CHAPTER V.

THE GREAT SUCCESS.

The work which had struggled into printed existence with such extreme

difficulty raised its author at a bound to fame. Ten days after the

publication of the first number, Charles Fox sent Harriet word that

not only were the fifteen hundred copies which formed the first

edition all sold off, but he had such orders in hand that he proposed

to print another five thousand at once. The people had taken up the

work instantly. The press followed, instead of leading the public in

this instance; but it, too, was enthusiastic in praise, both of the

scheme and the execution of the stories.

More than one publisher who had previously rejected the series made

overtures for it now. Its refusal, as they saw, had been one of those

striking blunders of which literary history has not a few to tell. But

there is no occasion to cry out about the stupidity of publishers.

They can judge well how far a work written on lines already popular

will meet the demand of the market; but an entirely original idea, or

the work of an original writer, is a mere lottery. There is no telling

how the public will take it until it has been tried. Publishers put

into a good many such lotteries, and often lose by them; then nothing

more is heard of the matter. But the cases where they decline a

speculation which afterwards turns out to have been a good one are

never forgotten. Still, the fact remains that it was Harriet Martineau

alone who saw that the people needed her work, and whose wonderful

courage and resolution brought it out for the public to accept.

Her success grew, as an avalanche gains in volume, by its own

momentum. Besides the publishers' communications she had letters, and

pamphlets, and blue-books, and magazines forwarded to her in piles, in

order that she might include the advocacy of the senders' hobbies in

her series. One day the postmaster sent her a message that she must

let a barrow be fetched for her share of the mail, as it was too bulky

to come in any other way. Lord Brougham declared, that it made him

tear his hair to think that the Society for the Diffusion of

Knowledge, which he had instituted for the very purpose of doing such

work as she was undertaking, seemed not to have a man in it with as

much sense of what was wanted as this little deaf girl at Norwich. The

public interest in the work was, perhaps, heightened by the fact that

so ignorant was everybody of her personality, that this description of

Brougham's passed muster. But she was not little, and she was now

twenty-nine years of age.

She stayed in Norwich, going on writing hard, until the November of

1832, by which time eight numbers of her series had appeared. Then she

went to London, taking lodgings with an old servant of Mrs.

Martineau's, who lived in Conduit street. In the course of a few

months, however, Mrs. Martineau settled herself in London, and her

daughter again resided with her, in a house in Fludyer street,

Westminster.

The purely literary success which she had hitherto enjoyed was now

turned into a social triumph. However she might strive against being

lionized she could not avoid the attentions and honors that were

poured upon her. It is little to say that all the distinguished people

in town hastened to know her; it was even considered to give

distinction to a party if she could be secured to attend it. Literary

celebrities, titled people, and members of Parliament, competed for

the small space of time that she could spare for society.

This was not very much, for the work she had undertaken was heavy

enough to absorb all her energies. She had engaged to produce one of

her stories every month. They were issued in small paper-covered

volumes of from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty pages

of print. She began publication with only two or three numbers ready

written. Thus, to keep on with her series, she had to write one whole

number every month. It would have been hard work had it been simple

story-telling, had she been merely imaginatively reproducing scenes

and characters from her past experience, or writing according to her

fancy. But it was, in fact, a much more difficult labor upon which she

was engaged. Her scheme required that she should embody every shade of

variety of the human character; that her scenes should be laid in

different parts of the world, with topography and surroundings

appropriate to the story; and that the governments and social state of

all these various places should be accurately represented. In addition

to all this she had to lay down for each tale the propositions which

had to be illustrated in it; to assure herself that she clearly saw

the truth and the bearings of every doctrine of political economy; and

then to work into a connected fiction in a concrete form the abstract

truths of the science--representing them as exemplified in the lives

of individuals.

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 mass 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

illustrate; 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 class 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 manuscript 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 principal words. The manuscript 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 competition 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 authoress 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 _Illustrations 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 circumstances 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 space 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 associated. 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 illustrative 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 passages, 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 acumen 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 "Illustration" 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

illustrate 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 manuscript 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 passive 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 analysis 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 _Illustrations 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 _Illustrations_ 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 _Illustrations of Taxation_ and _Illustrations 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 assuredly 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 pronounced _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 surpassed 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 Duchess 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 advertisement of the "Taxation" tales; for the young

Princess was being allowed to read the _Illustrations_, 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

_Illustrations_ 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

circumstances 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 "Illustration" 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 class 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 document 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 passages 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 passage on the storming of the

Bastile:--

The spectacles of a life-time were indeed to be beheld within the

compass 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 assurance of the downfall of their

despotic sway, knowing that the assumed sanctity 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 passages 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 illustrate 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 _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."