Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

of the revolution,-if they have hoped that Buonaparte might succeed in the usurpation of Portugal and Spain, and the subjugation of the Continent, the change is in them, in their feelings and their principles, not in me and in mine. At no time of my life have I held any opinions like those of the Buonapartists and revolutionists of the present day; never could I have held any communion with such men in thought, word, or deed,—my nature, God be thanked! would always have kept me from them instinctively, as it would from toad or asp. Look through the whole writings of my youth, including, if you please, Wat Tyler; there can be no danger that its errors should infect a gentleman who has called upon the attorney-general to prosecute the author,-and he would not be the worse were he to catch from it a little of the youthful generosity which it breathes. I ask you, Sir, in which of those writings I have appealed to the base or the malignant feelings of mankind, and I ask you whether the present race of revolutionary writers appeal to any other? What man's private character did I stab? Whom did I libel? Whom did I slander? Whom did I traduce? These miscreants live by calumny and sedition; they are libellers and liars by trade,

The one object to which I have ever been desirons of contributing according to my power, is the removal of those obstacles by which the improvement of mankind is impeded; and to this the whole tenour of my writings, whether in prose or verse, bears witness. This has been the pole-star of my course; the needle has shifted according to the movements of the statevessel wherein I am embarked, but the direction to which it points has always been the same. I did not fall into the error of those who, having been the friends of France when they imagined that the cause of liberty was implicated in her success, transferred their attachment from the republic to the military tyranny in which it ended, and regarded with complacency the progress of oppression because France was the oppressor. "They had turned their faces toward the east in the morning to worship the rising sun, and in the evening they were looking eastward still, obstinately affirming that still the sun was there." (1) I, on the contrary, altered my position as the world went round. For so doing, Mr. William Smith is said to have insulted me with the appellation of RENEGADE; and if it be indeed true that the foul aspersion passed his lips, I brand him for it on the forehead with the name of SLANDERER! Salve the mark as you will, Sir, it is ineffaceable! You must bear it with you to your grave, and the remembrance of it will outlast your epitaph.

And now, Sir, learn what are the opinions of the man to whom you have offered this public and notorious wrong, opinions not derived from any contagion of the times, nor entertained with the unreflecting eagerness of youth, nor adopted in connection with any party in the state; but gathered patiently, during many years of leisure and retirement, from books, observation, meditation, and intercourse with living minds who will be the light of other ages.

Greater changes in the condition of this country have been wrought during the last half century, than an equal course of years had ever before produced. Without entering into the proofs of this proposition,

(I) I quote my own words, written in IS09.

suffice it to indicate, as among the most efficient causes, the steam and the spinning-engines, the mailcoach, and the free publication of the debates in parliament; hence have followed, in natural and necessary consequence, increased activity, enterprise, wealth, and power; but, on the other hand, greediness of gain, looseness of principle, half-knowledge (more perilous than ignorance), vice, poverty, wretchedness, disaffection, and political insecurity. The changes which have taken place render other changes inevitable; forward we must go, for it is not possible to retrace our steps; the hand of the political horologe cannot go back, like the shadow upon Hezekiah's dial;—when the hour comes, it must strike.

Slavery has long ceased to be tolerable in Europe: the remains of feudal oppression are disappearing even in those countries which have improved the least: nor can it be much longer endured that the extremes of ignorance, wretchedness, and brutality, should exist in the very centre of civilised society. There can be no safety with a populace half Luddite, half Lazaroni. Let us not deceive ourselves. We are far from that state in which any thing resembling equality would be possible; but we are arrived at that state in which the extremes of inequality are become intolerable. They are too dangerous, as well as too monstrous, to be borne much longer. Plans which would have led to the utmost horrors of insurrection have been prevented by the government, and by the enactment of strong but necessary laws. Let it not, however, be supposed that the disease is healed, because the ulcer may skin over. The remedies by which the body-politic can be restored to health must be slow in their operation. The condition of the populace, physical, moral, and intellectual, must be improved, or a Jacquerie, a Bellum Servile, sooner or later will be the result. It is the people at this time who stand in need of reformation, not the government.

The government must better the condition of the populace; and the first thing necessary is to prevent it from being worsened. It must no longer suffer itself to be menaced, its chief magistrate insulted, and its most sacred institutions vilified with impunity. It must curb the seditious press, and keep it curbed. For this purpose, if the laws are not at present effectual, they should be made so; nor will they then avail unless they are vigilantly executed. I say this, well knowing to what obloquy it will expose me, and how grossly and impudently my meaning will be misrepresented; but I say it, because if the licentiousness of the press be not curbed, its abuse will most assuredly one day occasion the loss of its freedom.

This is the first and most indispensable measure; for without this all others will be fruitless. Next in urgency is the immediate relief of the poor. I differ, toto cœlo, from Mr. Owen, of Lanark, in one main point. To build upon any other foundation than religion is building upon sand. But I admire his practical benevolence,-I love his enthusiasm,—and I go far with him in his earthly views. What he has actually done entitles him to the greatest attention and respect. I sincerely wish that his plan for the extirpation of pauperism should be fairly tried. To employ the poor in manufactures is only shifting the evil, and throwing others out of employ, by bringing more la bour, and more produce of labour, into a market which is already overstocked.

Wise and extensive plans of foreign colonisation

first to have carefully attended to the solution of this problem: -whether it be more advantageous to the people to pay considerably, and to gain in proportion; or to gain little or nothing, and to be disburthened of all contribution." And in another place this great statesman says, "the prosperity and improvement of nations has generally increased with the increase of their revenues; and they will both continue to grow and flourish, as long as the balance between what is left to strengthen the efforts of individuals, and what is collected for the common efforts of the state, bear to each other a due reciprocal proportion, and are kept in a close correspondence and communication." This opinion is strikingly corroborated by the unexampled prosperity which the country enjoyed during the war, -a war of unexampled expenditure: and the stupendous works of antiquity, the ruins of which at this day so mournfully attest the opulence and splendour of states which have long since ceased to exist, were in no slight degree the causes of that prosperity of which they are the proofs. Instead therefore of this senseless cry for retrenchment, which is like prescrib

contribute essentially to keep a state like England in health; but we must not overlook the greater facility of colonising at home. Would it not be desirable that tracts of waste land should be purchased with public money, to be held as national domains, and colonised with our disbanded soldiers and sailors, and people who are in want of employment, dividing them into estates of different sizes according to the capability of the speculators, and allotting to every cottage that should be erected there a certain proportion of ground? Thus should we make immediate provision for those brave men whose services are no longer required for the defence of their country;—thus should we administer immediate relief to the poor, lighten the poorrates, give occupation to various branches of manufacture, and provide a permanent source of revenue, accruing from the increased prosperity of the country. There never was a time when every rood of ground maintained its man; but surely it is allowable to hope that whole districts will not always be suffered to lie waste while multitudes are in want of employment and of bread. A duty scarcely less urgent than that of diminishing the burthen of the poor-rates, is that of providing foring depletion for a patient whose complaints proceed the education of the lower classes. Government must no longer, in neglect of its first and paramount duty, allow them to grow up in worse than heathen ignorance. They must be trained in the way they should go: they must be taught to "fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man." Mere reading and writing will not do this: they must be instructed according to the established religion; they must be fed with the milk of sound doctrine: for states are secure in proportion as the great body of the people are attached to the institutions of their country. A moral and religious education will induce habits of industry; the people will know their duty, and find their interest and their happiness in follow ing it. Give us the great boon of parochial education, so connected with the church as to form part of the establishment, and we shall find it a bulwark to the state as well as to the church. Let this be done, let saving banks be generally introduced, let new channels for industry be opened (as soon as the necessities of the state will permit) by a liberal expenditure in public works, by colonising our waste lands at home and regularly sending off our swarms abroad, and the strength, wealth, and security of the nation will be in proportion to its numbers.

Never, indeed, was there a more senseless cry than that which is at this time raised, for retrenchment in the public expenditure as a means of alleviating the present distress. That distress arises from a great and sudden diminution of employment, occasioned by many coinciding causes, the chief of which is that the war-expenditure of from forty to fifty millions yearly has ceased. Men are out of employ:—the evil is that too little is spent, and, as a remedy, we are exhorted to spend less! Every where there are mouths crying out for food because the hands want work; and at this time, and for this reason, the state-quack requires further reduction! Because so many hands are unemployed, he calls upon government to throw more upon the public, by reducing its establishments and suspending its works! O lepidum caput! And it is by such heads as this that we are to be reformed! "Statesmen," says Mr. Burke, "before they value themselves on the relief given to the people by the destruction (or diminution) of their revenue, ought

from inanition, a liberal expenditure should be advised in works of public utility and magnificence. For if experience has shown us that increased expenditure during war, and a proportionately increasing prosperity, have been naturally connected as cause and consequence, it is neither rash nor illogical to infer, that a liberal expenditure in peace upon national works would produce the same beneficial effect, without any of the accompanying evil. Money thus expended will flow like chyle into the veins of the state, and nourish and invigorate it. Build, therefore, our monuments for Trafalgar and Waterloo, and let no paltry considerations prevent them from being made worthy of the occasion, and of the country;-of the men who have fought, conquered, and died for us;-of Nelson, of Wellington, and of Great Britain. Let them be such as may correspond in splendour with the actions to which they are consecrated, and vie, if possible, in duration, with the memory of those immortal events. They are for after-ages; the more magnificent they may be, the better will they manifest the national sense of great public services, and the more will they excite and foster that feeling in which great actions have their root. In proportion to their magnificence, also, will be the present benefit, as well as the future good; for they are not, like the Egyptian pyramids, to be raised by bondsmen under rigorous taskmasters: the wealth which is taken from the people returns to them again, like vapours which are drawn imperceptibly from the earth, but distributed to it in refreshing dews and fertilising showers. What bounds could imagination set to the welfare and glory of this island, if a tenth part, or even a twentieth of what the war expenditure has been, were annually applied in improving and creating harbours, in bringing our roads to the best possible state, in colonising upon our waste lands, in reclaiming fens and conquering tracts from the sea, in encouraging the liberal arts, in erecting churches, in building and endowing schools and colleges, and making war upon physical and moral evil with the whole artillery of wisdom and righteousness, with all the resources of science, and all the ardour of enlightened and enlarged benevolence?

It is likewise incumbent upon government to take heed lest, in its solicitude for raising the necessary

revenue, there should be too little regard for the means by which it is raised. It should beware of imposing such duties as create a strong temptation to evade them. It should be careful that all its measures tend, as much as possible, to the improvement of the people, and especially careful that nothing be done which can tend in any way to corrupt them. It should reform its prisons; and apply some remedy to the worst grievance which exists,-the enormous expenses, the chicanery, and the ruinous delays of the law. Machiavelli says, that legislators ought to suppose all men to be naturally bad;-in no point has that sagacious statesman been more erroneous. Fitter it is, that governments should think well of mankind; for the better they think of them, the better they will find them, and the better they will make them. Government must reform the populace, the people must reform themselves. This is the true reform; and compared with this all else is flocci, nauci, nihili, pili.

Such, Sir, are in part the views of the man whom you have traduced. Had you perused his writings, you could not have mistaken them; and I am will ing to believe that if you had done this, and formed an opinion for yourself, instead of retailing that of wretches who are at once the panders of malice and the pioneers of rebellion, you would neither have been so far forgetful of your parliamentary character, nor of the decencies between man and man, as so wantonly, so unjustly, and in such a place, to have attacked one who had given you no provocation. Did you imagine that I should sit down quietly under the wrong, and treat your attack with the same silent contempt as I have done all the abuse and calumny with which, from one party or the other, Antijacobins or Jacobins, I have been assailed in daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly publications, since the year 1796, when I first became known to

the public? The place where you made the attack, and the manner of the attack, prevent this.

How far the writings of Mr. Southey may be found to deserve a favourable acceptance from afterages, time will decide; but a name, which, whether worthily or not, has been conspicuous in the literary history of its age, will certainly not perish. Some account of his life will always be prefixed to his works, and transferred to literary histories, and to the biographical dictionaries, not only of this, but of other countries. There it will be related, that he lived in the bosom of his family, in absolute retirement; that in all his writings there breathed the same abhorrence of oppression and immorality, the same spirit of devotion, and the same ardent wishes for the melioration of mankind; and that the only charge which malice could bring against him was that, as he grew older, his opinions altered concerning the means by which that melioration was to be effected; and that as he learned to understand the institutions of his country, he learned to appreciate them rightly, to love, and to revere, and to defend them. It will be said of him, that in an age of personality, he abstained from satire; and that during the course of his literary life, often as he was assailed, the only occasion on which he ever condescended to reply, was, when a certain Mr. William Smith insulted him in parliament with the appellation of renegade. On that occasion, it will be said, that be vindicated himself, as it became him to do, and treated his calumniator with just and memorable severity. Whether it shall be added, that Mr. William Smith redeemed his own character, by coming forward with honest manliness and acknowledging that he had spoken rashly and unjustly, concerns himself, but is not of the slightest importance to me.

Heaven and Earth;

A MYSTERY.(1)

ROBERT SOUTHEY.

FOUNDED ON THE FOLLOWING PASSAGE IN GENESIS, CHAP. VI.

* And it came to pass... that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose."

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

at least some of the chorus might have been written by Sternhold and Hopkins themselves for that, and perhaps for melody. As it is longer, and more lyrical and Greek, than I intended at first, I have not divided it into acts, but called what I have sent Part First; as there is a suspension of the action, which may either close there without impropriety, or be continued in a way that I have in view. I wish the first part to be published before the second; because, if it don't succeed, it is better to stop there, than to go on in a fruitless experiment." Though without delay revised by Mr. Gifford, and printed, this "First Part" was not published till 1822, when it appeared in the second number of the Liberal. The Mystery was never completed.

"The great power of this Mystery is in its fearless and daring simplicity. Lord Byron faces at once all the grandeur of his sublime subject. He seeks for nothing, but it rises before him in its death-doomed magnificence. Man, or angel, or demon, the being who mourns, or laments, or

[blocks in formation]

Thou rulest in the upper air

Or warring with the spirits who may dare
Dispute with him

Who made all empires, empire; or recalling

Some wandering star, which shoots through the abyss,
Whose tenants dying, while their world is falling,
Share the dim destiny of clay in this;
Or joining with the inferior cherubim,
Thou deignest to partake their hymn-
Samiasa!

I call thee, I await thee, and I love thee.
Many may worship thee, that will I not:
If that thy spirit down to mine may move thee,
Descend and share my lot!

Though I be form'd of clay,

And thou of beams

The angels deign

exults, is driven to speak by his own soul. not to use many words, even to their beautiful paramours; and they scorn Noah and his sententious sons. The first scene is a woody and mountainous district, near Mount Ararat; and the time midnight. Mortal creatures, conscious of their own wickedness, have heard awful predictions of the threatened flood, and all their lives are darkened with terror. But the sons of God have been dwellers on earth, and women's hearts have been stirred by the beauty of these celestial visitants. Anah and Aholibamah, two of these angel-stricken maidens, come wandering along while others sleep, to pour forth their invocations to their demon lovers. They are of very different characters: Anah, soft, gentle and submissive; Aholibamah, proud, impetuous, and aspiring the one loving in fear, and the other in ambition." Wilson.-L. E.

(1) The archangels, said to be seven in number, and to occupy the eighth rank in the celestial hierarchy.

More bright than those of day
On Eden's streams,

Thine immortality can not repay
With love more warm than mine

My love. There is a ray

In me, which, though forbidden yet to shine,
I feel was lighted at thy God's and thine.
It may be hidden long: death and decay

Our mother Eve bequeath'd us-but my heart
Defies it: though this life must pass away,
Is that a cause for thee and me to part?
Thou art immortal-so am I: 1 feel-

I feel my immortality o'ersweep

All pains, all tears, all fears, and peal,
Like the eternal thunders of the deep,

Into my ears this truth-"Thou livest for ever!"
But if it be in joy

I know not, nor would know;
That secret rests with the Almighty giver

Who folds in clouds the fonts of bliss and woe.
But thee and me he never can destroy;
Change us he may, but not o'erwhelm; we are
Of as eternal essence, and must war
With him if he will war with us: with thee

I can share all things, even immortal sorrow; For thou hast ventured to share life with me, And shall I shrink from thine eternity?

No! though the serpent's sting should pierce me
thorough,

And thou thyself wert like the serpent, coil
Around me still! and I will smile,

And curse thee not; but hold

Thee in as warm a fold
As-But descend; and prove
A mortal's love

For an immortal. If the skies contain
More joy than thou canst give and take, remain! (1)
Anah. Sister! sister! I view them winging
Their bright way through the parted night.

Aho. The clouds from off their pinions flinging, As though they bore to-morrow's light.

Anah. But if our father see the sight!

Aho. He would but deem it was the moon Rising unto some sorcerer's tune

An hour too soon.

[blocks in formation]

(I) "This invocation is extremely beautiful: its chief beauty lies in the continuous and meandering flow of its impassioned versification. At its close,-and it might well win down to earth erring angels from heaven,-the maidens disappear in the midnight darkness, hoping the presence of their celestial lovers." Wilson.-L. E.

(2) "Lord Byron here takes a wide career, and is sometimes obscure and confused; but the flashes of fire continually break through, and illumine the clouds of smoke and vapour. The extravagance is dictated by passion. His muse, even in her riddles and digressions, has a sybil-like prophetic fury." Jeffrey.-L. E.

[blocks in formation]

(3) "In the second scene, Japhet, Noah's son, and Irad -the earthly and despised lovers of the two maidensappear. Their talk is somewhat dull; which, we presume, is natural in such circumstances." Wilson.-L. E.

(4) "This is one of those bitter taunting sarcasms that escape from Lord Byron's pen, in spite of himself. Japhet is afterwards introduced alone, in a mountainous cave; and his soliloquy, bemoaning his own fate, and the ap proaching destruction of mankind, is interrupted by a laugh of demons, rejoicing over the event. This scene is terrific." Jeffrey.-L. E.

« ElőzőTovább »