Alas! how strangely constituted is the human mind, which, in any state of being, could cherish such monstrous delusions—such fatal aspirations!
But is there no blame to be attached to society for this development of ideas so morbid even on the part of one single individual? is there nothing in the constitution of that society which gives encouragement, as it were, to those detestable sentiments?
Let us see.
Enough has been said in the more serious and reasoning parts of this work to prove that society is in a vitiated—a false—and an artificial condition. The poor are too poor, and the rich too rich: the obscure are too low, and the exalted too high. The upper classes alone have opportunities of signalising themselves: the industrious millions have no chance of rising in the State. Interest procures rank in the Navy—money buys promotion in the Army—and interest and money united obtain seats in the Legislative Assembly. Interest and money, then, remain to the exclusive few: the millions have neither—nor are they even stimulated by a national system of Education. An aristocrat of common abilities may rise to eminence in some department of the State, with but little trouble: but a son of toil, however vast his natural talents, has not a single chance of starting from obscurity through the medium of their proper development.
This is true: and we defy the most subtle reasoner on behalf of the oligarchy to refute those positions.
Now, such being the case,—with a dominant aristocracy on one hand, and the oppressed millions on the other,—is it not evident that every now and then some member of the latter class will brood upon the vast, the astounding contrast until feelings of a deplorably morbid nature become excited in his mind? How could it be otherwise? Ireland, with its agrarian outrages and its frequent instances of assassination, proves the fact. England, with its incendiary fires in periods of deep distress, affords additional corroboration.
We deplore that such should be the case; and not for a moment do we advocate such means of vindicating just rights against the usurpers thereof.
But if these instances of outbreaking revenge—if these ebullitions of indomitable resentment do now and then occur, no small portion of the blame must be charged against that aristocracy which maintains itself on an eminence so immeasurably above the depths in which the masses are compelled to languish. And when the poor creature who is goaded to desperation, does strike—can we wonder if, in the madness of his rage, he deals his blows indiscriminately, or against an innocent person? He may even aim at royalty itself—although, in every really constitutional country, the sovereign is little more than a mere puppet, the Prime Minister of the day being the virtual ruler of the nation.
From what we have said, it is easy to perceive how the contemplation of the splendid luxury of the palace first unhinged and unsettled the mind of Henry Holford.
We must now go a step farther.