THE WISHING-CAP.-No. VII. Answer to a Singular Argument of the Tories, about Human Happiness and Misery. We have heard of a singular argument lately adduced by the Tory Philosophers, in order to shew that reform is of no use. They say, that let mankind apparently alter their condition as they will, the amount of happiness and misery in the world is the same in all ages; that Providence evidently designs it to remain so; and that, consequently, all men upon an average, are equally happy and miserable, and one person's lot, deeply considered, no better than another's. We do not know, indeed, whether this latter consequence has been stated by the arguers; but it must be assumed as a necessary deduction, otherwise the first one would be of no importance; since, although the average amount of happiness and misery might be the same in all ages, the individual shares might be unequal. Some even might bear the whole amount of the misery, and others have all the happiness; or, at any rate, some might have the far greater portion of the happiness, and others of the misery; nine might walk on, tottering under their burdens, and the tenth have no burden at all, and be carried on their shoulders besides. And such is supposed to be the actual condition of society in general. Such is supposed to be the miserable condition of the persons for whose benefit this argument is put forth, and such the flourishing condition of these modest Tory sages who preach the endurance from the tops of the others' backs. When Tories resort to philosophy, it is always to recommend some endurance on the part of others. Touch their own toes and they are all for fire and fury, or for genteelly shedding" a little blood or so," à la Claverhouse, and having no pity. Fiat Toryismus, ruat cœlum. They would blow Christianity itself to the Devil, if it did not mean the Bishops. We have an intimation how cavalierly they could treat the Divine Being in the Introduction to Faust, which is all fine and philosophical, being written by a Minister of State, but would be sheer blasphemy, and could have no possible good aim, had it come from the pen of a Radical. It might be advisable even to be cautious how any Radical eye ventured to discern a good through the evil of that introduction, a piety through the impiety. Such strong perceptions are a privilege for those whose mode of turning them to account, demands to be treated with still greater respect, and to be considered everything that is Christian while it violates every Christian principle,— Proving their doctrine orthodox It was a Christian minister of this sort, who, having a dispute with another as to the right of reading a funeral service, came rushing in, when his rival was commencing with the words "I am the resurrection and the life;" and exclaimed, snatching the prayer-book out of his hand, "You the resurrection and the life: a pretty piece of impudence, i'faith! I am the resurrection and the life." It is possible that the average amount of happiness and misery is the same in all ages, and in all conditions of society; but as there is no possibility of proving it, it is an assumption good only for the last resources of endurance; and unless a further proof could be adduced in favour of the equal happiness of men at all times, the whole notion comes to nothing in the eyes of activity and want, and of the desire of improving one's condition. If we, for one, thought the state of mankind unalterable, we should be heartily for making the best of it as it is; nay, and we are for making the best of it at all events: in theory, by supposing the best necessity for all that has ever happened in the world; and in practice, both by making the best of what good we possess, and endeavouring to bring about all the good we can conceive. We grant, furthermore, that there is a great deal more good in the world than the world turns to account. One of our greatest hopes of its improvement is connected with that belief; and we are of opinion, also, that much of what is considered in a light fit for lamentation, is not at all so; that the blessings we bestow on less civilized foreign nations are not seldom nuisances, only to be reconciled to a sound philanthropy, by the hope of their leading to something better for us all ; and finally, we believe that a great deal of the real happiness of mankind arises from the mind's being in a state of activity or movement, apart from any thing specifically happy or miserable, motion being in the nature of all things, and good for its own sake. But a wonderful deal of care remains which the human being struggles to get rid off, and which puts the struggle to a pain beyond that which is good and wholesome; and to suppose that mankind can or ought to be content with the misery of this struggling, out of a notion that they would not be the happier without it, and that they are all equally happy, struggling or not struggling, is to suppose, that endeavour itself is not a part of man's nature, or that you could persuade a Tory, when his horse has thrown him in a ditch, that he might as well live in the ditch all day, as get up and go to dinner. The remark, that the amount of happiness and misery has ever been the same, is not new; though there is something new enough in the fancy that it can be brought forward at the present moment to stop the progress of the world. It is just as if you were to tell a hungry man, that hunger and a satisfied appetite are equally pleasant. The poor want bread. They are getting knowledge, and knowledge teaches how to get power and they will have both bread and power. When a little better share of both these advantages is in their possession, it will be time enough to recommend to their consideration the average quantity of human happiness and misery. The tragedy runs instinctively into farce, or the chief actors in it themselves could not bear it. It is out of this perplexity between the habitual selfishness, and the natural humanity of the very Tories, that they exhibit, to those who know them thoroughly, so ludicrous, yet so appalling a combination of an endeavour to be in earnest, with jovial escapes of candour, and a frightful effort to represent their wretched transitory system of violence and injustice, as a beautiful and permanent manifestation of God's providence. It is for a similar reason, and partly to attempt a cheat upon their own consciences, that they talk so much about resignation; of making the best of things; and of the certainty that God will dispose of everything as it best pleases him ;meaning, that he so disposes it in the instance of their ascendency, and that whatever enormities they may commit to sustain it, success will establish their justice. Yet the resignation, observe, is never on their own sides. They put no trust in God as long as they can have recourse to bribery and corruption, and a good knock on the head. They are for doing what they like "with their own;" but by no means for letting you, or the Almighty himself, do a bit of it,-supposing resignation to be from Him. One aristocratic philosopher turns round from a table monopolized by a few, and overflowing with "every luxury in season," and has the face to tell the starving fellow-creature who made it, that "the table's full." Another asks them what is the use of making a noise, since the amount of happiness and misery has been the same in all ages, and therefore to have no dinner is as good as turtle. The arguments about Providence and moral order are soon disposed of. It must be admitted, that if Providence, or the making provision for the good of the world,and moral order, or the smooth and happy working of the system,-consist in three men's sitting down to table and stuffing themselves, while three thousand are looking on and complaining, and if it be the will of Heaven, for its inscrutable purposes, (and in this part of our sentence we desire to express ourselves very gravely and religiously,) that a system apparently so unaccountable should continue, it will continue, do or say what we may against it. The Tories need not write in its favour, any more than the Radicals need oppose it. But if there is something in the nature of man which induces him, on reflection, as well as in his first impulses, not to regard this view of the designs of Providence as the just one, but more or less to labour to prove it another, and if, in the course of these labours, governments are altered, kings are overthrown, political ascendencies swept away, and the arguments of those who maintain it are otherwise perplexed, then the chance is, that Providence intends some further working of its providence to be manifested in due season. And if it be replied, that all this uneasy endeavour and occasional change is only a part of the action necessary to human kind, (which the far greater part of the rich, observe, do not share in,) the rejoinder is, that it is impossible to prove it; that the ascendency of unjust power, long as it has existed in one sense, has been but of inconceivably short duration in the amount of time; and that the same excuse which gives any sort of power all the power it really possesses, to wit, the sympathy and acquiescence of mankind, would render the very best and justest power the very greatest and most durable, because it would unite in its favour all which reason and prosperity could do for it, as well as the force of habit. As to the assumption that all men, somehow or other, have an equal portion of happiness and misery, there is an easy and visible proof to the contrary, which stares every one in the face. It is in the faces of the poor. Go to any assembly of the rich, and you may see, it is true, marks of many cares and many follies; and evidences to make you wonder how so insipid and trifling a generation are allowed to have pri- · vileges of superfluity injurious to millions who are certainly not their inferiors; but you will see, nevertheless, a great amount of comfort and health, and this, too, in spite of bad hours and other abuses of luxury. They are not so happy as might be supposed. They want employment enough, ideas, and good faith in one another. They are obliged to think ill of mankind in order to reconcile the secret sense of the injustice of their position; intrigue of all sorts will not allow them to think too well of their own class, and they go through life gaping, lounging, tattling, drinking, and being satiated, and asking themselves at the close of youth"What it is worth?" This is true, and shews that the rich are in a wrong position as well as the poor. Whatsoever shall render the condition of all classes more equal, will do good to all. But still, look at their faces, and you will see that they are not a twentieth part so unhappy as the poor. They are not afflicted with the worst evils of life, such as make the cheeks and the eyes hollow, even in the prime of a man's days, and torment his heart for what shall happen to his family. They are in easy physical condition; they are at least negatively happy compared with the others; they are not beset with the taskmaster and the tax-gatherer; they may indulge the natural affections; they know not the misery of wanting food and clothing; they do not dream of the work-house and the hospital, nor wake to see such dreams realized; in short, again we say, look at them, and look also at their children; look at their sons and daughters, with their handsome smooth faces, and the world of elegant comfort in which they are bred up; and then compare those few with these many. Go through a manufacturing town; see the masters and their clerks looking as comfortable as in most other places, notwithstanding what is said of bad air and unwholesome occupations, (the worst air is the breath of sorrow ;) and then look at the operatives, the workmen, and see what their faces tell you see, in contrast with the few people at the head of an establishment, the many who do the hard work for it, and who make it rich: behold their sunken and discoloured cheeks, their eyes staring with wretched and wondering thoughts; and observe, in the faces of their children, the premature, worldly trouble, and (what would be worse, if it were not an effort of nature at relief) the premature worldly vices, the cunning, the bad opinion, the sensuality, the hard and impudent instinct of despair and self-defence. We have seen girls of twelve years of age at Nottingham, with the looks of half-starved abandoned women of forty. The purse-proud aristocrat turns away from them in disgust, and sits down to a dinner of repletion collected out of their labours. When the poor have faces as healthy and careless as the rich, then, and not till then, let the argument about the average amount of happiness be brought forward; or let the rich give up their good dinners and good looks, and say they are as happy in misery as they were in happiness. These fine gratuitous abstractions, very amusing to gentlemen who crack their walnuts after a good dinner, and push the bottle, only serve to irritate those who are hungering and thirsting, and curs ing the tax-gatherers. And this position of the two parties is never to be lost sight of. If the aristocratical, and those who are well off, are not always pushing the bottle, while they are lecturing the poor, they are more or less under the influence of a state of blood and body produced by it, or at least by good living. Parliament legislates under it. Magistrates commit under it. Bishops preach under it. Generals and Field-marshals are for being vigorous" under it. Our government is a bottle-and-beef government, with bowels closed against compassion by the fat of the land. Its least "refreshment,"-its common every-day lunch,would be a feast to a labouring man, such as he would chalk up the days for, till it arrived. Its dinners would bewilder him to look at ; and yet, so small is its imagination, so wonderfully unsympathetic and in bad taste its public habits, that it is ostentatious of its feast days and its luxurious tables. It is always dining out, and in public; and shewing the indignant penny-reader of the newspapers how it revels in "every luxury of the season." Royalty is always dining thus; and thus dineth mayoralty-thus dine the judges, and the ministers, and the generals, and the Nulli Secundus clubs, and the parish officers; and by the side of the columns which record the dining, are recorded the people who starve upon the three-and-twopence a week, who die at the doorways of parish officers, or who, as the only means of avoiding death, steal with the avowed purpose of getting into prison, and go to it rejoicing, that they are to have a fiftieth part of the bit of bread which the gourmand has steeped into his turtle-contrasts disgraceful to an age pretending to be civilized; and yet so common, that the mention of them is received with canting bursts of angry hypocrisy, and pretences that they cannot be helped! Little is a similar answer thought decent or humane, when angry Revolution comes, and starved madmen thrust their bloody hands into the teeth of madmen stuffed full. May God, and those who help his good work, avert from mankind the necessity of any more such frightful lessons. And averted, we believe, it will be ; not because "rich men" have grown wiser, or their money-changers know much more of the right path than they; but because the poor are daily increasing in the calm power of knowledge, which, while it brings patience to endure humanely, brings authority to demand invincibly. The best answer to a bad argument is a Birmingham meeting. LETTERS FROM THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE TO SIR HORACE MANN, British Envoy at Florence.-From the year 1741 to 1760. Bentley, London. WHO could have hoped for such a stroke of good fortune as this in the summer of 1833! Horace Walpole once more resuscitated to amuse and enliven, to while away heavy hours, and beguile ennui with gay prattle and graceful trifling. The world has now settled its estimate of the Lord of Strawberry Hill with tolerable fairness. He is not reckoned quite so great a genius as he was deemed some half-century ago, when the little girls of England sewed his shew bit of Guelphic Gothic in their samplers; nor yet so filigree and japan a personage, as he was set down by his first critics. He was, whatever else, the antipodes of his father; and a wonderfully harmless, and marvellously clever person to have been the son of Sir Robert Walpole, and bred near and within the heavy and poisoned atmosphere of the Court of George II. He was, unquestionably, the prince of the polite gossips of his generation; and, happily, for the entertainment of posterity, one of the few British male persons born with an irresistible propensity to write letters. Whatever a man does from an inherent necessity of his nature, from the impulse of his genius, he will generally do well; or, at least, accomplish with freedom and facility, which are always graceful and attractive, though the art itself were one so seeming simple as opening an oyster. Walpole's letters are, accordingly, always easy and graceful, and, for him, extremely natural productions. The constitutional necessity of telling, once a-day, or oftener, whatever he had said, done, heard, or fancied, his bon mots, and his pleasantries, left him no leisure to be premeditative, stiff, and studied. He was immeasurably vain after his own peculiar fashion, though shrewd and sensible; and this vanity, which could not expend itself in conversation, found a vent, a valve, in letter-writing. He did not so much require a correspondent as a recipient. Slender sympathy sufficed in his friends; VOL. III.-NO. XVI. 2 K |