One evil consequence results from this mode of representation, which affects the rulers as well as the people. The house of commons has not, and cannot have, its proportion of talents: its members are wholly chosen from among persons of great fortune. The more limited the number out of which they are chosen, the less must be the chance of finding able men: there is, therefore, a natural unfitness in having a legislative body composed wholly of the rich. It is known both at schools and at universities, that the students of the privileged classes are generally remiss in their studies, and inferior in information for that reason to their contemporaries;—there is, therefore, less chance of finding a due proportion of knowledge among them. Being rich, and associating wholly with the rich, they have no knowledge of the real state of the great body for whom they are to legislate, and little sympathy for distresses which they have never felt: a legislature composed wholly of the rich, is therefore liable to lay the public burthens oppressively upon the inferior ranks.
There are two ways in which men of talents, who are not men of fortune, find their way into parliament. The minister sometimes picks out a few promising plants from the university, and forces them in his hot-bed. They are chosen so young that they cannot by any possibility have acquired information to fit them for their situations; they are so flattered by the choice that they are puffed up with conceit, and so fettered by it that they must be at the beck of their patron. The other method is by way of the law. But men who make their way up by legal practice, learn, in the course of that practice, to disregard right and wrong, and to consider themselves entirely as pleaders on the one side. They continue to be pleaders and partisans in the legislature, and never become statesmen.
From these causes it is, that, while the English people are held in admiration by all the world, the English government is regarded in so very different a light; and hence it is, that the councils of England have been directed by such a succession of weak ministers, and marked by such a series of political errors. An absolute monarch looks for talents wherever they are to be found, and the French negotiators have always recovered whatever the English fleets have won.
Long peace is not more unfavourable to the skill of an army, than long security to the wisdom of a government. In times of internal commotion, all stirring spirits come forward; the whole intellect of a nation is called forth; good men sacrifice the comforts of a wise privacy to serve their country; bad men press on to advance themselves; the good fall a sacrifice, and the government is resigned into the hands of able villains. When, on the contrary, every thing has long been safe, as is the case in England, politics become an established trade; to which a certain cast are regularly born and bred. They are bred to it as others are to the navy, to the law, or to the church; with this wide difference, that no predisposing aptitude of talents has been consulted, and no study of the profession is required. It is fine weather; the ship is heavy laden; she has a double and treble allowance of officers and supernumeraries,—men enough on board, but no seamen; still it is fine weather, and as long as it continues so the ship sails smoothly, and every thing goes on as well as if Christopher Columbus himself had the command. Changes are made in the equipage; the doctor and the pilot take each other's places; the gunner is made cook, and the cook gunner; it may happen, indeed, that he may charge the guns with peas, and shot them with potatoes,—what matters it while there is no enemy at hand?
[13] Spaniard! But is he wishing to recommend a Cortes, by insinuating that it would strengthen the power of the crown?—Tr.
[14] A committee chosen from the house of commons.—Tr.
LETTER XLIX.
Fashion.—Total Change in the English Costume.—Leathern Breeches.—Shoes.—Boots.—Inventors of new Fashions.—Colours.—Female Fashions.—Tight lacing.—Hair-dressing.—Hoops.—Bustlers.—Rumps.—Merry-Thoughts and Pads.
The caprice of fashion in this country would appear incredible to you, if you did not know me too well to suspect me either of invention or exaggeration. Every part of the dress, from head to foot, undergoes such frequent changes, that the English costume is at present as totally unlike what it was thirty years ago, as it is to the Grecian or Turkish habit. These people have always been thus capricious. Above two centuries ago a satirist here painted one of his countrymen standing naked, with a pair of shears in one hand, and a piece of cloth in the other, saying