Of the number I have heard, I will mention one anecdote only, and one remarkable expression of Joseph’s, which will serve to shew in its true light what his disposition was; and when you consider them as the act and sentiment of a young man nursed in the lap of despotism and pride, you cannot but consider them as marvellous.
In his journey to the Low Countries, he visited Wurtzaurg; and, in his perambulating alone and incog. stopped at a little public-house, where the people were busily employed in entertaining themselves: he went in, and inquired why they were so merry——“Sir,” said one of the country people, “we are celebrating a marriage.” “May I be permitted to join the company?” said the disguised Emperor. The host obtained that permission for him. When he entered the room, the married couple were presented to him, and he received them with great gaiety, sat down, drank their health, and, having informed himself of their situation, took leave of the company: but what was their astonishment, when, on lifting up a bottle of wine, they found a draft for six hundred florins, signed Joseph, and payable for the use of the married couple!
At Luxembourg, when the People called aloud on Heaven to shower down blessings on him for his affability, he made use of this remarkable expression, while his feelings moistened his eyes: “I wish I could make you as happy in my care, as I am in your affection!”
The affability of Monarchs has often been magnified by the foolish, and often blamed by the wise: But, if all the instances of condescension practised by Kings were like that I have recited of Joseph; if they arose from a sound, unquestionable spirit of philanthropy, not from gaping curiosity, broad folly, or a puerile inquisitive habit; and if, instead of conceiving those they visit paid for their intrusion with the honour of having conversed with Majesty, and leaving them churlishly, they would generously pay them with hard cash, as the good Emperor Joseph did; then, indeed, their affability might defy the exaggeration of fools, and must certainly command the applause of the wise.
On the 13th of July, the ceremony of Inauguration took place at Brussels. Nothing could equal the splendour of the place but the general joy of the People: the crowds were beyond all conception immense, and every thing was carried on with regularity till evening, when, in playing off some fire-works, that noble building the town-house took fire, and was burnt: six unfortunate persons lost their lives, and twenty were dangerously hurted: those who perished were absolutely roasted, and their cries were beyond description piercing. To such a temper as Joseph’s, you will readily conclude that this must be a most afflicting circumstance——it was so; and he left Brussels under the pressure of very different feelings from those with which he entered it, and was followed by the prayers and blessing of all the People.
But now we are to view the reverse of the medal. The sound of their prayers for his welfare, and praises of his goodness, had hardly died away upon their lips, ere their minds turned to revolt and rebellion. I will not say that they were not right in one or other, or which of those two extremes: certainly they could not be right in both; much less can their subsequent conduct be justified, or accounted for, in any principle of human nature, but that of the most abject meanness, dastardly feebleness, and gross folly. They returned to their allegiance, and besought forgiveness: that forgiveness was granted. How they have behaved since, I have already informed you, (See Letter IV.); and I have now to add, that, pillaged by the French, and likely to be left unprotected, they have again held their necks out, soliciting the protection and the yoke of Austria, and have actually offered to raise 100,000 men for the Emperor, if he will again drive the French out of their territories——An excellent word that IF!
How a People, once formed for manly pith and love of Freedom, could bend so low, is unaccountable. It is a question hard to be determined, whether an obstinate adherence even to a bad cause, is not more respectable, than a fickle, alternate dereliction, and adoption of right and wrong, as it suits the caprice or convenience of the moment? Of two things so very contemptible, I think the former the least odious and least unmanly.
At the same time, my observations on the Country led me to conceive, that under the name of Freedom, they groaned under the yoke of Tyranny; for, though the Country was, as I have described it, charming, its fecundity unsurpassed, its face decorated with the best gifts of Providence——I mean, smiling fields and bleating plains——though Ceres profusely repaid the labours of the husbandman, though every field had the appearance of a garden, and though, upon inquiry, I found that land which would bring in England five pounds an acre, rented at eight, nine and ten shillings of our money at most——yet, in spite of all this, the farmers were rather poor in general——not even one of them to be found rich or substantial, like the middle rank of that class of men in England. They wanted the great stimulus to industry——security of their property: they were liable to be turned out by their landlords at pleasure, and to be plundered when it should please some Monarch to make war.
The first of these, however, you will observe, is not the oppression of the Emperor: it is the tyranny of that worst of all constituent parts of a State, an Aristocracy——a vile Aristocracy!——that universal, that every-day despotism, under which all places groan, more or less——which is exercised in all the various gradations of life that chequer society, from the great man who, under the name of Minister, domineers over the Peer, to the country fox-hunting savage, who puts a poor wretch in jail to pine for years, (his family, the while, supported by the parish charity), only for doing that which makes the enjoyment of his own life, killing a partridge or a hare!——that Aristocratic tyranny which is seen scowling on the brows of a swaggering fellow in power, adopted by his secretary with increase, by him handed down to an upstart set of fellows in office, dependent on his smile, and by them displayed in all the nauseous, despicable forms which awkwardness and ignorance, lifted above their station, never fail to assume——the cold reserve, the affected stare, the listless nod, the feigned deafness, blindness, absence, and other fashionable perfections, which serve as vents for upstart arrogance, and indemnify the sycophant for the vile homage and submission which he has before paid some wretch mean and arrogant as himself!——I tell you, my dear Frederick, it is this Aristocratic usurpation of power, where power exists not, nor is necessary——this insulting assumption of superiority, this hidden petty oppression which rears its head in every manor, nay, almost every town and village in the Kingdom, that puts the Nations out of tune, mars the harmony of social arrangement, and renders power in the aggregate obnoxious. Why, our very women have their saucy, Aristocratic, supercilious front, their haughty stare, their contemptuous titter; and barter the winning softness of the sex, the dimples where the loves should dwell, for the haughty toss of the head, the ill-natured sneer, and the insulting Hector’s frown——And thus the spirit of Aristocracy, like a poisonous weed, grows and expands from one to the other with baleful luxuriance, gradually overspreading the whole face of humanity, stopping the wholesome current of the social atmosphere, and choaking up the less rank but more useful plants——Thus it goes round in shameful traffic; and, as the Poet says,
“The wh—re she kicks her cully,