My dear Eusebius,—If you wonder at the speculations with which I have
amused myself and bewildered all within reach of inquiry, remember what
a celebrated phrenologist said, that I should never make a philosopher:
you remarked, So much the better, for that the world had too many
already. I am not sure that I was not piqued; and, owing a little spite
against these unapproachable superiors—philosophers—have rather
encouraged a habit of posing them; and finding so many in this my
experience inferior to the common-sense portion of mankind, I amuse
myself with them, and treat them as monkeys, now and then throwing them
a nut to crack a little too hard for them. Wry faces break no
syllogisms, so we laugh, and they gravitate in philosophy. What is
civilisation? Is that a nut?—a very hard one, indeed. I, at least,
cannot tell what it is, in what it consists, or how this _summum bonum_
is to be attained; but I am no philosopher. I have taken many a one by
the button, and plunged him head foremost into the chaos of thought, and
seen him come out flushed with the suffocation of his dark bewilderment.
Less ambitious persons will scarcely stay to answer the question—What is
civilisation? The careless, who cannot answer it, laugh, and think they
win in the game of foolishness. Perhaps no better answer can be given,
and the laughing philosopher, after all, may be as wise as the speaking
one. A neighbour, who had been acquainted with the money markets, told
me he did not exactly know what it was, but he thought its condition was
indicated by the Three-per-cent Consols. An economist of the new school,
who happened to be on a visit to him, preferred as a test “American
bread-stuffs.” He argued that such stuffs were the staff of life,
supported life, and were, therefore, both civilisation and the end and
object of civilisation. My neighbour’s son Thomas, a precocious youth of
thirteen years of age, stepped forward, and said civilisation consisted
in reading, writing, and arithmetic: upon this, a parish boy, the
Inspector’s pet of the National School, said with rival scorn, “You must
go a great deal farther than that—it is knowledge, and knowledge is
knowing the etymologies of cosmography and chronology.” I asked the
red-faced plethoric Farmer Brown;—“What’s what!” quoth he, with a voice
of thunder, and, like a true John Bull, stalked off in scornful
ignorance. My next inquiry was of your playful little friend, flirting
Fanny of the Grove, just entering her fifteenth year. “What a question!”
said she, and her very eyes laughed deliciously—“the latest fashions
from Paris, to be sure.” Make what you please of it, Eusebius; put all
the answers into the bag of your philosophy, and shake them well
together, your little friend’s will have as good a chance as any of
coming up with a mark of truth upon it. The people that can afford to
invent fashions must have a large freedom from cares. There must be
classes who neither toil nor spin, yet emulate in grace, beauty, and
ornament the lilies of the field. If you were obliged to personify
civilisation, would you not, like another Pygmalion, make to yourself a
feminine wonder, accumulate upon your stature every grace, vivify her
wholly with every possible virtue, then throw a Parisian veil of dress
over her, and—oh, the profanation of your old days!—fall down and
worship her?
There is no better mark of civilisation than well-dressed feminine
excellence, to which men pay obeisance. Wherever the majority do this,
there is humanity best perfected. Homer teacheth that, when he exhibits
the aged council of statesmen and warriors on the walls of Troy paying
homage to the grace of Helen. The poet wished to show that the
personages of his Epic were not barbarians, and chose this scene to
dignify them. Ruminate upon the answer, “The latest fashions from
Paris.” What a mass of civilising detail is contained in these few
words!—the leisure to desire, the elegance to wear, the genius to
invent, the benevolent employment of delicate hands, the trades
encouraged, the soft influences—the very atmosphere breathes the most
delicate perfume of loves. It is not to the purpose to interpose that
this Paris of fashion suddenly turned savage, and revelled in brutal
revolution, sparing not man nor woman. It was because, in their
anti-aristocratic madness, the unhappy people threw off this reverential
respect that the uncivilised portion slaughtered the civilised. It was a
vile atheistical barbarism that waged war with civilisation. Think no
more of that black spot in the History of Humanity—that plague-spot.
Rather, Eusebius, turn your thoughts to your work, and fabricate, though
it be only in your imagination, your own paradise, and she shall be
named Civilisation. In case your imagination should be at this moment
dull, rest satisfied with a description of an image now before me, which
I think, as a personification, answers the question admirably; for
supposing it to be a portrait from nature, what a civilised people must
they be among whom such a wonder was born—not only born, but sweetly
nurtured, and arrayed in such a glory of dress! If you think this
indicates a foolish extravagant passion, know that this fair one must
have “died of old age” some centuries before I was born. There she is,
in all her pale loveliness, in a black japan figured frame, over the
mantelpiece of my bedroom at H——, where I am now writing this letter to
you. Mock not, Eusebius; she is, or rather was, Chinese. I look upon her
now as giving out her answer from those finely-drawn lips—“I represent
civilisation.” If I could pencil like that happy painter—happiest in
having such uncommon loveliness to sit to him—I would send you another
kind of sketch; it would be a failure. Be content with feeble words.
First, then, for dress: She wears a brown kind of hat, or cap, the rim a
little turned up, of indescribable shape and texture: the head part is
blue; around it are flowers, so white and transparent, just suffused
with a blush, as if instantaneously vitrified into china. Lovely are
they—such as botanical impertinences never scrutinised. On the right
side of this cap or hat two cock’s feathers, perfectly white, arch
themselves, as if they would coquet with the fairer cheek. You see how
firm they are, and would spring up strong from the touch, emblems of
unyielding chastity. The hair, little of which is seen, is of a
chestnut-brown; low down on the throat is a broad band of black,
apparently velvet, just peeping above which is the smallest edging of
white, exactly like the most modern shirt-collar, fastened above, where
it is parted, by a gold clasp. The upper dress is of a pink red, such as
we see in Madonna pictures; below this is a dark blue-green shirt-dress,
richly flowered to look like enamel; over the shoulders a Madonna
kerchief, fastened in a knot over the chest; it is of a clear brownish
hue, such as we see in old pictures. The upper red dress does not meet,
but terminates on each, side with a gold border, of a pattern centre,
with two lines of gold. Thus a rather broad space is left across the
bosom, which in modern costume is occupied by a habit-shirt; but such
word would ill describe either the colour or the texture here worn; it
is of a gossamer fabric, of a most delicately-greenish white, diapered
and flowered all over; nothing can be conceived more exquisite than
this. It would make the fortune of a modern _modiste_ to see and to
imitate it. A clasp of elegant shape fastens skirt to upper dress; the
sleeve of upper dress reaches only half-way down the arm; the lower
sleeve is of the rich blue-green, but altogether ample. Attitude,
slightly bent forward; over the left arm, which crosses the waist, is
suspended a fruit-basket of unknown material, and finely patterned,
brown in colour, in which are grapes and other fruit; expression,
sweetly modest; complexion—how shall it be described? Never was European
like it. It is finest porcelain, variegated with that under-living
immortal ichor of the old divinities. Eyes clear-cut or pencilled,
rather hazel in colour; background, rockwork garden, rising to a hill,
on which are trees—but such trees! Aladdin may have seen the like in his
enchanted subterranean garden. Then there is a lake, and a boat on it,
at a distance, with an awning. She is the goddess, or the queen, of this
Elysium, which her presence makes, and has enchanted into a porcelain
earth, whose flowers and trees are of its lustre.
Wherever, Eusebius, this portrait was taken, it was, and is, an epitome,
an emblem of high civilisation. It speaks so plainly of all exemption
from toil and care, of the unapproachableness of danger. There is living
elegance in a garden of peace. It is, in fact, the type of civilisation.
What! will the economist, the philosopher of our day, be ready to
say,—Civilisation amongst Chinese and Tartars! and that centuries
perhaps ago. Civilisation is “The Nineteenth Century!” The glory of the
Nineteenth Century is the Press. We are Civilisation. Very well,
gentlemen; nevertheless it would be pleasant if you could exhibit a
little more peace and quietness, a little less turmoil, a little more
unadulterating honesty, a little less careworn look in your streets, as
the mark of your boasted civilisation. You are doing wonders, and, like
Katerfelto with his hair on end, are in daily wonderment at your own
wonders. You steam—annihilate space and time. You have ripped open the
bowels of knowledge, and well-nigh killed her in search of her golden
egg. You are full, to the throat and eyes, of sciences and arts. You are
hourly astonishing yourselves and the world. Nevertheless, you have one
great deficiency as to the ingredients that make up civilisation; you
are decidedly too conceited; you lack charity; you count bygone times
and peoples as nothing and nobodies: yet you build a great Crystal
Palace, and boast of it, as if it were all your own; whereas the whole
riches of it, in the elegances of all arts, are imitations of the works
of those bygone times and peoples. Who is satisfied with your
model-civilisation? Eusebius, is not the question yet to be asked—What
is it? in what does it consist? how is it to be obtained? True
civilisation has no shams—we have too many, and they arise out of our
swaggering and boasting; so that we force ourselves to assume every
individual virtue, though we have it not. We are contemptuous; and
contempt is a burr of barbarism sticking to us still, even in this
“Nineteenth Century,” a phrase in the public mouth glorifying
self-esteem. I must, for the argument, go back to the Chinese lady in
her narrow japanned gilt frame. As I have drawn my curtains, Eusebius,
at the dawn of day, and that placid beauty (though not to be admitted in
any book of that name) has smiled upon me from lips so delicate, so
unvoracious—did she pick grains of rice, like Amine in the Arabian
tale?—I verily thought she must have lived in as civilised an age as
ours. Yes—perhaps she was not very learned, excepting in Chinese
romances, and very good learning that is: but neither you nor I,
Eusebius, lay very great stress upon knowledge, nor call it “Power,” nor
think that happiness necessarily grows out of it. One evil of it is,
that it unromances the age; and romance—why not say it?—romance is a
main ingredient in true, honest, unadulterated civilisation. You would
prefer being as mad as Don Quixote, and be gifted with his romance, to
being the aptest of matter-of-fact economists and material philosophers.
Romance, then, springs from the generous heart and mind;—methinks,
Eusebius, you are progressing, and reaching one of the ingredients of
this said desideratum, “Civilisation.” As a people, it may be doubted if
we are quite as romantic as formerly; if so, however we may advance in
knowledge and sciences, we are really retrograding from the _summum
bonum_ of social virtues. I remember once hearing a celebrated
physician, who knew as much as most men of mankind, their habits and
manners, speak of an American “gentleman,” adding, “and he was a
savage.” You can imagine it possible, that, in the presence and
impertinence of Anglo-Saxon vulgarity, the grave and courteous demeanour
of a so-called barbarian would be a very conspicuous virtue. I read the
other day, in Prince’s _Worthies of Devon_, a quaint passage to the
point, which much amused me for its singular expression. It relates to
Sir Francis Drake, who, touching at one of the Molucca Islands, was, as
the author words it, “by the king thereof, a true _gentleman pagan_,
most honourably entertained.” Of this “gentleman pagan” Prince adds,
that he told General Drake “that they and he were all of one religion,
in this respect, that they believed not in gods made of stocks and
stones, as did the Portuguese; and further, at his departure he
furnished him with all the necessaries that he wanted.” Yet, perhaps,
some of the habits of such gentlemen pagans had been scoffed at by
Europeans, and often met with worse usage than contempt. Whoever has no
consideration for others, no indulgence for habits contrary to his own,
though he may be born in nominally the most civilised nation under the
sun, is really a barbarian. It was well said that, upon the accidental
meeting of the finest drest gentleman, with a powdered head, and a
tatooed Indian, he who should laugh first would be the savage. The
well-known story of the horror expressed by different people at the
disposal of their deceased parents is curious, showing that opposite
actions arise from the same feelings. In this case it was of filial
piety. One party was asked if he would bury his father in the earth? He
was amazed at the question—shocked. Not for the world; as an act of
piety, he would eat him. The other, asked to eat his father, was hurt
and disgusted beyond measure. Let us be a little more even in our
judgments, and speak somewhat kindly, if we can, of these gentlemen
pagans all over the world. We may be often called upon to admire their
disinterested heroism, even when lavished upon mistaken objects. Here is
an example from the misnamed weaker sex—misnamed, for they are
wonderfully gifted with fortitude. I have been reading of a poor young
creature, widow of a chief among some cannibal race. She was to have
been immolated, according to custom, at the burial of her husband. Her
courage at the moment failed her: she was induced by, if I remember
rightly, some good missionaries, to fly, and they protected her. In the
night she repented of her irresolution, escaped, swam across a river,
and presented herself for the sacrifice and the feast. Scholars, you
read with love and admiration of Iphigenia at Aulis; her first
reluctance; her after self-devotion: you have imagined her youth, her
beauty, so vividly painted by the poet. Was Iphigenia more the heroine
than this poor girl whom we are pleased to pass unhistoried as a savage?
She gave herself up, not only to death, perhaps a cruel one, but with
the knowledge that she would be devoured also that night. Iphigenia was
certain of funeral honours, of immortal fame, and believed that her
sacrifice would insure victory to her father and the Greeks. We have
written exercises at school in praise of the suicide of Cato, whose act,
in comparison with this poor savage’s, was cowardice;—more than that, we
have been taught to mouth out with applause the blasphemy of the
celebrated hexameter, “Victrix causa Diis placuit sed victa Catoni.” Why
should we not be a little more even in our judgments? The poor gentlemen
pagans of the islands would cut as good a figure as heathen Cato, if
their names and deeds could be turned into tolerable Latin, and passed
off as of the classical age. Henley, in a letter to Swift, tells the
speech of a farmer, who said, “If I could but get this same breath out
of my body, I’d take care, by G—, how I let it come in again!” Henley
makes the pithy remark, “This, if it was put into fine Latin, I fancy
would make as good a sound as any I have met with.”
I did not mean to induce a belief, Eusebius, that the Chinese excelled
in the fine arts when I wrote down the description of the Chinese lady.
The portrait had its peculiarities, and would not have been hung upon
the line in the Royal Academy. I only chose it for its historical
expression, which spoke of civilisation of manners, of security, and as
containing in itself things which civilised people boast of. But there
the argument is not very much in favour of this our “Nineteenth
Century;” for the chiefest works of art in painting are of the _cinque
cents_. It is not pretended that we have thrown into oblivious shade the
masters of old celebrity; nor that we have made better statues than did
Phidias and Praxiteles; nor excelled the Greeks in architecture; nor
even the artist builders of the ages which we are pleased to style
“Dark;” so that we have at least lost some marks of civilisation. Nay,
to come to nearer times for comparison: It would be a hard thing for our
swaggerers to find a dramatist willing to be taken by the collar, and
contrasted face to face with the portraits of Shakespeare and Ben
Jonson, taking their plays as their representatives. There were worthies
of a high romance in the civilised days of the “Glorious Gloriana.” What
marks of essential civilisation are visible in the comedies of
Shakespeare—what delightful mixture of the real and unreal—the mind
springing from its own natural elasticity above the fogs and blight of
worldly business, that ever tend to keep the spirits from rising! And
why say comedies? Tragedies too. How fresh is the atmosphere mankind
seem then to breathe. Humanity is made lovable or dignified. If we might
judge of civilisation from the works of writers of that age, we might be
justified in pronouncing it most civilised, for it was governed by a
vivid and romantic spirit. Take as contrast the literature of Queen
Anne’s boasted time. It is quite of another spirit. There is a
descending, a degradation of the whole mind. There begins visible
worldliness. We see man taking his part in the affairs of the world for
what he can get as an individual. There is a prominence of the business,
and less made of the enjoyments of life;—the commercial spirit
predominating, which has since overwhelmed the imaginative faculties,
and buried the better, the more civilised pleasures of life, under the
weight of avarice. We are, my dear Eusebius, too money-loving and
money-getting to deserve the name of a thoroughly civilised people. Is a
true and just perception of the fine arts a sign of civilisation? What
is admired—what is eagerly purchased—what intellectual food do the
purchases convey? Is the mere visual organ gratified by the lowest
element of the arts—imitation—or the mind’s eye enlarged to receive and
love what is great and noble? In one sense, undoubtedly, the art of
living is better understood, because, the romance of life fading away,
personal comforts and little luxuries become exigencies, and engross the
thoughts, filling up the vacancies that romance has left. Shall I shock
you, my dear Eusebius, if I add my doubts if liberty is either
civilisation or a sign of it? Great things have been done in the world,
where there has been little of it enough, as well as where there has
been much. The fine arts are certainly not much indebted to it.
There is much in the question which yet remains to be considered. The
questioned may well ask, as did the heathen philosopher on one more
important, and of an infinite height and depth—another day of thought to
answer it, and each succeeding day another still. Is civilisation that
condition in which all the human faculties may be so continually
exercised, as to make the more intellectual moral and religious being?
when the plant humanity, like every other plant, shall by cultivation
assume a new character and even appearance? I fear this condition
necessarily implies a degradation also. For as in no state do the many
reach the high standard, equality must be destroyed, so that inferiority
will not only have its moral mark, but also its additional toil, far
above the share it would have supposing a state nearer equality.
But then, it may be answered, the question is not about the many, but
regards only examples, without considering number. Human plants may be
exhibited of extraordinary culture and beauty—beauty that must be seen
and admired—and, if so, imitated; and this law of imitation will draw in
the many, in process of time, to improvement. Very true, Eusebius; and
in a race naturally energetic, this imitation—while, on the whole, it
will improve general manners—creates a social vice, affectation—which is
vulgarity. The example of our Anglo-Saxon race is to the point—of
wondrous energy, but in no race under the sun is vulgarity so
conspicuous. If, then, the condition which forces all the human
faculties to exertion be that of civilising tendency, does it follow
that it is one of the greatest happiness? The history of the world says
manifestly that it is not one of peace, of quietness, of content, of
simplicity—alas! shall we say of honesty? For it must be confessed
civilisation acts upon the mixed character which every man has, and
therefore gives progression both to vice and virtue. Man is only made
great by trials; difficulties promote energies. It is the law of
preparation for this world and for the next. Long, steep, and arduous is
the way to excellence. The verse of Hesiod brings to mind a passage of
greater authority. The smooth and broad way, and ever-ready way, is not
so good.
“Τῆς δ’ἀρετῆς ἱδρῶτα θεοὶ προπάριοθεν ἔθηκαν.
Λθάνατοι, μακρος δὲ καὶ ὄρθιος οἷμος ἐπ’ αὺτὴν,
Kαὶ τρηχὺς πρῶτον επην δ’εἰς ἄκρον ἵκηται
Ρηἴδίη δ’ἔπειτα πέλει, χαλεπή περ ἐοῦσα.”
—HESIOD.
Here we have toil, trouble, and a rough road.
Now for a little entanglement of the subject. Who will sit for this
aspirant for all the virtues—for civilisation? I look up to the portrait
of the Chinese lady, who first set my thoughts upon this speculation.
Surely she never got that placid do-nothing look from any long habit of
toil and trouble; she never worked hard. I confess, Eusebius, as I
question her, she does look a little more silly than I thought her. She
never went the up-hill rough road. How should she? She was never shod
for it; nay, were the truth told—for the painter has judiciously kept it
out of sight—she had no proper feet to walk withal. They had been
pinched to next to nothing. She never could have danced; would have been
a sorry figure in a European ball-room; and in the way she must have
stood, would have made but (as Goldsmith calls it) “a mutilated
curtsey.” It is hard to give up a first idea. I proposed her as an
emblem of civilisation—and why not? She does not represent civilisation
in its progress—in its work; but in its result—its perfection. For look
at her,—she stands not up with a bold impudence, like Luxury in the
“Choice of Hercules,” puffed up and enlarged in the fat of pride, and
redder and whiter than nature—a painted Jezebel. Quite the reverse. She
is most delicately slender; her substance is of the purity of the finest
China tea-cup. In fact, she seems to have been set up as the work of a
whole nation’s toil,—as a sign, a model, of their civilisation. They who
imagined such a creature, and set her upon her legs—yet I can hardly say
that, considering the feet—must have made many after the same model, or
seen many; and exquisite must have been the manners of such a piece of
life-porcelain.
Indeed, Eusebius, we have greatly mistaken these people, the Chinese. I
will believe their own account of themselves, and that they were a
polished people when the ancient Britons went naked, and painted
themselves with woad. Besides, here is another picture at hand, clearly
showing them to have been, as probably they are still, a sensible
people, for they evidently agree with the wisest man who said, “Spare
the rod and spoil the child.” Here they have pictured a school, and the
pedagogue is flogging a boy, and he has a very legitimate rod. If this
is not a _mark_ of civilisation—for it certainly leaves one, giving, as
it were, a bottomry bond of future wisdom—I should like to know what is.
Birch-buds are the smart-money of education, and wonderfully improve the
memory without touching the head, but reaching the brain by a harmless
and distant sympathy. I am sure the Chinese must be a people well worth
studying; and, with all our national conceit, we may learn a good deal
from them. If we scatter them about with our artillery, and stick them
upon bayonets, and despise them because they are innocent, or have been
till recently, in the arts of destruction, who are the most savage—the
slaughtered or the slaughterers? Are we to call war, civilisation?
Perhaps it may be the “rough way” it has to pass. Ask the Czar to answer
the question. He will undoubtedly say, that it is cutting the throats of
the Turks and filching their property; and he will show you one
undoubted proof of the highest civilisation of modern times, consummate
hypocrisy—committing murder by wholesale in the name of religion.
Shall I advance a seeming paradox? Civilisation is impeded by
knowledge—that is, by the modern demand for it. The memory becomes
crammed, till there be no room in the brain for legitimate thought to
work in. Hence a bewilderment, a confusion of other men’s ideas, and
none of our own; a general perplexity, and little agreement among people
in sentiment, for they have no time left to consider upon their
differences. The world is overstocked with the materials of knowledge,
and yet there is ever a demand for more. The time of man’s best wisdom
was when he was not overburthened with books. Happy are scholars that so
many of the classics are lost. Were all that have been written extant,
the youth that should graduate in honours would be the miracle of a
short time, and an idiot the remainder of his life. Then our own
literature: it is frightful to see the bulky monthly catalogue of
publications. Had I to begin the world, I should throw down the list in
despair, and prefer being a literary fool, with a little common sense.
Besides, the aspirant in education must learn all modern languages also.
What a quantity! I made a note from a paper published, November 1851.
Here is a quotation. A letter from Leipsic says—“The catalogue for the
book fair of St Michael has been just published. It results from it that
during the short space of time which has elapsed since the fair of
Easter last, not fewer than three thousand eight hundred and sixty new
books have been published in Germany, and that one thousand one hundred
and fifty others are in the press. More than one-half of these works are
on scientific subjects.” Mercy on the brains of the people!—they will be
inevitably addled. What with all this learning and reading, summing and
analysing, and making book-shelves of themselves, they are retrograding
in natural understanding, which ought to be the strong foundation of
civilisation. And there is the necessity growing up of reading all the
daily papers beside. Better, Eusebius, that the human plant should grow,
like a cucumber, to belly, and run along the common ground, than shoot
out such head-seed as is likely to come out of such a hotbed under a
surfeit of dry manure. Verily it must shortly come to pass, that
Ignoramus will be the wisest if not the knowingest among us. He may have
common sense, a few flights of imagination unchoked with the dust of
learning, or many wholesome prejudices, a great deal of honest feeling,
and with these homespun materials keep his morals and religion pure,
and, walking in humbleness, reach unawares the summit of civilisation.
If you think him an imaginary being, wed him to the Chinese Purity in
the japan frame, and no one will write the epithalamium so happily as my
friend Eusebius. I might here have ended my letter, rather expecting to
receive a solution to the great question than pretending to offer one.
But having written so far, and about to add a concluding sentence, I
received a visit from our matter-of-fact friend B., whom people
hereabout call the Economist General: he is a professed statist, great
in all little things. He is alway at work, volunteering unacceptable
advices and schemes to boards of guardians and the Government. I told
him I was writing to you, and the subject of my letter,—“Then,” said he,
“I can assist you. The census newly come out is the thing. In that you
will learn everything. You will, in fact, find civilisation depicted
scientifically. I will send it to you.” We conversed an hour; I promised
to read his census return in the course of the day. He smiled strangely,
but said nothing. I soon understood what the smile meant, when I saw a
labouring man take out of a little cart a huge parcel, which upon
opening I found to contain the Census in nineteen volumes or books,
varying in shapes and sizes, some of which being very bulky, I judged to
contain heavy matter. The idea of reading over and digesting the Census
in an afternoon appeared now so ridiculous that I could not refrain from
laughing myself. Nineteen books to examine in an afternoon! It was
evident there would be six months’ toil, and as many hands as Briareus
wanted to turn over the leaves; to say nothing of the number of heads to
hold the matter. What horsepower engine in the brain to work up a
digested process equal to the task! I was, however, being somewhat idle,
curious to see what could have made our friend such an enthusiast; I
therefore looked into some of the books—became interested—read more and
more, though in a desultory manner. It is wonderful to see society so
daguerreotyped in all its phases. What could have given rise to so much
varied ingenuity?—What schemes, what contrivances for getting at
everything!—the commissioners must have been Titans in ingenuity. Was it
the necessity of the case that induced so much elaboration? I have read
that the cost of the Census exceeds £120,000. That accounts for it,
Eusebius; such a sum is not to be clutched without some inventive
powers. Our friend thinks the Census will help to solve the question of
civilisation; so pray borrow the volumes of an M.P. If you cannot get at
the marrow of the thing you want, you will find much for after
speculation. There is something frightful, Eusebius, in the idea that no
class of men, no individuals, can henceforth escape the eye of this
Great Inquisitor-General—a Census commission. There is no conceivable
thing belonging to man, woman, or child that may not come under the
inspection, and be in the books, of this great Gargantuan Busybody. In
truth, he was born a gigantic infant in 1801. Hermes, in the Homeric
hymn, leaped out of his cradle upon mischievous errands almost as soon
as born: so did our big Busybody. Ere he was six months old he took to
knocking at people’s doors, and running[144] away. He soon grew bolder,
stood to his knock, and asked if Mr Thompson did not live there. Then he
had the trick of getting into houses like the boy Jones, and counted the
skillets in the scullery, the pap-dishes in the nursery, turned over the
beds in the garrets, and booked men and maids who slept in them before
they could put their clothes on. With a thirst for domestic knowledge,
he insisted upon knowing who were married and who not. He would burst in
upon a family at their prayers, and note what religion they were of. He
would know every one’s age, condition, business, and be very particular
as to sex female, why they married or why they lived single; he could
tell to a day when any would lie in. The most wonderful thing was the
paper case he carried with him wherever he went. It would have made
Gargantua himself stare with astonishment, for it is said, upon
competent authority, to have weighed “nearly forty tons.” This paper
case contained particulars noted down of every one’s possible concerns.
He had another at home, in which he kept circulars for distribution,
demanding further information. It was said to be bigger still;[145] as
he grew robust and bold, of course it took more to feed Busybody. It is
almost incredible what a number of the people’s loaves he ate up in one
year; but that there is the baker’s bill to vouch for it, no one would
believe it. The quantity of food required for himself and his numerous
retainers has already made him look about with some anxiety to foist
upon the country a scheme for sure agricultural statistics, to ascertain
the number of loaves to the acre. It cannot be said of him, as of many,
that his eye is bigger than his belly, for the former cannot as yet see
“bread-stuffs” enough to fill the latter. Besides, he has quite an army
to maintain of officials, enumerators, and registrars, who all, after
the manner of benchers, must eat their way into the universal knowledge
required of them. Such is Busybody. In my afternoon nap, I have dreamed
of him, Eusebius, and offer you this description of him—his birth, life,
habits, and manners—as by a dreaming intuition I received them. What
think you of the monster? As perilous a beast as the Wooden Horse of
Troy.
“Inspectura domos, venturaque desuper urbi.” It would not be surprising
if Irish mothers, when they find that all their babes are registered,
age and sex noted down, were to take into their heads that they are to
be fattened; and Swift’s scheme, which a popular author has unwisely
characterised as serious cannibalism, is at length to be realised, and
thus Bigmouth of the old fair and puppet-show will appear as
Busybody-General. Perhaps the “King of the Cannibal Islands,” since we
have taught him to read and write, will avail himself of this new
registration system; for with him all is alike meat in the market. I
have been reading an account of such a people’s doings, and find the
only difference between human and other is, that the former is sold as
“long pig,” the other short pig.
I mentioned the ingenuity displayed in the Census—turn to the maps and
diagrams. You will see a map of England and Wales, shaded so that the
depth of colour shall denote the density of the population: there are
figures also to tell the number of persons to a square mile, and towns
and cities are represented by round dots, larger or smaller, according
to the number of inhabitants. It is a very curious and pretty plaything;
but of what imaginable use? It is like the shadowing on the maps of the
moon. London looks awful—a horrible black pit—and must give children,
who will be delighted with the plaything, a notion that our great
metropolis must be a sink of iniquity. Cobbett’s notion of the “great
wen” was by no means agreeable; to make it such a black pit of
destruction is far less flattering. There are diagrams also showing, by
the closeness of dots, the density of population at various periods. It
was certainly a very ingenious contrivance of the inventor, for the
enlargement and continuance of his work and employment; in a matter,
too, where, at first view, so little was required to be done. If not
more profitable, it at least provides as much amusement as Diogenes
afforded when he rolled his tub about, to show that he must be busy. The
inventor was, however, wiser than the philosopher; for the philosopher
aimed at satire only, the inventor of the maps and diagrams at pay and
profit. Everything should nowadays be turned into the channel of
education; it might be suggested to the educational purveyors, and to
masters and inspectors of schools, who stand a chance of wanting
something to teach, to have these maps and diagrams printed cheaply on
thick or board paper, that, even in their recreation hours, the scholars
may learn something, and the favourite “game of goose,” of ominous name,
be profitably superseded. The two diagrams of London, the one for the
year 1801, the other 1851, may serve quite as well as the “Chinese
puzzle” to exercise growing or dull memories, having a like advantage of
not burthening the mind, already too full, with any useful knowledge
whatever. For instance, it will be quite sport to learn by heart that,
as to density of London in 1801, “on an average, there were nearly 394
square yards of land to every person, 2784 square yards to every
inhabited house.” As to proximity in 1801, that, “on an average, the
mean distance from house to house (inhabited) was nearly 57 yards; from
person to person 21 yards.” That, as to density in 1851, “on an average,
there were nearly 160 square yards of land to every person; 1234 square
yards to every inhabited house.” As to proximity, that in 1851, “on an
average, the mean distance from house to house (inhabited) was nearly 38
yards; from person to person 14 yards.” So that every person is
approaching his neighbour in person, but not probably in love or liking,
so rapidly, as that he has already seven yards of the area of his
liberty taken from him since 1801. It will be comfortably and
philosophically answered, that most of those who enjoyed that liberty in
1801, more than half a century ago, cannot complain, for they are now
silent, and in less space, that of six feet by four; and that the
present generation easily accommodate themselves in less space, having
the better liberty of making more noise. These are the trifles, the
games, and the plays that amuse children six feet high. Let them by all
means roll about their tub in the streets, if they will remain contented
with their sport and their wages. They have, however, we may both of us
surmise and fear, done far less innocent work. It is not pleasant to
know that the pure, chaste secresy of your house has been invaded, taken
possession of, and is no longer exclusively yours; that you are in name
or in number, as No. 1 or No. 2, put away in a pigeon-hole somewhere in
that black pit you have seen in the map, to be drawn out, one of these
days, at the will of any impertinent official, and further questioned,
perhaps, as the phrase is, _squeezed_, when anything is to be got out of
you. You may have a commission sent down to your house, and take
possession of it, for some scrutiny or other, while you are taking your
morning walk; on your return, you will find two or three commissioners
have coolly taken your joint off the spit, and are politely drinking
your health out of your choicest sherry; and as an excuse of
extraordinary business, question you about the age and property of your
great-grandmother deceased. How do you or I know what use will be made
of all these registered particulars about us? It would be far pleasanter
to be let alone. I have an antipathy to curious questioning people. Dr
Franklin, when he came to a strange place, knowing the inquisitive
disposition of the people, used to say at once, “My name is Benjamin
Franklin; I come from such a place, and am going to such a place; age so
and so, and on such business; and now let me have out a horse.” I should
for one like to compound with this scrutinising government, on condition
of exemption from place in their books, to put out weekly posted to my
door the names, ages, and sex of every inmate, with a diary of their
employments the six days; requesting not to be called to account for my
time on the hallowed seventh. There is no chance of such a composition
being accepted on their part; for you will see, Eusebius, there is
nothing they are so busy about as to know what religion you are of.
There is a separate book for this very purpose; nay, they go
farther—they have superseded all known authorities in these matters, and
have dictated what shall be your creed, giving you only a latitude of
“_Churches_”—such they call every denomination in their Report presented
to Parliament, and her Majesty, who as yet happily has recognised but
one Church of England, in which matter the Report is undoubtedly at
variance with the fundamental law of the Constitution, and passes a kind
of insulting suggestion upon her Majesty’s highest prerogative, her very
crown and dignity. This is a matter for other consideration; the
religious Report must be examined; I only see at present, and note the
fact, that the Church of England is put down as but one of the sects.
“Increase and multiply” was at the beginning, and from the beginning to
this day is, the Divine command. Some would infer that there must be a
blessing attending obedience to it, others would in part abrogate the
law, and, with Malthus, admit no crowding at the bountiful table which
nature supplies. The presumption fairly is, that as security to life and
happiness is the main cause of increase; viewing this world only, such
increase must be a great good, and it implies advancement in
civilisation, which possibly may not be ill defined as the art of
promoting life and happiness. It includes moral advancement. But the
beneficence of our Maker allows us to look beyond this world. Hence, the
awful thought, and the responsibility incurred by its increase of
population, is an increase of immortal souls. There is a depth in this
argument beyond my scope. It is a curious fact which this Census shows.
In 1801, the population of Great Britain was 10,578,956; in 1851, it had
reached 20,959,477. Thus the population has nearly doubled in fifty
years. But further, “The population of the United Kingdom, including the
army, navy, and merchantseamen, was 21,272,187 in 1821, and about
27,724,849 in 1851; but in the interval 2,685,747 persons emigrated,
who, if simply added to the population of the United Kingdom, make the
survivors and descendants of the races within the British Isles in 1821,
now 30,410,595.”
Perhaps, Eusebius, you never considered that you have only right and
title to a certain limited area, to live and breathe in, in this your
beloved country. Your area is becoming more circumscribed every day.
People are approximating fearfully. You may come to touch very
disagreeable people; at present you are only a few yards apart. There
are two things, according to this Census, threatening you—“density” and
“proximity.” For “density” a French writer proposes “specific population
after the analogy of specific gravity,” so that if there be an
accelerating ratio, you may be run in upon and crushed by your
neighbours, after the annihilating principle of some of our railroads. I
remember when a boy hearing an old gentleman make a curious calculation,
equalising rights to the air we breathe. He came to the conclusion that
a man who smoked tobacco took up more room in the atmosphere than he had
any right to. This, now that we are so rapidly approximating, ought, you
will think, to come under the consideration of the Legislature. See your
danger—“the people of England were on an average one hundred and
fifty-three yards asunder in 1801, and one hundred and eight yards
asunder in 1851.” Thus the regular goers, the world-walkers, are coming
in upon you; but there are some as erratic as comets, whose contiguity
you will dread. I say this is your danger, for you do not suppose such
infinite pains would have been taken, and such vast expense incurred,
merely out of idle curiosity to give you this information. Perhaps it is
kindly meant to give you a hint that your room would be preferred to
your company. “Tempus abire tibi est.” More than this—not only persons,
but houses are encroaching upon each other. “The mean distance apart of
their houses was three hundred and sixty-two yards in 1801, and two
hundred and fifty-two yards in 1851.” You see, then, you must not only
set yourself in order to depart, but you must “set your house in order”
also. It is really astonishing that the Census Commission should have
taken such a world of trouble in making calculations which, at first
sight, look so puerile; we must only conclude, that somehow or other the
labour is as much worth the hire, as the labourer is worthy _his_ hire.
I dare to say, among your ignorances, you are ignorant of this, that the
British Isles are at least five hundred in number. “Five hundred islands
and rocks have been numbered, but inhabitants were only found and
distinguished on the morning of March 31, 1851, in _one hundred and
seventy-five_ islands, or groups of islands.” I cannot very well tell
what is meant by “_distinguished_,” but you will perceive that there is
a chance, if you fear the “crushing density and proximity” of escape to
one of these islands, as yet uninhabited, where you may exist without
contact or contagion, as a very “_distinguished_” individual. You may be
another Alexander Selkirk, and “monarch of all you survey,” and have the
honour of a distinction, in the next census, now enjoyed by a lone lady.
You will be enumerated as, and as solely taking care of, number one.
There are British isles that have each but two inhabitants. “Little
Papa” has but one—a woman; and “Inchcolm one solitary man.” What think
you of this “last man” and this “last woman,” each upon his or her
“_ultima Thule_?” The motherless man-hating woman, in contempt of the
parental name, alone treading under foot “Little Papa.” The “solitary
man,” if, as is likely he be, brutish, may live out of the fear of a
recent Act of Parliament. For if he disdains the marital luxury, he
cannot be punished for beating his wife.
The writer of these statistics, aware that there is a good deal of dry
matter, prudently sprinkles it with a little saltwater poetry. Thus, as
a kind of preface to these British islands, he says, “The Scandinavian
race survives in its descendants round the coasts of the British Isles,
and the soul of the old Viking still burns in the seamen of the British
fleet, in the Deal boatmen, in the fishermen of the Orkneys, and in that
adventurous, bold, direct, skilful, mercantile class, that has encircled
the world by its peaceful conquests. What the Greeks were in the
Mediterranean Sea, the Scandinavians have been in the Atlantic Ocean. A
population of a race on the islands and the island coasts, impregnated
with the sea, in fixing its territorial boundaries would exhibit but
little sympathy with the remonstrating Roman poet, in his Sabine farm
over the Mediterranean:
‘Nequidquam Deus abscidit
Prudens _occano dissociabili_
Feras, si tamen impiæ
Non tangenda rates trausiliunt vada.’”
A writer or compiler of statistics should ride his own hobby. Pegasus is
hard-mouthed to his hand; if he attempts the use of the curb, he is
thrown, and thus is sure to be run away with. So here he has got quite
beyond the ground of matter-of-fact. By the Vikings’ soul in the British
seamen—the burning soul too—he declares himself of the Pythagorean
philosophy, quite gratuitously; and in the following sentence carries
his transmigration notions to a strange but practical conclusion, for he
tells us of a race “_impregnated with the sea_,” imaging sailors’
mothers and wives as mermaids—that is, previous to the marine and
marital alliances; by which unaccountable flight of poetic diction, I
presume, he means only that the sea was rather a rough nursing-mother:
and how could he imagine that such an untutored race ever read, or could
read, a syllable of what Horace wrote? Doubtless, he must have been
weary, counting up these five hundred mostly barren islands, and, coming
in the list to “_Rum_,” it must have made for him a comfortable
suggestion; and in consequence, a pretty stiff tumbler set all his ideas
at once afloat, and poetically, “half seas over” among the islands,
steering, however, steadily, as he was bound towards Mull Port, and the
more pleasant hospitality of its 7485 inhabitants. Having descended from
this marine Pegasus, the author proceeds in his statistics.
The number of inhabited houses in Great Britain in 1801 amounted to
1,870,476; in 1851, to 3,648,347: these contained 4,312,388
families—persons, 20,816,351. Thus it is seen that the number of houses
since 1801 is nearly doubled. How commonly we boast, Eusebius, of things
that have passed away! You hear it now often said that an Englishman’s
house is his castle, the garrison of which has been hitherto supposed to
be known only to himself. There has been an idea that not only the
master, but all down to the very scullion, are ready to stand with spits
and skillets to keep out unwelcome invaders; whereas the truth is, as
shown in this Census, that the castle has its government inspector, who
notes down and registers the numbers, ages, names, sexes, and
occupations of every individual the said castle contains. Houses are a
very nice tangible property for the convenience of government taxation;
by judicious scrutiny, of which the Census Commission provides ample
means, it will be easily ascertained what each family has to live upon;
or, what is quite the same thing for the getting the taxation, what on
“an average” the Commissioners may think the said family ought to have
to live upon; thus the income-tax is facilitated in computation and
collection. These are surely encroachments, that, by little and little,
are domineering over the subjects’ liberty. There are other Acts of
Parliament also which affect this liberty in the “castle;” some general,
some local. In few places can a man make alterations in his building,
inside or out, without an application for consent, and of course a fee
to some commissioner or other. If he succeeds, there is a further
penalty upon his improvements, though they may have been required for
the very health of his family. He has, through this Census scrutiny, to
pay a tax upon his improvements, nor is he allowed any deduction for
repairs. This Englishman’s castle, then, you see, is as much besieged as
Bomarsund! At first it was pretty well thrown out of its own windows by
the window-tax, and is always at the mercy of commissions, whether it
shall or shall not be turned out of doors. Many a one is there that has
a ten-pound battery playing upon it all the year round. If, weary of
watching your besiegers, you turn yourself out of house, and live a
rambling, roving life how you can, you will not so easily escape; you
will have an inspector after you with note-book and ink-horn, and you
will be booked and pigeon-holed for further use when wanted. “Finally,
there is the population sleeping in barns, in tents, and in the open
air, comprising, with some honest, some unfortunate people out of
employment, or temporarily employed, gypsies, beggars, strollers,
vagabonds, vagrants, outcasts, criminals. The enumeration of the
houseless population, unsettled in families, is necessarily imperfect,
and the actual number must exceed the 18,249 returned; namely, 9972 in
barns, and 8277 in the open air.” The poor strollers! why should they be
stigmatised and classed with vagabonds, vagrants, outcasts, and
criminals? are they not following their lawful vocation, and doing
something, as it is hoped they are, towards civilising the people
through legitimate amusement? Is the compiler of these statistics a
descendant of the old Puritans, and still retaining an unwarrantable
prejudice? It were better he had the charity of the chimney-sweeper boy,
who remonstrated with a brother sweep, who pointed his finger at Garrick
in the streets, and said, “There be one of the player-folk.” “Don’t say
so,” said the discreet one, “for thee dostn’t know what thee and I may
come to.” But I know, as you rather patronise gypsies, you will be
pleased to hear that one tribe of them baffled the officials. “It is
mentioned in one instance that a tribe of gypsies struck their tents,
and passed into another parish in order to escape enumeration.”
The great king whom we read of in history, who, in the excess of his
felicity, thought it needful to have a flapper appointed to remind him
every day that he was mortal, though he was made the example of many a
theme in our school days, I look upon now as a very silly fellow. I have
often heard you express your dislike of any impertinent _memento
moris_—you have even thought it irreligious, and unthankful for present
good; and tending to chill the life-blood, the little that is left in
the old, and to throw a wet blanket over the cheerfulness of the young,
out of which cheerfulness elastic manhood is to spring, and to take upon
itself to do the manly responsible duties of life vigorously. I repeat
that you have always maintained, that to thrust a _memento mori_ in
every man’s face, or to carve it upon his walking-stick, is irreligious,
because it is essential unthankfulness.
It is not pleasant, certainly, to have one’s days numbered by other
people, and sent to you in circulars. I knew one of these
life-calculators; a clergyman called to condole with him on the recent
death of his wife. All he could get from him was partly a submission to
a necessity, and partly a congratulation that death had not taken him.
“Yes, sir,” said he, “if A does not die, in all probability B will; and
if neither A nor B die, C must.” You will be indignant, but your
philosophy will have the pleasure of its indignation, if I pointed out
to your notice Busybody’s table of mortality. When last he knocked at
your door, and booked your age, did his eyebrows arch with surprise?
Eusebius, that look meant to tell you that you had no right whatever at
that moment to be alive. He longed to filch your name out of his
pigeon-hole of life. You are a hale man, and will, I hope, doing so much
good as you do, outlive a couple of censuses yet. Have your eye upon
Busybody when he next appears; not like Death, with one of his warnings,
but ready to receive a certificate of burial. There is a table showing
how very few who were alive in 1801 are now living, and so on, at every
succeeding census. “By the English Life Table it is shown that the half
of a generation of men of all ages passes away _in thirty years_, and
that more than three in every four of their number die in half a
century.” But I pass by this unwelcome subject—nor will I be the one to
say to you or to any man, “Proximus ardet, Ucalegon.” Let Ucalegon’s
house escape if it can.
It is more agreeable to contemplate births than deaths. There is
something very curious in that hidden law which evidently regulates the
proportion of the sexes to each other. It has been commonly thought that
the males have exceeded the females, in order to make allowance for the
greater waste of life to which the males are subject by wars and the
elements. But the facts show the contrary. “The number of the male
population of Great Britain was 10,386,048, of the female population
10,735,919; the females exceeded the males by 349,871; and the males at
home were 10,223,558; consequently the females exceeded by 512,361 the
males _in_ Great Britain. To every 100,000 females the males were
96,741, including 1538 males abroad, the exclusion of whom leaves 95,203
males at home. The excess of females over males was nearly the same
proportionally in 1801 and 1851. Thus, in 1801, to every 100,000 males
there were 103,353 females; in 1851, the females were 103,369 to the
same number of males. The proportion in both periods was nearly 30 males
to 31 females.” It may be inferred from this that there is rather a
greater waste of female life than of male. It would be worth while to
ascertain how long this excess has been found to have taken place; I am
inclined to suspect that the unhealthy employments of young women, to so
large an extent, may have been the cause; for it seems to be the law of
nature to make a supply for the greater waste. Humanity requires a
strict scrutiny into the healthy or deleterious employments of young
women, especially in our manufacturing districts, to account for this
excessive supply, that as far as is possible some remedial measures may
be adopted. That all is regulated by a law of Providence, there can be
no doubt in any mind. My present knowledge of the Census is entirely
confined to the Report No. 1 of 1851. I shall look to the second Part
for an elucidation of this problem.
It is surprising, however, on the whole, to see how evenly the sexes are
balanced; it would be a speculation not uninteresting to see what causes
may have induced occasional variations. Thus speaks the Report:
“The sexes have apparently increased at different rates in certain
decennaries, but the average annual rates of increase through the whole
period have been so nearly the same (males 1.328, females 1.329 per
cent) as to cause a slight difference only in the third decimal place,
and have differed little from 1⅓ annually. The decennial rates of
increase were, males 14.108, females 14.111.” The “law of population,”
as it relates to proportion of sexes, is a mystery. No human polity can
provide for that. It is plain to see, however, that there is a wise,
benevolent, superintending power which makes and maintains the law in a
just equilibrium. Whether people shall marry or no may depend on human
laws and civil institutions; whether due encouragement be given, or the
reverse.
We learn from Herodotus that among the Sauromatæ, a people in the
northern parts of Europe and Asia, the women dressed in the habits of
men, and, like them, engaged in battle; that none were allowed to marry
till she shall first have killed her man. Hence it happened, we are
further told, that many died old maids, never having been able to fulfil
the conditions. How any population could be kept up under the existence
of such a law, no one now can question the historian. I suppose, from
the necessity of the case, that a reform was demanded, and more peaceful
marriages were the first-fruits of a free trade. It must have been an
adventurous thing for a man to marry a woman who had once killed her man
to obtain one husband; he might have lived in continual fear that she
might kill a second man to have another husband.
It appears that marriage, though it is nominally free, is under
restriction; were it otherwise, the increase of population would be far
greater. “In ordinary times a large proportion of the marriageable women
of every country are unmarried.” The writer might have spared his ink;
but he adds: “And the most direct action on the population is produced
by their entering the marriage state.” As one example may serve a
general purpose, the Census gives that of the south-eastern division,
comprising Surrey, Kent, Sussex, Hants, and Berks, in which “the number
of women of the age of 20, and under 45, amounted at the last Census to
290,209, of whom 169,806 were wives, and 120,403 were spinsters or
widows. 49,997 births were registered in the same counties during the
year 1850, or 10 children were born in 1850 to every 58 women living in
1851.” It is to be presumed that among matrimonial chances every lot is
a prize. The difficulty of a choice, where multitudes assemble,
maintains a law of hesitation—of indecision—by which it happens that
celibacy becomes wise, and is fond of repeating the philosopher’s advice
as to the time to marry: if young, not yet; if middle-aged, wait; if
old, never. Let us see how the reverse operates where the choice is very
limited. St Kilda, in the parish of Harris, is 70 miles away from the
mainland in the Western Hebrides; the population is 110—48 males, 62
females; 32 families in 32 houses. “There are 19 married couples on the
island, 2 widowers, 8 widows. _Five unmarried men, 5 unmarried women of
the age of 20, and under 46._” One would imagine these had only to meet
and to marry. Five is no great choice; the greater haste, you would
suppose, to take a partner. Is the solution to be found in this
extraordinary fact, that there is no clergyman to unite the couples
resident on the island? The five couples must wait; and as the clergyman
on the mainland may hesitate to go 140 miles to marry one couple, he is
probably waiting for all five to come to a decision. It must have been
some such unfortunate place as St Kilda which supplied the wit to the
epigrammatist upon the question of marriages ceasing elsewhere, the
priest asserting that women are not to be found there; the reply being—
“Women there are, but I’m afraid
They cannot find a priest.”
“On St Kilda,” says the Census, “there is a manse and a church, but no
medical man—no clergyman resident on the island.”
Will the world be better, Eusebius, for all these statistics; will
civilisation be one jot advanced, by _registering_ our tailors as well
as their paletots?—by knowing how many tinkers there are in the world to
mend our kettles? They will, be sure of it, trudge about just the same,
and do their work as badly or as well as before. All trades will be
governed by their own instincts, without the least difference; unless,
indeed, statistics take a more useful turn, and fix their stigma upon
the adulterators of goods. We may have reason to say something in favour
of the ScrutinizerGeneral, when he can tell us where the wines called
port are manufactured that never came from Portugal, and who make them;
who adulterates our drugs, so that people are dying for lack of the
genuine; who, in fact, poison all we eat and drink, and put devils’-dust
on our backs for woollen cloth. It is very little to the purpose to have
the number of thieves and rascals that infest the world, if the Augean
stable of crime is left uncleansed. If dishonesty should ever be driven
out of common trades, which it has so notoriously infected, a great
thing would be done; and we might bear with a grateful quietude more
numbering and registering of us and all our concerns than we quite like;
although it surely is not necessary for this to carry on such espionage
as this Census contains. Perhaps even its absurdity is dangerous, for it
induces people to fix their minds upon that, not upon its ulterior
purposes. While men are laughing at things, wilily ridiculous in
themselves, they know not what mischief is secretly brewing. I maintain
that it is a great offence in any way to touch the sanctity of the
hearth—that what economists and statistic inventors may please to call
public liberty, should be allowed to destroy home liberty. It is
something monstrous that every one should be obliged to give an account
of every inmate in his house, their ages, conditions, and their
relationship. It is better to let some of the peccadilloes of life
escape notice, than register them and the house. If Miss or Mrs Debora
Wilkins shall receive under her hospitality a big nephew, it is very
hard upon her to be obliged to certify the exact relationship, or induce
her into the great error of writing down a falsehood. Men may be a
little more careless in such matters, but feminine nicety is touched to
the quick. I remember once an Irishman walking into a drawing-room, and
introducing to the lady of the house a tall youth, as, “Give me leave to
introduce my nephew;” then putting his hand aside of his mouth, he
added, in a whisper which may be truly termed Irish, for it was quite as
loud as the first introduction, “he’s my son.” Could you, having any
bowels of compassion, extort a like confession from such an unprotected
female as Miss Debora? A registration commission might, if encouraged,
hereafter ransack her unfortunate boxes to find baby-linen. Is there to
be nothing but one rigid rule—no charity shown to sex and age—but the
unsparing discovery of both on that fatal 30th of March? Must no female,
then, escape to her lover’s arms in male attire—no “lubberly boy” pass
for a sweet Anne Page, that sweet Anne Page fall not to the lot of a
fool? Must foibles, frailties, and follies be all registered in
damnatory schedules? Surely there might be a little decent connivance,
such as would spare the two village ladies, who, being born in the same
_anno Domini_, annually visited each other to determine what should be
their ages for the ensuing year. Their only comfort will be in bribery
and corruption, which they will be thankful is not yet put down, and a
fee will spare what uncharitable census would expose. There may be
something in attacking crimes and discovering frauds which touch the
whole community. These are not much harboured in homes, but in
public-houses, and in shops, which are not homes, but as having a public
character, and giving public invitation to all to enter them, ought to
come under some kind of surveillance; but when the citizen shuts his
street-door, let none force an entrance. Let no Asmodeus take off his
roof, and publish the within little histories, nor make gimlet-holes in
walls and ceilings. Such doings are but, as at present, a slight
exaggeration or caricature of a census. Let there be a police, and a
good one; even with much secret scrutiny allowed them,—it is for the
public safety; but there let it end in its admitted authority. Make not
a police of a census commission, nor let the one interfere with or usurp
the office of the other. Let a census be content to number the people—a
police take crime under its cognisance. The undying, ever-seeing, and
acting arrangement of a police is one of the most curious phenomena of
society. For revolutions that appear to overturn everything, scarcely
touch a well-ordered police; the excellence of which is, that it lives
and moves unseen, unfelt, by the good—that it is a protector.
I remember years ago reading an anecdote showing the perfection of the
old Parisian police. A gentleman had sojourned in Paris a week or two,
when one day he was requested to attend at the police-office. He was
surprised when told how he had occupied himself since he had been in
Paris—what houses he had frequented, what friends visited, what business
he had transacted. He was finally asked the home-question, “Are you a
man of courage—can you rely upon yourself?” He thought he might. Then he
was told that there was a plot to murder him in his bed that night—that
his own servant was in conspiracy with others for that purpose. He was
desired to go to bed as usual, and, if he did not sleep, to appear to
sleep, and to fear nothing. In the night he heard his room-door open, a
person or persons enter—he knew steps were softly approaching his bed—he
fancied the arm uplifted to murder him. His reliance and his courage
failed him not. Under his bed, and elsewhere in his room, soldiers had
been secreted. To make the story short, his servant and the accomplices
were taken. The census which a police quietly makes has an object of
general safety. It has its one pursuit. It has its particular game, and
we may well give it its license. By it we sleep safely in our beds. It
does its complicated but defined work silently; whereas the other census
is perpetually knocking at every man’s door, to ask impertinent
questions. It is a perpetual warning to “beware the Ides of March;” for
then it will come and toss the clothes off your bed at earliest dawn,
lest you should rise and escape; and you must give an account of all the
beds, and all who slept in them. And what is all this disturbance for?
For no earthly good that any of the persecuted can yet see, but all
mistrust the end. Must every one of us have a ticket and number on his
back? It is the same thing, if he and his concerns, and all the
relations of his life, are down in Busybody’s book. There he sits in his
Centralisation Office, with his millions of electric wires passing
underground, and coming up unseen in every man’s house. He means to have
his hook in every man’s nose, nay, every man’s, woman’s, and child’s,
and to draw them in when he wills, as a big spider does his flies, and
perhaps to leave them sucked as dry, suspended in his million-threaded
web. And has he not as many eyes as that ugly creature, and as many ways
of spreading out his ubiquitous legs—backward, forward, or circular? Oh,
this Busybody!—he means to have a line in every one’s mouth, and to draw
all after him as Gulliver did the diminutive fleet. But I say, Eusebius,
that, Liliputians as we are in his eyes, it is hard if we cannot
combine, get our multitudinous toils round his legs, and with a long
pull, and a strong pull, and a pull altogether, throw him on his back,
tie him down hands and feet, search his pockets for his hooks, and then
shoot our sharpest arrows into the body of this Quintus Flestrin. We
will not be any more gulled by this huge Gulliver. He is the Great
Humbug and Deceiver, cajoling silly ones into a belief in the marvel of
his arithmetic; that all the commonest things of life must be done by
his mystical numbers, or will be done ill; that they must count and
think of how many joints, bones, muscles, and sinews they have in their
toes, before venturing their feet a single step.
What is become of civilisation all this while, Eusebius? This Census,
which was to tell so much, has not thrown light upon the question. Yet,
perhaps, after all, it is a more simple one than you or I thought it to
be. I go back to the placidity of the Chinese lady in the picture. I am
now gazing on her expressive trustfulness—upon a complexion that, if
there be many such, justifies the title of “Celestial Empire.” She, the
feminine representative of a nation, the prized pearl of the Romance of
the Porcelain Empire, the very “Gentilezza,” the embodied purity of a
people’s best thoughts, the endowed growth of a perfection above nature,
for so much worship as humanity may, for its improvement in
civilisation, be allowed to set up in the garden of imaginary virtues,
the very Goshen where grow plants and flowers, and sweet waters glide
unknown to working nature, and all courting the enchanting and enchanted
beauty.
“L’acqua la terra in suo favor s’inchina.” Not to be tedious with you in
this fancied passion, Eusebius, I come to the point I aim at. She is the
emblem of civilisation, and that is feminine influence. Its ideal has
beautified that porcelain world, as it will ever beautify every other
where it is felt and maintained.
Yes, Eusebius, civilisation, like common sense, aptly called mother-wit,
comes from the mother. He who, as child and boy, loved and reverenced
for all her purity, truth, and goodness, a mother, when he becomes man
will ever do his part in civilising the world. From the first romance of
mother’s love groweth every other romance; for romance is a noble and
delicate sentiment. To propagate this is to propagate civilisation. But
if any lack this reverence, from whatever cause, and would palm upon
society, as better than its romance, an idle knowledge, a low spirit of
calculation, an accumulation of mere facts and figures, trust him not
with the secrets of your breast; all his doings tend to selfishness and
rebarbarism. A mother to him is but as poor old Mrs Bounderby ignored.
For my own part, Eusebius, when I see such glib statistical calculators
boasting of their practical knowledge, I bethink me of the learned dog
in the show, who with perseverance has acquired the trick of putting his
paw upon letters and numbers, and of arithmetising required ages. Take
heed to your pocket on such occasions; for though you have paid your
admission-ticket, there remains the last acquirement, the last main
trick to be exhibited, the going round the company with the hat in his
mouth.