He, HE ALONE, were my parishioners.
As good Andro’s congregation of one required to be spoken of in the plural, so do my friends THEY need to be mentioned in the singular number. The truth is, THEY is a collective ideality, a most potent plural unit, who does a great many remarkable things in the world, without ever being called to account for them, and without any body knowing very distinctly who or what he is. I venture to say, that hardly a subject of his Majesty does not, day by day, refer events and deeds to the agency of THEY, and yet never has presumed, to this blessed hour, to consider who this mysterious personage—this great unknown—this finer spirit than Ariel—can be. In very truth, he is a most impalpable being, and susceptible of a wonderful variety of shapes. There is no height of greatness, and no depth of degradation, which he may not arrive at. Sometimes one would suppose that he is the government itself—sometimes, only a town council. One of THEY’S employments is the disposal of criminals. “Are THEY going to hang this fellow?” one man will ask another. “Perhaps THEY will only banish him,” is the probable answer. If the culprit be not decently and humanely hanged, the people get dreadfully enraged at THEY, and look as if they would almost tear his eyes out. They also has a great deal to do in public works. “Why did THEY make the road so crooked?” “They have put up a very absurd set of street lamps, I see.” “What, in wonder’s name, do THEY mean by building a temple up there, like a boy’s peerie, or an hour-glass?” Then THEY is the author of all kinds of rumours and surmises. “They say—what say they—let them say!” is an inscription on a wall within Aberdeen Cathedral four hundred years old; and I do not doubt that THEY would have given currency to scandals regarding the mother of mankind herself, in Paradise, if there had been any other lady to tell them to—or if THEY had then existed. Old newspapers say, “They write from St Petersburg that the Empress Catharine is about to fit out an armament for the Caspian.” “They talk at Rome of a change of councils in the Vatican.” Modern quidnuncs are also filled to the brim with things which THEY has been circulating. “They are now making out Lord —— to be non compos.” “They will have a marriage to be on the tapis between So-and-So and So-and-So;” personages, by the way, who claim a sort of kindred with THEY, and certainly are of imagination all compact. They is sometimes admired for his power, sometimes blamed for his stinginess. “They used to write capital solid books long ago.” “They used Burns very ill when he was alive.” It certainly was bad of THEY to treat Burns so scurvily; but unfortunately the fellow is so utterly impersonal, that we blame without knowing what we are doing.
They has a great deal to do with the naming of things. He may be called, in arithmetical language, the Grand Denominator. Indeed, I do not believe that Adam himself named more things than THEY. “What do THEY call this place?” one will ask a coachman, on nearing a town, village, or gentleman’s seat. “They call it Ashbourne,” or whatever else, is the reply. “What do THEY call ye?” is the ordinary question of a rustic boy to his unknown companion, and so forth. They is also the grand censor of all things which happen in the world. “I will not do this, for what would THEY say of me?” is a common expression, when a man hesitates upon some equivocal step. He may be convinced, from irrefragable data, of the propriety of what he contemplates: but then he could not convince THEY of it, and, of course, in these circumstances, he must let the scheme drop. They thus prevents many things that would be bad, many things that would be only strange, and many things that would certainly be good, if he could be convinced of it. A most uncompromising fellow is this THEY! He knows very well that he cannot enter into another man’s bosom, to see all the various reasons and tendencies which lead him towards the thing he aims at; but, nevertheless, presuming that he is quite omniscient, or at least fully as well acquainted with every other particular man’s business as his own, he never hesitates to give a decided contradiction to any proposal he is not, at first sight, pleased with. Many are the good original schemes which THEY has spoilt, from a hasty conclusion without premises.
They, also, amidst all his multitudinous and most Protean varieties of character, is a general scapegoat for all the mischief that is done in a household. “I see THEY have cracked that decanter.” “They have at last made an end of the globe in the lobby.” Or, as I once heard said by the lady of a house afflicted with a breaking woman-servant, “I declare THEY have broken the very kitchen poker!”—a compound fracture, too, it was. Such are a few of the doings of THEY in his household capacity; and it must be owned that in this light he is very great, and often comes above-board. The grandest aspect, however, in which THEY ever appears, is when he stands up as a representative of the government of the country. “They are going, I see, to bring us into a war with France.” “They intend, it seems, to resume cash payments at the Bank.” No matter whether the affair refers to privilege or prerogative; no matter for the claims of the particular officer under whose hands it ought to fall; King, Lords, Commons, Treasury, Admiralty, and Horse Guards—all melt, like mixed colours, into the single white light of THEY! Things may be different under the Reform Bill; but, heretofore, there has hardly been any precise government but THEY. They crowns the king—signs the orders of council—passes all bills through the legislature that will go through—fits out armies, and rigs fleets—makes war, and concludes peace—is church and state—Swing and the Press. They is a being of past history, and of present existence—a tyrant, or the people. They is the great despot pronoun of the world!
RELATIONS.
Owing to the different merits of the different members of a family, and in some measure, also, to the various chances which are vouchsafed to them of bettering their circumstances, we generally see that, though they all begin alike, some go up and some go down in life, so that in the long-run the family, or at least its second generation, is scattered over nearly the whole surface of society, from its top to its bottom. The case may seem startling; but it is our belief that there is hardly any person, be his own situation ever so exalted, who has not relations, and near relations too, in the very lowest walks of life—not only in the condition of servants, perhaps, for that is decent, and, in its way, respectable, but in the most degraded state to which human nature can well be reduced.
In the same way, almost all of us have kinsfolk a little higher in the scale than ourselves, or whom we think so—it is all one. Now, it is quite amazing how accurate our genealogical knowledge becomes respecting one of these individuals, compared with its equally surprising ignorance regarding those who have not been so fortunate. When a cousin or half grand-uncle rises above our level, he rises into a blaze of light, which enables us to trace our connection with him as plainly as we run our eye along the string of a boy’s kite. But when a poor nephew or grand-nephew descends into poverty and contempt, he seems like a plummet submersed in the ocean, where, though we may occasionally feel him tugging at the bottom of the line, we are totally unable to trace the line itself. We are always most laudably ready to exchange the civilities of life and the affections of kindred with the cousin who has, in the first place, convinced us of his merit by thatching himself well over with bank-notes. It is pleasant to go and dine at a kinsman’s house, where we know that our entertainment can be furnished without any distress to our worthy host. But really it is a totally different case to intrude upon a scene where our poor friend is doing his best, with the tears in his eyes, to satisfy the cravings of his family with, perhaps, a very homely meal. Humanity in that case demands that we should rather stay away, for we know he does not like to be seen in his poor state. And then, too, how easily we can put up with the eccentricities of a wealthy relation, even though they may sometimes gall our pride a little: how strangely liable, on the other hand, are we to fall out with the poor unfortunates below us! On the day after having been regaled to the uttermost excess by our wealthy friend, we will quarrel with the poor one for having drunk a single glass of some plebeian fluid. With the former, nothing—with the latter, every thing, is a fault. The imperfections of the poor are yawning and palpable as their own rags: those of the rich are as smooth as broad-cloth can make them. The truth is, our senses can tolerate almost any odious or improper thing that is found in a scene above our usual grade in the world. We never know enough of it to be able to measure its real odiousness, or it is disguised by the cordial appliances which we always have ready for the sores of the great. But the vices, nay, the smallest foibles of the lowly, come before our senses so bare, so beggarly, so unanealed, and, moreover, they are so immediately followed by that additional wretchedness which wealthy error escapes, that we have no excuse for them. Hence we generally find, that we have shaken off the most of our poor relations on account of some trivial cause of offence, which we find it necessary, however, to be always nursing in our minds, in order to sustain us in the conviction that the breach of treaty—the casus fœderis—was sufficient.
There is one very obvious mark of the individual who despises poor relations—a perpetual reference to rich ones. Some people are constantly bringing in allusions to “my cousin Mr This,” and “my uncle Mr That,” and even to more remote relations, such as “my great-grandmother the Countess of Somewhere.” A few are so very silly as to tell, in the newspaper announcement of their marriage, that their bride, besides being daughter to this or that plain esquire, is “grand-niece to General So-and-So,” or “cousin to Mr Such-a-Thing, secretary of state.” These announcements are an impertinence fit for the interference of the legislature—or the police. If people have exalted relations, let them enjoy them as much as they can within themselves, but do not let them be perpetually presenting this odious little piece of vanity before others, who not only are not interested in it, but are perhaps reminded by it that they have no fine relations themselves. To be always thus singling out a relation from all the rest, and holding him up in connection with ourselves, is a direct injury to him, in so far as we are thus trying to exalt ourselves at his expense—an indirect insult to our kindred in general, whom we leave out of view, and a nuisance to all before whom we thus exhibit our own poverty of soul. It is a cultivation of the most odious character, and necessarily suggests to every thinking person, that in exact proportion to our homage to the great persons of our family must be our haughtiness and severity to the humble. The people addicted to this vice of conversation are evidently satisfied in their own minds that they are talking very fine, and exciting no feeling in their hearers but admiration and respect; but in reality they are always scouted and ridiculed, even to the degree of being honoured with a nickname, carved, perhaps, out of the favourite phrase.
A really good and philosophical spirit will neither plume himself upon his more fortunate, nor despise his less fortunate, relations. He will modestly rejoice in the success of the former, and take care, by avoiding the appearance of intrusiveness on the one hand, and splenetic and pettish jealousy on the other, to afford no reason for the fortunate individual to feel incommoded by the connection, and, consequently, to endeavour to shake it off. To those who are less fortunate than himself, he will be as encouraging and kind as his circumstances render prudent or decent, neither manifesting that vulgar pride which tries needlessly to make a kind of virtue out of a low origin, nor that still more pitiable vanity which denies all inferior kindred, and seeks, at the expense of real dignity, the eclat of a few “great friends.” We allow there is a general difficulty in the case. Friends in different worldly circumstances are like positive and negative clouds in electricity: there is a constant tendency in the poor to an equalization, which is not relished by the parties whose pockets are charged positively. But human nature should be always contending with its weaknesses, and, though full confiding friendship is not perhaps to be expected, there may still be a sufficient interchange of kindness to lighten, in no small degree, the general burden of life.