CHAPTER XXIV.
GREAT BRITAIN.—HISTORY FROM THE COMMONWEALTH TO THE PRESENT DAY.
Puritans.—Results of Asceticism.—Excesses of the Restoration.—General Licentiousness.—Art.—Literature.—The Stage.—Nell Gwynne.—Nationality in Vice.—Sabbath at Court.—James II.—Literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth Centuries.—Lord Chesterfield.—House of Hanover.—Royal Princes.—George III.—George IV.—Influence of French Literature.—Marriage Laws.—Increase of Population.
On gaining the ascendant, the Puritans endeavored to reform the general corruption of society by cutting to the root of the disorders that afflicted it. Instead, however, of applying the knife judiciously, they excised the sound as well as the unhealthy parts. Their measures went to the extreme of killing all the affections and impulses natural to the human breast, in order to repress the excesses arising from too free an abandonment to them. Some fanatics, for instance, gravely suggested that, in order to put an end to fornication and adultery, all intercourse should be prohibited between the sexes.
In our days it is found that innocent amusements are the best safeguard against criminal indulgence, but the Puritans thought otherwise, and looked upon joyous exhilaration of any kind as almost sinful. They enforced their gloomy doctrines with a tyranny as unbending as their tenets themselves were harsh and unnatural. Theatrical entertainments, dancing, etc., were sternly placed under ban, and Puritanism presented merely a heavy and murky atmosphere, with scarcely a social star to enliven its gloomy aspect.
When the Restoration removed the oppressive weight of fanaticism from the public spirit, it rebounded as far above a healthy pitch as it had been formerly depressed below it. An immediate revolution took place in the manners and habits of the people. The theatres, which had been closed by the Puritans, were at once reopened, and the populace abandoned themselves to pleasurable excesses with an eagerness proportionate to the restraint which had been imposed on them. This license would, in time, have been checked by reflection, had not the impulse been supplied from the quarter where a repressive influence should have been exercised. The Merry Monarch and his court led the race in this national carnival, and the examples which they set only served to stimulate the public appetite for debauchery. Indeed, the court of Charles was little better than a public brothel, and the wit with which its orgies were embellished only served to increase the dangers arising from its conspicuous position, and its power over men’s minds as the centre from which all rank and consideration flowed. The conduct of the courtiers was strictly modeled on that of their royal master, and their social accomplishments only imperfectly varnished over the gross features of a coarse sensuality. Women were flattered and caressed, but not respected, and the homage paid them was such as no decent woman in our time would consent to receive.
The most faithful portraiture of the manners of this epoch is to be found in its dramatic literature. The staple incidents of the pieces represented at the theatres consisted of love intrigues, seductions, and rapes. The fop of the play never elicited such hearty applause as when he recounted his exploits in the ruin of female virtue among the citizens’ wives.
The theatre not only fostered lewdness by depicting it in glowing and attractive colors, but its actors spread abroad the corruption which it was their business to delineate. Their personal character corresponded, in too many instances, with the parts which they performed, and they re-enacted in private the debaucheries which they presented on the stage.