The following description of France before the great revolution of 1789, by M. Thiers, is strikingly applicable to the condition of Great Britain at the present day:—
"The condition of the country, both political and economical, was intolerable. There was nothing but privilege—privilege vested in individuals, in classes, in towns, in provinces, and even in trades and professions. Every thing contributed to check industry and the natural genius of man. All the dignities of the state, civil, ecclesiastical, and military, were exclusively reserved to certain individuals. No man could take up a profession without certain titles and the compliance with certain pecuniary conditions. Even the favours of the crown were converted into family property, so that the king could scarcely exercise his own judgment, or give any preference. Almost the only liberty left to the sovereign was that of making pecuniary gifts, and he had been reduced to the necessity of disputing with the Duke of Coigny for the abolition of a useless place. Every thing, then, was made immovable property in the hands of a few, and everywhere these few resisted the many who had been despoiled. The burdens of the state weighed on one class only. The noblesse and the clergy possessed about two-thirds of the landed property; the other third, possessed by the people, paid taxes to the king, a long list of feudal droits to the noblesse, tithes to the clergy, and had, moreover, to support the devastations committed by noble sportsmen and their game. The taxes upon consumption pressed upon the great multitude, and consequently on the people. The collection of these imposts was managed in an unfair and irritating manner; the lords of the soil left long arrears with impunity, but the people, upon any delay in payment, were harshly treated, arrested, and condemned to pay in their persons, in default of money to produce. The people, therefore, nourished with their labour and defended with their blood the higher classes of society, without being able to procure a comfortable subsistence for themselves. The townspeople, a body of citizens, industrious, educated, less miserable than the people, could nevertheless obtain none of the advantages to which they had a right to aspire, seeing that it was their industry that nourished and their talents that adorned the kingdom."
The elements of revolution are all to be found in Great Britain. A Mirabeau, with dauntless will and stormy eloquence, could use them with tremendous effect. Yet the giant of the people does not raise his voice to plead the cause of the oppressed, and to awaken that irresistible enthusiasm which would sweep away the pampered aristocracy.
The armorial escutcheons of the aristocracy are fearfully significant of its character. Says John Hampden, Jun.: [116]—
"The whole emblazonment of aristocracy is one manifesto of savage barbarism, brute force, and propensity to robbery and plunder. What are these objects on their shields? Daggers, swords, lions' heads, dogs' heads, arrow-heads, boars' heads, cannon balls, clubs, with a medley of stars, moons, and unmeaning figures. What are the crests of these arms? Lascivious goats, rampant lions, fiery dragons, and griffins gone crazed: bulls' heads, block-heads, arms with uplifted daggers, beasts with daggers, and vultures tearing up helpless birds. What, again, are the supporters of these shields? What are the emblems of the powers by which they are maintained and upheld? The demonstration is deeply significant. They are the most singular assemblage of all that is fierce, savage, rampageous, villanous, lurking, treacherous, blood-thirsty, cruel, and bestial in bestial natures. They are infuriated lions, boars, and tigers; they are raging bulls, filthy goats, horrid hyenas, snarling dogs, drunken bears, and mad rams; they are foxes, wolves, panthers, every thing that is creeping, sneaking, thievish, and perfidious. Nay, nature cannot furnish emblems extensive enough, and so start up to our astonished sight the most hideous shapes of fiendlike dragons and griffins, black, blasted as by infernal fires; the most fuliginous of monsters; and if the human shape is assumed for the guardians and supporters of aristocracy, they are wild and savage men, armed with clubs and grim with hair, scowling brute defiance, and seeming ready to knock down any man at the command of their lords. Ay, the very birds of prey are called in; and eagles, vultures, cormorants, in most expressive attitudes, with most ludicrous embellishments of crowned heads, collared necks, escutcheoned sides, and with hoisted wings and beaks of open and devouring wrath, proclaim the same great truth, that aristocracy is of the class of what the Germans call Raub-thieren, or robber-beasts—in our vernacular, beasts of prey."
And the character thus published to the world has been acted out to the full from the days of the bastard Duke of Normandy and his horde of ruffians to the time of the "Iron Duke" and his associates in title and plunder. The hyenas and vultures have never been satisfied.
The crime of England lies in maintaining the slavery of a barbarous age in the middle of the nineteenth century; in keeping her slaves in physical misery, mental darkness, moral depravity, and heathenism; in carrying fire and sword into some of the loveliest regions of the earth, in order to gratify that thirst for wealth and dominion ever characteristic of an aristocracy; in forcing her slaves in India to cultivate poison, and her weak neighbours of China to buy it; in plundering and oppressing the people of all her colonies; in concentrating the wealth of the United Kingdom and the dependencies in the purses of a few persons, and thus dooming all others beneath her iron rule to constant, exhausting, and unrewarded toil! We arraign her before the tribunal of justice and humanity, as the most powerful and destructive of tyrannies; as the author of Ireland's miseries, and a course of action toward that island compared with which the dismemberment of Poland was merciful; as the remorseless conqueror of the Hindoos; as a government so oppressive that her people are flying by thousands to the shores of America to escape its inflictions! Though most criminals plead "not guilty," she cannot have the front to do so! The general judgment of civilized mankind has long ago pronounced a verdict of conviction.
Yet, guilty as is the English oligarchy, certain of its members have taken to lecturing the world about the duties of Christians and philanthropists. This, we suppose, in charity, is done upon the principle given by Hamlet to his mother—
"Assume a virtue if you have it not."
But a loftier authority than Shakspeare tells us to remove the beam from our own eye before we point to the mote that is in the eye of a brother. Example, also, is more powerful than precept. Pious exhortations from a villain are usually disregarded. A preacher should never have the blood of slaughtered victims on his hands.