Part 2

The governing few are not invested with their authority by any formalities of law; nor do they obtain their station by any specific qualifications. The magistracy which they hold, appears to be neither hereditary nor elective, but contingent. The term of their continuance in power is also as indefinite and capricious, as the right by which they acquire it. One thing, however, is certain, that as a moral reputation has no influence in recommending them to the stations they fill, so the forfeiture of it in no degree weakens the stability, or abridges the duration of their power. That a government of this independent description should exist in the heart of the British empire, an _imperium in imperio_, will appear scarcely credible to my reader. He may, however, rely upon it, that the fact is as I have stated it; and if he should express his wonder, that such contempt of the sovereign authority as it eventually leads to, has not been properly resisted, he will only do what thousands have done before him.

But to return:—The laws by which the government of Fashion is administered, like the common law of England, are unwritten; and derive their force, as that does, from usage and prescription. The only code of any note among this people, is that which they distinguish by the collective appellation of the LAW of HONOUR. This extraordinary code has been defined to be—“a system of rules constructed by people of Fashion, and calculated to facilitate their intercourse with one another.” {29} Now if this definition be a just one, (and I presume it is, from the high authority by which it is given,) it will afford us no indifferent help, towards unfolding the mysteries of Fashionable jurisprudence.

It seems, then, that the _Law of Honour_, by which people of Fashion are said to be governed, is wholly and exclusively designed to make them acceptable to each other. Now, not to mention other things, persons in a Fashionable sphere cannot be strictly agreeable to each other, unless they are well dressed; nor can that intercourse which they chiefly value, be pleasantly maintained, without splendid equipages, choice wines, and sumptuous entertainments. As, therefore, the necessity of the case requires such accommodations, the _Law of Honour_, to say the least, does not look very nicely into the means by which they may have been procured. Hence it follows, by the fairest inference, that a man of Fashion is not at all the less respectable in his own circle, merely because he is what the rest of the world calls unjust. For, whatever may be the law elsewhere, a man of Fashion can owe nothing to his inferiors: and his character will therefore suffer no stain, though he should have broken his word a thousand times with the reptile that made his clothes, built his carriage, or furnished his table.

This law is also distinguished by many other features of toleration, which well account for the respect and influence that it possesses in the Fashionable World. By a spirit of accommodation, of which there is no other example, it overlooks, if it does not even encourage, a variety of actions, which in the mouth of a moralist would be absolute vices; and which, to say the truth, are scarcely deserving of a much better name. Thus, a man may debauch his tenant’s daughter, seduce the wife of his friend, and be faithless, and even brutal to his own, and yet be esteemed a man of honour, (which is the same as a man of Fashion,) and have a right to make any man fight him who says he is not. In like manner, a man may blaspheme God, and encourage his children and servants to do the same; he may neglect the interests, and squander the property, of his family; he may be a tyrant in his house, and a bully in the streets; he may lie a-bed all day, and drink and game all night; and yet be a most dutiful subject of the _Law of Honour_, and a shining character in the society of Fashion.

There is, I own, much convenience in all this, and some consistency. Persons who live only for this world, should have a proportionable latitude allowed them for the employment of their animal propensities; and the law which provides for the regulation of their conduct, should have a special reference to this consideration. Supposing, therefore, that people of Fashion ought to exist, they must have such a law as that which they possess. So that, taking the Law of Honour in this connexion, I cannot but think it a master-piece of political contrivance.

At the same time, I cannot agree with those who have been led to consider this table of Fashionable jurisprudence as deserving a place in the temple of Morality. Into this error a celebrated writer appears to have fallen, in his Treatise of Moral Philosophy. For, having defined morality to be “that science which teaches men their duty, and the reasons of it,” he proceeds to cite the _Law of Honour_ as one of the three rules by which men are governed. That respectable writer has, indeed, admitted that this law is _defective_, because it does not provide for the duties to God and to inferiors; he has also proclaimed that it is _bad_, by stating, that it allows of fornication, adultery, drunkenness, prodigality, duelling, &c. Still, however, he has rather left us to infer, that it ought wholly to be rejected, than absolutely told us so. By classing it with the law of the land and the Scriptures, he has (undesignedly no doubt) prevented its utter condemnation; and afforded ground for considering it as a moral rule, to which men owe a qualified obedience.

Having specified the sort of practices which the _Law of Honour_ allows, I shall take some brief notice of the duties which it exacts. The principal of these, and that upon which its tone and spirit are most peremptory, is the _resentment of injuries_. Now it must be observed, that the term _injury_, in the use of people of Fashion, is of a very wide and comprehensive signification. It not only means such an act of outrage as amounts to a manifest and palpable wrong, but extends to every dubious point of conduct, from which a Fashionable sophist could find scope to infer an injurious intention. Thus a sister seduced, and then abandoned, and a word or a look not satisfactorily explained, are all equally injuries; and constitute, in the spirit of this code, so many obligations to the most lively and implacable resentment. It may be, that the offended person is of a peaceable disposition, and would rather endure a moderate injury than revenge it; or he may have too much respect for the laws of the parent state, to require or accept redress in any other than the legal way; or he may know, that the offending party is a man disposed to seek a quarrel, and that he desires nothing so much as to provoke the innocent person, whom he has purposely insulted, to claim satisfaction; or, lastly, it may be, that the supposed injury is founded wholly on mistake, and that the reputed aggressor will not believe or own himself to have offended, and will therefore make no atonement. In all these cases, personal resentment might as well be waved; but this the Law of Honour positively forbids: and he who should conscientiously decline to pursue a personal quarrel, upon these, or even higher motives, might be a better father, a better husband, a better subject, and a better Christian, for so doing; but he would certainly be a worse man of honour.

It is worthy of remark, that these reputed injuries are sometimes so minute and transitory, or so remote and obscure, that, if every thing depended upon the aggressor and the aggrieved, they would either remain wholly undiscovered, or, at least, be speedily forgotten. But each of these consequences is not unfrequently defeated by the officious industry of some kind-hearted being, who, though he loves his friend too well to let him be insulted, can govern his feelings well enough to stand by and see him murdered. This is, certainly, a refinement upon the theory of friendship, which may be fairly set down among the most extraordinary achievements of the _Law of Honour_. Indeed, this bloody code has many such refinements. For, proceeding, as it does, upon principles of its own invention, it must necessarily clash with many antecedent obligations. These, however, it contrives, by the help of a little sophistry, so to supersede, that neither affinity nor attachment may impede the progress of honourable revenge: and hence we see, in compliance with its rigid edicts, the warmest friends sacrifice to resentment with as little reserve as the bitterest enemies; and that, perhaps, to settle a tavern dispute, or to avenge a play-house quarrel!

Having said so much of the principal duty enjoined by the Law of Honour, I shall offer a few observations upon the sort of punishment which it inflicts. I trust I shall be excused, if, in treating this part of my subject, I employ the term _punishment_ in a sense not strictly similar to that in which it is ordinarily used. The fact is, that this singular law makes the parties both judges in their own cause, and executioners of their own sentence. The universal award against every convicted offender is, that he shall fight a duel with the offended party. So that, if that may be set down as punishment, which is ultimate in a controversy, and which is exacted as a satisfaction to the law; death, or exposure to it, is the lowest punishment which honour inflicts upon the least offender; and the highest which it enforces upon the greatest.

And this is, I confess, a political incongruity, which I have not a little difficulty in reconciling with the good sense of many who have undertaken to defend it. The law of England has often been blamed (and I think with justice) as unreasonably sanguinary. In answer to this charge it has been said, that, though nearly two hundred offences of almost as many degrees of guilt, are made equally punishable with death; yet justice is administered with so much discretion and mercy, that the penalty is inflicted only on a few. Feeble as this excuse is, for a law that deals in blood, it would be well for the law of Honour if it admitted of such a palliation. But the truth is, that in the latter case there is nothing to abate the demand for blood—the prosecution of every difference is both summary and vindictive: there is no tribunal to enquire into the original matter of the quarrel; no judicature to determine the real merits of the controversy: if the judgment be erroneous, there is no court of equity to reverse the verdict; if rigorous, there is no arm of mercy to withdraw the victim from suffering.

It must be evident from this view which has been presented of the law, that, as an injury may be created by the most trivial incident, so punishment may be inflicted with the most preposterous and unequal retribution. I cannot better illustrate the frivolous foundation upon which an injury may be erected, than by adverting to an occurrence of very recent date, and of sufficient notoriety in the Fashionable World. Two men of Fashion, incensed against each other by an accidental quarrel between their respective dogs, dropped, in their warmth, certain expressions which rendered them amenable to the bloody code: duel was declared indispensable: and in less than twelve hours, one of the two was dispatched into eternity, and the other narrowly escaped the same fate. {42}

The inequality of the retribution is, indeed, an inevitable consequence of that article of the code which compels men of Fashion, without distinction, to decide their differences by fighting a duel. It results from this promiscuous injunction, that the peaceable man must fight the quarrelsome; that the heir of a noble family must meet the ruined esquire; and that the man who has never drawn a trigger in his life, must encounter the Fashionable ruffian, who has all his life been doing little else. This inequality is further manifest, from the different circumstances and connexions of life under which the combatants may be found. The son of many hopes may be matched against the worthless prodigal; the virtuous parent against the unprincipled seducer; and the man of industry, usefulness, and beneficence, against the miscreant who only lives to pamper his lusts, and to corrupt his fellow-creatures. Nothing has here been said of the indiscriminate manner in which judgment is executed. The innocent and the guilty must both be involved in the same awful contingency; each must put his life to hazard: and the probability is, that, if one of the two should fall, it will be the man whose conduct least entitled him to punishment, and whose life was most worth preserving.

I forbear to enter further into the system of Fashionable government, or to meddle with the inferior points of legislation. What has been said of the Law of Honour, will apply, with little variation, to every other institution of minor concern. To facilitate polite intercourse, and to exclude, as much as may be, duties to God and inferiors, is a considerable object in every regulation; and it is but justice to this people to say, that, in this respect, they are at once consistent and successful.

CHAP. III.

RELIGION AND MORALITY.

IN attempting to give an account of the _Religion_ of the people of Fashion, I feel myself not a little embarrassed. It were, indeed, very much to be wished, that one of their own number would, in the name of the rest, draw up a confession of their faith. This is, perhaps, expecting too much; and yet I cannot but think that it would be a very good employment for some of those modish priests, who pass so much of their time in the circles of Fashion. They give every proof that they have leisure for the undertaking: and the access which they have to these people, by attending them so familiarly at their theatres, their operas, and their routs, must render them perfectly masters of the subject. However, as I am not aware that any thing of this nature is yet taken in hand, I shall lay before my reader such observations as I have been able to make; partly because it seems necessary to the perfection of my work, that something should be said on the subject, and partly because I should be unwilling to afford by my silence any ground for suspicion—that there is _no_ religion in the Fashionable World.

I am, then, in the first place, decidedly of opinion, that people of Fashion are not _Atheists_; though I am sufficiently aware, that some strict religionists have entertained an opposite conviction. It has been contended by the latter, in support of their hypothesis, that people who believed in a God would have some scruple about taking such liberties with his name, and his attributes, and his threatenings, and, generally, with all his moral prerogatives, as people of Fashion are accustomed to do. There is certainly something plausible in this sort of reasoning, and I must candidly confess, that I have never yet seen it fairly overthrown; but then I cannot think, that it proves their disbelief of a God, though it certainly does prove their want of reverence for him. It seems to me, at the same time, probable, that the ideas of this people, and those of stricter Christians, upon the subject of that reverence which is due to the Deity, may differ sufficiently, to account for these offensive liberties, without having recourse to the hypothesis of atheism. Indeed, when I consider the spirit and construction of that law by which these people are bound, I can find other reasons for their conduct in this respect, besides that which these theorists have assigned. For, to say the truth, those obnoxious expressions from which so much has been inferred, are in perfect unison with the exclusion of a Deity from the rules which regulate their intercourse with each other. The more therefore I reflect on this subject, the more I am confirmed in my opinion, that the charge of Atheism against them is without any just foundation; and that their appeals to God in levity, earnestness, and anger, are designed to shew their contempt of His authority, and not their denial of his being.

I was for a long time of opinion, that these people were believers in _Christ_; for I had observed, that his name was found in their formularies of devotion, associated with their baptismal designation, and frequently appealed to in their conversation with each other. There were, I confess, many things at the time which staggered me. Having taken up my ideas of the Saviour from those Scriptures which they profess to receive as well as myself, I was not a little astonished at the ultimate difference between us. Their belief of a God was, I knew, inevitable, and forced upon them by every thing in nature and experience; I could therefore conceive, without much difficulty, how they could subscribe to his being, and yet not hallow his name; but I could not with equal facility conceive, that people should go out of their way to embrace a solemn article of revealed religion, only that they might have an opportunity of trifling with the holy name of Him, who was the author and the object of that revelation.

I had, besides, occasion to remark, that this name was seldom appealed to, but by the ladies; and it did not appear in the first instance probable, that the gentlemen would leave them in exclusive possession of a mode of imprecation by which any thing was meant. These and other circumstances excited in my mind a great deal of speculation. I will not, however, trouble my readers with the many conclusions which I drew from them; since an event has occurred, which affords no indifferent evidence, that belief in a Saviour does _not_ form an article of Fashionable religion. The event to which I refer, is the publication of a Memoir of the late Lord Camelford. In this Memoir the author professes to acquaint the world with the last moments of a Fashionable young man who had received a mortal wound in an affair of honour. In perusing this extraordinary narrative, I was much surprised at finding, that neither the dying penitent (for such he is represented to have been) nor his spiritual confessor ever once mentioned the name of _Christ_. But when, on further attention, I found his Lordship expressing a hope, that his _own_ dying sufferings would expiate his sins, and placing his dependance upon the mercy of his _Creator_; {53} I had only to conclude, that the Divine was deterred from mentioning a name with which his office must have made him familiar, out of respect for that Fashionable creed from which it is excluded.

There is some reason for supposing that these people believe in the immortality of the soul, the existence of an evil spirit, and a place of future torment. It must, at the same time, be acknowledged, that their ideas on each of these points are so loose and confused, that it is difficult to determine in what sense they apprehend them.

In subscribing, for example, to the immortality of the soul, they give it a value which infinitely exceeds that of the corruptible body: the inference from this, in a fair train of reasoning, would be, that the care of the former is of infinitely more importance than that of the latter. And yet this is manifestly not the inference they draw: for the experience of every week proves, that if they give three hours to the soul, they think it too much; while they will give six days and nights to the body, and think it too little. This is, I confess, a part of their character, of which no satisfactory explanation has ever been given.

I have no other evidence of their belief in an evil Spirit, and a place of future Torment, than the report of their Prayer-books, and the tenor of their conversation. I must, at the same time, acknowledge, that the looseness and frequency with which they refer to Hell and the Devil, on the most ordinary occasions, have excited my doubts whether they use these awful terms in the same religious sense in which orthodox Christians are accustomed to employ them. These doubts have been greatly encouraged by that sceptical facetiousness with which they apply the name of the evil spirit to their Fashionable amusements, and make the place of torment a subject of scenic representation. I will not say that these people do not believe what they thus caricature; but I think it must be obvious that they cannot have any very exact notions of their scriptural import, while they continue to employ them as terms of merriment, and sources of diversion. {57}

Religious worship, though not inculcated as absolutely necessary in the Fashionable World, is yet neither prohibited nor renounced. Certain persons of considerable influence among them, and whose connexion with them arose out of the incidental circumstances of birth, or office, or elevation, have carried into the societies of Fashion some principles which operate as a check upon the natural libertinism of the community. I impute it to this circumstance, rather than to any sober consideration of duty, that religious worship, though it is not esteemed _essential_ to a Fashionable character, is yet not regarded as any impeachment of it. My reason, in a word, for ascribing their conformity in this particular to influence rather than principle, is the difficulty of reconciling it, on any hypothesis besides, to the other parts of their conduct. For it would be a contradiction of ideas to suppose, that persons can seriously mean to worship a God whom they habitually blaspheme; or to pray against a devil, whom they are accustomed to hold out as a bugbear or a joke.

Their mode of worship is generally that which prevails in the country in which they live: they like the credit of an Establishment, and the convenience of taking things as they find them. There are, I am told, some members of Fashion among those who dissent from the established religion. These I shall leave to the care of their Pastors; and proceed to animadvert upon the Fashionable adherents to the religion of the State.

In their manner of observing the rites of public worship, nothing is so remarkable as the degree of refinement they contrive to introduce into every part of it which is capable of being refined upon. Chapels are, for the most part, preferred to Churches; and the reason, among others, for this preference, appears to be, that the modernness of their structure, and their exemption from parochial controul, render them better adapted to such elegant improvements as are requisite for Fashionable piety. Hence that variety of ingenious accommodations, and fanciful ornaments, which gives to their favourite place of devotion the air of a drawing-room: so that a stranger, introduced to their religious assemblies, might be excused for doubting, whether he was about to worship the Deity, or to pay a Fashionable visit. The conduct of their service is, in many cases, marked by an attention to mechanical effect, which is more nearly allied to the parade of the theatre, than to the simplicity of the church. The orators who fill their pulpits, are generally preferred in proportion as they display the captivating attractions of a graceful exterior, and a liberal theology. These preachers have, indeed, a task to execute of no ordinary difficulty. By the tyranny of custom they are compelled to take their text, and to produce their authorities, from the canon of Scripture; and I think it is much to the praise of their dexterity, that so often as they have occasion to discourse from those offensive writings, they yet contrive to give so little offence. How they manage this, I am at a loss to know; unless it be by blinking every question that involves a moral application; or else by allowing their audience the benefit of that Fashionable salvo, that the company present is always excepted.