UNIVERS TY OF CALIFO NIA SAN DIEGO 
 
 31822019464023
 
 019464023 
 
 Central University Library 
 
 University of California, San Diego 
 Please Note: This item is subject to recall. 
 
 Date Due 
 
 f\ A /*> /^ f 
 
 APR flSbS 
 APR 1 1995 
 
 Cl 39 (7/93) 
 
 UCSD Lb.
 
 LATELY PUBLISHED, 
 
 The Second Edition, with Additions, in 2 vols. post 8v. 18s. 
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT; 
 
 OR, 
 
 MEN AND THINGS IN THE BRITISH CAPITAL. 
 
 " These volumes treat of all subjects connected with London, from the 
 ' forest of masts' in the river, to the eloquence of the corporation from the 
 Chapel of St. Stephen's, to the steam-press in Printing- House Square, men, 
 women, books, and newspapers, every thing in and about London that is 
 worthy of notice in an intellectual point of view. Notliina escapes the eye and 
 the lash of the critic; he insinuates himself into coteries, and collects their 
 foibles; he examines men of every grade and class with an inquisitorial pre- 
 cision, as if he stopped the passengers in the street, one by one, and, after 
 putting his interrogatoiies, sat down to sum up the gentral character. All 
 this is done with an air of philosophical truth, a certain gravity and sedateness, 
 that impart a high tone of moral excellence to the production. lie has studied 
 the character of London and Londoners with acuteness. We think there is no 
 doubt th u the author is a Scotchman; but be he who he may, he has produced 
 two volumes that are highly creditable to his genius.' 1 Atlas. 
 
 LONDON : 
 PRINTED BY S. AND R. BENTLEY, 
 
 Dorset Street, Fleet Street.
 
 OR, A 
 
 SECOND JUDGMENT 
 
 OF 
 
 " BABYLON THE GREAT." 
 
 Aei'ai ffoi TO KPIMA TTJS ir6pvi]S TTJS /j,tya\r)s,Tris KaJd^fJifv^t eirl ruv 
 vSariav T<av iroKXiav. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 
 
 PUBLISHED FOR HENRY COLBURN, 
 
 BY R. BENTLEY ; BELL AND BRADFUTE, EDINBURGH ; 
 AND JOHN GUMMING, DUBLIN. 
 
 1836.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Page 
 
 LEX BABYLONICA. John Bull a devotee to his Laws Ra- 
 ther a blind one Law a marketable commodity The 
 real freedom of Englishmen Evils of arrest Of Pri- 
 vate prosecutors Old Bailey Pleaders ... 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 COURTS AND LAWS. The Coroner of the Tower Hamlets 
 Chancery Swearing Progress of a suit Items of the 
 bill Courts of Law Grounds of action Special 
 Pleading . 30 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 JOHN DOE. Real cause of suicides in November " Fudges" 
 Doe an impostor He keeps dogs, dirty ones Trage- 
 dies James Abbot . . 61
 
 Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Page 
 
 JOHN BULL'S CASTLE. Who may legally break into it, and 
 do illegal things when there Landlords House-agents 
 Tax-gatherers Iniquities of partial Acts of Parliament 89 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 BABYLONIAN BANKING. A novel contrast Bank of Eng- 
 land Babylonian system Scotch system . . .119 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 STOCK EXCHANGE. What it is, and what it does . . 153 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 HEt.LS. Who attend them Their attractions Chances of 
 the games Scenes that have taken place . . . ] 83 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 PIRACIES. Proper name for the upper end of an Alderman 
 Plunder as carried on by divers " Creeping Things 
 after their Kinds" 213 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THEATRES. Pretty full examination of the Theatres 
 A right unseemly and unsavoury subject . 241 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 WISE MEN OF THE BABYLON. To whom the Author payeth 
 court 279
 
 A 
 
 SECOND JUDGMENT 
 
 OF 
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 LEX BA.BYLONICA. 
 
 " Law is a bottomless pit.'' 
 
 ARBUTHNOT. 
 
 THOUGH the law, as emanating from the two 
 housefuls of wise men, of whom I treated largely 
 and gently in my former notice of the mighty 
 City, as raked out of the usages of the many scraps 
 of nations which form the Babylonian popula- 
 tion, and as delved out of that most dark and sin- 
 gular of all mines " the wisdom of their ances- 
 tors," be not the prominent and peculiar type of 
 the Babylon, as distinguished from the rest of the 
 country of which it is the metropolis, yet it meets 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 one at so many points, opens so many trap- 
 doors for catching the cash and comforts of the 
 unweary, and calls so loudly and so experimentally 
 for second thought, before any one should have any 
 thing to do with it, that it seems the very fittest 
 subject to set in the fore-ground of a Second 
 Judgment of the Babylon. 
 
 With all its train, there are probably as many 
 persons connected with the law in the Babylon as, 
 if their prowess be at all equal to their cunning in 
 stratagem, could defend the city against any invad- 
 ing army ; and they, aided by the sapience of the 
 two housefuls aforesaid, have rendered the book 
 of the law so completely a book in an unknown 
 tongue, that no man can read a line of it to profit, 
 without having a lawyer at his elbow. The pro- 
 fession are, indeed, inseparable adjuncts in every 
 transaction of consequence, almost in every event 
 and action of a man's life. It is true that they do 
 not obstetrically bring us into the world, neither do 
 they physic us out of it ; but, if a man's identity 
 his being himself and not any body else be a 
 ground upon which he is at any time to inherit, he 
 must be prepared with legal evidence to show that 
 he is himself ; for in law, the memory, the con- 
 sciousness, and all those matters that the mental 
 philosophers bring forward, in order to convince 
 John that he is John and not Joseph, go for
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 3 
 
 nothing. The man cannot be a witness in his own 
 cause ; and however strong may be his conviction 
 that he is John, and none other but John, yet 
 Joseph he must be, if he cannot find witnesses 
 who shall swear more terribly that he is legally, 
 and according to the statute as well as the usage, 
 John, than others swear the contrary. 
 
 It has sometimes been the custom of nations to 
 venerate their idols in the ratio of their size, some- 
 times in proportion to the number of their parts, and 
 the odd and uncouth way in which they are put 
 together, and sometimes in proportion to the de- 
 structive powers of the being, real or metaphorical, 
 of which the image was the type. This has been the 
 case, not only with the ancient Babylonians, who 
 were dazzled with the altitude and golden head of 
 the idol, without paying any attention to the falling 
 off in the lower extremity, but also with the Egyp- 
 tians, the Hindoos, the Mexicans, and almost every 
 nation which has had things of its own invention 
 and construction to worship. The case is somewhat 
 similar with the Babylonian Law, of which the size 
 is greater, the parts more numerous and more in- 
 congruously put together, and the victims that are 
 daily immolated to it greater, than ever was the 
 case with the most gigantic, the most hideous, the 
 most blood-thirsty idol, that the most wild and 
 savage imagination ever devised. 
 B2
 
 4 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 What with Common Law and Statute Law, 
 Civil Law and Criminal Law, Ecclesiastical Law 
 and Law of the Quorum, with " general customs," 
 " particular customs," " certain particular cus- 
 toms, 1 ' uses, prescriptions, statutes, statutes to ex- 
 plain statutes, statutes to explain the explanations, 
 statutes to amend statutes, other statutes to amend 
 the amendments, rights of persons, and things, 
 and places, privileges of Peers, privileges of the 
 Church, privileges of Corporations and other char- 
 tered and parliamentary knots of persons all of 
 whom have " a little go" in the law-making line 
 themselves, privileges of married women, privi- 
 leges of members of the Commons, privileges of 
 prisoners and bankrupts, with an endless file of 
 other matters, all in duplicates, with a wrong to 
 every right as a foil to set it off, and without 
 which the right would not be known, render the 
 old definition by Arbuthnot, not applicable to the 
 law generally, how well soever it may apply to the 
 cure of any hapless individual that may have the 
 misfortune to fall into it. As for the Common 
 Law the Lex non scripta, it is the most uncom- 
 mon kind of thing that ever existed in any 
 country; being just what any judge, whom future 
 judges may be pleased to consider as an authority, 
 may have chosen to call it ; and if you want to 
 know how it is on any particular point, though the
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 5 
 
 law itself be not written, you are compelled to 
 read as much as the universal history, and may miss 
 what you are in search of after all. Of the written 
 law again, a beggar's cloak is both the true and 
 the admonitory type, all the art of man cannot 
 tell what is a part of the original fabric, or which 
 is *' the master clout. 11 
 
 Why a personage so wise withal, and so little 
 disposed to put his weighty wits a stirring for 
 nothing, as John Bull, should have so interminable 
 and incomprehensible a code of laws is not a lit- 
 tle puzzling. In his ordinary business, John is as 
 quick-sighted as a lynx ; but the moment that law 
 is the subject, John shuts his eyes, puts his hands 
 on his ears, dashes into a crowd of lawyers, and 
 generally comes out with his pocket picked, his 
 head broken, or both. 
 
 A good deal is, no doubt, owing to that dogged- 
 ness in John's character, which makes him stand 
 up so much for any thing that is. Other folks 
 abandon the old fashion when they get the new ; 
 but, in his law at any rate, John keeps them both ; 
 and they sort so oddly together, that the motley is 
 worse than that of any minor fool. 
 
 As for the statute law again, it comes from va- 
 rious sources, and is bent and accommodated to 
 various interests, all of which jostle and run coun- 
 ter to one another. The whole system of private
 
 6 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 statutes, be they for what purpose they may, is 
 nothing else than a series of inroads on the general 
 law of the country, an investing of certain par- 
 ties with powers or privileges which the law does 
 not give to all men in the same rank of life, and 
 which are, consequently, wrongs against the com- 
 mon law, and invasions of the rights of the many 
 for the gain and emolument of the few. 
 
 One cannot altogether tell the deeds that may 
 have been done in former times by those little 
 parliaments the bones and pickings of which are 
 said to have been always equal to the average 
 cost of a contested election in the dark days, and 
 when the public had no knowledge of the matter, and 
 no interest in it ; but some idea of them may, how- 
 ever, be formed from the fact that, in the luminous 
 year 1826, the Grand Junction Water Company, 
 who had taken the public by a regular succession 
 of bills, contrived, in spite of the Chairman of the 
 Commons' Committee (bless him, poor dear imma- 
 culate !) to get a clause inserted into a bill, enabling 
 them to levy three hundred per cent, more upon the 
 public ; and that without taking one single shrimp, 
 barnacle, or horseleech out of the water. Nay, 
 the abundance of creeping things in the water, as 
 given out by the said Grand Junction, was proba- 
 bly the only ground upon which the increase was 
 sought. There is no evidence that any of the
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 7 
 
 finned or feeted things, that are bred in the waters 
 of Babylon, are poisonous ; and, as those that are 
 pastured in such streams as that which, meander- 
 ing through all the flower pots of Brompton, Pim- 
 lico, and Ranelagh, gurgles soft into the wooing 
 river just by where the Grand Junction now have 
 their " dolphin," (and from which junction of 
 streams, and junction of qualities in the waters 
 which they take up, they have their name of Grand 
 Junction : q. d. Ranelagh sewer joined to the 
 Thames ; and the black water thereof, joined to 
 the yellow waves of the former), as these must 
 be, in fine flesh and pride of grease, they are 
 worth something. The value of insect-loaded wa- 
 ter, as compared with water which has not that 
 advantage, is not, however, any part of my present 
 purpose. That is, merely to notice the fact, that 
 in 1826, a clause in a private bill, allowing the 
 public to be charged three hundred per cent, more 
 than they had been charged before, was passed, to 
 the utter horror of the chairman, who stood staring 
 at it with the well-turned eyes of an owl ; and, if 
 he was not dead, he was, for all purposes of opposi- 
 tion to the clause that spell-bound him, as Paddy 
 says, " speechless." 
 
 Another thing that spoils all the working of 
 John Bull's laws, is something which, for want of 
 knowing a better or more descriptive name for it,
 
 8 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 John calls discretion, the which discretion, in as far 
 as the credit of the law and the honest service of 
 the public are concerned, is the least discreet thing 
 that any person could invent. Crippled by this 
 discretion, the law puts one in mind of the peni- 
 tent going lame, limping, and sorrowful, along his 
 expiatory way. The penitent seemed withal a 
 lusty penitent, broad in the shoulders, and well 
 set in the limbs; but he wriggled and hobbled 
 as if he had been put together with pegs and 
 packthread, and groaned as if all the plagues of 
 Egypt had been upon him. Not a plague was 
 there however, not a disease; but the man's 
 understanding rested not on matter as smooth 
 as the soles of his shoes. There was a handful 
 of hard grey pease in each, and they, small and 
 paltry as they were, had mashed the said feet to 
 jelly. Just so, the law of England is an able- 
 bodied law ; but discretionary power is the grey 
 pease under its feet, by which it is wofully 
 crippled. This discretion runs through the whole, 
 from Royalty to Jack Ketch, and from Jack 
 Ketch back again to Royalty. The informer has 
 a discretionary power, whether he shall lodge his 
 complaint, or take the bribe from the party and 
 hush it up ; the witness has his discretion, whe- 
 ther he had better appear in court or be bought 
 off; the prosecutor, in criminal cases, has his dis-
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 9 
 
 cretion, whether he shall "speak with the prisoner," 
 that is, under cover of law, compound a felony ; 
 the police magistrate, and he of the quorum, have 
 discretion, whether they may or may not alter the 
 meaning of the whole vocabulary : any one, in 
 short, that has any thing to do with the laws, 
 other than to obey them, has some discretion or 
 other some power, not only of saying, but by 
 more substantial proof showing, that the law is 
 not the law, unless it accord with his pleasure and 
 profit that it should be so. Now when a law is so 
 miraculously brittle among the fingers of all who 
 have the official handling of it, it is impossible to 
 prevent other people from following the example, 
 and fancying that the laws are made for the 
 very purpose of being broken. 
 
 Indeed, the number of persons who live, and 
 live well, by the breach of the laws, is so great, 
 they act so in concert, and are withal so influen- 
 tial, and the system carries with it so great and so 
 profitable patronage, that to individuals in the pur- 
 suit of their interests, the breaking of the laws is a 
 matter not only to be desired, but to be brought 
 about by every wile and stratagem ; and such are 
 the prize and the profits, that considerable risk and 
 trouble and expense may be borne, and are borne 
 in this singular pursuit. 
 
 Nor is this all : for, in the criminal part of the 
 B 5
 
 10 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 code, the temptation is applied directly to the 
 law-breaker. To him the matter is a series of 
 lotteries, in each of which the prizes outnumber 
 the blanks. First, there is the chance of not being 
 detected ; and upon this the party does not stand 
 upon the mere fact of concealment ; for there are, 
 or there have been, means by which the putting 
 of some underling of the law, some nominal guar- 
 dian of the property of the people, paid by the 
 people for that purpose, in possession of a part of 
 the secret and the profits, the crime is hidden, 
 suspicion is lulled asleep, and the individual, or 
 the organized gang, can carry on the system for 
 years. Should that go too far for being hid, there 
 is yet the collusion and the negotiation, by which 
 the injured party buys the injury of others, at 
 the cost of half what he himself has lost. But 
 he is brought up, the evidence against him is 
 clear and conclusive, and he is committed ; then, 
 of course, he is at the mercy of the law, and shall 
 answer according to the statute ? How stands he 
 in funds ? that is the question : and if the answer 
 can be given in good and lawful money of the 
 realm, to the proper amount, he may still snap 
 his fingers at the gallows. The indictment has to 
 be drawn, not by any public officer who stands 
 secure in his living by a public salary, but by 
 some private person who depends wholly upon his
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 11 
 
 fees, and to whom the side of the cause that can fee 
 the best, is always the better. He is not, of course, 
 confined to the party who employs him to draw the 
 indictment. He is open to other clients ; and as 
 he is not bound to know that which is not told to 
 him, how is he legally to find out that the party 
 that fees him to a formal flaw, has any knowledge 
 of the party against whom the indictment lies ? 
 But the flaw does not " scale out;" the indict- 
 ment stands, and the trial goes on. But the jury ? 
 Ay, thanks for that : the jury is incorruptible ; 
 they belong to a class of men on whom money can 
 have no influence, and with whom it would, of 
 course, be in vain to tamper ; they have no feel 
 ings, or prejudices either; and they are always 
 possessed of intuitive vovg, by which they can see 
 the right and the wrong of any case. All this, of 
 course, must be conceded; but out of it there 
 arises a little argument, with which the wisdom of 
 the largest wig might find it somewhat difficult to 
 grapple. If twelve plain men are to be the ulti 
 mate judges, what is the use of all the previous 
 and expensive machinery ? Some one else must do 
 CEdipus upon that ; for really I cannot see in what 
 latitude the solution lies. Well, but all that is 
 got over, the case is clear, and the man is con- 
 demned? There are chances still; some officer 
 must take him to some place in some sort of vehi_
 
 12 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 cle. That may be a hackney-coach, belonging to 
 some of those philanthropic licentiates, who de- 
 vote their vehicles to the relief of the distressed. 
 Jarvis may be a wayward fellow; he may drive 
 so furiously, that the officer shall lose all know- 
 ledge of the direction and distance, and, ere he 
 has recovered, the coach may have halted, and the 
 criminal may have stepped out and vanished, in 
 a street in which the officer had no thought of 
 being. 
 
 Even should that fail, there are still hopes. 
 The King is merciful, most properly has he the 
 power of pardon ; it is the paramount jewel of his 
 diadem. But the King does not attend the trials ; 
 he does not weigh the evidence ; he does not even 
 read the reports ; he pardons at second-hand, ac- 
 cording as his officer furnishes the list. The offi- 
 cer is a man of the most rigid honour and honesty; 
 he takes no bribe ; he has no respect for persons. 
 But there are men who support him, because 
 they know his worth, and venerate his virtues; 
 and he would be most ungrateful, if, in return, he 
 did not do an act of mercy at their suggestion. 
 Here a chain commences, of which, though the 
 first links be beautiful, it is not easy to trace the 
 concatenation, or know the end. Originating in 
 veneration for the security of a minister, and pro- 
 ceeding by gratitude for that veneration, it may
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 13 
 
 run on and on, till a thief, or a habitual dealer in 
 stolen goods, hang bobbing at the nether end, and 
 be, in fact, the motive weight that puts the whole 
 in action. Such are the glorious uncertainties of 
 the law glorious to the guilty, but gloomy in the 
 extreme to the public. 
 
 In all the departments of the law, the anomalies 
 are quite as absurd ; and yet the law professes, in 
 all cases where it is not hedged in by privilege or 
 custom, to proceed strictly in accordance with 
 equity and justice. 
 
 Take a very plain case, and one which is of 
 more frequent occurrence than any other, that 
 of a tradesman to whom a debtor owes a small 
 sum, which the creditor is unable to get paid 
 just at the time he wishes. There must be 
 one of two reasons for this non-payment : the 
 debtor is in the mean time unable to pay, because 
 he is a poor man ; or he is unwilling to pay, be- 
 cause he is not honest. In either case, the cre- 
 ditor brings his action. If the debtor be poor 
 and honest, he does not, of course, employ law- 
 yers to defend the case for him, because his 
 honesty renders it improbable that he would have 
 recourse to the law, in order that it might help 
 him to do injustice; and his poverty renders it 
 impossible, because, without money, not a wheel 
 of the law will move. Notwithstanding this non-
 
 14 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 opposition of the debtor, or even an admission on 
 his part that the debt is a just one, the law will not 
 be satisfied, and give the creditor power over the 
 goods of the debtor, until numerous and com- 
 plicated operations have been gone through, and 
 an expense amounting to double, treble, or even 
 ten times the amount of the debt has been in- 
 curred ; and all for what ? Why, merely because 
 if the justice was satisfied if equity and justice, 
 which are the foundation of all law, saw that the 
 claim was a just one, the lawyers would not, until 
 they were paid for the opening of their eyes. 
 
 But if, on the other hand, the debtor be not 
 honest, there are so many traps and turnings in 
 the law, that he can contrive to delay the necessity 
 of payment, until, by that delay, and by the ex- 
 pense to which the creditor is put, the ultimate 
 gaining of his cause may be a positive loss ; and 
 for this reason he may, out of kindness for himself, 
 as he does in the other case out of kindness for the 
 debtor, abandon his claim altogether ; and such an 
 abandonment cannot fail to injure the temper of 
 the one party, and the morals of the other. 
 
 Now it really strikes me, that at least one of 
 the radical causes, both of the inefficiency and the 
 oppressiveness of the civil law of England, is a 
 remnant of personal slavery, the origin of which 
 must have been in remote and barbarous times ; I
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 15 
 
 mean the attachment of the person of the debtor 
 in limine, when the point at issue is the mere mat- 
 ter of an unpaid pecuniary debt, which may be 
 just or not just according to the evidence. This 
 brings into the market into the common money- 
 market of England, a commodity of which the 
 better laws of the country not only prohibit the 
 sale and purchase there, but annul every such 
 purchase while the subject of it remains upon 
 English soil. England boasts, and as far as the 
 boast goes, it is a proud one, that as long as a slave 
 stands upon her land and breathes her atmosphere, 
 he is a free man. But it is somewhat inconsistent, 
 that, in the very teeth of this boast, every English- 
 man who is indebted in a sum exceeding twenty 
 pounds if he is a householder, and any amount 
 however small if he is not, and who may be unable 
 to pay it at the moment it shall be demanded by 
 his creditor, must instantly be made, not indeed 
 a labouring slave to that creditor, by the proceeds 
 of which he might soon liquidate the debt, but a 
 close captive, deprived not only of that liberty 
 that personal liberty of which England boasts so 
 much, but rendered in the mean time incapable of 
 making any efforts for discharging the demand 
 that is upon him, and besides be so degraded both 
 in his own estimation, and in the estimation of all 
 who previously knew him, that his chances of being
 
 16 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 afterwards able to make payment, even although 
 that payment were not increased by the expenses 
 of this procedure, are very much diminished. 
 
 In a country like England, whose prosperity 
 depends so much upon its commerce, and whose 
 commerce requires, or at least enjoys, so much 
 credit, every reasonable means should certainly be 
 afforded by law for the preservation of good faith 
 on the part of the persons who are thus allowed 
 either to enjoy or to profit by the advances which 
 are made to them by others ; but besides the de- 
 gradation and misery which it involves, and the 
 door which it opens to ultimate evasion and fraud, 
 there is something so palpably absurd and incon- 
 sistent in this matter of personal captivity, that 
 one cannot help wondering why, amid the over- 
 whelming mass of modern legislating, no one has 
 effected its abolition. The foundation of all law 
 should be equity ; and therefore, before it be the 
 universal practice that the first thing upon which 
 the law is to seize as an equivalent for a sum of 
 money is the person of the debtor, it should be 
 defined in law, how many pounds or shillings or 
 pence an Englishman of every rank in society is 
 worth ; and a tariff should be made, setting forth 
 the value of a squire, a yeoman, a citizen, a bur- 
 gess, and all the other denominations of society, in 
 all their varieties of talents and character. The
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 17 
 
 practice is similar in all other securities : a creditor 
 does not take a mortgage on an estate or an in- 
 come, as surety for the lending of money or the 
 furnishing of goods, without especial care to ascer- 
 tain the value of the estate, and the certainty and 
 duration of the income ; and before a money-dealer 
 discounts a bill of exchange, he looks warily that 
 the document itself is not faulty, and that there 
 are, at least among some of the parties concerned 
 in it, funds adequate to the retiring of it when it 
 becomes due ; and therefore, before a creditor 
 gives credit, takes the power of imprisoning his 
 debtor, as the only security for payment, he ought, 
 not merely by parity of reasoning, but for a much 
 stronger reason the perishable and changeable 
 nature of the commodity, have it demonstrated to 
 him in black and white, that the personal liberty 
 of the debtor, if sold at open market, would fetch 
 the sum for which he receives it as security. 
 
 It may be objected, that to set a money price 
 upon the personal liberty of all or any of the 
 varied inhabitants of England, is not only abso- 
 lutely impossible in practice, but utterly absurd 
 in principle, that personal liberty, and money or 
 other physical property, are not quantities of the 
 same kind and that to attempt comparing them, 
 and estimating the one in terms of the other, 
 would be every bit as foolish as to ask how many
 
 18 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 miles of a road were equal in length to a summer's 
 day, or how many pounds weight were the exact 
 measure of an acre of land. To which I would 
 answer, that, in this very absurdity is contained 
 an argument against the practice, to which there 
 neither is nor can be any reply. Property and 
 liberty are incommensurable quantities : no depth 
 of arithmetic can tell how much of the one of 
 them is equivalent to any given portion of the 
 other; and therefore unless they be, as all other 
 commodities are, referred to some common stand- 
 ard, such as money, what can be more nonsensi- 
 cal, and it has worse properties than being merely 
 nonsensical, than attempting to make the one an 
 indemnity for the other. 
 
 But so little was personal property recognized 
 when the wisdom of our ancestors willed that such 
 should be the rule, that the law of England does 
 not so much as recognize a pecuniary debt as the 
 ground of an action ; not even, I believe, though 
 that debt be due, and on a regular document, 
 which has paid both the fee to the lawyer and the 
 stamp-duty to the public. The creditor cannot 
 come into Court, unless he come with a lie in his 
 mouth. If, indeed, he makes affidavit of the debt, 
 and swears to it, whether falsely or not, (for the 
 law of England has great respect for swearing,) 
 the Court must hear him, and the writ will issue
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 19 
 
 as a matter of course. But how does the writ 
 run ? does it embody the facts sworn to in the 
 applicant's affidavit, and call upon the debtor to 
 make payment within a reasonable time, other- 
 wise the judgment of the law will go forth against 
 him, and by its power his goods will be seized, and 
 given over to the creditor ? No such thing : the 
 writ sets forth that the man whose offence (and it 
 may probably be not so much his offence as his 
 folly, acted upon by the importunity of the per- 
 son who now sues out the writ, when he was 
 eager to make a profit by the bargain, and in that 
 eagerness overlooked the probability perhaps the 
 strong probability of ultimate loss,) is merely 
 negative a failure to fulfil a civil contract, 
 is guilty of a direct trespass a violent breach, 
 not of the civil but of the criminal law, that, 
 combining together with John Doe and Richard 
 Roe, or one or other of them, (persons whose ex- 
 istence is just as much a matter of fact as this 
 solemn declaration issued from, and countersigned 
 by, a high and honourable legal authority,) and 
 a whole host of auxiliaries armed with spears and 
 pikes, and the Lord knows how many weapons of 
 war and destruction, he came upon the poor man's 
 grounds, destroying his property and threatening 
 his life. Having begun with this precious aver- 
 ment, it goes on to declare that the debtor, always
 
 20 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 accompanied by Doe and Roe, or either of them, 
 is running up and down throughout a whole 
 shrievedom, in order to screen himself from that 
 justice, which the daring audacity of himself, his 
 associates, and their gang, has so monstrously out- 
 raged ; and having thus stated, it charges and com- 
 mands that the keepers of the public peace shall 
 bring not payment of the debt, or even attach 
 the debtor's goods to prevent them from being 
 embezzled, squandered, or secreted but the 
 debtor himself, in order that he may answer for 
 the crimes charged in the preamble. 
 
 Absurd and contrary to justice as this proceed- 
 ing is, and ruinous as it is for those who wish to 
 be honest in their misfortunes, it is said to do 
 well for others ; for those who will play as long 
 as they can at hide-and-seek in the corners and 
 doublings of the law, and who, when they can do 
 no better that is, when they cannot disburse 
 another fee will take up their abode in the 
 King's Bench Prison, or the Fleet, or the rules 
 and the liberties thereof, snap their fingers at their 
 creditors in the mean time, and ultimately shake 
 off the whole load of their incumbrances at the 
 Insolvent Court. 
 
 When misfortune or accident brings a man 
 within the power of this department of the law, 
 it is a matter of election with him whether it
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 21 
 
 shall ruin his fortunes or break down the tone of 
 his moral feeling. The number upon which it has 
 the former effect is very great; and if any one 
 imagines that those upon which it has had the 
 latter are few, let him visit the King's Bench and 
 the other prisons, and also note the conduct of 
 the majority of those who through these gates 
 have escaped to freedom from their creditors. 
 
 Bearing in mind, that, in every case of honest 
 inability to pay, the debtor is either an object of 
 protection, in consequence of misfortune that must 
 have occurred to him between the time of con- 
 tracting the debt and the time of payment ; or 
 the creditor is a sharer in the blame, inasmuch as 
 he either granted the credit without making due 
 inquiry, or derived such a profit from the grant- 
 ing of it as ought to be considered a premium of 
 insurance: bearing these things in mind, it is 
 right that there should be some protecting power 
 in the law something that shall not allow an 
 honest man to be doomed to everlasting starvation, 
 or everlasting imprisonment, for a mere involun- 
 tary breach of civil contract, a breach too which 
 may, in other respects, fall more heavily upon 
 him than the loss of that which he is unable to 
 pay falls upon the other party. But this is a 
 matter of extreme delicacy and difficulty : the 
 whole legislative wisdom of England has been at
 
 22 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 work upon it for ages ; they cobble it every other 
 Session of Parliament ; but their pieceings and 
 patchings are like " putting new cloth upon an 
 old garment," they " make the rent worse ;" and 
 how long and loud soever may be the reports of 
 Committees upon it, they are " full of sound and 
 fury which signify nothing." 
 
 A system of law founded upon a moral absur- 
 dity cannot be a very secure one : and the fact, 
 that the whole of this branch of the law of Eng- 
 land proceeds upon a principle of positive slavery 
 a presumption that the first thing the creditor 
 is to seize and pay himself out of, is the person 
 and liberty of his debtor is the root of the whole 
 evil. One who would speak equitably upon this 
 subject, would say, " Attack his goods get hold 
 of them, by legal means indeed, but summarily 
 and before the fear of a gaol and the dreaded loss 
 of character and employment shall drive the man 
 to do any thing fraudulent." It might be said 
 that this would be a restraint upon business, 
 that the security over men's liberty and especially 
 over the liberty of Englishmen, who have so much 
 of it, and are so fond of it adds wonderfully to 
 the whole value of the general mass of securities 
 that uphold credit, and enable trade to be carried 
 on ; but if they who give credit were made per- 
 fectly aware that they could look to nothing but
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 23 
 
 property for the re-payment of their property, and 
 that no Englishman could be deprived of his 
 liberty, unless in the case of fraud or crime of 
 some sort, then, though the extent of credit 
 might be in some instances diminished, yet its 
 stability, and therefore its usefulness, would be 
 very much promoted, and a great deal both of 
 misery and of positive vice would thereby be pre- 
 vented. It may seem somewhat singular to those 
 who have not reflected upon the subject, but it is 
 a fact, and a fact which is demonstrated fully as 
 much by the laws of England as by any other 
 code with which I am acquainted, that the thing 
 most difficult to be guarded against in the framing 
 of a law, is the preventing of it from making, by 
 its own operation, the very offenders whom it is 
 its object to punish. That the criminal law of 
 England has, in many instances this effect, has 
 been shown again and again both in the House 
 of Commons and elsewhere; that the Court of 
 Chancery has had this effect more, perchance, 
 on account of the creeping slowness of its motions 
 than of any thing else has also been felt as well 
 as demonstrated: and there can be just as little 
 doubt that such is the tendency of at least some 
 parts of common civil law ; and among these, not 
 the least in the department to which I am aUuding, 
 because that, amid the facilities and the fluctu-
 
 24 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 ations of a commercial country, is the one which 
 comes the most frequently into play. 
 
 One evil in the management of criminal justice, 
 for which it would be very desirable, and might 
 be possible, to find a remedy, is, making the 
 party who suffers by the crime, the prosecutor in 
 the punishment of it. Independently of the ex- 
 pense which the civil departments of the law costs 
 individuals, in fees and in taxes, and of the expense 
 of the criminal department in those salaries and 
 allowances which are paid out of the general and 
 local taxes, it is somewhat hard, that, if a man shall 
 get his property stolen, his house broken into, or 
 his life nearly taken away, he should be the in- 
 strument, and, in the first instance, the paymaster, 
 in bringing the offender to justice. When a crime 
 has been committed, though the immediate suffer- 
 ing or loss may be to the individual, the injury 
 set forth in the major proposition is an injury done 
 to society; and therefore the vengeance belongs 
 to the public, and should be demanded in the 
 name of the public, through whatever officer the 
 demand might come. 
 
 Private prosecutors standing up and demanding 
 exile or death against their fellow-subjects, for 
 what their presence there gives an impression can 
 be nothing more than private offences; their beg- 
 ging when the trial is over for repayment of the
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 25 
 
 expense to which they are put ; the hurried and 
 apparently heedless mode of conducting this most 
 solemn of all business; the cold-blooded indif- 
 ference of the Old Bailey pleaders ; and the whole 
 appearance, keeping, and conduct, of that fore- 
 most of Babylonian receiving-houses for the hulks 
 and for the gallows, make the Old Bailey Ses- 
 sions among the most painful scenes that a feel- 
 ing mind can contemplate : and setting aside alto- 
 gether the monstrous discrepancy that there is 
 between many of the crimes and the punishments, 
 the consequent necessity that there is upon the part 
 of the Crown to extend its prerogative of mercy 
 to a great number of those whom the law dooms 
 to die; the effect which this hope of mercy has 
 upon the sentence itself, and the agony and con- 
 sequent despair which it inflicts upon those who 
 must ultimately undergo that punishment which 
 humanity doubts whether man, under any cir- 
 cumstances, should dare to inflict, betray a want 
 of the fit solemn slowness and awful dignity, 
 about the Babylonian Courts of criminal retri- 
 bution, from which one cannot help turning away 
 as from a painful and pernicious thing. The men 
 and sometimes also ( proh pudor ! ) the women of 
 Babylon, frequent those scenes ; not to learn wis- 
 dom, but to seek amusement to gratify that 
 restless and rapacious curiosity, which will not be 
 VOL. I. C
 
 26 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 satisfied with the things and other occurrences of 
 a very large and very full epitome of the world. 
 Nay, they will not only attend as matter of amuse- 
 ment, and laugh and joke while the scales of life 
 and of death are quivering with their final poise ; 
 they will come there in order to ascertain whether 
 the bets which they have taken the base gam- 
 bling sums which they have staked upon the turn- 
 ing up of life or death for their fellow-creature, 
 are to be won or to be lost. Without this abomi- 
 nationj the scene is revolting enough ; but with 
 this, there is not a brand of infamy deep enough, 
 and deformed enough, for marking its enormity. 
 
 One cannot help regretting that in these Courts 
 counsel are permitted to do so little for those who 
 probably fee them with the last money they can 
 borrow, and that the little which custom permits 
 them to do is done in so heartless and heedless a 
 manner. 
 
 When all else appears to have deserted the hap- 
 less victim of the law, when the private prosecu- 
 tor has sworn against him, when learned counsel 
 has stated the case, when the witnesses for the 
 prosecution have given their evidence that evi- 
 dence which has been known and arranging all the 
 time that the party charged has been immured in 
 a prison, when the few brief cross examinations 
 have been made, while the prisoner stands in open
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 
 
 view of all the spectators, with the reflected light 
 of a mirror disclosing every line of his face, and 
 judge, jury, and the spectators, are all entirely en- 
 gaged in trying him both by the evidence which 
 has been sworn against him, and by that which 
 appears in his own expression ; at that moment of 
 pain and difficulty he is called upon to make his 
 defence to collect his scattered thoughts and sum- 
 mon his tortured nerves, in order that he may be a 
 match for cool men and cunning lawyers. All this 
 from the world he might possibly bear, but that 
 which cuts to the heart is yet behind ; his counsel 
 rises, pulls his gown about him, instinctively puts 
 his hand in his pocket, and jingles the fee in the 
 hearing of the poor wretch whose last hope was, 
 and to that moment is, the assistance which that 
 fee is to procure. But does the sage counsel plead ? 
 Does he make one effort to turn the scale of jus- 
 tice ; or failing that, does he appeal to the proper 
 sources of mercy ? Does he tell the jury, in the 
 language of that Gospel upon which they are sworn, 
 that " with whatsoever judgment they judge, it 
 shall be judged to them again? 1 ' Does he dwell 
 upon the temptations to which the unfortunate 
 person may have been exposed the hard necessity 
 which, in an hour of madness and despair, tempted 
 him, when man would not " give him leave to toil,' 1 
 to put forth his hand, and take upwards of forty
 
 28 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 shillings in a dwelling-house, in order to save, from 
 that starvation which he had no other means of 
 preventing, those whose lives were dearer to him 
 than his own ? Oh, not a jot I The man of law, 
 whatever else he may have learned along with it, 
 has learned to avoid the statute himself; and so, 
 pulling his gown around him, and chinking his 
 fee, as I have said, he delivers these words of con- 
 ciliation, with any thing but the most kindly looks, 
 " If you have any thing to say for yourself, now is 
 your time to say it, for I can do no more for you;" 
 and with that he flings himself out of that Court, 
 to attend in another, pocket another fee, and make 
 merry thereupon, at the very moment, perhaps, 
 when the poor culprit is undergoing sentence of 
 death, for want of the very assistance which the 
 learned person could have rendered. 
 
 Besides the cruelty and abomination which may 
 be perpetrated under the cover and pretence of the 
 regular law ; and the sums which the extortioners, 
 connected with the lower departments, may wring 
 from the timid and the ignorant, the matter is 
 rendered worse by mock attorneys, who go about 
 selling that legal counsel which they cannot de- 
 liver. The sum of which these harpies annually 
 defraud the public, by obtaining fees for the pur- 
 pose of raising suits, and from defendants for pre- 
 tending to stay them, has of late years become so
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 29 
 
 great, and the parties have become so open and 
 daring in their depredations, that a special statute 
 would be demanded for the regulation of the 
 matter. The mischief which is done by licensed 
 dealers in law is quite enough, without any of the 
 additional infliction of smugglers. In this, how- 
 ever, as in most illegal practices within the Baby- 
 lon, there is protection if there be money to pay 
 for it.
 
 SO A SECOND JUDGMENT OP 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 BABYLONIAN LAW. . 
 COURTS AND CASES. 
 
 " The law, you ought to know, was put into the hands of 
 very wicked men." 
 
 CORONER OF THE TOWER HAMLETS. 
 
 THE worshipful person by whom these words 
 were spoken, upon an occasion of the most melan- 
 choly calamity, probably meant their application 
 to extend only to the period of time then and there 
 described by himself, the commonwealth, or time 
 that intervened between the abscission of the first 
 Charles of " ever blessed" memory, and the re- 
 storation of the second Charles of memory se- 
 cundum quid. But as there was a certain person 
 of the name of Jefferies, who did not fall just 
 within this lapsed and sinful period, to whom the 
 opposite of the epithet, in the motto, hath never 
 been applied ; as the words were a sort of " Crown- 
 er's 'quest " upon the legal character, at least in as
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 31 
 
 far as the administration is concerned ; and as they 
 were more immediately addressed to a barrister, 
 of whom I have never heard even Envy herself 
 predicate any thing but the very opposite of wick- 
 edness, I have here set them down as a reason 
 why I do not even attempt to depict and dissect the 
 chief men, whom I found administering the Baby- 
 lonian law, in like manner as I have, in a former 
 volume, attempted to do those by whom the said 
 law is patched, turned, altered and eked out, in 
 the two Houses of Parliament. There are also 
 some other considerations moving me hereunto : as, 
 a judge, being chiefly made up of the two elements 
 of formality and gravity, is not very well adapt- 
 ed for the light portraiture of the quill, how well 
 soever he might do for Chantrey, or any other 
 " man of stones ;" and a pleader is, by the nature 
 of the law itself, so trammelled with forms, and 
 lost in words, so much in the rut of speciality, 
 that he is shorn of the ordinary attributes of man, 
 and is probably the more effective the less claim 
 that he has to genuine eloquence and sound philo- 
 sophy. The law of England is a thing sui generis, 
 not founded on reason, or proceeding upon any of 
 the principles recognized in science ; and therefore 
 the character and qualities of a good lawyer can 
 be known and appreciated only by the profession, 
 to whom these volumes are not specially addressed.
 
 82 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 Instead of wasting time upon individuals, my 
 business must rather be to point out the various 
 crucibles and forms in which the Babylonian law 
 is melted and moulded ; and here, though from 
 my own observation of the dull flatness of the 
 whole, I should be tempted to ask with Fuseli, 
 when the dandy student came boasting about his 
 drawing, " Pray, do tell me which is de top ?" yet 
 I shall begin with, 
 
 CHANCERY, to wit. In all those elements that 
 belong to the Babylonian courts, form their pecu- 
 liar essence, and stamp upon them their character, 
 as distinguished from the courts of all other na- 
 tions,' the Court of Chancery stands pre-eminent. 
 It takes under its care the greatest variety of per- 
 sons and their interests ; its proceedings are the 
 most tedious and the most expensive ; want of atten- 
 tion to its forms is attended with the most serious 
 consequences ; and its judgments proceed upon 
 principles the most inexplicable to every man who 
 has not been duly initiated into, and carefully 
 studied its mysteries. 
 
 To describe the Court of Chancery, as a scene, 
 is utterly impossible : For when you have said that 
 a man with a wig of one fashion, with an embroid- 
 ered bag at his feet, sits upon a platform, as the 
 high-priest of incomprehensibility ; that a dozen of 
 men and boys without wigs sit in a hole below,
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 33 
 
 with their backs turned upon him ; that half a 
 dozen men with wigs and silk gowns, and each a 
 purple bag at his elbow, and a bunch of waste paper 
 before him, occupy a pew immediately across the 
 hole; that some dozens of wigged men, some 
 with blue bags, and some not, sit in pews behind, 
 intermixed with wigless men, who appear to be 
 emptying themselves into the ears of the former ; 
 that, ever and anon, as one of the men with the 
 blue bag gets on end, and essays to lift up his 
 voice, a purple bag no, a purple bag-man gets 
 up and claims precedence; that of whatever may 
 happen to be spoken, you do not understand 
 one sentence ; and that, though you inquire, every- 
 body is just as ignorant as yourself; you have 
 said all that can be said about the Court of Chan- 
 cery, as a thing perceptible to mere mortals, or 
 open to the cognizance of common observation 
 and common sense. You find no place for witnesses 
 or jury, no means by which facts are to be got at, or 
 the truth weighed; and, just as folks of old said 
 that truth was found only in a well, so do you 
 discover that equity is found only in a bag ; but 
 whether any one ever gets it out of that bag, you 
 are not, and you cannot be informed. 
 
 Therefore, instead of wasting time upon the ap- 
 pearances of the Court of Chancery, I shall trace 
 the steps of its progress in one of its shortest and 
 c 5
 
 34 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 most straight-forward journeys, that of a common 
 suit in equity. 
 
 The key by which the doors of Chancery are 
 opened to let in a suitor, is the same that opens 
 the other Babylonian courts swearing ; but while 
 the " affidavit of action,"" (which must be doubtful 
 in many cases, and downright perjury in not a 
 few) may, for admission to the other courts be 
 taken at any common swearing-house, the Court of 
 Chancery, from a laudable love of fees, keeps a 
 swearing-house of its own in Southampton Build- 
 ings, Chancery-lane, where the twelve " masters in 
 ordinary " rule the year and the terms, like the 
 signs of the Zodiac, or the twelve moons of the 
 Mussulman's annuary, and, inter alia, listen to any 
 person that may swear any thing for the fees. In 
 order that access to the court of equity may be 
 facilitated, and expedition given to the good work 
 of swearing, there are " extraordinary masters," 
 some of them very extraordinary ones, spotted 
 here and there all over the country, each of whom, 
 upon the fee being paid, is ready to receive and 
 give authenticity to any quantity of primal, medial, 
 or final no notjinal supplemental swearing. 
 
 Philosophy has had easier tasks than that of 
 showing that any system, which is put in motion 
 upon an ex parte oath, upon which the very neces- 
 sity of the case casts a doubt, can be very pure or
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 35 
 
 very beneficial, more especially as the Court of 
 Chancery is so framed that the averments upon 
 oath are, at no stage of the suit, sifted by cross- 
 examination. 
 
 Well, suppose that you have an action which 
 you cannot bring at common law ; that you feel or 
 fancy a wrong, for which that law, which, if you 
 believe Blackstone, " has a plaster for every sore, 
 and makes a sore for every plaster," can give you 
 no redress that you have been nonsuited on a 
 point of form, or " thrown over the bridge," in 
 any of those ways that are so much matters of 
 course with lawyers and judges, who get their fees 
 all the same, but which to you, or any one else 
 who sought right and got wrong, are so galling ; 
 away you go, swear your swearing, file your peti- 
 tion, and you are in Chancery, to wit. 
 
 You will observe that your affidavit, and the 
 petition in which it is translated out of the vulgar 
 tongue, may be lies every word : the object is to 
 make a "first impression " on the court; the showing 
 which is exparte, may be coloured to any shade you 
 please ; and if part of your prayer be to stop any 
 thing that is doing, you may get an ex parte injunc- 
 tion, though it should turn out to be wrong, and 
 occasion the ruin of the matter at issue. 
 
 Injunction or not, the court will issue its sub- 
 'pana, commanding the other party to appear and
 
 86 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 answer the complaint. He may live in a remote 
 part of the country, where the nature of Chancery 
 is not known ; the complaint may be frivolous or 
 groundless, and he may pay no attention to the 
 mandate. In that case, woe be to him ! he is in 
 contempt, and liable to perpetual imprisonment ; 
 for contempt of Chancery is the dreadful sin, for 
 which ghostly or bodily there is no pardon. 
 
 But though the visitation for this contempt be 
 fearful, it is not speedy, " a door turning upon its 
 hinges, or a sluggard upon his bed," is the wing 
 of the lightning or of the light, as compared with 
 the most rapid motion in Chancery. Of all gran- 
 deur slowness has ever been an element ; and as 
 there is nothing in the way of a court half so 
 grand as the English Chancery, there is nothing 
 so slow saving its own reformation and amend- 
 ment. The demand is instant, but no notice is 
 understood to be taken of it till the next term. 
 That comes : the solicitor enters an appearance ; 
 gets eight days to think of the answer ; and when 
 these are expired, he moves for an enlargement till 
 the next term, and gets it. Three more motions 
 for delay can be made, of course, one for six 
 weeks, one for four, and one for three. Thus, at 
 the end of the first year, there have been five or 
 six sets of fees for motions, and the case is not 
 an inch from where it began,
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 37 
 
 The answer may come at the commencement of 
 the second year ; but the court is a court of equity, 
 which, at this stage of the business, means, that 
 " the defendant has the same latitude in swearing 
 as the plaintiff;" and thus, the answer may either 
 not go to the matter of your petition, or it may 
 introduce new matter, and thus change the ground 
 and complexion of the suit. Every answer has a 
 chance of being in the one or the other of these 
 two predicaments, it being always the interest of 
 the lawyers, and often that of the defendant, that 
 it should so be. If the answer does not satisfy the 
 case, you must put in exceptions to it ; and if it 
 discloses new matter, you must turn round and 
 petition the court to allow you to amend your bill. 
 If you are to take exceptions, you have eight days 
 allowed you in term time, or eight days of the 
 next term, if in the vacation. This is as matter 
 of course, and by motion and order you may, pay- 
 ing fees as you go, get half, or even the whole, of 
 the second year. 
 
 At the beginning of the third year you may file 
 your exceptions, but whether they are to be made 
 peremptory or not, depends on yourself; and thus 
 you may, at this the very threshold of the case 
 (for though it be three years old, it is not yet 
 formed) you may " hang it up" as long as you 
 please.
 
 88 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 It may be, however, that you have no wish to 
 delay ; but that, at the end of the eight days of 
 the third year, you " refer your exceptions to the 
 original bill." As matter of course, the defendant 
 must have time to " answer your exceptions ;" and, 
 as matter of course again, he gets two orders 
 upon motion and fee to enlarge that time, till 
 the better part of the third year be gone also. 
 
 But the defendant's second answer may be as 
 defective, or as redundant, as the first ; and, after 
 you have run the same course, the third, the fourth, 
 or the fifth, may be no better, and, though you 
 pay five or six sets of fees every year, the real suit 
 may not be begun at the end of seven years. 
 
 If the proper answer should come then, you can 
 put him off for nearly another year ; and if you 
 are not then inclined to proceed, you may alter 
 your original bill, or file one in supplement, by 
 which means you may get nearly another year. 
 After this you may get other two half years, upon 
 giving two undertakings to expedite your case ; 
 and though at the end of the ten years, the de- 
 fendant may, in the event of your not moving, get 
 your bill dismissed, you may file another, and 
 work him as before, for other ten years. In this 
 way a rich plaintiff may harass a poor defendant 
 to the end of the longest life. 
 
 But you have no wish to harass any body, and
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 39 
 
 so you join issue at the end of ten years. Well, 
 how stand you now ? Affidavit versus affidavit, 
 without one tittle of proof; and from the latitude 
 given to you both in swearing, that proof is likely 
 to be no joke. Summon the witnesses, then ; bring 
 them into court, and let the adverse wigs work the 
 truth out of them, and His Lordship work the 
 equity of the case out of that. Nay, nay. That 
 might be all very well at a court of law ; but 
 equity cannot look at a witness, like the Athe- 
 nian Areopagus, it must decide in the dark. The 
 face of a witness might betray cunning or false- 
 hood, either of which would not be seemly in a 
 court of equity ; but paper does not blush or look 
 confused, and so it is better to have their decla- 
 rations. 
 
 The way in which this is done is singular : be- 
 sides the " six clerks of Chancery," there are 
 " sixty clerks of court," one of whom rides on the 
 back of every suitor, as the old man of the sea 
 did on the back of Sinbad the sailor. These sixty 
 clerks seem to be of no manner of use : but their 
 three-legged stools are ; and so away the Babylo- 
 nian witnesses are marched and sworn at the stools, 
 before they be marched to examination in another 
 place. In the country, the mode of proceeding 
 differs a little: there the oaths are taken and sworn 
 before the extraordinary masters; but whether in
 
 40 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 presence of the men, or of the stools only, as in 
 the Babylon, I have not been able to learn nei- 
 ther do I think it of much consequence. At all 
 events, town or country, the witnesses are sworn 
 at one place, and catechised at another. Thence 
 arises an "issue" which had better be sent to a jury, 
 as the court could not probably grope toward it in 
 the days of any man living. It is this : how long 
 does an oath taken by a man upon any subject 
 bind him to speak the truth upon that subject ? 
 The taking of the oath is an admission that, be- 
 fore taking it, he would have lied, or, at all events, 
 equivocated ; and as he is sworn de novo, every 
 time that his testimony is required, it is implied 
 that the obligation to tell the truth is limited to 
 some period of time. Now, as the precise period 
 is not fixed by any statute or usage that ever I 
 heard of, the presumption is, that the impression 
 and obligation weaken gradually ; and that there- 
 fore the examination should follow the taking of 
 the oath, without any change of time or place. 
 That is not the practice in Chancery ; and because 
 it is not the practice, the presumption is, that the 
 same latitude is there given to witnesses as to 
 suitors. 
 
 But waving that, the way in which the exami- 
 nation is taken is not apparently the best calcu- 
 lated for eliciting the truth. When the witness
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 41 
 
 has been sworn, if in the Babylon, he is marched 
 away to the examiner's office ; and if in the country, 
 he is marched away to a commissioner appointed 
 by the parties themselves, and all that the court 
 requires of them, is, that they shall fee him and 
 feed him. No sagacity is needed upon his part 
 to bring a reluctant witness to the point, or put a 
 varying one on the proper track. The court has 
 never seen the witness, knows not a thing about him ; 
 and yet the court knows all that he can and should 
 communicate. A list of questions is accordingly 
 made out, and sent to the commissioner ; and he 
 has nothing to do but set down the answers. The 
 questions partake of the nature of issues, and the 
 reply to one of them has no influence upon the 
 other ; and it may happen, in fact it does happen 
 very often, that not one of them can reach what 
 the witness really knows about the case. How 
 can it be otherwise ? The party by whom the 
 questions are drawn up, knows nothing about the 
 party that is to answer them, and very little about 
 the case itself. 
 
 When the evidence, such as it is, has been ob- 
 tained, the first step is to publish it. Not to set 
 it up in great primer types, advertise it by the 
 booksellers, and sell it in the shops ; not to print it 
 in the newspapers, chalk it on the walls, or even 
 proclaim it by the common crier ; no. The deposi-
 
 42 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 tions are sent to the master, and he publishes 
 them by giving a copy to each party, of that 
 which, one of them at least must have known, and 
 both could have known, without any reference to 
 the master at all. There is a fee, however, not to 
 a man who works for it, but to one who claims it 
 officially, and being official and without value in 
 return, it becomes what John Bull's keepers call a 
 vested right,, against which even the two Houses 
 of Parliament have no power. Nor is this all. 
 Every fee in Chancery looks to the possibility of 
 another fee ; and so, both parties may apply in 
 turn for enlargement of publication ; and that 
 whether they have any new matter to introduce 
 or not. 
 
 Well, but suppose all this is at an end, in the 
 twelfth year, and that you are to "be in the 
 paper," next term. You now bless your stars 
 that, in three months more, you will get out of 
 Chancery in some way or other. Have patience : 
 there are chances for Chancery yet. Your case 
 must take its turn; and there are probably a 
 hundred before his Lordship, of which hundred 
 yours is the last. It gets into the paper, how- 
 ever ; you are full of hope, and your solicitor at- 
 tends every day. The first cause is called ; no one 
 answers ; the solicitor has been worn out ; down 
 goes that cause to the bottom of the list ; and you
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 43 
 
 are one step nearer a hearing. The next cause : 
 upstarts blue bag, and opens his mouth ; but ere 
 he has uttered a sentence, in bounces Purple-bag, 
 shakes his silken toga, claims precedence, Jupiter 
 nods, and down drops Blue-bag, as mute as a 
 fish. This goes to your heart like an arrow ; for 
 he in whom you have placed your confidence is a 
 blue-bag, and he may share the same fate. Pur- 
 ple bag opens, heavens and earth, what a pile of 
 papers ! his words crawl like a brook in the fens ; 
 and as you have nothing else to do, you fag and 
 wonder, and wonder and fag again, to find out 
 what all this broad solemnity of words can mean. 
 At length you find out that it is the third canto of 
 Purple-bag's oration ; and so you conclude that it 
 is the last ; but just when you fancy that he is 
 coming to something like a peroration, up starts 
 his Lordship and moves off, to learn from the 
 learned Recorder how the gallows thrives at the 
 Old Bailey. Purple-bag creeps into his shell 
 again, and each man wendeth his way, the suitors 
 sorrowing as they go. Next day his Lordship 
 hears appeals in the Lords ; and there is no busi- 
 ness done in court, save a few short motions of 
 course. The day after, he must attend the Ca- 
 binet, and there are short motions again. 
 
 That evening the Premier gives a dinner ; the 
 Lord Chancellor either under-eats or over-eats
 
 44 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 himself; all men have not bowels of brass; and 
 so the next day he is sorely smitten with the 
 headache, or some other grievous malady, in vir- 
 tue, or rather in vice, of which the current of 
 Equity stops. Sir Harry Halford, or Sir Patrick 
 Macgregor, works him, as need may be, and in 
 three days he is in court again. But an accident 
 has happened in the interim ; a noble Lord has 
 lost his wits all business is thrown aside and 
 whip and spur for a commission. 
 
 The unwitting of the Lord is, thank God! 
 proved, and next day will get you rid of one 
 cause at the least. No: somebody has published 
 a ballad, which somebody else has pirated, and an 
 injunction must be granted before even Purple- 
 bag can be heard. At last he gets up ; but it is 
 " the adventure of the Bear and Fiddle' 1 again; 
 and as you find that there are three more to follow 
 on the same side, you and your solicitor conclude 
 that, as matters have gone, one week will be taken 
 for that, and another for the reply. You return 
 at the end of the two weeks just one day too 
 late ; your case has been called, nobody answered, 
 and it has dropt down to the bottom. 
 
 After a term or two, perhaps a year or two, of 
 this rout of discipline, your counsel gets on his 
 legs at last, and your cause proceeds at the rate 
 of half a speech per week. At last it is ripe for
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 45 
 
 judgment, but it hangs till it be rotten : the court 
 has forgotten all the arguments of your counsel, 
 and must take time to read the affidavits, before 
 it can decide. Thus the whole labour, cost, and 
 case go for nothing ; and if you had been obliged 
 to come into court with your affidavits and your 
 evidence complete, his Lordship might have taken 
 them home in his pocket, and given judgment the 
 next morning. 
 
 But though this intermediate business be very 
 useless, it is very costly. In proof of this I shall 
 quote a few items from the bill of expenses in 
 what one would think a very ample case. The 
 lord of a certain manor had, nearly two centuries 
 ago, bequeathed certain sums to the churchwar- 
 dens of a certain parish, to be by them applied to 
 charitable purposes ; and the question was, could 
 they be applied, according to the will of the donor, 
 or not. The whole bill is like the river in the 
 Vision of Mirza : but the following is a correct 
 extract. 
 
 1824. . s . d. 
 
 Dec. 6. Attending court, three petitions 
 in the paper for judgment, when 
 the Lord Chancellor went par- 
 tially into the matter, and re- 
 quested to be furnished with the 
 repealed Local Act, which he said
 
 46 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 he would read, and give his judg- . s. d. 
 
 ment to-morrow 2 
 
 Attending the Court all day, 
 three petitions in the paper, when 
 His Lordship said, he had to 
 leave early, but would not fail 
 giving his judgment to-morrow 
 
 1824. morning 200 
 
 Dec. 8. Attending Court all day, three 
 petitions in the paper for judg- 
 ment, when the Lord Chancellor 
 adverted to the question of juris- 
 diction, which he desired to be 
 again spoken to, and requested 
 that the Dean and Chapter of 
 Canterbury, they being the Lords 
 of the Manor of Wai worth, 
 should attend him, and ap- 
 pointed Saturday next for that 
 purpose, and requested to be in- 
 formed as to the mode of appoint- 
 ing overseers at the time the cha- 
 rity was founded 200 
 
 11. Attending Court all day, three 
 petitions when the same were 
 called on, and Mr. Shadwell 
 applied on the part of the Dean 
 and Chapter of Canterbury, to
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 47 
 
 let the petitions stand over, and . s. d. 
 
 the same were ordered till the 
 
 first seal before Hilary Term, to 
 
 give the Dean and Chapter an 
 
 opportunity of considering what 
 
 course they should take 2 
 
 1825. 
 
 Jan. 11. Attending Court on three peti- 
 tions, when Mr. Shadwell, on the 
 part of the Dean and Chapter, 
 stated that he was not prepared 
 to go on, and the Lord Chan- 
 cellor ordered the same to stand 
 for this day fortnight peremptory 200 
 
 25. Attending Court all day, three 
 petitions on the paper, but some 
 
 not called on 1 10 
 
 26. The like attendance this day ... 1 10 
 
 27. The like attendance this day ... 1 10 
 
 28. The like attendance this day ... 1 10 
 
 29. Attending Court, three petitions 
 in the paper, the same called on, 
 and ordered to stand for Tues- 
 day next, for the Dean and 
 Chapter to prove themselves en- 
 titled to interfere in this matter 
 
 as visitors .. .200
 
 48 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 Feb. 1. Attending Court all day, three . s. d. 
 petitions in the paper, but some 
 not called on 1 10 
 
 4. Attending Court all day, three 
 petitions in the paper, but some 
 
 not called on 1 10 
 
 5. The like attendance in Court 
 this day, three petitions in the 
 
 paper 1 10 
 
 9. The like attendance this day ... 1 10 
 
 10. The like attendance this day ... 1 10 
 
 11. The like attendance this day ... 1 10 
 23. Attending Court, when the Lord 
 
 Chancellor directed the Registrar 
 to report the petitions in the 
 
 paper for Tuesday next 068 
 
 Mar. 1. Attending Court on three peti- 
 tions, some in the paper, and 
 called on, when the various points 
 suggested by the Court were 
 again argued at some length, 
 and His Lordship promised to 
 give his judgment this day week. 200 
 8. Attending Court, but the Lord 
 Chancellor did not give judgment 
 according to his promise 068 
 
 Such is an authentic specimen of Proceedings in 
 Chancery, and costs of the same, in a case where
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 49 
 
 it cannot be presumed that there were any angry 
 feelings on the part of the suitors, or any disposi- 
 tion other than that of getting at the equity of 
 the case by the shortest and plainest course. As 
 little can it be presumed that there was any dispo- 
 sition on the part of the Court itself, or of those 
 practising therein, to arrest the current of equity. 
 But if such things happen when all are looking 
 anxiously and honestly to the close of the pro- 
 ceedings, what must it not be if one of the parties 
 be bent upon litigation. 
 
 I shall not mention the other jurisdictions of the 
 court, and the collateral courts and other places of 
 motion, adjustment, and device that grow out of 
 it, or are, in one way or another, dependant upon 
 it ; but it may happen that, while your main case 
 is in Chancery, there may be minor points before 
 the Vice-Chancellor and the Master, and also issues 
 before the Courts of Common Law ; any how, you 
 very often find that the whole case, upon which 
 an entire fortune and more than half a life have 
 been expended, really resolves itself into the Com- 
 mon Law issue; and that, had you not been barred 
 that Court by some disqualification of mere form, 
 you might have had judgment in a single term, 
 and at comparatively no expense. 
 
 Nor is it in what are strictly called equity cases, 
 that the Court of Chancery can put off judgment 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 50 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 almost ad libitum. It is the superior Court, and, 
 as such, it can stay proceedings in the Law Courts, 
 and do some other things which you would not 
 look for in a system which the learned Blackstone 
 describes as " the perfection of reason," and which 
 he says has faults, for no other reason than " lest 
 we should be tempted to think it of more than 
 human structure." 
 
 In the first place, the law of real property is so 
 complicated, and the style used by conveyancers is 
 so lumbered with words, the holdings and de- 
 scents run so counter to what you would think 
 common sense and common justice, that unless the 
 owners of the soil breed " in and in," in a way 
 which would addle the heads of the whole in a 
 few generations, every estate must, in the lapse of 
 some period or other, come into the warden ship of 
 Chancery, or come there as a suitor. I shall not 
 take upon me to say which of these cases is the 
 worst ; but any one who compares an estate which 
 is in Chancery with one which is not, will be at no 
 loss to discover that they are both bad enough. 
 This seems, too, to be a case that cannot well be 
 mended, unless both law and Chancery were at- 
 tacked at once ; an attack for which but few men 
 would have the daring, and probably no man the 
 strength. 
 
 Secondly, if your antagonist finds that the Com-
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 51 
 
 mon Law would go against him, he can, if he but 
 find swearing enough, come into Chancery, and sus- 
 pend the proceedings; and as he is the plaintiff 
 there, he may hang up the case as long as he pleases. 
 
 Thirdly, though you have got the better of him 
 at Common Law, he may swear that he is, in 
 equity, in the right ; but that he could not esta- 
 blish his case through the want of your evidence 
 and that of sundry other persons, some of whom 
 are at Canton and others at Quito. If he can but 
 swear up to the point, the Court will believe him ; 
 he will file his bill of discovery; that will pass; 
 and he will obtain a commission not only to ex- 
 amine evidence at the other end of the earth's 
 diameter, but to make you criminate yourself, 
 that is, admit that you are in the wrong. In this, 
 too, he is the party to move, and he may do so, 
 now or never, while your action at law lies all the 
 time on the shelf. A full disclosure of Chancery 
 would be one of the greatest books ever written ; 
 wherefore I shall leave it, and just notice, 
 
 2. THE COURTS OF LAW. These are not 
 much better subjects for general description than 
 the Court of Chancery. The irreverence with 
 which the oaths are administered to the witnesses; 
 the squabbles that sometimes take place between 
 the bench and that part of the bar which is rising 
 in spite of it; the clumsy technicalities, and many 
 D 2
 
 52 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 other things, inspire one with any thing but the 
 feelings that should be inspired by, and in, a court 
 of justice. Still, as there the feelings and the com- 
 mon sense of men have to be appealed to, as the 
 witness is shown to the jury and the public in per- 
 son and not on paper, and as there is an air of mean- 
 ing, a hearing to the end, when a cause once comes 
 on, and no interruptions on account of lunatic 
 lords, broken-down tradesmen, or orphan heiresses, 
 one feels much more interest and satisfaction than 
 in the Court of Chancery. One is refreshed, 
 too, with displays of talent and power, for which 
 there seems to be no scope in Chancery. One has 
 the keenness of Scarlet, the full-swelling tide of 
 Brougham, and those magical bursts in Denman, 
 which if he had sustained and turned to the affairs 
 of nations, he would have had but few rivals. 
 One likes, too, to hear Tenterden untying all the 
 knots that the barristers have entangled, straight- 
 ening the crooked bits of the evidence, and hand- 
 ing the real matter at issue over to the jury, plain, 
 clear, and manageable. No man could go the 
 length of being delighted with those courts, unless 
 he had just gained what had long seemed a hope- 
 less case ; but, in all the part of them that comes 
 broadly before the public, and is connected with the 
 jury, they are bearable in themselves, and very 
 good as contrasted with Chancery.
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 53 
 
 No thanks to the law for that ; for when we 
 come to consider the machinery and the motions of 
 that, we find but little that we can admire. Let 
 us look at the structure and steps of a com- 
 mon case. 
 
 In most cases, the writ is the document upon 
 which all the proceedings are founded, and the 
 suing out of that is the first step. In some way or 
 other money is sought by this writ ; but it has not 
 the slightest allusion to the merits of the case, or 
 the reason why the money is sought. The Court of 
 King's Bench, nominally can take cognizance of mat- 
 ters only as between the King and a subject ; and 
 so the object of the writ is to bring the defendant 
 into court, in order that, by being there, he may 
 be in opposition to the King a fictitious outlaw. 
 If the plaintiff calls for a specific performance, the 
 writ is a pr&cipe, calling upon the defendant to do 
 what it asks, or show cause why not. If it be for 
 general satisfaction, the attendance of the defendant 
 is not only demanded, but if the demand be more 
 than twenty pounds, whether it be well-founded or 
 not, the defendant is taken prisoner, unless he gives 
 security. This writ issues out of Chancery, and 
 like all other Chancery matters, it is grounded upon 
 swearing ; but as I shall have something to say 
 about it in another chapter, I shall say no more 
 here. The serving of the writ, so as to make sure
 
 54 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 of the defendant's appearance, or to get judgment 
 in absence against him if he fails, is called the 
 process. 
 
 Then comes the pleading, or the form in which 
 the matter is to be brought before the court. This 
 pleading is not any thing about the merits of the 
 case ; it is merely putting the counts or allegations 
 of it into the particular jargon of one of ten forms, 
 in which form it must be kept to the last a case 
 improperly laid or conducted in point of form, be- 
 ing more certain of failure than one which has no 
 foundation in justice. Six of the forms are for 
 wrong or injury done, actively by the defendant : 
 trespass, that he did the wrong wilfully and by 
 force ; replevin, that he took goods by force ; de- 
 tinue, that he forcibly keeps some particular thing; 
 trover, that he has found property and forcibly 
 keeps it ; case, that he has done some mischief, but 
 not vi et armis, as in trespass ; and ejectment, that 
 he holds premises, and refuses to quit. These six 
 are grounded upon the defendant's actually doing 
 wrong: the remaining four upon his refusing to 
 do right. These are, covenant, something that the 
 defendant should perform ; debt, something that 
 he should pay ; assumpsit, a species of implied co- 
 venant ; and detinue again, something that the de- 
 fendant should give up, without any allegation as
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 55 
 
 to his having come improperly by it originally, 
 but still being bound to deliver it up. 
 
 Into one or other of these ten forms of action, 
 the plaintiff must get a special pleader to put his 
 case ; and among them he has ample latitude. 
 
 Those who may have the good fortune never to 
 have had any thing to do with these same forms of 
 action, may be amused to see the slang that the 
 special pleader would put into the mouth of Sha- 
 drach Schneider, of Old Bond-street, tailor and 
 breeches-maker, in an action of trespass against 
 Frank Fashion, Gentleman. The real cause, you 
 will please to recollect, is, that Frank is indebted 
 to Shadrach in the sum of nine-and-twenty pounds 
 three shillings and one penny three farthings, for 
 having twice encased the body of the said Frank 
 in clothes, fitted by the " rules of trigonometry," 
 as Shadrach sets forth in his circular. Frank has 
 been touched by the magic finger of the bum-bai- 
 liff, which has taken all the franchise out of him, 
 until his friends have come in and lent him four 
 legs to stand upon ; and in the end he means to 
 " turn Shadrach round," by pleading minority. 
 Meanwhile, however, he keeps that to himself; 
 Shadrach also sinks the tailor, and the complaint 
 runs in this wise: 
 
 " Shadrach Schneider complains of Frank Fash-
 
 56 A SECOND JUDGMENT OP 
 
 ion, being in the custody of the Marshal of the 
 Marshalsea of our Lord the now King, before the 
 King himself, on a plea of trespass. For that the 
 said Frank, on the first day of April, in the year 
 of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and 
 twenty-eight, with force and arms, assaulted the 
 said Shadrach, to wit, in the parish of St. James's 
 in the County of Middlesex, and then and there, 
 with a certain stick, and with his fists, gave and 
 struck the said Shadrach a great many violent 
 blows and strokes on and about his head, face, 
 breast, back, shoulders, arms, legs, and divers 
 other parts of his body ; and also, then and there, 
 with great force and violence, shook and pulled 
 about the said Shadrach, and cast and threw the 
 said Shadrach downward upon the ground, and 
 then and there violently kicked the said Shadrach, 
 and gave and struck him a great many other 
 blows and strokes ; and also, then and there, with 
 great force and violence, rent, tore, and damaged 
 the clothes and wearing apparel, to wit, one coat, 
 one waistcoat, one pair of breeches, one cravat, 
 one shirt, one pair of stockings, and one hat, of 
 the said Shadrach, of great value, to wit, of the 
 value of fifty pounds, which he, the said Shadrach 
 then and there wore and was clothed with. By 
 means of said several premises he, the said Shad- 
 rach was then and there, greatly hurt, bruised
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 57 
 
 and wounded, and became and was, sick, sore, 
 lame, and disordered, and so remained and con- 
 tinued for a long space of time, to wit, hitherto, 
 during all which time, the said Shadrach thereby 
 suffered and underwent great pain, and was hin- 
 dered and prevented from performing and trans- 
 acting his necessary business and affairs, by him 
 during the same time to be performed and trans- 
 acted ; and also, thereby, he, the said Shadrach 
 was forced and obliged to, and did necessarily, 
 pay, lay out, and expend a large sum of money, 
 to wit the sum of fifty pounds, of lawful money of 
 Great Britain, in and about endeavouring to be 
 cured of the bruises, wounds, sickness, soreness, 
 lameness, and disorder aforesaid, occasioned as 
 aforesaid, to wit, in the parish of St. James's afore- 
 said. And other wrongs to the said Shadrach, 
 then and there did, against the peace of our said 
 Lord the King, and to the damage of the said 
 Shadrach, of five hundred pounds, and therefore 
 he brings his suit." 
 
 Such is the Babylonian jargon, with no truth, 
 and very little meaning though true, with which 
 the tailor comes " before the king himself," to get 
 payment of his bill, part of that " perfection of 
 reason," which needs faults, " lest we should be 
 tempted to think it of more than human struc- 
 ture!" Truly the temptation seems all the other 
 D 5
 
 58 A SECOND JUDGMENT OP 
 
 way that we should think it less. In any other 
 matter, if a man were to come forward, in grave 
 solemnity with such a story, if he happened to 
 have property worth the suing for, that would be in 
 the keeping of the Lord Chancellor, and himself in 
 a mad-house and strait-jacket, in very brief space. 
 But as the law, proverbially, " does not hang its 
 own thieves," so it seems it does not take cogni- 
 zance of its own acts of lunacy. So far from it, 
 that every word of this precious document is as 
 immutable as holy writ it is not to be added to 
 or taken from. If in any one part of the form, 
 the words, " force or violence," or " against the 
 peace of the King," were omitted, no action for 
 trespass would lie ; but Shadrach would have to 
 pay all the costs of both sides, and bring his 
 action " on the case," or in some other form. 
 
 There is something even more absurd than 
 that : the word " whereas" is, as one would think, 
 one of the most harmless words in the language ; 
 and from the frequency of its recurrence in sta- 
 tutes and legal documents, and notices of all 
 sorts, one would think that it is of the same mys- 
 tic use in law as the unpronounceable word in 
 Masonry, or the " Oom" of the adorers of Vishnu. 
 Yet if it find its way into the second sentence of 
 this declaration, the whole goes for nothing. In 
 most, if not all the other forms, the declara-
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 59 
 
 lion runs, " For that whereas ;" but if you say 
 " whereas," in the form of assault, you destroy 
 the whole document. Now if the " for that" and 
 the " whereas" be not synonymous and convertible 
 terms, they come so near to it, that nobody but a 
 special pleader could see the difference. 
 
 When the declaration is filed, the defendant 
 must either plead, or have judgment against him. 
 Pleading, he may either plead to the action itself, 
 or he may not. If not, he may deny the juris- 
 diction of the court, the ability of the plaintiff, as 
 that he is an infant, a married woman, or a fat 
 friar, or he may plead clerical errors in the decla- 
 ration ; and any one of these pleas, if established, is 
 good. If these be not attempted, or over-ruled, and 
 he plead to the action, he may give in ten or a 
 dozen pleas, the one half of which, are contradic- 
 tory of the other, as, he may plead first " that 
 he never owed a sum of money," and secondly, 
 " that he has paid it when due." Nay, he may 
 split the last into three, and plead that he paid 
 the whole of that which he says he never owed, 
 three times over of his own voluntary pleasure 
 before it was due, when it was due, and after it 
 was due. 
 
 To the plea of the defendant, the plaintiff may 
 rejoin, the defendant may sur-rejoin, the plaintiff' 
 rebut, and the defendant sur-rebut. Each of
 
 60 A- SECOND JUDGMENT OP 
 
 these proceedings must be worded in conformity 
 with the t( form of action ;" all of them are, there- 
 fore, unintelligible to anybody but lawyers ; all of 
 them are expensive ; and none of them go to 
 the real merits of the case. In fact the case itself 
 does not appear till all this technical rubbish be 
 got rid of, issue be joined on the specific point, 
 or points, as may be, and the cause set down for 
 hearing before a jury. What then is the use 
 of the jargon ? Nothing, that I could ever see, 
 or hear of, but to swell the costs, put fees in the 
 pockets of judges, officers, and attorneys, and find 
 a living for those ingenious hair-splitting persons, 
 called special-pleaders, for whom, but for the fic- 
 tions and forms of the law, there would not be the 
 smallest use. If the original writ contained the 
 real ground of action, and the declaration the 
 issues to be tried, all the nonsense would be done 
 away with, the case could at once go to a jury, 
 and there would be a great deal of justice and 
 very little law, which is exactly the reverse of 
 what I found in the Babylon.
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 61 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 BABYLONIAN LAW.- 
 FESTIVAL OF JOHN DOE. 
 
 Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with blood 
 
 Of human sacrifice." MILTON. 
 
 THOUGH the Babylonian law be unfathomable 
 and insatiable as the sea, and though the unfor- 
 tunate be, at all times, liable to be lost in its 
 abyss ; yet, like the sea, it has its ebbings and its 
 Sowings, its spring tides and its neaps, its high 
 floods, its equinoctial gales, and all the changes of 
 foam and fury ; and, still like the sea, its ragings 
 and restings depend chiefly upon the moon. During 
 the latter part of the summer and the autumnal 
 moons, it is comparatively quiet ; but when No- 
 vember weeps in fog, it makes its victim weep 
 in sorrow. 
 
 November has long been styled " the gloomy 
 month, in which Englishmen hang and drown 
 themselves ;" but though those who have bestowed 
 the appellation have been true to the casualties, they
 
 62 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 have not so much as hinted at the cause, though 
 that cause be as plain and palpable as cause can 
 be : it is then that " John Doe," that ogre of mis- 
 chief, recruited by the slumbers of the long vaca- 
 tion, comes upon the heedless and the unfortunate, 
 strong as an elephant and merciless as a tiger. 
 Of all heroes of romance, this hero of the romance 
 of the Babylonian law is the most singular. No- 
 body knows his origin ; and though he be every 
 where and engaged in all sorts of pursuits, nobody 
 can prove his identity, because nobody can swear 
 to having seen him personally ; his birth is remote 
 in the mists of the past, not only before the me- 
 mory of living man, but anterior to the commence- 
 ment of regular history ; yet though he be thus 
 old, he is as active as ever, and seems to be ex- 
 empted from disease as well as from death. There 
 is some occasional virtue in him, too; for when any 
 person wholly friendless is in danger of being de- 
 frauded of his rights, Doe instantly steps for- 
 ward in his behalf, and has the matter tried at 
 law ; and when any person is brought up for owing 
 money, Doe is always ready to offer security, even 
 although he may have, in the very same case, been 
 openly accused, and ordered to be taken into cus- 
 tody for assisting the debtor in committing a most 
 violent trespass or assault upon the creditor. In 
 neither case, however, can Doe be depended upon ;
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 63 
 
 for in the case of the friendless person, if the law 
 should happen to go against him, he slips out of 
 court without paying a farthing of the costs ; and 
 when he gives his security, or becomes bail, as it is 
 called, that security is never of any use whatever to 
 an honest debtor ; and if the debtor be dishonest, 
 and hide himself, or run out of the country, 
 then nobody ever heard of a creditor recovering a 
 penny from Doe. 
 
 In fact, Doe's sole object seems to be to cater for 
 the lawyers, and this at once accounts for his con- 
 duct and the lenity that is shown toward him. 
 Indeed, were it not for Doe, actions for debt, the 
 most numerous and the most profitable for the 
 lawyers, though the least so to every body else, 
 could not be brought at all. The good and great 
 Court of King's Bench, the supreme tribunal of 
 law, in the Babylon, is above taking notice of any 
 such thing as the recovery of a debt; and thus 
 without a little finesse, and the agency of Doe, 
 every creditor in England might go without his 
 money, unless the debt were constituted by a bond, 
 or some other written document worthy of the dig- 
 nity of the Court. Thus, in order to get hold 
 of the debtor, the creditor comes forward and 
 says, or swears, not that the said debtor owes 
 him a sum of money, which he is unable or un- 
 willing to pay, but that the debtor, accompanied
 
 64f A SECOND JUDGMENT OP 
 
 by Doe, and a host of other persons, all armed 
 in the most formidable manner, have come to his 
 house, or upon his grounds, and there committed 
 the most alarming outrages, trampling down his 
 corn, pulling up his trees, hamstringing his cattle, 
 and menacing him self, his wife, his family, and his 
 servants, with instant and cruel death. At this 
 the law gets very angry ; and, snapping asunder 
 that fine but filmy fiction, by which it is said to 
 look upon every man as innocent whom a jury of 
 his peers has not found guilty, it instantly believes 
 the assertion, and thereupon issues its mandate to 
 the sheriffs to summon the possd comitatus, and 
 take the rebels into custody, in order that they 
 may answer for the trespass of which they have 
 been guilty. Here one cannot help thinking either 
 that there is some collusion, or that Mr. Doe turns 
 common informer; for the first step of the sheriff 
 is regulated, not by the number of armed men 
 and the extent of damage done, as set forth in 
 the mandate of the court, but by the amount of the 
 debt. If that it be under twenty pounds, or if the 
 debtor have a house to live in, then the Court 
 takes his word that he shall appear ; but if the 
 debt be above twenty pounds, or if the debtor 
 have no house to live in, then he is held as being 
 guilty at once, and the mandate charges that he 
 shall be lodged in prison along with other felons
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 65 
 
 and guilty persons ; and if he be once put in 
 prison, in this manner, he may, and must lie there 
 for the whole term of his natural life, unless he 
 happens to have money enough to redeem him- 
 self out of this bondage, which, in the case of an 
 honest debtor, a man who does not pay merely 
 because he is unable to pay, is not likely to be 
 the case. If the debtor remain in prison, Doe 
 takes no more notice of him, but follows the same 
 course with as many others as those lawyers for 
 whom he caters may direct or desire. If, on the 
 other hand, the debtor be not ordered to prison 
 by the mandate, or if, being ordered, he do not 
 wish to go there, Doe, and a cousin of his, Roe, 
 come forward and offer their security upon re- 
 ceiving half a crown each, provided that a proper 
 fee is paid to the lawyers. The days upon which 
 this takes place, are accounted days of wonderful 
 solemnity at the Court. They are called days of 
 " the essoins," that is, " the fudges ;" because Doe 
 and Roe are, in common parlance, denominated 
 "fudge ball ;" and because, in the estimation of 
 reason, and to all intents and purposes, save that 
 of filling the pockets of the lawyers, and greasing 
 the axletrees of the law, the whole proceedings of 
 these days are fudge. Indeed, the same desig- 
 nation is most aptly given to the whole proceedings 
 up to this period, as well as during the time that
 
 66 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 Doe and Roe stand security. At the commence- 
 ment, the mandate contains a falsehood ; asserts 
 that which is well known never to have happened ; 
 therefore that is fudge ; and so also is the security 
 to the creditor, while the "fudge bail " suffices ; 
 for if during this period the debtor shall fly (fugit), 
 why then the creditor loses both debt and costs, 
 and nobody is any thing the better for the trans- 
 action but the lawyers, unless it be Doe and Roe, 
 and their half crowns seldom do them much good, 
 as they are usually spent in the next ale-house. 
 
 Here we can hardly help pausing to notice the 
 different glosses which the wise men of the northern 
 and the southern parts of this island put upon the 
 same word " fudge." There is fudge in the Scot- 
 tish law as well as in the English, but the applica- 
 tion of the term in the former country marks that 
 catching caution for which the wily natives of that 
 land of sneaking and saintship are so well known ; 
 while, if kind heartedness could be predicated of 
 any thing connected with law, one would say that 
 the English "fudge," more especially that part 
 of it which takes place after a " fudge-day," is cha- 
 racteristic of such kind heartedness as there may 
 be in John Bull. The Scottish law issues a "fudge- 
 warrant," in order to prevent the debtor from, 
 "fugens" running; the English, on the other hand, 
 accepts "fudge-bail," in order that "fugeris,"
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 67 
 
 he may run, if he pleases. The time granted 
 for this purpose is seldom very long. In Term- 
 time, when the Court is sitting, it does not exceed 
 a week ; and though in the vacation, more espe- 
 cially in the long vacation, which precedes and 
 ushers in the great festival of John Doe, it may be 
 much longer, lawyers generally make it as short as 
 circumstances will admit. 
 
 When the period of "fudgation" has expired, 
 the whole fiction of the law, Doe, Roe, the men 
 mounted and armed with the trampled corn, the 
 hamstrung cattle, the people screaming murder at 
 the sight of the bows and pikes, and all the other 
 things that awakened the vigilance and vengeance 
 of the Court, vanish like a dream, a thing that 
 had never been ; and the debtor finds that he is in 
 a very different situation from what he supposed. 
 If he was ignorant of the trick that they were 
 playing off against him, and what loyal English- 
 man that loved his country and revered its laws 
 as the very paths of justice and equity, could ever 
 imagine that those laws would countenance an 
 imposition ? if he was ignorant of this, he would 
 be looking forward to the day of trial with that 
 pride and confidence which an honest man feels 
 when he is falsely accused, and looks forward to a 
 triumphant acquittal by a jury of his fellow-sub- 
 jects in that country which he loves. He naturally
 
 68 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 laughs at the mandate of the Court, because he 
 never was in company with Messrs. Doe and Roe, 
 and never in his life committed a trespass or an 
 assault upon any human being. Thus, he is com- 
 pletely thrown off his guard, either as to paying 
 the debt, if it be a legal one, or as to preparing 
 his defence if it be not. All that he prepares him- 
 self to prove is, that he never was in company with 
 the persons alleged, and never once thought of 
 committing the part of which the mandate charges 
 him with the perpetration. When, therefore, the 
 real case, which was cloked under this juggle, opens 
 to him, he is not merely like a man near the brink 
 of a precipice, he is like one who is half-way over, 
 with one set of friends dragging him down, and 
 another securing his hands so as the more certainly 
 to ensure his fall. He discovers that Doe and the 
 trespass have nothing to do with the case ; but that 
 he is in custody for a debt which was never men- 
 tioned to him in the former part of the proceedings, 
 which, haply, is owing to a man to whom he has 
 given exorbitant prices for a long time, and who, 
 in the hope of an enormous and gambling profit, 
 wheedled him into the debt in question. If the 
 debtor be a man of principle and feeling (and from 
 the way that matters are often conducted in the 
 Babylon, there is a chance that a debtor, if there 
 be no other charge against him, is a person of this
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 69 
 
 description,) the juggle which has been played off 
 disgusts him, and makes him feel a contempt for 
 those laws which condescend to be co-actors in 
 deceit in fudge. But this is not all : for, though 
 the juggle has been confessed and abandoned, he 
 finds that, to him, it is just as costly as if it had 
 been all regular and true. Every act of the farce 
 is charged against him as a new debt ; and if the 
 real debt was a small one, it may be doubled, or 
 even tripled, before the party can, by any process 
 of common ingenuity, find out that the action is 
 for a debt at all. 
 
 What can be the use of this farce, before the 
 real business of the law commences ? To the cre- 
 ditor it does no good ; to the debtor who can pay, 
 either by compulsion or otherwise, it does evil ; if 
 the debtor has just as much as would pay the 
 debt, the costs of the farce sweep it all away ; and 
 if the debtor be unable to pay any thing, why then 
 the creditor must both lose his debt and pay the 
 costs of the farce. There is, thus, only one way 
 of accounting for its existence, and however that 
 may have been excused in times of comparative 
 darkness, there can be no plea for it now in these 
 days of comparative and confessed light : the only 
 parties who are at all benefited by it are the law- 
 yers, and, in the cases where it is most ruinous to 
 the debtor, and most expensive to the creditor, the
 
 70 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 low and worthless of the profession. Why not 
 come boldly to the case at once, avow the real 
 object, and take open and direct means for the 
 accomplishment of it ? The present procedure 
 is quite in opposition to the character of John 
 Bull ; and that he tolerates its existence is equally 
 unaccountable and disgraceful. But the conse- 
 quences are as immoral, as the practice is absurd. 
 A good man will not resort to it for the recovery 
 of a small debt ; and, just in consequence of it, the 
 honesty of a debtor is often undermined, and he is 
 sent first to the Insolvent Court, where, in nine 
 cases out of every ten, his moral sense is destroyed, 
 or at least blunted ; then he comes into society again 
 a man of fraud instead of a man of misfortune ; and 
 he who was instigated to occasion this, by the inte- 
 rested wheedling of some harpy of the law, who 
 could not be trusted with more honourable busi- 
 ness, pays costs for the certain loss of that which, 
 but for this mode of proceeding, he might have 
 recovered. 
 
 These strange things make November the month 
 of suicide ; and very many of those against whom 
 coroners' juries, in their mercy, return verdicts of 
 " temporary derangement," are persons murdered 
 by the fiction of the law. When Trinity Term 
 closes, and no further writ can be made returnable 
 till after the lapse of three or four months, the
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 71 
 
 necessitous and the thoughtless fancy that they 
 have before them a millennium of repose. In con- 
 sequence of this they incur expenses, and are 
 guilty of indiscretions, to which they are not sub- 
 ject at any other period of the year. It is the 
 fashion to leave Babylon during this period, and 
 to perform all sorts of whims and gambols, by 
 field and flood. This is not confined to those who, 
 in the strict mercantile sense of the words, " can 
 afford it :" all love pleasure ; many are urged by 
 vanity and fashion to " do as their neighbours 
 do ;" and thus, bills at home remain unpaid, new 
 ones are incurred, money is borrowed or raised upon 
 fictitious acceptances, business is neglected, and 
 away they whisk, leaving the cares and the pru- 
 dence of the city, or the suburbs, " to ape their 
 betters" at the fashionable haunts of folly and dis- 
 sipation. There, while the funds last, they are 
 supremely blessed, and lose in the Lethe of en- 
 joyment, all considerations of their affairs. But 
 Doe follows them like a staunch blood-hound. Un- 
 like blood-hounds of gentler breed he is ubiquious 
 in his tracking ; and while the " silly ones" fancy 
 that they are enjoying parties of pleasure, he is 
 recording against them deeds of assault and tres- 
 pass, in order that he may thereby bring them to 
 his November feast, or send them, by the deed of 
 their own hands, to feast the worms, after he has
 
 72 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 procured letters of invitation from those whose 
 slave and minister he is. 
 
 Doe is not the only dog upon the scent ; the 
 hounds of the law the low bred and mongrel 
 curs, are also upon the slot, and dogged, despe- 
 rate, and without a yelp, they are nosing out their 
 game. Among honourable lawyers, as among other 
 honourable men, there is no unusual stir at this 
 season. Every honourable man in the Babylon, 
 whatever may be his profession, has his connexion, 
 and contents himself with that, well knowing that 
 it will always be profitable and sure in proportion 
 to his ability and trustworthiness. But there are 
 persons who, by one means or other have got them- 
 selves enrolled among the practitioners of the law, 
 who have recourse to means very different. They 
 prowl about. Some of them settle in a suburb or 
 neighbourhood, attend the evening clubs of the 
 tradesmen, worm out of these by flattery, who are in 
 their debt ; and having ascertained that, their game 
 is a-foot. They do not run at it at once. They 
 dwell with much pathos upon the hardship to 
 which honest tradesmen are subjected, by fraudu- 
 lent persons who will not pay their bills ; and at 
 this they continue till they convince the tradesmen 
 that they are the best friends they have in the 
 world. After this the particular debtors of the 
 parties are again brought forward ; and the conver-
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 73 
 
 sation closes by an assignation, at which the trades- 
 man is to produce to the lawyer a list of his out- 
 standing debts. A case is now ready for the deci- 
 sion of the man of law, namely in how many of 
 the cases before him shall the tradesman and his 
 customers, jointly, be able to pay the costs ; when 
 this is decided, the lawyer " takes his instructions," 
 and the debts can be settled only through him. 
 As a sort of colour of justice, he first sends a let- 
 ter to the persons owing ; the cost of this is small, 
 but the profit is great, as the letters are usually 
 ready printed on brown paper, and do not cost a 
 farthing a piece, though they be charged " six-and- 
 eightpence" to the party receiving them, or the 
 party at whose suit they profess to be sent, as it 
 happens. In the sending of these same letters a 
 good deal of finesse is practised, in order to prevent 
 the parties to whom they are sent from discharging 
 the debts before the commencement of the action, 
 which they intimate is to be " without further 
 notice," can take place. If the parties be from 
 home during the time, all is safe ; if they be 
 not from home, then the scouts find out whether 
 they be punctual people or not ; if not punctual, 
 the letter is sent, trusting to their carelessness ; and 
 if punctual, the putting of it into the post-office 
 is delayed ; nay, there are some of the petty receiv- 
 ing houses in the plot ; and thus, though the pet- 
 VOL. I. E
 
 74 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 tifogger's clerk be ready to swear that he posted 
 the letter on the proper day, it is so contrived that 
 the writ follows closely at its heels. In this way 
 a vast number of paltry suits are originated ; and 
 it would be a curious inquiry to ascertain how 
 many attorneys of the lowest class are enabled to 
 live in comparative affluence by this means; and 
 also what portion of their living falls upon those 
 by whom they are employed, and what on those 
 whom they harass. It is an inquiry, however, 
 which would be disgusting in the progress, and 
 doubtful in the result. One more easy, and as 
 useful in guiding the Legislature in any attempt to 
 cure the evil, would be to ascertain the number of 
 individuals and families that are annually ruined 
 by this means, without any advantage to those in 
 whose names the proceedings are instituted. 
 
 Another means by which much distress is occa- 
 sioned, without any advantage except to the at- 
 torney, and those persons about the Court who 
 get fees on the different stages of the proceedings, is, 
 small bills of exchange and promissory notes, which 
 the acceptors or grantors have not been able to pay, 
 and which are nearly due, under a request that 
 they may be renewed, just due and dishonoured, or 
 overdue and not prescribed by the Statute of 
 Limitations. 
 
 Bills of this kind are frequently given by needy
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 75 
 
 and inconsiderate persons, for a half or third of 
 the value which they express ; and sometimes they 
 are fraudulently given by those who hope to take 
 advantage of this circumstance, and who do not 
 know, or do not reflect how the case is altered by 
 their getting into the hands of a third party. 
 Where there is one good name upon the bill, the 
 attorney, or attorney's confederate, who gets pos- 
 session of it, does not care how many bad ones 
 there may be, because he can recover from the good 
 one with costs as from all the others. Sometimes 
 the attorney has himself money enough for follow- 
 ing the trade of a bill-broker in this small way ; 
 but more frequently he has a gang of confederates. 
 These buy bills ; and if, as has been said, there be 
 one good name among the indorsers, the bill is all 
 the better if the original parties to it are bad. If a 
 bill has lain long over due, and the holder has lost 
 all hopes of payment, he will often part with it for 
 a trifle ; and though in this case the buyer could 
 not maintain his action, he can indorse it to another, 
 and the evidence of an undervalue of course fails. 
 
 In which of these ways soever the attorney or his 
 confederate gets possession of the bill, he takes his 
 action against the whole of the parties whose 
 names are to it, not excepting a few which he 
 himself may find convenient to add, for the mere 
 purpose of augmenting the costs; and in all the
 
 76 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 actions he proceeds until he gets some sort of 
 settlement. The way in which he usually deals 
 with the parties whom he knows are unable to 
 pay, is, after an expense of nine or ten pounds 
 has been incurred upon the action against them, 
 to settle with them by a warrant of attorney, for 
 which he gets two or three pounds in addition 
 to the expense of the suit; and in this way he 
 lets them drop one by one, and then comes upon 
 the solvent party for the whole costs. When 
 indeed, there is a party really solvent, the case 
 seldom proceeds thus far ; because that party 
 either pays at an earlier stage of the proceedings, 
 or employs some respectable solicitor, whose scru- 
 tiny the pettifogger is unable to abide. But 
 where the parties are all unable, warrants of 
 attorney may be obtained from them all ; and 
 half a dozen families may be kept without a chair 
 on which to sit, or a bed on which to repose, from 
 inability to pay one bill of exchange of ten pounds 
 value. 
 
 . The number of cases of this kind that are 
 brought to the feast of John Doe, at his most 
 formidable avatar in November, is more than any 
 reasonable arithmetician can sum up. Prepared 
 as they are by the pettifogging gentry alluded 
 to, there are no means by which the victims can 
 escape. For four weeks of the advent, the tip-
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 77 
 
 staves are seen flying about in all directions, 
 causing misery and despair wherever they come; 
 and by the time that the day itself arrives, those 
 pest-houses, in which the last shilling is wrung 
 from the sons of misfortune, are crowded in every 
 part. All this happening amid the murky fog 
 and the grim and uncomfortable streets of the 
 Babylon, affords a picture at which the heart 
 sickens, and misanthropy steals upon the gayest 
 in spite of himself. The crowd of defendants at 
 the bail-court, the ugly " fudges" offering their 
 moment of protection, the clamours of the clerks 
 and attorneys for fees, the blank and hopeless 
 visages of those who have been taken, and the 
 savage grins and insolent yellings of the " bums," 
 crowd together a group of circumstances which 
 tempt you to believe that you have escaped out 
 of the confusion of Babel, and, taking the wrong 
 door, got into the thickest torments of a worse 
 place. Nor is the scene or are the circumstances 
 amended if you venture to look into any of the 
 courts, lanes, or public rooms in the vicinity. 
 Nowhere do you find a brow unclouded, a cheek 
 unfurrowed, or an eye unaffected by passion. 
 The chafed creditor, worked into anger by the 
 cunning artifice of the attorney, lest he should be 
 melted at the sight of human misery and let the 
 victim go, and get payment at the sacrifice of fu-
 
 78 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 ture fees to the attorney, and storms like a demon ; 
 the debtor, with blanched brow, and eyes of lead, 
 pores upon vacuity, in hopes of finding a loophole 
 in a case which is frozen over as the Baltic in the 
 severest winter ; or if any thing that you can call 
 hope steals across his countenance, it is not that 
 radiant glow which gives pleasure to all that be- 
 hold it it is hope blasted with revenge the hope 
 of defeating his creditor, by having secured from 
 that just and honourable payment, which, but for 
 these harsh proceedings he would have made, as 
 much as will, by the use of that habeas corpus, 
 which should be free as air to all the people of 
 England, pay for u six weeks within the walls," fee 
 an attorney and counsel, and let him once more 
 come into society, with a knowledge of the place 
 where all that he may be able to get credit for 
 in the course of the next five years, may be again 
 washed off; and just by these, the ferret-eyes of 
 the attorney, each peering from under his dingy 
 brow, like a cat from under an inverted saucepan, 
 taking measure of the capacity of the debtor ; and, 
 as that lessens in the glance of the Insolvent 
 Court that the experienced harpy sees stealing upon 
 the debtor's resolutions, most slowly and compla- 
 cently taking gauge of the creditor's ability to put 
 himself, in as far as the attorney is concerned or 
 cares, into the debtor's place.
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 79 
 
 Such are the doings that are open to the day, 
 the garnishings of the festival of John Doe ; but 
 there are other matters, upon which, unless they 
 come to light in a report of a Coroner's Inquest, 
 the eye of the public cannot look. Those who 
 can come to the bail- room, and those who can get 
 any one to come to them in the strong and ra- 
 pacious hold of the preparatory prison, are not 
 utterly wretched and lost, they have still some 
 means of caring for themselves, as there are still 
 in the dense mass of the Babylon some that care 
 for them, however little. There are many, how- 
 ever, at whose misery not an eye moistens, or the 
 corner of a lip falls down, and in whose behalf 
 not a finger is put in motion. These are taken 
 from their squalid and furnitureless habitations, 
 or from their ample dwelling in the public streets, 
 as an ox is taken to the slaughter, and none heeds 
 or wits the while. To such, a common cell and a 
 felon's allowance would be plenty, and transpor- 
 tation, or even the hulks, Elysium ; but those 
 enjoyments are reserved for the thief, the robber, 
 and the murderer, and the simple and honest (for, 
 amid so much temptation and facility for stealing, 
 one so poor must be honest) debtor, is given over 
 to a more sad and more summary fate. To the 
 licentious man of fashion, and to the fraudulent 
 person in trade, who goes there that he may, in
 
 80 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 two months 1 time stock his shop with goods that 
 nobody can take from him, enter the lock-up-house 
 with jocund steps, accost its grim owner and keep- 
 ers with looks of familiarity and significant nods, 
 spend their time gaily there, and, when the form 
 allows, take their departure for the great delivery- 
 house in St. George's fields, there to carouse the 
 term of their formal probation in wantonness and 
 waste. But there are others to whom the lock- 
 up-house is a sepulchre, and the keeper the angel 
 of death, who die there as a matter of course, 
 and about whom there is no farther inquiry than 
 whether the escape that they have been fortunate 
 enough to make from unparalleled woe, has been 
 done by the courage and determination of their 
 own minds, or by any casualty of external circum- 
 stances. Yes, there be those who enter these 
 dreary shades, with nothing in the world but one 
 little crust of bread ; and, as these are places 
 where charity true charity of the heart cannot 
 be expected to dwell, and where public charity 
 that charity which " does its alms, blowing a 
 trumpet before it in the streets," will not visit, they 
 have no alternative when their little crust is eaten, 
 but to lay them down upon the cold earth, their 
 present support, and their to-morrow's brother 
 to lay them down there and die. 
 
 This is no exaggeration, no fiction of an idle
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 8l 
 
 fancy ; or if it be of an idle fancy, (idle to remind 
 the public of what they before knew but did not 
 heed,) still it is true. I have the evidence of my 
 own observation, and turn to the newspaper of the 
 morning, which has just been laid upon the table, 
 and I find that it furnishes the exact parallel of 
 the case which I have been attempting to describe. 
 It is not old either, not something which took 
 place under the cruel sway of the Tudors, or the 
 reckless one of the second Charles. No. It 
 happened when the monarch was the pinnacle and 
 the pride of all the kindnesses and the graces of 
 Majesty, when the trumpet was sounding that our 
 armament had won liberty for a distant nation, 
 which had been in slavery for hundreds of years ; 
 and when cruelty and oppression in all their forms 
 were fast flitting before the combined powers of 
 civilization and science; it took place on the 
 evening of Sunday the eleventh, or the morning 
 of Monday the twelfth of November, one thou- 
 sand eight hundred and twenty-seven ; and it 
 took place in the very centre of the Babylon. 
 
 If the report is accurate, and in such a case 
 there could be no motive for falsification, James 
 Abbot had, only four short months previous to 
 the day alluded to, been carrying on an extensive 
 business as a soap-boiler, had been what is termed 
 a respectable man, had paid his debts, all but the 
 E5
 
 82 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 fatal one in question, as it should seem (for it 
 does not appear that more than one party con- 
 duced to his imprisonment). But he had be- 
 come a defaulter to the Excise, had, in all proba- 
 bility failed to pay the duty upon his manufacture 
 at the time specified ; and a writ, with a most 
 singular name, but with fearfully extensive 
 powers, had been sued out against him. " An 
 extent in aid," a proceeding which may in some 
 cases be very necessary for the protection of the 
 public revenue, but which, in other cases, may be 
 very ruinous to the individual, without any cor- 
 responding advantage to the public, had been sued 
 out against him. This proceeding is an extent of 
 power which does not quadrate very well with 
 the notions that vulgar people have of a free 
 country. There is no proof of the debt adduced 
 to the jury, and there is no notice given to the 
 defendant, that he may plead either wrong in bar 
 of the writ, or poverty in mitigation of the punish- 
 ment. It is, as they say in the courts of equity, 
 ex parte, the one side swears to it in the absence 
 of the other side, and thereupon the writ issues. 
 
 Well, an extent in aid issued against James 
 Abbot, he could not, or he did not, (for it must 
 be a rich man that can do that, as the Crown pays 
 no costs,) sue out a writ of error, either in the 
 Court of Exchequer, or before the House of Com-
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 83 
 
 mons; and so the extent in aid swept off his whole 
 property, and he was cast into prison. What fault 
 there may have been on the part of James Ab- 
 bot to warrant those proceedings, is not on the 
 record from which I copy, and therefore I am 
 unable to state it. Nor is such a statement neces- 
 sary, for I am bound to believe, and, in justice to 
 the parties, to state my belief, that every thing had 
 been done strictly according to law, and without 
 the slightest intention to injure James Abbot as 
 an individual. 
 
 But James Abbot was cast into prison, and got 
 out thence upon giving the usual bond to put in 
 special bail at the ensuing festival of John Doe. 
 To obtain special sureties for the payment of a 
 bond to the Exchequer, where a scire facias can at 
 once issue against the sureties, if the principal 
 fails, is no easy matter ; and to one who, like 
 James Abbot, had had his whole property swept 
 away, as a matter of course, impossible. It need 
 not then be wondered at that James Abbot did 
 not find bail ; and not having done so, he was 
 again arrested upon (as the report says) the 
 morning of Sunday the eleventh of November. 
 
 Up to this, all was no doubt legal ; and I am so 
 far from questioning the legality of this, that it is 
 wholly on that account that I recite the facts. There 
 needs no disputing the legality : the fault lies there.
 
 84 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 If James Abbot had been living in luxury, if 
 he had had about him property that could have 
 satisfied the demand of the public, and had been 
 refusing to give up that property for this purpose, 
 then, common sense would have understood the 
 justice of his arrest ; and even if he had been 
 possessed of as much as would have paid the 
 officer who arrested him, there might have been 
 something said on the ground of a warning to 
 others. 
 
 But did the officer find about James Abbot any 
 symptoms of property concealed, or of capacity to 
 pay ? Ah ! no. He was found in one of the most 
 humble neighbourhoods in the purlieus of the me- 
 tropolis, and in one of the most miserable apart- 
 ments that ever was tenanted by human being in 
 a Christian land, a land whose wealthy inhabitants 
 subscribe to all and every thing save the relief of 
 genuine and retiring woe. The whole property 
 in that miserable apartment, that great all that 
 was to satisfy a demand of the mighty revenue of 
 the mightiest people upon earth, was, not a con- 
 cealed bag of gold, no, not even a chest of the 
 plainest wearing apparel it was, two broken 
 chairs. Not a bed was there for repose, not a 
 rug was there for warmth, two broken chairs were 
 the goods, and one little loaf of bread was all for 
 the Sunday's repast. And from this abode of
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 85 
 
 desolation and misery was James Abbot taken, in 
 order that he might pay a bond of default to the 
 five and fifty million revenue of England ! And 
 he was taken on the Sabbath day, on that holy 
 day when religion says, that the very beasts shall 
 rest, and man shall devote himself to the worship 
 of his Maker, on that day which is kept holy in 
 commemoration of the remission of sins to a re- 
 deemed world, on that day when the people of 
 all denominations cast their worldly pursuits and 
 their worldly cares behind them, and encompass 
 the altar of their God ; and when, in all likeli- 
 hood, the very men whose office it was to sue out 
 the writ, in conformity with the letter of the 
 law, joined in the sublime service of the national 
 church. And they would kneel down in solemn 
 reverence before the God of all the earth, and 
 would say, in the fervour of devotion, " Forgive 
 us our trespasses, as we forgive them that tres- 
 pass against us ;" again they would say, " That 
 it may please thee to succour, help and comfort, all 
 that are in necessity;" and again they would say, 
 " That it may please thee to defend and provide 
 for all that are desolate and oppressed ;" and yet 
 again they would say, " That it may please thee to 
 show thy pity upon all prisoners and captives ;" 
 and when they had done this, they would return 
 with hearts contented and joyful to the comfort
 
 86 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 and the happiness, and the fulness, and the lux- 
 ury of their homes. 
 
 That all this was most proper and most praise- 
 worthy, I have not the smallest disposition to 
 question ; as little am I disposed to doubt that, in 
 having originated the proceeding that led to the 
 case under consideration, the parties were serv- 
 ing their country with the same honest zeal, as 
 in the temple of religion they were serving their 
 God. The law is the law ; and while it stands uri- 
 repealed, those who have the administration of it 
 fail in their duty, if they do not take care to act 
 up to the very letter ; for if, in any case, the admi- 
 nistration of the law cause useless oppression, the 
 fault is not in the officer who administers, but in 
 the country which enacts. 
 
 And yet it might be well, that they who have a 
 voice and a control in these matters, would, when 
 they pour out the fervour of their hearts, in behalf 
 of " those that are in necessity," or " destitute," or 
 " prisoners," to think ivho are in those conditions, 
 and what may have brought them there; for though 
 they may have had nothing to do with causing the 
 calamity, that does not take away either their duty 
 or their ability in the curing of it ; and had some 
 such known of the taking of James Abbot, and the 
 place, and the circumstances, and the final result, 
 there is no knowing but they might have stepped 
 in and prevented the last.
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 87 
 
 His miserable abode was not one that would 
 tempt the visits of the world, neither would it 
 strike one that any change could darken his woe. 
 But so holy a thing is freedom, that with it, the 
 two broken chairs and the little loaf of bread, are 
 wealth and luxury, compared with the costliest 
 furnishings and the choicest fare in a prison. To 
 part from them was, therefore, an agony of the 
 heart to James Abbot. But even this was not all, 
 for there was a sting behind more barbed and 
 more venomed still. In the sad apartment there 
 was one who would not quit a loved and a loving 
 one, who parts not but with parting life a wife of 
 a year's standing one whom he had vowed above 
 all the world to protect and defend ; and who was 
 to protect her when the iron doors had been bar- 
 red and bolted upon him ? And she needed his 
 protection, for the hand of death was upon her ; 
 consumption had gnawed her to the bones, and to 
 the aid of that consumption was now to be called 
 in the more dreadful demon of hunger ; and of 
 these she was to die, and die alone in her desolate 
 habitation ; and the foul vermin were to crawl over 
 her poor remains, until that change which causes 
 high and low, rich and poor, to " stink in the 
 nostril," should tell the passers by, that " in secret 
 one had died there." 
 
 In this thought there was something to which 
 anguish could not add. The unfortunate couple
 
 88 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 took one farewell look ; tore asunder the little 
 loaf of bread ; and taking each a crust as pro- 
 vision for life, as earth could sever them no 
 farther, bade God's blessing upon each other, 
 and parted. 
 
 As the poor man tottered his way to the prison, 
 an acquaintance gave him sixpence, with the half 
 of which he purchased another loaf; and, stored 
 with that and with threepence, he was hurried to 
 one of those places, where, report says, money 
 alone can purchase civility. The threepence was, 
 in the course of the day, expended in a pint of 
 porter, which the prisoner intimated was his all. 
 The heart of the turnkey seems to have melted 
 at this, for he gave the man a drink of water 
 gratis, and accommodated him with a bed. When 
 he showed him to that, he bade " God bless" him; 
 but upon entering the apartment in the morning, 
 doubtless to bestow something more substantial, 
 the torment of the night's reflection had been un- 
 supportable, and, by the deed of his own hand, 
 the poor prisoner was a corpse. A Coroner's jury 
 sat upon the body ; a few shillings were subscribed 
 for the dying widow, and the whole passed off as 
 a natural casualty of the festival of John Doe. 
 Reader ! can you reason upon the subject after 
 this ? If you can, do, for / cannot.
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 89 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 JOHN BULL'S CASTLE. 
 
 The rat bored through the castle wall, 
 
 And down the castle fell, O : 
 So strong the wall, the rat so small, 
 
 A wonder it was to tell, O. OLD SONG. 
 
 IF one were to pause amid ones attempts at de- 
 scribing the " ways and wonders " of the Babylon, 
 and give one short hour to thought, there is nothing 
 that would call for more painful reflection, or place 
 in a clearer light the genuine spirit of the place 
 than the kind of security which John Bull enjoys 
 in his boasted castle. I speak not of those visita- 
 tions in defiance of the law, and in contempt of the 
 police, or haply in collusion with those " most 
 senseless and fit men, 1 ' whom ward, or district, or 
 parochial wisdom, appoints to be warders and 
 judges for the night. So far as these can be seen 
 through the natural and moral darkness and fog in 
 which; by time, temptation, and tendency, they are
 
 90 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 involved, they fall to be noticed in another place. 
 There are, however, other visitations to which 
 John is much more frequently and systematically 
 liable, that cause far more misery and suffering, 
 both in the aggregate and the details, than those 
 infractions of the law. Though the amount of 
 the illegal invasions of John's castle be great ; 
 though despite the gaol, the treadmill, the hulks, 
 and the gallows, " the worshipful company of 
 robbers and burglars," be as thriving in its 
 numbers and as doctant in its craft, as any other 
 of the minor corporations in the city ; though it 
 have its " wardens and commonaltie of the mys- 
 terie," well and thoroughly organized ; and though 
 it have its laws, and its lawyers, ready to screen 
 and defend the freedom and privileges of its 
 members ; yet it falls chiefly upon those who are 
 able to bear it, and it pursues not its victims 
 beyond the individual act. 
 
 The legal burglaries, on the other hand, are 
 never practised but upon the necessitous; there is 
 not the shadow of protection against them, and 
 the parties with whom they originate, or by whom 
 they are conducted, pursue their victims to ruin 
 always, and often to death. The common law 
 says, that a man's dwelling shall not be " broken 
 into " by forcing the outer door ; but it allows the 
 same to be entered by stealth ; and when it has
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 91 
 
 been so entered upon, any of the local statutes, 
 statutes which have mostly been obtained upon 
 false showings for corrupt purposes, the statute 
 silences the common law, and shuts the court of 
 justice against the sufferer. 
 
 Those hardships often take place in what may 
 properly be termed the " Parish business " of the 
 Babylon. The imposition and levying of local rates, 
 and the law of landlord and tenant. The assessed 
 taxes upon dwelling-houses, are fixed by the public 
 statute at a certain poundage on the rent ; and 
 as it is said never to be the intention of the law 
 of England to harass, distress, or persecute any of 
 the people, unless when guilty of crime upon this 
 plain principle, that the property of the country 
 must support the state, and should do it equitably 
 a discretionary lenity is delegated to those who 
 have the conducting of the details. The statute, 
 however, is existent, and may be pleaded; the 
 lenity is a mere understanding, and, as such, has 
 no existence in law ; and thus, that which was 
 intended to be equitable and merciful, is turned to 
 a fertile source of injustice and oppression. 
 
 This injustice and oppression arises from two 
 sources ; the principle of the assessment, and the 
 practice. 
 
 First, the principle is not equitable. The rent 
 which a man pays is not a fair criterion of the
 
 92 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 property in his possession which the law protects, 
 and therefore it cannot be the foundation of an 
 equitable assessment. It is taxing a man in pro- 
 portion to the number of his family; in other 
 words, making the tax fall heaviest upon those 
 who are the least able to pay. Nor is this all, for 
 the rent paid for a house is not the measure of the 
 accommodation. A rich man takes a long lease, 
 pays a large premium, and thus gets his house at a 
 half, or third, of what it would be charged to a 
 yearly tenant, especially to one whose ability to pay 
 were in any way doubtful. Such is the fault of the 
 principle ; and upon it many instances could be 
 pointed out in which a rich man pays taxes only 
 upon a rental of twenty or thirty pounds a-year, 
 while a poor man living at the next door, and hav- 
 ing probably inferior accommodation, is compelled 
 to pay upon a rent of forty, fifty, or sixty pounds. 
 Secondly. Unequal and oppressive, however, 
 as is the principle upon which this most galling of 
 all species of taxation proceeds, it is equity and 
 justice as contrasted with the practice ; for there, 
 in the sum assessed, in the mode of levying it, and 
 in every circumstance connected with it, the bene- 
 volent intention of the law vanishes, and that dis- 
 cretionary power which it intended should protect 
 the unfortunate, is perverted from its original 
 purpose, and made an instrument of partiality
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 93 
 
 in favour of the rich ; of oppression and gross 
 injustice to the poor, and (with real loss to the 
 revenue,) of enrichment to a set of the most 
 worthless harpies with which any country was 
 ever cursed. In this again, we have a striking 
 application of the beautiful apologue of the Baby- 
 lonian image : The " head," which devises the 
 tax, is of pure gold ; but the " feet and toes," by 
 which the small fragments of it are trodden out of 
 the poor and the needy, are truly of " iron mixed 
 with miry clay." The commissioners are, of 
 course, " worshipful men ;" but their interference 
 in the matter is little else than form ; the sub- 
 stance being committed to those under them, the 
 surveyors, assessors, and collectors; and through 
 these there comes a mass of partiality and injus- 
 tice, greater than would be supposed, by any but 
 those who have, for years, closely and quietly 
 watched the working of a parish or a district. 
 
 There is no occasion for imputing absolute and 
 direct bribery to these men, though such do, in 
 many instances, take place ; because they may be 
 as effectually and more safely corrupted by other 
 means. They are not independent officers, de- 
 voting the whole of their time and attention to 
 the public service, deriving the whole of their 
 emoluments from that service, and being thus 
 independent of those upon whom they impose and
 
 94 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 levy the tax. They are common tradesmen, fol- 
 lowing the ordinary craft of money-making, in 
 their respective neighbourhoods, and following it 
 by the usual means. They are creatures of the 
 local aristocracy of wealth, made by that aristo- 
 cracy for its own ends ; and if they serve not these 
 properly, that which made them can cast them 
 down and appoint others in their places. A faith- 
 ful discharge of their duty to the whole public 
 may be the wish of at least some of them ; but 
 they dare not carry that wish into practice, at the 
 hazard of " losing their best customers." There- 
 fore, in very many cases, they are compelled to 
 assess the rate not at what they should, but at 
 what they dare. Nor is it in the mere assessments 
 upon the premises which they themselves inhabit, 
 that the rich derive an unfair advantage. In most 
 districts, and especially in the suburban ones, 
 many of the houses are the property of those 
 ruling and influential men who have the nomina- 
 tion of the officers ; they can thus have their 
 houses entered at any portion of the real rent 
 they please ; and if the landlord has influence to 
 reduce and keep the taxes and rates fifteen pounds 
 lower than they should be, a tenant could not 
 scruple to pay ten pounds of additional rent. 
 Twenty houses managed in this way, will produce 
 clear two hundred pounds a year to the landlord ;
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 95 
 
 and thus he will be considerably in pocket though 
 he shall divide fifty in douceurs among the officers. 
 Some landlords may have ten times, or twenty 
 times that number of houses in a district, and 
 thus their influence and their profits may increase 
 to an extent, irresistible by any dependent offi- 
 cer. Thus a very great number of very powerful 
 causes, combine to sap the foundation of John 
 Bull's castle in all cases when that castle is not 
 founded upon the adamantine rock of wealth. 
 
 These evils apply to the whole country ; but it 
 is in and near the Babylon where their operation 
 is most general and destructive. In great mat- 
 ters, the voice of public opinion is omnipotent in 
 the Babylon ; but in small ones, it has no power 
 whatever. A measure which affects a class or a 
 nation, causes every quill to be run up to the 
 feather in ink ; and questions, commentaries, and 
 conjectures, blot a thousand reams of paper in a 
 day. Not so with minor acts of oppression ; for 
 at the very time when they are writing and dining, 
 and speechifying, and subscribing for the relief of 
 some great public calamity which has happened, 
 or been supposed to happen at the opposite ex- 
 tremity of the earth's diameter, a desolate widow, 
 or some friendless invalid, may have the rug taken 
 from over them, or the pallet of straw from under 
 them, in execution ; or may be cast into the street,
 
 96 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 diseased and naked, for a few shillings of rent, 
 without any farther notice being taken, than a 
 verdict of " died by the visitation of God," re- 
 turned by the Coroner and his jury. The pri- 
 vate business of every Babylonian necessarily occu- 
 pies his private attention, and the news of the day 
 which are rained upon him by the public press, 
 find him in so ample materials of conversation, 
 that he has no leisure and no inclination to attend 
 to the cases and fortunes of those about him, any 
 farther than he may happen to be connected with 
 them in business. As long as they are thriving 
 and prosperous, this has its advantages ; it pre- 
 vents scandal and saves a few from being unjustly 
 expelled from society, consequences which some- 
 times take place in small places, where the charac- 
 ters and conduct of the whole, individually and 
 collectively, supply each individual with the ma- 
 terials of conversation. But the moral oblivion 
 of the Babylon covers the real perpetrator of 
 crime or cruelty, as well as shields the innocent 
 from the shaft of scandal ; and when we come to 
 weigh the good against the evil, it is by no means 
 easy to find out which way the balance leans. 
 Contemplating the quantity of this crime and 
 cruelty, which is noticed by the press, one would 
 feel disposed to get rid of it, even at the expense 
 of a considerable portion of scandal , and gossip ;
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 97 
 
 and were there any means of getting a full view of 
 the whole, there is little doubt how the judgment 
 of philanthropy would be given. 
 
 The Government taxes are not the only or the 
 chief means by which this injustice is done; for 
 though there be the means already stated, as well 
 as other means, whereby the burden is taken off 
 the rich and laid upon the poor ; yet there is one 
 point upon which the statute is clear and specific, 
 the rate per pound or per window ; and there is 
 always a check, though with the poor and the 
 ignorant (and they always compose the majority 
 of the sufferers) that check is far from an efficient 
 one, there is a chance that the injured may com- 
 plain, and that the voice of their complaint may 
 be heard and answered at some point of the system 
 higher than corruption can dare to lift its head. 
 
 When, however, the exaction is of a purely lo- 
 cal nature when it proceeds from parish business, 
 or from some local or personal statute, such as one 
 for repairing the highways, supplying the districts 
 with water, and q. s. of feculse and insects, or the 
 like, the working of the system is perfect and unan- 
 nealed. Here the very men who can derive the pro- 
 fits of injustice are those at the top of the file ; and 
 any appeal to them against the injustice of those 
 whom they employ, is much the same as if a lamb 
 were to appeal from the cub fox to a full-grown 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 98 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 wolf. If it is parish business poor-rates, church- 
 rates, or any other rates, which the local governors 
 impose, the amount, as well as the apportioning, 
 lies with the parties who, necessarily, have both 
 the disposition and the power to shift the burden off 
 themselves ; and therefore to assume that they do 
 not do it, would be to contradict a general principle 
 of human nature, and the only one which is recog- 
 nized and acted upon by a very large number of 
 the Babylonians. These ruling men in the pa- 
 rishes are generally, nay, almost invariably, men 
 of illiterate and vulgar minds, men who have con- 
 trived to " add house to house 1 ' in a very ques- 
 tionable way; and who, as they made the fortunes 
 that give them the influence that they possess, by 
 
 ' ' Every art o' legal theivin','' 
 
 and have no knowledge or idea beyond or contrary 
 to those arts, hover about the vestry-room, and 
 brood over the parish, as carrion crows do over 
 their prey. Why the affairs of the parishes, which, 
 all over England, are next in importance to those 
 of the state, and which, in and about the Baby- 
 lon, are of much more importance even than these, 
 should be left to persons of the description men- 
 tioned, is more to be regretted than wondered at. 
 Parish business, either from something in its own 
 nature, or from some prejudice that has been
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 99 
 
 raised against it, is always looked upon as dirty 
 business; and thus men of enb'ghtened minds do 
 not like to have any thing to do with it : so it gets 
 into the hands of great and small jobbers, who 
 manage it for their own interest ; put their own 
 creatures into the parish offices ; screen them when 
 they do wrong ; expect gratitude, at least, for their 
 patronage, and would of course give it up if they 
 did not find it profitable. 
 
 If the exaction be in virtue of a private or local 
 act, the chance is that that act will contain some 
 sly and lurking clause by means of which a good 
 deal of partiality may be carried on and protected. 
 Matters have mended a good deal now ; but pre- 
 vious to the exposure of some very gross jobbing 
 in the time of the bubbles of 1824 and 1825, and 
 especially of one very gross one on the part of the 
 Solomons of the North, at which the very advo- 
 cates of ordinary corruption in that land cried 
 " shame," a private bill could in every instance be 
 made a job, and, in a great many instances, was 
 one in reality. The principle upon which a pri- 
 vate bill is sought is, ex facie ', a questionable one; 
 such a bill being an ex part L e law, sought for in 
 order to take the applicants out of the power of 
 the general law of the country. It is costly too, 
 and therefore no party would apply for it, if it 
 were not to give them an advantage over the pub- 
 F 2
 
 100 A SECOND JUDGMENT OP 
 
 lie which they could not claim at common law or 
 in equity. But, when any principle is bad, it 
 may safely be concluded that the practice founded 
 upon that principle is worse : and up to the 
 period alluded to, this was notoriously the case 
 with private and local acts of Parliament. It 
 would be " within the statute" a gross " breach of 
 privilege" as it were, to say that any member in 
 Saint Stephen's could, even in the rude and bar- 
 barous times antecedent to the year 1826, be 
 bribed or influenced, because men who not only 
 do the public business without fee or reward, but 
 who voluntarily spend fortunes in order to obtain 
 permission so to do it, must be, at least must be 
 understood to be, the most pure and disinterested 
 men on the face of the earth. It is a fact, however, 
 that, up to the period that has been mentioned, 
 the pure and honourable minds of those generous 
 and disinterested individuals, whenever they had 
 the misfortune to form the majority of " a Com- 
 mittee up-stairs " upon a private bill, were grossly 
 imposed upon and misled by the parties at whose 
 instance the bill was sought, or else their unsus- 
 pecting natures were vilely cajoled by the cunning 
 words of the solicitors and agents by whom the 
 drafts of the said bills were prepared. Here, 
 again, the very virtue of the senate was changed 
 into vice : the honourable minds and unsuspect-
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 101 
 
 ing natures of the committee-members allowed 
 them to be at first the dupes of parties out of the 
 House ; and when habit had given this a colour of 
 right, they began to dip their own fingers in the 
 caldron of jobbing, in the bubble year, and got 
 them burnt. This made the other part of the 
 House take some measures for its fatuous members 
 for the future ; but the caution came a little too 
 late for the public, who, all over the country, and 
 especially in and near the Babylon, still groan 
 under the effects of those ex parte laws. 
 
 Such are the means by which power is given to 
 levy secondary taxes upon the Babylonians ; and 
 they all afford the most ample proof of want of 
 equity in the apportionment, and consequent op- 
 pression and misery in the collection. The men 
 by whom these taxes are apportioned, are all, in 
 common parlance, " respectable" men ; the most 
 indeterminate epithet, by the way, in the whole 
 Babylonian vocabulary, unless its value be esti- 
 mated in money : their operations are carried on 
 in the dark, at least the majority of those whom 
 they affect, and more especially those upon whom 
 that effect has a chance of being the most disas- 
 trous, have neither the knowledge requisite for their 
 investigation, nor leisure for applying it although 
 they had ; and in the really distressing part of it, 
 the collection, they do not at all appear. For
 
 102 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 these reasons, complaints, when made, are seldom 
 made to the proper quarter, or against the proper 
 parties ; and thus the little redress that might be 
 attainable, is not obtained. 
 
 There is a vulgar prejudice against every per- 
 son to whom the final execution of the law is 
 committed : When the hangman appears in the 
 streets, he is hooted, or in remote places, where 
 the gallows is not so much a matter of course as 
 in the Babylon, he dares not appear in public with- 
 out a guard ; and such is the odium in which the 
 officer who beheads a traitor is held, that he must 
 perform his disgusting office in a mask. That 
 this is a merely animal prejudice is true : it is of 
 the same nature as that which makes a wild beast 
 snap at the weapon with which he is wounded, or 
 a surly peasant kick the stone that has bruised 
 his toes ; but still it is a general prejudice ; and it 
 is very doubtful whether any class of society can 
 ever become so educated as to get the better of it. 
 
 Of this prejudice, the collector of any tax or rate 
 comes in for his full share, in proportion to the real 
 or imaginary hardship that his demand may occa- 
 sion to the parties. His is, therefore, an ungracious 
 office, an office which only the necessitous, or those 
 who care not much how they stand in the estima- 
 tion of their neighbours, will be disposed to under- 
 take. In the honest and faithful discharge of the 
 duties of his office, too, the tax-gatherer must do
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 103 
 
 things which, though perfectly legal, are harsh, 
 and the repetition of these, together with the pre- 
 judice that there is against him, cannot fail in 
 having a pernicious influence upon his temper and 
 character. Whatever may be said of disinte- 
 restedness, men are in general virtuous for the 
 profits of virtue, and vicious for "the wages of 
 sin ;" and thus if, on the one hand, you make the 
 man do the deed which is felt to be cruel, and on 
 the other hand give him the odium of it, you sap 
 the foundation of the man's goodness, and leave 
 him hardly any alternative but to become what he 
 is called. Be his original disposition what it may, 
 be his indulgence great, even to his own actual 
 loss, there still must be cases, and many cases, in 
 which he is complained of; and thus, as he has not 
 the reward of the kindness which he really exer- 
 cises, he is not to be blamed though he cease to 
 show that kindness itself. 
 
 Whether the nature of the offices under consi- 
 deration has a tendency to attract persons who 
 have not the clearest natural perception of the nice 
 distinctions of right and wrong, or whether the cor- 
 rupting tendencies above stated may operate upon 
 them, it avails not much to inquire ; but even where 
 the matter is supposed to be conducted with per- 
 fect fairness, John Bull generally gets the offer of 
 paying an additional rate or two, as often as it suits 
 or pleases him to go out of a former neighbourhood,
 
 104 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 or come into a new one ; and as these extra de- 
 mands are usually made, either when John is in the 
 bustle of removing, or before he is firmly seated in 
 his new locality, Babylonian John's habit of attend- 
 ing only to one thing at a time, is very apt to lead 
 him to pay. Any extra sum that may be thus raised 
 is, of course, the prize of the collector ; and when 
 a man once tastes <; the sweetness of stolen waters, 1 ' 
 he is but seldom satisfied with a single draught. 
 It is matter of habitual remark, that, however poor 
 an individual may be when he is appointed to one 
 of these collectorships, his wealth thrives apace 
 under it ; and in some of the very extensive and 
 populous parishes of the Babylon, there have been 
 instances where a collector of rates has, in the 
 course of a few years, become proprietor of more 
 houses than he had farthings at the commencement. 
 The way in which this was accomplished was by 
 keeping two sets of books, one by which he account- 
 ed to the parish, and another, in which he entered 
 the sums which he levied upon the parishioners. 
 The fraud was discovered by a concubine, to whom 
 he had given offence, sending to the parties con- 
 cerned the wrong no, the right book. The an- 
 nual discrepancy amounted to some thousands of 
 pounds, and had been effected in various ways. 
 The rates were in some instances charged at less 
 than their real amount ; in others, those who had
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 105 
 
 paid were set down as hopeless defaulters ; persons 
 who were still living in the parish were reported as 
 having gone away clandestinely, and being non 
 invent us to the most careful inquiry ; and houses 
 which had been all the time occupied, were returned 
 as empty, and as such, not liable to be rated. 
 
 To those who are not versed in the mysteries of 
 Babylon, this may seem incredible ; but it is, never- 
 theless, literally true ; and I know not whether the 
 law ,is it even now stands could regard the matter as 
 any thing more than a common breach of trust, or 
 that restitution could be had for any thing more 
 than the single year or term, out of many, to which 
 the single book that was discovered applied. As this 
 happened for years, in a very large and populous 
 parish, and by a man who, till the accidental dis- 
 covery, was looked upon as the very best of officers, 
 there is a strong presumption that it is not a solitary 
 instance even of the double book ; and a presump- 
 tion no less strong, that instances in which exactions 
 are made and never accounted for to the revenue 
 or the parish, are far more numerous than even 
 suspicion itself would, upon a first glance at the 
 matter, surmise. These, however, are all entrances, 
 and forcible entrances of John Bull's castle ; they 
 do not enter it, indeed, in the same open and 
 alarming way as John Doe, and the spearman and 
 the debtor come upon his ground ; but they enter 
 F5
 
 106 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 it with a force far more irresistible at the time, and 
 for the damage done by which John can get no 
 redress afterwards. 
 
 The whole of the inroads and hardships to which 
 John is exposed in his castle, if he be there as a 
 tenant the situation in which he is in ninety-nine 
 out of every hundred instances in the Babylon 
 are yet more numerous and grievous than these ; 
 and they cannot be even hinted at without intro- 
 ducing some other parties to the notice of the 
 stranger to John they need not be introduced, 
 they come of themselves ; but still, where he does 
 not appear to have the requisite notice of them. 
 
 Equity would seem to demand, that where any 
 two parties should have, at the same place, proper- 
 ty which is, as it were, inseparable, they should 
 bear the public charges upon that property, in the 
 compound ratio of the value that belongs and the 
 profit that accrues to each ; that, in the case of a 
 house which is rented, the value of the house, and 
 the rent paid for it, should be charged against the 
 landlord, because his is a permanent and tangible 
 property, from which neither the public revenue 
 nor that of the parish could sustain any loss, where- 
 as that of the tenant may be evanescent ; and also, 
 because the landlord being presumable to be more 
 permanently allocated, either in himself or his 
 agent, than the tenant, and being besides pre-
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 107 
 
 sumable to be a more wealthy and influential man, 
 possessing more leisure and more knowledge of the 
 public and local laws, he is more likely to prevent 
 inequality in the assessments, and fraud in the col- 
 lections. So far, however, is this from being the 
 case, that the landlord is chargeable with no tax, 
 save that for the ground upon which the house 
 stands, and even that may be redeemed. He may 
 be owner of half the parish ; derive from it a yearly 
 revenue of a hundred thousand pounds, and yet 
 not pay a farthing to the parish expense. 
 
 It may be alleged that the occupant of the 
 house can always be found, but that it might be 
 difficult, in many cases, to find the owner ; but the 
 reverse is the case, and there are few instances in 
 which it would be difficult to find the landlord. If 
 the taxes and rates were charged in this way, the 
 apportionment could be made far more equitable, 
 and, as the sums would be much larger, they could 
 be collected at a fraction of the expense, and with- 
 out any defalcation. Nor is there any reason to 
 apprehend that the landlord svould, by this arrange- 
 ment, get less profit upon his capital ; for it would 
 be the same in amount, and far more agreeable in 
 practice for the tenant to pay a half or a third more 
 than his present rent, than to have a weekly visit 
 from the tax-gatherer. But the grand advantages 
 would be, a certain payment upon the real rents or
 
 108 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 value of the houses, and, in consequence of that, a 
 considerable diminution of the poundage both to 
 the King and the parish, and not a few of the poor 
 and the unfortunate saved from the workhouse 
 or from worse places. 
 
 But the landlord is not merely exempted from 
 taxes and rates ; his property appears to have had 
 some peculiar fascination in the opinion of those 
 who framed the law. Just because a house may 
 be more certainly come at than furniture or 
 movables of any description, the wisdom of the 
 law has seen meet not to come against it for rates 
 or taxes; and again, it seems that, just because a 
 house is more difficult to be stolen, run away with, 
 or otherwise appropriated than most other kinds of 
 property, the law in its wisdom has afforded it 
 protection which extends to nothing else. In the 
 case of any other debt, though the creditor may 
 have parted with his property, though he may 
 have lost the profits upon the value of that pro- 
 perty for years, and though he may be perfectly 
 aware that the debtor has not only other property 
 more than equal to satisfy the debt, but that he 
 has in his possession, unused, the very article for 
 which the debt was incurred, yet he dares not 
 without an action at law, followed up to final 
 judgment in the course of which the whole pro- 
 perty may vanish seize, or even attach the value
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 109 
 
 of one farthing. A landlord, on the other hand, 
 may, without process of law, and in many cases 
 without any intimation of his intention, come, the 
 very moment that his profit becomes due, and 
 strip his tenant to the last rag. Houses, being 
 indispensable accommodations, must always com- 
 mand their fair price in the market ; and it will be 
 found that, notwithstanding the enormous supply 
 of new ones (certainly not fewer than four thou- 
 sand annually in the Babylon on the average of 
 the first five years of George the Fourth), money 
 laid out on them yields as great a return as 
 upon any of the ordinary branches of commerce, 
 and yields it without any of the risk that is always 
 contingent there. In business, the whole, or at 
 least part of the capital, must always be put at 
 hazard ; but in the case of houses, nothing is 
 at stake but the profit ; whatever protection the 
 law gives to the owners of them, it should there- 
 fore give more to every kind of property which 
 the contingencies of trade place in greater jeopar- 
 dy. But the law reverses this ; and upon the good 
 old maxim that " it is safest to help the strong," 
 it leaves that which may really be in peril, and 
 blusters in aid of that which is in no danger, and 
 therefore stands in need of no protection at all. 
 In this way, John Bull's castle becomes, in reality, 
 the castle of John's landlord ; and John himself
 
 110 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 is a mere serf that may be thrown over the bat- 
 tlements at any time. 
 
 The extraordinary power which the law gives 
 to this class of persons, is productive of a vast 
 train of evil consequences, a few of which it may 
 not be improper to mention, inasmuch as, though 
 nobody can be long in the Babylon without seeing 
 them in reality, I have never met with the tale 
 recorded in print. 
 
 1. The extraordinary protection which the law 
 affords to landlords, by enabling them without pro- 
 cess, without trouble, and without notice, (as un- 
 der certain circumstances is the case,) to levy an in- 
 stant distress for their monthly or weekly sums, 
 gives them the means of collecting into the low neigh- 
 bourhoods of the Babylon, and retaining, for a time 
 at least, bands of characters whose assembling 
 together constitutes one of the chief means of their 
 danger to society, and who, were the landlords 
 compelled to have recourse to the same means for 
 the recovery of their rents, to which ordinary 
 creditors are obliged to have recourse, could not 
 be so collected ; but would be dispersed over the 
 country, where their operations could not, from 
 the want of confederacy and concert, prove half 
 so destructive to the public. In many of those 
 abodes of misery and guilt, the landlord is to be 
 found, upon his weekly rent-day, threading the
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. Ill 
 
 mazes of his filthy lane, with his book in his 
 hand, his broker at his elbow, and a cart for the 
 removal of the distrained property, following at 
 his heels. If the money be forthcoming, no 
 question is put as to the character of the 
 parties. Like the tribute-money of the Roman 
 Emperor, the rent smells not of its origin; and 
 the landlord cares not a jot how many thieves and 
 prostitutes may be harboured, or how many 
 assaults, robberies, or even murders may be per- 
 petrated upon his premises, so long as he derives 
 from the children of iniquity that revenue which 
 enables him to live " a highly respectable man," 
 in some other part of the Babylon, or keep his 
 carriage, and be " quite a gentleman," in some of 
 the . neighbouring villages. When, however, he 
 goes to the source of his gains, he leaves his re- 
 spectability at his house, or says " good b'ye" 
 to the gentleman at his villa ; and you may find 
 him bartering along with a thief at one place, 
 exchanging " black eyes" with a prostitute at 
 another, or seizing broken chairs, or legless tables, 
 or tearing away the ragged blanket, with which 
 a dying infant is covered, at a third. 
 
 2. The extraordinary relief which the law 
 gives to the landlord, often affords swindlers the 
 means of plundering honest tradesmen and shop- 
 keepers. Besides the furniture which the parties
 
 112 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 may have in the house, the landlord generally 
 makes them pay at entering for certain " fixed" 
 articles which cannot easily be removed ; and 
 of which the value may amount, upon the aver- 
 age, to nearly a year's rent. If they pay this, 
 the landlord is safe for a year, although the fur- 
 niture originally deposited in the house may be 
 of small value ; and the scouts of the landlord 
 proclaim the circumstance, and so trumpet the 
 respectability of the party, that they very easily 
 obtain credit, not only for necessaries, but for 
 articles which are never brought to the premises 
 at all, but are instantly sent to the agent of the 
 swindler, and by him turned into money. Twelve 
 months in one place are always enough for an 
 ordinary swindler ; and as the landlord has a dou- 
 ble security for that time, in the " fixed" articles 
 and the power of distress, he feels quite in- 
 different to any other conduct in the tenant, 
 than that of not leaving upon the premises as 
 much as shall pay the rent and the costs of the 
 distraining. By these means, there are introduced 
 into every street and neighbourhood of the Baby- 
 lon, as respectable householders, persons who, 
 if their real characters were known, would be 
 found in lodgings in quite another way. It is 
 thus that the regular dealers in crime obtain 
 permanent residences ; and so long as they satisfy
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 113 
 
 the landlord, the house has to them all the secu- 
 rity of a castle, from which a little bribery can 
 easily exclude the lower scouts of justice. 
 
 3. But while the protection given to landlords 
 operates thus in gathering together and skreening 
 from justice those who by force or fraud prey 
 upon the community, it is just as great a dis- 
 tress and hardship to those who are overtaken by 
 sudden or unexpected misfortunes. Though 
 many more fortunes are made, and much more 
 wealth is accumulated in the Babylon, than in 
 any other region of ten times the extent, yet life 
 is more a lottery in the Babylon than in any 
 other place whatever ; and as it abounds so much 
 in trick, quackery, and imposition of every de- 
 scription, *' the battle is not always to the strong" 
 in honest principle, nor " the race to the swift" 
 in honest talent. He who is to-day not only in 
 independence but in affluence, may ere to-morrow 
 be without a shilling and in debt, and that not 
 only by stockjobbing or gaming, but in the regu- 
 lar way of business, and by the failure of those who, 
 at the time when he trusted them, were universally 
 believed to be very wealthy. The ruin occasioned 
 by these reverses is ultimately not so utter as that 
 which is occasioned in provincial places ; for if a 
 man has talents which are really useful, and has 
 " held fast his integrity," no reverse of business
 
 114 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 can put him finally down. If persecuted in one 
 place, he does not need to " flee to another city," 
 it is quite enough to flee to another street ; if he can 
 retain the means of doing this with any semblance 
 of external respectability, he can begin the world 
 anew without any inquisitorial scrutiny into the 
 past. This, though in too many instances it en- 
 ables detected guilt to renew its depredations, 
 has many advantages, that probably more than 
 compensate that evil: it enables those whom ex- 
 perience has made wiser, to begin the world anew, 
 and it affords a locus panitentm to those who are 
 not hardened in crime. 
 
 Here, however, the power of the landlord is 
 a source of perpetual misery ; and in the perpe- 
 tration of that misery, he is aided by a very nu- 
 merous, and, in every thing but forbearance and 
 good feeling, a very thriving class. These are the 
 different descriptions of " House- Agents," men of 
 many avocations, who let houses, collect rents, 
 levy distresses, appraise the goods so taken, and 
 purchase them, through their confederates, at a 
 small fraction of the value. The greater part of 
 these are in league with each other, and also with 
 the collectors of taxes and rates ; and they all lie 
 in a concerted ambush, in order to " make a good 
 thing " of any one who happens to be in arrear. 
 When the goods of a stranger are brought into a
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 115 
 
 neighbourhood, these persons, or their scouts, are 
 always found hovering about, in quest of articles 
 that may, at some future time, become their prey ; 
 and, knowing that, in case of accident, there is no 
 bar to their plundering save money, they take 
 every means of worming out with whom every 
 man is connected ; and whenever they find that 
 the law gives them a title, and that the parties 
 are defenceless, in they pounce, sweep away pro- 
 perty which really cost ten times the demand, and 
 take especial care that not one farthing shall be 
 returned to those from whom it is taken. True, 
 the law says that "distresses must be propor- 
 tionate to the thing distrained for ;" and that, " if 
 a man take unreasonable distress, as two oxen for 
 twelve pence, he may be heavily fined ;" and the 
 law farther limits the expense of small distresses, 
 and ordains that the goods shall be sold by auction 
 and appraised by sworn brokers. All this the 
 law says, and is, no doubt, very sincere in the 
 saying of it ; but nowhere are " to say " and " to 
 do," phrases of more different import than in the 
 Babylonian law. One ox may be taken for the 
 twelve pence ; or if there be eleven pennyworth of 
 hay, that may be taken first, and then the ox may 
 be taken for the odd penny. In the appraisement, 
 again, the broker is a confederate, and, for all his 
 oath, he must either set such value on the pro-
 
 116 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 perty as his employers wish, or he may give up 
 the business. In most cases, indeed, where a man's 
 living depends upon an oath, matters stand much 
 as they are said to have done some time ago in the 
 courts of the sister kingdom " Och, an' if it 's 
 only an oath, tip me the turteen, and swear away, 
 my jewel. 1 ' 
 
 Even the appraisement has nothing to do with 
 the sum at which the confederates shall in the end 
 get the property into their possession. It is only 
 good when the party distressed is able to repur- 
 chase within five days ; and a distress is seldom 
 levied when there is a chance of that, because, in 
 the case of a small sum, the parties barely get 
 paid for their trouble. If a man be so circum- 
 stanced as to be able to pay in five days, he is in a 
 condition to find security, and nobody will take 
 the trouble of distraining his goods. Distress has 
 generally, if not always, the ultimate possession of 
 the goods at an under-value, as its stimulating 
 principle ; and though the law says that the sa]e 
 shall be public, upon notice, there are ways of 
 getting the better of that. Any person who fre- 
 quents the Auction Mart, in Bartholomew-lane, 
 which is the most public place of sale in the city, 
 must remember instances of the sales there at 
 noon-day, as easy as if they had taken place in a 
 broker's warehouse, with the doors bolted, and at
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 117 
 
 midnight. I have not often been there, but I 
 once saw property sold, at one o'clock, under an 
 order of the Commissioners of Bankrupts. It had 
 been duly advertized in the Gazette, and yet there 
 was nobody present to take the smallest interest in 
 the matter, save the auctioneer, the attorney under 
 the commission, the assignees, and the purcha- 
 sers, who got the property at a price which had 
 previously been agreed on, and which certainly 
 was but a small portion of the real value. 
 
 Now, if this could be done in a matter which 
 comes under the authority of the highest Court in 
 the Babylon, where the case was one that had 
 been talked of and written about in the news- 
 papers, and when the property really was of a 
 nature and value that might have excited compe- 
 tition, how much more easily may it be presumed 
 to be practicable, and how much more frequently 
 must it be done, in the case of goods distrained 
 from a poor man, whom nobody knows, about 
 whom nobody cares, and whose goods are sold at 
 the rooms of some broker, at the most snug time 
 of the day ? In the Babylon, if any thing, whether 
 good or evil, can be done, and must be profitable, it 
 may be laid down as an axiom that that thing 
 is done every day. 
 
 Thus the parties by whom the boasted castle of 
 John Bull may be assailed, have a powerful influ-
 
 118 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 ence in increasing the number of depredators, 
 shielding them in their depredations, and reducing 
 many to misery, and not a few to crime. Thus, 
 in as far as the relief of the poor is concerned, it is 
 well that the law does relieve them, for they are 
 its own children : it makes them ; and in as /ar as 
 crime and punishment are concerned, the law, in 
 the slang of political economists, " grows its own 
 materials."
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 119 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 FANES OF MAMMON. . 
 BABYLONIAN BANKING. 
 
 " The love of money is the root of all evil." THE BIBLE. 
 
 IN matters of religion, the fondest devotees are 
 by no means the ablest theologians ; and they who 
 pray the most, are seldom the best informed re- 
 specting the nature and attributes of their divinity. 
 This holds in an especial manner with the Baby- 
 lonians. Mammon is, at all times, and under all 
 circumstances, their idol. Their education in 
 youth, their labours in manhood, and their dotings 
 in old age, all emanate from the love of money, 
 and are reflected back again to that. It cannot 
 be otherwise: the little spot of ground upon which 
 the mighty multitude is congregated, gives them 
 nothing but the earth to stand on and the air to 
 breathe, unless it be the damp and charcoal with 
 which the latter is impregnated ; and, as the rustic
 
 120 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 commentator inferred from the text of " the wild 
 ass snuffing up the east wind in the desert, 1 ' they 
 cannot get very fat upon these. 
 
 Imagine a kingdom, containing a million of 
 human beings, and the soil nothing but granite, 
 brick-dust and mire ; and you have a perfect type 
 of the productiveness of the Great Babylon. Nor 
 are there any riches under the earth, not one mi- 
 neral worth taking out. At a considerable depth, 
 indeed, there is water, and water of very pure and 
 delightful qualities, which could be drawn up at 
 the mean temperature of the earth, even on those 
 sultry days in the ardour and drought of summer, 
 when the Thames is almost seething hot, and the 
 contributions of its sable tributaries are mantling, 
 reeking, and smelling like the spume of a witches' 
 cauldron. But the Babylonians do not avail them- 
 selves even of this single useful production of their 
 locality. They go to market for water ; and while 
 they are drudging, and panting, or puffing, or 
 swindling, to raise the money in order to pay for 
 it, they allow a certain portion of their number, by 
 Act of Parliament had and obtained, to convert 
 the stomach of every man, woman, and child, into 
 a gas-manufactory, by turning the tide of the 
 Thames, foul with the contents of five hundred 
 common sewers, rank with the refuse of a whole 
 nation, down their throats. When the Babylonians
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 121 
 
 visit " the modern Athens," they are apt to turn 
 away their noses, and taunt the inhabitants of that 
 city about the unfavonian breezes which, according 
 as the wind sets, are wafted to the spine of the 
 city from the closes that lead to the grand per- 
 fumery of the North Loch on the one hand, or 
 that of the Cowgate on the other; and I must 
 admit that a nose, even of ordinary perception, 
 can nowhere be put to a severer trial. But, after 
 all, I should like some cunning casuist to resolve 
 me whether the pollution of a city be more cleanly 
 and healthful when smelled or when swallowed ; 
 and if the verdict be in favour of the latter, why 
 the Babylonians may drink away and boast. It 
 has been pleaded, that there is something highly 
 nutritive in the unctuous waters of the Babylon, 
 and that the ammonia and charcoal of the soot 
 with which the water of the Thames is ever and 
 anon powdered, have wonderful antiseptic effects, 
 and convert into a pabulum of life that which, to 
 the unlearned, would seem a deadly poison, and 
 impart the perfume of Arabia to that which, even 
 in idea, seems more offensive than <{ reek o' the 
 rotten fen." I am not chemist enough to solve 
 this mystery ; and though I were, I am not sure 
 that I should waste my chemistry upon it. If the 
 sons and daughters of the Babylon will drink dirty 
 water at a high price, when they might get clean 
 VOL. I. G
 
 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 water at a low one, they must have some reason 
 for it ; and whether they have a reason for it or 
 not, it is their own matter, and by the law and 
 the practice of England nobody has a right to 
 interfere. That it is not absolute poison may be 
 inferred from the fact of the Babylonians being 
 alive; and that it is exceedingly favourable to 
 some kinds of life, may be inferred from the ac- 
 tivity and friskiness of the insects with which it 
 abounds. 
 
 Imagine, as I have said, a whole nation huddled 
 together in one small space, which produces not 
 one farthing's worth for their support, what would 
 be the conclusion a priori ? why that the folks 
 would either starve or be paupers. But is this 
 the case ? So far from it, that they are not only 
 better fed and clothed, aud more sumptuously 
 lodged, appointed, and attended, than the people 
 of the single hamlet or house that stands in the 
 centre of the most fertile plain, or at the mouth of 
 the richest mine in the world ; but have the pro- 
 ductions of every region of the world, in the 
 greatest abundance, of the choicest quality, and 
 at the most moderate price : and not only this, 
 in consequence of wealth acquired upon this barren 
 spot, become not merely the owners of many of 
 the lands, mines, manufactories, and other sources 
 of revenue in their own country, and the creditors
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 123 
 
 and mortgagers of the greater part of the re- 
 mainder, but hold the east and the west in their 
 coffers, being arbiters of the fortunes of men from 
 the Gulf of California to the Chinese wall, being 
 the almoners, and therefore the masters, of free 
 states and despotic kings, and saying to the proud- 
 est monarchs on the face of the earth, " Ye shall 
 enter into leagues or break them, make peace or 
 declare war, only according as we shall be pleased 
 to furnish you with the means. 11 
 
 A power so unbounded, springing from causes 
 which to common observation are invisible, really 
 wears more the air of the work of a divinity, 
 than the mere plodding and cunning of men ; and 
 we need not wonder that the Babylonians should 
 have elevated Mammon to the dignity of a god, 
 that they should invest him with the attributes of 
 divinity, and that, in the main and the majority, 
 they should worship him and none other, seeing 
 that he has done for them what all the idols of the 
 nations have never been able to accomplish. 
 
 To the merely curious, this stupendous result 
 of the combined attention of a multitude of peo- 
 ple, and not chosen men men of talents and ac- 
 complishments for, the matter of mammon ex- 
 cepted, there are some of the most wealthy and 
 influential of them all that have not only " less 
 human genius," but absolutely less human form 
 G 2
 
 124 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 and expression, " than God gives an ape,"- col- 
 lated at the same point, and pursuing the same 
 object, cannot fail to be a matter of wonder. But 
 mere wonder to the curious is not all ; for herein 
 there is a vein of philosophy as delightful as it is 
 deep. The working of veins of philosophy is not 
 " my vocation ;" but really if some of the " men of 
 philosophic make," who while away their time and 
 dribble out their talents at the meetings of the 
 Royal Society, and elsewhere, would but turn to 
 this subject the tithe of that attention which they 
 give to subjects that never can be of the smallest 
 use to the world, they would deserve the names 
 which they now hold without deserving them. If 
 the combination, or rather the working at the 
 same point and object (for in the acquisition of the 
 wealth there is opposition and rivalship, and not 
 combination), has given, in this instance, power 
 which nothing can resist or control, why should 
 not the same take place in other matters ? There 
 is really no mysterious power, no active and opera- 
 ting principle, in money considered in itself. " Mo- 
 ney makes money," says the proverb ; but the pro- 
 verb is either a fable or a falsehood. Ten bushels 
 of gold might lie in a chest for a thousand years, 
 without producing a farthing ; and though two 
 bank notes, for a thousand pounds each, were kept 
 together as long as you please, not a single one-
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 125 
 
 pound note would grow out of their union. Mo- 
 ney only makes money, in the same way that a 
 goose-quill writes a book, by being an instru- 
 ment in the hand of him who knows how to use it; 
 and in the one case, as well as in the other, the 
 instrument is a useless and helpless thing com- 
 pared with the hand. The instrument can do no- 
 thing of itself, not even seek a hand to use it ; but 
 if the hand should miss one instrument, it can 
 grope about for another. If a man could not find a 
 goose-quill to write his book with, he might con- 
 trive to scrawl it with a reed or a bit of stick to 
 say nothing of a pair of scissors. 
 
 It is, therefore, not the money, the wealth of the 
 Babylon, but the powers by which that wealth has 
 been accumulated and is applied, that is the real 
 and original cause of the mighty influence which 
 the men of the Babylon possess. That power, the 
 spring, the mental part of it, is not of a very high 
 order, it is common-place belongs to the herd 
 anybody may possess a portion of it. It does not 
 need talents, genius, or education of any sort ; 
 the maxim upon which it proceeds is very short 
 and very easily understood : " Get whatever you 
 can by any means ; and what you once get, keep." 
 That is the whole cause and principle of the mat- 
 ter ; and all else is mere arrangement. 
 
 Now, if ** Dull Care," meaning thereby the care
 
 126 A SECOND JUDGMENT OP 
 
 and prudence that can be exercised by the dullest 
 and most illiterate persons on the face of the earth, 
 can so effectually govern the world, as we find it 
 governed by the mammon of the mighty city ; can 
 any cause be shown why talents and abilities should 
 not much more effectually do the same ? That 
 they would do so, more rapidly and more effectually, 
 just in proportion to their intrinsic superiority, 
 there cannot be the slightest doubt, if they could 
 be applied in the same way as this dull quality is. 
 Indeed, it is from the talents that the wealth comes, 
 after all. These are the fountains that supply the 
 water ; and the wealthy fools are nothing more 
 than the dams and cesspools in which it is accumu- 
 lated. Of those who wield the wealth of the Ba- 
 bylon, and use it as the universal sceptre, the ma- 
 jority never increased the wealth of the world, the 
 number of useful things in it, by the worth of a 
 single hobnail ; and the poor cotter in the wilds of 
 Connaught, who has but once insinuated one seed 
 potato into the neighbouring bog, has added 
 more to the wealth of the world than Rothschild 
 and all his fraternity. 
 
 But the very dulness and stupidity, the want of 
 mental energy and activity in those persons, emi- 
 nently qualify them for this business of accumula- 
 tion. The dam that holds water must be a dull, 
 heavy, stationary, and quiescent thing ; and the
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 127 
 
 mind of the accumulator of money must just hold 
 the idea of money, and nothing more. The whole 
 time, the whole soul must be sold and devoted to 
 that ; and the instant that any thing of a more ele- 
 vated or agreeable kind is admitted, off runs the 
 idea of the money to a place which is more low 
 and level. 
 
 These considerations may in part explain, not 
 only the influence which men, in their own natures 
 dull, useless, and not unfrequently worthless, have 
 obtained by means of money ; but also why the 
 better and more active qualities of men have failed 
 in producing the same effect. Mobility, restless- 
 ness, is the quality of all the more intellectual and 
 valuable powers. This renders aggregation diffi- 
 cult, and accumulation next to impossible. The 
 elements upon which knowledge, civilization, free- 
 dom, good government, the cultivation of the sci- 
 ences, the advancement of the arts all that ren- 
 ders society respectable, and makes man actively 
 happy, are buoyant elements : they ascend ; and 
 therefore cannot be collected in dams and cess- 
 pools. The effect of those principles is, therefore, 
 much more confined to single efforts than that of 
 money ; and those efforts requiring the consent and 
 co-operation of a number of individuals at the 
 same time, are, of course, far more difficult to ma- 
 nage than that which is under the control of one.
 
 128 A SECOND JUDGMENT OP 
 
 By these means the money of the Babylon, and not 
 the talents, becomes the commanding power; and 
 being the commanding power, it is also that which 
 men worship. 
 
 But, as I have said, this worship is not always 
 as wise as it is willing. In the act of getting, in- 
 deed, every one tries to get as much as ever he 
 can ; and in the act of giving, every one tries to 
 give as little ; but still there are in the manage- 
 ment of the accumulated and unoccupied money, 
 some circumstances which take the profits and 
 gradually the capital out of the hands of those 
 who have been the owners, or rather the first col- 
 lectors, and direct it into channels by which it runs 
 toward those monied men who have been charac- 
 terised as wholly useless themselves, and who yet, 
 in reality, govern the whole. 
 
 Among every other class of persons, the loan of 
 money is accounted worth paying for, and even 
 paying for at so extravagant a rate, that the legis- 
 lature of England fix a profit, beyond which no 
 lender shall charge, without placing, not merely 
 the profit, but the sum lent, in very certain peril. 
 But among the common bankers of the Babylon, 
 the case is very different : their accepting money is 
 accounted a favour done to the lender. Of that 
 money they always make a profit, and a large pro-
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 
 
 fit : they lend it on mortgages ; they gamble with 
 it in joint-stock shares ; they gamble with it in the 
 funds ; some of them are said to gamble with it in 
 the hells ; they discount bills with it ; they some- 
 times lose it. In short, they do with it all possible 
 things that can be done with money, in order to 
 make the possession profitable ; and they do many 
 things with it by which it is put in great risk and 
 jeopardy ; but they never pay for the use of it. A 
 Babylonian banker is thus not an active agent, 
 a man who, by accommodating the needy, and lay- 
 ing out the surplus of the opulent profitably for 
 them, keeps up an equality or an activity in the 
 circulation of cash, and thereby stimulates and 
 nourishes all the productive sources of wealth ; he 
 is a mere utensil a strong-box, that has the fa- 
 culty of feeding upon the profits of its contents. 
 
 When one looks at the splendid office, the nu- 
 merous array of clerks, and the long file of part- 
 ners, each of them living in a style and at an ex- 
 pense equal to that of the nobles of the land, and 
 holding the family-plate and other valuables of 
 those nobles under lock and key, so that they are 
 obliged " to dine off delf" whenever the banker 
 pleases ; when one looks at all this, one is apt to 
 imagine that here must be the very pith and core 
 of the mercantile stability and prosperity of the 
 G 5
 
 130 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 country, instead of being a mere fungus, a para- 
 sitical excrescence, that drains, and drains largely, 
 the life-blood of the tree. 
 
 A mere bank of deposit, and that is the general 
 and avowed function of the Babylonian banks, is a 
 useless thing under any circumstances ; and there 
 are in the Babylonian banks circumstances which 
 render them worse than useless. The quantity 
 of unoccupied circulating medium that lies in them 
 is always great ; and toward the end of the year, 
 when people are anxious to appear wealthy at their 
 bankers (for the banker is father confessor of 
 wealth, and as such repudiates the characters of 
 those who do not allow him to make a profit by 
 their cash), the sum thus deposited is so very 
 great, and people scramble after having it with so 
 much avidity, that, during the last two months of 
 the year, the ordinary circulation is almost sus- 
 pended. Of this large sum, a part is no doubt ap- 
 plied to the legitimate purposes of trade, in the 
 discounting of bills. This, however, amounts only 
 to a very inconsiderable portion of the whole, and 
 the rest is employed upon the Stock Exchange, 
 and very greatly increases the activity of that 
 grand academy of gambling. 
 
 Like other things, a system of banking can be 
 good only where it gives a fair equivalent for what 
 it costs. This the Babylonian system does not do ;
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 131 
 
 for the banks there are merely so many tanks into 
 which the disposable cash of the place is collected, 
 previously to its being poured into the great cess- 
 pool of what is called the money-market, and 
 thence spouted toward all sorts of speculations and 
 jobs, whereby the public, who originally earn the 
 money, are deprived of it, and it gets into the pos- 
 session of the worthless and unprincipled. Were 
 it not for the adage, " doters are always dupes," it 
 would be very difficult to account for the continuance 
 of a system of this nature among a people whose 
 chief occupation and object is the gaining of mo- 
 ney ; but when we consider how each individual is 
 completely absorbed by his own individual mode 
 and scheme of acquisition, we can easily see that a 
 knowledge of the general nature and functions of 
 money, or of any thing else, cannot be possessed by 
 those who are so occupied. We never have had a 
 good treatise on the doctrine of chances from a 
 gamester ; and when we look into the statute-book 
 we find that the chapters which are the most ano- 
 malous, not only from liberality and good govern- 
 ment, but from common justice and equity, are 
 those which have emanated from mere lawyers. 
 The more intensely any persons are occupied 
 about a part, and the more intimately they are ac- 
 quainted with it, the less they know about the 
 whole of which it forms a part. Thus the par-
 
 132 A SECOND JUDGMENT OP 
 
 tiality of the Babylonians for their system of bank- 
 ing may arise, not from their being convinced that 
 it is good, but from their being unable to discover 
 that it is bad. 
 
 It is commonly said that the Bank of England 
 is the sole cause of the perpetuation of the expen- 
 sive and unprofitable system of banking that pre- 
 vails in the city ; and, though it is not the sole 
 cause, it is no doubt a considerable one ; for an 
 establishment of such magnitude, so connected 
 with and protected by the Government, having 
 privileges so exclusive, and some of them so con- 
 trary to the natural principles of commercial liber- 
 ty, cannot but do mischief. In defence of the 
 Bank, it is argued that the notes which it issues 
 have a security which could not belong to the 
 notes of private bankers ; and from its connexion 
 with the Government this security may be con- 
 ceded to it, at least in so far as its individual cre- 
 ditors, that is, the holders of its notes, are concern- 
 ed. This, however, is not the only security which 
 the public should have for a paper currency ; and 
 even this belongs not intrinsically to the Bank of 
 England. 
 
 The securities which the individual holder of a 
 bank note should have are two, that it shall not 
 be forged, and that he shall, whenever he is so 
 inclined, be able to part with it without any loss.
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 133 
 
 The only talisman which the Bank of England 
 has against forgery is the gallows: that is no 
 sufficient prevention of any crime ; and as the 
 Bank of England note is understood to circulate 
 to a greater distance than that of a local bank, 
 the facilities for forging it are greater, or rather, 
 which comes to the very same thing in effect, the 
 means of detecting the forgery are less. For this 
 very reason, Bank of England notes are not liked 
 in the remote parts of the country. Thus against 
 the opinion that the note of the Bank is more 
 secure from forgery, we have both the reason of 
 the thing itself, and the opinion of that part of 
 the people who are the most interested in the 
 matter those who have not the means of ascer- 
 taining from the Bank itself whether the note be 
 genuine or not. 
 
 As to the greater certainty of payment, that 
 can have no meaning other than more ability to 
 pay ; and really one is puzzled to see where this 
 should come from in the case of the Bank of 
 England. The average of its circulation for the 
 last ten years, may be taken at about twenty-five 
 millions sterling. Now, where are the funds out 
 of which this vast sura, if demanded, could be 
 paid ? Are they gold and silver in the coffers of 
 the Bank ? No ; for if such a sum were locked 
 up there, the loss on it would consume the whole
 
 134 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 of the returns, and leave the Bank every year 
 minus the whole expense of management. Where 
 then are the funds? Are they the lands and 
 goods of the proprietors, those lands that they 
 have purchased with the profits which this great 
 leech has sucked out of the public ? No ; these 
 are available for no such purpose. The fact is, 
 that the capital or stock of the Bank of England 
 is precisely of the same value, as far as it goes, as 
 the three per cent, stock, or any other of what are 
 called the funds a mere nonentity. The Bank of 
 England has not a shilling of available capital ; 
 and when it pays its notes in gold, it must first 
 buy that gold with another parcel of its notes. 
 As to funds in its own possession, available im- 
 mediately for the payment of its issues of paper, 
 the Bank of England is, therefore, in a worse 
 condition than the poorest country bank in the 
 kingdom. 
 
 Still, paradoxical as that may seem, its pay- 
 ments are more secure, that is, it is less likely to 
 be upset by a run upon it, than any other bank in 
 the country. And why ? It has, from time to 
 time, lent the Government rather more than 
 twenty millions sterling ; and as this is not a sum 
 which the Government is in a condition to pay, 
 whenever there is likely to be a run on the Bank, 
 the Government, for its own safety, steps in, and
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 135 
 
 by ihejiat of an act of the legislature, suspends 
 cash payments, and declares the Bank note a legal 
 tender of precisely the same value as that portion 
 of the coin of the realm of which it expresses the 
 nominal amount. The security of the Bank of 
 England consists not in its wealth, but in its 
 poverty : in fact, the whole of its undivided 
 capital that part of its profits from the manage- 
 ment and use of the public money, which has not 
 already been divided among the shareholders is 
 a bad debt, a debt which the Government have 
 no other means of discharging than by laying on 
 a tax of twenty millions, or adding twenty millions 
 to the other part of the national debt, and laying 
 on a tax to pay the interest and charges of ma- 
 nagement. 
 
 At first sight, it would seem a little mysterious 
 that an establishment carried on at great expense, 
 paying yearly dividends, and yet having no capi- 
 tal, should be able to lend such a sum as twenty 
 millions of pounds. It must be borne in mind, 
 however, that the sum which it actually lent was 
 only one million and a fifth ; and that it paid all 
 the rest, together with its own profits and expen- 
 ses of management, out of the public revenue of 
 the country out of the pockets of the people. 
 The Bank has made its profits by being the depo- 
 sit bank to the Government, and not only having
 
 136 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 large sums of the public money in its possession, 
 by the employment of which, in the same way as 
 the money of individuals is employed by the 
 private bankers of the Babylon, it contrived to 
 make five per cent., but being paid for its ma- 
 nagement besides. Every shilling that the Bank 
 of England has therefore accumulated, every pound 
 that has been paid to the proprietors, and every 
 million for which it claims to be the creditor of the 
 state, have been abstracted from the active and 
 useful capital of the country ; and hence have made 
 the whole country poorer than it would have been, 
 not only by their full amount, but by the profits 
 on them, at that rapid rate of compound interest, 
 at which property has, during the intermediate 
 period, been accumulating ; and those who have 
 had the management of the public revenue have 
 colluded with the Bank, and suffered it to do this, 
 either because they have been incapable of doing 
 their duty, or dishonest in the discharge of it, or 
 both. 
 
 The Bank of England, therefore, has no real 
 security to give either to its immediate creditors 
 or to the country. It is a mere fungus "proud 
 ftesh" (as the old surgeons admirably designate it,) 
 growing out of an ill-conditioned and ill-attended 
 sore ; and it remains only because the vessels of 
 the circulation have struck and ramified into it ;
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 137 
 
 and the hemorrhage consequent upon its eradica- 
 tion might be attended with great danger. To 
 follow the surgical allusion, the best way would be 
 to pass a ligature round its base, and by drawing 
 that tighter and tighter, lessen the circulation, 
 till it could be cut off with safety. 
 
 But though the Bank of England note were 
 secure against forgery, which it is not, and secure 
 against being thrown out of circulation from the 
 want of funds to pay it, which it is, in consequence 
 of the shock which the upsetting of it would give, 
 not to the Government only, but to the whole 
 trade of the country, still, these are not all the 
 securities which a good bank-note ought to pos- 
 sess. Besides the security to individuals, there is 
 another, and a more important one, security to 
 the public security that the whole value of the 
 paper currency shall not fluctuate ; and the want 
 of this is the Charybdis upon which the people 
 of this country are always thrown, when the 
 steersman " puts the helm hard up, n by a sus- 
 pension of cash payments, in order to avoid the 
 Scylla of upsetting the Bank. The senate may 
 enact that a sovereign and a one-pound Bank of 
 England note are things of identical and inter- 
 changeable value, and so they may that the ex- 
 pending of a second sum of money upon courts 
 and lawyers in an unsuccessful attempt to recover
 
 138 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 a first, is justice; and they may punish the sub- 
 ject of the King of England who refuses to be- 
 lieve them. But the voice of senates, however 
 loud, or however imperative or absurd, cannot in 
 one jot alter the qualities of things, or their adap- 
 tation to practical purposes. They have no more 
 power over these than old Canute the Dane had 
 over the flowing of the tide. Indeed, the very 
 necessity of a law declaring that paper and gold 
 are to be held as equal, is in itself an admission 
 of their inequality. It needs no law to say that 
 one sovereign is equal to another ; nor does it 
 need any to declare the same thing of the sove- 
 reign and the bank-note, when the one can be any- 
 where obtained for the other. Thus the injustice 
 of the law stands as its own rubric, and a statute 
 founded on manifest injustice must always be pro- 
 ductive of mischief. 
 
 The moment that such a law is promulgated, 
 the value of the circulating medium would be 
 deteriorated, even though the country had no 
 connexion with foreigners ; the metallic currency 
 would get out of circulation by being hoarded and 
 by becoming of more value as an ordinary article 
 of commerce than as money; and these causes 
 together could not fail to produce a depreciation 
 in the value of the whole circulating medium, and
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 139 
 
 a consequent derangement in all the contracts, 
 bargains, and business of society. 
 
 But, if the effects would be mischievous in a 
 detached country, living upon its own produce, 
 and having no connexion or transactions with 
 other countries, they must be much more so to 
 a country like England, which is so dependent on 
 the rest of the world, both for the supply of raw 
 materials and the market of its manufactures. 
 There would be no means of compelling the peo- 
 ple of those other countries to acknowledge the 
 equality of the gold and the paper in their trans- 
 actions. The gold being still their standard, they 
 would give a premium for it as compared with 
 the paper; and thus the paper would be depre- 
 ciated in value purchase a less quantity of goods 
 in the general market, by the full amount of the 
 premium. In the year 1810, when such a law 
 was in force, the one-pound note of the Bank of 
 England was worth only about sixteen shillings : 
 thus the operation of the Bank swept away a full 
 fifth of all that the people could obtain for their 
 money, and swept it across the sea for the bene- 
 fit of other nations. 
 
 Comparing the Bank of England with the 
 other banking establishments of the Babylon, the 
 only superiority that can be conceded to it, is,
 
 140 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 that it consumes, at all times, more of the earn- 
 ings of the industrious; and that, when it geta 
 into a state of derangement, it produces a much 
 more extended and ruinous species of mischief. 
 It is not, as some suppose, in the mere exporta- 
 tion of the precious metals the gold and the 
 silver, that the evil consists ; for there are many 
 circumstances in which it is more profitable to pay 
 in gold than in any other commodity ; and if we 
 were placed exactly on a par with foreigners in 
 other matters, it would always be most advan- 
 tageous for us to pay in gold when they sought 
 after that metal with the greatest avidity, for this 
 plain reason, that at such times we can get a 
 better price for it than for any other commodity. 
 If we retain gold, whether in bullion or in coin, 
 when, in a perfectly fair and equitable state of 
 the general market, gold is more in demand than 
 any other commodity, we act in direct opposition 
 to the general principle of commerce, and hurt 
 ourselves by so doing. Even the common sense 
 or instinct of men makes them act in this man- 
 ner. When wheat is in great demand, and the 
 other kinds of grain heavy and unsaleable, the 
 farmer does not hoard up his wheat, and thresh 
 out his barley, beans, and oats, and hurry them 
 to market. He sells the wheat, and ** waits the 
 turn of the market " for the rest.
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 141 
 
 The grand evil is, that the money or medium 
 in which the people must deal with foreigners, 
 is of greater value than that which, by law, is 
 made to circulate at home ; and that thus, in every 
 transaction with foreigners, they gain, and this 
 country loses the difference. 
 
 It would be well if even this were the whole 
 amount of the evil ; but it is not, for those who 
 are in possession of the articles of human sub- 
 sistence, and those who have no means of obtain- 
 ing their portion of these but the wages of their 
 daily labour, stand, both with respect to each 
 other and to the welfare and prosperity of the 
 country, very much in the same relation as 
 foreigners and natives. Those classes are what 
 are usually termed the rich and the poor, classes 
 whose natures, functions, and relations to each 
 other, and to the improvements of the country 
 that is, the increase of useful commodities in it 
 do not appear to be very well understood, even 
 by the wisest writers on political economy. It is 
 not indeed impossible, that this want of under- 
 standing, or at least of making others understand 
 the subject, may arise from the very profundity 
 of the philosophers. " Truth is in a well/' says 
 the proverb. Therefore, boring for truth may 
 very properly be compared to boring for a well ; 
 an operation which fails if you bore too deep,
 
 142 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 just as certainly as if you do not bore deep 
 enough. In the last way, you do not get at 
 the stratum which contains the water ; in the 
 first, you perforate that which holds it, and it 
 runs into the sand below and is lost. This is 
 by far the more fatal error of the two : if you 
 have not gone deep enough, an abler man may 
 go deeper, and succeed ; but if you have gone too 
 deep, the thing is spoiled. It is just the same 
 in philosophy especially the philosophy of so- 
 ciety : the truth has been let out of the greater 
 part of it, by too deep boring. Aware of this, 
 I never philosophise ; and thus, if I discover no 
 truth, I destroy none. 
 
 The rich are, properly speaking, the people 
 who possess the commodities already produced and 
 fit for the market ; and the poor are those who, 
 before they can eat, drink, or otherwise enjoy, 
 must produce something that is useful. As re- 
 spects the increase of wealth in the country, the 
 former class are wholly unproductive; and every 
 addition, whatever it may be, must come from the 
 latter. Any thing therefore that throws a burden 
 upon them, damps their spirits, or destroys their 
 energy, must very seriously affect the public pros- 
 perity. Even when they labour under no legal 
 disadvantage, the producers of wealth are never so 
 advantageously situated as the holders. The mind
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 143 
 
 of the holder has nothing to distract it from con- 
 sidering how he may turn that which he holds to 
 the greatest advantage ; while that of the pro- 
 ducer is occupied about the mode and means of 
 production, and cannot devote much attention to 
 the art of exchange. The poor, therefore, always 
 go to market at a disadvantage, whether it be to 
 sell their labour for wages, or to lay out their 
 wages in the purchase of necessaries. Another 
 thing : they are, in both cases, driven to market by 
 their necessities they must have what they want, 
 or starve; whereas the holders of commodities 
 are merely drawn to market by their interest, and 
 can afford to hold until that be satisfied. 
 
 These disadvantages, under which the portion 
 of society that, in a natural point of view, is really 
 the most valuable, are placed, ought to make their 
 protection the chief care of a wise legislature. But 
 it does not appear that such a legislature can ex- 
 ist. I do not mean to say that all who legislate 
 and rule are fools. Very far from it ; for many of 
 them are Solons in their way. But they all be- 
 long to the possessing class, and therefore all their 
 knowledge and prejudices are bent in favour of it ; 
 and, when one looks into the statute-book of any 
 country, one finds it to contain little else than a 
 series of concessions to property, at the expense of
 
 344 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 that by which alone property has been, or can be, 
 produced. 
 
 In no case is this more obvious than in that 
 of the suspension of cash payments by the Bank, 
 and the consequent depreciation of the circulating 
 medium. If that be lowered one fifth, the whole 
 property holden by the rich is raised in the same 
 proportion, as measured against the poor. But 
 the poor are " in double," before they can get food 
 and clothing ; they must sell their labour for the 
 depreciated currency, and with that currency they 
 must purchase their necessaries : each time there 
 is twenty per cent, against them, that is, when, 
 in consequence of the suspension of cash payments, 
 the one-pound note is reduced to sixteen shillings 
 in the general circulation, the labour which, when 
 the currency is at par, can command food or cloth- 
 ing worth twenty shillings, can only command the 
 worth of about twelve and ninepence, or, one hun- 
 dred labourers can obtain only as much as, but 
 for the suspension of cash payments, would have 
 been parted among sixty. 
 
 Famines, pestilences, earthquakes, all the con- 
 vulsions of nature, are looked upon as things 
 of most appalling destruction. Journalists and 
 annalists make a harvest of them, and poets put 
 their verses in mourning by tagging them at the 
 end; and yet this same suspension of cash payments
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 145 
 
 caused not only more enduring loss to England, 
 but more loss at the time, than if all the parlia- 
 mentary boroughs in Cornwall had been buried 
 by an earthquake, or than with lamentation and 
 woe be it spoken than if the chapel of the Holy 
 Stephen, with all that were therein contained, had, 
 for the time being, been full five fathoms under 
 the Thames. Such is the mercy which the Bank 
 of England has already inflicted upon the country; 
 and if it be allowed to remain in its present state 
 and connexion, such mercy it may, and, judging 
 of the future from the past, must inflict again. 
 
 I have said nothing of the constant fluctuations 
 of prices, which, by varying its issues, the Bank 
 can produce for its own profit, and the conse- 
 quent loss of the country ; but these are very con- 
 siderable, and as the Bank gives both opinion and 
 law to the private bankers, the power of the money 
 market, and consequently that of all the commerce 
 of the country, gets into the hands of those who 
 are ignorant of its nature, and opposed to its wel- 
 fare in their interests. 
 
 One, ignorant of the confusion of the Babylon, 
 could hardly be more astonied laugh or cry more, 
 according as he were not, or were, interested 
 at finding the spiritual guides of the people, the 
 learned and pious and saintly capitals of England's 
 church, debating upon corn-bills or acts for regulat- 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 146 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 ing the impost upon gin and tobacco, than he 
 would at finding the balance of commerce com- 
 mitted to the bankers, a set of men whose occu- 
 pation must narrow both their ideas and their sen- 
 timents ; and who, in reality, have no knowledge 
 beyond receipts and payments and securities, and 
 no means of amassing wealth, or even of living, 
 but what they abstract from the useful capital of 
 the Babylon. The fact, though strange, is certain. 
 Let the Babylonians themselves point out the 
 cause. 
 
 After all, there are many advantages in a paper 
 currency, if that could be obtained with all the 
 requisite securities : It substitutes a cheap article 
 for a costly one ; a portable one for one that is 
 heavy ; one that may be lost or stolen without 
 any farther ultimate loss than its intrinsic value 
 as a commodity, which is very small a bank-note 
 for any amount, being manufacturable for about 
 a penny; and though it be perhaps more easily 
 counterfeited than metallic currency (and this is 
 doubtful), the difference is only one in degree, 
 and is more than compensated by the advantages. 
 
 How a paper circulation of this kind, with the 
 proper security as to payment and uniformity of 
 value, with its amount always regulated by the 
 public, and not by the issuers, could be established 
 in a population so dense, and of which the different
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 
 
 individuals are so little acquainted with eacli 
 other as in the Babylon, it is no easy matter 
 to say ; and therefore I shall not attempt to say 
 it. But the paper issued by the Scotch banks, 
 and the whole system of banking in that country, 
 are so much more advantageous than those that 
 prevail in the Babylon, that they are worth a few 
 sentences. 
 
 The proprietors, or shareholders, in a Scotch 
 bank, are usually very numerous, and the whole 
 of their property, real and personal, can be made 
 available for the payment of the notes. The in- 
 fluence of the bank is confined to its own town or 
 district ; and though there have been instances of 
 banks being very inquisitorial and oppressive there, 
 yet the influence of no one bank can extend so as 
 to have any material effect upon the general circu- 
 lation of the country. One part of the profit of 
 the bank, of course, arises from the circulation of 
 its notes ; and as these are always payable at sight, 
 they cannot travel far out of its own district, be- 
 cause, if they did, the bank of the next district 
 would get hold of them, and demand payment. 
 By this means the issue of each bank is regulated, 
 not by its own caprice, but by the wants of its 
 locality ; and the quantity of paper in circulation 
 is always regulated by the demand there is for it. 
 This may not give perfect security in any of the 
 H 2
 
 148 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 ways in which the public should be secured ; but 
 we have the best of experience that it is a good 
 approximation. Very few Scotch banks have failed 
 with loss to the holders of their notes, and those 
 that have, have been rather constructed upon the 
 English principle, few partners, and the whole 
 property of these either not known or not liable, 
 in consequence of some specialty in the deed of 
 partnership. Runs upon Scotch banks have not 
 been so frequent as upon the private banks in 
 England, whether mere banks of deposit, like 
 those of the Babylon, or banks also issuing notes 
 like those in the country ; and it does not appear 
 that the Scotch banks have had any tendency to 
 depreciate the circulation within that country. It 
 is true, that when cash payments have been sus- 
 pended at the Bank of England, the Scotch bank- 
 notes have been depreciated, as compared with me- 
 tallic currency ; but they have been so only to the 
 same extent as the Bank of England note, and 
 therefore the cause of the depreciation must have 
 been the English note, and not the Scotch one. 
 If the latter had any tendency to be depreciated, 
 it would be at a discount as compared with the 
 former, and there never was a time when an En- 
 glish note was, in Scotland, preferred to a Scotch 
 one, either when the English pound note was 
 worth twenty shillings, or when it was worth less.
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 149 
 
 It is true that, in London, Scotch notes pass only 
 at a discount, but that arises from the people being 
 ignorant of them, the distance of the place where 
 they are payable, and the Bank's not taking them 
 in exchange. If the Scotch banks did not take 
 Bank of England notes, they would pass at a dis- 
 count in Scotland ; and though the banks do take 
 them, there are many places in which they either 
 pass at a discount, or not at all. 
 
 The advantages of the Scotch banks are not 
 confined to the security and uniform value of the 
 notes which they issue ; they are more liberal to 
 the public, and afford more accommodation to 
 the business of the country. 
 
 They do this in two ways. First, they pay in- 
 terest upon all sums deposited with them, less, in- 
 deed, than what they charge upon discounts, but 
 always more than the half, and in some instances 
 as much as four-fifths ; and they are enabled to do 
 this, because they make their advances in their 
 own notes. Secondly, they advance money upon 
 " cash accounts," that is, upon a permanent 
 bond, with security, by which the stamps and all 
 the other inconveniences of particular bills for the 
 loans are avoided. Thus the merchants of a town, 
 or the farmers of a district, are enabled to employ 
 in their respective businesses more capital than 
 they actually have floating, by being mutually se-
 
 150 A SECOND JUDGMENT OP 
 
 curity for each other. For instance, a man wish- 
 ing to begin or extend business, applies to the bank 
 for a permanent power of drawing on them to any 
 amount not exceeding a certain sum say a thou- 
 sand pounds, goes to the bank, and explains his 
 circumstances and tenders his sureties ; and, if 
 these be found satisfactory, he may instantly have 
 the command of money to the amount agreed on. 
 When he needs money, he draws for it ; and when 
 he receives money, he pays it in ; and he may 
 farther discount the bills that he takes, or leave 
 them at the bank, to be put to his credit when 
 paid. The rate of interest which the bank charges, 
 is charged to his debit upon all sums that he 
 draws ; and the rate which the bank allows is 
 placed to his credit upon all sums that he pays in. 
 A balance is struck once a year ; the difference be- 
 tween the whole debit and the whole credit, shows 
 how matters stand between him and the bank, and 
 shows the balance which he is due the bank, or 
 the bank is due him, as the first item of the next 
 year's account ; and the difference between the 
 interest on the debit and the credit, shows him 
 how much his loans have cost him, or how much 
 he has gained upon his deposits. Thus, the Scotch 
 banker, instead of taking all the profit to himself, 
 shares it with those who employ him ; and instead 
 of confining his transactions to making a profit of
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 151 
 
 the mere keeping of the money of the rich, he puts 
 capital, with safety, into the hands of those who 
 have it not ; and thus the customers of a Scotch 
 banker have greater inducements to stand by him 
 if there should be a run, than those of the bankers 
 of the Babylon. Though this system be far more 
 liberal and accommodating to the public, it does 
 not appear to be less profitable to the bank. The 
 private bankers of the Babylon are not very fond 
 either of disclosing the amount of their profits, or 
 the means by which they are made ; but the Bank 
 of England declares its dividends, and these are 
 not so high as those of some of the Scotch banks. 
 
 But the benefits in a merely pecuniary point 
 of view are not all : it does not require much con.- 
 sideration to discover that there is a moral ad- 
 vantage in the system, something which not only 
 gives accommodation to the people, but which 
 stimulates them to do well. A poor man, however 
 honest and however skilful, cannot turn his virtue 
 and his talents to account, in the Babylon, in any 
 other way than by selling them to a man who is 
 rich, or having recourse to dishonesty, either in 
 the way of direct theft, or in the more corrupting 
 (because more general) way of quackery; and, 
 as no man will purchase even honesty and talents 
 without the certainty, or at all events the probabi- 
 lity of making a profit of them, though a poor man
 
 152 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 of talents can turn them to some account in the 
 Babylon, there are difficulties in the way of his 
 honestly getting full value for them, he must 
 always concede a share, and often by far the great- 
 est share, to some man who is wealthier than him- 
 self, and who augments his wealth by sucking the 
 brains of others. 
 
 Now, though the circumstances of the country 
 where the Scotch banks are placed must narrow 
 the sale of useful qualities, yet the system of the 
 banks gives more facility for their self-employ- 
 ment ; and thus, in every pursuit, there is, in pro- 
 portion to the numbers and wealth of the popula- 
 tion, a much greater proportion of competition in 
 all the departments of business. The ardour of 
 the young Babylonian is etiher not excited, or it is 
 soon damped, and he sits down contented with his 
 clerkship and his animal enjoyments : that of the 
 young Caledonian is kept up, by his always look- 
 ing forward to the time when he shall be a master.
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 153 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 FANES OF MAMMON. 6. 
 THE STOCK EXCHANGE. 
 
 Let the Devil, upon the roof, 
 
 If the Devil be thunder-proof, 
 
 With a poker fiery red, 
 
 Crack the stones and melt the lead, 
 
 And drive them down on every skull, 
 
 When the den of thieves is full." SWIFT. 
 
 OF all the fanes which the devotees to that sor- 
 did but seductive idol have raised for his worship 
 within the wide extent of the Babylon, a loca- 
 lity of which he is, more than any other idol of 
 man's making, the chosen and appropriate divinity, 
 there is none in which his rites are performed 
 more incessantly, or followed with agony more 
 deep and desperate, than the Stock Exchange; 
 and there is none where the public generally are 
 kept in greater ignorance of the deeds that are done, 
 and the mischief and ruin that follow. The other 
 H5
 
 154 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 hells, even the deepest of them, may be entered 
 by any one who the inmates are certified is not 
 an informer ; and not only this, but those who have 
 money to lose are invited to them, and, though 
 they pay dear for it, have their share of the re- 
 freshments and the play. At the Stock Exchange 
 it is different, and those who, not being of the ini- 
 tiated, would gamble there, must do it by proxy ; 
 and if a stranger presumes to enter, even with a 
 disposition to risk, and, by necessary consequence, 
 to lose his money, he is treated with more brutal 
 indignity than he would be in the darkest and 
 dirtiest alley of St. Giles's. The coarsest epithets 
 are bestowed upon him ; the Jews there, as if to 
 take vengeance for the iniquity of which Shylock 
 complains, 
 
 " Spit upon his gaberdine ;" 
 
 his hat is knocked off, and converted into a foot- 
 ball ; his clothes are torn from his back ; and, ac- 
 cording to the reports at the police offices, he is 
 robbed. 
 
 And for all this the Stock Exchange is a gam- 
 ing-house; a gaming-house under a cloak indeed, 
 but still a gaming-house, which supports more 
 people in idleness and profligacy than all the other 
 gaming-houses in England. As a gaming-house, it 
 can produce nothing, save what is obtained from
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 155 
 
 those who are not members of it. The estimate is 
 below the truth, but say that there are upon the 
 average one thousand members, and that each ol 
 these (which is below the truth again) manages, in 
 one way or other, to spend or hoard but generally 
 to spend a thousand pounds a-year, here is one 
 million sterling annually taken from the revenue, 
 the wages, and profits of the people of England, in 
 order to support a band, not only of the most use- 
 less, but, generally speaking, of the most worth- 
 less characters that can well be imagined. It avails 
 nothing to say, that, as the public are not admit- 
 ted, the members can lose only to one another, and 
 so the Stock Exchange must support itself; for in 
 itself, a gaming-house, or any house for the mere 
 exchange of money, is utterly barren and unpro- 
 fitable. With regard to those who haunt the Stock 
 Exchange, most likely the whole fee simple of 
 themselves and all they possess is not, upon the 
 average, worth a year's purchase : that is, a year's 
 expenses of them and their establishment ; there- 
 fore they are as much supported by the public as 
 if they got their money in alms, or robbed for it 
 upon the highway. 
 
 Why the public are not admitted into the pene- 
 tralia of this temple of iniquity is easily seen, for 
 two reasons : First, the jobbing is illegal, and if 
 the public were invited, or even permitted, openly
 
 156 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 and freely to enter and lose their money, the laws 
 could not well pass it over, even presuming (as 
 from the fact of their non-interference it is difficult 
 to avoid presuming) that those who had the admi- 
 nistration of the laws had the wish ; whereas, by its 
 being a private club or society, rented by its own 
 members, regulated by its own by-laws, and osten- 
 sibly confining its operation to its own members, 
 that enactment which makes an Englishman's house 
 his castle of protection when he offends, though not 
 always when he is offended against, comes over it 
 like a shield. The second reason is, that if the 
 public were admitted into it, the iniquity could 
 not be carried on, and the place would come to an 
 end. No man who was in the habit of seeing the 
 proceedings would hazard one shilling upon a time 
 bargain ; and thus the whole dishonest gains of the 
 members would be gone, the whole transactions in 
 the funds would be reduced to real buying and sell- 
 ing, operations which could be better carried on at 
 the chambers of the brokers. Openness would be 
 attended with another consequence fatal to the 
 place. The broker who acts with other people's 
 money would be obliged to act bondjide, whereas, 
 under the close system, he can be the pretended 
 and ostensible agent of those without, while he is 
 the real agent of those to whom he himself is the 
 means of making those who employ and pay him
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 157 
 
 for his pretended services, lose their money ; and 
 the party whom he serves in secret may engage to 
 make good the loss upon that small transaction of 
 his own, under which he contrives to cover the 
 fraud. Suppose the difference at settling day 
 amounts to five thousand pounds (and there 
 are single cases in which it may amount to more 
 than fifty thousand), and that the person em- 
 ployed has five hundred to settle for himself, and 
 as many single hundreds for persons not members, 
 as will make up the four thousand five hundred, it 
 is very easy for the parties gaining the whole to 
 hand him back his five hundred privately, with a 
 bonus, and also for him to appease the dupes, and 
 get them again to employ him, by showing upon 
 the face of his books, to which his clerk is always 
 ready to swear, that he is five times greater a loser 
 than any of them. Of course this practice would 
 be denied by all connected with the transaction ; 
 but there are cases in which the forwardness and 
 force of the denial are no unconclusive proofs of 
 the fact denied, and there is more than common 
 hypothesis for concluding that this is the case 
 here. 
 
 Still it may be asked, or at least wondered at, 
 why the law takes no cognizance of these trans- 
 actions. There are many reasons : In the first 
 place, the sums lost are not recoverable by law,
 
 158 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 and thus no appeal is made to the law ; and the 
 parties without pay upon that principle which 
 (whether wisely or not I shall not say) describes 
 a gaming debt as a debt of honour something 
 which ought to be paid, though those creditors of 
 the party who have given him full value for the 
 amount of their claims, should never get a single 
 shilling. Secondly, where the broker has been 
 acting as a decoy for those who have gained the 
 money, if there should be any out-door defaulters, 
 he does not press them, because if he did he would 
 expose the system without reaping any advantage. 
 Thirdly, when the broker has been acting on his 
 own account, and both inexperience and cupidity 
 (at seeing the great profits which others have 
 made through his previous transactions) may 
 tempt him to do this to ten or even a hundred 
 times the value of what he possesses, then, in the 
 case of default he is instantly expelled their door, 
 and rendered incapable of gaining even a commis- 
 sion for his agency in the frauds ever after. In 
 cases of this kind, the members of the Exchange 
 have no right to complain, for they lose nothing, 
 inasmuch as they have given no equivalent for the 
 money they would have received if the defaulter 
 had been able to pay. But, when such a case 
 occurs, there is usually a good deal of loss out of 
 doors ; for the previously reputed wealth of the
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 159 
 
 party, which is magnified by those very accounts 
 of his skill and success in jobbing by which he 
 attempts to obtain the agency and confidence of 
 others, enable him to obtain credit to a large 
 amount ; and thus it frequently happens that a 
 defaulter upon the Stock Exchange sends a dozen 
 of tradesmen to the Gazette as bankrupts, and turns 
 that number of clerks and other inexperienced 
 young men to the commissioners as insolvents. 
 The number of those who have their prospects 
 blasted, their morals destroyed, and their characters 
 tainted, so as that they are quite reckless of what 
 they do afterward, is much greater than any one 
 who has not long and attentively studied and ex- 
 amined the subject could be made to believe. 
 Indeed, the subject is one of which no attention 
 can know all the particulars, and no study can 
 fully understand the results. Even the members 
 themselves, though they know the nature of their 
 own transactions full well, live in such suspicion 
 of each other, that no one can tell what is done by 
 another farther than any particular case where 
 they may find it for their mutual interest to hunt 
 in packs ; and even when they do this, such is the 
 spirit generated by the system, that each inwardly 
 curses the others on account of the share that they 
 have in the spoil. 
 
 A fourth reason which may produce a tender-
 
 160 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 ness toward the enormities of the Stock Exchange, 
 may arise from the hold which the master-spirits 
 who, though they do not appear personally in 
 the den, yet have their emissaries there, influence 
 all its movements, and pocket the greater share 
 of the profits, have upon the Corinthian pillars 
 which are supposed equally to support and adorn 
 society. Those who have looked at the fabric of 
 society with a builder's eye, know full well that 
 that fabric receives no more support from these 
 same pillars, than a Babylonian mansion does 
 from their namesakes at the portico ; in both 
 cases the pillars are only rotten sticks stuccoed 
 over, while the strength is in the brickwork and 
 beams that are concealed behind ; but the utility 
 is vulgarly believed, and that comes pretty nearly 
 to the same thing. The great high priests of 
 Mammon those who, like the Grand Lama of 
 Thibet, are hid from the eyes of mere mortals in 
 their frail and sinful capacity, and held out as the 
 vicegerents, if not the express incarnations of the 
 god of the place, and as such the guardian angels 
 of kings and nobles contrive to be, to a large 
 amount, the creditors of those who in office 
 have it in their power to say whom the law shall 
 watch, and whom it shall not ; and though this 
 be one of the hidden mysteries into which not 
 even the common worshippers within, far less the
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 161 
 
 public without, are permitted to look, I dare not 
 attempt to gauge its extent, though I am dis- 
 posed to assign no mean dimensions to it. 
 
 Any farther account of the moral mischief of 
 this extraordinary and execrable place, might seem 
 incredible to that public, which is sedulously kept 
 in ignorance of it, for the purpose of enabling 
 those who carry on the nefarious trade, to prey 
 upon the cupidity (for, after all, it is the cupidity, 
 and he who is ruined by a transaction on the 
 Stock Exchange merely reaps the reward, and it 
 may be the just reward, of his own love of illegal 
 gain,) of the unwise from Cornwall to Caithness, 
 and from Lowestoffe to St. David's ; and there- 
 fore it may be as well to interpolate some notice 
 of the physical aspect of the place. 
 
 This is the more necessary, because those who 
 have not been made acquainted with the real and 
 most extended practices of the place, are apt to 
 suppose that the Stock Exchange is nothing more 
 than a place where the securities of the British 
 Government, and others, for the payment of the 
 stipulated dividends upon their debts, are bought 
 and sold like any other commodities, in a fair, 
 open, and legitimate way ; and that the profits 
 which they sometimes make, and the losses which 
 they far more frequently sustain, arise from fluc- 
 tuations in the weal and woe of nations, in which
 
 162 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 neither they, nor the brokers who transact their 
 business, have the smallest concern. Were this the 
 case, it is quite clear, that no blame could attach 
 to the Stock Exchange, and the business done 
 there could be productive of harm to nobody. 
 But the real business, the actual buying and sell- 
 ing, has nothing more to do with the intention of 
 the parties, and forms no greater part of the ex- 
 pected value, than the half-dozen bunches of 
 matches in the pretence-basket of a burglar, upon 
 his morning reconnoitre, bear to the value of the 
 plunder that he hopes to carry off during the 
 night. The sales and purchases for the account 
 are the chief, profitable, and tempting part of the 
 business; and the real sales are usually conducted 
 in a manner honourable enough, in order that they 
 may be the better incitement and disguise in 
 the case of these. In making the sale or purchase 
 for the account, or the time bargain, the nego- 
 tiator gives or receives no money farther than the 
 commission which he exacts of those who may 
 employ him thus to purchase or to sell upon their 
 account. He merely engages to buy or to sell, 
 against a certain day of every month, which is 
 called settling day, a certain amount of stock at a 
 certain rate. If the price, when that day comes, 
 be the same as that which was agreed on, there is 
 an end of the transaction ; but. if the price rises,
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 163 
 
 and he is a seller, he receives the difference, and if 
 the price falls, and he is a seller, he pays the dif- 
 ference ; and if he is a buyer, he receives in case 
 of a fall, and pays in case of a rise: as, if a jobber 
 undertakes to sell twenty thousand three per cents, 
 at 75 on settling-day ; if the price rises to 80, 
 he loses 1000/,, and if it falls to 70, he gains 
 WOOL ; and if he engages to purchase, the effect, 
 if the prices are the same, is to the same amount, 
 but the other way, gain if the price rises, and 
 loss if it falls. 
 
 By this means the frequenters of the place are 
 always divided into two classes ; those who have 
 to sell, and those who have to buy ; or rather those 
 who have to receive in the event of a rise of the 
 price, and those who have to pay ; the receiver in 
 case of a rise, having to pay in case of a fall ; and 
 the payer in case of a rise, having to receive in case 
 of a fall. The one party is therefore interested in 
 the rise of the price, and the other party in the 
 fall ; and these parties are opposed to each other, 
 with an avidity of gambling which often changes 
 into personal rancour. The party interested in 
 the rise are called Bulls, and those interested in 
 the fall, Bears ; and certainly the wars and con- 
 flicts of those animals, even in their most untamed 
 and infuriate state, are mild and gentle compared 
 with those which are waged by their namesakes.
 
 164 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 If those parties continued in the same relative 
 positions during the whole of the month, there 
 might be some chance (though among them there 
 would be no certainty) of understanding the 
 matter ; but as the wary bull, when he finds that 
 the ultimate result has a chance of being against 
 him, will sometimes attempt to hedge in the inte- 
 rim, by becoming a bear for a time, in order that 
 he may in that capacity change the market ulti- 
 mately in his favour as a bull, and as the wily 
 bear will sometimes also play the same game, it is 
 utterly impossible for any one to know what may 
 be the effect against settling day; and he who 
 without confederacy and collusion should attempt 
 to buy against it, would be almost sure to lose. 
 
 There is no trick or stratagem to which these 
 parties will not have recourse, and no lie which they 
 will not utter, for the furtherance of their purposes. 
 Letters and despatches from abroad are counter- 
 feited, and lies and rumours of all sorts with regard 
 to politics, and the state of the revenue, and of 
 trade at home, are put into circulation, not only 
 by whispered and mysterious messages and ru- 
 mours on the Exchange itself, during business 
 hours, but in all the newspapers over which they 
 can exercise any control. The control that they 
 can exercise in this way, is much greater than those 
 who have not examined the matter could be
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 165 
 
 tempted to believe. This is gone about in various 
 ways : sometimes (though rarely in his own opi- 
 nion) the owner, or conductor, of the paper is a 
 fool, and they hoax him ; at other times it is better 
 to pay down a hundred pounds than lose a thou- 
 sand ; and there may be cases in which a proprietor 
 of the paper, or the person who furnishes the re- 
 ports and quotations of the prices, may have a 
 direct interest. When the latter is the case, it 
 requires to be kept secret, and the public are often 
 gulled by a general tirade against the Stock Ex- 
 change, printed immediately over an article which 
 is inserted for the known purposes of jobbing. 
 As the jobbing is not confined to the eight hundred 
 millions of the British debt, but extends to the 
 foreign loans, and to all companies of which the 
 shares are transferable, the gambling and the 
 tricks and lies extend to all ; and as many states 
 and companies of which the public have no imme- 
 diate means of knowing the real condition, are in 
 the market, one hardly knows what to believe re- 
 specting those states and companies. It used to 
 be believed, and some people believe still, that 
 those rumours, whether of matters at home or of 
 matters abroad, that are inserted in the papers of 
 one day as truths, and contradicted in the next as 
 falsehoods, were the fabrications of needy editors, 
 for the purpose of filling up their columns. Such,
 
 166 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 however, is not, and probably never was the case. 
 There is always matter enough, of some kind or 
 other, for filling up the largest newspaper ; and 
 though there were not, that would not be the way 
 in which a supply would be sought for, without 
 some stronger stimulus than that of mere want of 
 matter. 
 
 A time of tranquillity for the country is a time 
 which the stock-jobber hates, because, during 
 such a time, his inventions can have little influ- 
 ence upon the price of the public securities. 
 Like the raven, he takes pleasure in storms, 
 hovers over the field of battle, and is in perfect 
 rapture when any great man dies, or any impor- 
 tant enterprise fails. It might be supposed that 
 he is as much pleased with public prosperity, and 
 a gradual rise in the funds. Such, however, is not 
 the case. He does not want either a rise, or a fall, 
 that is gradual and depends upon causes which 
 he cannot influence. What he wants, is alarm 
 and uncertainty, under which he can operate him- 
 self the change which may be most advantageous 
 for his purposes ; and as experience soon teaches 
 him that the fears of mankind are much more 
 easily excited than their hopes, public disaster 
 is his harvest and his delight. By working upon 
 the fears of the public, he can, in times of alarm 
 and difficulty, intimidate the bond Jide holders
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 167 
 
 of stock to direct him to make real sales upon 
 which he gets a commission ; and as, if he happens 
 not to be possessed of capital himself, he speedily 
 finds those who are, he and his associates hold 
 that till the lie has ceased to operate, and then he 
 sells at a profit besides a second commission. At 
 the same time he entraps those who employ him, 
 to offer similar rates for the account ; and by the 
 confederacy to which I have already alluded, 
 defrauds them, and at the same time escapes sus- 
 picion by making it appear that he is the greatest 
 loser himself. 
 
 These inundations of bubbles, which those who 
 do not know or advert to the Stock Exchange, 
 are apt to regard as unexceptionable hallucina- 
 tions of the public mind, are in reality crops sown 
 and cultivated by the stock-jobber, of which he 
 reaps an abundant harvest ; and during the bub- 
 ble-mania of 1825, persons of this description 
 were hunting about in all directions, in quest of 
 those who had skill to invent a plausible scheme, 
 or impudence to vamp up an imposing prospectus; 
 and when either was obtained, the jobbers thronged 
 for shares, brought them out at a premium, sold 
 them at such as long as ever they could, and, 
 when that was no longer practicable, refused 
 to pay the instalments, or returned them to the
 
 168 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 directors, with whom they were in collusion, as 
 shares that had never been subscribed for. 
 
 The quarters to which recourse may be, and is 
 often had, for the purposes of jobbing, are much 
 higher, if not more honourable, than one would 
 at first imagine. For the honour of the cloth, 
 I will not venture to say that I ever heard a 
 stock-jobbing sermon, though various members 
 of that profession do invest their surplus moneys 
 in the funds, for the support of the state and 
 their own profit ; but this I will say, without 
 fear of contradiction, that some of the most ear- 
 nest, though certainly not the most eloquent 
 orations that I ever listened to in the pure atmo- 
 sphere of St. Stephen's, were either meant to 
 influence the price of stocks, or they had no 
 meaning whatever. This high confederacy is, of 
 course, not sought after in ordinary cases, be- 
 cause it is expensive far too expensive for any 
 individual jobber, save those who have higher 
 objects in view than the management of a com- 
 mon time-bargain in stock. But when a loan, 
 either domestic or foreign, is to come into the 
 market, it comes into play ; and it did the same 
 largely in the case of the bubbles. Nay, it might 
 not be very difficult to prove that (of course in 
 times less pure and wise than the present) mem-
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 169 
 
 bers were returned to parliament merely for stock- 
 jobbing purposes, some of them on their own 
 account, and some on account of others. I have 
 even heard, though at what precise era I cannot 
 venture to say, of an official personage, in a rather 
 important office, who used to make up his scanty 
 salary by a successful bargain or bit of good 
 advice on the Stock Exchange. This, however, 
 is an allegation which I myself am not bound 
 to believe, unless I choose ; and therefore I can- 
 not see that any one has a right to bid me force 
 the belief of it upon others. 
 
 Because few of my readers may have the oppor- 
 tunity, and still fewer the hardihood to look into 
 this singular den ; and because it probably does not 
 now, and certainly will not long (very long at least,) 
 continue to poison the mercantile character of 
 the city, and the morals of the whole country, 
 let them imagine it in the filling up of my sketch 
 of that, to which neither pen nor pencil can do 
 justice. 
 
 The locality of the Stock Exchange is well 
 chosen, being at a point where intelligence from 
 the Bank of England, the Royal Exchange, and 
 the different coffee houses where private letters 
 from abroad are received, may be obtained in a 
 few minutes ; and thus " news from all nations" 
 may be very speedily manufactured with an air of 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 170 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 authenticity. One wide portal gapes toward the 
 Bank, in Bartholomew-lane ; and there is a sally- 
 port into Threadneedle-street for those who do 
 not wish to be seen entering or emerging the other 
 way. From the dull and dingy aspect of these 
 approaches, which it seems cannot be whitened, 
 one could form no guess at the mighty deeds of 
 the place ; and when the hourly quotations of the 
 prices of stocks are the same, the place is silent, 
 and only a few individuals, with faces which can 
 grin but cannot smile, are seen crawling in and 
 out, or standing yawning in the court with their 
 hands in their breeches' pockets. If, however, the 
 quotations fluctuate, and the Royal Exchange, 
 where most of the leading men of the money- 
 market lounge, be full of bustling and rumours, 
 and especially if characters, with eyes like basilisks, 
 and faces lined and surfaced like an asparagus bed 
 ere the plants come up, be ever and anon darting 
 in at the north door of the Royal Exchange, 
 bounding toward the chief priests of Mammon, 
 like pith balls to the conductor of an electric ma- 
 chine, and when they have " got their charge," 
 bounding away again, then you may be sure that 
 the Stock Exchange is worth seeing, if it could be 
 seen with comfort, or even with safety. At those 
 times, however, a stranger might as well jump into
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 171 
 
 a den of lions, or throw himself into the midst of a 
 herd of famishing wolves. 
 
 But, though it would not be either pleasant or 
 safe to enter the gate at such a time, yet a peep 
 into the court gives a new view of human nature 
 a view so new, that one doubts whether the moving 
 things which are passing and repassing the inner 
 gates, like bees on a sunny day, be human or not. 
 Every passion that the " root of all evil" (the 
 fruit, by the way, is very good when properly cul- 
 tivated) can stir, is depicted. Upon the visage of 
 one who enters, sits the burning avidity of a plun- 
 derer rushing to the spoil ; upon that of another, 
 the agony of a criminal after the judge has summed 
 up and the jury retired from their box ; a third 
 comes in, gaping wonder, with ears, mouth, and 
 eyes distended to the maximum of their receiving 
 capacity ; and a fourth struts in with his mouth 
 contracted to a line, and his breast heaving with 
 some mighty secret, as though it would burst. Of 
 those who come out, and of whom the fortunes for 
 the day, and it may be for ever, are sealed, the 
 countenances are more marked still. One bounds 
 along in an ecstasy of delight, casting a leering eye 
 upon those whom he has outlied and ruined ; 
 another comes growling, because he has neither 
 lost nor won; a third is writhing his face, gnashing 
 I 2
 
 172 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 his teeth, and slapping his forehead in a paroxysm ; 
 and a fourth, with his chin on his breast, his hands 
 dangling by his sides, and his eye " fixed on va- 
 cancy," stands at the threshold, heedless of every 
 thing around him, the very type of remediless woe, 
 until, very possibly, the man who has ruined him, 
 kicks and bustles him into motion, and pushes him 
 out at that gateway, which he dares never again 
 enter, amid the grinning plaudits of the loathsome 
 group. If any painter, or sculptor, or actor, wishes 
 to delineate the sordid passion in all its appear- 
 ances, he will find upon such an occasion models 
 more true to Nature than the chefs d'auvre of the 
 finest art. 
 
 While the stranger stands gazing at these ago- 
 nized men, in a reverie of the most profound asto- 
 nishment, in which the most acute understanding 
 can hardly thread its way, his contemplation is 
 ever and anon broken by the most uncouth shouts 
 and the most dismal yells, issuing from the interior 
 of the den. Bedlam is out-bedlamed by the din ; 
 and one instantly thinks of the dog-ribbed Indians 
 starting from an ambush, or the natives of New 
 Zealand preparing to drink the blood and gnaw 
 the bones of their captives. 
 
 Even this, however, is nothing to the interior, 
 because, in the court, the figures glide so rapidly 
 away, and their places are so soon supplied by
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 173 
 
 others, that you have not time to fix their charac- 
 ters upon your mind. Imagine then, that you 
 have got into the great hall (the place, when you 
 get into it, consists of three halls, one larger than 
 the others, and some smaller apartments) early in 
 the morning, before the business of the day is 
 commenced ; imagine that it is a time of public 
 anxiety and alarm ; and imagine farther, as it will 
 give a characteristic tint to the scene, that it is the 
 gloomy month of November, that variable and 
 capricious part of it, when the sun, which is able 
 to cast a few pencils of dull red light through the 
 smoke of the morning, may, ere noon, be veiled in 
 a fog so dense, that the lamps must be lighted ere 
 people can find their way in the streets. 
 
 You take your station in the great hall, where 
 you can see but the warders of the place. Crowds 
 of carcases, which appear to be all ears and no 
 tongue, first pace the floor in silence, or pore 
 upon the newspapers of the morning. They are 
 thus silent, lest the plots and confederacies of the 
 one side should be known to the other. An agent 
 of one of the great leading houses comes in and 
 surveys the house, and he seems for a moment to 
 act as the angel of death ; for though every feature 
 of every face be asking a question, not a tongue is 
 moved. 
 
 Ten o'clock approaches ; the hall throngs ; there
 
 174 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 is a ripple of articulated anxiety, and some of the 
 redundant spirits are sported in tricks, where it is 
 known that the object will not or dares not resent. 
 The serious door-keeper, the cerberus major of 
 the place, ascends a little platform; and fixing 
 his eye upon the clock, poises a watchman's rattle 
 in his dexter-hand. This rattle is the " view 
 halloo" for the pack ; and they stand panting and 
 straining, like blood-hounds on the slip, with their 
 eye upon the clock and their ear intent to catch 
 the sound, till the index points to the hour, and 
 the rattle 
 
 " Cries havoc and lets slip the dogs of war." 
 
 At the voice of the rattle the whole bound into 
 aheap, pushing, pulling, shouting, staggering and 
 swearing, as if they were, by the force of collision 
 and compression, to dash into one mass. One 
 party is clamorous to sell, and the other equally 
 clamorous to buy ; and the news of the morning 
 and the former evening is served up by each party 
 in a different way, sauced and disguised by every 
 thing that each party fancies can in any way in- 
 fluence the first start of the market in their favour. 
 That start the opening price, is a matter of the 
 highest importance, as it in some sort regulates, or 
 at least influences, the whole transactions of the 
 day. When sudden and important news, or even 
 a skilfully hatched invention, can be vociferated
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 175 
 
 to the mob, while this is pending, the din may be 
 fearfully prolonged ; and the announcement of the 
 first sale may cause the instant transfer of hun- 
 dreds of thousands, the plunging of many families 
 into instant and hopeless ruin, and the elevation 
 of a few to great and undeserved wealth. But 
 there is a sort of retributive justice in jobbing, and 
 like most other vices that are not punishable, or 
 at least punished, by law, there is, sooner or later, 
 a punishment in itself; and the same man who 
 upon one fortunate day, netted his hundred thou- 
 sand pounds, may, ere the sun brings round that 
 day twelvemonth, be swept of his last shilling, 
 and his heart give the last convulsive flutter with 
 that life of which his own hand has been the exe- 
 cutioner. 
 
 When the passions are once thus dreadfully 
 excited, it requires little additional impulse to 
 keep up the excitement. This is the chief reason 
 why the opening price is so very important; for 
 if any party be able to raise a whirlwind and storm 
 in their own favour at the opening, they are gene- 
 rally able to ride on that whirlwind and direct that 
 storm during the day. 
 
 In proportion, however, as the unfortunate party 
 lose, they become desperate ; and though defaulter 
 after defaulter may be hooted out of the place, 
 those within become more and more furious in the
 
 176 A SECOND JUDGMENT OP 
 
 struggle, in the hope that by some chance or 
 stratagem they may regain at least a part of what 
 they have lost. If the news or the fabrication be 
 of a disastrous nature, the bulls do not come to 
 action all at once, though they all clamour at the 
 same time. The weak-nerved come first, and then 
 the others in succession ; and it sometimes happens 
 that a brazen bull, by turning bear at the middle 
 of the contest, and bull again at the end, realizes 
 large profits. 
 
 If a second impulse be expected, either a deeper 
 plunge in the way of the first, or a reaction the 
 other way, the wrangling, the noise, the madness, 
 continue till the physical strength of some and the 
 moral strength of the others appear to give way : 
 gasping, pale, covered with perspiration, and 
 sometimes having their clothes torn and the tat- 
 ters covered with saw-dust, individuals hurry to 
 the neighbouring coffee-houses to swallow basins 
 of soup or glasses of wine and spirits. Sometimes 
 when they are in the act of swallowing these, the 
 yell of ruin or victory to that side which they 
 have espoused, will reach them, and the basin or the 
 glass will drop from their hands, and they will 
 hurry off to mingle in the strife. 
 
 The turn which the awakened passions take is 
 sometimes very ludicrous, from the violence of 
 gambling strife, in which, for the purpose of irri-
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 177 
 
 tating the parties, throwing them off their guard, 
 and thus getting the better of them in the game, 
 all sorts of personal abuse that scandal can find out 
 or slander invent, are brought into play. The ex- 
 acerbation of this will sometimes pass into a real 
 phrensy, in which the whole assembly, apparently 
 unconscious of what they are about, will knock off 
 each other's hats, tear each other's coats, throw 
 clouds of sawdust, and yell, kick, strike, and 
 even bite, till their conduct has no resemblance to 
 that of rational creatures. 
 
 The termination of this brawl is sometimes as 
 singular as the conducting of it is unseemly ; for 
 a vulgar song, begun in some corner of the crowd, 
 will sometimes be taken up by the whole, and 
 bawled till the walls and roof shiver to the din, 
 emulating that glee which Burns describes among 
 the beggars at " Poasie Nannie's/' under the in- 
 fluence of which 
 
 " Frighted rations backward look, 
 An' seek the benmost bore." 
 
 The brawl which takes place here is not a battle 
 in anger, neither is the song a ballad in glee ; they 
 are both secondary symptoms of the depth of the 
 gaming and the madness to which the gamesters are 
 worked ; and they plainly show that, whatever of 
 design and cunning there may be in the planning of 
 that which produces so dementing an excitement, 
 i 5
 
 178 A SECOND JUDGMENT OP 
 
 it often proceeds to a height which cunning itself 
 cannot control, and of which, for the moment, it 
 can take no advantage. 
 
 Occasionally, however, these mad scenes have 
 their use to the deeper gamesters; for it may hap- 
 pen that a real communication, or an invented one, 
 shall be brought in by one of the solemn-faced 
 personages already alluded to, before the song has 
 closed ; and then, as if by the wand of an enchanter, 
 the song and its echo are snapped asunder, and the 
 hall becomes for a moment still as the grave. This 
 stillness is but momentary ; for no sooner has the 
 messenger arrived at the party to whom he is 
 to communicate his purpose, than the roar, the 
 wrangle, and the rush are renewed with as much 
 vehemence as at the first, or at least with as much 
 as the strength of the parties can bear. 
 
 Amid all this confusion there is a sort oY rule, 
 or at least of supremacy ; for the whole hinges upon 
 a knot of persons who constitute what is called the 
 Stock Market by way of eminence. They regu- 
 late the prices that are proclaimed in the hall ; they 
 furnish the quotations that are hourly posted up, 
 and also those that are inserted in the newspapers, 
 and therefore they may be said to be the real ar- 
 biters of the marketable value, not only of the 
 eight hundred millions of the national debt of 
 Britain, but of all the foreign loans, shares of
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 179 
 
 companies, and other securities that are bought 
 and sold on the Stock Exchange. 
 
 Those who have visited this den upon a day of 
 agitation, and when a dense fog has come over it, 
 describe it as coming nearer to Milton's description 
 of hell than any thing else that nature or imagina- 
 tion can furnish. The dense atmosphere makes one 
 feel as if one were breathing a solid ; the lamps 
 glimmer dim and red through the fog, and like the 
 flickerings of the infernal fire, " cast, pale and 
 dreadful," a light which is more nearly allied to 
 darkness ; the darkness thickens toward the sides 
 of the hall, till these be lost sight of, and the whole 
 puts on the appearance of an infinitude of space ; 
 the yells which ever and anon come from the 
 groups in the shade, upon whose side, next the 
 lamps, there falls but a line of " darkness visible," 
 put one in mind of the wailings of the accursed ; 
 while the more active figures that reel and rage in 
 the light, are the express images of tormenting 
 devils, nor does the image fall much short of the 
 reality, either in their desire and power to tor- 
 ment others, or in their being doomed to share the 
 same torment themselves. 
 
 What is here wrtten falls far short of the truth; 
 for, if it were possible to lay bare all the finesses, 
 tricks, and falsehoods by which the prices are in- 
 fluenced, and all the consequences that result,
 
 180 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 the picture would be one upon which no man of 
 feeling could look. A thousand persons in and 
 about London alone, who leave their families in 
 the morning in affluence and expensive habits of 
 which they had calculated there would be no end, 
 return to them at night with the certainty of ruin, 
 want, misery, and, it may be, infamy. For what 
 will not a man whose passions have been inflamed 
 by such a scene, and whose excitement has, with- 
 out pause, been followed by the agony of despair, 
 what will not such a man do ? theft, robbery, 
 burglary, suicide, any thing. And yet people all 
 over the country will dabble in the funds; will risk 
 and lose their money for the support of this most 
 iniquitous and corrupting of all associations, an 
 association which, independently of the mischief 
 that it does to those who are immediately connect- 
 ed with it, withdraws the public attention and the 
 public capital from more honest and deserving 
 objects. 
 
 Those who are fonder of playing with their own 
 theories than with the facts which the world sets 
 before them, would be very apt, from the exist- 
 ence of this corrupt and corrupting association in 
 the very midst of the greatest commercial city that 
 ever existed, to conclude, that there is in commerce 
 something which blunts the honest powers and 
 feelings of nature, and lays man open to this spe-
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 181 
 
 cies of vice. But the fact is, that there cannot be 
 two things more opposed to each other, than the 
 spirit of gaming and the spirit of commerce. The 
 true commercial principle is equity, a fair measure 
 of commodity against commodity; while the object 
 of the gambler, and of the Stock Exchange gam- 
 bler as much as any other, is to get possession of 
 that which is not his own, without giving any 
 equivalent whatever. Nor is it mere theory only, 
 for the theory is borne out by the facts : the re- 
 spectable merchants of London care nothing about 
 the Stock Exchange, and the members of the Stock 
 Exchange know and care nothing about the mer- 
 chants of London. They and their institution are 
 not part of society ; they are foreign to it, a stain, 
 an excrescence. Nor are they akin to any other 
 country : they are an anomaly in human nature 
 altogether. Summer and winter, plenty and fa- 
 mine, virtue and vice, prosperity and adversity, 
 (no, not prosperity and adversity, for it is by 
 adversity that they make their chief gains,) are 
 all the same to them. One jot they care not whose 
 ship founders, whose house is burned, or whose 
 life has been taken away by an assassin. Give 
 them fluctuations in the funds, and fools whom 
 they may strip of their all and send to beggary 
 or the gallows. 
 
 Why should such a crew meet with encourage-
 
 182 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 ment, and where should they find recruits when 
 death, defalcation, and suicide, thin their num- 
 bers? I can find but one answer: that love of 
 strong excitement is inseparable from those whose 
 appetites are pampered, whose minds are uncul- 
 tivated, and whose morals are utterly gone.
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 183 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 FANES OF MAMMON. y. 
 THE HELLS. 
 
 -" Torment without end 
 
 Still urges." MILTON. 
 
 THOSE who are anxious to see the full fruition 
 and benefit of that which all seek, and the majority 
 never can find a total exemption from (or perhaps 
 it is more correct to say, a total disregard of) all 
 the ordinary cares and occupations of life, and a 
 surfeit to nausea of all its ordinary pleasures ; to 
 see men, who have been nursed with tenderness, 
 educated in the hope that they might be useful 
 and virtuous, and who have, in many instances, 
 won honours in the service of their country, aban- 
 doning every pleasurable and profitable considera- 
 tion, putting from them not merely the reason, 
 but all the natural passions, and even the natural 
 vices of their kind, and giving up their whole 
 souls, their whole time, and (for to that it must
 
 184) A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 come, and does come in the end,) their whole 
 means of supporting themselves, for one desolating 
 and degrading vice, a vice which has not one plea 
 in its favour, those who wish to see that and them, 
 have only to resort to the purlieus of St. James's, 
 and they will find their curiosity gratified, by 
 scenes of unmingled cold-blooded plunder, agony, 
 despair, and self-destruction. 
 
 Different from other sinks of vice, which may 
 almost be called temples of virtue as compared with 
 these, " The Hells," as they are most appropriately 
 named, are not situated in retired neighbourhoods 
 or obscure corners. No : their owners are too 
 much bronzed in iniquity, too utterly unhuman- 
 ized for that. Those who pander to, and profit 
 by, the other vices of mankind, have " a private 
 door round the corner," which shows that though 
 they may have lost the greater part of the sub- 
 stance of virtue, its shadow continues to fall upon 
 them in the operation of shame. Not so with the 
 hell-monger. His " den of deeper damnation " 
 flares full to view in the most thronged and 
 public street, and to all, save the ministers of 
 justice, 
 
 " Noctes atque dies patet atri janua." 
 
 But he whom the mean desire of participating in 
 unhallowed gain, tempts to enter the inviting
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 185 
 
 portal, finds that, until he be utterly ruined, there 
 is no escape, no return to the " golden skies of a 
 tranquil mind." The obtrusive impudence with 
 which those hells mingle with and outvie, both in 
 external and internal splendour, the dwellings of 
 the nobility, tells a tale of alteration in the public 
 morals which one cannot trust one's self to set 
 down on paper, and points out to how miserable a 
 pass those are driven who have drained the ordi- 
 nary sources of pleasure dry, and are, from custom 
 and qualifications, incapacitated for killing their 
 time over any thing useful. A superficial obser- 
 ver would be apt to spend his maledictions wholly 
 upon the wretches whom the iniquity of those 
 places raises (if raising it can be called) from the 
 very bottom of human degradation, to the very 
 summit of wealth ; and it must be allowed, that of 
 all robbers, those who rob by gaming are the most 
 cowardly as well as the most destructive. They 
 are the most cowardly, because they risk nothing. 
 A guerilla in the mountains of Castile, or a bri- 
 gand in the Alps or the Apennines, may be a good 
 man, and must be a brave one. He may live in 
 hostility to the laws, and he may be stained with 
 the most desperate and daring offences ; but op- 
 pression may have made him an outlaw, and neces- 
 sity may have initiated him into guilt. The hell- 
 monger has no such plea : society is open to him,
 
 186 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 and there is nothing to bring him to his course, or 
 confine him to it, save the utter depravity of his 
 own heart. Courage, being in itself a virtue, quits 
 the bosom when all other virtues are gone ; and if 
 it still remains, one may be sure that other virtues 
 are there also, and might be called into operation 
 by a proper change of circumstances ; but there is 
 no virtue that will dwell with cupidity or cowardice, 
 much less with the two when they are indissolubly 
 joined. It is this which gives one the true key to 
 the character of him who lives by gaming, and 
 enables one to see why the wretches who amass 
 the greatest plunder at those hells are always raked 
 up from among the filth at the very lowest bottom 
 of society, fellows who, in the whole course of their 
 lives, have never been guilty of one honest resolu- 
 tion, or one generous wish. 
 
 But the plunder of the gamester is also far more 
 destructive to him from whom it is taken than that 
 of the thief or the robber. He who is robbed, or 
 has his property stolen, stands morally upon higher 
 ground than he did before. He is not deprived of 
 those powers and faculties by which he can acquire 
 more ; and instead of having cause to reproach or 
 blame himself, he feels that he is an injured man, 
 a situation in which, as one would say, " a man's 
 spirits rally in his own aid," his energies are con- 
 centrated, he stands more firm and erect, and is
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 187 
 
 capable of more daring deeds. The account which 
 Horace gives of the increased valour of the soldier 
 after his purse had been stolen, is as true in philo- 
 sophy as it is elegant in song. But the spirit of the 
 gambler's dupe is broken, as well as his fortunes. 
 Along with what he had, he has lost the power of ac- 
 quiring more ; and if he does not terminate his life 
 in a moment of madness, he wears out the remain- 
 der of it in self-condemnation and despair. Thus 
 the gambler is, in every way that can be view- 
 ed, the very worst character that can be inflicted 
 upon society. 
 
 Bad and worthless, however, as are those cha- 
 racters, it is not upon them that the burden of 
 the evil done to private happiness and public mo- 
 rals lies. They are all too insignificant for that ; 
 and were it not for the scope which is given to them 
 by others, their vices (for under any circumstances 
 they would have been vicious) would have been 
 displayed in another manner. Had it not been 
 for the restless demon of ennui, which, to the idle 
 voluptuary, turns the honey of life into gall, the 
 man who now, in the sight of the law, and almost 
 at the very threshold of royalty, amasses his hun- 
 dreds of thousands every year, would, in all probabi- 
 lity, have expiated his crimes by having his worth- 
 less carcase displayed at Newgate, in testimony of 
 picking the pocket of a blind man in an alley, or
 
 188 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 robbing a poor beggar girl of her cloak upon a 
 common ; and thus, though we cannot help despis- 
 ing him as the instrument, our more deep and bit- 
 ter feeling should be directed against those who 
 give him scope and aid in his unholy work. 
 
 I do not so directly mean the dupes who are daily 
 ruined in these dens of iniquity, although they too 
 are guilty, and, if the ruin were not to their families 
 and the public, justice would say that it were 
 richly merited. But the guilt could not, as it is, 
 be openly perpetrated, in the knowledge and with 
 defiance of the law, if there were not somewhere a 
 shield, which the sword of justice cannot or dares 
 not penetrate. This it is which forms the root of 
 the evil ; for we find that, in small cases of gaming, 
 the law is powerful and vigilant enough. If a few 
 tradesmen shall, after the labours of the day, go 
 to the ale-house and play a game at cribbage, for a 
 tankard of ale, or a few pence, oh how quickly 
 the jackals of justice are on the scent, and how 
 the mane of the lion is shaken in angry denun- 
 ciation ; but let the scene be laid in a great house, 
 let every stake be thousands, and the nightly plun- 
 der tens of thousands, and " then there is a lion in 
 the way" more fierce and fell than he whose choler 
 is in high chafe when the mechanics touch the 
 cribbage-board. I do not mean to advocate the 
 gaming by the mechanics ; I am sure that any of
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 189 
 
 them could spend their time better ; and as far as 
 the principle and the example go, they are just as 
 corrupt and as corrupting in gaming for a penny as 
 for a million. The great fault is, that the justice 
 is not even-handed ; that they swallow the camel, 
 " while they are straining at the gnat ; v that, in 
 their solicitude about " the mote" in the eye of the 
 poor man, they heed not " the beam" in the eye of 
 the rich. " Oh but/' say they to whom the exe- 
 cution of the mandate falls, " we have the utmost 
 horror and dislike to those same hells ; we are con- 
 stantly upon the watch for them ; but they have so 
 terribly strong doors, and they shut and open in 
 so unusual a way, that we cannot get in ; or if we 
 got in, the chance is that we should never get out 
 again. Nor is this all, for there are so many of 
 these doors, that long before we can force our way 
 through the half of them, the garrison have es- 
 caped by some sallyport unknown to us, carrying 
 with them the whole of their materiel ; so that we 
 lose our labour, the public has to pay the expense, 
 while the gamblers return to their den and laugh 
 at us and our laws." 
 
 There must be some truth in this plea ; for it is 
 the only one which is pleaded whenever " the sake 
 of appearances," or whatever else it may be, ren- 
 ders it necessary to make a feint of attack on a 
 hell. But why should the " arm of power," which
 
 190 A SECOND JUDGMENT OP 
 
 is so invincible, which comes into the houses and 
 pockets of the people at home, when it lists, and 
 for what it lists, and which has ere now defied the 
 combined force of the globe, why should this "arm 
 of power" drop nerveless and paralysed the instant 
 that it is lifted up against the door of a gaming- 
 house ? Is that door a sort of Gymnotus, which 
 can unnerve the arm that touches it with a bat- 
 tering-ram ? No, not physically ; but it seems that 
 there is a moral electricity, which is as invisible, and 
 much more powerful than that of the far-famed 
 fish. What may be the specific organ in which 
 this power is contained, it is impossible to know, 
 and might not be safe to conjecture ; but, somehow 
 or other, one can never think of it without at the 
 same time thinking of some person of quality 
 some of " the Corinthian capitals," not of the 
 state (necessarily), but of society. 
 
 This assertion may be both unfounded and un- 
 fair ; but it is very generally made, and till another 
 cause be found and stated, it will continue to be very 
 generally made ; and therefore it produces the same 
 mischief as if it were publicly demonstrated. In- 
 deed it produces more mischief; for if the fact were 
 established, the cause of it would be seen; it 
 would be palpable, from the cupidity and injustice 
 which would be revealed, that gaming in a titled 
 personage is just as immoral and degrading as it is
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 191 
 
 in him who, but for gaming, would never have 
 lifted his head from the dunghill; that in the hell, 
 as in the grave, there is no distinction of persons. 
 
 The mystery and concealment in which this 
 connexion, if such connexion there be, is at pre- 
 sent wrapped up, throw the whole of this disgusting 
 part of the matter into the shade. As gambling 
 is punished on the part of the humble, and spared 
 on that of the daring, people regard it as a fash- 
 ionable and desirable thing, a pleasure which the 
 lofty would monopolize, just as they do the killing 
 of game ; and when the landlord of an alehouse is 
 brought up and fined, or gets his licence taken 
 from him, because mechanics have been playing 
 cribbage in his parlour, the people feel toward it 
 in the same way as they do toward a prosecution 
 under the game laws. By this means the immo- 
 rality and odium are taken away ; and as gaming 
 is made, as it were, the prerogative of the great 
 one of the badges and characteristics of fashion, 
 and, as such, the vain and the thoughtless are 
 always disposed and anxious to wear it ; in con- 
 sequence, it creeps into quarters where it is b'ttle 
 to be expected, and less to be wished ; and though 
 they seldom can obtain money enough to pay for 
 their admission into the greater hells, yet there 
 are, in many places of the Babylon, and more par- 
 ticularly in the vicinity of the great theatres, hells,
 
 192 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 at which the " London 'prentices" are inveigled 
 to waste the money of their masters, at the same 
 time that, by the other practices of those places, 
 they are ruining their constitutions, and quali- 
 fying themselves for "foreign travel" in the 
 Southern hemisphere. Notwithstanding much 
 discovery and many fulminations, there seems to 
 be some sort of protection for these wretched hells 
 also ; and indeed, a person who was fond of re- 
 ducing long stories to short sentences, would be 
 very apt to lay down as an axiom, " That any 
 party may practise any vice in the Babylon, and be 
 protected in the practice of it, provided that the 
 profits on the practice will pay for the protection." 
 Those minor hells, however, how debasing and 
 destructive soever they may be to the morals of 
 the unthinking youth of the Babylon, and how 
 much soever they may conduce, by the infamous 
 characters that are always collected about them, 
 to augment the number of nightly depredations, 
 are all carried on under false colours, while the 
 inmates do one thing, the sign-board says another. 
 Not so with the deeper hells of the West. What- 
 ever may be the style and decorations of the build- 
 ings, they are hell all over. They need no sign. 
 Go into the streets where they are ; find out the 
 mansion of the most captivating aspect, and with 
 the most alluring entrance, and that you may rest 
 assured is a hell. About it every thing is fine and
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 193 
 
 fascinating, and a stranger would suppose that in 
 such a mansion there could be found none save 
 the highest and most honourable in the land ; and 
 if he felt either himself or his property in danger, 
 the hell is the very place to which he would flee 
 as an asylum. 
 
 If, however, he should be told, that the whole 
 of this vast and gaudy pile had been erected out 
 of a year or two's plunder; that the sole and 
 only object of it was to rob the vain and the 
 silly (always allied, by the way,) of their pro- 
 perty ; that, for the accomplishment of this pur- 
 pose, agents were appointed, and scouts running 
 to and fro throughout the country ; that others 
 of smooth tongue and winning manners were sta- 
 tioned in every public room and place of resort, 
 for the purpose of worming themselves into the 
 favour and confidence of those whose fortunes 
 and propensities had been favourably reported 
 for the concern ; that these panders to the den 
 are furnished by the council with lists of those 
 whom they are to allure, and notes of the mode 
 of alluring; that within that tempting place is 
 contained every thing that can pamper the appe- 
 tites and lull the reason to sleep ; that the air, 
 the sea, and the earth, are ransacked for the 
 richest and rarest viands, and that for the prepa- 
 ration of these to '"bankerout the wits," nobility, 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 194 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 and even royalty itself, are outbidden for the Swiss 
 of cookery ; that every liquor that can be had to 
 " lap the senses in Elysium," is offered without 
 money and without price ; and that, after all these 
 great and costly establishments and givings, there 
 yet arose from what was perpetrated within those 
 walls, a revenue greater than that of the wealthi- 
 est man in these kingdoms, he would pause at 
 the threshold and exclaim, " This must be a den 
 of monstrous iniquity !" And truly so it is. It 
 is a whited sepulchre " full of rottenness and 
 dead men's bones :" rottenness of every principle 
 and every feeling, and dead men's bones, not by 
 any allegorical flourish, but in literal truth. 
 
 They who pass by see the splendour, and many 
 of them are thereby tempted to enter if they 
 are worth the ruining, and can find any one who 
 will introduce them to their ruin ; and if they 
 are wealthy, there are, as I have said, those upon 
 the watch who can soon conduct them to their 
 fate. The blandishments of the place are seen, 
 are ostentatiously displayed ; but the crime and 
 the misery are veiled from mortal view. After 
 the game is found, and the hounds of the table 
 are on the slot, there remains no disinterested 
 spectator who can tell the tale ; and the previous 
 preparation is such, that the poor victims are 
 unconscious of their fate until the intoxication
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 195 
 
 has abated, and the bonds which they have 
 executed in the madness of wine and despair, 
 are put in force against them. Vast as are the 
 sums lost in the games, they do not make up 
 the whole, or nearly the whole of what, if the 
 losers have the means, they are compelled to pay ; 
 but care is taken by the gamesters, who carefully 
 avoid that which intoxicates their dupes, that 
 there shall be no means of detecting the fraud. 
 
 Independently of the fascinations of those hells, 
 and the agreeable manners which the hell-mon- 
 gers and their confederates can, ere matters come 
 to the extreme point, assume, there is an air of 
 fairness in the games themselves, and also in 
 the appearance of the manner in which they are 
 usually played. Indeed, the leading games at 
 those places are so contrived, that there is no 
 need for unfairness in the mode of playing. 
 That, if discovered, would ruin the character 
 of the house (for even these dens of iniquity 
 can talk about their character), and therefore, 
 matters are so managed, that the certainty of 
 gain to the one party and ruin to the other is 
 in the game itself. This is at once a surer and 
 a safer means than the others : the party to whom 
 the hell belongs, are certain of that part of the 
 stakes which the chance of the game gives in 
 their favour, and from their familiarity with 
 K 2
 
 196 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 the run of the chances, they generally have the 
 better of the player with regard to the rest. 
 
 The games most frequently played, are Ronge et 
 Noir, and Roulette ; and they are no doubt selected, 
 because a great number of persons can play ; be- 
 cause the stake of each may be, within certain limits, 
 proposed by the owner of the den, whatever he 
 thinks fit ; because the performance is very rapid ; 
 and because the appearance of the game, and the 
 quantity of money displayed for the purpose of 
 paying those who win, is very tempting. 
 
 I pretend not to much knowledge of these 
 games, and it is a knowledge of which folks need 
 not be very ambitious ; but yet a slight outline of 
 them becomes almost necessary. 
 
 The reader will therefore be pleased to imagine 
 that he has got into the moral slaughter-house of 
 one of these hells, and that the business of the 
 evening is just commencing. Sometimes, the table 
 for the Rouge et Noir, and that for the Roulette, 
 are placed in the same apartment ; and sometimes 
 there are by -tables for other games with dice and 
 cards, at which the confederates of the fraternity, 
 who are not immediately occupied at the business 
 tables, contrive to pick up money, and also to entice 
 the novices to these ; but the whole matter will be 
 more easily understood, if the tables are mentioned 
 separately.
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 197 
 
 Imagine then that you have got into the hell of 
 slower torment, the Rouge et Noir saloon. Your 
 first impression is that your conductor has shown 
 you into the wrong place, and that you are not in 
 hell but in Elysium. The hall itself is of the most 
 ample dimensions, and the most perfect symmetry ; 
 the ceiling is tinted with the most airy colours of 
 the sky, the carpet outvies the gayest parterre, 
 the festoonings are of the finest damask ; wherever 
 you turn your view, a splendid mirror repeats the 
 scene ; on the sideboards ^re all things which the 
 voluptuary can covet ; and the glare of light from 
 lamps and lustres, broken into the most beautiful 
 rainbow tints by ten thousand faucettes of crystal, 
 outshines and outdazzles those " cressets," with 
 which the enchantment of Milton lighted up the in- 
 fernal palace. Nor does the company please you 
 less; for though those persons who are so assiduous 
 in their attentions be as base-born as they are base, 
 they are trained to assume the external air, and 
 play off the external manners of gentlemen. It is 
 very true that, if you could be calm and philosophic, 
 you would easily detect them ; for the tailor, the 
 posture-master, and the barber, cannot make a gen- 
 tleman ; but that is a place which calmness and 
 philosophy do not enter, neither could you intro- 
 duce them if you would. Among these, however, 
 may sometimes be seen the titled of the land, and
 
 198 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 occasionally (though I hope not often) the fair and 
 the fascinating. In short, the people who are 
 taking a momentary rest upon the chairs, sofas, 
 and ottomans, appear, at a casual glance, to be 
 the blissful tenants of a blest abode; but even 
 ere " the slaughter is begun," if you look nar- 
 rowly, you can discern on them " the print of pas- 
 sions, not allied to heaven." 
 
 In the middle of the apartment stands the table, 
 putting you a little in mind of the great sacrificial 
 stone, upon which the Mexicans immolated the 
 unhappy victims to glut the vengeance of their 
 unsightly goddess of war. The divinity here 
 offends not the sight as did the Mexican idol, but 
 it is as cruel in reality, and the victims to it far 
 outnumber those to the other. 
 
 This sacrificial table is of large dimensions and 
 handsome appearance. Upon the centre of it is 
 piled an immense heap of money, to tempt the cu- 
 pidity of the players; and the inexperienced youth, 
 who has had his ear poisoned by the flattery of the 
 decoys, and his brain influenced by the wines, 
 hesitates not long ere he communicates to his be- 
 trayer that he is resolved " to have a dash at, it." 
 One of the confederates, whose business it is to 
 deal the cards, sits at one side of the table beside 
 this money, (or bank, as it is called,) and another 
 sits opposite to him, whose business it is to " rake"
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 109 
 
 towards him the sums won by the bank ; while 
 there are others that pay the losses, and watch 
 the play. There are two sets of chances in the 
 game, the red, and the black,, and the colour, and 
 the reverse, but these are determined at the same 
 time ; large square patches of red and black are 
 placed for the stakes ventured upon these, and 
 the stakes for the colour and the reverse are laid 
 down between them. Before the game begins, the 
 spots on the table, the heaps of money, six packs 
 of cards sealed up, and the fatal rake, are the 
 whole apparatus that appear. 
 
 At the time appointed, the taiUeur or dealer 
 takes his seat; the other confederates are at 
 their posts, and the players throng round the 
 table. The six packs of cards are then unsealed, 
 counted, shuffled pack by pack, first by one con- 
 federate and then by another ; then by one player, 
 who may be, and very often is, also a confederate; 
 then again by the dealer, who mixes all the packs 
 together, shuffles them once more, and has them 
 cut ; and so they are ready for the game. 
 
 The stakes are then put upon the black, the 
 red, the colour, and the reverse, at the pleasure of 
 the players, and to what extent they please, ac- 
 cording to the rules of the particular hell. The 
 red and black are decided by the points, or spots, 
 contained on two separate rows of cards, which the
 
 200 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 dealer draws from the packs one by one ; first a 
 row for the black, and then another for the red. 
 In each suit of cards, the ace, king, queen, and 
 knave, count ten, and the other cards the same 
 number as their spots, so that there are five times 
 as many tens as there are any other numbers; 
 that is, 120 tens in the whole, only 24 of each 
 intermediate number, and no aces. This makes 
 the chance a little puzzling ; but the puzzle does 
 not apply to the red and black, of which the 
 chances, if the cards be fairly shuffled and drawn, 
 are precisely equal ; neither does it make any 
 difference to the colour and reverse ; and as the 
 bank always plays a stake equal to that of every 
 player, the game has an air of the most perfect 
 equality. 
 
 Thirty-one (trente-un) is the number of the 
 game, and the dealer continues to draw cards till 
 the points on them either come to that number, or 
 the least above it, which may be any thing not 
 exceeding forty. It cannot exceed forty, because 
 though the previous number had been thirty, the 
 highest that could be added to it is ten. When 
 the dealer has drawn ttye row for the black, 
 he calls out the number by which the points on 
 them exceed thirty ; and this number is carefully 
 noted by the players. Then he proceeds on the 
 same number for the red, and calls out the excess
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 201 
 
 for it in the same manner ; and that being done, 
 he pronounces that the one which is the nearest to 
 thirty-one, in the event of their being different, 
 has gained. Upon this, all the stakes upon that 
 which has lost, are raked to the bank, and all 
 those upon that which has gained are doubled. 
 
 The colour, means the colour of the first drawn 
 card (black or red, as it happens) ; and the reverse, 
 the other colour. If the colour be red, it gains if 
 red gains; and if black, it gains when black gains ; 
 and in either of these cases the reverse loses ; but 
 if the winning colour be different from that of the 
 card, the reverse wins and the colour loses. 
 
 Thus, in both parts of the play, the bank both 
 gains and loses every time, and each player either 
 loses the whole of his stake or doubles it, unless 
 he happens to stake both on the red or black and 
 the colour, and the one of these gain and the others 
 lose. The sum which the bank, or house, wins, 
 at any single game, has no reference to the sum 
 which it loses. Thus far the chance is fair ; but 
 as the bank plays always, and the players only 
 occasionally, it has the advantage even in this 
 respect. 
 
 The gain to the bank, and the absorption by 
 
 that of any sum of money that may be played, 
 
 however large the amount, are certain, if the play 
 
 be continued long enough. If the points for both 
 
 K 5
 
 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 red and black be the same, and both above thirty- 
 one, the play goes for nothing, and the players 
 may withdraw or continue or alter their stakes, 
 just as they please ; but if both be thirty-one, the 
 bank is entitled to one half of all the stakes on the 
 table, upon what part soever they are adventured; 
 and the only way that the players have even a 
 chance of winning back that half is to put it in 
 the prison, and take the chance of losing the whole. 
 Now it is this thirty-one, which is very mysteriously 
 wrapt up, which produces the certain and enor- 
 mous gain to the hell-monger. 
 
 If the number of points upon each suit of the 
 cards were regular from one up to thirteen, and if 
 by their permutation there were an equal chance 
 of drawing each of the ten numbers over which 
 that chance ranges, the chance of one of the rows 
 being thirty-one, would be one-tenth of the whole ; 
 and the chance of their being both thirty-one, 
 would be one-hundredth ; so that the players 
 would lose one half per cent, on their stakes every 
 time they played, which, as the stakes are played 
 many times over in the course of a night, would 
 amount to a large per centage. Thus, if the 
 average stakes were twenty thousand pounds, and 
 played for twenty times in the course of a night, 
 the gain to the hell would, if they played every
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 203 
 
 night, be seven hundred and thirty thousand 
 pounds a year f 
 
 But those who choose to take the trouble of 
 calculating the chances of drawing thirty-one out 
 of cards, in each suit of which there are five tens 
 and not a one, will find that it is something very 
 different from one in ten ; and that a much smaller 
 sum than that mentioned will produce the enor- 
 mous gain alluded to : So great is it, indeed, that 
 the average stake must be gone in two or three 
 nights. 
 
 Those who cannot, or who do not choose to 
 make the calculation, may so far judge of the 
 matter by considering that as there are five tens 
 in the cards for every one of the other numbers, 
 the chance of drawing one ten is five to one 
 against any other particular card, and five to 
 eight against drawing any other card whatever; 
 for it is five-thirteenths of the whole chances that 
 are there. So also the chance of drawing two tens 
 in succession is to that of drawing any other two 
 cards whatever as 595 to 4056, or two tens should 
 be drawn in succession rather oftener than every 
 seventh time. But supposing two tens to be 
 drawn, the probability of drawing another ten 
 would be diminished to about once in twelve 
 times, and the probability of drawing any other
 
 204 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 number would be rather less than once in two 
 trials being 192, the whole of the other numbers, 
 to 310, the remaining cards. There is, therefore, 
 a chance of six to one nearly against the number 
 drawn being thirty ; and if we omit ten, which is 
 the only number that, with the twenty already 
 drawn, makes thirty, there is a chance of six to 
 five that the number shall be drawn, against the 
 other numbers singly ; or of six to fifty-one (or 
 about one to eight) against them all. Thus the 
 whole chance that thirty-one shall be drawn is 
 six to fifty-one, or about six per cent, on the whole 
 stakes every time they are played. 
 
 Considering the rapidity of the play, it is easy 
 to see how, with a very moderate stake, the whole 
 of the expense and splendour of the hell can be 
 defrayed ; they have only to play for five hundred 
 pounds, play sixteen times over in the night for 
 half the year, and seventy-eight thousand pounds 
 are in the claws of the harpies. 
 
 It may, and indeed must be, that some will 
 gain ; but even, if they continue, no occasional 
 winning can long satisfy the drain made by the 
 table ; and therefore the professional gamester 
 has nothing to save him from certain ruin but 
 to cheat, or to be in confederation with those who 
 keep the hell ; and independently of the state of
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 205 
 
 mental agony in which such a character must live, 
 not the meanest den of theft can produce more 
 demoralizing and debasing consequences. If any 
 thing like reflection be left to him, that reflection 
 must give to his breast all the torment and dis- 
 quietude of a hell, and make him far more misera- 
 ble than the wretch who is chained to an oar for 
 life, and doomed to toil in the galley under the 
 fervour of a summer sun. 
 
 As you linger in this abode of destruction, and 
 the fumes of the wine begin to subside, woe and 
 misery display themselves in their true colours ; or 
 a double draught of the inflaming beverage rouses 
 all the demons of remorse. Stake after stake gets 
 into prison, and still the rake is as ready for its 
 work as ever. Here one, quite unmanned, cries 
 like a child ; there another sits with folded arms, 
 drooping head, and eyes fixed on vacuity, as if 
 he were turned into stone ; another, tearing his 
 hair, gnashing his teeth, and dashing his head 
 against the walls, hurries out of the saloon, and 
 the report of a pistol proclaims that he has gamed 
 his last. You turn away and escape, mutter- 
 ing curses at those by whom those deeds are 
 done, nor can you exempt those by whom they 
 are permitted. 
 
 Roulette is even more summary in its operation,
 
 206 A SECOND JUDGMENT OP 
 
 and more complicated in its nature than the game 
 of which I have given a brief and imperfect, but by 
 no means overcharged, outline. 
 
 Roulette is played on a table somewhat similar 
 to that used for Rouge et Noire ; but the appara- 
 tus and marking of the table are different. In the 
 middle of the table there is placed a wooden bowl, 
 which has a metal bottom, pierced with thirty- 
 eight holes, in which numbers, from one to thirty- 
 six, and a 0, and a 00, are painted in red and black 
 alternately. To this movable bottom several arms 
 are attached, and by pressing upon a cross on the 
 top of the axle, it may be put into very rapid mo- 
 tion, by means of machinery which is contained 
 and concealed below. Upon each end of the table, 
 the thirty-six numbers are arranged in three co- 
 lumns of twelve each ; but the natural order of the 
 numbers read across the columns. At the top of 
 each set of numbers are marked the and the 00, 
 and there is a blank square at the hollow of each 
 column. The bank is displayed to tempt the cu- 
 pidity of the players, the same as at Rouge et Noz'r, 
 and the stakes are laid upon the divisions of the 
 table, according to the hazard which the player 
 may choose to take. The game is decided by the 
 manager putting the machine into motion, and 
 dashing into it an ivory ball, which, by the centri- 
 fugal force and the disturbance of the arms, con-
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 207 
 
 tinues to start about the bowl in a very irregular 
 manner. While it is doing this, the players place 
 their stakes, and when the machine is about to stop, 
 and before it can be seen where the ball is to settle, 
 the manager calls out that the play is made, and 
 forbids the depositing of any farther stake. When 
 the machine stops, the ball has settled in one of 
 the holes, and upon that depends the decision of 
 the chances. These chances are seven. Les nom- 
 bres on the two ends of the table, f impair, la 
 manque et le rouge on the one side, le pair, le 
 passe et le noir on the other. 
 
 Uimpair wins, if the ball falls into a hole with 
 an odd number ; and le pair, if it falls into one 
 with an even, the gain being double the stake. 
 La manque gains, if the ball falls into a hole mark- 
 ed eighteen or under; le passe, if it falls into a 
 higher number. Rouge, or Noir, gains when the 
 ball falls into a hole of its colour. The gain is 
 the same as in the former case ; but if the ball 
 falls into or 00, the stakes on these chances are 
 lost. 
 
 When the player stakes his money on the num- 
 ber, he may do it on one number, or two, a whole 
 column, or any number of them that he pleases ; 
 and if he wins, he gets thirty-five times his stake 
 on a single number, or if on more than one number, 
 he gets the sum which results from dividing thirty-
 
 208 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 six times the stakej by the numbers : thus, if he 
 lays money on two chances, he gets eighteen times 
 the stake, and if he lays it on eighteen chances, he 
 gets double the stake. Playing on a single num- 
 ber holds out the greatest temptation ; and a 
 thoughtless person, who hopes to make money by 
 play, will stake ten pounds in hopes of winning three 
 hundred and fifty in a minute or two, much more 
 readily than he will stake the same sum on eighteen 
 numbers of the same machine, in the hope of get- 
 ting twenty pounds. The men of the hells are 
 aware of this, and so have made the odds against 
 the player much greater on one number than in 
 any other case. 
 
 It will be observed that there are thirty-eight 
 holes in the revolving plate, while thirty-five are 
 allowed for the single number, and thirty-six for 
 the others. The advantage to the table and 
 against the player is therefore rather more than 
 one in thirteen on the single number, and one in 
 eighteen upon more numbers than one. So that, 
 whatever may be the average stakes, the table is 
 certain in every fourteen times' playing to sweep 
 away the whole on the single numbers, and in 
 every nineteen times to sweep away the whole on 
 the others. Every time, therefore, that a sum is 
 risked on a single number, above seven per cent, of
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 209 
 
 it is gone ; and every venture upon more than 
 one number is at a loss of more than five per cent. 
 With eager hands, about three minutes are, I be- 
 lieve, enough for playing a game at roulette ; and 
 thus, whatever may be the sum which the player 
 risks, on the average, he is certain to lose it to the 
 table within the hour. It may be, indeed, that he 
 is " lucky," and that the loss may fall mostly on his 
 fellow-players, or that he may be in pocket ; but 
 as " time and chance happen to all," if he con- 
 tinues to play, his turn will come, and the sure 
 per centage to the table will, in time, and that in a 
 very short time, consume both his gains and his 
 fortune, however large. The yawning gulf of a 
 roulette hell, is bottomless as that pit of retribution 
 of which it is so proper a type ; and he who es- 
 capes from the more slow torment of Rouge et 
 Noir, may soon find reason to bemoan himself 
 with the fallen angel 
 
 " And in that lowest deep, a lower deep, 
 Still threatening to devour me, opens wide." 
 
 Let us suppose that a party of players take 
 with them to a roulette hell the sum of twenty 
 thousand pounds, and begin play at eight o'clock. 
 At first they resolve to be cautious, and stake only 
 two thousand pounds among them. The losses
 
 210 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 and gains fluctuate, but, upon comparing their 
 moneys at nine o'clock, they find they have only 
 eighteen thousand among them. Amazed at this, 
 and finding that caution does not save them, they 
 double, and martingal, till the stake runs up to 
 eight thousand. Gain and loss fluctuate as before; 
 but, when they come to count their money at ten, 
 it is all gone but two thousand. With that they 
 make one attempt more. It fails. Their own 
 money, and money not their own, has vanished. 
 They cast one last and agonizing look upon the 
 infernal machine ; and, having no more of which 
 to be spoiled, they are turned out of the den, and 
 *' plod their weary way" to the three final asy- 
 lums of gaming the Gazette, the Madhouse, and 
 the Inquest-room. So passes the golden dream 
 of avarice and folly, for the sad awakening of 
 incurable woe woe with which reason cannot sym- 
 pathize, and to which commiseration cannot ad- 
 minister. 
 
 Such are scenes of nightly occurrence at the 
 Babylonian hells; and for such she well merits 
 the name of " the mother of all abominations." 
 That there are, in her population, permanent as 
 well as occasional predisposing causes to this ruin- 
 ous vice, cannot be disputed, by any one who has 
 observation and reflection. The abomination of
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 211 
 
 the Stock Exchange, glossed over as it is with a 
 colour of business, produces in the mercantile 
 classes a favour for gambling of all kinds ; busi- 
 ness itself is, in many instances, a lottery ; betting 
 upon all subjects, from the probable termination 
 of a natural calamity, down to the result of a 
 brutal combat between two bull-dogs, or two more 
 savage animals in human shape, surrounded by 
 myriads of thieves and pickpockets ; " the wit of 
 cheats;" the courage of villains; the restless tor- 
 ment of those " who know not what else to do with 
 their time ;" these, and many other incitements, 
 which will suggest themselves to the reader, help 
 forward the vile delusion ; and enable the offscour- 
 ings of society creatures of whom the hulks and 
 the gallows have been defrauded to become first 
 the associates, then the patrons, next the tyrants, 
 and ultimately the heirs and successors to those 
 who, from a long line of ancestors, unfortunately 
 for themselves and their country, inherited the 
 largest fortunes, the most ample domains, and the 
 most princely mansions in England. And all this 
 happens, and every body that has eyes to see, and 
 ears to hear, knows that it happens; but, "in 
 the multitude of matters, 1 " it somehow or other 
 escapes that retribution which falls with unerring 
 justice upon minor enormities. To investigate
 
 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 the cause belongs to others than me ; and there- 
 fore I shall content myself with quoting the 
 adage : 
 
 " Who slays a man, in his own cause, 
 Is felon, forfeit to the laws : 
 Who, causeless, mows a million down, 
 Is hero, deck'd with laurel crown."
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 213 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 BABYLONIAN PIRACIES. 
 
 " Leave not a foot of mire, a foot of stone, 
 A page, a grave, that they can call their own." POPE. 
 
 WHEN the Babylonian, fatigued by the morn- 
 ing^s business, and yet more by the evening's re- 
 past, sits down under the dominion of those "azure- 
 vested imps," who are apt to come in at the end of 
 a feast, and dwell with him who has had the good- 
 liest share, and attempts to steal from their society 
 by the oblivion of a sleep, it may be that he chooses, 
 as the well-known opiate for the purpose, that 
 surest of all soporifics, a book. If that book shall 
 unfold the " travel's history" of some adventurer in 
 climes far remote, 
 
 " Wherein of antres vast, and deserts idle, 
 
 Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven, 
 
 It is his bent to speak ; 
 
 And of the Cannibals that eat each other 
 
 The Anthropophagi, and the men whose heads 
 
 Do grow beneath their shoulders "
 
 214 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 if he shall there read of the Dog-ribbed Indians, on 
 the slopes of the stony mountains, making a meal 
 of their captives, because it is the fashion ; or of 
 the natives of New Zealand eating the bodies of 
 their enemies, all for the salvation of their souls 
 just as piously as the Inquisition burns heretics 
 for the same holy purpose ; he will be very apt, 
 as he yawns upon the closing volume, and leans 
 back upon his easy chair, in order to give scope to 
 the " weltering tide" of the feast, to bless himself 
 that he lives in a land of tender-heartedness and 
 turtle, where man, having abundance of other pro- 
 vender, has no need and no desire to make a meal 
 of his fellow ! ! Having thus felicitated himself, he 
 falls into such slumber as deigns to visit man under 
 his circumstances; and, as "when the stomach 
 must labour, the spirit cannot rest," his ideas 
 drudge at a dream as to how he shall turn to his 
 own profit an invention, or a discovery, that has 
 been made by another. 
 
 The fact is, that had the Bard lived in these 
 our times, and probably the times in which he did 
 live were not very different, he would not, he 
 could not, have required to send his hero to travel 
 even so far as the great Lord Mayor Venables 
 did, (as hath been most emphatically said and set 
 forth by his worthy and appropriate chaplain,) to 
 find either the " Cannibals that each other eat,"
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 215 
 
 or the " Men whose heads do grow beneath their 
 shoulders ;" for he would have found plenty of 
 both, and both, too, often in the same indivi- 
 dual, within the sound of that brazen monitor 
 which called back the illustrious Whittington to 
 make his fortune, " also," and in all probability 
 " likewise." 
 
 So far as concerns those " whose heads do grow 
 beneath their shoulders," I have not much to say, 
 farther than to establish the fact of their existence 
 as among the marvels of the Babylon. Now toward 
 the establishment of that fact, there come two 
 demonstrations, the one grounded upon the sub- 
 stantive " head," and the other upon the predicate 
 "grow." "Head" applies not so much to that 
 which is farthest from the centre of gravity, as 
 to that which is most worthy of, or receives, 
 the chief attention : as, when we say " the head of 
 a college," we do not mean either the topmost 
 pinnacle of the building, or the " fellow " who has 
 the greatest cranial endowments; but that "mem- 
 ber" to whom all the other members first and 
 chiefly minister. Now it is palpable to any one's 
 observation, that the real head of a man, a warm 
 and important man of Babylon, that to which all 
 his "members" first and chiefly minister, is his 
 stomach ; and this head, as the anatomists write, is 
 invariably found " beneath the shoulders." When
 
 216 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 all the members do homage and service to the 
 stomach, and thus constitute it the head, that 
 part of the man which accident has placed at the 
 greatest distance from the feet, gets a new name 
 altogether, and we say " the top " of Alderman or 
 Deputy So-and-so. In proof of this, one may ap- 
 peal to the peculiar language of the Babylon, in 
 which the true appellations of things there are, of 
 course, most correctly given. The common cover- 
 ing of the upper part of a man is, in that elegant 
 language, called "a topper," and not " a header ;" 
 and therefore that which it covers, must be a top, 
 and not a head. If " top," from its also implying a 
 " rotatory engine used by boys," should be objected 
 to, as insinuating against the gravity and stability 
 of a Babylonian citizen, fashioned upon the model of 
 the Apollos of Guildhall, the " vertex " may be 
 substituted, and is indeed both corporally and in- 
 tellectually the better word, inasmuch as it indi- 
 cates the position just as well as top, and superadds 
 a most clear and specific description of the thing 
 posited. " Vertex " implies that the top is small, 
 as compared with the inferior parts ; and taking a 
 citizen after the model aforesaid, from the sacral 
 aspect to the vertex, he has both corporally and 
 mentally all the form and stability of a pyramid, 
 of which the top is, by accurate writers, always 
 styled the vertex. Here again there is a collateral
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 217 
 
 confirmation ; when the fumes of a city feast as- 
 cend from the head to the top, they produce an 
 uneasy sensation, which is called vertigo, clearly 
 proving that the top of such a personage should 
 always be designated the vertex : such and so con- 
 clusive is the argument from the substance. 
 
 That from the predicate will not detain us long. 
 Shakspeare says, that the heads " do grow," and 
 farther he says, that they are " merfs heads." Now 
 taking for " the head " that which has been proved 
 to be " the vertex," it cannot be maintained that 
 the heads of men grow, in the proper sense of the 
 term. The vertex- ceases to grow corporally every 
 where when manhood is arrived at, and it ceases 
 mentally in the Babylon a good deal earlier. The 
 stomach grows largely, however, both in size and 
 importance ; does not begin to grow preeminently 
 until manhood be arrived at, and then grows in 
 both senses, very much in the proportion of the 
 man's importance in himself and in the city. It is 
 true that the adult Babylonian vertex is subject 
 to a certain extraneous increase, from the adhesion 
 of a cornuous substance ; but the operation by 
 which that is produced, is not (Crescere) " to 
 grow," but (Germinare) " to sprout," or probably 
 from the passive voice of the latter verb (Germi- 
 nari) " to be sprouted." 
 
 Against " the men whose heads did grow be- 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 218 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 neath their shoulders," with whom Othello met 
 in his travels, nothing bad is said. That they 
 were a little grotesque in their appearance, no- 
 body who believes the story will deny ; and it may 
 be shrewdly hinted, that the knowing old hero 
 introduced them for the purpose of better setting 
 off the charms of his own person to the fair Des- 
 demona. Or if he had another motive, it must 
 have been to conduce to the same effect by the 
 contrast which these ungainly gentlemen found 
 with " the Anthropophagi," of whom no personal 
 deformity is alleged, but who were, nevertheless, 
 represented as so deformed in their minds, that 
 they "did each other eat. 11 Othello puts these 
 monsters of feeling before the monsters of form, 
 in strict accordance with that admirable tact and 
 generalship, by which he took " the circumcised 
 dog 11 by the beard ere he smote him, and secured 
 the admiration of the lady before he made any 
 application for her love. The former suitors of 
 Desdemona, as being Venetians, must have had 
 the advantage of the Moor in complexion, and 
 also in features, (though, by the way, the Moor 
 has no claim to the black face and the woolly wig 
 in which his mimics make their appearance upon 
 the stage ;) and thus it was wise in him to hold 
 up those, against whom he could take no personal 
 exception, to the dislike of the lady, before he
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 219 
 
 came to touch upon those who may be presumed 
 to have been, in appearance, much more similar 
 to himself. 
 
 With regard to the men with the "gastraP 1 
 heads and the Anthropophagi of the Babylon, 
 there is no need for this caution ; for we have ex- 
 perience and Shakspeare upon our side when we 
 say that " thick-ribbed men are kind-hearted ; 
 and that when the form is thin and sharp, it is 
 apt to cut." 
 
 The Babylonians, formerly noticed, the " men 
 whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders," 
 may sometimes excite a smile, but one likes them 
 all the better for that. One feels wonderfully 
 safe and wonderfully happy among them. They 
 are all men who are " well to live ;" they do their 
 business fairly and honourably ; and as they like 
 to live themselves, and upon themselves, so they 
 wish that others should live too. They are harsh 
 to no domestic, they are unjust to no equal, and 
 they bow and cringe to no superior. Ask their 
 aid in an ordinary case, and they will give or 
 refuse it frankly, without showing the patron in 
 the one case, or the churl in the other. Ask 
 them in a case of extremity, and let them have 
 but one convincing glance that you are not an 
 impostor, (a character which above all others they 
 cordially and constitutionally hate,) and their pro-
 
 220 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 tection is to you a perfect shield. Continue to 
 sustain a fair and honest character, and their 
 friendship nothing can shake : even behave ill, 
 and though they dismiss you, they will not per- 
 secute you ; they will give you your hint " more 
 in sorrow than in anger." Such are " the men 
 whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders ;" 
 and when you have studied them long and atten- 
 tively enough for knowing their real characters, 
 you cannot help wishing that all men's heads 
 could be made to grow after the same fashion. 
 I have made many inquiries (and as neither the 
 class collectively, nor any individual of it, either 
 has done, or is at all likely ever to do me good or 
 evil, I cannot see how I can be biassed one way 
 or other,) and I can find it no where remem- 
 bered or recorded, that a genuine fat Babylonian, 
 of the class to which I allude, ever invaded the 
 right, or possessed himself unfairly of the pro- 
 perty, of a single individual. It may be true 
 that, as members of " corporations," great or small, 
 these very men may not merely overlook, but en- 
 gage in jobs, misapplications and mismanagements. 
 That, however, does not make much against their 
 characters as men. Who ever predicated virtue 
 and purity of a corporation ? The word is, in fact, 
 so nearly allied to corruption, even in orthogra- 
 phy, that we have only to change one letter,
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 221 
 
 transpose another, reject a third, and they are the 
 same. If this were done, each would have much 
 the same meaning as at present. 
 
 But whatever of real respectability and sub- 
 stantial worth these men may give to the Babylon, 
 there is another and an opposite class, not so in- 
 fluential as individuals certainly, but probably 
 more formidable from their numbers and their 
 arts, by whom it is as much deteriorated. These 
 are " the Anthropophagi," who, though they ge- 
 nerally prove too tough for " each other's" mas- 
 tication, yet find their chief subsistence in eating 
 up the rest of society ; being in fact a more des- 
 perate, despicable, and destructive species of man 
 eaters than any that are found in the world, or 
 fabled in story. They do not indeed literally 
 eat the flesh of their fellow-men after life is ex- 
 tinct, but they tear and gnaw it off their bones 
 while they are alive ; and this is far worse, because 
 in the one case the victim feels neither the insult 
 nor the agony, while in the other he is keenly 
 alive to them both. If some truth must be con- 
 ceded to Shylock when he says, 
 
 -" You take my life 
 
 When you do take the means whereby I live/' 
 there must be equal truth in the parody, 
 
 " You eat my flesh 
 
 When you do eat that whereon I should feed it."
 
 222 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 It has often been attempted to sum up the 
 total of the persons who, almost houseless and 
 destitute, yet contrive to live upon the folly 
 and the gullibility of Babylon " by their own 
 wits." But no attempt has been made to sum the 
 total of those who without wits of their own, 
 yet contrive to live (at least for the day which 
 "every dog has") in apparent wealth and com- 
 fort " upon the wits of others." 
 
 That this class is very numerous any one may 
 observe, and that it has the most baneful and 
 mischievous effects both upon the comforts and 
 the morals of society, every honest man who hap- 
 pens to have wits capable of producing any thing 
 valuable, any thing which can be pilfered or 
 pirated with a chance of profit, feels to his cost. 
 
 In every profession and trade within the Ba- 
 bylon, even down to the low vocation of pun- 
 making, there are two sets of persons: one set 
 who set about the profession, the trade, or the 
 work, whatever it is, in honest faith and good ear- 
 nest, who are solicitous that that which they 
 bring to the general mart of society, and in return 
 for which they expect to obtain subsistence or 
 fortune, or fame, as it may be, should be in sub- 
 stance, in fashion, or in both, according to the 
 nature of the article, their own ; and another set 
 whom nature has either not endowed with talents
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 228 
 
 adequate to the invention or the construction of 
 any thing original, or to whom she has refused 
 the industry and honesty requisite for turning 
 those talents to profitable account. These con- 
 stantly dog the others, and when any thing new 
 in idea or execution, which bids fair for yielding 
 a profit, makes its appearance, they appropriate 
 it openly and boldly if the law will allow them, or, 
 if the law forbid, they retain the substance, the 
 valuable part of it, and so alter and debase it in 
 form as to keep themselves without the statute 
 which in matters of this kind is neither very broad 
 nor very clear; and if it be impossible to keep 
 without the statute, and yet steal the valuable 
 part of the discovery or work, some substitute is 
 found, whom it is impossible to punish by fine, and 
 who cares not though he should be sent to prison. 
 He acts as the scapegoat of a richer villain, and 
 receives a scanty share of the gain as the wages of 
 his prostitution. 
 
 What the matter is makes little difference, ex- 
 cept in the mode in which the piracy is conducted. 
 If we, perhaps, except the abstract sciences, phi- 
 losophy, and the higher departments of the fine 
 arts, the Anthropophagi scour the whole field, 
 and turn every thing to their purpose. Litera- 
 ture, arts, manufactures, modes of cleaning bon- 
 nets, all are alike, for thieves to steal and re-
 
 224 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 ceivers to vend. A man of genius, for instance, 
 after much and painful study, produces a book in 
 which there is something original and interesting. 
 Instantly the plunderers are on the scent. If the 
 author has a name, and the book will abridge, snap 
 go the scissors, an abridgment is hashed up, and the 
 name of the author is made use of for the purpose of 
 cheating him out of the reward of his labour. If the 
 author has no name, and the substance of the book 
 be still worth the stealing, it is hashed up in a dif- 
 ferent form and with another title, and the name of 
 some Doctor, or Esquire, or haply of some priest 
 of most " Unholy Orders," is placed rubric as 
 the veritable author. If neither of these modes 
 will do, then the best parts of the book are pur- 
 loined, under the pretence of reviewing the work. 
 When the spoiler has had his quantity, he abuses 
 the rest and libels the author ; and thus promotes 
 the sale of the garbled piracy, and in the same 
 breath tries to ruin the future success and fortune 
 of the very man upon whom he battens, and whom 
 without having plundered, he himself could not 
 have existed. There is another species of piracy 
 which, to a man of acute feelings (and the feelings of 
 men of original talents are proverbially acute,) is 
 much more cutting than this. It is when the man 
 is left with the glory, but wheedled out of a con- 
 siderable part of the gain, under the cloke of hy-
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 225 
 
 pocritical friendship, when one man pretending to 
 be literary, and having the externals of literature, 
 (for without these he cannot practise his craft,) 
 flatters another, and draws lamentable pictures of 
 the impositions which booksellers, cunning men of 
 the world, practise upon the moody, simple, unsus- 
 pecting, and withal needy, men of the closet and the 
 quill. But he the dear generous soul i knows 
 their wiles ; and though he does not practise counter 
 ones, except as against booksellers, he can play with 
 them at their own game, and beat them for the 
 benefit of genius, which is so constantly and so 
 cruelly imposed upon by these harpies. When 
 you hear a man making such speeches and protes- 
 tations, avoid him as a pestilence. Though he 
 should have the faculty of making nonsense ver- 
 ses, telling a tale of nature, all so unnatural, or 
 stringing up the onions of criticism on a pack- 
 thread, depend upon it that his cranium and his 
 thorax are as hollow as drums, and that there is 
 not a drachm of brains or of heart in him. The 
 man who purloins the matter of your book, pays 
 you a compliment ; but he who, under the pretext 
 of saving you from the claws of a bookseller, puts 
 perhaps the half of what that bookseller gives him, 
 and would have given you, into his pocket, injures 
 you in a way that leaves you no consolation at the 
 time, and lowers your own estimate of your talents 
 L 5
 
 226 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 to the part of the price which it pleases him to 
 give you. Such articles are nuisances, filthy nui- 
 sances ; shun them ; uncloke them, hold them up 
 to scorn and ridicule ; and if you have any literary 
 dealings go to the fountain-head. 
 
 If it be an invention of the arts, it is first taxed 
 at the Patent-office for more than the inventor can 
 hope in the end to make by it (as mechanical in- 
 ventors are, almost of necessity, men of slender 
 means, in consequence of the time, expense, and 
 abstraction of mind, necessary for mechanical inven- 
 tion) ; or if it escape the Scylla of the Patent-office, 
 it generally falls into the Charybdis of some knave, 
 whose want of powers of mechanical invention 
 have given him scope for becoming an inventor of 
 another sort. 
 
 Is it something new in manufacture some choice 
 pattern or fabric, in furniture, printed cotton, silk 
 or the like, which is the result of many trials and 
 much expense, it avails not ; for the moment that 
 it is exhibited for sale, the imitator is on the watch, 
 and buys, begs, borrows, or sometimes procures to 
 be stolen, as much as shall enable him to produce 
 something which, to an ignorant eye, may appear 
 the same. It is needless to pursue the revolting 
 delineation farther : it runs through the whole. 
 Whatever may be the kind or use of the genuine 
 and fairly-produced commodity, if that commodity
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 
 
 be likely to produce a profit, there is sure to be an 
 imitation ; and unless the genuine commodity be 
 in the hands of a rich and long-established firm, 
 the imitation, how much worse soever it may be, is 
 sure to draw the profits. It is sure to do this, be- 
 cause it costs less, as the making, the material, or 
 the thing ready made, is stolen, and as such can be 
 sold cheaper ; and also, because the vender, who is 
 furnished upon those easy terms, can afford to ad- 
 vertise, and puff more than the other, and, from 
 his character, will not confine himself to the truth. 
 Those spurious articles, too, being produced by 
 fraud and not by ingenuity, and " coming cheap, 1 " 
 address themselves to the cupidity of a very large 
 portion of the people. To buy cheap is a general 
 maxim, both with the needy poor and the saving 
 rich ; and, as sound knowledge, even of the quality 
 of the things bought, cannot be ascribed to the 
 majority of either class, their translation of " buy- 
 ing cheap," is " buying for little money." They get 
 into this habit, and they continue in it, and thus, 
 as they have not the means of comparing the uti- 
 lity and durability of these cheap purchases with 
 those of the dear ones at the depots of the fair and 
 first-rate dealers, they lose sight of one grand ele- 
 ment of their economy, namely, that the smallest 
 price may be repeated till the sum of the repeti- 
 tions shall exceed the greatest. In this way the
 
 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 ultimate encouragers of the piracy draw upon 
 themselves their own punishment ; but, as they do 
 not see, it they cannot learn wisdom from it. 
 
 The mischief which this class of persons do in 
 society, and for which there does not appear to be 
 any remedy in the existing law or police of the Ba- 
 bylon, is far greater than that which is done by the 
 persons who " live by their own wits," against 
 whom so much has, not without justice, been said. 
 One great difference is, that they who live by their 
 own wits, live by plundering the idle and the fool- 
 ish ; while those who live upon the wits of others, 
 live by plundering the industrious and ingenious. 
 Wherefore, in as far as industry and ingenuity are 
 better than idleness and folly, in so far is an injury 
 done to the one class more hurtful to society than 
 an injury done to the other. But when the idle 
 and the foolish are duped and cheated, there is some 
 chance that that very circumstance may teach them 
 a little wisdom, experience being, proverbially, the 
 only school in which fools can be taught. In this 
 way, preying upon them may really add something 
 to the wisdom of society. But to prey upon those 
 whose faculties are already in a state of the utmost 
 excitement, while it can teach them nothing that 
 can add to their exertions, can hardly fail in dis- 
 piriting them, and making them slacken these exer- 
 tions. Wherefore again, while the mischief done
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 229 
 
 by those who live by their own wits may produce a 
 small reaction of good on the part of those upon 
 whom their wits are practised, the mischief done by 
 those who live upon the wits of others, can produce 
 upon those from whom the honest reward of the 
 wits is stolen, nothing but unmixed evil. 
 
 That the laws of England, which evince so tender 
 a regard for property, even as contrasted with liberty 
 or life, should be powerless or indifferent toward 
 the most valuable of all property -the property 
 that a man has in those powers which he receives 
 immediately from his Maker, would, at first sight, 
 seem anomalous and contrary to their general tenor. 
 One would naturally suppose that laws which for- 
 bid the touching of a man^s goods, and yet allow 
 his person to be locked up among felons for a debt 
 of a few pounds, and that debt too, it may be, 
 falsely sworn to ; and which under certain circum- 
 stances make it a much greater crime to take a 
 penny out of a man's pocket than to take his life ; 
 would be up in all their terrors, and denounce 
 their heaviest inflictions upon those villains who 
 should go about to steal, and sell openly when 
 stolen, the very industry of the people. When, 
 however, one comes to consider the kind of property 
 to which the laws give this abundance of protec- 
 tion, one finds there is no anomaly and no con- 
 tradiction in the case ; they have never legislated
 
 230 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 in favour of the productive power the whole of 
 their attention has been directed to the thing after 
 it has been produced, without any regard to the 
 producer. They have been attentive to the eggs, 
 as it were ; but they have not watched and fed 
 the goose. 
 
 Now, if there be any one kind of property to which 
 the possessor is more entitled than another, and 
 which, consequently, calls more for the protection 
 of -the law than any other, it is the property which 
 a man has in the inventions of his head or the 
 labour of his hands. This is obvious for two rea- 
 sons: first, because it is more strictly personal, 
 more intimately identified with the possessor, and 
 more dependent upon him for its existence than 
 any other property ; and secondly, because the 
 possessor is less in a condition to protect it from 
 thieves, and less able to detect and recover it when 
 stolen. Upon these grounds, justice to the indivi- 
 dual calls for some remedy at law, and calls for it 
 in such a way as that it may operate without the 
 interference of the injured parties themselves. But 
 besides these demands of natural justice, there is 
 a claim on account of society ; for as he who dis- 
 covers or invents any thing pleasurable or profit- 
 able, always communicates to the public more 
 service or gratification than he himself can possibly, 
 as an individual, receive in return, it follows that
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 231 
 
 when the inventive and constructive powers are 
 paralysed, as they must always be when the owners 
 are deprived of their fair reward, or of that fame 
 and reputation which are dearer to them than any 
 reward, the public are always the sufferers, and suf- 
 ferers to a far greater extent than in any other theft 
 or robbery that can be named. Think ofpoorDodd 
 the engineer. If he had got the honour of his inven- 
 tions, and but the hundredth part of the pecuniary 
 reward, the profits which have been actually real- 
 ized, and that too with benefit to the nation 
 think you that he would have been lost to society, 
 driven to madness by starvation and neglect, and 
 compelled to find " a place to die in," in the cold 
 and inhospitable infirmary of a gaol ? Ah no ! had 
 there been but a trace of justice one touch of 
 equity (I do not mean a Chancery suit) in the case, 
 Dodd would have been alive in honour, enriching 
 the country by his talents ; and some (whose names 
 I could mention) would have still been at their 
 original and appropriate vocation of the shovel and 
 the hod. There is no saying how many Dodds 
 annually perish within the Babylon, from the single 
 fact of there being no law to prevent them from 
 being eaten up by the Anthropophagi, and the in- 
 compatibility of watchfulness on their own part, 
 with the vigorous performance of their more pub- 
 licly important and valuable functions.
 
 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 In support of the propositions enumerated in 
 the last paragraph, it may not, perhaps, be im- 
 proper to offer a few remarks the more so, as 
 the subject is of greater importance than, judging 
 from the neglect that it has met with, both from 
 the legislature and the press, seems generally to be 
 believed. It may without much chance of con- 
 tradiction be assumed, that the ostensible basis of 
 all restrictive legislation is the protection of the 
 weak against the strong whether the strength of 
 the latter consist in power, cunning, fraud, or any 
 thing else. I do not pretend to say that this is 
 the actual basis ; because I am unwilling to give a 
 dogmatical opinion on so very profound a sub- 
 ject ; but still we may assume it for the sake of 
 binding together a few loose observations respect- 
 ing the property of inventions, the power of the 
 inventor to protect that property, and the conse- 
 quences to the public when it is not protected. 
 
 First. The property which a man holds in that 
 which he, of his own skill or labour, invents, dis- 
 covers, or constructs, is much more intimate and 
 personal, and therefore ought, injustice, to be held 
 much more sacred and inviolable, than any other 
 property whatever. 
 
 To perceive the truth of this, we have only to 
 observe that the real right which any man has 
 to any thing in his possession varies with the
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 233 
 
 means by which that possession was acquired. 
 But other than making the thing possessed himself, 
 there is no personal means of acquisition. If the 
 thing be " heritage" that is, if he succeed to 
 it as the heir of its former possessor, though he 
 may have a legal property in it, he can have no 
 personal property, because he has not in any way 
 conduced to its existence or production. The 
 right to that which a man purchases, resolves itself 
 into the means by which he came possessed of the 
 price. If that price was heritage, so is the thing 
 bought for it ; if that price was accumulated by 
 any means of fraud or unfair dealing, the possession 
 of the thing purchased by it is so far fraudulent, 
 and has no foundation in natural justice, what- 
 ever it may have in enacted law or established 
 custom ; and therefore it is only when the price 
 is the reward, or can be resolved into the reward, 
 of equivalent service done to society, that the 
 natural property in the thing purchased is com- 
 plete and pure. Now if we take any ordinary ob- 
 ject of possession, as a title, an estate, a house, an 
 article of furniture or apparel, or a sum of money ; 
 any thing, in short, the stealing of which is felony 
 b} the statute, there is no knowing how possession 
 of that thing was obtained. For aught that the 
 administrator of the law may know about the 
 matter, it may be heritage, it may be fairly or
 
 234 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 fraudulently purchased, or it may even be stolen ; 
 still, as the person who by the discovered theft has 
 been deprived of it, was in unquestioned possession 
 of it, the only course that the law can follow, is to 
 consider him as having a complete property in it, 
 and punishing the party who, without the will of 
 the proprietor, goes about to deprive him of that 
 property. Here the law proceeds fairly enough 
 as to the injustice of the thief, but there is always 
 a want of clearness as to the justice of the other 
 party ; for if there be not, then the man who is 
 robbed of that which he has just stolen is as 
 much injured, as he who is robbed of that in the 
 production of which he has extended his skill, 
 his time, or his money. In both these cases the 
 thief is equally guilty; but the persons from 
 whom he steals are in very different predicaments, 
 and the object of the law, as respects their regain- 
 ing possession of the property in question, should 
 be just as different. The law should have guarded 
 the possession to the honest possessor, should have 
 prevented it to the felonious one, and if it failed 
 in vigilance there, it ought to find him out and 
 bring him to punishment. In the possession of that 
 which a man invents, or discovers, or constructs, 
 there can be none of this uncertainty, and there- 
 fore the law is bound, preeminently to secure to him
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 235 
 
 that to which his right admits not of the slightest 
 doubt. 
 
 The maxim arising out of this argument, and 
 which should form the basis of any practical legis- 
 lation intended to meet the justice of the case, is, 
 " That any invention, discovery, or construction, 
 of which any man can satisfactorily prove that he 
 is the inventor, the discoverer, or the constructor, 
 should be held to have been taken from him felo- 
 niously, unless it can be as satisfactorily shown 
 that he parted with his right of property in it, for 
 an equivalent with which he was satisfied at the 
 time. 1 " 
 
 Secondly. The inventor, the discoverer, or the 
 constructor, stands more in need of the protection 
 of the law ; because, from the very nature of his 
 pursuits, he is himself less able than any other 
 person to protect his property. 
 
 The truth of this proposition might be argued 
 upon two grounds, the constitution or tempera- 
 ment of the persons to which it refers, and the 
 way in which they are, of necessity, occupied. 
 There can be no invention or discovery without a 
 corresponding quantity of what is usually called 
 genius : which, whether it be a different modifica- 
 tion in the original formation of the mind, or a 
 habit induced, of the cause of which no notice has
 
 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 been taken, however it may serve as a shuttlecock 
 for the metaphysicians, does not affect either the 
 philosophy or the practical management of the 
 case. Now this same genius (when it does not 
 turn itself to the circumvention of the rest of man- 
 kind, and then it is called " evil genius") is both 
 a wayward, and, as respects the common business 
 of life, a helpless thing ; and he whose only object 
 is that his children should be rich and prosperous 
 in the world, should pray earnestly that the bar of 
 genius may not be drawn across their way. It is 
 true that fools and idlers often assume careless- 
 ness of themselves and their concerns their ex- 
 ternal concerns ; and therefore all that are anoma- 
 lous from the common tract of thrift and cunning, 
 are not to be allowed the plea of genius ; but this 
 assumption of the external indication, confirms the 
 fact of its existence. Nor is it at all difficult to 
 see the cause : sterling genius is rare, much rarer 
 than is generally supposed ; and therefore the ma- 
 chine of society is not, in any way, formed upon 
 its model ; so that whenever it must leave its 
 own fancies or abstractions, as the nature of the 
 case may be, and come in contact with society, it is 
 raw and untutored, knows nothing of the for- 
 wardness of the fool, or the trick of the knave, and 
 so it is always over-reached. The Babylon pre-
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 237 
 
 sents numerous instances of this. Go into any 
 class, or any profession, or establishment, and, if 
 the genius be of the purely mental kind, you al- 
 ways find the man who possesses it, poor, and in a 
 subordinate situation. The snail can crawl up the 
 pyramid, and support itself by that, in its ascent, 
 from the adhesive quality of its own slime : the 
 eagle can do no such thing. It may bound up by 
 the power of its own wings, but it cannot ascend by 
 crawling. Just so with those who want genius, 
 and those who have it : the latter cannot crawl ; 
 they, if they are to rise at all, must do it by the 
 elasticity of their own wings ; and in the Babylon, 
 as well as in other places, there are always plenty 
 of trimmers who can keep them clipped. 
 
 But, besides the constitutional inability of per- 
 sons of this description to watch over their common 
 interests with the same vigilance as men of the 
 ordinary cast, they are farther disqualified by the 
 nature of their pursuits. How much soever it 
 may suit the purposes of every-day men to say so, 
 discovery is seldom the result of accident, and in- 
 vention and execution are never. These things do 
 not, like Falstaff 's treason, " lie in a man's 
 way and he finds them ;" they are all, if they be 
 worth any thing, the results of long and careful 
 study in the one case, and of patient and laborious
 
 238 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 practice in the other. The whole mind must be 
 wrapt up in them ; and he who distracts his atten- 
 tion by considering how he is to hedge the profit, 
 will never add much to the stores of society. Upon 
 these grounds, and upon many others, that could 
 be adduced in theory, and confirmed by facts of 
 hourly occurrence in the Babylon, it is manifestly 
 the duty of the legislature to afford to that pro- 
 perty which most unequivocally belongs to the 
 possessor, the most complete protection against 
 pillage. But at present so completely and so uni- 
 versally, indeed, is genius overreached by " the 
 scoundrel cunning of a mind at large," that it is 
 doubtful whether the legislature should not do 
 something to prevent those whose productions have 
 established that they possess genius, from being- 
 duped and over-reached in what, among men 
 equally armed with artifice, would be accounted 
 fair dealing. 
 
 For this there is a sort of precedent in the law 
 of these kingdoms, though some contend that, in 
 that case, the evasion of the statute by other means 
 makes matters worse than if the statute were not 
 in existence. The necessitous man, who wishes to 
 borrow money, (whether the necessity be the con- 
 sequence of misfortune or imprudence) stands in a 
 worse situation in regard to the rich man who has
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 239 
 
 the money to lend, than he who goes to purchase 
 any other commodity ; and therefore the law steps 
 in for the protection of the man who has the dis- 
 advantage, and says to the other, " you shall not 
 demand for the use of this money more than five 
 per cent, per annum." Now upon the principle 
 of protecting the weak against the strong, which 
 has been assumed as the basis of legislature ; and 
 upon the established fact of the inequality between 
 a man of abstract genius and a cunning man of 
 the world, when they come to make a bargain, as 
 strong a case for the protection of the law to the 
 former is made out, as that upon which the 
 statute against usury is founded. 
 
 Thirdly. The protection of the law to the parties, 
 and in the cases alluded to, is demanded in behalf of 
 the very best interests of the public. In proof of 
 this, the reader has nothing to do but look at 
 the Babylon itself. Once it was the fenny margin 
 of a frowzy stream, upon which, haply, some half- 
 dozen of savages shivered out a life of misery in 
 wigwams inferior to those of the American Indians. 
 It is somewhat different now ; and that difference 
 is solely and exclusively owing to invention, dis- 
 covery, and execution ; to the operation of those 
 talents of which the Anthropophagi are daily and 
 hourly swindling the possessors, without any
 
 240 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 shadow of a remedy at law. Ought such a state 
 of things to be ? Let those who have the making 
 and the amending of the laws answer ; and, 
 until they shall do that, justly and satisfactorily, 
 let all honest men join in setting upon the Anthro- 
 pophagi that brand which their villany and their 
 meanness so well deserve.
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 241 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 BABYLONIAN THEATRES. 
 
 " He look'd, and saw a sable sorcerer rise, 
 Swift to whose hand a winged volume flies : 
 All sudden, gorgons hiss, and dragons glare, 
 And ten horn'd fiends and giants rush to war. 
 Hell rises, heaven descends, and dance on earth 
 Gods, imps and monsters, music, rage and mirth, 
 A fire, a jig, a battle, and a ball, 
 Till one wide conflagration swallows all. 
 Thence a new world, to nature's laws unknown, 
 Breaks out refulgent with a heaven its own : 
 Another Cynthia her new journey runs, 
 And other planets circle other suns : 
 The forests dance, the mountains upward rise, 
 Whales sport in woods and dolphins in the skies. 
 Yet wouldst thou more ? In yonder cloud behold, 
 Whose sarsenet skirts are edged with flowery gold, 
 A matchless wight : His nod these worlds controls, 
 Wings the red lightning, and the thunder rolls. 
 Angel of dulness, sent to scatter round 
 Her magic charms o'er all on classic ground. 
 
 Immortal ! how calm he sits at ease, 
 
 Mid snows of paper and fierce hail of peas ; 
 And, proud his mistress' order to perform, 
 Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm." 
 
 " Here lie poor Shakspeare's half-eat scenes, and there 
 The fripp'ry of the crucified Moliere.' POPE. 
 
 A TEMPORARY sojourner in the Babylon, who 
 has feasted the livelong night upon the matchless 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 242 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 dainties of Shakspeare ; who has gone with his 
 friends to laugh at the histrionics of the village 
 barn, or the borough theatre, and who has occa- 
 sionally seen one of those stars that occasionally 
 start or are projected from the Babylonian zodiac 
 toward the polar regions of the provinces, usually 
 has the theatres noted down among the first and 
 principal subjects that he is to see, and report for 
 the edification of his female cousins. If, however, 
 he happen to have as much theatrical knowledge 
 as to discover the mere architecture of a play- 
 house, (the evening's bill and the morning's news- 
 papers will give him the cast and the criticisms,) 
 and if he be possessed of good taste and sound 
 moral principle, he had better draw a little upon 
 the latter, by following the counsel which Sheridan 
 gave his son about the coal-pit, into which he was 
 to descend for the mere purpose of saying he had 
 been there. " Why can't you say so, Tom, with- 
 out going? the descent will dirty you ten times 
 more than the lie." Indeed, it would require no 
 small depth of arithmetic to sum up how many lies 
 of this simple description would be required to fill 
 up the same measure of contamination, which 
 might be the result of an innocent and unsuspect- 
 ing rustic's visiting the dens of the Babylonian 
 drama ; and a coal-pit, or any other pit on this 
 side the grave, is both a more rational and a more
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 243 
 
 safe place of amusement, than the pit of any, espe- 
 cially of what are called the national playhouses. 
 In going there, there is every chance that a stranger 
 shall be jostled and robbed ; when there, all that 
 is before him is sound and sight, without sense or 
 sentiment; and when he escapes, if he be not aware 
 of the Babylonian abominations, he may be landed 
 in a place where, if he be fortunate enough to 
 escape with life, it will be with empty pockets and 
 bruised bones ; and if he do not pass away quietly 
 under his misfortunes, the guardians of the public 
 peace and morals, who have been the while chat- 
 ting most familiarly to, and striking the hand of 
 intimate fellowship with, characters of the most 
 worthless, loose, and abandoned description, may 
 lock him up among thieves for the night ; and ere 
 one week has passed away, his friends, even at the 
 remotest part of the island, may have him served 
 up to them in print, as an outrageous breaker of 
 the laws, though all of which he has been inten- 
 tionally guilty is going to a theatre, the morality 
 of which pretends to be protected by the patent of 
 the King, or at any rate by the licence of the Lord 
 Chamberlain, and, after suffering the fatigue and 
 pressure of that, endeavouring to get some refresh- 
 ment in a place which, from its own appearance, 
 as well as from the dress of the crowds of both 
 sexes that were thronging to it at the same time 
 M 2
 
 244 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 with himself, appeared to be of undoubted re- 
 spectability. 
 
 In attempting even a sketch of the materiel and 
 morale of the Babylonian theatres, (a full descrip- 
 tion would be difficult to write, and could not be 
 read,) there are two difficulties to be encountered 
 the theatres themselves, and the means of getting 
 at them, and in neither is there much room for 
 congratulating the Babylonians, either in the way 
 of morality or in that of taste. The approaches 
 are nuisances of the very worst description ; the ad- 
 juncts to the theatres are equally so ; and then, as 
 for the exhibition, it " palls upon the sense." 
 
 Wherever a great crowd is of necessity col- 
 lected in a narrow thoroughfare, or where a throng- 
 assembles, gaping at any wonder, or struggling to 
 get entrance into any place, be it palace, church, 
 court of justice, playhouse, execution, spectacle, or 
 any one place, or event, or occurrence, of business 
 or amusement, joy or sorrow, there the confede- 
 rated and well-organized thieves of the Babylon 
 resort, not merely to glean a few ears by stealth 
 after the harvest, but carry off sheaves and shocks, 
 wholesale and by main force. 
 
 At all the theatres there is the enticement of a 
 crowd, and a crowd too of the very worst descrip- 
 tion, but adapted for the successful machinations 
 of those who empty the pockets of the whole peo-
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 245 
 
 pie, and those who deprave the morals and ruin the 
 health of the young, the careless, and the silly ; 
 and at the " national" theatres, Drury and Covent- 
 garden, the approaches are numerous, narrow and 
 filthy, and they are so anastomosed, ramified, and 
 united, by courts and lanes and alleys, in which 
 a thief can almost instantly elude the pursuit of 
 any one, and especially a stranger, that one would 
 almost be tempted to believe that the said theatres 
 had been placed in such a spider's web of iniquity, 
 for the sole benefit of thieves and blackguards. 
 At any hour of the night, or almost at every hour 
 of the day, these approaches to the national houses 
 of the regular drama are so disgraceful, that no 
 person who is ignorant or unprotected, can pass 
 them without danger, and no person who has any 
 delicacy can pass them without disgust. At the 
 entrances of the courts and the doors of the low 
 public-houses, knots of characters are assembled 
 of the most suspicious appearance, and, in a lan- 
 guage which is generally unintelligible even amid 
 the confusion of tongues in the Babylon, planning, 
 no doubt, the campaign for the night. The fe- 
 males, who are to act as their accomplices, may be 
 seen farther into the dens, by any one whose nerves 
 are proof against the extremes of frowziness and 
 filth ; and, worse almost than these, there grins from 
 out a mass of frippery, the hideous physiognomy of
 
 246 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 the receiver of stolen goods. Some of these have, 
 indeed, other occupations than plundering the 
 " sons of Belial, 1 ' who reel to the theatre at or 
 after half-price ; for the chief seat of inquisitorial 
 justice is hard by; and the " cordon sanitaire"" of 
 crime within doors, and the " corps d'observation " 
 without, are always in the close vicinity to watch 
 and circumvent, or seduce the enemy, according to 
 the policy that may make most for their cause. 
 
 That part of the corps which attends more par- 
 ticularly to the theatres, is rather of an inferior 
 order ; the prizes, though numerous, are small, 
 and thus below the notice of those who, by their 
 talents, have risen high in the profession of theft. 
 Unless when there is a crush to get in, (and that 
 happens but seldom in these times) they do not 
 often proceed by violence, but content themselves 
 by taking handkerchiefs, pocket-books, and watches, 
 or enticing those whom folly has made stupid, or 
 intemperance reckless, into the dens of their con- 
 federates. 
 
 As the evening closes in, and the hour of half- 
 price approaches, the public nuisance arrives at 
 its height ; and the poor young victims of ruin 
 some of them not twelve years of age, and none 
 of them above fifteen or sixteen, who have been 
 left orphans, without " the key " of a charitable 
 institution, have been stolen from kind parents,
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 247 
 
 sold by brutal ones, or been let through any of 
 the numerous loop-holes with which the Babylon 
 abounds, into the heedless but hopeless den of the 
 lowest vice, led in gangs by those " fiends in fe- 
 male garb," who pick up their filthy living by the 
 slow moral and physical murder of these unfortu- 
 nates, prowl and pollute every approach, till the 
 ears of the passer-by are disgusted, and his heart, 
 if he has any feeling, is sick. These are the out- 
 posts, or rather the guerillas of vice, who prowl 
 upon the outskirts of the territory ; and though 
 their yells, when they are made drunk to give them 
 confidence, and their cries when they are kicked 
 and beaten by their inhuman mistresses, or even 
 their groans when they are perishing of want and 
 disease, may all be heard at the seat of inquisito- 
 rial justice; yet that justice, professing a polite 
 and virtuous ignorance of slang the language 
 which publicly and officially it must hear the most 
 frequently, is deaf the while, or occupied in hear- 
 ing respectable persons making their defences to 
 the most grievous of all charges " that they would 
 not move on when the watchman commanded them." 
 It would, perhaps, be unfair to charge the whole 
 of tliese enormities to the account of the theatres ; 
 but through them must every visitor of those 
 places pass : thus they form, as it were, the epider- 
 mis, and must, as anatomists say, " be divided,"
 
 248 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 before one can come at the structural and vital 
 parts. Nor is this all : for the theatres must be, 
 directly and positively, the cause of a very con- 
 siderable portion of the nuisance ; for nuisance of 
 the same kind, though different in degree, is found 
 in the neighbourhood of all the theatres, not in the 
 casual attendants, but in the character of the 
 place. Some are of course better than others ; 
 and the freedom from pollution is always in pro- 
 portion to the openness of the situation ; but it 
 may be laid down as a truth, which any man's 
 observation may verify, that the neighbourhood of 
 no Babylonian theatre is wholly untainted; and that 
 which invariably draws vice toward it, cannot, in 
 the nature of things, be pure. But, whatever in- 
 fluence the theatres may have in the production of 
 the abominations complained of, it is not with the 
 managers of those that the correction lies. Their 
 province is to see that all is right within doors ; and 
 where they do that properly, they would, in as far 
 as morality is concerned, discharge their duty to 
 the public. 
 
 Even here, however, there is sad neglect, not to 
 say immoral licence. There is a part, and a nu- 
 merous part of the audience, which haunts and 
 pollutes the saloons, and invades every part of the 
 house in a manner that cannot fail of being revolt- 
 ing to all who have even a slight trace of
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 249 
 
 I do not mean to say that a certificate of moral 
 character should be demanded of every one who 
 pays money or presents a ticket at the door of a 
 playhouse; but I do mean to say, that if the 
 theatre be at all intended as a place of amuse- 
 ment for decent people and a people so closely 
 occupied with business during the day, and so in- 
 capable of any more intellectual pursuit to break 
 the dulness of that, as the Babylonians, really need 
 some sort of amusement like the theatre then it 
 is an offence against morality to the public, and 
 unwise on the part of the managers themselves, to 
 tolerate such characters as are not merely tolerated, 
 but, if report uncontradicted current report says 
 sooth, are encouraged at the national theatres. 
 An almost unlimited number of women of the 
 town are understood to be furnished with free 
 admissions; and their presence in the saloons is 
 said to contribute more to the ordinary audiences, 
 than the characters that figure on the stage. Those 
 saloons, which are fitted up in the most enticing 
 manner, would appear to a stranger to be for the 
 accommodation of the decent part of the audience 
 especially of females, whose health or comfort 
 might demand a momentary absence from the warm 
 and contaminated air of the theatre. No respect- 
 able female can, however, go there without being 
 disgusted, and, in all probability, insulted, or even 
 M 5
 
 250 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 maltreated ; and there, too, a gentleman is liable 
 to be accosted in the same way as in the streets ; 
 nor are the cyprians without their male confede- 
 rates to jostle and rob in the event of a crowd. 
 
 Leaving the saloon is not a certain means of 
 escaping from the pollution. Far from it ; for 
 unless the individual, or the party, engage a whole 
 box, they may, for the whole evening, be com- 
 pelled to hear language, and see gestures, which 
 even ordinary delicacy cannot endure; and when 
 the hour of half-price lets loose the thought- 
 less and untutored youth of the Babylon, the 
 scene becomes loose beyond description. This half- 
 price is, indeed, the grand curse of the theatres, 
 the fertile cause of the profits of the depraved, 
 both without and within the theatre. Giddy youths 
 who have just left the comparative purity of the 
 country, or shaken off the control of their parents, 
 bands of persons who have quaffed themselves into 
 a ripeness for being vicious, with those who hope 
 to profit by these, throng into all parts of the 
 house, and, by the irregularity of their conduct, 
 sometimes render it altogether impossible to attend 
 to the play. In some rare instances, when it pro- 
 ceeds to an outrageous height, the parties are 
 turned out of the theatre, or taken into custody 
 by the constables and officers ; but in these cases, 
 there is some danger that the cure shall be worse
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 251 
 
 than the disease ; for the ejection, or the capture, 
 occasions a disturbance, the very thing which the 
 thieves want, and they fail not to make use of it 
 to the cost of the unsuspecting. 
 
 It would, perhaps, be illiberal to the public, 
 and it would certainly be injurious to the trea- 
 suries of the theatres, as these establishments are 
 now conducted, to abolish this cheap admission, at 
 an hour, and for purposes, when, and for which, 
 morality and good taste equally forbid admission ; 
 but, really, while it is continued, it would be too 
 mueh to hope for any thing like a respectable 
 drama, either as to audience, or as to acting. One 
 cannot attend without being compelled to notice 
 vice in the most broad, open, and unblushing 
 character, apparently encouraged as a thriving 
 and regular part of the establishment; and there- 
 fore it becomes impossible to think of the theatre, 
 without associating with it this accompaniment. 
 Nor can there be any doubt that this has caused 
 the drama to be deserted by the really respectable 
 part of the British nation ; and this being the case, 
 the managers have been compelled to lower the 
 taste of the entertainments to that of the audience. 
 Refined sentiment, elegant language, and chaste 
 and graceful attitudes and gestures, would not be 
 relished by the ladies of the saloons and the 
 loungers in the lobbies. These have humours and
 
 252 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 tastes of their own ; and as they are the " nature" 
 to which " the mirror is held up, 1 ' the mirror 
 would be deserted if it did not show their own 
 features. 
 
 It would, at first, seem not merely a puzzle, but 
 an absolute impossibility, that a people, in whose 
 literature there are the very first dramatic writers 
 that ever were produced, and that not in an occa- 
 sional giant, who, like Shakspeare, could, even in 
 the lightest of his sport, toss about every passion 
 of the human heart, and every character in human 
 society, of any age, or of any country, but in a 
 numerous constellation in every department of the 
 drama a people on whose boards there have ap- 
 peared the most choice and the most chaste per- 
 formers of both sexes a people who have re- 
 warded, and are still disposed to reward, the lead- 
 ing stars of the histrionic galaxy, with more both 
 of " solid pudding," and of " empty praise," than 
 any other people that do or that did exist, should 
 in the most glorious time, the most bright and 
 brilliant career of every thing else when animo- 
 sity and corruption have skulked away from po- 
 litics, when the voice of the Government abroad is 
 bold and successful for the liberties and the weal 
 of every people that is enslaved or oppressed when 
 the noblest spirits in the land make it their nightly 
 study, and their daily task, to improve every insti-
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 253 
 
 tution, and remove every obstacle that lies in the 
 way of the people's improvement and happiness 
 when science and the principles of the arts (those 
 arts which have changed a small northern and 
 cold island into the treasury and storehouse of the 
 globe) which, only a century ago, were but as the 
 day-spring upon a few of the loftier peaks, are now 
 the clear shining of the meridian, penetrating, en- 
 lightening, and increasing everywhere, should, 
 amid all this, have its drama in a state that would 
 disgrace the barbarians of a rude age. If, of all 
 men, the higher dramatic writers of England have 
 taken hold of the most certain immortality ; if, 
 of those who make money by their mere personal 
 exertions, the heroes (and mimes) of the drama be 
 even yet the most successful ; and if the stars of 
 that course shoot up into the sphere of nobility 
 with more certainty, and less worth of personal 
 virtue or royal favour, than any other class of the 
 Babylonian or the British fair, one cannot, upon 
 the first blush of the matter, help being a little 
 astonished, that the centres of all this glory and 
 gain should be the grand magnets for the attrac- 
 tion of immorality. Here, one would think, there 
 is a prize that would tempt the purest and the 
 most daring spirits of every age ; and the throng 
 of the high and the respectable, to hear the elo- 
 quence and see the grace of these, would be such
 
 254 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 as to brush away all pollution from the theatres. 
 Instead of this, however, matters really take the 
 very opposite turn : as the people become capable 
 of appreciating higher merit in the art, the drama 
 sinks down ; and it is just because the spirit of 
 the drama is gone, that we find those abominations 
 about it. The vultures and the vermin infest not 
 the living body ; and if we find the former flocking 
 and the latter crawling at any place, it needs no 
 examination or inquiry to find out that " there is 
 carrion there." 
 
 One cause of the deterioration of the Babvlonian 
 
 ti 
 
 theatres I speak of the national ones is their 
 vast size. An apartment may be made of any di- 
 mensions, below those at which oak, or stone, or 
 iron would be crushed and broken by its own 
 weight ; but you cannot, in the same way, enlarge 
 the human powers or quicken the human percep- 
 tions. You may construct a playhouse as spacious 
 as the amphitheatres of the Romans ; but if you 
 do, the rational and regular drama, that which re- 
 presents the action, and delineates the passions of 
 human beings with nature and truth, cannot be 
 enacted there. If you will have the amphitheatre, 
 you must take the gladiators and the wild beasts 
 along with it ; and though these may not literally 
 tear and destroy each other, they are sure to make 
 wonderful havoc upon congruity and taste. They
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 255 
 
 do this, too, not from any wish or intention on their 
 part, but as an unavoidable consequence of the 
 circumstances under which they are placed. A 
 sentiment is not lofty in proportion as the words 
 in which it is uttered are loud ; and to bawl like a 
 stentor is a symptom of vulgarity rather than of 
 high breeding, and of cowardice rather than of 
 bravery. Violence of motion and gesture are no 
 measures of the depth of passion or feeling ; they 
 are rather proofs that the agitation is counterfeit, 
 or the party vulgar. When the heart is deeply 
 agitated when the man has cast off, or been cast off 
 by, the world's counsels when the warfare is with- 
 in, and he is moulding his purpose there are no 
 shrieks, and starts, and wild gesticulations. Just 
 as the breaker shows that the sea has no depth, and 
 the slow-moving and hardly perceptible eddy is 
 proof of the profundity that is there ; the external 
 brawl may be taken as conclusive testimony that 
 the mind or the emotion is shallow, and the purpose 
 for which it is agitated cannot have much interest. 
 The unutterable things which so magnify the mind 
 the man and what he may do by their huge- 
 ness and their dimness, make not much stir. It 
 is only at the point where the mind gives way, or 
 at the moment when the purpose is executed, that 
 there is room for vehemence and contortion. Be- 
 fore these can be admitted, the man must have
 
 256 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 abandoned every thing mental, and be, for the time, 
 a mere animal ; a character with which the idea of 
 a hero, or lofty character of any kind, cannot asso- 
 ciate beyond the instant. While the rudder re- 
 tains its power, and the vessel holds on her way, 
 there is, let the storm rage as it will, a species of 
 firmness ; and when the reeling and the splash 
 come, they are clear proofs that the helm is gone. 
 Just so with man : while he continues to act his 
 part, there must be calmness and self-possession ; 
 and when these depart, if the departure be any 
 thing more than momentary, the man ceases to be 
 great. 
 
 At half the average distance at which the au- 
 dience, in either of the great theatres, are from the 
 stage, it is impossible to hear words spoken in the 
 natural key, or to see the natural working of emo- 
 tions in the limbs or features. Thus there can be 
 neither natural dialogues nor natural pantomime, 
 and thus the whole effective part of the matter, all 
 that can " tell" upon the audience, must be either 
 spectacle, or grimace and ranting. Hence an ugly 
 face, or a harsh grating voice, is among the most 
 valuable endowments of a modern actor ; and if 
 those who are now acknowledged to be at the head 
 of the two classes of heroes and humourists were 
 deprived of these, their popularity would be re- 
 duced almost to nothing. Hence when the names
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 257 
 
 that are found in Shakspeare are introduced into 
 the playbill, (and Shakspeare is not favoured or 
 even tolerated by the playgoers of the time, unless 
 he have the patronage of some star of name,) the 
 delineations that ensue, are not the full and sus- 
 tained characters of the bard. They loiter through 
 the play, and it is only in one or two points clap- 
 traps, where a trick has probably been first yelled 
 into popularity by a party hired for the purpose, 
 that any impression is made upon the audience. 
 When a new actor starts, or an old one is restored, 
 he is nothing without his clacqueurs, who all have 
 previous notice of the points at which they are to 
 applaud ; and it is sometimes very amusing to see 
 how one more dull and careless than the rest, comes 
 in with his patter of applause at the wrong place. 
 
 But besides the impossibility of having chaste 
 and natural acting in houses of such dimensions, 
 that circumstance reduces the importance of the 
 actors, whatever they may be, as part of the whole 
 exhibition, by destroying the congruity and keep- 
 ing between them and the scenery. It sometimes 
 happens, in the case of " the real great" that is, 
 of those who hold the offices of greatness that the 
 trappings divide the glory with the man, and some- 
 times carry it off from him altogether. Now, if 
 this be the case where there is at least the official 
 substantiality of greatness, much more must it be
 
 258 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 the case where the whole of the greatness is ideal 
 and known to be so. The mischief which over- 
 decoration, even in a single actor, produces upon 
 the taste of the audience, and consequently upon 
 the character of the acting, did not escape the 
 scrutinizing satire of Pope. 
 
 " Booth enters : hark ! the universal peal ! 
 But has he spoken ? Not a syllable. 
 What shook the stage and made the people stare ? 
 Cato's flower'd gown, great wig, and lacquer'd chair." 
 
 So far from these trappings having any thing to do 
 with the merits of Cato, they were themselves most 
 ludicrously out of character, and could not one of 
 them have belonged to the real Roman. They 
 seemed, however, to " dazzle the crowd, and set 
 them all agape ;" and to call off their attention, not 
 only from the sentiment of the play, but from the 
 way in which the disfigured patriot might be re- 
 presented. 
 
 Now, the modern managers have found their 
 profit in tricking out the whole house in a manner 
 as gorgeous, if not always as incongruous, as that 
 in which Booth tricked himself out to play the 
 senator. The house itself glares in colours, and 
 glitters in gold leaf, and so many hues of radiance 
 come upon you from the faucettes of crystal, paste 
 gems, beads, bugles, and all manner of tinsel, that
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 259 
 
 you can hardly observe that which is human of 
 the actors, or reckon them any thing more im- 
 portant than motes in the many-tinted beam. 
 
 That scenery and decoration are necessary in a 
 theatre, not only for the benefit of those in whom 
 speculation can pierce no farther inward than the 
 eye, but also in order to perfect the illusion to 
 those that go along with the feeling of the piece, 
 I shall not attempt to deny ; neither can I deny 
 that the scenery at the Babylonian theatres is 
 always very showy, and not unfrequently beauti- 
 ful and appropriate. Still there is a keeping de- 
 manded : there is an elder muse there, and to her 
 the government of the theatre belongs in right of 
 primogeniture. Poesy is the legitimate sovereign 
 of the theatre, and if she be dethroned on account 
 of any other, the legitimate drama is at an end. 
 No pictorial representation in the theatres can 
 ever come up to the panoramas and dioramas, or 
 any of the other exhibitions at which colours reign 
 alone ; and therefore a theatre, which depends 
 chiefly upon its scenery, whatever may be its 
 merits in that way, must be injurious to sound 
 dramatic taste. 
 
 There is no doubt that the managers have some 
 temptations to substitute scenery and spectacle in 
 the place of acting. Painting is cheaper than per- 
 forming, even when the merit is equal or superior.
 
 260 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 The reason is obvious : the actor comes before the 
 public in his own person ; and his lot as to success 
 or failure is decided by them ; consequently, they 
 are his real employers, and he is, if he be popular, 
 the master of the manager, and can dictate his 
 own terms. It is this which makes the road to 
 fortune more short and certain with an actor than 
 with any other artist; and which, if that which 
 the public (right or wrong) applaud in him be 
 peculiar, as contortion of face, flexibility of limbs, 
 peculiarity of voice, either for speaking or for 
 singing, makes him a despot whose throne no 
 opposition can shake. The painter, on the other 
 hand, is kept out of view ; the public hear not of 
 him, and they care not for him. If he works suc- 
 cessfully, he must do it in retirement ; and there- 
 fore his remuneration never is what he pleases to 
 demand, or even what he should in justice get; it 
 is what his employers please to give him. Thus 
 the cupidity of the manager decides in favour of 
 decoration. 
 
 This however, is not the only cause ; for there 
 are two others necessity, and the taste of the 
 audience. The necessity is so near akin to that 
 above stated, that they may almost be taken as 
 different parts, or peculiarities of the same. The 
 expenses of the great house itself are so enormous, 
 in proportion to the proceeds of an average au-
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 261 
 
 dience, as compared with houses of more moderate 
 dimensions, that a great part of what should pay 
 for histrionic talent is wasted upon them. The 
 sums, too, which are paid to the " great stars," 
 are so enormous so perfectly above the value of 
 what they do so outrageously higher than what 
 are paid, not only to any other mere artists and 
 contributors to amusement, but to those who de- 
 vote talents of an infinitely higher class than any 
 which the stage, even supposing it to be perfection 
 itself, could employ, and employ them in a way 
 that is highly beneficial not to one nation, but to 
 all nations at the time ; and not to all nations at 
 one time only, but to all future generations of all 
 nations; these sums are so outrageously exces- 
 sive, that they eat up all that should support the 
 other performers in the play ; and thus the blank 
 has to be patched over with scenery. If future 
 ages shall take money as the measure of " all 
 kinds of value, 1 ' in the same manner as at present ; 
 and if, by being tacked to the end of any thing less 
 worthless and perishable, the names and the remu- 
 nerations of one or two of these stars shall float 
 down the stream of time for a hundred years, 
 the people who are then in existence will be some- 
 what astonished to learn that, in the year one thou- 
 sand eight hundred and twenty-seven, a man of 
 no very exalted character or refined acquirements
 
 262 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 received more money for ranting and grimacing a 
 few speeches in a play, or a strumpet probably for 
 trilling a ballad, in which there was no lack of 
 double entendre, than the Prime Minister of Eng- 
 land did for performing the highest and most im- 
 portant act of his official duty. It might, perhaps, 
 be pleaded in justification, that the song of deli- 
 vered nations, the congratulations of enlightened 
 minds, and above all, that highest of human re- 
 wards, the mens conscia recti, form the true emolu- 
 ment of the minister, and he looks upon the per- 
 cuniary part of the matter rather as an incum- 
 brance that must be suffered for his existence, than 
 as any measure of the value of what he does ; and 
 that, as the spouter or the singer has only the 
 clapping of the night, without any pride for good 
 done, or any mens, whether conscia recti or not, 
 whereon to ruminate and repose, he has nothing to 
 look to but that which " perishes with the using," 
 and so must grasp after it as much as possible. 
 Those who wish to have the benefit of this plea 
 may avail themselves as much of it as they please ; 
 but though it may be a justification with respect 
 to the rest of society, it is none whatever as to the 
 mischief that they do to the drama, upon which, 
 in more respects than the one under consideration, 
 their influence is most pernicious. 
 
 But the audience, degenerated as it is in quality
 
 BA.BYLON THE GREAT. 263 
 
 and character, favours an excess of scenery and 
 decoration. To wonder at these, requires no pre- 
 paration in taste, and no labour of understanding. 
 As Addison (I believe) says, " it is only opening 
 their eyes and the scene enters ;" and thus as one 
 gaudy piece of canvass succeeds another, they have 
 something to gape and even talk about, without 
 any thing to disturb the unspeculative repose of 
 the most somnolent fancy. 
 
 There is another way still in which the largeness 
 of the theatre militates both against their own 
 profits and the popularity of the drama ; and that 
 is the distance from which a respectable audience, 
 capable of filling them, must be collected. To a 
 family, living in a distant part of the Babylon, 
 even within that magic but most absurd distinc- 
 tion which is said to be "upon the stones," the 
 expense of going and returning may be double 
 that of the theatre itself ; and if they be " off the 
 stones," that is, in any of the suburbs or villages, 
 where health dictates that families who can afford 
 it should reside, then the " back," or double fare 
 for the additional distance may repeat the amount 
 again ; or if the party should alight " on the 
 stones," and walk along the lane, or across the 
 fields, there is a chance that they are driven by a 
 " flash" coachman that is, by a thief who has 
 brought his confederates with him, on the box and
 
 264 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 behind, just in order that they may waylay and 
 rob his fare after they are set down, and he, honest 
 man, know nothing about the matter. 
 
 Now, waiving the danger altogether, and it is 
 far from being an ideal one, it cannot be expected 
 that a party who could afford to pay, say a guinea 
 for an evening's attendance at a theatre, and who, 
 if that theatre were at a reasonable walking dis- 
 tance, could attend it without any farther cost, 
 can attend so often if they have to pay a guinea or 
 two more. Hence, unless when there is some great 
 attraction, for which people will be content to sa- 
 crifice what would, otherwise, be their theatrical 
 allowance for some time, the great theatres must 
 depend upon casual visitors, and those who are 
 attracted there by the saloons. 
 
 Indeed, until the great houses shall be abolished, 
 the Babylon parcelled out into districts, and a the- 
 atre of moderate dimensions established in each, 
 the Babylonian drama can neither be respectable 
 in itself, nor respectably attended. The audience 
 and the exhibition are something like the supply 
 and demand of the political economists, one cannot 
 say which is the cause and which the effect; but 
 they have a powerful influence upon each other ; 
 and if the one be by any means debased, the de- 
 basement of the other follows as a matter of ne- 
 cessity
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 265 
 
 The magnitude of the theatres, the mere ex- 
 penses of the houses (estimated at about two hun- 
 dred pounds a night, for each of the great ones,) 
 the star-system, and stars only can be seen by the 
 naked eye athwart the yawning gulf between the 
 boxes and the stage, and all the causes above cited, 
 with some others, have sunk dramatic writing to 
 an unprecedented ebb. What was said of the 
 office of Laureate, when the elegant Gray refused 
 to be the successor of the former holder, may now 
 be said of the other part of that former holder's 
 craft, 
 
 " Debased by Gibber, and contemn'd by Gray." 
 
 When Byron, the poet who, since Shakspeare, 
 certainly both probed the deepest into the arcana 
 of the human heart and character, and threw man, 
 in all his moods, with the most force upon the 
 canvass, turned away from the stage with the most 
 indignant scorn; all others of name and note, "far 
 down the gradus" have followed the example of 
 the noble bard, till it may with the utmost confi- 
 dence be stated that, of the song-stricken sons of the 
 Babylon, not one of " any rateable rate" woos the 
 histrionic muse ; and sooth it is, that if any thing 
 in which there is originality happens at any time 
 to steal in, it is the production of some Shakspeare- 
 smitten wight of the provinces, who singes his airy 
 wings once, or at most twice, at the manager's lamp, 
 VOL. i. N
 
 266 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 and then drops down to be heard of no more ; or, 
 if he has the hardihood to mime in motley, he 
 falls into the phalanx of those who, 
 
 " Old puns restore, lost blunders nicely seek, 
 And crucify poor Shakspeare, (no, not him,) 
 twice a-week." 
 
 Instead of drawing upon his own resources, the 
 playwright is fain to tie himself to the tail of some 
 successful novelist ; to dilute a French farce with 
 " quips and puns," suited to the taste of the audi- 
 ence ; or to treat the public with a rehearsal of any 
 occurrence, or enormity of the times, which has 
 been floated into notoriety upon the paper wings 
 of the daily news. 
 
 In short, the legitimate drama, the represen- 
 tation of lofty character and deep feeling in hu- 
 man life, is no more ; and just as the number of 
 people who are capable of appreciating the giants 
 of the art in the closet, has increased, the number 
 of those who care for the same in the theatre, has 
 diminished. And why ? Something is, no doubt, 
 owing to the character of the nation, as well as to 
 that of the age. John Bull is of matter too solid 
 for making a business of the theatre : when he 
 goes there, it is merely because he is moved on by 
 the current, and all that he seeks, or cares for, is 
 a laugh. The great, with the exception of a few
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 267 
 
 individuals, to whom a "she-star" on the boards 
 has more attraction than the star of an order of 
 knighthood, have got beyond the state in which 
 the stage " can rouse the snoring demon in their 
 breasts." If my Lord were to go there, he might 
 have his tailor in the box on the one side, and his 
 boot-maker in that on the other ; and the ghosts 
 of the unpaid bills might be as terrible to his ima- 
 gination, as that of Banquo to Macbeth. These 
 might " beckon him to hell ;" and so, to save them 
 the trouble, " to hell he goes," if he be reduced to 
 the stimulus of dissipation. If he be political, he 
 goes to his club ; and if he be of the ton, he makes 
 " Mahomet come to the mountain ;" his house is 
 thrown into a wilderness of sweets, among which 
 the nightingales of the Drama and the Opera 
 warble much to their satisfaction and profit. 
 
 But though the nation and the age are the causes 
 of a good deal of the falling off, they are not the 
 only causes : though 
 
 " The heavy wit that hangs at every lord," 
 
 in these days be " the wit of cheats ;" yet, as the 
 increase of wealth, and with it power and influence 
 on the part of the people, has wonderfully lessened 
 the dimensions of lordship as part of the nation, 
 and as they do not now give the same tone to so- 
 N 2
 
 268 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 ciety, and take the same lead in it now as they did 
 an age or two ago, there would, were there not 
 " sins on the other side of the Trojan towers," be 
 an ample theatrical public without them. 
 
 As to the materials of the play, the manager can- 
 not afford to pay for original talent ; and though 
 he could, he durst not employ it. He cannot af- 
 ford it, because of the heavy expenses of the house, 
 formerly mentioned ; and though he could afford 
 it, he is controlled by his destiny " the stars" 
 will not allow it. It seems, the Babylonians are 
 never to be altogether freed from the dominion of 
 astrology. The days of Sidrophel have passed 
 away, and people do not now go to the cunning man 
 and pay him for drawing a horoscope and casting 
 the nativities of their children, " according to the 
 flesh."' 1 If, however, the brains, or the portfolio of 
 any one, happen to get enceinte in the dramatic 
 way, the parturition is suspended until the Si- 
 drophel of the theatre shall consult the stars ; and 
 if it turn out that " the lord of the ascendant is in 
 malignant aspect," the bantling is not permitted 
 even to cry. I have no wish to penetrate the 
 green-room, nor would I disclose the mysteries 
 there, even though I could stoop to pick up the 
 knowledge of them ; but I may mention, that when 
 one play (" William Tell," I believe,) was first 
 submitted to Sidrophel, there were two interesting
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 269 
 
 characters in it old Tell and his son, and that 
 there were some spirited passages in the character 
 of the youth. Sidrophel began to raise his figure 
 according to the accustomed rules of green-room 
 divination ; and for a time all looked benignant 
 and promising ; but when he came to the aspect at 
 which young Tell seemed to be the ascendant, 
 the " other lord " started from his sphere, like 
 a comet, 
 
 " That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge 
 In the arctic sky ; and from his horrid hair 
 Shook pestilence and war ; 
 
 and nothing could avert the direful omen, but the 
 sacrifice of the taste of the author, the truth of the 
 story, the keeping of the play ; and the award of 
 all the best passages in the younger Tell, to him 
 who played, or was on those conditions to play, the 
 elder. This is a tyranny to which no man of 
 talent, no man capable of writing a good play, 
 would submit, and to which if any man submitted, 
 his independence, and with that all which were 
 original and valuable in his powers, would cease. 
 Spur Pegasus as much as ever you please, though 
 even with the armed heel of poverty ; but if you 
 pull the curb, and especially if you attempt to put 
 on a martingale, down he drops, loses his wings, 
 and becomes a very hack.
 
 270 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 If Shakspeare had drawn his Richards, and his 
 Falstaffsj and his Touchstones, for the Keans, and 
 the Ellistons, and the Listens of the present day, 
 think you that they would have had that spirit of 
 immortality in them, which no bad acting or neg- 
 lect can cause to evaporate ? It is impossible ; for 
 if they had, the author and the actor would have 
 been buried in the same grave, and gone together 
 into the same oblivion. It may be true that that 
 great anatomist of the mind kept in view the 
 performers by whom the parts in his plays were 
 to be performed, that he in part touched and took 
 hold of the clay tenement that was first to hold 
 the transmigratory spirit of the character. But 
 though to a certain extent he did and must have 
 done this it being in vain to produce a character 
 for the stage that could find no representative, yet 
 it is clear that he never allowed the actor, even for 
 a moment, to come between him and that high and 
 universal character, that magical creation, which 
 was not confined to any man or any time, but 
 which formed one of all men in all ages, which it 
 was his main purpose to delineate. 
 
 This is not all, for so much is the matter in 
 the hands of these who, sometimes not by the 
 most honourable means, have got themselves 
 howled or scribbled into notice, that we have 
 not only the play written for the actor, but we
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 271 
 
 have him hashed up at second hand ; and an 
 entertainment (as it is called) got up for the 
 express purpose of one player giving us the pe- 
 culiarities often the offensive, and generally the 
 tasteless peculiarities, of another. The original 
 character is nothing in itself: it contains neither 
 power nor wit ; but the actor for whose face or 
 figure it is written, happens to make himself more 
 than usually ugly in it ; the gods thunder, the 
 demons of the pit yell, the pens of the critics are 
 up to the feather in ink ; and then the imitatores 
 servvm pecus are " at it " all over the Babylon in 
 brief space. This of itself would be quite enough 
 to exclude from the house any one possessed of 
 delicate taste in the drama. 
 
 Mere dramatic taste is not, however, the only 
 taste which is habitually outraged. One who has 
 any reasonable quantity of moral feeling, and 
 more especially the female sex, the honourable part 
 of whom should be among the first attractions 
 of the place, cannot with safety go there. It is 
 not the nature of purity to be censorious ; and if 
 vice will but hide itself in its congenial darkness, 
 virtue may pass it without thinking much about the 
 matter ; but if the most depraved and abandoned 
 licentiousness will throw off all veil and conceal- 
 ment ; if it will, even garnished out with degraded 
 beauty or prostituted talents, thrust itself forward,
 
 272 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 cast its harlot eye in scorn upon neglected virtue 
 neglected because it is virtue, and demand and get 
 the chief approbation and the chief reward ; how 
 can any one who is virtuous sit still and notice the 
 monstrous injustice? If the gallery thunder, the 
 pit yell, and the press slobber with applause, the 
 adulteress rank from the couch of mercenary pollu- 
 tion, or the harlot who comes reeking from the den 
 of fornication, and tries to entrap, as if she were 
 virtuous, the heedless into the sink of such matri- 
 mony ; and if it be roared and written, day after 
 day, and week after week, that such are the women 
 whom the stage delights to honour, how can maid- 
 en or matron go there ? It is of no avail to take up 
 the silly subterfuge and say, ' to the pure, all things 
 are pure;* for foul and offensive things must always 
 offend, if they are not kept out of the way. Could 
 any honourable man sit still, in placid enjoyment, 
 and in an assembled multitude, applauding a mur- 
 derer one who had not been merely once guilty of 
 the crime, at a moment when passion had overcome 
 him, but who made it a daily practice for the lucre 
 of gain ? Few men would dare to say that they 
 would. Then how can it be supposed that a vir- 
 tuous female can sit, in calmness and unconcern, to 
 hear the nightly applauses that are bestowed upon 
 a cold-hearted and mercenary prostitute ? Fashion 
 may do a good deal; but the sun of Babylonian
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 273 
 
 purity, ay, and of English greatness, will have gone 
 down many degrees from that zenith of splendour 
 which all who love England would wish to shine 
 for ever, if the virtuous among her mothers and 
 her daughters can sit by the while, when such ap- 
 plause is given. 
 
 If vice of this kind is applauded in the warmest 
 manner, and paid for at the highest rate, it is no 
 palliation to say that it is because the vice is 
 accompanied by personal or professional attrac- 
 tions of a very high order. Though " the Devil 
 be transformed into an angel of light," he is still 
 the Devil ; and not only so, he is the Devil in the 
 most dangerous garb that he can wear. The 
 beauty or the talents which the party may possess, 
 do not redeem or elevate the vice ; they are them- 
 selves debased by it ; and the baneful influence 
 upon society is the greater in proportion to these. 
 
 For the honour of human nature there are still 
 upon the boards of the national theatres females 
 of the very highest talents, and at the same time of 
 the most delightful manners and the most spotless 
 virtue. These have been, of course, surrounded by 
 the same contamination, and exposed to the same 
 temptations as the others ; and as they have rode 
 buoyant in their purity upon that tainted and 
 troubled tide in which so many have sunk, their 
 praise is above that of other women. I shall 
 N 5
 
 274 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 not attempt a solution of the problem whether 
 these be or be not sufficient to stamp their own 
 character upon the profession, or even so to divide 
 it with the others, as to leave it, like Mahomet's 
 coffin, suspended between the upper and nether 
 skies. This much, however, is certain, that the 
 number of openly licentious females that are upon 
 the boards, the pecuniary encouragement which 
 they meet with from the managers, and the ap- 
 plause which they draw down or, if the phrase 
 be better suited to the fact, rake up, from the 
 clacqueurs and critics, must increase very much 
 the class of females out of which actresses can be 
 supplied, and bring upon the profession that cen- 
 sure which belongs not to it in itself, but to the 
 way in which it is allowed to be conducted. If 
 there were any necessary connection between the 
 profession of an actress and loose habits, then 
 there would be a plea for driving females from 
 the stage altogether, and playing Juliet and Ro- 
 salind in mustachios. But there is none what- 
 ever; and the Siddonses, the CTNeils, and the 
 Stephenses are demonstrative proof that tbere is 
 not. Why, then, should the managers tolerate 
 the nuisance complained of ? Clearly because they 
 do not understand their own interest ; or if they 
 spurn that as a libel upon their wisdom, let 
 them take the alternative they intentionally con-
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 275 
 
 duct matters in such a way as to repel the vir- 
 tuous and attract the depraved. 
 
 One would be led to suppose that the quantity 
 of theatrical writing one cannot call the whole 
 of it criticism which is in daily circulation, would 
 tend to cure the ills of the stage : at least that it 
 does not, is a good reason for bringing it within 
 the category of quackery. Medicine skilfully 
 administered cures ; but the more quacking, there 
 is always the more disease. Even though good, it 
 is doubtful whether criticism repeated every day 
 would long continue to have any effect ; and when in 
 a good many cases there is reason to question both 
 the honesty and the ability of what is written, 
 the effect must be greatly diminished. Criticism 
 to be pure should be made without any collusion 
 with, or any thing, however small, given to, the 
 critic, in the shape of bribe or gratuity. In the 
 case of books, many of the editors of the minor 
 journals praise them for the sake of the copy pre- 
 sented to them; and the proprietors, with but few 
 exceptions, demand praise for the purpose of 
 getting the advertisements. 
 
 I will not say that the same system affects the 
 theatrical observations of all the papers ; because 
 there are some which, if they are not above being 
 thus influenced, should be so. Still the gratuitous 
 admission for "the editor and friend, 11 upon all
 
 276 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 occasions, and the possibility of, at times, extend- 
 ing that to a whole party, leave the purity of the 
 criticism open to a good deal of suspicion, even in 
 the case of some of the daily journals; while, with the 
 minor weekly ones, the admission is not meant to 
 be used by the editor at all, it is sought after as a 
 bonus or a bribe to those who advertise in the pa- 
 per. As applied to any evening but that of Satur- 
 day, any thing that a Sunday paper could say is 
 anticipated by the daily journals ; and thus the ne- 
 cessity, as well as the utility of attending, for the 
 purpose of making remarks, is done away; the ac- 
 count of the acting is thus compiled from the opi- 
 nions of others by one who, perhaps, does not visit 
 the theatre once in six months ; and the admission 
 " goes its rounds," for the purpose of bribing the 
 partners or clerks of advertising houses. Any one 
 who chooses to take the trouble of going to these 
 houses, on any of the days when the canvassers for 
 the pure press of the week go a recruiting, may 
 find the canvasser shuffling admissions to the minor 
 theatres like a pack of cards, in order that one 
 which strikes the fancy of the advertising clerk, 
 may draw ten or fifteen shillings from his master 
 for the insertion of an advertisement. 
 
 By this mode of procedure, and it is far from 
 being a rare one, a double wound is inflicted the 
 clerk and the criticiser are both hurt. The clerk
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 277 
 
 is tempted not to study the interest of his em- 
 ployer in sending the advertisement to the paper 
 in which it has the certainty of being seen by the 
 greatest number of those whose seeing it may con- 
 duce to the employer's interest, but to the paper 
 which can give him as editor and " his friend" 
 in most instances a female one an opportunity of 
 visiting the theatre gratis, and, of course, spending 
 at an oyster-house, when the play is over, the 
 pseudo-edi tor's usual allowance for the night. One 
 would suppose that the manager would not counte- 
 nance this system ; but he, too, has his bribe. 
 His bills are inserted in the paper for the stamp 
 duty ; and there is a chance that the individual, 
 who has been habituated to the theatre and its 
 consequence in this cheap way, may take a liking 
 to them, and return at his own (or his master's) 
 cost. View them, in short, as you will, the Baby- 
 lonian theatres have something of the " abomina- 
 tion" in them. 
 
 That abomination does not appear to be charge- 
 able to the account of the individual managers ; for 
 there have been theatres, and large ones, under the 
 management of committees ; committees, too, not 
 of what one would call needy adventurers, whose 
 " poverty " might seduce their " will " into an 
 occasional peccadillo ; but of the preux chevaliers 
 of rank and patriotism, and presumable virtue,
 
 278 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 men who could speak by the acre in " a certain 
 House." They did not call upon the legislature to 
 clear away the nuisance by which the theatre is 
 surrounded, they did not even bid the lean dogs 
 of Bow beware of " the sweetened sop," and bark 
 out, they did not hunt for authors of talent, cri- 
 tics of integrity, or performers of purity. No, God 
 bless them ! they laved their limbs in the flood, 
 and without heeding much its qualities, allowed 
 themselves to be borne on by it. One threw 
 the shield of his protection over a female already 
 upon the boards; another sought to add to the 
 number of the stars one who was already snug 
 under the buckler ; and of a third it might be 
 said, as of fyaxcov /w.syf cro/spof, that ovpa. aurou drew 
 the third part of " the stars ;" though history 
 be wholly silent as to the xs<pXq or the xspanx. 
 
 If these things were done under the evergreen 
 laurel of many boughs, what can be predicated of 
 the ivy that creepeth up the walls ? If there be 
 any hope, or any necessity for indulging any upon 
 such a subject, the only operation through which 
 it can be looked for is Macadamization.
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 279 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 WISE MEN OF THE BABYLON. 
 
 " You, that understand all books, f 
 By judging only with your looks ; 
 Resolve all problems with your face, 
 As others do with B's. and A's ; 
 Unriddle all that mankind knows 
 With solid bending of your brows ; 
 All arts and sciences advance, 
 With screwing of your countenance ; 
 And, with a penetrating eye, 
 Into the abstrusest learning pry.'' 
 
 How much soever the modes and forms of the 
 world may change, there is a wonderful perma- 
 nence about the substantial things of which they 
 are the modes and forms. That wisdom, of which 
 the poet gives so graphic a delineation in these 
 lines, takes a different type as fashion changes the 
 habits of men and the idols of the crowd ; but in its 
 essence that wisdom continues always the same. 
 When society is rude and credulous, it takes its
 
 280 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 external character from the mystic and occult arts, 
 and the wise man is a conjurer, an astrologer, a 
 soothsayer, or a rhabdomancer, according to the 
 state and leading folly of society ; when mystic 
 divinity is the idol, and when men cast away the 
 substance of religion, in order that they may the 
 more successfully hunt after the shadow, the wise 
 man is inspired ; when politics bear down all else, 
 and change in the rule of states is approaching or 
 impending, the wise man becomes an inventor of 
 rights and a manufacturer of constitutions ; and 
 when the world is in happier train, and the desires 
 of men are turned toward the acquisition of know- 
 ledge, the wise man becomes a portable encyclo- 
 paedia, and trit-s to urge on the ball of science 
 without troubling himself about the composition 
 and qualities of that ball, or the laws of its motion. 
 Men of this description are sometimes impos- 
 tors, and act their parts for a purpose ; but they 
 are more frequently self-deceived t the dupes of 
 their own ignorance, or rather the victims of their 
 own wisdom. Without presuming to say any 
 thing about the abstract nature of truth a subject 
 which no man can by possibility understand, it 
 may with confidence be stated that the individual 
 truth, the truth upon which men always act when 
 they act honestly, is just what the individual be- 
 lieves. In the opinion of other men, it may be
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 281 
 
 doubtful or it may be false, he may have taken it 
 up from partial evidence, or from no evidence at 
 all ; but still, while he firmly beliwes it, it is just 
 as much the truth to him, as if it stood upon a 
 foundation of the most legitimate geometry. Nay, 
 the less evidence upon which any thing that a man 
 believes stands, the more satisfied, confirmed, and 
 obstinate, is he in the belief of it. Folks call that 
 superstition and folly, and a number of other 
 names, hard and soft, which they would like very 
 ill to have applied to themselves ; and for so doing 
 they do not deserve much compliment at the hand 
 either of good-nature or of philosophy. 
 
 There are certain truths of which we have no 
 proof whatever, other than our simple belief; but 
 instead of putting these at the bottom of the scale, 
 as being on the confines of dubiety, we set them fore- 
 most, and found the whole of what we call proved 
 or demonstrated truth upon them. In the mathe- 
 matical sciences, those points of unproved and un- 
 proveable belief, are not only the foundation on 
 which the whole structure rests, they are the ma- 
 terials of which the whole of it is built, and into 
 which it could all be resolved. Those little axioms 
 are, as it were, the bricks of which we build those 
 fabrics which we call trains, or reasonings, or ar- 
 guments, and by the repetition of which we say 
 that we prove and demonstrate certain things, and
 
 282 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 place them on a foundation which is far more secure 
 and unquestionable than mere belief. It is, how- 
 ever, belief, and nothing but belief ; and the man 
 who believes the concatenation, and yet would deny 
 the individual parts, is the dupe of a more vitiated 
 credulity, than he who contents himself with the 
 individual points of belief, and never troubles his 
 head about the concatenation. 
 
 This doctrine, and though simple it would not 
 be easily overturned, forms both the reason for the 
 existence, and the justification of their continuance 
 in that state of existence, to those who may pro- 
 perly be called the wise men " of the Babylon," 
 the men who come forward and claim to be the Sir 
 Oracles in all matters, and who succeed in their 
 claims, chiefly in consequence of the confident and 
 valorous way in which those claims are advanced. 
 The men believe that they have this pre-eminence ; 
 the belief is a most satisfactory and agreeable one ; 
 they dwell constantly upon it ; and as that is the 
 true way of getting out of their wits, they soon 
 come to that state ; and after that, the malady of 
 wisdom must remain quite incurable. 
 
 Those wise men are so very numerous, they ad- 
 dress themselves to so many particulars, and they 
 are so diversified, that it would be quite impossible 
 to do any thing with them in detail. Like all 
 other persons in the Babylon, they race on in a
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 283 
 
 current ; and thus if one were to stand for ever so 
 brief space noting the individuals, they would be 
 gone and forgotten ; others would be in their places, 
 and the public, looking to the originals immediately 
 before it, would deny the likeness of the best limned 
 picture. 
 
 In the Babylon there have always been those 
 wise men, though the only traces of the former 
 sets of them are to be found in the works or the 
 remains of those who had no pretensions to an 
 equal portion of wisdom, and did not receive 
 during their lifetimes any thing like the same sort of 
 worship and adoration. From their history, or 
 rather from the want of history of them, it ap- 
 pears that praise and honour are as apt to be ex- 
 hausted by wasteful and improvident use as money; 
 and that a man who is a glutton of fame in his 
 lifetime, is just as likely to die a beggar in that 
 article, as one who is a glutton in turtle or opera 
 songs, is apt to die a beggar as to cash. This is a 
 doctrine not very often stated ; but it is not on that 
 account the less true ; and those who have taken 
 even a very little pains in examining human nature, 
 may easily recollect confirmations of it. People in 
 general prefer bestowing their admiration upon a 
 mediocre personage rather than upon one who is 
 more profound ; because the envy which they have 
 to the former is less humiliating and cutting ; they
 
 284 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 give their admiration as a sort of alms, sanctified 
 by that mysterious source of sweetness to the 
 giver a consciousness that the receiver claims it 
 not as a merit, but that it comes within the scope 
 and province of that charity before which a trum- 
 pet is blown in the streets. On the other hand, 
 the man of mediocrity has more appetite for this 
 sort of praise, as well as more time for the enjoy- 
 ment of it. The man who has superior powers, 
 and who knows and feels that he has them (and 
 few or none can have the possession without the 
 knowledge and feeling), finds his greatest pleasure 
 in their exercise ; and as the mass of the world can- 
 not see and appreciate that to which he attaches the 
 greatest value, he does not care much for their opi- 
 nion. If folks do not get the thanks they want in 
 return, or feel that in the trade they do not get 
 more distinction than they give, they will soon 
 cease from it. Flattery, though at first sight it 
 may appear to be one of the least selfish of human 
 occupations, is really the most so. The natural in- 
 stinct of men leads every man to place himself at 
 the very head of the class ; and though he may not 
 be able to confess it, or rather willing to confess it, 
 every man does so place himself. There may be 
 points on which he concedes the advantage to others, 
 just as a man will admit that another is taller, or 
 stronger than he ; but there is always something
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 285 
 
 upon which the individual plumes himself as having 
 no rival. That is his standard in his own mind ; 
 and he never honestly gives another man praise in 
 the direction of that. 
 
 This may seem either to be very trite or very 
 trifling and the reader may consider it as either or 
 both, according to his pleasure ; but it is neverthe- 
 less very true, and, properly applied, these trifling 
 matters often throw the greatest light upon the ac- 
 tions of men. The whole race are made up of 
 trifles : the greatest and noblest action, the most 
 elaborate work, and the most profound disquisition, 
 are all reducible into elements, each of which is so 
 trifling and insignificant that, if met with singly, 
 it would be passed over without notice. The gran- 
 deur is in the aggregate, not in the elements ; and 
 as the mud or the brickbat that goes to the forma- 
 tion of the most splendid palace is not better than 
 that which goes to the meanest hovel, so the indi- 
 vidual, the momentary acts and impulses of the 
 greatest philosopher, are not more valuable, or in 
 any way much different from those of the merest 
 fool. 
 
 The tendency which men have to keep the pre- 
 serve of their own glory to give no real praise to 
 others in the direction in which they are most 
 prone to praise themselves, is the cause why the mob 
 are almost always wrong in their judgments ; or,
 
 286 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 which is very nearly the same thing, it is the cause 
 why those to whom the popular voice awards the 
 palm of wisdom, are never the wisest men, why 
 those who to-day ride foremost as bubbles on the 
 Babylonian stream, are hardly asked for to-morrow, 
 and if asked for, not a trace of them is to be found. 
 One thing is necessary here to guard against er- 
 ror, we must be careful not to confound the praise 
 that is given directly to the man, with that which is 
 bestowed upon the thing that he may have pro- 
 duced. When approbation comes in that way, it 
 comes through the filter and is pure ; men give it 
 not because they are selfish, but because they cannot 
 help giving it. When the act elevates the man, 
 the elevation is always merited on his part, and 
 never addresses itself to that passion of mankind 
 by which they value most that which they do to the 
 undeserving ; but when the thing done, derives its 
 merit from the man who does it, it is merely a con- 
 sequence of that selfishness which made the world, 
 in the exercise of that which it calls charity, give 
 him the undeserved reputation which imparts 
 merit of its own sort to the deed. 
 
 In consequence of this, men are led to praise 
 the most willingly and the most loudly that which 
 they understand the least. This opens widely the 
 flood-gates that let in upon the world men who have 
 the name of wisdom, but who in reality are the
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 287 
 
 very opposite of wise ; and of such men the Ba- 
 bylon is full, above all places. It is not, perhaps, 
 because the Babylonians are less capable of draw- 
 ing the line of distinction between wisdom and the 
 want of it, that they are more inflicted with spu- 
 rious sages. It is principally because the succes- 
 sion is so quick that the individual will not stay be- 
 fore them till they have questioned it. When they 
 begin to think, they at once see that the idol of the 
 moment was a false idol ; but before they have had 
 leisure and consideration for coming to this con- 
 elusion, that idol has gone, and they are borne on 
 the ripple of that crowd which is hallooing and 
 shouting in praise of another. 
 
 Besides these wise men of the moment, who get 
 their ephemeral praise and character because the 
 current of the world will not suffer them to stop 
 till men question them, there are others that are 
 left dry and stranded upon the banks, because the 
 current has run on, altered its channel a little, and 
 left them there. 
 
 These chiefly belong to the institutions that are 
 from time to time established as dams for the col- 
 lection of wisdom. At first they are, like other 
 dams, not unfrequently clear and copious ; but the 
 feeders bring mud and rubbish into them ; and 
 they silt up, and become foul and pestilent cease 
 to give motion to the machinery of society, and
 
 288 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 scatter disease over it. This has been more or less 
 the case with all the literary and scientific institu- 
 tions in the Babylon, that have existed for a suffi- 
 cient length of time. While they possessed the 
 charm of novelty, perhaps while information was 
 rare, and the capacity of solving a problem or 
 writing an essay was a distinction, they had their 
 celebrity and their use. They drew the attention 
 and stimulated the labour of the ablest men of the 
 time ; and they did good. But it was only while 
 they had the charms of novelty that they did this. 
 When these went, the active and ambitious spirits 
 went to lend their aid to more stimulating pursuits ; 
 and the learned societies were abandoned to those 
 who had not talents or ambition for any thing else. 
 There was a time, for instance, though it be long 
 ago, when the professors at Gresham College were 
 among the leading men of the time. What are 
 they now ? Nobody can tell, and nobody cares. 
 The Royal Society, that was once an institution 
 of some note; it made an impression upon the 
 character, not of England merely, but of the world. 
 What is it now ? Some one wiser than I can ever 
 hope to be, must solve the question. I have looked, 
 I have listened, I have asked ; but I have learnt 
 nothing farther than that it is the Royal Society, 
 that when any body that has acquired such name 
 and reputation out of doors, as that the addition of
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 
 
 him to the file is likely to bring a little eclat to the 
 firm, he is invested with the cabalistic F. R. S., 
 which he is thenceforth permitted to append to his 
 name in all time coming, and that there is a 
 secretary, a president, and other " fixtures'" in the 
 place of meeting. Of this I have been able to in- 
 form myself; but farther than this, the establish- 
 ment has eluded my observation ; and when I have 
 wished to discover the said Royal Society as shin- 
 ing, I have invariably been obliged to go nearly 
 a century back, and probably it shone then 
 only as a farthing candle or a putrid fish-head 
 does in the dark because the sun was not above 
 the horizon. 
 
 Of this society, and of others of more recent 
 formation, I would, however, speak with all the 
 tenderness that I can. There are many persons 
 of good means and good meaning, who take it 
 into their heads, that without their fostering care 
 the arts and the sciences would languish and die. 
 They do not much to keep them alive, to be sure ; 
 but then there is something praiseworthy in the 
 wish ; and the merest twaddle that gets the name 
 of science, is far better than the pursuits of the 
 majority of persons of the same class. Upon the 
 whole, a good-natured person will feel toward 
 those societies as toward ruins of any kind, they 
 are picturesque in themselves, and they give a sort 
 VOL. I. o
 
 290 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 of melancholy remembrance of things that are now 
 no more, they take up the ground unprofitably, 
 but there are shadowy and romantic recollections 
 about them, which, to minds imbued with much 
 feeling, more than compensate the loss ; while, by 
 a very little additional activity on the part of the 
 rest of mankind, that loss may be more than made 
 up even in a physical and practical point of view. 
 
 Therefore, the wise men who make their holes 
 in those monuments of the science of former 
 times, may be allowed to walk in them without 
 annoyance ; and if they wish to cover themselves 
 with any portion of that fame of which they are 
 the epitaphs, by all means let them do it. The 
 operative wisdom, that wisdom that works in so- 
 ciety, and works to some good practical account, 
 has left them now, and gone to the manufactory 
 and the workshop ; and as they have been thus 
 robbed of the usefulness, it would be cruel to strip 
 them of the simple glory. 
 
 Wherefore " turn we our style" to the wise 
 men of modern art ; to those who have come imme- 
 diately to the crowd and sought glory from that 
 and from that only. I believe I should not be 
 very wide of the truth, though I should slur them 
 all over in the general appellation bestowed in an- 
 other sense by the maccaronic bard 
 " Quack-erunt omnes.''
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 291 
 
 But they form part of the Babylon, not a merely 
 passive part, like the men in office, but an active 
 part, and therefore they both demand and bear 
 to be dealt with somewhat more in detail. In fact, 
 the picture of the Babylon would not be any thing 
 like complete without them. 
 
 Far be it from me even to attempt to delineate 
 those characterestic wise men of the Babylon in 
 their details or by their names : the former would 
 fill a book that might surfeit the Leipzic fair, and 
 the latter are of so putrescent a nature, that I 
 doubt whether even my printer could find paper 
 that they would not corrode. Thus the preserva- 
 tion of both book and reader require that what 
 follows should be confined to generals. 
 
 Generally, then, in the first place, I have found 
 in those who pre-eminently deserve, or at least as- 
 sume and appropriate, the name of the wise men of 
 the Babylon, a regular despising if not hatred of 
 religion. Now, though I hate cant as well as for- 
 mality and bigotry ; and though I have not settled, 
 or even agitated with myself, the question as to 
 whether the machinery of churches be essential to 
 religion in general, or to the Christian religion in 
 particular ; yet I have never been able to bring 
 myself to believe that a man who affects to mock 
 at all religion can be a philosopher in any thing. 
 It is rather a proof that the man feels his own 
 o 2
 
 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 shallowness, and takes up that most morbid of all 
 superstitions the superstition of unbelief, for the 
 very same reason that a medical quack gives a 
 sounding name to his nostrum, and gets people 
 to purchase as the pabulum vit<e, that which they 
 would not so much as look at if it was called by 
 its real name brick-dust and ditch-water. 
 
 Although I cannot, even for a moment, sup- 
 pose that my opinion can have any weight with 
 those wise men, upon whom higher testimony and 
 universal evidence have had no influence, yet, for 
 the sake of fools like myself, I may perhaps 
 win a fool's thanks, (which compensates me for the 
 censure of what is called a wise man, any day,) if 
 I state in one or two lines or paragraphs, the grounds 
 of my conviction why the man that rails and scoffs 
 at relimon as a feeling of human nature and an 
 
 O <J 
 
 exercise of the human mind, is not only not a phi- 
 losopher, but is really twin-brother to the man who 
 uses the name of religion as a cloak for his sins, 
 and the exercise of it as a means of raking up that 
 subsistence or wealth which he is unable to get by 
 any more decent or honourable means. 
 
 That which the conduct of both these parties 
 tends directly to prove, is, not only that they are 
 ignorant of the particular matter at issue, but that 
 they are not thinking persons at all that how 
 much soever they may pirouette and play with
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 293 
 
 names, they have never grappled with things, or 
 looked into that concatenation and sequence of 
 events, which produces the natural world as we see 
 it around us. 
 
 No doubt the nonsense which has been solemnly 
 held forth, and printed on this most magnificent 
 but most mysterious subject, has di.sgusted many ; 
 but still, he who has the active and honest spirit 
 of inquiry in him, will brush all that aside as 
 stubble, and go to the matter itself, with the same 
 zeal and appetite as though there never had been 
 a word of nonsense said about it. 
 
 A ship is a pretty thing, for it can make even 
 an adverse wind carry it to the place of its desti- 
 nation ; a watch is so, as it can measure time to 
 us, even in the long and sunless night of the polar 
 regions ; and a steam-engine is a very pretty thing, 
 as we can make it a servant of all work, and the 
 most docile and punctual servant we have ; but 
 none of these is so curious a thing as that little fly 
 on the window. He contained in himself the power' 
 of eliminating that form from the successive states of 
 the egg, the caterpillar, and the chrysalis. He did 
 not require the successive study of inventors, and 
 the successive labours of workmen, to bring him 
 to perfection ; and as he moves along, he does 
 not need to be steered like the ship, wound up like 
 the watch, or supplied with steam like the engine.
 
 294 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 The most curious of the machinery, too, wears 
 out, and unless the workmen produce more, the 
 kind would soon become extinct ; but there is a 
 principle of reproduction in the fly himself, which 
 secures a succession without any apparent trouble 
 to any thing else. Now the fly, instead of being 
 the ship, the watch, or the steam-engine, of Nature, 
 is hardly so much, in respect of the whole, as a 
 hobnail or a peg, and yet, as a piece of mechanism, 
 he is superior to them all. His feet are air-pumps, 
 his eye is both a telescope and a microscope, and 
 the little thing has sense, and feeling, and powers 
 of voluntary motion in those parts of its body, 
 which are so small that you cannot see them. 
 They harmonize better, too, than the parts of 
 your steam-engines and watches. In these there 
 is a waste of materials in some of the parts, and a 
 want in others ; and the materials of which the 
 different parts are constructed, are not balanced to 
 the work they have to perform. In consequence 
 of this, some parts wear out, while others are little 
 worse, and the machine has to stop and undergo 
 repairs. In the fly there are no such dispropor- 
 tions, and he has never to suspend his functions 
 till a worn-out member be taken away and replaced 
 by another. 
 
 We admire the ship, and the watch, and the 
 steam-engine ; call them the chef-cTaiuvre of art 
 and science ; and write biographies and carve mo-
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 295 
 
 numents for those that improve them. Now, Na- 
 ture is ship, and watch, and steam-engine motion, 
 and measure, and action, all over; and should we 
 forget the Power, the Artist that made that and 
 made it by a word ? Do you praise and admire 
 that which at the best can act but lamely, and 
 not merely neglect that which is always perfection, 
 but actually deny its existence ? 
 
 Yes; but the wise man complains that he can 
 see and understand the working in the case of art, 
 but not in the case of nature ; that therefore he 
 can believe that there is an artist in the one case, 
 but not in the other. And is this all ? Does the 
 wise man admit the existence of nothing but what 
 is palpable to his own senses ? Did you he, I 
 mean ever see James Watt working at a steam 
 cylinder, or Chantrey chiselling a statue, or Sir 
 Thomas Lawrence painting a picture ? Most likely 
 not: then how come you to speak confidently 
 about engines, and statues, and pictures, as being 
 theirs 1 You never heard of nature, or chance, 
 or whatever you call it, making a steam-engine, or 
 a statue ; and therefore you have reason on your 
 side, when you say that these must have had 
 makers of sufficient skill to design, and sufficient 
 dexterity to execute them. You allow contri- 
 vance and design in the engine and the statue; 
 but you deny them in the talents by which these 
 were made. It is very noble to construct a
 
 296 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 thing which steam can put in motion, or to mo- 
 del an image that has nothing but form ; but to 
 make a thing that thinks, or can move or not as it 
 pleases, is so very simple a matter, that the clods 
 a set of powers that never made so much as a 
 hobnail can accomplish it ! 
 
 Among men you do not need to see the artist 
 at work ; you trace his style ; and if your judg- 
 ment be properly informed, you know the pro- 
 duction of the master just as certainly as if you 
 had stood by all the time that he was engaged on 
 it. Also, if a thing be well made and do not re- 
 quire to be constantly in the hands of the work- 
 man for repair, you do not, on that account, deny 
 that it ever had a maker. You do not deny your 
 watchmaker, because your watch does not need to 
 be set once in a month, or cleaned once in a year : 
 you praise him on that very account, call him a 
 skilful and superior workman, and recommend him 
 to your friends. But no watch keeps time like 
 the sun ; that does not need any repair ; and yet 
 you not only will not admire the Maker of that, 
 but you deny that there is one. 
 
 You do not understand the matter ; and you 
 will not, cannot, believe any thing that you do 
 not understand ? Very well ; you believe, I pre- 
 sume, that you can walk, or abstain from walking, 
 just as you please; and do you understand why your
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 297 
 
 legs obey your will ? Have you any more accurate 
 knowledge of that than you have of the working 
 of that unseen Being, which you laugh at other 
 people for believing in ? They know no more 
 about your will, as an antecedent to the motion of 
 your limbs, than you do about the will of a Creator 
 as an antecedent to the work of creation ; and you 
 do not know much more about it yourself. Now, 
 if in this very simple matter, which happens to 
 you every day and hour of your life, other people 
 can obtain no knowledge whatever, farther than 
 the mere fact of the limb moving cannot have 
 evidence given them of the act of volition, or even 
 of the existence of the will, and if you yourself 
 know not much about the volition, and nothing 
 whatever about that which connects it with the 
 consequent motion of the limb, why should you 
 venture to be positive upon the subject of cre- 
 ation, and positive too in the face of the evidence 
 of that case, and the analogy of other cases ? 
 
 There is not a thing in nature which is not far 
 better adapted to the purpose that it serves, than 
 the work of the very best artist ; and, therefore, 
 as it requires contrivance and skill to build a ship 
 out of oak, why should it not much more require 
 skill, to build the oak itself out of materials col- 
 lected from the earth and the air ? You admit 
 the machine, the statue, or the picture, to be the 
 o 5
 
 298 A SECOND JUDGMENT OP 
 
 work of the master, when you see the style of the 
 master impressed upon it : the style of the Master 
 is impressed upon every thing that Nature pro- 
 duces ; and yet you doubt and hesitate there. So 
 universal, so visible is the impress, that the illite- 
 rate never mistake, never attribute artificial things 
 to Nature, or natural things to art ; and nations, 
 even in the very rudest states in which they have 
 been found, have generally been so forcibly struck 
 with it, that they have found it impossible to be 
 without a religion. Nay, the very man who in his 
 speech denies all religion, invariably proves religion 
 by his actions. Nor can it be otherwise : you can- 
 not look carefully at Nature, and doubt the being 
 of a God ; you cannot observe so much matchless 
 contrivance contrivance to which no skill and 
 dexterity of man can make an approach at all in 
 kind, without having reference to a contriver ; 
 you cannot trace the working, and refrain from, at 
 least, mental adoration of the Workman. If man 
 be not wrapped in the lowest ignorance, or if he be 
 not fatuous and incapable of reflection, he must, 
 just as naturally and irresistibly as pain offends 
 and pleasure gratifies, admire that which is skilful 
 in the design and beautiful in the execution ; and 
 the transition from the thing made to the Maker, 
 is so constant, that we are accustomed to think 
 it necessary and invariable. 
 
 Nothing, in fact, can bar it, but the causes that
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 299 
 
 have been mentioned ignorance or mental weak- 
 ness the want of information as to the evidence 
 that Nature affords, or the want of capacity for un- 
 derstanding that evidence. The case of fatuity is 
 one that rarely occurs ; and as it cannot, of course, 
 occur in the case of a Babylonian wise man, who, in 
 those matters of art and artifice to which his atten- 
 tion has been turned, is generally a shrewd man 
 enough, those wise men must fall within the cate- 
 gory of the ignorant. 
 
 That ignorance is, in the second place, easily 
 accounted for. In order that a man may be a 
 philosopher in the largest and most valuable sense 
 of the term, he must be taught, or at least per- 
 mitted to study, in three schools : First, the com- 
 mon technical schools of the world, where he finds 
 the interpretation of the laws of Nature by men 
 which interpretation may be right or wrong, 
 according as the interpreter, whose dictum is 
 followed, is, or is not, sagacious and free from 
 prejudice; secondly, the school of Nature her- 
 self, in which he may observe the working of 
 those laws, and try the correctness of the commen- 
 tary ; and thirdly, the school of religion, not 
 that he may merely con by rote and repeat cer- 
 tain formulae of words for if mere unmeaning 
 sound is to be religion, then one sound is just as 
 good as another ; and if there be no difference in 
 the attached meaning and the excited feeling, a
 
 300 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 popular song is just as religious, as much condu- 
 cive to holy feeling and life, as all the paternosters 
 that ever were said or sung, but that school, in 
 which the articles of religious belief shall be care- 
 fully compared with that evidence of the nature 
 and attributes of a Supreme Being, which is found 
 in the volume of Nature. 
 
 In the first of these schools, the wise man of the 
 Babylon may have made a great deal of progress ; 
 but he is as generally altogether without the dis- 
 cipline and nurture of the second. Now, it is 
 through the medium of the second only, that pre- 
 paration is made for at all profiting by the third ; 
 and as the wise man of the Babylon has none of 
 the preparation, he can have none of the advan- 
 tages to which that preparation opens the way. 
 His philosophy, whatever may be its measure or its 
 weight, is a philosophy of art ; a science merely of 
 man and his doings, without any other principle of 
 connection than the notion of present utility, and as 
 that is a notion which is not only not the same in 
 two individuals, but not the same in one individual 
 at two different times, it is much the same with no 
 connecting principle at all. The individual parts 
 of such a philosophy are like unstrung beads, you 
 cannot make use of them as an ornament ; it is as 
 if the husbandman kept ploughing the field, and
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 301 
 
 airing and turning the seed over in the granary, 
 but never thought of bringing them together. 
 
 It were well if this science of surfaces, this pure 
 science, which, as Lord Bacon says of the final 
 causes, "like a vestal virgin produces nothing," were 
 confined to the wise men of the Babylon, to those 
 luminaries that lump systems and lay on lectures 
 for a day, and then vanish nobody asks where. 
 Such, however, is not the case : there is every 
 where a tendency to go into the mere art, to look 
 only at that part and bearing of the subject which 
 has reference to the merchandise and reward. This 
 may be in so far necessary ; and it is true that the 
 turning of knowledge to profit is highly desirable. 
 But still it is not necessary that man should be- 
 come a mere engine, performing the work of the 
 day, without reflection on the past, or speculation 
 on the future. To make him so is the tendency 
 of that wisdom which characterises the wise men of 
 the Babylon ; and as the Babylon is the principal 
 theatre where all the faculties of men, and wisdom 
 among the rest, find their exercise and their re- 
 ward, it is but natural that the character of Baby- 
 lonian wisdom should creep over the rest of the 
 country. 
 
 The grand cause to which all this change for the 
 worse is owing, is the division of labour ; a cause
 
 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 which, confined to its proper sphere and objects, 
 has contributed, perhaps, more than any other to 
 the physical wealth and improvement of England. 
 Wherever the mere application of the hand, or 
 even the employment of thought, as to a single 
 subject, is the object in view, there cannot be too 
 much abstraction from other subjects, and devo- 
 tion to that. If a man would improve a steam- 
 engine, a chronometer, or any machine, or even 
 the cylinder of the engine or the balance of the 
 time-keeper, or any single part of any instrument 
 or machine to the very utmost ; even if he would 
 be very expert in the details and practices of any 
 of those subjects that are called sciences, such as 
 the nomenclature of botany or zoology, or the 
 formulae of the calculus, he must devote his atten- 
 tion wholly and constantly to that. But such a 
 man, however dexterous he may become, of what- 
 ever use his labours may be to society, (and I am 
 far from wishing to deny or underrate their value,) 
 cannot philosophise, cannot give a general opi- 
 nion on the principles of nature or society, to say 
 nothing of religion, any more than the man who 
 turns a potter's wheel, or spends his whole time in 
 putting heads upon pins. 
 
 In his own little department he becomes micro- 
 scopic; but just in proportion as he does, so he
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 
 
 loses the faculty of looking upon the whole of the 
 frame of nature around him, and perceiving either 
 the beauty and harmony of the structure, or the 
 laws by which it is governed. 
 
 It is doubtful whether by any system of schools 
 this science of concatenation, which binds all the 
 scattered leaves of knowledge into a book, could be 
 imparted. It is a science wholly of induction and 
 inference ; and, therefore, it is not possible that all 
 which the schools could give, how long soever they 
 were attended, or how zealously soever those in 
 them did their duty, could be either the thing itself 
 or the desire for it ; and it is quite clear, that in a 
 state of society, where people buy knowledge as 
 they buy other merchandise, just to sell again, there 
 is no inducement to bring such knowledge into the 
 market. 
 
 The teaching of religion (any little that there is 
 of it), so far from tending to mend the matter, has 
 a tendency to make it worse. Even though the 
 most skilful workmen came in good earnest to 
 build the structure, they could not succeed, there 
 being no foundation on which to rear it. But the 
 teaching, both to the infant and the adult, is a 
 shutting rather than an opening of the gate of know- 
 ledge. Take the catechism of any church, esta- 
 blished or dissenting, read it carefully, and then
 
 304 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 tell me in what way it is likely to promote the 
 knowledge and the love of religion in one who is 
 ignorant of the one and who feels not the other. 
 The scope of it is not to unfold natural religion, to 
 answer those enquiries as to a Maker, which even 
 an infant feels when the wonders of creation dawn 
 upon him. Yet this is the first step the one that 
 grapples the mind to the subject ; and if it be not 
 taken, the second is impossible. You must not 
 expect that children will pay any attention to mys- 
 terious tales about a Being whom they cannot con- 
 nect with the system of things which they see. 
 But the way in which they are usually treated, is 
 worse than this. Every church is more alive to, 
 and more zealous for, its own peculiarities as a 
 church, than it is about the general principles of 
 religion; and, therefore, those are the things which 
 it labours first and chiefly to inculcate. Now, the 
 very circumstance of these being the peculiar tenets 
 of that particular church, as distinguished from 
 other churches, is a proof that the tenets them- 
 selves are such as religious men, and men of in- 
 formation, are not agreed about ; and, therefore, 
 they are the very worst subjects for being made 
 the vehicle of initiatory information upon the most 
 abstruse subject that can address itself to the hu- 
 man powers. When a physician gives to his pa-
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 305 
 
 tient a medicinal substance, he does not give it in 
 a vehicle which must, of necessity, throw it down 
 in the form of an insoluble precipitate; he chooses 
 one that will hold the substance in solution. But 
 those incomprehensible words, words which few 
 grown up persons are completely masters of, and 
 which no child or ignorant person can by possi- 
 bility understand, are the only religious instruction 
 which the majority of people get. 
 
 Upon such a foundation it is impossible for 
 them to build for themselves, or get built for them 
 by others, any rational structure in future life. 
 The connexion with reason has been prevented 
 from being formed ; the whole that comes after is 
 machinery earthly machinery machinery of 
 which they do not see the use, and therefore there 
 is a tendency to throw it into the general mass of 
 merchandise, and rate it, like other things, at the 
 money-price that can be got for it. 
 
 We are apt to wonder why, among the wise men 
 of the Babylon, there are now no Bacons and 
 Newtons, and why among her men of song there is 
 not the least approach to a Milton. But we have 
 the solution in what has been stated; there are no 
 materials of which to make them, and there is no 
 demand for them though they were made. What 
 is called for is that which shall be cheap in the
 
 306 j 
 
 production, and can be readily brought to market ; 
 and as there is no knowledge of general principles 
 in the purchasers, there is no use of them in the 
 thing offered for sale. 
 
 What effect may be produced by the London 
 University, or by the London " particular" Uni- 
 versity the King's College, which some say is 
 intended to unteach all that is taught by the 
 other, it is not for me to say. I can see nothing to 
 take them out of the general track ; but they have 
 not made the experiment, and it would not 
 be altogether fair to judge them beforehand, al- 
 though the analogical grounds of that judgment 
 may be ever so apparently clear. But when we 
 turn to the existing luminaries to those who hold 
 forth at institutions, royal, civic, or plebeian, really 
 there is not much upon which hope can be ground- 
 ed. In all the lectures of the last half dozen 
 years, I doubt whether one new fact, or induc- 
 tion, or even one new mode of drawing an old 
 induction, has gone upon the record. I have 
 heard lectures by Doctor This and Professor 
 That; I have seen crowds attend them; I have heard 
 these crowds thump the floor with their feet, upon 
 signal given, at the close of certain passages ; and 
 I have heard thanks given by Presidents and 
 Patrons, for that which, in my opinion, would have
 
 BA.BYLON THE GREAT. 307 
 
 justified them in pulling the quack from the ros- 
 trum, and sending him to the plough or the pick- 
 axe ; and I have afterwards known that the pre- 
 siding quack has had influence (and one of the 
 " itn.s,") to get the prelecting quack pushed into 
 the road to wealth, and such honour as may fall 
 to the lot of one who abuses the public ; but I 
 have never been able to see in the whole matter 
 any utility, further than that the whole might be 
 set down as a sort of refuge for the destitute. 
 At first I thought there must have been some lurk- 
 ing envy or some obtuseness of perception about 
 myself; but there was, at least, no ground for the 
 former ; and if there had been a great deal of the 
 latter, I must have felt pleasure rather than pain 
 at perceiving that that was the very commodity 
 that could be brought to the market with the 
 greatest chance of profit. Among these philo- 
 sophers of the mob, it would have been out of 
 place to look for any thing like the splendour of 
 philosophy that captivation of the mind which 
 carries one along, and makes one forget that the 
 business is philosophy at all that it is any thing 
 else than a natural story, all probable and true, 
 and without any marvel or mystery in it ; but 
 still one might have looked for something original, 
 even if it had been but original nonsense. The
 
 308 A SECOND JUDGMENT OP 
 
 provoking part of the business, however, was, that 
 both the sense and the nonsense were what any 
 one might have known before ; and the only alter- 
 ation consisted in both being cracked and disjointed 
 out of their original concatenation. 
 
 Of books I have said so much on a former occa- 
 sion, that I am almost ashamed to recur to the 
 subject again ; and yet, as the same book is served 
 up to the Babylonian public, I do not see that any 
 very great blame can attach to me for recurring 
 to the subject twice, the more so as, since I last 
 noticed it, we have had a change. Then, I had to 
 complain that in the scientific part of the Babylo- 
 nian paper-wasting, wisdom and originality had 
 ebbed clean away ; but since then, there was a 
 promise that the tide would return, and return 
 with " the rush of many waters," till the proudest 
 eminences of the olden time should be drowned 
 in the modern flood. But alas for the event ! 
 They have come in the way that they ought to 
 have come, but they have not come with the power. 
 Men of sounding name and lofty pretension have 
 talked most mysteriously about " the depths of 
 science," and " the present state of mathematical 
 knowledge," as being things which no man now in 
 his grave, how recently however he may have got 
 there, could fathom or foreknow ; but when that,
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 309 
 
 before which they sounded the trumpet, came, it 
 turned out that the unfathomable places, which 
 they had called the depths of science, were merely 
 holes that they had torn in it by their own bung- 
 ling, and that they had been unable to find the 
 bottom, simply because there was none to be found. 
 If it had not been for these lofty pretensions, and 
 the " testimonies of living authors," one might 
 have guessed beforehand that the men who spoke 
 thus were shallow. There are no depths in science, 
 any more than there are steps a mile long in a 
 public road. The beauty of science, indeed, con- 
 sists in there being no depths in it ; in its being like 
 a skilfully constructed road, in which there are no 
 holes, and in which the heaviest carriage of autho- 
 rity or custom cannot wear a rut. It is the same 
 to one man as to another, and the steps of it, how- 
 ever long it may be, are all in themselves equally 
 short and easy. The traveller may get fatigued, 
 may want strength or resolution to go on, or he 
 may be tempted to turn into some bye path, or 
 stop by the way ; but most assuredly there is 
 nothing in science to stop a man's progress or to 
 render it more arduous at one time than at ano- 
 ther, provided he has his face turned the right 
 way when he sets out, and keeps it so turned as 
 he proceeds. Accordingly (I would name him,
 
 310 A SECOND JUDGMENT OF 
 
 but I have said I will mention no names, and I 
 shall keep my word,) the learned Theban who so 
 " cried from the depths of science," turned out to 
 have had his face the wrong way at the very 
 outset. He was bound for the depths of science, 
 but he ran aground upon the first simplest and 
 shallowest of all possible scientific ideas the idea 
 of unextended position a mere mathematical point 
 a thing which has no qualities whatever, and 
 about which there can, therefore, be neither mis- 
 take nor dispute, but such as are chargeable to that 
 kind of disposition which is, and can be, wise 
 only in words. 
 
 Still, there is some sort of reaction ; numbers 
 of people, who have time to think, do talk more 
 and more rationally about science than they did 
 some time ago : and if they be not able of them- 
 selves to do much for the restoration of their 
 country's honour in that way; and if there be 
 few, or probably no living men that are, in the 
 meantime, just in the proper way of helping them, 
 they may still keep the subject alive prevent it 
 from being lost among the spoken nonsense of the 
 time ; until the noise that has been made about it 
 shall call into being or action some one who can 
 do that which they are most laudably attempt- 
 ing ; but for which the others, in whom they have
 
 BABYLON THE GREAT. 311 
 
 hitherto trusted, are most lamentably unfit. If 
 I might venture to state where the most con- 
 fident hope lies, I would say in the people them- 
 selves. The schools and the schoolmen taught 
 the people in the beginning ; but now that they 
 have set about it, the probability is that they have 
 become wiser than their teachers, and may turn 
 round and school them in the end. When the 
 existing establishments were formed, they were 
 formed at the will and for the honour and ad- 
 vantage of those who were to deal in wisdom as a 
 commodity just as the laws were at first made 
 for the administrators, and without any care about 
 the opinions or the advantage of those who were 
 to obey them. But when the great body of the 
 people are so informed as that they can judge of 
 the matter, and in what respect it bears upon their 
 interests, the despotism of the few is dissolved ; 
 and, whether they will or not, they must be con- 
 tent with being the servants and scholars of the 
 public. In politics and law-making the English 
 public have assumed this their proper privilege 
 already ; and they have only to inform themselves 
 as well on matters of philosophy, in order to fetch 
 wisdom out of the prison-house of the schools, and 
 make her dwell in freedom with the people. Some 
 of that which has been done gives a bright gleaming
 
 312 JUDGMENT OF BABYLON THE GREAT. 
 
 through the gloom ; and though I may not hope 
 to live and profit by it, or even long to rejoice in 
 it, I feel that, if what is now doing had come half 
 a century earlier, I might have been judging some 
 thing else than Babylon the Great. 
 
 END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY S. AND R. BENTLEY, 
 Dorset Street, Fleet Strop!.
 
 University of California 
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 
 
 Return this material to the library 
 
 from which it was borrowed. 
 
 REC'C I 
 
 QL OCJi; 
 
 MAY i o HZ
 
 Ur