Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 69, No. 424, February 1851

by Various

It is hard to say whether examples of this sort are most fitted to inspire confidence in the final triumph of the cause of truth, or despondency as to the fate of a nation in which error has been widespread and long continued, and powerful classes of society are interested in its being perpetuated. It is evident that the enormity of error, the clearness of the demonstration of its falsehood, the perilous and even fatal consequences which may be anticipated from its continuance, afford no sort of security against its sway being continued, if an influential class is interested in its duration. It is equally clear that the extension of education, the boasted march of intellect, the spread of journals, the number of persons interested in the termination of a pernicious policy, the awful consequences which may be anticipated from its continuance, are often wholly impotent to rescue a nation from disaster, it may be ruin, if the effects of the disastrous system are not so plain and palpable as to be obvious to the senses of the whole of mankind. But while all this is perfectly clear on the one hand—and there is obviously no limit to this long continuance of the most ruinous error in the opinions and policy of a particular nation—it is equally evident, on the other, that there is a bar imposed by Providence to the eternity of error in the world in general. The laws of nature at length come to the aid of truth: some great and decisive event occurs which renders its effects palpable to all the people; the whole fabric of error so studiously upheld, so anxiously defended, is overturned in an instant; and mankind, awakening from the slumbers of half a century, are astonished only how a thing so very evident had never before struck them. They then find, to their infinite surprise, that all which has occurred had been clearly foreseen and distinctly predicted by the few among them who judged of the future by the past, and cast their eyes beyond the interests or passions of the moment; and that it was not because truth had not been told to them, but because they would not listen to it, that all the calamities they deplore had been brought upon them.

The circumstances which mainly contribute to produce this extraordinary tenacity of error and insensibility to truth, in the majority of mankind at all times and under all circumstances, are their general indifference to distant effects, and their acute sense of present burdens. If the danger is obvious and visible to the senses of all, and, above all, if it threatens immediate evil to all, the mass of men will often make incredible, almost superhuman efforts to avert it. But if it is distant and contingent only, and the remedies proposed to guard against it are attended with present burdens, however slight, it will in general be found that it is wholly impossible to make them do anything to guard against the impending evils. In the words of one who knew them well,[4] "they prefer any load of infamy, however great, to any burden of taxation, however light." They never will incur present expense to guard against future danger. It is for this reason that states in which the popular voice is all-powerful so often rush into foreign wars with scarcely any preparations, and are so often defeated by nations possessing far less vigour and fewer resources, but in whom the wisdom of a monarchical or aristocratic government has made an adequate provision in peace for the contingency of future hostilities. All the eloquence of Demosthenes, we know, failed to make the Athenian people take any steps to augment the national armaments, and they got the battle of Chæronea and subjugation by Philip in consequence. The English, in 1778, commenced the contest with their revolted American colonies with a regular army of 20,000 men, and they lost the colonies in consequence: they began the war with France in 1793 with 40,000 regular soldiers in the British empire, when their enemy had 1,200,000 men under arms; and it cost them a struggle of twenty years, and six hundred millions of debt incurred, to get the better of the necessary consequences of their infatuation. They starved down the establishment in India, and forbade all hostile preparations, even though it was a dominion won, and which could only be upheld, by the sword, till it was brought to the verge of destruction on the banks of the Sutlej; and the empire which disposed of the resources of 80,000,000 of subjects, owed its extrication from what seemed unavoidable ruin, only to a strange and unaccountable retreat of the enemy, resting on a population of 6,000,000 only, when victory was within their grasp. The Americans rushed into a contest with England in 1812 with a fleet of six frigates and an army of 8000 men; and the consequence was, that in two years their commerce was totally destroyed, their capital taken by a British division of 3500 men, and the general suffering would in six months have made the Northern States break of from the Union, had not England, weary of fighting and satiated with glory, sheathed her sword when the dissolution of the Union was within her power.

But in addition to this general cause of delusion and error, which pervades all states really regulated by the popular voice, there is another and a still more powerful one which occasions and perpetuates the most ruinous public delusions in an advanced and complicated state of society. This arises from the strength and influence of the classes who become interested in the perpetuating of error because they profit by it, and the impossibility of getting the great bulk of men to see, among the numerous causes which are then acting upon their fortunes, the real ones to which their sufferings are owing. They know perfectly when they are prosperous, and when unfortunate; but they do not know, and cannot be brought to see, to what either the prosperity or adversity is to be ascribed. If the consequences of a particular line of policy could be brought before them by a clear and short process of demonstration—if they could see from whence their suffering in truth comes, and the arrow, known to have been discharged from the quivers of Free Trade and a metallic currency, could be seen festering in the breast of every industrious man in the country, one universal burst of indignation would arise from one end of the kingdom to the other. This system, so profitable to the moneyed rich, so ruinous to the industrious poor, would be abolished, amidst shouts of congratulation from one end of the country to the other, in a month. But they cannot be brought to see this; and the vast riches which the continuance of this system is daily bringing to the moneyed classes, enables them to perpetuate the darkness.

The press in such circumstances becomes—what it was in Napoleon's time in France, from the overwhelming weight of military power—what Madame de Stael feared it would one day become in all aged communities—the most powerful engine for the diffusion and continuance of error. The most ruinous systems of public policy are then pursued with the cordial support of the millionnaires who profit by them, with the loud applause and able assistance of the public press, who are guided by the requirements of their subscribers, or directed by the dictates of their shareholders, and amidst the supine indifference or sullen despair of the industrious classes, who are steeped in misery by their effects. They see they are ruined, but they know not how or by whom; and a large part of the public press are careful to direct their attention to any but the right quarter for redress. In despair at such an accumulation of distresses, the great bulk of mankind follow the usual instinct of the multitude in such cases—they fasten upon the seen in preference to searching for the unseen, and lend a willing ear to any demagogue of the day who lays before them plans for a great reduction of public burdens, by abandoning nearly the whole means of the public defence. Thus a perpetual reduction of our military and naval armaments, and means of maintaining our independence or even existence as a nation, is forced upon successive Governments, without the slightest regard to the obvious peril with which such reductions, with increasing armaments on the part of our neighbours, and increasing points of attack upon the part of ourselves, must be attended; and the policy which has impoverished the greater part of the nation terminates in its natural result, the destruction of the nation itself. Such is the most common process of national ruin.

There can be no doubt that the day will one day come when all these illusions will be dispelled. If a Russian fleet of twenty-five ships of the line anchors off the Nore, and demands the surrender of the arsenal of Woolwich, and of our ships of war at Portsmouth and Plymouth, as the condition of their raising the blockade of the capital or saving it from pillage—or if a French squadron of fifteen ships of the line takes a second look into Torbay, and we have only three or four half-manned seventy-fours to oppose to them—or if an invading army of 80,000 men lands on the coast of Sussex, and we can only muster 30,000 regular troops to stop their progress—if Woolwich is taken, and Hyde Park is the scene of an enemy's camp, and London, like Paris, capitulates to the conqueror—or if Russia and America unite together and demand the surrender of the half of our fleet and the whole of our arsenals as the price at which they will allow their grain-laden vessels to come to Great Britain and restore bread to the 7,000,000 of our population whom we have in four years rendered dependent on supplies from those countries for their daily food, or if wheat rises to 150s the quarter, and the quartern loaf to 2s. in consequence of our refusal—if the Thames, the Mersey, and the Clyde are blockaded by hostile fleets, and 700,000 or 800,000 manufacturers with their families, for the sake of the riches produced by whom we have sacrificed everything, are suddenly thrown out of employment—or if the seamen of the Baltic and other maritime powers of Europe have come to outnumber our own in the carrying on of our trade, and threaten to disable our commerce, and bring us to death's door, by simply recalling their crews—or if the Bank stops payment in the midst of these calamities, and public and private credit are at once destroyed at the very time when their assistance is most needed—then, and not till then, will England speak out in a voice of thunder.

How rapidly will the scales then fall from the eyes which have so long been blinded; how bitter will be the regret at the inexplicable insensibility now to solemn warnings; how intense the indignation at the delusions which, for the sake of present profit to the deluders, has so long been practised upon them! The burst of indignation with which the appointment of the Lord Cardinal was received throughout England, the more suppressed apprehensions with which the opening of the Californian treasures was viewed by our moneyed oligarchy, can afford but a faint image of the feelings of agony which will then wring the British heart—the frightful cry of distress which will then rise up from famishing millions, the universal horror at past neglect which will send the iron into the soul of our whole people. Their efforts to redeem the past will probably be great, their struggles will be those of a giant. But it may be too late. They will be in the condition of the Athenian people when Lysander cast anchor off the Piræus, after the burning of their fleet at Aigos Potamos; or of the Carthaginians, when the legions of Scipio, in the last Punic war, drew round their walls; or of the Parisians, when "Europe in arms before their gates" demanded the surrender of all their conquests. They will be profoundly mortified—they will be cut to the heart; they would give half they possess for a deliverance, but they will be forced to submit; and to the annalist of these mournful times will only remain the task of drawing the appropriate moral from the melancholy tale, and recording the fall and ruin of England for the instruction of, and as a beacon to be avoided by, future times.

The Free Trade and Bullionist orators will exclaim that this statement is overcharged—that these apprehensions are entirely chimerical—that neither France nor Russia have the slightest intention of going to war with us—that the days of hostility between nations are at an end—that, even if we were attacked, our resources are greater than ever—and that the insular situation of Great Britain gives her a security which renders the maintenance of costly armaments for the national defence wholly unnecessary. This is what they will say; and we tell them what they will not say.—They will never allude to the arguments which follow, which will demonstrate the reality of all this peril as clearly as any proposition in Euclid; if they do allude to them, it will only be to ridicule and misrepresent—the usual resource of detected error in presence of irresistible arguments. They will never allude to the facts or arguments adduced on the other side; but, treating the whole persons who adduce them—and ourselves among the rest—as utter fanatics and monomaniacs, continue to inculcate on their numerous readers—who never look at any papers on the other side—the entire security of the nation, the evident advent of a time when all wars are to cease, our secure and unassailable position, and the utter folly of incurring the certain evil of present expense for the purpose of warding off such contingent, remote, and chimerical dangers. We are well aware of the ability with which this method of upholding delusions is carried on, and of the readiness with which it is listened to both by the opulent and powerful class whose means of amassing fortunes would be diminished, and the numerous class whose burdens would in a slight degree be increased by a change of system.

The argument, that the era of wars has ceased, that Peace Congresses are henceforth to supersede the logic of cannon, and that the sooner we disband our troops, and sell our ships of the line, as a costly relic of a preadamite age, the better—would be an extremely strong one, and deserving of the most serious consideration, if it had any foundation in fact. But if this is not the case—if, on the contrary, the facts are all of an opposite character—then the argument, based on such a fallacious foundation, becomes the strongest which can be urged on the other side. Now, without going back to former times and the annals of history, let us attend only to our own days, and what we see around us, to ascertain whether there is any likelihood of war becoming unknown among men, and a real millennium causing all swords to be turned into pruning-hooks.

Everybody knows that the tendency of the present times is to become democratic; and it is chiefly in the increased weight of the people—the greatest sufferers from the ravages of war—in the direction of public affairs, that the advocates of universal peace rest their predictions of the immediate advent of a pacific millennium. What countenance do the facts of recent times—even if all previous history were set aside—afford to the assertion that democratic influence is essentially of a pacific character, and that with the increase in all civilised states of popular power, the disuse and, at length, extinction of war may be anticipated?

So far from affording any countenance to such an idea, all recent, as well as former experience, leads to conclusions directly the reverse, and induces the melancholy prognostication that, with the general increase of democratic influence, not only will the sphere of future hostility be augmented, but its fierceness and devastations will be fearfully enhanced. Who commenced the dreadful wars of the French Revolution, which for twenty long years deluged Europe with blood, and brought the tricolor standards—the emblem of Republicanism—into every capital of continental Europe?—Democratic ascendency in Paris; the crimes and ambition of the Girondists; the bloodthirsty passions of the Jacobins, which, not content with ravaging and drenching with gore their own country, could not find vent but in the sacking and plundering of all Europe. What afterwards gave rise to the terrible struggle in Poland in 1831, and induced the multiplied sufferings of that gallant but inconsiderate and infatuated democracy?—The French Revolution of 1830, which, but for the firmness of Louis Philippe, and his determination to risk all rather than gratify the passion for war in the Republicans who had elevated him to power, would have involved Europe in universal conflagration. What brought on the horrid civil war in Spain, which for five years overwhelmed the Peninsula with horrors and cold-blooded atrocities, which throw even those consequent on the invasion of Napoleon into the shade?—A democratic triumph in Madrid; the placing of a revolutionary queen on the throne of Spain; the determination and armed intervention of England and France to uphold the cause of popular aggression in both kingdoms of the Peninsula.