addition to the crime of robbing him of his children, this occupant of
the wool-sack, had made the seat of justice an appanage for his lust
of wealth and power. I have already quoted some verses on this
renowned lawyer, and will now present you with two others bearing on
the same subject:
"Next came Fraud, and he had on,
Like Lord Eldon, an ermine gown;
His big tears (for he wept well)
Turned to mill stones as they fell;
"And _the little children_, who
Round his feet played to and fro,
Thinking every tear a gem,
Had their brains knocked out by them."
In _Queen Mab_, Shelley has presented us with an unmistakable
portraiture of the "First Gentleman in Europe;" and in the following
lines, which I have taken from this poem, I have chosen two extracts,
descriptive of the origin of political despotism, and the reason of
its continuance:
"Whence, thinkest thou, kings and parasites arose?
Whence that unnatural line of drones, who heap
Toil and unvanquishable penury
On those who build their palaces, and bring
Their daily bread? From vice, black, loathsome vice,
From rapine, madness, treachery and wrong;
From all that genders misery, and makes
Of earth this thorny wilderness; from lust,
Revenge and murder."
* * * * *
"Nature rejects the monarch, not the man;
The subject, not the citizen; for kings
And subjects, mutual foes, forever play
A losing game into each other's hands,
Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man
Of virtuous soul commands not nor obeys.
Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame
A mechanized automaton."
Shelley believed in reformation, not revolution; and in the "Revolt of
Islam" and his Irish pamphlets, we find him advocating a bloodless
revolution, except where force was used, and then force for force, if
compromise were hopeless. His idea was ever the foundation of
political systems founded on that of this country, or on the ancient
Greek Republic. He says:
"The study of modern history is the study of kings,
financiers, statesmen, and priests. The history of ancient
Greece is the study of legislators, philosophers, and poets;
it is the history of men compared with the history of
titles. What the Greeks were was a reality, not a promise.
And what we are and hope to be is derived, as it were, from
the influence of these glorious generations."
Hoping almost against hope for the regeneration of his country, he
submitted to the people of England a proposal for putting to the vote
the great reform question, which was filling the public mind; but he
was conscious that in the then unprepared state of public knowledge
and feeling, universal suffrage was fraught with peril, and remarks
that although
"A pure republic may be shown, by inferences the most
obvious and irresistible, to be that system of social order
the fittest to produce the happiness and promote the genuine
eminence of man. Yet nothing can less consist with reason,
or afford smaller hopes of any beneficial issue, than the
plan which should abolish the regal and the aristocratical
branches of our constitution, before the public mind,
through many gradations of improvement, shall have arrived
at the maturity which shall disregard these symbols of its
childhood."
An essay has come down to us (unhappily unfinished), in which he
argues in favor of "Government by Juries." It is but a fragment; and
yet it shows us that his mind was ever in search of the right
solution of the question of proper legislation for the masses. William
Pitt, with enemies on every side, publicly acknowledged the
extraordinary genius which impelled the American revolution, and
admired the constitution of this country, as well as the masterly
character of the "Declaration of Independence." In unstinted praise
does he speak of the learning and remarkable public spirit of the
signers. With equal praise, I am confident, everyone must eulogize the
"Declaration of Rights," compiled by Shelley, which he put before his
countrymen sixty-three years ago. Therein he has given the whole of
his conception of the correct theory of government, and it cannot fail
to be read by advanced minds with feelings of genuine pleasure.
The race has suffered through its long martyrdom with the horrors of
war. One tyrant after another, to aid his accursed ambition or revenge
his spite upon a brother monarch, has cursed the unhappy earth and
humanity with the terrors of long-continued devastation and bloodshed.
With burning pen has Shelley depicted war in its most hideous aspects,
and by most beautiful comparisons has he shown us the sublimity of
peace. He points out, that
"War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight,
The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade."
He repudiates the notion that man, if left free, would wantonly heap
ruin, vice, or shivery, or curse his species with the withering blight
of war; and he shows us how
"Kings, priests, and statesmen blast the human flower,
Even in its tender bud; their influence darts
Like subtle poison through the bloodless veins
Of desolate society. The child,
Ere he can lisp his mother's sacred name,
Swells with the unnatural pride of crime, and lifts
His baby sword even in a hero's mood.
This infant arm becomes the bloodiest scourge
Of devastated earth: whilst specious names,
Learnt in soft childhood's unsuspecting hour,
Serve as the sophisms with which manhood dims
Bright reason's ray, and sanctifies the sword
Upraised to shed a brother's innocent blood."
In other places he seems to prophetically point out what this generation
appears to comprehend--the judiciousness of arbitration--which in the
future will be the true panacea for this frightful affliction of
humanity.
To the current Irish questions Shelley devoted much of his time, and
took up his residence in Dublin, to aid the independence of Ireland,
which might, under proper treatment, have been made one of the
brightest spots in the British Dominions; but the inhabitants of
which, owing to centuries of English misrule and oppression, had, in
certain parts, fallen into a condition not much superior to that of
those of Central Africa. When we contemplate what Ireland was before
the Norman and Saxon had set their feet there, the most prejudiced
antagonist of the Celtic race cannot but be astonished at the picture
presented to us after their usurpation. When Saxondom was in a state
of barbarism, this branch of the Celts was civilized. Aldfred, king of
the Northumbrian Saxons, has given us the experiences of a Saxon in
Ireland over a thousand years ago. In a poem of his own composing, he
tells us that he found "noble, prosperous sages," "learning, wisdom,
welcome, and protection," "kings, queens, and royal bards, in every
species of poetry well skilled. Happiness, comfort, and pleasure," the
people "famed for justice, hospitality, lasting vigor, fame," and
"long blooming beauty, hereditary vigor"--and the monarch concludes
his really curious account by saying:
"I found in the fair, surfaced Leinster,
From Dublin to Slewmargy,
Long-living men, health, prosperity,
Bravery, hardihood and traffic.
I found from Ara to Gle,
In the rich country of Ossory,
Sweet fruit, strict jurisdiction,
Men of truth, chess-playing.
I found in the great fortress of Meath,
Valor, hospitality, and truth,
Bravery, purity, and mirth--
The protection of all Ireland.
I found the aged of strict morals,
The historians recording truth--
Each good, each benefit that I have sung,
In Ireland I have seen."
Such is the statement of King Aldfred, and the Venerable Bede informs
us that in Ireland, Saxons and other foreigners were "hospitably
received, entertained and educated, furnished with books," etc., all
gratuitously.
Up to the middle of the sixteenth century, I find, after careful study
in the Leabhar-Gabhala, the Annals of the Four Masters, of
Clonmacnoise, of Loch Ce, and other historical records, the same
continued apparent prosperity, but after the English took possession
of the larger portion of the country, only the records of anarchy,
despotism, and misery. Before the Reformation, or so long as the
English settlers remained within the pale, Ireland had been as happy
as Ultramontanism would allow, but from the accession of Elizabeth and
the consequent attempted enforcement of a new theology, against the
wishes of the people, a fearful succession of despotism is revealed.
To force Protestantism on the Irish, Catholicism was put down by the
most stringent laws--the torture chamber never empty, the scaffold
rarely free from executions, the seaports closed, and manufactures
forbidden to be exported; "black laws" of a most iniquitous character,
exceeding in ingenuity the devices of Tilly or Torquemada, placed on
the statute book. The punishment for being a recusant Catholic, or
Papist, was death, and it is a known fact that one Protestant
commander, Sir William Cole, of Fermanagh, made his soldiers massacre
in a short period "seven thousand of the vulgar sort," as Borlase
informs us. Elsewhere the English behaved in the same manner, and on
the authority of Bishop Moran it is asserted that the Puritans of the
North shot down Catholics as wild beasts, and made it their business
"to imbrue their swords in the hearts' blood of the male children."
Mr. and Mrs. S.C. Hall, in their valuable work on Ireland, state that
the possessors of the whole province of Ulster were driven out under
pain of mortal punishment from their homes and lands, without roof
over their heads, to be pent up in the most barren portion of
Connaught, where to pass a certain boundary line was instant death
without trial, and where it was commonly said, "There is not wood
enough to hang a man, water enough to drown him, nor earth enough to
bury him." One hundred thousand Catholics were sold as slaves to the
West Indian and North American planters by the public authority of the
Cromwellian government. Such was the way these Christians showed their
love for their fellow Christians, and can it be wondered that ever
since than there has been one continual succession of uprisings in
that most unhappy country? As the sinew of Ireland's people in this
country were driven by necessity, fleeing from the terrors of
starvation and insufficient existence at home, so were the best of the
race in the two previous centuries necessitated to fly to the European
continent, where we find them enrolled, for instance, in the service
of the King of France, and having revenge on their oppressors on the
field of Fontenoy. Elsewhere in every country of Europe do we discover
them or their descendants in the front ranks, and at the helm of
affairs--in Spain, O'Donnell and Prim; in France, Mac Mahon and Lally
Tollendal; in Austria, O'Taafe and Maguire.
When Shelley arrived in Dublin in 1812, he soon found himself joined
to the body of the Repeal party, which was endeavoring to obtain back
the parliament which had been stolen from them by British gold, less
than a quarter of a century before, and to have the Catholic
Emancipation Bill made law. He published two remarkable, political
pamphlets, in those days the only mode by which a statesman could
appeal to the people, in which it may be noticed how well he could
write in a popular style, to effectually serve a purpose. They also
prove his enthusiasm for the liberty of discussion, and how, although
he was always willing to treat on politics alone, he was preoccupied
with metaphysical questions which continually crop out.
In the first, which he called _An Address to the Irish People_, and
wrote during the first week of his residence in Ireland, he commences
by eulogizing the Irish, explains to them that all religions are good
which make men good, and shows that, being neither Protestant nor
Catholic, he can offer the olive branch to each. He then points out
the weak spots in each other's conduct in the past, the necessity of
toleration, and the crime of persecution--how different this was to
what Christ taught!
He endeavors to prove that arms should not be used--that the French
Revolution, although undertaken with the best intentions, ended badly
because force was employed. He recommends sobriety, regularity and
thought; for the Irish not to appeal to bloodshed, but to agitate
determinedly for Catholic emancipation and repeal, which should be
ensured through the use of moral persuasion. And concluding with an
appeal to Catholic and Protestant to bear with each other, using
mildness and benevolence, and to mutually organize a society which
"Shall serve as a bond to its members for the purpose of
virtue, happiness, liberty and wisdom by the means of
intellectual opposition to grievances,"
he winds up by saying:
"Adieu, my friends! May every sun that shines on your green
island see the annihilation of an abuse, and the birth of an
embryon of melioration! Your own hearts--may they become the
shrines of purity and freedom, and never may smoke to the
Mammon of Unrighteousness ascend from the polluted altar of
their devotion."
In a postscript to this pamphlet, he urges
"A plan of amendment and regeneration in the moral and
political state of society, on a comprehensive and
systematic philanthropy which shall be sure though slow in
its projects; and as it is without the rapidity and danger
of revolution, so will it be devoid of the time-servingness
of temporizing reform;"
and quotes Lafayette:
"A name endeared by its peerless bearer to every lover of
the human race, 'For a nation to love liberty, it is
sufficient that she knows it to be free; it is sufficient
that she wills it.'"
His other Dublin pamphlet, _A Proposal for an Association of
Philanthropists_, consists of remarks of the same character as the
former, but he gives a summary of the French Revolution, which he
endeavors to clear from the slurs which had been cast thereon. The
information has come down to us through one of Shelley's biographers,
that he spoke at several meetings in Dublin. At the one in which he
made his first appearance in public he aroused a large assembly to
enthusiasm by his fervid eloquence, and yet, notwithstanding all his
efforts, his toleration unfortunately became the great stumbling-block
in his attempts on behalf of Ireland, for we learn that at another
meeting of patriots:
"So much ill-will against the Protestants was shown, that
Shelley was provoked to remark that the Protestants were
fellow-Christians and fellow-subjects, and were therefore
entitled to equal rights and equal toleration with the
Papists. Of course, he was forthwith interrupted by savage
yells. A fierce uproar ensued, and the denouncer of bigotry
was compelled to be silent. At the same meeting, and
afterward, he was even threatened with personal violence,
and the police suggested to him the propriety of quitting
the country."
By many it has been said that Shelley was unsuccessful in his
self-imposed task, but he was simply before his time, and no wonder,
when we remember the condition of Ireland at the time of his visit.
We know to-day that much of what he demanded has been conceded to
Ireland by liberal English governments. An alien Church has been
disestablished; public education, Catholic emancipation, and a good
deal more, has been given. In the late repeal movement, the young
Ireland party, the Fenian organization, and the present Home Rule
agitation, we find, as Shelley wished, Catholic and Protestant working
arm in arm, their colors being an admixture of orange and green--a
healthy sign.
Those who dislike this noble people--for the name is legion of those
who are fond of shouting "No Irish need apply"--I would recommend to
think calmly over Irish history, to remember the frightful outrages
put upon this generous, warm-hearted, and impulsive race for
centuries, and read up Froude, Mitchell, Goldwin-Smith, McGee, Moran,
and other Irish historians.
We know what the Irish are capable of, and that in Ireland, as here,
after a generation or two of education, the old theological belief
becomes by a gradual process less and less strong.
On September 6th, 1819, a red letter day was added to the English
calendar, through the slaughter by cavalry of a number of unarmed men,
who were agitating, peaceably, for the rights of labor. This is known
to posterity as the "Peterloo Massacre," and happened in Manchester,
on the site of the present superb Free Trade Hall, erected by the Free
Traders to commemorate the ultimate triumph of their cause over the
capitalists, who, in the manufacturing districts, were, until a few
years back, always aided by the military in putting down strikes or
demands for increase of wages.
At the time of this outrage Shelley was in Italy; in consequence of it
his attention was concentrated more than previously on the labor
question, and he immediately composed half a dozen in spiriting poems,
full of the fire of genius; in one of which he calls, with a voice of
thunder, to the
I.
"Men of England! wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave, with toil and care,
The rich robes your tyrants wear?
II.
Wherefore feed and clothe and save,
From the cradle to the grave,
Those ungrateful drones who would
Drain your sweat--nay, drink your blood?
III.
Wherefore, bees of England, forge
Many a weapon, chain, and scourge,
That these stingless drones may spoil
The forced produce of your toil?
IV.
Have ye leisure, comfort, calm,
Shelter, food, love's gentle balm?
Or what is't ye buy so dear
With your pain, and with your fear?
V.
The seed ye sow, another reaps;
The wealth ye find another keeps;
The robes ye weave, another wears;
The arms ye forge, another bears.
VI.
Sow seed--but let no tyrant reap;
Find wealth--let no impostor heap;
Weave robes--let not the idle wear;
Forge arms--in your defence to bear.
VII.
Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells;
In halls ye deck, another dwells.
Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see
The steel ye tempered, glance on ye!
VIII.
With plough and spade, and hoe and loom,
Trace your grave, and build your tomb,
And weave your winding sheet, till fair
England be your sepulchre!"
By far the finest composition brought out by this occasion was the
"Masque of Anarchy," a magnificent poem of ninety-one verses. "Anarchy"
he describes as riding "on a white horse,"[E] in alliance with
theology and statecraft, and whose admirers were "lawyers and
priests."
[Footnote E: This doubtless alludes to the House of Hanover, the
principal charge on whose armorial bearings is a white horse.]
After a series of powerful delineations, he describes slavery and
freedom, justice, wisdom, peace and love, in exquisite terms. Then he
turns to their lamps--science, poetry, and thought, which make secure
"the lot of the dwellers in the cot."
He advises--That, on some spot of English ground, should be convened a
great assembly of the fearless and the free, who shall come from the
bounds of the English coast, and from every hut, village, and town,
where, for other's misery and their own, they live, suffer, and moan.
Also,
"From the workhouse and the prison,
Where, pale as corpses newly risen,
Women, children, young and old,
Groan for pain, and weep for cold;
"From the haunts of daily life,
Where is waged the daily strife
With common wants and common cares,
Which sow the human heart with tares."
When face to face with their oppressors, no force should be used, but
instead
"strong and simple words,
Keen to wound as sharpened swords,
And wide as targes let them be,
With their shade to cover ye."
The description of the Peterloo massacre which follows, is one of the
finest pieces of composition in the language, and the poem concludes
by calling the "Men of England, Heirs of Glory, Heroes of Unwritten
Story," to
"Rise like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable NUMBER!
Shake your chains to earth, like dew
Which in sleep had fall'n on you;
'YE ARE MANY--THEY ARE FEW.'"
In a pamphlet, written ostensibly on the death of the Princess
Charlotte, he calls attention to the fact that three men had been
executed in the interests of the "big-hearted and generous
capitalists," of whom we now-a-days hear so much from their interested
admirers, but whose wings are now fortunately clipped.
Shelley considered that there was no real wealth but man's labor, and
that speculators pandering to selfishness, the twin-sister of debased
theology, took a pride in the production of useless articles of luxury
and ostentation. Imbued with this spirit, a man of wealth imagines
himself a patriot when employing laborers on the erection of a
mansion, or a woman of fashion indulging in luxurious dress, fancies
she is aiding the laboring poor. He observes of such instances as
these:
"Who does not see that this is a remedy which aggravates,
whilst it palliates the countless diseases of society? The
poor are set to labor--for what? Not the food for which they
famish; not the blankets for want of which their babes are
frozen by the cold of their miserable hovels; not those
comforts of civilization without which civilized man is far
more miserable than the meanest savage, oppressed as he is
by all its insidious evils, within the daily and taunting
prospect of its innumerable benefits assiduously exhibited
before him; no, for the pride of power, for the miserable
isolation of pride, for the false pleasures of the hundredth
part of society."
Labor is required for physical, and leisure for moral improvement.
What is wanted, he considered, is a state to combine the advantages of
both and have the evils of neither. In fact, any unnecessary labor
which deprives the race of intellectual gain, and all times not
required for the manufacture of commodities which are necessary for
the subsistence of humanity, should be occupied only in mental or
physical culture.
Shelley lays down as a principle that commerce is the venal
interchange of what human art or nature yields, and which should not
be purchased by wealth, but demanded by want. Labor and commerce, when
badly regulated, scatter withering curses and open
"The doors to premature and violent death,
To penury, famine, and full-fed disease."
Wealth was a living God, who rules in scorn, and whom peasants,
nobles, priests, and kings blindly reverence, and by whom everything
is sold--the light of heaven, earth's produce, the peace of outraged
conscience, the most despicable things, every object of life, and even
life itself.
In a proper condition of society, which should be strictly
co-operative, there would necessarily be no pauperism, and
"No meditative signs of selfishness,
No jealous intercourse of wretched gain,
No balancings of prudence, cold and long;
In just and equal measure all is weighed;
One scale contains the sum of human weal.
And one the good man's heart."
The fruits of Shelley's enunciations on the labor and capital
questions, and the school of political economists to which he
belonged, have made wondrous progress. The world is beginning to see
that labor has the unrestricted right of coalition, that there should
be only a standard day's work, according to the wants of society, with
prohibition of labor for at least one day in the week; that
legislation is required for the protection of the life and health of
the working man, and that mines, factories, and workshops should be
strictly controlled by sanitary officers selected by labor; that no
children's work should be permitted, or women's, which may be
considered unhealthy; that prison work should be regulated, and that
laborers' co-operative and benevolent societies should be administered
independently of the State.
Liberals must learn from their enemies, must organize and let the
ramifications of unshackled thought spread through the lands, and
must, above all, conserve the control of education. Whereever there is
a church or chapel, let there be beside it a hall or club, in which
shall be inculcated the simple doctrines of a pure, integralised
religion.