[18] 'Six thousand per annum,' viz., on the authority of his own
confession to Pinkerton.
EDITOR'S NOTE.--De Quincey is guilty of a slight lapse of memory in
reference to 'The Castle of Otranto' and Onuphrio Muralto. It was
not in the first sentence of the preface, but on the title-page,
that Walpole so plainly attributed the work to another. The
_original_ title-page, which, of course, was dropped out when it
became known to all the world that Walpole was the author, read
thus: 'The Castle of Otranto: a Story. Translated by William
Marshall, Gent. From the original Italian of Onuphrio Muralto,
Canon of the Church of St. Nicholas, at Otranto. London: printed
for Thomas Lownds, in Fleet Street. 1765.'
_XV. DANIEL O'CONNELL._
With a single view to the _intellectual_ pretensions of Mr. O'Connell,
let us turn to his latest General Epistle, dated from 'Conciliation
Hall,' on the last day of October. This is no random, or (to use a
pedantic term) _perfunctory_ document; not a document is this to which
indulgence is due. By its subject, not less than by its address, it
stands forth audaciously as a deliberate, as a solemn, as a national
state paper; for its subject is the future political condition of
Ireland under the assumption of Repeal; for its address is, 'To the
People of Ireland.' So placing himself, a writer has it not within his
choice to play the fool; it is not within his competence to tumble or
'come aloft' or play antics as a mountebank; his theme binds him to
decency, his audience to gravity. Speaking, though it be but by the
windiest of fictions, to a nation, is not a man pledged to respectful
language? speaking, though it is but by a chimera as wild as Repeal to a
question of national welfare, a man is pledged to sincerity. Had he
seven devils of mockery and banter within him, for that hour he must
silence them all. The foul fiend must be rebuked, though it were Mahu
and Bohu who should prompt him to buffoonery, when standing at the bar
of nations.
This is the law, this the condition, under which Mr. O'Connell was
speaking when he issued that recent address. Given such a case, similar
circumstances presupposed, he could not evade the obligations which they
impose. From such obligations there is no dispensation to be bought--no,
not at Rome; from the obligations observe, and those obligations, we
repeat, are--sincerity in the first place, and respectful or deferential
language in the second. Such were the duties; now let us look to the
performance. And that we may judge of _that_ with more advantage for
searching and appraising the qualities of this document, permit us to
suggest three separate questions, the first being this: What was the
occasion of the Address? Secondly, what was its ostensible object?
Thirdly, what are the arguments by which, as its means, the paper
travels towards that object?
First, as to the _occasion_ of the Address. We have said that the date,
viz., the 31st of October, is falsified. It was _not_ dated on the 31st
of October, but on or about the seventh day of November. Even that
falsehood, though at first sight trivial, is enough for suspicion. If X,
a known liar, utters a lie at starting, it is not for him to plead in
mitigation the apparent uselessness of the lie, it is for us to presume
out of the fact a use, where the fact exists. A leader in the French
Revolution protested often against bloodshed and other atrocities--not
as being too bad, but, on the contrary, as being too good, too precious
to be wasted upon ordinary occasions. And, on the same principle, we may
be sure that any habitual liar, who has long found the benefit of
falsehoods at his utmost need, will have formed too profound a reverence
for this powerful resource in a moment of perplexity ever to throw away
a falsehood, or to squander upon a caprice of the moment that lie which,
being seasonably employed, might have saved him from confusion. The
artist in lying is not the man to lie gratuitously. From the first,
therefore, satisfied ourselves that there was a lurking motive--the key
to this falsification of date--we paused to search it out. In that we
found little difficulty. For what was the professed object of this
Address? It was to meet and to overthrow two notions here represented as
great popular errors. But why at this time? Wherefore all this heat at
the present moment? Grant that the propositions denounced as erroneous
_were_ so in very deed, why should criminals standing under the shadow
of public vengeance ready to descend, so childishly misuse the interval,
mercifully allowed for their own defence, in reading lectures upon
abstract political speculations, confessedly bearing no relation to any
militant interest now in question? Quite as impertinent it would be,
when called upon for the answer upon 'Guilty or not Guilty?' to read a
section from the Council of Trent, or a rescript from Cardinal
Bellarmine. Yet the more extravagant was the logic of this proceeding,
the more urgent became the presumption of a covert motive, and that
motive we soon saw to be this. Let the reader weigh it, and the good
sense of the man who at such a moment could suffer such a motive to
prevail. Thus it is: when Clontarf was intercepted, and implicitly,
though not formally, all similar meetings were by that one act for ever
prohibited, the first days of terror were naturally occupied with the
panic of the conspirators, and in providing for their personal terrors.
But when the dust of this great uproar began to settle, and objects
again became distinguishable in natural daylight, the first consequence
which struck the affrighted men of the conspiracy was the chilling
effect of the Government policy upon the O'Connell rent; not the weekly
rent, applied nobody knows how, but the annual rent applied to Mr.
O'Connell's _private_ benefit. This was in jeopardy, and on the
following argument: Originally this rent had been levied as a
compensation to Mr. O'Connell in his character of Irish barrister--not
for services rendered or _to be_ rendered, but for current services
continually being rendered in Parliament from session to session, for
expenses incident to that kind of duty, and also as an indemnification
for the consequent loss of fees at the Irish Bar. Yet now, in 1843,
having ceased to attend his duty in Parliament, Mr. O'Connell could no
longer claim in that senatorial character. Such a pretension would be
too gross for the understanding even of a Connaught peasant. And in
_that_ there was a great loss. For the allegation of a Parliamentary
warfare, under the vague idea of pushing forward good bills for Ireland,
or retarding bad ones, had been a pleasant and easy labour to the parish
priests. It was not necessary to horsewhip[19] their flocks too
severely. If all was not clear to 'my children's' understanding, at
least my children had no mutinous demur in a positive shape ready for
service. Recusants there were, and sturdy ones, but they could put no
face on their guilt, and their sin was not contagious. Unhappily, from
this indefinite condition of merit Mr. O'Connell himself had translated
his claim to a very distinct one founded upon a clear, known, absolute
attempt to coerce the Government into passive collusion with prospective
treason. This attempt, said the peasantry, will the Government stand, or
will it not? 'Why, then,' replied the Government, on the 17th of
October, 'we will _not_.'
The aristocracy of Ireland may not have done their duty as regards the
Repeal; it is too certain that they have not, because they have done
nothing at all. But it is also certain that their very uttermost would
have been unavailing for one principal object concerned. Other great
objects, however, might have been attained. Foreign nations might have
been disabused of their silly delusions on the Irish relations to
England, although the Irish peasantry could _not_. The monstrous
impression also upon many English and Scotch parties, that a general
unity of sentiment prevailed in Ireland as to the desirableness of an
independent Parliament--this, this, we say loudly, would have been
dissipated, had every Irish county met by its gentry disavowing and
abominating all sentiments tending towards a purpose so guilty as
political disunion. Yet, in palliation of this most grievous failure,
we, in the spirit of perfect candour, will remind our readers of the
depressing effect too often attending one flagrant wound in any system
of power or means. Let a man lose by a sudden blow--by fire, by
shipwreck, or by commercial failure--a sum of twenty thousand pounds,
that being four-fifths of his entire property, how often it is found
that mere dejection of mind will incapacitate him from looking
cheerfully after the remaining fifth! And this though it is now become
far more essential to his welfare; and, secondly, upon a motion
tending upwards and not downwards, he would have regarded five
thousand pounds as a precious treasure worthy of his efforts, whether
for protection or for improvement. Something analogous to this weighs
down the hearty exertions of the Irish gentry. Met at the very
threshold, affronted at starting, by this insufferable tyranny of
priestly interference--humiliated and stung to the heart by the
consciousness that those natural influences which everywhere else
settle indefeasibly upon property, are in Ireland intercepted,
filched, violently robbed and pocketed by a body of professional
nuisances sprung almost universally from paupers--thus disinherited of
their primary rights, thus pillaged, thus shorn like Samson of those
natural ornaments in which resided their natural strength, feeling
themselves (like that same Samson in the language of Milton) turned
out to the scorn of their countrymen as 'tame wethers' ridiculously
fleeced and mutilated--they droop, they languish as to all public
spirit; and whilst by temperament, by natural endowment, by continual
intercourse with the noble aristocracy of Britain (from whom also they
are chiefly descended), they _should_ be amongst the leading
chivalries of Europe, in very fact they are, for political or social
purposes, the most powerless gentry in existence. Acting in a
corporate capacity, they can do nothing. The malignant planet of this
low-born priesthood comes between them and the peasantry, eclipsing
oftentimes the sunshine of their comprehensive beneficence, and
_always_ destroying their power to discountenance[20] evil-doers. Here
is the sad excuse. But, for all that, we must affirm that, if the
Irish landed gentry do not yet come forward to retrieve the ground
which they have forfeited by inertia, history will record them as
passive colluders with the Dublin repealers. The evil is so
operatively deep, looking backward or forward, that we have purposely
brought it forward in a second aspect, viz., as contrasted with the
London press. For the one, as we have been showing, there is a strong
plea in palliation; for the other there is none.
Let us be frank. This is what we affirm, that it was, it is, it will be
hereafter, within the powers of the London press to have extinguished
the Repeal or any similar agitation; they could have done this, and this
they have _not_ done. But let us also not be misunderstood. Do we say
this in a spirit of disrespect? Are we amongst the parties who (when
characterizing the American press) infamously say, 'Let us, however,
look homewards to our own press, and be silent for very shame'? Are we
the people to join the vicious correspondent of an evening paper whom
but a week ago we saw denouncing the editor of the _Examiner_ newspaper
as a public nuisance, and recommending him as a fit subject of some
degrading punishment, for no better reason than that he had exercised
his undoubted right of exposing delinquencies or follies in a garrulous
lord? Far be such vilenesses from us. We honour the press of this
country. We know its constitution, and we know the mere impossibility
(were it only from the great capital required) that any but men of
honour and sensibilities and conspicuous talent, and men brilliantly
accomplished in point of education, should become writers or editors of
a _leading_ journal, or indeed of any daily journal. Here and there may
float _in gurgite vasto_ some atrocious paper lending itself upon system
to the villainies of private slander. But such a paper is sure to be an
inconsiderable one in the mere sense of property, and therefore,
by a logical consequence in our frame of society, _every_ way
inconsiderable--rising without effort, sinking without notice. In fact,
the whole staff and establishment of newspapers have risen in social
consideration within our own generation; and at this moment not merely
proprietors and editors, but reporters and other ministerial agents to
these vast engines of civility, have all ascended in their superior
orders to the highest levels of authentic responsibility.
We make these acknowledgments in the mere spirit of equity, and because
we disdain to be confounded with those rash persons who talk glibly of a
'licentious press' through their own licentious ignorance. Than
ignorance nothing is so licentious for rash saying or for obstinate
denying. The British press is _not_ licentious; neither in London nor in
Edinburgh is it ever licentious; and there is much need that it should
be otherwise, having at this time so unlimited a power over the public
mind. But the very uprightness of the leading journalists, and all the
other elements of their power, do but constitute the evil, do but
aggravate the mischief, where they happen to go astray; yes, in every
case where these journalists miss the narrow path of thoughtful
prudence. They _do_ miss it occasionally; they must miss it; and we
contend that they _have_ missed it at present. What they have done that
they ought _not_ to have done. Currency, buoyancy, they ought _not_ to
have impressed upon sedition, upon conspiracy, upon treason. Currency,
buoyancy, they _have_ impressed upon sedition, upon conspiracy, upon
treason.
As to Mr. O'Connell himself, it is useless, and it argues some thick
darkness of mind, to remonstrate or generally to address any arguments
from whatsoever quarter, which either appeal to a sense of truth, which,
secondly, manifest inconsistencies, or, thirdly, which argue therein a
tendency ruinous to himself. Let us think. Burke asserted of himself,
and to our belief truly, that having at different periods set his face
in different directions--now to the east, now to the west, now pointing
to purposes of relaxation or liberality, now again to purposes of
coercive and popular restraint--he had notwithstanding been uniform, if
measured upon a higher scale. Transcending objects, coinciding neither
instantly with the first, nor except by accident with the last, but
indifferently aided by aristocratic forces or by democratic, shifting
weights which sometimes called for accessories of gravity, sometimes for
subtraction, mighty fluctuating wheels which sometimes needed flywheels
to moderate or harmonize, sometimes needed concurrent wheels to urge or
aggravate their impetus--these were the powers which he had found
himself summoned to calculate, to check, to support, the vast algebraic
equation of government; for this he had strengthened substantially by
apparent contrarieties of policy; and in a system of watch-work so
exquisite as to vary its fine balances eternally, eternally he had
consulted by redressing the errors emergent, by varying the poise in
order that he might _not_ vary the equipoise, by correcting
inequalities, or by forestalling extremes. That was a man of heroic
build, and of him it might be said at his death, 'Truly this man was a
son of Anak.' Now, of Mr. O'Connell a man might affirm something
similar; that as with regard to Edmund Burke it is altogether useless to
detect contradictions in form, seeing that he knows of this, that he
justifies this, glories in this, vehemently demands praise for this
contradiction, as all discord is harmony not understood, planned in the
letter and overruled in the spirit; so may O'Connell say, 'Gentlemen,
grubs, reptiles, vermin, trouble not yourselves to find out
contradictions or discords in my conduct; vex not your slender faculties
by arraying hosts of promises that defeat promises, or principles that
destroy principles--you shall not need to labour; I will make you a
present of three huge canisters laden and running over with the flattest
denials in one breath of that which I affirmed in another. But, like
Edmund Burke, I register my conduct by another table and by its final
result. On the dial which you see, the hands point thus and thus; but
upon a higher and transcendent dial these fingers do but precipitate or
retard one gigantic hand, pointing always and monotonously to the unity
of a perfect selfishness. The everlasting tacking in my course gives me
often the air of retrograding and losing; but, in fact, these
retrogressions are momentary, these losings of my object are no more
than seeming, are still but the same stealthy creeping up under cover of
frequent compliances with the breeze that happens to thwart me, towards
the one eternal pole of my own self-interest; that is the pole-star
which only never sets, and I flatter myself that amidst vast apparent
wanderings or multiplied divergences there will be detected by the eye
of the philosopher a consistency in family objects which is absolute, a
divine unity of selfishness.'
This we do not question. But to will is not to do; and Mr. O'Connell,
with a true loyalty to his one object of private aims, has _not_
maintained the consistency of his policy. All men know that he has
adventured within the limits of conspiracy; that could not be for his
benefit. He has touched even the dark penumbra of treason; that could
not but risk the sum of his other strivings. But he who has failed for
himself in a strife so absolute, for that only must be distrusted by
his countrymen.