First Impressions: a series of letters from France, Switzerland, and Savoy, written in 1833-4, and addressed to the Rev. H. Raikes, etc

Introduction

. There is no department of knowledge, perhaps, which is at once more difficult, interesting, and important than that of human nature as ex hibited in the varied forms of character, which under different circumstances it is found to assume. While in every age, throughout every clime, and under every political and social econo my, man is distinguished by certain broad and universal features, intellectual and moral, as well as physical, which are sufficient to identify him with the race of beings to which he belongs, it is evident that in all these respects he is susceptible of a great variety of modifications. The elements which may be considered as forming the combined aggregate of his character, are as numerous as the influences to which he has been exposed. It is, however, a mistaken and most dangerous theory, that he is a mere creature of circumstances, and that all his habits of thought, and feeling, and action,

INTRODUCTION.

. VI are the necessary and invariable result of external impressions, over which he can exercise little or no control. Such a notion is at variance with the whole scheme of moral government, and is entirely destructive of the nature of man as a rational and responsible agent. In the enlightened study of mankind, it must be as sumed as a first principle, that in the present, which, as we learn from the highest authority, is a fallen and degraded state of existence, there are original germs of moral and account able character, common to the whole species; and the object of such inquiry is to ascertain the influence of the various circumstances and conditions of life, in developing these inherent susceptibilities — to notice the most prominent effects to which they may give rise, and thus to discover the most efficacious means of ob viating the dangers or remedying the evils, with which they may be attended.

So numerous and complex, and in many cases so recondite, however, are tbe influences, which contribute their share of force to the formation of the general character, that it is often one of the most difficult processes of moral analysis to determine the ingredients of which it is mainly composed, and the laws by which it is habitually governed. And if this be difficult in the case of individuals, it is a still more embarrassing and arduous undertaking, to ascertain the result of all these varied and frequently discordant

INTRODUCTION.

. VII influences as embodied in the character of a nation. But although national character cannot in any case be reduced to a standard of absolute and undeviating uniformity, it may, and un questionably does, present features sufficiently marked and decided to identify the various communities comprized within its range. In no country has human nature been more severely put to the test, — no where has it been tortured, if we may be allowed the expression, by a greater variety of bold and searching experiments, than in France, during the last fifty years. It has passed through almost every ordeal, which a daring and reckless ingenuity could de vise, for the avowed purpose of developing its capabilities and of ameliorating its social con dition. No form of government has been left untried — no philosophic theory has been un attempted — no imaginable combination of prejudices and passions has not been brought to bear with full and unrestrained effect upon the solution of the great problem of national tranquillity and happiness.

The fabric of society has been successively demolished and recon structed with as much levity and wantonness, if not as much coolness and indifference, as if it had been but a house of cards. A dynasty enriched with the glories and entwined with all that was venerable in the recollections and associations of a thousand years, was trampled in the dust, in order to be succeeded by a

INTRODUCTION.

. reign of anarchy and bloodshed, unparalleled in the history of civilized humanity. Towards the close of a decade of years, during which human nature seemed to have been abandoned by every principle, and bereft of every influence, except that of its own selfish and unhallowed passions, roused to the highest pitch of fury by mutual exasperation and collision — an era of iron despotism arose, which, while it dazzled men with the splendour of its achievements, destroyed every vestige of liberty, and turned the whole nation into so many living automata, which dared to move and act only at its own bidding. Soon was this terrific and bloody sway followed by a resuscitated form of royalty, which reluc tantly submitted to the restraints which it had consented to impose on its own prerogatives, and wielded a feeble sceptre over a murmur ing and restless population.

Within a short period the scene was again shifted, and a member of tbe deposed family was carried, amidst renewed tumult and slaughter, on the shoulders of a successful insurrection, to a throne, which he has been constrained to surround, not, as was vauntingly promised, with republican institutions, but with enactments, which, however, mild in their present administration, and however ne cessary under existing circumstances, embody all that is restrictive to the free expression of political opinion in the most coercive and ar bitrary despotism.

INTRODUCTION.

. IX Nor has religion undergone a less variety of transformations during the same disastrous eras. Popery, in its most intolerant forms — Atheism in its most naked and undisguised deformity — In fidelity — Scepticism — Latitudinarianism, have al ternately held the ascendant, and have reflected their respective colourings in the prevailing habits of the people. At one time Catholicism alone was legally maintained. At another, no religion whatever, except what in the absurd jargon of the day was termed the worship of Nature, a term, which might quite as well have been ex changed for any other combination of the same six letters, was tolerated. At present, the system is to recognize and even to maintain the teachers of all the forms of religion, which prevail to any extent among the people. In the view of such multitudinous changes and experiments, it is assuredly a question not a little interesting, what has been the actual result? — as it affects the existing1 state and tbe future prospects of society in this great country.

It must be acknowledged by every enlightened, unprejudiced, and well-informed observer, that this phrenzied turmoil, — continued with few and brief intervals of cessation for nearly half a century, direful as have been the calamities which marked its successive ebullitions, deep and broad as have been the torrents of human gore, with which, at various periods of its duration, it deluged the streets of almost every a X

INTRODUCTION.

. considerable town throughout the kingdom, and the plains of almost every country in Europe, — has not been unattended with some beneficial effects. To what extent and through what instrumentality, the good might have been at tained without the counterbalancing evil, it would now be useless to inquire. Comparing, how ever, France in 1835, with France in 1785, it is impossible not to recognize a variety of most important and salutary changes. Obnox ious, absurd, and oppressive privileges — those insignia of nobility, which had been handed down from ages of darkness, rapine and blood, were swept away by the first outburst of the revolu tionary tide. Popery — that Popery, against which the blood and groans of the millions sacrificed to its intolerance, in the massacres of St. Bar tholomew, in the wars of the league, and in the exterminating dragonnades of a later period, had been crying to heaven for vengeance, received a shock, which has left it powerless to persecute, though, unhappily, still mighty to delude.

Religious liberty, notwithstanding the existing anomaly, not of tolerating nor even of simply protecting — a duty which every or ganized government unquestionably owes to all its peaceful subjects, but of actually supporting the most discordant systems, has been established upon a firm and, it may be hoped, indestructible basis. These are undeniably objects of vast and incalculable importance to the well-being

INTRODUCTION.

. XI of the community, and the attainment of them might well have been purchased at no ordinary expense of transient and temporary suffering. The general character of the people, as quick of apprehension, and keenly susceptible of im pression — as vain and. volatile, gay and sprightly, courageous and dissolute, appears to have un dergone little or no alteration. Nature in these respects seems to have cast it into a mould, which renders it almost entirely independent of the ordinary influences springing from political and economical arrangements. To the eye of a casual and transient visitant, especially if his moral sensibilities are not distinguished by any peculiar acuteness, there is much on the surface of society in France, which must appear in a high degree fascinating and engaging. There is a gaiety of heart — a buoyancy of spirits — an elasticity of nerve, which unitedly give an expression of riant exultation to the whole aspect of life.

The men appear to be all frank, and the women all cheerful. Their characteristic follies and even vices are often curiously and almost inseparably interwoven with some im posing quality. Their vanity imparts a tone of amenity and politeness to their conversational intercourse, which is calculated to convey the impression of the most perfect cordiality, and mutual respect ; and their very profligacy seldom fails to hide its deformity beneath the garb of a spurious and yet modest decorum. To one

INTRODUCTION.

. who does not look much beyond outward forms and ceremonies, aud expressions of countenance, as indicative of religious feeling, there is also much among them, which must convey the idea of the most fervent and profound devotion. To the crude and short-sighted politician above all — to one, who is accustomed to speculate on the institutions of other countries, in order to be enabled to perceive and declaim on the alleged inferiority or injustice of those of his own — there is here much of what is attractive and im posing. There is an uniformity in the character and application of the laws, as they affect the various classes and members of the community, which it would certainly be difficult to attain in the same degree, without resolving the whole mass of society into its first elements ; and, in contempt of all the complex interests and relations, which for ages have been more closely combining with the existing system, re adjusting its component parts with all the regularity and accuracy of the law of definite proportions.

In the affairs of morality and religion, so far as they fall under the cogni zance of the law, there is manifested an attempt, and to a certain extent a successful attempt, to adapt the economy to the propensities and prejudices of human nature, rather than to raise human nature to one pure and authoritative standard; there is a freedom from all interference with habits and opinions, except so far as they may be

INTRODUCTION.

. XIII deemed dangerous to the stability of the existing government, which must strike one, who can not pursue these principles beyond their palpable and immediate bearing on the political condition of society, as exceedingly philosophical and profound. But, notwithstanding all the advantages, real or imaginary, which France has derived from the convulsive struggles and ever-shifting mu tations of half a century, from the schemes of social perfectibility, which it has been attempted to embody in its institutions, and the ultimate success, which has attended every effort to remove the impediments which were supposed to impede the generous expansion of the moral and self-ameliorating energies of the people — notwithstanding all the light, which speculative philosophy, directed, applied, and, where it was deemed necessary, corrected in its aberrations by the results of practical experience, has thrown over every department of its economy, its condition at this moment is very far from being either enviable or secure.

There is perhaps no civilized country upon earth, in which the state of opinion is more utterly chaotic and undefinable — in which there are fewer elements capable of being combined into a solid and permanent system of political and social administration, in which the moral principle is more lax in its operations and the religious more paralyzed and enfeebled by the antipathies of extreme and conflicting theories — producing the blindest and most bigotted intol-

INTRODUCTION.

. XIV erance on the one side, and the most reckless and contemptuous indifference on the other. What avails a constitutional charter among a people, who will be content to be governed by no laws except the capricious impulses of the moment ? What moral regimen can controul a community, a large proportion of which derives its notions of the tendency of the marriage relation from the mysteries of St. Simonianism '. What ideas of religion can be expected in a nation, which, with the exception of a small but doubtless increasing body, is divided between the adherents of the Pope on the one hand, and the followers of Voltaire on the other 1 Even religious liberty, in such a condition of things, though inestimable in itself, and under God the best hope of the country, becomes practi cally little else than a liberty to dismiss all serious concern about the subject.

These remarks, which the following letters tend further to illustrate, are not intended to depre ciate the real advantages, religious and political, which are doubtless great and important, now enjoyed in France, but to convey a correct impression of the true position of the case, as compared with that of our own country. If, however, it were deemed expedient to trace to their most prolific sources the multitudinous evils prevalent in the former, with a view at once of exhibiting their malignant influence, and of directing attention to the means by which

INTRODUCTION.

. XV alone they can be ultimately remedied, they might perhaps be mainly referred to the following four leading causes, Popery- — Scepticism — Liber tinism — and Political Disaffection. (1.) When we attribute to the influence of Popery a large proportion of the moral and political disorders, under which this distracted country still labours, every one acquainted with the workings of that mystery of iniquity, wher ever it is either embodied into the institutions of the state, or exercises a dominant authority over the prejudices and passions of a considerable number of the people, will at once recognize the statement as only asserting what might naturally have been expected. It is true that Catholicism is not — it feels with bitter mortifi cation that it is not — what it once was, and what within a very recent period it fully ex pected ere long to be again in France — it is true, that stripped of its wealth and reduced to a very modest competency, it no longer walks abroad in the gorgeous pomp, nor revels in the luxurious indolence of days that are past: — it is true, that the only recognized ascendancy it now enjoys is that of being the religion of the majority of Frenchmen, though it would, doubtless, be more correct to say, that the majority of Frenchmen have no religion at all; and that by the larger proportion of the educated com munity it is treated rather with the contempt due to a detected imposture, than with the

INTRODUCTION.

. XVI prostrate submission once awarded to its decrees; but in spite of all this, Popery, as an instrument of powerful, though for the most part silent and indirect influence, is still in active and vigor ous operation over the length and breadth of this benighted land. After the horrible massacres and disgusting impieties of the revolutionary era, which, though avowedly directed against itself, were the natural growth of its corrupt deposits, it arose under the fostering wing of Napoleon, to whom all creeds and forms of religion were alike, with a strong reaction in its favour. The great mass of the common peo ple looked back with horror and shame upon the scenes of barbarity, blasphemy, and persecu tion, which, had been enacted during a protracted season of national delirium. Many of them had sympathized with their pillaged, proscribed, and exiled pastors, and they now hailed their re storation and received their religious ministra tions, which in fact, were the only ministrations which were offered to their acceptance, with increased veneration and delight.

Protestantism, on the contrary, which at this period lost a golden opportunity of extending its salutary conquests, had sunk into a cold and lifeless form — occupying a kind of midway position between the absolute negations of Deism, and a cognate system which deprives Christianity of all that gives it a character of energy and importance. Apostate Protestantism thus neglecting the high and

INTRODUCTION.

. XVII honourable mission of attempting to evangelize a long abandoned population, and contenting it self with being merely recognized and salaried by the state, — Popery had the whole land again before it, and although it could not achieve the conquest of the scepticism and hardened infidelity of those, who would not be subjugated to the yoke of any religion, it very soon assumed a complete ascendancy over the mass of the rural population, and over the great majority of the females of all the gradations of society. The priesthood, having thus gained the ear of these numerous and in some respects influential classes of the community, have not been back ward to avail themselves of the various advantages it has afforded them. Without adverting for the moment to that mixture of good, which unques tionably attends their labours, they never fail to turn their ascendancy to the account of more firmly rivetting the chains of superstition — of closing every avenue against the access of pure and unadulterated truth, — and of fo menting a spirit of the most bigotted and ran corous hostility against a dynasty and a system of government, which they consider to be at variance with the paramount interests of their own ecclesiastical dominion.

It is altogether a mistake to suppose that Popery, because it is strip ped of its ancient insignia of secular authority, and has been forced to retire from the throne, the camp, the legislative chamber, and the institute

INTRODUCTION.

. of science, is extinct or powerless in France. Though it has been chased, amidst the horrors of intestine conflict, by a still more reckless, heartless, and sanguinary rival, from the high places of wealth, and dignity, and command, yet, like Marius amidst the marshes of Minturnæ, it still keeps its head above water, and from those thick fastnesses of ignorance and superstition, over which it holds sway, only awaits the opportunity of putting forth a vigorous effort for the re-establishment of its pristine supremacy. It is true, that it exhibits every symptom of having reached its grand climacteric — that it has arrived at the era of its decrepitude, and that it will not be very long, before it will fall prostrate, like Dagon before the ark of the covenant, not indeed by the hand of human violence, but by a more efficacious and resist less energy issuing from the shrine of the Eternal.

In the mean time it is working incalculable mischief throughout the whole length, but more especially at both extremes of the social scale. It cherishes all the pride, and bigotry, and morbid disaffection of the noble — it blinds the understanding in the same proportion as it fer ments the passions of the peasant, while it affords a plausible excuse to the scoffer and the infidel to reject the claims of the gospel, in that grotesque and fantastic play of mimic phan tasmagoria, by which it intercepts from the eyes of the people the beams of eternal truth.

INTRODUCTION.

. XIX (2.) To those, who are at all acquainted with the natural workings of the human mind, and with the history of religious opinions, it can occasion no surprize that Popery and .Scepticism — diametrically opposed to each other as they are in all their direct and ostensible tendencies — should co-exist to a most influential and over whelming extent in the same state of society. This, by universal consent, is the actual position of the case in France at this moment, and it requires very little attention to perceive that they not only co-exist, but that the latter is the natural effect of the former. Popery requires men to believe every thing — Scepticism, pushed by the force of reaction to a proportionate ex treme in the opposite direction, believes nothing ! Popery discards evidence as unnecessary — Scep ticism, equally absurd, rejects all evidence as inadequate.

Popery commands men to shut their eyes, and to believe on the authority pf those, who have been appointed to see in their behalf — Scepticism, with its eyes open, but with a proud determination not to be constrained to recognize what it cannot acknowledge with delight, regards the whole scene of its con templations as a mere illusion — a random congeries of effects without a cause, of adaptations without design. Popery calls upon men to make a sacrifice of their reason, as an act of homage due to their faith — Scepticism readily makes a victim of its faith, in order to satisfy the XX

INTRODUCTION.

. fictitious and extravagant demands of its reason. Which of these systems is the most puerile and preposterous, it were difficult to say. Never is a greater injury done to faith, than when men are commanded to believe what scripture does not assert, and reason pronounces to be incredible ; nor is there ever a greater outrage offered to reason, than when, as once was openly and literally and is still virtually done, in the metropolis of France, she is set up, in contempt of a higher authority, as an object of idolatrous adoration. Hostile, however, as these two systems are in their apparent bearing to each other, they would find, like Sin and Death in Milton's famous allegory, that on more intimate acquaintance, they are much more closely allied to each other than they might at first have supposed.

It is a melancholy consideration, that of these two mighty delusions the great mass of the people of France are at this moment-the willing subjects, and that to their respective influences the greater part of tbe miseries of that country is owing. It is a fact too palpable to escape observation, and too certain to admit of denial, that the vast majority of Frenchmen — especially in the middling and better educated classes of society, have no fixed religious principles what ever. Of the Bible, they are for the most part utterly ignorant, or if they know anything of its contents, they know them only to treat its awful

INTRODUCTION.

. XXI announcements with indifference, if not contempt. Unhappily identifying in their own mind Chris tianity with Popery, they discard the whole as a grand scheme of imposition, once palmed on the ignorance and credulity of mankind, but now totally expunged from the category of rational opinions. This spirit of infidelity pervades and impregnates almost the whole mass of that por tion of society which is most distinguished by intellectual and physical energy, and which con sequently exerts the most commanding influence in the regulation and propulsion of the whole machinery of public and private life. It tinc tures the national science — it accompanies the march of discovery — it deposits its countless spawn in the shallows of light literature — it is the very life and essence of all the most popular and distinguished productions of the stage — it passes from the arena of public commerce, into the circles of social intercourse, and like a volatile, though often latent poison, insinuates itself into every vein ofthe body politic.

In these general remarks , it is not intended to be asserted that there are not numerous and valu able exceptions, or that infidelity assumes that bold, forward and disgusting port, which once characterized its advocates in this country. The infidelity of the present day greatly differs in this respect from that of the concluding part of the last century. That of the existing generation does not display itself in violent attempts to

INTRODUCTION.

. XXII overthrow Christianity, and to prove revelation to be false or absurd, but exhibits itself rather — to use a phrase of recent application — in a kind of, passive resistance, to the claims of the one, and the great truths of the other. In reference to the fundamental principles of revealed religion it is scepticism, rather than absolute and dogmatic infidelity ; and as it relates to the whole progress of human affairs, it is rather a species of fatalism, as absurd and unphilosophical as unchristian, which assumes that blind nature must have its course, rather than a direct and positive denial of a superintending and all governing Providence. It is, in fact, a con temptuous assumption that Christianity is either false or worthless, without taking the trouble of inquiring what foundation there is for a suppo sition involving consequences of such vast and overwhelming importance.

The spirit of the present era of the infidel reign, it must be al lowed, is not a spirit of terror and of direct per secution. This would be unphilosophical. This would be a reflection on the intellect of the per secuting party. This, moreover, would imply that correct opinions on the subject of religion are of some real importance, to render it worth while to persecute on account of supposed errors. Not to think or speak at all about the question, at least beyond the precincts of the church or the temple, which infidels rarely frequent — to leave it altogether out of the field of contemplation as

INTRODUCTION.

. XXIII a matter which has any real connection with the progress of society and the welfare of mankind — this is the beau ideal of the philosophy of mo dern scepticism. The adherents of this very con descending system, in the fulness of its liberality, will concede, indeed, any form of religion to the multitude, not because it is true, not because man cannot attain the great end of his existence without its influence, but because the infirmity of nature requires some such illusive support. " II faut de la religion" — there must be religion, said a gentleman once to the author of the fol lowing letters, just after he had returned from a most imposing exhibition of the mummeries of Popery ; while his whole bearing afforded every indication that his idea of the necessity of religion rested not on a sense of its inherent truth and excellency and importance, but on the as sumption that the people can neither be governed nor live in comfort without some object upon which they can exercise a kind of native religious sense.

Neither is it the fact that the French banish all ideas of futurity from their minds and habits. No people, indeed, talk more frequently and pompously of " 1' avenir" — the future. But it has been frequently a matter of astonishment to the writer, that they who appear to feel so deep an interest in the " avenir" of time, should be able so completely to banish from their minds the more awful "avenir" of eternity. The

INTRODUCTION.

. French, in fact, are much too vain a people to allow it possible that their great men should al together cease to exist as soon as the present fleeting scene of being is past. Even Voltaire, in his poetic rhapsody, addressed to the Mar chioness du Chatelet, whom he describes as the Minerva of France, represents Newton as floating aloft in some vague ethereal region, which he calls heaven, and looking down from thence on the jarring scenes which he had left.1 Nothing is more common, indeed, than to find their poets, orators, and painters transporting their heroes into some such region as this, but if we calmly inquire what this means, we shall discover that instead of the glorious reality of the christian's future abode, it is nothing but a sport of fancy — a sort of pagan elysium — or rather a paradise of fools, with which the vanity of a grovelling scepticism endeavours to indemnify itself for the narrowness of the boundaries, to which it reduces the span of human existence.

(3.) In a country in which Popery and Infi delity, the first of which claims, and on the pre scribed conditions is too ready to exercise, the power of granting indulgence to the passions, and the second abjures the very principles which alone can form the basis of a system of pure morals, — rule with a paramount, though divided, sway, it might naturally be expected that liberi Tranquille aa haut des cieux, que Newton s'est soumis II ignore en effet s'il a des ennemis.

INTRODUCTION.

. XXV tinism of conduct would prevail to an appalling extent. The fact, as established by incontro vertible evidence, is precisely such as might have been anticipated. As superseding the ne cessity of all other proof, it is sufficient to men tion what stands publicly recorded in authorized statistical documents, that, to say nothing of con jugal infidelity, more than one-third ofthe births at Paris are actually illegitimate. When it is added that gambling and prostitution are literally legalized, or, which amounts to the same thing, are distinctly recognized by the constituted authorities of the state — that within the precincts of the same focus of iniquity, suicide, almost invariably the result of ruined profligacy or mor tified vanity, is calculated to amount to the average number of one for every day in the year, and finally, that the Sabbath is chiefly distinguished as a day of more than ordinary frivolity and dissipation, few persons, it is presumed, will maintain that the French can advance any extraordinary claim to morality.