Kitabı oku: «Historical Characters», sayfa 20

Living in a retired part of London, visited only by his adorers and disciples, looking rarely beyond the confines of his early knowledge, and on the train of thinking it had inspired, an old and singular gentleman, with great native powers of mind, almost alone resisted the new impulse, and, classifying and extending the doctrines of the French philosophy, established a reputation and a school of his own. The charm of Mr. Bentham’s philosophy, however obscured by fanciful names and unnecessary subdivisions, is its apparent clearness and simplicity.

He considers with the disciples of Helvetius – 1, that our ideas do come from our sensations, and that consequently we are selfish; 2, that man in doing what is most useful to himself does what is right.

Very strange and fantastical notions have been propagated against the philosopher by persons so egregiously mistaking him as to imagine that what he thus says of mankind generally – of man, meaning every man – is said of a man, of man separately; so that a murderer, pretend these commentators, has only to be sure that a second murder is useful to him by preventing the detection of the first, in order to be justified in committing it. It were useless to dwell upon this ridiculous construction. But in urging men to pursue the general interest of society at large, in telling them that to do what is most for that interest is to act usefully and thereby virtuously, Mr. Bentham found it necessary to explain how such interest was to be discovered.

Accordingly he has propounded that the general interest of a society must be considered to be the interest of the greatest number in that society, and that the greatest number in any society is the best judge of its interest. Moreover, in the further development of his doctrine, he contends that a majority would always, under natural circumstances, govern a minority, and that, therefore, there is a natural tendency, if not thwarted, towards the happiness and good government of mankind. This system of philosophy gained the more attention from its being also a system of politics. According to Mr. Bentham, that which was most important to men depended on maintaining what he considered the natural law, viz., governing the minority by the majority.

VIII

Unfortunately for the destiny of mankind, and the soundness of the Benthamite doctrine, it is by no means certain that the majority in any community is the best judge of its interests; whilst it is even less certain, if it did know these interests, that it would necessarily and invariably follow them. In almost every collection of men the intelligent few know better what is for the common interest than the ignorant many; and it is rare indeed to see communities or individuals pursuing their interest steadily even when they perceive it clearly. It would, perhaps, be more reconcilable to reason to say that the intellect of a community should govern a community; but this assertion is also open to objection, since a small number of intelligent men might govern for their own interest, and not for the interest of the society they represented. In short, though it is easy to see that the science of government does not consist in giving power to the greatest number, but in giving it to the most intelligent, and making it for their interest to govern for the interest of the greatest number; still, every day teaches us that good government is rather a thing relative than a thing absolute; that all governments have good mixed with evil, and evil mixed with good; and that the statesman’s task, as is beautifully demonstrated by Montesquieu, is, not to destroy an evil combined with a greater good, nor to create a good accompanied with a greater evil; but to calculate how the greatest amount of good and the least amount of evil can be combined together. Hence it is, that the best governments with which we are acquainted seem rather to have been fashioned by the working hand of daily experience, than by the artistic fingers of philosophical speculation.

Nevertheless, the theory, that the good of the greatest number in any community ought to be the object which its government should strive to attain, and the maxim, that the interest and happiness of every unit in a community are to be treated as a portion of the interest and happiness of the whole community, are humanizing precepts, and have, through the influence of Mr. Bentham and of his disciples, produced, within my own memory, a considerable change in the public opinion of England.

Mr. Bentham’s name, then, is far more above the scoff of his antagonists than below the enthusiasm of his disciples; and it is in this spirit, and with a becoming respect, that Sir James Mackintosh treats the philosopher while he combats his philosophy.

IX

In regard to the theory of Sir James himself, if I understand it rightly (and it is rather, as I have said, indistinctly expressed), he accepts neither the doctrine of innate ideas disinterestedly producing or ordering our actions, nor that of sense-derived ideas by which, with a concentrated regard to self, some suppose men to be governed – but imagines an association of ideas, naturally suggested by our human condition, which, according to a pre-ordinated state of the mind, produces, as in chemical processes, some emotion different from any of the combined elements or causes from which it springs.

This emotion, once existing, requires, without consideration or reflection, its gratification. In this manner the satisfaction of benevolence and pity springs as much from a spontaneous desire as the satisfaction of hunger; and man is unconsciously taught, through feelings necessary to him as man, to wish involuntarily for that which, on reflection and experience, he would find (such is the beautiful dispensation of Providence) most for his happiness and advantage.

The union, assemblage, or incorporation, if one may so speak, of these involuntary desires, affecting and affected by them all, becomes our universal moral sense or conscience, which in each of its propensities is gratified or mortified, according to our conduct.

X

Here end my criticisms. They have passed rapidly in review the principal works and events of Sir James Mackintosh’s life;¹⁰⁴ and what have they illustrated? That, which I commenced by observing: that he had made several excellent speeches, that he had taken an active part in politics, that he had written ably upon history, that he had manifested a profound knowledge of philosophy; but that he had not been pre-eminent as an orator, as a politician, as an historian, as a philosopher.¹⁰⁵ It may be doubted whether any speech or book of his will long survive his time; but a very valuable work might be compiled from his writings and speeches. Indeed, there are hardly any books in our language more interesting or more instructive than the two volumes published by his son, and which display in every page the best qualities of an excellent heart and an excellent understanding, set off by the most amiable and remarkable simplicity. His striking, peculiar, and unrivalled merit, however, was that of a conversationalist. Great good-nature, great and yet gentle animation, much learning, and a sound, discriminating, and comprehensive judgment, made him this. He had little of the wit of words – brilliant repartées, caustic sayings, concentrated and epigrammatic turns of expression. But he knew everything and could talk of everything without being tedious. A lady of great wit, intellect, and judgment (Lady William Russell), in describing his soft Scotch voice, said to me – “Mackintosh played on your understanding with a flageolet, Macaulay with a trumpet.” Having lived much by himself and with books, and much also in the world and with men, he had the light anecdote and easy manner of society, and the grave and serious gatherings in of lonely hours. He added also to much knowledge considerable powers of observation; and there are few persons of whom he speaks, even at the dawn of their career, whom he has not judged with discrimination. His agreeableness, moreover, being that of a full mind expressed with facility, was the most translatable of any man’s, and he succeeded with foreigners, and in France, which he visited three times – once at the peace of Amiens, again in 1814, and again in 1824 – quite as much as in his own country, and with his own countrymen. Madame de Staël and Benjamin Constant prized him not less than did Lord Dudley or Lord Byron. It was not only in England, then, but also on the Continent, where his early pamphlet and distinguished friendships had made him equally known – that he ever remained the man of promise; until, amidst hopes which his vast and various information, his wonderful memory, his copious elocution, and his transitory fits of energy, still nourished, he died, in the sixty-seventh year of his age, universally admired and regretted, though without a high reputation for any one thing, or the ardent attachment of any particular set of persons. His death, which took place the 30th of May, 1832, was occasioned by a small fragment of chicken-bone, which, having lacerated the trachea, created a wound that ultimately proved fatal. He met his end with calmness and resignation, expressing his belief in the Christian faith, and placing his trust in it.

XI

No man doing so little ever went through a long life continually creating the belief that he would ultimately do so much. A want of earnestness, a want of passion, a want of genius, prevented him from playing a first-rate part amongst men during his day, and from leaving any of those monuments behind him which command the attention of posterity. A love of knowledge, an acute and capacious intelligence, an early and noble ambition, led him into literary and active life, and furnished him with the materials and at moments with the energy by which success in both is obtained. An amiable disposition, a lively flow of spirits, an extraordinary and varied stock of information made his society agreeable to the most distinguished persons of his age, and induced them, encouraged by some occasional displays of remarkable power, to consider his available abilities to be greater than they really were.

“What have you done,” he relates that a French lady once said to him, “that people should think you so superior?” “I was obliged,” he adds, “as usual, to refer to my projects.” For active life he was too much of the academic school: – believing nearly all great distinctions to be less than they were, and remaining irresolute between small ones. He passed, as he himself said, from Burke to Fox in half an hour, and remained weeks, as we learn from a friend (Lord Nugent), in determining whether he should employ “usefulness” or “utility” in some particular composition. Such is not the stuff out of which great leaders or statesmen are formed. His main error as a writer and as a speaker was his elaborate struggle against that easy idle way of delivering himself, which made the charm of his talk when he did not think of what he was saying. “The great fault of my manner,” he himself observes somewhere, “is that I overload.” And to many of his more finished compositions we might, indeed, apply the old saying of the critic, who on being asked whether he admired a certain tragedy of Dionysius, replied: “I have not seen it; it is obscured with language.” His early compositions had a sharper and terser style than his later ones, the activity of the author’s mind being greater, and his doubts and toils after perfection less; but even these were over-prepared. Can he be considered a failure? No; if you compare him with other men. Yes; if you compare him with the general idea entertained as to himself. The reputation he attained, however vague and uncertain, the writings that he left, though inferior to the prevalent notions as to his powers, – all placed him on a pedestal of conspicuous, though not of gigantic elevation amongst his contemporaries. The results of his life only disappointed when you measured them by the anticipations which his merits had excited – then he became “the man of promise.” Could he have arrived at greater eminence than that which he attained? if so, it must have been by a different road. I cannot repeat too often that no man struggles perpetually and victoriously against his own character; and one of the first principles of success in life, is so to regulate our career as rather to turn our physical constitution and natural inclinations to good account, than to endeavour to counteract the one or oppose the other.

There can be no general comparison between Montaigne and Mackintosh. The first was an original thinker, and the latter a combiner and retailer of the thoughts of others. But I have often pictured to myself the French philosopher lounging away the greatest portion of his life in the old square turret of his château, yielding to his laziness all that it exacted from him, and becoming, almost in spite of himself, the first magistrate of his town, and, though carelessly and discursively, the greatest writer of his time. He gave the rein to the idleness of his nature, and had reason to be satisfied with the employment of his life.

On the other hand, let us look at the accomplished Scotchman, constantly agitated by his aspirations after fame and his inclinations for repose; formed for literary ease, forcing himself into political conflict – dreaming of a long-laboured history, and writing a hasty article in a review; earnest about nothing, because the objects to which he momentarily directed his efforts were not likely to give the permanent distinction for which he pined; and thus, with a doubtful mind and a broken career, achieving little that was worthy of his abilities, or equal to the expectations of his friends. I have said there can be no general comparison between men whose particular faculties were no doubt of a very different order; yet, had the one mixed in contest with the bold and factious spirits of his day, he would have been but a poor “ligueur;” and had the other abstained from politics and renounced long and laborious compositions, merely writing under the stimulus of some accidental inspiration, it is probable that his name would have gone down to posterity as that of the most agreeable and instructive essayist of his remarkable epoch. But at all events that name is graven on the monument which commemorates more Christian manners and more mild legislation: and “Blessed shall he be,” as said our great lawyer, “who layeth the first stone of this building; more blessed he that proceeds in it; most of all he that finisheth it in the glory of God, and the honour of our king and nation.”

COBBETT, THE CONTENTIOUS MAN

Part I
FROM HIS BIRTH, IN MARCH, 1762, TO HIS QUITTING THE UNITED STATES, JUNE 1ST, 1800

Son of a small farmer. – Boyhood spent in the country. – Runs away from home. – Becomes a lawyer’s clerk. – Enlists as a soldier, 1784. – Learns grammar and studies Swift. – Goes to Canada. – Remarked for good conduct. – Rises to rank of sergeant-major. – Gets discharge, 1791. – Marries. – Quits Europe for United States. – Starts as a bookseller in Pennsylvania. – Becomes a political writer of great power. – Takes a violent anti-republican tone. – Has to suffer different prosecutions, and at last sets sail for England.

I

The character which I am now tempted to delineate is just the reverse of that which I rise from describing. Mackintosh was a man of great powers of reasoning, of accomplished learning, but of little or no sustained energy. His vision took a wide and calm range; he saw all things coolly, dispassionately, and, except at his first entry into life, was never so lost in his admiration of one object as to overlook the rest. His fault lay in rather the opposite extreme; his perception of the universal weakened that of the particular, and the variety of colours which appeared at once before him became too blended in his sight for the adequate appreciation of each.

The subject of this memoir, on the contrary, though he could argue well in favour of any opinion he adopted, had not that elevated and philosophic cast of mind which makes men inquire after truth for the sake of truth, regarding its pursuit as a delight, its attainment as a duty. Neither could he take that comprehensive view of affairs which affords to the judgment an ample scope for the comparison and selection of opinions. But he possessed a rapid power of concentration; a will that scorned opposition; he saw clearly that one side of a question which caught his attention; and pursued the object he had momentarily in view with an energy that never recoiled before a danger, and was rarely arrested by a scruple. The sense of his force gave him the passion for action; but he encouraged this passion until it became restlessness, a desire to fight rather for the pleasure of fighting than for devotion to any cause for which he fought.

While Mackintosh always struggled against his character, and thereby never gave himself fair play, the person of whom I am now about to speak – borne away in a perfectly opposite extreme – allowed his character to usurp and govern his abilities, frequently without either usefulness or aim. Thus, the one changed sides two or three times in his life, from that want of natural ardour which creates strong attachments; the other attacked and defended various parties with a furious zeal, upon which no one could rely, because it proceeded from the temporary caprice of a whimsical imagination, and not from the stedfast enthusiasm of any well-meditated conviction. With two or three qualities more, Cobbett would have been a very great man in the world; as it was, he made a great noise in it. But I pass from criticism to narrative.

II

William Cobbett was born in the neighbourhood of Farnham, on the 9th of March, 1762. The remotest ancestor he had ever heard of was his grandfather, who had been a day labourer, and, according to the rustic habits of old times, worked with the same farmer from the day of his marriage to that of his death. The son, Cobbett’s parent, was a man superior to the generality of persons in his station of life. He could not only read and write, but he knew also a little mathematics; understood land surveying, was honest and industrious, and had thus risen from the position of labourer, a position in which he was born, to that of having labourers under him.

Cobbett’s boyhood, I may say his childhood, was passed in the fields: first he was seen frightening the birds from the turnips, then weeding wheat, then leading a horse at harrowing barley, finally joining the reapers at harvest, driving the team, and holding the plough. His literary instruction was small, and only such as he could acquire at home. It was shrewdly asked by Dr. Johnson, “What becomes of all the clever schoolboys?” In fact, many of the boys clever at school are not heard of afterwards, because if they are docile they are also timid, and attend to the routine of education less from the love of learning than the want of animal spirits. Cobbett was not a boy of this kind. At the age of sixteen he determined to go to sea, but could not get a captain to take him. At the age of seventeen he quitted his home (having already, when much younger, done so in search of adventures), and without communicating his design to any one, started, dressed in his Sunday clothes, for the great city of London. Here, owing to the kind exertions of a passenger in the coach in which this his first journey was made, he got engaged after some time and trouble as under-clerk to an attorney (Mr. Holland), in Gray’s Inn Lane.

It is natural enough that to a lad accustomed to fresh air, green fields, and out-of-door exercise, the close atmosphere, dull aspect, and sedentary position awaiting an attorney’s under-clerk at Gray’s Inn must have been hateful. But William Cobbett never once thought of escaping from what he called “an earthly hell” by a return to his home and friends. This would have been to confess himself beaten, which he never meant to be. On the contrary, rushing from one bold step to another still more so, he enlisted himself (1784) as a soldier in a regiment intended to serve in Nova Scotia. His father, though somewhat of his own stern and surly nature, begged, prayed, and remonstrated. But it was useless. The recruit, however, had some months to pass in England, since, peace having taken place, there was no hurry in sending off the troops. These months he spent in Chatham, storing his brains with the lore of a circulating library, and his heart with love-dreams of the librarian’s daughter.

To this period he owed what he always considered his most valuable acquisition, a knowledge of his native language; the assiduity with which he gave himself up to study, on this occasion, insured his success and evinced his character. He wrote out the whole of an English grammar two or three times; he got it by heart; he repeated it every morning and evening, and he imposed on himself the task of saying it over once every time that he mounted guard. “I learned grammar,” he himself says, “when I was a private soldier on the pay of sixpence a day. The edge of my berth, or that of the guard-bed, was my seat to study on; my knapsack was my book-case, a bit of board lying on my lap was my writing-table, and the task did not demand anything like a year of my life.” Such is will. In America, Cobbett remained as a soldier till the month of September, 1791, when his regiment was relieved and sent home. On the 19th of November, he obtained his discharge, after having served nearly eight years, never having once been disgraced, confined, or reprimanded, and having attained, owing to his zeal and intelligence, the rank of sergeant-major without having passed through the intermediate rank of sergeant.

The following was the order issued at Portsmouth on the day of his discharge:

“Portsmouth, 19th Dec. 1791.

“Sergeant-Major Cobbett having most pressingly applied for his discharge, at Major Lord Edward Fitzgerald’s request, General Frederick has ordered Major Lord Edward Fitzgerald to return the Sergeant-Major thanks for his behaviour and conduct during the time of his being in the regiment, and Major Lord Edward adds his most hearty thanks to those of the General.”

III

At this period Cobbett married. Nobody has left us wiser sentiments or pithier sentences on the choice of a wife. His own, the daughter of a sergeant of artillery, stationed like himself at New Brunswick, had been selected at once. He had met her two or three times, and found her pretty; beauty, indeed, he considered indispensable, but beauty alone would never have suited him. Industry, activity, energy, the qualities which he possessed, were those which he most admired, and the partner of his life was fixed upon when he found her, one morning before it was distinctly light, “scrubbing out a washing-tub before her father’s door.” “That’s the girl for me,” he said, and he kept to this resolution with a fortitude which the object of his attachment deserved and imitated.

The courtship was continued, and the assurance of reciprocated affection given; but before the union of hands could sanctify that of hearts, the artillery were ordered home for England. Cobbett, whose regiment was then at some distance from the spot where his betrothed was still residing, unable to have the satisfaction of a personal farewell, sent her 150 guineas, the whole amount of his savings, and begged her to use it – as he feared her residence with her father at Woolwich might expose her to bad company – in making herself comfortable in a small lodging with respectable people until his arrival. It was not until four years afterwards that he himself was able to quit America, and he then found the damsel he had so judiciously chosen not with her father, it is true, nor yet lodging in idleness, but as servant-of-all-work for five pounds a year, and at their first interview she put into his hands the 150 guineas which had been confided to her – untouched. Such a woman had no ordinary force of mind; and it has been frequently asserted that he who, once beyond his own threshold, was ready to contend with every government in the world, was, when at home, under what has been appropriately called the government of the petticoat.

Cobbett’s marriage took place on the 3rd of February, 1792; that is, about ten weeks after his discharge; but having in March brought a very grave charge against some of the officers of his regiment, which charge, when a court-martial was summoned, he did not appear to support, he was forced to quit England for France, where he remained till September, 1792, when he determined on trying his fortune in the United States.

IV

On his arrival he settled in Philadelphia, and was soon joined by Mrs. Cobbett, who had not accompanied him out. His livelihood was at first procured by giving English lessons to French emigrants; and it is a fact not without interest that a celebrated person who figures amongst these sketches – M. de Talleyrand – wished to become one of his pupils. He refused, he says, to go to the ci-devant bishop’s house, but adds, in his usual style, that the lame fiend hopped over this difficulty at once by offering to come to his (Cobbett’s) house, an offer that was not accepted. About this time Doctor Priestley came to America. The enthusiasm with which the doctor was received roused the resentment of the British soldier, who moreover panted for a battle. He published then – though with some difficulty, booksellers objecting to the unpopularity of the subject, an objection at which the author was most indignant – a pamphlet called “Observations on Priestley’s Emigration.” This pamphlet, on account both of its ability and scurrility, made a sensation, and thus commenced the author’s reputation, though it only added 1s. 7½d. to his riches. But he was abusing, he was abused. This was to be in his element, and he rose at once, so far as the power and peculiarity of his style were concerned, to a foremost place amongst political writers. This style had been formed at an early period of life, and perhaps unconsciously to himself.

“At eleven years of age,” he says in an article in the Evening Post, calling upon the reformers to pay for returning him to Parliament, “my employment was clipping of box-edgings and weeding beds of flowers in the garden of the Bishop of Winchester at the castle of Farnham, my native town. I had always been fond of beautiful gardens, and a gardener who had just come from the King’s gardens at Kew gave me such a description of them as made me instantly resolve to work in those gardens. The next morning” (this is the early adventure I have previously spoken of), “without saying a word to any one, off I set, with no clothes except those upon my back, and with thirteen halfpence in my pocket. I found that I must go to Richmond, and I accordingly went on from place to place inquiring my way thither. A long day (it was in June) brought me to Richmond in the afternoon. Two pennyworth of bread and cheese and a pennyworth of small beer which I had on the road, and one halfpenny that I had lost somehow or other, left three pence in my pocket. With this for my whole fortune, I was trudging through Richmond in my blue smock-frock, and my red garters tied under my knees, when, staring about me, my eye fell upon a little book in a bookseller’s window, on the outside of which was written ‘The Tale of a Tub, price 3d.’ The title was so odd that my curiosity was excited. I had the threepence; but then I could not have any supper. In I went and got the little book, which I was so impatient to read, that I got over into a field at the upper corner of Kew Gardens, where there stood a haystack. On the shady side of this I sat down to read. The book was so different from anything that I had ever read before, it was something so new to my mind, that, though I could not understand some parts of it, it delighted me beyond description, and produced what I have always considered a sort of birth of intellect.

“I read on until it was dark without any thought of supper or bed. When I could see no longer, I put my little book in my pocket and tumbled down by the side of the stack, where I slept till the birds in the Kew Gardens awakened me in the morning, when off I started to Kew, reading my little book. The singularity of my dress, the simplicity of my manner, my lively and confident air, and doubtless his own compassion besides, induced the gardener, who was a Scotchman, I remember, to give me victuals, find me lodging, and set me to work; and it was during the period that I was at Kew that George IV. and two of his brothers laughed at the oddness of my dress while I was sweeping the grass-plot round the foot of the Pagoda. The gardener, seeing me fond of books, lent me some gardening books to read; but these I could not relish after my ‘Tale of a Tub,’ which I carried about with me wherever I went, and when I – at about twenty years old – lost it in a box that fell overboard in the Bay of Fundy, in North America, the loss gave me greater pain than I have since felt at losing thousands of pounds.”

V

Many had cause to remember, this evening passed under a haystack at Kew. The genius of Swift engrafted itself naturally on an intellect so clear and a disposition so inclined to satire as that of the gardener’s boy.

Cobbett’s earliest writings are more especially tinged with the colouring of his master. Take for instance the following fable, which will at all times find a ready application:

“In a pot-shop, well stocked with wares of all sorts, a discontented, ill-formed pitcher unluckily bore the sway. One day, after the mortifying neglect of several customers, ‘Gentlemen,’ said he, addressing himself to his brown brethren in general – ‘gentlemen, with your permission, we are a set of tame fools, without ambition, without courage, condemned to the vilest uses; we suffer all without murmuring; let us dare to declare ourselves, and we shall soon see the difference. That superb ewer, which, like us, is but earth – these gilded jars, vases, china, and, in short, all those elegant nonsenses whose colour and beauty have neither weight nor solidity – must yield to our strength and give place to our superior merit.’ This civic harangue was received with applause, and the pitcher, chosen president, became the organ of the assembly. Some, however, more moderate than the rest, attempted to calm the minds of the multitude; but all the vulgar utensils, which shall be nameless, were become intractable. Eager to vie with the bowls and the cups, they were impatient, almost to madness, to quit their obscure abodes to shine upon the table, kiss the lip, and ornament the cupboard.