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No. 125. TUESDAY, JULY 24.

Ne pueri, ne tanta animis assuescite bella:
Neu patriæ validas in viscera vertite vires.

VIRG. En. vi. 832.

Embrace again my sons; be foes no more,
Nor stain your country with her children's gore.

DRYDEN.

My worthy friend Sir Roger, when we are talking of the malice of parties, very frequently tells us an accident that happened to him when he was a school-boy, which was at a time when the feuds ran high between the Round-heads and Cavaliers. This worthy knight being then but a stripling, had occasion to inquire which was the way to St. Anne's-Lane,' upon which the person whom he spoke to, instead of answering his question, called him a young popish cur, and asked him who had made Anne a saint! The boy being in some confusion, inquired of the next he met, which was the way to Anne's-Lane; but was called a prickeared cur for his pains, and instead of being shewn the way, was told, that she had been a saint before he was born, and would be one after he was hanged. Upon this, says Sir Roger, I did not think fit to repeat the former question, but going into every lane of the neighbourhood, asked what they called the name of that lane. By which ingenious artifice he found out the place he inquired after, without giving offence to any party. Sir Roger generally closes this narrative with reflections on the mischief that parties do in the country; how they spoil good neighbour

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1 There were two St. Anne's Lanes which might have cost Sir Roger trouble to find; one on the north side of St. Martin's-le-Grand, just within Aldersgate Street," (Stow); and the other-which it requires sharp eyes to find in Strype's map-turning out of Great Peter Street, Westminster. Mr. Peter Cunningham, in his admirable Handbook for London, prefers supposing Sir Roger enquiring his way in Westminster.—*

? There is scarcely a period when party spirit raged so fiercely as at the

hood, and make honest gentlemen hate one another; besides that they manifestly tend to the prejudice of the land-tax, and the destruction of the game.

date of these numbers of the "Spectator;" for, although faction had long sheathed the sword, the tongue in coffee-houses and the pen in pamphlets were never more bitterly or rancorously employed. Only a few months previously, the trial of Dr. Sachevrel and the "bed-chamber cabal "—of which Mrs. Masham was chief-had overturned the Godolphin ministry; and had brought in the Tories with Harley at their head, backed by a new and eminently Tory House of Commons, with Whiggery enough in the Upper House and in the camarilla to keep the flames of party in full glow. So nearly were sides balanced in the House of Lords, that to carry the peace project, which ended in the treaty of Utrecht, Anne was obliged to make twelve new Tory peers, -a "jury" of such well-packed Tories, that a Whig wit asked one of them if they intended to vote by their "foreman." The Duchess of Somerset was still retained about the person of the queen; and counteracted, in part, the subtle Tory whisperings of Mrs. Masham into Anne's ear. The lucrative employments of the Duchess of Marlborough were divided between these two favourites. The duke was on the eve of being impeached for peculation, and his regiment had actually been transferred to Hill, Mrs. Masham's brother. The Whigs violently advocated the continuance of a war which Marlborough's victories had made at once so profitable to his private fortune and so glorious to the nation. The Tories and the queen strove equally for peace: nor did this contest suspend the church controversy which Sachevrel's trial had brought to issue without deciding.

These questions ranged the British public into two ranks, under Whig and Tory banners; and carried the battle into private life in the manner not less truthfully than humorously described in the text, and in various other chapters of the "Spectator." Families were estranged and friendships broken up, especially amongst those who played prominent parts in the struggle-such as Swift on the Tory, and Addison and Steele on the Whig side. Yet it is gratifying to observe, that the softening influences of literature afforded a lingering link of union to these men even after they were in political opposition. Swift, the foremost party pamphleteer of his day, did not scruple to use his influence with Harley, in favour of "Pastoral" Philips, Congreve, and on one occasion for Steele-all Whigs. On the day of publication of the paper which forms part of our present chapter, (Thursday, July 26th, 1711), Swift, Addison, and Steele, dined together at young Jacob Tonson's, “Mr. Addison and I talked as usual, and as if we had seen one another yesterday; and Steele and I were very easy, though I wrote him a biting letter in answer to one of his, where he desired me to recomVOL. V.-15*

There cannot a greater judgment befal a country than such a dreadful spirit of division as rends a government into two distinct people, and makes them greater strangers and more averse to one

mend a friend of his to the lord treasurer." Again, under a later date, Swift writes to Stella, "I met Pastoral Philips and Mr. Addison on the Mall to-day, and took a turn with them; but they looked terribly dry and cold. A curse on party!"

The bonds of other classes of society were more forcibly riven. The lower the grade the more inveterate the contention: for, as Pope said about that time, "There never was any party, faction, sect, or cabal whatsoever, in which the most ignorant were not the most violent; for a bee is not a busier animal than a blockhead." Even trade was tainted by the poison of party. The buying, in its dealings with the selling public, more generally enquired into the political principles of tradesmen, than into the excellence or defects of their wares. Inn-keepers, as we find in the text, were especially subjected to this rule, and their politics were known by the signs at their doors. The introduction of Addison's "Freeholder” to the Tory fox-hunter was accompanied by the recommendation of a host"A lusty fellow, that lives well, is at least three yards in the girt, and is the best Church of England man upon the road."

Not the least conspicuous partizans were, alas, of the gentler sex; for the chiefs of each faction were women, and their theatre of war the queen's bedchamber. The petty expedients of each faction to distinguish itself in public from the other, are happily ridiculed in various parts of the "Spectator." At the play Whig and Tory ladies sat at opposite sides of the house, and "patched" on opposite sides of their faces:-"I must here take notice, that Rosalinda, a famous Whig partizan, has most unfortunately a very beautiful mole on the Tory part of her forehead: which, being very conspicuous, has occasioned many mistakes, and given an handle to her enemies to misrepresent her face, as though it had revolted from the Whig interest. But whatever this natural patch may seem to insinuate, it is well known that her notions of government are still the same. This unlucky mole, however, has misled several coxcombs; and like the hanging out of false colours, made some of them converse with Rosalinda in what they thought the spirit of her party, when on a sudden she has given them an unexpected fire, that has sunk them all at once. If Rosalinda is unfortunate in her mole, Nigranilla is as unhappy in a pimple, which forces her, against her inclination, to patch on the Whig side." No. 81.

So angry were the Whig ladies with the queen when she presented Prince Eugene with a jewelled sword, that they abstained in a body from appearing at court on that occasion; which being that of her majesty's birthday was evidence of unprecedented party rancour.

another, than if they were actually two different nations. The effects of such a division are pernicious to the last degree, not only with regard to those advantages which they give the common enemy, but to those private evils which they produce in the heart of almost every particular person. This influence is very fatal both to men's morals and their understandings; it sinks the virtue of a nation, and not only so, but destroys even

common sense.

A furious party-spirit, when it rages in its full violence, exerts itself in civil war and bloodshed; and when it is under its greatest restraints, naturally breaks out in falsehood, detraction, calumny, and a partial administration of justice. In a word, it fills a nation with spleen and rancour, and extinguishes all the seeds of good-nature, compassion, and humanity.

Plutarch says very finely, that a man should not allow himself to hate even his enemies, because, says he, if you indulge this passion in some occasions, it will rise of itself in others; if you hate your enemies, you will contract such a vicious habit of mind, as by degrees will break out upon those who are your friends or those who are indifferent to you. I might here observe how admirably this precept of morality (which derives the malignity of hatred from the passion itself, and not from its object) answers to that great rule which was dictated to the world about an hundred years before this philosopher wrote; but instead of that, I shall only take notice, with a real grief of heart, that the mindst of many good men among us appear soured with party-principles, and alienated from one another in such a manner, as seems to me altogether inconsistent with the dictates either of reason or religion. Zeal for a public cause is apt to breed passions in the hearts of virtuous persons, to which the regard ofa their own private interest would never have betrayed them.

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a The regard of, I would rather say a regard for."

If this party spirit has so ill an effect on our morals, it has likewise a very great one upon our judgments. We often hear a poor insipid paper or pamphlet cried up, and sometimes a noble piece depreciated by those who are of a different principle from the author. One who is actuated by this spirit, is almost under an incapacity of discerning either real blemishes or beauties. A man of merit in a different principle, is like an object seen in two different mediums, that appears crooked or broken, however straight and entire it may be in itself. For this reason there is scarce a person of any figure in England, who does not go by two contrary characters, as opposite to one another as light and darkness. Knowledge and learning suffer in a particular manner from this strange prejudice, which at present prevails amongst all ranks and degrees in the British nation. As men formerly became eminent in learned societies by their parts and acquisitions, they now distinguish themselves by the warmth and violence with which they espouse their respective parties. Books are valued upon the like considerations: an abusive scurrilous style passes for satire, and a dull scheme of party-notions is called fine writing.

There is one piece of sophistry practised by both sides, and that is the taking any scandalous story that has been ever whispered or invented of a private man, for a known undoubted truth, and raising suitable speculations upon it. Calumnies that have been never proved, or have been often refuted, are the ordinary postulatums of these infamous scribblers, upon which they proceed as upon first principles granted by all men, though in their hearts they know they are false, or at best very doubtful. When they have laid these foundations of scurrility, it is no . wonder that their superstructure is every way answerable to them. If this shameless practice of the present age endures

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