Reflections continued.
THAT some of the leaders of the hostile party in America acted upon
liberal and patriotic views, cannot be doubted. There were many, indeed,
of whom the public good was the leading principle; and to these the
cause was a noble one: yet even these little foresaw the result. Had
they known what a cold selfish character, what a dereliction of
religious principle, what furious factions, and wild unsettled notions
of government, were to be the consequence of this utter alienation from
the parent state, they would have shrunk back from the prospect. Those
fine minds who, nurtured in the love of science and of elegance, looked
back to the land of their forefathers for models of excellence, and
drank inspiration from the production of the British muse, could not but
feel this rupture as “a wrench from all we love, from all we are.” They,
too, might wish, when time had ripened their growing empire, to assert
that independence which, when mature in strength and knowledge, we claim
even of the parents we love and honour. But to snatch it, with a rude
and bloody grasp, outraged the feelings of those gentler children of the
common parent. Mildness of manners, refinement of mind, and all the
softer virtues that spring up in the cultivated paths of social life,
nurtured by generous affections, were undoubtedly to be found on the
side of the unhappy royalists; whatever superiority in vigour and
intrepidity might be claimed by their persecutors. Certainly, however
necessary the ruling powers might find it to carry their system of exile
into execution, it has occasioned to the country an irreparable
privation.
When the edict of Nantz gave the scattering blow to the protestants of
France, they carried with them their arts, their frugal regular habits,
and that portable mine of wealth which is the portion of patient
industry. The chasm produced in France, by the departure of so much
humble virtue, and so many useful arts, has never been filled.
What the loss of the Huguenots was to commerce and manufactures in
France, that of the loyalists was to religion, literature, and amenity,
in America. The silken threads were drawn out of the mixed web of
society, which has ever since been comparatively coarse and homely. The
dawning light of elegant science was quenched in universal dullness. No
ray has broke through the general gloom except the phosphoric lightnings
of her cold-blooded philosophers, the deistical Franklin, the legitimate
father of the American ‘age of calculation.’ So well have “the children
of his soul” profited by the frugal lessons of this apostle of Plutus,
that we see a new empire blest in its infancy with all the saving
virtues which are the usual portion of cautious and feeble age; and we
behold it with the same complacent surprise which fills our minds at the
sight of a young miser.
Forgive me, shade of the accomplished Hamilton[25], while all that is
lovely in virtue, all that is honourable in valour, and all that is
admirable in talent, conspire to lament the early setting of that
western star; and to deck the tomb of worth and genius with wreaths of
immortal bloom.
“Thee Columbia long shall weep;
Ne’er again thy likeness see?”
fain would I add,
“Long her strains in sorrows steep,
Strains of immortality.”—_Gray._
but alas!
“They have no poet, and they die.”—_Pope._
His character was a bright exception; yet, after all, an exception that
only confirms the rule. What must be the state of that country where
worth, talent, and the disinterested exercise of every faculty of a
vigorous and exalted mind, were in vain devoted to the public good;
where, indeed, they only marked out their possessor for a victim to the
shrine of faction? Alas! that a compliance with the laws of false
honour, (the only blemish of a stainless life,) should be so dearly
expiated!
Footnote 25:
General Hamilton, killed in a duel, into which he was forced by Aaron
Burr, Vice-President of Congress, at New-York, in 1806.
Yet the deep sense expressed by all parties of this general loss, seems
to promise a happier day at some future period, when this chaos of
jarring elements shall be reduced by some pervading and governing mind
into a settled form.
But much must be done, and suffered, before this change can take place.
There never can be much improvement till there are union and
subordination; till those strong local attachments are formed, which are
the basis of patriotism, and the bonds of social attachment. But, while
such a wide field is open to the spirit of adventure; and, while the
facility of removal encourages that restless and ungovernable spirit,
there is little hope of any material change. There is in America a
double principle of fermentation, which continues to impede the growth
of the arts and sciences, and of those gentler virtues of social life,
which were blasted by the breath of popular fury. On the sea-side there
was a perpetual importation of lawless and restless persons, who have no
other path to the notoriety they covet, but that which leads through
party violence; and of the want of that local attachment, I have been
speaking of, there can be no stronger proof, than the passion for
emigration so frequent in America.
Among those who are neither beloved in the vicinity of their place of
abode, nor kept stationary by any gainful pursuit, it is incredible how
light a matter will afford a pretext for a removal.
Here is one great motive, for good conduct and decorous manners,
obliterated. The good opinion of his neighbours is of little consequence
to him, who can scarce be said to have any. If a man keeps free of those
crimes which a regard for the public safety compels the magistrate to
punish, he finds shelter in every forest from the scorn and dislike
incurred by petty trespasses on society. There all who are unwilling to
submit to the restraints of law and religion, may live unchallenged, at
a distance from the public exercise of either. There all whom want has
made desperate, whether it be the want of abilities, of character, or
the means to live, are sure to take shelter. This habit of removing
furnishes, however, a palliation for some evils, for the facility with
which they change residence, becomes the means of ridding the community
of members too turbulent or too indolent to be quiet or useful. It is a
kind of voluntary exile, where those whom government want power and
efficiency to banish, very obligingly banish themselves; thus preventing
the explosion which might be occasioned by their continuing mingled in
the general mass.
It is owing to this salutary discharge of peccant humours that matters
go on so quietly as they do, under a government which is neither feared
nor loved, by the community it rules. These removals are incredibly
frequent; for the same family, flying as it were before the face of
legal authority and civilization, are often known to remove farther and
farther back into the woods, every fifth or sixth year, as the
population begins to draw nearer. By this secession from society, a
partial reformation is in some cases effected. A person incapable of
regular industry and compliance with its established customs, will
certainly do least harm, when forced to depend on his personal
exertions. When a man places himself in the situation of Robinson
Crusoe, with the difference of a wife and children for that solitary
hero’s cats and parrots, he must of necessity make exertions like his,
or perish. He becomes not a regular husbandman, but a hunter, with whom
agriculture is but a secondary consideration. His Indian corn, and
potatoes, which constitute the main part of his crop, are, in due time,
hoed by his wife and daughters; while the axe and the gun are the only
implements he willingly handles.
Fraud and avarice are the vices of society, and do not thrive in the
shade of the forest. The hunter, like the sailor, has little thought of
coveting or amassing. He does not forge, nor cheat, nor steal; as such
an unprincipled person must have done in the world, where, instead of
wild beasts, he must have preyed upon his fellows; and he does not drink
much, because liquor is not attainable. But he becomes coarse, savage,
and totally negligent of all the forms and decencies of life. He grows
wild and unsocial. To him a neighbour is an encroacher. He has learnt to
do without one; and he knows not how to yield to him in any point of
mutual accommodation. He cares neither to give nor take assistance, and
finds all the society he wants in his own family. Selfish from the
overindulged love of ease and liberty, he sees in a new comer merely an
abridgment of his range, and an interloper in that sport on which he
would much rather depend for subsistence than on the habits of regular
industry. What can more flatter an imagination warm with native
benevolence, and animated by romantic enthusiasm, than the image of
insulated self-dependant families, growing up in those primeval
retreats, remote from the corruptions of the world, and dwelling amidst
the prodigality of nature. Nothing, however, can be more anti-Arcadian.
There no crook is seen, no pipe is heard, no lamb bleats, for the best
possible reason, because there are no sheep. No pastoral strains awake
the sleeping echoes, doomed to sleep on till the bull-frog, the wolf,
and the Quackawarry[26] begin their nightly concert. Seriously, it is
not a place that can, in any instance, constitute happiness. When
listless indolence or lawless turbulence fly to shades the most
tranquil, or scenes the most beautiful, they degrade nature instead of
improving or enjoying her charms. Active diligence, a sense of our duty
to the source of all good, and kindly affections towards our
fellow-creatures, with a degree of self-command and mental improvement,
can alone produce the gentle manners that insure rural peace, or enable
us, with intelligence and gratitude, to “rejoice in nature’s joys.”
Footnote 26:
Quackawarry is the Indian name of a bird, which flies about in the
night, making a noise similar to the sound of its name.
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