Chapter XXVI: Front Matter (26)

The motto of wit seems to be, _Light come, light go_. A touch is sufficient to dissever what already hangs so loose as folly, like froth on the surface of the wave; and an hyperbole, an impossibility, a pun or a nickname will push an absurdity, which is close upon the verge of it, over the precipice. It is astonishing how much wit or laughter there is in the world—it is one of the staple commodities of daily life—and yet, being excited by what is _out of the way_ and singular, it ought to be rare, and gravity should be the order of the day. Its constant recurrence from the most trifling and trivial causes, shows that the contradiction is less to what we find things than to what we wish them to be. A circle of milliner’s-girls laugh all day long at nothing, or day after day at the same things—the same cant phrase supplies the wags of the town with wit for a month—the same set of nicknames has served the _John Bull_ and _Blackwood’s Magazine_ ever since they started. It would appear by this that its essence consisted in monotony, rather than variety. Some kind of incongruity however seems inseparable from it, either in the object or language. For instance, admiration and flattery become wit by being expressed in a quaint and abrupt way. Thus, when the dustman complimented the Duchess of Devonshire by saying, as she passed, ‘I wish that lady would let me light my pipe at her eyes,’ nothing was meant less than to ridicule or throw contempt, yet the speech was wit and not serious flattery. The putting a wig on a stupid face and setting it on a barber’s pole is wit or humour:—the fixing a pair of wings on a beautiful figure to make it look more like an angel is poetry; so that the _grotesque_ is either serious or ludicrous, as it professes to exalt or degrade. Whenever any thing is proposed to be _done_ in the way of wit, it must be in mockery or jest; since if it were a probable or becoming action, there would be no drollery in suggesting it; but this does not apply to illustrations by comparison, there is here no line drawn between what is to take place and what is not to take place—they must only be extreme and unexpected. Mere nonsense, however, is not wit. For however slight the connexion, it will never do to have none at all; and the more fine and fragile it is in some respects, the more close and deceitful it should be in the particular one insisted on. Farther, mere sense is not wit. Logical subtilty or ingenuity does not amount to wit (although it may mimic it) without an immediate play of fancy, which is a totally different thing. The comparing the phrenologist’s division of the same portion of the brain into the organs of form and colour to the cutting a Yorkshire pudding into two parts, and calling the one _custard_ and the other _plum-cake_ may pass for wit with some, but not with me. I protest (if required) against having a grain of wit.[64]

PERSONAL POLITICS

‘Ay, every inch a king!’

Many persons are surprised at the conduct of Charles X. in pushing things to extremities: the wonder would have been, if he had not. All the time of the _Restoration_ under a charter, he was employed in thinking how to get rid of that charter, to throw off that incubus, to cancel that juggle, to breathe once more the air of divine right. Till this were done—no matter by what delays, after what length of time, by what jesuitical professions, by what false oaths, by what stratagems, by what unmasked insolence, by what loud menaces, by what violence, by what blood—the French monarch (whether Charles or Louis), felt himself ‘cooped, confined, and cabined in, by saucy doubts and fears;’ but this phantom of a constitution once out of the way he would be ‘himself again.’ He would then first cry _Vive la Charte!_ without a pang—with his eyes running over, and his heart bursting with laughter. If he had a right to be _where_ he was, he had a right to be _what_ he was, and what he was born to be. This was the first idea instilled into his mind, the last he would forget. All else was a compromise with circumstances, a base surrender of an inalienable claim, a concession extorted under _duresse_, so much the more eagerly to be retracted, as an appearance of compliance had been the longer and more studiously kept up. A throne not founded on inherent right was a mockery and insult. All power shared with the people, supposed to be derived from them, for which the possessor was accountable to them, held during pleasure or good behaviour, was pollution to his thoughts, odious to him as the leprosy. Be sure of this, popular right coiled round the sceptre of hereditary kings is like the viper clinging to our hands, which we shake off with fear and loathing. There is in despots (born and bred) a natural and irreconcilable antipathy to the people, and to all obligations to them. The very name of freedom is a screech-owl in their ears. They have been brought up with the idea that they were entitled to absolute power, that there was something in their blood that gave them a right to it without condition or reserve, or being called to account for the use or abuse of it; and they reject with scorn and impatience anything short of this. They will either be absolute or they will be nothing. The Bourbons for centuries had been regarded as the gods of the earth, as a superior race of beings, who had a sovereign right to trample on mankind, and crush them in their wrath or spare them in their mercy. Would Charles X. derogate from his ancestors, would he be the degenerate scion of that royal line, to wear a tarnished and dishonoured crown, to be raised by the shout of a mob, to wait the assent of a Chamber of Deputies, to owe every thing to the people, to be a king on liking and on sufferance, a sort of state prisoner in his own kingdom, shut up and spell-bound in the nickname of a Constitution? He would as soon consent to go on all-fours. The latter would not shock his pride and prejudices more: would not be a greater degradation in his eyes, or a more total inversion of the order of nature. It is not that the successor to a despotic throne will not, but he cannot be the king of a free people: the very supposition is in his mind a contradiction in terms. It is something base and mechanical, not amounting even to the rank of a private gentleman who does what he pleases with his estate; and kings consider mankind as their estate. If a herd of overloaded asses were to turn against their drivers and demand their liberty and better usage, these could not be more astonished than the Bourbons were when the French people turned against them and demanded their rights. Will these same Bourbons, who have been rocked and cradled in the notion of arbitrary power, and of their own exclusive privileges as a separate and sacred race, who have sucked it in with their mothers’ milk, who inherit it in their blood, who have nursed it in exile and in solitude, and gloated over it once more, since their return, as within their reach, ever be brought to look Liberty in the face except as a mortal and implacable foe, or ever give up the hope of removing that obstacle to all that they have been or still have a fancied right to be? The last thing that they can be convinced of will be to make them comprehend that they are _men_. This is a discovery of the last forty years, that has been forced upon them in no very agreeable manner; by the beheading of more than one of their race, the banishment of the rest, by their long wanderings and unwelcome return to their own country, from whence they have been driven twice since—but up to that period they find no such levelling doctrine inscribed either in the records of history or on their crest and coat of arms or in the forms of religion or in the ancient laws and institutions of the kingdom. Which version will they then believe or turn a deaf ear to: that which represents them as God’s vicegerents upon earth, or that which holds them up as the enemies of the human race and the scoff and outcasts of their country? Every, the meanest individual has a standard of estimation in his own breast, which is that he is of more importance than all the rest of the world put together; but a king is the only person with respect to whom all the rest of the world join or have ever joined in the same conclusion; and be assured that having encouraged him in this opinion, he will do every thing in his power to keep them to it till his last gasp. You have sworn to a man that he is a god: this is indeed the most solemn of compacts. Any attempt to infringe it, any breath throwing a doubt upon it, is treason, rebellion, impiety. Would you be so unjust as to retract the boon, he will not be so unjust to himself as to let you. He would sooner suffer ten deaths and forfeit twenty kingdoms than patiently submit to the indignity of having his right called in question. It is said, Charles X. is a good-natured man: it may be so, and that he would not hurt a fly; but in that quarrel he would shed the blood of millions of men. If he did not do so, he would consider himself as dead to honour, a recreant to fame, and a traitor to the cause of kings. Touch but that string, the inborn dignity of kings and their title to ‘solely sovereign sway and masterdom,’ and the milk of human kindness in the best-natured monarch turns to gall and bitterness. You might as well present a naked sword to his breast, as be guilty of a word or look that can bear any other construction than that of implicit homage and obedience. There is a spark of pride lurking at the bottom of his heart, however glozed over by smiles and fair speeches, ever ready (with the smallest opposition to his will) to kindle into a flame, and desolate kingdoms. Let but the voice of freedom speak, and to resist ‘shall be in him remorse, what bloody work soever’ be the consequence. Good-natured kings, like good-natured men, are often merely lovers of their own ease who give themselves no trouble about other people’s affairs: but interfere in the slightest point with their convenience, interest, or self-love, and a tigress is not more furious in defence of her young. While the Royal Guards were massacring the citizens of Paris, Charles X. was partridge-shooting at St. Cloud, to show that the shooting of his subjects and the shooting of game were equally among the _menus plaisirs_ of royalty. This is what is meant by mild paternal sway, by the perfection of a good-natured monarch, when he orders the destruction of as great a number of people as will not do what he pleases, without any discomposure of dress or features. Away with such trifling! There is no end of the confusion and mischief occasioned by the application of this mode of arguing from personal character and appearances to public measures and principles. If we are to believe the fashionable cant on this subject, a man cannot do a dirty action because he wears a clean shirt: he cannot break an oath to a nation, because he pays a gambling debt; and because he is delighted with the universal homage that is paid him, with having every luxury and every pomp at his disposal, he cannot, under the mask of courtesy and good humour, conceal designs against a Constitution, or ‘smile and smile and be a _tyrant_!’ Such is the logic of the _Times_. This paper, ‘ever strong upon the stronger side,’ laughs to scorn the very idea entertained by our ‘restless and mercurial neighbours’ (as if the _Times_ had nothing of the _tourniquet_ principle in its composition) that so amiable, so well-meaning and prosperous a gentleman as Charles X. should nourish an old and inveterate grudge against the liberties of his country or wish to overturn that happy order of things which the _Times_ had so great a share in establishing. But he no sooner verifies the predictions of the French journalists and is tumbled from his throne, than the _Times_ with its jolly, swaggering, _thrasonical_ air falls upon him and calls him all the _vagabonds_ it can get its tongue to. We do not see the wit of this, any more than of its assuring us, with unabated confidence, that there is not the least shadow of foundation for the apprehensions of those who are perverse enough to think, that a Ministry that have set up and countenanced the Continental despotisms, and uniformly shown themselves worse than indifferent to the blood and groans of thousands of victims in foreign countries (sacrificed under their guarantee of the _deliverance of mankind_) may have an _arrière-pensée_ against the liberties of their own. We grant the premises of the _Times_ in either case, that the French king was good-humoured and that the Duke has a vacant face; but these favourable appearances have not prevented a violent catastrophe in the one case and may not in the other. Mr. Brougham a short time ago, in a speech at a public meeting, gave his hearty approbation of the late Revolution in France, and clenched his argument by asking what fate an English monarch would merit, and probably meet, who acted in the same manner as the besotted Charles; who annulled the liberty of the press, who prevented the meeting of the representatives of the people, who disfranchised four-fifths of the electors by an arbitrary decree, and proposed to reign without law, and raise the taxes without a Parliament? This is not exactly the point at issue. A more _home_ question would be, what fate a king of England would deserve, not who did or attempted all this in his own person, but who fearing to do that, as the next best thing and to show which way his inclinations tended, aided and abetted with all the might and resources of a people calling itself free, and tried to force back upon a neighbouring state, by a long and cruel war and with the ruin of his own subjects, a king like Charles X., who by every act and circumstance of his life had shown himself hostile to the welfare and freedom of his country, and whose conduct, if repeated here, would justly incur the forfeiture of his own crown? It would be ‘premature,’ in the judgment of some, to give an opinion on this subject till after the thing has happened, and then it would be neither loyal nor patriotic to condemn the conduct of our own cabinet; but we hope at least that the next time the English government undertake to force a king upon the French people, they will send them a baboon instead of a Bourbon, as the less insult of the two!—To return to the question of _personal politics_. Our last king but one was a good domestic character; but this had little or nothing to do with the wisdom or folly of his public measures. He might be faithful to his conjugal vows, but might put a construction on some clause in his Coronation-oath fatal to the peace and happiness of a large part of his subjects. He might be an exceedingly well-meaning, moral man, but might have notions instilled into him in early youth respecting the prerogatives of the crown and the relation between the sovereign and the people, that might not quit him to his latest breath, and might embroil his subjects and the world in disastrous wars and controversies during his whole reign. His son succeeded him without the same reputation for domestic virtue, but adopted all the measures of his father’s ministers. If the private character and the public conduct were to be submitted to the same test, this could not have happened. But the late king was cried up for his elegant accomplishments, and as the _fine gentleman_ of his family; and this, with equally sound logic, atoned for the absence of less shewy qualities, and stamped his public proceedings with the character of a wise and liberal policy. We are already assured of a fortunate and peaceful reign, because the present king looks pleased and good-humoured on his accession to the crown; though the smallest cloud in the political horizon may scatter the ruddy smiles and overcast the whole prospect. Mr. Coleridge complains, somewhere, of politicians who pretend to guide the state, and yet have ruined their own affairs. Would the author of the _Ancient Mariner_ apply the same rule to other things, and affirm that no one could be a poet or a philosopher who had not made his fortune? One would suppose, that all the people of sense and worth were confessedly on one side of the question in the great disputes in religion or politics that have agitated and torn the world in pieces, and all the knaves and fools on the other. This is hardly tenable ground. Charles IX., of happy memory was we believe a good-tempered man and a most religious prince: this did not hinder him from authorising the massacre of St. Bartholomew and shooting at the Huguenots out of the palace-windows with his own hands. This was the prejudice of his time: we have still certain prejudices to contend with in ours, which have nothing to do with the looks, temper, or private character of those who hold them. We wonder at the cruelties and atrocities of religious fanatics in former times, and would not have them repeated: were none of these persecutors honest, conscientious men? Take any twelve inquisitors: six of them shall be angels and the other six scoundrels, yet they will all agree in one unanimous verdict, condemning you or me to the flames for not believing in the infallibility of the Pope. This is the thing to be avoided _by all means_; and not to lose our time in idle discussions about the amiableness of the characters of these pious exterminators, nor in admiring the fineness of their countenances, nor the picturesque effect of the scenery and _costume_. Charles X., the gay and gallant Count d’Artois, wears a hair-shirt, is fond of partridge-shooting, and wanted to put a yoke on the necks of his subjects. The last is that on which issue was joined. Let him go where he chooses, with a handsome pension; but let him not be sent back again (as he was once before) at the expense of millions of lives![65]

EMANCIPATION OF THE JEWS

‘_Player._ We have reformed that indifferently, my lord.

_Hamlet._ Oh! reform it altogether.’

The emancipation of the Jews is but a natural step in the progress of civilisation. Laws and institutions are positive things: opinions and sentiments are variable; and it is in conforming the stubbornness and perversity of the former to the freedom and boldness of the latter, that the harmony and beauty of the social order consist. But it is said, ‘The Jews at present have few grievances to complain of; they are well off, and should be thankful for the indulgence they receive.’ It is true, we no longer burn them at a stake, or plunder them of their goods: why then continue to insult and fix an idle stigma on them? At Rome a few years ago they made the Jews run races (naked) in the Corso on Good Friday. At present, they only oblige them to provide asses to run races on the same day for the amusement of the populace, and to keep up the spirit of the good old custom, though by altering it they confess that the custom was wrong, and that they are ashamed of it. They also shut up the Jews in a particular quarter of the city (called Il Ghetto Judaico), and at the same time will not suffer the English as heretics to be buried within the walls of Rome. An Englishman smiles or is scandalised at both these instances of bigotry; but if he is asked, ‘Why, then, do you not yourselves emancipate the Catholics and the Jews?’ he may answer, ‘We _have_ emancipated the one.’ And why not the other? ‘Because we are intolerant.’ This and this alone is the reason.

We throw in the teeth of the Jews that they are prone to certain sordid vices. If they are vicious it is we who have made them so. Shut out any class of people from the path to fair fame, and you reduce them to grovel in the pursuit of riches and the means to live. A man has long been in dread of insult for no just cause, and you complain that he grows reserved and suspicious. You treat him with obloquy and contempt, and wonder that he does not walk by you with an erect and open brow.

We also object to their trades and modes of life; that is, we shut people up in close confinement and complain that they do not live in the open air. The Jews barter and sell commodities, instead of raising or manufacturing them. But this is the necessary traditional consequence of their former persecution and pillage by all nations. They could not set up a trade when they were hunted every moment from place to place, and while they could count nothing their own but what they could carry with them. They could not devote themselves to the pursuit of agriculture, when they were not allowed to possess a foot of land. You tear people up by the roots and trample on them like noxious weeds, and then make an outcry that they do not take root in the soil like wholesome plants. You drive them like a pest from city to city, from kingdom to kingdom, and then call them vagabonds and aliens.

When reason fails, the Christian religion is, as usual, called in aid of persecution. The admission of the Jews, it is said, to any place of trust or emolument in the state ought not to be sanctioned, because they expect the coming of the Messiah, and their restoration, one day or other, to their own country: and Christianity, it is said, is part of the law of the land.

As to their exclusion because they expect the coming of the Messiah, and their restoration, one day or other, to their own country, a few words will be sufficient. Even if it is too much for a people, with this reversion in the promised land, to have a ‘stake in the country’ added to it; and the offer of a seat in the House of Commons is too much for any one who looks forward to a throne in the _New Jerusalem_: this objection comes with but an ill grace from the followers of him who has declared, ‘My kingdom is not of this world;’ and who on that plea profess to keep all the power and authority in their own hands. Suppose an attempt were made to exclude Christians from serving the office of constable, jury-man, or knight of the shire, as expressly contrary to the great principle of their religion, which inculcates an entire contempt for the things of this life, and a constant preparation for a better. Would not this be considered as an irony, and not a very civil one? Yet it is the precise counterpart of this argument. The restoration of the Jews to their own country, however firmly believed in as an article of faith, has been delayed eighteen hundred years, and may be delayed eighteen hundred more. Are they to remain indifferent to the good or evil, to the respectability or odium that may attach to them all this while? The world in general do not look so far; and the Jews have not been accused, more than others, of sacrificing the practical to the speculative. But according to this objection, there can be no amalgamation of interests with a people of such fantastic principles and abstracted ties; they cannot care how soon a country goes to ruin, which they are always on the point of quitting. Suppose a Jew to have amassed a large fortune in the last war, and to have laid by money in the funds, and built himself a handsome house in the neighbourhood of the metropolis; would he be more likely by his vote in the House of Commons to promote a revolution, so as to cause a general bankruptcy; or to encourage the mob to pull down his house, or root up his favourite walks, because after all, at the end of several centuries, he and the rest of his nation indulge in the prospect of returning to their own country? The most clear-sighted John Bull patriotism hardly reaches beyond ourselves and our heirs.

As to the assertion that Christianity is part of the law of the land, as Popery is a part of the law of the land at Rome, and a good reason for hunting Jews and refusing Christian burial to Protestants, by whom is it made? Not by our Divines. They do not distrust the power of our religion; and they will tell you that if Christianity, as sanctioning these cruelties or any miserable remnant of them, is part of the law of the land, then the law of the land is no part of Christianity. They do not forget the original character of the Jewish people, and will not say anything against it. We and modern Europe derived from them the whole germ of our civilisation, our ideas on the unity of the Deity, or marriage, on morals,

‘And pure religion breathing household Laws.’

The great founder of the Christian religion was himself born among that people, and if the Jewish Nation are still to be branded with his death, it might be asked on what principle of justice ought we to punish men for crimes committed by their co-religionists near two thousand years ago? That the Jews, as a people, persist in their blindness and obstinacy is to be lamented; but it is at least, under the circumstances, a proof of their sincerity; and as adherents to a losing cause, they are entitled to respect and not contempt. Is it the language of Lawyers? They are too intelligent, and, in the present times, not favourers of hypocrisy. They know that this law is not on our statute book, and if it were, that it would be law as long as it remained there and no longer; they know that the supposition originated in the unadvised dictum of a Judge, and, if it had been uttered by a Puritan Divine, it would have been quoted at this day as a specimen of puritanical nonsense and bigotry. Religion cannot take on itself the character of law without ceasing to be religion; nor can law recognise the obligations of religion for its principles, nor become the pretended guardian and protector of the faith, without degenerating into inquisitorial tyranny.

The proposal to admit Jews to a seat in Parliament in this country is treated as an irony or a burlesque on the Catholic question. At the same time, it is said to be very proper and rational in France and America, Denmark and the Netherlands, because there, though they are nominally admitted, court influence excludes them in the one, and popular opinion in the other, so that the law is of no avail: that is, in other words, in England as there is neither court influence nor popular prejudice; and as every thing in this country is done by money alone, the Stock Exchange would soon buy up the House of Commons, and if a single Jew were admitted, the whole would shortly be a perfect Sanhedrim. This is a pleasant account of the spirit of English patriotism, and the texture of the House of Commons. All the wealth of the Jews cannot buy them a single seat there; but if a certain formal restriction were taken off, Jewish gold would buy up the fee simple of the consciences, prejudices and interests of the country, and turn the kingdom _topsy-turvy_. Thus the bed-rid imagination of prejudice sees some dreadful catastrophe in every improvement, and no longer feeling the ground of custom under its feet, fancies itself on an abyss of ruin and lawless change. How truly has it been said of prejudice, ‘that it has the singular ability of accommodating itself to all the possible varieties of the human mind. Some passions and vices are but thinly scattered among mankind, and find only here and there a fitness of reception. But prejudice, like the spider, makes every where its home. It has neither taste nor choice of place, and all that it requires is room. There is scarcely a situation, except fire and water, in which a spider will not live. So let the mind be as naked as the walls of an empty and forsaken tenement, gloomy as a dungeon, or ornamented with the richest abilities of thinking; let it be hot, cold, dark or light, lonely or inhabited, still prejudice, if undisturbed, will fill it with cobwebs, and live like the spider, where there seems nothing to live on. If the one prepares her food by poisoning it to her palate and her use, the other does the same; and as several of our passions are strongly characterised by the animal world, prejudice may be denominated the spider of the mind.’

Three hundred years ago all this was natural and in order, because it accorded with the prejudices of the time; now it is absurd and Gothic, because it is contrary to men’s reason and feelings. Hatred is the food and growth of ignorance. While we know nothing but ourselves and our own notions, we can conceive of nothing else as possible; and every deviation from our practice or opinions gives a shock to our faith that nothing can expiate but blows. Those who differ from us in the smallest particular are considered as of a different species, and we treat them accordingly. But this barrier of prejudice, which is founded on ignorance, is thrown down by the diffusion of light and knowledge; nor can any thing build it up again. In the good old times a Jew was regarded by the vulgar and their betters as a sort of monster, a _lusus naturæ_ whose existence they could not account for, and would not tolerate. The only way to get rid of the obnoxious opinion was to destroy the _man_. Besides, in those dark ages, they wanted some object of natural antipathy, as in country places they get a strange dog or an idiot to hunt down and be the bugbear of the village. But it is the test of reason and refinement to be able to subsist without bugbears. While it was supposed that ‘the Jews eat little children,’ it was proper to take precautions against them. But why keep up ill names and the ill odour of a prejudice when the prejudice has ceased to exist? It has long ceased amongst the reflecting part of the community; and, although the oldest prejudices are, it is to be lamented, preserved longest in the highest places, and governments have been slow to learn good manners, we cannot but be conscious that these errors are passing away. We begin to see, if we do not fully see, that we have no superiority to boast of but reason and philosophy, and that it is well to get rid of vulgar prejudices and nominal distinctions as fast as possible.

ON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH

The view which has been taken of the subject by Beccaria and other modern writers appears to be erroneous or defective in some of the most important circumstances relating to this question.

_First objection._ It is assumed as a general maxim, that, ‘it is not the intensity of punishment, but its duration, which makes the greatest impression on the human mind.’

This maxim will be found to be in direct opposition to all experience, and to every principle of human nature. It supposes that a number of impressions, feeble in themselves, and dissipated over a long interval of time, produce a stronger effect upon the mind, than a single object, however powerful and striking, presented to it at once: that is, that the passions are excited more by reason than imagination, by the real, than by the apparent quantity of good or evil. This principle is indeed, in general, denied by Mr. Bentham, but admitted by him, as far as relates to the influence of the fear of death on malefactors. If it be true with respect to them in particular (which there is reason to doubt,) it is not because the fear of a continued punishment influences them more than the fear of an intense one, but because death is to them not an intense punishment.

Again, it has been said, that ‘crimes are more effectually prevented by the certainty than by the severity of the punishment.’ Now I cannot think that this is either self-evident, or true universally and in the abstract. It is not true of human nature in general, and it is still less so as applied to the more lawless and abandoned classes of the community. It is evident from the very character of such persons, that if they are not to be acted upon by violent motives, by what appeals strongly to their imagination and their passions, they cannot be acted upon at all, they are out of the reach of all moral discipline. The dull, sober certainties of common life, and the real consequences of things when set in competition with any favourite inclination, or vicious indulgence, they altogether despise. It is only when the certainty of punishment is immediate, obvious, and connected with circumstances, which strike upon the imagination, that it operates effectually in the prevention of crimes. This principle is however true, as it has been sometimes applied to cases where the law has become a dead letter. _When a moderate punishment is strictly and vigorously enforced, and a severe punishment is as generally and systematically evaded, the mind will, undoubtedly, be more affected by what it considers as a serious reality, than by what it will regard as an idle threat._ So far the principle is true in its application, but no farther.

_First maxim._ It is not the _real_, but the apparent severity of the punishment which most effectually deters from the commission of crimes. For this reason, an intense punishment will have more effect than a continued one, because more easily apprehended. Neither is the certainty of punishment to be depended on, except when it is apparent. _It is not the calculation of consequences, but their involuntary and irresistible impression on the mind that produces action. The laws to prevent crimes must appeal to the passions of men, and not to their reason: for crimes proceed from passion, and not from reason. If men were governed by reason, laws would be unnecessary._

_Second objection._ It seems to be taken for granted by speculative writers, (at least the contrary is not stated with sufficient distinctness) that punishment operates by terror alone, or by the fear which each individual has of the consequences to himself.

It is indeed a prevailing maxim of philosophy, that self-interest is the sole spring of action, and it has thus probably been inferred, that the fear of punishment could only operate on this principle of cool, calculating self-interest. But it is quite certain that sympathy with others, whatever may be its origin, is, practically speaking, an independent and powerful principle of action. The opinions and feelings of others do actually and constantly influence our conduct, in opposition to our strongest interests and inclinations. That punishment, therefore, will not be the most dreaded, nor, consequently, the most effectual, which is the greatest to the individual, unless it is at the same time thought so by others, and expresses the greatest general disapprobation of the crime. Thus, though a malefactor, consulting only his own inclinations or feelings, might prefer death to perpetual imprisonment and hard labour, yet he may regard it as the worst of punishments, in as far as it demonstrates the greatest abhorrence and indignation in the community against the crime.

_Second maxim._ Punishment operates by sympathy, as well as by terror. Penal laws have a tendency to repress crimes not more by exciting a dread of the consequences, than by marking the strong sense entertained by others of their enormity, and the detestation in which they are held by mankind in general. The most severe laws will always be the most effectual, as long as they are expressions of the public sentiment; but they will become ineffectual, in proportion as the sentiment is wanting. The disproportion between the crime and the punishment in the public opinion, will then counteract the dread of the severity of the law. Setting this feeling aside, the most severe laws will be the most effectual. The argument drawn from the inefficacy of severe punishments, when inflicted on trifling or common offences, does not prove that they must be ineffectual, when applied to great crimes, which rouse the public indignation and justify the severity.

_Third objection._ It is farther implied in the foregoing statements, that the only object of punishment is to prevent actual crimes, or that those laws are the best, which most effectually answer this end by deterring criminals.

This I also conceive to be a narrow and imperfect view of the question, which respects not merely the motives and conduct of criminals, but the motives and sentiments of the community at large. It is of the first importance that the ill disposed should be coerced, but it is also of importance that they should be coerced in such a manner, and by such means, as it is most consistent with the public morals to employ. In defending the state, we are not to forget that the state ought to be worth defending. As the sentiments of society have a powerful effect in enforcing the laws, so the laws re-act powerfully on the sentiments of society. This is evident with respect to barbarous punishments. The evil of a law operating in this way on manners, by holding out an example of cruelty and injustice, however effectual it might be found, is not denied. In like manner, a law falling short of or disappointing the just indignation and moral sense of the community, is, for the same reason, faulty as one that exceeds and outrages it. One end of punishment, therefore, is to satisfy this natural sense of justice in the public mind, and to strengthen the opinion of the community by its act. As the arm of justice ought not to be mocked and baffled by the impunity of offences, so neither ought it to be unnerved by thwarting and prevaricating with the common sentiments of mankind, or by substituting remote, indirect, and artificial punishments for obvious and direct ones. I call a punishment natural when it is dictated by the _passion_ excited against the crime. A punishment will therefore be the most beneficial when it arises out of, and co-operates with that strong sense of right or wrong, that firm and healthy tone of public sentiment, which is the best preservative against crime.

_Illustration._ Thus even if it were shewn that perpetual imprisonment and hard labour would be equally effectual in deterring malefactors from the commission of murder, it would by no means necessarily follow, that this mode of punishment would be preferable to capital punishment, unless it could at the same time be made to appear that it would equally enforce the principle of the connexion between the crime and the punishment, or the rule of natural justice, by which he who shews himself indifferent to the life of another, forfeits his own. There is a natural and home-felt connexion between the hardened obduracy which has shewn itself insensible to the cries of another for mercy and the immediate burst of indignation which dooms the criminal to feel that he has no claims on the pity of others: but there is no connexion, because there is no ascertainable proportion, in the mind either of the criminal or the public, between the original crime, and the additional half-hour in the day after the lapse of twenty years, which the malefactor is condemned to labour, or the lash of the whip which urges him to complete his heavy task. That reasoning which stops the torrent of public indignation, and diverts it from its object only to dole it out to its miserable victim, drop by drop, and day by day, through a long protracted series of time with systematic, deliberate, unrelenting severity, is in fact neither wise nor humane. Punishments of this kind may be so contrived as to intimidate the worst part of mankind, but they will also be the aversion of the best, and will confound and warp the plain distinctions between right and wrong.

_Third maxim._ The end of punishment is not only to prevent actual crimes, but to form a standard of public opinion, and to confirm and sanction the moral sentiments of the community. The mode and degree of the punishment ought, therefore, to be determined with a view to this object, as well as with a view to the regulation of the police.

_Fourth objection._ The theory here alluded to, is farther objectionable in this, that it makes familiarity with the punishment essential to its efficacy, and therefore recommends those punishments, the example of which is the most lasting, and, as it were, constantly before the eyes of the public, as the most salutary. On the contrary, those punishments are the best which require the least previous familiarity with objects of guilt and misery to make them formidable, which come least into contact with the mind, which tell at a distance, the bare mention of which startles the ear, which operate by an imaginary instead of an habitual dread, and which produce their effect once for all, without destroying the erectness and elasticity of social feeling by the constant spectacle of the degradation of the species. No one would wish to have a gibbet placed before his door, to deter his neighbours from robbing him. Punishments which require repeated ocular inspection of the evils which they occasion, cannot answer their end in deterring individuals, without having first operated as a penance on society. They are a public benefit only so far as they are a public nuisance. Laws framed entirely on this principle, would convert the world into a large prison, and divide mankind into two classes, felons and their keepers!

_Maxim fourth._ Those punishments are the best which produce the strongest apprehension, with the least actual suffering or contemplation of evil. Such is in general the effect of those punishments which appeal to the imagination, rather than to our physical experience; which are immediately connected with a principle of honour, with the passions in general, with natural antipathies, the fear of pain, the fear of death, etc. These punishments are, in Mr. Bentham’s phrase, the most _economical_; they do their work with the least expense of individual suffering, or abuse of public sympathy. Private punishments are, so far, preferable to public ones.

_General inference._ There ought to be a gradation of punishments proportioned to the offence, and adapted to the state of society.

In order to strike the imagination and excite terror, severe punishments ought not to be common.[66]

To be effectual, from the sympathy of mankind in the justice of the sentence, the highest punishments ought not to be assigned to the lowest or to very different degrees of guilt. The absence of the sanction of public opinion not only deadens the execution of the law, but by giving confidence to the offender, produces that sort of resistance to it, which is always made to oppression. The ignominy attached to the sentence of the law, is thus converted into pity. If the law is enacted but not enforced, this must either be to such a degree as to take away the terror of the law, or if the terror still remains, it will be a terror of injustice, which will necessarily impair the sense of right and wrong in the community. But if the law is regularly carried into execution, the effect will be still worse. In general, all laws are bad which are not seconded by the manners of the people, and laws are not in conformity with the manners of the people when they are not executed. This is the case at present with a great proportion of the English laws. Is it to be wondered at that they should be so? Manners have changed, and will always change insensibly, and irresistibly, from the force of circumstances. The laws, as things of positive institution, remain the same. So that without a constant, gradual assimilation of the laws to the manners, the manners will, in time, necessarily become at variance with the laws, and will render them odious, ineffectual, and mischievous—a clog, instead of a furtherance to the wheels of justice.

NOTES
FUGITIVE WRITINGS

THE FIGHT

First republished in _Literary Remains_, vol. II. p. 193. For another account of the fight and, more particularly, of the journey home, see P. G. Patmore’s _My Friends and Acquaintance_, III. 41, _et seq._ The fight (between Hickman, the ‘Gas-man’ and Bill Neat) took place on Dec. 11, 1821. For an account of Tom Hickman (who was thrown from a chaise and killed in the following December) see Pierce Egan’s _Boxiana_, where particulars will be found of all the ‘Fancy’ heroes referred to by Hazlitt in this essay.

PAGE

1. ‘_The fight_,’ _etc._ Cf. _Hamlet_, Act II. Sc. 2.

_Jack Randall’s._ Cf. vol. VI. (_Table-Talk_), note to p. 202.

‘_The proverb ... musty._’ Cf. _Hamlet_, Act III. Sc. 2.

2. _Jo. Toms._ Joseph Parkes (1796–1865), the Radical politician, at
that time articled to a London solicitor.

‘_So carelessly_,’ _etc._ _As You Like It_, Act I. Sc. 1.

_Jack Pigott._ P. G. Patmore.

‘_What more felicity_,’ _etc._ Spenser, _Muiopotmos_, st. 27.

_Tom Belcher’s._ Tom Belcher (1783–1854), a younger brother of
the better known prizefighter, James Belcher, kept the ‘Castle’
tavern in Holborn.

‘_Well, we meet at Philippi._’ Cf. _Julius Cæsar_, Act IV. Sc. 3.

3. ‘_I follow Fate_,’ _etc._ Cf. Dryden, _The Indian Emperor_, IV.
3.

4. _Tom Turtle._ According to the author’s son (see _Literary
Remains_, II. 201) this was John Thurtell (1794–1824),
afterwards notorious as the murderer of Weare.

‘_Quite chap-fallen._’ _Hamlet_, Act V. Sc. 1.

_Martin._ Jack Martin, known as ‘The Master of the Rolls.’

_Mr. Richmond._ Bill Richmond, presumably, the veteran coloured
hero, who had recently taken to teaching the art of boxing.

‘_Where good digestion_,’ _etc._ _Macbeth_, Act III. Sc. 4.

5. ‘_Follows so_,’ _etc._ _Henry V._, Act IV. Sc. 1.

‘_More figures_,’ _etc._ Cf. _Julius Cæsar_, Act II. Sc. 1.

‘_His dream_,’ _etc._ Cf. _Othello_, Act III. Sc. 3.

‘_Seriously inclined._’ Cf. _Ibid._ Act I. Sc. 3.

6. ‘_A lusty man_,’ _etc._ Cf. _Canterbury Tales_, Prologue, 167.

7. ‘_Standing_,’ _etc._ _Henry V._, Act III. Sc. 1.

‘_He moralised_,’ _etc._ Cf. _As You Like It_, Act II. Sc. 1.

‘_A firebrand like Bardolph’s._’ _1 Henry IV._, Act II. Sc. 2.

‘_Loud and furious fun._’ Cf. ‘The mirth and fun grew fast and
furious.’ Burns, _Tam O’Shanter_.

7. _Cribb’s beating Jem_, _etc._ Cribb defeated Jem Belcher twice,
in 1807 and 1809. Belcher had lost an eye in 1803 through an
accident when playing at rackets.

8. _Gully._ John Gully (1783–1863), afterwards well known in the
racing world, had retired from the ring in 1808 after two
victories over Bob Gregson.

‘_Alas!_’ _etc._ Cf. ‘Alas! Leviathan is not so tamed.’ Cowper,
_The Task_, II. 322.

9. _The Game Chicken._ Henry Pearce (1777–1809).

‘_That man was made to mourn._’ The title and refrain of ‘A
Dirge’ by Burns.

10. ‘_Between the acting_,’ _etc._ _Julius Cæsar_, Act II. Sc. 1.

_With Atlantean shoulders_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, II. 306.

11. ‘_Grinned horrible_,’ _etc._ _Ibid._ II. 846.

‘_Like two clouds_,’ _etc._ Cf. _Ibid._ II. 714–716.

12. _Jackson._ Presumably John Jackson (1769–1845), the well-known
pugilist (retired 1803), known as ‘Gentleman Jackson.’

Note. _Scroggins._ Jack Scroggins, another well-known
prizefighter.

Note. ‘_In doleful dumps_,’ _etc._ _Chevy-Chace_, st. 50.

13. _Procul este profani._ _Æneid_, VI. 258.

14. _Ned Turner._ Ned Turner (1791–1826), the conqueror of Scroggins.

_Broughton and George Stevenson._ Jack Broughton’s (1704–1789)
fight with George Stevenson ‘The Coachman,’ took place, not in
1770, but in 1741.

MERRY ENGLAND

First republished in _Sketches and Essays._

16. ‘_I have been merry_,’ _etc._ Cf. _2 Henry IV._, Act V. Sc.
3.

‘_He chirped over his cups._’ _Rabelais._ See vol. I. (_The Round
Table_), p. 52.

‘_There were pippins_,’ _etc._ Sir Hugh Evans in _The Merry Wives
of Windsor_, Act I. Sc. 2.

‘_Continents_,’ _etc._ Hobbes, _Human Nature_ (_Works_, ed.
Molesworth, IV. 50).

‘_They ... amused themselves_,’ _etc._ Cf. vol. I. (_The Round
Table_), note to p. 100.

‘_Eat_,’ _etc._ _S. Luke_ XII. 19.

17. ‘_Hair-breadth ‘scapes._’ _Othello_, Act I. Sc. 3.

_Old Lord’s cricket-ground._ Hazlitt refers to the original
‘Lord’s,’ established about 1782 by Thomas Lord, on the site
now occupied by Dorset Square, where the game continued to be
played till 1810. The present ‘Lord’s,’ dates from 1814.

18. ‘_A cry more tuneable_,’ _etc._ Cf. _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_,