by Thomas Moore
“Is there no light?” — thou ask’st— “no lingering spark
“Of ancient fire to warm us? Lives there none,
“To act a Marvell’s part?”11 — alas! not one.
To place and power all public spirit tends,
In place and power all public spirit ends;
Like hardy plants that love the air and sky,
When out, ‘twill thrive — but taken in, ‘twill die!
Not bolder truths of sacred Freedom hung
From Sidney’s pen or burned on Fox’s tongue,
Than upstart Whigs produce each market-night,
While yet their conscience, as their purse, is light;
While debts at home excite their care for those
Which, dire to tell, their much-loved country owes,
And loud and upright, till their prize be known,
They thwart the King’s supplies to raise their own.
But bees on flowers alighting cease their hum —
So, settling upon places, Whigs grow dumb.
And, tho’ most base is he who, ‘neath the shade
Of Freedom’s ensign plies corruption’s trade,
And makes the sacred flag he dares to show
His passport to the market of her foe,
Yet, yet, I own, so venerably dear
Are Freedom’s grave old anthems to my ear,
That I enjoy them, tho’ by traitors sung,
And reverence Scripture even from Satan’s tongue.
Nay, when the constitution has expired,
I’ll have such men, like Irish wakers, hired
To chant old “Habeas Corpus” by its side,
And ask in purchased ditties why it died?
See yon smooth lord whom nature’s plastic pains
Would seem to’ve fashioned for those Eastern reigns
When eunuchs flourisht, and such nerveless things
As men rejected were the chosen of kings; — 12
Even he, forsooth, (oh fraud, of all the worst!)
Dared to assume the patriot’s name at first —
Thus Pitt began, and thus begin his apes;
Thus devils when first raised take pleasing shapes.
But oh, poor Ireland! if revenge be sweet
For centuries of wrong, for dark deceit
And withering insult — for the Union thrown
Into thy bitter cup when that alone
Of slavery’s draught was wanting13 — if for this
Revenge be sweet, thou hast that daemon’s bliss;
For sure ’tis more than hell’s revenge to fee
That England trusts the men who’ve ruined thee: —
That in these awful days when every hour
Creates some new or blasts some ancient power,
When proud Napoleon like the enchanted shield
Whose light compelled each wondering foe to yield,
With baleful lustre blinds the brave and free
And dazzles Europe into slavery, —
That in this hour when patriot zeal should guide,
When Mind should rule and — Fox should not have died,
All that devoted England can oppose
To enemies made fiends and friends made foes,
Is the rank refuse, the despised remains
Of that unpitying power, whose whips and chains
Drove Ireland first to turn with harlot glance
Towards other shores and woo the embrace of France; —
Those hacked and tainted tools, so foully fit
For the grand artisan of mischief, Pitt,
So useless ever but in vile employ,
So weak to save, so vigorous to destroy —
Such are the men that guard thy threatened shore,
Oh England! sinking England! boast no more.
1 England began very early to feel the effects of cruelty towards her dependencies. “The severity of her government [says Macpherson] contributed more to deprive her of the continental dominions of the family of the Plantagenet than the arms of France.” — See his History, vol. i.
2 “By the total reduction of the kingdom of Ireland in 1691[says Burke], the ruin of the native Irish, and in a great measure, too, of the first races of the English, was completely accomplished. The new English interested was settled with as solid a stability as anything in human affairs can look for. All the penal laws of that unparalleled code of oppression, which were made after the last event, were manifestly the effects of national hatred and scorn towards a conquered people, whom the victors delighted to trample upon, and were not at all afraid to provoke.” Yet this is the era to which the wise Common Council of Dublin refer us for “invaluable blessings,” etc.
3 The drivelling correspondence between James I and his “dog Steenie” (the Duke of Buckingham), which we find among the Hardwicke Papers, sufficiently shows, if we wanted any such illustration, into what doting, idiotic brains the plan at arbitrary power may enter.
4 Tacitus has expressed his opinion, in a passage very frequently quoted, that such a distribution of power as the theory of the British constitution exhibits is merely a subject of bright speculation, “a system more easily praised than practised, and which, even could it happen to exist, would certainly not prove permanent;” and, in truth, a review of England’s annals would dispose us to agree with the great historian’s remark. For we find that at no period whatever has this balance of the three estates existed; that the nobles predominated till the policy of Henry VII, and his successor reduced their weight by breaking up the feudal system of property; that the power of the Crown became then supreme and absolute, till the bold encroachments of the Commons subverted the fabric altogether; that the alternate ascendency of prerogative and privilege distracted the period which followed the Restoration; and that lastly, the Acts of 1688, by laying the foundation of an unbounded court- influence, have secured a preponderance to the Throne, which every succeeding year increases. So that the vaunted British constitution has never perhaps existed but in mere theory.
5 The last great wound given to the feudal system was the Act of the 12th of Charles II, which abolished the tenure of knight’s service in capite, and which Blackstone compares, for its salutary influence upon property, to the boasted provisions of Magna Charta itself. Yet even in this act we see the effects of that counteracting spirit which has contrived to weaken every effort of the English nation towards liberty.
6 “They drove so fast [says Wellwood of the ministers of Charles I.], that it was no wonder that the wheels and chariot broke.” — (Memoirs .)
7 Among those auxiliaries which the Revolution of 1688 marshalled on the side of the Throne, the bugbear of Popery has not been the least convenient and serviceable. Those unskilful tyrants, Charles and James, instead of profiting by that useful subserviency which has always distinguished the ministers of our religious establishment, were so infatuated as to plan the ruin of this best bulwark of their power and moreover connected their designs upon the Church so undisguisedly with their attacks upon the Constitution that they identified in the minds of the people the interests of their religion and their liberties. During those times therefore “No Popery” was the watchword of freedom and served to keep the public spirit awake against the invasions of bigotry and prerogative.
8 “It is a scandal [said Sir Charles Sedley in William’s reign] that a government so sick at heart as ours is should look so well in the face.”
9 The senate still continued, during the reign of Tiberius, to manage all the business of the public: the money was then and long after coined by their authority, and every other public affair received their sanction.
10 There is something very touching in what Tacitus tells us of the hopes that revived in a few patriot bosoms, when the death of Augustus was near approaching, and the fond expectation with which they already began “bona libertatis incassum disserere.”
11 Andrew Marvell, the honest opposer of the court during the reign of Charles the
Second, and the last member of parliament who, according to the ancient mode, took wages from his constituents. The Commons have, since then, much changed their pay-masters.
12 According to Xenophon, the chief circumstance which recommended these creatures to the service of Eastern princes was the ignominious station they held in society, and the probability of their being, upon this account, more devoted to the will and caprice of a master, from whose notice alone they derived consideration, and in whose favor they might seek refuge from the general contempt of mankind.
13 Among the many measures, which, since the Revolution, have contributed to increase the influence of the Throne, and to feed up this “Aaron’s serpent” of the constitution to its present healthy and respectable magnitude, there have been few more nutritive than the Scotch and Irish Unions.
INTOLERANCE, A SATIRE.
“This clamor which pretends to be raised for the safety of religion has almost worn put the very appearance of it, and rendered us not only the most divided but the most immoral people upon the face of the earth.”
ADDISON, Freeholder, No. 37.
Start not, my friend, nor think the Muse will stain
Her classic fingers with the dust profane
Of Bulls, Decrees and all those thundering scrolls
Which took such freedom once with royal souls,1
When heaven was yet the pope’s exclusive trade,
And kings were damned as fast as now they’re made,
No, no — let Duigenan search the papal chair
For fragrant treasures long forgotten there;
And, as the witch of sunless Lapland thinks
That little swarthy gnomes delight in stinks,
Let sallow Perceval snuff up the gale
Which wizard Duigenan’s gathered sweets exhale.
Enough for me whose heart has learned to scorn
Bigots alike in Rome or England born,
Who loathe the venom whence-soe’er it springs,
From popes or lawyers,2 pastrycooks or kings, —
Enough for me to laugh and weep by turns,
As mirth provokes or indignation burns,
As Canning Vapors or as France succeeds,
As Hawkesbury proses, or as Ireland bleeds!
And thou, my friend, if, in these headlong days,
When bigot Zeal her drunken antics plays
So near a precipice, that men the while
Look breathless on and shudder while they smile —
If in such fearful days thou’lt dare to look
To hapless Ireland, to this rankling nook
Which Heaven hath freed from poisonous things in vain,
While Gifford’s tongue and Musgrave’s pen remain —
If thou hast yet no golden blinkers got
To shade thine eyes from this devoted spot,
Whose wrongs tho’ blazoned o’er the world they be,
Placemen alone are privileged not to see —
Oh! turn awhile, and tho’ the shamrock wreathes
My homely harp, yet shall the song it breathes
Of Ireland’s slavery and of Ireland’s woes
Live when the memory of her tyrant foes
Shall but exist, all future knaves to warn,
Embalmed in hate and canonized by scorn.
When Castlereagh in sleep still more profound
Than his own opiate tongue now deals around,
Shall wait the impeachment of that awful day
Which even his practised hand can’t bribe away.
Yes, my dear friend, wert thou but near me now,
To see how Spring lights up on Erin’s brow
Smiles that shine out unconquerably fair
Even thro’ the blood-marks left by Camden there, — 3
Couldst thou but see what verdure paints the sod
Which none but tyrants and their slaves have trod,
And didst thou know the spirit, kind and brave,
That warms the soul of each insulted slave,
Who tired with struggling sinks beneath his lot
And seems by all but watchful France forgot — 4
Thy heart would burn — yes, even thy Pittite heart
Would burn to think that such a blooming part
Of the world’s garden, rich in nature’s charms
And filled with social souls and vigorous arms,
Should be the victim of that canting crew,
So smooth, so godly, — yet so devilish too;
Who, armed at once with prayer-books and with whips,
Blood on their hands and Scripture on their lips,
Tyrants by creed and tortures by text,
Make this life hell in honor of the next!
Your Redesdales, Percevals, — great, glorious Heaven,
If I’m presumptuous, be my tongue forgiven,
When here I swear by my soul’s hope of rest,
I’d rather have been born ere man was blest
With the pure dawn of Revelation’s light,
Yes, — rather plunge me back in Pagan night,
And take my chance with Socrates for bliss,5
Than be the Christian of a faith like this,
Which builds on heavenly cant its earthly sway
And in a convert mourns to lose a prey;
Which, grasping human hearts with double hold, —
Like Danäe’s lover mixing god and gold,6 —
Corrupts both state and church and makes an oath
The knave and atheist’s passport into both;
Which, while it dooms dissenting souls to know
Nor bliss above nor liberty below,
Adds the slave’s suffering to the sinner’s fear,
And lest he ‘scape hereafter racks him here!
But no — far other faith, far milder beams
Of heavenly justice warm the Christian’s dreams;
His creed is writ on Mercy’s page above,
By the pure hands of all-atoning Love;
He weeps to see abused Religion twine
Round Tyranny’s coarse brow her wreath divine;
And he, while round him sects and nations raise
To the one God their varying notes of praise,
Blesses each voice, whate’er its tone may be,
That serves to swell the general harmony.7
Such was the spirit, gently, grandly bright,
That filled, oh Fox! thy peaceful soul with light;
While free and spacious as that ambient air
Which folds our planet in its circling care,
The mighty sphere of thy transparent mind
Embraced the world, and breathed for all mankind.
Last of the great, farewell! — yet not the last —
Tho’ Britain’s sunshine hour with thee be past,
Ierne still one ray of glory gives
And feels but half thy loss while Grattan lives.
1 The king-deposing doctrine, notwithstanding its many mischievous absurdities, was of no little service to the cause of political liberty, by inculcating the right of resistance to tyrants and asserting the will of the people to be the only true fountain of power.
2 When Innocent X. was entreated to decide the controversy between the Jesuits and the Jansenists, he answered, that “he had been bred a lawyer, and had therefore nothing to do with divinity.” It were to be wished that some of our English pettifoggers knew their own fit element as well as Pope Innocent X.
3 Not the Camden who speaks thus of Ireland:— “To wind up all, whether we regard the fruitfulness of the soil, the advantage of the sea, with so many commodious havens, or the natives themselves, who are warlike, ingenious, handsome, and well-complexioned, soft-skinned and very nimble, by reason of the pliantness of their muscles, this Island is in many respects so happy, that Giraldus might very well say, ‘Nature had regarded with more favorable eyes than ordinary this Kingdom of Zephyr.’”
4 The example of toleration, which Bonaparte has held
forth, will, I fear, produce no other effect than that of determining the British government to persist, from the very spirit of opposition, in their own old system of intolerance and injustice: just as the Siamese blacken their teeth, “because,” as they say, “the devil has white ones.”
5 In a singular work, written by one Franciscus Collius, “upon the Souls of the Pagans,” the author discusses, with much coolness and erudition, all the probable chances of salvation upon which a heathen philosopher might calculate. Consigning to perdition without much difficulty Plato, Socrates, etc., the only sage at whose fate he seems to hesitate is Pythagoras, in consideration of his golden thigh, and the many miracles which he performed. But having balanced a little his claims and finding reason to father all these miracles on the devil, he at length, in the twenty-fifth chapter, decides upon damning him also.
6 Mr. Fox, in his Speech on the Repeal of the Test Act (1790), thus condemns the intermixture of religion with the political constitution of a state:— “What purpose [he asks] can it serve, except the baleful purpose of communicating and receiving contamination? Under such an alliance corruption must alight upon the one, and slavery overwhelm the other.”
7 Both Bayle and Locke would have treated the subject of Toleration in a manner much more worthy of themselves and of the cause if they had written in an age less distracted by religious prejudices.
THE SCEPTIC, A PHILOSOPHICAL SATIRE.
PREFACE.
The Sceptical Philosophy of the Ancients has been no less misrepresented than the Epicurean. Pyrrho may perhaps have carried it to rather an irrational excess; — but we must not believe with Beattie all the absurdities imputed to this philosopher; and it appears to me that the doctrines of the school, as explained by Sextus Empiricus, are far more suited to the wants and infirmities of human reason as well as more conducive to the mild virtues of humility and patience, than any of those systems of philosophy which preceded the introduction of Christianity. The Sceptics may be said to have held a middle path between the Dogmatists and Academicians; the former of whom boasted that they had attained the truth while the latter denied that any attainable truth existed. The Sceptics however, without either asserting or denying its existence, professed to be modestly and anxiously in search of it; or, as St. Augustine expresses it, in his liberal tract against the Manichaeans, “nemo nostrum dicat jam se invenisse veritatem; sic eam quoeramus quasi ab utrisque nesciatur.” From this habit of impartial investigation and the necessity which it imposed upon them of studying not only every system of philosophy but every art and science which professed to lay its basis in truth, they necessarily took a wider range of erudition and were far more travelled in the regions of philosophy than those whom conviction or bigotry had domesticated in any particular system. It required all the learning of dogmatism to overthrow the dogmatism of learning; and the Sceptics may be said to resemble in this respect that ancient incendiary who stole from the altar the fire with which he destroyed the temple. This advantage over all the other sects is allowed to them even by Lipsius, whose treatise on the miracles of the Virgo Hallensis will sufficiently save him from all suspicion of scepticism. “labore, ingenio, memoria,” he says, “supra omnes pene philosophos fuisse. — quid nonne omnia aliorum secta tenere debuerunt et inquirere, si poterunt refellere? res dicit nonne orationes varias, raras, subtiles inveniri ad tam receptas, claras, certas (ut videbatur) sententias evertendas?” etc.— “Manuduct. ad Philosoph. Stoic.” Dissert. 4.
