Part 27 (1/2)
British consul at Copenhagen--
”Is to purchase a clock; then a horse and cow, which he hires out, and which pay good interest. Then his ambition is to become a petty proprietor; and _this cla.s.s of persons is better off than any in Denmark_. Indeed, I know no people in any country who have more easily within their reach all that is really necessary for life than this cla.s.s, which is very large in comparison with that of labourers.”
To the power advantageously to employ the small acc.u.mulations of the labourer, it is due that the proportion of small proprietors has become so wonderfully large. ”The largest proportion of the country, and of the best land of it,” says Mr. Laing,[184] is in their hands--
”With farms of a size to keep ten or fifteen cows, and which they cultivate by hired labour, along with the labour of the family. These small proprietors, called huffner, probably from _hoff_, a farm-steading and court-yard, correspond to the yeomen, small freeholders, and statesmen, of the North of England, and many of them are wealthy. Of this cla.s.s of estates, it is reckoned there are about 125,150 in the two duchies: some of the huffners appear to be copyholders, not freeholders; that is, they hold their land by hereditary right, and may sell or dispose of it; but their land is subject to certain fixed payments of money, labour, cartages, ploughing yearly to the lord of the manor of which they hold it, or to fixed fines for non-payment. A cla.s.s of smaller land-holders are called Innsters, and are properly cottars with a house, a yard, and land for a cow or two, and pay a rent in money and in labour, and receive wages, at a reduced rate, for their work all the year round.
They are equivalent to our cla.s.s of married farm-servants, but with the difference that they cannot be turned off at the will or convenience of the verpachter, or large farmer, but hold of the proprietor; and all the conditions under which they hold--sometimes for life, sometimes for a term of years--are as fixed and supported by law, as those between the proprietor and the verpachter. Of this cla.s.s there are about 67,710, and of house-cottars without land; 17,480, and 36,283 day-labourers in husbandry. The land is well divided among a total population of only 662,500 souls.”--P. 43.
Even the poorest of these labouring householders has a garden, some land, and a cow;[185] and everywhere the eye and hand of the little proprietor may be seen busily employed, while the larger farmers, says our author--
”Attend our English cattle-shows and agricultural meetings, are educated men, acquainted with every agricultural improvement, have agricultural meetings and cattle-shows of their own, and publish the transactions and essays of the members. They use guano, and all the animal or chemical manures, have introduced tile-draining, machinery for making pipes and tiles, and are no strangers to irrigation on their old gra.s.s meadows.”--P. 127.
As a natural consequence, the people are well clothed. ”The proportion,” says Mr. Laing--
”Of well-dressed people in the streets is quite as great as in our large towns; few are so shabby in clothes as the unemployed or half-employed workmen and labourers in Edinburgh; and a proletarian cla.s.s, half-naked and in rags, is not to be seen. The supply of clothing material for the middle and lower cla.s.ses seems as great, whether we look at the people themselves or at the second or third rate cla.s.s of shops with goods for their use.”--P. 379.
In regard to house accommodation, he says:--
”The country people of Denmark and the duchies are well lodged. The material is brick. The roofing is of thatch in the country, and of tiles in the towns. Slate is unknown. The dwelling apartments are always floored with wood. I have described in a former note the great hall in which all the cattle and crops and wagons are housed, and into which the dwelling apartments open. The accommodations outside of the meanest cottage, the yard, garden, and offices, approach more to the dwellings of the English than of the Scotch people of the same cla.s.s.”--P. 420.
Every parish has its established schoolmaster, as well as
”Its established minister; but it appears to me that the cla.s.s of parochial schoolmasters here stands in a much higher position than, in Scotland. They are better paid, their houses, glebes, and stipends are better, relatively to the ordinary houses and incomes of the middle cla.s.s in country places, and they are men of much higher education than their Scotch brethren.” * * * ”It is quite free to any one who pleases to open a school; and to parents to send their children to school or not, as they please. If the young people are sufficiently instructed to receive confirmation from the clergyman, or to stand an examination for admission as students at the university, where or how they acquired their instruction is not asked. Government has provided schools, and highly qualified and well-paid teachers, but invests them with no monopoly of teaching, no powers as a corporate body, and keeps them distinct from and unconnected with the professional body in the university.”--Pp. 170, 336.
”The most striking feature in the character of these small town populations,” says our author--
”And that which the traveller least expects to find in countries so secluded, so removed from intercourse with other countries, by situation and want of exchangeable products, as Sleswick, Jutland, and the Danish islands, is the great diffusion of education, literature, and literary tastes. In towns, for instance, of 6000 inhabitants, in England, we seldom find such establishments as the 6000 inhabitants of Aalborg, the most northerly town in Jutland, possess. They enjoy, on the banks of the Lymfiord, a cla.s.sical school for the branches of learning required from students entering the university; an educational inst.i.tution, and six burger schools for the ordinary branches of education, and in which the Lancastrian method of mutual instruction is in use; a library of 12,000 volumes, belonging to the province of Aalborg, is open to the public; a circulating library of 2000 volumes; several private collections and museums, to which access is readily given; a dramatic a.s.sociation, acting every other Sunday; and two club-houses for b.a.l.l.s and concerts. A printing office and a newspaper, published weekly or oftener, are, in such towns, establishments of course. Wyborg, the most ancient town in Jutland, the capital in the time of the pagan kings, and once a great city, with twelve parish churches and six monasteries, but now containing no remains of its former grandeur, and only about 3000 inhabitants, has its newspaper three times a week, its cla.s.sical school, its burger school, its public library, circulating library, and its dramatic a.s.sociation acting six or eight plays in the course of the winter. These, being county towns, the seats of district courts and business, have, no doubt, more of such establishments than the populations of the towns themselves could support; but this indicates a wide diffusion of education and intellectual tastes in the surrounding country. Randers, on the Guden River, the only river of any length of course which runs into the Baltic or Cattegat from the peninsular land, and the only one in which salmon are caught, is not a provincial capital, and is only about twenty-five English miles from the capital Wyborg; but it has, for its 6000 inhabitants, a cla.s.sical school, several burger schools; one of which has above 300 children taught by the mutual-instruction method, a book society, a musical society, a circulating library, a printing press, a newspaper published three times a week, a club-house, and a dramatic society. Aarhuus, with, about the same population as Randers, and about the same distance from it as Randers from Wyborg, has a high school, two burger schools, and a ragged or poor school, a provincial library of 3000 or 4000 volumes, a school library of about the same extent, a library belonging to a club, a collection of minerals and sh.e.l.ls belonging to the high schools, a printing press, (from which a newspaper and a literary periodical are issued,) book and music shops, a club-house, concert and ball-room, and a dramatic society. Holstebro, a little inland town of about 800 inhabitants, about thirty-five English miles west from Wyborg, has its burger school on the mutual-instruction system, its reading society, and its agricultural society. In every little town in this country, the traveller finds educational inst.i.tutions and indications of intellectual taste for reading, music, theatrical representations, which, he cannot but admit, surpa.s.s what he finds at home in England, in similar towns and among the same cla.s.ses.”--P.316.
We have here abundant evidence of the beneficial effect of local action, as compared with centralisation. Instead of having great establishments in Copenhagen, and no local schools, or newspapers, there is everywhere provision for education, and evidence that the people avail themselves of it. Their tastes are cultivated, and becoming more so from day to day; and thus do they present a striking contrast with the picture furnished by the opposite sh.o.r.e of the German Ocean, and for the reason that there the system is based on the idea of cheapening labour at home and underworking the labourer abroad. The windows of the poorest houses, says Mr. Laing--
”Rarely want a bit of ornamental drapery, and are always decked with flowers and plants in flower-pots. The people have a pa.s.sion for flowers. The peasant girl and village beau are adorned with bouquets of the finest of ordinary flowers; and in the town you see people buying, flowers who with us, in the same station, would think it extravagance. The soil and climate favour this taste. In no part of Europe are the ordinary garden-flowers produced in such abundance and luxuriance as in Holstein and Sleswick.”--P. 50.
The people have everywhere ”leisure to be happy, amused, and educated,”[186] and, as a consequence, the sale of books is large. The number of circulating libraries is no less than six hundred,[187] and their demands give
”More impulse to literary activity than appears in Edinburgh, where literature is rather pa.s.sive than active, and what is produced worth publis.h.i.+ng is generally sent to the London market. This is the reason why a greater number of publications appear in the course of the year in Copenhagen than in Edinburgh.” * * * ”The transmission of books and other small parcels by post, which we think a great improvement, as it unquestionably is, and peculiar to our English post-office arrangement, is of old standing in Denmark, and is of great advantage for the diffusion of knowledge, and of great convenience to the people.”--Pp. 373, 374.
The material and intellectual condition of this people is declared by Mr. Laing--and he is an experienced and most observant traveller--to be higher than that of any other in Europe;[188] while Mr. Kay, also very high authority, places the people of England among the most ignorant and helpless of those of Europe. The Danes consume more food for the mind
”Than the Scotch; have more daily and weekly newspapers, and other periodical works, in their metropolis and in their country towns, and publish more translated and original works; have more public libraries, larger libraries, and libraries more easily accessible to persons of all cla.s.ses, not only in Copenhagen, but in all provincial and country towns; have more small circulating libraries, book-clubs, musical a.s.sociations, theatres and theatrical a.s.sociations, and original dramatic compositions; more museums, galleries, collections of statues, paintings, antiquities, and objects gratifying to the tastes of a refined and intellectual people, and open equally to all cla.s.ses, than the people of Scotland can produce in the length and breadth of the land.”--P. 390.
High moral condition is a necessary consequence of an elevated material and intellectual one; and therefore it is that we find the Dane distinguished for kindness, urbanity, and regard for others,[189]
and this is found in all portions of society. In visiting the Museum of Northern Antiquities, which is open to the public, free of charge, on certain days--
”The visitors are not left to gape in ignorance at what they see.
Professors of the highest attainments in antiquarian science--Professor Thomsen, M. Worsaae, and others--men who, in fact, have created a science out of an undigested ma.s.s of relics, curiosities, and specimens, of the arts in the early ages--go round with groups of the visitors, and explain equally to all, high and low, with the greatest zeal, intelligence, and affability, the uses of the articles exhibited, the state of the arts in the ages in which they were used, the gradual progress of mankind from sh.e.l.ls, stones, and bones to bronze and iron, as the materials for tools, ornaments, and weapons, and the conclusions made, and the grounds and reasons for making them, in their antiquarian researches. They deliver, in fact, an extempore lecture, intelligible to the peasant and instructive to the philosopher.”--P. 399.
In place of the wide gulf that divides the two great portions of English society, we find here great equality of social intercourse, and
”It seems not to be condescension merely on one side, and grateful respect for being noticed at all on the other, but a feeling of independence and mutual respect between individuals of the most different stations and cla.s.ses. This may be accounted for from wealth not being so all-important as in our social state; its influence in society is less where the majority are merely occupied in living agreeably on what they have, without motive or desire to have more.”--P. 423.