[3] I call moral evil, in 1822, every government which has not got two chambers; the only exception can be when the head of the government is great by reason of his probity, a miracle to be seen in Saxony and at Naples.
[4] See in the trial of the late Queen of England[(33)], a curious list of the peers with the sums which they and their families receive from the State. For example, Lord Lauderdale and his family, £36,000. The half-pint of beer that is necessary to the miserable existence of the poorest Englishman, is taxed a halfpenny for the profit of the noble peer. And, what is very much to the point, both of them know it. As a result, neither the lord nor the peasant have leisure enough to think of love; they are sharpening their arms, the one publicly and haughtily, the other secretly and enraged. (Yeomanry and Whiteboys.)[(34)].
[5] Plunkett Craig, Life of Curran.
[6] Degree of civilisation to be seen in the peasant Robert Burns and his family; a peasants' club with a penny subscription each meeting; the questions discussed there. (See the Letters of Burns.)
[7] The same in America. In Scotland, display of titles.
[8] January, 1822, Cant.
CHAPTER XLVII
SPAIN[(36)]
Andalusia is one of the most charming sojourns that Pleasure has chosen for itself on earth. I had three or four anecdotes to show how my ideas about the three or four different acts of madness, which together constitute Love, hold good for Spain: I have been advised to sacrifice them to French refinement. In vain I protested that I wrote in French, but emphatically not French literature. God preserve me from having anything in common with the French writers esteemed to-day!