THE

NEW ENGLANDER.

No. L.

MAY, 1855.

ART. I.-ALTON LOCKE.

Alton Locke: Tailor and Poet.-An Autobiography.

THIS is the title of a work, which has already been for several years before the public on both sides of the water, and has had an immensely wide circulation. It has been eagerly devoured by a multitude of delighted admirers, whose style of thought and principles of taste it accurately and brilliantly reflects, and who feel for it and its author that affectionate enthusiasm, which is always excited in us towards one who succeeds in giving eloquent expressions to our own opinions and emotions. The fact that the work has found so many admirers, both in England and with us, does not prove that it has made converts to the opinions of its author on certain social and religious questions, but only that multitudes were converted already, and only needed to find some fervid and striking utterance of notions, they were already vaguely and indistinctly entertaining. In one respect, indeed, it is a favorable indication in regard to the state of the popular mind, which ever view we may take of the author's opinions. It shows that public atten

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tion is awake to those great social evils, which still exist, to mock at our boasted social progress, and to disgrace both the religion and the freedom of the nineteenth century. Morbid sensibility even to these evils is a better indication for the future, than that dead apathy which has too long been exhibited by the most enlightened classes in all civilized countries. There is some reason to suspect, that there is another large class of readers of the book, who sympathize with whatever of the spirit of philanthropy it exhibits, and who deeply and feelingly deplore the social evils which it depicts; but they still feel that its views are unsound and unsafe, and that its influence on the young, who are its most interested and admiring readers, is to be distrusted and deplored. And yet it may be doubted whether they are themselves sufficiently masters of the questions of trade and political economy which pervade the book, to be able to assign a reason entirely satisfactory to themselves for their distrust and aversion. We are mistaken if the views taken of this class of subjects, even by many of the most cultivated minds among us, are not vague and unsatisfactory. Their feelings are on the one hand humane and philanthropic, and on the other sober, and in the true sense of the word, conservative. But these questions they have not thought out, and settled on a rational and satisfactory basis. They hold to old opinions from conservative taste, and are all the while taunted by the uncomfortable suspicion, that their opinions and their philanthropy are in conflict with each other. They are consciously unable to defend their opinions against themselves, much more against the assaults of an excited and revolutionary radicalism. They need a clearer and more comprehensive view of the subject.

Alton Locke belongs to a class of fictitious writings, very numerous of late, in which though the authors are not negligent of the attractions of thrilling and tragic incident, they have made it still subordinate to the inculcations of their opinions, on questions of morals, politics and religion. We have said their opinions, and yet it is not mere opinions, which this class of authors would promulgate through their fictitious narrative, but the intensity of their love, the bitterness of their hatred, the enthusiasm of their hopes, the fervor of their emotions. The appeal is not to the cold intellect of the reader, but to the emotions of his heart, and the convictions of his moral nature. Viewed in this light this class of fictions belong not to the mere didactic, but to the poetic, the dramatic, and often even to the tragic. Though the Coelebs in search of a wife of Hannah More, and Uncle Tom's Cabin are both works of di

dactic fiction, no two compositions could well be more unlike in their real nature and spirit. The one is a series of instructions, slightly enlivened by being woven into a warp of incident. The other is an epic, wanting only poetic numbers. And yet under another aspect it is not an epic after all. The design of the epic is to please, not to instruct. It belongs wholly to the fine arts. Uncle Tom's Cabin, Alton Locke, and all the class of compositions to which they belong, are designed to convince and to persuade. Considered in respect to the design of their authors, they belong rather to the department of oratory, than poetry. They are orations, sermons, dramatized.

The more we reflect upon these and similar productions, the more are we convinced that our age has certainly given birth to a new species of literature. There is perhaps some approach to the same thing in the great work of Cervantes, but it is only a very remote approximation. The species is new and it is the product in a great degree of our own age. Nor is it difficult to see how it results from the general spirit and tendency of the age. It is but the utilitarian spirit seizing on the drama and the epic and forcing them into the service of practical utility. It is only one out of many efforts of the highly cultivated and gifted minds of this age, to reach and mould the million. It is a recognition of the reign of democracy. These authors have seen and felt the truth, that the destinies of humanity are hereafter not with kings and nobles, but with the people.

Whether this new-born species is likely to prove a blessing or a curse to mankind, may perhaps yet be a question. If we admit, as we surely must, that it is a department of literature in which genius, in alliance with freedom and religion, may confer great blessings on mankind, we cannot on the other hand deny, that it is also one in which genius in alliance with despotism, impiety, and anarchy, may perpetrate incalculable mischief. And yet in an open field of conflict, where truth and falsehood are equally free to choose their own weapons and their own tactics, the wise man, and the enlightened Christian, will never be distrustful of the result. We hold it to be demonstrable, that under the government of God every great popular force must at last range itself on the side of truth and righteousness.

But we must hasten to a more direct examination of the work. The design of this book seems to us to be briefly comprehended in the following statements, viz:

1. To cast the most intense odium upon the principle of competition as applied in adjusting the wages of labor.

2. To exhibit the principle of associated labor, united with the religion of the imagination, under the forms of the Church of England, as the great remedy for existing social evils.

These points will be considered in the order in which they have been stated. Our first question then is purely an economical one. Not that we are dealing with a treatise on political economy. The author does not dogmatize. Dogmatism is not his weapon. He ought not, however, to be surprised, that to an unbeliever, his mode of presenting his views seem more arrogant and offensive, than the most confident dogmatism. He does not draw out his economical creed in the form of propositions-he does not argue for it. That would be to admit that there is some room for plausible doubt of its truth. He assumes it as true beyond the necessity of argument, and makes it the ground-work of the whole plot. If the principle of competition be not essentially unjust and tyrannical in its application to the wages of labor, if the poverty, the sordid filth, the degraded ignorance, the besotted vice, the starvation of the millions, who depend for subsistence on being employed, be not the product of the grinding avarice and the heartless oppression of those who employ them, then is Alton Locke a meaningless book. Its moral portraits, though vivid in coloring still, have lost all their power to affect us according to the intention of their author. They are utterly untrue to nature. They may, indeed, be kept hanging in the picture gallery of our imagination, but they will be allowed no place in our philosophy.

We must be excused for thinking, that the fit time for such an assault on the fundamental principles of the Science of Political Economy is not yet; and that for this reason sober minded, reflecting men will find it difficult to read this book, without a considerable measure of indignation. In the present state of the question, the doctrines which underlie the narrative stand in need of clear statements, and convincing arguments, rather than vivid and tragic pictures. They are fitter themes for philosophy than for poetry, for logic than for rhetoric. Albeit we are well aware that the school to which our author belongs holds logic in very low estimation. We are expected to receive their economies, their intentional theology, without any attempts to dissect them into propositions, and grind them in our "logic mills," or be without further probation written down bigots and fools.

Nevertheless, we are so constituted, (humiliating as the confession may seem,) that we cannot know that we understand a thing till we have stated it; nor can we prove a thing either

true or false, till we understand it. We are compelled, therefore, to interrogate our author for his economical creed, and to state it in a form somewhat definite and tangible. There can, probably, be no danger of mistake or injustice, in ascribing to him the following opinions, viz:

That the doctrine that the market price of any article is the true test of its value, is, when applied to labor, false, tyrannical and oppressive; that instead of placing the capitalist and the laborer on an equal footing, because each is equally necessary to the other, it places the laborer wholly in the power of the capitalist, to exact his toil for any compensation he chooses to pay; and this enables the few to fatten on the poverty and misery of the many; and that every new arrangement of the capitalist, whereby he enlarges the area of competition among laborers, is only a new invention of avarice, to grind the faces of the suffering poor. For example, when the various operations of the tailor's trade are carried on only in shops kept for that express purpose, in public places convenient for public resort, it is plain that there can be no other competition in that line of business, than between persons able to leave their homes, and resort to such public places for employment. And as in such shops no laborers are employed except those possessing and those acquiring the full skill of the trade, persons not possessing that skill, and who are prevented by their circumstances from acquiring it, are not permitted to enter into the competition, even for those parts of the work for which skill is not requisite. It is plain then that while the labors of the trade are confined within these conditions, competition must be very limited, and the price paid for labor very high.

Let us now suppose that the system is changed, that work is let out to any individual to do at his own home, provided he possesses the skill, and that those parts of the work requiring no unusual skill, are entrusted to any good seamstress, to do it where she pleases and return it to her employer. It is evident that such an arrangement must greatly multiply the competitors for tailor's work, and ere long reduce its price. It is also obvious that there are strong inducements to enterprising men possessing capital, to make such arrangements. By this increased competition among laborers, they can so diminish the cost of producing an article of clothing, that they can offer it to the consumer much cheaper than before, and yet secure to themselves a liberal profit by the operation.

Such arrangements have been extensively made in England, and in this country, in the manufacture of clothing, shoes, and perhaps other articles. It is upon such arrangements under