of being pleasant to the ruling powers in the France of 1833.
Harriet Martineau"s constant sympathy with democracy, her hatred of oppression and tyranny, and her aversion to cla.s.s government, all became conspicuous in this story. "The greatest happiness of the greatest number" of mankind was her ideal of the aim of legislation; and she well knew, as Bentham saw, that only the democratic form of government can produce a body of laws approximating to this ideal. Her efforts were constant, therefore, to prepare the people to demand, and to afterwards wisely use, the power of governing themselves. Now, though Louis Philippe was the citizen-king, though he was the head of a republican monarchy, though his legislative chamber rejected in that same year a ministerial doc.u.ment because it spoke of the people as "subjects," yet it may be easily understood that this king and his ministers did not care to stimulate the democratic feeling of the nation any more than they found inevitable. The whole tone of this work would be objectionable to them; and a dozen pa.s.sages might be readily quoted to show why royal and aristocratic rulers were little likely to aid its circulation amongst the people whom they governed.
Here, for instance, is a portion of the pa.s.sage on the storming of the Bastile:--
The spectacles of a life-time were indeed to be beheld within the compa.s.s of this one scene.... Here were the terrors which sooner or later chill the marrow of despotism, and the stern joy with which its retribution fires the heart of the patriot. Here were the servants of tyranny quailing before the glance of the people.... The towers of palaces might be seen afar, where princes were quaking at this final a.s.surance of the downfall of their despotic sway, knowing that the a.s.sumed sanct.i.ty of royalty was being wafted away with every puff of smoke which spread itself over the sky, and their irresponsibility melting in fires lighted by the hands which they had vainly attempted to fetter, and blown by the breath which they had imagined they could stifle. They had denied the birth of that liberty whose baptism in fire and in blood was now being celebrated in a many-voiced chant with which the earth should ring for centuries. Some from other lands were already present to hear and join in it; some free Britons to aid, some wondering slaves of other despots to slink homewards with whispered tidings of its import; for from that day to this, the history of the fall of the Bastile has been told as a secret in the vineyards of Portugal, and among the groves of Spain, and in the patriotic conclaves of the youth of Italy, while it has been loudly and joyfully proclaimed from one end to the other of Great Britain, till her lisping children are familiar with the tale.
Besides such pa.s.sages as this, scarcely likely to please the French king, there was the special ground for his objection that his immediate ancestor, Egalite, was introduced into the story, and depicted in no favorable light his efforts to inflame the popular violence for his selfish ends, his hypocrisy, his cowardice, and so on, being held up to contempt. Mrs. Marcet, when she read all this, came breathless to Harriet Martineau to ask her how she could have made such a blunder as to write a story that plainly would (and, of course, in fact, did) put an end to the official patronage of her series in France, and would destroy for ever any hopes that she might have entertained of being received at the Court of Louis Philippe?
Greatly surprised was the good lady at finding Harriet"s reverence for that monarch so limited in extent. She replied to her kind friend that she "wrote with a view to the people, and especially the most suffering of them; and the crowned heads must for once take their chance for their feelings."
At the very moment that Mrs. Marcet"s remonstrance was made, Miss Martineau was writing a story of a character likely to be even more distasteful to the Emperor of Russia than this one to the King of the French. She had found it difficult to ill.u.s.trate the theory of the currency in a story treating of the existence of civilized people. The only situation in which she could find persons, above the rank of savages, transacting their exchanges by aid of a kind of money which made the business only one remove from bartering, was amongst the Polish exiles in Siberia. She therefore wrote _The Charmed Sea_, a story founded upon the terrible facts of the lives of the exiled Poles "in the depths of Eastern Siberia," working in "a silver-mine near the western extremity of the Daourian Range, and within hearing of the waters of the Baikal when its storms were fiercest." Had the melancholy tale been written in the service of the Poles, it could not have been more moving. So powerful, and interesting was it, indeed, that the criticism of the _Edinburgh Review_ was that the fiction too entirely overpowered the political economy. The arrival of _The Charmed Sea_ in Russia changed the favorable opinion which the Czar had previously been so kind as to express about the _Ill.u.s.trations_.
He had been purchasing largely of the French translation of the series for distribution amongst his people. But now he issued a proclamation ordering every copy in Russia of every number to be immediately burnt, and forbidding the author ever to set foot upon his soil. Austria, equally concerned in the Polish business, followed this example, and a description of Harriet Martineau"s person was hung in the appointed places, amidst the lists of the proscribed, all over Russia, Austria, and Austrian-Italy. Despots, at least, had no admiration for her politics.
The only important adverse criticism in the press appeared in the _Quarterly Review_.[7] The reviewer objected impartially to every one of the twelve stories which had then appeared. Every circ.u.mstance which could arouse prejudice against the series was taken advantage of, from party political feeling and religious bigotry, down to the weakness of fluid philanthropy, and "the prudery and timidity of the middle-cla.s.ses of England." The princ.i.p.al ground of attack was the story which dealt with Malthusianism, _Weal and Woe in Garveloch_.
[7] In the same number, by the way, appeared the notorious biting and sarcastic notice of Tennyson"s second volume. It is a distinction, indeed, for a critical review, that one number should have devoted half its s.p.a.ce to violently unfavorable criticisms of Alfred Tennyson"s poetry and Harriet Martineau"s political economy.
When the course of my exposition brought me to the population subject, I, with my youthful and provincial mode of thought and feeling--brought up, too, amidst the prudery which is found in its great force in our middle cla.s.s--could not but be sensible that I risked much in writing and publishing on a subject which was not universally treated in the pure, benevolent, and scientific spirit of Malthus himself.... I said nothing to anybody; and, when the number was finished, I read it aloud to my mother and aunt. If there had been any opening whatever for doubt or dread, I was sure that these two ladies would have given me abundant warning and exhortation--both from their very keen sense of propriety and their anxious affection for me. But they were as complacent and easy as they had been interested and attentive. I saw that all ought to be safe.
The _Quarterly Review_ seized the opportunity of the appearance of this number to make a vile attack upon the series and its writer.
Harriet suffered under it to a degree which seems almost excessive.
The review is so obviously full of fallacies, as regards its Political Economy, that any person whose opinion was worth having could hardly hesitate in deciding that she, and not her critic, was talking common-sense and arguing logically. As to the personal part of the article, it is, though scurrilous, and even indecent, so very funny that the attacked might almost have forgotten the insult in the amus.e.m.e.nt. Nevertheless, the writers, Croker and Lockhart, did their worst. Croker openly said that he expected to lose his pension very shortly, and, being wishful to make himself a literary position before that event happened, he had begun by "tomahawking Miss Martineau." All that could be painful to her as a woman, and injurious to her as a writer, was said, or attempted to be conveyed, in this article.
Let us see what it was all about. Garveloch, one of the Hebridean islands, is seen in the "Ill.u.s.tration" rapidly multiplying its population, both by early marriages and by immigration, under the stimulus of a pa.s.sing prosperity in the fishing industry. The influx of capital and the increase of the demand for food, have led to such an improvement in the cultivation of the land, that the food produce of the island has been doubled in ten years. Ella, the heroine (a fine, strong, self-contained, helpful woman--one of the n.o.blest female characters in these works), foresees that if the reckless increase of population continues, the supply of food will by-and-by run short. Her interlocutor asks how this will be the case, since the population will surely not double again, as it has done already, in ten years? Then the _Quarterly_ quotes Ella"s reply, and comments on it:--
"Certainly not; but say twenty, thirty, fifty or any number of years you choose; still, as the number of the people doubles itself for ever, while the produce of the land does not, the people must increase faster than the produce."
This is rare logic and arithmetic, and not a little curious as natural history. A plain person now would have supposed that if the produce doubled itself in ten, and the people only in a hundred years, the people would not increase _quite_ so fast as the produce, seeing that at the end of the first century the population would be multiplied but by two, the produce by one thousand and twenty-four. But these are the discoveries of genius!
Why does Miss Martineau write, except to correct our mistaken notions and to expound to us the mysteries of "the principle of population."
The reviewer goes on to suggest, in the broadest language, that she has confounded the rate of the multiplication of the herring-fisher-women with that of the herrings themselves; reproves her for writing on "these ticklish topics" with so little physiological information; and tells her that she, "poor innocent, has been puzzling over Mr.
Malthus"s arithmetical and geometrical ratios for knowledge which she should have obtained by a simple question or two of her mamma." In one and the same paragraph, he tells her that he is "loth to bring a blush unnecessarily upon the cheek of any woman," and asks her if she picked up her information on the subject "in her conferences with the Lord Chancellor?"
This is enough to show to what a sensitive young lady was exposed in ill.u.s.trating "a principle as undeniable as the multiplication table,"
and in stating the facts upon which hangs the explanation of the poverty, and therefore of a large part of the vice and misery, of mankind. Miss Martineau"s exposition was, of course, entirely right, and the fallacy in the review is obvious, one would suppose on the surface. The reviewer"s error consists in his a.s.sumption--the falsity of which is at once apparent on the face of the statement--that land can go on doubling its produce _every_ ten years, for an indefinite period. So far from this being true, the fact is that the limit of improving the cultivation of land is soon reached.
Better agricultural treatment may easily make half-cultivated land bring forth double its previous produce; but the highest pitch of farming once reached--as it comparatively soon is--the produce cannot be further increased; and even before this limit is reached, the return for each additional application of capital and labor becomes less and less proportionately bountiful. This is the truth known to political economists as "the Law of the Diminishing Return of Land."
Taken in conjunction with the fact that the human race _can_ double for ever, theoretically, and in reality _does_ multiply its numbers with each generation, checked only by the forethought of the more prudent and the operations of famine, war, crime, and the diseases caused by poverty, this law explains why mankind does not more rapidly improve its condition--why the poor have been always with us--and why teaching such as Harriet Martineau here gave must be received into the popular mind before the condition of society can be expected to be improved in the only way possible, by the wisdom and prudence of its members.
Painful as was the attack she had undergone, intensely as she had suffered from its character and nature, Miss Martineau did not allow what she had felt of personal distress to have any influence on her future writings. Her moral courage had been well trained and exercised, first by the efforts that her mind had had to make in following her conscience as a guide to the formation of opinions, in opposition to the tendency implanted by her mother"s treatment to bow supinely before authority; secondly, by the lesson of endurance which her deafness had brought to her. She had now to show, for the first, but by no means the last time, that hers was one of those temperaments which belong to all leaders of men, whether in physical or moral warfare; that danger was to her a stimulus, and that her courage rose the higher the greater the demand for its exercise.
Praise and blame, appreciation and defamation, strengthened and enlarged her mind during this period. But at the end of it, Sydney Smith could say: "She has gone through such a season as no girl before ever knew, and she has kept her own mind, her own manners, and her own voice. She"s safe."
CHAPTER VI.
FIVE ACTIVE YEARS.
On the conclusion of the publication of the _Ill.u.s.trations of Political Economy_, Harriet went to the United States, and travelled there for more than two years. Her fame had preceded her; and she received the warm and gracious greeting from the generous people of America that they are ever ready to give to distinguished guests from their "little Mother-isle." She travelled not only in the Northern States, but in the South and the West too, going in the one direction from New York to New Orleans, and in the other to Chicago and Michigan. Everywhere she was received with eager hospitality. Public inst.i.tutions were freely thrown open to her, and eminent citizens vied with each other in showing her attention, publicly and privately.
The most noteworthy incident in the course of the whole two years was her public declaration of her anti-slavery principles. The Anti-Slavery movement was in its beginning. The abolitionists were the subjects of abuse and social persecution, and Miss Martineau was quickly made aware that by a declaration in their favor she would risk incurring odium, and might change her popularity in society into disrepute and avoidance. It would have been perfectly easy for a less active conscience and a less true moral sense to have evaded the question, in such a manner that neither party could have upbraided her for her action. She might simply have said that she was there as a learner, not as a teacher; that her business was to survey American society, and not to take any share in its party disputes, or to give any opinion on the political questions of a strange land. Such paltering with principle was impossible to Harriet Martineau. She did not obtrude her utterances on the subject, but when asked in private society what she thought, she frankly spoke out her utter abhorrence, not merely of slavery in the abstract, but also of the state of the Southern slave-holders and their human property. She could not help seeing that this candor often gave offense; but that was not her business when her opinion was sought on a moral question.
The really searching test of her personal character did not come, however, with regard to this matter, till she went to stay for a while in Boston, the head-quarters of the abolitionists, fifteen months after her arrival in America. It happened that she reached Boston the very day a ladies" anti-slavery meeting was broken up by the violence of a mob, and that Garrison, falling into the hands of the enraged mult.i.tude, was half-murdered in the street. Harriet had given a promise, long previously, to attend an abolitionists" meeting; and though these occurrences showed her that there was actual personal danger in keeping her word, she was not to be intimidated. She went to the very next meeting of the ladies" society, which was held a month after the one so violently disturbed, and there, being unexpectedly begged to "give them the comfort" of a few words from her, she rose, and as the official report says, "with great dignity and simplicity of manner," declared her full sympathy with the principles of the a.s.sociation.