political and private vices to his opponents, from which he represents his
own side as exempt; and we have immediately afterwards said, that the
wide-spread corruption, and constant promotion of influential imbecility,
which, ever since 1688, has been the bane of Great Britain, and the chief,
if not the sole, cause of all the disasters we have undergone, and of
nine-tenths of the debts we have contracted, is mainly to be ascribed to
the Whigs, who, during the long period of seventy years, immediately
subsequent to the Revolution, were exclusively in power, and had the
entire moulding of the constitution, both in church and state, in their
hands. Having taken the mote out of our neighbour's eye, we proceed to
take the beam out of our own. We hasten to show that we do not ascribe
greater political baseness to one party than another. We will not follow
the example of Walpole, who represents Chatham, and all his Whig
followers, as patriotic angels; Bute, and all his Tory supporters, as
selfish devils. We assume it as the basis of all just or rational
historical discussion, that, though there may be a wide and most important
difference in the beneficial or ruinous effects with which their measures
are attended, the real character, the moral purity of the motives, of men
of opposite parties, in the same age, is much alike. There is, indeed, a
wide difference in the virtue and public spirit of different ages, and of
men in the same community, under different circumstances; but in the same
age, and under the same circumstances, they are very like similar.
The patriotism of Regulus and Fabricius was very different from that which
followed the insurrection of the Gracchi; but Sylla and Marius, Caesar and
Pompey, differed, if their real motives are considered, very little from
each other. The same result would probably have followed the triumphs of
either. There is no such thing as all the sheep being on one side and all
the goats on another, in the same country at the same time. The proportion
of good and bad men, of generous and base motives, among the Roundheads
and Cavaliers, was much the same. The cabal which was framing a government
of despotic power for Charles II., was doubtless selfish and tyrannical;
but Algernon Sidney, and the whole patriots who opposed them, except Lord
Russell, were quietly taking, the whole time, bribes from Louis XIV.
Severity was doubtless exercised in the punishment of the leaders, some of
whom were noble and high-minded men, of the Rye-House Plot; but that was
only in retaliation of the still greater atrocities consequent on the
fictitious Popish plots, and the perjury of Titus Oates. The Revolution of
1688 was, doubtless, brought about, as a whole, by necessity and patriotic
intentions; but Churchill proved a traitor to his benefactor and king, and
betrayed his trust to promote that revolution--a crime as deep as that for
which Ney justly suffered in the gardens of the Luxembourg--and the
blackness of which all the glories of Marlborough have not been able to
efface. The government of Lord Bute and Lord North was doubtless mainly
based on the influence of official or parliamentary patronage, and the
evils of that corruption clearly appeared in the disasters of the American
war; but these Tory noblemen only carried on the system invented and
brought to perfection, during the seventy years that the Whigs had enjoyed
a monopoly of power.
It is a first principle, says Sismondi, in politics, that all classes
which have not constitutionally the means of resistance, will be
oppressed. There can be no doubt that this is true; and it is not less
true, that all power which is not systematically watched, will become
corrupt. It is these principles which explain the universal and
wide-spread corruption which overran the country for a century after the
Revolution; and they point to a conclusion of the very highest importance
in political science. Direct or tyrannical power, by means of the
prerogative, or the simple will, of the sovereign, having become
impossible, in consequence of the safeguards established by the Great
Rebellion and the Revolution, and the disposition to tyranny and abuse
remaining the same, from the corrupt tendency of the human heart, the
system of gaining a majority, both in Parliament and in the
constituencies, by means of government influence and official corruption,
became the acknowledged, and probably unavoidable, basis of government.
During the seventy years that the Whigs were in power, they brought this
system to perfection, and extended its ramifications into the remotest
corners of the kingdom. A majority of the House of Peers, in the Whig
interest, amply provided with emoluments, offices, and dignities, got
possession of so many boroughs and counties, that they secured a majority
in the Commons also, and got the entire command of government. The
sovereigns on the throne--men of little capacity, imperfectly acquainted
with English, unable, from that cause, even to preside at the meetings of
their own cabinet, and strongly opposed by an ardent and generous, because
disinterested, party in the country--became mere puppets in their hands,
and rendered the crown nearly destitute of all real or independent weight
in the kingdom.
The natural check in a free country upon this corrupt system, into which
every constitutional monarchy has so strong a tendency to run, is found in
the vigorous opposition and incessant watchfulness of the people. It is
this which has been so powerful a restraint upon the abuses of government
during the last half century; and which has now become so strong, that the
common complaint is, that, in all important appointments at least, the
Tory ministry are forgetful of their friends, and select the persons to
be appointed from the ranks of their enemies. But this salutary check upon
bad government did not exist during the first half of the eighteenth
century; or rather, it existed only to fan and augment the inclination,
already sufficiently strong, to corrupt administration on the part of the
Whig oligarchy, who had got possession of the helm. The popular party were
now in power; their leaders had the disposal of every thing, and therefore
not a whisper escaped their lips, as to the degrading system which was so
fast spreading in the country. The Tories, who were in opposition, were a
discredited and defeated party. They had got into ugly company--they had
the axe impending over them. The unsuccessful result of the rebellions of
1715 and 1745, had, as is always the case, not only greatly augmented the
strength of the ruling government, but it had rendered the Tories, who
were in great part, and probably justly, suspected of a leaning to the
rebels, to the last degree obnoxious to a large majority of the English
people. Religious feeling combined with political antipathy and personal
terror to produce this emotion. The Tories were associated, in the popular
mind, with Jacobites and rebels; with Popish mummery and national
antipathy; with the fires of Smithfield and the defeat of Prestonpans;
with Scotch ascendency and revenge for the blood shed at Carlisle; with
breechless Highlanders and Protestant confiscation. Thus the Tories, as a
popular party, capable of exercising any effective control on the vices
and corruptions of administration, were practically extinct. Meanwhile,
the popular party in England, steeped in corruption, and gorged with the
spoils of the state, which the expensive system of government, introduced
with the Revolution, had done so much to augment, was effectually gagged,
and was enjoying its lucrative abuses in silence. This is the true
explanation and real cause of the prodigious corruptions which pervaded
every department of the state, and--what was worse--every class in the
country during the seventy years which followed the Revolution, and which
had wellnigh proved fatal to all patriotic spirit, or public virtue in
England. The two powers, that of the government and the people, usually
opposing each other, had come to draw in the same direction, and they
raised between them a spring-tide of corruption, which wellnigh submerged
the state.
There can be no question, that if this degrading system of government--the
necessary and never-failing result of successful revolution--had continued
for a generation longer, it would have proved altogether fatal to Great
Britain. But, fortunately for the country, George III. and his advisers,
from the very first moment of his accession to the throne, set his face
against the party which had introduced and matured this system of
government; and their efforts, though after a severe struggle, were
successful. This was the turning-point of English history; upon the
success of that attempt, the future character of the government and of the
people mainly depended. It, for the first time since the Revolution,
restored the government to its proper position--it rested it, in its
ultimate effects, on property, and put numbers in opposition. This is the
only proper basis of good government--for without property ruling, there
can be no stability in administration; and without numbers watching, there
is no security against the multiplication of abuses. The corrupt system of
Sir R. Walpole, and the preceding administrations, had arisen from the
popular party--that is, numbers--having become the ruling power, and of
course appropriated to themselves the whole spoils of the state. Instantly
their watching became equal to nothing, and every abuse was perpetrated
without either exposure or complaint. There were no Wilkeses nor Juniuses,
to lash the vices of administration, from 1688 to 1761, when the Whigs
were in power; though that was beyond all question the most corrupt period
of English history. But they appeared fast enough, and did infinite good,
as soon as the Tories got possession of the public treasury. This is the
true secret of the unbounded corruption of the government of the
Convention and Directory in France--of the rapid return to a corrupt
system during the ten years of Whig power which succeeded the downfall of
the Tories in 1830, and of the establishment of Louis Philippe's dynasty,
now, on the basis of one hundred and thirty-eight thousand offices, which
Tocqueville tells us are at the disposal of the ruling power at the
Tuileries. It is not that the popular leaders are worse men, or by nature
more inclined to evil, than their Conservative opponents, but that, when
they are elevated into power by the result of a revolution or social
convulsion, the controlling has become the ruling power; its leaders and
followers alike profit by corruption and mal-administration; and therefore
there is no longer any possible restraint on abuse. It is not that the
Conservative leaders are by nature better men, or more inclined to eschew
evil and do good than their popular opponents: but that, as the basis of
their government is property, which necessarily is vested in comparatively
few hands, they are of course opposed and narrowly watched by numbers; and
thus they are deterred from doing evil, from the dread of its consequences
recoiling upon themselves. And this observation explains the cause of the
remark by Montesquieu, which the experience of all ages has proved to be
well founded, "that the most degrading despotisms recorded in history have
been those which have immediately followed a successful revolution."
The clearest proof of how strongly, and all but indelibly, corruption and
abuses had become engrained, as it were, on the practice of the English
constitution, is to be found in their long continuance and pernicious
effects after the popular party had been thrown back to their proper duty
of watching and checking the abuses of government, and despite the
prodigious efforts which were made, and the vast talent which was exerted,
to expose and decry it. Walpole tells us enough of the corrupt means by
which Lord Bute's authority was maintained, and of the discreditable
intrigues by which succeeding administrations were raised up and cast
down. Wilkes and Junius exposed, in cutting libels, and with caustic
severity, their real or supposed continuance in a subsequent part of the
reign of George III.; Burke and Fox declaimed in a voice of thunder
against the vices of Lord North's administration; and the disasters of
that untoward period demonstrate but too clearly, that the radical vice of
parliamentary influence had almost banished talent and ability from the
public service. Every one knows that commissions in the army and navy were
bestowed on children, as the mere price of support to government; and
that, when the little hirelings of corruption were sent forth into the
public service, they were utterly ignorant, for the most part, of even the
most elementary parts of their duty. The same system continued during the
early years of the Revolutionary war: and we all know with what disastrous
effects it was then attended. But the Whig orators and patriots, with all
their acuteness and zeal, forgot to tell us one thing, which, however, it
most behoved them to have told--and that is, that it was themselves who
had formed and habituated the nation to this degrading system. They have
forgot to tell us that they had the framing of the constitution in church
and state, after the Revolution of 1688; that their power was, for above a
century, entirely paramount; and that, if the system of government had
come, during that time, to rest on corrupt influences, it was they, and
they alone, who are responsible for the practical moulding of the
constitution into such a form.
No man who knows the human heart, or has had any experience, either of
public characters in his own, or historic shades in any former age, will
suppose that the Conservative party are more inclined in their hearts to
pure and virtuous administration than their popular opponents; but,
nevertheless, there can be no question that their government, generally
speaking, is much more pure, and its effects far more beneficial. Decisive
proof of this exists in English history during the nineteenth century. It
took nearly forty years of incessant effort on the part of the Whigs to
eradicate the harvest of corruption which sprang up since 1761, from the
seeds so profusely sown by their predecessors during the seventy years
before that period; and unless they had been aided by the disasters of the
American, and the perilous chances of the Revolutionary contest, it is
probable all their efforts would have been unsuccessful. But when, by the
firmness of George III., and the talent of Mr Pitt, the contest for
political supremacy was at an end, and government was rested on its true
basis--that of property being the ruling, and numbers the controlling
power--when the Tory party, freed from the influence of their old Jacobite
recollections, had rallied with sincere loyalty round the throne, and the
Whigs, having lost the glittering prospect of a return to power and
corruption, had been driven to seek for support in the passions of the
people, what a marvellous display of public virtue and strength did the
empire afford! Search the annals of the world, you will find nothing
superior, few things equal, to the patriotism, public spirit, and generous
devotion of the latter period of the Revolutionary war. Its unequalled
triumphs prove this; the biographies of its great men, which are daily
issuing from the press, show from what a noble and elevated spirit these
triumphs had sprung. They conquered because they were worthy to conquer.
The burning patriotism of Nelson; the prophetic courage of Pitt; the
spotless heart of Collingwood; the stern resolves of St Vincent; the
steady judgment of Eldon; the moral firmness of Castlereagh; the
unconquerable resolution of Wellington, shine forth as the most
conspicuous ornaments of this brilliant period. But these men, great as
they were, did not stand alone. They were in prominent situations, and
have thence acquired immortal fame; but they were followed and supported
by hundreds and thousands, animated with the same spirit, and possessing,
if called forth, the same abilities. England at that period seemed to have
reached that epoch in national life, "brief and speedily to perish," as
Tacitus says, when the firmness of aristocracy had given invincible
resolution, and the energy of democracy inexhaustible vigour to the state;
when we had the tenacity of nobles without their pride, and the vehemence
of the people without their licentiousness--"Si monumentum quaeris,
circumspice."
The Emperor Nicholas, therefore, judged too hastily when he condemned all
free countries and constitutional monarchies as necessarily the seats of
corruption. It is no wonder he thought so from the experience he had of
them, and that which the greater part of such governments, in his time,
had afforded. If we had judged of constitutional monarchy and the cause of
freedom from the history of England from 1688 to 1793, we should have said
the same. But the subsequent history of the British empire has revealed
the real cause of these general and wide-spread abuses. It has shown that
they arose not necessarily from the triumph of freedom, but accidentally
from government, in consequence of that triumph, having for a long period
been established on a wrong basis. The contending powers, whose opposition
produces equilibrium, had been brought to draw in the same direction, and
thence the spring-tide of corruption. A constitutional monarchy is not
necessarily based on patronage; it is so only when the popular party are
in power. That party, having, as a whole, little or no interest in the
property of the state, can be retained in obedience, and hindered from
urging on the revolutionary movement, only by being well supplied with
offices. It is like a beast of prey, which must be constantly gorged to be
kept quiet. But the holders of property need no such degrading motive to
keep them steady to the cause of order. They are retained there by their
own private interest; by their deep stake in the maintenance of
tranquillity; by their desire to transmit their estates unimpaired to
their descendants. They are as certain, in the general case, of supporting
the cause of order, and its guardians at the helm of a state, as the
passengers in a ship are of standing by the pilot and crew who are to save
them from the waves. The true, the legitimate, the honourable support of a
Conservative government, is to be found in that numerous class of men who
have no favours to ask, who would disdain to accept any gratification, who
adhere to the cause of order, because it is that of peace, of religion, of
themselves, and of their children. It is a sense of the strength of these
bonds, a knowledge of the independent and disinterested support which
they are certain of receiving, which enables a Conservative administration
so often to neglect its supporters in the distribution of the public
patronage, and seek for merit and worth in the ranks of its opponents. A
democratic government can never do this, because the passions and
interests of the great bulk of its supporters are adverse to the
preservation of property; and therefore they can be kept to their colours,
and hindered from clamouring for those measures which its leaders feel to
be destructive, only by the exclusive enjoyment and entire monopoly of all
the patronage of the state.
Without undervaluing, then, the effects of the Revolution of 1688; without
discrediting the motives of many of the patriots who combined to shake off
the oppressive tyranny and Romish bigotry of James II., it may safely be
affirmed, that it was George III., Lord Bute, and Mr Pitt, who put the
British constitution upon its right, and the only durable and beneficial,
basis, and worked out the Revolution itself to its appropriate and
beneficent effects. This is the great and important moral of English
history during the eighteenth century; this is the conclusion forced on
the mind by the perusal of _Walpole's Memoirs_, and his vehement abuse of
Lord Bute and George III. for their dismissal of the Whigs from power.
Doubtless, they acted from selfish motives in doing so. The king wanted to
regain his prerogative, the minister to secure his power; but still it
was, on the part of both, a step in the right direction. But for the
resolute stand which they made against the Whig oligarchy--but for their
wisdom in throwing themselves on the property of the nation to withstand
its debasement, a domineering party would have become omnipotent, the
people would have been irrecoverably plunged in the slough of corruption,
and the liberties of England lost for ever, according to all former
experience, in the firmly established despotism consequent on a successful
revolution. George III. said, on the first decisive parliamentary division
which gave a majority to the Tories in 1761--"At length, then, we have a
king on the throne in England." Posterity will add--at length the
foundations of a free constitution were laid on a durable and practicable
basis.
NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS.
NO. II.
DRYDEN AND POPE.
Specimens of the British Critics are unavoidably an irregular history of
Criticism in this island; and such a history of our Criticism is
unavoidably one, too, of our Poetry. The first name in our series is
DRYDEN. See what we have written, and you find half of our paper is on
Shakspeare. POPE is our next worthy; and of three or four pillars on which
his name as a critic rests, one is his character of the Protagonist. Thus,
for this earlier part of a new Age, the Presidents of Criticism are the
two Kings of Verse.
When the poet is a critic, how shall we sever in him the two Arts? If his
prose is explicit, his verse is implicit criticism; and there was thus a
reason for speaking somewhat especially of Dryden's character as a
tragedian in drawing his character as a critic. But indeed the man, the
critic, and the poet, are one, and must be characterized as a whole; only
you may choose which aspect shall be principal. In studying his works you
are struck, throughout, with a mind loosely disciplined in its great
intellectual powers. In his critical writings, principles hastily proposed
from partial consideration, are set up and forgotten. He intends largely,
but a thousand causes restrain and lame the execution. Milton, in
unsettled times, maintained his inward tranquillity of soul--and "dwelt
apart." Dryden, in times oscillating indeed and various, yet quieter and
safer, discloses private disturbance. His own bark appears to be borne on
continually on a restless, violent, whirling, and tossing stream. It never
sleeps in brightness on its own calm and bright shadow. An unhappy
biography weaves itself into the history of the inly dwelling Genius.
His treatment of "The Tempest" shows that he wanted intelligence of
highest passion and imagination. One powerful mind must have discernment
of another; and he speaks best of Shakspeare when most generally. Then we
might believe that he understood him in all the greatness of his might;
but our belief cannot support itself among the many outrages offered by
him to nature, in a blind or wanton desecration of her holiest revealments
to her inspired priest. In the sense stated above, his transformation of
"The Tempest," is an implicit criticism of "The Tempest." And, assuredly,
there is no great rashness of theorizing in him who finds in this
barbarous murder, evidence to a lack of apprehension in Dryden, for some
part of the beauty which he swept away. It would be unjustifiable towards
the man to believe that, for the lowest legitimate end of a
playwright--money--or for the lower, because illegitimate end, the popular
breath of a day amongst a public of a day--he voluntarily ruined one of
the most delicate amongst the beautiful creations with which the divine
muse, his own patroness, had enlarged and adorned the bright world of
mind--ruined it down to the depraved, the degraded, the debased, the
grovelling, the vulgar taste of a corrupt court and town. "The Inchanted
Island" is a dolorous document ungainsayable, to the appreciation, in
particulars, by that Dryden who could, in generals, laud Shakspeare so
well--of that Shakspeare. And if, by Dryden, then by the age which he
eminently led, and for which he created, and for which he--destroyed.