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March 12. 1833
CORONATION OATHS
Lord Grey has, in Parliament, said two things: first, that the Coronation Oaths only bind the King in his executive capacity; and, secondly, that members of the House of Commons are bound to represent by their votes the wishes and opinions of their constituents, and not their own. Put these two together, and tell me what useful part of the constitutional monarchy of England remains. It is clear that the Coronation Oaths would be no better than Highgate oaths. For in his executive capacity the King cannot do any thing, against the doing of which the oaths bind him; it is only in his legislative character that he possesses a free agency capable of being bound. The nation meant to bind that.
March 14. 1833
DIVINITY.—PROFESSIONS AND TRADES
Divinity is essentially the first of the professions, because it is necessary for all at all times; law and physic are only necessary for some at some times. I speak of them, of course, not in their abstract existence, but in their applicability to man.
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Every true science bears necessarily within itself the germ of a cognate profession, and the more you can elevate trades into professions the better.
March 17. 1833
MODERN POLITICAL ECONOMY
What solemn humbug this modern political economy is! What is there true of the little that is true in their dogmatic books, which is not a simple deduction from the moral and religious credenda and agenda of any good man, and with which we were not all previously acquainted, and upon which every man of common sense instinctively acted? I know none. But what they truly state, they do not truly understand in its ultimate grounds and causes; and hence they have sometimes done more mischief by their half- ignorant and half-sophistical reasonings about, and deductions from, well- founded positions, than they could have done by the promulgation of positive error. This particularly applies to their famous ratios of increase between man and the means of his subsistence. Political economy, at the highest, can never be a pure science. You may demonstrate that certain properties inhere in the arch, which yet no bridge-builder can ever reduce into brick and mortar; but an abstract conclusion in a matter of political economy, the premisses of which neither exist now, nor ever will exist within the range of the wildest imagination, is not a truth, but a chimera—a practical falsehood. For there are no theorems in political economy—but problems only. Certain things being actually so and so; the question is, how to do so and so with them. Political philosophy, indeed, points to ulterior ends, but even those ends are all practical; and if you desert the conditions of reality, or of common probability, you may show forth your eloquence or your fancy, but the utmost you can produce will be a Utopia or Oceana.
You talk about making this article cheaper by reducing its price in the market from 8_d_. to 6_d_. But suppose, in so doing, you have rendered your country weaker against a foreign foe; suppose you have demoralized thousands of your fellow-countrymen, and have sown discontent between one class of society and another, your article is tolerably dear, I take it, after all. Is not its real price enhanced to every Christian and patriot a hundred-fold?
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All is an endless fleeting abstraction; the whole is a reality.
March 31. 1833
NATIONAL DEBT.—PROPERTY TAX.—DUTY OF LANDHOLDERS
What evil results now to this country, taken at large, from the actual existence of the National Debt? I never could get a plain and practical answer to that question. I do not advert to the past loss of capital, although it is hard to see how that capital can be said to have been unproductive, which produces, in the defence of the nation itself, the conditions of the permanence and productivity of all other capital. As to taxation to pay the interest, how can the country suffer by a process, under which the money is never one minute out of the pockets of the people? You may just as well say that a man is weakened by the circulation of his blood. There may, certainly, be particular local evils and grievances resulting from the mode of taxation or collection; but how can that debt be in any proper sense a burthen to the nation, which the nation owes to itself, and to no one but itself? It is a juggle to talk of the nation owing the capital or the interest to the stockholders; it owes to itself only. Suppose the interest to be owing to the Emperor of Russia, and then you would feel the difference of a debt in the proper sense. It is really and truly nothing more in effect than so much moneys or money's worth, raised annually by the state for the purpose of quickening industry.137
I should like to see a well graduated property tax, accompanied by a large loan.
One common objection to a property tax is, that it tends to diminish the accumulation of capital. In my judgment, one of the chief sources of the bad economy of the country now is the enormous aggregation of capitals.
When shall we return to a sound conception of the right to property— namely, as being official, implying and demanding the performance of commensurate duties! Nothing but the most horrible perversion of humanity and moral justice, under the specious name of political economy, could have blinded men to this truth as to the possession of land,—the law of God having connected indissolubly the cultivation of every rood of earth with the maintenance and watchful labour of man. But money, stock, riches by credit, transferable and convertible at will, are under no such obligations; and, unhappily, it is from the selfish autocratic possession of such property, that our landholders have learnt their present theory of trading with that which was never meant to be an object of commerce.
April 5. 1833
MASSINGER.—SHAKSPEARE.—HIERONIMO
To please me, a poem must be either music or sense; if it is neither, I confess I cannot interest myself in it.
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The first act of the Virgin Martyr is as fine an act as I remember in any play. The Very Woman is, I think, one of the most perfect plays we have. There is some good fun in the first scene between Don John, or Antonio, and Cuculo, his master138; and can any thing exceed the skill and sweetness of the scene between him and his mistress, in which he relates his story?139 The Bondman is also a delightful play. Massinger is always entertaining; his plays have the interest of novels.
But, like most of his contemporaries, except Shakspeare, Massinger often deals in exaggerated passion. Malefort senior, in the Unnatural Combat, however he may have had the moral will to be so wicked, could never have actually done all that he is represented as guilty of, without losing his senses. He would have been, in fact, mad. Regan and Goneril are the only pictures of the unnatural in Shakspeare; the pure unnatural—and you will observe that Shakspeare has left their hideousness unsoftened or diversified by a single line of goodness or common human frailty. Whereas in Edmund, for whom passion, the sense of shame as a bastard, and ambition, offer some plausible excuses, Shakspeare has placed many redeeming traits. Edmund is what, under certain circumstances, any man of powerful intellect might be, if some other qualities and feelings were cut off. Hamlet is, inclusively, an Edmund, but different from him as a whole, on account of the controlling agency of other principles which Edmund had not.
It is worth while to remark the use which Shakspeare always makes of his bold villains as vehicles for expressing opinions and conjectures of a nature too hazardous for a wise man to put forth directly as his own, or from any sustained character.
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The parts pointed out in Hieronimo as Ben Jonson's bear no traces of his style; but they are very like Shakspeare's; and it is very remarkable that every one of them re-appears in full form and development, and tempered with mature judgment, in some one or other of Shakspeare's great pieces.140
April 7. 1833
LOVE'S LABOUR LOST.—GIFFORD'S MASSINGER.—SHAKSPEARE.—THE OLD DRAMATISTS
I think I could point out to a half line what is really Shakspeare's in Love's Labour Lost, and some other of the not entirely genuine plays. What he wrote in that play is of his earliest manner, having the all-pervading sweetness which he never lost, and that extreme condensation which makes the couplets fall into epigrams, as in the Venus and Adonis, and Rape of Lucrece.141 In the drama alone, as Shakspeare soon found out, could the sublime poet and profound philosopher find the conditions of a compromise. In the Love's Labour Lost there are many faint sketches of some of his vigorous portraits in after-life—as for example, in particular, of Benedict and Beatrice.142
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Gifford has done a great deal for the text of Massinger, but not as much as might easily be done. His comparison of Shakspeare with his contemporary dramatists is obtuse indeed.143
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In Shakspeare one sentence begets the next naturally; the meaning is all inwoven. He goes on kindling like a meteor through the dark atmosphere; yet, when the creation in its outline is once perfect, then he seems to rest from his labour, and to smile upon his work, and tell himself that it is very good. You see many scenes and parts of scenes which are simply Shakspeare's, disporting himself in joyous triumph and vigorous fun after a great achievement of his highest genius.
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The old dramatists took great liberties in respect of bringing parties in scene together, and representing one as not recognizing the other under some faint disguise. Some of their finest scenes are constructed on this ground. Shakspeare avails himself of this artifice only twice, I think,—in Twelfth Night, where the two are with great skill kept apart till the end of the play; and in the Comedy of Errors, which is a pure farce, and should be so considered. The definition of a farce is, an improbability or even impossibility granted in the outset, see what odd and laughable events will fairly follow from it!
April 8. 1833
STATESMEN.—BURKE
I never was much subject to violent political humours or accesses of feelings. When I was very young, I wrote and spoke very enthusiastically, but it was always on subjects connected with some grand general principle, the violation of which I thought I could point out. As to mere details of administration, I honestly thought that ministers, and men in office, must, of course, know much better than any private person could possibly do; and it was not till I went to Malta, and had to correspond with official characters myself, that I fully understood the extreme shallowness and ignorance with which men of some note too were able, after a certain fashion, to carry on the government of important departments of the empire. I then quite assented to Oxenstiern's saying, Nescis, mi fili, quam parva sapientia regitur mundus.
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Burke was, indeed, a great man. No one ever read history so philosophically as he seems to have done. Yet, until he could associate his general principles with some sordid interest, panic of property, jacobinism, &c., he was a mere dinner bell. Hence you will find so many half truths in his speeches and writings. Nevertheless, let us heartily acknowledge his transcendant greatness. He would have been more influential if he had less surpassed his contemporaries, as Fox and Pitt, men of much inferior minds in all respects.
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As a telegraph supposes a correspondent telescope, so a scientific lecture requires a scientific audience.
April 9. 1833
PROSPECT OF MONARCHY OR DEMOCRACY.—THE REFORMED HOUSE OF COMMONS
I have a deep, though paradoxical, conviction that most of the European nations are more or less on their way, unconsciously indeed, to pure monarchy; that is, to a government in which, under circumstances of complicated and subtle control, the reason of the people shall become efficient in the apparent will of the king.144 As it seems to me, the wise and good in every country will, in all likelihood, become every day more and more disgusted with the representative form of government, brutalized as it is, and will be, by the predominance of democracy in England, France, and Belgium. The statesmen of antiquity, we know, doubted the possibility of the effective and permanent combination of the three elementary forms of government; and, perhaps, they had more reason than we have been accustomed to think.
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You see how this House of Commons has begun to verify all the ill prophecies that were made of it—low, vulgar, meddling with every thing, assuming universal competency, flattering every base passion, and sneering at every thing noble, refined, and truly national! The direct and personal despotism will come on by and by, after the multitude shall have been gratified with the ruin and the spoil of the old institutions of the land. As for the House of Lords, what is the use of ever so much fiery spirit, if there be no principle to guide and to sanctify it?
April 10. 1833
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.—CAPTAIN B. HALL.—NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN STATES. —DEMOCRACY WITH SLAVERY.—QUAKERS
The possible destiny of the United States of America,—as a nation of a hundred millions of freemen,—stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, living under the laws of Alfred, and speaking the language of Shakspeare and Milton, is an august conception. Why should we not wish to see it realized? America would then be England viewed through a solar microscope; Great Britain in a state of glorious magnification! How deeply to be lamented is the spirit of hostility and sneering which some of the popular books of travels have shown in treating of the Americans! They hate us, no doubt, just as brothers hate; but they respect the opinion of an Englishman concerning themselves ten times as much as that of a native of any other country on earth. A very little humouring of their prejudices, and some courtesy of language and demeanour on the part of Englishmen, would work wonders, even as it is, with the public mind of the Americans.
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Captain Basil Hall's book is certainly very entertaining and instructive; but, in my judgment, his sentiments upon many points, and more especially his mode of expression, are unwise and uncharitable. After all, are not most of the things shown up with so much bitterness by him mere national foibles, parallels to which every people has and must of necessity have?
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What you say about the quarrel in the United States is sophistical. No doubt, taxation may, and perhaps in some cases must, press unequally, or apparently so, on different classes of people in a state. In such cases there is a hardship; but, in the long run, the matter is fully compensated to the over-taxed class. For example, take the householders of London, who complain so bitterly of the house and window taxes. Is it not pretty clear that, whether such householder be a tradesman, who indemnifies himself in the price of his goods,—or a letter of lodgings, who does so in his rent, —or a stockholder, who receives it back again in his dividends,—or a country gentleman, who has saved so much fresh levy on his land or his other property,—one way or other, it comes at last pretty nearly to the same thing, though the pressure for the time may be unjust and vexatious, and fit to be removed? But when New England, which may be considered a state in itself, taxes the admission of foreign manufactures in order to cherish manufactures of its own, and thereby forces the Carolinians, another state of itself, with which there is little intercommunion, which has no such desire or interest to serve, to buy worse articles at a higher price, it is altogether a different question, and is, in fact, downright tyranny of the worst, because of the most sordid, kind. What would you think of a law which should tax every person in Devonshire for the pecuniary benefit of every person in Yorkshire? And yet that is a feeble image of the actual usurpation of the New England deputies over the property of the Southern States.
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There are two possible modes of unity in a State; one by absolute coordination of each to all, and of all to each; the other by subordination of classes and offices. Now, I maintain that there never was an instance of the first, nor can there be, without slavery as its condition and accompaniment, as in Athens. The poor Swiss cantons are no exception.
The mistake lies in confounding a state which must be based on classes and interests and unequal property, with a church, which is founded on the person, and has no qualification but personal merit. Such a community may exist, as in the case of the Quakers; but, in order to exist, it must be compressed and hedged in by another society—mundus mundulus in mundo immundo.
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The free class in a slave state is always, in one sense, the most patriotic class of people in an empire; for their patriotism is not simply the patriotism of other people, but an aggregate of lust of power and distinction and supremacy.
April 11. 1833
LAND AND MONEY
Land was the only species of property which, in the old time, carried any respectability with it. Money alone, apart from some tenure of land, not only did not make the possessor great and respectable, but actually made him at once the object of plunder and hatred. Witness the history of the Jews in this country in the early reigns after the Conquest.
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I have no objection to your aspiring to the political principles of our old Cavaliers; but embrace them all fully, and not merely this and that feeling, whilst in other points you speak the canting foppery of the Benthamite or Malthusian schools.
April 14. 1833
METHODS OF INVESTIGATION
There are three ways of treating a subject:—
In the first mode, you begin with a definition, and that definition is necessarily assumed as the truth. As the argument proceeds, the conclusion from the first proposition becomes the base of the second, and so on. Now, it is quite impossible that you can be sure that you have included all the necessary, and none but the necessary, terms in your definition; as, therefore, you proceed, the original speck of error is multiplied at every remove; the same infirmity of knowledge besetting each successive definition. Hence you may set out, like Spinosa, with all but the truth, and end with a conclusion which is altogether monstrous; and yet the mere deduction shall be irrefragable. Warburton's "Divine Legation" is also a splendid instance of this mode of discussion, and of its inability to lead to the truth: in fact, it is an attempt to adopt the mathematical series of proof, in forgetfulness that the mathematician is sure of the truth of his definition at each remove, because he _creates _it, as he can do, in pure figure and number. But you cannot _make _any thing true which results from, or is connected with, real externals; you can only _find _it out. The chief use of this first mode of discussion is to sharpen the wit, for which purpose it is the best exercitation.
2. The historical mode is a very common one: in it the author professes to find out the truth by collecting the facts of the case, and tracing them downwards; but this mode is worse than the other. Suppose the question is as to the true essence and character of the English constitution. First, where will you begin your collection of facts? where will you end it? What facts will you select, and how do you know that the class of facts which you select are necessary terms in the premisses, and that other classes of facts, which you neglect, are not necessary? And how do you distinguish phenomena which proceed from disease or accident from those which are the genuine fruits of the essence of the constitution? What can be more striking, in illustration of the utter inadequacy of this line of investigation for arriving at the real truth, than the political treatises and constitutional histories which we have in every library? A Whig proves his case convincingly to the reader who knows nothing beyond his author; then comes an old Tory (Carte, for instance), and ferrets up a hamperful of conflicting documents and notices, which proves _his _case per contra. A. takes this class of facts; B. takes that class: each proves something true, neither proves the truth, or any thing like _the _truth; that is, the whole truth.
3. You must, therefore, commence with the philosophic idea of the thing, the true nature of which you wish to find out and manifest. You must carry your rule ready made, if you wish to measure aright. If you ask me how I can know that this idea—my own invention—is the truth, by which the phenomena of history are to be explained, I answer, in the same way exactly that you know that your eyes were made to see with; and that is, because you _do _see with them. If I propose to you an idea or self-realizing theory of the constitution, which shall manifest itself as in existence from the earliest times to the present,—which shall comprehend within it _all _the facts which history has preserved, and shall give them a meaning as interchangeably causals or effects;—if I show you that such an event or reign was an obliquity to the right hand, and how produced, and such other event or reign a deviation to the left, and whence originating,—that the growth was stopped here, accelerated there,—that such a tendency is, and always has been, corroborative, and such other tendency destructive, of the main progress of the idea towards realization;—if this idea, not only like a kaleidoscope, shall reduce all the miscellaneous fragments into order, but shall also minister strength, and knowledge, and light to the true patriot and statesmen for working out the bright thought, and bringing the glorious embryo to a perfect birth;—then, I think, I have a right to say that the idea which led to this is not only true, but the truth, the only truth. To set up for a statesman upon historical knowledge only, is as about as wise as to set up for a musician by the purchase of some score flutes, fiddles, and horns. In order to make music, you must know how to play; in order to make your facts speak truth, you must know what the truth is which ought to be proved,—the ideal truth,—the truth which was consciously or unconsciously, strongly or weakly, wisely or blindly, intended at all times.145
"A great statesman, lately deceased, in one of his anti-ministerial harangues against some proposed impost, said, 'The nation has been already bled in every vein, and is faint with loss of blood.' This blood, however, was circulating in the mean time through the whole body of the state, and what was received into one chamber of the heart was instantly sent out again at the other portal. Had he wanted a metaphor to convey the possible injuries of taxation, he might have found one less opposite to the fact, in the known disease of aneurism, or relaxation of the coats of particular vessels, by a disproportionate accumulation of blood in them, which sometimes occurs when the circulation has been suddenly and violently changed, and causes helplessness, or even mortal stagnation, though the total quantity of blood remains the same in the system at large.
"But a fuller and fairer symbol of taxation, both in its possible good and evil effects, is to be found in the evaporation of waters from the surface of the earth. The sun may draw up the moisture from the river, the morass, and the ocean, to be given back in genial showers to the garden, to the pasture, and the corn field; but it may, likewise, force away the moisture from the fields of tillage, to drop it on the stagnant pool, the saturated swamp, or the unprofitable sand-waste. The gardens in the south of Europe supply, perhaps, a not less apt illustration of a system of finance judiciously conducted, where the tanks or reservoirs would represent the capital of a nation, and the hundred rills, hourly varying their channels and directions under the gardener's spade, give a pleasing image of the dispersion of that capital through the whole population by the joint effect of taxation and trade. For taxation itself is a part of commerce, and the government maybe fairly considered as a great manufacturing house, carrying on, in different places, by means of its partners and overseers, the trades of the shipbuilder, the clothier, the iron-founder," &c. &c.—ED.
Act iv. sc. 3.:—
"ANT. Not far from where my father lives, a lady,A neighbour by, bless'd with as great a beautyAs nature durst bestow without undoing,Dwelt, and most happily, as I thought then,And bless'd the home a thousand times she dwelt in.This beauty, in the blossom of my youth,When my first fire knew no adulterate incense,Nor I no way to flatter, but my fondness;In all the bravery my friends could show me,In all the faith my innocence could give me,In the best language my true tongue could tell me,And all the broken sighs my sick heart lent me,I sued and served: long did I love this lady,Long was my travail, long my trade to win her;With all the duty of my soul, I served her.ALM. How feelingly he speaks! (Aside.) And she loved you too?It must be so.ANT. I would it had, dear lady;This story had been needless, and this place,I think, unknown to me.ALM. Were your bloods equal?ANT. Yes; and I thought our hearts too.ALM. Then she must love.ANT. She did—but never me; she could not love me,She would not love, she hated; more, she scorn'd me,And in so poor and base a way abused me,For all my services, for all my bounties,So bold neglects flung on me—ALM. An ill woman!Belike you found some rival in your love, then?ANT. How perfectly she points me to my story! (Aside.)Madam, I did; and one whose pride and anger,Ill manners, and worse mien, she doted on,Doted to my undoing, and my ruin.And, but for honour to your sacred beauty,And reverence to the noble sex, though she fall,As she must fall that durst be so unnoble,I should say something unbeseeming me.What out of love, and worthy love, I gave her,Shame to her most unworthy mind! to fools,To girls, and fiddlers, to her boys she flung,And in disdain of me.ALM. Pray you take me with you.Of what complexion was she?ANT. But that I dare notCommit so great a sacrilege 'gainst virtue,She look'd not much unlike—though far, far short,Something, I see, appears—your pardon, madam—Her eyes would smile so, but her eyes could cozen;And so she would look sad; but yours is pity,A noble chorus to my wretched story;Hers was disdain and cruelty.ALM. Pray heaven,Mine be no worse! he has told me a strange story, (Aside.)" &c.—ED.
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By Hieronimo Mr. Coleridge meant The Spanish Tragedy, and not the previous play, which is usually called The First Part of Jeronimo. The Spanish Tragedy is, upon the authority of Heywood, attributed to Kyd. It is supposed that Ben Jonson originally performed the part of Hieronimo, and hence it has been surmised that certain passages and whole scenes connected with that character, and not found in some of the editions of the play, are, in fact, Ben Jonson's own writing. Some of these supposed interpolations are amongst the best things in the Spanish Tragedy; the style is singularly unlike Jonson's, whilst there are turns and particular images which do certainly seem to have been imitated by or from Shakspeare. Mr. Lamb at one time gave them to Webster. Take this, passage, in the fourth act:—
"HIERON. What make you with your torches in the dark?PEDRO. You bid us light them, and attend you here.HIERON. No! you are deceived; not I; you are deceived.Was I so mad to bid light torches now?Light me your torches at the mid of noon,When as the sun-god rides in all his glory;Light me your torches then.PEDRO. Then we burn day-light.HIERON. Let it be burnt; Night is a murd'rous slut,That would not have her treasons to be seen;And yonder pale-faced Hecate there, the moon,Doth give consent to that is done in darkness;And all those stars that gaze upon her faceAre aglets on her sleeve, pins on her train;And those that should be powerful and divine,Do sleep in darkness when they most should shine.PEDRO. Provoke them not, fair sir, with tempting words.The heavens are gracious, and your miseries and sorrowMake you speak you know not whatHIERON. Villain! thou liest, and thou dost noughtBut tell me I am mad: thou liest, I am not mad;I know thee to be Pedro, and he Jaques;I'll prove it thee; and were I mad, how could I?Where was she the same night, when my Horatio was murder'd!She should have shone then; search thou the book:Had the moon shone in my boy's face, there was a kind of grace,That I know—nay, I do know, had the murderer seen him,His weapon would have fallen, and cut the earth,Had he been framed of nought but blood and death," &c. Again, in the fifth act:—
"HIERON. But are you sure that they are dead?CASTILE. Ay, slain, too sure.HIERON. What, and yours too?VICEROY. Ay, all are dead; not one of them survive.HIBRON. Nay, then I care not—come, we shall be friends;Let us lay our heads together.See, here's a goodly noose will hold them all.VICEROY. O damned devil! how secure he is! HIERON. Secure! why dost thou wonder at it? I tell thee, Viceroy, this day I've seen Revenge, d in that sight am grown a prouder monarch Than ever sate under the crown of Spain. Had I as many lives at there be stars,, As many heavens to go to as those lives, I'd give them all, ay, and my soul to boot, But I would see thee ride in this red pool. Methinks, since I grew inward with revenge, I cannot look with scorn enough on death.
KING. What! dost thou mock us, slave? Bring tortures forth.HIERON. Do, do, do; and meantime I'll torture you.You had a son as I take it, and your sonShould have been married to your daughter: ha! was it not so?You had a son too, he was my liege's nephew.He was proud and politic—had he lived,He might have come to wear the crown of Spain:I think 't was so—'t was I that killed him;Look you—this same hand was it that stabb'dHis heart—do you see this hand?For one Horatio, if you ever knew him—A youth, one that they hang'd up in his father's garden—One that did force your valiant son to yield," &c.—ED.
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