“But how is it possible,” said I to my cicerone, “to applaud such singing as this? There is neither simplicity nor taste, neither feeling nor execution in her performance, and yet the storm of applause is not abating.”
“For the Lord’s sake!” exclaimed he, “do not say that loud enough for other people to hear you. It would deprive you of many an innocent pleasure you would perhaps otherwise enjoy during your stay in this city. Our élite never forgive such a difference of opinion to one of their own clique; how much more, then, must a foreigner be on his guard! And in this case, too, where Mr. and Mrs. *** have taken the songstress under their protection! It would be sufficient to exclude you at once from society. This is free country, sir! every man may do or think what he pleases, only he must not let other people know it. You might just as well attack one of our fashionable preachers as Mrs. ***.”
“If this is what you call freedom in Boston,” said I, “I will not go to another concert, if Paganini himself were to perform here.”
“And yet, if you heard an oratorio performed by our ‘Handel and Haydn Society’, you would, perhaps, change your opinion. That society is almost wholly composed of mechanics, who cultivate music from taste, and pay their German leader, a good scientific musician, a very handsome salary.”
“Singular city this!” exclaimed I, “in which the labouring classes cultivate music from taste, and in which the rich people listen to it from obligation. I shall be obliged to leave the room. Will you not accompany me?”
“I should like to do so,” whispered he; “but it would be observed. I am obliged to live with these people; and you know the proverb, ‘Among Romans do as Romans do.’ A propos; if any one should ask you about the concert, and especially about Mrs. ***, say you were ‘delighted;’ that’s the word now. There is no use in making yourself enemies; delighted, sir! Don’t forget your cue.”
What an extraordinary phenomenon, thought I as I went home, this state of society must be to an European! And is it a wonder if, under such circumstances, the most paltry scribbler thinks himself justified in caricaturing it? Here is a free people voluntarily reducing itself to a state of the most odious social bondage, for no other object but to maintain an imaginary superiority over those classes in whom, according to the constitution of their country, all real power is vested; and here are the labouring classes, probably for the first time permitted to legislate for themselves, worshipping wealth in its most hideous colours! Here, then, is a society formed as nearly as possible on the abstract theory of equality; and this is the state to which it has become reduced by the aspirings of a few wealthy families in less than a century! If such is the tendency towards decay in all human institutions, how jealous ought the people to be of the most trifling privileges, arrogated exclusively by certain classes.
And what species of tyranny is worse than that which attempts to control a man’s private actions, his worship, his domestic arrangements, and his pleasures? What can be more absurd than for a certain class, for the most part not a whit better educated than the rest, to assume the dictatorship in all matters relating to politics, religion, or the arts? And how can it be reconciled with the spirit of independence, manifested more or less by every American, to see so large a portion of their countrymen governed by the tinsel logic of such a coterie? Nothing can excite the contempt of an educated European more than the continual fears and apprehensions in which even the “most enlightened citizens” of the United States seem to live with regard to their next neighbours, lest their actions, principles, opinions, and beliefs should be condemned by their fellow creatures!
I have heard it seriously asserted in America, that there are no better policemen than the ordinary run of Bostonians; and that, as long as their natural inquisitiveness remained, there was no need of a secret tribunal; every citizen taking upon himself the several offices of spy, juryman, justice, and—vide Lynch law—executioner. This is by some called the wholesome restraint of public opinion: but, in order that public opinion may be just, it must not be biased by the particular faith of a coterie; and there are transactions in private life of which the public ought never to be made the judge.
There is scarcely a degree of political freedom which can compensate a man for the loss of independence in his private transactions, and the want of a generous liberality in the community at large. There are individuals whose tastes and dispositions are not likely to involve them in any political or religious controversy, and who therefore can be comparatively free, even under a despotic government; but, in a community like Boston, no abstract rule of conduct can be laid down, capable of protecting a man against censure and retaliation. This peculiarity in the composition of its society I do not, however, like so many others, ascribe to the political institutions of the country, which, on the contrary, are constantly counteracting its effects; but to the aristocracy of money, unmitigated as it is by superior education, and unlimited in its influence either by the existence of a real nobility or a powerful sovereign.