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which it was animated and exalted. To the exquisite perceptions of an Athenian tribunal this appeal was irresistible. Pericles was acquitted, and Aspasia reinstated in uncontrolled sovereignty. While they continued to rule the republic, the current of public affairs swelled with the full tide of prosperity. But with her seems to have expired the wisdom of her country-with him its executive energy. Athens has had cause to lament that Pericles and Aspasia had ever been born or ever died.

The destinies of France have constantly prevailed or exulted in the genius of woman.—Mazarin was raised from obscurity by female partiality. Richelieu, reserving his talents for public affairs, founded his authority on the firmer basis of female influence. The hydra of revolution was conceived in the Salons of Paris; and the character of the sex was forgotten, when they assisted at the monstrous birth. The anarchy of revolution overwhelmed all authority but that of woman; during the administration of her husband, Madame Roland was the real Minister of the Interior. Amid the important events of a later date, the politician's calculations are confounded and his conjectures baffled by this mysterious agent. The revolt of the troops at Lons-le-saulnier is acknowledged to have been the cause of Bonaparte's re-establishment on the throne of France. Louis might, with impunity, have violated the charter, and revoked the sale of the national domains, if Ney, at the head of his troops, had continued faithful to his allegiance. The pride of history is humbled while it seeks for a cause commensurate with this decisive event. As such it assumes the soldier's attachment to his chief, the prince of Moskwa's gratitude to his benefactor, the patriot's indignation at the violated charters of his country. Let us listen to the language of the marechal himself: 'I can no 'longer endure,' said he, that my WIFE should return in TEARS 'every evening from court, with CONSTANT COMPLAINTS OF THE CONTEMPT WITH WHICH SHE IS TREATED.' After the first restoration, the Bourbon princes and the old noblesse treated the ladies, especially the princesses, of Bonaparte's court with marked disrespect. Every occasion was grasped at to humble their pride by the haughtiness of disdain, and mortify their vanity with sneers of contempt. But these indignities were fearfully avenged,-the Bourbon sceptre, which, like the staff of Aaron, had blossomed anew, again withered under the frown of insulted, indignant wo

man.

I should grieve for the character of my country, if its history did not attest and celebrate the sex's influence, Of many instançes of its existence, the limits of this letter compel me to confine myself to one. Let minor wits sing how Britain was again blessed with a Boadicea in the person of a late acting commander of the forces: how the noble lord who sits on the woolsack in that

'House of Incurables,* and presides the Rhadamanthus of the Court of the Damned (from which there is no redemption) is himself put in Chancery by the fair but firm arms of a lady. These, and similar instances, must give way to others of higher consideration.

POLITICS.-I am disgusted with the assuming egotism of my sex. I am weary of listening to the secondary causes which the political and philosophic vulgar assign to the Revolution of 1688. Such minds may be allowed to perceive the connexion of the fruit with the branches, and that of the branches with their trunk:-but it is reserved for the microscopic eye of intense reflection to trace that trunk to the minute seminal principle from which it has issued and ramified. The sages of the law are (as my grandfather would phrase it) remarkably profund in tracing that great event to its origin. The Revolution is ascribed to the attempt to innovate on the established religion, which was fully developed by the edicts of toleration, and the prosecution of the bishops; and the last blow was given to the staggered victim by the treachery of his minister, the invasion of his son-in-law, the desertion of his daughter, and the perfidy of his favourite. But Churchill would never have been tempted to ingratitude, or the princess to unnatural desertion; Sunderland would never have found occasion to betray his master, or the Prince of Orange to grasp at his crown: the bishops never would have been prosecuted and never triumphed, if religious innovation had not been suggested as an expedient to the Second Charles to relieve the distresses which he had prodigally created by quieting the importunities of his female favourites and supplying their extravagance. The wants of a consort are supplied by the simple expenditure of the husband. Her rank is coordinate with his; and the modesty of conscious dignity is satisfied with the measure of his individual style and state. Their interests are one, and their distresses would be common. That second self-love, of which the source and centre is her offspring, has ever been found stronger than that which had been prior and personal, in the mind of a virtuous woman. Temptations to extravagance are generally subdued by the necessity of transmitting her honours supported by independence. But of inordinate loves, one of the ordinary and just penalties is dilapidation of fortune. The object of unlicensed passion has no interests in common with her paramour. The tenure by which she holds his heart she feels to be very insecure the base selfishness which seduced, would be capable of deserting her. All the arts of intreaty, tears, importu nity and fraud, are employed to collect and accumulate during her

*Lord Chesterfield's expression on Mr. Pitt's elevation to the peerage. The bon-mot of the day was, that he had got a fall up stairs.

transient hours of favour. But with that inconsistency which marks the infatuation of vice, her expenditure is calculated upon a scale which supposes that her influence can never cease, that her supplies will never be reduced or withdrawn. Indeed the vices of a female create factitious necessities. She feels that she can lay no claim to the substance of respect and dignity :-she therefore more jealously grasps at its semblance, and is compelled to be content with it. To secure the attentions of the selfish and the adulation of the servile, she is obliged to minister to their cupidity. And the scrutiny which would pry into her dishonour and degradation, she attempts to divert or dazzle by flaunting and meretricious splendour. Thus what has been viciously acquired, is heedlessly squandered and the same vicious circle' constantly recurs, of wants, importunity, supplies, and extravagance. The queen of Charles II. offered to his court a singular example of frugality and virtue. The habits of his mistresses were dissolute and profligate. By prudent management and faithful application, the revenues derived from the customs and the permanent taxes, would have been fully adequate to the public service. But other claims were urged and preferred in that unprincipled court: and the public treasure was poured into a reservoir irretentive and wasteful as the sieve of the Danaides. Yet the political machine could not be suffered to stand still. And only one alternative offered, by which supplies might be provided for the wants of the state, and the remuneration of vice. That alternative was, either to summon Parliament, or to pawn for a pension from a foreign state the honour of the British crown. To meet the representatives of the people is ever hateful to an arbitrary monarch. Something might be said of redress of grievances, and impertinent inquiries might be made into the mode of the expenditure of the public money. Charles preferred bartering to the French king that jewel, without which his crown became a bauble. The principal condition with which his Most Christian Majesty accompanied his annual pension, provided that his royal brother should make active efforts to reduce his erring subjects within the pale of the primitive faith.a The efforts of that inactive monarch were confined to intentions, resolutions, and abortive projects. The zeal of King James urged him on to more desperate enterprise. The throne of the Stuarts was irretrievably subverted by the conflicting elements of abstract opinions.-The Revolution has been traced to its remote and primary cause. Let not a grateful people any longer withhold its acknowledgments from the Duchess of Portsmouth,b and the foundresses of the illustrious houses of Lennox and the Fitzroys.

The wisdom of Walpole's first administration was attested by b Vulgarly known as Nell Gwynne,

Stuart Papers.

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an approving king and a contented people: the former was satisfied with the supplies; the latter could not complain of the pressure of taxation. The power of that pacific minister appeared to rest on the most secure foundation. But Walpole had yet to learn that in the respective governments of modern Europe, the sex forms a third estate, which, if dissatisfied, in vain will the minister have conciliated the other two. The ruling passion of Queen Caroline was ambition. She guarded her influence with jealous vigilance; she considered no measure too vigorous to vindicate it from dispute, and no sacrifice too great to secure it from danger. A woman, a queen of such a character would seldom neglect an occasion of exercising her authority. Walpole's spleen was frequently provoked by what he considered her untimely interference or impolitic counsels. On one occasion, when he had delivered his opinion to the privy council respecting a public question, and stated the reasons which induced him to adopt it, a brief reply was made by one of the members, that those counsels could not be followed-they would displease the queen, who recommended other measures.' The minister expressed his impatience of contradiction, with a coarse allusion to her Majesty's embonpoint: That fatis constantly intermeddling with public business. Why does she not attend to her proper duties, and take care of her family?" It is now matter of little moment, what opinion was adopted. Walpole speedily forgot the dispute and its circumstances.-His consternation in a few days can with difficulty be conceived, when he was officially informed of his dismissal from office, and from the privy council. The deep politicians of the day attributed his fall to rival intrigue, supported by aristocratic influence. Walpole himself could ascribe it to no other cause. After the lapse of a few years, the alarm created by the king's illness forced upon the attention of Parliament, among other measures, that of assigning a suitable provision to his surviving consort. The sum The sum specified by ministers was considered by the queen inadequate to the proper maintenance of her state and dignity. The minister firmly refu sed an augmentation. At this favourable contingency, Walpole sent, with his respectful homages, an assurance to her majesty, that if he were restored to office, he would carry through both Houses a vote to the amount she had specified. The queen's emphatically perspicuous. 'Give him my compliments; and tell him that, on the condition he proposes, the fat forgives, and will reinstate him.' Sir Robert Walpole for the first time, beheld the rock on which all his honours had been wrecked. The wisdom of the British monarch, like that of his majesty of ancient Rome, was traced to the furtive wooings of an Egeria, and the minister resolved to be more discreet.

answer was

Of the late Lord Nelson, it was said in his day, that he was "no

thing upon land."-With the talents which he possessed, and the natural vigour of his mind, Lord Nelson must have risen to relative eminence in any department of life. With such claims to general capacity, no attempt has been yet made to reconcile the facts upon record that, though the latter years of his life, the meridian of his manhood, were spent upon shore, he was never distinguished, and never attempted to distinguish himself, by eloquence in the senate, by advising expeditions in council, by nautical experiments or improvements, or by boldly making incursions in quest of other praise into provinces not his own. The fate of Nelson was not dissimilar to that of Saul, and it was equally melancholy. The energies of the genii by which they were respectively visited, were quelled by the melody of a human voice: but those genii belonged to two different classes of creation. In the hour of his visitation, the Hebrew monarch was impelled to phrenzy, perfidy, and crime; while the other was exalted by divine enthusiasm, into the hero, the Decius of his country. When languishing in the lap of his fair Philistine, the champion whom God raised up in England's emergency, was shorn of his strength. But remote from the sphere of her blandishments, when "the Philistines were upon him," he arose in his might, and "smote them as the smiting of Midian :" he plucked down the pillar and prop of their hopes, and buried them with their presumption, himself and his frailties under the same awful and magnificent ruin.-During that period of his life which preceded the battle of the Nile, Nelson was distinguished by manly uprightness of mind, by strict and honourable attention to the duties of his profession, and of society. He had been accustomed to give to vice its proper appellative,a and to rebuke it with all the indignation of honest integrity. The sophistry of passion had not yet taught him to violate with unblest ecstacy, the sanctity of the nuptial bed, or to prefer to the pure and living flame of chaste love, the cold and lucid lustre which emanates from the couch of corruption. But after that brilliant opening of a series of victories, of which the final achievement and its luminous record, b were reserved for the martial and literary genius of a Hutchinson, the relations of Nelson with a woman assumed a new form. Naples was the Capua, in which the character of his mind received a new stamp, his glory was tarnished, and the care-worn and mutilated veteran debased into a luxurious Sybarite. Unfortunately he was too rash or too unsuspecting to flee from the facinating "spell of a "I am sick of this country of pimps, fiddlers, bawds, and eunuchs.”—Nelson's Letter to Sir J. Jervis.

b See Lord Hutchinson's despatch on the Battle of Alexandria. We are not far advanced in military literature. In this instance, literature appears to have disputed the victory, upon her own field, her superior claims to the genius of Hutchinson. His lordship may be compared to the pillar, which lifts itself in lonely magnificence over the "dead level of the wilderness." Vincenti corona!

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