"I don't hate the world, but I laugh at it;
for none but fools can be in earnest about a trifle."
So says Gay of the world, in one of his letters to Swift, and we have
adapted the quotation to our idea of liberty. True it is that Addison
apostrophizes liberty as a
Goddess, heavenly bright!
but we hope our laughter will not be considered as indecorous or
profane. Our great essayist has exalted her into a Deity, and invested
her with a mythological charm, which makes us doubt her existence; so
that to laugh at her can be no more irreverend than to sneer at the
belief in apparitions, a joke which is very generally enjoyed in these
good days of spick-and-span philosophy. Whether Liberty ever existed
or not, is to us a matter of little import, since it is certain that
she belongs to the grand hoax which is the whole scheme of life. The
extension of liberty into concerns of every-day life is therefore
reasonable enough, and to prove that we are happy in possessing this
ideal blessing, seems to have been the aim of all who have written on
the subject. One, however, if we remember right, sets the matter in a
grave light, when he says to man--
Since thy original lapse, true liberty
Is lost.
He who loves to scatter crumbs of comfort in these starving times, will
not despair at this sublime truth, but will seek to cherish the love of
liberty, or the consolation for the loss of it wherever he goes.
The reader need not be told that we are friends to the spread of liberty:
indeed, we think she may "triumph over time, clip his wings, pare his
nails, file his teeth, turn back his hour-glass, blunt his scythe, and
draw the hobnails out of his shoes;" but to show how this may be done, we
must run over a few varieties of liberty for the benefit of such as do not
enjoy the inestimable blessings of being _free and easy_: we quote these
words, vulgar as they are; for, of all words in our vernacular tongue,
to express comfort and security from ill, commend us to the expletive of
_free and easy_. We had rather not meddle with civil or religious liberty:
they are as combustible as the Cotopaxi, or the new governments, of South
America; and our attempts at reformation do not extend beyond paper and
print, which the unamused reader may burn or not, as he pleases without
searing his own conscience or exciting our revenge. To be sure, a few of
our examples may border on civil liberty; but we shall not seek to find
parallels for the Ptolemaian cages, or the Tower of Famine, in our times;
neither shall we feast upon the horrors of the French Revolution, nor the
last polite reception of the Russians by headless Turks; notwithstanding
all these examples would bear us out in our idea of the love of liberty,
and the evils of the loss of it.
Kings often want liberty, even amidst the multitude of their luxuries.
They are not unfrequently the veriest slaves at court, and liege and loyal
as we are, we seldom hear of a king eating, drinking, and sleeping as
other people do, without envying him so happy an interval from the cares
of state, and the painted pomp of palaces. This it is that makes the
domestic habits of kings so interesting to every one; and many a time have
we crossed field after field to catch a glimpse of royalty, in a plain
green chariot on the Brighton road, when we would not have put our heads
out of window to see a procession to the House of Lords. Some kings have
even gone so far in their love of plain life as to drop the king, which is
a very pleasant sort of unkingship. Frederick the Great, at one of his
literary entertainments adopted this plan to promote free conversation,
when he reminded the circle that there was no monarch present, and that
every one might think aloud. The conversation soon turned upon the faults
of different governments and rulers, and general censures were passing
from mouth to mouth pretty freely, when Frederick suddenly stayed the
topic, by saying, "Peace, peace, gentlemen, have a care, the king is
coming; it may be as well if he does not hear you, lest he should be
obliged to be still worse than you." Our Second Charles was very fond of
liberty, and of dropping the king, or as some writers say, he never took
the office up: this was for another purpose, in times when
License they mean when they cry liberty.
Voluntarily parting with one's liberty is, however, very different to
having it taken from us, as in the anecdote of the citizen who never
having been out of his native place during his lifetime, was, for some
offence, sentenced to stay within the walls a whole year; when he died
of grief not long afterwards.
State imprisonment is like a set of silken fetters for kings and other
great people. Thus, almost all our palaces have been used as prisons,
according to the caprice of the monarch, or the violence of the uppermost
faction. Shakspeare, in his historical plays, gives us many pictures of
royal and noble suffering from the loss of liberty. One of the latter,
with a beautiful antidote, is the address of Gaunt to Bolingbroke, after
his banishment by Richard II.:--
All places that the eye of heaven visits,
Are to a wise man ports, and happy havens:
Teach thy necessity to reason thus:
There is no virtue like necessity.
Think not, the king did banish thee;
But thou the king: woe doth heavier sit,
Where it perceives it is but faintly borne.
Go, say--I sent thee forth to purchase honour,
And not--the king exiled thee: or suppose,
Devouring pestilence hangs in our air,
And thou art flying to a fresher clime.
Look, what thy soul holds dear, imagine it
To lie that way thou go'st, not whence thou comest:
Suppose the singing birds musicians;
The grass whereon thou tread'st, the presence strew'd;
The flowers, fair ladies; and thy steps, no more
Than a delightful measure, or a dance;
For gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite
The man that mocks at it, and sets it light.
Even Napoleon, whose wounds were almost green at his death, sought to
chase away the recollections of his ill-starred splendour, by rides and
walks in the island, and conversation with his suite in his garden; and
Louis XVIII. after his restoration to the throne of France, passed few
such happy days as his exile at Hartwell, which though only a pleasant
seat enough, had more comfort than the gilded saloons of Versailles, or
the hurly-burly of the Tuilleries, with treason hatching in the street
beneath the windows, and revolution stinking in the very nostrils of the
court. Shakspeare might well call a crown a
Polished perturbation! golden care!
and add--
O majesty!
When thou dost pinch thy bearer, thou dost sit
Like a rich armour worn in heat of day,
That scalds with safety.
Goldsmith has somewhat sarcastically lamented that the appetites of the
rich do not increase with their wealth; in like manner, it would be a
grievous thing could liberty be monopolized or scraped into heaps like
wealth; a petty tyrant may persecute and imprison thousands, but he cannot
thereby add one hour or inch to his own liberty.
Another and a very common loss of liberty is by pleasure and the love of
fame, especially by the slaves of fashion and the lovers of great place;
Whose lives are others' not their own.
Pleasure for the most part, consists in fits of anticipation; since, the
extra liberty or license of a debauch must be repaid by the iron fetters
of headache, and the heavy hand of _ennui_ on the following day: even
the purblind puppy of fashion will tell you, if you make free with your
constitution, you must suffer for it; and this by a species of slavery. To
dance attendance upon a great man for a small appointment, and to _boo_
your way through the world, belongs to the worst of servitude. Congreve
compares a levee at a great man's to a list of duns; and Shenstone still
more ill-naturedly says, "a courtier's dependant is a beggar's dog."
Making free, or taking liberties with your fortune, brings about the
slavery, if not the sin, of poverty; and to take a liberty with the wealth
of another is about as sure a road to slavery as picking pockets is to
house-breaking. Debt is another of those odious badges which mark a man
as a slave, and let him but go on to recovery, that like a snake in the
sunshine, he may be the more effectually scotched and secured. Gay says to
Swift, "I hate to be in debt; for I can't bear to pawn five pounds worth
of my liberty to a tailor or a butcher. I grant you, this is not having
the true spirit of modern nobility; but it is hard to cure the prejudice
of education;" and every man will own that a _greater_ slave-master is not
to be found at Cape Coast than the law's follower, who says, "I 'rest
you;" and then "brings you to all manner of unrest." One of these fellows
is even greater than the sultan of an African tribe in till his glory;
though he neither bears the insignia of rank nor power--none of the little
finery which wins allegiance and honour--yet he constrains you "by
virtue," and brings about a compromise and temporary cessation of your
liberty.
Taking liberties with the pockets or tables of one's relations and
friends, is at best, but a dangerous experiment. It cannot last long
before they beg to be excused the liberty, &c., and like the countryman
with the golden goose, you get a cold, fireless parlour, or a colder hall
reception for your importunity; and, perchance, the silver ore being all
gone, you must put up with the French plate. One of the most equivocal,
if not dangerous, forms of correspondence is that beginning with "I take
the liberty;" for it either portends some well tried "sufferer" as Lord
Foppington calls him; a pressing call from a fundless charity; or at best
but a note from an advertising tailor to tell you that for several years
past you have been paying 50 per cent. too high a price for your clothes;
but, like most good news, this comes upon crutches, and the loss is past
redemption.
What is called the liberty of the subject we must leave for a dull
barrister to explain: in the meantime, if any reader be impatient for the
definition, a night's billeting in Covent Garden watchhouse will initiate
him into its blessings; he is not so dull as to require to be told how to
get there. The liberty of the press is another ticklish subject to handle--
like a hedgehog--all points; but we may be allowed to quote, as one of the
most harmless specimens of the liberty of the press--the production of THE
MIRROR, as we always acknowledge the liberty by reference to the sources
whence our borrowed wealth is taken. This is giving credit in one way, and
taking credit for our own honesty.
Liberty-boys and brawlers would be new acquaintance for us. We are not old
enough to remember "Wilkes and 45;" the cap of liberty is now seldom
introduced into our national arms, and this and all such emblems are fast
fading away. People who used to spout forth Cowper's line and a half on
liberty, have given up the profession, and all men are at liberty to think
as they please. Still ours is neither the golden nor the silver age of
liberty: it is more like paper and platina liberty, things which have the
weight and semblance without their value.
The only odd rencontre we ever had with a liberty advocate was with L'Abbe
Gregoire, one of the cabinet advisers of Napoleon, and to judge by his
writings, a benevolent man. On visiting him at Paris, we put into our
pocket a little work of our leisure, containing upwards of 6,000
quotations on almost every subject. The Abbé, who understands English
well, was delighted with the variety, and on calling again in a few days,
we found the venerable patriot had been searching for all the passages on
_liberty_, which he had distinguished by registers: what an evidence is
this of his ruling passion. At the time we did not recollect that to M.
Gregoire is attributed the republican sentiment "the reign of Kings is the
martyrology of nations:" his conversation proved him an enthusiast, but we
think this liberty rather too strong.