Chapter IV: Part 4

[41] A new edition of Ray's book, with large additions, was
published by Bohn, in 1855, under the title of "A Handbook of
Proverbs." It is a vast collection of "wise saws" of all ages and
countries.

CONFUSION OF WORDS.

"There is nothing more common," says the lively Voltaire, "than to read and to converse to no purpose. In history, in morals, in law, in physic, and in divinity, be careful of equivocal terms." One of the ancients wrote a book to prove that there was no word which did not convey an ambiguous and uncertain meaning. If we possessed this lost book, our ingenious dictionaries of "synonyms" would not probably prove its uselessness. Whenever _the same word_ is associated by the parties with _different ideas_, they may converse, or controverse, till "the crack of doom!" This with a little obstinacy and some agility in shifting his ground, makes the fortune of an opponent. While one party is worried in disentangling a meaning, and the other is winding and unwinding about him with another, a word of the kind we have mentioned, carelessly or perversely slipped into an argument, may prolong it for a century or two--as it has happened! Vaugelas, who passed his whole life in the study of words, would not allow that the _sense_ was to determine the meaning of _words_; for, says he, it is the business of _words_ to explain the _sense_. Kant for a long while discovered in this way a facility of arguing without end, as at this moment do our political economists. "I beseech you," exclaims a poetical critic, in the agony of a confusion of words, on the Pope controversy, "not to ask whether I mean _this_ or _that_!" Our critic, positive that he has made himself understood, has shown how a few vague terms may admit of volumes of vindication. Throw out a word, capable of fifty senses, and you raise fifty parties! Should some friend of peace enable the fifty to repose on one sense, that innocent word, no longer ringing the _tocsin_ of a party, would lie in forgetfulness in the Dictionary. Still more provoking when an identity of meaning is only disguised by different modes of expression, and when the term has been closely sifted, to their mutual astonishment both parties discover the same thing lying under the bran and chaff after this heated operation. Plato and Aristotle probably agreed much better than the opposite parties they raised up imagined; their difference was in the manner of expression, rather than in the points discussed. The Nominalists and the Realists, who once filled the world with their brawls, and who from irregular words came to regular blows, could never comprehend their alternate nonsense; "whether in employing general terms we use _words_ or _names_ only, or whether there is _in nature anything_ corresponding to what we mean by a _general idea_?" The Nominalists only denied what no one in his senses would affirm; and the Realists only contended for what no one in his senses would deny; a hair's breadth might have joined what the spirit of party had sundered!

Do we flatter ourselves that the Logomachies of the Nominalists and the Realists terminated with these scolding schoolmen? Modern nonsense, weighed against the obsolete, may make the scales tremble for awhile, but it will lose its agreeable quality of freshness, and subside into an equipoise. We find their spirit still lurking among our own metaphysicians! "Lo! the Nominalists and the Realists again!" exclaimed my learned friend, Sharon Turner, alluding to our modern doctrines on _abstract ideas_, on which there is still a doubt whether they are anything more than _generalising terms_.[42] Leibnitz confused his philosophy by the term _sufficient reason_: for every existence, for every event, and for every truth there must be a _sufficient reason_. This vagueness of language produced a perpetual misconception, and Leibnitz was proud of his equivocal triumphs in always affording a new interpretation! It is conjectured that he only employed his term of _sufficient reason_ for the plain simple word of _cause_. Even Locke, who has himself so admirably noticed the "abuse of words," has been charged with using vague and indefinite ones; he has sometimes employed the words _reflection_, _mind_, and _spirit_ in so indefinite a way, that they have confused his philosophy: thus by some ambiguous expressions, our great metaphysician has been made to establish doctrines fatal to the immutability of moral distinctions. Even the eagle-eye of the intellectual Newton grew dim in the obscurity of the language of Locke. We are astonished to discover that two such intellects should not comprehend the same ideas; for Newton wrote to Locke, "I beg your pardon for representing that you struck at the root of morality in a principle laid down in your book of Ideas--and that I took you for a Hobbist!"[43] The difference of opinion between Locke and Reid is in consequence of an ambiguity in the word _principle_, as employed by Reid. The removal of a solitary word may cast a luminous ray over a whole body of philosophy: "If we had called the _infinite_ the _indefinite_," says Condillac, in his _Traite des Sensations_, "by this small change of a word we should have avoided the error of imagining that we have a positive idea of _infinity_, from whence so many false reasonings have been carried on, not only by metaphysicians, but even by geometricians." The word _reason_ has been used with different meanings by different writers; _reasoning_ and _reason_ have been often confounded; a man may have an endless capacity for _reasoning_, without being much influenced by _reason_, and to be _reasonable_, perhaps differs from both! So Moliere tells us,

Raisonner est l'emploi de toute ma maison;
Et le raisonnement en bannit la raison!

In this research on "confusion of words," might enter the voluminous history of the founders of sects, who have usually employed terms which had no meaning attached to them, or were so ambiguous that their real notions have never been comprehended; hence the most chimerical opinions have been imputed to founders of sects. We may instance that of the _Antinomians_, whose remarkable denomination explains their doctrine, expressing that they were "against law!" Their founder was John Agricola, a follower of Luther, who, while he lived, had kept Agricola's follies from exploding, which they did when he asserted that there was no such thing as sin, our salvation depending on faith, and not on works; and when he declaimed against the _Law of God_. To what length some of his sect pushed this verbal doctrine is known; but the real notions of this Agricola probably never will be! Bayle considered him as a harmless dreamer in theology, who had confused his head by Paul's controversies with the Jews; but Mosheim, who bestows on this early reformer the epithets of _ventosus_ and _versipellis_, windy and crafty! or, as his translator has it, charges him with "vanity, presumption, and artifice," tells us by the term "law," Agricola only meant the ten commandments of Moses, which he considered were abrogated by the Gospel, being designed for the Jews and not for the Christians. Agricola then, by the words the "Law of God," and "that there was no such thing as sin," must have said one thing and meant another! This appears to have been the case with most of the divines of the sixteenth century; for even Mosheim complains of "their want of precision and consistency in expressing _their sentiments_, hence their real sentiments have been misunderstood." There evidently prevailed a great "confusion of words" among them! The _grace suffisante_ and the _grace efficace_ of the Jansenists and the Jesuits show the shifts and stratagems by which nonsense may be dignified. "Whether all men received from God _sufficient grace_ for their conversion!" was an inquiry some unhappy metaphysical theologist set afloat: the Jesuits, according to their worldly system of making men's consciences easy, affirmed it; but the Jansenists insisted, that this _sufficient grace_ would never be _efficacious_, unless accompanied by _special grace_. "Then the _sufficient grace_, which is not _efficacious_, is a contradiction in terms, and worse, a heresy!" triumphantly cried the Jesuits, exulting over their adversaries. This "confusion of words" thickened, till the Jesuits introduced in this logomachy with the Jansenists papal bulls, royal edicts, and a regiment of dragoons! The Jansenists, in despair, appealed to miracles and prodigies, which they got up for public representation; but, above all, to their Pascal, whose immortal satire the Jesuits really felt was at once "sufficient and efficacious," though the dragoons, in settling a "confusion of words," did not boast of inferior success to Pascal's. Former ages had, indeed, witnessed even a more melancholy logomachy, in the _Homoousion_ and the _Homoiousion_! An event which Boileau has immortalised by some fine verses, which, in his famous satire on _L'Equivoque_, for reasons best known to the Sorbonne, were struck out of the text.

D'une _syllabe_ impie un saint _mot_ augmente
Remplit tous les esprits d'aigreurs si meurtrieres--
Tu fis, dans une guerre et si triste et si longue,
Perir tant de Chretiens, _martyrs d'une diphthongue_!

Whether the Son was similar to the substance of the Father, or of the same substance, depended on the diphthong _oi_, which was alternately rejected and received. Had they earlier discovered, what at length they agreed on, that the words denoted what was incomprehensible, it would have saved thousands, as a witness describes, "from tearing one another to pieces." The great controversy between Abelard and St. Bernard, when the saint accused the scholastic of maintaining heretical notions of the Trinity, long agitated the world; yet, now that these confusers of words can no longer inflame our passions, we wonder how these parties could themselves differ about words to which we can attach no meaning whatever. There have been few councils or synods where the omission or addition of a word or a phrase might not have terminated an interminable logomachy! At the council of Basle, for the convenience of the disputants, John de Secubia drew up a treatise of _undeclined words_, chiefly to determine the signification of the particles _from_, _by_, _but_, and _except_, which it seems were perpetually occasioning fresh disputes among the Hussites and the Bohemians. Had Jerome of Prague known, like our Shakspeare, the virtue of an IF, or agreed with Hobbes, that he should not have been so positive in the use of the verb IS, he might have been spared from the flames. The philosopher of Malmsbury has declared that "Perhaps _Judgment_ was nothing else but the composition or joining of _two names of things, or modes_, by the verb IS." In modern times the popes have more skilfully freed the church from this "confusion of words." His holiness, on one occasion, standing in equal terror of the court of France, who protected the Jesuits, and of the court of Spain, who maintained the cause of the Dominicans, contrived a phrase, where a comma or a full stop, placed at the beginning or the end, purported that his holiness tolerated the opinions which he condemned; and when the rival parties despatched deputations to the court of Rome to plead for the period, or advocate the comma, his holiness, in this "confusion of words," flung an unpunctuated copy to the parties; nor was it his fault, but that of the spirit of party, if the rage of the one could not subside into a comma, nor that of the other close by a full period!

In jurisprudence much confusion has occurred in the uses of the term _rights_; yet the social union and human happiness are involved in the precision of the expression. When Montesquieu laid down, as the active principle of a republic, _virtue_, it seemed to infer that a republic was the best of governments. In the defence of his great work he was obliged to define the term; and it seems that by _virtue_ he only meant _political virtue_, the love of the country.

In politics, what evils have resulted from abstract terms to which no ideas are affixed,--such as, "The Equality of Man--the Sovereignty or the Majesty of the People--Loyalty--Reform--even Liberty herself!--Public Opinion--Public Interest;" and other abstract notions, which have excited the hatred or the ridicule of the vulgar. Abstract ideas, as _sounds_, have been used as watchwords. The combatants will usually be found willing to fight for words to which, perhaps, not one of them has attached any settled signification. This is admirably touched on by Locke, in his chapter of "Abuse of Words." "Wisdom, Glory, Grace, &c., are words frequent enough in every man's mouth; but if a great many of those who use them should be asked what they mean by them, they would be at a stand, and know not what to answer--a plain proof that though they have learned those _sounds_, and have them ready at their tongue's end, yet there are no determined _ideas_ laid up in their minds which are to be expressed to others by them."

When the American exclaimed that he was not represented in the House of Commons, because he was not an elector, he was told that a very small part of the people of England were electors. As they could not call this an _actual representation_, they invented a new name for it, and called it a _virtual one_. It imposed on the English nation, who could not object that others should be taxed rather than themselves; but with the Americans it was a sophism! and this _virtual_ representation, instead of an _actual_ one, terminated in our separation; "which," says Mr. Flood, "at the time appeared to have swept away most of our glory and our territory; forty thousand lives, and one hundred millions of treasure!"

That fatal expression which Rousseau had introduced, _l'Egalite des Hommes_, which finally involved the happiness of a whole people, had he lived he had probably shown how ill his country had understood. He could only have referred in his mind to _political equality_, but not an equality of possessions, of property, of authority, destructive of social order and of moral duties, which must exist among every people. "Liberty," "Equality," and "Reform" (innocent words!) sadly ferment the brains of those who cannot affix any definite notions to them; they are like those chimerical fictions in law, which declare the "sovereign immortal, proclaim his ubiquity in various places," and irritate the feelings of the populace, by assuming that "the king can never do wrong!" In the time of James the Second "it is curious," says Lord Russell, "to read the conference between the Houses on the meaning of the words 'deserted' and 'abdicated,' and the debates in the Lords whether or no there is an original contract between king and people." The people would necessarily decide that "kings derived their power from them;" but kings were once maintained by a "right divine," a "confusion of words," derived from two opposite theories, and both only relatively true. When we listen so frequently to such abstract terms as "the majesty of the people," "the sovereignty of the people," whence the inference that "all power is derived from the people," we can form no definite notions: it is "a confusion of words," contradicting all the political experience which our studies or our observations furnish; for sovereignty is established to rule, to conduct, and to settle the vacillations and quick passions of the multitude. _Public opinion_ expresses too often the ideas of one party in place; and _public interest_ those of another party out! Political axioms, from the circumstance of having the notions attached to them unsettled, are applied to the most opposite ends! "In the time of the French Directory," observes an Italian philosopher of profound views, "in the revolution of Naples, the democratic faction pronounced that 'Every act of a tyrannical government is in its origin illegal;' a proposition which at first sight seems self-evident, but which went to render all existing laws impracticable." The doctrine of the illegality of the acts of a tyrant was proclaimed by Brutus and Cicero, in the name of the senate, _against the populace_, who had favoured Caesar's perpetual dictatorship; and the populace of Paris availed themselves of it, _against the National Assembly_.

This "confusion of words," in time-serving politics, has too often confounded right and wrong; and artful men, driven into a corner, and intent only on its possession, have found no difficulty in solving doubts, and reconciling contradictions. Our own history in revolutionary times abounds with dangerous examples from all parties; of specious hypotheses for compliance with the government of the day or the passions of parliament. Here is an instance in which the subtle confuser of words pretended to substitute two consciences, by utterly depriving a man of any! When the unhappy Charles the First pleaded that to pass the bill of attainder against the Earl of Strafford was against his conscience, that remarkable character of "boldness and impiety," as Clarendon characterizes Williams, Archbishop of York, on this argument of _conscience_ (a simple word enough), demonstrated "that there were _two sorts of conscience_, public and private; that his public conscience as a king might dispense with his private conscience as a man!" Such was the ignominious argument which decided the fate of that great victim of State! It was an impudent "confusion of words" when Prynne (in order to quiet the consciences of those who were uneasy at warring with the king) observed that the statute of twenty-fifth Edward the Third ran in the singular number--"If a man shall levy war against _the king_, and therefore could not be extended to _the houses_, who are many and public _persons_." Later, we find Sherlock blest with the spirit of Williams, the Archbishop of York, whom we have just left. When some did not know how to charge and to discharge themselves of the oaths to James the Second and to William the Third, this confounder of words discovered that there were _two rights_, as the other had that there were _two consciences_; one was a providential right, and the other a legal right; one person might very righteously claim and take a thing, and another as righteously hold and keep it; but that _whoever got the better_ had the _providential_ right by possession; and since all authority comes from God, the people were obliged to transfer their allegiance to him as a king of God's making; so that he who had the providential right necessarily had the legal one! a very simple discovery, which must, however, have cost him some pains; for this confounder of words was himself confounded by twelve answers by non-jurors! A French politician of this stamp recently was suspended from his lectureship for asserting that _the possession of the soil_ was a right; by which principle, _any king_ reigning over a country, whether by treachery, crime, and usurpation, was a _legitimate sovereign_. For this convenient principle the lecturer was tried, and declared not guilty--by persons who have lately found their advantage in a confusion of words. In treaties between nations, a "confusion of words" has been more particularly studied; and that negotiator has conceived himself most dexterous who, by this abuse of words, has retained an _arriere-pensee_ which may fasten or loosen the ambiguous expression he had so cautiously and so finely inlaid in his mosaic of treachery. A scene of this nature I draw out of "Mesnager's Negociation with the Court of England." When that secret agent of Louis the Fourteenth was negotiating a peace, an insuperable difficulty arose respecting the acknowledgment of the Hanoverian succession. It was absolutely necessary, on this delicate point, to quiet the anxiety of the English public and our allies; but though the French king was willing to recognise Anne's title to the throne, yet the settlement in the house of Hanover was incompatible with French interests and French honour. Mesnager told Lord Bolingbroke that "the king, his master, would consent to any such article, _looking the other way, as might disengage him from the obligation of that agreement_, as the occasion should present." This ambiguous language was probably understood by Lord Bolingbroke: at the next conference his lordship informed the secret agent "that the queen could not admit of any _explanations, whatever her intentions might be_; that the _succession_ was settled by act of parliament; that as to the private sentiments of the queen, or of any about her, he could say nothing." "All this was said with such an air, as to let me understand that he gave a _secret assent_ to what I had proposed, &c.; but he desired me to drop the discourse." Thus two great negotiators, both equally urgent to conclude the treaty, found an insuperable obstacle occur, which neither could control. Two honest men would have parted; but the "skilful confounder of words," the French diplomatist, hit on an expedient; he wrote the words which afterwards appeared in the preliminaries, "That Louis the Fourteenth will acknowledge the Queen of Great Britain in that quality, as also _the succession of the crown according to the_ PRESENT SETTLEMENT." "The English agent," adds the Frenchman, "would have had me add--_on the house of Hanover_, but this I entreated him not to desire of me." The term PRESENT SETTLEMENT, then, was that article which was LOOKING THE OTHER WAY, _to disengage his master from the obligation of that agreement_, as occasion should present! that is, that Louis the Fourteenth chose to understand by the PRESENT SETTLEMENT the _old one_, by which the British crown was to be restored to the Pretender! Anne and the English nation were to understand it in their own sense--as the _new one_, which transferred it to the house of Hanover!

When politicians cannot rely upon each other's interpretation of _one of the commonest words_ in our language, how can they possibly act together? The Bishop of Winchester has proved this observation, by the remarkable anecdote of the Duke of Portland and Mr. Pitt, who, with a view to unite parties, were to hold a conference _on_ FAIR _and_ EQUAL _terms_. His grace did not object to the word FAIR, but the word EQUAL was more specific and limited; and for a necessary preliminary, he requested Mr. Pitt to inform him what he _understood_ by the word EQUAL? Whether Pitt was puzzled by the question, or would not deliver up an _arriere-pensee_, he put off the explanation to the conference. But the duke would not meet Mr. Pitt till the _word_ was explained; and this important negotiation was broken off by not explaining a simple word which appeared to require no explanation.

There is nothing more fatal in language than to wander from the popular acceptation of words; and yet this popular sense cannot always accord with precision of ideas, for it is itself subject to great changes.

Another source, therefore, of the abuse of words, is that mutability to which, in the course of time, the verbal edifice, as well as more substantial ones, is doomed. A familiar instance presents itself in the titles of _tyrant_, _parasite_, and _sophist_, originally honourable distinctions. The abuses of dominion made the appropriate title of kings odious; the title of a magistrate, who had the care of the public granaries of corn, at length was applied to a wretched flatterer for a dinner; and absurd philosophers occasioned a mere denomination to become a by-name. To employ such terms in their primitive sense would now confuse all ideas; yet there is an affectation of erudition which has frequently revived terms sanctioned by antiquity. Bishop Watson entitled his vindication of the Bible "an _apology_:" this word, in its primitive sense, had long been lost for the multitude, whom he particularly addressed in this work, and who could only understand it in the sense they are accustomed to. Unquestionably, many of its readers have imagined that the bishop was offering an _excuse_ for a belief in the Bible, instead of a _vindication_ of its truth. The word _impertinent_, by the ancient jurisconsults, or law-counsellors, who gave their opinion on cases, was used merely in opposition to _pertinent_--_ratio pertinens_ is a pertinent reason, that is, a reason _pertaining_ to the cause in question, and a _ratio impertinens_, an impertinent reason, is an argument _not pertaining_ to the subject.[44] _Impertinent_ then originally meant neither absurdity nor rude intrusion, as it does in our present popular sense. The learned Arnauld having characterised a reply of one of his adversaries by the epithet _impertinent_, when blamed for the freedom of his language, explained his meaning by giving this history of the word, which applies to our own language. Thus also with us the word _indifferent_ has entirely changed: an historian, whose work was _indifferently_ written, would formerly have claimed our attention. In the Liturgy it is prayed that "magistrates may _indifferently_ minister justice." _Indifferently_ originally meant _impartially_. The word _extravagant_, in its primitive signification, only signified to digress from the subject. The Decretals, or those letters from the popes deciding on points of ecclesiastical discipline, were at length incorporated with the canon law, and were called _extravagant_ by _wandering out_ of the body of the canon law, being confusedly dispersed through that collection. When Luther had the Decretals publicly burnt at Wittemberg, the insult was designed for the pope, rather than as a condemnation of the canon law itself. Suppose, in the present case, two persons of opposite opinions. The catholic, who had said that the decretals were _extravagant_, might not have intended to depreciate them, or make any concession to the Lutheran. What confusion of words has the _common sense_ of the Scotch metaphysicians introduced into philosophy! There are no words, perhaps, in the language which may be so differently interpreted; and Professor Dugald Stewart has collected, in a curious note in the second volume of his "Philosophy of the Human Mind," a singular variety of its opposite significations. The Latin phrase, _sensus communis_, may, in various passages of Cicero, be translated by our phrase _common sense_; but, on other occasions, it means something different; the _sensus communis_ of the schoolmen is quite another thing, and is synonymous with _conception_, and referred to the seat of intellect; with Sir John Davies, in his curious metaphysical poem, _common sense_ is used as _imagination_. It created a controversy with Beattie and Reid; and Reid, who introduced this vague ambiguous phrase in philosophical language, often understood the term in its ordinary acceptation. This change of the meaning of words, which is constantly recurring in metaphysical disputes, has made that curious but obscure science liable to this objection of Hobbes, "with many words making nothing understood!"

Controversies have been keenly agitated about the principles of morals, which resolve entirely into _verbal disputes_, or at most into questions of arrangement and classification, of little comparative moment to the points at issue. This observation of Mr. Dugald Stewart's might be illustrated by the fate of the numerous inventors of systems of thinking or morals, who have only employed very different and even opposite terms in appearance to express the same thing. Some, by their mode of philosophising, have strangely unsettled the words _self-interest_ and _self-love_; and their misconceptions have sadly misled the votaries of these systems of morals; as others also by such vague terms as "utility, fitness," &c.

When Epicurus asserted that the sovereign good consisted in _pleasure_, opposing the unfeeling austerity of the Stoics by the softness of pleasurable emotions, his principle was soon disregarded; while his _word_, perhaps chosen in the spirit of paradox, was warmly adopted by the sensualist. Epicurus, of whom Seneca has drawn so beautiful a domestic scene, in whose garden a loaf, a Cytheridean cheese, and a draught which did not inflame thirst,[45] was the sole banquet, would have started indignantly at

The fattest hog in Epicurus' sty!

Such are the facts which illustrate that principle in "the abuse of words," which Locke calls "an affected obscurity arising from applying _old words to new, or unusual significations_."

It was the same "confusion of words" which gave rise to the famous sect of the Sadducees. The master of its founder Sadoc, in his moral purity, was desirous of a disinterested worship of the Deity; he would not have men like slaves, obedient from the hope of reward or the fear of punishment. Sadoc drew a quite contrary inference from the intention of his master, concluding that there were neither rewards nor punishments in a future state. The result is a parallel to the fate of Epicurus. The morality of the master of Sadoc was of the most pure and elevated kind, but in the "confusion of words," the libertines adopted them for their own purposes--and having once assumed that neither rewards nor punishments existed in the after-state, they proceeded to the erroneous consequence that man perished with his own dust!

The plainest words, by accidental associations, may suggest the most erroneous conceptions, and have been productive of the grossest errors. In the famous Bangorian controversy, one of the writers excites a smile by a complaint, arising from his views of the signification of a plain word, whose meaning he thinks had been changed by the contending parties. He says, "the word _country_, like a great many others, such as _church_ and kingdom, is, by the Bishop of Bangor's leave, become to signify a _collection of ideas_ very different from its _original meaning_; with some it implies _party_, with others _private opinion_, and with most _interest_, and perhaps, in time, may signify _some other country_. When this good innocent word has been tossed backwards and forwards a little longer, some new reformer of language may arise to reduce it to its primitive signification--_the real interest of Great Britain!_" The antagonist of this controversialist probably retorted on him his own term of _the real interest_, which might be a very opposite one, according to their notions! It has been said, with what truth I know not, that it was by a mere confusion of words that Burke was enabled to alarm the great Whig families, by showing them their fate in that of the French _noblesse_; they were misled by the _similitude of names_. The French _noblesse_ had as little resemblance to our nobility as they have to the Mandarins of China. However it may be in this case, certain it is that the same terms misapplied have often raised those delusive notions termed false analogies. It was long imagined in this country, that the _parliaments_ of France were somewhat akin to our own; but these assemblies were very differently constituted, consisting only of lawyers in courts of law. A misnomer confuses all argument. There is a trick which consists in bestowing good names on bad things. Vices, thus veiled, are introduced to us as virtues, according to an old poet,

As drunkenness, good-fellowship we call?

SIR THOMAS WIAT.

Or the reverse, when loyalty may be ridiculed, as

The right divine of kings--to govern wrong!

The most innocent recreations, such as the drama, dancing, dress, have been anathematised by puritans, while philosophers have written elaborate treatises in their defence--the enigma is solved, when we discover that these words suggested a set of opposite notions to each.

But the nominalists and the realists, and the _doctores fundatissimi_, _resolutissimi_, _refulgentes_, _profundi_, and _extatici_, have left this heirloom of logomachy to a race as subtle and irrefragable! An extraordinary scene has recently been performed by a new company of actors, in the modern comedy of Political Economy; and the whole dialogue has been carried on in an inimitable "confusion of words!" This reasoning and unreasoning fraternity never use a term as a term, but for an explanation, and which employed by them all, signifies opposite things, but never the plainest! Is it not, therefore, strange that they cannot yet tell us what are _riches_? what is _rent_? what is _value_? Monsieur Say, the most sparkling of them all, assures us that the English writers are obscure, by their confounding, like Smith, the denomination of _labour_. The vivacious Gaul cries out to the grave Briton, Mr. Malthus, "If I consent to employ your word _labour_, you must understand me," so and so! Mr. Malthus says, "Commodities are not exchanged for commodities only; they are also exchanged for _labour_;" and when the hypochondriac Englishman, with dismay, foresees "the glut of markets," and concludes that we may produce more than we can consume, the paradoxical Monsieur Say discovers that "commodities" is a _wrong word_, for it gives a wrong idea; it should be "productions;" for his axiom is, that "productions can only be purchased with productions." Money, it seems, according to dictionary ideas, has no existence in his vocabulary; for Monsieur Say has formed a sort of Berkleian conception of wealth being immaterial, while we confine our views to its materiality. Hence ensues from this "confusion of words," this most brilliant paradox,--that "a glutted market is not a proof that we produce _too much_ but that we produce _too little_! for in that case there is not enough produced to exchange with what is produced!" As Frenchmen excel in politeness and impudence, Monsieur Say adds, "I revere Adam Smith; he is my master; but this first of political economists did not understand all the phenomena of production and consumption." We, who remain uninitiated in this mystery of explaining the operations of trade by metaphysical ideas, and raising up theories to conduct those who never theorise, can only start at the "confusion of words," and leave this blessed inheritance to our sons, if ever the science survive the logomachy.

Caramuel, a famous Spanish bishop, was a grand architect of words. Ingenious in theory, his errors were confined to his practice: he said a great deal and meant nothing; and by an exact dimension of his intellect, taken at the time, it appeared that "he had genius in the eighth degree, eloquence in the fifth, but judgment only in the second!" This great man would not read the ancients; for he had a notion that the moderns must have acquired all they possessed, with a good deal of their own "into the bargain." Two hundred and sixty-two works, differing in breadth and length, besides his manuscripts, attest, that if the world would read his writings, they could need no other; for which purpose his last work always referred to the preceding ones, and could never be comprehended till his readers possessed those which were to follow. As he had the good sense to perceive that metaphysicians abound in obscure and equivocal terms, to avoid this "confusion of words," he invented a jargon of his own; and to make "confusion worse confounded," projected grammars and vocabularies by which we were to learn it; but it is supposed that he was the only man who understood himself. He put every author in despair by the works which he announced. This famous architect of words, however, built more labyrinths than he could always get out of, notwithstanding his "_cabalistical_ grammar," and his "_audacious_ grammar."[46] Yet this great Caramuel, the critics have agreed, was nothing but a puffy giant, with legs too weak for his bulk, and only to be accounted as a hero amidst a "confusion of words."

Let us dread the fate of Caramuel! and before we enter into discussion with the metaphysician, first settle what he means by the nature of _ideas_; with the politician, his notion of _liberty_ and _equality_; with the divine, what he deems _orthodox_; with the political economist, what he considers to be _value_ and _rent_! By this means we may avoid, what is perpetually recurring, that extreme laxity or vagueness of words, which makes every writer, or speaker, complain of his predecessor, and attempt sometimes, not in the best temper, to define and to settle the signification of what the witty South calls "those rabble-charming words, which carry so much wildfire wrapt up in them."

FOOTNOTES:

[42] Turner's "History of England," i. 514

[43] We owe this curious unpublished letter to the zeal and care of
Professor Dugald Stewart, in his excellent "Dissertations."

[44] It is still a Chancery word. An answer in Chancery, &c., is
referred for _impertinence_, reported _impertinent_--and the
_impertinence_ ordered to be struck out, meaning only what is
immaterial or superfluous, tending to unnecessary expense. I am
indebted for this explanation to my friend, Mr. Merivale; and to
another learned friend, formerly in that court, who describes its
meaning as "an excess of words or matter in the pleadings," and who
has received many an official fee for "expunging impertinence,"
leaving, however, he acknowledges, a sufficient quantity to make the
lawyers ashamed of their verbosity.

[45] Sen. Epist. 21.

[46] Baillet gives the dates and plans of these grammars. The
_cabalistic_ was published in Bruxelles, 1642, in 12mo. The
_audacious_ was in folio, printed at Frankfort, 1654.--Jugemens des
Savans. Tome ii. 3me partie.

POLITICAL NICKNAMES.

Political calumny is said to have been reduced into an art, like that of logic, by the Jesuits. This itself may be a political calumny! A powerful body, who themselves had practised the artifices of calumniators, may, in their turn, often have been calumniated. The passage in question was drawn out of one of the classical authors used in their colleges. Busembaum, a German Jesuit, had composed, in duodecimo, a "Medulla Theologiae moralis," where, among other casuistical propositions, there was found lurking in this old Jesuit's "marrow" one which favoured regicide and assassination! Fifty editions of the book had passed unnoticed; till a new one appearing at the critical moment of Damien's attempt, the duodecimo of the old scholastic Jesuit, which had now been amplified by its commentators into two folios, was considered not merely ridiculous, but dangerous. It was burnt at Toulouse, in 1757, by order of the parliament, and condemned at Paris. An Italian Jesuit published an "apology" for this theory of assassination, and the same flames devoured it! Whether Busembaum deserved the honour bestowed on his ingenuity, the reader may judge by the passage itself.

"Whoever would ruin a person, or a government, must begin this operation by spreading calumnies, to defame the person or the government; for unquestionably the calumniator will always find a great number of persons inclined to believe him, or to side with him; it therefore follows, that whenever the object of such calumnies is once lowered in credit by such means, he will soon lose the reputation and power founded on that credit, and sink under the permanent and vindictive attacks of the calumniator." This is the politics of Satan--the evil principle which regulates so many things in this world. The enemies of the Jesuits have formed a list of great names who had become the victims of such atrocious Machiavelism.[47]

This has been one of the arts practised by all political parties. Their first weak invention is to attach to a new faction a contemptible or an opprobrious nickname. In the history of the revolutions of Europe, whenever a new party has at length established its independence, the original denomination which had been fixed on them, marked by the passions of the party which bestowed it, strangely contrasts with the state of the party finally established!

The first revolutionists of Holland incurred the contemptuous name of "Les Gueux," or the Beggars. The Duchess of Parma inquiring about them, the Count of Barlamont scornfully described them to be of this class; and it was flattery of the great which gave the name currency. The Hollanders accepted the name as much in defiance as with indignation, and acted up to it. Instead of brooches in their hats, they wore little wooden platters, such as beggars used, and foxes' tails instead of feathers. On the targets of some of these _Gueux_ they inscribed "Rather Turkish than Popish!" and had the print of a cock crowing, out of whose mouth was a label, _Vive les Gueux par tout le monde!_ which was everywhere set up, and was the favourite sign of their inns. The Protestants in France, after a variety of nicknames to render them contemptible--such as _Christodins_, because they would only talk about Christ, similar to our Puritans; and _Parpaillots_, or _Parpirolles_, a small base coin, which was odiously applied to them--at length settled in the well-known term of _Huguenots_, which probably was derived, as the Dictionnaire de Trevoux suggests, from their hiding themselves in secret places, and appearing at night, like King Hugon, the great hobgoblin of France. It appears that the term has been preserved by an earthen vessel without feet, used in cookery, which served the _Huguenots_ on meagre days to dress their meat, and to avoid observation; a curious instance, where a thing still in use proves the obscure circumstance of its origin.

The atrocious insurrection, called _La Jacquerie_, was a term which originated in cruel derision. When John of France was a prisoner in England, his kingdom appears to have been desolated by its wretched nobles, who, in the indulgence of their passions, set no limits to their luxury and their extortion. They despoiled their peasantry without mercy, and when these complained, and even reproached this tyrannical nobility with having forsaken their sovereign, they were told that _Jacque bon homme_ must pay for all. But _Jack good-man_ came forward in person--a leader appeared under this fatal name, and the peasants revolting in madness, and being joined by all the cut-throats and thieves of Paris, at once pronounced condemnation on every gentleman in France! Froissart has the horrid narrative; twelve thousand of these _Jacques bon hommes_ expiated their crimes; but the _Jacquerie_, who had received their first appellation in derision, assumed it as their _nom de guerre_.

In the spirited Memoirs of the Duke of Guise, written by himself, of his enterprise against the kingdom of Naples, we find a curious account of this political art of marking people by odious nicknames. "Gennaro and Vicenzo," says the duke, "cherished underhand that aversion the rascality had for the better sort of citizens and civiller people, who, by the insolencies they suffered from these, not unjustly hated them. The better class inhabiting the suburbs of the Virgin were called _black cloaks_, and the ordinary sort of people took the name of _lazars_, both in French and English an old word for leprous beggar, and hence the _lazaroni_ of Naples." We can easily conceive the evil eye of a _lazar_ when he encountered a _black cloak_! The Duke adds--"Just as, at the beginning of the revolution, the revolters in Flanders formerly took that of _beggars_; those of Guienne, that of _eaters_; those of Normandy that of _bare-feet_; and of Beausse and Soulogne, of _wooden-pattens_." In the late French revolution, we observed the extremes indulged by both parties chiefly concerned in revolution--the wealthy and the poor! The rich, who, in derision, called their humble fellow-citizens by the contemptuous term of _sans-culottes_, provoked a reacting injustice from the populace, who, as a dreadful return for only a slight, rendered the innocent term of _aristocrate_ a signal for plunder or slaughter!

It is a curious fact that the French verb _fronder_, as well the noun _frondeur_, are used to describe those who condemn the measures of government; and more extensively, designates any hyperbolical and malignant criticism, or any sort of condemnation. These words have only been introduced into the language since the intrigues of Cardinal de Retz succeeded in raising a faction against Cardinal Mazarin, known in French history by the nickname of the _Frondeurs_, or the Slingers. It originated in pleasantry, although it became the password for insurrection in France, and the odious name of a faction. A wit observed, that the parliament were like those school-boys, who fling their stones in the pits of Paris, and as soon as they see the _Lieutenant Civil_, run away; but are sure to collect again directly he disappears. The comparison was lively, and formed the burthen of songs; and afterwards, when affairs were settled between the king and the parliament, it was more particularly applied to the faction of Cardinal de Retz, who still held out. "We encouraged the application," says de Retz; "for we observed that the distinction of a name heated the minds of people; and one evening we resolved to wear hat-strings in the form of slings. A hatter, who might be trusted with the secret, made a great number as a new fashion, and which were worn by many who did not understand the joke; we ourselves were the last to adopt them, that the invention might not appear to have come from us. The effect of this trifle was immense; every fashionable article was now to assume the shape of a sling; bread, hats, gloves, handkerchiefs, fans, &c.; and we ourselves became more in fashion by this folly, than by what was essential." This revolutionary term was never forgotten by the French, a circumstance which might have been considered as prognostic of that after-revolution, which de Retz had the imagination to project, but not the daring to establish. We see, however, this great politician, confessing the advantages his party derived by encouraging the application of a by-name, which served "to heat the minds of people."

It is a curious circumstance that I should have to recount in this chapter on "Political Nicknames" a familiar term with all lovers of art, that of _Silhouette_! This is well understood as a _black profile_; but it is more extraordinary that a term so universally adopted should not be found in any dictionary, either in that of _L'Academie_, or in Todd's, and has not even been preserved, where it is quite indispensable, in Millin's _Dictionnaire des Beaux-Arts_! It is little suspected that this innocent term originated in a political nickname! _Silhouette_ was a minister of state in France in 1759; that period was a critical one; the treasury was in an exhausted condition, and Silhouette, a very honest man, who would hold no intercourse with financiers or loan-mongers, could contrive no other expedient to prevent a national bankruptcy, than excessive economy and interminable reform! Paris was not the metropolis, any more than London, where a Plato or a Zeno could long be minister of state without incurring all the ridicule of the wretched wits! At first they pretended to take his advice, merely to laugh at him:--they cut their coats shorter, and wore them without sleeves; they turned their gold snuff-boxes into rough wooden ones; and the new-fashioned portraits were now only profiles of a face, traced by a black pencil on the shadow cast by a candle on white paper! All the fashions assumed an air of niggardly economy, till poor Silhouette was driven into retirement, with all his projects of savings and reforms; but he left his name to describe the most economical sort of portrait, and one as melancholy as his own fate!

This political artifice of appropriating cant terms, or odious nicknames, could not fail to flourish among a people so perpetually divided by contending interests as ourselves; every party with us have had their watchword, which has served either to congregate themselves, or to set on the ban-dogs of one faction to worry and tear those of another. We practised it early, and we find it still prospering! The _Puritan_ of Elizabeth's reign survives to this hour; the trying difficulties which that wise sovereign had to overcome in settling the national religion, found no sympathy in either of the great divisions of her people; she retained as much of the catholic rites as might be decorous in the new religion, and sought to unite, and not to separate, her children. John Knox, in the spirit of charity, declared, that "she was neither gude protestant, nor yet resolute papist; let the world judge quilk is the third."

A jealous party arose, who were for reforming the reformation. In their attempt at more than human purity, they obtained the nickname of _Puritans_; and from their fastidiousness about very small matters, _Precisians_; these Drayton characterises as persons that for a painted glass window would pull down the whole church. At that early period these nicknames were soon used in an odious sense; for Warner, a poet in the reign of Elizabeth, says,--

If hypocrites why _puritaines_ we term be asked, in breese,
'Tis but an _ironised terme_; good-fellow so spels theese!

Honest Fuller, who knew that many good men were among these _Puritans_, wished to decline the term altogether, under the less offensive one of _Non-conformists_. But the fierce and the fiery of this party, in Charles the First's time had been too obtrusive not to fully merit the ironical appellative; and the peaceful expedient of our moderator dropped away with the page in which it was written. The people have frequently expressed their own notions of different parliaments by some apt nickname. In Richard the Second's time, to express their dislike of the extraordinary and irregular proceedings of the lords against the sovereign, as well as their sanguinary measures, they called it "The _wonder-working_ and the _unmerciful_ parliament." In Edward the Third's reign, when the Black Prince was yet living, the parliament, for having pursued with severity the party of the Duke of Lancaster, was so popular, that the people distinguished it as the _good_ parliament. In Henry the Third's time, the parliament opposing the king, was called "_Parliamentum insanum_," the mad parliament, because the lords came armed to insist on the confirmation of the great charter. A Scottish parliament, from its perpetual shiftings from place to place was ludicrously nicknamed the _running_ parliament; in the same spirit we had our _long_ parliament. The nickname of _Pensioner_ parliament stuck to the House of Commons which sate nearly eighteen years without dissolution, under Charles the Second; and others have borne satirical or laudatory epithets. So true it is, as old Holingshed observed, "The common people will manie times give such _bie names_ as seemeth _best liking to themselves_." It would be a curious speculation to discover the sources of the popular feeling; influenced by delusion, or impelled by good sense!

The exterminating political nickname of _malignant_ darkened the nation through the civil wars: it was a proscription--and a list of _good_ and _bad_ lords was read by the leaders of the first tumults. Of all these inventions, this diabolical one was most adapted to exasperate the animosities of the people, so often duped by names. I have never detected the active man of faction who first hit on this odious brand for persons, but the period when the word changed its ordinary meaning was early; Charles, in 1642, retorts on the parliamentarians the opprobrious distinction, as "The _true malignant party_ which has contrived and countenanced those barbarous tumults." And the royalists pleaded for themselves, that the hateful designation was ill applied to them: "for by _malignity_ you denote," said they, "activity in doing evil, whereas we have always been on the suffering side in our persons, credits, and estates;" but the parliamentarians, "grinning a ghastly smile," would reply, that "the royalists would have been _malignant_ had they proved successful." The truth is, that _malignancy_ meant with both parties any opposition of opinion. At the same period the offensive distinctions of _roundheads_ and _cavaliers_ supplied the people with party names, who were already provided with so many religious as well as civil causes of quarrel; the cropt heads of the sullen sectaries and the people, were the origin of the derisory nickname; the splendid elegance and the romantic spirit of the royalists long awed the rabble, who in their mockery could brand them by no other appellation than one in which their bearers gloried. In the distracted times of early revolution, any nickname, however vague, will fully answer a purpose, although neither those who are blackened by the odium, nor those who cast it, can define the hateful appellative. When the term of _delinquents_ came into vogue, it expressed a degree and species of guilt, says Hume, not exactly known or ascertained. It served, however, the end of those revolutionists who had coined it, by involving any person in, or colouring any action by, _delinquency_; and many of the nobility and gentry were, without any questions being asked, suddenly discovered to have committed the crime of _delinquency_! Whether honest Fuller be facetious or grave on this period of nicknaming parties I will not decide; but, when he tells us that there was another word which was introduced into our nation at this time, I think at least that the whole passage is an admirable commentary on this party vocabulary. "Contemporary with _malignants_ is the word _plunder_, which some make of Latin original, from _planum dare_, to _level_, to _plane_ all to nothing! Others of Dutch extraction, as if it were to _plume_, or pluck the feathers of a bird to the bare skin.[48] Sure I am we first heard of it in the Swedish wars; and if the name and thing be sent back from whence it came few English eyes would weep thereat." All England had wept at the introduction of the word. The _rump_ was the filthy nickname of an odious faction--the history of this famous appellation, which was at first one of horror, till it afterwards became one of derision and contempt, must be referred to another place. The _rump_ became a perpetual whetstone for the loyal wits,[49] till at length its former admirers, the rabble themselves, in town and country, vied with each other in "_burning rumps_" of beef, which were hung by chains on a gallows with a bonfire underneath, and proved how the people, like children, come at length to make a plaything of that which was once their bugbear.