Reading - for want of something better - “Macaulay’s Essays.” He is a born Edinburgh Reviewer, this Macaulay; and, indeed, a type-reviewer - an authentic specimen-page of nineteenth century “literature.” He has the right, omniscient tone, and air, and the true knack of administering reverential flattery to British civilization, British prowess, honour, enlightenment, and all that, especially to the great nineteenth century and its astounding civilization, that is, to his readers. It is altogether a new thing in the history of mankind, this triumphant glorification of a current century upon being the century it is. No former age, before Christ or after, ever took any pride in itself and sneered at the wisdom of its ancestors; and the new phenomenon indicates, I believe, not higher wisdom, but deeper stupidity. The nineteenth century is come, but not gone; and what now, if it should be, hereafter, memorable among centuries for something quite other than its wondrous enlightenment? Mr. Macaulay, however, is well satisfied with it for his part, and in his essay on Milton penny-a-lines thus: “Every girl who has read Mrs. Marcet’s little dialogues on political economy, could teach Montague or Walpole many lessons on finance. Any intelligent man may now, by resolutely applying himself for a few years to mathematics, learn more than the great Newton knew after half a century of study and meditation”; and so on. If Pythagoras, now, could only have been introduced to Mrs. Marcet, or even to one of her premium girls, how humbly would he have sat at her feet! Could Aristotle or Hipparchus but have seen Mr. Pinnock before they died, how would they have sung nunc dimittas! This nineteenth century man, and indeed the century generally, can see no difference between being told a thing [20] conning it in a catechism, or “little dialogue “ - and knowing it; between getting by heart a list of results, what you call facts, and mastering science.

Still more edifying, even than Edinburgh wisdom, is the current Edinburgh ethics. Herein, also, the world has a new development; and as I am now about to retire a little while from the great business of this stirring age, to hide me, as it were, in a hole of the rock, while the loud-sounding century, with its steam-engines, printing-presses, and omniscient popular literature, flares and rushes roaring and gibbering by, I have a mind to set down a few of Macaulay’s sentences, as a kind of land-marks, just to remind me where the world and I parted. For I do, indeed, account this Reviewer a real type, and recognised spokesman of his age; and by the same token he is now, by virtue of his very reviewing, too, a Cabinet Minister. In his essay on Lord Bacon, he freely admits the treacherous, thoroughly false, and unprincipled character of the statesmen of that age; thinks, however, we must not be too hard on them; says, “it is impossible to deny that they committed many acts which would justly bring down, on a statesman of our time, censures of the most serious kind” (as that a man is a liar, an extortioner, a hypocrite, a suborner); “but when we consider the state of morality in their age, and the unscrupulous character of the adversaries against whom they had to contend,” etc. And the state of morality, it seems, varies, not with the age only, but with the climate also, in a wonderful manner. For the essayist, writing of Lord Clive and his villainies in India, pleads in behalf of Clive, that “he knew he had to deal with men destitute of what in Europe is called honour; with men who would give any promise, without hesitation, and break any promise without shame; with men who would unscrupulously employ corruption, perjury, forgery, to compass their ends.” And they knew that they had to deal with men destitute of what in Asia is called honesty - men who would unscrupulously employ- corruption, perjury, forgery, etc. - so, what were the poor men to do, on either side? - the state of morality was so low! When one is tempted to commit any wickedness, he ought, apparently, to ascertain this point - what is the state of morality? How range the quotations? Is this an age (or a climate) adapted for open [21] robbery? Or does the air agree better with swindling and cheating? Or must one cant and pray, and pretend anxiety to convert the heathen - to compass one’s ends? But to come back to Lord Clive, the great founder of British power in India; when the essayist comes to that point at which he cannot get over fairly telling us how Clive swindled Omichund by a forged paper, he says: “But Clive was not a man to do anything by halves (too much British energy for that). We almost blush to write it. He forged Admiral Watson’s name.” Almost blush - but not just quite. Oh! Babington Macaulay. This approximation to blushing, on the part of the blue-and-yellow Reviewer, is a graceful, touching tribute to the lofty morality of our blessed century.

For morality, now - Lord bless you - ranges very high; and Religion, also: through all our nineteenth-century British hterature there runs a tone of polite, though distant recognition of Almighty God, as one of the Great Powers; and though not resident, is actually maintained at His court. Yet British civilization gives Him assurances of friendly relations; and “our venerable Church,” and our “beautiful liturgy,” are relied upon as a sort of diplomatic Concordat, or Pragmatic Sanction, whereby we, occupied as we are, in grave commercial and political pursuits, carrying on our business, selling our cotton, and civilizing our heathen - bind ourselves, to let Him alone, if He lets us alone - if He will keep looking apart, contemplating the illustrious mare-milkers, and blameless Ethiopians, and never-minding us, we will keep up a most respectable Church for Him, and make our lower orders venerate it, and pay for it handsomely, and we will suffer no national infidelity, like the horrid French. For the venerable Church of England, and for our beautiful liturgy, the essayist has a becoming respect; and in his essay on Hallam’s Constitutional History, I find a sentence or two on this point worth transcribing. He is writing about the villains who reformed religion in England, and the other miscreants who accomplished the Glorious Revolution, and he says: “It was, in one sense, fortunate, as we have already said, for the Church of England, that the Reformation in this country was effected by men who cared little about religion. And in the same manner it was fortunate for our civil Government that the Revolution was effected by men who cared little about their political principles.

At such a crisis splendid talents and strong passions (by strong passions he means any kind of belief or principle) might have done more harm than good.” But then he immediately adds - for we must keep up an elevated tone of morality now - “But narrowness of intellect, and flexibility of principle, though they may be serviceable, can never be respectable.” Why not? If scoundrels and blockheads can rear good, serviceable, visible churches for the saving of men, and glorious constitutions for the governing of men, what hinders them from being respectable? What else is respectable? Or, indeed, what is the use of the splendid talents and the strong passions at all? I am wasting my time, and exasperating the natural benignity of my temper, with this oceanic review of the Edinburgh Reviewer. But my time at least is not precious just now; and I will plunge into the man’s essay on Lord Bacon, which cannot fail to be the most characteristic piece of British literature in the volumes. This must be done to-morrow [...] (pp.20-23.)

below, threw off coat and waistcoat for coolness, and began to read Macaulay on Bacon - “the great English teacher,” as the reviewer calls him. And to do the reviewer justice, he understands Bacon, knows what Bacon did, and what he did not; and therefore sets small store by that illustrious Chimera’s new “method” of investigating truth. He is not ignorant; but knows that Lord Bacon’s discovery of the inductive “method,” or Novum Organum, is the most genuine piece of mare’s-nesting recorded in the history of letters. And, to do Bacon himself justice, for all the impudence of his title (Instauratio Scientiarum) and the pretentiousness of his outrageous phraseology, he hardly pretended to be the original discoverer of wisdom, to the extent that many Baconians, learned stupid asses, have pretended for him. Apart from the “induction” and the “method,” and the utterly inexcusable terminology (far worse even than the coinage of Jeremy Bentham), Bacon’s true distinction as a “philosopher” was this - I accept the essayist’s description - “The philosophy which he taught was essentially new. Its object was the good of mankind, in the sense in which the mass of mankind always have understood, and always will understand, the word good. The aim of the Platonic philosopher was to raise us far above vulgar wants; the aim of the Baconian philosophy was to supply our vulgar wants.

The former aim was noble; but the latter was attainable.” What the mass of mankind understand by the word good is, of course, pudding and praise and profit, comfort, power, luxury, supply of vulgar wants - all, in short, which Bacon included under the word commoda; and to minister to mankind in these things is, according to the great English teacher, the highest aim - the only aim and end - of true philosophy or wisdom. O Plato! Jesu! “The former aim was noble, but the latter was attainable.” On the contrary, I affirm that the former aim was both noble and, to many men, attainable; the latter not only ignoble, but to all men unattainable, and to the noblest men most. The essayist makes himself very merry with the absurdities of what they called philosophy in times of ante-Baconian darkness. “It disdained to be useful, and was content to be stationary. It dealt largely in theories of moral perfection, which were so sublime [25] that they never could be more than theories: it attempts to solve insoluble enigmas: in exhortations to the attainment of unattainable frames of mind. It could not condescend to the humble office of ministering to the comfort of human beings.”

Now the truth is, that Plato and Pythagoras did not undervalue comfort, and wealth, and human commoda at all: but they thought the task of attending to such matters was the business of ingenious tradespeople, and not of wise men and philosophers. If James Watt had appeared at Athens or Crotona with his steam-engine, he would certainly have got the credit of a clever person and praiseworthy mechanic - all he deserved: but they never would have thought of calling him philosopher for that. They did actually imagine - those ancient wise men - that it is true wisdom to raise our thoughts and aspirations above what the mass of mankind calls good - to regard truth, fortitude, honesty, purity, as the great objects of human effort, and not the supply of vulgar wants.

What a very poor fool Jesus Christ would have been, judged by the “new philosophy,” - for His aim and Plato’s were one. He disdained to be useful in the matter of our httle comforts - yes, indeed, “ He could not condescend to the humble office of ministering to the comfort of human beings.” On the contrary, “whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are holy, if there be any virtue “ Why, good Messiah! this is the mere Academy over again. Have you considered that these are unattainable frames of mind? You offer us living bread, and water which he that drinketh shall not thirst again: - very beautiful, but too romantic. Can you help us to butter the mere farinaceous bread we have got, to butter it first on one side and then on the other? - to improve the elemental taste and somewhat too paradisiac weakness of this water? These are our vulgar wants: these are what the mass of mankind agrees to call good. Whatsoever things are snug, whatsoever things are influential - if there be any comfort, if there be any money, think on these things. Henceforth we acknowledge no light of the world which does not light our way to good things like these.

Almost this sounds profanely; but the profanity belongs to the [26] essayist. His comparison of Plato’s philosophy with modem inventive genius is exactly as reasonable as if he had compared the Christian religion with the same. Ancient philosophy was indeed natural religion - was an earnest striving after spiritual [sic for spiritual] truth and good; it dealt with the supersensuous and nobler part of man; and its “aim” was to purify his nature, and give him hope of an immortal destiny amongst the enthroned gods on sainted seats.

Just so, says the essayist; that was what they called wisdom - this is what I, Lord Bacon and I, call wisdom. “The end which the great Lord Bacon proposed to himself was the multiplying of human enjoyments and the mitigating of human sufferings.” Anything beyond this we simply ignore; let all the inquirings, all the aspirings of mankind stop here. Leave off dreaming of your unattainable frames of mind, and be content with the truth as it is in Bacon.

I can imagine an enlightened inductive Baconian standing by with scornful nose as he listens to the Sermon on the Mount, and then taking the Preacher sternly to task - “What mean you by all this - “Bless them that curse you” - “Love your enemies” - “Be ye perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect!” What mortal man ever attained these frames of mind? Why not turn your considerable talents, friend, to something useful, something within reach? Can you make anything? - improve anything? - You are, if I mistake not, a carpenter by trade, and have been working somewhere in Gallilee [sic]; now, have you invented any little improvement in your own respectable trade? Have you improved the saw, the lathe, the plane? Can you render the loom a more perfect machine, or make a better job of the potter’s wheel? Have you in any shape economised materials, economised human labour, added to human enjoyment? Have you done, or can you show the way to do, any of all these things? No I Then away with him! Crucify him! “

Ah! but the enlightened Briton would say, “Now you talk of religion; that is our strong point in this admirable age and country. Is not there our venerable Church? - our beautiful liturgy? There is a department for all that, with the excellent Archbishop of Canterbury at the head of it. If information is wanted about the other world, or salvation, or anything in that [27] line, you can apply at the head-office, or some of the subordinate stations.

True, there is a department, and offices, and salaries, more than enough; yet the very fact is, that modern British civilisation (which may be called the child of this great British teacher) is not only not Christian, but is not so much as Pagan. It takes not the smallest account of anything higher or greater than earth bestows. The hopeless confusion of ideas that made Bacon and Macaulay institute a comparison between ancient philosophy and modern ingenuity, is grown characteristic of the national mind and heart, and foreshadows national death. The mass of mankind agree to call money, power, and pleasure, good; and behold! the Spirit of the Age has looked on it, and pronounced it very good. The highest phase of human intellect and virtue is to be what this base spirit calls a philanthropist - that is, one who, by new inventions and comfortable contrivances, mitigates human suffering, heightens human pleasure. The grandest effort of godlike genius is to augment human power - power over the elements, power over uncivilised men - and all for our own comfort. Nay, by tremendous enginery of steam and electricity, and gunpowder - by capital and the “law of progress,” and the superhuman power of co-operation, this foul Spirit of the Age does veritably count upon scaling the heavens. The failure of Otus and Ephialtes, of Typhæus and Enceladus, of the builders of Shinar, never daunts him a whit - for why? - they knew little of co-operation; electricity and steam and the principle of the arch were utterly hidden from them; civil engineering was in its infancy; how should they not fail?

The very capital generated and circulated, and utilised on so grand a scale by civilised men now-a-days, seems to modern Britons a power mighty enough to wield worlds; and its numen is worshipped by them accordingly, with filthy rites. The God of mere nature will, they assure themselves, think twice before He disturbs and quarrels with such a power as this; for indeed it is faithfully believed in the City, by the moneyed circles there, that God the Father has money invested in the three-per-cents, which makes Him careful not to disturb the peace of the world, or suffer the blessed march of “civilisation” to be stopped.

Semble then, first, that the peace of the world is maintained so [28] long as it is only the unmoneyed circle that are robbed, starved, and slain; and, second, that nothing civilises either gods or men like holding stock.

But I am strong in the belief that the portentous confusion both of language and thought, which has brought us to all this, and which is no accidental misunderstanding, but a radical confounding of the English national intellect and language, a chronic addlement of the general brain, getting steadily worse now for two hundred years, is indeed more alarming than the gibbering of Babel, and is symptomatic of a more disastrous ending. By terrible signs and wonders it shall be made known that comfort is not the chief end of man. I do affirm, I - that Capital is not the ruler of the world - that the Almighty has no pecuniary interest in the stability of the funds or the European balance of power - finally, that no engineering, civil or military, can raise man above the heavens or shake the throne of God.

On that day some nations that do now bestride the narrow world will learn lessons of true philosophy, but not new philosophy, in sackcloth and ashes. And other nations, low enough in the dust now, will arise from their sackcloth and begin a new national life - to repeat, it may be, the same crimes and suffer the same penalties. For the progress of the species is circular; or possibly in trochoidal curves, with some sort of cycloid for deferent; or more properly it oscillates, describing an arc of a circle, pendulum-wise; and even measures time (by aeons) in that manner; or let us say, in one word, the world wags.

(p.21-29.)

[Note Mitchel refers to 14 MSS pages written by him on Macaulay and Bacon; p.31.]

[...]

It was here, amongst these very cedars, that noster George Berkeley desired to establish a missionary college, with a view to convert red Americans to Christianity, and gave up his fat deanery of Derry that he might take up house here as Principal of his college at £100 a year. The English minister (Sir Robert Walpole, I think) promised a grant of £20,000 for that college: and on the strength of this promise Berkeley left Derry, went to New England, where he stayed a year, expecting the grant and charter, soliciting objurgating, reminding, remonstrating - till his heart was nearly broken, and then he came home to Ireland, almost in despair. Good man! he little knew what a plague Ministers thought him, with his missionary colleges; they had quite another plan for the conversion of the red people - to convert them, namely, into red humus. But they gave George a bishopric at Cloyne, and there he philosophised and fiddled till he died.

It was to Bermuda, also, that Prospero, on a certain night, sent his Ariel to [33] “fetch dew.” Albeit, one might hardly know these isles for the still-vexed Bermoothes, for they lie sleeping on the glassy sea to-day, as tranquil as an infant on its mother’s bosom. And was it not here, too, that “metaphysical” Waller, having transported himself hither to shun the evil days, dreamed his “Dream of the Summer Islands?” and has not Moore, also, sung these cedars? Bermuda, then, has its associations; is even classical; in fact, is apparently a genuine fragment of the flowery earth, peering above the Atlantic flood here.

(p.33-34.)

[...]

Yet will I not lay hand upon my own life, for the reasons here following: -

First. Because I should, in such case, be a conspirator with Baron Lefroy, the Sheriff of Dublin, and the Ministers of England, against my own name and fame. Their parliament and their sheriff may nickname me “felon,” but if I, in despair, thereupon rush to my death, I will own myself a felon, indeed, and send my children scandalised to their graves, as the children of a self-convicted criminal and despairing suicide.
Second. Because, having engaged in this undertaking with full knowledge that this imprisonment might, and probably would be, the end of it for me, suicide now would be a mean and cowardly confession that the consequence of my own acts, I find upon trial, to be more than I can bear.
Third. Because, whereas I am now employed in carrying forward that undertaking, I trust to a happy issue, if I kill myself, I not only desist from the whole enterprise, but, so far as in me lies, undo all I have done. Sometimes to suffer manfully is the best thing man can do - passiveness may happen to be the most effectual action; and I do firmly believe that (unless my whole life has been one gross mistake from the first) I am this moment, though three thousand miles off, active in Ireland - not passive in Bermuda. The manner of my sham trial, the eager, fierce haste of the enemy to gag and ruin me, the open war waged against all constitutional and legal right in Ireland - all this will (or else the very devil is in them) sting the apathetic, shame the “constitutional,” and, above all, rouse the young to a pitch of wrathful disaffection that cannot but come to good. While I am known to be living in vile sinks of felony - and through such means - especially if other and better men follow through the same means, the mind of the young Irish generation will not easily settle down and acquiesce in the sway of the foreign enemy. But if I die. I, for one, will soon be forgotten. There will be one stimulus the less to Ireland’ friends - one difficulty the less to her foes. And if I die by my own hand, I will be worse than forgotten - I will have confessed that England’ brute power is resistless, and therefore righteous - at any rate - that I for my part, am a beaten man. It will be my last speech and dying declaration, imploring my countrymen to avoid the terrible fangs of British law - my pupils will hang their heads for shame; and, instead of an example, I shall have become a warning.
Fourth. Because my flesh creeps at the thought of the convict cemetery.
Fifth. Because I have much to live for - many duties but half discharged or wholly neglected - young children brought into the world, and allowed to grow up hitherto, like an unweeded garden. For so busy has my life been that I never yet got much further than intending to begin doing my domestic duties. But if it be the will of Providence to draw me alive out of this pit, I hope to do my children some good yet before I die.
Sixth. Because * * * *

(pp.48.49)

[...]

I am sentenced to the very same punishment with these convicts, yet here have I my “cabin,” my bookshelves, the attendance of a servant, wear my own clothes, go out and come in at my own times, am spoken to, not only without haughtiness, but with respect, and all because I am supposed to be (though I never said I was) a gentleman. See here the spirit of the British Constitution- a most polite Constitution - a most genteel spirit! See of what fine porcelain clay your British gentleman must be made, when, even as a felon (for they [52] are bound to pretend that they consider me a felon), the gentleman is not to be allowed to mix with the swinish multitude. Your gentlemanly convict, even, must have deference and accommodations, and attendance and literary leisure: but in the hulk, as elsewhere, there is the hard word and the hard blow, and unremitting, ill-requited toil, and fetters for the Umbs, and a scourge for the back of the poor.

(pp.52-53.

Hulking, as a profession, is as yet confined to England - that it will become a more favourite line of business there, as the poverty of the English poor shall grow more inveterate, cannot be doubted. God’ mercy! is Ireland not to be torn out of the hands of these ameliorative British statesmen until they have brought this crowning curse upon her, too?

There are now about two thousand convicts at Bermuda - about a thousand at Spike Island; how many may be at Gibraltar and Australia, not to speak of the several depots for them in England, I know not; but on the whole there is an immense and rapidly growing convict community distributed in all these earthly hells, maintained in much comfort, with everything handsome about them, at the cost of the hard-working and ill-fed, and even harder working and worse-fed people of England, Scotland, and Ireland. That there is a limit to all this, one may easily see. What to do, then, with all our robbers, burglars, and forgers? Why hang them, hang them. You have no right to make the honest people support the rogues, and support them better than they, the honest people, can support themselves. You have no right to set a premium upon villainy, and put burglars and rickburners on a permanent endowment. It is not true to say that in Bermuda (for instance) the value of their own labour supports them, because that labour is employed upon most extravagant public works, which government could not undertake at all without convict labour, and the wages come out of the taxes paid by the honest people; in short, they support themselves just as seamen on board a man-of-war support themselves, and do not earn their living half so hard. The taxes keep up the “convict service,” just as they keep up the navy and the excise men. In criminal jurisprudence, as well as in many another thing, the nineteenth century is sadly retrogressive; and your Beccarias, and Howards, and Romillys are genuine apostles of barbarism Hulking, as a profession, is as yet confined to England - that it will become a more favourite line of business there, as the poverty of the English poor shall grow more inveterate, cannot be doubted. God’ mercy! is Ireland not to be torn out of the hands of these ameliorative British statesmen until they have brought this crowning curse upon her, too?

There are now about two thousand convicts at Bermuda - about a thousand at Spike Island; how many may be at Gibraltar and Australia, not to speak of the several depots for them in England, I know not; but on the whole there is an immense and rapidly growing convict community distributed in all these earthly hells, maintained in much comfort, with everything handsome about them, at the cost of the hard-working and ill-fed, and even harder working and worse-fed people of England, Scotland, and Ireland. That there is a limit to all this, one may easily see. What to do, then, with all our robbers, burglars, and forgers? Why hang them, hang them. You have no right to make the honest people support the rogues, and support them better than they, the honest people, can support themselves. You have no right to set a premium upon villainy, and put burglars and rickburners on a permanent endowment. It is not true to say that in Bermuda (for instance) the value of their own labout supports them, because that labour is employed upon most extravagant public works, which government could not undertake at all without convict labour, and the wages come out of the taxes paid by the honest people; in short, they support themselves just as seamen on board a man-of-war support themselves, and do not earn their living half so hard. The taxes keep up the “convict service,” just as they keep up the navy and the excise men.

In criminal jurisprudence, as well as in many another thing, the nineteenth century is sadly retrogressive; and your Beccarias, and Howards, and Romillys are genuine apostles of barbarism - ultimately of cannibalism. “Reformation of the offenders” is not the reasonable object of criminal punishment, nor any part of the reasonable object, and though it were so, your jail and hulk system would be the surest way to defeat that object and make the casual offender an irreclaimable scourge of mankind. Jails ought to be places of discomfort; the “sanitary condition” of [124] miscreants ought not to be better cared for than the honest, industrious people - and for “ventilation,” I would ventilate the rascals in front of the county jails at the end of a rope.; ultimately of cannibalism. “Reformation of the offenders” is not the reasonable object of criminal punishment, nor any part of the reasonable object, and though it were so, your jail and hulk system would be the surest way to defeat that object and make the casual offender an irreclaimable scourge of mankind. Jails ought to be places of discomfort; the “sanitary condition” of miscreants ought not to be better cared for than the honest, industrious people - and for “ventilation,” I would ventilate the rascals in front of the county jails at the end of a rope.

(pp.124-25; reparagraphed.)