A MISSIONARY TOUR.
The civil and political revolution I wished to effect, had apparently,
to a considerable extent, been already effected in my own country, and
the principal theatre of my operations must be in the Old World. There
is no doubt, that, at bottom, the American system does not differ from
the European. It is the same system of repression, and, though it
dispenses with kings and nobles, it asserts, with equal emphasis, the
necessity of government, of law, and morals. The American, in making his
revolution, had no socialistic dreams, no thought of resolving society
into its original elements, denying all authority, rejecting all
government, abolishing all religion and morality, and leaving every man
to do freely whatever seems right in his own eyes, however wrong it may
seem in those of his neighbor. The authors of the American Revolution,
and founders of the American States and the American Union, were any
thing but democrats in the present prevailing sense of the word.
But the progress of ideas and events has so modified the American
system, and done so much towards restoring a perfect democracy, where
the demagogues have every thing their own way, that the chance of
getting up any considerable revolutionary party, except to operate
abroad, is not worth counting. Indeed, it is not necessary to hasten the
march of things here, which is sufficiently rapid towards that point
where democracy resolves itself either into complete individualism or
into an absolute social despotism. I saw and felt this, and looked upon
my own country as more ready to assist me in my philanthropic or Satanic
efforts to revolutionize foreign countries than in need of similar
efforts on its own account.
Let me not, however, be misunderstood. Let me speak as I think and feel
as I lie here confined to my room, from which I am to be removed only to
my grave. I love not democracy, which I regard as from below, not from
above; but I love as little, perhaps much less, absolute or unlimited
monarchy,—your Czarism, Cæsarism, or Imperialism. I may think it unwise,
wrong, wicked even, to attempt to overthrow by revolutionary violence,
an absolute government, where it exists, and is not intolerable in
practice, for the sake of introducing a republic, or even a
constitutional monarchy; but I hold no government a good one, where one
man alone represents the will and the majesty of the nation. I demand a
government of estates, whenever that is practicable, but always a
representative body, with real legislative power, capable of imposing
real and effective restraints on the administration. I demand for the
nation the means of making known freely and effectively, within the
limits of the moral law, its will. I demand freedom of discussion,
deliberation, and decision. I demand the freedom of the press,
temperately, and answerable for its abuse, (which, however, must be a
real abuse;) to criticize publicly the acts of political authority, to
point out the defects of its policy, and to suggest measures for the
public good. I demand a political constitution in which the nation
governs through a king or president, and parliament or legislative body
or bodies. I am, what is sneered at by your imperialists, a
parliamentarian, a constitutionalist, and have no sympathy at all with
the Cæsarism of either France or Russia. I am no radical, no
revolutionist, no friend of sedition, but I love a wise, prudent,
well-regulated liberty, which leaves me all my power to do good, and
therefore, necessarily, to some extent, even to do evil; for if you so
bind me by the civil power that I can do no evil, you take from me my
manhood, make me an automaton, and deprive me of all power to do good
and to acquire merit. Such is my political creed, and therefore let no
man dare, because I favor not now the wild radical movements of the age,
accuse me of being an enemy to liberty, or a worshipper of Cæsarism, or
what is called absolutism.
Not seeing much to be done in my own country, I resolved to go abroad. I
required Priscilla to make herself ready to accompany me, and to take
her husband along with her. I know not whether this latter request
pleased her or not. Woman is woman even when under the power of the Evil
One; and that Priscilla loved me, and loved me madly, she hardly
pretended to conceal. I had, perhaps, loved her, too, for a moment, when
I might do so innocently, and I loved her still as much as remained in
me the power to love. But love or lust was not precisely my ruling
passion, and I would as soon have taken another with me as Priscilla,
could she have served my purpose as well. Even in my worst days I was as
much repelled as attracted by a woman who could betray her husband’s
honor, and I always found a woman, mastered by her passion, and ready to
give up all for love, as it is called, a troublesome rather than an
agreeable companion. A man wishes to find in the woman of his affections
a free soul, moral dignity,—a tender, loving heart, indeed, but with
sufficient strength to stand alone. Lads and lasses in their teens have
very false notions of love, and this is why love so seldom survives the
honeymoon, and why so many complain of unrequited affection and broken
hearts.
But I could not do without Priscilla, and I wished her husband to
accompany her to avoid scandal, and also to serve as manager, to take
charge of all the arrangements in travelling, residing in one place, or
in going from that to another, for which he was admirably adapted. I
found him far more intelligent, far more of a man than I had been led to
suspect from his ready submission to petticoat government. Priscilla had
entirely mistaken him, and might one day find him more than her master.
In a couple of months our arrangements were made for the voyage to
Europe, and for a longer or shorter residence abroad, as we should find
it convenient. We embarked from Boston in one of the Cunard steamers for
Liverpool, in May, 1843. We arrived at Liverpool after a pleasant
passage of thirteen days, and as soon as we could land, and get our
baggage through the custom-house, we departed for London, where we
proposed stopping for some weeks. Let not the reader fear that I am
about to inflict on him a journal of my travels in England and on the
Continent. I did not go abroad as a curious traveller, to see other
lands, and study the ways, manners, customs, institutions, laws,
politics, or religion of other nations. I went for a special object, and
to that I confined myself. I could, if I would, tell very little more
than I might have learned at home. My mission was not to observe and
learn, but to do, and to prepare, and hasten on the grand movement I
contemplated.
I did not find in England much remaining to be done, or that I needed to
do. I saw very few of her nobility, and I was not even once invited to
dine with the Queen. The middle classes I found very much like my own
countrymen, with very much the same culture, ideas, habits, and
pursuits. I found, as at home, a large number of philanthropists, though
less thoroughgoing than ours, and narrower, and less comprehensive in
their views. The common Englishman is a little insular in his notions,
and looks with disdain or pity on all who do not happen to be natives of
his own island world. The American is broad and expanded in his views,
like his extended prairies and boundless forests. No pent up Utica
confines him; the globe is too small for him; and he seriously
contemplates forming a joint-stock company for the construction of a
railroad to the moon. He thinks it will prove a good speculation. They
are both proud, equally proud; but with the Englishman, pride assumes
the form of haughtiness, or a low estimate of others; while with the
American, it assumes that of a conscious superiority to all the rest of
creation.
I did not see much chance of a reform or a democratic revolution in
England at present. True, she had at that time a very considerable body
of Chartists, and a numerous _canaille_, but these I counted for
nothing. No revolution is ever made by the proletarian classes. Wat
Tyler, Jack Cade, and the Jacquerie of France have proved that. No
people can ever overthrow a government till the government betrays
itself. In 1789, and in 1848, in every instance the government, with a
few whiffs of grape-shot, might have dispersed the mob and suppressed
the revolution. _Quem Deus vult perdere, prius dementat._ I placed no
reliance on the democracy of England, yet I did not at all despair of
her. She had her Reform Bill of 1832, which in due time would be
followed by another, and another, till her House of Commons would come
to be regarded as representing population, not an estate. The extension
of her commerce and manufactures was compelling Sir Robert Peel, an able
man, but a short-sighted statesman, to break up the protective system,
establish free trade, and throw the power into the hands of the urban
class. I did not need to mesmerize him; he was doing my work as fast as
it could be done with safety. Lord John Russell, Lord Palmerston, and
their friends, I found had been visited before me. Mr. Gladstone needed
a slight manipulation; but I saw that he was an impressible subject, and
I foresaw that, when he became Chancellor of the Exchequer, I should
have every reason to be satisfied with him. Lord Shaftesbury, then Lord
Ashley, I found amply mesmerized by nature and inheritance.
As to aid from England, in carrying on democratic revolutions on the
Continent, especially in Italy, if not in France, I might count on it
with entire confidence, so far as beginning the movements and getting
into trouble were concerned. But I thought possibly I might find her aid
like the devil’s, which suffices to help one into a scrape, but leaves
him to get out the best way he can. She had no interest in helping the
reformers to establish democracy, but she was ready enough to throw the
Continental states into confusion and anarchy. Hers has of late years
been only a half-way genius. Nevertheless, I found in her a few choice
spirits, and erected a mesmeric battery, which has since done some
service to the cause I had at heart. Priscilla was still more successful
among the philanthropic ladies and women with whom she was able to
communicate. We made sure, without much difficulty, of Exeter Hall. It
was a battery already charged, and served, with skill and ability.
We prepared an agent to visit Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and
other considerable English towns, and, upon the whole, were very well
satisfied with our mother country, and in good spirits left England for
Dublin. We were received there with true Irish hospitality. The
Liberator was then in his glory, and filled a large space in the eyes of
the world. He had obtained the Catholic Relief Bill, and opened to his
co-religionists of Great Britain and Ireland a political arena, and was
now agitating for the legislative independence of his native country. A
few months after he was arrested, and sentenced to a fine and a year’s
imprisonment, which virtually put an end to his movement. It broke his
heart both as a patriot and as a lawyer. He received us very coolly at
first, because we were Americans, and the Americans held negro slaves;
but on learning that we were abolitionists and philanthropists, he
opened his large heart to us, and bid us a hundred thousand welcomes. We
could not, however, make much of O’Connell. He was an admirable type of
the general Irish character, and not easily understood. He struck us as
a bundle of opposing qualities, not usually thrown together in the same
individual. A pious Catholic, he was surrounded by unbelievers, and the
patron of the whole herd of philanthropists, whose chief aim was to rid
the world of his religion; a man of impulse, as capricious as a child,
wily as a village attorney, and subtle as the most crafty lawyer, and
acting always upon calculation; a warm-hearted patriot, a genuine lover
of his country, yet with a sharp eye to the “rint,” and leaving it
doubtful to many minds whether he had any higher motives in what he did
than to gain personal distinction, and to elevate his family. He however
interested us as the inventor of a “peaceful agitation,” an invention
which could have been made only by an Irish lawyer, and it was as a
“peaceful agitator” that we chose to think of him. We found his
“peaceful agitation” might be turned to good account in the
constitutional states of the Continent, and we took care to introduce it
into France, when we visited that country, with what effect those who
remember the “Reform Banquets” which preceded the Revolution of
February, 1848, need not to be informed.
From the Liberator, or, as we chose to call him, the Agitator, we went
to meet the chiefs of the Young Ireland party, still apparently acting
in harmony with him. We formed no great expectations of them. They
talked too much, and made too much noise and bluster. We found them in
excellent dispositions, but too unsubstantial for our purpose. They were
all blaze, and no heat. The devil, having no creative power, could not
himself make much of them, and gave them up in despair. Hence their
miserable failure four years later at Slievnamon. Indeed, Ireland was a
country by no means to our philanthropic and reforming purpose, and we
made no account of her in preparing our revolutionary movements. We
however erected a small battery in the west, with a view to some
ulterior operations, and which we left in charge of Exeter Hall. It has
produced some temporary effect; but inasmuch as it has served to arouse
the Popish bishops and clergy to a more diligent discharge of their
duties, in regard to the religious and moral instruction of the people
in that hitherto somewhat neglected district, it is not certain but it
will, in the long run, produce an effect the reverse of that intended.
Rome, too, has sent a man after her own heart to look after the Irish
Church, the present Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland; so the
philanthropists have not much to hope from Ireland. Pat will sometimes
live and talk as an unbeliever, but he has a singular propensity to die
a Christian.
From Ireland we visited Edinburgh, Glasgow, the Highlands, and the
Hebrides—the Highlands and the Hebrides, for the purpose of making
observations on the “second sight” of the natives. We were much pleased
with Scotland. The Scottish character has many admirable features, and
there is not upon the whole a finer race in Europe than the Scotch, when
unperverted. We found nothing to do among them. There was no need of
mesmerizing them. Their own “_ingenuum fervidum_,” a sort of permanent
mesmerization, was amply sufficient for all our purposes. Besides, there
seemed to be a natural and ample supply of the odic fluid in her own
mountains and glens, which were still peopled by brownies and fairies.