I speak for myself, and for many, very many of my countrymen. Our mere populace are of course possessed with the idea that a universal Yankee-doodle is the panacea for all the miseries of the world. It has been told them so often by demagogues, that they are pardonable. But even they would probably allow that the Chinese, for instance, are not yet quite ready for liberty-poles and ballet-boxes, and by degrees might be brought to confess as much for any country less remarkable and astonishing than our own. But there is a solid mass of good sense among us that is not so deceived. It consists of those who would rejoice to see a rational republic in France, or in any other country; but who know that, with the exception perhaps of Holland, such a thing is impossible, and that, in France, reason is more likely to reappear as the divinified harlot of Notre Dame than in any more respectable form. As to Great Britain, even our schoolboys have learned that, with all the stability of empire, it unites the freedom of a republic; and in spite of some feeling against John Bull, I scarcely know the man who would not be sorry to see it suddenly or violently revolutionised. On Irish affairs opinion is not so sane among us. Few of us know any thing about them; and for the sake of the starving peasantry of Ireland, there is some sympathy with its turbulent Gracchi. Believe it, the general tone of sentiment on this side the Atlantic, among reflecting men, is far more conservative than you imagine. Indeed, all classes stand amazed at the democracy of Europe. Our wildest enthusiasts are outdone, even by some who sit in the House of Commons; and the rampant socialism of Paris is as unlike the worst excesses of our elections, as the ferocity of a tiger is unlike the playfulness of a kitten. Young as we are, we are better mannered; and I must say, dear Basil, that when the older nations of the world are allowing themselves such license, we have a right to regard ourselves as taking new rank, and deserving more credit than has heretofore been given us, as, after all, a law-loving and law-maintaining people.
You will say, as was said to the trumpeter in Æsop—"No, no,—you make all the mischief; others cut throats, but you have set them on." But is the democratic spirit really of American origin? Our Plymouth orators—the men who annually glorify our earliest colonists—usually trace it to the Puritans, and through them to Geneva. At all events, it now infects the world, and those are the happy and the permanent governments which are prepared for its violence, by constitutional vents and floodgates. It is not to be stifled, or dammed up. We believe, therefore, that our own government is the best for ourselves, and few of us have any fear for that of England. On British matters we do not feel bound to judge by our own experiences. We are free to theorise on broader principles; and many of us form our own opinions, not as cool and critical foreigners, but as having a deep interest in the preservation of the institutions of our ancestors. Why should we not? The study of history carries us, at once, beyond the narrow limits of threescore years and ten, which is the age of our national existence, and as soon as we pass that boundary we too are Britons. The blood of our forefathers ran in English veins, or flowed for British freedom and sovereignty. This fact is enough to make our educated and reflecting men speculatively conservative as to British politics. We know the past, and do not feel the party-heats of the present in England. Hence I am far from being alone among my countrymen, in looking at English matters with an English heart. Even our commercial class have a reason for wishing internal peace and prosperity to England; and I believe there is generally something better than selfishness in the prevalent good-will toward her. I wish you could have watched, as I did, the feelings of our whole people, while lately, between the arrivals of two steamers, there was a solemn feeling of surprise as to what would be the results of the Chartist demonstration! Till the news came, the stoutest of us held our breath. I assure you, Basil, the peril of England was observed with a deep anxiety. During all that time I met not a respectable man who wished to see a revolutionary result. It was the talk of all circles. Our merchants trembled for England; our scholars hoped for her; a clerical gentleman assured me that he daily prayed for her. The press very generally predicted a triumph of order, but there were some specimens of newspaper literature that ventured an opposite augury. I wish you could have seen this city when the result was known. The news was received with a thrill. There was some laughing at the parturient mountain and the still-born mouse, but a graver cheerfulness was the reigning emotion. We deeply felt that, by the mercy of God, the world had been spared from a conflagration which the match of a madman could light, but which only another deluge could extinguish. For one, I was as a watcher by the sea-side, who, after a night of tempest, waits for the fog to rise, and then thanks God to see the good old ship coming home, in season, her masts all standing, and her flag untorn.
I had felt fears, my Basil. What was not imaginable, when Europe presented the appearance of a table on which empires had fallen in a day, like card-houses blown down by the breath of children! I knew that neither France, nor Prussia, nor Austria, nor Italy, were any thing like England, which is founded on a rock, and knit together by joints and bands: but I felt that England is no longer what she was. With a Whig government she is never herself.[5] The Whigs are more than half Frenchmen. I tell you you seem to me not half enough afraid of your Whigs; they are worse than your Radicals. You show some uneasiness under the Jewish Disabilities Bill, but I wish you could see it as it strikes a looker-on. If time has on you the effect which distance has on me, you will yet look back on that measure as you now look back on the great mistake of 1829. It will haunt you like a nightmare, and you will regard it with less of anger than of shame and remorse; with the deep conviction that, if the friends of the constitution had done their duty, it never would have disgraced a Christian state. True, the Whigs are responsible for inflicting the blow; but what has been done to avert it? So far as I know, nothing commensurate with the greatness of the evil. You seem to give way to it as only one of many inroads upon old proprieties, which are inevitable, and cannot be withstood. But is the unchristianising of the state to be spoken of side by side with even the destruction of colonies, and the discouragement of agriculture? As it strikes me, it is not a thing of a class, it stands out a portent, a harbinger, a phenomenon of its own kind. Not that it surprises me. From Lord John Russell nothing that argues fatuity and lack of political principle should surprise any one. To carry out the plans to which he has committed himself, he must consistently pander to infidels, foster heretics, and subsidise Jews. To the reforms of the last score of years, there could be no more fitting sequel than this coalition with a people loaded with the hereditary burthen of the saving blood of the Crucified. I only marvel that the bill goes on so slowly. The Baron should have been long since in his place, and the Easter holidays should have been disregarded, out of respect to his feelings. It is astonishing that he is not already an ecclesiastical commissioner. The times are not now as during a former French revolution, when a British statesman could say[6]—"the Jews in Change Alley have not yet dared to hint their hopes of a mortgage on the revenues belonging to the see of Canterbury." You are always praising your church, Basil, but allow me to ask, Why you may not live to see a Jewish rabbi nominated to a bishopric. As I understand it, the obsequious chapter would be obliged to perform the election, and close all by anthems to Almighty God, ascribing to Him the glory of a gift so felicitous and so auspicious to the church! It would not be the first time, I believe, that Lord John has set the Te Deum of cathedrals going, like the whistles of a juggler's barrel-organ. Forgive me, Basil; I am not mocking the agonies of your church, but I am scorning a British minister that can use for her destruction the powers confided to him for her nourishment and defence. I have learned my notions of your politics from Edmund Burke, and I remember what he said in his Reflections on the French Revolution of 1792—for, by the way, revolutions in France must be always referred to by dates, and will soon be known, like policemen, by letters and numbers. "The men of England," said that great and honest man, "the men I mean of light and leading in England, would be ashamed, as of a silly deceitful trick, to profess any religion in name which, by their proceedings, they appear to contemn." Does not Lord John profess to be a Christian? I must caution you, too, against supposing that I dislike the Israelites. Far from it. In my own country I am glad that they labour under no disabilities, and I can testify to their good order, decency, and propriety of behaviour as citizens. But we have "no past at our back," and nothing in our system which demands a prior consideration. No, Basil—I honour a Jew, however much I may pity him. Crying old clothes, or lolling in a banker's chariot, the Jew is to me a man of sacred associations. And then—a Jewish gentleman—he makes me think at once of the sons of Maccabæus and all the Asmoneans; those Hebrews of the Hebrews, those Tories of Israel! What natural sympathy has a Jewish gentleman with a Whig? Were I merely covetous of votes I would say—let the Jews in! I could trust their conscience; I could appeal to their own feelings; I would put it to them whether their liberalism would consent to eat pork with the Gentiles, or to call in the uncircumcised to make laws for the synagogue. We pity the blindness of the Jews that offered their thirty pieces of silver—but we do not despise them. Our contempt settles on the head of the Christian who consented to take them at the bargain.
You speak of this Jew bill as the first step! Why, yes, the first step in tragedy; there was a former one in farce. There is Sir Moses Montefiore! Who made him a knight? "A Jewish knight," said I, at the time—"hear it, ye dry bones,—ye cross-legged effigies—ye Paladins—ye Templars! Hear it, Du-Bois-Gilbert,—hear it, Richard Cœur-de-Lion! Yes, and thou, too, old Roger de Coverley! Hear it, thou true old English knight; for they that bought thine old clothes now come for thine old spurs!" So said I—wondering that no one seemed to wonder. The nineteenth century had not time to stare. There was not even a London Punch to laugh at such a Judy, and so Moses was belted and spurred, no man gainsaying; and knighthood, that was Sidney's once, is just the thing for Sir Peter Laurie now.
And if a Jewish knight, why not a Jewish senator! True, there is something grand in the idea of a nation that never, since the Wittenagemote, has seen a lawgiver unbaptised; and then there is still a red cross in the flag of England; and there has been a pleasing notion that the Christian faith was part and parcel with the British constitution; and even we in America, averse to church and state, have long allowed ourselves to admire one exception to the rule, and to confess the majestic figure made among the nations by a Christian empire, shining forth in splendid contrast to surrounding kingdoms, some of them infidel and some of them superstitious, but she alone the witness to reasonable faith, and faithful reason. But who regards it in this light? Who among you stands up to warn his country of the glory that is departing? Who has said any thing in parliament at all adequate to the turning-point of a nation's religion? I have looked for some one to speak as Burke would have spoken, of "uncovering your nakedness, by throwing off that Christian religion which has hitherto been your boast and comfort." I have longed to see his promise made good,—"we shall never be such fools as to call in an enemy to the substance of any system, to remove its corruptions, to supply its defects, or to perfect its construction." I read The Times, but as yet I have looked in vain. A few honest remonstrances have indeed been ventured amid cries of oh, oh! and vociferations of buck-toothed laughter from the benches that support the honourable members from Cottonburgh and Calicopolis. But who has stood up as for altars and fires? I hope, ere this reaches you, the question will be creditably answered. I hope the Christianity of England will not die without a struggle. I suspect it will be of no use, but I look yet for some John of Gaunt in the House of Lords. Imagine him, my Basil:—
"This sceptred isle,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
Renownèd for her deeds as far from home
(For Christian service and true chivalry)
As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry
Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son;
This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now—paun'd out to Jews!"
This is what ought to be said; and I look for it, if not from lords spiritual, then even from lords temporal. But surely it would well become the primate's mouth! Of course, it would do little good; but then the religion of England would fall at least dramatically. It would make a picture quite as good as the death of Chatham. Do you remember the lawn-sleeves in that picture? The bishops are "in at the death,"—but nothing more.
But another steamer has come in with news; and France is all the talk. The elections are over; the Modérés have triumphed; the National Assembly has convened, and the Provisional Government is at an end. Vive Lamartine! Of course the stock of the republic takes a rise, but holders are not firm. The bloodshed at Rouen, the émeutes at Elbœuf and Limoges, and the threats of the Communistes, do not precisely inspire confidence. Still, we are so far surprised, and those who have predicted favourably for France grow a little more sanguine in their hopes. I am glad to say that Louis Blanc has no sympathisers here. All are convinced that Lamartine will make the best of it, and that, if he fails, the republic will be suffocated and expire in a stench. For one, it seems to me that Lamartine is not bad enough to encounter successfully the frantic malice of his opponents, and that their eventual success is certain. Already, things have very likely taken a decisive turn, and by the time this letter reaches you, the doings of the Assembly will have enabled you to conjecture whether the nation is going by the long way, or the short cut, to Henry Fifth. As all will be stale before you can read what I now write, I will not presume to predict the immediate results; but I am sure that the assembling of such a set as have been returned to the legislature, would be enough to blow up the strongest government on earth. Jew, Dominican, pastor and bishop, poet and butcher, all in their tricoloured sashes—was there ever such a full-blown tulip-bed of liberty, equality, and fraternity!
The announcement of several clergymen as members of the Assembly reminds me that there has been some sickly sentiment among us, about the piety that has been displayed in this revolution. In Boston we are favoured with some strange types of religions enthusiasm; in fact, the type of Christianity that prevails among us is peculiarly our own; and like our improvements in machinery, deserves the proverbial name of a "Boston notion." Emerson, who is now illuminating England, may give you some idea of what I mean; and a queer story that is told of one of his disciples, may furnish you with an explanation of the fact, that some men see religion in the sacking of the Tuileries. The youth was at the Opera to see a celebrated danseuse, and excited general attention by his somewhat extraordinary applause. His enthusiasm so transported him, that the emotions of his heart became unconsciously audible. As the dancer began to whirl, he cried, "Ah, that is poetry!" As she stretched her toe to the horizontal, he exclaimed, "That's divinity!" but when she proceeded to an evolution that forced the ladies to pay attention to their fans, he burst into the climax—"That's religion!" If this be caricature, the Emersonians richly deserve it. They are laughed at even in Boston. But they are not alone in thinking well of the piety of Paris, and arguing from it that there will be no reign of terror; as if there was not vastly more show of religion in the first revolution! If there is an archbishop of Paris now, there was formerly a Talleyrand for high-priest and master of ceremonies. Oh, but they rejoin with a story! When the blouses were gutting the palace of its pictures and marbles, they found, among other works of art, an image of the Crucified. As a blouseman was about to dash it to atoms, there was a cry, "Save it—save the great teacher of fraternity!" The crucifix was accordingly saved, and borne about the streets amid songs and curses, and, very appropriately, "with lanterns and torches." "Ah, that's religion!" says your Emersonian. So, when recreant priests baptise a liberty-pole, or join a procession of blouses, with crosses and censers, that's divinity, at least. Was ever hypocrisy so revolting! The nauseous mockery has its only parallel in the writings of George Sand, who makes a favourite hero and heroine betake themselves to an adulterous bed, after duly reciting their prayers, in which the absent husband is very affectionately remembered. If a revolution thus begun is not destined to go speedily through all the ripening and rotting of a godless anarchy, it is to be accounted for only on the principle that "He who is Eternal can wait." The old scene at Notre Dame may not be actually revived, and the Bible may not be literally dragged through Paris again tied to an ass's tail; but the undisguised atrocities of the first revolution may, after all, be exceeded by the smooth-faced blasphemies of that which has already degraded the world's Redeemer into the patron saint of insurrection, and the father of infidel fraternity.
Poor Lamartine! Is this the man, my Basil, whom you once likened to Chateaubriand? Quantum mutatus! I knew him, till lately, only as a poet and a traveller. He certainly went to Palestine with the spirit of a palmer. He bathed in Siloa with enthusiasm, and almost expired of feeling under the venerable olive-trees of Gethsemane.