The Inconsistencies of Cant
An Illustrative History of One Day
In order to carry herself gracefully, and turn out her toes in after times, the young pupil of the dancing-master is placed diurnally upon a board, so contrived as to keep her delicate feet extended at right angles with its sides; and, with her chest expanded, and her head erect, the dear little creature is made to stand for a certain period of every morning, Sundays excepted. This is all very well in early youth, and the pains endured in those days are amply repaid by the admiration she afterwards excites at Almack’s by the gracefulness of her air and manner, the carriage of her body, and the symmetry of her figure. Wretched, indeed, would be the fair sufferer’s case were she doomed from her teens to her death to stand in the same little stocks, and never enjoy the more liberal pleasures of her dancing days. Such is the melancholy state of a considerate “saint,”—and consider he must; for, if he considereth not, he sins. But to my history.
A gentleman, plain, pious, and excessively virtuous (such has ever been our aversion from mentioning proper names, that we decline saying who), resident, however, in a suburban villa, with a well-mown lawn in front, and charmingly-clipped evergreens standing thereupon, a bright-yellow gravel sweep to the door, a shining weathercock on the coach-house, a large dog in the yard, an old peacock on a rail, and a couple of enormous shells on either side of the entrance steps,—a gentleman, we say, resident in such a house, having descanted upon the horrors of slavery, lighted, last Tuesday evening, his bedroom candle, and betook himself to rest, his exemplary partner having preceded him thither after family prayers. To doubt the quiescence of such a couple, to imagine that anything could ruffle their serenity, or disturb their slumbers, would be to libel the fraternity to which our excellent friend belongs.
In the morning the exemplary man arose; and the first thing he did when he went down stairs, was to look into his hot-house, where he carefully examined a specimen of sugar-cane which he had planted some months previously, with a view to the cultivation of free sugar upon Dartmoor. He then sat down to breakfast with his lady.
“Dear Rachel,” said the exemplary man, “how excellent this free sugar is. You get this, I presume, of William Heywood?”
“To be sure, my dear,” replied the partner of his joys.
“It is gratifying to think,” said the husband, “that no slave has been flogged to produce this.”
Saying which, the mild and humane gentleman dropped a lump of it into a cup of chocolate, upon which excellent beverage, or the slave-labour required to cultivate it, he made no observation.
“I have but one fault to find with free sugar,” said the lady, sighing.
“Name it,” said the saint.
“It is fourteen-pence a pound, my love,” said his spouse, “and we can get better anywhere else for ten-pence.”
“That signifies little, my dear,” said the saint, “provided we use nothing that has cost the slave torture.” And then he blew his nose with a cotton pocket-handkerchief. “Confinement and slavery,” continued the pious man, “are incompatible with humanity and feeling.” Saying which, he walked up to the cage which held his lady’s Jamaica parrot, and indulged the moping captive with a lump of Heywood’s “free and easy.”
At this moment his dennett was announced, and, rising from his bamboo-chair, he proceeded to leave ten guineas with his lady for a charitable donation;—he put on his hat and gloves, and his amiable partner having attended him to the door, as he stepped into the vehicle, expressed her tender fears lest the slightness of the shafts should endanger her exemplary husband’s neck.
“They look very slight, dearest,” said the “saint;” “but they are perfectly secure, they are made of lance-wood!”
Consoled by this intelligence, she waved her lily hand, and our pious friend went to attend a meeting of shareholders of the Anglo-Mexican Mining Company, where he paid up his instalments, without taking the precaution of considering what class of labourers must necessarily be employed in working the mines. He proceeded thence to the sale of East India produce, where he made several purchases, not troubling himself to inquire how indigo flourished, or rice grew; and, meeting on his way a director of the opulent Leadenhall monopoly, accepted an invitation to dine with him at the City of London Tavern.
Here he of course found an excellent dinner spread upon a table of mahogany; his chair was of the same material. He was helped to turtle and ate it with a silver spoon. To gratify his palate he drank ever and anon iced punch, sweetened he asked not how, and strengthened with rum. Over his turbot he sprinkled Cayenne pepper, and flavoured his cucumber with Chili vinegar. With a curry he called for hot pickles, and having in the dessert refreshed himself with some excellent preserved ginger, took a cup of coffee, and concluding with a small glass of noyeau, stepped again into his dennett, and reached his villa in safety, blessing the names of Buxton, Wilberforce, and Macaulay, and receiving the tender compliments of his affectionate wife upon the virtue of drinking nothing but free sugar.
And this is what five hundred persons do, under the guidance of the Liverpool speculators, and the leaders of apes and asses in this metropolis. Let us merely point out to such of our readers who like the followers of cant, and will not take the trouble of thinking for themselves, those inconsistencies which one day’s adventures of our pious “saint” develop.
Had he acted upon principle instead of policy, this exemplary old body would have remembered that rum and coffee, as well as sugar, are the produce of slave-labour,—that his morning’s chocolate and his afternoon’s liqueur have the same origin; he would neither have ventured to trust to his lance-wood springs, nor have dared to blow his nose with his cotton handkerchief; neither would he in the morning after his hearty dinner, have been prevailed upon to take a little tamarind drink to cool his constitution, nor have allowed his apothecary to suggest an exhibition of castor-oil if his indigestion continued; but even if he had overcome these scruples, how would he have summoned sufficient fortitude to put into circulation his sovereigns and shillings, which, although our only circulating medium, are furnished by the labour of slaves, chained to their horrid work, lest they should risk the punishment of death by endeavouring to escape the toil and climate to which they are consigned.
It is with the slavery question as it is with the over-refinement of all other feelings,—it only requires to be looked into and analysed to be detected in all its flagrant folly and absurdity. Had our pious “free and easy” sugar friend followed up his own doctrine, he would long before this have quitted his villa, disposed of his dennett, and retired to some cave, where neither eating nor drinking, nor furniture dyed with fustic and logwood, were required, and have shown himself a sincere saint, an abjurer of all the good things of this world, and a man of ten thousand; but until we see the whole life of a man in the same keeping, and find him equally scrupulous upon all points, and not exhibiting his piety only where his mercantile prospects are implicated, we must beg to avow our opinion that the “free and easy” sugar system at fourteen-pence per pound, however profitable to the grocer, and gratifying to the East India proprietor, is neither more nor less than a contemptible absurdity, and a most unqualified humbug.