[7] Un espanto is the original phrase. Not knowing the game, the translator suspects he has not hit upon the right name.—Tr.
[8] Alexander Pope.
LETTER LX.
Growth of the Commercial Interest.—Family Pride almost extinct.—Effect of heavy Taxation.—Titles indiscriminately granted.—Increase of the House of Peers.
The commercial system has long been undermining the distinction of ranks in society, and introducing a worse distinction in its stead. Mushrooms are every day starting up from the dunghill of trade, nobody knows how, and family pride is therefore become a common subject of ridicule in England; the theatres make it the object of a safe jest, sure to find applause from the multitude, who are ever desirous of depreciating what they do not possess; and authors, who are to themselves, as one of their own number says,
"A whole Welsh genealogy alone,"
continue to attack as a prejudice a feeling, which, as philosophers, it is now time for them to defend. That the new gentry of the country should join in this ridicule ought not to be wondered at. He who has no paternal oaks has reason to prefer the poplars of his own planting, and may well like to expatiate upon the inconvenience of an old family house, long galleries, huge halls, and windows which none but the assessor can count, in his own villa, which is built to the pattern of the last tax upon light, and where the stucco upon the walls is hardly dry. But that the true gentlemen of England should so readily yield up their own precedency to vulgar opinion is indeed extraordinary. Nothing, however, is now valued for being old. The windows and the whole front of the mansion must be modernized; the old avenues of elms, which two centuries have just brought to their full perfection, are sacrificed to a hatred of uniformity; and the yew hedges, which have been clipt year after year till they formed a thick and impenetrable wall, are levelled and shorn smooth away. The fashion of the furniture must be changed; even the old plate must be melted down, and recast in the newest shape; and an English Esquire would as soon walk abroad in his grandfather's wedding suit, as suffer the family Tree to be seen in his hall.
This degeneracy of feeling is confined to the English, and has not yet extended to the Scotch, or Welsh, or Irish. That it is not necessarily and unavoidably produced by commerce seems to be proved by the instances of Genoa and Venice; but the commercial spirit was never so universal in those states as it is in England, where it extends to every thing, and poisons every thing:—literature, arts, religion, government, are alike tainted; it is a lues which has got into the system of the country, and is rotting flesh and bone.
In the celestial hierarchy, we are told, the gradations, though infinite, are imperceptible; so gradual is the ascent, and so beautiful and perfect is order in heaven. Experience shows that something like this is desirable in civil society; at least, where the limits of rank are most strongly marked, there is there the worst tyranny and the most abject misery, as among the casts of Hindostan. Towards this evil the English are tending; the commercial system encroaches on the one hand upon the aristocracy, and on the other it treads down the peasants, and little landholders, the yeomanry as they were called, who were once the strength of England. Half a century ago the country was divided into small farms; here was a race of men above the labourers, though labourers themselves; not superior to their hinds in manners or education, and living at the same table with them, but still in independence, and with that feeling of independence which was the pride of the country, and which has made the country what it is. These men have disappeared since agriculture has become a trading speculation: field has been joined to field; a moneyed farmer comes, like Aaron's rod, and swallows up all within his reach. Agriculture is certainly materially improved; whether the markets be better supplied or not is disputed; there is less competition, and the rich cultivator can withhold produce which his poorer predecessor must have brought to sale. In this point perhaps the advantages and disadvantages may be equal. But the evil is, that there is one gradation the less in society; that the second step in the ladder is taken away. And this evil is felt and acknowledged: the race of domestic servants were formerly the children of these little farmers; they were decently and religiously educated; and because they were of respectable parentage, they possessed a sort of family pride which made them respectable themselves. But the labouring and manufacturing poor have no leisure to breed up their children religiously, and no means to do it decently, and a very general depravity of the servants is complained of.