UNIVERS TY OF CALIFO NIA SAN DIEGO
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019464023
Central University Library
University of California, San Diego
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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
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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.
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