In passing through Countries groaning beneath the despotic scourge of unlimited Monarchy, where subsidies are raised, and taxes laid on ad libitum——where guilty distrust and suspicion, with the eyes of a lynx and the fangs of a harpy, stand sentinels at every gate, to scrutinize the harmless passenger, awake him to the clanks of his fetters, and awe him into compliance, a free-born Briton feels a cold horror creep through his whole frame: his soul recoils at the gloomily ferocious and insolently strict examination, with which a sentinel, at the entry of a town, stops, investigates, demands a passport; and, in short, puts him, pro tempore, in a state of durance, with all its hideous formalities and appendages, its gates, its bars, its armed ruffians, its formal professions of laws, and its utter violation of reason and of justice. Entering the town of Bruges, we were stopped by a sentinel, who, with all the saucy, swaggering air of authority, of a slave in office, demanded to know, whether we had any contraband goods? whether we were in any military capacity? whence we came? and whither we were going? with a variety of other interrogatories, to my mind equally impertinent and detestable, but which seemed to make no greater impression on the good Flemings themselves, than demanding the toll at a turnpike-gate would make on an English waggoner.
Talking over this subject, since that time, with a Gentleman who is well acquainted with all those places, he informed me, that in the war between the Emperor and the States General, some French officers, travelling through Flanders to join Count Maillebois, were stopped at the gate of Bruges, and, by order of the Emperor, sent to his army, turned into the ranks, and obliged to do duty as common soldiers.—Here, my dear Frederick, was an act, not only despotic in itself, but aggravated by circumstances of collateral profligacy, of such enormous magnitude as bids defiance to all power of amplification, and leaves eloquence hopeless of describing it with greater force than it derives from a simple narration of the fact: on the one hand, the inroad upon the just personal rights of the individual; on the other, the rights of a Nation violated. Some men in England, judging from their own constitutional security, may disbelieve the fact: but let them consider, that the Marquis de la Fayette, an alien, taken upon neutral ground, is now, even now, held in illegal, unjust thraldom and persecution——let them, I say, remember this, and let their incredulity cease.
Bless your stars, my dear boy, that you were born in a Country where such outrages as these can never be perpetrated by any, and will never be approved of but by a few.
LETTER VI.
In my last, I carried you past a ferocious, impertinent sentinel, into the town of Bruges; and now, having got you there, I must endeavour, from the loose materials I have been able to collect, to give you a short description of it.
I had heard much of Bruges, its grandeur and its opulence; you will guess my surprise then, when, on entering it, I found nothing but an old-fashioned, ill-built, irregular town; the streets, in general, narrow and dirty, and most of the houses strongly expressive of poverty and squalid wretchedness: yet this was anciently a most flourishing city. Did the difference between the town at this time, and its state as it is represented of old, consist only in its external appearance, we might readily account for that, in the great improvements made by the Moderns in the art of house-building; but its present inferiority goes deeper, and is the result of departed commerce——commerce, that fluctuating will-with-a-wisp, that leads States in hot pursuit after it, to entrap them ultimately into mires and precipices, and which, when caught, stays till it extinguishes the spirit of Freedom in a Nation, refines its People into feeble slaves, and there leaves them to poverty and contempt.
Perhaps there is no subject that affords an ampler field for a speculative mind to expatiate upon, than the various, and, I may say, incongruous revolutions which have chequered the progress of human society from the first records of History down to the present time. It is indeed a speculation which not only tends to improve the understanding, by calling in experience to correct the illusions of theory, but is highly instructive in a moral point of view, by pointing out the instability of the very best strictures of human wisdom, and teaching us how little reliance is to be placed upon human casualties, or earthly contingencies. Look to Greece, once, the fountain-head of Arts, Eloquence, and Learning, and the mother of Freedom——her Poets, her Legislators, her Soldiers, and her Patriots, even to this day considered the brightest[brightest] examples of earthly glory!——see her now sunk in slavery, ignorance, sloth, and imbecillity, below any petty Nation of Europe. Look to Rome—in her turn, the queen of Arms and Arts, the land of Liberty, the nurse of Heroes—the stage on which inflexible Patriots, accomplished Philosophers, and a free People, acted for centuries a drama that elevated Man almost above his nature!——see her now reduced to the last stage of contemptibility——even below it, to ridicule and laughter——swayed by the most contemptible imposture, and sunk into the most despicable enslavement, both of person and opinion——the offices of her glorious Senate performed by a kind of heteroclite being, an hermaphroditical imposter, who, deducing his right from the very dregs and offscourings of superstition and fanaticism, and aided by a set of disciples worthy of such a master, rules the People, not with the terrors of the Tarpeian rock, nor yet with that which to a Roman bosom was more terrible, banishment——but with the horrors of eternal damnation!——see her valiant, vigorous Soldiery converted into a band of feeble fidlers and music-masters, and the clangor of her arms into shrill concerts of squeaking castratoes; those places where her Cicero poured forth eloquence divine, and pointed out the paths that led to true morality——where her Brutus and her Cato marshalled the forces of Freedom, and raised the arm of Justice against Tyrants, over-run by a knavish host of ignorant, beggarly, bald-pated Friars, vomiting, to a crowd of gaping bigots, torrents of fanatical bombast, of miracles never performed, of Gods made of wood or copper, and of Saints, that, like themselves, lived by imposture and deception!——see her triumphs and military trophies changed into processions of Priests singing psalms round wafers and wooden crucifixes; and that code of Philosophy and Religion, which operated so effectually upon the morals of her People that there was none among them found so desperate or so base as to break an oath, exchanged for the Roman Catholic branch of the Christian Faith——for dispensations for incest, indulgences for murder, fines for fornication, and an exclusive patent for adultery in their priesthood. Then look to England!——see her, who once stooped beneath the yoke of Rome, whose Chief, Caractacus, was carried there in chains to grace his conquerors[conquerors] triumphs, while herself was made the meanest of the Roman Provinces, now holding the balance of the world, the unrivalled mistress of Arms, Arts, Commerce——every thing.
It was in this irresistible mutation of things, that Bruges sunk from the high state of a most flourishing city, where there are still (unless the French have destroyed them) to be seen the remains of seventeen palaces, anciently the residences of Consuls of different Nations, each of which had distinct houses, magnificently built and furnished, with warehouses for their merchandises: and such was the power and wealth of the Citizens in those days, that it is an indubitable fact, they kept their Sovereign, the Archduke Maximilian, prisoner, affronted his servants, and abused his officers; nor would they release him until he took an oath to preserve inviolate the laws of the State. Even so late as the time I was there, Bruges had some trade——indeed as good a foreign trade as most cities in Flanders. The people seemed cheerful and happy, and the markets were tolerably supplied.