Tales of My Time, Vol. 2 (of 3) / Who Is She? [concluded]; The Young Reformers

by William Pitt Scargill

Such was the state of affairs at the period of which I write, as touching our public functions; but the condition of private life remains to be unfolded; and as the inhabitants of Glendruid were not the leaders, but the led, I will begin with causes before I proceed to effects, and describe the situation of affairs at Painesville, formerly known by the appellation of Lovett-lodge, and exhibiting a complete pandemonium at the time in which my tale may be said to commence. Looking back on Mr. Lovett's family with the sobered views of forty-five, I must own that nothing could be more preposterously absurd than the inversion of all natural order in his house.

Mr. and Mrs. Lovett were pupils of that school which directly sprang from the French revolution, though they had not drank so deeply of the poisoned chalice as to be openly professed advocates of irreligion or immorality. They were republicans; and held all the incompatible doctrines which contradict each other, and the unfortunate consequences of which are precisely as apparent under a single roof as in a nation. Of such nature were the dogmas of liberty and equality, so utterly at variance with the constitution of created things, that were they introduced by the divine fiat over the face of the whole globe in perfect balance at the moment of its formation, one generation could not pass away without witnessing the destruction of a state inconsistent with the unequal proportions of strength and intellect awarded by our Maker to his creatures, and therefore never designed to be continued amongst them.

The uproar of a democracy met the eye and ear on crossing the threshold of the door at Painesville, where eight children were permitted, from the earliest age, to exercise their several talents for disputation without the slightest restraint. Assertion passed for argument, roughness was styled sincerity, and contempt of all authority was called the light of reason. When first I became acquainted with manners so dissimilar from those to which I had been used at Glendruid, I was struck with an unfavourable impression, and felt like one who is suddenly introduced from a purer atmosphere into one that is contaminated; but the moral and physical senses become alike accustomed to vitiated air, and we learn to breathe freely where suffocation seemed to threaten. I soon imbibed enough of the popular Malaria to be quite at home; and though conscious that paradoxes were imposed upon my understanding, against which the unbiassed mind revolted, I speedily adopted the nomenclature, and learned to call things by names which were foreign to their nature; right and wrong often changed places, and I became an adept in the language of "natural justice—tyranny of the laws—folly of legislation—wickedness of power—sovereignty of reason," and the disgusting farrago of a period now gone by, but which, though its grosser errors are disclaimed by the more judicious, has left much of its leaven behind.

At Painesville there was nothing but incessant discussion, replication, rejoinder, mooting of futile questions, and disrespectful contradiction. Talents were held to be the one thing needful; and though the heads of the family did not carry matters to such lengths as to pronounce that religion and morals were of no value, yet the whole bearing of conversation tended to loosen all existing ties with either the one or the other. Every subject was tried by the test of reason; not meaning the reason of the wise, the informed, the experienced—but of the young, the pert, and superficial. The rapid conclusions of ingenuity put to flight the sober maxims of truth and knowledge. Whatever was rendered venerable by the sanction of time was litigated, and brought to the bar anew, to be tried by a self impanelled jury. At Painesville it was decreed that, "relationship was a mere accident, which ought not to infringe on the liberty of the subject, by conveying any right. Children, it was argued, were not consulted as to their choice—they did not give consent to be brought into the world; consequently there was no covenant. Nature declared for equality, in the inferior creation, as soon as animals acquired physical power to take care of themselves. Why should man be the only exception to a law thus general, and with superior endowments be excluded from the charter enjoyed by every other living creature?"

It is painful, even now, to retrace, at this distance of time, the dicta of a philosophy which has become nearly obsolete, and the very remembrance of which ought to be expunged; but I am giving the history of my own times; and facts which I must narrate require a retrospect of those modes of thinking which gave them birth. The intelligent reader, who is aware of the moral confusion which followed, upon the adoption of those principles introduced by the French revolution, will easily fill up the rough sketch which I have attempted of the Lovett family, and be enabled to anticipate, in idea, all the consequences exhibited in the minuter detail of their lives. Such a reader will easily guess, that on the part of the parents was presented a wild assumption of those destructive principles which led to the dismemberment of that country from which they were unhappily imported; while the offspring, as might naturally be expected, found too much that was gratifying both to pride and vanity, in the lessons which they were taught, not to seize them with avidity; and Painesville accordingly exhibited a saturnalia where the rulers and the ruled exchanged places.

All was chaos and usurpation; Mr. and Mrs. Lovett boasted of the equality which reigned in their family, and rejected every idea of governing their children by means of parental discipline. Fear was decided to be a slavish sentiment, which was not allowed place amongst the motives which ought to actuate rational beings. "Man was born free, and judgment was given as the only guide of action. Affections were mere instincts unworthy of swaying the conduct; and duty was an imposition on the privileges of the human race."

The young people were not long in convincing their father and mother that the relation of equal fraternity, once substituted for that of parent and child, it is no easy matter to retrace the path, and when the evils of misrule become intolerable from the numbers and the strength of those whom it influences, to exchange them for the blessings of legitimate control. The colt too long at large will not readily submit to bit and bridle; and that rider who would attempt to enforce the unwonted restraint, will soon be rendered practically sensible of his mistake.

At Painesville all the members of the family talked together, which seemed the only symptom of concert amongst them. They quoted Rousseau, D'Alembert, Gibbon, Hume, Volney, at every sentence. With these authors I was not acquainted, as they made no part of the study furniture at Glendruid; but, as I have said already, though conscience winced in the outset from doctrines so little in unison with those of home, I was an apt pupil, and speedily adopted a new system of thinking.

My two brothers, who were senior to me, had entered the University in the year that preceded that of the Irish rebellion; and though they never remained more than a few days at each examination in the metropolis, yet my father's parochial duties frequently interfering with his power of accompanying them, these short visits in Dublin were sufficient to bring them acquainted with all that was in progress, such was the activity that characterized at that juncture the republican energies in Ireland.