rigour, but their greatest sufferings were after the restoration of the
monarchy. No sooner had the heretical hierarchy recovered its power,
than it began to persecute the dissenters with such bitterness as the
rancorous remembrance of its own injuries excited. Charles willingly
permitted this, because he dreaded the political opinions of these
sectarians; it is probable, too, that as he had been secretly reconciled
to the true faith, he was not displeased to see a church which dared not
pretend to be infallible, pursuing measures which nothing but
infallibility can justify, thus accustoming the people to intolerance,
and weakening heresy: so he protected the Catholics from the false
bishops, and left the sectarians to their tender mercy. Other sectarians
made use of every artifice to escape; but it was contrary to the
principles of the Quakers to avail themselves of any subterfuge; and
their dress, language, and manner made it impossible for them to pass
unnoticed. The prisons were filled with them; the prisons were then
dreadful places; filth, cold, and wet brought on diseases which were
aggravated by the uniform brutality of the jailors; and in this manner
numbers were destroyed by the cowardly cruelty of those who were ashamed
openly to put them to death.
Erroneous as the principles of these people are, it was impossible that
any men could lead more blameless lives, and display more admirable
integrity or more heroical self-devotement. George Fox was more than
once set at liberty on his bare promise of appearing upon a certain day
to take his trial, no other security being thought needful;—more than
once opportunities of escaping from prison were avowedly given him, of
which he would not avail himself; and a pardon from the king offered
him, which he refused to accept, saying, that to accept a pardon, would
imply that he had committed a crime which needed it. The usual snare for
them was to tender the oath of supremacy, a test enacted against the
Catholics. It was in vain that they declared their full assent to the
vile heresy of this oath, and that they affirmed its substance in other
words; the act of swearing was insisted upon, and for refusing this
their property was confiscated, and themselves sentenced to perpetual
imprisonment. No injustice, no cruelty, ever provoked them to anger;
they exhorted their persecutors, but never reproached them. Instances
often occurred of one man's offering to suffer confinement for another.
The principle of selfishness seemed to be extinguished among them. Even
the instincts of resentment and self-defence, perhaps the most powerful
and deeply-rooted in our nature, they had subdued. Men who had borne
arms and approved their courage in battle, not only submitted to insults
and blows themselves, but saw their wives and daughters insulted,
beaten, and trampled upon, without lifting a hand to protect or revenge
them. It was in vain to block up their meeting-houses; they met in the
open streets, and in open day, though sure that soldiers would be there
to arrest, and a rabble to assault them; and when the parents were cast
into prison, the children voluntarily followed their example, held their
meetings in the like manner, and submitted to the same sufferings, with
the same quiet and unconquerable endurance.
It is worthy of remark, that these excellent people (as assuredly they
were in every thing not appertaining to the articles of their faith),
while they were thus persecuted by their brother heretics, were treated
by the true church with a tenderness which it has never shown towards
any others. Two female preachers who went to Malta to promulgate their
opinions, were seized there by the Holy Office and confined, that they
might not pervert others; but when it was found impossible to reclaim
them, they were set at liberty, and sent out of the island. A man in his
way from visiting them landed at Gibraltar, which was then in our
possession, and went on Holy Thursday into the church, while the priest
was celebrating mass; he took off his cloak and rent it, and appeared in
sackcloth; cried out repentance thrice in a loud voice, and then
returned unmolested to his ship. One man went to Jerusalem to bear his
testimony against pilgrimages at the Holy Sepulchre! Several went to
Rome to convert the pope, for whom they seemed to be particularly
concerned;—they were safely lodged in the Holy Office, permitted to
write as many memorials as they pleased to his holiness and the
cardinals; and when they had said all that they had to say, they were
sent out of Italy. With this tenderness did the church behave to them,
while in England they were whipt and imprisoned, and in America put to
death by the Calvinists.
Even the infidels respected them. A woman left her family in the hope of
converting the Grand Turk:—he received her in his camp, gave her
audience, listened to her respectfully, and dismissed her with a safe
conduct through his dominions. A ship, of which the master and the mate
were Quakers, was taken by the Algerines, who put a party of Moors on
board to carry her into Algiers. The crew thought themselves strong
enough to recover the vessel, and would have attempted to kill the
Moors; but these men, true to their principle of not fighting, and not
hazarding human life, refused to assist in regaining their liberty,
except by such means as they could conscientiously approve. They
contrived to secure their weapons, and took possession of the ship.
These people profess also to act up to the Gospel precept of returning
good for evil; and in conformity to this the master promised the Moors
that they should not be sold as slaves. They put into Majorca, where the
islanders to their great astonishment found that the prisoners were not
to be sold: they were proceeding to take them by force, but these
Quakers actually set the Moors loose from their confinement, that they
might assist in working the ship out of port and escaping. The rascally
infidels, not in the slightest degree influenced by this example,
attempted twice or thrice to become masters again, and it required all
the authority and exertions of the Quakers to prevent their men from
knocking them on the head. At the imminent risque of being recaptured,
they stood over to the Barbary coast, and landed their prisoners in
their own country. King Charles was dining in his palace at Greenwich
when the vessel came up, and news was brought him that a Quaker ship was
just arrived which they had won from the Algerines without fighting. The
king went himself to see it, and when he had heard the story, told the
Quakers they were fools for letting the Moors go,—"You should have
brought them to me," he said. "I thought it better for them," replied
the quaker, "to be in their own country."
One of their tenets is, that man, when truly born again of the Spirit,
is restored to the state of Adam before the fall; an error which
approximates nearer to truth, than the diabolical heresy of the
Calvinists and Gnostics. It might lead to a perilous confidence in those
who presumed they had attained to this state; but it must needs produce
the best effect upon the feelings and lives of such as are aspiring to
it. The doctrine of inspiration is more dangerous, but the tenet which
forbids all violence prevents those evil consequences which it might
else occasion.—The Quakers were always ready to carry a message from the
Lord, but they never thought of delivering it upon the point of a
dagger. An individual now and then appeared in sackcloth, crying
Repentance, in the streets. One man in Ireland went into a Catholic
church, naked above the waist, and burning brimstone in a chafing-dish,
as a token to the congregation of what they were to expect unless they
repented of their errors. Such extravagancies exposed none but
themselves to danger.
They lay claim to miracles; and it is good proof of the fidelity of
their chronicler that none of these miracles can be considered as
impossible, nor even unlikely. George Fox came into a house at a time
when they had bound a madwoman, and were attempting to bleed her. He
addressed her with his wonted gentleness, quieted her fears, soothed
her, persuaded the people to unbind her, and converted her to his own
opinions. Her phrensy never returned; it had found its proper channel. A
few of their numerous persecutors came to untimely ends. One in
particular, who had been active in torturing and putting them to death
in New England, was thrown from his horse and killed upon the place of
their execution: it was natural and perhaps not erroneous to ascribe
this to divine vengeance. In the days of their persecution they often
denounced a visitation of pestilence against London:—a tremendous plague
made its appearance and carried off 100,000 of its inhabitants. As they
had announced it, they naturally thought it came upon their account. One
Thomas Ibbitt went about the streets of the metropolis denouncing a
judgment by fire. On the very next day the fire of London broke out,
which consumed thirteen thousand houses. The effect which this produced
upon the prophet authenticates the story. So utterly was he astonished
at beholding the accomplishment of his prediction, that his character
was totally changed; he immediately conceived himself to be something
more than human, advanced to meet the conflagration, holding out both
his arms to stay its progress, and would infallibly in this delirium
have rushed into the flames, if he had not been carried away by force.
The sufferings of the Quakers ceased upon the accession of James II.,
who would willingly have purchased toleration for the true faith by
granting it to all others. He favoured them also for the sake of one of
their great leaders, whose father had been his personal friend. It is
related of this king, whom the English themselves acknowledge to have
been the best of his family, that when one of this sect was one day
addressing him in the palace, with his hat on as usual, the king took
off his own; upon which the Quaker observed that the king need not be
uncovered on his account. "My friend," replied James, "you don't know
the custom of this place;—only one hat at a time must be worn here."
That these people should have borne up against persecution is not
wonderful.—There is a stubborn principle in human nature, which in a
good cause is virtue, and even in an erroneous one is akin to it. Indeed
without persecution, or at least without opposition, the enthusiasm of a
sect cannot be kept up,—it is its food and fuel; and without it, it must
starve and be extinguished. From the time of their legal recognition the
enthusiasm of the Quakers ceased. No prophecies have since been uttered
by them in the streets, no testimony borne in sackcloth and ashes; the
Grand Turk has been abandoned to his misbelief, and the Pope,
notwithstanding their concern for him, given up as irreclaimable. Yet
such is the admirable œconomy of this extraordinary sect, that they
continue to flourish, if not to spread.
So pure a system of democracy was never elsewhere exhibited as that of
the internal government of this society. Each parish regulates its own
affairs in a monthly meeting, each diocese or district in a quarterly
one, the whole body in a yearly one, which is held in the
metropolis.—Deputies go from the lesser to the larger assemblies; but
every member of the society, who can conveniently, is expected to
attend. The women have their meetings in like manner; the equality of
the sexes in all things being practically acknowledged. In all other
collective bodies the will of the majority is the law. The Quakers admit
no such principle: among them nothing is determined upon unless it is
the sense of the whole; and as the good of the whole is their only
possible motive, (for no member of the society receives any emolument
for discharging any office in it,) they never fail, whatever difference
of opinion may at first have existed, to become unanimous.
Their preaching strikes a stranger as ludicrous. You may conceive what
it must needs be, when the preacher imagines himself to be the organ of
inspiration, and, instead of thinking what he shall say, watches for
what he believes to be internally dictated to him. Nothing in fact can
be more incoherent than their discourses, and their manifest inferiority
to those of any other sect ought to convince them of the fallacy of the
opinion upon which they proceed. That the admonition of the spirit, in
other words the faculty of conscience, when it be wisely and earnestly
cultivated, is an infallible guide of conduct, may and must be admitted;
but that which will make a good man act well, will not always make him
talk wisely. It is not however the matter of these discourses which
impresses those who are disposed to be impressed: knowing the speaker to
be seriously affected, they partake his feelings, and become seriously
affected also. Their history affords a curious illustration of this. The
mother of their chronicler was a Dutchwoman, who being moved, as she
believed, by the Spirit, came to preach in England in the days of
persecution. She understood no English, and therefore delivered herself
through an interpreter. One day it happened that the interpreter was not
at hand when the call came upon her, and the person who attempted to
translate her meaning found that he could not understand her. The
congregation, however, called upon her to proceed, affirming that the
religious feeling which she impressed upon them could not be stronger if
they had understood her. In the hands of a lying chronicler this would
have been magnified into a gift of tongues. The story is not the less
valuable, though it may provoke a smile.
The chief cause which exasperated the clergy so greatly against them,
was their obstinate refusal to pay tithes, and this is now operating to
diminish the sect. Could they be content to pay, and salve their
consciences by protesting against it, all would go on smoothly; instead
of this, they suffer their goods to be distrained and sold upon the
spot; by which they sustain a loss themselves, and tempt others to
profit fraudulently at their expense. The consequence is, that the
Quakers have very generally forsaken the country and taken up their
abode in cities. This is doubly detrimental to them. Those who remain in
the country are left as insulated families, and zeal even more than
gaiety requires the stimulus of fellowship. By their laws, anyone who
marries out of the pale of the society is dismissed from it; but these
families who live apart from their fellows are likely to fall off on
this account for want of neighbourhood. They who are collected in
cities, are lessened by another cause. Their principles exclude them
from all professions except that of physic, in which few only can find
employment; commerce therefore may be considered as their sole pursuit;
their plain and moderate habits lessen expense, and their industry
insures success; they grow rich, and their children desert the society.
The children of the rich find its restraints irksome, and are
converted—not by strong argument, not by incontrovertible authority, not
by any honourable and worthy sense of duty, but by the pleasures of the
card-table, the ballroom, and the theatre. But the great agents in
converting young Quakers to the established Church of England are the
tailors. The whole works of Bellarmine could not produce such an effect
upon them as a pattern-book of forbidden cloths and buttons. Nor could
any reason be urged to them so forcible as the propriety of appearing
like other people, and conforming to the strict orthodoxy of fashion.
Odd as it may seem, this feeling has far more influence among the men
than among the women of the society. The women who quit it usually
desert for love, for which there is this good reason, that the Quakers
have too much neglected the education of their sons. Women are easily
converted in their youth; they make amends for this pliancy as they
advance in life, and become the most useful diffusers of their own faith.
The diminution of the sect is not very manifest; and it is kept up by
proselytes who silently drop in, for they no longer seek to make
converts, and are even slow in admitting them. Perhaps these new
members, if they are sufficiently numerous, may imperceptibly bring them
nearer to the manners of the world in their appearance, and thus lessen
the main cause of their decline.
LETTER LVIII.
_Winter Weather.—Snow.—Christmas.—Old Customs gradually disused._
Jan. 2, 1808.
"If you would live in health," says the proverb, "wear the same garment
in summer which you wear in winter." It seems as if the English had some
such fool's adage, by the little difference there is between their
summer and their winter apparel. The men, indeed, when they go abroad
put on a great coat, and the women wear muffs, and fur round the neck;
but all these are laid aside in the house. I no longer wonder why these
people talk so much of the weather; they live in the most inconstant of
all climates, against which it is so difficult to take any effectual
precaution, that they have given the matter up in despair, and take no
precautions at all. Their great poet, Milton, describes the souls of the
condemned as being hurried from fiery into frozen regions: perhaps he
took the idea from his own feelings on such a day as this, when, like
me, he was scorched on one side and frost-bitten on the other; and, not
knowing which of the two torments was the worst, assigned them to the
wicked both in turn. "Why do you not warm your rooms like the Germans,"
I say to them, "and diffuse the heat equally on all sides?" "Oh," the
reply, "it is so dismal not to see the fire!" And so for the sake of
seeing the fire, they are contented to be half starved and half roasted
at the same time, and to have more women and children burnt to death in
one year than all the heretics who ever suffered in England in the days
when heresy was thought a crime.
I happened to sleep in the country when the first snow fell; and in the
morning when I looked out of window every thing was white, and the snow
flakes like feathers floating and falling with as endless and
ever-varying motions as the dance of musquitos in a summer evening. And
this mockery of life was the only appearance of life; and indeed it
seemed as if there could be nothing living in such a world. The trees
were clothed like the earth, every bough, branch, and spray; except that
side of the bark which had not been exposed to the wind, nothing was to
be seen but what was perfectly and dazzingly white; and the evergreens
in the garden were bent beneath the load. White mountains in the
distance can give no idea of this singular effect. I was equally
delighted with the incrustation upon the inside of the windows. Nothing
which I have ever seen equals the exquisite beauty of this frost-work.
But when I returned to London the scene was widely different.—There the
atmosphere is so full of soot from the earth-coal, that the snow is
sullied as it falls; men were throwing it from the top of every house by
shovels full, lest it should soak through the roof;—and when it began to
melt, the streets were more filthy and miserable than I could have
conceived possible. In wet weather women wear a clog, which is raised
upon an iron ring about two inches from the ground; they clatter along
the streets like horses.
The cold in this country is intense; and because it is not quite severe
enough to nip off a man's nose if he puts it out of doors, they take no
precautions against it, and therefore suffer more than the Germans or
Russians. Nay, the Russian soldiers who were in England during the late
war died of the cold; they had been accustomed to their stoves and their
furs, for which regimentals and English barracks were such bad
substitutes, that they sickened and died off like rotten sheep. Liquids
freeze in the house. My water-bottle burst last night with a loud
report. An exorcist would have taken it for a signal gun of the enemy,
and have discharged a volley of anathemas in return. I was startled, and
could not divine the cause till day-light explained it.
I happened to go into a pastrycook's shop one morning, and enquired of
the mistress why she kept her window open during this severe
weather—which I observed most of the trade did. She told me, that were
she to close it, her receipts would be lessened forty or fifty shillings
a-day;—so many were the persons who took up buns or biscuits as they
passed by and threw their pence in, not allowing themselves time to
enter. Was there ever so indefatigable a people!—I may here mention,
that the first confectioner who ever carried on the trade in England was
a Spaniard, by name Balthezar Sanchez, who founded a hospital near
London at the close of the sixteenth century. Some of the English
sweetmeats exceed ours: the currant and the raspberry, fruits which
flourish in a cold climate, form delicious preserves. Their iced creams
also are richer than our iced waters; but these northern people do not
understand the management of southern luxuries; they fill their cellars
with ice instead of snow, though it is procured with more difficulty and
greater expense, and must be broken to the consistency of compressed
snow before it can be used.
Just at this time these shops are filled with large plum-cakes, which
are crusted over with sugar, and ornamented in every possible way. These
are for the festival of the kings, it being part of an Englishman's
religion to eat plum-cake on this day, and to have pies at Christmas
made of meat and plums. This is the only way in which these festivals
are celebrated; and if the children had not an interest in keeping it
up, even this would soon be disused. All persons say how differently
this season was observed in their fathers' days, and speak of old
ceremonies and old festivities as things which are obsolete. The cause
is obvious. In large towns the population is continually shifting; a new
settler neither continues the customs of his own province in a place
where they would be strange, nor adopts those which he finds, because
they are strange to him, and thus all local differences are wearing out.
In the country, estates are purchased by new men, by the manufacturing
and mercantile aristocracy who have no family customs to keep up, and by
planters from the West Indies, and adventurers from the East, who have
no feeling connected with times and seasons which they have so long
ceased to observe.
Perhaps no kingdom ever experienced so great a change in so short a
course of years without some violent state convulsion, as England has
done during the present reign. I wish I could procure materials to show
the whole contrast:—A metropolis doubled in extent; taxes quintupled;
the value of money depreciated as rapidly as if new mines had been
discovered; canals cut from one end of the island to the other;
travelling made so expeditious that the internal communication is
tenfold what it was; the invention of the steam-engine, almost as great
an epocha as the invention of printing; the manufacturing system carried
to its utmost point; the spirit of commerce extended to every thing; an
empire lost in America, and another gained in the East; these would be
parts of the picture. The alteration extends to the minutest things,
even to the dress and manners of every rank of society.
LETTER LIX.
_Cards.—Whist.—Treatises upon this Game.—Pope Joan.—Cards never used on
the Sabbath, and heavily taxed.—Ace of Spades._
The English cards are, like the French, fifty-two in number. They differ
from them in the figured cards, which are whole-length, and in the
clumsiness of their fabric, being as large again, thick in proportion,
and always plain on the back. Our names for the suits are retained in
both countries; and as only with us the names and the figures
correspond, and our words for cards (_naypes_) is unlike that in any
other European language, we either invented or first received them from
the Orientals.
Gambling, dancing, and hunting are as favourite pastimes among the
English as among savages. The latter of the sports must of course be
almost exclusively the amusement of men; dancing requires youth, or at
least strength and agility; but old and young, hale and infirm, can
alike enjoy the stimulus of the dice-box or the card-table.