History of Civilization in England, Vol. 1 of 3

Such are some of the benefits which European trade owes to the paternal care of European legislators. But worse still remains behind. For the economical evils, great as they were, have been far surpassed by the moral evils which this system produced. The first inevitable consequence was, that, in every part of Europe, there arose numerous and powerful gangs of armed smugglers, who lived by disobeying the laws which their ignorant rulers had imposed. These men, desperate from the fear of punishment,418 and accustomed to the commission of every crime, contaminated the surrounding population; introduced into peaceful villages vices formerly unknown; caused the ruin of entire families; spread, wherever they came, drunkenness, theft, and dissoluteness; and familiarized their associates with those coarse and swinish debaucheries which were the natural habits of so vagrant and lawless a life.419 The innumerable crimes arising from this,420 are directly chargeable upon the European governments by whom they were provoked. The offences were caused by the laws; and now that the laws are repealed, the offences have disappeared. But it will hardly be pretended, that the interests of civilization have been advanced by such a policy as this. It will hardly be pretended, that we owe much to a system which, having called into existence a new class of criminals, at length retraces its steps; and, though it thus puts an end to the crime, only destroys what its own acts had created.

It is unnecessary to say, that these remarks do not affect the real services rendered to society by every tolerably organized government. In all countries, a power of punishing crime, and of framing laws, must reside somewhere; otherwise the nation is in a state of anarchy. But the accusation which the historian is bound to bring against every government which has hitherto existed is, that it has overstepped its proper functions, and, at each step, has done incalculable harm. The love of exercising power has been found to be so universal, that no class of men who have possessed authority have been able to avoid abusing it. To maintain order, to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak, and to adopt certain precautions respecting the public health, are the only services which any government can render to the interests of civilization. That these are services of immense value, no one will deny; but it cannot be said, that by them civilization is advanced, or the progress of Man accelerated. All that is done is, to afford the opportunity of progress; the progress itself must depend upon other matters. And that this is the sound view of legislation, is, moreover, evident from the fact, that as knowledge is becoming more diffused, and as an increasing experience is enabling each successive generation better to understand the complicated relations of life; just in the same proportion are men insisting upon the repeal of those protective laws, the enactment of which was deemed by politicians to be the greatest triumph of political foresight.

Seeing, therefore, that the efforts of government in favour of civilization are, when most successful, altogether negative; and seeing too, that when those efforts are more than negative, they become injurious, – it clearly follows, that all speculations must be erroneous which ascribe the progress of Europe to the wisdom of its rulers. This is an inference which rests not only on the arguments already adduced, but on facts which might be multiplied from every page of history. For no government having recognized its proper limits, the result is, that every government has inflicted on its subjects great injuries; and has done this nearly always with the best intentions. The effects of its protective policy in injuring trade, and, what is far worse, in increasing crime, have just been noticed; and to these instances, innumerable others might be added. Thus, during many centuries, every government thought it was its bounden duty to encourage religious truth, and discourage religious error. The mischief this has produced is incalculable. Putting aside all other considerations, it is enough to mention its two leading consequences; which are, the increase of hypocrisy, and the increase of perjury. The increase of hypocrisy is the inevitable result of connecting any description of penalty with the profession of particular opinions. Whatever may be the case with individuals, it is certain that the majority of men find an extreme difficulty in long resisting constant temptation. And when the temptation comes to them in the shape of honour and emolument, they are too often ready to profess the dominant opinions, and abandon, not indeed their belief, but the external marks by which that belief is made public. Every man who takes this step is a hypocrite; and every government which encourages this step to be taken, is an abettor of hypocrisy and a creator of hypocrites. Well, therefore, may we say, that when a government holds out as a bait, that those who profess certain opinions shall enjoy certain privileges, it plays the part of the tempter of old, and, like the Evil One, basely offers the good things of this world to him who will change his worship and deny his faith. At the same time, and as a part of this system, the increase of perjury has accompanied the increase of hypocrisy. For legislators, plainly seeing that proselytes thus obtained could not be relied upon, have met the danger by the most extraordinary precautions; and compelling men to confirm their belief by repeated oaths, have thus sought to protect the old creed against the new converts. It is this suspicion as to the motives of others, which has given rise to oaths of every kind and in every direction. In England, even the boy at college is forced to swear about matters which he cannot understand, and which far riper minds are unable to master. If he afterwards goes into Parliament, he must again swear about his religion; and at nearly every stage of political life he must take fresh oaths; the solemnity of which is often strangely contrasted with the trivial functions to which they are the prelude. A solemn adjuration of the Deity being thus made at every turn, it has happened, as might have been expected, that oaths, enjoined as a matter of course, have at length degenerated into a matter of form. What is lightly taken, is easily broken. And the best observers of English society, – observers too whose characters are very different, and who hold the most opposite opinions, – are all agreed on this, that the perjury habitually practised in England, and of which government is the immediate creator, is so general, that it has become a source of national corruption, has diminished the value of human testimony, and shaken the confidence which men naturally place in the word of their fellow-creatures.421

The open vices, and, what is much more dangerous, the hidden corruption, thus generated in the midst of society by the ignorant interference of Christian rulers, is indeed a painful subject; but it is one which I could not omit in an analysis of the causes of civilization. It would be easy to push the inquiry still further, and to show how legislators, in every attempt they have made to protect some particular interests, and uphold some particular principles, have not only failed, but have brought about results diametrically opposite to those which they proposed. We have seen that their laws in favour of industry have injured industry; that their laws in favour of religion have increased hypocrisy; and that their laws to secure truth have encouraged perjury. Exactly in the same way, nearly every country has taken steps to prevent usury, and keep down the interest of money; and the invariable effect has been to increase usury, and raise the interest of money. For, since no prohibition, however stringent, can destroy the natural relation between demand and supply, it has followed, that when some men want to borrow, and other men want to lend, both parties are sure to find means of evading a law which interferes with their mutual rights.422 If the two parties were left to adjust their own bargain undisturbed, the usury would depend on the circumstances of the loan; such as the amount of security, and the chance of repayment. But this natural arrangement has been complicated by the interference of government.423 A certain risk being always incurred by those who disobey the law, the usurer, very properly, refuses to lend his money unless he is also compensated for the danger he is in from the penalty hanging over him. This compensation can only be made by the borrower, who is thus obliged to pay what in reality is a double interest: one interest for the natural risk on the loan, and another interest for the extra risk from the law. Such, then, is the position in which every European legislature has placed itself. By enactments against usury, it has increased what it wished to destroy; it has passed laws, which the imperative necessities of men compel them to violate: while, to wind up the whole, the penalty for such violation falls on the borrowers; that is, on the very class in whose favour the legislators interfered.424

In the same meddling spirit, and with the same mistaken notions of protection, the great Christian governments have done other things still more injurious. They have made strenuous and repeated efforts to destroy the liberty of the press, and prevent men from expressing their sentiments on the most important questions in politics and religion. In nearly every country, they, with the aid of the church, have organized a vast system of literary police; the sole object of which is, to abrogate the undoubted right of every citizen to lay his opinions before his fellow-citizens. In the very few countries where they have stopped short of these extreme steps, they have had recourse to others less violent, but equally unwarrantable. For even where they have not openly forbidden the free dissemination of knowledge, they have done all that they could to check it. On all the implements of knowledge, and on all the means by which it is diffused, such as paper, books, political journals, and the like, they have imposed duties so heavy, that they could hardly have done worse if they had been the sworn advocates of popular ignorance. Indeed, looking at what they have actually accomplished, it may be emphatically said, that they have taxed the human mind. They have made the very thoughts of men pay toll. Whoever wishes to communicate his ideas to others, and thus do what he can to increase the stock of our acquirements, must first pour his contributions into the imperial exchequer. That is the penalty inflicted on him for instructing his fellow-creatures. That is the blackmail which government extorts from literature; and on receipt of which it accords its favour, and agrees to abstain from further demands. And what causes all this to be the more insufferable, is the use which is made of these and similar exactions, wrung from every kind of industry, both bodily and mental. It is truly a frightful consideration, that knowledge is to be hindered, and that the proceeds of honest labour, of patient thought, and sometimes of profound genius, are to be diminished, in order that a large part of their scanty earnings may go to swell the pomp of an idle and ignorant court, minister to the caprice of a few powerful individuals, and too often supply them with the means of turning against the people resources which the people called into existence.

These, and the foregoing statements, respecting the effects produced on European society by political legislation, are not doubtful or hypothetical inferences, but are such as every reader of history may verify for himself. Indeed, some of them are still acting in England; and, in one country or another, the whole of them may be seen in full force. When put together, they compose an aggregate so formidable, that we may well wonder how, in the face of them, civilization has been able to advance. That, under such circumstances, it has advanced, is a decisive proof of the extraordinary energy of Man; and justifies a confident belief, that as the pressure of legislation is diminished, and the human mind less hampered, the progress will continue with accelerated speed. But it is absurd, it would be a mockery of all sound reasoning, to ascribe to legislation any share in the progress; or to expect any benefit from future legislators, except that sort of benefit which consists in undoing the work of their predecessors. This is what the present generation claims at their hands; and it should be remembered that what one generation solicits as a boon, the next generation demands as a right. And, when the right is pertinaciously refused, one of two things has always happened: either the nation has retrogaded, or else the people have risen. Should the government remain firm, this is the cruel dilemma in which men are placed. If they submit, they injure their country; if they rebel, they may injure it still more. In the ancient monarchies of the East, their usual plan was to yield; in the monarchies of Europe, it has been to resist. Hence those insurrections and rebellions which occupy so large a space in modern history, and which are but repetitions of the old story, the undying struggle between oppressors and oppressed. It would, however, be unjust to deny, that in one country the fatal crisis has now for several generations been successfully averted. In one European country, and in one alone, the people have been so strong and the government so weak, that the history of legislation, taken as a whole, is, notwithstanding a few aberrations, the history of slow, but constant concession: reforms which would have been refused to argument, have been yielded from fear; while from the steady increase of democratic opinions, protection after protection, and privilege after privilege, have, even in our time, been torn away; until the old institutions, though they retain their former name, have lost their former vigour, and there no longer remains a doubt as to what their fate must ultimately be. Nor need we add, that in this same country, where, more than in any other of Europe, legislators are the exponents and the servants of the popular will, the progress has, on this account, been more undeviating than elsewhere; there has been neither anarchy nor revolution; and the world has been made familiar with the great truth, that one main condition of the prosperity of a people is, that its rulers shall have very little power, that they shall exercise that power very sparingly, and that they shall by no means presume to raise themselves into supreme judges of the national interests, or deem themselves authorized to defeat the wishes of those for whose benefit alone they occupy the post entrusted to them.

CHAPTER VI

ORIGIN OF HISTORY, AND STATE OF HISTORICAL LITERATURE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES

I have now laid before the reader an examination of those conspicuous circumstances to which the progress of civilization is commonly ascribed; and I have proved that such circumstances, so far from being the cause of civilization, are at best only its effects; and that although religion, literature, and legislation do, undoubtedly, modify the condition of mankind, they are still more modified by it. Indeed, as we have clearly seen, they, even in their most favourable position, can be but secondary agents; because, however beneficial their apparent influence may be, they are themselves the product of preceding changes, and their results will vary according to the variations of the society on which they work.

It is thus that, by each successive analysis, the field of the present inquiry has been narrowed, until we have found reason to believe that the growth of European civilization is solely due to the progress of knowledge, and that the progress of knowledge depends on the number of truths which the human intellect discovers, and on the extent to which they are diffused. In support of this proposition, I have, as yet, only brought forward such general arguments as establish a very strong probability; which, to raise to a certainty, will require an appeal to history in the widest sense of the term. Thus to verify speculative conclusions by an exhaustive enumeration of the most important particular facts, is the task which I purpose to execute so far as my powers will allow; and in the preceding chapter I have briefly stated the method according to which the investigation will be conducted. Besides this, it has appeared to me that the principles which I have laid down may also be tested by a mode of proceeding which I have not yet mentioned, but which is intimately connected with the subject now before us. This is, to incorporate with an inquiry into the progress of the history of Man, another inquiry into the progress of History itself. By this means, great light will be thrown on the movements of society; since there must always be a connexion between the way in which men contemplate the past, and the way in which they contemplate the present; both views being in fact different forms of the same habits of thought, and therefore presenting, in each age, a certain sympathy and correspondence with each other. It will, moreover, be found, that such an inquiry into what I call the history of history, will establish two leading facts of considerable value. The first fact is, that during the last three centuries, historians, taken as a class, have shown a constantly increasing respect for the human intellect, and an aversion for those innumerable contrivances by which it was formerly shackled. The second fact is, that during the same period, they have displayed a growing tendency to neglect matters once deemed of paramount importance, and have been more willing to attend to subjects connected with the condition of the people and the diffusion of knowledge. These two facts will be decisively established in the present Introduction; and it must be admitted, that their existence corroborates the principles which I have propounded. If it can be ascertained, that as society has improved, historical literature has constantly tended in one given direction, there arises a very strong probability in favour of the truth of those views towards which it is manifestly approaching. Indeed, it is a probability of this sort which makes it so important for the student of any particular science to be acquainted with its history; because there is always a fair presumption that when general knowledge is advancing, any single department of it, if studied by competent men, is also advancing, even when the results may have been so small as to seem unworthy of attention. Hence it becomes highly important to observe the way in which, during successive ages, historians have shifted their ground; since we shall find that such changes have in the long-run always pointed to the same quarter, and are, in reality, only part of that vast movement by which the human intellect, with infinite difficulty, has vindicated its own rights, and slowly emancipated itself from those inveterate prejudices which long impeded its action.

With a view to these considerations, it seems advisable that, when examining the different civilizations into which the great countries of Europe have diverged, I should also give an account of the way in which history has been commonly written in each country. In the employment of this resource, I shall be mainly guided by a desire to illustrate the intimate connexion between the actual condition of a people and their opinions respecting the past; and, in order to keep this connexion in sight, I shall treat the state of historical literature, not as a separate subject, but as forming part of the intellectual history of each nation. The present volume will contain a view of the principal characteristics of French civilization until the great Revolution; and with that there will be incorporated an account of the French historians, and of the remarkable improvements they introduced into their own departments of knowledge. The relation which these improvements bore to the state of society from which they proceeded, is very striking, and will be examined at some length; while, in the next volume, the civilization and the historical literature of the other leading countries will be treated in a similar manner. Before, however, entering into these different subjects, it has occurred to me, that a preliminary inquiry into the origin of European history would be interesting, as supplying information respecting matters which are little known, and also as enabling the reader to understand the extreme difficulty with which history has reached its present advanced, but still very imperfect, state. The materials for studying the earliest condition of Europe have long since perished; but the extensive information we now possess concerning barbarous nations will supply us with a useful resource, because they have all much in common; the opinions of extreme ignorance being, indeed, every where the same, except when modified by the differences which nature presents in various countries. I have, therefore, no hesitation in employing the evidence which has been collected by competent travellers, and drawing inferences from it respecting that period of the European mind, of which we have no direct knowledge. Such conclusions will, of course, be speculative; but, during the last thousand years, we are quite independent of them, inasmuch as every great country has had chroniclers of its own since the ninth century, while the French have an uninterrupted series since the sixth century. In the present chapter, I intend to give specimens of the way in which, until the sixteenth century, history was habitually written by the highest European authorities. Its subsequent improvement during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, will be related under the separate heads of the countries where the progress was made; and as history, previous to the improvement, was little else than a tissue of the grossest errors, I will, in the first place, examine the leading causes of its universal corruption, and indicate the steps by which it was so disfigured that, during several centuries, Europe did not possess a single man who had critically studied the past, or who was even able to record with tolerable accuracy the events of his own time.

At a very early period in the progress of a people, and long before they are acquainted with the use of letters, they feel the want of some resource, which in peace may amuse their leisure, and in war may stimulate their courage. This is supplied to them by the invention of ballads; which form the groundwork of all historical knowledge, and which, in one shape or another, are found among some of the rudest tribes of the earth. They are, for the most part, sung by a class of men whose particular business it is thus to preserve the stock of traditions. Indeed, so natural is this curiosity as to past events, that there are few nations to whom these bards or minstrels are unknown. Thus, to select a few instances, it is they who have preserved the popular traditions, not only of Europe,425 but also of China, Tibet, and Tartary;426 likewise of India,427 of Scinde,428 of Belochistan,429 of Western Asia,430 of the islands of the Black Sea,431 of Egypt,432 of Western Africa,433 of North America,434 of South America,435 and of the islands in the Pacific.436

In all these countries, letters were long unknown; and, as a people in that state have no means of perpetuating their history except by oral tradition, they select the form best calculated to assist their memory; and it will, I believe, be found that the first rudiments of knowledge consist always of poetry, and often of rhyme.437 The jingle pleases the ear of the barbarian, and affords a security that he will hand it down to his children in the unimpaired state in which he received it.438 This guarantee against error increases still further the value of these ballads; and instead of being considered as a mere amusement, they rise to the dignity of judicial authorities.439 The allusions contained in them, are satisfactory proofs to decide the merits of rival families, or even to fix the limits of those rude estates which such a society can possess. We therefore find, that the professed reciters and composers of these songs are the recognized judges in all disputed matters; and as they are often priests, and believed to be inspired, it is probably in this way that the notion of the divine origin of poetry first arose.440 These ballads will, of course, vary, according to the customs and temperaments of the different nations, and according to the climate to which they are accustomed. In the south they assume a passionate and voluptuous form; in the north they are rather remarkable for their tragic and warlike character.441 But, notwithstanding these diversities, all such productions have one feature in common. They are not only founded on truth, but making allowance for the colourings of poetry, they are all strictly true. Men who are constantly repeating songs which they constantly hear, and who appeal to the authorized singers of them as final umpires in disputed questions, are not likely to be mistaken on matters, in the accuracy of which they have so lively an interest.442