Harriet Martineau
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 _Illustrations_.
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 circumstance
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-classes of England." The principal 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 space 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 class--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
amusement. 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 "Illustration" rapidly multiplying its
population, both by early marriages and by immigration, under the
stimulus of a passing 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 noblest 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
illustrating "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 assumption--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 _Illustrations 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
institutions 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