" What did you do next ? I was obliged to
go from the window then."
" So you war there ! I jist crinkle-crankled
myself up in the rope, so that they couldn't burn
you without me too."
" But they did not burn you, I hope ?"
" Jist singed a bit ; no more. This," pointing
to his hand, " corned of a great nail in the gib-
bet, that gived me a good hould as long as it
lasted."
" So you pulled it out."
"We split the gibbet's self 'mong us ; and then
INVESTIGATIONS. 121
'twar~ all over with me, and I corned home di-
rectly then."
" Why did not you stay to see the sight, when
once you found you could not help its going for-
ward ?"
" They put me in a rare passion, 'mong 'em ;
and I didn't want to see nought of their sights."
' " What were you in a passion about? What
had you to do with it ?"
To this question no answer was to be got, but
instead thereof an inquiry.
11 For all they say, you won't think of going
away for sich as they I They'll come round,
when they see you don't go off in a huff."
"And if 1 do go, you will easily get work,
Tom. You weave well now, and Mr. Culver
and many others will have work to give you."
11 No fear," Tom said ; but he did not seem to
wish M. Gaubion to go away the more for that.
" Do ask her," said one of the visitors to the
Frenchman, ā M you know her better than we
do, ā do ask her why, in times like these, she does
not live in more comfort. The wonder is that
she lets these looms at all in a room where a
saucepan-full of cabbage-water stands in a cor-
ner, and her peppermint-bottle on the sill, and
not a window open."
M. Gaubion did not see that it was any busi-
ness of his ; but Tom overheard the remark, and
gave assurance that his mother had so little appe-
tite that she could not eat her breakfast without
her little rasher and greens ; and that she was so
M
122 INVESTIGATIONS.
subject to sinking of her inside, that she was ob-
liged to keep her peppermint-bottle beside her. ,
" And do you take any of it, boy?"
11 Why, no, sir : my inside don't sink often till
night ; and then I go and garden."
" That is better than taking peppermint, de-
pend upon it. Mrs. Ellis, it seems to me a pity
that you should bring up both these young folks
as weavers. If you were to make this boy some-
thing else, there would be a better chance for
you all when bad times come ; and meanwhile,
you could let his loom for half as much as he
earns."
Objections sufficient to knock down half-a-
dozen such proposals were poured out on the
instant, and re-urged so vehemently on the men-
tion of bad times, that it was plain the widow did
not anticipate bad times, but thought weaving the
best occupation she could bring up her children
to. She ended by saying, that to be pretty sure
of work, at Tom's age, under such a master as
M. Gaubion, was more than he could expect in
any other employment; and that if there was
any change, she thought she should have the
benefit of it. Heaven only knew what she had
gone through, from Tom's age till now ā in her
husband's time especially. She always thought,
in her youth, that her's was a hard lot, so much
at the loom as she was ; but all that was nothing
to the confinement afterwards. Her husband was
of a jealous temper, God forgive him ! and kept
at home and within himself sadly ; and he could
INVESTIGATIONS. 123
not bear that her acquaintance should be so much
more general than his ; so that she had more
trouble than enough if she moved three yards
from her own door, to have a chat with a neigh-
bour. Since she lost him, poor man ! (which
would have been a great relief but for her having
such a family upon her hands,) she had had to
work for bread, and for any little comforts which
her weak health made necessary ; and now, if
anybody was to have rest, or any advantage, it
should be herself, and not Tom, who was but
just
" But would you apprentice yourself to a gar-
dener, or to learn any new business V* inquired
M. Gaubion. " That was what I contemplated
for Tom. If he could weave like you, ā if this
velvet were his work,ā I should not propose the
change."
The widow laughed at the idea of her boy
weaving as well as herself, but would not yet
hear of any change. The examiners found that
it was time to make a change in the scene of
their inquiries ; and declaring themselves satisfied
that Mrs. Ellis was Mrs. Ellis, and that she lived
and wove as declared, they left poor Tom to throw
his shuttle amidst reveries of ranunculus, gera-
nium, tulip, and hyacinth.
The names of Dickens and Rogers were down
on the list ; and it was therefore necessary to go
to Cooper's, where their looms stood.
There was not a more cheerful house in all
Spitalfields than Cooper's. Short had resumed
his ancient song, and sat, with his grizzled hair
M 2
124 INVESTIGATIONS."
hanging about his round shoulders, cheerily weav-
ing his fiftieth last piece. Dickens and Rogers
were no less busy, and, consequently, equally
amiable. No dispute ever arose within these four
walls, but when the comparative merits of the
masters, English and French, were in question ;
or when, by chance, any old-world custom was
brought into contrast with any new. On such
occasions, Mrs. Cooper's good-humour presently
charmed away strife ; and she contrived, ulti-
mately, to persuade each disputant to be content
with his own opinion, as he was with his own
species of work. Let him who weaves gros-de-
Naples feel himself enlightened in his advocacy
of what is modern ; and let him who weaves
velvet plume himself on his fidelity to what is
ancient. Such was her philosophy, communi-
cated in a timely smile, and a gentle word let
drop here and there. Ichabod was an admirable
auxiliary in restoring peace when his grown-up
companions were ruffled. He could at any time
be made to imitate the loom's smack and tick, or
to look into Rogers's pocket to see what he could
find there ; or to stroke old Short's cheek, and
rock upon his shoulders, regardless of the dusty
coat-collar ; or to stick a daisy into Dickens's
button-hole ; after any one of which feats he was
blessed, and winked at behind his back, as the
rarest child that ever was seen. If, on hot days,
a pint of beer was wished for, Ichabod could
bring it without spilling, provided it was in a
quart pot. Surrounded by both arms, and tightly
squeezed against his breast, it arrived safe, Mrs Ā«
INVESTIGATIONS. 125
Cooper removing every stick and straw out of her
child's path, that he might get credit and confi-
dence, instead of disgrace and a panic. Cooper,
meanwhile, worked away for his wife and bov,
trusting to go on to do so, notwithstanding any
temporary mischief caused by the speculations of
throwsters, and when the discordant prophecies
of those about him should have issued in acqui-
escence in the lasting benefits of an unrestricted
commerce.
The examiners were even more tempted to for-
get their immediate object here than at Mrs.
Ellis's. One walked straight up to the clear,
bright window, to look out upon the patch of
garden-ground behind ; while the other took no-
tice of a curious foreign clock (once belonging
to Cooper's ancestors), which had been preserved
as family property through all chances and
changes of fortune. It was true that now either
of the almost equally short hands might point
as it happened, to six or twelve ; that the machine,
like other machines, sometimes went to sleep at
night, and was now and then drowsy in the day ;
but the case was inlaid as curiously as ever, and
the chimes set all the lively children who might
be within hearing chiming, morning, noon, and
night. Whatever might be Ichabod's destined
education in other respects, he was sure to know
enough of German text to read the name of the
maker of this clock, and sufficient geography to
be able to tell whereabouts on the earth's surface
lay the Flemish town where it received its won-
drous being.
M 3
126 INVESTIGATIONS.
" You should see my husband's other garden,
out of doors, sir," said Mrs. Cooper. " You
seem to like this ; but it is nothing to the one out
of doors. I do not mean for size, but for the
beauty of the flowers."
" Ay," observed Short, " he pays ten shillings
a year for it ; and he does not make half so much
out of it as used to be made in my young days."
" I tret health and wholesome amusement out
of it ; and that is enough when one cannot get
more. You see, gentlemen, ours is a bad occu-
pation for the health and the nerves. You may
see a sort of scared look, they say, that we
weavers have, and bent backs, by the time we
come to middle age ; and even my hands shake
so sometimes, at the end of a long day's work,
that I should soon begin to feel myself growing
old, if I did not turn out to breathe a little, and
occupy myself in something pleasant. It is well
worth while making a little less money than one
might do, and to keep one's health."
"^Certainly ; if you are lucky enough to be
able to afford it."
" Why, sir, our people here do mostly con-
trive to afford some fancy or another ; either a
garden like mine, or birds, or flute-playing, or
drawing. Drawing for the most part requires a
steadier hand than a weaver has ; but we hear
many a flute far and near in the summer evenings.
There are few fancies that may not be found here
and there among us : though there are not many
men that, having but one child and a managing
wife, are so free to afford them as I am."
INVESTIGATIONS. 127
u The way to afford them is to make them
pay," observed old Short. " Folks understood
that matter in my time. A root that Cooper
here sells for eighteen-pence, used to bring
five guineas. Those were the times to grow
flowers in."
" I had rather see a hundred roots of any
beautiful tulip in a hundred gardens," observed
M. Gaubion, " that a hundred owners might en-
joy its beauty, than have the single root from
which the hundred sprang, even though it might
make me envied by all my neighbours, and
moreover be worth five or fifty guineas."
" So had I, sir," said Cooper : " for the same
reason that I had rather see any useful or pretty
article of manufacture growing cheap, and spread-
ing over the world, than have it remain scarce,
that I and a few others might have the sale of it
to ourselves. My flowers answer their purpose
better in giving pleasure to me and mine, than
in being wondered at and snatched up for their
rarity ; and it is the same with things that are
wrought by the hand of man. They must be
scarce at the beginning; but that scarcity is a
necessary fault, not a virtue, as far as their use-
fulness is concerned. But, as to making them
more scarce than they need be, I would not be
the man that had to answer for it I"
" Then you deserve the due and true reward of
the liberal, ā to have plenty while giving others
plenty. I see you work for one master, and
these neighbours of yours for another. You seem
all to be busy enough."
128 INVESTIGATIONS.
Ā« Yes, sir. Thank God ! M. Gaubion Las
had enough for his people to do ; and we, ā that
is, I," ā nodding with a significant smile towards
Short, ā " cannot but improve by seeing what is
all the same as French work going on under one's
eyes. Our fabrics, sir, are quite another thing
already to what they were three years ago.''
There was indeed a manifest difference between
Short's piece (which might be taken as a speci-
men of what the English fabric had been five
years before) and Cooper's, whose work was
little, if at all, inferior to that which M. Gaubion's
trained men were achieving with his improved
apparatus. ā That gentleman took no part while
the comparison was being made ; and when
looked for, as his companions were about to leave
the room, was found in a corner with Ichabod,
cooking dinner in the kitchen of a baby-house
which was the little lad's favourite toy. Twice
had the jack been wound up, nine times had the
goose revolved, and again and again had the lady
inhabitant been brought down from her toilet to
the kitchen fire, and led from the kitchen to her
jointed table, before Ichabod would leave hold of
M. Gaubion's right-hand cuff, and allow him to
go about other business than his gallant cookery.
" Your little son has his fancy as well as you,"
the gentleman observed with a smile. " Though
far from the age of being worn and weary,
Ichabod has his fancy ; ā the first fancy, I hope,
of many."
" It is as much Mr. Short's fancy as Icha-
bod's, or more," replied Mrs. Cooper, " Mr.
INVESTIGATIONS. 129
Short has been good enough to make the greater
part of this toy with his own hands. These little
chairs are cut with his own knife ; and the look-
ing-glass, ā do look, sir, how nicely so small a
bit of glass is framed; ā this looking-glass is
of his making ; and so little time as he has
now too !"
Short let his shuttle rest while he watched
complacently how the grave men of business
gathered round his baby-house, to admire one and
another of its toys. He did not hear Cooper
whisper that Mr. Short seemed to have more time
now for the child than when he used to sit over
the fire all day, moping because he had nothing
to do. Now, it was a regular thing, on a Sunday
morning, for the old man to take Ichabod on his
knee, and turn over the big bible, that was
brought down out of the cupboard, looking at the
pictures, and at Short's great-grandfather's hand-
writing. And there was scarcely an evening that
he was not about one little kind-hearted job or
another, while the child was asleep, little thinking
what treats were preparing for him.
" Well! long may we all be able to afford to
keep a fancy !'' said one of the visitors. M That
is, if the fancy is of a better kind than that of
accusing this gentleman here, because he is a
foreigner, of practices which it is clear to me
he never dreamed of."
All present joined in the wish, and Rogers and
Dickens desired no more than to be as free from
care, if they lived to old age, as Short was now.
He was sure, from his claim of long service, of
130 INVESTIGATIONS.
work from a good master, as long as any work
was to be had ; and there was little doubt of this
whenever the consequences of the first disorder,
inevitable on the occasion of a change of system,
should be surmounted, and speculation subside
into its natural channels. This would soon hap-
pen now, and Short need not, they hoped, say
any more that he had woven his last piece, till he
should find his hand refuse to throw the shuttle,
or his feet grow stiff upon the treadles.
M. Gaubion had a bow from the entire audience
as he left the room, Short himself being propi-
tiated by his act of winding up the jack.
Others of the gentleman's foes were not so
easily won. He very simply supposed, and led
his sisters to suppose, that all was well over when
the haunts of his weavers had been examined,
and his statements found correct. No such thing.
Some one was wise enough to discern that this
entire method of examination and verification
might be a concerted plot ; ā concerted between
the Treasury and the Frenchman.
What was to be done next ?
Some proof must be afforded that M. Gaubion
had no French goods in his possession.
" A proof easily afforded," replied he. " Go to
my warehouse ; turn over every piece of silk it
contains ; and with the first article of foreign
manufacture which you can thence produce, I will
restore to you my esteem, and forfeit yours."
One, and another, and another, declined the
commission, on the plea of want of confidence
in their own judgment and experience ; though
INVESTIGATIONS. 131
it was scarcely three years since any notable little
girl of ten years old could tell a French from an
English silk by a mere glance or touch. This
new-born modesty was not allowed to be an ob-
stacle to the experiment. M. Gaubion requested
that the most acute detector of foreign fabrics
on the Customs establishment should precede
him to his warehouse, and try what could be
found there. As it was impossible to devise a
more searching trial of the foreigner's good faith
than he had himself proposed, his plan was agreed
upon.
Day after day, the inquiry was prosecuted ;
and M. Gaubion allowed the free range of his
warehouse to all the parties concerned, except
himself. He began to fancy, naturally enough,
that he had mistaken his way on leaving home,
and got set down in some country where the In-
quisition still thrives, commerce being its subject
instead of religion ; silks its object instead of
creeds ; the fabrics of human hands instead of
those of human heads. He could very confidently
identify the working spirit.
He opposed an invincible patience to the
workings of this spirit ; and read with a calm eye
the Report of the Custom House agent that
thirty-seven pieces had been selected from among
many hundred as undoubtedly French ; and stood
by with an unmoved countenance to witness their
seizure ; and followed with a steady step to the
depot, albeit greeted with insults at every turn,
in the neighbourhood where he was known.
Unassisted even by his own clerks, that no room
132 INVESTIGATIONS.
might be afforded for a further charge of collu-
sion, he made out from the books to which access
was granted on his petition, a list of the weavers
of these thirty-seven pieces ; issued summonses
to them, and went home to await the appearance
of those who had to travel from Macclesfield to
swear to their own work. His sisters had no
more bitter jokes about handcuffs to amuse him
with : but it was pretty evident to them, (though
their neighbours were not so plain-spoken to the
ladies as to their servants,) Hhat it was thought
not to look well that the matter was so long in
hand ; and that that which had been declared so
easy of proof should be so tardily acknowledged.
Mademoiselle was also quite of the opinion that
all this did not look well. For whom it looked
ill was another question.
Chapter VII.
PROSPECTIVE BROTHERHOOD.
When the Macclesfield weavers arrived to swear
to their handiwork, it was remarked with some
surprise that they did not appear to bear the same
similitude to their Spitalfields' brethren as one
race of weavers usually bears to^another. Seve-
ral of them measured more than five feet five ;
and though some were pale and thin, they did
not show the peculiar conformation of shoulders
and of face which marks the weaving son and
PROSPECTIVE BROTHERHOOD. 133
grandson of a weaver. The simple reason of tin's
was, that most of these men had but lately taken
to the craft ; only in consequence of the magni-
ficent promises held out, and the large speculations
entered into, on the determination of parliament
to repeal the restrictions of former years. When
many thousands of apprentices were advertised
for, and a multitude of new hands quarrelled for
by ambitious capitalists, the temptation was great
to quit employments which were poorly paid, for
the sake of the wa^es which the masters vied with
each other in offering. It happened, of course,
that many, both of masters and men, were disap-
pointed. The inundation of smuggled silks,
caused by the prohibition of pieces of a certain
length, prepared for the opened market, wai a
serious misfortune to the masters ; and the im-
mediate extension of sale, in consequence of the
greatness of the supply, did not equal their ex-
pectations. As their stocks accumulated, some
of their men were compelled to betake themsei
to other ^occupations, or to wait for a clearance
of the market, complaining, meanwhile, the
foolish of the new measures by which a competi-
tion was established with the French, the wise
of the miscalculations by which the good effects
of the new measures had been for a time obscured.
M. Gaubion's men alone had no cause for lamen-
tation. The superiority of his goods ensured
his immediate prosperity on his settling in Eng-
land ; and of his many workmen, none went back
disappointed to an inferior kind of labour, or sat
listless, waiting for better times.
N
134 PROSPECTIVE BROTHERHOOD.
These men had something cheerful to say even
of those of their brethren whose hopes had been
disappointed as to the silk manufacture. It hap-
pened " luckily," as they said, ā " of course," as
M. Gaubion and Mr. Culver agreed, ā that there
was an increased demand for labour in some
other businesses, in exact proportion as French
silks sold in our markets. This was natural
enough, as the French must have something in
return for their goods ; and they would of course
take those articles which we can produce better
than they. It was not the less a happy thing,
however, for the poor man, because it was a mat-
ter of course, that if one of his sons had to wait
for the clearing of the silk market, another who
was a cutler, and a third who was a cotton spin-
ner, were in a state of increased prosperity. The
fact was, that the distress of the weavers had been
greater in 1816 than at any time since, while it
was occasioned by causes much more likely to be
lasting in their operation, and was in no degree
compensated by increased briskness in other de-
partments of British manufacture. The sum and
substance of the news from Macclesfield was
that some scores of slightly- built cottages were
certainly tumbling into ruins, but that many
dozens were inhabited which had not been in
existence five years before ; ā that there had un-
doubtedly been a transference of some hundreds
of apprentices from the various branches of the
silk manufacture to other departments of labour,
but that a much greater number had been added
to the silk throwing and weaving population ; ā
PROSPECTIVE BROTHERHOOD. 135
and that, if many were still waiting for employ-
ment, they were not so many by half as those
who had been taken on by other classes of
masters.
It could not be otherwise, an officer of the
Customs declared, as the imports of raw and
thrown silk were already nearly double what they
had been in the busiest year under the old sys-
tem, and as our exports of manufactured silks
had increased 300 per cent, since the trade had
been thrown open.
" You left your own country just at the right
time, sir," observed another officer to M. Gau-
bion. " The French exports have been declining,
ā not so fast as ours have risen, ā but enough to
show that the English need not fear competition
with their foreign neighbours."
" But who could have guessed," asked the
first, " how amazingly the manufacture would
improve in this short time ? The heavier sort of
fabrics have improved more in three years than
in any quarter of a century before. As to gauzes,
and ribbons, and other light kinds of goods, the
French still surpass us there, and will do so, pro-
bably, for a long time to come ; but in the sub-
stantial and more important fabrics of our looms,
we can undersell our neighbours in many coun-
tries abroad."
11 For which we are partly indebted to this gen-
tleman, whom some of you have taken upon you
to persecute," observed a plain-spoken Maccles-
field man. " Poor man as I am, I had rather
be myself, working under him, than them that
n2
136 PROSPECTIVE BROTHERHOOD.
have been working against him. And how it
came into their heads to suspect him is more than
I can guess. Come, gentlemen, I am ready to
swear to my piece. That's the piece I wove : I
can swear to it, by certain marks, as confidently
as my wife could to our eldest by the mole on
his arm."
One of the Customs officers could give an ac-
count of one circumstance which had aggravated
the suspicions against M. Gaubion. A mysterious-
looking package had arrived at the Custom-house,
addressed to Mademoiselle, and declared to con-
tain a mummy for her museum. This package
had been detained for some time, on pretence of
its being difficult to assign the duties on an article
which it did not appear had been in the contem-
plation of the framers of the Customs regulations
at the period of their origin. A mummy could
scarcely be specified as raw produce ; and if con-
sidered as a manufactured article, it would be dif-
ficult to find a parallel by which to judge of the
rate of duty for which it was liable. Under this
pretence, the package had been detained ; but
there were suspicions that it enclosed some
other stuffing than the linen swathing-bands of
Egyptian production, and it was reserved for ex-
amination, in case of the whole train of evidence
against the gentleman miscarrying. The more it
was examined, the more the package looked as if