The tone of politics and of public opinion has undergone a considerable and curious change, even in the few short years I can remember. In my time, that is, in the early part of it, the love of liberty (at least by all those whom I came near) was regarded as the dictate of common sense and common honesty. It was not a question of depth or learning, but an instinctive feeling, prompted by a certain generous warmth of blood in every one worthy the name of Briton. A man would as soon avow himself to be a pimp or a pick-pocket as a tool or a pander to corruption. This was the natural and at the same time the national feeling. Patriotism was not at variance with philanthropy. To take an interest in humanity, it was only thought necessary to have the form of a man: to espouse its cause, nothing was wanting but to be able to articulate the name. It was not inquired what coat a man wore, where he was born or bred, what was his party or his profession, to qualify him to vote on this broad and vital question—to take his share in advancing it, was the undisputed birth-right of every free-man. No one was too high or too low, no one was too wise or too simple to join in the common cause. It would have been construed into lukewarmness and cowardice not to have done so. The voice as of one crying in the wilderness had gone forth—‘Peace on earth, and good-will towards men!’ The dawn of a new era was at hand. Might was no longer to lord it over right, opinion to march hand in hand with falsehood. The heart swelled at the mention of a public as of a private wrong—the brain teemed with projects for the benefit of mankind. History, philosophy, all well-intentioned and well-informed men agreed in the same conclusion. If a good was to be done, let it—if a truth was to be told, let it! There could be no harm in that: it was only necessary to distinguish right from wrong, truth from lies, to know to which we should give the preference. A rose was then doubly sweet, the notes of a thrush went to the heart, there was ‘a witchery in the soft blue sky’ because we could feel and enjoy such things by the privilege of our common nature, ‘not by the sufferance of supernal power,’ and because the common feelings of our nature were not trampled upon and sacrificed in scorn to shew and external magnificence. Humanity was no longer to be crushed like a worm, as it had hitherto been—power was to be struck at, wherever it reared its serpent crest. It had already roamed too long unchecked. Kings and priests had played the game of violence and fraud for thousands of years into each other’s hands, on pretences that were now seen through, and were no farther feasible. The despot’s crown appeared tarnished and blood-stained: the cowl of superstition fell off, that had been so often made a cloak for tyranny. The doctrine of the Jus Divinum ‘squeaked and gibbered in our streets,’ ashamed to shew its head: Holy Oil had lost its efficacy, and was laughed at as an exploded mummery. Mr. Locke had long ago (in his Treatise of Government, written at the express desire of King William) settled the question as it affected our own Revolution (and naturally every other) in favour of liberal principles as a part of the law of the land and as identified with the existing succession. Blackstone and De Lolme (the loudest panegyrists of the English Constitution) founded their praise on the greater alloy of Liberty implied in it. Tyranny was on the wane, at least in theory: public opinion might be said to rest on an inclined plane, tending more and more from the heights of arbitrary power and individual pretension to the level of public good; and no man of common sense or reading would have had the face to object as a bar to the march of truth and freedom—
‘The right divine of Kings to govern wrong!’
No one had then dared to answer the claim of a whole nation to the choice of a free government with the impudent taunt, ‘Your King is at hand!’ Mr. Burke had in vain sung his requiem over the ‘age of chivalry:’ Mr. Pitt mouthed out his speeches on the existence of social order to no purpose: Mr. Malthus had not cut up Liberty by the roots by passing ‘the grinding law of necessity’ over it, and entailing vice and misery on all future generations as their happiest lot: Mr. Ricardo had not pared down the schemes of visionary projectors and idle talkers into the form of Rent: Mr. Southey had not surmounted his cap of Liberty with the laurel wreath; nor Mr. Wordsworth proclaimed Carnage as ‘God’s Daughter;’ nor Mr. Coleridge, to patch up a rotten cause, written the Friend. Every thing had not then been done (or had, ‘like a devilish engine, back recoiled upon itself’) to stop the progress of truth, to stifle the voice of humanity, to break in pieces and defeat opinion by sophistry, calumny, intimidation, by tampering with the interests of the proud and selfish, the prejudices of the ignorant, the fears of the timid, the scruples of the good, and by resorting to every subterfuge which art could devise to perpetuate the abuses of power. Freedom then stood erect, crowned with orient light, ‘with looks commercing with the skies:’—since then, she has fallen by the sword and by slander, whose edge is sharper than the sword; by her own headlong zeal or the watchful malice of her foes, and through that one unrelenting purpose in the hearts of Sovereigns to baffle, degrade, and destroy the People, whom they had hitherto considered as their property, and whom they now saw (oh! unheard-of presumption) setting up a claim to be free. This claim has been once more set aside, annulled, overthrown, trampled upon with every mark of insult and ignominy, in word or deed; and the consequence has been that all those who had stood forward to advocate it have been hurled into the air with it, scattered, stunned, and have never yet recovered from their confusion and dismay. The shock was great, as it was unexpected; the surprise extreme: Liberty became a sort of bye-word; and such was the violence of party-spirit and the desire to retaliate former indignities, that all those who had ever been attached to the fallen cause seemed to have suffered contamination and to labour under a stigma. The Party (both of Whigs and Reformers) were left completely in the lurch; and (what may appear extraordinary at first sight) instead of wishing to strengthen their cause, took every method to thin their ranks and make the terms of admission to them more difficult. In proportion as they were scouted by the rest of the world, they grew more captious, irritable, and jealous of each other’s pretensions. The general obloquy was so great that every one was willing to escape from it in the crowd, or to curry favour with the victors by denouncing the excesses or picking holes in the conduct of his neighbours. While the victims of popular prejudice and ministerial persecution were eagerly sought for, no one was ready to own that he was one of the set. Unpopularity ‘doth part the flux of company.’ Each claimed an exception for himself or party, was glad to have any loop-hole to hide himself from this ‘open and apparent shame,’ and to shift the blame from his own shoulders, and would by no means be mixed up with Jacobins and Levellers—the terms with which their triumphant opponents qualified indiscriminately all those who differed with them in any degree. Where the cause was so disreputable, the company should be select. As the flood-gates of Billingsgate abuse and courtly malice were let loose, each coterie drew itself up in a narrower circle: the louder and more sweeping was the storm of Tory spite without, the finer were the distinctions, the more fastidious the precautions used within. The Whigs, completely cowed by the Tories, threw all the odium on the Reformers; who in return with equal magnanimity vented their stock of spleen and vituperative rage on the Whigs. The common cause was forgot in each man’s anxiety for his own safety and character. If any one, bolder than the rest, wanted to ward off the blows that fell in showers, or to retaliate on the assailants, he was held back or turned out as one who longed to bring an old house about their ears. One object was to give as little offence as possible to ‘the powers that be’—to lie by, to trim, to shuffle, to wait for events, to be severe on our own errors, just to the merits of a prosperous adversary, and not to throw away the scabbard or make reconciliation hopeless. Just as all was hushed up, and the ‘chop-fallen’ Whigs were about to be sent for to Court, a great cloutering blow from an incorrigible Jacobin might spoil all, and put off the least chance of anything being done ‘for the good of the country,’ till another reign or the next century. But the great thing was to be genteel, and keep out the rabble. They that touch pitch are defiled. ‘No connection with the mob,’ was labelled on the back of every friend of the People. Every pitiful retainer of Opposition took care to disclaim all affinity with such fellows as Hunt, Carlisle, or Cobbett.[[70]] As it was the continual drift of the Ministerial writers to confound the different grades of their antagonists, so the chief dread of the Minority was to be confounded with the populace, the Canaille, &c. They would be thought neither with the Government or of the People. They are an awkward mark to hit at. It is true they have no superfluous popularity to throw away upon others, and they may be so far right in being shy in the choice of their associates. They are critical in examining volunteers into the service. It is necessary to ask leave of a number of circumstances equally frivolous and vexatious, before you can enlist in their skeleton-regiment. Thus you must have a good coat to your back; for they have no uniform to give you. You must bring a character in your pocket; for they have no respectability to lose. If you have any scars to shew, you had best hide them, or procure a certificate for your pacific behaviour from the opposite side, with whom they wish to stand well, and not to be always wounding the feelings of distinguished individuals. You must have vouchers that you were neither born, bred, nor reside within the Bills of Mortality, or Mr. Theodore Hook will cry ‘Cockney’! You must have studied at one or other of the English Universities, or Mr. Croker will prove every third word to be a Bull. If you are a patriot and a martyr to your principles, this is a painful consideration, and must act as a draw-back to your pretensions, which would have a more glossy and creditable appearance, if they had never been tried. If you are a lord or a dangler after lords, it is well: the glittering star hides the plebeian stains, the obedient smile and habitual cringe of approbation are always welcome. A courtier abuses courts with a better grace: for one who has held a place to rail at place-men and pensioners shews candour and a disregard to self. There is nothing low, vulgar, or disreputable in it!—I doubt whether this martinet discipline and spruceness of demeanour is favourable to the popular side. The Tories are not so squeamish in their choice of tools. If a writer comes up to a certain standard of dulness, impudence, and want of principle, nothing more is expected. There is fat M——, lean J——, black C——, flimsy H——, lame G——, and one-eyed M——. Do they not form an impenetrable phalanx round the throne, and worthy of it! Who ever thought of inquiring into the talents, qualifications, birth, or breeding of a Government-scribbler? If the workman is fitted to the work, they care not one straw what you or I say about him. This shews a confidence in themselves, and is the way to assure others. The Whigs, who do not feel their ground so well, make up for their want of strength by a proportionable want of spirit. Their cause is ticklish, and they support it by the least hazardous means. Any violent or desperate measures on their part might recoil upon themselves.
‘When they censure the age,
They are cautious and sage,
Lest the courtiers offended should be.’
Whilst they are pelted with the most scurrilous epithets and unsparing abuse, they insist on language the most classical and polished in return; and if any unfortunate devil lets an expression or allusion escape that stings, or jars the tone of good company, he is given up without remorse to the tender mercies of his foes for this infraction of good manners and breach of treaty. The envy or cowardice of these half-faced friends of liberty regularly sacrifices its warmest defenders to the hatred of its enemies—mock-patriotism and effeminate self-love ratifying the lists of proscription made out by servility and intolerance. This is base, and contrary to all the rules of political warfare. What! if the Tories give a man a bad name, must the Whigs hang him? If a writer annoys the first, must he alarm the last? Or when they find he has irritated his and their opponents beyond all forgiveness and endurance, instead of concluding from the abuse heaped upon him that he has ‘done the State some service,’ must they set him aside as an improper person merely for the odium which he has incurred by his efforts in the common cause, which, had they been of no effect, would have left him still fit for their purposes of negative success and harmless opposition? Their ambition seems to be to exist by sufferance; to be safe in a sort of conventional insignificance; and in their dread of exciting the notice or hostility of the lords of the earth, they are like the man in the storm who silenced the appeal of his companion to the Gods—‘Call not so loud, or they will hear us!’ One would think that in all ordinary cases honesty to feel for a losing cause, capacity to understand it, and courage to defend it, would be sufficient introduction and recommendation to fight the battles of a party, and serve at least in the ranks. But this of Whig Opposition is, it seems, a peculiar case. There is more in it than meets the eye. The corps may one day be summoned to pass muster before Majesty, and in that case it will be expected that they should be of crack materials, without a stain and without a flaw. Nothing can be too elegant, too immaculate and refined for their imaginary return to office. They are in a pitiable dilemma—having to reconcile the hopeless reversion of court-favour with the most distant and delicate attempts at popularity. They are strangely puzzled in the choice and management of their associates. Some of them must undergo a thorough ventilation and perfuming, like poor Morgan, before Captain Whiffle would suffer him to come into his presence. Neither can any thing base and plebeian be supposed to ‘come betwixt the wind and their nobility.’ As their designs are doubtful, their friends must not be suspected: as their principles are popular, their pretensions must be proportionably aristocratic. The reputation of Whiggism, like that of women, is a delicate thing, and will bear neither to be blown upon or handled. It has an ill odour, which requires the aid of fashionable essences and court-powders to carry it off. It labours under the frown of the Sovereign: and swoons at the shout and pressure of the People. Even in its present forlorn and abject state, it relapses into convulsions if any low fellow offers to lend it a helping hand: those who would have their overtures of service accepted must be bedizened and sparkling all over with titles, wealth, place, connections, fashion (in lieu of zeal and talent), as a set-off to the imputation of low designs and radical origin; for there is nothing that the patrons of the People dread so much as being identified with them, and of all things the patriotic party abhor (even in their dreams) a misalliance with the rabble!
Why must I mention the instances, in order to make the foregoing statement intelligible or credible? I would not, but that I and others have suffered by the weakness here pointed out; and I think the cause must ultimately suffer by it, unless some antidote be applied by reason or ridicule. Let one example serve for all. At the time that Lord Byron thought proper to join with Mr. Leigh Hunt and Mr. Shelley in the publication called the Liberal, Blackwood’s Magazine overflowed, as might be expected, with tenfold gall and bitterness; the John Bull was outrageous; and Mr. Jerdan black in the face at this unheard-of and disgraceful union. But who would have supposed that Mr. Thomas Moore and Mr. Hobhouse, those staunch friends and partisans of the people, should also be thrown into almost hysterical agonies of well-bred horror at the coalition between their noble and ignoble acquaintance, between the Patrician and ‘the Newspaper-Man?’ Mr. Moore darted backwards and forwards from Cold-Bath-Fields’ Prison to the Examiner-Officer, from Mr. Longman’s to Mr. Murray’s shop, in a state of ridiculous trepidation, to see what was to be done to prevent this degradation of the aristocracy of letters, this indecent encroachment of plebeian pretensions, this undue extension of patronage and compromise of privilege. The Tories were shocked that Lord Byron should grace the popular side by his direct countenance and assistance—the Whigs were shocked that he should share his confidence and counsels with any one who did not unite the double recommendations of birth and genius—but themselves! Mr. Moore had lived so long among the Great that he fancied himself one of them, and regarded the indignity as done to himself. Mr. Hobhouse had lately been black-balled by the Clubs, and must feel particularly sore and tenacious on the score of public opinion. Mr. Shelley’s father, however, was an older Baronet than Mr. Hobhouse’s—Mr. Leigh Hunt was ‘to the full as genteel a man’ as Mr. Moore in birth, appearance, and education—the pursuits of all four were the same, the Muse, the public favour, and the public good! Mr. Moore was himself invited to assist in the undertaking, but he professed an utter aversion to, and warned Lord Byron against having any concern with, joint-publications, as of a very neutralizing and levelling description. He might speak from experience. He had tried his hand in that Ulysses’ bow of critics and politicians, the Edinburgh Review, though his secret had never transpired. Mr. Hobhouse too had written Illustrations of Childe Harold (a sort of partnership concern)—yet to quash the publication of the Liberal, he seriously proposed that his Noble Friend should write once a week in his own name in the Examiner—the Liberal scheme, he was afraid, might succeed: the Newspaper one, he knew, could not. I have been whispered that the Member for Westminster (for whom I once gave an ineffectual vote) has also conceived some distaste for me—I do not know why, except that I was at one time named as the writer of the famous Trecenti Juravimus Letter to Mr. Canning, which appeared in the Examiner and was afterwards suppressed. He might feel the disgrace of such a supposition: I confess I did not feel the honour. The cabal, the bustle, the significant hints, the confidential rumours were at the height when, after Mr. Shelley’s death, I was invited to take part in this obnoxious publication (obnoxious alike to friend and foe)—and when the Essay on the Spirit of Monarchy appeared, (which must indeed have operated like a bomb-shell thrown into the coteries that Mr. Moore frequented, as well as those that he had left,) this gentleman wrote off to Lord Byron, to say that ‘there was a taint in the Liberal, and that he should lose no time in getting out of it.’ And this from Mr. Moore to Lord Byron—the last of whom had just involved the publication, against which he was cautioned as having a taint in it, in a prosecution for libel by his Vision of Judgment, and the first of whom had scarcely written any thing all his life that had not a taint in it. It is true, the Holland-House party might be somewhat staggered by a jeu-d’esprit that set their Blackstone and De Lolme theories at defiance, and that they could as little write as answer. But it was not that. Mr. Moore also complained that ‘I had spoken against Lalla Rookh,’ though he had just before sent me his ‘Fudge Family.’ Still it was not that. But at the time he sent me that very delightful and spirited publication, my little bark was seen ‘hulling on the flood’ in a kind of dubious twilight, and it was not known whether I might not prove a vessel of gallant trim. Mr. Blackwood had not then directed his Grub-street battery against me: but as soon as this was the case, Mr. Moore was willing to ‘whistle me down the wind, and let me prey at fortune;’ not that I ‘proved haggard,’ but the contrary. It is sheer cowardice and want of heart. The sole object of the set is not to stem the tide of prejudice and falsehood, but to get out of the way themselves. The instant another is assailed (however unjustly), instead of standing manfully by him, they cut the connection as fast as possible, and sanction by their silence and reserve the accusations they ought to repel. Sauve qui peut—every one has enough to do to look after his own reputation or safety without rescuing a friend or propping up a falling cause. It is only by keeping in the back-ground on such occasions (like Gil Blas when his friend Ambrose Lamela was led by in triumph to the auto-da-fe) that they can escape the like honours and a summary punishment. A shower of mud, a flight of nick-names (glancing a little out of their original direction) might obscure the last glimpse of Royal favour, or stop the last gasp of popularity. Nor could they answer it to their Noble friends and more elegant pursuits to be seen in such company, or to have their names coupled with similar outrages. Their sleek, glossy, aspiring pretensions should not be exposed to vulgar contamination, or to be trodden under foot of a swinish multitude. Their birthday suits (unused) should not be dragged through the kennel, nor their ‘tricksy’ laurel-wreaths stuck in the pillory. This would make them equally unfit to be taken into the palaces of princes or the carriages of peers. If excluded from both, what would become of them? The only way, therefore, to avoid being implicated in the abuse poured upon others is to pretend that it is just—the way not to be made the object of the hue and cry raised against a friend is to aid it by underhand whispers. It is pleasant neither to participate in disgrace nor to have honours divided. The more Lord Byron confined his intimacy and friendship to a few persons of middling rank, but of extraordinary merit, the more it must redound to his and their credit—the lines of Pope,
‘To view with scornful, yet with jealous eyes,
And hate for arts which caused himself to rise,’—