THREE:What a totally different species of composition was the "Vicar" to the tale of "Rasselas," published by his friend Dr. Samuel Johnson (b. 1709; d. 1784), the great lexicographer, seven years before! This was conceived in the romantic and allegoric spirit of the time"The Ten Days of Seged," "The Vision of Mirza," and the like. It was laid in the south, but amid Eastern manners, and didactic in spirit and ornate in style. It was measured, and graceful, and dulltoo scholastic to seize on the heart and the imagination. On a nature like Goldsmith's it could make no impression, and therefore leave no trace. The one was like a scene amid palm trees, and fountains, and sporting gazelles; the other like a genuine English common, on which robust children were tumbling and shouting, amid blooming gorse, near the sunny brook, with the lark carolling above them. There is no country in Europe, scarcely in the world, where letters are known, which has not its translation of the "Vicar of Wakefield." Even in England, "Rasselas" is almost forgotten.The Budget excited extraordinary interest throughout the country; but the proposed sugar duties were, in the eyes of the Free Traders, objectionable, as maintaining the differential rates in favour of the West Indian landlords. Though well received on the whole, it was impossible not to see in the Budget traces of the anomalous position of the Minister. One newspaper described his measures as combining the most glaring inconsistencies that ever disfigured the policy of any Minister, and arranged in parallel columns illustrations of its assertion. Sir Robert Peel was charged with proposing at the same time a tariff whose[516] express object was declared to be to cheapen the necessaries of life and corn, and provision laws whose sole object was to make the chief necessaries of life dear; with professing great concern to relieve trade and commerce, for the sake of which a property tax was proposed, combined with a still greater concern to uphold the rent of land, for the sake of which trade and commerce were loaded with a bread tax; with devising taxes for the mere purpose of revenue; with levying taxes for the mere purpose of protection; with repealing the duty on slave-grown cotton, while imposing prohibitory duties on slave-grown sugar; with encouraging Brazilian coffee and cotton, while refusing Brazilian sugar; and with admitting cheap slave-grown sugar to be refined in Britain, and sold to Continental nations, while forbidding the selfsame cheap sugar to our own working people. Still, there was progress. The Corn Law was untouched, but statesmen of all parties had spoken despairingly of its continuance.
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