Political calumny is said to have been reduced into an art, like that of
logic, by the Jesuits. This itself may be a political calumny! A
powerful body, who themselves had practised the artifices of
calumniators, may, in their turn, often have been calumniated. The
passage in question was drawn out of one of the classical authors used
in their colleges. Busembaum, a German Jesuit, had composed, in
duodecimo, a "Medulla Theologiae moralis," where, among other casuistical
propositions, there was found lurking in this old Jesuit's "marrow" one
which favoured regicide and assassination! Fifty editions of the book
had passed unnoticed; till a new one appearing at the critical moment of
Damien's attempt, the duodecimo of the old scholastic Jesuit, which had
now been amplified by its commentators into two folios, was considered
not merely ridiculous, but dangerous. It was burnt at Toulouse, in
1757, by order of the parliament, and condemned at Paris. An Italian
Jesuit published an "apology" for this theory of assassination, and the
same flames devoured it! Whether Busembaum deserved the honour bestowed
on his ingenuity, the reader may judge by the passage itself.
"Whoever would ruin a person, or a government, must begin this operation
by spreading calumnies, to defame the person or the government; for
unquestionably the calumniator will always find a great number of
persons inclined to believe him, or to side with him; it therefore
follows, that whenever the object of such calumnies is once lowered in
credit by such means, he will soon lose the reputation and power founded
on that credit, and sink under the permanent and vindictive attacks of
the calumniator." This is the politics of Satan--the evil principle
which regulates so many things in this world. The enemies of the Jesuits
have formed a list of great names who had become the victims of such
atrocious Machiavelism.[47]
This has been one of the arts practised by all political parties. Their
first weak invention is to attach to a new faction a contemptible or an
opprobrious nickname. In the history of the revolutions of Europe,
whenever a new party has at length established its independence, the
original denomination which had been fixed on them, marked by the
passions of the party which bestowed it, strangely contrasts with the
state of the party finally established!
The first revolutionists of Holland incurred the contemptuous name of
"Les Gueux," or the Beggars. The Duchess of Parma inquiring about them,
the Count of Barlamont scornfully described them to be of this class;
and it was flattery of the great which gave the name currency. The
Hollanders accepted the name as much in defiance as with indignation,
and acted up to it. Instead of brooches in their hats, they wore little
wooden platters, such as beggars used, and foxes' tails instead of
feathers. On the targets of some of these _Gueux_ they inscribed "Rather
Turkish than Popish!" and had the print of a cock crowing, out of whose
mouth was a label, _Vive les Gueux par tout le monde!_ which was
everywhere set up, and was the favourite sign of their inns. The
Protestants in France, after a variety of nicknames to render them
contemptible--such as _Christodins_, because they would only talk about
Christ, similar to our Puritans; and _Parpaillots_, or _Parpirolles_, a
small base coin, which was odiously applied to them--at length settled
in the well-known term of _Huguenots_, which probably was derived, as
the Dictionnaire de Trevoux suggests, from their hiding themselves in
secret places, and appearing at night, like King Hugon, the great
hobgoblin of France. It appears that the term has been preserved by an
earthen vessel without feet, used in cookery, which served the
_Huguenots_ on meagre days to dress their meat, and to avoid
observation; a curious instance, where a thing still in use proves the
obscure circumstance of its origin.
The atrocious insurrection, called _La Jacquerie_, was a term which
originated in cruel derision. When John of France was a prisoner in
England, his kingdom appears to have been desolated by its wretched
nobles, who, in the indulgence of their passions, set no limits to their
luxury and their extortion. They despoiled their peasantry without
mercy, and when these complained, and even reproached this tyrannical
nobility with having forsaken their sovereign, they were told that
_Jacque bon homme_ must pay for all. But _Jack good-man_ came forward in
person--a leader appeared under this fatal name, and the peasants
revolting in madness, and being joined by all the cut-throats and
thieves of Paris, at once pronounced condemnation on every gentleman in
France! Froissart has the horrid narrative; twelve thousand of these
_Jacques bon hommes_ expiated their crimes; but the _Jacquerie_, who had
received their first appellation in derision, assumed it as their _nom
de guerre_.
In the spirited Memoirs of the Duke of Guise, written by himself, of his
enterprise against the kingdom of Naples, we find a curious account of
this political art of marking people by odious nicknames. "Gennaro and
Vicenzo," says the duke, "cherished underhand that aversion the
rascality had for the better sort of citizens and civiller people, who,
by the insolencies they suffered from these, not unjustly hated them.
The better class inhabiting the suburbs of the Virgin were called _black
cloaks_, and the ordinary sort of people took the name of _lazars_, both
in French and English an old word for leprous beggar, and hence the
_lazaroni_ of Naples." We can easily conceive the evil eye of a _lazar_
when he encountered a _black cloak_! The Duke adds--"Just as, at the
beginning of the revolution, the revolters in Flanders formerly took
that of _beggars_; those of Guienne, that of _eaters_; those of
Normandy that of _bare-feet_; and of Beausse and Soulogne, of
_wooden-pattens_." In the late French revolution, we observed the
extremes indulged by both parties chiefly concerned in revolution--the
wealthy and the poor! The rich, who, in derision, called their humble
fellow-citizens by the contemptuous term of _sans-culottes_, provoked a
reacting injustice from the populace, who, as a dreadful return for only
a slight, rendered the innocent term of _aristocrate_ a signal for
plunder or slaughter!
It is a curious fact that the French verb _fronder_, as well the noun
_frondeur_, are used to describe those who condemn the measures of
government; and more extensively, designates any hyperbolical and
malignant criticism, or any sort of condemnation. These words have only
been introduced into the language since the intrigues of Cardinal de
Retz succeeded in raising a faction against Cardinal Mazarin, known in
French history by the nickname of the _Frondeurs_, or the Slingers. It
originated in pleasantry, although it became the password for
insurrection in France, and the odious name of a faction. A wit
observed, that the parliament were like those school-boys, who fling
their stones in the pits of Paris, and as soon as they see the
_Lieutenant Civil_, run away; but are sure to collect again directly he
disappears. The comparison was lively, and formed the burthen of songs;
and afterwards, when affairs were settled between the king and the
parliament, it was more particularly applied to the faction of Cardinal
de Retz, who still held out. "We encouraged the application," says de
Retz; "for we observed that the distinction of a name heated the minds
of people; and one evening we resolved to wear hat-strings in the form
of slings. A hatter, who might be trusted with the secret, made a great
number as a new fashion, and which were worn by many who did not
understand the joke; we ourselves were the last to adopt them, that the
invention might not appear to have come from us. The effect of this
trifle was immense; every fashionable article was now to assume the
shape of a sling; bread, hats, gloves, handkerchiefs, fans, &c.; and we
ourselves became more in fashion by this folly, than by what was
essential." This revolutionary term was never forgotten by the French, a
circumstance which might have been considered as prognostic of that
after-revolution, which de Retz had the imagination to project, but not
the daring to establish. We see, however, this great politician,
confessing the advantages his party derived by encouraging the
application of a by-name, which served "to heat the minds of people."
It is a curious circumstance that I should have to recount in this
chapter on "Political Nicknames" a familiar term with all lovers of art,
that of _Silhouette_! This is well understood as a _black profile_; but
it is more extraordinary that a term so universally adopted should not
be found in any dictionary, either in that of _L'Academie_, or in
Todd's, and has not even been preserved, where it is quite
indispensable, in Millin's _Dictionnaire des Beaux-Arts_! It is little
suspected that this innocent term originated in a political nickname!
_Silhouette_ was a minister of state in France in 1759; that period was
a critical one; the treasury was in an exhausted condition, and
Silhouette, a very honest man, who would hold no intercourse with
financiers or loan-mongers, could contrive no other expedient to prevent
a national bankruptcy, than excessive economy and interminable reform!
Paris was not the metropolis, any more than London, where a Plato or a
Zeno could long be minister of state without incurring all the ridicule
of the wretched wits! At first they pretended to take his advice, merely
to laugh at him:--they cut their coats shorter, and wore them without
sleeves; they turned their gold snuff-boxes into rough wooden ones; and
the new-fashioned portraits were now only profiles of a face, traced by
a black pencil on the shadow cast by a candle on white paper! All the
fashions assumed an air of niggardly economy, till poor Silhouette was
driven into retirement, with all his projects of savings and reforms;
but he left his name to describe the most economical sort of portrait,
and one as melancholy as his own fate!
This political artifice of appropriating cant terms, or odious
nicknames, could not fail to flourish among a people so perpetually
divided by contending interests as ourselves; every party with us have
had their watchword, which has served either to congregate themselves,
or to set on the ban-dogs of one faction to worry and tear those of
another. We practised it early, and we find it still prospering! The
_Puritan_ of Elizabeth's reign survives to this hour; the trying
difficulties which that wise sovereign had to overcome in settling the
national religion, found no sympathy in either of the great divisions of
her people; she retained as much of the catholic rites as might be
decorous in the new religion, and sought to unite, and not to separate,
her children. John Knox, in the spirit of charity, declared, that "she
was neither gude protestant, nor yet resolute papist; let the world
judge quilk is the third."
A jealous party arose, who were for reforming the reformation. In their
attempt at more than human purity, they obtained the nickname of
_Puritans_; and from their fastidiousness about very small matters,
_Precisians_; these Drayton characterises as persons that for a painted
glass window would pull down the whole church. At that early period
these nicknames were soon used in an odious sense; for Warner, a poet in
the reign of Elizabeth, says,--
If hypocrites why _puritaines_ we term be asked, in breese,
'Tis but an _ironised terme_; good-fellow so spels theese!
Honest Fuller, who knew that many good men were among these _Puritans_,
wished to decline the term altogether, under the less offensive one of
_Non-conformists_. But the fierce and the fiery of this party, in
Charles the First's time had been too obtrusive not to fully merit the
ironical appellative; and the peaceful expedient of our moderator
dropped away with the page in which it was written. The people have
frequently expressed their own notions of different parliaments by some
apt nickname. In Richard the Second's time, to express their dislike of
the extraordinary and irregular proceedings of the lords against the
sovereign, as well as their sanguinary measures, they called it "The
_wonder-working_ and the _unmerciful_ parliament." In Edward the Third's
reign, when the Black Prince was yet living, the parliament, for having
pursued with severity the party of the Duke of Lancaster, was so
popular, that the people distinguished it as the _good_ parliament. In
Henry the Third's time, the parliament opposing the king, was called
"_Parliamentum insanum_," the mad parliament, because the lords came
armed to insist on the confirmation of the great charter. A Scottish
parliament, from its perpetual shiftings from place to place was
ludicrously nicknamed the _running_ parliament; in the same spirit we
had our _long_ parliament. The nickname of _Pensioner_ parliament stuck
to the House of Commons which sate nearly eighteen years without
dissolution, under Charles the Second; and others have borne satirical
or laudatory epithets. So true it is, as old Holingshed observed, "The
common people will manie times give such _bie names_ as seemeth _best
liking to themselves_." It would be a curious speculation to discover
the sources of the popular feeling; influenced by delusion, or impelled
by good sense!
The exterminating political nickname of _malignant_ darkened the nation
through the civil wars: it was a proscription--and a list of _good_ and
_bad_ lords was read by the leaders of the first tumults. Of all these
inventions, this diabolical one was most adapted to exasperate the
animosities of the people, so often duped by names. I have never
detected the active man of faction who first hit on this odious brand
for persons, but the period when the word changed its ordinary meaning
was early; Charles, in 1642, retorts on the parliamentarians the
opprobrious distinction, as "The _true malignant party_ which has
contrived and countenanced those barbarous tumults." And the royalists
pleaded for themselves, that the hateful designation was ill applied to
them: "for by _malignity_ you denote," said they, "activity in doing
evil, whereas we have always been on the suffering side in our persons,
credits, and estates;" but the parliamentarians, "grinning a ghastly
smile," would reply, that "the royalists would have been _malignant_ had
they proved successful." The truth is, that _malignancy_ meant with both
parties any opposition of opinion. At the same period the offensive
distinctions of _roundheads_ and _cavaliers_ supplied the people with
party names, who were already provided with so many religious as well as
civil causes of quarrel; the cropt heads of the sullen sectaries and the
people, were the origin of the derisory nickname; the splendid elegance
and the romantic spirit of the royalists long awed the rabble, who in
their mockery could brand them by no other appellation than one in which
their bearers gloried. In the distracted times of early revolution, any
nickname, however vague, will fully answer a purpose, although neither
those who are blackened by the odium, nor those who cast it, can define
the hateful appellative. When the term of _delinquents_ came into vogue,
it expressed a degree and species of guilt, says Hume, not exactly known
or ascertained. It served, however, the end of those revolutionists who
had coined it, by involving any person in, or colouring any action by,
_delinquency_; and many of the nobility and gentry were, without any
questions being asked, suddenly discovered to have committed the crime
of _delinquency_! Whether honest Fuller be facetious or grave on this
period of nicknaming parties I will not decide; but, when he tells us
that there was another word which was introduced into our nation at this
time, I think at least that the whole passage is an admirable commentary
on this party vocabulary. "Contemporary with _malignants_ is the word
_plunder_, which some make of Latin original, from _planum dare_, to
_level_, to _plane_ all to nothing! Others of Dutch extraction, as if it
were to _plume_, or pluck the feathers of a bird to the bare skin.[48]
Sure I am we first heard of it in the Swedish wars; and if the name and
thing be sent back from whence it came few English eyes would weep
thereat." All England had wept at the introduction of the word. The
_rump_ was the filthy nickname of an odious faction--the history of this
famous appellation, which was at first one of horror, till it afterwards
became one of derision and contempt, must be referred to another place.
The _rump_ became a perpetual whetstone for the loyal wits,[49] till at
length its former admirers, the rabble themselves, in town and country,
vied with each other in "_burning rumps_" of beef, which were hung by
chains on a gallows with a bonfire underneath, and proved how the
people, like children, come at length to make a plaything of that which
was once their bugbear.
Charles the Second, during the short holiday of the restoration--all
holidays seem short!--and when he and the people were in good humour,
granted anything to every one,--the mode of "Petitions" got at length
very inconvenient, and the king in council declared that this
petitioning was "A method set on foot by ill men to promote discontents
among the people," and enjoined his loving subjects not to subscribe
them. The petitioners, however, persisted--when a new party rose to
express their abhorrence of petitioning; both parties nicknamed each
other the _petitioners_ and the _abhorrers_! Their day was short, but
fierce; the _petitioners_, however weak in their cognomen, were far the
bolder of the two, for the commons were with them, and the _abhorrers_
had expressed by their term rather the strength of their inclinations
than of their numbers. Charles the Second said to a _petitioner_ from
Taunton, "How _dare_ you deliver me such a paper?" "Sir," replied the
petitioner from Taunton, "my name is DARE!" A saucy reply, for which he
was tried, fined, and imprisoned; when lo! the commons petitioned again
to release the _petitioner_! "The very name," says Hume, "by which each
party denominated its antagonists discovers the virulence and rancour
which prevailed; for besides _petitioner_ and _abhorrer_, this year is
remarkable for being the epoch of the well-known epithets of _whig_ and
_tory_." These silly terms of reproach, whig and tory, are still
preserved among us, as if the palladium of British liberty was guarded
by these exotic names, for they are not English, which the parties so
invidiously bestow on each other. They are ludicrous enough in their
origin. The friends of the court and the advocates of lineal succession
were, by the republican party, branded with the title of _tories_, which
was the name of certain Irish robbers;[50] while the court party in
return could find no other revenge than by appropriating to the
covenanters and the republicans of that class the name of the Scotch
beverage of sour milk, whose virtue they considered so expressive of
their dispositions, and which is called _whigg_. So ridiculous in their
origin were these pernicious nicknames, which long excited feuds and
quarrels in domestic life, and may still be said to divide into two
great parties this land of political freedom. But nothing becomes
obsolete in political factions, and the meaner and more scandalous the
name affixed by one party to another the more it becomes not only their
rallying cry or their password, but even constitutes their glory. Thus
the Hollanders long prided themselves on the humiliating nickname of
"Les Gueux:" the protestants of France on the scornful one of the
_Huguenots_; the non-conformists in England on the mockery of the
_puritan_; and all parties have perpetuated their anger by their
inglorious names. Swift was well aware of this truth in political
history: "each party," says that sagacious observer, "grows proud of
that appellation which their adversaries at first intended as a
reproach; of this sort were the _Guelphs_ and the _Ghibellines_,
_Huguenots_ and _Cavaliers_."
Nor has it been only by nicknaming each other by derisory or opprobrious
terms that parties have been marked, but they have also worn a livery,
and practised distinctive manners. What sufferings did not Italy endure
for a long series of years under those fatal party-names of the
_Guelphs_ and the _Ghibellines_; alternately the victors and the
vanquished, the beautiful land of Italy drank the blood of her children.
Italy, like Greece, opens a moving picture of the hatreds and jealousies
of small republics; her _Bianchi_ and her _Neri_, her _Guelphs_ and her
_Ghibellines_! In Bologna, two great families once shook that city with
their divisions; the _Pepoli_ adopted the French interests; the
_Maluezzi_ the Spanish. It was incurring some danger to walk the streets
of Bologna, for the _Pepoli_ wore their feathers on the right side of
their caps, and the _Maluezzi_ on the left. Such was the party-hatred of
the two great Italian factions, that they carried their rancour even
into their domestic habits; at table the _Guelphs_ placed their knives
and spoons longwise, and the _Ghibellines_ across; the one cut their
bread across, the other longwise. Even in cutting an orange they could
not agree; for the _Guelph_ cut his orange horizontally, and the
_Ghibelline_ downwards. Children were taught these artifices of
faction--their hatreds became traditional, and thus the Italians
perpetuated the full benefits of their party-spirit from generation to
generation.[51]
Men in private life go down to their graves with some unlucky name, not
received in baptism, but more descriptive and picturesque; and even
ministers of state have winced at a political christening. Malagrida the
Jesuit and Jemmy Twitcher were nicknames which made one of our ministers
odious, and another contemptible.[52] The Earl of Godolphin caught such
fire at that of Volpone, that it drove him into the opposite party, for
the vindictive purpose of obtaining the impolitical prosecution of
Sacheverell, who, in his famous sermon, had first applied it to the
earl, and unluckily it had stuck to him.
"Faction," says Lord Orford, "is as capricious as fortune; wrongs,
oppression, the zeal of real patriots, or the genius of false ones, may
sometimes be employed for years in kindling substantial opposition to
authority; in other seasons the impulse of a moment, a _ballad_, a
_nickname_, a _fashion_ can throw a city into a tumult, and shake the
foundations of a state."
Such is a slight history of the human passions in politics! We might
despair in thus discovering that wisdom and patriotism so frequently
originate in this turbid source of party; but we are consoled when we
reflect that the most important political principles are immutable: and
that they are those which even the spirit of party must learn to
reverence.