relic no doubt of dirtier times; for the English are a truly clean
people, and have an abhorrence of all vermin. This loathsome insect
seems to have been imported from France. An English traveller of the
early part of the seventeenth century calls it the French _punaise_;
which should imply either that the bug was unknown in his time, or had
been so newly imported as to be still regarded as a Frenchman. It is
still confined to large cities, and is called in the country, where it
is known only by name, the London bug; a proof of foreign extraction.
It seems to be the curse of this country to catch vermin from all
others: the Hessian fly devours their turnips; an insect from America
has fastened upon the apple-trees, and is destroying them; it travels
onward about a league in a year, and no means have yet been discovered
of checking its progress. The cockroach of the West Indies infests all
houses near the river in London, and all sea-port towns; and the Norway
rats have fairly extirpated the aboriginal ones, and taken possession of
the land by right of conquest. As they came in about the same time as
the reigning family, the partisans of the Stuarts used to call them
Hanoverians. They multiply prodigiously, and their boldness and ferocity
almost surpass belief: I have been told of men from whose heads they
have sucked the powder and pomatum during their sleep, and of children
whom they have attacked in the night and mangled. If the animals of the
North should migrate, like their country barbarians, in successive
shoals, each shoal fiercer than the last, it is the hamsters’ turn to
come after the rats, and the people of England must take care of
themselves. An invasion by rafts and gun-boats would be less dangerous.
A lady of J—’s acquaintance was exceedingly desirous, when she was in
Andalusia, to bring a few live locusts home with her, that she might
introduce such beautiful creatures into England. Certainly, had she
succeeded, she ought to have applied to the board of agriculture for a
reward.
Foxes are imported from France in time of peace, and turned loose upon
the south coast to keep up the breed for hunting. There is certainly no
race of people, not even the hunting tribes of savages, who delight so
passionately as the English in this sport. The fox-hunter of the last
generation was a character as utterly unlike any other in society, and
as totally absorbed in his own pursuits, as the alchemist. His whole
thoughts were respecting his hounds and horses; his whole anxiety, that
the weather might be favourable for the sport; his whole conversation
was of the kennel and stable, and of the history of his chases. One of
the last of this species, who died not many years ago, finding himself
seriously ill, rode off to the nearest town, and bade the waiter of the
inn bring him in some oysters and porter, and go for a physician. When
the physician arrived he said to him, “Doctor, I am devilish ill,—and
you must cure me by next month, that I may be ready for foxhunting.”
This, however, was beyond the doctor’s power. One of his acquaintance
called in upon him some little time after, and asked what was his
complaint. “They tell me,” said he, “’tis a dyspepsy. I don’t know what
that is, but some damn’d thing or other, I suppose!”—a definition of
which every sick man will feel the force.
But this race is extinct, or exists only in a few families, in which the
passion has so long been handed down from father to son, that it is
become a sort of hereditary disease. The great alteration in society
which has taken place during the present reign, tends to make men more
like one another. The agriculturist has caught the spirit of commerce;
the merchant is educated like the nobleman; the sea-officer has the
polish of high life; and London is now so often visited, that the
manners of the metropolis are to be found in every country gentleman’s
house. But though hunting has ceased to be the exclusive business of any
person’s life, except a huntsman’s, it is still pursued with an ardour
and desperate perseverance beyond even that of savages: the prey is
their object, for which they set their snares or lie patiently in
wait:—here the pleasure is in the pursuit. It is no uncommon thing to
read in the newspapers of a chase of ten or twelve leagues,—remember,
all this at full speed, and without intermission,—dogs, men, and horses
equally eager and equally delighted, though not equally fatigued. Facts
are recorded in the annals of sporting, how the hunted animal, unable to
escape, has sprung from a precipice, and some of the hounds have
followed it; and of a stag, which, after one of these unmerciful
pursuits, returned to its own lair, and, leaping a high boundary with
its last effort, dropped down dead,—the only hound which had kept up
with it to the last, dying in like manner by its side. The present king,
who is remarkably fond of the sport, once followed a deer till the
creature died with pure fatigue.
This was the only English custom which William of Nassau thoroughly and
heartily adopted, as if he had been an Englishman himself. He was as
passionately addicted to it as his present successor, and rode as
boldly, making it a point of honour never to be outdone in any leap,
however perilous. A certain Mr Cherry, who was devoted to the exiled
family, took occasion of this, to form perhaps the most pardonable
design which ever was laid against a king’s life. He regularly joined
the royal hounds, put himself foremost, and took the most desperate
leaps, in the hope that William might break his neck in following him.
One day, however, he accomplished one so imminently hazardous, that the
king, when he came to the spot, shook his head and drew back.
Shooting is pursued with the same zeal. Many a man, who, if a walk of
three leagues were proposed to him, would shrink from it as an exertion
beyond his strength, will walk from sun-rise till a late dinner hour,
with a gun upon his shoulder, over heath and mountain, never thinking of
distance, and never feeling fatigue. A game book, as it is called, is
one of the regular publications, wherein the sportsman may keep an
account of all the game he kills, the time when, the place where, and
chronicle the whole history of his campaigns! The preservation of the
game becomes necessarily an object of peculiar interest to the gentry,
and the laws upon this subject are enforced with a rigour unknown in any
other part of Europe. In spite of this, it becomes scarcer every year:
poaching, that is, killing game without a privilege so to do, is made a
trade: the stage-coaches carry it from all parts of the kingdom to the
metropolis for sale, and the larders of all the great inns are regularly
supplied; they who would eagerly punish the poacher, never failing to
encourage him by purchasing from his employers. Another cause of
destruction arises from the resentment of the farmers, who think that,
as the animals are fed upon their grounds, it is hard that they should
be denied the privilege of profiting by them. At a public meeting of the
gentry in one of the northern provinces, a hamper came directed to the
president, containing two thousand partridges’ eggs carefully packed.
Some species by these continual persecutions have been quite rooted out,
others are nearly extinct, and others only to be found in remote parts
of the island. Sportsmen lament this, and naturalists lament it also
with better reason.
One of the most costly works which I shall bring home is a complete
treatise upon rural sports, with the most beautiful decorations that I
have ever seen: it contains all possible information upon the subject,
the best instructions, and annals of these sciences, as they may be
termed in England. I have purchased it as an exquisite specimen of
English arts, and excellently characteristic of the country, more
especially as being the work of a clergyman. He might have seen in his
Bible that the mighty hunters there are not mentioned as examples; and
that, when Christ called the fishermen, he bade them leave the pursuit,
for from thenceforth they should catch men.
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LETTER XXVI.
_Poor-Laws.—Work-Houses.—Sufferings of the Poor from the
Climate.—Dangerous State of England during the Scarcity.—The Poor
not bettered by the Progress of Civilization._
With us charity is a religious duty, with the English it is an affair of
law. We support the poor by alms; in England a tax is levied to keep
them from starving, and, enormous as the amount of this tax is, it is
scarcely sufficient for the purpose. This evil began immediately upon
the dissolution of the monasteries. They who were accustomed to receive
food at the convent door, where they could ask it without shame because
it was given as an act of piety, had then none to look up to for bread.
A system of parish taxation was soon therefore established, and new laws
from time to time enacted to redress new grievances, the evil still
outgrowing the remedy, till the poor-laws have become the disgrace of
the statutes, and it is supposed that at this day a tenth part of the
whole population of England receive regular parish pay.
The disposal of this money is vested in certain officers called
overseers. The office is so troublesome that the gentry rarely or never
undertake it, and it usually devolves upon people rather below the
middle rank, who are rigidly parsimonious in the distribution of their
trust. If they were uniformly thus frugal of the parish purse, it would
be laudable, or at least excusable; but where their own enjoyments are
concerned, they are inexcusably lavish of the money collected for better
purposes. On every pretext of parish business, however slight, a dinner
is ordered for the officers. While they indulge themselves they deal
hardly by the poor, and give reluctantly what they cannot withhold. The
beadsman at the convent door receives a blessing with his pittance, but
the poor man here is made to feel his poverty as a reproach; his scanty
relief is bestowed ungraciously, and ungraciously received; there is
neither charity in him that gives, nor gratitude in him that takes. Nor
is this the worst evil: as each parish is bound to provide for its own
poor, an endless source of oppression and litigation arises from the
necessity of keeping out all persons likely to become chargeable. We
talk of the liberty of the English, and they talk of their own liberty;
but there is no liberty in England for the poor. They are no longer sold
with the soil, it is true; but they cannot quit the soil, if there be
any probability or suspicion that age or infirmity may disable them. If
in such a case they endeavour to remove to some situation where they
hope more easily to maintain themselves, where work is more plentiful,
or provisions cheaper, the overseers are alarmed; the intruder is
apprehended as if he were a criminal, and sent back to his own parish.
Wherever a pauper dies, that parish must be at the cost of his funeral:
instances therefore have not been wanting, of wretches in the last stage
of disease having been hurried away in an open cart upon straw, and
dying upon the road. Nay, even women in the very pains of labour have
been driven out, and have perished by the way-side, because the
birth-place of the child would be its parish. Such acts do not pass
without reprehension; but no adequate punishment can be inflicted, and
the root of the evil lies in the laws.
The principle upon which the poor-laws seem to have been framed is this:
The price of labour is conceived to be adequate to the support of the
labourer. If the season be unusually hard, or his family larger than he
can maintain, the parish then assists him; rather affording a specific
relief, than raising the price of labour, because if wages were
increased, it would injure the main part of the labouring poor instead
of benefiting them: a fact, however mortifying to the national
character, sufficiently proved by experience. They would spend more
money at the alehouse, working less and drinking more, till the habits
of idleness and drunkenness strengthening each other, would reduce them
to a state of helpless and burthensome poverty. Parish pay, therefore,
is a means devised for increasing the wages of those persons only to
whom the increase is really advantageous, and at times only when it is
really necessary.
Plausible as this may at first appear, it is fallacious, as all
reasonings will be found which assume for their basis the depravity of
human nature. The industrious by this plan are made to suffer for the
spendthrift. They are prevented from laying by the surplus of their
earnings for the support of their declining years, lest others not so
provident should squander it. But the consequence is, that the parish is
at last obliged to support both; for, if the labourer in the prime of
his youth and strength cannot earn more than his subsistence, he must
necessarily in his old age earn less.
When the poor are incapable of contributing any longer to their own
support, they are removed to what is called the workhouse. I cannot
express to you the feeling of hopelessness and dread with which all the
decent poor look on to this wretched termination of a life of labour. To
this place all vagrants are sent for punishment; unmarried women with
child go here to be delivered; and poor orphans and base-born children
are brought up here till they are of age to be apprenticed off; the
other inmates are those unhappy people who are utterly helpless, parish
idiots and madmen, the blind and the palsied, and the old who are fairly
worn out. It is not in the nature of things that the superintendants of
such institutions as these should be gentle-hearted, when the
superintendance is undertaken merely for the sake of the salary; and, in
this country, religion is out of the question. There are always enough
competitors for the management, among those people who can get no better
situation; but, whatever kindliness of disposition they may bring with
them to the task, it is soon perverted by the perpetual sight of
depravity and of suffering. The management of children who grow up
without one natural affection—where there is none to love them, and
consequently none whom they can love—would alone be sufficient to sour a
happier disposition than is usually brought to the government of a
workhouse.
To this society of wretchedness the labouring poor of England look on,
as their last resting-place on this side the grave; and rather than
enter abodes so miserable, they endure the severest privations as long
as it is possible to exist. A feeling of honest pride makes them shrink
from a place where guilt and poverty are confounded; and it is
heart-breaking for those who have reared a family of their own, to be
subjected in their old age to the harsh and unfeeling authority of
persons younger than themselves, neither better born nor better bred.
They dread also the disrespectful and careless funeral which public
charity, or rather law, bestows; and many a wretch denies himself the
few sordid comforts within his reach, that he may hoard up enough to
purchase a more decent burial, a better shroud, or a firmer coffin, than
the parish will afford.
The wealth of this nation is their own boast, and the envy of all the
rest of Europe; yet in no other country is there so much poverty—nor is
poverty any where else attended with such actual suffering. Poor as our
own country is, the poor Spaniard has resources and comforts which are
denied to the Englishman: above all, he enjoys a climate which rarely or
never subjects him to physical suffering. Perhaps the pain—the positive
bodily pain which the poor here endure from cold, may be esteemed the
worst evil of their poverty. Coal is every where dear, except in the
neighbourhood of the collieries; and especially so in London, where the
number of the poor is of course greatest. You see women raking the ashes
in the streets, for the sake of the half-burnt cinders. What a picture
does one of their houses present in the depth of winter! the old
cowering over a few embers—the children shivering in rags, pale and
livid—all the activity and joyousness natural to their time of life
chilled within them.—The numbers who perish from diseases produced by
exposure to cold and rain, by unwholesome food, and by the want of
enough even of that, would startle as well as shock you. Of the children
of the poor, hardly one-third are reared.
During the late war the internal peace of the country was twice
endangered by scarcities. Many riots broke out, though fewer than were
apprehended, and though the people on the whole behaved with exemplary
patience. Nor were the rich deficient in charity. There is no country in
the world where money is so willingly given for public purposes of
acknowledged utility. Subscriptions were raised in all parts, and
associations formed, to supply the distressed with food, either
gratuitously, or at a cheaper rate than the market price. But though the
danger was felt and confessed, and though the military force of London
was called out to quell an incipient insurrection, no measures have been
taken to prevent a return of the evil. With all its boasted wealth and
prosperity, England is at the mercy of the seasons. One unfavourable
harvest occasions dearth: and what the consequences of famine would be
in a country where the poor are already so numerous and so wretched, is
a question which the boldest statesman dares not ask himself. When
volunteer forces were raised over the kingdom, the poor were excluded;
it was not thought safe to trust them with arms. But the peasantry are,
and ought to be, the strength of every country; and woe to that country
where the peasantry and the poor are the same!
Many causes have contributed to the rapid increase of this evil. The
ruinous wars of the present reign, and the oppressive system of taxation
pursued by the late premier, are among the principal. But the
manufacturing system is the main cause; it is the inevitable tendency of
that system to multiply the number of the poor, and to make them
vicious, diseased, and miserable.
To answer the question concerning the comparative advantages of the
savage and social states, as Rousseau has done, is to commit high
treason against human nature, and blasphemy against Omniscient Goodness;
but they who say that society ought to stop where it is, and that it has
no further amelioration to expect, do not less blaspheme the one, and
betray the other. The improvements of society never reach the poor: they
have been stationary, while the higher classes were progressive. The
gentry of the land are better lodged, better accommodated, better
educated than their ancestors; the poor man lives in as poor a dwelling
as his forefathers when they were slaves of the soil, works as hard, is
worse fed, and not better taught. His situation, therefore, is
relatively worse. There is, indeed, no insuperable bar to his rising
into a higher order—his children may be tradesmen, merchants, or even
nobles—but this political advantage is no amendment of his actual state.
The best conceivable state for man is that wherein he has the full
enjoyment of all his powers, bodily and intellectual. This is the lot of
the higher classes in Europe; the poor enjoys neither—the savage only
the former. If, therefore, religion were out of the question, it had
been happier for the poor man to have been born among savages, than in a
civilized country, where he is in fact the victim of civilization.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LETTER XXVII.
_Saint Paul’s.—Anecdote of a female Esquimaux.—Defect of
Grecian Architecture in cold Climates.—Nakedness of the
Church.—Monuments.—Pictures offered by Sir Joshua Reynolds, &c., and
refused.— Ascent.—View from the Summit._
The cathedral church of St Paul’s is not more celebrated than it
deserves to be. No other nation in modern times has reared so
magnificent a monument of piety. I never behold it without regretting
that such a church should be appropriated to heretical worship;—that,
like a whited sepulchre, there should be death within.
In the court before the grand entrance stands a statue of Queen Anne,
instead of a cross; a figure as ill-executed as it is ill-placed, which
has provoked some epigrams even in this country, indifferent as the
taste in sculpture is here, and little as is the sense of religious
decorum. On entering the church I was impressed by its magnitude. A fine
anecdote is related of the effect this produced upon a female
Esquimaux:—quite overpowered with wonder when she stood under the dome,
she leaned upon her conductor, as if sinking under the strong feeling of
awe, and fearfully asked him, “Did man make it? or was it put here?” My
own sensations were of the same character, yet it was wonder at human
power unmingled with any other kind of awe; not that feeling which a
temple should inspire; not so much a sense that the building in which I
stood was peculiarly suitable for worship, as that it could be suitable
for nothing else. Gothic architecture produces the effect of sublimity,
though always without simplicity, and often without magnitude; so
perhaps does the Saracenic; if the Grecian ever produce the same effect
it is by magnitude alone. But the architecture of the ancients is
altered, and materially injured by the alteration, when adapted to cold
climates, where it is necessary when the light is admitted to exclude
the air: the windows have always a littleness, always appear misplaced;
they are holes cut in the wall: not, as in the Gothic, natural and
essential parts of the general structure.
The air in all the English churches which I have yet entered is damp,
cold, confined, and unwholesome, as if the graves beneath tainted it. No
better proof can be required of the wisdom of enjoining incense. I have
complained that the area in their ordinary churches is crowded; but the
opposite fault is perceivable in this great cathedral. The choir is but
a very small part of the church; service was going on there, being
hurried over as usual in week-days, and attended only by two or three
old women, whose piety deserved to meet with better instructors. The
vergers, however, paid so much respect to this service, such as it is,
that they would not show us the church till it was over. There are no
chapels, no other altar than that in the choir;—for what then can the
heretics have erected so huge an edifice? It is as purposeless as the
Pyramids.
Here are suspended all the flags which were taken in the naval victories
of the late war. I do not think that the natural feeling which arose
within me at seeing the Spanish colours among them influences me, when I
say that they do not ornament the church, and that, even if they did,
the church is not the place for them. They might be appropriate
offerings in a temple of Mars; but certainly there is nothing in the
revealed will of God which teaches us that he should be better pleased
with the blood of man in battle, than with that of bulls and of goats in
sacrifice. The palace, the houses of legislature, the admiralty, and the
tower where the regalia are deposited, should be decorated with these
trophies; so also should Greenwich be, the noble asylum for their old
seamen; and even in the church a flag might perhaps fitly be hung over
the tomb of him who won it and fell in the victory. Monuments are
erecting here to all the naval captains who fell in these actions; some
of them are not finished; those which are do little honour to the
artists of England. The artists know not what to do with their
villainous costume, and, to avoid uniforms in marble, make their unhappy
statues half naked. One of these represents the dying captain as falling
into Neptune’s arms;—a dreadful situation for a dying captain it would
be—he would certainly take the old sea-god for the devil, and the
trident for the pitchfork with which he tosses about souls in the fire.
Will sculptors never perceive the absurdity of allegorizing in stone!