“Who rules o’er freemen must himself be free,” he sensibly remarked,—
“Who drives fat oxen must himself be fat.” That impromptu alone was worth three hundred a-year.
The use of public dinners in a free country I need not dwell upon; every one knows that they are the most powerful stimulus to patriotism and virtue. It is only after dinner that gentlemen can be supposed to listen patiently to a long political argument, intended to prove their antagonists to be arrant knaves, and their partisans men of sound public principles. Calumny and eulogy are the necessary dessert of a public meal,—a sort of confiture taken after the appetite for solid food has been appeased in a more satisfactory manner.
Dinners and suppers are also made use of for the purposes of diplomacy; or, as is the case in the United States and in England, for making political proselytes. Napoleon, used to conquest, knew yet the value of good dinners. Instead of repeating the rules and maxims laid down by Machiavelli for a young prince,—instead of echoing the vile saying of Richelieu, “Dissimuler, c’est regner,”—he gave to his parting ministers no other injunctions than “Tenez bonne table, et soignez les femmes.”
A whole world lies in this injunction! “Tenez bonne table” precedes the command “Soignez les femmes;” a proof that he considered the latter, if not impossible, at least useless, without the former.
Talleyrand added to his political sagacity the most perfect appreciation of good eating; both qualities being absolutely indispensable to an ambassador. The compliment he paid to the English, “that he never knew what French cooking was until he came to England,” may be considered at once as a proof of his diplomatic wisdom and taste. Count A——y, who keeps the diplomatic crack house in Paris, maintains his influence with all parties by the most tasteful entertainments; and it is generally believed that Count P——o di B——o’s cook has as much contributed to the widespread reputation of his master, as the consummate talents with which the latter has managed the interests of his sovereign. Lord P——, as we are assured by a most able writer in one of the best periodicals of the present day, has a winning way of conciliating Tory ladies with Whig dinners: and if Lord M——ne is less successful in this most important art of a minister, it is, I am quite sure, because he prefers dining out to entertaining his friends at home; a practice for which no public man was ever pardoned in any country.
In a similar manner is eating made a means of making political converts in the United States; but with the exception of two or three wealthy families in Philadelphia, and half-a-dozen of the same kind in New York and Baltimore, the democrats are not in the habit of entertaining people; (in England, according to the most respectable testimony, the Whig lords entertain more than the Tories;) and it is on this account, principally, that their case seems to be hopeless—in good society. In the Western States there is a great deal of “treating” among the “republicans;” but the honour of giving regular dinner-parties and hot suppers belongs almost exclusively to “the aristocracy.”
These dinners and suppers are given to public men as a sort of “douceur” for their honourable conduct; but, once accused of democracy, its “no song, no supper.” The higher classes of Americans apply the same method by which beasts are tamed and tutored, to the representatives of the people; they feed them when they behave well, and kick at them when they show themselves self-willed and disobedient. In a few instances some of the government officers in Boston and Philadelphia gave parties, at which there was a profusion of iced champaign and chicken-salad; and the thing went off well enough: the Whigs, alias Tories, alias National Republicans, alias Federalists, came, as they always do when they are invited to a supper, drank the wine, emptied the dishes, and went off saying, “It’s no use for these people to imitate us; you cannot make a gentleman out of a democrat.”
If it were not for the excellent dinners given by the President, and the delightful circles at Mr. Secretary W***’s, the democratic senators and members of Congress would never quit their messes, or would be obliged to content themselves with a steak or a chop at one of the two mulatto restaurants in the Capitol. General Jackson, who was great in everything, had also an excellent French cook; his dinners, as Miss Martineau can testify, were in the best style, and his wines of the most superior quality. “Oh, he is a delightful old gentleman!” exclaimed a truly aristocratic lady of Baltimore,—“how amiable in his private intercourse!—no one can be with him without loving him! I wish he were ambitious, and met with a better fate than Cæsar!”
The worst objection to democracy is, that, except taverns and coffee-houses, both of which are in exceeding bad repute in the United States, its followers have no regular rendezvous, no réunions, no petits comités amongst themselves, where its zealots might mutually inspire one another with patriotic sentiments, after the example of the Whigs, who, from time to time, refresh their dying love of liberty with the best West India madeira, furnished by their own cellars. And yet man is a gregarious animal, and, as we all know, woman still more so; both like company, or, as the Americans express it, “love company,” “admire company,” “dote upon company.” “They cannot always stick at home;” the young ladies want to dance and to get married,—the young gentlemen want to have an opportunity of addressing an heiress, and of appearing to advantage in society. And of what use, after all, are their good manners if they cannot show them? All these things operate against democracy, and tend, in a considerable degree, to swell the ranks of the opposition. The people, assuredly, are in possession of all political power; but a very small number of individuals take it upon themselves to fix the conventional standard.