Gleanings in Europe

by James Fenimore Cooper

The English gentlemen have the merits of courage, manliness, intelligence, and manners.—Their morals are overrated, except as to the vices which are connected with meanness. Perhaps there is less of the latter than is commonly found in countries where the upper classes are more directly under the influence of courts, but even of this there is much, very much, more than it is common to believe in America. As between the English and ourselves, I honestly think we have the advantage of them on this point. They are our superiors in manners and in intelligence; they are our superiors in all that manliness which is dependent on opinion, but certainly I have known things practised, and that pretty openly, in connexion with interest, by men of condition here, which could not well be done by a gentleman with us, without losing caste. In the northern states we have very few families whose sons would now hesitate about embarking in commerce, at need, and this, of itself, is a great outlet (as well as inlet) for the vices of a pecuniary nature. The prejudices connected with this one subject are the cause of half the meannesses of Europe. The man who would hesitate about suffering his name to appear in a commercial firm would pass his life in a commission of meannesses, not to say crimes, that should put him to the ban of society. This feeling is daily becoming weaker in England, but it is still strong. Men of family scarcely ever engage openly in commerce, though they often do things covertly, which, besides possessing the taint of trade, have not the redeeming merit of even its equivocal ethics. To them the army, navy, church and government patronage are almost the only resources. The latter facts have given rise to two of the most odious of the practical abuses of the present system. A few occasionally appear at the bar, but more as criminals than as advocates. The profession is admitted within the pale of society, as it opens the way to the peerage and to parliament, but it requires too much labour and talents to be in favour. A physician in England ranks higher, professionally, than almost any where else, but he is scarcely considered an equal in the higher set. The younger sons of peers enter all the professions but that of medicine, but I never heard of one who chose to be a doctor. A curate may become Archbishop of Canterbury, but a physician can merely hope to reach a baronetcy, a dignity little coveted. Like our “Honourables,” and “Colonels,” it is not in vogue with the higher classes. I cannot better illustrate the state of feeling here, in relation to these minor titles, than by our own in relation to the appellations named, which are of much account in certain sets, but which it is thought bad taste to bandy among gentlemen.

The masculine properties of the English aristocracy (I include the gentry, you will remember) have deservedly given them favour with the nation. They owe something of this to the climate, which is favourable to field sports, and something, I think, to the nature of their empire which has fostered enterprise. Physically they are neither larger, nor stronger, nor more active than ourselves, but I think they attend more to manly exercises. The army has been exclusively their property, for it is necessary, in such a government, to keep it in the hands of those who rule. The purchase of commissions is strictly in unison with the spirit of the system. Then the insulated situation of the kingdom, coupled with its wealth, induce travelling. The influence of the latter can scarcely be overrated, and no nation has so many motives for quitting home. The English go abroad for the sake of economy, for while their actual expenses are less, their incomes are increased from five to twenty per cent., by the usual courses of exchange. Formerly none but men of rank went abroad, and they were distinguished from the rest of the nation by their taste and liberality, but now all the genteel classes (and some below them even) travel. It is true the English character on the Continent has suffered by the change, but the English nation is greatly the gainer.

The English gentlemen are not sparing of their persons in war, or in civil troubles. They would not have abandoned Paris to a mob, in 1792.[20] These are qualities to captivate the mass, who greatly prize daring and physical excellencies. Although there is a considerable and certainly an increasing hostility to the exclusive classes of England, there is also a deep feeling of respect and even of attachment for them, in a portion of the nation. Perhaps no aristocracy was ever less enervated or thrown off its guard, by the enjoyment of its advantages, than this, a fact that must be attributed, too, to the circumstance that the public, by possessing so many more franchises than usual, have kept them constantly on the alert. In the event of any struggle between the aristocrats and the mass, I should say that much may be expected from the manliness and spirit of the former, enough, perhaps, aided as these qualities would be by their habits of control and combination, to secure the victory, were it not that the very affluence of intelligence in this portion of the nation, would always put at the command of the people sufficient men of minds and authority to direct them. Although a wide reform, wide enough to admit themselves, would be apt to be sustained by the novi homines, revolution would not; for the new rich, as a body, are always found on the side opposed to popular rights; and the aristocracy would have most to apprehend from seceders from their own body, as leaders, unless events, as probably would be the case, should raise up some man of native fitness for the station, from the ranks of the people themselves.

That part of the present influence of the aristocracy which is fraudulent and even wicked, is connected with a wide-spread system of studied misrepresentation, and with abuses connected with the church. As I shall probably have occasion to write a short letter on the subject of the latter, I will touch on the former alone, at present. While the aristocracy itself is so well mannered and less apt to betray illiberal sentiments than the classes beneath it, I cannot think it free from the imputation of having conspired to circulate the atrocious misrepresentations which have been so industriously promulgated against ourselves, for instance, during the last half century. They may despise the traitors, but they love the treason. The whole code of prejudices and false political maxims which pervade society here, is the offspring of a system of which they are the head. They have differed from the other nations of Europe, in which power is exclusive, in the circumstance of the franchises of the nation. A franchise is not power of itself, but it is an exemption from the abuses of power. As it was not possible to muzzle the press, it has become necessary to make it the instrument of circulating falsehood. No means of effecting such an end are so certain as that of creating prejudice, which instantly becomes an active and efficient agent in attaining the end. The United States, her system, national character, historical facts, people, habits, manners, and morals, for obvious reasons, have been one principal object for these assaults, but as I may have occasion to speak of the Anglo-American question hereafter, I will now allude only to the internal action of the system.

Thirty-six years ago, you and I were school-fellows and class-mates, in the house of a clergyman of the true English school. This man was an epitome of the national prejudices, and, in some respects, of the national character. He was the son of a beneficed clergyman in England; had been regularly graduated at Oxford and admitted to orders; entertained a most profound reverence for the king and the nobility; was not backward in expressing his contempt for all classes of dissenters and all ungentlemanly sects; was particularly severe on the immoralities of the French revolution, and, though eating our bread, was not especially lenient to our own; compelled you and me to begin Virgil with the Eclogues, and Cicero with the knotty phrase that opens the oration in favour of the poet Archias, “because their writers would not have had placed them first in the books if they did not intend people to read them first;” spent his money freely, and sometimes that of other people; was particularly tenacious of the ritual, and of all the decencies of the church, detested a democrat as he did the devil; cracked his jokes daily about Mr. Jefferson and Black Sal, never failing to place his libertinism in strong relief against the approved morals of George III., of several passages in whose history, it is charity to suppose he was ignorant; prayed fervently of Sundays; decried all morals, institutions, churches, manners and laws but those of England, Mondays and Saturdays; and, as it subsequently became known, was living every day in the week, in vinculo matrimonii, with another man’s wife!

You know this sketch to be true. Now, I do not mean to tell you that all the stronger features of this case are at all national, but I think the prejudices, the pretending condemnation of the moral defects of those who did not think exactly as he did, and the blindness to his own faults, are. In this particular, that church of which our old master was a member, in doing the state good service, has done itself a grave injury. The popular mind has been so acted on, by a parade of religious influences, that millions of Englishmen attach a sense of criminality to the efforts of those who would reform the government. I think you must have observed how seldom one has found an active English reformer left in possession of a fair moral character. The course has usually been to commence by assailing the liberals with sneers, in connection with their origin, their pursuits, and their motives. These attacks have been addressed to the abject feeling which the establishment of an aristocracy has formed in the minds of the mass, and which has created a sort of impression that birth and fortune are necessary to the civic virtues. He who should make it matter of reproach against a public man in France, that he came of the people, would lose more than he would gain by his argument, and yet it is a constant weapon of the English party tactics. Failing of success, by these means, the next assault is against the character.

The English themselves are apt to attribute the latter expedient to a creditable feeling in the nation, which invites, by its moral sense, exposures of this nature. The reasoning may be true in part, or it is true up to the level of the dogmas of the decency-and-seemliness school which the system has created, but it is flagrantly false when viewed on pure Christian principles. Coupled with the grossness of language, the personalities, the vindictiveness and the obvious deformities of hostility and art, with which these attacks are usually made, nothing can be more inherently offensive to the feelings of those, of whom the “chiefest virtue” is charity. But we need no better proof that the whole is the result of a factitious state of things, in which a parade of morals is made to serve an end, than the fact, that, while every man who shows a generous mind is peculiarly obnoxious to be accused of vice, they who are notorious for their misdeeds are not only overlooked, but spoken of in terms of reverence, if they happen to belong to the dominant party. You will understand me; I am not now speaking of the common party abuse, which varies with events, but of a deliberate and systematic method of vituperation, by means of which the idea of liberalism in politics has become associated in the public mind, with irreligion, libertinism, pecuniary dishonesty, and, in short, with a general want of moral principle. As a consequence, men habitually, think of Mr. A——, or Sir George B——, or Lord C——, as persons to be condemned for their sins, though the very vices of which they are accused are openly practised by half the favourites and leaders of the other side, with impunity as regards the public. I can quote to you the instance of Washington, who was accused of being an unprincipled adventurer, at the commencement of the revolution, as a case in point; and I dare say your own scrupulous and pious father, passed for a fellow no better than he should be, with a majority of the well-intentioned English of that day.

It seems to me that there is a singular conformity between English opinion and the English institutions. The liberty of the country consists in franchises, which secures a certain amount of personal rights, and not in a broad system, which shall insure the control of numbers. As individuals, I am inclined to think the English (meaning those who are easy in their circumstances) do more as they please than any other people on earth; while the moment they begin to think and act collectively, I know no nation in which the public mind is so much influenced by factitious and arbitrary rules. Something like the very converse of this exists with us.

I have little to say about the influence which the aristocracy possess through the deference of their inferiors. Strange as it may seem, the subordinate classes take a sort of pride in them. Such a feeling can only have arisen from the depression of the less fortunate, and it is quite plain has gathered no small part of its intensity from any thing but that knowledge which leaves “no man a hero with his valet-de-chambre.” It exists to a singular degree, in despite of all the bluster about liberty, and I can safely say that I never yet knew an Englishman, I care not of what degree of talents, who did not appreciate the merits of a nobleman, to a certain extent, by his rank, unless he lived in free and constant communion with men of rank himself. I have found the nobles of England, certainly, as I have already told you, but it has often puzzled me to discover the aristocratic mien, the aristocratic ears, aristocratic fingers, aristocratic nails, and aristocratic feet that these people talk and write so much about. I have been often led to think of that jeu d’esprit of Hopkinson, where he says