DOMESTIC STATE.
"How lived, how loved, how died they?"
BYRON.
Geologists tell us that they can answer for the modes of life of the
people of any extensive district by looking at the geological map of the
region. Put a geological map of England before one who understands it,
and he will tell you that the inhabitants of the western parts, from
Cornwall, through Wales, and up through Cumberland into Scotland, are
miners and mountaineers; here living in clusters round the shaft of a
mine, and there sprinkled over the hills, and secluded in the valleys.
He will tell you that, on the middle portion of the surface, from
Devonshire, up through Leicestershire, to the Yorkshire coast, the wide
pastures are covered with flocks, while the people are collected into
large manufacturing towns; an ordinary map showing, at the same time,
that Kidderminster, Birmingham, Coventry, Leicester, and Nottingham,
Sheffield, Huddersfield, and Leeds, with many others, lie in this
district. He will tell you that the third range, comprehending the
eastern part of the island, is studded with farms, and that tillage is
the great occupation and interest of the inhabitants.
The moralist might follow up the observations of the geologist with an
account of the general characteristics of societies engaged in these
occupations. He knows that a distinct intellectual and moral character
belongs to miners, to artisans, and to agriculturists; he knows that
miners are prone to superstition, and to speculation in business, from
the incalculable nature of their pursuits, the hap-hazard character of
their enterprises; he knows that an artisan population is active-minded,
communicative, capable and fond of concert; that among them is found the
greatest proportion of religious dissent and political sagacity, of
knowledge and its results in action. He knows that an agricultural
people are less of a society than the others; that they are as mentally
sluggish in comparison with operatives, as they are physically superior
to them; that they make far less use of speech; are more attached to
what is habitual and ancient, and have less enterprise and desire of
change. They are, in fact, the representatives of the past,--of feudal
times; while an artisan population is a prophecy of the future, and the
beginning of the fulfilment. The ideas of equal rights, of
representation of person as well as property, and all other democratic
notions, originate in towns, and chiefly in manufacturing towns. Loyalty
to the person rather than the function of rulers, pride in land and love
of it as the blessing of blessings, and jealousy of every other
interest, are found wherever corn springs up in the furrows, and there
are farm-houses to be miniature representations of the old feudal
establishments.
Such are the general tendencies, modified according to circumstances.
There are influences which make certain artisans in England tories, and
certain landlords and tenants liberals; and there may be times and
places where whole societies may have their characteristics modified;
but there is rarely or never a complete departure from the general rule.
Landlords and their posse of tenants, called liberal, soon find a point
beyond which they cannot go, and from which they tend back into the
politics of their order; and there is often but a single step for tory
artisans into ultra-radicalism; it turns out to be a spurious toryism.
So it is possible that there might have been here and there a democrat
in La Vendée in 1793, and a sprinkling of royalists in Lyons in 1817.
Yet La Vendée and Linois may be taken as representatives of the two
kinds of society. The weaving population of Lyons are, like that of
manufacturing towns generally, disposed to irritability by physical
uneasiness, nourishing their ideas and feelings by communication,
suffering from the consequences of partial knowledge, having glimpses of
a better social state, and laying the blame of their adversities on a
deficiency of protection by the government; enterprising and nicely
skilled in the improvement of their articles of manufacture, and ever
full of aspiration. The inhabitants of La Vendée are so diametrically
opposite in their social circumstances and characteristics, that their
bias in politics is a matter of course. Here is a description of the
face of the district at the time that Lyons was as intensely republican
as La Vendée was royalist:--
"Only two great roads traversed this sequestered region, running nearly
parallel, at a distance of more than seventy miles from each other. The
country, though rather thickly peopled, contained, as may be supposed,
few large towns; and the inhabitants, devoted almost entirely to rural
occupations, enjoyed a great deal of leisure. The noblesse or gentry of
the country were very generally resident on their estates, where they
lived in a style of simplicity and homeliness which had long disappeared
from every other part of the kingdom. No grand parks, fine gardens, or
ornamented villas; but spacious clumsy chateaux, surrounded with farm
offices, and cottages for the labourers. Their manners and way of life,
too, partook of the same primitive rusticity. There was great
cordiality, and even much familiarity, in the intercourse of the
seigneurs with their dependants: they were followed by large trains of
them in their hunting expeditions, which occupied so great a part of
their time. Every man had his fowling-piece, and was a marksman of fame
or pretensions. The peasants resorted familiarly to their landlords for
advice, both legal and medical; and they repaid the visits in their
daily rambles, and entered with interest into all the details of their
agricultural operations. From all this there resulted a certain
innocence and kindliness of character, joined with great hardihood and
gaiety. Though not very well educated, the population were exceedingly
devout; though theirs was a kind of superstitious and traditional
devotion, it must be owned, rather than an enlightened or rational
faith. They had the greatest veneration for crucifixes and images of
their saints, and had no idea of any duty more imperious than that of
attending on all the solemnities of religion. They were singularly
attached also to their curés, who were almost all born and bred in the
country, spoke their _patois_, and shared in all their pastimes and
occupations. When a hunting-match was to take place, the clergyman
announced it from the pulpit after prayers, and then took his
fowling-piece and accompanied his congregation to the thicket."[J]
The chief contrasting features of these two kinds of society may be
recognized in all parts of the civilized world. The most intensely loyal
of the loyal Chinese will be found irrigating the terraces of the
mountains, or busy in the ploughing-matches of the plains; and the least
contented will be found at the loom. Spain is removed from a capacity
for social freedom just in proportion to the discouragement of
manufactures. The vine-growing districts of Germany are the most, and
the commercial towns the least, acquiescent in the rule under which they
are living. Russia will be despotically governed as long as she has no
manufactures; and England and the United States are rescued, by the full
establishment of their manufactures, from all danger of a retrogradation
towards feudalism.
The way in which these considerations concern us in this place is, that
public and private morals, no less than manners, depend on the degree of
feudalism which is left in the community. We have spoken before of the
morals of the feudal and democratic states of society; and what we are
now pointing out is, that these states, with their attendant morals and
manners, may be discerned from the face of the country, and the
consequent occupations of its inhabitants.
It appears as if a geological map might be a useful guide to the
researches of the moralist,--an idea which would have appeared insanely
ridiculous half a century ago, but now reasonable enough. If the
traveller be no geologist, so that he cannot, by his own observation,
determine the nature of the soil, and thence infer, for his general
guidance, the employments and mental and moral state of the people, he
must observe the face of the country along the road he travels. He will
do better still by mounting any eminences which may be within reach,
whether they be churches, pillars, pyramids, pagodas, baronial castles
on rocks, or peaks of mountains; thence he should look abroad, from
point to point, through the whole region, and mark out what he sees
spread beneath him. Are there pastures extended to the horizon, with
herdsmen and flocks sprinkled over them, and in the midst a cloud of
smoke overhanging a town, from which roads part off in many directions?
Or is it a scene of shadowy mountains, with streams leaping from their
fissures, and no signs of human habitation but the machinery of a mine,
with rows of dwellings near heaps of piled rubbish? Or is the whole
intersected with fences, and here dark with fallows, there yellow with
corn, while farmsteads terminate the lanes, and the dwellings and
grounds of rich proprietors are seen at intervals, with each a hamlet
resting against its boundaries? Is this the kind of scene, whether the
great house be called mansion, or chateau, or villa, or schloss; whether
the produce be corn, or grapes, or tea, or cotton? A person gifted with
a precocity of science in the twelfth century might have prophesied what
is now happening from the picture stretched beneath him as he gazed
from an eminence on the banks of the Don or the Calder. He might see,
with the bodily eye, only
"Meadows trim with daisies pied,
Shallow brooks and rivers wide,"
with clusters of houses in the far distance, and Robin Hood with his
merry men lurking in the thickets of the forest, or basking under the
oaks: but with the prophetic eye of science he might discern the
multitudes that were, in course of time, to be living in Sheffield or
Huddersfield; the stimulus that would be given to enterprise, the
thronging of merchants to this region, the physical sufferings, the
moral pressure, that must come; the awakening of intelligence, and the
arousing of ambition. In the real scene, a cloud-shadow might be passing
over a meadow; in the ideal, a smoke-cloud would be resting upon a
hundred thousand human beings. In the real scene, a warbling lark might
be springing from the grass; in the ideal, a singer[K] of a higher order
might appear remonstrating with feudalism from amidst the roar of the
furnace-blast and the din of the anvil; and then, when his complaint of
social oppression is done, starting forwards to the end of all, and
singing the requiem of the world itself.
"Whose trade is poaching. Honest Jem works not,
Begs not; but thrives by plundering beggars here.
Wise as a lord, and quite as good a shot,
He, like his betters, lives in hate and fear,
And feeds on partridge because bread is dear.
Sire of six sons apprenticed to the jail,
He prowls in arms, the Tory of the night;
With them he shares his battles and his ale;
With him they feel the majesty of might."
"He reads not, writes not, thinks not; scarcely feels:
Steals all he gets; serves Hell with all he steals."
* * * * *
"Yes, and the sail-less worlds which navigate
Th' unutterable deep that hath no shore,
Will lose their starry splendour soon or late,
Like tapers quenched by Him whose will is fate!
Yes, and the angel of Eternity,
Who numbers worlds and writes their names in light,
One day, O Earth, will look in vain for thee,
And start, and stop in his unerring flight;
And with his wings of sorrow and affright
Veil his impassioned brow and heavenly tears!"
Somewhat in the same way as such a supposed philosophic observer might
be imagined to foresee that democratic strains of remonstrance would
here succeed to foresters' and freebooters' songs, may a well-qualified
observer of the present day discern the interior mechanism and the
remote issues of what lies beneath his eyes. While surveying the vast
prairies on the banks of the deep rivers of the Western world, he may
safely anticipate the time when self-governing communities will swarm
where now a settler's log-house and enclosure are the only break in the
wide surface of verdure. While looking down upon the harvests of
Volhynia, or watching the processions of wagons laden with corn, and
slowly wending their way down to Odessa, he may securely conclude that
no vivacious artisan population will enliven this region for a long time
to come; that the inhabitants will continue attached to the despotism
under which they live; and that the morals of a despotism--the morals
which coexist with gross ignorance and social subservience--may be
looked for and found for at least an age.
Some preparation may thus be made by a glance over the face of the
country. Much depends on whether it is flat or mountainous, pasture or
arable land. It appears from fact, too, that much depends on minor
circumstances,--even on whether it is damp or dry. It is amusing to the
traveller in Holland to observe how new points of morals spring up out
of its swamps, as in the East from the dryness of the deserts. To injure
the piles on which the city is built, is at Amsterdam a capital offence;
and no inhabitant could outgrow the shame of tampering with the
vegetation by which the soil of the dykes is held together. While Irish
children are meritoriously employed in gathering rushes to make candles,
and sedges for thatch, "the veriest child in Holland would resent as an
injury any suspicion that she had rooted up a sedge or a rush, which had
been planted to strengthen the embankments."[L] Such are certain points
of morals in a country where water is the great enemy. In the East,
where drought is the chief foe, it is a crime to defile or stop up a
well, and the greatest of social glories is to have made water flow
where all before was dry. In Holland, a malignant enemy cuts the dyke,
as the last act of malice: in Arabia, he fills up the wells. In Holland,
a distinct sort of moral feeling seems to have grown up about
intemperance in drink. The humidity of the climate, and the scarcity of
clear, wholesome water, obliges the inhabitants to drink much of other
liquids. If moderation in them were not made a point of conscience of
the first importance, the consequences of their prevalent use would be
dreadful. The success of this particular moral effort is great.
Drunkenness is almost as rare in Holland as carelessness in keeping
accounts, and tampering with the dykes. There is no country in the world
whose morals have more clearly grown out of its circumstances than
Holland. On the theory of an infallible Moral Sense, it would be as
difficult to account for a Dutchman's tenderness of conscience on any of
the above three heads, as for a soldier's agony at the imputation of
sleeping upon guard, or an Alabama planter's resentment at being charged
with putting the alphabet in the way of a mulatto.
* * * * *
Having noted the aspect of the country, the observer's next business is
to ascertain the condition of the inhabitants as to the supply of the
Necessaries of life. He knows that nothing remains to be learned of the
domestic morals of people who are plunged in hopeless poverty. There is
no foundation for good morals among such. They herd together, desperate
or depressed; they have no prospect; their self-respect is prostrated;
they have nothing to lose, there is nothing for them to gain by any
effort that they can make.--But it is needless to speak of this. When we
treat of the domestic morals of any class, it is always presupposed that
they are not in circumstances which render total immorality almost
inevitable.
In agricultural districts, the condition of the inhabitants may be
learned by observation of the markets. An observing traveller has said,
"To judge at once of a nation, we have only to throw our eyes on the
markets and the fields. If the markets are well supplied, the fields
well cultivated, all is right. If otherwise, we may say, and say truly,
these people are barbarous and oppressed."[M] This, though a rather
sweeping judgment, is founded in truth, and is well worthy of being
borne in mind in travelling. It so happens that the negroes of Hayti are
abundantly supplied with the necessaries, and with many of the comforts
of life; that they are by no means barbarous, and far from being
oppressed; and yet they have few roads, and scarcely any markets. They
grow up in the midst of plenty; but, when a countryman is about to kill
a hog, he sends his son round among his neighbours on horseback, to give
notice to any who wish for pork, to send for it on a certain day. Their
wretched, barbarous, oppressed countrymen in South Carolina, meanwhile,
have excellent markets. The Saturday night's market at Charleston might
beguile a careless foreigner into the belief that those who throng it
are a free and prosperous people. Thus the rule above quoted does not
always hold. Yet it is true that the existence and good quality of
markets testify to the existence and good quality of other desirable
things.
Where markets are abundantly and variously supplied, it is clear that
there must be a large demand for the comforts of life, and a diversity
of domestic wants. It is clear that there must be industry to meet this
demand, and competence to justify it. There must be social security, or
the industry and competence would not be put to so hazardous a use. It
_may_ happen, as at Charleston, that the capital is the masters' (whose
the profits may also be, at any moment); that the industry is called
forth by a delusive hope; and that the briskness of the transactions at
market is ascribable to the pleasure slaves have in social meetings; but
better things may usually be inferred from a well-supplied and
well-conducted market.
* * * * *
The traveller's other researches in agricultural regions will be into
the Tenure of lands,--whether they are held in small separate
properties;--whether such properties are held by individuals, or shared
with any kind of partners;--whether portions are rented from landlords;
and, if so, whether any order of middlemen are concerned in the
business;--whether the land is chiefly held by large owners; and, if so,
whether the labourers are attached to the soil under feudal
arrangements, or whether they are free labourers working for wages.
The homes of the agricultural population will be found to vary in aspect
as any one of these systems prevails. In young and prosperous countries,
the system of small separate properties is found to conduce to
independence and the virtues which result from it, though it is not
favourable to knowledge and enlightenment. Families live much to
themselves; and thus, while forming strong domestic attachments, they
lose sight of what is going on in the world. They become unused to the
light of society, and get to dislike and fear it. The labourers, in such
case, usually live with the family, whether they be brothers, as often
happens in Switzerland; sons, as in many a farm-house of the United
States; or hired servants, as in former times in England,--and still in
some retired parts. In each case the picture is easily filled in by the
imagination. All are engaged, throughout the year, in the business of
living. The work is never ending, still beginning; or, if it has
intervals, they are dull and weary, from the absence of interests
wherewith to occupy them. The employments of life are innocent, and the
principle of association is harmless; but if there be ignorance and
prejudice in the region, in these farm-houses will they be found; and in
company with them morals of a high order are not to be looked for.
If small properties are held in partnership, poverty is present or
threatening. The condition of affairs cannot be lasting; and this may be
well; for narrow means and partnership in a property which requires to
be managed by skill are more favourable to discontent and disagreement
than to a kindly social state.
The middleman system is favourable or unfavourable to morals, just in
proportion as it is so to prosperity. Every one knows the wretchedness
of it in Ireland, and that there are numerous instances in Italy of the
complete success of the métayer plan.
Where the land is the property of large owners, and is tilled by
labourers, there must be more or less of the feudal temper and manners
remaining. Where the labourers are attached to the soil, there must
necessarily exist whatever good arises from the certainty of the means
of subsistence, coupled with the evils of subservience to the will of
the lord, mental sluggishness, and ignorance. Where they are not
irremovably attached to the soil, habit and helplessness have usually
much of the same effect. The son hedges, ditches, or ploughs where his
father hedged, ditched, or ploughed; he takes his beer, or cider, or
thin wine, (according to the country he lives in,) at the same house of
entertainment, and gossips about the doings of the lord and his family,
much as labourers were wont to gossip two hundred years ago.
It is the business of the traveller to note which mode of agricultural
life prevails, and how the morals which pertain to it are modified by
particular circumstances.
* * * * *
He must make the same kind of observations on the Manufacturing and
Commercial Classes of the country he visits. Here again the chief
differences in morals and manners arise out of the comparative
prosperity or adversity of the class. Take the cotton manufacture.
Passing by the Chinese operative plying his shuttle as he sits under his
bamboo shed, and the Hindoo drawing out his fine thread under the shade
of the palm, what differences there are among artisans of the same
race,--Europeans and of European extraction! In Massachusetts there are
villages of artisans, where whole streets of houses are their property;
the church on the green in the midst is theirs; the Lyceum, with its
library and apparatus, is theirs. There are rows of neat
frame-dwellings, painted white or yellow, with piazzas before and
behind, and Venetian blinds to every window,--all growing up out of the
earnings of girls, who bring their widowed mothers to preside over their
establishments. Others are paying off the mortgages on their fathers'
farms. Others are procuring for their brothers a learned education in a
college. In the cotton settlements of Europe what a contrast! At the
best, operatives can only provide for their wants, and the placing out
of their children, by a life of strenuous toil. At the worst, they herd
together, many families in one house,--often in one room; decency is
discarded; recklessness succeeds, to such a degree that, in certain
sections of the society, there is scarcely a man of thirty-five who is
not a grandfather. Among such there is a barbarism as savage as among
the most vicious aristocracy of the worst feudal times. The lowest
artisan population of the present day may vie in corruption with the
noblesse of France on the eve of the first revolution. It is for the
traveller to observe what grade in the wide interval between the
operatives of Massachusetts, and those of Lyons and Stockport, is
occupied by the artisans of the places he visits.
* * * * *
Upon the extent of the Commerce of a country depends much of the
character of its morals. Old virtues and vices dwindle away, and new
ones appear. The old members of a rising commercial society complain of
the loss of simplicity of manners, of the introduction of new wants, of
the relaxation of morals, of the prevalence of new habits. The young
members of the same society rejoice that prudery is going out of
fashion, that gossip is likely to be replaced by the higher kind of
intercourse which is introduced by strangers, and by an extension of
knowledge and interests: they even decide that domestic morals are purer
from the general enlargement and occupation of mind which has succeeded
to the _ennui_ and selfishness in which licentiousness often originates.
A highly remarkable picture of the two conditions of the same place may
be obtained by comparing Mrs. Grant's account of the town of Albany, New
York, in her young days,[N] with the present state of the city. She
tells us of the plays of the children on the green slope which is now
State Street; of the tea-drinkings and working parties, of the gossip,
bickerings, and virulent petty enmities of the young society, with its
general regularity and occasional back-sliding; with the gentle
despotism of its opulent members, and the more or less restive or
servile obedience of the subordinate personages. In place of all this,
the stranger now sees a city with magnificent public buildings, and
private houses filled with the products of all the countries of the
world. The inhabitants are too busy to be given to gossip, too
unrestrained in their intercourse with numbers to retain much prudery:
social despotism and subservience have become impossible: there is a
generous spirit of enterprise, an enlargement of knowledge, an
amelioration of opinion. There is, on the other hand, perhaps a decrease
of kindly neighbourly regard, and certainly a great increase of the low
vices which are the plague of commercial cities. Such is the
transformation wrought by commerce. An observer who can also
speculate,--one who looks before and after,--will conclude that, amidst
some evil, the change is advantageous; and that good must, on the whole,
arise from enlarged intercourses between men and societies. Seeing in
commerce the instrument by which all the inhabitants of the earth are in
time to be brought into common possession of all true ideas, and
sympathy in all good feelings, he will mark the progress made by the
society he visits towards this end. He will mark whether its merchants
as a body have a spirit of generous enterprise or of sordid
self-interest; whether they entertain a respect for learning and a taste
for art,--bringing the one from abroad, and cherishing the other at
home;--whether, in short, the merchants are the princes or the
money-grubbers of the community. The spirit of this class will determine
that of their subordinates. If the masters of commerce are liberal and
enlightened, their servants will be thriving, and will have the virtues
which wait upon self-respect: if the contrary, they will be debased. A
Jewish money-lender is no more like a merchant of Salem or Bourdeaux
than Malay porters at Macao are like the clerk class of Amsterdam. In
the mercantile orders of society may be found the extremes of honour,
generosity, diligence, and accuracy,--and of treachery, meanness, and
selfish carelessness. It is the traveller's business to note the
tendencies to the one or the other,--from the vexatious hog and yam
traffic of the islands of the South Sea, to the magnificent transactions
of the traders of Hamburgh.
* * * * *
The Health of a community is an almost unfailing index of its morals. No
one can wonder at this who considers how physical suffering irritates
the temper, depresses energy, deadens hope, induces recklessness, and,
in short, poisons life. The domestic affections, too, are apt to
languish through disappointment in countries where the average of death
is very high. There is least marriage in unhealthy countries, and most
in healthy ones,--other circumstances being equal. The same kind of
spirit (however largely diluted) prevails in sickly regions as in
societies which are visited by a pestilence. Study the tempers of the
people who are subject to goîtres, of those who live in marshes, of
those who encounter an annual tropical fever; and contrast it with that
of dwellers on mountains, and in dry prairies, and in well-ventilated
towns. What selfishness, apathy, and discontent in the one class! and
what kindliness, briskness, and cheerfulness in the other! In the United
States, wide spreading as the country is, and comprehending every
variety of people, and almost of climate, the common deficiency of
health produces moral effects which must strike the most careless
traveller. The epicurean temper of the south, and the puritanic mood of
the north, are alike stimulated by this. In the south, the overseers,
whose business it is to encounter the fever, seem to be always
practically saying, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." There
is a recklessness among the trading classes there, a heathen levity and
grossness, which are doubtless in a great degree owing to the presence
of slavery, but also in part to the certainty of a very large annual
mortality. Not the purest Christianity itself could preserve a people so
placed from a more or less modified fatalism. The richer members of
society leave their homes for some months of every year, and go
northwards; and this perpetual unsettling of their families has a bad
effect upon the habits of the young people and the comfort of their
parents. It operates against domestic diligence, tranquillity, and
satisfaction with home pleasures. In the north, there is a perpetual
preaching about death, enforced by the never-ceasing recurrence of it;
but it has not the effect of making people less worldly-minded than
others. It serves only to shade life with apprehension, uncertainty, and
bereavement; and, it is to be feared, to give to the vanity of many
minds the direction of false heroism about meeting death. This seems too
serious a subject for the exercise of human vanity; yet that purpose it
has served, perhaps, in all societies; and in none more than in New
England. The greater number of very young people, everywhere, who cannot
be aware of the importance of life, and of the simplicity of death as
its close, have romantic thoughts about dying early; and, in a country
where an unusual proportion do die early, this species of vain-glory is
likely to flourish. The pain felt everywhere by really enlarged and
religious minds on seeing a false resignation exhibited, and hearing
shallow sentimentalities given out on the brink of the grave, is
peculiarly felt in a region where mourning mothers may be seen who have
lost eight, twelve, or fifteen children, and where scarcely an
enterprise of any extent can be undertaken which is not almost sure to
be interrupted or baffled by sickness or death.--When these
considerations are dwelt upon, and when it is remembered what the
consequences of a low state of health must be to each future generation,
it seems scarcely extravagant to say that the best influence upon the
morals of the American nation would be such as might improve their
health.
Good and bad health are both cause and effect of good and bad morals. No
proof of this is needed, nor any further dwelling upon the proposition.
The fact, however, points out to the observer the duty of obtaining a
correct general estimate of the health of the community he visits.
There are two principal methods by which he may obtain the knowledge he
wants,--by examining civic registers, and by visiting burial-grounds.
A faithful register of births, marriages, and deaths, is wished for by
enlightened philanthropists of all advanced countries, far more as a
test of national morals and the national welfare, than as a matter of
the highest social convenience. For this the physiologist waits as the
means of determining the physical condition of the nation; as a guide to
him in suggesting and prescribing the methods by which the national
health may be improved, and the average of life prolonged.--For this the
legislator waits as the means of determining the comparative proneness
of the people to certain kinds of social offences, and the causes of
that proneness; that the law may be framed so as to include (as all wise
laws should include) the largest preventive influence with the greatest
certainty of retribution.--For this the philanthropist waits as a guide
to him in forming his scheme of universal education; and without
this,--without knowing how many need education altogether,--how many
under one set of circumstances, and how many under another,--he can
proceed only in darkness, or amidst the delusions of false lights. He is
only perplexed by the partial knowledge, which is all that his utmost
efforts enable him to obtain. If he goes into every house of every town
and village in his district, he is no nearer to an understanding of the
intellectual and moral condition of the nation than he was before: for
other districts have a different soil and different occupations; the
employments of the people, their diseases and their resources, are
unlike; and, under these diverse influences, their physical, and
therefore moral and intellectual condition, must vary. The reports of
Philanthropic Societies do little more for him, drawn up as they are
with partial objects and under exclusive influences: parliamentary
disclosures are of little more use. Vague statements about the increase
of drunkenness, resistance to one kind of law or another, alarm and
distress him; but such statements again are partial, and so often
brought forward for a particular object, that they afford no safe guide
to him who would form a general preventive or remedy. Thus it is under
all partial methods of observation; but when the philanthropist shall
gain access to a register of the national births, marriages, and deaths,
he will have under his hand all the materials he requires, as completely
as if he were hovering over the kingdom, comprehending all its districts
in one view, and glancing at will into all its habitations.
The comparative ages of the dead will indicate to him not only the
amount of health, but the comparative force of various species of
disease; and from the character of its diseases, and the amount of its
health, much of the moral state of a people may be safely pronounced
upon. The proportion of marriages to births and deaths is always an
indication of the degree of comfort enjoyed, and of the consequent
purity of morals; and, therefore, of the degree in which education is
present or needed. A large number of children, and a large proportion of
marriages, indicate physical and moral welfare, and therefore a
comparative prevalence of education. A large number of births, and a
small proportion of marriages, indicate the reverse. When these
circumstances are taken in connexion with the prevailing occupations of
the district to which they relate, the philanthropist has arrived at a
sufficient certainty as to the means of education required, and the
method in which they are to be applied.
There is, unfortunately, in all countries, an insufficiency of records
framed for the purpose of induction, and subsequent practical use. The
chief of a tribe, proud in proportion to his barbarian insignificance,
may from time to time indulge himself by numbering the people whom he
considers as his property; and an ambitious and warlike emperor may
organize a conscription; and these records may remain to fulfil
hereafter far more exalted purposes than those for which they were
designed: but these instances are few; and in the art of constructing
tables, and ascertaining averages, the most civilized people are still,
for want of practice, in a state of unskilfulness. But, in the absence
of that which would spare observers the task of ascertaining results for
themselves, they must take the best they can get. A traveller must
inquire for any public registers which may exist in all districts, and
note and reflect upon the facts he finds there. In case of there being
none such, it is possible that the physicians of the district may be
able to afford information from private documents of the same nature. If
not, there remain the cemeteries.
The calculators of longevity believe that they may now, by taking down
the dates from the first thirty tombstones in the cemeteries of the
districts they pass through, learn the comparative healthiness and
length of life of the inhabitants of the country. However this may be,
there is no doubt that a large variety and extent of information may be
thus obtained. The observer can ascertain where the fatal diseases of
infancy most prevail,--which is the same thing as knowing that the
physical and moral condition of the people is low; as a large proportion
(not mere number) of deaths in infancy is a most unfavourable symptom of
society. He can ascertain where consumption prevails, where fever, and
where the largest proportion attains to length of days. It is much to
know what character disease and death wear in any district. One
character of Morals and Manners prevails where the greater number die
young, and another where they die old; one where they are cut off by
hardship; another where they waste away under a lingering disease; and
yet another where they abide their full time, and then come to their
graves like a shock of corn in its season. The grave-yards on the
heights of the Alleghanies will tell a different tale of Morals and
Manners from the New Orleans' cemetery, glaring in the midst of the
swamp; and so would the burial-places in the suburbs of Irish cities,
if their contents were known, from those of the hardy Waldenses, or of
the decent and thriving colonists of Frederick's-oord.
* * * * *
The Marriage compact is the most important feature of the domestic state
on which the observer can fix his attention. If he be a thinker, he will
not be surprised at finding much imperfection in the marriage state
wherever he goes. By no arrangements yet attempted have purity of
morals, constancy of affection, and domestic peace been secured to any
extensive degree in society. Almost every variety of method is still in
use, in one part of the world or another. The primitive custom of
brothers marrying sisters still subsists in some Eastern regions.
Polygamy is very common there, as every one knows. In countries which
are too far advanced for this, every restraint of law, all sanction of
opinion, has been tried to render the natural method,--the restriction
of one husband to one wife,--successful, and therefore universal and
permanent. Law and opinion have, however, never availed to anything like
complete success. Even in thriving young countries, where no
considerations of want, and few of ambition, can interfere with domestic
peace,--where the numbers are equal, where love has the promise of a
free and even course, and where religious sentiment is directed full
upon the sanctity of the marriage state,--it is found to be far from
pure. In almost all countries, the corruption of society in this
department is so deep and wide-spreading, as to vitiate both moral
sentiment and practice in an almost hopeless degree. It neutralizes
almost all attempts to ameliorate and elevate the condition of the
race.--There must be something fearfully wrong where the general result
is so unfortunate as this. As in most other cases of social suffering,
the wrong will be found to lie less in the methods ordained and put in
practice, than in the prevalent sentiment of society, out of which all
methods arise.
It is necessary to make mention (however briefly) of the kinds of false
sentiment from which the evil of conjugal unhappiness appears to
spring.--The sentiment by which courage is made the chief ground of
honour in men, and chastity in women, coupled with the inferiority in
which women have ever been sunk, was sure to induce profligacy. As long
as men were brave nothing more was required to make them honourable in
the eyes of society: while the inferior condition of women has ever
exposed those of them who were not protected by birth and wealth to the
profligacy of men.--The shallowness of the sentiment of honour is
another great evil. In its origin, honour includes self-respect and the
respect of others. In time, "from its intimate connexion with what is
personal in interest and feeling, it is greatly exposed to degenerate
into a false and misguiding sentiment. Connecting itself with the
notions of character which prevail by chance in the community, rather
than with the rule of right and of God, it has erected a false standard
of estimate." The requisitions of honour come to be viewed as regarding
only equals, or those who are hedged about with honour, and they are
neglected with regard to the helpless. Men of honour use treachery with
women,--with those to whom they promise marriage, and with those to
whom, in marrying, they promised fidelity, love, and care; and yet their
honour is, in the eyes of society, unstained.--Feudal ambition is
another sentiment fraught with evil to marriage. In a society where
pride and ostentation prevail, where rank and wealth are regarded as
prime objects of pursuit, marriage comes to be regarded as a means of
obtaining these. Wives are selected for their connexions and their
fortune, and the love is placed elsewhere.--Any one of these corrupt
species of sentiment, and of some others which exist, must ruin domestic
peace, if the laws of each country were as wise as they are now, for the
most part, faulty, and as powerful as they are now ineffectual.--If the
traveller will bear these things in mind, he will gain light upon the
moral sentiment of the society by the condition of domestic life in it;
and again, what he knows of the prevalent moral sentiment of the society
will cast light upon the domestic condition of its members.
Another thing to be carefully remembered is, that asceticism and
licentiousness universally coexist. All experience proves this; and
every principle of human nature might prophesy the proof. Passions and
emotions cannot be extinguished by general rules. Self-mortification can
spring only out of a home-felt principle, and not from the will of
another, or of any number of others. The exhibition only can be
restrained, and the visible conduct ordered by rule. In consequence, it
is found that no greater impurity of mind exists than among associated
ascetics; and nowhere are crimes of the licentious class so gross, other
circumstances being equal, as in communities which have the puritanic
spirit. Any one well-informed on the subject is aware that there is much
coarseness in the manners of the Quakers; and their regard for the
pleasures of the table is open to the observation of all. Nowhere are
drunkenness and infanticide more disgusting and horrible, when they do
occur, than in Calvinistic Scotland. The bottomless corruption of Vienna
is notorious; and much of it is traceable to a species of political
asceticism,--to artificial restrictions other than religious, but
producing similar effects. Politics are a forbidden topic of
conversation. Under this rule, literature is a forbidden topic too; for
literary and philosophical necessarily induces political communication.
In Vienna may be seen the singular spectacle of an assembled multitude
who read, not one of whom opens his lips upon books, or their subject
matter. What then remains? Gallantry. The intellect being silenced, the
passions run riot; and the excessive corruption of the society,--a
corruption which is notorious over the civilized world,--is the natural
consequence. It may safely be assumed that wherever artificial
restraints are imposed on the passions, or on the intellects and
pursuits of men, there must be licentiousness, precisely proportioned to
the severity of the restraint.
Celibacy of the clergy, or of any other class of men, involves
polygamy, virtual if not avowed, in some other class. To this the
relaxation of domestic morals in the higher orders of all Catholic
societies bears testimony as strongly as the existence of allowed
polygamy in India. It is everywhere professed that Christianity puts
an end to polygamy; and so it does, as Christianity is understood in
Protestant countries; but a glance at the state of morals in countries
where celibacy is the religion of the clergy,--among the higher ranks
in Italy, in France, in Spain,--shows that, while the name of polygamy
is disclaimed, the thing is held in no great abhorrence. This is
mentioned here simply as matter of fact, necessary to our inquiry as to
how to observe morals and manners. It is notorious that, wherever
celibacy is extensively professed, there is not only, as a consequence,
a frequent breach of profession, but a much larger indulgence extended
to other classes, in consequence of the restrictions on one. The methods
of marriage in Italy and France,--the disposing of the woman at an early
age, and before she is capable of giving an enlightened consent,--often
even without the form of asking her consent,--on the understanding,
tacit or avowed, that she may hereafter place her affections
elsewhere,--these proceedings could have been adopted, could now be
persevered in, only in countries where partial asceticism had induced a
corresponding licentiousness.--The same fact,--the invariable proportion
of asceticism and licentiousness,--exists where by some it would be
least looked for,--in societies which have the reputation of being
eminently pure; and this consideration is sufficient to extinguish all
boasting, all assumption of unquestionable moral superiority in one
people over another. It is not only that each nation likes its own
notions of morals better than those of its neighbours; but that the
very same things which are avowed among those who are called the
grossest, happen with that which considers itself the most pure. Such
superiority as there is is owing, perhaps, in no case to severity of
religious sentiment and discipline, but rather to the worldly ease which
blesses a young and thinly peopled country, and to the high cultivation
of a society which furnishes its members with an extraordinary diversity
of interests and pursuits.
Marriage exists everywhere, to be studied by the moral observer. He must
watch the character of courtships wherever he goes;--whether the young
lady is negociated for and promised by her guardians, without having
seen her intended; like the poor girl who, when she asked her mother to
point out her future husband from among a number of gentlemen, was
silenced with the rebuke, "What is that to you?"--or whether they are
left free to exchange their faith "by flowing stream, through wood, or
craggy wild," as in the United States;--or whether there is a medium
between these two extremes, as in England. He must observe how fate is
defied by lovers in various countries. We have seen what was the
acquiescence of Philip and Hannah in their eternal separation. None but
Moravians, perhaps, would have so parted for ever. Scotch lovers agree
to come together after so many years spent in providing the
"plenishing." Irish lovers conclude the business, in case of difficulty,
by appearing before the priest the next morning. There is recourse to a
balcony and rope-ladder in one country; a steam-boat and back-settlement
in another; trust and patience in a third; and intermediate
flirtations, to pass the time, in a fourth. He must note the degree of
worldly ambition which attends marriages, and which may therefore be
supposed to stimulate them,--how much space the house with two rooms in
humble life, and the country-seat and carriages in higher life, occupy
in the mind of bride or bridegroom.--He must observe whether conjugal
infidelity excites horror and rage, or whether it is so much a matter of
course as that no jealousy interferes to mar the arrangements of mutual
convenience.--He must mark whether women are made absolutely the
property of their husbands, in mind and in estate; or whether the wife
is treated more or less professedly as an equal party in the
agreement.--He must observe whether there is an excluded class, victims
to their own superstition or to a false social obligation, wandering
about to disturb by their jealousy or licentiousness those whose lot is
happier.--He must observe whether there are domestic arrangements for
home enjoyments, or whether all is planned on the supposition of
pleasure lying abroad; whether the reliance is on books, gardens, and
play with children, or on the opera, parties, the ale-house, or dances
on the green.--He must mark whether the ladies are occupied with their
household cares in the morning, and the society of their husbands in the
evening, or with embroidery and looking out of balconies; with receiving
company all day, or gadding abroad; with the library or the nursery;
with lovers or with children.--In each country, called civilized, he
will meet with almost all these varieties: but in each there is such a
prevailing character in the aspect of domestic life, that intelligent
observation will enable him to decide, without much danger of mistake,
as to whether marriage is merely an arrangement of convenience, in
accordance with low morals, or a sacred institution, commanding the
reverence and affection of a virtuous people. No high degree of this
sanctity can be looked for till that moderation is attained which,
during the prevalence of asceticism and its opposite, is reached only by
a few. That it yet exists nowhere as the characteristic of any
society,--that all the blessings of domestic life are not yet open to
all, so as to preclude the danger of any one encroaching on his
neighbour,--is but too evident to the travelled observer. He can only
mark the degree of approximation to this state of high morals wherever
he goes.
The traveller everywhere finds woman treated as the inferior party in a
compact in which both parties have an equal interest. Any agreement thus
formed is imperfect, and is liable to disturbance; and the danger is
great in proportion to the degradation of the supposed weaker party. The
degree of the degradation of woman is as good a test as the moralist can
adopt for ascertaining the state of domestic morals in any country.
The Indian squaw carries the household burdens, trudging in the dust,
while her husband on horseback paces before her, unencumbered but by his
own gay trappings. She carries the wallet with food, the matting for the
lodge, the merchandize (if they possess any), and her infant. There is
no exemption from labour for the squaw of the most vaunted chief. In
other countries the wife may be found drawing the plough, hewing wood
and carrying water; the men of the family standing idle to witness her
toils. Here the observer may feel pretty sure of his case. From a
condition of slavery like this, women are found rising to the highest
condition in which they are at present seen, in France, England, and the
United States,--where they are less than half-educated, precluded from
earning a subsistence, except in a very few ill-paid employments, and
prohibited from giving or withholding their assent to laws which they
are yet bound by penalties to obey. In France, owing to the great
destruction of men in the wars of Napoleon, women are engaged, and
successfully engaged, in a variety of occupations which have been
elsewhere supposed unsuitable to the sex. Yet there remains so large a
number who cannot, by the most strenuous labour in feminine employments,
command the necessaries of life, while its luxuries may be earned by
infamy, that the morals of the society are naturally bad. Great
attention has of late been given to this subject in France: the social
condition of women is matter of thought and discussion to a degree which
promises some considerable amelioration. Already, women can do more in
France than anywhere else; they can attempt more without ridicule or
arbitrary hinderance: and the women of France are probably destined to
lead the way in the advance which the sex must hereafter make. At
present, society is undergoing a transition from a feudal state to one
of mutual government; and women, gaining in some ways, suffer in others
during the process. They have, happily for themselves, lost much of the
peculiar kind of observance which was the most remarkable feature of the
chivalrous age; and it has been impossible to prevent their sharing in
the benefits of the improvement and diffusion of knowledge. All
cultivation of their powers has secured to them the use of new power; so
that their condition is far superior to what it was in any former age.
But new difficulties about securing a maintenance have arisen. Marriage
is less general; and the husbands of the greater number of women are not
secure of a maintenance from the lords of the soil, any more than women
are from being married. The charge of their own maintenance is thrown
upon large numbers of women, without the requisite variety of
employments having been opened to them, or the needful education
imparted. A natural consequence of this is, that women are educated to
consider marriage the one object in life, and therefore to be extremely
impatient to secure it. The unfavourable influence of these results upon
the happiness of domestic life may be seen at a glance.
This may be considered the sum and substance of female education in
England; and the case is scarcely better in France, though the
independence and practical efficiency of women there are greater than in
any other country. The women in the United States are in a lower
condition than either, though there is less striving after marriage,
from its greater frequency, and little restriction is imposed upon the
book-learning which women may obtain. But the old feudal notions about
the sex flourish there, while they are going out in the more advanced
countries of Europe; and these notions, in reality, regulate the
condition of women. American women generally are treated in no degree as
equals, but with a kind of superstitious outward observance, which, as
they have done nothing to earn it, is false and hurtful. Coexisting
with this, there is an extreme difficulty in a woman's obtaining a
maintenance, except by the exercise of some rare powers. In a country
where women are brought up to be indulged wives, there is no hope, help,
or prospect for such as have not money and are not married.
In America, women can earn a maintenance only by teaching, sewing,
employment in factories, keeping boarding-houses, and domestic service.
Some governesses are tolerably well paid,--comparing their earnings with
those of men. Employment in factories, and domestic service, are well
paid. Sewing is so wretched an occupation everywhere, that it is to be
hoped that machinery will soon supersede the use of human fingers in a
labour so unprofitable. In Boston, Massachusetts, a woman is paid
ninepence (sixpence English) for making a shirt.--In England, besides
these occupations, others are opening; and, what is of yet greater
consequence, the public mind is awakening to the necessity of enlarging
the sphere of female industry. Some of the inferior branches of the fine
arts have lately offered profitable employment to many women. The
commercial adversity to which the country has been exposed from time to
time, has been of service to the sex, by throwing hundreds and thousands
of them upon their own resources, and thus impelling them to urge claims
and show powers which are more respected every day.--In France this is
yet more conspicuously the case. There, women are shopkeepers,
merchants, professional accountants, editors of newspapers, and employed
in many other ways, unexampled elsewhere, but natural and respectable
enough on the spot.
Domestic morals are affected in two principal respects by these
differences. Where feminine occupations of a profitable nature are few,
and therefore overstocked, and therefore yielding a scanty maintenance
with difficulty, there is the strongest temptation to prefer luxury with
infamy to hardship with unrecognized honour. Hence arises much of the
corruption of cities,--less in the United States than in Europe, from
the prevalence of marriage,--but awful in extent everywhere. Where vice
is made to appear the interest of large classes of women, the observer
may be quite sure that domestic morals will be found impure. If he can
meet with any society where the objects of life are as various and as
freely open to women as to men, there he may be sure of finding the
greatest amount of domestic purity and peace; for, if women were not
helpless, men would find it far less easy to be vicious.
The other way in which domestic morals are affected by the scope which
is allowed to the powers of women, is through the views of marriage
which are induced. Marriage is debased by being considered the one
worldly object in life,--that on which maintenance, consequence, and
power depend. Where the husband marries for connexion, fortune, or an
heir to his estate, and the wife for an establishment, for consequence,
or influence, there is no foundation for high domestic morals and
lasting peace; and in a country where marriage is made the single aim of
all women, there is no security against the influence of some of these
motives even in the simplest and purest cases of attachment. The
sordidness is infused from the earliest years; the taint is in the mind
before the attachment begins, before the objects meet; and the evil
effects upon the marriage state are incalculable.
All this--the sentiment of society with regard to Woman and to Marriage,
the social condition of Woman, and the consequent tendency and aim of
her education,--the traveller must carefully observe. Each civilized
society claims for itself the superiority in its treatment of woman. In
one, she is indulged with religious shows, and with masquerades, or
Punch, as an occasional variety. In another, she is left in honourable
and undisputed possession of the housekeeping department. In a third,
she is allowed to meddle, behind the scenes, with the business which is
confided to her husband's management. In a fourth, she is satisfied in
being the cherished domestic companion, unaware of the injury of being
doomed to the narrowness of mind which is the portion of those who are
always confined to the domestic circle. In a fifth, she is flattered at
being guarded and indulged as a being requiring incessant fostering, and
too feeble to take care of herself. In a sixth society, there may be
found expanding means of independent occupation, of responsible
employment for women; and here, other circumstances being equal, is the
best promise of domestic fidelity and enjoyment.
It is a matter of course that women who are furnished with but one
object,--marriage,--must be as unfit for anything when their aim is
accomplished as if they had never had any object at all. They are no
more equal to the task of education than to that of governing the state;
and, if any unexpected turn of adversity befals them, they have no
resource but a convent, or some other charitable provision. Where, on
the other hand, women are brought up capable of maintaining an
independent existence, other objects remain when the grand one is
accomplished. Their independence of mind places them beyond the reach of
the spoiler; and their cultivated faculty of reason renders them worthy
guardians of the rational beings whose weal or woe is lodged in their
hands. There is yet, as may be seen by a mere glance over society, only
a very imperfect provision made anywhere for doing justice to the next
generation by qualifying their mothers; but the observer of morals may
profit by marking the degrees in which this imperfection approaches to
barbarism. Where he finds that girls are committed to convents for
education, and have no alternative in life but marriage, in which their
will has no share, and a return to their convent, he may safely conclude
that there a plurality of lovers is a matter of course, and domestic
enjoyments of the highest kind undesired and unknown. He may conclude
that as are the parents, so will be the children; and that, for one more
generation at least, there will be little or no improvement. But where
he finds a variety of occupations open to women; where he perceives them
not only pursuing the lighter mechanic arts, dispensing charity and
organizing schools for the poor, but occupied in education, and in the
study of science and the practice of the fine arts, he may conclude that
here resides the highest domestic enjoyment which has yet been attained,
and the strongest hope of a further advance.
* * * * *
Children in all countries are, as Mrs. Grant of Laggan says, first
vegetables, and then they are animals, and then they come to be people;
but their way of growing out of one stage into another is as different,
in different societies, as their states of mind when they are grown up.
They all have limbs, senses, and intellects; but their growth of heart
and mind depends incalculably upon the spirit of the society amidst
which they are reared. The traveller must study them wherever he meets
them. In one country, multitudes of them lie about in the streets,
basking in the sun, and killing vermin; while the children of the very
poorest persons of another country are decently clothed, and either
busily occupied with such domestic employments as they are capable of,
or at school, or playing among the rocks, or climbing trees, or crawling
about the wooden bridges, without fear or danger. From this one symptom,
the observer might learn the poverty and idleness of the lower classes
of Spain, and the comfort and industry of those of the United States. As
to the children of the richer classes, there is the widest difference in
the world between those who are the idols of their mothers, (as in
societies where the heart's love is lavished on the children which has
not been engaged by the husband,) and those who are early steeped in
corruption, (as in slave countries,) and those who are reared
philosophers and saints, and those to whom home is a sunny paradise
hedged round with love and care, and those who are little men and women
of the world from the time they can walk alone. All these kinds of
children exist,--sure breathings of the moral atmosphere of their homes.
The traveller must watch them, talk with them, and learn from their
bearing towards their parents, and the bent of their affections, what is
the spirit of the families of the land.
From observation on these classes of facts,--the Occupation of the
people, the respective Characters of the occupied classes, the Health of
the population, the state of Marriage and of Women, and the character of
Childhood,--the moralist may learn more of the private life of a
community than from the conversation of any number of the individuals
who compose it.