century of the Christian era was the province of Britain. In this single
instance the successors of Caesar and Augustus were persuaded to follow
the example of the former, rather than the precept of the latter. The
proximity of its situation to the coast of Gaul seemed to invite their
arms; the pleasing, though doubtful, intelligence of a pearl-fishery
attracted their avarice; and as Britain was viewed in the light of a
distinct and insulated world, the conquest scarcely formed any exception
to the general system of continental measures. After a war of about
forty years, undertaken by the most stupid, maintained by the most
dissolute, and terminated by the most timid of all the emperors, the far
greater part of the island submitted to the Roman yoke. The various
tribes of Britons possessed valor without conduct, and the love of
freedom without the spirit of union. They took up arms with savage
fierceness; they laid them down, or turned them against each other, with
wild inconstancy; and while they fought singly, they were successively
subdued. Neither the fortitude of Caractacus, nor the despair of
Boadicea, nor the fanaticism of the Druids, could avert the slavery of
their country, or resist the steady progress of the imperial generals,
who maintained the national glory, when the throne was disgraced by the
weakest or the most vicious of mankind. At the very time when Domitian,
confined to his palace, felt the terrors which he inspired, his legions,
under the command of the virtuous Agricola, defeated the collected force
of the Caledonians at the foot of the Grampian hills; and his fleets,
venturing to explore an unknown and dangerous navigation, displayed the
Roman arms round every part of the island. The conquest of Britain was
considered as already achieved; and it was the design of Agricola to
complete and insure his success by the easy reduction of Ireland, for
which, in his opinion, one legion and a few auxiliaries were sufficient.
The western isle might be improved into a valuable possession, and the
Britons would wear their chains with the less reluctance, if the
prospect and example of freedom was on every side removed from before
their eyes.
But the superior merit of Agricola soon occasioned his removal from the
government of Britain; and forever disappointed this rational, though
extensive, scheme of conquest. Before his departure the prudent general
had provided for security as well as for dominion. He had observed that
the island is almost divided into two unequal parts by the opposite
gulfs, or, as they are now called, the Friths of Scotland. Across the
narrow interval of about forty miles he had drawn a line of military
stations, which was afterwards fortified, in the reign of Antoninus
Pius, by a turf rampart, erected on foundations of stone. This wall of
Antoninus, at a small distance beyond the modern cities of Edinburgh and
Glasgow, was fixed as the limit of the Roman province. The native
Caledonians preserved, in the northern extremity of the island, their
wild independence, for which they were not less indebted to their
poverty than to their valor. Their incursions were frequently repelled
and chastised, but their country was never subdued. The masters of the
fairest and most wealthy climates of the globe turned with contempt from
gloomy hills assailed by the winter tempest, from lakes concealed in a
blue mist, and from cold and lonely heaths, over which the deer of the
forest were chased by a troop of naked barbarians.
Such was the state of the Roman frontiers, and such the maxims of
imperial policy, from the death of Augustus to the accession of Trajan.
XXV. ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION.[F]
EDMUND BURKE.--1729-1797.
In one thing I can excuse the Duke of Bedford for his attack upon me and
my mortuary pension: He cannot readily comprehend the transaction he
condemns. What I have obtained was the fruit of no bargain, the
production of no intrigue, the result of no compromise, the effect of no
solicitation. The first suggestion of it never came from me, mediately
or immediately, to his Majesty or any of his ministers. It was long
known that the instant my engagements would permit it, and before the
heaviest of all calamities had forever condemned me to obscurity and
sorrow, I had resolved on a total retreat. I had executed that design. I
was entirely out of the way of serving or of hurting any statesman or
any party, when the ministers so generously and so nobly carried into
effect the spontaneous bounty of the crown. Both descriptions have acted
as became them. When I could no longer serve them, the ministers have
considered my situation. When I could no longer hurt them, the
revolutionists have trampled on my infirmity. My gratitude, I trust, is
equal to the manner in which the benefit was conferred. It came to me,
indeed, at a time of life, and in a state of mind and body, in which no
circumstance of fortune could afford me any real pleasure. But this was
no fault in the royal donor, or in his ministers, who were pleased, in
acknowledging the merits of an invalid servant of the public, to assuage
the sorrows of a desolate old man....
I was not like his Grace of Bedford, swaddled, and rocked, and dandled
into a legislator: "_Nitor in adversum_" is the motto for a man like me.
I possessed not one of the qualities, nor cultivated one of the arts,
that recommend men to the favor and protection of the great. I was not
made for a minion or a tool. As little did I follow the trade of winning
the hearts by imposing on the understandings of the people. At every
step of my progress in life--for in every step was I traversed and
opposed--and at every turnpike I met, I was obliged to shew my passport,
and again and again to prove my sole title to the honor of being useful
to my country, by a proof that I was not wholly unacquainted with its
laws, and the whole system of its interests both abroad and at home.
Otherwise, no rank, no toleration even, for me. I had no arts but manly
arts. On them I have stood, and, please God, in spite of the Duke of
Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale, to the last gasp will I stand....
The Duke of Bedford conceives that he is obliged to call the attention
of the House of Peers to his Majesty's grant to me, which he considers
as excessive and out of all bounds.
I know not how it has happened, but it really seems, that, whilst his
Grace was meditating his well-considered censure upon me, he fell into a
sort of sleep. Homer nods, and the Duke of Bedford may dream; and as
dreams--even his golden dreams--are apt to be ill-pieced and
incongruously put together, his Grace preserved his idea of reproach to
_me_, but took the subject-matter from the crown grants to _his own
family_. This is "the stuff of which his dreams are made." In that way
of putting things together, his Grace is perfectly in the right. The
grants to the house of Russell were so enormous, as not only to outrage
economy, but even to stagger credibility. The Duke of Bedford is the
leviathan among all the creatures of the crown. He tumbles about his
unwieldy bulk; he plays and frolics in the ocean of the royal bounty.
Huge as he is, and whilst "he lies floating many a rood," he is still a
creature. His ribs, his fins, his whalebone, his blubber, the very
spiracles through which he spouts a torrent of brine against his origin,
and covers me all over with the spray--everything of him and about him
is from the throne. Is it for _him_ to question the dispensation of the
royal favor?
I really am at a loss to draw any sort of parallel between the public
merits of his Grace, by which he justifies the grants he holds, and
these services of mine, on the favorable construction of which I have
obtained what his Grace so much disapproves. In private life I have not
at all the honor of acquaintance with the noble Duke; but I ought to
presume, and it costs me nothing to do so, that he abundantly deserves
the esteem and love of all who live with him. But as to public service,
why, truly, it would not be more ridiculous for me to compare myself, in
rank, in fortune, in splendid descent, in youth, strength, or figure,
with the Duke of Bedford, than to make a parallel between his services
and my attempts to be useful to my country. It would not be gross
adulation, but uncivil irony, to say that he has any public merit of his
own to keep alive the idea of the services by which his vast landed
pensions were obtained. My merits, whatever they are, are original and
personal: his are derivative. It is his ancestor, the original
pensioner, that has laid up this inexhaustible fund of merit, which
makes his Grace so very delicate and exceptious about the merit of all
other grantees of the crown. Had he permitted me to remain in quiet, I
should have said: "'Tis his estate; that's enough. It is his by law;
what have I to do with it or its history?" He would naturally have said
on his side: "'Tis this man's fortune. He is as good now as my ancestor
was two hundred and fifty years ago. I am a young man with very old
pensions: he is an old man with very young pensions--that's all."
Why will his Grace, by attacking me, force me reluctantly to compare my
little merit with that which obtained from the crown those prodigies of
profuse donation by which he tramples on the mediocrity of humble and
laborious individuals?... Since the new grantees have war made on them
by the old, and that the word of the sovereign is not to be taken, let
us turn our eyes to history, in which great men have always a pleasure
in contemplating the heroic origin of their house.
The first peer of the name, the first purchaser of the grants, was a Mr.
Russell, a person of an ancient gentleman's family, raised by being a
minion of Henry the Eighth. As there generally is some resemblance of
character to create these relations, the favorite was in all likelihood
much such another as his master. The first of those immoderate grants
was not taken from the ancient demesne of the crown, but from the recent
confiscation of the ancient nobility of the land. The lion, having
sucked the blood of his prey, threw the offal carcass to the jackal in
waiting. Having tasted once the food of confiscation, the favorites
became fierce and ravenous. This worthy favorite's first grant was from
the lay nobility. The second, infinitely improving on the enormity of
the first, was from the plunder of the church. In truth, his Grace is
somewhat excusable for his dislike to a grant like mine, not only in its
quantity, but in its kind, so different from his own.
Mine was from a mild and benevolent sovereign: his, from Henry the
Eighth. Mine had not its fund in the murder of any innocent person of
illustrious rank, or in the pillage of any body of unoffending men: his
grants were from the aggregate and consolidated funds of judgments
iniquitously legal, and from possessions voluntarily surrendered by the
lawful proprietors with the gibbet at their door.
The merit of the grantee whom he derives from, was that of being a
prompt and greedy instrument of a levelling tyrant, who oppressed all
descriptions of his people, but who fell with particular fury on
everything that was great and noble. Mine has been in endeavoring to
screen every man, in every class, from oppression, and particularly in
defending the high and eminent, who, in the bad times of confiscating
princes, confiscating chief-governors, or confiscating demagogues, are
the most exposed to jealousy, avarice, and envy.
The merit of the original grantee of his Grace's pensions was in giving
his hand to the work, and partaking the spoil with a prince who
plundered a part of the national church of his time and country. Mine
was in defending the whole of the national church of my own time and my
own country, and the whole of the national churches of all countries,
from the principles and the examples which lead to ecclesiastical
pillage, thence to a contempt of _all_ prescriptive titles, thence to
the pillage of _all_ property, and thence to universal desolation.
The merit of the origin of his Grace's fortune was in being a favorite
and chief adviser to a prince who left no liberty to his native country.
My endeavor was to obtain liberty for the municipal country in which I
was born, and for all descriptions and denominations in it. Mine was to
support, with unrelaxing vigilance, every right, every privilege, every
franchise, in this my adopted, my dearer, and more comprehensive
country; and not only to preserve those rights in this chief seat of
empire, but in every nation, in every land, in every climate, language,
and religion, in the vast domain that still is under the protection, and
the larger that was once under the protection, of the British crown.
His founder's merits were, by arts in which he served his master and
made his fortune, to bring poverty, wretchedness, and depopulation on
his country. Mine were under a benevolent prince, in promoting the
commerce, manufactures, and agriculture of his kingdom.
His founder's merit was the merit of a gentleman raised by the arts of a
court and the protection of a Wolsey to the eminence of a great and
potent lord. His merit in that eminence was, by instigating a tyrant to
injustice, to provoke a people to rebellion. My merit was, to awaken the
sober part of the country, that they might put themselves on their
guard against any one potent lord, or any greater number of potent
lords, or any combination of great leading men of any sort, if ever they
should attempt to proceed in the same courses, but in the reverse
order,--that is, by instigating a corrupted populace to rebellion, and,
through that rebellion, introducing a tyranny yet worse than the tyranny
which his Grace's ancestor supported, and of which he profited in the
manner we behold in the despotism of Henry the Eighth.
The political merit of the first pensioner of his Grace's house was that
of being concerned as a counsellor of state in advising, and in his
person executing, the conditions of a dishonorable peace with
France,--the surrendering of the fortress of Boulogne, then our outguard
on the Continent. By that surrender, Calais, the key of France, and the
bridle in the mouth of that power, was not many years afterwards finally
lost. My merit has been in resisting the power and pride of France,
under any form of its rule; but in opposing it with the greatest zeal
and earnestness, when that rule appeared in the worst form it could
assume,--the worst, indeed, which the prime cause and principle of all
evil could possibly give it. It was my endeavor by every means to excite
a spirit in the House, where I had the honor of a seat, for carrying on
with early vigor and decision the most clearly just and necessary war
that this or any nation ever carried on, in order to save my country
from the iron yoke of its power, and from the more dreadful contagion of
its principles,--to preserve, while they can be preserved, pure and
untainted, the ancient, inbred integrity, piety, good-nature, and
good-humor of the people of England, from the dreadful pestilence
which, beginning in France, threatens to lay waste the whole moral and
in a great degree the whole physical world, having done both in the
focus of its most intense malignity.
The labors of his Grace's founder merited the "curses, not loud, but
deep," of the Commons of England, on whom _he_ and his master had
effected a _complete Parliamentary Reform_, by making them, in their
slavery and humiliation, the true and adequate representatives of a
debased, degraded, and undone people. My merits were in having had an
active, though not always an ostentatious share, in every one act,
without exception, of undisputed constitutional utility in my time, and
in having supported, on all occasions, the authority, the efficiency,
and the privileges of the Commons of Great Britain. I ended my services
by a recorded and fully reasoned assertion on their own journals of
their constitutional rights, and a vindication of their constitutional
conduct. I labored in all things to merit their inward approbation, and
(along with the assistants of the largest, the greatest, and best of my
endeavors) I received their free, unbiased, public, and solemn thanks.
Thus stands the account of the comparative merits of the crown grants
which compose the Duke of Bedford's fortune, as balanced against mine.
FOOTNOTES:
[F] _From_ "A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD, _on the attacks made upon Mr.
Burke and his Pension, in the House of Lords, by the Duke of Bedford
and the Earl of Lauderdale, early in the Present Session of
Parliament." 1796._
* * * * *
_England, with all thy faults, I love thee still,
My country! and, while yet a nook is left
Where English minds and manners may be found,
Shall be constrain'd to love thee. Though thy clime
Be fickle, and thy year, most part, deform'd
With dripping rains, or wither'd by a frost,
I would not yet exchange thy sullen skies
And fields without a flower, for warmer France
With all her vines._
COWPER.--_The Timepiece_.
XXVI. TWO EIGHTEENTH CENTURY SCENES.
WILLIAM COWPER.--1731-1800.
_From letters to the Rev. John Newton._
Nov. 17th, 1783.
... Since our conflagration here, we have sent two women and a boy to
the justice, for depredation; S. R. for stealing a piece of beef, which,
in her excuse, she said she intended to take care of. This lady, whom
you well remember, escaped for want of evidence; not that evidence was
wanting, but our men of Gotham judged it unnecessary to send it. With
her went the woman I mentioned before, who, it seems, has made some sort
of profession, but upon this occasion allowed herself a latitude of
conduct rather inconsistent with it, having filled her apron with
wearing-apparel, which she likewise intended to take care of. She would
have gone to the county gaol, had William Raban, the baker's son, who
prosecuted, insisted upon it; but he, good-naturedly, though I think
weakly, interposed in her favor, and begged her off. The young gentleman
who accompanied these fair ones is the junior son of Molly Boswell. He
had stolen some iron-work, the property of Griggs the butcher. Being
convicted, he was ordered to be whipped, which operation he underwent at
the cart's tail, from the stone-house to the high arch, and back again.
He seemed to show great fortitude, but it was all an imposition upon the
public. The beadle, who performed it, had filled his left hand with
yellow ochre, through which, after every stroke, he drew the lash of his
whip, leaving the appearance of a wound upon the skin, but in reality
not hurting him at all. This being perceived by Mr. Constable H., who
followed the beadle, he applied his cane, without any such management or
precaution, to the shoulders of the too merciful executioner. The scene
immediately became more interesting. The beadle could by no means be
prevailed upon to strike hard, which provoked the constable to strike
harder; and this double flogging continued, till a lass of Silver-End,
pitying the pitiful beadle thus suffering under the hands of the
pitiless constable, joined the procession, and placing herself
immediately behind the latter, seized him by his capillary club,
and pulling him backwards by the same, slapped his face with a most
Amazon fury. This concatenation of events has taken up more of my
paper than I intended it should, but I could not forbear to inform
you how the beadle thrashed the thief, the constable the beadle, and
the lady the constable, and how the thief was the only person concerned
who suffered nothing.
* * * * *
March 29th, 1784.
It being his Majesty's pleasure, that I should yet have another
opportunity to write before he dissolves the Parliament, I avail myself
of it with all possible alacrity. I thank you for your last, which was
not the less welcome for coming, like an extraordinary gazette, at a
time when it was not expected.
As when the sea is uncommonly agitated, the water finds its way into
creeks and holes of rocks, which in its calmer state it never reaches,
in like manner the effect of these turbulent times is felt even at
Orchard Side, where in general we live as undisturbed by the political
element as shrimps or cockles that have been accidentally deposited in
some hollow beyond the water-mark, by the usual dashing of the waves.
We were sitting yesterday after dinner, the two ladies and myself, very
composedly, and without the least apprehension of any such intrusion in
our snug parlor, one lady knitting, the other netting, and the gentleman
winding worsted, when to our unspeakable surprise a mob appeared before
the window; a smart rap was heard at the door, the boys bellowed, and
the maid announced Mr. Grenville. Puss was unfortunately let out of her
box, so that the candidate, with all his good friends at his heels, was
refused admittance at the grand entry, and referred to the back door, as
the only possible way of approach.
Candidates are creatures not very susceptible of affronts, and would
rather, I suppose, climb in at the window, than be absolutely excluded.
In a minute, the yard, the kitchen, and the parlor were filled. Mr.
Grenville, advancing toward me, shook me by the hand with a degree of
cordiality that was extremely seducing. As soon as he, and as many more
as could find chairs, were seated, he began to open the intent of his
visit. I told him I had no vote, for which he readily gave me credit. I
assured him I had no influence, which he was not equally inclined to
believe, and the less, no doubt, because Mr. Ashburner, the draper,
addressing himself to me at this moment, informed me that I had a great
deal. Supposing that I could not be possessed of such a treasure without
knowing it, I ventured to affirm my first assertion, by saying, that if
I had any I was utterly at a loss to imagine where it could be, or
wherein it consisted. Thus ended the conference. Mr. Grenville squeezed
me by the hand again, kissed the ladies, and withdrew. He kissed
likewise the maid in the kitchen, and seemed upon the whole a most
loving, kissing, kind-hearted gentleman. He is very young, genteel, and
handsome. He has a pair of very good eyes in his head, which not being
sufficient, as it should seem, for the many nice and difficult purposes
of a senator, he has a third also, which he suspended from his
buttonhole. The boys halloo'd, the dogs barked, puss scampered, the
hero, with his long train of obsequious followers, withdrew. We made
ourselves very merry with the adventure, and in a short time settled
into our former tranquillity, never probably to be thus interrupted
more. I thought myself, however, happy in being able to affirm truly
that I had not that influence for which he sued; and which, had I been
possessed of it, with my present views of the dispute between the Crown
and the Commons, I must have refused him, for he is on the side of the
former. It is comfortable to be of no consequence in a world where one
cannot exercise any without disobliging somebody. The town, however,
seems to be much at his service, and if he be equally successful
throughout the country, he will undoubtedly gain his election. Mr.
Ashburner, perhaps, was a little mortified, because it was evident I
owed the honor of this visit to his misrepresentation of my importance.
But had he thought proper to assure Mr. Grenville that I had three
heads, I should not, I suppose, have been bound to produce them....
* * * * *
_Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,
And while the bubbling and loud hissing urn
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups
That cheer but not inebriate wait on each,
So let us welcome peaceful evening in._
COWPER.--_The Winter Evening_.
XXVII. FROM "THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL."[G]
RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN.--1751-1816.
SCENE.--_A Room in_ SIR PETER TEAZLE'S _House._
_Enter_ SIR PETER TEAZLE.