THE MANCHESTER MAN AT HOME.

(FROM THE SATURDAY REVIEW, OCT. 25.)

IN ancient days, as Manchester reckons antiquity—that is, some thirty years ago—the inhabitant of each of the chief Lancashire towns had his characteristic designation. The coachman of the old highflyer, when asked who was inside, would reply, " Oh, the usual lot; there's a Liverpool gentleman, and a Manchester man; and an Oldham chap, and a Bolton blackguard." There was nothing uncomplimentary intended by these latter substantives, Oldham and Bolton were as proud of their peculiar produce as were Liverpool or Manchester. Possibly railroads have obliterated these nice varieties, and "chaps" and "blackguards" are no longer local distinctions. The Liverpool gentleman, to be sure, has generally asserted his claim to gentle blood by returning a Tory or two to Parliament, when none of his neighbours did so, just by way of a pardonable aristocratic foible; but in the main, Lancashire specialities have merged themselves in the generic type, the "Manchester Man." There is a sort or brisk business-like alertness about the tight little alliteration that seems to have been rather taking; the man was generally quite in keeping with the character it indicated ; and thus the Manchester man, by common consent, has swallowed up all the other local notabilities, and become, in common parlance, the embodied representative of the manufacturing mind.

In the repeal of the Corn-laws Manchester attained its culminating point. It understood, or seemed to understand, one question thoroughly—pushed its cause with singleness of aim and unflagging energy—won its way, and dazzled, or silenced, all England. There was, indeed, one man, a sort of Micaiah among the prophets, Mr. Henry Drummond, who persisted in asserting that the Manchester Man was a man of only one idea, and that that idea was not corn after all. "When a Manchester man begins to argue on 'principle' (he told the House one night), you may be sure he is going to talk about cotton." But Henry Drummond shared the fate of all unsavoury Micaiahs, and was fed on the bread and water of Parliamentary affliction all his days. The Manchester Man was everybody and everything ; Cotton was King, and Cobden was his prophet; and Manchester was the abode of all the surviving descendants of Solomon. Pride, however, got its fall in time. The Manchester Man came to a good deal of grief when he tried his hand at a Reform Bill; and, after clamouring for representation according to numbers, had to explain (when it turned out that the numbers were likely to be against him) that he did not mean mere numbers—i.e, including the poor besotted agricultural "niggers"—but numbers of men, of real smart citizens, that read the penny papers and listened to the speeches of enlightened Mr. Bright. He tried his best to commend to popular acceptance his notion or the difference between viri and homines, Manchester men and people in general; but, whether for lack of Latin or from lack of sympathy in a country which unfortunately contains too large a proportion of the inferior caste, he failed to impress the latter with the proper sense of their inferiority; and now the break-down of American democracy has completed his discomfiture. The dethronement of the idol has involved the worshipper in its ruin; and Manchester is very unlikely to exercise an undue influence on the politics of English-men for at least a generation to come.
There had been unpleasant peculiarities about the Manchester Man all through. He was fussy and self-important; not over-refined, and grievously overbearing; almost ostentatiously narrow-minded and intolerant; and these peculiarities had become offensively prominent in the latter days of his political and social prosperity. Still, everybody looked upon him as generous in money matters, clear-headed and sagacious in business, and quite a master of the art of organization in everything that concerned the details of practical life. He had failed on the greater stage of national politics, but he was still believed to be unequalled in his own line, and at home. The popular belief in the Manchester Man lasted almost till yesterday. Even when this very cotton famine arose, the persons who cared to help their suffering fellow country-men—Lord Derby, the Lord Mayor, and "subscribers" of every sort—were quite contented at the outset to contribute their cash, and leave the disposal of it to what was fully believed to be the efficiency of local administration. There was a fine opportunity here for the Manchester Man to regain his laurels if he had only known how to use it. These latter had suffered, not merely from the collapse of the great Reform windbag, but from the manifest willingness of Manchester to rely exclusively on America for its cotton, in spite of many invitations to encourage other markets, and many warnings as to the instability of its existing source of supply. The capabilities of Central Africa—the home alike of cotton and its natural cultivator— those of India, Australia, and a dozen other countries had been pressed upon the consideration of Cottonopolis time after time with no apparent result, or almost less than none —contemptuous silence. Only two or three years ago, after Dr. Livingstone's discoveries had reduced the supply to a certainty, if only due energy and capital should be forthcoming, we remember Bishop Mackenzie, then just appointed to his African mission, going down thither, fortified by the presence of Bishop Wilberforce and Lord Brougham. The suppression of the slave trade and the creation of a new competitor to cheapen the markets of Charleston and New Orleans — cotton and Christianity, philanthropy and free-trade—all had their charms set forth in liveliest eloquence. Every effort was made to allure Manchester into making the most of the opportunity, but all in vain. If we recollect aright, donations of some £400 were all that came of it. Some time before that, the Indian prospect had been opened out, with scarcely more success. Mr. Mason, a manufacturer of Ashton, and one who is honorably distinguished by keeping 500 hands in full work to this moment, while vigorously defending his brethren the other day from the charge of discouraging the discovery of substitutes for cotton, or new fields for its growth, told the British Association, as rather a creditable feat, that a "Cotton Supply Association" had been established in Manchester, with reference to the Indian capabilities, five years ago. He modestly forbore, however, to add that it was founded by only four persons, including himself. With equal modesty he refrained from saying what had been the outgrowth of its labors ; and, as Dr. Farr pertinently remarked, "we have not heard the amount of money they have spent in promoting the object." Mr. Bazley, another of the four founders of this half-fledged association, is much more explicit. At the Annual meeting of the Association, held a month ago, he said:—"For himself, he was very much indisposed to address the meeting at all. He felt somewhat disheartened. For twenty-five years he had been incessantly calling the attention of the trade to the probable dilemma in which it would be placed, to little or no purpose. In the Exhibition of the present year there were contributions of cotton from thirty-five sources of supply, and yet this country had essentially depended upon one of them. People were either lacking in moral courage, or lacking in spirit to invest for their own profit and security. For nearly two years the price of cotton had been continually advancing; but a five-fold price had not induced exertion to give us the needed supply. Although he computed that not less than 20,000,000 sterling had been obtained by the advanced prices of cotton, it could not be shown that one single shilling of it had been embarked in the cultivation of cotton on an extended scale."

The truth is, that Manchester contented itself with going to the cheapest actual market, not caring what slavery it was encouraging, or what kind of an America (North or South alike) it was breeding by the way, and forgot altogether to look out for the cheapest possible and future market. In the language of one of its most recent apologists, Mr. Chadwick, it has been for the last twenty years or more "continuously calling the attention of all the countries of the world to the necessity of new sources of supply," and taking no pains and hazarding no capital to make them available. This is just the point. These vicarious saviours of their country and of cotton have been continuously calling upon all the world to do their own work for them, and find the capital to do it with. The latest phase that this system of enterprise by deputy has taken is that of round abuse of the Indian Government, because it has not done everything, while the persons most immediately interested have done nothing. We are told, indeed, of the name of an "Indian Irrigation and Canal Company," but nothing about its capital or performances. This is scarcely the way in which the great capitalists and the great organizers of the world should set to work.

It never deems to have occurred all this while to the Manchester Man that he is putting on the Protectionist's old clothes. He laughed at them very sufficiently, and perhaps rather rudely (though all the world laughed with him), a few years ago, when they were worn by their original proprietor. We much regret this unlucky piece of petty larceny, and very much more regret that the habiliments appear to fit the appropriator so remarkably well. Mr. Cobden almost glories in the sinister acquisition. On one of the late days of the late session he placidly told the House that it was quite absurd to suppose that cotton manufacturers should be expected to trouble themselves about the supply of the raw material. It was their business to work it up when it came, not to provide for its being forthcoming. How grandly his unadorned eloquence would have rolled about if some member for Mudhurst or Chalkshire, in the last days of Protection, had got up and coolly told the world it was the farmer's business to grow corn, and somebody else's to find him seed and manure; and that, if corn was wanting, and bread was high, and laborers were starving, it was clearly everybody's fault but his own? How, good honest free-traders, who mean what they say—who mean by free-trade free enterprise, liberally entered into and winning its way to success and power by its own resolute activity, not timorous and selfish indolence lying sprawling on its back and howling to all England because lollipops do not drop into its mouth as long as it chooses to lie there— are a good deal confused by this unhappy exhibition of the Manchester Man. He looks too much like a squalling baby, or an exploded squib, or a burst bubble. And people who still thought, notwithstanding odd appearances and symptoms here and there, that there was really something in the man at bottom, are suffering just now a very unpleasant disenchantment. Great things, great men—above all, great thoughts—are not so common that we can afford, without regret, to see them vulgarized, travestied, and rolled in the mud ; and freedom of trade really was a great thought, and the Manchester Man seemed to be a great man. It is very sad to see him commit suicide as he has done. We had let him collapse as a politician without much regret—it was hardly his vocation—but at home, and in his own proper province, we expected something nobler and more thoughtful than the sorry exhibition these last years have given us.

We have not joined in the cry that has been raised against Manchester selfishness in its grosser form of pecuniary niggardliness. No doubt Lord Palmerston would not have spoken in Parliament as he did, nor would Mr. Gladstone have cited the instance of a mill-owner who had shut up his mill, sold his cotton at a large profit, and conveyed it away by night for fear of ugly personal consequences, had this been a wholly exceptional case—had there not been dozens who have made large profits by the ventures of the cotton market, and are now perhaps making more, or enjoying a luxurious holiday. Most likely, page upon page might be written on the subject with entire accuracy as to the facts. But a series of facts is not always equivalent to "the truth," and is very seldom the whole truth. It must not be forgotten that the manufacturer who keeps his men at work is administering far more manly and effectual aid than he who gives it in the shape of a staring advertisement of his liberality in a subscription list; nor that the £20,000,000 which Mr. Bazley estimates to have been gained in cotton speculations since the rise in the cotton market exactly measure (as he rightly adds) the amount which the manufacturers who have kept their mills going have either lost, if they have bought cotton, or refused to gain, if they have foreborne to sell it. We ought not to omit, on the other hand, that huge fortunes have been made during the last few years, with unexampled rapidity— that over-production had created such a glut of cotton goods that even a year of almost non-production has not materially raised their price—and, therefore that the cotton famine has been a great source of gain to the manufacturer, or at least has saved him from very serious loss, in many cases, probably from total ruin. We are only commenting now, however, on the grievous wreck that has been made of a once great reputation by its own short-sighted imbecility. We may have more to say hereafter about imbecility of another sort. The Manchester Man has not only shown himself grievously incompetent to provide for the exigencies of his own business, but at this very moment he appears to be almost equally incompetent to the task of turning to account the aid that has been freely furnished him towards maintaining the honest self-respect of his laborers themselves, and as fast allowing them to degenerate into a colony of paupers. All honor to the Manchester operative but little praise to the "Manchester Man."

Courier (Brisbane, Qld. : 1861 - 1864), Thursday 1 January 1863, page 4