itants are deprived of almost every accommodation that can render life tolerable or secure. Their utmost industry scarcely suffices for their support. The women and children lean with an insupportable weight upon the efforts of the man, so that a large family has in the lower orders of life become a proverbial expression for an uncommon degree of poverty and wretchedness. If sickness or some of those casualties which are perpetually incident to an active and laborious life, be added to these burdens, the distress is greater.

It seems to be agreed that in England there is less wretchedness and distress than in most of the kingdoms of the continent. In England the poor rates amount to the sum of two millions sterling per annum. It has been calculated that one person in seven of the inhabitants of this country derives at some period of his life assistance from this fund. If to this we add the persons who, from pride, a spirit of independence, or the want of a legal settlement, though in equal distress, receive no such assistance, the proportion will be considerably increased.

I lay no stress upon the accuracy of this calculation; the general fact is sufficient to give us an idea of the greatness of the abuse. The consequences that result are placed beyond the reach of contradiction. A perpetual struggle with the evils of poverty, if frequently ineffectual, must necessarily render many of the sufferers desperate. A painful feeling of their oppressed situation will itself deprive them of the power of surmounting it. The superiority of the rich, being thus unmercifully exercised, must inevitably expose them to reprisals; and the poor man will be induced to regard the state of society as a state of war, an unjust combination, not for protecting every man in his rights and securing to him the means of existence, but for engrossing all its advantages to a few favored individuals, and reserving for the portion of the rest, want, dependence, and misery.

A second source of those destructive passions by which the peace of society is interrupted, is to be found in the luxury, the pageantry, and magnificence with which enormous wealth is usually accompanied. Human beings are capable of encountering with cheerfulness considerable hardships, when those hardships are impartially shared with the rest of society, and they are not insulted with the spectacle of indolence and ease in others, no way deserving of greater

advantages than themselves. But it is a bigger aggravation of their own calamity, to have the privileges of others forced on their observation, and, while they are perpetually and vainly endeavoring to secure for themselves and their families the poorest conveniences, to find others reveling in the fruits of their labors. This aggravation is assiduously administered to them under most of the political establishments at present in existence. There is a numerous class of individuals who, though rich, have neither brilliant talents nor sublime virtues; and however highly they may prize their education, their affability, their superior polish, and the elegance of their manners, have a secret consciousness that they possess nothing by which they can so securely assert their preeminence and keep their inferiors at a distance, as the splendor of their equipage, the magnificence of their retinue, and the sumptuousness of their entertainments. The poor man is struck with this exhibition; he feels his own miseries; he knows how unwearied are his efforts to obtain a slender pittance of this prodigal waste; and he mistakes opulence for felicity. He cannot persuade himself that an embroidered garment may frequently cover an aching heart.

2. Of Perfectibility

Lastly, man is perfectible. This proposition needs some explanation.

By perfectible it is not meant that he is capable of being brought to perfection. But the word seems sufficiently adapted to express the faculty of being continually made better and receiving perpetual improvements; and in this sense it is here to be understood. This term, perfectible, thus explained, not only does not imply the capacity of being brought to perfection, but stands in express opposition to it. If we could arrive at perfection, there would be an end of our improvement. There is however one thing of great importance that it does imply every perfection or excellence that human beings are competent to conceive, human beings, unless in cases that are palpably and unequivocally excluded by the structure of their frame, are competent to attain.

An opinion has been extensively entertained, "that the differences of the human species in different ages and countries, particularly so far as relates to moral princi

ples of conduct, are extremely insignificant and trifling; that we are deceived in this respect by distance and confounded by glare; but that in reality the virtues and vices of men, collectively taken, always have remained, and of consequence, it is said, "always will remain, nearly at the same point."

The erroneousness of this opinion will perhaps be more completely exposed by a summary recollection of the actual history of our species, than by the closest deduction of abstract reason. We will in this place simply remind the reader of the great changes which man has undergone as an intellectual being, entitling us to infer the probability of improvements not less essential to be realized in future. The conclusion to be deduced from this delineation, that his moral improvements will in some degree keep pace with his intellectual, and his actions correspond with his opinions, must depend for its force upon the train of reasoning which has already been brought forward under that head.

Such was man in his original state, and such is man as we at present behold him. Is it possible for us to contemplate what he has already done, without being impressed with a strong presentiment of the improvements he has yet to accomplish? There is no science that is not capable of additions; there is no art that may not be carried to still higher perfection. If this be true of all other sciences, why not morals? If this be true of all other arts, why not social institution? The very conception of this as possible, is in the highest degree encouraging. If we can still further demonstrate it to be a part of the natural and regular progress of mind, our conndence and our hopes will then be complete. This is the temper with which we ought to engage in the study of political truth. Let us look back, that we may profit by the experience of mankind; but let us not look back as if the wisdom of our ancestors was such as to leave no room for future improvement.

3. The Moral Effects of Aristocracy

Of all the principles of justice, there is none so material to the moral rectitude of mankind as this, that no man can be distinguished but by his personal merit. Why not endeavor to reduce to practice so simple and sublime a lesson? When a man has proved himself a benefactor to the public, when he has already by laudable preference

cultivated in himself talents which need only encouragement and public favor to bring them to maturity, let that man be honored. In a state of society where fictitious distinctions are unknown, it is possible he should not be honored. But that a man should be looked up to with servility and awe because the king has bestowed on him a spurious name, or decorated him with a ribbon, that another should wallow in luxury because his ancestor three centuries ago bled in the quarrel of Lancaster or York; do we imagine that these iniquities can be practiced without injury? Let those who entertain this opinion converse a little with the lower order of mankind. They will perceive that the unfortunate wretch, who with unremitted labor finds himself incapable adequately to feed and clothe the family, has a sense of injustice rankling at his heart: One whom distress has spited with the world, Is he whom tempting fiends would pitch

Lift up their hands and wonder who could
do them.
-Tragedy of Douglas.
Such is the education of the human species.
Such is the fabric of political society.

But let us suppose that their sense of injustice were less acute than it is here described, what favorable inference can be drawn from that? Is not the injustice real? If the minds of men be so withered and stupefied by the constancy with which it is practiced, that they do not feel the rigor that grinds them into nothing, how does that improve the picture?

Let us for a moment give the reins to reflection and endeavor accurately to conceive the state of mankind where justice should form the public and general principle. In that case our moral feelings would assume a firm and wholesome tone, for they would not be perpetually counteracted by examples that weaken their energy and confound their clearness. Men would be fearless because they would know that there were no legal snares lying in wait for their lives. They would be courageous because no man would be pressed to the earth that another might enjoy immoderate luxury, because every one would be secured of the just reward of his industry and prize of his exertions. Jealousy and hatred would cease, for they are the offspring of injustice. Every man would speak truth with his neighbor, there

would be no temptation to falsehood and deceit. Mind would find its level, for there would be every thing to encourage and to animate. Science would be unspeakably improved, for understanding would convert. it into a real power, no longer an ignis fatuus, shining and expiring by turns, and leading us into sloughs of sophistry, false science, and specious mistake. All men would be disposed to avow dispositions and actions; none would endeavor to suppress the just eulogium of his neighbor, for, so long as there were tongues to record, the suppression would be impossible; none fear to detect the misconduct of his neighbor, for there would be no laws converting the sincere expression of our convictions into a libel.

Let us fairly consider for a moment what is the amount of justice included in the institution of aristocracy. I am born, suppose, a Polish prince with an income of $300,000 per annum. You are born a manorial serf or a Creolian negro, attached to the soil, and transferable by barter or otherwise to twenty successive lords. In vain shall be your most generous efforts and your unwearied industry to free yourself from the intolerable yoke. Doomed by the law of your birth to wait at the gates of the palace you must never enter, to sleep under a ruined weather-beaten roof, while your master sleeps under canopies of state, to feed on putrefied offals while the world is ransacked for delicacies for his table, to labor without moderation or limit under a parching sun while he basks in perpetual sloth, and to be rewarded at last with contempt, reprimand, stripes, and mutilation.

In fact the case is worse than this. I could endure all that injustice or caprice could inflict, provided I possessed in the resource of a firm mind the power of looking down with pity on my tyrant, and of knowing that I had that within, that sacred character of truth, virtue, and fortitude, which all his injustice could not reach. But a slave and a serf are condemned to stupidity and vice, as well as to calamity.

Is all this nothing? Is all this necessary for the maintenance of civil order? Let it be recollected that for this distinction there is not the smallest foundation in the nature of things; that, as we have already said, there is no particular mould for the construction of lords; and that they are born neither better nor worse than the poorest of their dependents. It is this structure of aristocracy in all its sanctuaries and fragments against which reason and philosophy bave declared war. It is alike unjust, whether we consider it in the castes of India, the villainage of the feudal system, or the despotism of the patricians of ancient Rome dragging their debtors into personal servitude to expiate loans they could not repay. Mankind will never be in an eminent degree virtuous and happy till each man shall possess that portion of distinction and no more, to which he is entitled by his personal merits. The dissolution of aristocracy is equally the interest of the oppressor and the oppressed. The one will be delivered from the listlessness of tyranny, and the other from the brutalizing operation of servitude. How long shall we be told in vain, "that mediocrity of fortune is the true rampart of personal happiness”?

ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

WILLIAM COWPER

[Extracts from Letters, 1790-1793]
I

The French, who like all lively folks are extreme in every thing, are such in their zeal for freedom; and if it were possible to make so noble a cause ridiculous, their manner of promoting it could not fail to do so. Princes and peers reduced to plain gentlemanship, and gentles reduced to a level

with their own lackeys, are excesses of which they will repent hereafter. Differences of rank and subordination are, I believe, of God's appointment, and consequently essential to the well-being of society: but what we mean by fanaticism in religion is exactly that which animated their polities; and unless time should sober them, they will, after all, be an unhappy people. Perhaps it deserves not much to be wondered at, that at their first escape from tyrannic shackles they should act extravagantly and treat their kings as they sometimes treated their idols. To these, however, they are recon

ciled in due time again, but their respect for monarchy is at an end. They want nothing now but a little English sobriety, and that they want extremely; I heartily wish them some wit in their anger, for it were great pity that so many millions should be miserable for want of it.

II

You can hardly have sent me intelligence that would have gratified me more than that of my two dear friends, Sir John and Lady Throckmorton, having departed from Paris two days before the terrible 10th of August. I have had many anxious thoughts on their account; and am truly happy to learn they have sought a more peaceful region, while it was yet permitted them to do so. They will not, I trust, revisit those scenes of tumult and horror while they shall continue to merit that description. We are here all of one mind respecting the cause in which the Parisians are engaged; wish them a free people, and as happy as they can wish themselves. But their conduct has not always pleased us: we are shocked at their sanguinary proceedings, and begin to fear, myself in particular, that they will prove themselves unworthy, because incapable of enjoying it, of the inestimable blessings of liberty. My daily toast is, Sobriety and Freedom to the French; for they seem as destitute of the former as they are eager to secure the latter.

III

This has been a time in which I have heard no news but of the shocking kind, and the public news is as shocking as any. War I perceive-war in procinet-and I cannot but consider it as a prelude to war at home. The national burden is already nearly intolerable, and the expenses of the war will make it quite so. We have many spirits in the country eager to revolt, and to act a French tragedy on the stage of England. Alas! poor Louis! I will tell you what the French have done. They have made me weep for a King of France, which I never thought to do, and they have made me sick of the very name of liberty, which I never thought to be. Oh, how I detest them! Coxcombs, as they are, on this occasion as they ever are on all. Apes of the Spartan and the Roman character, with neither the virtue nor the good sense that belonged to it.

Is this treason at Eartham? I hope not. If it is, I must be a traitor.

EXPERIENCES OF AN ENGLISH IDEALIST

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

[From The Prelude, Books IX-XI; written 1799-1805; published 1850]

1. First View of the Revolution 1 Through Paris lay my readiest course. and there

Sojourning a few days, I visited

In haste, each spot of old or recent fame,
The latter chiefly; from the field of Mars
Down to the suburbs of St. Antony,
And from Mont Martre southward to the
Dome

Of Geneviève. In both her clamorous Halls,
The National Synod and the Jacobins,
I saw the Revolutionary Power
Toss like a ship at anchor, rocked by storms;
The Arcades I traversed, in the Palace huge
Of Orleans; coasted round and round the
line

Of Tavern, Brothel, Gaming-house, and
Shop,

Great rendezvous of worst and best, the walk Of all who had a purpose, or had not;

I stared and listened, with a stranger's ears, To Hawkers and Haranguers, hubbub wild! And hissing Factionists with ardent eyes, In knots, or pairs, or single. Not a look Hope takes, or Doubt or Fear is forced to

wear,

But seemed there present; and I scanned them all,

Watched every gesture uncontrollable,
Of anger, and vexation, and despite,
All side by side, and struggling face to face,
With gaiety and dissolute idleness.

Where silent zephyrs sported with the dust

Of the Bastille, I sate in the open sun,
And from the rubbish gathered up a stone,
And pocketed the relic, in the guise
Of an enthusiast; yet, in honest truth,
I looked for something that I could not find,
Affecting more emotion than I felt;
For 'tis most certain, that these various
sights,

However potent their first shock, with me

1 Wordsworth visited France in November, 1791. and remained until December, 1792, an eye witness of some of the most stirring scenes of the Revolution.

Appeared to recompense the traveler's pains Less than the painted Magdalene of Le Brun,

A beauty exquisitely wrought, with hair Disheveled, gleaming eyes, and rueful cheek Pale and bedropped with everflowing tears. [Book IX, lines 42-80.]

2. An Idealist of the Revolution
Meantime, day by day, the roads
Were crowded with the bravest youth of
France,

And all the promptest of her spirits, linked
In gallant soldiership, and posting on
To meet the war upon her frontier bounds.
Yet at this very moment do tears start
Into mine eyes: I do not say I weep-

I wept not then,—but tears have dimmed my sight,

In memory of the farewells of that time,
Domestic severings, female fortitude
At dearest separation, patriot love
And self-devotion, and terrestrial hope,
Encouraged with a martyr's confidence;
Even files of strangers merely seen but once,
And for a moment, men from far with sound
Of music, martial tunes, and banners spread,
Entering the city, here and there a face,
Or person singled out among the rest,
Yet still a stranger and beloved as such;
Even by these passing spectacles my heart
Was oftentimes uplifted, and they seemed
Arguments sent from Heaven to prove the

cause

Good, pure, which no one could stand up against,

Who was not lost, abandoned, selfish, proud,
Mean, miserable, wilfully depraved,
Hater perverse of equity and truth.

Among that band of Officers was one,
Already hinted at,1 of other mould—
A patriot, thence rejected by the rest,
And with an oriental loathing spurned,
As of a different caste. A meeker man
Than this lived never, nor a more benign,
Meek though enthusiastic. Injuries
Made him more gracious, and his nature
then

Did breathe its sweetness out most sensibly,
As aromatic flowers on Alpine turf,
When foot hath crushed them. He through
the events

Of that great change wandered in perfect faith,

1 Michael Beaupuy, one of the true knights errant of the Revolution, met by Wordsworth during his sojourn in Blois.

As through a book, an old romance, or tale
Of Fairy, or some dream of actions wrought
Behind the summer clouds. By birth he
ranked

With the most noble, but unto the poor
Among mankind he was in service bound,
As by some tie invisible, oaths professed
To a religious order. Man he loved
As man; and, to the mean and the obscure,
And all the homely in their homely works
Transferred a courtesy which had no air
Of condescension; but did rather seem
A passion and a gallantry, like that
Which he, a soldier, in his idler day
Had paid to woman: somewhat vain he was,
Or seemed so, yet it was not vanity,
But fondness, and a kind of radiant joy
Diffused around him, while he was intent
On works of love or freedom, or revolved
Complacently the progress of a cause,
Whereof he was a part: yet this was meek
And placid, and took nothing from the man
That was delightful. Oft in solitude
With him did I discourse about the end
Of civil government, and its wisest forms;
Of ancient loyalty, and chartered rights,
Custom and habit, novelty and change;
Of self-respect, and virtue in the few
For patrimonial honor set apart,
And ignorance in the laboring multitude.
For he, to all intolerance indisposed,
Balanced these contemplations in his mind;
And I, who at that time was scarcely dipped
Into the turmoil, bore a sounder judgment
Than later days allowed; carried about me,
With less alloy to its integrity,

The experience of past ages, as, through help

Of books and common life, it makes sure

way

To youthful minds, by objects over near
Not pressed upon, nor dazzled or misled
By struggling with the crowd for present
ends.

But though not deaf, nor obstinate to find
Error without excuse upon the side
Of them who strove against us, more delight
We took, and let this freely be confessed,
In painting to ourselves the miseries
Of royal courts, and that voluptuous life
Unfeeling, where the man who is of soul
The meanest thrives the most; where dig-
nity,

True personal dignity, abideth not;
A light, a cruel, and vain world cut off
From the natural inlets of just sentiment,
From lowly sympathy and chastening truth;