it does every thing else, seems here at last to have lost its
fickleness. Ombre, Basset, and Quadrille had their day; but Whist is as
much the favourite now as when it was first introduced. Casino came in
from Italy, like the opera, and won over many females; but, like the
opera, though it became fashionable it never was fairly naturalized, and
whist still continues peculiarly the game of the English people. It
suits the taciturnity and thoughtfulness of the national character;
indeed its name is derived from _whish_, a word, or rather sound, which
they make when they would enjoin silence.[5] Not a word is spoken during
the deal, unless one of the party, happening to be of irascible temper,
should find fault with his partner—for people of the politest manners
sometimes forget their politeness and their manners at cards. The time
of dealing, if silence be broken, is employed in discussing the politics
of the last deal. Whatever the stake may be, the men usually increase it
by betting with some by-stander upon the issue of the rubber, the single
game, and sometimes the single deal; and thus the lookers-on take as
much interest in the cards as the players themselves.
A certain person of the name of Hoyle wrote a treatise upon the game,
about half a century ago, and laid down all its laws. These laws, which,
like those of the Medes and the Persians, alter not, are constantly
appealed to. Few books in the language, or in any language, have been so
frequently printed, still fewer so intently studied. Compendiums have
been made of a pocket-size for the convenience of ready reference; these
are very numerous; the most esteemed is by Short.[6] But though these
laws are every where received as canonical, an old Welsh baronet who
used to play cards six days in the week, and take physic on the seventh,
chose some few years since to set up a heresy of his own in opposition.
It consisted in reducing the number of points from ten to six, allowing
no honours to be counted, and determining the trump by drawing a card
from the other pack, so that the dealer had no advantage, and all chance
was as far as possible precluded. Whether this was considered as
savouring too much of equality and Jacobinism I know not, but he made
few proselytes, and the schism expired with him. He himself called it
Rational Whist; his friends, in a word of contemptuous fabrication,
denominated it his _whimsy-whamsy_.
Of the minor games I have only noticed two as remarkable, the one for
its name, which is Pope Joan; a curious instance of the mean artifices
by which the heretics still contrive to keep up a belief in this
exploded fable. They call her the curse of Scotland; so the legend,
fabulous as it is, has been still more falsified. The other game is
called _a fear_;[7] each person stakes a certain sum, a card is named,
and the pack spread upon the table; each draws one in succession, and he
who draws the lot loses and retires: this is repeated till the last
survivor remains with the pool. The pleasure of the game consists in the
_fear_ which each person feels of seeing the fatal card turned up by
himself, and hence its name.
Their great poet[8] speaks of an old age of cards as the regular and
natural destiny of his countrywomen,—what they all come to at last. This
is one of the effects of their general irreligion. When I have seen a
palsied old woman nodding over these Devil's-books, as the puritans call
them, I could not but think how much better her withered and trembling
hands would be employed in telling a bead-string, than in sorting clubs
and spades; and it has given me melancholy thoughts, to think that the
human being whom I beheld there with one foot in the grave, had probably
never a serious thought upon any other subject. The more rigid
dissenters, and especially the Quakers, proscribe cards altogether; some
of the old church people, on the contrary, seem to ascribe a sort of
sacredness to this method of amusement, and think that a Christmas-day
cannot be duly celebrated without it. But a general and unaccountable
prejudice prevails against the use of them on Sundays. I believe that
half the people of England think it the very essence of sabbath-breaking.
Nothing is taxed more heavily than cards and dice, avowedly for the
purpose of discouraging gambling. Yet the lottery is one of the regular
Ways and Means of government; and as men will gamble, in some shape or
other, it should seem that the wisest thing a government can do, is to
encourage that mode of gambling which is most advantageous to itself,
and least mischievous to the people. If cards were lightly taxed, so as
to be sold as cheaply here as they are in our country, the amusement
would, as with us, descend to the lowest class of society, and the
consumption be increased in proportion. The revenue would be no loser,
and the people would be benefited, inasmuch as some little degree of
reflection is necessary to most games; and for those who now never think
at all, it would be advancing a step in intellect and civilization, to
think at their sports. Besides this, cards are favourable to habits of
domestication, and the mechanic would not so often spend his evenings in
the chimney corner of the alehouse, if he could have this amusement by
his own fire-side.
All the insignia of taxation are conferred upon the ace of spades, which
is girt with the garter, encircled with laurels, and surmounted with the
crown, the king's name above, and his motto beneath; but under all, and
over all, and around all, you read every where "sixpence, additional
duty!" which said sixpences have been laid on so often, that having no
room for their increase upon the card, they now ornament the wrapper in
which the pack is sold with stamps. Once in a farm-house where cards
were so seldom used that a pack lasted half a century, I saw an ace of
spades, plain like the other aces: they told me it was always made so in
former times; a proof that when it was chosen to bear these badges of
burthensome distinction, quadrille, or some one of its family, was the
fashionable game.
[5] It seems, by this etymology, as if some person had been fooling the
author's curiosity.—TR.
[6] The author has mistaken Bob Short for a real name.—TR.
[7] _Un espanto_ is the original phrase. Not knowing the game, the
translator suspects he has not hit upon the right name.—TR.
[8] Alexander Pope.
LETTER LX.
_Growth of the Commercial Interest.—Family Pride almost extinct.—Effect
of heavy Taxation.—Titles indiscriminately granted.—Increase of the
House of Peers._
The commercial system has long been undermining the distinction of ranks
in society, and introducing a worse distinction in its stead. Mushrooms
are every day starting up from the dunghill of trade, nobody knows how,
and family pride is therefore become a common subject of ridicule in
England; the theatres make it the object of a safe jest, sure to find
applause from the multitude, who are ever desirous of depreciating what
they do not possess; and authors, who are to themselves, as one of their
own number says,
"A whole Welsh genealogy alone,"
continue to attack as a prejudice a feeling, which, as philosophers, it
is now time for them to defend. That the new gentry of the country
should join in this ridicule ought not to be wondered at. He who has no
paternal oaks has reason to prefer the poplars of his own planting, and
may well like to expatiate upon the inconvenience of an old family
house, long galleries, huge halls, and windows which none but the
assessor can count, in his own villa, which is built to the pattern of
the last tax upon light, and where the stucco upon the walls is hardly
dry. But that the true gentlemen of England should so readily yield up
their own precedency to vulgar opinion is indeed extraordinary. Nothing,
however, is now valued for being old. The windows and the whole front of
the mansion must be modernized; the old avenues of elms, which two
centuries have just brought to their full perfection, are sacrificed to
a hatred of uniformity; and the yew hedges, which have been clipt year
after year till they formed a thick and impenetrable wall, are levelled
and shorn smooth away. The fashion of the furniture must be changed;
even the old plate must be melted down, and recast in the newest shape;
and an English Esquire would as soon walk abroad in his grandfather's
wedding suit, as suffer the family Tree to be seen in his hall.
This degeneracy of feeling is confined to the English, and has not yet
extended to the Scotch, or Welsh, or Irish. That it is not necessarily
and unavoidably produced by commerce seems to be proved by the instances
of Genoa and Venice; but the commercial spirit was never so universal in
those states as it is in England, where it extends to every thing, and
poisons every thing:—literature, arts, religion, government, are alike
tainted; it is a _lues_ which has got into the system of the country,
and is rotting flesh and bone.
In the celestial hierarchy, we are told, the gradations, though
infinite, are imperceptible; so gradual is the ascent, and so beautiful
and perfect is order in heaven. Experience shows that something like
this is desirable in civil society; at least, where the limits of rank
are most strongly marked, there is there the worst tyranny and the most
abject misery, as among the casts of Hindostan. Towards this evil the
English are tending; the commercial system encroaches on the one hand
upon the aristocracy, and on the other it treads down the peasants, and
little landholders, the yeomanry as they were called, who were once the
strength of England. Half a century ago the country was divided into
small farms; here was a race of men above the labourers, though
labourers themselves; not superior to their hinds in manners or
education, and living at the same table with them, but still in
independence, and with that feeling of independence which was the pride
of the country, and which has made the country what it is. These men
have disappeared since agriculture has become a trading speculation:
field has been joined to field; a moneyed farmer comes, like Aaron's
rod, and swallows up all within his reach. Agriculture is certainly
materially improved; whether the markets be better supplied or not is
disputed; there is less competition, and the rich cultivator can
withhold produce which his poorer predecessor must have brought to sale.
In this point perhaps the advantages and disadvantages may be equal. But
the evil is, that there is one gradation the less in society; that the
second step in the ladder is taken away. And this evil is felt and
acknowledged: the race of domestic servants were formerly the children
of these little farmers; they were decently and religiously educated;
and because they were of respectable parentage, they possessed a sort of
family pride which made them respectable themselves. But the labouring
and manufacturing poor have no leisure to breed up their children
religiously, and no means to do it decently, and a very general
depravity of the servants is complained of.
The gentry of small fortune have also disappeared. The colonial war bore
hard upon them, but the last has crushed them. Inheriting what to their
forefathers had been an ample subsistence, they have found themselves
step by step curtailed of the luxuries and at last of the comforts of
life, without a possibility of helping themselves. For those who were
arrived at manhood it was too late to enter into any profession; and to
embark what they possessed in trade was hazarding all, and putting
themselves at the mercy of a partner. Meantime year after year the price
of every article of necessary consumption has increased with
accelerating rapidity: education has become more costly, and at the same
time more indispensable; and taxation year after year falls heavier,
while the means of payment become less. In vain does he whose father has
lived in opulence, and whom the villagers with hereditary respect still
address hat in hand, or bow to as they pass,—in vain does he put down
the carriage, dismiss the footman, and block up windows even in the
house front. There is no escape. Wine disappears from his side-board;
there is no longer a table ready for his friend; the priest is no longer
invited after service;—all will not do: his boys must out to sea, or
seek their fortune in trade; his girls sink lower, and become dependants
on the rich, or maintain themselves by the needle, while he mortgages
the land, for immediate subsistence, deeper and deeper as the burthen of
the times presses heavier and heavier;—and happy is he if it lasts long
enough to keep him from absolute want before he sinks into the grave.
While one part of the community is thus depressed by the effects of war,
and the commercial system, and the diminished value of money, they who
are in the lucky scale rise as others sink; and merchants and bankers
and contractors make their way by wealth even into the ranks of
nobility. James I., whom we compelled to cut off the head of the
Raleigh, being perpetually at his shifts to supply the extravagance of
his infamous favourites, invented the title of baronet, and offered
fifty of these titles for sale at a thousand pounds each,—in those days
a weighty sum. This title has never indeed since been publicly put up to
sale, yet it is still to be purchased; and as one of the expedients
during the American war, it is known that the then minister, having no
readier means of rewarding one of his adherents, gave him the blank
patent of a baronetcy, to make the most of, and fill up with what name
he pleased. It is true that the title confers no power, the holder still
continuing a commoner; but when honorary distinctions are thus disposed
of, they cease to be honourable. Knighthood is here bestowed
indiscriminately upon the greatest and the meanest occasions: it was
conferred upon Sir Sidney Smith, who stopt the progress of Bonaparte in
Syria and drove him from Acre; and it is lavished upon every provincial
merchant who comes up with an address from his native city to the king
upon any subject of public congratulation. This title, which consists in
affixing Sir to the proper name (a word equivalent in its common
acceptation to _Senor_), differs from the baronetcy in not being
hereditary; but, as I have before said, whoever chooses to pay the price
may entail it upon his children.
The indiscriminate admission to nobility is a practice which produces
the same mischievous effect upon public opinion. They must be
short-sighted politicians who do not see that, if they would have
nobility respected, they should reserve it as the reward of great and
signal services; that it is monstrous to give the same honours and
privileges to a man because he has the command of three or four
boroughs, as to Nelson for the battle of the Nile. This however is not
all the evil; the political system of the country is altered by it, and
the power of the old nobles gradually transferred to a set of new men,
to an aristocracy of wealth. The Lords in England form the second power
in the stale, and no law can be enacted till it has received their
approbation. About a century ago the party in opposition to the crown
was known to be the strongest in the house of lords, and the queen,
knowing that her measures would else be outvoted, created twelve new
peers, who turned the scale. This open and undisguised exertion of the
prerogative, to the actual subversion of the constitution as it then
stood, provoked nothing more than a sarcasm. When the first of these new
peers gave his vote upon the question, one of the old nobles addressed
himself to the rest, and said, "I suppose, gentlemen, you all vote by
your foreman," alluding to their number, which was the same as that of a
common jury. This practice of granting peerages has been more frequent
during the present reign than at any former period, not less than
three-fifths of the house of lords having been created, and the number
is every year increased. But to the old aristocracy of the country every
new creation is a diminution of their power and weight in the political
scale. This evil will eventually occasion its own remedy; the lords will
become at last too numerous for one assembly, and sooner or later some
mode of election for seats must be resorted to for the younger peers, as
is now the case in Scotland.
Agur prayed to the Almighty to give him neither poverty nor riches, and
the wisest of mankind recorded his prayer for its wisdom. That which is
wisdom for an individual must be wisdom for a nation, for wisdom and
morality are not variable. There are too much riches and too much
poverty in England; and were there less of the one there would be less
of the other. Taxation might be so directed as to break down the great
properties, and counteract the law of primogeniture.—Without that law no
country can emerge from barbarism, (unless, as in Peru, no right of
individual property be acknowledged,) and, in small estates, it seems
advisable that it should always hold good; but when a nation has
attained to that state of improvement which England has, the operation
of the law is mischievous. Society has outgrown it. But thus it is that,
retaining institutions after their utility has ceased, man is crippled
on his march, by fettering, like the Chinese women, the feet of maturity
with the shoes of childhood.
LETTER LXI.
_Despard's Conspiracy.—Conduct of the Populace on that Occasion.—
War.—The Question examined whether England is in Danger of a
Revolution.—Ireland._
A most extraordinary conspiracy to kill the king and to overthrow the
government has been detected. A certain Colonel Despard and a few
soldiers were the only persons concerned. This man had for many years
been the object of suspicion, and had at different times been confined
as a dangerous person. Whether his designs were always treasonable, or
whether he was goaded on by a frantic desire of revenge for what he had
suffered, certain it is that he corrupted some of the king's guards to
fire at him in his carriage, from a cannon which always stands by the
palace. If it missed, the others were to be ready to dispatch him with
their swords. The scheme had spread no further than this handful of
associates; and they trusted to the general confusion which it would
occasion, and to the temper of the mob. These facts have been proved by
the testimony of some of the parties concerned. Despard on his trial
steadily denied them, and laid a not unreasonable stress upon the
absurdity of the scheme. The jury who pronounced him guilty
unaccountably recommended him to mercy; he, however, and some of his
accomplices have suffered death. The rest, it is supposed, will be
pardoned.[9] With such lenity are things conducted in England. No
arrests have followed, no alarm has been excited; the people are
perfectly satisfied of his guilt, and only say What a blessing that it
did not happen under Pitt!—Never had a nation a more perfect confidence
in the rectitude of their minister.
The execution was after the ordinary manner, with this difference only,
that the criminal after he was dead was beheaded, and the head held up
with this proclamation, "This is the head of a traitor." He addressed
the people from the scaffold, solemnly protested that he was innocent,
and that he died a martyr to the zeal with which he had ever been the
friend of their liberties. If revenge were the rooted passion of his
soul, never was that passion more strongly exemplified than by this calm
declaration of a dying man, which was so well calculated to do
mischief,—and had it been under Mr Pitt's administration, a great part
of the nation would have believed him. What is most extraordinary is,
that the mob applauded him while he spoke, took off their hats as if in
respect when he suffered, and hissed the executioner when he held up his
bloody head. They burnt one of the witnesses in effigy,—and attended the
body to the grave, as if they had been giving him the honours of a
public funeral.
* * * * *
The English are going to war. To the utter astonishment of every body
the king has informed parliament, that formidable armaments are fitting
out in the French ports, and that it is necessary to prepare against
them. There is not a syllable of truth in this, and every body knows it;
but every thing in this country is done by a fiction; the lawyers have
as complete a mythology of their own as the old poets, and every trial
has as regular a machinery as the Iliad. That war will be the result is
not doubted, because it is well known that the ministry are disposed to
be at peace. They have given a decisive proof of this by prosecuting M.
Peltier for a libel upon the first consul; it is therefore reasonably
supposed, that after a measure so repugnant as this to English feelings,
and to English notions of the freedom of the press, has been adopted to
gratify the first consul, nothing but necessity could induce them to
abandon their pacific system.
This sudden turn of political affairs has greatly raised the reputation
of Lord Grenville and his party. It now appears that he prophesied as
truly of the peace as Mr Fox did of the war. The curse of Cassandra lay
upon both; and it seems as if the English, like the Jews of old, always
were to have prophets, and never to believe them. The peace, however,
short as its duration has been, has been highly beneficial. The English
are no longer a divided people. They are ready and almost eager for the
commencement of hostilities, because they are persuaded that war is
unavoidable. The tremendous power of France seems rather to provoke than
alarm them: volunteers are arming every where; and though every man
shakes his head when he hears the taxes talked of, it is evident that
they are ready to part with half they have, if the national exigencies
call for it.
Still the circumstances which occurred upon Despard's execution may give
the English government matter for serious reflection. There is no longer
a party in the country who are desirous of a revolution, and as eager as
they were able to disseminate the perilous principles of Jacobinism.
Bonaparte has extinguished that spirit; he has destroyed all their
partiality for the French government, and Mr Addington has conciliated
them to their own. Never was there a time when the English were so
decidedly Anti-Gallican, those very persons being the most so who
formerly regarded France with the warmest hopes. Whence then can have
arisen this disposition in the populace, unless it be from the weight of
taxation which affects them in the price of every article of life,—from
a growing suspicion that their interest and the interest of their rulers
are not the same, and a disposition to try any change for the chance
there is that it may be for the better?
Two causes, and only two, will rouse a peasantry to rebellion;
intolerable oppression, or religious zeal either for the right faith or
the wrong; no other motive is powerful enough. A manufacturing poor is
more easily instigated to revolt. They have no local attachments; the
persons to whom they look up for support they regard more with envy than
respect, as men who grow rich by their labour; they know enough of what
is passing in the political world to think themselves politicians; they
feel the whole burthen of taxation, which is not the case with the
peasant, because he raises a great part of his own food: they are aware
of their own numbers, and the moral feelings which in the peasant are
only blunted, are in these men debauched. A manufacturing populace is
always ripe for rioting,—the direction which this fury may take is
accidental; in 1780 it was against the Catholics, in 1790 against the
Dissenters. Governments who found their prosperity upon manufactures
sleep upon gunpowder.
Do I then think that England is in danger of revolution? If the
manufacturing system continues to be extended, increasing as it
necessarily does increase the number, the misery, and the depravity of
the poor, I believe that revolution inevitably must come, and in its
most fearful shape. But there are causes which delay the evil, and some
which may by an easy possibility avert it, if government should aid them.