The son of this chieftain was Rameses the Second, or the Great.

Following the example of his illustrious predecessor, he soon led

a numerous and chosen army to extend the Oriental conquests of the

Egyptians. He passed along the sea-coast of a country, which is, without

doubt, Syria, since the name of Rameses the Second is still found on

that shore, near the ancient Berytus and modern Beirut. He continued

his march into the interior, where we at length find him opposed by a

powerful force on the banks of a great river, probably the Euphrates.

On the opposite bank of the river is a vast and strongly-fortified city.

The battle is fought and won. The Orientals are defeated, and sue

for peace. The city is not represented as taken, yet sieges are often

sculptured on these walls, and the Egyptian army is always supplied with

scaling-ladders and the testudo. And what was this city? Was it Babylon?

Was it Nineveh? How wonderful is it at this remote period, to read for

the first time, the Gazettes of the Pharaohs! It does not appear to have

been the object of the Egyptians to make a permanent settlement in these

conquered countries. They laid waste the land, they accumulated plunder,

they secured peace by the dread of their arms, and, returning home with

the same rapidity that they advanced, they enjoyed and commemorated

their victories in the embellishment of their majestic cities. The

remainder of the long reign of Rameses the Great was passed in the

cultivation of the arts. A greater number of monuments, statues, and

temples bear the name of this king than of any other who ruled in Egypt,

and there are few remains of any city in that country where it is not

met with. To him we are indebted alike for the rock temples of Nubia,

and the inimitable obelisks of Luxor. He raised that splendid structure

on the western side of Thebes, supported by colossal statues, which is

foolishly styled the Memnonion; he made great additions to Karnak; he

built the temple of Osiris at Abydus; he adorned the great temple of

Memphis with colossal statues, for which he evidently had a passion;

and, finally, amid a vast number of other temples, especially in Nubia,

which it would be tedious to recount, and other remains, he cut the

famous Monticoelian obelisk now at Rome. Whatever may have been the

actions recorded of Sesostris, one thing is certain, that no Egyptian

king ever surpassed or equalled the second Rameses. Let us then allow

that history has painted in too glowing colours the actions of the

former-too great for the limited power of Europe--and remain persuaded,

that, so far from aiming at the conquest of the world, the utmost extent

of his march was confined to the countries bordering on Assyria, Arabia,

and part of Æthiopia, from which country he is represented as receiving

tribute. The conquests of Rameses the Second secured a long peace to

Egypt. The reigns of his two successors, however, are celebrated for the

creation of the great avenue of sphinxes at Thebes, leading from Luxor

to Karnak, a mile and a quarter in extent, a sumptuous evidence of the

prosperity of Egypt and of the genius of the Pharaohs. War, however,

broke out again under Rameses the Third, but certainly against another

power, and it would appear a naval power. Returning victorious, the

third Rameses added a temple to Karnak, and raised the temple and the

palace of Medcenet Habu. Here closes the most interesting period of

Egyptian history. A long succession of princes, many of whom bore the

name of Rameses, followed, but, so far as we can observe, they were

distinguished neither in architecture nor war. There are reasons which

may induce us to believe that the Trojan war happened during the reign

of the third Rameses. The poetical Memnon is not found in Egyptian

records. The name is not Egyptian, although it may be a corruption. It

is useless to criticise this invention of the lying Greeks, to whose

blinded conceit and carelessness we are indebted for the almost total

darkness in which the records of antiquity are enveloped. The famous

musical statue of Memnon is still seated on its throne, dignified and

serene, on the plain of Thebes. It is a colossus, fifty feet in height,

and the base of the figure is covered with inscriptions of the Greek and

Roman travellers, vouching that they had listened to the wild sunrise

melody. The learned and ingenious Mr. Wilkinson, who has resided at

Thebes upwards of ten years, studying the monuments of Egypt, appears to

me to have solved the mystery of this music. He informed me that having

ascended the statue, he discovered that some metallic substance had been

inserted in its breast, which, when struck, emitted a very melodious

sound. From the attitude of the statue, a priest might easily have

ascended in the night, and remained completely concealed behind the

mighty arms while he struck the breast; or, which is not improbable,

there was probably some secret way to ascend, now blocked up; for this

statue, with its remaining companion, although now isolated in their

situation, were once part of an enormous temple, the ruins of which yet

remain, and the plan of which may yet be traced. Thanks to the phonetic

system, we now know that this musical statue is one of Amunoph the

Second, who lived many centuries before the Trojan war. The truth is,

the Greeks, who have exercised almost as fatal an influence over modern

knowledge as they have a beneficial one over modern taste, had no

conception of anything more ancient than the Trojan war, except Chaos.

Chaos is a poetic legend, and the Trojan war was the squabble of a few

marauding clans.

‘Where are the records of the great Assyrian monarchy? Where are the

books of the Medes and Persians? Where the learned annals of Pharaohs?

‘Fortunate Jordan! Fortunate Ilissus! I have waded through the sacred

waters; with difficulty I traced the scanty windings of the classic

stream. Alas! for the exuberant Tigris; alas! for the mighty Euphrates;

alas! for the mysterious Nile!’

It is curious that no allusion whatever to the Jews has yet turned up on

any Egyptian monuments. But upon the walls of Medoenet Habu I observed,

more than once repeated, the Ark borne in triumph. This is not a

fanciful resemblance. It responds in every particular.

I have noticed the history of Ancient Egypt, because some knowledge of

it is necessary to illustrate Thebes. I quit a subject which, however

curious, is probably of too confined an interest for the general reader,

and I enter in his company the City of the Hundred Gates.

The Nile winds through the valley of Thebes--a valley formed by ranges

of mountains, which on one side defend it from the great Lybian desert,

and on the other from the rocky wilderness that leads to the Red Sea. On

each side of the stream are two great quarters of ruins. On the side of

the Red Sea are Luxor and Karnak, on the opposite bank the great temple

called the Memnonion, and the various piles which, under the general

title of Medoenet Habu, in all probability among other structures

comprise the principal palace of the more ancient Pharaohs. On the

Lybian side, also, are the cemeteries of the great city-the mummy caves

of Gornou, two miles in extent; above them, excavated in the mountains,

the tombs of the Queens, and in the adjacent valley of Beban-el-Maluk

the famous tombs of the Kings. The population of the City of the Hundred

Gates now consists of a few Arab families, who form four villages of

mud huts clustered round those gigantic columns and mighty obelisks, a

single one of which is sought for by the greatest sovereigns of Europe

for their palaces and museums as the rarest of curious treasures. Often,

indeed, have I seen a whole Arab village rising from the roof of a

single Egyptian temple. Dendera is an instance. The population of

Gornou, in number between three and four hundred, reside solely in the

tombs.

I think that Luxor, from its situation, first attracts the notice of the

traveller. It is close on the river, and is built on a lofty platform.

Its enormous columns are the first specimen of that colossal genius of

the Pharaohs which the Ptolemies never attempted to rival. The entrance

to this temple is through a magnificent propylon, that is, a portal

flanked by massy pyramidal moles. It is two hundred feet in breadth, and

rises nearly sixty feet above the soil. This gate is entirely covered

with sculpture, commemorating the triumph of Rameses the Great over the

supposed Assyrians. On each side of the portal are two colossal statues

of red granite, buried in the sand up to their shoulders, but measuring

thence, to the top of their crowns, upwards of twenty feet. On each side

of them, a little in advance, rise the two most perfect obelisks that

remain, also of red granite, and each about eighty feet high. From the

propylon you pass into a peristyle court, about two hundred and thirty

feet long by one hundred and seventy, the roof of which was once

supported by double rows of columns, many of which now remain; and so

on through other pyramidal gates and courts and porticoes and chambers

which are, in all probability, of a more ancient date than the gates and

obelisks and colossi first described, which last were perhaps added by

Rameses, who commemorated his triumph by rendering a celebrated building

still more famous.

From Luxor you proceed to Karnak, the other great division on this side

of the river, through an avenue of sphinxes considerably above a mile

in extent; and here I should observe that Egyptian sphinxes are either

_andro_ or _crio_ sphinxes, the one formed by the union of the lion with

the man, and the other of the lion with the ram. Their mystery is at

length penetrated. They are male and never female. They are male and

they are monarchs. This great avenue, extending from Luxor to Karnak,

was raised by the two immediate successors of the great Rameses, and

represents their long line of ancestry.

All the marvels of the world sink before the first entrance into Karnak.

It may vie with the Alps and the Andes. The obelisks of Luxor may be

unrivalled, the sculptures of Medcenet Habu more exquisite, the colossus

of Memnonion more gigantic, the paintings of the royal tombs more

curious and instructive, but criticism ceases before the multifarious

wonders of the halls and courts of Karnak and the mind is open only to

one general impression of colossal variety.

I well remember the morning I stood before the propylon, or chief

entrance of Karnak. The silver stars were still shining in the cold blue

heaven, that afforded a beautiful relief to the mighty structure, built

of a light yellow stone, and quite unstained by the winds of three

thousand years. The front of this colossal entrance is very much broader

than the front of our cathedral of St. Paul’s, and its height exceeds

that of the Trajan column. It is entirely without sculptures, a rare

omission, and doubtless intended, that the unity of the effect should

not be broken. The great door in the centre is sixty-four feet in

height.

Through this you pass into columned courts, which, in any other place,

would command undivided attention, until you at length arrive in front

of a second propylon. Ascending a flight of steps, you enter the great

hall of Karnak. The area of this hall is nearly fifty-eight thousand

square feet, and it has recently been calculated that four such churches

as our St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields might stand side by side in this

unrivalled chamber without occupying the whole space. The roof, formed

of single stones, compared with which the masses at Stonehenge would

appear almost bricks, has fallen in; but the one hundred and thirty-four

colossal columns which supported it, and which are considerably above

thirty feet in circumference, still remain, and, with the walls and

propyla, are completely covered with sculptured forms. I shall not

attempt to describe any other part of Karnak. The memory aches with

the effort; there are many buildings attached to it, larger than most

temples; there are an infinite number of gates, and obelisks, and

colossi; but the imagination cannot refrain from calling up some sacred

or heroic procession, moving from Luxor to Karnak, in melodious pomp,

through the great avenue of sphinxes, and ranging themselves in glorious

groups around the gigantic columns of this sublime structure.

What feudal splendour, and what Gothic ceremonies, what tilts and

tournaments, and what ecclesiastic festivals, could rival the vast, the

beautiful, and solemn magnificence of the old Egyptians?

Crossing the river to Western Thebes, we arrive at the two seated

colossi, one of which I have already noticed as the musical Memnon.

These doubtless once guarded the entrance of some temple more ancient

than any remaining, for they were raised by Amunoph the Second, a

predecessor, by some generations, of the great Rameses. They were,

doubtless, once seated on each side of a propylon, as at Luxor, and

in all probability were flanked by obelisks. Whether the temple were

destroyed for materials, for more recent structures, or whether it has

sunk under the accumulations of the slimy soil, may be decided by the

future excavator.

We arrive at the Memnonion. This temple was raised by Rameses the Great.

In the colossal Caryatides we recognise the same genius that excavated

the rocks of Ipsambul, and supported a cavern temple upon the heads of

giants. From the Memnonion came the statue that is now in the British

Museum. But this figure, though a fine specimen of Egyptian sculpture,

sinks, so far as magnitude is concerned, into insignificance when

compared with the statue of Rameses himself, which, broken off at the

waist, now lies prostrate in the precincts of the sanctuary. This is

probably the most huge colossus that the Egyptians ever constructed. The

fragment is of red granite, and of admirable workmanship. Unfortunately

the face is entirely obliterated. The statue lies upon its back, and

in its fall has destroyed all the temple within reach. It measures more

than sixty feet round the shoulders, the breadth of the instep is nearly

seven feet, and the hieroglyphical figures engraven on the arm are large

enough for a man to walk in.

Perhaps the most interesting group of ruins at Thebes is the quarter

of Medcenet Habu. Most of the buildings are of the time of Rameses the

Third.

The sculptured walls of the great temples, covered with battles,

chariots, captives, and slaves, have been worthily described by the

vivid pen of Mr. Hamilton. They celebrate the victorious campaigns of

the monarch. Here also the Third Rameses raised his palace. And it is

curious, among other domestic subjects, that we find represented on the

walls, in a very admirable style, Rameses playing chess with his Queen.

Chess is, probably, a most ancient Oriental game. Rameses the Third

lived before the Trojan war, to which the Greeks, as usual, ascribe the

invention of chess.

The sepulchres of Thebes still remain to be described, a theme more

fertile in interest and instruction than even its palaces and temples.

The arts of the Egyptians must be studied in their tombs, and to learn

how this remarkable people lived, we must even go where they were

buried. To cite no other instances in a sketch which is already too

long, it is from a painting in a tomb near Beni-hassan that we learn how

the Egyptians procured from the distant quarries of Nubia those masses

of stone and granite with which they raised the columns of Karnak and

the obelisks of Luxor.

But we must conclude. We have touched a virgin subject rich with

delightful knowledge, and if our readers be not wearied with wandering

on the banks of the Nile, we may perhaps again introduce them to the

company of the Pharaohs.

SHOUBRA

ORIENTAL palaces, except perhaps in the great Indian peninsula, do not

realise the dreams and glittering visions of the Arabian Nights, or

indeed the authentic histories written in the flush and fullness of

the success of the children of the desert, the Tartar and the Saracen.

Commerce once followed in the train of the conquerors of Asia, and

the vast buildings which they hastily threw up of slight and perishing

materials, were filled, not only with the plunder of the East, but

furnished with all the productions of art and curious luxury, which the

adventurous spirit of man brought from every quarter of the globe to

Samarcand and Bagdad. The site of these mighty capitals is almost erased

from the map of the modern traveller; but tribute and traffic have also

ceased to sustain even the dilapidated serail of the once omnipotent

Stamboul, and, until very recently, all that remained of the splendour

of the Caliphs of Egypt was the vast Necropolis, which still contains

their palatial sepulchres.

How the bold Roumelian peasant who in our days has placed himself on

the ancient throne of the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies, as Napoleon on

the seat of the Merovingian kings, usurping political power by military

prowess, lodged and contented himself in the valley of the Nile, was

not altogether an uninteresting speculation; and it was with no common

curiosity that some fifteen years ago, before he had conquered Syria and

scared Constantinople, I made one morning a visit to Shoubra, the palace

of Mehemet Ali.

Nothing can be conceived more animated and picturesque than Cairo during

the early morning or at night. It seems the most bustling and populous

city in the world. The narrow streets, abounding with bazaars, present

the appearance of a mob, through which troops of richly dressed

cavaliers force with difficulty their prancing way, arrested often in

their course by the procession of a harem returning from the bath, the

women enveloped in inscrutable black garments, and veils and masks of

white linen, and borne along by the prettiest donkeys in the world. The

attendant eunuchs beat back the multitude; even the swaggering horsemen,

with their golden and scarlet jackets, rich shawls and scarfs, and

shining arms, trampling on those around, succeed in drawing aside; but

all efforts are vain, for at the turning of the street appears the first

still solemn visage of a long string of tall camels bearing provisions

to the citadel, a Nubian astride on the neck of the leader, and beating

a wild drum, to apprise the people of his approach. The streets, too,

in which these scenes occur are in themselves full of variety and

architectural beauty. The houses are lofty and latticed, abounding in

balconies; fountains are frequent and vast and as richly adorned

as Gothic shrines; sometimes the fortified palace of one of the old

Mamlouks, now inhabited by a pasha, still oftener the exquisite shape of

an Arabian mosque. The temples of Stamboul cannot vie with the fanes

of Cairo. Their delicate domes and airy cupolas, their lofty minarets

covered with tracery, and the flowing fancy of their arabesques recalled

to me the glories of the Alhambra, the fantastic grace of the Alcazars

and the shrines of Seville and Cordova.

At night the illuminated coffee-houses, the streaming population, each

person carrying a lantern, in an atmosphere warmer and softer than our

conservatories, and all the innocent amusements of an out-door life--the

Nubian song, the Arabian tale, the Syrian magic--afford a different, but

not less delightful scene.

It was many hours before noon, however, that I made my first visit to

Shoubra, beneath a sky as cloudless as it remained during the whole six

months I was in Egypt, during which time I have no recollection that we

were favoured by a single drop of rain; and yet the ever-living breeze

on the great river, and the excellent irrigation of the earth, produce

a freshness in the sky and soil, which are missed in other Levantine

regions, where there is more variety of the seasons.

Shoubra is about four or five miles from the metropolis. It rises on the

banks of the Nile, and the road to it from Cairo is a broad but shady

avenue, formed of sycamores, of noble growth and colour; on one side

delightful glimpses of the river, with its palmy banks and sparkling

villages, and on the other, after a certain tract of vivid vegetation,

the golden sands of the desert, and the shifting hillocks which it

forms; or, perhaps, the grey peaks of some chain of pyramids.

The palace of Shoubra is a pile of long low buildings looking to the

river--moderate in its character, and modest in its appointments; but

clean, orderly, and in a state of complete repair; and, if we may

use such an epithet with reference to oriental life, comfortable. It

possesses all the refined conveniences of European manners, of which the

pasha at the time I am referring to was extremely proud. Most of these

had been the recent gift of the French government, and his highness

occasionally amused his guests--some sheikh from Arabia, or some emir

from the Lebanon--by the exhibition of some scientific means of domestic

accommodation with which use has made us familiar, but which I was

assured had sensibly impressed the magnates of the desert and the

mountain with the progress of modern civilisation.

The gardens of Shoubra, however, are vast, fanciful, and kept in

admirable order. They appeared to me in their character also entirely

oriental. You enter them by long, low, winding walks of impenetrable

shade; you emerge upon an open ground sparkling with roses, arranged in

beds of artificial forms, and leading to gilded pavilions and painted

kiosks. Arched walks of orange trees, with the fruit and the flowers

hanging over your head, lead again to fountains, or to some other

garden-court, where myrtles border beds of tulips, and you wander on

mosaic walks of polished pebbles. A vase flashes amid a group of dark

cypresses, and you are invited to repose under a Syrian walnut tree by a

couch or a summer-house.

The most striking picture, however, of this charming retreat is a lake

surrounded by light cloisters of white marble, and in its centre a

fountain of crocodiles, carved in the same material. That material as

well as the art, however, are European. It was Carrara that gave the

pure and glittering blocks, and the Tuscan chisel called them into life.

It is a pity that the honourable board of directors, in their recent

offering of the silver fountain to the pasha, had not been aware of

the precedent thus afforded by his highness’s own creation for the

introduction of living forms into Moslem sculpture and carving. They

might have varied their huge present with advantage. Indeed, with the

crocodile and the palm-tree, surely something more beautiful and not

less characteristic than their metallic mausoleum might easily have been

devised.

This marble pavilion at Shoubra, indeed, with its graceful, terraced

peristyles, its chambers and divans, the bright waters beneath, with

their painted boats, wherein the ladies of the harem chase the gleaming

shoals of gold and silver fish, is a scene worthy of a sultan; but my

attendant, a Greek employed in the garden, told me I ought to view it

on some high festival, crowded by the court in their rich costumes, to

appreciate all its impressive beauty. This was a scene not reserved

for me, yet my first visit to Shoubra closed with an incident not

immemorable.

I had quitted the marble pavilion and was about to visit the wilderness

where roam, in apparent liberty, many rare animals, when I came,

somewhat suddenly, on a small circular plot into which several walks

emptied, cut through a thick hedge of myrtle. By a sun-dial stood a

little man, robust, though aged, rather stout, and of a very cheerful

countenance; his attire plain and simple, a pelisse of dark silk, and a

turban white as his snowy beard; he was in merry conversation with his

companion, who turned out to be his jester. In the background,

against the myrtle wall, stood three or four courtiers in rich

dresses--courtiers, for the little old man was their princely

master--the great Pasha of Egypt.

EDEN AND LEBANON

I FOUND myself high among the mountains, and yet amid a series of green

slopes. All around me sparkled with cultivation--vineyards, gardens,

groves of young mulberry trees, clustering groups of the sycamore and

the walnut. Falling around, the cascades glittered in the sun, until,

reaching the bottom of the winding valley, they mingled with the waters

of a rivulet that glided through a glade of singular vividness.

On the broad bosom of a sunny hill, behind which rose a pyramid of bare

rock, was a most beautiful village--flat cottages with terraced roofs,

shaded by spreading trees, and surrounded by fruit and flowers. A

cerulean sky above; the breath of an infinite variety of fragrant herbs

around; and a land of silk and wine; everywhere the hum of bees and

the murmur of falling streams; while, on the undulating down, a band of

beauteous children were frolicking with the kids.

The name of this village, the fairest spot in the region of Lebanon, is

_Eden_, which, rendered from the Arabic into the English tongue, means a

‘Dwelling of Delight.’

I ascended the peak that overhung this village. I beheld ridges of

mountains succeeding each other in proportionate pre-eminence, until the

range of the eternal glaciers, with their lustrous cones, flashed in the

Syrian sun. I descended into the deep and solemn valleys, skirted the

edges of rocky precipices, and toiled over the savage monotony of the

dreary table-land. At length, on the brow of a mountain, I observed the

fragments of a gloomy forest--cedar, and pine, and cypress. The wind

moaning through its ancient avenues and the hoarse roar of a cataract

were the only sounds that greeted me.

In the front was a scanty group of gigantic trees, that seemed the

relics of some pre-Adamite grove. Their grey and massive trunks, each of

which must have been more than twelve yards in girth, were as if quite

dead; while, about twenty feet from the ground, they divided into five

or six huge limbs, each equal to a single tree, but all, as it were,

lifeless amid their apparent power.

Bare of all foliage, save on their ancient crests--black, blasted,

riven, and surrounded by deep snows--behold the trees that built the

palaces of Solomon!

When I recall the scene from which I had recently parted, and contrasted

it with the spectacle before me, it seemed that I had quitted the

innocence and infancy of Nature to gaze on its old age--of exhausted

passions and desolate neglect.

A SYRIAN SKETCH

THE sun was quivering above the horizon, when I strolled forth from

Jaffa to enjoy the coming breeze amid the beautiful gardens that environ

that agreeable town. Riding along the previous day, my attention had

been attracted by a marble gate, the fragment of some old temple, that

now served as the entrance to one of these enclosures, their secure

boundary otherwise formed by a picturesque and impenetrable hedge of

Indian fig.

It is not a hundred yards from the town; behind it stretches the plain

of Ramie--the ancient Arimathea-broad and fertile, and, at this moment,

green; for it was just after the latter rains, when Syria is most

charming. The caravan track winding through it led to Jerusalem.

The air was exquisitely soft and warm, and sweet with the perfume of

the orange bowers. I passed through the marble portal, adorned with some

florid yet skilful sculptures, and found myself in a verdant wilderness

of fruit-trees, rising in rich confusion from the turf, through which

not a single path seemed to wander. There were vast groups of orange

and lemon-trees, varied occasionally with the huge offspring of the

citron-tree, and the glowing produce of the pomegranate; while, ever

and anon, the tall banana raised its head aloft with its green or

golden clusters, and sometimes the graceful and languid crest of the

date-bearing palm.

While I was in doubt as to the direction I should bend my steps, my

ear was caught by the wild notes of Turkish music; and, following the

sounds, I emerged upon a plot of turf, clear from trees, in the middle

of which was a fountain, and, by its margin, seated on a delicate

Persian carpet, a venerable Turk. Some slaves were near him, one of

whom, at a little distance, was playing on a rude lyre; in the master’s

left hand was a volume of Arabian poetry, and he held in his right the

serpentine tube of his narghileh, or Syrian pipe. When he beheld me, he

saluted me with all the dignity of the Orient, pressing his hand to his

heart, but not rising. I apologised for my intrusion; but he welcomed me

with serene cordiality, and invited me to share his carpet and touch his

pipe.

Some time elapsed in answering those questions respecting European

horses and European arms, wherein the Easterns delight. At length, the

solemn and sonorous voice of the muezzin, from the minarets of Jaffa,

came floating on the air. The sun had set; and, immediately, my host and

his companions performed their ablutions in the fountain; and kneeling

towards Mecca, repeated their accustomed prayers. Then rising, the

Turkish aga, for such was his rank, invited me to enjoy the evening

breeze, and accompany him in a walk round his garden.

As we proceeded, my companion plucked an orange, and taking a knife from

his girdle, and cutting the fruit in half, offered me one moiety, and

threw the other away. More than once he repeated this ceremony, which

somewhat excited my surprise. At length he inquired my opinion of his

fruit. I enlarged, and with sincerity, on its admirable quality, the

racy sweetness of its flavour, which I esteemed unequalled; but I could

not refrain from expressing my surprise, that of fruit so exquisite he

should studiously waste so considerable a portion.

‘Effendi,’ said the Turk, with a grave though gracious smile, ‘to

friends we give only the sunny side.’

THE BOSPHORUS

THE stranger whose felicity it has been to float between the shores of

the Bosphorus will often glance back with mingled feelings of regret

and satisfaction to the memory of those magical waters. This splendid

strait, stretching from the harbour of Constantinople to the mouth

of the Euxine, may be about twenty miles in length, and its ordinary

breadth seldom exceeds one mile. The old Greek story tells that one

might hear the birds sing on the opposite shore. And thus two great

continents are divided by an ocean stream narrower than many rivers

that are the mere boundaries of kingdoms. Yet it is strange that the

character of these two famous divisions of our earth is nowhere more

marked than on the shores of the Bosphorus. The traveller turns without

disappointment from the gay and glittering shores of Europe to the

sublimer beauty and the dusky grandeur of Asia.

The European side, until you advance within four or five miles of

the Black Sea, is almost uninterruptedly studded with fanciful and

ornamental buildings: beautiful villages, and brilliant summer palaces,

and bright kiosks, painted in arabesque, and often gilt. The green

background to the scene is a sparkling screen of terraced gardens,

rising up a chain of hills whose graceful undulations are crowned with

groves of cypress and of chestnut, occasionally breaking into fair

and delicate valleys, richly wooded, and crossed by a grey and antique

aqueduct.

But in Asia the hills rise into mountains, and the groves swell into

forests. Everything denotes a vast, rich and prolific land, but there

is something classical, antique, and even mysterious in its general

appearance. An air of stillness and deep repose pervades its less

cultivated and less frequented shores; and the very eagles, as they

linger over the lofty peak of ‘the Giant’s grave,’ seem conscious that

they are haunting some heroic burial-place.

I remember that one of the most strange, and even sublime, spectacles

that I ever beheld occurred to me one balmy autumnal eve as I returned

home in my caique from Terapia, a beautiful village on the Bosphorus,

where I had been passing the day, to Pera. I encountered an army of

dolphins, who were making their way from the Ægean and the Sea of

Marmora through the Strait to the Euxine. They stretched right across

the water, and I should calculate that they covered, with very little

interval, a space of three or four miles. It is very difficult to form

an estimate of their number, but there must, of course, have been

many thousands. They advanced in grand style, and produced an immense

agitation: the snorting, spouting, and splashing, and the wild panting

rush, I shall never forget. As it was late, no other caique was in

sight, and my boatmen, apprehensive of being run down, stopped to defend

themselves with their oars. I had my pistols with me, and found great

sport, as, although the dolphins made every effort to avoid us, there

were really crowds always in shot. Whenever one was hit, general

confusion ran through the whole line. They all flounced about with

increased energy, ducked their round heads under water, and turned

up their arrowy tails. We remained thus stationary for nearly

three-quarters of an hour, and very diverting I found the delay. At

length the mighty troop of strangers passed us, and, I suppose, must

have arrived at the Symplegades about the same time that I sought the

elegant hospitality of the British Palace at Pera.

AN INTERVIEW WITH A GREAT TURK

WHEN I was in Egypt the great subject of political speculation was the

invasion of Syria; not that the object of the formation of the camp at

Alexandria was generally known; on the contrary, it was a secret,-but a

secret shared by many ears. Forty thousand well-disciplined troops were

assembled at Cairo; and it was whispered at Court that Abdallah Pasha of

Acre might look to himself, a young and valiant chief, by-the-bye, whom

I well know, but indulging in dissipation, extraordinary even in the

Levant. I was exceedingly anxious of becoming in some manner attached

to this expedition; and as I was not without influence in the proper

quarters, there appeared little probability of my wish not being

gratified. With these views I remained in Egypt longer than I had

intended, but it would seem that the invaders were not quite as ardent

as their intended volunteer, for affairs at Alexandria progressed but

indifferently. Orders and counter-orders, marches and counter-marches,

boats pressed on the Nile for the passage of troops from the capital,

which were all liberated the next day, many divans and much smoking; but

still the troops remained within pistol-shot of the citadel, and months

glided away apparently without any material advancement.

I had often observed that although there was in most subjects an

excellent understanding between the two Pashas, Mehemet Ali and Ibrahim,

a degree of petty jealousy existed between them on the point of their

mutual communications with foreigners; so that if I happened one morning

to attend the divan of the Grand Pasha, as the Franks styled the father,

I was sure, on some excuse or other, of being summoned the next day to

the levee of the son; I was therefore not surprised when, one day, on my

return from paying my respects to the divan at the citadel of Cairo,

I found a Nubian eunuch in attendance at my quarters, telling me that

Ibrahim Pasha was anxious to see me.

I accordingly repaired without loss of time to the sumptuous palace of

that chieftain: and being ushered into his presence, I found the future

conqueror of Syria attended only by his dragoman, his secretary; and an

aide-de-camp.

A pipe was immediately brought me, but Ibrahim himself did not smoke.

After the usual compliments, ‘Effendi,’ said Ibrahim, ‘do you think the

English horses would live in Egypt?’

I was too practised an observer of the Turkish character to suppose that

English horses were really the occasion of my summons. The Turks are

very diplomatic, and are a long time coming to the point. I answered,

however, that, with English grooms, I was of opinion that English horses

would flourish in any climate. A curt, dry, uninteresting conversation

about English horses was succeeded by some queries, which I had answered

fifty times before, about English pistols: and then came a sly joke or

two about English women. At length the point of the interview began to

poke its horns out of this shell of tittle-tattle.

‘If you want to go with the army,’ said his Highness, ‘’tis I who am

the person to speak to. They know nothing about those things up there’

(meaning the citadel).

I answered his Highness that I had attended the divan merely as a matter

of ceremony, and that I had not interchanged a word with the Grand Pasha

on the subject of the expedition.

‘I suppose you talked with Boghaz?’ said Ibrahim.

Boghaz was the favourite of Mehemet Ali.

‘Neither with Boghaz nor any one else. Your Highness having once

graciously promised me that I should attend you, I should have thought

it both impertinent and unnecessary to apply to any other person

whatever.’

‘Tahib!’ exclaimed his Highness, which meant that he was satisfied.

‘After all, I do not know whether the army will march at all. You have

been in Syria?’

I answered, in the affirmative, a question which had often been

addressed to me.

‘Do you think I could march as far as Gaza?’ inquired Ibrahim, with a

smile.

This was a question of mockery. It was like asking whether the Life

Guards could take Windsor. I therefore only returned the smile, and said

that I did not doubt the enemy would agree to settle affairs upon that

condition.

‘Tahib! Well I think I can march as far as they speak Arabic!’ This was

a favourite phrase of his Highness.

I answered that I hoped, if I had the honour of attending his Highness,

the army would march till we could see another ocean.

‘It is all talk up there,’ replied Ibrahim; ‘but my life is a life of

deeds.’

‘Words are very good things sometimes,’ I replied; ‘that is, if we keep

marching at the same time.’

‘God is great!’ exclaimed Ibrahim; and looking round to his officers,

‘the Effendi speaks truth; and thus it was that Redchid beat the beys.’

Ibrahim alluded to the Albanian campaign of the preceding year, when the

energy of the grand vizier crushed the rebellious beys of the ancient

Epirus.

‘What do you think of Redchid?’ he inquired.

‘I think he is worthy of being your Highness’s rival.’

‘He has always been victorious,’ said Ibrahim; ‘but I think his sabre is

made of gold. That will not do with me.’

‘It’s a pity,’ I observed, ‘that if your Highness find time to march

into Syria, you had not acted simultaneously with the Albanians, or with

the Pasha of Scutari.’

‘May I kill my mother but it is true; but up there, they will watch, and

watch, and watch, till they fall asleep.’

The truth is, the Orientals have no idea of military diversions; and

even if they combine, each strives to be the latest in the field, in

order that he may take advantage of the other’s success or discomfiture.

Mehemet Ali, at an immense expenditure, had excited two terrible revolts

in European Turkey, and then waited to invade Syria until the armies of

the Porte were unemployed. The result with some will justify his policy;

but in the conquest of Syria, the truth is, Ibrahim himself used a

golden sabre, and the year, before, the contingents of the pashas, whom

he was obliged to bribe, were all busied in Europe.

The night previous to this conversation the style of the military

oath of the Egyptian army had been altered; and the troops, instead of

swearing allegiance to the Sultan, had pledged themselves to Mehemet

Ali. The Grand Pasha was so nervous about this change, that the order

for it was countermanded twice in four hours; however, what with

gratuities to the troops, and the discreet distribution of promotion

among the officers, everything went off very quietly. There was also

a rumour that Mehemet Ali intended immediately to assume the title of

_Caliph_.

This piece of information is necessary to explain the following striking

observation of Ibrahim Pasha.

‘Effendi, do you think that a man can conquer Syria, who is not called a

caliph? Will it make 40,000 men 80,000?’

I replied, that I thought the assumption of the title would have a

beneficial effect at foreign courts.

‘Bah! before the Yahoos hear of it, I shall be at Damascus. Up there,

they are always busying themselves with forms. The eagle in his flight

does not think of his shadow on the earth!’

MUNICH

THE destiny of nations appears to have decreed that a society should

periodically, though rarely, flourish, characterised by its love of

the Fine Arts, and its capacity of ideal creation. These occasional and

brilliant ebullitions of human invention elevate the race of man; they

purify and chasten the taste of succeeding generations; and posterity

accepts them as the standard of what is choice, and the model of what is

excellent.

Classic Greece and Christian Italy stand out in our universal annals

as the epochs of the Arts. During the last two centuries, while manners

have undergone a rapid transition, while physical civilisation has

advanced in an unprecedented degree, and the application of science to

social life has diverted the minds of men from other pursuits, the Fine

Arts have decayed and vanished.

I wish to call the attention of my countrymen to another great movement

in the creative mind of Europe; one yet young and little recognised, but

not inferior, in my opinion, either to that of Athens or of Florence.

It was on a cloudless day of the autumn of last year, that I found

myself in a city that seemed almost visibly rising beneath my eye. The

street in which I stood was of noble dimensions, and lined on each side

with palaces or buildings evidently devoted to public purposes. Few

were completely finished: the sculptor was working at the statues

that adorned their fronts; the painter was still touching the external

frescoes; and the scaffold of the architect was not in every instance

withdrawn. Everywhere was the hum of art and artists. The Byzantine

style of many of these buildings was novel to me in its modern

adaptation, yet very effective. The delicate detail of ornament

contrasted admirably with the broad fronts and noble façades which they

adorned. A church with two very lofty towers of white marble, with their

fretted cones relieved with cerulean blue, gleamed in the sun; and

near it was a pile not dissimilar to the ducal palace at Venice, but of

nobler and more beautiful proportions, with its portal approached by a

lofty flight of steps, and guarded by the colossal statues of poets and

philosophers--suitably guarded, for it was the National Library.

As I advanced, I found myself in squares and circuses, in every instance

adorned by an obelisk of bronze or the equestrian statue of some royal

hero: I observed a theatre with a lofty Corinthian portico, and a

pediment brilliantly painted in fresco with designs appropriate to its

purpose; an Ionic museum of sculpture, worthy to enshrine the works of

a Phidias or a Praxiteles; and a palace for the painter, of which I was

told the first stone had been rightly laid on the birthday of Raffaelle.

But what struck me most in this city, more than its galleries, temples,

and palaces, its magnificent buildings, splendid paintings, and

consummate statues, was the all-pervading presence and all-inspiring

influence of living and breathing Art. In every street, a school: the

atelier of the sculptor open, the studio of the painter crowded: devoted

pupils, aspiring rivals: enthusiasm, emulation, excellence. Here

the long-lost feudal-art of colouring glass re-discovered; there

fresco-painting entirely revived, and on the grandest scale; while the

ardent researches of another man of genius successfully analyses the

encaustic tenting of Herculaneum, and secures the secret process for the

triumph of modern Art. I beheld a city such as I had mused over amid the

crumbling fanes of Pericles, or, aided alike by memory and fancy, had

conjured up in the palaces and gardens of the Medici.

Such is Munich, a city which, half a century ago, was the gross and

corrupt capital of a barbarous and brutal people. Baron Reisbech, who

visited Bavaria in 1780, describes the Court of Munich as one not at all

more advanced than those of Lisbon and Madrid. A good-natured prince,

fond only of show and thinking only of the chase; an idle, dissolute,

and useless nobility; the nomination to offices depending on women

and priests; the aristocracy devoted to play, and the remainder of the

inhabitants immersed in scandalous debauch.

With these recollections of the past, let us enter the palace of the

present sovereign. With habits of extreme simplicity, and a personal

expenditure rigidly economical, the residence of the King of Bavaria,

when completed, will be the most extensive and the most sumptuous palace

in the world. But, then, it is not merely the palace of a king: it is

a temple dedicated to the genius of a nation. The apartments of state,

painted in fresco on the grandest scale, bold in design, splendid in

colour, breathe the very Teutonic soul. The subjects are taken from the

‘Nibelungenlied,’ the Gothic epic, and commemorate all the achievements

of the heroic Siegfried, and all the adventures of the beautiful

Chrimhilde. The heart of a German beats as he gazes on the forms and

scenes of the Teutonic Iliad; as he beholds Haghen the fierce, and

Dankwart the swift; Volker, the minstrel knight, and the beautiful and

haughty Brunhilda. But in point of harmonious dimension and august

beauty, no chamber is perhaps more imposing than the Kaiser Saal, or

Hall of the Sovereigns. It is, I should think, considerably above one

hundred feet in length, broad and lofty in exact proportion. Its

roof is supported on either side by columns of white marble; the

inter-columniations are filled by colossal statues, of gilded brass, of

the electors and kings of the country. Seated on his throne, at the end

of this imperial chamber, Louis of Bavaria is surrounded by the solemn

majesty of his ancestors. These statues are by Schwanthaler, a sculptor

who to the severe and classic taste and profound sentiment of his

master, Thorwaldsen, unites an exuberance of invention which has filled

Munich with the greatest works since Phidias. Cornelius, Julius Schnorr,

and Hess are the principal painters who have covered the galleries,

churches, and palaces of Munich with admirable frescoes. The celebrated

Klenze is known throughout Europe as the first of living architects, and

the favourite of his sovereign when that sovereign did not wear a crown;

but we must not forget the name of Gartner, the architect who has

revived the Byzantine style of building with such admirable effect.

But it was in the private apartments of the king that I was peculiarly

impressed with the supreme genius of Schwanthaler. These chambers, eight

in number, are painted in encaustic, with subjects from the Greek

poets, of which Schwanthaler supplied the designs. The ante-chambers are

devoted to Orpheus and Hesiod, and the ornaments are in the oldest

Greek style; severely simple; archaic, but not rude; the figures of the

friezes in outline, and without relief. The saloon of reception, on the

contrary, is Homeric; and in its colouring, design, and decoration, as

brilliant, as free, and as flowing as the genius of the great Mæonian.

The chamber of the throne is entirely adorned with white bas-reliefs,

raised on a ground of dead gold; the subjects Pindaric; not inferior

in many instances to the Attic remains, and characterised, at the same

time, by a singular combination of vigour and grace. Another saloon is

devoted to Æschylus, and the library to Sophocles. The gay, wild muse of

Aristophanes laughs and sings in his Majesty’s dressing-room; while

the king is lulled to slumber by the Sicilian melodies and the soothing

landscapes of Theocritus.

Of these chambers, I should say that they were a perfect creation of

Art. The rooms themselves are beautifully proportioned; the subjects of

their decorations are the most interesting in every respect that could

be selected; and the purity, grace, and invention of the designs, are

equalled only by their colouring, at the same time the most brilliant

and harmonious that can be conceived; and the rich fancy of the

arabesques and other appropriate decorations, which blend with all

around, and heighten the effect of the whole. Yet they find no mean

rivals in the private chambers of the queen, decorated in an analogous

style, but entirely devoted to the poets of her own land. The

Minnesingers occupy her first apartments, but the brilliant saloon is

worthy of Wieland, whose Oberon forms it frieze; while the bedchamber

gleams with the beautiful forms and pensive incidents of Goethe’s

esoteric pen. Schiller has filled the study with his stirring characters

and his vigorous incidents. Groups from ‘Wallenstein’ and ‘Wilhelm Tell’

form the rich and unrivalled ceiling: while the fight of the dragon and

the founding of the bell, the innocent Fridolin, the inspired maiden of

Orleans, breathe in the compartments of the walls.

When I beheld these refined creations, and recalled the scenes and

sights of beauty that had moved before me in my morning’s wanderings, I

asked myself, how Munich, recently so Boeotian, had become the capital

of modern Art; and why a country of limited resources, in a brief space,

and with such facility and completeness, should have achieved those

results which had so long and utterly eluded the desires of the richest

and most powerful community in the world?

It is the fashion of the present age to underrate the influence of

individual character. For myself, I have ever rejected this consolation

of mediocrity. I believe that everything that is great has been

accomplished by great men. It is not what witnessed at Munich, or know

of its sovereign, that should make me doubt the truth of my conviction.

Munich is the creation of its king, and Louis of Bavaria is not only a

king but a poet. A poet on a throne has realised his dreams.

THE SPIRIT OF WHIGGISM

_[In the following pages Lord Beaconsfield expounds that theory of the

English Constitution which he had previously set forth in his pamphlet

‘A Vindication of the English Constitution in a Letter to a Noble and

Learned Lord.’ The same theory is expounded in another way in the three

great novels, ‘Coningsby,’ ‘Sybil,’ and ‘Tancred.’ His contemporaries

never seem to have understood it, while his assailants of a later date

appear to have written and spoken concerning him in absolute ignorance

of his real political creed. The concluding paragraph of the tract

ought, in the minds of all candid men, to disperse at once and forever

the innumerable calumnies levelled at Lord Beaconsfield during and since

the Reform struggle of 1859-1867.]_

CHAPTER I.

_Object of the Whigs_

ENGLAND has become great by her institutions. Her hereditary Crown has

in a great degree insured us from the distracting evils of a contested

succession; her Peerage, interested, from the vast property and the

national honours of its members, in the good government of the country,

has offered a compact bulwark against the temporary violence of popular

passion; her House of Commons, representing the conflicting sentiments

of an estate of the realm not less privileged than that of the Peers,

though far more numerous, has enlisted the great mass of the lesser

proprietors of the country in favour of a political system which offers

them a constitutional means of defence and a legitimate method of

redress; her Ecclesiastical Establishment, preserved by its munificent

endowment from the fatal necessity of pandering to the erratic fancies

of its communicants, has maintained the sacred cause of learning and

religion, and preserved orthodoxy while it secured toleration; her law

of primogeniture has supplied the country with a band of natural and

independent leaders, trustees of those legal institutions which pervade

the land, and which are the origin of our political constitution. That

great body corporate, styled a nation-a vast assemblage of human beings

knit together by laws and arts and customs, by the necessities of the

present and the memory of the past--offers in this country, through

these its vigorous and enduring members, a more substantial and healthy

framework than falls to the lot of other nations. Our stout-built

constitution throws off with more facility and safety those crude and

dangerous humours which must at times arise in all human communities.

The march of revolution must here at least be orderly. We are preserved

from those reckless and tempestuous sallies that in other countries,

like a whirlwind, topple down in an instant an ancient crown, or sweep

away an illustrious aristocracy. This constitution, which has secured

order, has consequently promoted civilisation; and the almost unbroken

tide of progressive amelioration has made us the freest, the wealthiest,

and the most refined society of modern ages. Our commerce is unrivalled,

our manufacturers supply the world, our agriculture is the most skilful

in Christendom. So national are our institutions, so completely have

they arisen from the temper and adapted themselves to the character of

the people, that when for a season they were apparently annihilated,

the people of England voluntarily returned to them, and established them

with renewed strength and renovated vigour.

The constitution of England is again threatened, and at a moment when

the nation is more prosperous, more free, and more famous than at any

period of its momentous and memorable career. Why is this? What has

occasioned these distempered times, which make the loyal tremble and

the traitor smile? Why has this dark cloud suddenly gathered in a sky so

serene and so splendid? Is there any analogy between this age and that

of the first Charles? Are the same causes at work, or is the apparent

similarity produced only by designing men, who make use of the perverted

past as a passport to present mischief? These are great questions, which

it may be profitable to discuss and wise to study.

Rapin, a foreigner who wrote our history, in the course of his frigid

yet accurate pages, indulged in one philosophical observation. Struck

at the same time by our greatness and by the fury of our factions, the

Huguenot exclaimed: ‘It appears to me that this great society can only

be dissolved by the violence of its political parties.’ What are these

parties? Why are they violent? Why should they exist? In resolving

these questions, we may obtain an accurate idea of our present political

position, and by pondering over the past we may make that past not a

prophecy, as the disaffected intend, but a salutary lesson by which the

loyal may profit.

The two great parties into which England has during the last century and

a half been divided originated in the ancient struggle between the

Crown and the aristocracy. As long as the Crown possessed or aspired to

despotic power, the feeling of the nation supported the aristocracy

in their struggles to establish a free government. The aristocracy of

England formed the constitution of the Plantagenets; the Wars of the

Roses destroyed that aristocracy, and the despotism of the Tudors

succeeded. Renovated by more than a century of peace and the spoils of

the Papacy, the aristocracy of England attacked the first Stuarts, who

succeeded to a despotism which they did not create. When Charles the

First, after a series of great concessions which ultimately obtained for

him the support of the most illustrious of his early opponents, raised

the royal standard, the constitution of the Plantagenets, and more than

the constitution of the Plantagenets, had been restored and secured. But

a portion of the able party which had succeeded in effecting such a vast

and beneficial revolution was not content to part with the extraordinary

powers which they had obtained in this memorable struggle. This section

of the aristocracy were the origin of the English Whigs, though

that title was not invented until the next reign. The primitive

Whigs-’Parliament-men,’ as they liked to call themselves, ‘Roundheads,’

as they were in time dubbed--aspired to an oligarchy. For a moment they

obtained one; but unable to maintain themselves in power against the

returning sense and rising spirit of a generous and indignant people,

they called to their aid that domestic revolutionary party which exists

in all countries, and an anti-national enemy in addition. These were the

English Radicals, or Root-and-Branch men, and the Scotch Covenanters. To

conciliate the first they sacrificed the Crown; to secure the second

they abolished the Church. The constitution of England in Church

and State was destroyed, and the Whig oligarchy, in spite of their

machinations, were soon merged in the common ruin.

The ignoble tyranny to which this great nation was consequently subject

produced that reaction which is in the nature of human affairs. The

ancient constitution was in time restored, and the Church and the Crown

were invested with greater powers than they had enjoyed previously to

their overthrow. So hateful had been the consequences of Whig rule, that

the people were inclined rather to trust the talons of arbitrary power

than to take refuge under the wing of these pretended advocates of

popular rights. A worthless monarch and a corrupted court availed

themselves of the offered opportunity; and when James the Second

ascended the throne, the nation was again prepared to second the

aristocracy in a struggle for their liberties. But the Whigs had

profited by their previous experiment: they resolved upon a revolution,

but they determined that that revolution should be brought about by

as slight an appeal to popular sympathies as possible. They studiously

confined that appeal to the religious feelings of the nation. They hired

a foreign prince and enlisted a foreign army in their service. They

dethroned James, they established themselves in power without the aid of

the mass; and had William the Third been a man of ordinary capacity, the

constitution of Venice would have been established in England in 1688.

William the Third told the Whigs that he would never consent to be

a Doge. Resembling Louis Philippe in his character as well as in his

position, that extraordinary prince baffled the Whigs by his skilful

balance of parties; and had Providence accorded him an heir, it is

probable that the oligarchical faction would never have revived in

England. The Whigs have ever been opposed to the national institutions

because they are adverse to the establishment of an oligarchy. Local

institutions, supported by a landed gentry, check them; hence their love

of centralisation and their hatred of unpaid magistrates.

An independent hierarchy checks them; hence their affected advocacy of

toleration and their patronage of the Dissenters. The power of the Crown

checks them; therefore they always labour to reduce the sovereign to a

nonentity, and by the establishment of the Cabinet they have virtually

banished the King from his own councils. But, above all, the Parliament

of England checks them, and therefore it may be observed that the Whigs

at all times are quarrelling with some portion of those august estates.

They despair of destroying the Parliament; by it, and by it alone, can

they succeed in their objects. Corruption for one part, force for

the other, then, is their motto. In 1640 they attempted to govern the

country by the House of Commons, because the aristocracy was then more

powerful in the House of Commons than in the House of Lords, where a

Peerage, exhausted by civil wars, had been too liberally recruited from

the courtiers of the Tudors and the Stuarts. At the next revolution

which the Whigs occasioned, they attempted to govern the country by

the House of Lords, in which they were predominant; and, in order to

guarantee their power for ever, they introduced a Bill to deprive the

King of his prerogative of making further Peers. The revolution of 1640

led to the abolition of the House of Lords because the Lords opposed the

oligarchy. Having a majority in the House of Lords, the Whigs introduced

the Peerage Bill, by which the House of Lords would have been rendered

independent of the sovereign; unpopular with the country, the Whigs

attacked the influence of popular election, and the moment that, by

the aid of the most infamous corruption, they had obtained a temporary

majority in the Lower House, they passed the Septennial Act.

The Whigs of the eighteenth century ‘swamped’ the House of Commons; the

Whigs of the nineteenth would ‘swamp’ the House of Lords. The Whigs

of the eighteenth century would have rendered the House of Lords

unchangeable; the Whigs of the nineteenth remodel the House of Commons.

I conclude here the first chapter of the ‘Spirit of Whiggism’-a little

book which I hope may be easily read and easily remembered. The Whig

party have always adopted popular cries. In one age it is Liberty, in

another reform; at one period they sound the tocsin against popery, in

another they ally themselves with papists. They have many cries,

and various modes of conduct; but they have only one object--the

establishment of an oligarchy in this free and equal land. I do not

wish this country to be governed by a small knot of great families, and

therefore I oppose the Whigs.

CHAPTER II.

_Parliamentary Reform_

WHEN the Whigs and their public organs favour us with their mysterious

hints that the constitution has provided the sovereign with a means to

re-establish at all times a legislative sympathy between the two Houses

of Parliament, it may be as well to remind them that we are not indebted

for this salutary prerogative to the forbearance of their party. Suppose

their Peerage Bill had passed into an Act, how would they have carried

the Reform Bill of 1832? The Whigs may reply, that if the Peerage Bill

had become a law, the Reform Bill would never have been introduced; and

I believe them. In that case, the British House of Lords would have been

transformed into a Venetian Senate, and the old walls of St. James’s

might have witnessed scenes of as degrading mortification as the famous

ducal palace of the Adriatic.

George III. routed the Whigs, consolidated by half a century of power;

but an ordinary monarch would have sunk beneath the Coalition and

the India Bill. This scheme was the last desperate effort of the

oligarchical faction previous to 1830. Not that they were inactive

during the great interval that elapsed between the advent of Mr. Pitt

and the resurrection of Lord Grey: but, ever on the watch for a cry

to carry them into power, they mistook the yell of Jacobinism for the

chorus of an emancipated people, and fancied, in order to take the

throne by storm, that nothing was wanting but to hoist the tricolour and

to cover their haughty brows with a red cap. This fatal blunder clipped

the wings of Whiggism; nor is it possible to conceive a party that had

effected so many revolutions and governed a great country for so long

a period, more broken, sunk, and shattered, more desolate and

disheartened, than these same Whigs at the Peace of Paris. From that

period till 1830, the tactics of the Whigs consisted in gently and

gradually extricating themselves from their false position as the

disciples of Jacobinism, and assuming their ancient post as the

hereditary guardians of an hereditary monarchy. To make the transition

less difficult than it threatened, they invented Liberalism, a bridge

by which they were to regain the lost mainland, and daintily recross

on tiptoe the chasm over which they had originally sprung with so

much precipitation. A dozen years of ‘liberal principles’ broke up the

national party of England, cemented by half a century of prosperity

and glory, compared with which all the annals of the realm are dim and

lack-lustre. Yet so weak intrinsically was the oligarchical faction,

that their chief, despairing to obtain a monopoly of power for his

party, elaborately announced himself as the champion of his patrician

order, and attempted to coalesce with the liberalised leader of the

Tories. Had that negotiation led to the result which was originally

intended by those interested, the Riots of Paris would not have

occasioned the Reform of London.

It is a great delusion to believe that revolutions are ever effected by

a nation. It is a faction, and generally a small one, that overthrows a

dynasty or remodels a constitution. A small party, stung by a long

exile from power, and desperate of success except by desperate means,

invariably has recourse to a _coup-d’état_. An oligarchical party is

necessarily not numerous. Its members in general attempt, by noble

lineage or vast possessions, to compensate for their poverty of numbers.

The Whigs, in 1830, found themselves by accident in place, but under

very peculiar circumstances. They were in place but not in power. In

each estate of the realm a majority was arrayed against them. An appeal

to the Commons of England, that constituency which, in its elements,

had undergone no alteration since the time of Elizabeth, either by the

influence of the legislature or the action of time--that constituency

which had elected Pym, and Selden, and Hampden, as well as Somers,

Walpole, and Pulteney--an appeal to this constituency, it was generally

acknowledged, would be fatal to the Whigs, and therefore they determined

to reconstruct it. This is the origin of the recent parliamentary

reform: the Whigs, in place without being in power, resolved as usual

upon a coup-d’état, and looked about for a stalking-horse. In general

the difficult task had devolved upon them of having to accomplish their

concealed purpose while apparently achieving some public object. Thus

they had carried the Septennial Act on the plea of preserving England

from popery, though their real object was to prolong the existence of

the first House of Commons in which they could command a majority.

But in the present instance they became sincerely parliamentary

reformers, for by parliamentary reform they could alone subsist; and all

their art was dedicated so to contrive, that in this reformation their

own interest should secure an irresistible predominance.

But how was an oligarchical party to predominate in popular elections?

Here was the difficulty. The Whigs had no resources from their own

limited ranks to feed the muster of the popular levies. They were

obliged to look about for allies wherewith to form their new popular

estate. Any estate of the Commons modelled on any equitable principle,

either of property or population, must have been fatal to the Whigs;

they, therefore, very dexterously adopted a small minority of the

nation, consisting of the sectarians, and inaugurating them as the

people with a vast and bewildering train of hocus-pocus ceremonies,

invested the Dissenters with political power. By this _coup-d’état_ they

managed the House of Commons, and having at length obtained a position,

they have from that moment laid siege to the House of Lords, with the

intention of reducing that great institution and making it surrender at

discretion. This is the exact state of English politics during the last

five years. The Whigs have been at war with the English constitution.

First of all they captured the King; then they vanquished the House of

Commons; now they have laid siege to the House of Lords. But here the

fallacy of their grand scheme of political mystification begins to

develop itself. Had, indeed, their new constituency, as they have long

impudently pretended, really been ‘the people,’ a struggle between

such a body and the House of Lords would have been brief but final.

The absurdity of supposing that a chamber of two or three hundred

individuals could set up their absolute will and pleasure against the

decrees of a legislative assembly chosen by the whole nation is so

glaring that the Whigs and their scribes might reasonably suspect that

in making such allegations they were assuredly proving too much. But

as ‘the people’ of the Whigs is in fact a number of Englishmen not

exceeding in amount the population of a third-rate city, the English

nation is not of opinion that this arrogant and vaunting moiety of a

class privileged for the common good, swollen though it may be by some

jobbing Scots and rebel Irish, shall pass off their petty and selfish

schemes of personal aggrandisement as the will of a great people, as

mindful of its duty to its posterity as it is grateful for the labours

of its ancestors. The English nation, therefore, rallies for rescue

from the degrading plots of a profligate oligarchy, a barbarising

sectarianism, and a boroughmongering Papacy round their hereditary

leaders--the Peers. The House of Lords, therefore, at this moment

represents everything in the realm except the Whig oligarchs, their

tools--the Dissenters, and their masters--the Irish priests. In the

meantime the Whigs bawl aloud that there is a ‘collision’! It is true

there is a collision; but it is not a collision between the Lords and

the people, but between the Ministers and the Constitution.

CHAPTER III.

_The Menace to England_

IT MAY be as well to remind the English nation that a revolutionary

party is not necessarily a liberal one, and that a republic is not

indispensably a democracy. Such is the disposition of property in

England that, were a republic to be established here to-morrow, it would

partake rather of the oligarchical than of the aristocratic character.

We should be surprised to find in how few families the power of the

State was concentrated. And although the framers of the new commonwealth

would be too crafty to base it on any avowed and ostensible principle of

exclusion, but on the contrary would in all probability ostentatiously

inaugurate the novel constitution by virtue of some abstract plea about

as definite and as prodigal of practical effects as the rights of man or

the sovereignty of the people, nevertheless I should be astonished were

we not to find that the great mass of the nation, as far as any share in

the conduct of public affairs was concerned, was as completely shut out

from the fruition and exercise of power as under that Venetian polity

which has ever been the secret object of Whig envy and Whig admiration.

The Church, under such circumstances, would probably have again been

plundered, and therefore the discharge of ecclesiastical duties might

be spared to the nation; but the people would assuredly be practically

excluded from its services, which would swarm with the relations and

connections of the senatorial class; for, whether this country be

governed only by the House of Commons, or only by the House of Lords,

the elements of the single chamber will not materially differ; and

although in the event of the triumph of the Commons, the ceremony of

periodical election may be retained (and we should not forget that the

Long Parliament soon spared us that unnecessary form), the selected

members will form a Senate as irresponsible as any House of Parliament

whose anomalous constitution may now be the object of Whig sneers or

Radical anathemas.

The rights and liberties of a nation can only be preserved by

institutions. It is not the spread of knowledge or the march of

intellect that will be found a sufficient surety for the public

welfare in the crisis of a country’s freedom. Our interest taints our

intelligence, our passions paralyse our reason. Knowledge and capacity

are too often the willing tools of a powerful faction or a dexterous

adventurer. Life, is short, man is imaginative; our means are limited,

our passions high.

In seasons of great popular excitement, gold and glory offer strong

temptations to needy ability. The demagogues throughout a country, the

orators of town-councils and vestries, and the lecturers of mechanics’

institutes present, doubtless in most cases unconsciously, the ready and

fit machinery for the party or the individual that aspires to establish

a tyranny. Duly graduating in corruption, the leaders of the mob become

the oppressors of the people. Cultivation of intellect and diffusion of

knowledge may make the English nation more sensible of the benefits of

their social system, and better qualified to discharge the duties with

which their institutions have invested them, but they will never render

them competent to preserve their liberties without the aid of these

institutions. Let us for a moment endeavour to fancy Whiggism in a state

of rampant predominance; let us try to contemplate England enjoying all

those advantages which our present rulers have not yet granted us, and

some of which they have as yet only ventured to promise by innuendo.

Let us suppose our ancient monarchy abolished, our independent hierarchy

reduced to a stipendiary sect, the gentlemen of England deprived of

their magisterial functions, and metropolitan prefects and sub-prefects

established in the counties and principal towns, commanding a vigorous

and vigilant police, and backed by an army under the immediate orders

of a single House of Parliament. Why, these are threatened changes--aye,

and not one of them that may not be brought about to-morrow, under

the plea of the ‘spirit of the age’ or ‘county reform’ or ‘cheap

government.’ But where then will be the liberties of England? Who will

dare disobey London?--the enlightened and reformed metropolis! And can

we think, if any bold squire, in whom some of the old blood might still

chance to linger, were to dare to murmur against this grinding tyranny,

or appeal to the spirit of those neighbours whose predecessors his

ancestors had protected, can we flatter ourselves that there would not

be judges in Westminster Hall prepared and prompt to inflict on him all

the pains and penalties, the dungeon, the fine, the sequestration, which

such a troublesome Anti-Reformer would clearly deserve? Can we flatter

ourselves that a Parliamentary Star Chamber and a Parliamentary High

Commission Court would not be in the background to supply all the

deficiencies of the laws of England? When these merry times arrive--the

times of extraordinary tribunals and extraordinary taxes--and, if we

proceed in our present course, they are much nearer than we imagine-the

phrase ‘Anti-Reformer’ will serve as well as that of ‘Malignant,’ and

be as valid a plea as the former title for harassing and plundering all

those who venture to wince under the crowning mercies of centralisation.

Behold the Republic of the Whigs! Behold the only Republic that can be

established in England except by force! And who can doubt the swift

and stern termination of institutions introduced by so unnatural and

irrational a process. I would address myself to the English Radicals.

I do not mean those fine gentlemen or those vulgar adventurers who, in

this age of quackery, may sail into Parliament by hoisting for the

nonce the false colours of the movement; but I mean that honest and

considerable party, too considerable, I fear, for their happiness and

the safety of the State-who have a definite object which they distinctly

avow--I mean those thoughtful and enthusiastic men who study their

unstamped press, and ponder over a millennium of operative amelioration.

Not merely that which is just, but that which is also practicable,

should be the aim of a sagacious politician. Let the Radicals well

consider whether, in attempting to achieve their avowed object, they are

not, in fact, only assisting the secret views of a party whose scheme

is infinitely more adverse to their own than the existing system, whose

genius I believe they entirely misapprehend. The monarchy of the Tories

is more democratic than the Republic of the Whigs. It appeals with

a keener sympathy to the passions of the millions; it studies their

interest with a more comprehensive solicitude. Admitting for a moment

that I have mistaken the genius of the English constitution, what

chance, if our institutions be overthrown, is there of substituting

in their stead a more popular polity? This hazard, both for their own

happiness and the honour of their country, the English Radicals are

bound to calculate nicely. If they do not, they will find themselves,

too late, the tools of a selfish faction or the slaves of a stern

usurper.

CHAPTER IV.

_The English Constitution_

A CHAPTER on the English constitution is a natural episode on the spirit

of Whiggism. There is this connection between the subjects--that the

spirit of Whiggism is hostile to the English constitution. No political

institutions ever yet flourished which have been more the topic of

discussion among writers of all countries and all parties than our

famous establishment of ‘King, Lords, and Commons;’ and no institutions

ever yet flourished, of which the character has been more misrepresented

and more misconceived. One fact alone will illustrate the profound

ignorance and the perplexed ideas. The present Whig leader of the

House of Commons, a member of a family who pique themselves on their

constitutional reputation, an author who has even written an elaborate

treatise on our polity, in one of his speeches, delivered only so late

as the last session of Parliament, declared his desire and determination

to uphold the present settlement of the ‘three estates of the realm,

viz.--King, Lords, and Commons.’ Now, his Gracious Majesty is no more an

estate of the realm than Lord John Russell himself. The three estates of

the realm are the estate of the Lords Spiritual, the estate of the Lords

Temporal, and the estate of the Commons. An estate is a popular class

established into a political order. It is a section of the nation

invested for the public and common good with certain powers

and privileges. Lord John Russell first writes upon the English

constitution, and then reforms it, and yet, even at this moment,

is absolutely ignorant of what it consists. A political estate is a

complete and independent body. Now, all power that is independent is

necessarily irresponsible. The sovereign is responsible because he

is not an estate; he is responsible through his Ministers; he is

responsible to the estates and to them alone.

When the Whigs obtained power in 1830, they found the three estates

of the realm opposed to them, and the Government, therefore, could not

proceed. They resolved, therefore, to remodel them. They declared that

the House of Commons was the House of the people, and that the people

were not properly represented. They consequently enlarged the estate

of the Commons; they increased the number of that privileged order who

appear by their representatives in the Lower House of Parliament. They

rendered the estate of the Commons more powerful by this proceeding,

because they rendered them more numerous; but they did not render their

representatives one jot more the representatives of the people. Throwing

the Commons of Ireland out of the question, for we cannot speculate upon

a political order so unsettled that it has been thrice remodelled during

the present century, some 300,000 individuals sent up, at the last

general election, their representatives to Westminster.

Well, are these 300,000 persons the people of England? Grant that they

are; grant that these members are divided into two equal portions. Well,

then, the people of England consist of 150,000 persons. I know that

there are well-disposed persons that tremble at this reasoning, because,

although they admit its justice, they allege it leads to universal

suffrage. We must not show, they assert, that the House of the people is

not elected by the people. I admit it; we must not show that the House

of the people is not elected by the people, but we must show that the

House of Commons is not the House of the people, that it never was

intended to be the House of the people, and that, if it be admitted to

be so by courtesy, or become so in fact, it is all over with the English

constitution.

It is quite impossible that a whole people can be a branch of a

legislature. If a whole people have the power of making laws, it

is folly to suppose that they will allow an assembly of 300 or 400

individuals, or a solitary being on a throne, to thwart their sovereign

will and pleasure. But I deny that a people can govern itself.

Self-government is a contradiction in terms. Whatever form a government

may assume, power must be exercised by a minority of numbers. I shall,

perhaps, be reminded of the ancient republics. I answer, that the

ancient republics were as aristocratic communities as any that

flourished in the middle ages. The Demos of Athens was an oligarchy

living upon slaves. There is a great slave population even in the United

States, if a society of yesterday is to illustrate an argument on our

ancient civilisation.

But it is useless to argue the question abstractedly.

The phrase ‘the people’ is sheer nonsense. It is not a political term.

It is a phrase of natural history. A people is a species; a civilised

community is a nation. Now, a nation is a work of art and a work of

time. A nation is gradually created by a variety of influences--the

influence of original organisation, of climate, soil, religion, laws,

customs, manners, extraordinary accidents and incidents in their

history, and the individual character of their illustrious citizens.

These influences create the nation--these form the national mind, and

produce in the course of centuries a high degree of civilisation. If you

destroy the political institutions which these influences have called

into force, and which are the machinery by which they constantly

act, you destroy the nation. The nation, in a state of anarchy and

dissolution, then becomes a people; and after experiencing all the

consequent misery, like a company of bees spoiled of their queen and

rifled of their hive, they set to again and establish themselves into a

society.

Although all society is artificial, the most artificial society in the

world is unquestionably the English nation. Our insular situation and

our foreign empire, our immense accumulated wealth and our industrious

character, our peculiar religious state, which secures alike orthodoxy

and toleration, our church and our sects, our agriculture and our

manufactures, our military services, our statute law, and supplementary

equity, our adventurous commerce, landed tenure, and unprecedented

system of credit, form, among many others, such a variety of interests,

and apparently so conflicting, that I do not think even the Abbe Sieyès

himself could devise a scheme by which this nation could be absolutely

and definitely represented.

The framers of the English constitution were fortunately not of the

school of Abbe Sieyès. Their first object was to make us free; their

next to keep us so. While, therefore, they selected equality as the

basis of their social order, they took care to blend every man’s

ambition with the perpetuity of the State. Unlike the levelling equality

of modern days, the ancient equality of England elevates and creates.

Learned in human nature, the English constitution holds out privilege

to every subject as the inducement to do his duty. As it has secured

freedom, justice, and even property to the humblest of the commonwealth,

so, pursuing the same system of privileges, it has confided the

legislature of the realm to two orders of the subjects--orders, however,

in which every English citizen may be constitutionally enrolled--the

Lords and the Commons. The two estates of the Peers are personally

summoned to meet in their chamber: the more extensive and single estate

of the Commons meets by its representatives. Both are political orders,

complete in their character, independent in their authority, legally

irresponsible for the exercise of their power. But they are the trustees

of the nation, not its masters; and there is a High Court of Chancery

in the public opinion of the nation at large, which exercises a vigilant

control over these privileged classes of the community, and to which

they are equitably and morally amenable. Estimating, therefore,

the moral responsibility of our political estates, it may fairly be

maintained that, instead of being irresponsible, the responsibility of

the Lords exceeds that of the Commons. The House of Commons itself not

being an estate of the realm, but only the representatives of an estate,

owes to the nation a responsibility neither legal nor moral. The House

of Commons is responsible only to that privileged order who are its

constituents. Between the Lords and the Commons themselves there is this

prime difference--that the Lords are known, and seen, and marked; the

Commons are unknown, invisible, and unobserved. The Lords meet in a

particular spot; the Commons are scattered over the kingdom. The eye of

the nation rests upon the Lords, few in number, and notable in position;

the eye of the nation wanders in vain for the Commons, far more

numerous, but far less remarkable. As a substitute the nation appeals to

the House of Commons, but sometimes appeals in vain; for if the majority

of the Commons choose to support their representatives in a course of

conduct adverse to the opinion of the nation, the House of Commons

will set the nation at defiance. They have done so once; may they

never repeat that destructive career! Such are our two Houses of

Parliament--the most illustrious assemblies since the Roman Senate and

Grecian Areopagus; neither of them is the ‘House of the People,’ but

both alike represent the ‘Nation.’

CHAPTER V.

_A True Democracy_

THERE are two propositions, which, however at the first glance they may

appear to contradict the popular opinions of the day, are nevertheless,

as I believe, just and true. And they are these:--First. That there is

no probability of ever establishing a more democratic form of government

than the present English constitution.

Second. That the recent political changes of the Whigs are, in fact, a

departure from the democratic spirit of that constitution.

Whatever form a government may assume, its spirit must be determined

by the laws which regulate the property of the country. You may have a

Senate and Consuls, you may have no hereditary titles, and you may dub

each householder or inhabitant a citizen; but if the spirit of your laws

preserves masses of property in a particular class, the government of

the country will follow the disposition of the property. So also you may

have an apparent despotism without any formal popular control, and with

no aristocracy, either natural or artificial, and the spirit of the

government may nevertheless be republican. Thus the ancient polity

of Rome, in its best days, was an aristocracy, and the government of

Constantinople is the nearest approach to a democracy on a great

scale, and maintained during a great period, that history offers.

The constitution of France during the last half century has been fast

approaching that of the Turks. The barbarous Jacobins blended modern

equality with the refined civilisation of ancient France; the barbarous

Ottomans blended their equality with the refined civilisation of ancient

Rome. Paris secured to the Jacobins those luxuries that their system

never could have produced: Byzantium served the same purpose to the

Turks. Both the French and their turbaned prototypes commenced

their system with popular enthusiasm, and terminated it with general

subjection. Napoleon and Louis Philippe are playing the same part as the

Suleimans and the Mahmouds. The Chambers are but a second-rate Divan,

the Prefects but inferior Pachas: a solitary being rules alike in the

Seraglio and the Tuileries, and the whole nation bows to his despotism

on condition that they have no other master save himself.

The disposition of property in England throws the government of the

country into the hands of its natural aristocracy. I do not believe that

any scheme of the suffrage, or any method of election, could divert

that power into other quarters. It is the necessary consequence of our

present social state. I believe, the wider the popular suffrage, the

more powerful would be the natural aristocracy. This seems to me an

inevitable consequence; but I admit this proposition on the clear

understanding that such an extension should be established on a fair,

and not a factious, basis.

Here, then, arises the question of the ballot, into the merits of which.

I shall take another opportunity of entering, recording only now my

opinion, that in the present arrangement of the constituencies, even the

ballot would favour the power of the natural aristocracy, and that, if

the ballot were simultaneously introduced with a fair and not a factious

extension of the suffrage, it would produce no difference whatever in

the ultimate result.

Quitting, then, these considerations, let us arrive at the important

point. Is there any probability of a different disposition of property

in England--a disposition of property which, by producing a very general

similarity of condition, would throw the government of the country into

the hands of any individuals whom popular esteem or fancy might select?

It appears to me that this question can only be decided by ascertaining

the genius of the English nation. What is the prime characteristic

of the English mind? I apprehend I may safely decide upon its being

industry. Taking a general but not a superficial survey of the English

character since the Reformation, a thousand circumstances convince me

that the salient point in our national psychology is the passion for

accumulating wealth, of which industry is the chief instrument. We

value our freedom principally because it leaves us unrestricted in our

pursuits; and that reverence for law and for all that is established,

which also eminently distinguishes the English nation, is occasioned

by the conviction that, next to liberty, order is the most efficacious

assistant of industry.

And thus we see that those great revolutions which must occur in the

history of all nations when they happen here produce no permanent

effects upon our social state. Our revolutions are brought about by

the passions of creative minds taking advantage, for their own

aggrandisement, of peculiar circumstances in our national progress.

They are never called for by the great body of the nation. Churches are

plundered, long rebellions maintained, dynasties changed, parliaments

abolished; but when the storm is passed, the features of the social

landscape remain unimpaired; there are no traces of the hurricane, the

earthquake, or the volcano; it has been but a tumult of the atmosphere,

that has neither toppled down our old spires and palaces nor swallowed

up our cities and seats of learning, nor blasted our ancient woods, nor

swept away our ports and harbours. The English nation ever recurs to its

ancient institutions--the institutions that have alike secured freedom

and order; and after all their ebullitions, we find them, when the

sky is clear, again at work, and toiling on at their eternal task of

accumulation.

There is this difference between the revolutions of England and the

revolutions of the Continent--the European revolution is a struggle

against privilege; an English revolution is a struggle for it. If a new

class rises in the State, it becomes uneasy to take its place in the

natural aristocracy of the land: a desperate faction or a wily leader

takes advantage of this desire, and a revolution is the consequence.

Thus the Whigs in the present day have risen to power on the shoulders

of the manufacturing interest. To secure themselves in their posts, the

Whigs have given the new interest an undue preponderance; but the new

interest, having obtained its object, is content. The manufacturer,

like every other Englishman, is as aristocratic as the landlord. The

manufacturer begins to lack in movement. Under Walpole the Whigs played

the same game with the commercial interests; a century has passed, and

the commercial interests are all as devoted to the constitution as the

manufacturers soon will be. Having no genuine party, the Whigs seek

for succour from the Irish papists; Lord John Russell, however, is only

imitating Pym under the same circumstances. In 1640, when the English

movement was satisfied, and the constitutional party, headed by such men

as Falkland and Hyde, were about to attain power, Pym and his friends,

in despair at their declining influence and the close divisions in their

once unanimous Parliament, fled to the Scotch Covenanters, and entered

into a ‘close compact’ for the destruction of the Church of England as

the price of their assistance. So events repeat themselves; but if the

study of history is really to profit us, the nation at the present day

will take care that the same results do not always occur from the same

events.

When passions have a little subsided, the industrious ten-pounder, who

has struggled into the privileged order of the Commons, proud of having

obtained the first step of aristocracy, will be the last man to

assist in destroying the other gradations of the scale which he or

his posterity may yet ascend; while the new member of a manufacturing

district has his eye already upon a neighbouring park, avails himself of

his political position to become a county magistrate, meditates upon a

baronetcy, and dreams of a coroneted descendant.

The nation that esteems wealth as the great object of existence will

submit to no laws that do not secure the enjoyment of wealth. Now, we

deprive wealth of its greatest source of enjoyment, as well as of its

best security, if we deprive it of power. The English nation, therefore,

insists that property shall be the qualification for power, and the

whole scope of its laws and customs is to promote and favour the

accumulation of wealth and the perpetuation of property. We cannot

alter, therefore, the disposition of property in this country without we

change the national character. Far from the present age being hostile to

the supremacy of property, there has been no period of our history where

property has been more esteemed, because there has been no period when

the nation has been so industrious.

Believing, therefore, that no change will occur in the disposition of

property in this country, I cannot comprehend how our government can

become more democratic. The consequence of our wealth is an aristocratic

constitution; the consequence of our love of liberty is an aristocratic

constitution founded on an equality of civil rights. And who can deny

that an aristocratic constitution resting on such a basis, where the

legislative, and even the executive office may be obtained by every

subject of the realm, is, in fact, a noble democracy? The English

constitution, faithful to the national character, secures to all the

enjoyment of property and the delights of freedom. Its honours are a

perpetual reward of industry; every Englishman is toiling to obtain

them; and this is the constitution to which every Englishman will always

be devoted, except he is a Whig.

In the next Chapter I shall discuss the second proposition.

CHAPTER VI.

_Results of Whiggism_

THE Tories assert that the whole property of the country is on their

side; and the Whigs, wringing their hands over lost elections and

bellowing about ‘intimidation,’ seem to confess the soft impeachment.

Their prime organ also assures us that every man with 500L. per annum is

opposed to them. Yet the Whig-Radical writers have recently published,

by way of consolation to their penniless proselytes, a list of some

twenty Dukes and Marquises, who, they assure us, are devoted to

‘Liberal’ principles, and whose revenues, in a paroxysm of economical

rhodomontade, they assert, could buy up the whole income of the rest

of the hereditary Peerage. The Whig-Radical writers seem puzzled to

reconcile this anomalous circumstance with the indisputably forlorn

finances of their faction in general. Now, this little tract on the

‘Spirit of Whiggism’ may perhaps throw some light upon this perplexing

state of affairs. For myself, I see in it only a fresh illustration of

the principles which I have demonstrated, from the whole current of our

history, to form the basis of Whig policy. This union of oligarchical

wealth and mob poverty is the very essence of the ‘Spirit of Whiggism.’

The English constitution, which, from the tithing-man to the Peer of

Parliament, has thrown the whole government of the country into the

hands of those who are qualified by property to perform the duties of

their respective offices, has secured that diffused and general freedom,

without which the national industry would neither have its fair play nor

its just reward, by a variety of institutions, which, while they prevent

those who have no property from invading the social commonwealth, in

whose classes every industrious citizen has a right to register himself,

offer also an equally powerful check to the ambitious fancies of those

great families, over whose liberal principles and huge incomes the

Whig-Radical writers gloat with the self-complacency of lackeys at the

equipages of their masters. There is ever an union in a perverted sense

between those who are beneath power and those who wish to be above it;

and oligarchies and despotisms are usually established by the agency of

a deluded multitude. The Crown, with its constitutional influence over

the military services, a Parliament of two houses watching each other’s

proceedings with constitutional jealousy, an independent hierarchy

and, not least, an independent magistracy, are serious obstacles in the

progressive establishment of that scheme of government which a small

knot of great families--these dukes and marquises, whose revenues

according to the Government organ, could buy up the income of the whole

peerage-naturally wish to introduce. We find, therefore, throughout the

whole period of our more modern history, a powerful section of the great

nobles ever at war with the national institutions, checking the Crown,

attacking the independence of that House of Parliament in which they

happen to be in a minority--no matter which, patronising sects to

reduce the influence of the Church, and playing town against country to

overcome the authority of the gentry.

It is evident that these aspiring oligarchs, as a party, can have little

essential strength; they can count upon nothing but their retainers.

To secure the triumph of their cause, therefore, they are forced to

manoeuvre with a pretext, and while they aim at oligarchical rule, they

apparently advocate popular rights. They hold out, consequently, an

inducement to all the uneasy portion of the nation to enlist under their

standard; they play their discontented minority against the prosperous

majority, and, dubbing their partisans ‘the people,’ they flatter

themselves that their projects are irresistible. The attack is

unexpected, brisk, and dashing, well matured, dexterously mystified.

Before the nation is roused to its danger, the oligarchical object is

often obtained; and then the oligarchy, entrenched in power, count upon

the nation to defend them from their original and revolutionary allies.

If they succeed, a dynasty is changed, or a Parliament reformed, and the

movement is stopped; if the Tories or the Conservatives cannot arrest

the fatal career which the Whigs have originally impelled, then away

go the national institutions; the crown falls from the King’s brow;

the crosier is snapped in twain; one House of Parliament is sure to

disappear, and the gentlemen of England, dexterously dubbed Malignants,

or Anti-Reformers, or any other phrase in fashion, the dregs of the

nation sequester their estates and install themselves in their halls;

and ‘liberal principles’ having thus gloriously triumphed, after a due

course of plunder, bloodshed, imprisonment, and ignoble tyranny, the

people of England, sighing once more to be the English nation, secure

order by submitting to a despot, and in time, when they have got rid of

their despot, combine their ancient freedom with their newly-regained

security by re-establishing the English constitution.

The Whigs of the present day have made their assault upon the nation

with their usual spirit. They have already succeeded in controlling the

sovereign and in remodelling the House of Commons. They have menaced

the House of Lords, violently assailed the Church, and reconstructed

the Corporations. I shall take the two most comprehensive measures which

they have succeeded in carrying, and which were at the time certainly

very popular, and apparently of a very democratic character,-their

reform of the House of Commons, and their reconstruction of the

municipal corporations. Let us see whether these great measures have,

in fact, increased the democratic character of our constitution or

not--whether they veil an oligarchical project, or are, in fact, popular

concessions inevitably offered by the Whigs in their oligarchical

career.

The result of the Whig remodelling of the order of the Commons has been

this--that it has placed the nomination of the Government in the hands

of the popish priesthood. Is that a great advance of public intelligence

and popular liberty? Are the parliamentary nominees of M’Hale and Kehoe

more germane to the feelings of the English nation, more adapted to

represent their interests, than the parliamentary nominees of a Howard

or a Percy? This papist majority, again, is the superstructure of a

basis formed by some Scotch Presbyterians and some English Dissenters,

in general returned by the small constituencies of small towns--classes

whose number and influence, intelligence and wealth, have been grossly

exaggerated for factious purposes, but classes avowedly opposed to the

maintenance of the English constitution. I do not see that the cause of

popular power has much risen, even with the addition of this leaven.

If the suffrages of the Commons of England were polled together, the

hustings-books of the last general election will prove that a very

considerable majority of their numbers is opposed to the present

Government, and that therefore, under this new democratic scheme, this

great body of the nation are, by some hocus-pocus tactics or other,

obliged to submit to the minority. The truth is, that the new

constituency has been so arranged that an unnatural preponderance has

been given to a small class, and one hostile to the interests of the

great body. Is this more democratic? The apparent majority in the House

of Commons is produced by a minority of the Commons themselves; so that

a small and favoured class command a majority in the House of Commons,

and the sway of the administration, as far as that House is concerned,

is regulated by a smaller number of individuals than those who governed

it previous to its reform.

But this is not the whole evil: this new class, with its unnatural

preponderance, is a class hostile to the institutions of the country,

hostile to the union of Church and State, hostile to the House of Lords,

to the constitutional power of the Crown, to the existing system of

provincial judicature. It is, therefore, a class fit and willing to

support the Whigs in their favourite scheme of centralisation, without

which the Whigs can never long maintain themselves in power. Now,

centralisation is the death-blow of public freedom; it is the citadel

of the oligarchs, from which, if once erected, it will be impossible to

dislodge them. But can that party be aiming at centralised government

which has reformed the municipal corporations? We will see. The reform

of the municipal corporations of England is a covert attack on the

authority of the English gentry,-that great body which perhaps forms the

most substantial existing obstacle to the perpetuation of Whiggism in

power. By this democratic Act the county magistrate is driven from the

towns where he before exercised a just influence, while an elective

magistrate from the towns jostles him on the bench at quarter sessions,

and presents in his peculiar position an anomaly in the constitution of

the bench, flattering to the passions, however fatal to the interests,

of the giddy million. Here is a lever to raise the question of county

reform whenever an obstinate shire may venture to elect a representative

in Parliament hostile to the liberal oligarchs. Let us admit, for the

moment, that the Whigs ultimately succeed in subverting the ancient and

hereditary power of the English gentry. Will the municipal corporations

substitute themselves as an equivalent check on a centralising

Government? Whence springs their influence? From property? Not half a

dozen have estates. Their influence springs from the factitious power

with which the reforming Government has invested them, and of which the

same Government will deprive them in a session, the moment they cease

to be corresponding committees of the reforming majority in the House of

Commons. They will either be swept away altogether, or their functions

will be limited to raising the local taxes which will discharge their

expenses of the detachment of the metropolitan police, or the local

judge or governor, whom Downing Street may send down to preside over

their constituents. With one or two exceptions, the English corporations

do not possess more substantial and durable elements of power than

the municipalities of France. What check are they on Paris? These

corporations have neither prescription in their favour, nor property.

Their influence is maintained neither by tradition nor substance. They

have no indirect authority over the minds of their townsmen; they have

only their modish charters to appeal to, and the newly engrossed letter

of the law. They have no great endowments of whose public benefits they

are the official distributers; they do not stand on the vantage-ground

on which we recognise the trustees of the public interests; they neither

administer to the soul nor the body; they neither feed the poor nor

educate the young; they have no hold on the national mind; they have not

sprung from the national character; they were born by faction, and they

will live by faction. Such bodies must speedily become corrupt; they

will ultimately be found dangerous instruments in the hands of a

faction. The members of the country corporations will play the game of a

London party, to secure their factitious local importance and obtain the

consequent results of their opportune services.

I think I have now established the two propositions with which I

commenced my last chapter: and will close this concluding one of the

‘Spirit of Whiggism’ with their recapitulation, and the inferences which

I draw from them. If there be a slight probability of ever establishing

in this country a more democratic government than the English

constitution, it will be as well, I conceive, for those who love their

rights, to maintain that constitution; and if the more recent measures

of the Whigs, however plausible their first aspect, have, in fact, been

a departure from the democratic character of that constitution, it will

be as well for the English nation to oppose, with all their heart, and

all their soul, and all their strength, the machinations of the Whigs

and the ‘Spirit of Whiggism.’