"There is some soul of goodness in things evil"; but in this instance one does not lessen the force of the evil by modifying or "softening" the form of the oath. The essence remains unchanged. When Pecksniff slams the door in a rage, he simply "swears" what Hood describes as a "wooden damn." The devout Moslem will not tread upon a scrap of paper in his path, "Lest," he says, "the name of God be written upon it"; but the impetuous Anglo-Norman recklessly flings the name of God into the contaminated environment of his daily life. And he has done so, history attests, since the day he sprang full-armed upon the planetary sphere—the most portentous apparition of mediæval days. "Long ago," says Canon Bardsley, "under the offensive title of Jean Gotdam, we [the English] had become known as a people given to strange and unpleasant oaths." The very name—Jean Gotdam—vouches for its antiquity, as well as for the fearless sincerity of him who swore.
There came into one of our Bluegrass communities just after the war a clever Confederate adventurer, who speedily established very pleasant social relations by exploiting his military record. A venerable Kentuckian, who had come through the war with his Confederate principles and Virginian prejudices intact, was asked by a friend how he liked their Virginian visitor—the ci-devant "aide to General Lee." "I don't like him, sir," he said with vicious emphasis, "he is not what he professes to be; I never in my life heard a Virginian gentleman say 'God dern!' He either swore or he didn't swear." He had no indulgence for a marked card nor for an emasculated oath. He would not substitute a sickly, modernized variant for a venerated traditional form. By "Gad" or by "gosh" or by "gobbs" was good enough for a reforming purist; for himself he preferred to say, with the irascible Robert of Normandy, "Ne se, by God!" It is not the form, after all, but the sentiment or suggestion, that lies behind the "swear."
It is discouraging to the spirit of philosophic optimism to note the slinking figure of the iconoclast now running amuck in every field. The instinct and habit of reverence is almost gone, and the solidest traditional reputations are no longer safe. We no longer say with Wallenstein—
"There is a consecrating power in Time,
And what is gray with years to man is godlike."
Even the fine historic character of Washington is "at a discount" in the modern world—partly on account of his alleged indulgence in profane speech, but chiefly because of his recognized incapacity to tell a lie. He had not only lost (we are told by one biographer) the useful—the indispensable—instinct of "prevarication," but (as we are told by another) "when deeply angered, he would swear a hearty English oath." One may survive in the Darwinian struggle without the capacity to swear, but scarcely without the capacity to deceive. There seems to be no salvation in this life except for the successful liar; but for the man of many oaths there appears to be no salvation either in this life or the next. Happily, the material prosperity of Virginia was but little affected by the ethics of the Washingtonian Code. Her commercial instincts had been powerfully quickened in her early years by an admonitory imprecation from a royal, or official, source. When the Commissioners of Virginia were pleading the interests of "learning and religion" before the Attorney-General of Charles II (an Anglo-Norman lawyer, no doubt), he promptly responded with a hearty English oath—"Damn your souls! Grow tobacco!" There is no need for such an adjuration to the planters of the fine old Anglo-Norman Commonwealth of Kentucky. The tobacco will be planted, whatever may become of their souls.
[X]
An English scholar of sound judgment and exceptionally sound views has recently said that the Emperor Napoleon was the greatest administrator of all time. His greatest work, perhaps, is the system of administrative centralization which, through a century of the severest tests that political madness could apply, has maintained the conditions of social order even in the midst of war and under every form of organized misrule, and secured almost unparalleled prosperity for the municipalities and provinces of France. But it must not be forgotten that William the Norman solved a like problem with apparently even greater success, and under antagonizing conditions which only a statesman of original genius could successfully confront. Not for one century, only, of marvelous effectiveness in civic administration, but for eight hundred years of advancing and expanding civilization, the conceptions evolved by the Norman's brain have been doing their beneficent work; and great as was the genius of the Corsican adventurer, it is not incredible that even he, the master of Europe, did not disdain the lesson which had been taught the nations by that magnificent Son of France. The Corsican was a close student of military history, and secretly meditated a descent upon modern England in imitation of the earlier Conqueror's work. It is not likely that he would overlook the methods of reorganization that followed the war, with its machinery of sheriffs, judges, justiciaries, etc.—executive officers directly responsible to the king—bringing the throne in direct touch with the people, and drawing every subject, at least in every central shire, in direct personal allegiance to the throne. The Marquessess, or wardens of the Marches, were able and ambitious warriors whose sole concern was with dangers from without. But even Napoleon could not foresee, in this guarded initiatory recognition of the landowner, the ultimate evolution of a territorial democracy that was to affect the political and social destinies of the English race. Monarchs of a later date—Henry the Eighth and his masterful daughter Elizabeth—saw in the people the sole source of power; and the loyal Englishman even of this generation will proudly tell you that in his country the sole fountain of honor is the king. There were at least two American statesmen who were illustrious disciples of the Norman's political school. They were men of Norman blood, who wrought in American statecraft with the Norman's constructive brain—and there was still another of the same imperial strain who, with a philosophic conception of all that was of value in the principles of Anglo-Norman administration and a just appreciation by actual experience of government as a practical art, never failed throughout a long, brilliant, and successful career to teach the doctrine that the People Themselves were the sole fountain of honor and the exclusive source of power—a principle in the philosophy of government and in political administration equally patent to William the Conqueror, when he anxiously sought a declaration of "personal" allegiance from the subjects in that great gathering of potential "sovereigns" upon Salisbury Plain. In the long succession of administrators that followed the Norman king, there was none that seems to have grasped so completely and applied so skillfully his principles and methods of political administration as a daughter of the Tudor race. She may not have loved the people in any modern sense; but she knew their power, she recognized their rights; she studied their interests, and her jeweled finger was always upon their pulse. The best of all treatment, she thought, was to anticipate with soothing remedies the rude distempers of the times. She considered rather the Constitution of the Subject than the Constitution of the State; since, collectively, one embraced the other.