The civil and political revolution I wished to effect, had apparently, to a considerable extent, been already effected in my own country, and the principal theatre of my operations must be in the Old World. There is no doubt, that, at bottom, the American system does not differ from the European. It is the same system of repression, and, though it dispenses with kings and nobles, it asserts, with equal emphasis, the necessity of government, of law, and morals. The American, in making his revolution, had no socialistic dreams, no thought of resolving society into its original elements, denying all authority, rejecting all government, abolishing all religion and morality, and leaving every man to do freely whatever seems right in his own eyes, however wrong it may seem in those of his neighbor. The authors of the American Revolution, and founders of the American States and the American Union, were any thing but democrats in the present prevailing sense of the word.
But the progress of ideas and events has so modified the American system, and done so much towards restoring a perfect democracy, where the demagogues have every thing their own way, that the chance of getting up any considerable revolutionary party, except to operate abroad, is not worth counting. Indeed, it is not necessary to hasten the march of things here, which is sufficiently rapid towards that point where democracy resolves itself either into complete individualism or into an absolute social despotism. I saw and felt this, and looked upon my own country as more ready to assist me in my philanthropic or Satanic efforts to revolutionize foreign countries than in need of similar efforts on its own account.
Let me not, however, be misunderstood. Let me speak as I think and feel as I lie here confined to my room, from which I am to be removed only to my grave. I love not democracy, which I regard as from below, not from above; but I love as little, perhaps much less, absolute or unlimited monarchy,—your Czarism, Cæsarism, or Imperialism. I may think it unwise, wrong, wicked even, to attempt to overthrow by revolutionary violence, an absolute government, where it exists, and is not intolerable in practice, for the sake of introducing a republic, or even a constitutional monarchy; but I hold no government a good one, where one man alone represents the will and the majesty of the nation. I demand a government of estates, whenever that is practicable, but always a representative body, with real legislative power, capable of imposing real and effective restraints on the administration. I demand for the nation the means of making known freely and effectively, within the limits of the moral law, its will. I demand freedom of discussion, deliberation, and decision. I demand the freedom of the press, temperately, and answerable for its abuse, (which, however, must be a real abuse;) to criticize publicly the acts of political authority, to point out the defects of its policy, and to suggest measures for the public good. I demand a political constitution in which the nation governs through a king or president, and parliament or legislative body or bodies. I am, what is sneered at by your imperialists, a parliamentarian, a constitutionalist, and have no sympathy at all with the Cæsarism of either France or Russia. I am no radical, no revolutionist, no friend of sedition, but I love a wise, prudent, well-regulated liberty, which leaves me all my power to do good, and therefore, necessarily, to some extent, even to do evil; for if you so bind me by the civil power that I can do no evil, you take from me my manhood, make me an automaton, and deprive me of all power to do good and to acquire merit. Such is my political creed, and therefore let no man dare, because I favor not now the wild radical movements of the age, accuse me of being an enemy to liberty, or a worshipper of Cæsarism, or what is called absolutism.
Not seeing much to be done in my own country, I resolved to go abroad. I required Priscilla to make herself ready to accompany me, and to take her husband along with her. I know not whether this latter request pleased her or not. Woman is woman even when under the power of the Evil One; and that Priscilla loved me, and loved me madly, she hardly pretended to conceal. I had, perhaps, loved her, too, for a moment, when I might do so innocently, and I loved her still as much as remained in me the power to love. But love or lust was not precisely my ruling passion, and I would as soon have taken another with me as Priscilla, could she have served my purpose as well. Even in my worst days I was as much repelled as attracted by a woman who could betray her husband’s honor, and I always found a woman, mastered by her passion, and ready to give up all for love, as it is called, a troublesome rather than an agreeable companion. A man wishes to find in the woman of his affections a free soul, moral dignity,—a tender, loving heart, indeed, but with sufficient strength to stand alone. Lads and lasses in their teens have very false notions of love, and this is why love so seldom survives the honeymoon, and why so many complain of unrequited affection and broken hearts.
But I could not do without Priscilla, and I wished her husband to accompany her to avoid scandal, and also to serve as manager, to take charge of all the arrangements in travelling, residing in one place, or in going from that to another, for which he was admirably adapted. I found him far more intelligent, far more of a man than I had been led to suspect from his ready submission to petticoat government. Priscilla had entirely mistaken him, and might one day find him more than her master.
In a couple of months our arrangements were made for the voyage to Europe, and for a longer or shorter residence abroad, as we should find it convenient. We embarked from Boston in one of the Cunard steamers for Liverpool, in May, 1843. We arrived at Liverpool after a pleasant passage of thirteen days, and as soon as we could land, and get our baggage through the custom-house, we departed for London, where we proposed stopping for some weeks. Let not the reader fear that I am about to inflict on him a journal of my travels in England and on the Continent. I did not go abroad as a curious traveller, to see other lands, and study the ways, manners, customs, institutions, laws, politics, or religion of other nations. I went for a special object, and to that I confined myself. I could, if I would, tell very little more than I might have learned at home. My mission was not to observe and learn, but to do, and to prepare, and hasten on the grand movement I contemplated.
I did not find in England much remaining to be done, or that I needed to do. I saw very few of her nobility, and I was not even once invited to dine with the Queen. The middle classes I found very much like my own countrymen, with very much the same culture, ideas, habits, and pursuits. I found, as at home, a large number of philanthropists, though less thoroughgoing than ours, and narrower, and less comprehensive in their views. The common Englishman is a little insular in his notions, and looks with disdain or pity on all who do not happen to be natives of his own island world. The American is broad and expanded in his views, like his extended prairies and boundless forests. No pent up Utica confines him; the globe is too small for him; and he seriously contemplates forming a joint-stock company for the construction of a railroad to the moon. He thinks it will prove a good speculation. They are both proud, equally proud; but with the Englishman, pride assumes the form of haughtiness, or a low estimate of others; while with the American, it assumes that of a conscious superiority to all the rest of creation.
I did not see much chance of a reform or a democratic revolution in England at present. True, she had at that time a very considerable body of Chartists, and a numerous canaille, but these I counted for nothing. No revolution is ever made by the proletarian classes. Wat Tyler, Jack Cade, and the Jacquerie of France have proved that. No people can ever overthrow a government till the government betrays itself. In 1789, and in 1848, in every instance the government, with a few whiffs of grape-shot, might have dispersed the mob and suppressed the revolution. Quem Deus vult perdere, prius dementat. I placed no reliance on the democracy of England, yet I did not at all despair of her. She had her Reform Bill of 1832, which in due time would be followed by another, and another, till her House of Commons would come to be regarded as representing population, not an estate. The extension of her commerce and manufactures was compelling Sir Robert Peel, an able man, but a short-sighted statesman, to break up the protective system, establish free trade, and throw the power into the hands of the urban class. I did not need to mesmerize him; he was doing my work as fast as it could be done with safety. Lord John Russell, Lord Palmerston, and their friends, I found had been visited before me. Mr. Gladstone needed a slight manipulation; but I saw that he was an impressible subject, and I foresaw that, when he became Chancellor of the Exchequer, I should have every reason to be satisfied with him. Lord Shaftesbury, then Lord Ashley, I found amply mesmerized by nature and inheritance.
As to aid from England, in carrying on democratic revolutions on the Continent, especially in Italy, if not in France, I might count on it with entire confidence, so far as beginning the movements and getting into trouble were concerned. But I thought possibly I might find her aid like the devil’s, which suffices to help one into a scrape, but leaves him to get out the best way he can. She had no interest in helping the reformers to establish democracy, but she was ready enough to throw the Continental states into confusion and anarchy. Hers has of late years been only a half-way genius. Nevertheless, I found in her a few choice spirits, and erected a mesmeric battery, which has since done some service to the cause I had at heart. Priscilla was still more successful among the philanthropic ladies and women with whom she was able to communicate. We made sure, without much difficulty, of Exeter Hall. It was a battery already charged, and served, with skill and ability.
We prepared an agent to visit Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and other considerable English towns, and, upon the whole, were very well satisfied with our mother country, and in good spirits left England for Dublin. We were received there with true Irish hospitality. The Liberator was then in his glory, and filled a large space in the eyes of the world. He had obtained the Catholic Relief Bill, and opened to his co-religionists of Great Britain and Ireland a political arena, and was now agitating for the legislative independence of his native country. A few months after he was arrested, and sentenced to a fine and a year’s imprisonment, which virtually put an end to his movement. It broke his heart both as a patriot and as a lawyer. He received us very coolly at first, because we were Americans, and the Americans held negro slaves; but on learning that we were abolitionists and philanthropists, he opened his large heart to us, and bid us a hundred thousand welcomes. We could not, however, make much of O’Connell. He was an admirable type of the general Irish character, and not easily understood. He struck us as a bundle of opposing qualities, not usually thrown together in the same individual. A pious Catholic, he was surrounded by unbelievers, and the patron of the whole herd of philanthropists, whose chief aim was to rid the world of his religion; a man of impulse, as capricious as a child, wily as a village attorney, and subtle as the most crafty lawyer, and acting always upon calculation; a warm-hearted patriot, a genuine lover of his country, yet with a sharp eye to the “rint,” and leaving it doubtful to many minds whether he had any higher motives in what he did than to gain personal distinction, and to elevate his family. He however interested us as the inventor of a “peaceful agitation,” an invention which could have been made only by an Irish lawyer, and it was as a “peaceful agitator” that we chose to think of him. We found his “peaceful agitation” might be turned to good account in the constitutional states of the Continent, and we took care to introduce it into France, when we visited that country, with what effect those who remember the “Reform Banquets” which preceded the Revolution of February, 1848, need not to be informed.
From the Liberator, or, as we chose to call him, the Agitator, we went to meet the chiefs of the Young Ireland party, still apparently acting in harmony with him. We formed no great expectations of them. They talked too much, and made too much noise and bluster. We found them in excellent dispositions, but too unsubstantial for our purpose. They were all blaze, and no heat. The devil, having no creative power, could not himself make much of them, and gave them up in despair. Hence their miserable failure four years later at Slievnamon. Indeed, Ireland was a country by no means to our philanthropic and reforming purpose, and we made no account of her in preparing our revolutionary movements. We however erected a small battery in the west, with a view to some ulterior operations, and which we left in charge of Exeter Hall. It has produced some temporary effect; but inasmuch as it has served to arouse the Popish bishops and clergy to a more diligent discharge of their duties, in regard to the religious and moral instruction of the people in that hitherto somewhat neglected district, it is not certain but it will, in the long run, produce an effect the reverse of that intended. Rome, too, has sent a man after her own heart to look after the Irish Church, the present Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland; so the philanthropists have not much to hope from Ireland. Pat will sometimes live and talk as an unbeliever, but he has a singular propensity to die a Christian.
From Ireland we visited Edinburgh, Glasgow, the Highlands, and the Hebrides—the Highlands and the Hebrides, for the purpose of making observations on the “second sight” of the natives. We were much pleased with Scotland. The Scottish character has many admirable features, and there is not upon the whole a finer race in Europe than the Scotch, when unperverted. We found nothing to do among them. There was no need of mesmerizing them. Their own “ingenuum fervidum,” a sort of permanent mesmerization, was amply sufficient for all our purposes. Besides, there seemed to be a natural and ample supply of the odic fluid in her own mountains and glens, which were still peopled by brownies and fairies.
