was a grade in itself, a dignity guarded by the laws of the land,
and an assurance of personal gentility. Up to the middle of the last
century, all the liberal professions were closed against the Catholic
gentry of Ireland; but it was a dignity to belong to the bar, even among
protestants; for the candidate for its honours was obliged to study in
London, which at that time was an affair of no inconsiderable enterprize
and effort. The uncertain sea voyage, and long land journey, were
attended with a heavy expense, some risk, and considerable labour. Wales
being then inaccessible to carriages, that part of the journey was made
on hired horses; and not less than three weeks were occasionally passed
in the transit from Dublin to London. To be a counsellor, therefore, was
in itself the mark of a certain considerable wealth and respectability.
“Counsellor,” is still prefixed as a title of distinction by the common
people, and by all the second-rate Catholics, to the names of barristers;
and even the feudal cognomen of “_the_ O’Connell” loses nothing by the
professional dignity of counsellor, which the Kerry clients of that
gentleman, the ex-subjects of his dynasty, never fail to give him.
A short time before the death of Grattan, “our husband and ourself”
drove from the house of our old friend General C——, to pay a visit at
Tenahinch. We had taken a wrong road, within a mile or two of that
beautiful spot; and we stopped to inquire our way of an old woman, who
sat spinning at a cabin door. “Pray, which is the road to Mr. Grattan’s?”
“Misther Grattan! Och, sorrow know myself knows, no, in troth, Mar’m.”
“What! not know where Tenahinch is?”
“Tinnyhinch, agrah! Och, it’s the counsellor’s yez are looking for;
well, turn here, just to the right, and any body will tell yez where the
counsellor’s is; just a stone’s throw from the Dargle. Sorrow one in the
country but knows the counsellor’s.”
The counsellor, then, was the distinctive epithet by which the poor
neighbours of Tenahinch best knew “the father of his country.” It was the
title of his ascendancy; and power is always uppermost in the Irish mind.
How deeply has the iron of oppression entered into the soul of the Irish
nation, and how much has a long misrule deteriorated the national
intellect; substituting the conventional for the true, and rendering
moral dignity and honesty of conduct almost physically impossible.
Aristides himself, to say nothing of St. Anthony, could scarcely resist
the temptations to corruption which arise from a divided population,
and which are unknown in the worst governments of the continent. The
protestant ascendancy, from the peer to the coal porter, form the true
aristocracy of the land, and all else are serfs. The protestants are
in Ireland, what the Normans were in England; only they have not seen
the policy of a social fusion, which the more genial temperament of the
French conquerors submitted to, in their intercourse with the Saxons. Oh!
with how many warm Irish hearts and ardent Irish spirits I began life,
who have since yielded to the baneful influence of this state of things,
and cooled down to a more prudent consideration of their country’s
wrongs, in relation to their own private interests. Yielding to a paltry
and ephemeral ambition, they have looked down from the height of their
official dignities upon the romance of patriotism, and condemned the
expression of feelings, which it was once their pride to avow. How many
who once shared such illusions, have afterwards shunned my sight, lest
they should involve their interests in the proscription of one who loved
their country, “not wisely but too well.” This is one of the severest
penalties of life: death itself inflicts none so bitter. The penalties
of nature bring their solace in their necessity: but what consoles for
the terrible conviction of the frailty, and falling off from principle,
of genius and sensibility; for perceiving, ere half our course is run,
or, while we are maintaining ourselves a direct course, “steering right
onward,”
“Each wave that we danced on at morning, glide from us,
And leave us at eve on the bleak shore alone.”
RIDICULE.
“Yes, I am proud—I must be proud to see
Men, not afraid of God, afraid of me.”
I envy Pope the burst of honest triumph that produced these lines!
How long was he lashed, tortured, reviled, calumniated, and
misrepresented in character, feeling, religion, person, and in all his
ties and all his affections, before the author of Windsor Forest and the
Universal Prayer produced his Satires and his Dunciad! Ridicule is an arm
furnished by nature to wit, to defend it against the envy, hatred, and
malice of vain, pretending, mediocrity; and the severity of its blows,
has no doubt mainly contributed to the outcry against its legitimacy
in the warfare of opinion. Dulness commenced its denunciation, and
self-interest set the seal of reprobation upon it, by rendering it penal.
The validity of the legal objection against ridicule, seems to me wholly
untenable; being founded on one of those “subterfuges,” in which Lord
Kames tells us, that “lawyers delight.” The assumption that ridicule is
no test of truth, has been received without examination, principally on
account of its application to the detection of political and religious
error. Notwithstanding the universal dislike to be shewn up, no one has
dared directly to question the morality of satire as a corrective of
manners, or to object to the poet’s magnificent boast of
“Safe from the bar, the pulpit, and the throne.
Yet touched and shamed by ridicule alone.”
In criticism also, ridicule is allowed, notwithstanding the supposed
proximity of the sublime to the ridiculous. Even the murderous parody
of “Oh! Jemmy Thomson, Jemmy Thomson, oh!” has escaped the imputation
of injustice, and of leading to false conclusions, on the merit of the
original. But above all, a great deal of the logic of Euclid consists
in the _reductio ad absurdum_, which differs from the ridiculous, only
because there is nothing very humorous in the disparity discoverable in
a man’s notions concerning angles and lines.
In strictness of speech, there is no test of truth, save the evidence of
the senses; but whatever tends to bring our conceptions in comparison
with realities, may be so called; and that ridicule may be so applied
to this purpose is indisputable. It is indeed the especial merit of
ridicule, that it addresses itself to the senses, or at least to those
ideas which are the most closely connected with sensitive impressions.
The ridicule of persons is purely demonstrative. It is an enumeration
of accidents and qualities, more or less exaggerated for the sake of
humorous effect, but, for the rest, substantially true, or believed to be
so: otherwise the ridicule fails. To tax a man with absurdities of which
he is not guilty, is not ridicule, but calumny. Ridicule of opinions can
only consist in such a juxta-position of ideas, as makes their disparity
ludicrously self-evident. That which is consistent and true, cannot be
ridiculed.
Ridicule derives its efficacy from the responsive sympathies of the
audience addressed. The ridicule of unknown persons excites no emotion.
The ridicule of a known person, for qualities which he notoriously does
not possess, is equally impotent. When Hone represented the British
constitution by an inverted pyramid, resting on the crown at its
apex, and supported by bayonets, the sensible image of instability he
presented, found a prompt reflection in the public mind. He advanced,
however, no novel statement. If a conviction had not pre-existed in
public opinion of “something rotten in the state of Denmark,” his humour
would not have told. Had he supported the tottering edifice with a
printing press, instead of a bayonet, the misrepresentation would have
been rejected with scorn.
Ridicule stands precisely on the same ground as graver arguments, being
either the statement of a fact, or an inference drawn from one; and it
is liable to the same abuses, and no more. Nothing is more common than
for ridicule to address itself to vulgar prejudices; but what is there
singular in this? Aristophanes (it is said) assisted in forwarding the
judicial murder of Socrates, by personifying in his drama the false
notions which were current in Athens respecting that philosopher. But
Melytus and Anitus did precisely the same thing, and were equally
successful through the employment of grave discussion; yet no one dreams
of proscribing rhetoric and logic, because they were thus employed to
make the worse appear the better cause. The common villainy in both
cases was the falsehood of the matter objected. Had Socrates really
spent his time in the pursuit of childish subtleties, the flea’s leap
would have been no more than a fair exaggeration, as illustrative as it
was pleasant. Just so, had he really corrupted the youth of the city,
the sober, serious invective of his public accusers would have been
equitable: the fault, in both instances, was not in the form, but in the
_fond_.
There is, however, this essential difference in favour of ridicule, that
the graver lie might be the entire fabrication of the accuser, and yet
produce its effect; whereas the efficacy of the satire depends altogether
on the pre-existing prejudices of the public, which it only illustrates.
Ridicule, it is true, may lead to error, by the misapplication of
acknowledged truths; as when trifling absurdities are employed to render
virtue contemptible. A bishop’s wig is no ornament to the “human face
divine,” but it would be eminently unfair to conjure up the ridiculous
image, in mockery of the pious individual who may be compelled to adopt
the costume; still more unjust would it be, if an inference were drawn
against the religious system which flourishes beneath the shadow of that
hairy portent. Such false inductions are not, however, less familiar to
the most serious argumentations; and they are then, by so much the more
dangerous, as the bad reasoning is less obvious to detection.
The general rejection of ridicule in dispute, rests upon the most flimsy
of sophisms—the argument from abuse to use. But there are many persons
who direct their objections against it in its application to religious
subjects, on account of the weight and dignity of the theme.[10] This
is a frank begging of the question. Dugald Stewart, in speaking of the
Provincial Letters of Pascal, observes, that there are some truths
in which ridicule is more powerful and convincing than reason. “The
mischievous absurdities,” he says, “which it was Pascal’s aim to correct,
scarcely admitted the gravity of logical discussion, requiring only the
extirpation or the prevention of those early prejudices which choke the
growth of common sense and conscience.”[11] Having, in his quality of a
good protestant, a previous conviction or prejudice that the system of
the Jesuits was false, Stewart readily admitted that the use of ridicule
against it is fair. He would likewise have allowed, in all probability,
a joke against Mahomet’s pigeon, or the miracle of his suspended coffin;
but he would not, I suspect, have approved of the ludicrous exaggeration
of Voltaire’s drama on David, or have suffered it to pass muster as a
proof of the disparity between the facts of that king’s life and his
pretensions to the character of the man after God’s own heart. Certain I
am, my Lord Chief Justice would not let such a work go unpunished. The
ideas illustrated in this sarcastic attack, are of the commonest order
of moral conceptions; and Voltaire might have thought himself as much
justified as Pascal, in “extirpating a prejudice which scarcely required
the gravity of logical discussion,” by a ridiculous travestie: the
offence then, if offence there be, lies in the mind of the judge, and in
his conviction as to what is, or is not, sacred.
But the law in permitting grave discussion, permits the right of judgment
on this presumed sacredness. The accused, therefore, cannot in equity
be bound to the judge’s prejudice in the matter. If we are permitted to
entertain a doubt of the truth of any proposition, we should in reason
be allowed to put forth those arguments which we deem most convincing
against it; and if we think a proposition beneath the gravity of logical
discussion, there is no reason why we should be forced to confine
ourselves to that mode of argument. The judge, however, takes the whole
point at issue into his own hands. The ideas to be overturned, he asserts
are not early prejudices, not contrary to common sense, and therefore
they are too respectable to be confuted in any other way, than in Barbara
or in Baralipton. In other words, he declares, that ridicule is a good
instrument to extirpate all errors, except those which he cherishes
himself; and that it is available against all the world, but the dogmas
which are “pack and parcel” of his law, and are incontrovertibly
established on its authority.
On this point, the Catholics and Protestants would be much at issue. Many
a grave Protestant divine has chuckled over Erasmus’s jest concerning the
“real presence” of the horse, he forgot to return to its owner.[12]
To a Catholic, convinced of the truth of the doctrine of
transubstantiation, it would appear an indecent levity, and misapplied
ridicule: “flat blasphemy.” Why then should this argument be lawful as
levelled against transubstantiation, and yet be unfair as applied against
the miraculous conception? Simply because he who is the strongest happens
to be a Protestant, without being also an Unitarian.
Ridicule is, in reality, a species of argument very peculiarly applicable
to test religious dogmas. The propositions which constitute the elements
of a religious faith relate to “things not seen.” There are no sensible
types with which to compare them; and it is only by comparing the ideas
with each other, and detecting their incongruities, that error can be
demonstrated. This is the especial province of ridicule. When Alexander
set up for a god, the ludicrous decree of the Lacedemonian senate
betrayed the absurdity of his pretensions better than the most studied
argument. The ridicule of the pagan theology scattered through the works
of Lucian is a perpetual demonstration of the incongruity of abstract
propositions, by means of sensible images. Yet persecuting, narrow
sectarians have not thought it beneath their dignity to claim this writer
as a believer, and to use his arguments against their opponents, though
they bitterly execrate Swift and Voltaire for treading in his steps.
It is this peculiar efficacy of ridicule, that has made its use so
objectionable to partizans and exclusionists. The happiness of its
illustration renders truths popular, which would remain the exclusive
property of the learned, as long as the error to which they are opposed
was involved in the intricacy of an abstract argument. The sensible
image is a stepping-stone to the judgment of those, who, unused to
dialectics, cannot thread the labyrinth of involuted ideas. Those who
are interested in the credit of any particular doctrine are, in general,
ready enough to compound for the dissent of the cultivated few: and they
can bear with patience an argument, which, being beyond the calibre of
the vulgar, is not likely to make many proselytes: but ridicule, being
within the scope of all, brings absurdity home to the conviction of the
meanest understanding. This is the secret of that hostility which the law
manifests in the midst of its seeming candour, against certain attacks
on the establishment. They are intelligible to all the world; and it is
feared that their influence may be proportionate.
Whatever is incongruous and absurd, cannot emanate from a being
pre-eminently wise and good. The internal evidence of such incongruity,
is decisive against the pretensions of any religious system, in which
it exists. Ridicule, therefore, goes to the fountain head of all false
pretensions; and as one religion alone can be a real revelation from
Heaven, it follows, that the partisans of all the others, have an
immediate interest in putting down the use of a ready instrument for
measuring their several errors. What is the sum of their argument? You
may put forth cogent and conclusive reason as long as you please; but
beware of ridicule; for that proves nothing. This excess of candour and
forbearance is not entitled to the slightest credit. It may, perhaps,
be objected, that ridiculous no-proofs will pass current with the lower
classes for valid argument. To this I reply, first, that the lower
classes are not so innocent and helpless: or if they are, let them be
better taught: and secondly, that they are much more frequently the dupes
of grave and plausible no-proofs, than of humorous misrepresentation; and
that the argument, if good for any thing, goes against all discussion
whatever.
The defenders of absurdity and error are not always in the same story:
for they always cry out against the argument which happens to press them
the most closely. The counsel of Geneva censured Rousseau’s gravity in
attacking their religious notions; and asserted, in the teeth of the
English law-maxim, that, “books, only written to turn into ridicule,
are not, _by a great deal_, so reprehensible, as those which, without
stepping on one side, go at once to the attack by dry reasoning.”[13] So
much for the honesty of state dogmatists!
In advocating the lawfulness of ridicule, it is not necessary to advocate
every instance in which it is employed. It is bad taste and buffoonery to
put forward ludicrous ideas, out of season; and it is both bad feeling
and bad policy, to insult the believer by a profane jest. A man is not,
however, to be committed to Newgate on a point of taste, or treated like
a felon for not having read the institutes of Quintilian. Those who would
thus proscribe ridicule in their opponents, are by no means slow in using
it against them. Not only ridicule, but scurrility and invective, are
daily lavished against those who are objects of religious rancour. What
was reprehensible in Voltaire becomes laudable in Piron; what was wrong
in Swift was right in Rennell. A protestant bishop may crack a joke upon
two non-ascendant religions with a single antithesis; but woe betide the
man who is facetious upon the thirty-nine articles.
Within this sophism the lawyers have entrenched themselves, upon
being driven, by public opinion, from an open and barefaced defence
of persecution. By its assistance they are still enabled to fine or
imprison, any one who presumes to question the truth of law-established
dogma. It has taken some centuries to storm the outwork; how many will it
take to capture the citadel!
LEGISLATIVE LITERATURE.
Lord C—f—n was very amusing to-day: every thing he said was cleverly
said; full of information, and abounding in curious historic anecdote.
I observe, that the elders of the English aristocracy have an amazing
mass of historical knowledge. History is the mirror of aristocratical
_amour-propre_. How I should read history if I were a Howard, or a
Stanley, or a Russel! The knowledge of history is, besides, a part of
the qualifications for an hereditary legislator; and, of necessity, it
engages the attention of those nobles, who are not above, or beneath, all
sense of duty and propriety. The mischief of it is, that their tastes and
education lead them rather to anecdote, than to philosophy; and their
knowledge consists more in facts, than in deductions. The ecclesiastical
education of our English universities is at war with philosophy; and
the great reject all philosophy that is not genteel and within bounds,
like Paley’s. Dugald Stewart is their _ne plus ultra_. Of physiological
philosophy, the philosophy of fact, they are usually ignorant. A single
page of De Tracy would scare the whole House of Lords. Though they may
very generally read the Heloise, they do not the less reject Rousseau’s
other works, as too philosophical,—Rousseau, the least philosophical of
thinkers, and as vehement a hater of philosophers, as the author of the
Metromanie himself! “If,” said Lord L——, to his old friend, General C——,
who wanted him to purchase a duplicate set of Voltaire’s works—“if I were
to let your Voltaire into my house, I should expect the roof to fall and
crush me.” Another lord, to compare great things with small, actually
burned my France, having first called his whole household to witness
the solemnity. From the beginning of time this flaming argument has
been the favourite _court moyen_ with the powers that be. In this they
do but follow the natural instinct which leads us to fear whatever we
do not understand. Philosophy is, in truth, but a democratical piece of
business: it knows nothing of castes and privileges: its object is only
the happiness of mankind at large; and it mounts not to the sublimity of
vested rights, the transcendentals of politics. But anecdotes, facts,
and dates, the sayings and doings of our ancestors, are so useful, so
imposing, so applicable to every thing and to nothing, they are so
ornamental in discourse, and they so set off a debate!! What a figure
they made in the discussions on the catholic question—the arguments of
the E.’s, and the eloquence of the W.’s.
VICE REGAL PROGRESSES.
“Les ambassadeurs envoyés en France par les princes étrangers,
faisoient à Paris une entrée pompeuse et solemnelle. Cet usage
a subsisté jusque vers le milieu du dernier siècle: on ignore
pourquoi il a été aboli.”[14]
_Dict. des Etiquettes, par M. de Genlis._
I think however one may guess! The age of pompous and solemn ceremonies,
like the age of chivalry, is over, and for ever; both belonged to times
of ignorance and barbarism: and long before the great explosion from the
revolutionary crater took place, public opinion and private comfort were
undermining that mass of cumbrous forms, which weighed upon the feelings,
tastes and enjoyments of the victims whose rank obliged them to submit
to their galling infliction. If any now submit to the _gêne_ of gorgeous
state, it must be in the irremediable dulness which produces the lowest
order of pride, and which is more gratified by figuring in a procession,
than in the page of history, to illustrate the records of their country.
The Irish Lord Lieutenants of the olden times were subjected to all the
pageantry, privation and display which then distinguished the majesty
they represented. From the very starting post of official initiation,
they were called on to abandon all the personal ease and independence
of private life. They left England, and returned to it, according to
certain rules and forms, which it would have been _leze-majesté_ to have
neglected. The interval of the commonwealth, had caused some of the forms
of the vice-regal progress to be forgotten; yet in Charles the Second’s
time, we find Lord Essex writing to a friend, to find out, if he is to
return in the same state with which he departed, and to prepare him a
black suit trimmed with black ribbons, to make his grand entry into
London; even though he returned in a sort of disgrace. Sir John Perrot’s
departure for the Lord Deputyship, as described by his quaint biographer,
is a scene for a melodrame! He had received the queen’s orders to sail
with, and command the fleet, sent to intercept the Spanish invaders
directed against the Irish coasts, and “to interrupt the King of Spayne,
and his Navie.”