Part 28
When the white and red roses were the symbols of faction in England, and when the contest between Baliol and Bruce made way for invasion and tyranny in Scotland, the destruction of armies and of cities, public executions, plunder and confiscations, were the least evils that they occasioned. The annihilation of public virtue and private confidence; the exasperation of hereditary hatred; the corrupting the milk of human kindness, and breaking asunder every sacred tie by which man and man are held together: all these dreadful results of civil discord are the means of visiting the sins of civil war on the third and fourth generation of those who have kindled it. Yet the extinction of charity and kindness in dissensions like these, is not to be compared to that which is the consequence of an entire subversion of the accustomed form of government. Attachment to a monarch or line of royalty, aims only at a single object, and is at worst loyalty and fidelity misplaced: yet war once begun on such a motive, loosens the bands of society, and opens to the ambitious and the rapacious the way to power and plunder. Still, however, the laws, the customs, and the frame of government stand where they did. When the contest is decided, and the successful competitor established, if the monarch possesses ability, and courts popularity, he, or at any rate, his immediate successor, may rule happily, and reconcile those who were the enemies, not of his place, but of his person. The mighty image of sovereign power may change its “head of gold” for one of silver; but still it stands firm on its basis, supported by all those whom it protects: but when thrown from its pedestal by an entire subversion of government, the wreck is far more fatal and the traces indelible. Those who on each side support the heirs claiming a disputed crown, mean equally to be faithful and loyal to their rightful sovereign; and are thus, though in opposition to each other, actuated by the same sentiment. But when the spirit of extermination walks forth over prostrate thrones and altars, ages cannot efface the traces of its progress. A contest for sovereignty is a whirlwind, that rages fiercely while it continues, and deforms the face of external nature. New houses, however, replace those it has demolished; trees grow up in the place of those destroyed; the landscape laughs, the birds sing, and every thing returns to its accustomed course. But a total subversion of a long established government is like an earthquake, that not only overturns the works of man, but changes the wonted course and operation of the very elements; makes a gulf in the midst of a fertile plain, casts a mountain into a lake, and in line, produces such devastation as it is not in the power of man to remedy. Indeed, it is too obvious that, even in our own country, that fire which produced the destruction of the monarchy, still glows among the ashes of extinguished factions; but that portion of the community who carried with them across the Atlantic, the repugnance to submission, which grew out of an indefinite love of liberty, might be compared to the Persian Magi. Like them, when forced to fly from their native country, they carried with them a portion of the hallowed fire, which continued to be the object of their secret worship. Those who look upon the revolution, of which this spirit was the prime mover, as tending to advance the general happiness, no doubt consider these opinions as a rich inheritance, productive of the best effects. Many wise and worthy persons have thought and still continue to think so. There is as yet no room for decision, the experiment not being completed. Their mode of government, anomalous, and hitherto inefficient, has not yet acquired the firmness of cohesion, or the decisive tone of authority.
The birth of this great empire is a phenomenon in the history of mankind. There is nothing like it in reality or fable, but the birth of Minerva, who proceeded full armed and full grown out of the head of the thunderer. Population, arts, sciences, and laws, extension of territory, and establishment of power, have been gradual and progressive in other countries, where the current of dominion went on increasing as it flowed, by conquests or other acquisitions, which it swallowed like rivulets in its course; but here it burst forth like a torrent, spreading itself at once into an expanse, vast as their own Superior lake, before the eyes of the passing generation which witnessed its birth. Yet it is wonderful how little talent or intellectual pre-eminence of any kind has appeared in this new-born world, which seems already old in worldly craft, and whose children are indeed “wiser in their generation than the children of light.” Self-interest, eagerly grasping at pecuniary advantages, seems to be the ruling principle of this great continent.
Love of country, that amiable and noble sentiment, which by turns exalts and softens the human mind, nourishes enthusiasm, and inspires alike the hero and sage, to defend and adorn the sacred land of their nativity, is a principle which hardly exists there. An American loves his country, or prefers it rather, because its rivers are wide and deep, and abound in fish; because he has the forests to retire to, if the god of gainful commerce should prove unpropitious on the shore. He loves it because if his negro is disrespectful or disobedient, he can sell him and buy another; while if he himself is disobedient to the laws of his country, or disrespectful to the magistracy appointed to enforce them, that shadow of authority, without power to do good, or prevent evil, must possess its soul in patience.
We love our country because we honour our ancestors; because it is endeared to us not only by early habit, but by attachments to the spots hallowed by their piety, their heroism, their genius, or their public spirit. We honour it as the scene of noble deeds, the nurse of sages, bards, and heroes. The very aspect and features of this blest asylum of liberty, science, and religion, warm our hearts, and animate our imaginations. Enthusiasm kindles at the thoughts of what we have been, and what we are. It is the last retreat, the citadel, in which all that is worth living for is concentrated. Among the other ties which were broken, by the detachment of America from us, that fine ligament, which binds us to the tombs of our ancestors, (and seems to convey to us the spirit and the affections we derive from them) was dissolved: and with it perished all generous emulation. Fame,
“That spur which the clear mind doth raise To live laborious nights and painful days,”
has no votaries among the students of Poor Richard’s almanack, the great _Pharos_ of the states. The land of their ancestors, party hostility has taught them to regard with scorn and hatred. That in which they live calls up no images of past glory or excellence. Neither hopeful nor desirous of that after-existence, which has been most coveted by those who do things worth recording, they not only live, but thrive; and that is quite enough. A man no longer says of himself with exultation, “I belong to the land where Milton sung the song of seraphims, and Newton traced the paths of light; where Alfred established his throne in wisdom, and where the palms and laurels of renown shade the tombs of the mighty and the excellent.” Thus dissevered from recollections so dear, and so ennobling, what ties are substituted in their places? Can he regard with tender and reverential feelings, a land that has not only been deprived of its best ornaments, but become a receptacle for the outcasts of society from every nation in Europe? Is there a person whose dubious or turbulent character has made him unwelcome or suspected in society, he goes to America, where he knows no one, and is of no one known; and where he can with safety assume any character. All that tremble with the consciousness of undetected crimes, or smart from the consequence of unchecked follies; fraudulent bankrupts, unsuccessful adventurers, restless projectors, or seditious agitators, this great Limbus Patrum has room for them all; and too it they fly in the day of their calamity. With such a heterogeneous mixture a transplanted Briton of the original stock, a true old American, may live in charity, but never can assimilate. Who can, with the cordiality due to that sacred appellation, “my country,” apply it to that land of Hivites and Girgashites, where one cannot travel ten miles, in a stretch, without meeting detachments of different nations, torn from their native soil and first affections, and living aliens in a strange land, where no one seems to form part of an attached connected whole.
To those enlarged minds, who have got far beyond the petty consideration of country and kindred, to embrace the whole human race, a land, whose population is like Joseph’s coat, of many colours, must be a peculiarly suitable abode. For in the endless variety of the patchwork, of which society is composed, a liberal philosophic mind might meet with the specimens of all those tongues and nations which he comprehends in the wide circle of his enlarged philanthropy.
CHAP. LXIV.
Reflections continued.
THAT some of the leaders of the hostile party in America acted upon liberal and patriotic views, cannot be doubted. There were many, indeed, of whom the public good was the leading principle; and to these the cause was a noble one: yet even these little foresaw the result. Had they known what a cold selfish character, what a dereliction of religious principle, what furious factions, and wild unsettled notions of government, were to be the consequence of this utter alienation from the parent state, they would have shrunk back from the prospect. Those fine minds who, nurtured in the love of science and of elegance, looked back to the land of their forefathers for models of excellence, and drank inspiration from the production of the British muse, could not but feel this rupture as “a wrench from all we love, from all we are.” They, too, might wish, when time had ripened their growing empire, to assert that independence which, when mature in strength and knowledge, we claim even of the parents we love and honour. But to snatch it, with a rude and bloody grasp, outraged the feelings of those gentler children of the common parent. Mildness of manners, refinement of mind, and all the softer virtues that spring up in the cultivated paths of social life, nurtured by generous affections, were undoubtedly to be found on the side of the unhappy royalists; whatever superiority in vigour and intrepidity might be claimed by their persecutors. Certainly, however necessary the ruling powers might find it to carry their system of exile into execution, it has occasioned to the country an irreparable privation.
When the edict of Nantz gave the scattering blow to the protestants of France, they carried with them their arts, their frugal regular habits, and that portable mine of wealth which is the portion of patient industry. The chasm produced in France, by the departure of so much humble virtue, and so many useful arts, has never been filled.
What the loss of the Huguenots was to commerce and manufactures in France, that of the loyalists was to religion, literature, and amenity, in America. The silken threads were drawn out of the mixed web of society, which has ever since been comparatively coarse and homely. The dawning light of elegant science was quenched in universal dullness. No ray has broke through the general gloom except the phosphoric lightnings of her cold-blooded philosophers, the deistical Franklin, the legitimate father of the American ‘age of calculation.’ So well have “the children of his soul” profited by the frugal lessons of this apostle of Plutus, that we see a new empire blest in its infancy with all the saving virtues which are the usual portion of cautious and feeble age; and we behold it with the same complacent surprise which fills our minds at the sight of a young miser.
Forgive me, shade of the accomplished Hamilton[25], while all that is lovely in virtue, all that is honourable in valour, and all that is admirable in talent, conspire to lament the early setting of that western star; and to deck the tomb of worth and genius with wreaths of immortal bloom.
“Thee Columbia long shall weep; Ne’er again thy likeness see?”
fain would I add,
“Long her strains in sorrows steep, Strains of immortality.”—_Gray._
but alas!
“They have no poet, and they die.”—_Pope._
His character was a bright exception; yet, after all, an exception that only confirms the rule. What must be the state of that country where worth, talent, and the disinterested exercise of every faculty of a vigorous and exalted mind, were in vain devoted to the public good; where, indeed, they only marked out their possessor for a victim to the shrine of faction? Alas! that a compliance with the laws of false honour, (the only blemish of a stainless life,) should be so dearly expiated!
Footnote 25:
General Hamilton, killed in a duel, into which he was forced by Aaron Burr, Vice-President of Congress, at New-York, in 1806.
Yet the deep sense expressed by all parties of this general loss, seems to promise a happier day at some future period, when this chaos of jarring elements shall be reduced by some pervading and governing mind into a settled form.
But much must be done, and suffered, before this change can take place. There never can be much improvement till there are union and subordination; till those strong local attachments are formed, which are the basis of patriotism, and the bonds of social attachment. But, while such a wide field is open to the spirit of adventure; and, while the facility of removal encourages that restless and ungovernable spirit, there is little hope of any material change. There is in America a double principle of fermentation, which continues to impede the growth of the arts and sciences, and of those gentler virtues of social life, which were blasted by the breath of popular fury. On the sea-side there was a perpetual importation of lawless and restless persons, who have no other path to the notoriety they covet, but that which leads through party violence; and of the want of that local attachment, I have been speaking of, there can be no stronger proof, than the passion for emigration so frequent in America.
Among those who are neither beloved in the vicinity of their place of abode, nor kept stationary by any gainful pursuit, it is incredible how light a matter will afford a pretext for a removal.
Here is one great motive, for good conduct and decorous manners, obliterated. The good opinion of his neighbours is of little consequence to him, who can scarce be said to have any. If a man keeps free of those crimes which a regard for the public safety compels the magistrate to punish, he finds shelter in every forest from the scorn and dislike incurred by petty trespasses on society. There all who are unwilling to submit to the restraints of law and religion, may live unchallenged, at a distance from the public exercise of either. There all whom want has made desperate, whether it be the want of abilities, of character, or the means to live, are sure to take shelter. This habit of removing furnishes, however, a palliation for some evils, for the facility with which they change residence, becomes the means of ridding the community of members too turbulent or too indolent to be quiet or useful. It is a kind of voluntary exile, where those whom government want power and efficiency to banish, very obligingly banish themselves; thus preventing the explosion which might be occasioned by their continuing mingled in the general mass.
It is owing to this salutary discharge of peccant humours that matters go on so quietly as they do, under a government which is neither feared nor loved, by the community it rules. These removals are incredibly frequent; for the same family, flying as it were before the face of legal authority and civilization, are often known to remove farther and farther back into the woods, every fifth or sixth year, as the population begins to draw nearer. By this secession from society, a partial reformation is in some cases effected. A person incapable of regular industry and compliance with its established customs, will certainly do least harm, when forced to depend on his personal exertions. When a man places himself in the situation of Robinson Crusoe, with the difference of a wife and children for that solitary hero’s cats and parrots, he must of necessity make exertions like his, or perish. He becomes not a regular husbandman, but a hunter, with whom agriculture is but a secondary consideration. His Indian corn, and potatoes, which constitute the main part of his crop, are, in due time, hoed by his wife and daughters; while the axe and the gun are the only implements he willingly handles.
Fraud and avarice are the vices of society, and do not thrive in the shade of the forest. The hunter, like the sailor, has little thought of coveting or amassing. He does not forge, nor cheat, nor steal; as such an unprincipled person must have done in the world, where, instead of wild beasts, he must have preyed upon his fellows; and he does not drink much, because liquor is not attainable. But he becomes coarse, savage, and totally negligent of all the forms and decencies of life. He grows wild and unsocial. To him a neighbour is an encroacher. He has learnt to do without one; and he knows not how to yield to him in any point of mutual accommodation. He cares neither to give nor take assistance, and finds all the society he wants in his own family. Selfish from the overindulged love of ease and liberty, he sees in a new comer merely an abridgment of his range, and an interloper in that sport on which he would much rather depend for subsistence than on the habits of regular industry. What can more flatter an imagination warm with native benevolence, and animated by romantic enthusiasm, than the image of insulated self-dependant families, growing up in those primeval retreats, remote from the corruptions of the world, and dwelling amidst the prodigality of nature. Nothing, however, can be more anti-Arcadian. There no crook is seen, no pipe is heard, no lamb bleats, for the best possible reason, because there are no sheep. No pastoral strains awake the sleeping echoes, doomed to sleep on till the bull-frog, the wolf, and the Quackawarry[26] begin their nightly concert. Seriously, it is not a place that can, in any instance, constitute happiness. When listless indolence or lawless turbulence fly to shades the most tranquil, or scenes the most beautiful, they degrade nature instead of improving or enjoying her charms. Active diligence, a sense of our duty to the source of all good, and kindly affections towards our fellow-creatures, with a degree of self-command and mental improvement, can alone produce the gentle manners that insure rural peace, or enable us, with intelligence and gratitude, to “rejoice in nature’s joys.”
Footnote 26:
Quackawarry is the Indian name of a bird, which flies about in the night, making a noise similar to the sound of its name.
CHAP. LXV.
Sketch of the Settlement of Pennsylvania.
FAIN would I turn from this gloomy and uncertain prospect, so disappointing to philanthropy, and so subversive of all the flattering hopes and sanguine predictions of the poets and philosophers, who were wont to look forward to a new Atalantis,
“Famed for arts and laws derived from Jove,”
in this western world. But I cannot quit the fond retrospect of what once was in one favoured spot, without indulging a distant hope of what may emerge from this dark disordered state.
The melancholy Cowley, the ingenious bishop of Cloyne, and many others, alike eminent for virtue and for genius, looked forward to this region of liberty as a soil, where peace, science, and religion could have room to take root and flourish unmolested. In those primeval solitudes, enriched by the choicest bounties of nature, they might (as these benevolent speculators thought) extend their shelter to tribes no longer savage, rejoicing in the light of evangelic truth, and exalting science. Little did these amiable projectors know how much is to be done before the human mind, debased by habitual vice, and cramped by artificial manners in the old world, can wash out its stains and resume its simplicity in a new; nor did they know through how many gradual stages of culture the untutored intellect of savage tribes must pass before they become capable of comprehending those truths which to us habit has rendered obvious, or which at any rate we have talked of so familiarly, that we think we comprehend them. These projectors of felicity were not so ignorant of human nature, as to expect change of place could produce an instantaneous change of character; but they hoped to realize an Utopia, where justice should be administered on the purest principles; from which venality should be banished, and where mankind should, through the paths of truth and uprightness, arrive at the highest attainable happiness in a state not meant for perfection. They “talked the style of gods,” making very little account of “chance and sufferance.” Their speculations of the result remind me of what is recorded in some ancient writer, of a project for building a magnificent temple to Diana in some one of the Grecian states. A reward was offered to him who should erect, at the public cost, with most taste and ingenuity, a structure which should do honour both to the goddess and her worshippers. Several candidates appeared. The first that spoke was a self-satisfied young man, who, in a long florid harangue, described the pillars, the porticoes, and the proportions of this intended building, seeming all the while more intent on the display of his elocution, than on the subject of his discourse. When he had finished, a plain elderly man came from behind him, and leaning forwards, said in a deep hollow voice, “All that he has said, I will do.”
William Penn was the man, born to give “a local habitation and a name,” to all that had hitherto only floated in the day-dreams of poets and philosophers.
To qualify him for the legislator of a new-born sect, with all the innocence and all the helplessness of infancy, many circumstances concurred, that could scarce ever be supposed to happen at once to the same person. Born to fortune and distinction, with a mind powerful and cultivated, he knew, experimentally, all the advantages to be derived from wealth or knowledge, and could not be said ignorantly to despise them. He had, in his early days, walked far enough into the paths of folly and dissipation, to know human character in all its varieties, and to say experimentally, all is vanity. With a vigorous mind, an ardent imagination, and a heart glowing with the warmest benevolence, he appears to have been driven, by a repulsive abhorrence of the abuse of knowledge, of pleasure, and pre-eminence, which he had witnessed, into the opposite extreme; into a sect, the very first principles of which, clip the wings of fancy, extinguish ambition, and bring every struggle for superiority, the result of uncommon powers of mind, down to the dead level of tame equality; a sect that reminds one of the exclusion of poets from Plato’s fancied republic, by stripping off all the many-coloured garbs with which learning and imagination have invested the forms of ideal excellence, and reducing them to a few simple realities, arrayed as soberly as their votaries.
This sect, which brings mankind to a resemblance of Thomson’s Laplanders,
“Who little pleasure know, and feel no pain,”