It was reserved for the reign of George III. to give a favorable turn to court morals and to make virtue respectable. The Georges I. and II. had exercised but a negative influence on their subjects. They were merely viewed as political necessities, and held in little or no personal esteem. Their uncouth manners, foreign mistresses, and decidedly heavy liaisons had no charm for either eye or fancy. With George III. and his queen, virtue in courts became in some degree fashionable; the slough of libertinism in which Louis XV. and the Regent Orleans had plunged themselves seemed in France to have created some reaction. Louis XVI. in Paris, and George III. in London, presented the rare spectacle to their respective subjects of two well-conducted men, whose domestic life and character were unimpeachable. But as the sons of George III., especially the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York, attained their majority, they were surrounded by bands of flatterers and parasites, who stimulated and encouraged the natural proneness of youth to pleasure and dissipation. The libertinism and excesses of the Stuarts again became bon-ton, devoid, it is true, of political debasement and national dishonor; checked also by parental disapprobation, and by the influence of public opinion. This, though very weak, was not quite powerless; and, though lenient to the errors of youth, it drew an unfavorable comparison between the reckless extravagance and dissolute tastes of the princes, and the moderate and personally estimable conduct of the king and queen.[297]
The masses of the English people were distinguished for plain good sense, and attachment to the cause of religion and morality; and although drinking, gambling, boxing, and racing were, in honor of the royal princes, fashionable amusements, and their attainment coveted and emulated by many of the rising generation, still the general sentiment of the nation at this period was condemnatory of these vices. Those inclined to charitable views of human nature found excuses in the temptations of youth, a fine person, a commanding position, and, lastly, in the infamous counsels of those who found political capital in the encouragement of these excesses, thereby promoting a division between the heir to the throne and his sovereign parent. Others there were who beheld in George IV., whether as prince or monarch, a modern Tiberius, a man of ungovernable lusts; a ruthless libertine and a debased sensualist, without any redeeming qualities. As a fact, apart from causes and political prejudices, George IV. was undoubtedly a debauchee and a man of dissolute habits;[298] but he was a man of liberal education, of cultivated taste, of distinguished appearance, and elegant manners. He and the Count D’Artois, brother of Louis XVI., were considered the most finished gentlemen in Europe, so far as mannerism went. These externals glossed over, and even lent a charm to, the vices of his youth; and the mysterious orgies of Carlton House were associated in the public mind with the brilliant wit of Sheridan, the manly grace of Wyndham (that beau ideal of an English gentleman), the vast talent of Fox, and the enchanting grace of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, the bright particular star amid a galaxy of minor luminaries. The respectability belonged to the court party; the genius and fascination were ranged on the side of the Prince of Wales.
It is difficult, even at this brief lapse of time, and when so many eye-witnesses are yet surviving, to speak with any degree of confidence of the state of general public morals in England as affected by the French Revolution, and the violent Tory and Whig contests of the period. The literature which preceded and accompanied the French Revolution went the whole length of undermining and unsettling every established institution, both of politics and religion, without building up an effective substitute in place of the structure destroyed. The doctrines of moral obligation and the balance of general convenience, which, according to the Volney, Voltaire, and Rousseau school, were to supersede the effete and worn-out dogmas of the Gospel, were little known and less liked in England. At the outset of the French movements, the cause had the sympathy of the English Liberals; but afterward, when the social and political excesses of the time disgusted even its moderate British supporters, and when the deep-rooted and apparently innate antagonism of the two nations was revived by the war, the hatred and contempt of the English people for French manners, French literature, French men, French every thing, knew no bounds. Thus, while the leaven of Parisian philosophy was fermenting in the breasts of all Continental Europe, it is our opinion that its influence in England was purely of a reactionary character; and as under the last Stuarts patriotism and libertinism went hand in hand, so, in the end of the eighteenth and the commencement of the nineteenth centuries, an Englishman’s love of his own country and his hatred of France were associated with a detestation of the heresies of French philosophers and patriarchs.
Of the effect produced on the morals of the people by the loose manner in which, previous to 1753, the marriage ceremony was performed, we have the evidence brought forward in the debates on Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Bill. Anterior to that time, a boy of fourteen and a girl of twelve years of age might marry against the will of their parents or guardians, without any possibility of dissolving such marriage. The law, indeed, required the publication of banns, but custom and the dispensing power had rendered them nugatory. A dispensation could be purchased for a couple of crowns, and the marriage could take place in a closet or a tavern, before two friends who acted as witnesses. But dispensations were not always necessary. There were privileged places, such as May Fair and the Fleet, where the marriage ceremony could be performed at a moment’s notice, and without any inconvenient questions being asked.
Gretna Green, on the borders of Scotland, was long a famous place for runaway matches. It has been questioned how far the Scotch law of marriage was conducive to morality; but, judging from its effects upon the people themselves, it can scarcely be considered an ally of vice. This law, which has only been repealed within a few years, treated marriage as a civil contract, valid if contracted before witnesses, and required no ceremony or preparatory notice. That unions so formed were binding, admits of no possible dispute: the question has been tried in the British courts of law on every conceivable ground, and their legality has been always affirmed, but in the case of marriages at May Fair or the Fleet the same certainty did not exist. Gretna Green is the first village after passing the dividing line between England and Scotland, and owes its fame to its locality. It has doubtless been the scene of many heartless adventures, for which the actual law of the land must be held accountable.
The marriage act which came into operation in 1754, had for its object the prevention of clandestine marriages in England, but did not interfere with the law of Scotland. It sought to effect this reform by making it necessary to the validity of a marriage without license, that it should take place after the proclamation of banns on three Sundays in the parish church, before a person in orders, between single persons consenting, of sound mind, and of the age of twenty-one years, or of the age of fourteen in males and twelve in females, with the consent of parents and guardians, or without their consent in cases of widowhood. The new marriage act of 1837 allows marriage, after notice to the superintendent registrars in every district, either in the public register offices in the presence of the superintendent registrar and the registrar of marriages, or in duly registered places of worship.
We have no statement as to the number of marriages previous to the year 1753. All we know is, that from 1651 to 1751 the population only increased sixteen per cent., the increase being only one million and fourteen thousand in one hundred years. Since the act of 1753 came into operation, the registers of marriages have been preserved in England, and show an increase of marriages from 50,972 in the year 1756, to 63,310 in 1764. “The rage of marrying is very prevalent,” writes Lord Chesterfield in the latter year; and again in 1767, “In short, the matrimonial phrensy seems to rage at present, and is epidemical.” After many fluctuations, the marriages rose to seventy, eighty, ninety, and one hundred thousand annually, and in 1851 to one hundred and fifty-four thousand two hundred and six. Fourteen millions were added to the population, an increase of 187 per cent., or at the rate of one per cent. annually.[299]
CHAPTER XXV.
GREAT BRITAIN.—PROSTITUTION AT THE PRESENT TIME.