Notes of a Traveller on the social and political state of France, Prussia, Switzerland, Italy, and other parts of Europe, during the present century

Preface

. The changes produced by tbe French Revolution in the social economy of tbe European people are so ex tensive and important, reaching downwards to the very foundation of the former feudal structure of society, that History, it may be truly said, only begins for posterity with this century. The monarchical, aristocratical, and ecclesiastical elements of the former social economy of Europe, even property, law, power, have all been altered in relations, proportions, and in tensity of influence ; and the living of the generation which witnessed the commencement of the French Revolution have, in fifty years, been removed five hundred from the order of things previously esta blished. The events and personages connected with this great convulsion will, no doubt, find their his torian ; but the alterations produced by it in the social structure and arrangements of almost every country are scarcely noticed by our travellers and political writers occupied with the more brilliant scenes or novelties of the age, and the future historian or phi losopher may even want materials, notwithstanding all the literature of our days, for forming a just estimate of the amount, nature, and tendencies of the changes effected, or in progress, during this half-century, in the social economy of Europe. The Author of the following notes has attempted in two preceding A

PREFACE.

. works — one on Norway*, and one on Sweden t — to collect materials on the social economy of those two countries, which although distant from the centre of action, have not been beyond the reach of its dis turbing force. This work is intended to be a con tinuation of the same attempt to collect materials for the future historian or philosopher who shall endea vour to describe and estimate the new social elements in Europe which are springing up from, and covering the ashes of, the French Revolution. The Author's encouragement to this work is great. His two former volumes have had a success ofa kind which literary production of this humble class rarely attains. The one on Norway turned the public attention, both in England and on the Continent, to that interesting country and its liberal institutions, and assisted in raising around the Norwegian con stitution an impregnable barrier of public opinion which the Swedish monarch and his cabinet are forced to respect.

The Norwegian constitution guaranteed to Norway by the Allied Powers, accepted of and sworn to by the Swedish monarch, ancl made known in all its circumstances to the European public, can not now be silently crushed by an unprincipled faction in Sweden as a mere provincial diet existing, as they pretended, only by the sufferance of the sovereign. The volume on Sweden has contributed to open the eyes of the Swedish nation to the demoralising in fluences, in its social economy, of privileged governing classes, who within memory of the living gene- * Journal of a Residence in Norway, by Samuel Laing. Long mans, London, 1836. ■_■ A Tour in Sweden, by Samuel Laing. Longmans, 1839.

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. V ration, assassinated one king, betrayed another, sold for money their military trusts in Finland to the enemy, and sold the crown of their native race of sovereigns to a foreigner. Great and loud was the indignation of those classes against the audacious traveller who bad presumed to apply the test of right principle to these historical events in which they had been the agents, to hold up their misdeeds to the reprobation osthe moral, the loyal, and the patriotic of every country, and to draw aside the tinsel robe of a third-rate military reputation, behind which they shelter themselves, and to expose the ignorance, disposition to arbitrary rule, and unfounded assumption of merit it conceals. The official published records of the yearly amount of crime in Sweden — that documentary proof of the demoralising influence on the Swedish people of the demoralised governing classes — could not be got rid of.

In vain those classes attempted in controversial pamphlets to delude the public, to divert attention from the true source osthe evil, to palliate the undeniable excess of crime in Sweden, by alledging excess of drunkenness and excess of bad legislation by which simple police transgressions punished and recorded as crimes, swell the criminal record. They only proved what they attempted to deny — the misgovernment of privileged classes, who confounding moral guilt with trans gressions against their own conventional regulations in one demoralising code and administration of law, brutalise the habits, and deaden the moral sentiments osthe people under them. Swedish diplomacy itself — His Excellency Count Biornstierna, minister of His Swedish Majesty at the court of St. James's — VI

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. condescended to satisfy the English public, that the allegations and views of the traveller were, to the fullest extent, correct and incontrovertible ; for His Excellency published a pamphlet *, professing to be a refutation of " Mr. Laing's calumnies," and " libels against tbe Swedish nation," in which, with great success, His Excellency confirms all he attempts to refute, and refutes all he attempts to confirm. The Swedish public with the landmarks of their own pub lished official records of crime from year to year, before their eyes, were not to be misled by their noble party writers. The late Diet appointed a com mittee to report upon the social economy of the country, and the amendments necessary in the Con stitution. Their Report recommends the abolition of the exclusive privileges and political powers of those classes which have in this age so signally betrayed the material interests, and corrupted the moral in terests of their country — an answer in full, and from the Swedish people themselves, to their noble diplo matic pamphleteer, who, to uphold the tottering power of his order, attempted, in the face of un deniable facts and official documents, to persuade the world that Sweden is a country eminently moral, particularly well governed by its nobility and their hero-king, and quite contented with its present government.

To have contributed in the most in significant degree towards sucb beneficial movements of the public mind is a great literary success for such trivial literary productions. * Mr. Laing's Answer to Count Biornstierna's pamphlet ap peared in the Monthy Chronicle for November, 1840, published by Longmans, London.

PREFACE.

. VII In this continuation osthe same design of collecting materials which may enable the future historian to form a just estimate osthe present political and social economy of some portions of the European people, the Author in these Notes pursues the same plan as in the preceding volumes. Taking historical events, statistical facts, and his own observation in various tours, as a basis, he proceeds from that basis straight forward to his conclusions in political or social economy, regardless of the theories, authorities, or opinions that may be jostled out of the road, or of the establishments, classes, or personages whose assumed merits, or false lustre, may be rubbed off in the col lision and shock with truth and just principle. SAMUEL LAING. Edinburgh, January, 1842. CONTENTS.