Mr. Laing justly remarks in his preface. "The future historian will probably complain that the English travellers of the present generation, while they lavish the highest talents on descriptions of personal feelings or adventures, of romantic natural scenery, of striking objects in the sciences or fine arts, have left few of the more humble facts or observations, from which he can appreciate and describe the advance of society in different countries, towards a higher condition of morals, laws, good government, physical well-being, and civilisation. Yet the calm which we have been enjoying for nearly a quarter of a century, after that storm of the French Revolution which shook the world, is perhaps the most important period that has occurred in the history of the human race. New powers, it may be said, have been granted to man during this period,- -new intellectual power, by the general diffusion of knowledge through the press,-new physical power, by the general application of steam to machinery and movement. changes which these mighty agencies are The rapidly producing in the social condition of the lower and middle classes of every country, the circumstances in their ancient institutions, laws, and governments, which are retarding or accelerating the progress of these classes to a condition of higher moral and physical well-being, are objects particularly deserving the attention of the traveller. * * * In Norway and Sweden, such inquiries are peculiarly interesting at the present period, because these two nations, although the furthest removed from the agitation of the French Revolution, have, by a singular chance, been affected by it more permanently, and one of them more beneficially, than any others in Europe. Norway received a new and liberal constitution, and has started with the freshness of youth;--a new nation, as it were, called suddenly into life from among the slumbering feudal populations of the North. Sweden received a new dynasty, and slumbers on amidst ancient institutions, and social arrangements of darker ages," &c. Of Sweden, it is true, as Mr. Laing observes, that none of the secondary European powers have acted such brilliant and important parts in modern history, as the Swedish monarchs. Gustavus Vasa, Gustavus Adolphus, Charles XII. live in the memory of all nations. If the highest achievement with the smallest means be the test of military genius, the Vasa race have not been equalled by any commanders even in our times ;* but Sweden has not, like Norway, an heroic age in her history, connecting her earliest exploits with the fate of other countries. The Swedish small kings plundered at home, and became, like the nobility of Poland, a power of which the strongest party disposed of the Crown, and ruled the country amidst perpetual factions, tumult, and bloodshed. The Swedish historian Geyer, one of the most acute and philosophic of modern historians, observes, that the history of the Swedish nation is the history of its kings. He might have added, that the history of its kings is often but the history of the factions and intrigues of a nobility governing in reality from behind the throne and of whose power, the kings, with few exceptions, have, down to the present age, been either the puppets or the victims. The present position of Sweden among the European powers is extraordinary. By the loss of their foreign provinces of Finland and Pomerania, she is severed from the main land of Europe, and its political affairs; and by the singular chance which has seated upon her throne a new line of monarchs not connected by family alliances with any other royal dynasty, she stands politically insulated even more than physically. What has been, or ever will be, the result of this curious political position? : The author of the Answer to Mr. Laing's statement appears to be a person who has resided for some time in Sweden, and who possesses a considerable acquaintance with the feelings and character of the people, * Such also is the decided opinion of Col. Mitchell in his eloquent and interesting life of Wallenstein; of the military talents of Gustavus Adolphus, he speaks in the very highest terms, and considers the art of war, as embodied in modern tactics, to have originated with him, and been perfected by him.-Rev. and the institutions of the country. His political opinions are directly opposed to those of Mr. Laing, and he has remarked on some of his statements with much apparent exactness and justice. Mr. Laing attributed the low moral state of the Swedish nation to its feudal institutions, and the pernicious influence of its nobility. Of the charge of being uneducated, as far as statistical tables go in evidence, the author of the Remarks has liberated them; and he adds that, so far from the nobility holding trade and industry beneath their dignity, several of the first commercial houses in Stockholm have members of this class at the head of their establishments, and the greater proportion of iron manufactories, founderies, and mines, are not only the property of members of the nobility, but personally superintended by them: while, in addition to their scientific and commercial occupations, they embrace generally in youth the profession of arms, not forgetful of those victorious banners which have in the palmy days of their country's greatness floated over the Vistula, the Danube, and the Rhine. "Mr. Laing (he says) talks of the extreme poverty of the Swedish nobility, who, he pretends 6 are with very few exceptions living from civil or military employment, or on their farms, in obscurity or poverty.' Let us examine whether this charge deserves more credit than the other. Official documents, of incontestible veracity, show that the Swedish nobility possess not less than one fourth of the whole landed property of Sweden, including the very finest and most fertile estates. It owns, besides this landed property, more than half the mines, smelting works, and forests of the country; a large proportion of the most considerable buildings of the metropolis; much property in ca pital, and property of various denominations. Even deducting these landed possessions of the nobility, its debts, mortgages and allotments, (which in many instances belong to the junior branches of its families,) there would still remain in its possession above one fifth of the general property of Sweden; and we ask Mr. Laing to state where the country in Europe is, whose nobility in fair proportion can boast of such a fortune? The nobility of England, the most aristocratical country in Europe, does not possess property to the amount of more than 100,000,000l. which does not correspond to more than one 36th part of the total property of the country, estimated at 3,680,000,0007.* while the Swedish nobility possesses the fourth part of the property of its country, and adding even the fortunes of the gentry of England to that of the nobility, the proportion would still remain in favour of the Swedish; but in such cases all calculations are rela tive to the wealth of a country,-that of Sweden being of course infinitely superior to that of Great Britain. The nobility of Sweden possesses a very great number of country residences and chateaux, which, if not comparable perhaps to those in England, fully rival those of the west of Europe, and often surpass them. Thus surrounded by their sincerely devoted tenants, or peasants, they live not in the luxury of the British aristocracy, but with all the ease and comfort which renders a country residence agreeable. They do not devote themselves exclusively to the pleasures of the chase, but are occupied with the improvement of their estates, the advance of agricultural knowledge, and the care of their mines, smelting establishments, and forges, whose produce, conveyed to Sheffield and Birmingham, is afterwards transmitted to all parts of the globe in that beautiful shape of manufactured steel into which British industry knows howtochangeit. The Swedish gentry exercise on their estates a most cordial hospitality to every visitor, of which Mr. Laing might have partaken, if he had had the good sense to get acquainted with this respectable class by himself, and not through the medium of his radical friends at Christiana, which is about the same as to look to a Chartist meeting at Birmingham for correct notions on the English nobility. It is at these delightful country seats that the Swedish nobility exercise those domestic virtues and pious religious feelings which might serve as an example to many, and which ensures to them the esteem and affection of their countrymen." Although the author of this pamphlet repudiates the notion that the low state of morality among the people in Sweden is at all owing to the Ricardo estimates the whole property of Great Britain at 3,000,000,000l. and according to G. R. Porter's Tables of 1833, the property of the empire is estimated at 3,660,000,000l. and the gross income at not less than 514,000,0007. pernicious influence of the aristocracy, he owns, at the same time, that, though the state of morality is far from being so low as Mr. Laing would have it believed, yet it is not so high as might be expected from a people so well educated and religious as the Swedish are. The author then gives his solution of the problem, which is to be found in the almost illimited democracy of the constitution. "It is (he says) from this progress of democracy in Sweden,-and particularly from the influence acquired by the order of peasants in the legislation of the country, that a principle of misunderstood liberty has sprung up, which in volves the most fatal consequences for the morality of the nation. Acting upon this principle, the order of peasants insist that every body has the right to distil his own brandy as well as he has the right to make his own soup,' forgetting that the maintenance of social order imperiously requires the sacrifice of personal rights to the general welfare. The assumed principle of liberty has been so much more detrimental to the Swedish people as the order of peasants has applied it, in the manner generally adopted by democracy when it obtains the upper hand, with all kinds of injustice against the rights of other citizens, and has in the last diet obtained the privilege of paying for its home-distilled brandy even less excise than the very small duty imposed upon the proprietors of other estates for their own distillations; by which means a distilling of brandy has been introduced in nearly every peasant's dwelling,—the number of those officially known amounting to no less than 121,000, of which 120,000 belong to the peasantry. Thus has been produced the fatal result mentioned by Mr. Laing, viz. that the consumption of brandy, which in 1786 amounted only to 5,400,000 kanns for the joint population of Sweden and Finland, has increased now to 22,000,000 kanns for the population of Sweden alone. Under such circumstances it will not be wonderful if the moral state of the rural population of Sweden should decline by degrees from the constant use of a liquor so strong as the common Swedish brandy (generally 6° above proof), and which, being fabricated at home, is within the constant and immediate reach of the peasant. His welfare must suffer from this pernicious abuse in every point of view:-consuming more than his means allowed, it must lead him to moral and physical degradation, and to œconomical ruin. "We admit these facts with perfect candour, but we beg to put the question whether, as Mr. Laing insinuates, this state of things accrues from the aristocratic organization of the country, or whether it is not, on the contrary, the rising ascendancy of democracy, which has thus effected the decline of the morality of the people? It becomes curious to examine whether the same results have not occurred in England, corroborating thereby the decline of morality by the increase of democracy. The progress of immorality has several other causes in Sweden, more or less of a democratical character, viz. the greater division of landed property than was the case before, which produces misery, and misery crime; and the bad state of the prisons, where no classification is introduced, and where, therefore, people confined for the slightest offences are mingled with inveterate criminals, which tends to harden and demoralize the former. We invariably notice that the greater number of offences committed in Sweden are the deeds of the same persons, —of those, who, their term of confinement being expired, are discharged from prison without any honest means of existence. In this respect the system of transportation adopted by Great Britain offers great advantages, which we fear have not been sufficiently appreciated. It may be true that transportation interferes with emigration, and that it ought not to apply to the fertile and magnificent country of Australia: but Great Britain possesses so many islands, and can dispose of so many points in the Pacific, and other parts of the globe, that the system itself ought not to be abandoned. We admit that the punishment of solitary confinement and of hard labour in the houses of correction is far more severe than that of transportation; but it must be considered that it is not the fear of punishment, more or less severe, which arrests the committal of a crime, for the malefactor is always in hopes of escaping detection, and the consequences of his act. The evil which will result to Great Britain from abolishing or diminishing transportation will be, that the criminals, after the expiration of their respective terms of imprisonment, will be turned loose upon society, which now is the case with but a very small proportion of those transported for less than life."* *In the year 1835 there were no less than 3625 convicted and sentenced to transportation for various periods, of which only 402 were actually transported, the sentences of the remainder having been commuted. With regard to the material prosperity of the country, the finances, the great artery of the social body, are in Sweden in the most flourishing condition. The annual income of the country exceeds considerably its expenditure; there is no national debt, and the country is less taxed than any other in Europe, even less than the United States of America. The annual savings of Sweden have enabled her to expend since the peace of 1814 a sum of above 15,000,000 rix-dollars for the construction of canals, clearing of rivers, erection of piers, and for improving the state of defence of her seaports. Sweden has a national bank, under the exclusive management of deputies elected by the States-General; a bank exchanging on demand (and at a rate fixed once for all by the States-General)-has notes for gold or silver-its circulation of paper amounting to 30,000,000 rixdollars, while its vaults contain the value of 20,000,000 rix-dollars, in gold and silver, and that of 25,000,000 in securities, showing thus an overplus of 15,000,000. Sweden's manufacturing industry has doubled within the last ten years; her agriculture has made great progress, and she is now independent of other countries for her supply of grain. The population of Sweden has increased, so as to make it now equal to what it was at the time when Finland was joined with her. Sweden possesses a well organized and disciplined army, and a respectable navy, which carries more than 2500 heavy guns on board her vessels. Of the prosperity of Norway there can be no difference of opinion, though those who have visited the country, or considered the subject, are not Mr. Laing looks to the great division of property agreed about the causes. and the legislative form of its government. The author of the pamphlet considers that it depends on her union with Sweden. since the Union, an independent kingdom; has its own legislature-its own government-its own laws, and its own finances, without a single functionary who is not a Norwegian. Such are the immense benefits which Norway has derived from her union with Sweden. Her prosperity is, then, the result of this Union, and not at all of a greater division of property than in Sweden-which is not the case; or of the democratic form of her legislature, the popularity of which would suffer materially if the Norwegian people were called upon to make the sacrifices required everywhere else for the maintenance of national independence, which are now in great part provided for by Sweden. Her democratic form of legislature would never have acquired her actual popularity, if Norway had been obliged, like other free nations, to waste its blood and its treasures in the attainment of this liberty. No! it has fallen to her like a gift from heaven. For many centuries a mere province, under the absolute although mild sway of the Kings of Denmark, without ever making the least attempt at emancipation, Norway awoke one day, and found herself transformed into a free and independent kingdom, having obtained all kinds of liberties-by whom, if not by the exertion and by the sacrifices of Sweden? All that Sweden wishes to secure from her union with Norway is the advantage of not being attacked at her back, as has always been the case in her former wars with Russia (see in 1778, and latterly in 1808); and the expectation of such a security is, we believe, not a very great pretension of Sweden, considering the sacrifices made by her for this Union--sacrifices consisting not alone in the chances which she might fairly have had in 1812 and 1813 to recover Finland, heretofore an integral part of the kingdom, and not a separate one like Norway; but in giving up her last German possession, Pomerania, the only remaining trophy of her great Gustavus Adolphus: in hazarding for it a dangerous war with the then colossal power of Napoleon, and in obtaining this so-called Union at the gates of Christiana, with an army of 50,000 men, and not at the gates of Stockholm, where there is no record in history of a foe ever having set his foot. All that Sweden requires is, justice for what she has done to effect the Union so conducive to the happiness of the Norwegian people." But there are other subjects besides these which are political, that have fallen within the scope of Mr. Laing's observation, and which will repay the reader's curiosity. His sketches of the Fins and Laplanders are of this description; his remarks on the indeldta system in the army,-on the religious sect called the Læsere, something resembling our Methodistshis anecdotes of the reigning sovereign-his view of Stockholm-his scenic sketches of the country, are all of interest, although we are obliged to pass by them in silence; but our antiquarian zeal forbids us not to linger for a short time on the shores of Gothland, to visit its remarkable capital of Wisby. Mr. Laing says, "This ancient city is the most extraordinary place in the north of Europe. It is a city of the Middle Ages-existing unbroken and unchanged, in a great measure, to the present day; it appears to have undergone less alteration from time, devastation, or improvement, than any place of the same antiquity.-The appearance from the sea of this mother of the Hanseatic cities is very striking, from the numerous remains of churches and other ancient structures. I counted thirty-five towers, spires, or prominent ruins. On landing, the aspect is equally novel. Ancient streets, well paved, cross each other in all directions. The ruins of the churches are of very extraordinary beauty and workmanship. The whole city is surrounded by its ancient wall, with towers square, octagonal, and round, as they stood in the thirteenth century, and with very little demolition. The wall is entire, and above thirty feet high for the greater part, and in no place demolished. Of forty-five towers upon it the greater part are entire.-The wall is built on rock stretching from the sea at one end round the city to the sea at the other. There appear marks both of an inner and outer wall. This wall was built in 1288, and is, perhaps, the most entire specimen of ancient fortification remaining in the north of Europe. This curious city, which might accommodate within its area thirty or forty thousand persons, contains at present only four thousand two hundred and sixty-eight inhabitants, badly lodged, in little tenements, under edifices of great cost and magnificence, which the former inhabitants reared with the superfluity of their wealth. You scarcely see a human being moving in streets once crowded with the wealthiest merchants of all countries.-Long before the Hans Towns were heard of, Wisby had been the great emporium of commerce in the north of Europe; the markets in which the productions even of the east, brought by caravans to Novogorod, and across the Baltic, met the furs and metals of the north, and the buyers of the south of Europe. Wisby was, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, one of the most important commercial cities in Europe.* Its mercantile laws were regarded as the most perfect, and they were transferred to France by Saint Louis, whose code of the Isle of Oleron was copied from the constitutions of Wisby, and these contain the principles of maritime, mercantile, and internationallaw. Wisby had a population of twelve thousand burgesses, besides tradesmen, &c. in the thirteenth century. The foreigners in the eleventh century were so numerous that each nation had its own church and house of assembly.-Judging from the numerous ruins of costly structures, the remains of her former magnificence, * The establishment of the Hanseatic league took place in 1241. |
