The Press.
London, England, 1858-07-03 00:00:00

THE PRESS, JULY 3, 1858.

immediate dread of Popery and tyranny was re-
moved, the English people would not resume
their natural allegiance to monarchical principles.
Professor Smyth is right enough in saying that
the two first Georges were not in any bondage to
their Ministers, and that, therefore, it cannot be
properly said that George 111. emancipated him-
self from a thraldom which, in fact, never ex-
isted. True ; but what kind of power was it
that the two first Georges exercised, and by what
unholy compact was it held ? The King agreed
to surrender the management of our domestic
policy into the hands of the Whigs, provided the
Whigs would permit him to pursue a German
policy abroad. There was no thraldom here, of
course, for either party; but then it was a state
of things which could only be regarded, at the
best, as a necessary evil, to be abrogated the
moment it could be done with security. To
exclude the Stuarts, it was necessary to maintain
the Guelphs; to maintain the Guelphs, it was
necessary to humour their Hanoverian sympa-
thies. But when that necessity was over, the
English people welcomed back an English King
to the exercise of those functions which attached
to the national sovereignty. " The principles of
the Revolution" did not consist in having a
King of England who cared for nothing English,
and was content to ignore his real position. All
that they established was, that no King of
England could govern in defiance of the will of
Parliament. They never meant that Parliament
was to govern in defiance of the King's will. And
that this was the general interpretation placed
upon them by the people of this country is evident
from the popular support accorded to the King's
Government for an unbroken period of half a
century. This is a salient fact which cannot be
got over. The abstract excellence of any system
of government is one thing ; its agreement with
the feelings of those for whose sake it is admi-
nistered is another. Any Government which
fulfils the latter condition is, in the only practical
sense of the word, a good Government. And
when, therefore, it is argued against George 111.
that he supported the American war, and op-
posed Roman Catholic emancipation, it seems to
be quite overlooked that had he not done both
he would have been acting on the very same
theory of government which the Revolution was
intended to destroy. When, therefore, Mr.
Massey writes in such a strain as the following,
he is really, if we may say so, putting the cart
before the horse :
The Catholic question served the purposes of George
HI. for the remainder of his reign. It. enabled him to
form and break up administrations, to gratify personal
malice, and to exclude from the public service some of the
foremost statesmen in the country. His mind, like that
of James 11., was so constituted as to be incapable of
derising a practical lesson from experience; and had he
lived and governed in 1829, he would, probably, have
risked a far more dangerous dismemberment of the empire
than that of 1783, before he would have permitted the
Duke of Norfolk or Mr. O'Connell to take their seats in
the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

It is not so much that the Catholic question
served the purposes of George 111. as that
George 111. served the purposes of the English
Protestants. As his own opinions happened, un-
fortunately, to agree with those of the vast
majority of his subjects, they preserved a cordial
understanding with each other to the end of his
reign. But this is twisted by Mr. Massey into a
deliberate scheme on the King's part to adopt
popular prejudices for the sake of being able
"to gratify his personal malice"; while he is
said to have imitated James 11., by doing, in
obedience to the popular wish, the exact re-
verse of what that Sovereign had tried to do in
defiance of it. These arguments are as logical as
they are generous, and as unworthy of Mr.
Massey as they are contrary to the known cha-
racter of the King. Not even George lll.'s
enemies have denied that he acted conscien-
tiously, and it was the confidence which lie
thus inspired, as much as the principles he
professed, which contributed to his long popu-
larity.
We have said that where Mr. Massey is free
from the influence of the most powerful kind of
prejudices, he is frequently sensible and shrewd.
His remarks on the partition of Poland in 1772
are an instance of this. He thinks, and in our
opinion very justly, that it was impossible for this
country to interfere. We, indeed, go even
further than he does, for we think that even
France and England united would have

631

been no match in those days for Austria,
Prussia, and Russia on their own ground.
But however that might have been, it
is clear that the partition was in accordance with
the foreign policy which Great Britain had long
been pursuing, and of which Chatham was the
great exponent. The statesmen of that day are
not to be blamed if they did not see seventy years
before them, or if they overrated the terrors of a
power which was the traditional enemy to the
liberties of Europe. The " Humiliation of the
House of Bourbon" had, in their time, become
an empty phrase ; but they could not, perhaps,
be expected to see it. A hundred and twenty
years before the same thing was said about
Spain ; and the Peace of the Pyrenees was
grounded on the same erroneous theory that
induced English statesmen to wink at the parti-
tion of Poland. France then stood in the same
relation to Spain that Russia now stood in to
France—her as yet unacknowledged successor to
the predominant place in Europe. Nobody in
either case saw the truth—neither Cromwell in
the one, nor Chatham in the other. It is pos-
sible, indeed, that each may have been blinded by
special prejudices—Cromwell by his indignation
with Spain for protecting the Stuarts and their
adherents; Chatham by the fact that his reputa-
tion was principally founded on his great struggle
with France. But still the analogy is a curious
one, and only serves to show how rare, after all,
is true political foresight, and how little claim
can be advanced by the greatest statesmen to a
freedom from popular illusions.
Mr. Massey's sketches of society and literature
during the present period are spirited and graphic,
though they show a closer imitation of Lord Ma-
caulay than he has any right to indulge in.
Witness the following :

The curate of the seventeenth, and the first half st least
of the eighteenth century, in point of education, was little
above his flock ; and, in social position, he was certainly
below the yeomen and tradesmen of the parish. He was
often obliged to eke out a subsistence for his ragged and
half-starved family by the labour of his hands : and his
children were brought up to earn their bread by servile
labour. The vices and foibles incident to a position
theoretically one of dignity and authority, but iii which
it was really difficult to maintain sell-respect, were the
constant theme of ridicule to the satirists of the age. The
higher ranks of the clergy, though free from the degrading
influences of abject poverty, seldom fulfilled the duties,
or ever regarded much the outward decencies of their
calling. The rector or vicar was often a pluralist, and,
therefore, an absentee; or, if he lived upon his vlebe, he
was a kind of ecclesiastical squire, differing only from
other country gentlemen in the discharge of the formal
duties of his offic. He joined in carouses and field.
sports ; and his presence rarely imposed any restraint on
the conversation or indulgence of the festive board. On
Sunday the service was hurried over, terminating, perhaps,
in a sermon affectedly learned and abstruse. The daily
attendance on his parishioners, which is now considered by
every conscientious clergyman the most important part of
his duties, was wholly neglected by the incumbents who
flourished in the early years of the Hanover succession;
and, even down to a much later period, the jovial rector,
if called upon to perform o duty on a week-day, might be
seen homing over the office of matrimony or burial in a
surplice carelessly thrown beer a hunting frock or other
equipment Thr the field.

The man of fashion of this period was a compound of
effeminacy and affectation. He painted and perfumed
like a woman. His toilet occupied a great proportion of
his time; his dress was of the most costly materials, and
the most fantastic pattern.. Silks and brocades, em•
broidery, gold-lace and jewellery, adorned his person, both
in morning and evening costume. He seldom stirred
abroad on foot, except to take a turn in the Mall ; and if
he bad to cr)ss the street only from his lodging to
a tavern, he was conveyed in a chair. Gaming was his
chief employment; gallantry occupied the hours which
could be spared from dress and play. He had made the
grand tour, and consequently knew the world. Of books
he knew little or nothing. Men of education he called
" prigs " and " pedants." The only literature which he
cultivated was plays, novels, lampoons, or tracts in ridicule
of religion.

With Mr. Massey's literary opinions we often
disagree. his estimate of Junius in the first
volume has not, we think, commanded general
assent. Ills account of Foote in the present
volume stands in marked contrast with the essay
of Mr. Forster on the same subject. We are,
indeed, tempted to believe that Mr. Massey has
not read this essay, or he would scarcely have
stated as a well-known fact what that careful and
laborious writer has not even so much as men-
tioned. We allude to the report that Foote
offered to suppress a libel on the Duchess of
Kingston if she would give him 2,0001. Now,
we allow that the evidence for this report is not
so weak as to justify the contemptuous silence of
Mr. Forster. But certainly the general %in=

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of Foote's contemporaries was unfavourable to it.
His theatre was thronged to overflowing after his
quarrel with the Duchess, whose own character,
as well as that of the instruments she employed,
rendered any amount of false swearing on their
part perfectly credible. Her chaplain made an
affidavit before Sir John Fielding, the magistrate,
to the effect that Foote had used the words attri-
buted to him. And certainly no contradiction of
this affidavit, which was published in the Evening
Post, is to be found in the newspapers of the
period. But, as in the case of the somewhat
similar story about Pope and the Duchess of
Marlborough, we prefer to take the character of
the parties implicated against any evidence which
has yet been brought lbrward.
Mr. Massey's concluding volumes will, he tells
us, be shortly given to the public. But we can
scarcely imagine he will complete his work, as
originally proposed, in four volumes; for the two
first have only carried him through twenty years,
and forty more remain, which are pregnant with
momentous events.

A New Yorker in the Foreign-office, and his
Adventures in Paris. By henry Wikoff.
London : Trabner.
A PERSONAL explanation which has not been
actually demanded by the public voice is seldom
a wise measure, even in the case of a man who
has achieved notoriety and success ; it is almost
certain to be an imprudent one in that of a man
who conies forward for the first time as a vindi-
cator of his own character. Yet such is the part
which Mr. Wikoff has now chosen to play on a
second occasion. lie is the hero of a volume,
which may be in the recollection of many of our
readers, entitled " My Courtship and Its Conse-
quences," and which was as resolute a self-
exposure as we ever remember to have met with.
To have made an audacious and pertinacious at-
tempt to secure the hand of a lady of fortune—
to have hunted her over Europe, bribed her
servants, and generally persecuted her after a
fashion not exceeded by Mr. Deuceace or
Barry Lyndon, and to have signally failed after
all—is an exploit which Mr. Wikoff appeared to
consider rather a feather in his cap, and to have
deemed worthy of commemoration in a full
and circumstantial narrative. To have under-
taken a task requiring a certain amount of deli-
cacy and address, but for which he knew himself
to be by no means fitted—to have neglected to
ascertain the wishes of his employer with regard
to it—to have wielded the weapons of diplomacy
purely according to the light of nature—to have
attempted to pump and circumvent that "old,
old bird," Lord Palmerston (need we say with
what success ?)—and finally to have retired ig-
nominiously from the contest—are matters which
the curious may find set forth at length in the
volume before us, and by the relation of which
he fondly hopes to excite a certain amount of
sympathy and admiration?
Mr. Wikoff was employed by Lord Palmerston
in 1850, at a salary of 5001. a year, in a kind of
secret mission, "to make known clearly through
the medium of the French and United States
press the liberal, and especially the pacific, cha-
racter" of the English Government at that time.
Of this duty he acquitted himself entirely to his
own satisfaction, and we are desired to believe
that he changed public opinion on the above sub-
jects both in Paris and New York. The Foreign
Secretary, however, not so well pleased with him,
gave him his dismissal in the course of about a
year. Finding himself at liberty, he pursued
his matrimonial scheme with such pertinacity
that the lady was finally induced to give him into
the custody of the Sardinian authorities for an
attempt at abduction. The English consul, he
tells us, did his best to forward the prosecution,
and the result was that the unfortunate Mr.
Wikoff passed fifteen months in a Genoese pri-
son—a consummation which he conceives him-
self to owe to the hostility of Lord Palmerston
and his subordinates, whom lie had exasperated
by frequent attempts to obtain some explanation
of the cause of his dismissal.
On the recital of these facts, it may perhaps
seem that Mr. Wikoff was rather hardly used ;
and that the least thing the Foreign-office could
do, even for a discarded servant, was to save him
from the dangerous consequences of having
brought his heiress to bay, and forced her into
as aggressive position. let we are persuaded