Government is not founded on property, taken merely as such, in the
abstract; it is founded on _unequal_ property; the inequality is an
essential term in the position. The phrases--higher, middle, and lower
classes, with reference to this point of representation--are delusive; no
such divisions as classes actually exist in society. There is an
indissoluble blending and interfusion of persons from top to bottom; and no
man can trace a line of separation through them, except such a confessedly
unmeaning and unjustifiable line of political empiricism as 10_l_.
householders. I cannot discover a ray of principle in the government plan,
--not a hint of the effect of the change upon the balance of the estates of
the realm,--not a remark on the nature of the constitution of England, and
the character of the property of so many millions of its inhabitants. Half
the wealth of this country is purely artificial,--existing only in and on
the credit given to it by the integrity and honesty of the nation. This
property appears, in many instances, a heavy burthen to the numerical
majority of the people, and they believe that it causes all their distress:
and they are now to have the maintenance of this property committed to
their good faith--the lamb to the wolves!
Necker, you remember, asked the people to come and help him against the
aristocracy. The people came fast enough at his bidding; but, somehow or
other, they would not go away again when they had done their work. I hope
Lord Grey will not see himself or his friends in the woeful case of the
conjuror, who, with infinite zeal and pains, called up the devils to do
something for him. They came at the word, thronging about him, grinning,
and howling, and dancing, and whisking their long tails in diabolic glee;
but when they asked him what he wanted of them, the poor wretch, frightened
out his of wits, could only stammer forth,--"I pray you, my friends, be
gone down again!" At which the devils, with one voice, replied,--
"Yes! yes! we'll go down! we'll go down!--
But we'll take _you_ with us to swim or to drown!"[1]
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge must have been thinking of that "very pithy and profitable"
ballad by the Laureate, wherein is shown how a young man "would read
unlawful books, and how he was punished:"--
"The _young_ man, he began to read
He knew not what, but he would proceed,
When there was heard a sound at the door,
Which as he read on grew more and more.
"And more and more the knocking grew,
The young man knew not what to do:
But trembling in fear he sat within,
_Till the door was broke, and the devil came in_.
"'What would'st thou with me?' the wicked one cried;
But not a word the young man replied;
Every hair on his head was standing upright,
And his limbs like a palsy shook with affright.
"'What would'st thou with me?' cried the author of ill;
But the wretched young man was silent still," &c.
The catastrophe is very terrible, and the moral, though addressed by the
poet to young men only, is quite as applicable to old men, as the times
show.
"Henceforth let all young men take heed
How in a conjuror's books they read!"
_Southey's Minor Poems_, vol. iii. p. 92.--ED.]
* * * * *
_June_ 25. 1831.