In my yesterday's paper, I proposed that the honest (160: 5)
men of all parties should enter into a kind of association
for the defence of one another, and the confusion of their
common enemies. As it is designed this neutral body
should act with a regard to nothing but truth and equity,
and divest themselves of the little heats and prepossessions (10)
that cleave to parties of all kinds, I have prepared
for them the following form of an association, which may
express their intentions in the most plain and simple
manner:
We whose names are hereunto subscribed, do solemnly declare (15)
that we do in our consciences believe two and two make four; and
that we shall adjudge any man whatsoever to be our enemy who
endeavors to persuade us to the contrary. We are likewise ready
to maintain, with the hazard of all that is near and dear to us, that
six is less than seven in all times and all places, and that ten (20)
will not be more three years hence than it is at present. We do also
firmly declare that it is our resolution as long as we live to call
black black, and white white; and we shall upon all occasions oppose
such persons that upon any day of the year shall call black
white, or white black, with the utmost peril of our lives and
fortunes. (161: 5)
Were there such a combination of honest men, who
without any regard to places would endeavour to extirpate
all such furious zealots as would sacrifice one half of their
country to the passion and interest of the other; as also
such infamous hypocrites that are for promoting their (10)
own advantage under colour of the public good; with all
the profligate, immoral retainers to each side, that have
nothing to recommend them but an implicit submission
to their leaders;--we should soon see that furious party
spirit extinguished, which may in time expose us to the (15)
derision and contempt of all the nations about us.
A member of this society that would thus carefully
employ himself in making room for merit, by throwing
down the worthless and depraved part of mankind from
those conspicuous stations of life to which they have been (20)
sometimes advanced, and all this without any regard to
his private interest, would be no small benefactor to his
country.
I remember to have read in Diodorus Siculus an account
of a very active little animal, which I think he calls the (25)
ichneumon, that makes it the whole business of his life to
break the eggs of the crocodile, which he is always in
search after. This instinct is the more remarkable because
the ichneumon never feeds upon the eggs he has
broken, nor in any other way finds his account in them.
Were it not for the incessant labours of this industrious
animal, Egypt, says the historian, would be overrun with
crocodiles; for the Egyptians are so far from destroying
those pernicious creatures that they worship them as (162: 5)
gods.
If we look into the behaviour of ordinary partisans, we
shall find them far from resembling this disinterested
animal, and rather acting after the example of the wild
Tartars, who are ambitious of destroying a man of the (10)
most extraordinary parts and accomplishments, as thinking
that upon his decease the same talents, whatever post
they qualified him for, enter of course into his destroyer.
As in the whole train of my speculations I have endeavoured,
as much as I am able, to extinguish that pernicious (15)
spirit of passion and prejudice which rages with the same
violence in all parties, I am still the more desirous of
doing some good in this particular because I observe that
the spirit of party reigns more in the country than in the
town. It here contracts a kind of brutality and rustic (20)
fierceness to which men of a politer conversation are
wholly strangers. It extends itself even to the return of
the bow and the hat; and at the same time that the
heads of parties preserve toward one another an outward
show of good breeding, and keep up a perpetual intercourse (25)
of civilities, their tools that are dispersed in these
outlying parts will not so much as mingle together at a
cock-match. This humour fills the country with several
periodical meetings of Whig jockeys and Tory fox hunters,
not to mention the innumerable curses, frowns, and whispers
it produces at a quarter sessions.
I do not know whether I have observed, in any of my
former papers, that my friends Sir Roger de Coverley and
Sir Andrew Freeport are of different principles; the first (163: 5)
of them inclined to the landed, and the other to the moneyed
interest. This humour is so moderate in each of
them that it proceeds no farther than to an agreeable
raillery, which very often diverts the rest of the club. I
find, however, that the knight is a much stronger Tory (10)
in the country than in town, which, as he has told me in
my ear, is absolutely necessary for the keeping up his
interest. In all our journey from London to his house,
we did not so much as bait at a Whig inn; or if by
chance the coachman stopped at a wrong place, one of (15)
Sir Roger's servants would ride up to his master full
speed, and whisper to him that the master of the house
was against such an one in the last election. This often
betrayed us into hard beds and bad cheer; for we were
not so inquisitive about the inn as the innkeeper; and (20)
provided our landlord's principles were sound, did not
take any notice of the staleness of his provisions. This
I found still the more inconvenient because the better the
host was, the worse generally were his accommodations;
the fellow knowing very well that those who were his (25)
friends would take up with coarse diet and an hard
lodging. For these reasons, all the while I was upon the
road I dreaded entering into an house of any one that
Sir Roger had applauded for an honest man.
Since my stay at Sir Roger's in the country, I daily find
more instance of this narrow party humour. Being upon a
bowling green at a neighbouring market town the other day
(for that is the place where the gentlemen of one side
meet once a week), I observed a stranger among them of (164: 5)
a better presence and genteeler behaviour than ordinary;
but was much surprised that, notwithstanding he was a
very fair better, nobody would take him up. But upon
inquiry, I found that he was one who had given a disagreeable
vote in a former parliament, for which reason (10)
there was not a man upon that bowling green who would
have so much correspondence with him as to win his
money of him.
Among other instances of this nature, I must not omit
one which concerns myself. Will Wimble was the other (15)
day relating several strange stories, that he had picked up,
nobody knows where, of a certain great man; and upon
my staring at him, as one that was surprised to hear such
things in the country, which had never been so much as
whispered in the town, Will stopped short in the thread (20)
of his discourse, and after dinner asked my friend Sir
Roger in his ear if he was sure that I was not a
fanatic.
It gives me a serious concern to see such a spirit of
dissension in the country; not only as it destroys virtue (25)
and common sense, and renders us in a manner barbarians
towards one another, but as it perpetuates our animosities,
widens our breaches, and transmits our present passions
and prejudices to our posterity. For my own part, I am
sometimes afraid that I discover the seeds of a civil war
in these our divisions, and therefore cannot but bewail, as
in their first principles, the miseries and calamities of our
children. C.