Alice, or the Mysteries — Complete
with the sectarian, it should be free with the elector. The Ballot is a
corollary from the Catholic Relief-bill. Grant the Ballot, and the new
corollary of enlarged suffrage. Suffrage enlarged is divided but by
a yielding surface (a circle widening in the waters) from universal
suffrage. Universal suffrage is Democracy. Is Democracy better than the
aristocratic commonwealth? Look at the Greeks, who knew both forms;
are they agreed which is the best? Plato, Thucydides, Xenophon,
Aristophanes--the Dreamer, the Historian, the Philosophic Man of Action,
the penetrating Wit--have no ideals in Democracy. Algernon Sidney, the
martyr of liberty, allows no government to the multitude. Brutus died
for a republic, but a republic of Patricians! What form of government is
then the best? All dispute, the wisest cannot agree. The many still say
'a Republic;' yet, as you yourself will allow, Prussia, the Despotism,
does all that Republics do. Yes, but a good despot is a lucky accident;
true, but a just and benevolent Republic is as yet a monster equally
short-lived. When the People have no other tyrant, their own public
opinion becomes one. No secret espionage is more intolerable to a free
spirit than the broad glare of the American eye.
"A rural republic is but a patriarchal tribe--no emulation, no glory;
peace and stagnation. What Englishman, what Frenchman, would wish to be
a Swiss? A commercial republic is but an admirable machine for making
money. Is man created for nothing nobler than freighting ships and
speculating on silk and sugar? In fact, there is no certain goal in
legislation; we go on colonizing Utopia, and fighting phantoms in the
clouds. Let us content ourselves with injuring no man, and doing good
only in our own little sphere. Let us leave States and senates to fill
the sieve of the Danaides, and roll up the stone of Sisyphus."
"My dear friend," said De Montaigne, "you have certainly made the most
of an argument, which, if granted, would consign government to fools
and knaves, and plunge the communities of mankind into the Slough of
Despond. But a very commonplace view of the question might suffice to
shake your system. Is life, mere animal life, on the whole, a curse or a
blessing?"
"The generality of men in all countries," answered Maltravers, "enjoy
existence, and apprehend death; were it otherwise, the world had been
made by a Fiend, and not a God!"
"Well, then, observe how the progress of society cheats the grave! In
great cities, where the effect of civilization must be the most visible,
the diminution of mortality in a corresponding ratio with the increase
of civilization is most remarkable. In Berlin, from the year 1747 to
1755, the annual mortality was as one to twenty-eight; but from 1816 to
1822, it was as one to thirty-four! You ask what England has gained by
her progress in the arts? I will answer you by her bills of mortality.
In London, Birmingham, and Liverpool, deaths have decreased in less than
a century from one to twenty, to one to forty (precisely one-half!).
Again, whenever a community--nay, a single city, decreases in
civilization, and in its concomitants, activity and commerce, its
mortality instantly increases. But if civilization be favourable to
the prolongation of life, must it not be favourable to all that blesses
life,--to bodily health, to mental cheerfulness, to the capacities for
enjoyment? And how much more grand, how much more sublime, becomes the
prospect of gain, if we reflect that, to each life thus called forth,
there is a soul, a destiny beyond the grave, multiplied immortalities!
What an apology for the continued progress of States! But you say that,
however we advance, we continue impatient and dissatisfied: can you
really suppose that, because man in every state is discontented with
his lot, there is no difference in the _degree_ and _quality_ of his
discontent, no distinction between pining for bread and longing for the
moon? Desire is implanted within us, as the very principle of existence;
the physical desire fills the world, and the moral desire improves it.
Where there is desire, there must be discontent: if we are satisfied
with all things, desire is extinct. But a certain degree of discontent
is not incompatible with happiness, nay, it has happiness of its own;
what happiness like hope,--what is hope but desire? The European serf,
whose seigneur could command his life, or insist as a right on the
chastity of his daughter, desires to better his condition. God has
compassion on his state; Providence calls into action the ambition
of leaders, the contests of faction, the movement of men's aims and
passions: a change passes through society and legislation, and the serf
becomes free! He desires still, but what? No longer personal security,
no longer the privileges of life and health; but higher wages, greater
comforts, easier justice for diminished wrongs. Is there no difference
in the quality of that desire? Was one a greater torment than the other
is? Rise a scale higher: a new class is created--the Middle Class,--the
express creature of Civilization. Behold the burgher and the citizen,
and still struggling, still contending, still desiring, and therefore
still discontented. But the discontent does not prey upon the springs
of life: it is the discontent of _hope_, not _despair_; it calls forth
faculties, energies, and passions, in which there is more joy than
sorrow. It is this desire which makes the citizen in private life an
anxious father, a careful master, an _active_, and therefore not an
unhappy, man. You allow that individuals can effect individual good:
this very restlessness, this very discontent with the exact place
that he occupies, makes the citizen a benefactor in his narrow circle.
Commerce, better than Charity, feeds the hungry and clothes the naked.
Ambition, better than brute affection, gives education to our children,
and teaches them the love of industry, the pride of independence, the
respect for others and themselves!
"In other words, a deference to such qualities as can best fit them to
get on in the world, and make the most money!"
"Take that view if you will; but the wiser, the more civilized the
State, the worse chances for the rogue to get on! There may be some art,
some hypocrisy, some avarice,--nay, some hardness of heart,--in paternal
example and professional tuition. But what are such sober infirmities
to the vices that arise from defiance and despair? Your savage has his
virtues, but they are mostly physical,--fortitude, abstinence, patience:
mental and moral virtues must be numerous or few, in proportion to
the range of ideas and the exigencies of social life. With the savage,
therefore, they must be fewer than with civilized men; and they are
consequently limited to those simple and rude elements which the
safety of his state renders necessary to him. He is usually hospitable;
sometimes honest. But vices are necessary to his existence as well
as virtues: he is at war with a tribe that may destroy his own; and
treachery without scruple, cruelty without remorse, are essential
to him; he feels their necessity, and calls them _virtues_! Even
the half-civilized man, the Arab whom you praise, imagines he has a
necessity for your money; and his robberies become virtues to him. But
in civilized States, vices are at least not necessary to the existence
of the majority; they are not, therefore, worshipped as virtues. Society
unites against them; treachery, robbery, massacre, are not essential
to the strength or safety of the community: they exist, it is true, but
they are not cultivated, but punished. The thief in St. Giles's has the
virtues of your savage: he is true to his companions, he is brave in
danger, he is patient in privation; he practises the virtues necessary
to the bonds of his calling and the tacit laws of his vocation. He might
have made an admirable savage: but surely the mass of civilized men are
better than the thief?"
Maltravers was struck, and paused a little before he replied; and then
he shifted his ground. "But at least all our laws, all our efforts, must
leave the multitude in every State condemned to a labour that deadens
intellect, and a poverty that embitters life."
"Supposing this were true, still there are multitudes besides _the_
multitude. In each State Civilization produces a middle class, more
numerous to-day than the whole peasantry of a thousand years ago. Would
Movement and Progress be without their divine uses, even if they limited
their effect to the production of such a class? Look also to the effect
of art, and refinement, and just laws, in the wealthier and higher
classes. See how their very habits of life tend to increase the sum
of enjoyment; see the mighty activity that their very luxury, the very
frivolity of their pursuits, create! Without an aristocracy, would there
have been a middle class? Without a middle class, would there ever have
been an interposition between lord and slave? Before commerce produces a
middle class, Religion creates one. The Priesthood, whatever its errors,
was the curb to Power. But, to return to the multitude,--you say that in
all times they are left the same. Is it so? I come to statistics again:
I find that not only civilization, but liberty, has a prodigious effect
upon human life. It is, as it were, by the instinct of self-preservation
that liberty is so passionately desired by the multitude. A negro slave,
for instance, dies annually as one to five or six, but a free African
in the English service only as one to thirty-five! Freedom is not,
therefore, a mere abstract dream, a beautiful name, a Platonic
aspiration: it is interwoven with the most practical of all
blessings,--life itself! And can you say fairly that by laws labour
cannot be lightened and poverty diminished? We have granted already that
since there are degrees in discontent, there is a difference between
the peasant and the serf: how know you what the peasant a thousand years
hence may be? Discontented, you will say,--still discontented. Yes; but
if he had not been discontented, he would have been a serf still! Far
from quelling this desire to better himself, we ought to hail it as
the source of his perpetual progress. That desire to him is often like
imagination to the poet, it transports him into the Future--
'Crura sonant ferro, sed canit inter opus.'
It is, indeed, the gradual transformation from the desire of Despair
to the desire of Hope, that makes the difference between man and man,
between misery and bliss."
"And then comes the crisis. Hope ripens into deeds; the stormy
revolution, perhaps the armed despotism; the relapse into the second
infancy of States!"
"Can we, with new agencies at our command, new morality, new wisdom,
predicate of the Future by the Past? In ancient States, the mass were
slaves; civilization and freedom rested with oligarchies; in Athens
twenty thousand citizens, four hundred thousand slaves! How easy
decline, degeneracy, overthrow in such States,--a handful of soldiers
and philosophers without a People! Now we have no longer barriers to
the circulation of the blood of States. The absence of slavery, the
existence of the Press; the healthful proportions of kingdoms, neither
too confined nor too vast, have created new hopes, which history cannot
destroy. As a proof, look to all late revolutions: in England the Civil
Wars, the Reformation,--in France her awful Saturnalia, her military
despotism! Has either nation fallen back? The deluge passes, and,
behold, the face of things more glorious than before! Compare the French
of to-day with the French of the old _regime_. You are silent; well, and
if in all States there is ever some danger of evil in their activity, is