Robert Southey

Despard's Conspiracy.—Conduct of the Populace on that Occasion.—War.—The Question examined whether England is in Danger of a Revolution.—Ireland.

A most extraordinary conspiracy to kill the king and to overthrow the government has been detected. A certain Colonel Despard and a few soldiers were the only persons concerned. This man had for many years been the object of suspicion, and had at different times been confined as a dangerous person. Whether his designs were always treasonable, or whether he was goaded on by a frantic desire of revenge for what he had suffered, certain it is that he corrupted some of the king's guards to fire at him in his carriage, from a cannon which always stands by the palace. If it missed, the others were to be ready to dispatch him with their swords. The scheme had spread no further than this handful of associates; and they trusted to the general confusion which it would occasion, and to the temper of the mob. These facts have been proved by the testimony of some of the parties concerned. Despard on his trial steadily denied them, and laid a not unreasonable stress upon the absurdity of the scheme. The jury who pronounced him guilty unaccountably recommended him to mercy; he, however, and some of his accomplices have suffered death. The rest, it is supposed, will be pardoned.[9] With such lenity are things conducted in England. No arrests have followed, no alarm has been excited; the people are perfectly satisfied of his guilt, and only say What a blessing that it did not happen under Pitt!—Never had a nation a more perfect confidence in the rectitude of their minister.

The execution was after the ordinary manner, with this difference only, that the criminal after he was dead was beheaded, and the head held up with this proclamation, "This is the head of a traitor." He addressed the people from the scaffold, solemnly protested that he was innocent, and that he died a martyr to the zeal with which he had ever been the friend of their liberties. If revenge were the rooted passion of his soul, never was that passion more strongly exemplified than by this calm declaration of a dying man, which was so well calculated to do mischief,—and had it been under Mr Pitt's administration, a great part of the nation would have believed him. What is most extraordinary is, that the mob applauded him while he spoke, took off their hats as if in respect when he suffered, and hissed the executioner when he held up his bloody head. They burnt one of the witnesses in effigy,—and attended the body to the grave, as if they had been giving him the honours of a public funeral.

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The English are going to war. To the utter astonishment of every body the king has informed parliament, that formidable armaments are fitting out in the French ports, and that it is necessary to prepare against them. There is not a syllable of truth in this, and every body knows it; but every thing in this country is done by a fiction; the lawyers have as complete a mythology of their own as the old poets, and every trial has as regular a machinery as the Iliad. That war will be the result is not doubted, because it is well known that the ministry are disposed to be at peace. They have given a decisive proof of this by prosecuting M. Peltier for a libel upon the first consul; it is therefore reasonably supposed, that after a measure so repugnant as this to English feelings, and to English notions of the freedom of the press, has been adopted to gratify the first consul, nothing but necessity could induce them to abandon their pacific system.

This sudden turn of political affairs has greatly raised the reputation of Lord Grenville and his party. It now appears that he prophesied as truly of the peace as Mr Fox did of the war. The curse of Cassandra lay upon both; and it seems as if the English, like the Jews of old, always were to have prophets, and never to believe them. The peace, however, short as its duration has been, has been highly beneficial. The English are no longer a divided people. They are ready and almost eager for the commencement of hostilities, because they are persuaded that war is unavoidable. The tremendous power of France seems rather to provoke than alarm them: volunteers are arming every where; and though every man shakes his head when he hears the taxes talked of, it is evident that they are ready to part with half they have, if the national exigencies call for it.

Still the circumstances which occurred upon Despard's execution may give the English government matter for serious reflection. There is no longer a party in the country who are desirous of a revolution, and as eager as they were able to disseminate the perilous principles of Jacobinism. Bonaparte has extinguished that spirit; he has destroyed all their partiality for the French government, and Mr Addington has conciliated them to their own. Never was there a time when the English were so decidedly Anti-Gallican, those very persons being the most so who formerly regarded France with the warmest hopes. Whence then can have arisen this disposition in the populace, unless it be from the weight of taxation which affects them in the price of every article of life,—from a growing suspicion that their interest and the interest of their rulers are not the same, and a disposition to try any change for the chance there is that it may be for the better?

Two causes, and only two, will rouse a peasantry to rebellion; intolerable oppression, or religious zeal either for the right faith or the wrong; no other motive is powerful enough. A manufacturing poor is more easily instigated to revolt. They have no local attachments; the persons to whom they look up for support they regard more with envy than respect, as men who grow rich by their labour; they know enough of what is passing in the political world to think themselves politicians; they feel the whole burthen of taxation, which is not the case with the peasant, because he raises a great part of his own food: they are aware of their own numbers, and the moral feelings which in the peasant are only blunted, are in these men debauched. A manufacturing populace is always ripe for rioting,—the direction which this fury may take is accidental; in 1780 it was against the Catholics, in 1790 against the Dissenters. Governments who found their prosperity upon manufactures sleep upon gunpowder.

Do I then think that England is in danger of revolution? If the manufacturing system continues to be extended, increasing as it necessarily does increase the number, the misery, and the depravity of the poor, I believe that revolution inevitably must come, and in its most fearful shape. But there are causes which delay the evil, and some which may by an easy possibility avert it, if government should aid them.

The spread of Methodism in its various shapes tends immediately to make its converts quiet and orderly subjects, though its ultimate consequences cannot be doubted. The army may as yet be depended upon, the volunteers are fully equal to any service which may be required of them, and the English people, by which denomination I mean, as distinguishing them from the populace, that middle class from whom an estimate of the national character is to be formed, have that wonderful activity and courage, that unless the superiority of numbers against them were more than tenfold, they would put out an insurrection, as they put out a fire. They are a wonderful people. There is no occasion to cry out Aqui del Rey! (Here for the king!) in England. Should one man draw his knife upon another in the streets, the passers-by do not shrug up their shoulders and say, "It is their business," and pass on, letting murder be committed and the murderer escape. Every man in England feels that it is his business both to prevent a crime, and to deliver up a criminal to justice.

The people then are the security of England against the populace; but the tendency of the present system is to lessen the middle class and to increase the lower ones; and there is also some danger that the people may become dissatisfied with their rulers. There is no oeconomy in the administration of public affairs; prodigal governments must be needy, and needy ones must be oppressive. The sum paid in taxation is beyond what any other people ever paid to the state; the expenditure of the state is almost incredible—for the last years of the war it exceeded a million of English money per week. The peculation is in proportion to the expenditure. They are now enquiring into these abuses; many have been pointed out in the department of the admiralty, and no person entertains a doubt but that they exist in every other department in an equal degree. It is almost as dangerous to touch these abuses as to let them continue;—but the alarm has been given, and upon this ground any member of parliament, however little his influence and however despised his talents, would, even if he stood alone, prove a far more formidable opponent to any ministry, than ever Fox has been with all the great families of the country, and all his own mighty powers. Any member who should boldly and pertinaciously cry out that the public money was peculated, bring forward his proofs, and perseveringly insist upon investigation, would not long be without supporters. The people would take up the cause: they can bear to have their money squandered, and can even be made to take a pride in the magnitude of the expenditure, as something magnificent, but they would not bear to have it pilfered;—and should they be convinced that it is pilfered, which these examinations if they be carried on must needs convince them of—should they be provoked so far as to insist upon having all the ways and windings of corruption laid open, and all the accounts well examined before the bills are paid, I know not what lure would be strong enough to draw them from the scent; and their governors would have reason to apprehend the fate of ActÆon.

The causes which may prevent revolution chiefly arise from France. France expects to ruin England by its finances, forgetful with what result that recipe for ruining an enemy has lately been tried by England upon herself. The French do not know this wonderful people. It was supposed that the existence of the English government depended upon the bank, and that the bank would be ruined by an invasion: the thing was tried; men were landed in Wales, away ran the Londoners to the bank to exchange their bills for cash, and the stock of cash was presently exhausted. What was the consequence? Why, when the Londoners found there was no cash to be had, they began to consider whether they could not do without it, mutually agreed to be contented with paper—and with paper they have been contented ever since. The bank is infinitely obliged to France for the experiment, and no persons suffer by it except the poor sailors, who, when they receive their pay, put these bills in their tobacco-boxes, and spoil them with a wet quid.

It is certain that the English government must adopt a strict system of oeconomy, thereby effectually preventing revolution by reform, or that sooner or later a national bankruptcy must ensue—and to this France hopes to drive them. But what would be the effect of national bankruptcy?—not a revolution. The English have no fits of insanity: if they saw the evil to be inevitable, they would immediately begin to calculate and to compound, and see how it might be brought about with the least mischief. Thousands would be ruined; but they who would be benefited by the reduction of the taxes would be tens of thousands; so that the majority would be satisfied at the time, and government begin its accounts afresh, strong enough to take credit, if the people were not disposed to give it. For this fact is apparent from all history,—that the tendency of all political changes is ultimately to strengthen the executive power. Forms may be altered—they who play for authority may win and lose as rapidly as other gamesters, and perhaps at more desperate stakes, but the uniform result is, that the government becomes stronger. The National Convention carried decrees into effect which Louis XIV. would not have dared to attempt—and Bonaparte has all the strength of that convention rendered permanent by military power. Whatever be the external form, the effect is the same; the people submit implicitly to the directions of a single man, till he has riveted the yoke upon their necks; or cheerfully obey the more rigid tyranny of laws, because they conceive them to be of their own making.—A government therefore with the forms of freedom, which could persuade the people that it had no other object than their good, would be the strongest in the world. The Spartans called themselves free, and boasted of their obedience to institutions which changed the very nature of man.

In the language of modern politics a ministry has been considered as synonymous with government, and government as synonymous with nation. England made this error with regard to France, and France is now making it with regard to England. Admit that the pressure of taxation should occasion a national bankruptcy, and that this in its consequence should bring about a revolution—England would be miserable at home; but would she be less formidable abroad? She would not have a ship nor a sailor the less; and if any circumstances were to awaken a military spirit in the land of the Plantagenets, France, mighty as she is, might tremble for her conquests. I do not believe that the fall of the funds would produce any violent change in the government; and whether it did or not, the enemies of England would do well to remember, that it would finally strengthen the nation.

Bonaparte, whether at war or at peace, will endeavour to ruin the commerce of England. As for what he can do by war, the English laugh at him. The old saying of the cat and the adulterer holds equally true of the smuggler; and a large portion of the world is out of reach of his armies, but not out of reach of their merchant-ships. He will take the surer method of establishing manufactories at home:—they smile at this too. Manufactories are not to be created by edicts; and if they were, if he could succeed in this, he would do precisely the best possible thing which could be done for England in the best possible way:—first check and then destroy a system, which there is now nothing to check, which cannot be suddenly destroyed without great evil, and which, if it continues to increase, will more effectually tend to ruin England than all the might and all the machinations of its enemies, were they ten times more formidable than they are.

That system certainly threatens the internal tranquillity, and undermines the strength of the country. It communicates just knowledge enough to the populace to make them dangerous, and it poisons their morals. The temper of what is called the mob, that is, of this class of people, has been manifested at the death of Despard, and there is no reason to suppose that it is not the same in all other great towns as in London. It will be well for England when her cities shall decrease, and her villages multiply and grow; when there shall be fewer streets and more cottages. The tendency of the present system is to convert the peasantry into poor; her policy should be to reverse this, and to convert the poor into peasantry, to increase them, and to enlighten them; for their numbers are the strength, and their knowledge is the security of states.

Ireland is the vulnerable part of the British empire: and till that empire be restored to the true faith, it will always be vulnerable there. Another conspiracy has just been formed there; the plan was to seize the seat of government, and if the insurgents had not stopped to perpetrate a useless murder upon the way, they would in all likelihood have succeeded; the mails would that night have scattered their proclamations over the whole island, and nine-tenths of the population would have been instantly in rebellion. The exemplary attachment of the Irish to the religion of their fathers is beyond all praise, and almost beyond all example. Nothing but the complete re-establishment of that religion can ever conciliate them to the English government, or reclaim them from their present savage state, and the false hierarchy is too well aware of the consequences ever to consent to this. Dagon knows what would happen if the Ark of Truth were to be set up so near.