Part 7 (1/2)

In ancient times most men were proprietors and labourers too; but under despotic rule. Societies which have once come under the representative principle are not likely to retrograde to this state; while there are influences ever at work to exalt the function of labour, and to extend that of proprietors.h.i.+p. Wherever this mixture of functions has gone the furthest,--wherever the mechanic cla.s.ses are becoming capitalists, and proprietors are liable to sink down from their ancient honour, unless they can secure respect by personal qualifications, the idea of liberty is, to a considerable degree, confirmed and elevated. In such a case, it is clear that both the power and the desire of encroachment on the part of the upper cla.s.s must be lessened, and that of resistance on the part of the lower increased.--The other improvement follows upon this.

Proprietors.h.i.+p, with its feudal influences, having lost caste (though it has gained in true dignity), some other ground of distinction must succeed. If we may judge by what is before our eyes in the Western world, talent is likely to be the next successor. It is to be hoped that talent will, in its turn, give way to moral worth,--the higher degrees of which imply, however, superiority of mental power. The preference of personal qualifications to those of external endowment has already begun in the world, and is fast making its way. Such distinction of ranks as there is in America originates in mental qualifications. Statesmen, who rise by their own power, rank highest; and then authors. The wealthiest capitalist gives place, in the estimation of all, to a popular orator, a successful author, or an eminent clergyman.--In France, the honours of the peerage and the offices of the state are given to men of science, philosophy, and literature. The same is the case in some parts of Germany: and, even in aristocratic England, the younger members of her Upper House are unsatisfied with being merely peers, and are anxious to push their way in literature, as well as in politics.--The traveller must give earnest heed to symptoms like these, knowing that as the barriers of ranks are thrown down, and personal obtain the ascendant over hereditary qualifications, social coercion must be relaxed, and the sentiment of liberty exalted.

In close connexion with this, he must observe the condition of Servants.

The treatment and conduct of domestics depend on causes which lie far deeper than the principles and tempers of particular servants and masters, as may be seen by a glance at domestic service in England, Scotland, and Ireland. In England, the old Saxon and Norman feud smoulders, (however unconscious the parties may be of the fact,) in the relation of master and servant. Domestics who never heard of either Norman or Saxon entertain a deep-rooted conviction of their masters'

interests and their own being directly opposed, and are subject to a strong sense of injury. Masters who never bestow a thought on the transactions of the twelfth century, complain of a doggedness, selfishness, and case-hardened indifference in the cla.s.s of domestics, which kindness cannot penetrate, or penetrates only to pervert. The relation is therefore a painful one in England. There is little satisfaction to be obtained between the extremes of servility and defiance, by which the conduct of servants is almost as distinctly marked now as when the nation was younger by seven centuries. The English housewives complain that confidence only makes their maid servants conceited, and that indulgence spoils them.--In Ireland, the case is of the same nature, but much aggravated. The injury of having an aristocracy of foreigners forced on the country, to whom the natives are to render service, is more recent, and the impression more consciously retained. The servants are ill-treated, and they yield bad service in return. It is mournful to see the arrangement of Dublin houses. The drawing-rooms are palace-like, while the servants' apartments are dark and damp dungeons. It is wearisome to hear the complaints of the dirt, falsehood, and faithlessness of Irish servants,--complaints which their mistresses have ever ready for the ear of the stranger; and it is disgusting to witness the effects in the household. It is equally sad and ludicrous to see the mistress of some families enter the breakfast room, with a loaf of bread under her arm, the b.u.t.ter-plate in one hand, and a bunch of keys in the other;--to see her cut from the loaf the number of slices required, and send them down to be toasted,--explaining that she is obliged to lock up the very bread from the thievery of her servants, and informing against them as if she expected them to be worthy of trust, while she daily insults them with the refusal of all trust,--even to the care of the bread-pan. In Scotland, the case is widely different. Servitude and clans.h.i.+p are there connected, instead of servitude and conquest. The service is willing in proportion; and the faults of domestics are not those common to the oppressed, but rather those proceeding from pride and self-will. The Scotch domestic has still the pride in the chief of the name which cherishes the self-respect of every member of a clan; and in the service of the chief there is scarcely any exertion which the humblest of his name would not make. The results are obvious. There is a better understanding between the two cla.s.ses than in the other divisions of the kingdom: and Scotch masters and mistresses obtain a satisfaction from their domestics which no degree of justice and kindness in English and Irish housekeepers can secure. The dregs of an oppression of centuries cannot be purged away by the action of individual tempers, be they of the best. The causes of misunderstanding, as we have said, lie deep.

The principles which regulate the condition of domestic servants in every country form thus a deep and wide subject for the traveller's inquiries. In America, he will hear frequent complaints from the ladies of the pride of their maid servants, and of the difficulty of settling them, while he sees that some are the most intimate friends of the families they serve; and that not a few collect books, and attend courses of scientific lectures. The fact is that, in America, a conflict is going on between opposite principles, and the consequences of the struggle show themselves chiefly in the relation between master and servant. The old European notions of the degradation of servitude survive in the minds of their American descendants, and are nourished by the presence of slavery on the same continent, and by the importation of labourers from Europe which is perpetually going on. In conflict with these notions are the democratic ideas of the honourableness of voluntary service by contract. It is found difficult, at first, to settle the bounds of the contract; and masters are liable to sin, from long habit, on the side of imperiousness, and the servants on that of captiousness and jealousy of their own rights. Such are the inconveniences of a transition state;--a state, however, upon which it should be remembered that other societies have yet to enter. In an Irish country-house, the guest sometimes finds himself desired to keep his wardrobe locked up.--In England, he perceives a restraint in the address of each cla.s.s to the cla.s.s above it.--In France, a washerwoman speaks with as much ease to a d.u.c.h.ess as a d.u.c.h.ess to a washerwoman.--In Holland, the domestics have chambers as scrupulously neat as their masters'.--In Ireland, they sleep in underground closets.--In New York, they can command their own accommodation.--In Cuba they sleep, like dogs, in the pa.s.sages of the family dwellings. These are some of the facts from which the observer is to draw his inferences, rather than from the manners of some individuals of the cla.s.s whom he may meet. In his conclusions from such facts he can hardly be wrong, though he may chance to become acquainted with a footman of the true heroic order in Dublin, and a master in Cuba who respects his own servants, and a cringing lackey in New York.

A point of some importance is whether the provincial inhabitants depend upon the management and imitate the modes of life of the metropolis, or have principles and manners of their own. Where there is least freedom and the least desire of it, everything centres in the metropolis. Where there is most freedom, each ”city, town, and vill,” thinks and acts for itself. In despotic countries, the principle of centralization actuates everything. Orders are issued from the central authorities, and the minds of the provinces are saved all trouble of thinking for themselves.

Where self-government is permitted to each a.s.semblage of citizens, they are stimulated to improve their idea and practice of liberty, and are almost independent of metropolitan usages. The traveller will find that ”Paris is France,” as everybody has heard, and that the government of France is carried on in half-a-dozen apartments in the capital, with little reference to the unrepresented thousands who are living some hundreds of miles off: while, if he casts a glance over Norway, he may see the people on the sh.o.r.es of the fiords, or in the valleys between the pine-steeps, quietly making their arrangements for controlling the central authority, even abolis.h.i.+ng the inst.i.tution of hereditary n.o.bility in opposition to the will of the king; but legally, peaceably, and in all the simplicity of determined independence,--the result of a matured idea of liberty. The observer will note whether the pursuits and amus.e.m.e.nts of the provincial inhabitants originate in the circ.u.mstances of the locality, or whether they are copies from those of the metropolis; whether the great city be spoken of with reverence, scorn, or indifference, or not spoken of at all: whether, as in a Pennsylvanian village, the society could go on if the capital were swallowed up by an earthquake; or whether, as in Prussia, the favour of the central power is as the breath of the nostrils of the people.

Newspapers are a strong evidence of the political ideas of a people;--not individual newspapers; for no two, perhaps, fully agree in principles and sentiment, and it is to be feared that none are positively honest. Not by individual newspapers must the traveller form his judgment, but by the freedom of discussion which he may find to be permitted, or the restraints upon discussion imposed. The idea of liberty must be low and feeble among a people who permit the government to maintain a severe censors.h.i.+p; and it must be powerful and effectual in a society which can make all its complaints through a newspaper,--be the reports of the newspapers upon the state of social affairs as dismal as they may. Whatever revilings of a tyrannical president, or of a servile congress, a traveller may meet with in any number of American journals, he may fairly conclude that both the one and the other must be nearly harmless if they are discussed in a newspaper. The very existence of the newspapers he sees testifies to the prevalence of a habit of reading, and consequently of education--to the wide diffusion of political power--and to the probable safety and permanence of a government which is founded on so broad a basis, and can afford to indulge so large a licence. Whatever he may be told of the patriotism of a sovereign, let him give it to the winds if he finds a s.p.a.ce in a newspaper made blank by the pen of a censor. The tameness of the Austrian journals tells as plain a tale as if no censor had ever suppressed a syllable;--as much so as the small size of a New Orleans paper compared with one of New York, or as the fiercest bl.u.s.ter of a Cincinnati Daily or Weekly, on the eve of the election of a president.

In countries where there is any Free Education, the traveller must observe its nature; and especially whether the subjects of it are distinguished by any sort of badge. The practice of badging, otherwise than by mutual consent, is usually bad: it is always suspicious. The traveller will note whether free education is conferred by charitable bequest, (a practice originating in times when the doctrine of expiation was prevalent, and continued to this day by its union with charity,) or whether it is framed at the will of the sovereign, that his young subjects may be trained to his own purposes,--as in the case of the Emperor of Russia and his young Polish victims; or whether it arises from the union of such a desire with a more enlightened object,--as may be witnessed in Prussia; or whether it is provided by the sovereign people,--by universal consent, as the right of every individual born into the community, and as the necessary qualification for the enjoyment of social privileges,--as in the United States. The English Christ Hospital boys are badged: Napoleon's Polytechnic pupils were badged; so are the Czar's orphan charge. Wherever the meddling or ostentatious charity of antique times is in existence,--times when the idea of liberty was low and confined,--this badging is to be looked for; and also wherever it is necessary to the purposes of the potentate to keep a register of the young subjects who may become his instruments or his foes:--but where education is absolutely universal, where any citizen has a right to put every child, not otherwise educated, into the school-house of his towns.h.i.+p, and where the rising generation are destined to take care of themselves, and legislate after their own will, no badging will be found. This apparently trifling fact is worth the attention of the observer.

The extent of popular education is a fact of the deepest significance.

Under despotisms there will be the smallest amount of it; and in proportion to the national idea of the dignity and importance of man,--idea of liberty, in short,--will be its extent, both in regard to the number it comprehends, and to the enlargement of their studies. The universality of education is inseparably connected with a lofty idea of liberty; and till the idea is realized in a constantly expanding system of national education, the observer may profitably note for reflection the facts whether he is surrounded on a frontier by a crowd of whining young beggars, or whether he sees a parade of charity scholars,--these all in blue caps and yellow stockings, and those all in white tippets and green ap.r.o.ns; or whether he falls in with an annual or quarterly a.s.sembly of teachers, met to confer on the best principles and methods of carrying on an education which is itself a matter of course.

In countries where there is any popular Idea of Liberty, the universities are considered its stronghold, from their being the places where the young, active, hopeful, and aspiring meet,--the youths who are soon to be citizens, and who have here the means of daily communication of their ideas, for many years together. It would be an interesting inquiry how many revolutions, warlike or bloodless, have issued from seats of learning; and yet more, how many have been planned for which the existing powers, or the habits of society, have been too strong. If the universities are not so const.i.tuted as to admit of this fostering of free principles, they are pretty sure to retain the antique notions in accordance with which they were inst.i.tuted, and to fall into the rear of society in morals and manners. It is the traveller's business to observe the characteristics of these inst.i.tutions, and to reflect whether they are likely to aid or to r.e.t.a.r.d the progress of the nation in which they stand.

There are universities in almost every country; but they are as little like one another as the costumes that are found in Switzerland and India; and the one speak as plainly of morals and manners as the other of climate. It is needless to point out that countries which contain only aristocratic halls of learning, or schools otherwise devoid of an elastic principle, must be in a state of comparative barbarism; because, in such a case, learning (so called there) must be confined to a few, and probably to the few who can make the least practical use of it.

Where the universities are on such a plan as that, preserving their primary form, they can admit increasing numbers, the state of intellect is likely to be a more advanced one. But a more favourable symptom is where seats of learning are multiplied as society enlarges, modified in their principles as new departments of knowledge open, and as new cla.s.ses arise who wish to learn. That country is in a state of transition--of progression--where the ancient universities are honoured for as much as they can give, while new schools arise to supply their deficiencies, and Mechanics' Inst.i.tutes, or some kindred establishments, flourish by the side of both. This state of things, this variety in the pursuit of knowledge, can exist only where there is a freedom of thought, and consequent diversity of opinion, which argues a vigorous idea of liberty.

The observer must not, however, rest satisfied with ascertaining the proportion of the means of education to the people who have to be educated. He must mark the objects for which learning is pursued. The two most strongly contrasted cases which can be found are probably those of Germany and (once more) the United States. In the United States, it is well known, a provision of university education is made as ample as that of schools for an earlier stage; yet no one pretends that a highly finished education is to be looked for in that country. The cause is obvious. In a young nation, the great common objects of life are entered upon earlier, and every preparatory process is gone through in a more superficial manner. Seats of learning are numerous and fully attended, both in Germany and America, and they testify in each to a pervading desire of knowledge. Here the agreement ends. The German student may, without being singular, remain within the walls of his college till time silvers his hairs; or he has even been known to pa.s.s eighteen years among his books, without once crossing the threshold of his study. The young American, meanwhile, satisfied at the end of three years that he knows as much as his neighbours, settles in a home, engages in farming or commerce, and plunges into what alone he considers the business of life. Each of these pursues his appropriate objects: each is right in his own way: but the difference of pursuit indicates a wider difference of sentiment between the two countries than the abundance of the means of learning in each indicates a resemblance. The observer must therefore mark, not only what and how many are the seats of learning, but who frequent them; whether there are many, past the season of youth, who make study the business of their lives; or whether all are of that cla.s.s who regard study merely as a part of the preparation which they are ordained to make for the accomplishment of the commonest aims of life.

He can scarcely take his evening walk in the precincts of a university without observing a difference so wide as this.

The great importance of the fact lies in this,--that increase of knowledge is necessary to the secure enlargement of freedom. Germany may not, it is true, require learning in her youth for political purposes, but because learning has become the taste, the characteristic honour of the nation; but this knowledge will infallibly work out, sooner or later, her political regeneration. America requires knowledge in her sons because her political existence itself depends upon their mental competency. The two countries will probably approximate gradually towards a sympathy which is at present out of the question. As America becomes more fully peopled, a literature will grow up within her, and study will a.s.sume its place among the chief objects of life. The great ideas which are the employment of the best minds of Germany must work their way out into action; and new and immediately practical kinds of knowledge will mingle themselves, more and more largely, with those to which she has been, in times past, devoted. The two countries may thus fall into a sympathetic correspondence on the mighty subjects of human government and human learning, and the grand idea of liberty may be made more manifest in the one, and disciplined and enriched in the other.

One great subject of observation and speculation remains--the objects and form of Persecution for Opinion in each country. Persecution for opinion is always going on among a people enlightened enough to entertain any opinions at all. There must always be, in such a nation, some who have gone further in research than others, and who, in making such an advance, have overstepped the boundaries of popular sympathy.

The existence and sufferings of such are not to be denied because there are no fires at the stake, and no organized and authorized Inquisition, and because formal excommunication is gone out of fas.h.i.+on. Persecution puts on other forms as ages elapse; but it is not extinct. It can be inflicted out of the province of law, as well as through it; by a neighbourhood as well as from the Vatican. A wise and honest man may be wounded through his social affections, and in his domestic relations, as effectually as by flames, fetters, and public ignominy. There are wise and good persons in every civilized country, who are undergoing persecution in one form or another every day.

Is it for precocity in science? or for certain opinions in politics? or for a peculiar mode of belief in the Christian religion, or unbelief of it? or for champions.h.i.+p of an oppressed cla.s.s? or for new views in morals? or, for fresh inventions in the arts, apparently interfering with old-established interests? or for bold philosophical speculation?

Who suffers arbitrary infliction, in short, and how, for any mode of thinking, and of faithful action upon thought? An observer would reject whatever he might be told of the paternal government of a prince, if he saw upon a height a fortress in which men were suffering _carcere duro_ for political opinions. In like manner, whatever a nation may tell him of its love of liberty should go for little if he sees a virtuous man's children taken from him on the ground of his holding an unusual religious belief; or citizens mobbed for a.s.serting the rights of negroes; or moralists treated with public scorn for carrying out allowed principles to their ultimate issues; or scholars oppressed for throwing new light into the sacred text; or philosophers denounced for bringing fresh facts to the surface of human knowledge, whether they seem to agree or not with long-established suppositions.

The kind and degree of infliction for opinion which is possible, and is practised in the time and place, will indicate to the observer the degree of imperfection in the popular idea of liberty. This is a kind of fact easy to ascertain, and worthy of all attention.

CHAPTER V.

PROGRESS.

”'Tis the sublime of man, Our noontide majesty, to know ourselves Parts and proportions of one wondrous whole!

This fraternizes man, this const.i.tutes Our charities and bearings.”