Fragments of Two Centuries | Page 3

Constitution as resting upon empty bottles and blunder-busses, for was
it not the great "three-bottle period" of the British aristocracy? and as
for the masses, the only national sentiment in common was that of
military glory earned by British heroes in foreign wars. In more
domestic affairs, it was a long hum-drum grind in settled grooves--deep
ruts in fact--from which there seemed no escape. Yet it was a period in
which great forces had their birth--forces which were destined to

exercise the widest influence upon our national, social, and even
domestic affairs. Adam Smith's great work on the causes of the wealth
of nations planted a life-germ of progressive thought which was to
direct men's minds into what, strange as it may seem, was almost a new
field of research, viz., the relation of cause and effect, and was
commercially almost as much a new birth and the opening of a flood
gate of activity, as was that of the printing press at the close of the
Middle Ages; and, this once set in motion, a good many other things
seemed destined to follow.
What a host of things which now seem a necessary part of our daily
lives were then in a chrysalis state! But the bandages were visibly
cracking in all directions. Literature was beginning those {2} desperate
efforts to emerge from the miseries of Grub Street, to go in future direct
to the public for its patrons and its market, and to bring into quiet old
country towns like Royston at least a newspaper occasionally. In the
political world Burke was writing his "Thoughts on the present
Discontents," and Francis, or somebody else, the "Letters of Junius."
Things were, in fact, showing signs of commencing to move, though
slowly, in the direction of that track along which affairs have
sometimes in these latter days moved with an ill-considered haste
which savours almost as much of what is called political expediency as
of the public good.
Have nations, like individuals, an intuitive sense or presentiment of
something to come? If they have, then there has been perhaps no period
in our history when that faculty was more keenly alive than towards the
close of the last century. From the beginning of the French Revolution
to the advent of the Victorian Era constitutes what may be called the
great transition period in our domestic, social, and economic life and
customs. Indeed, so far as the great mass of the people were concerned,
it was really the dawn of social life in England; and, as the darkest hour
is often just before the dawn, so were the earlier years of the above
period to the people of these Realms. Before the people of England at
the end of the 18th century, on the horizon which shut out the future,
lay a great black bank of cloud, and our great grandfathers who gazed
upon it, almost despairing whether it would ever lift, were really in the

long shadows of great coming events.
Through the veil which was hiding the new order of things,
occasionally, a sensitive far-seeing eye, here and there caught glimpses
from the region beyond. The French, driven just then well-nigh to
despair, caught the least glimmer of light and the whole nation was
soon on fire! A few of the most highly strung minds caught the
inspiration of an ideal dream of the regeneration of the world by some
patent process of redistribution! All the ancient bundle of precedents,
and the swaddling bands of restraints and customs in which men had
been content to remain confined for thousands of years, were
henceforth to be dissolved in that grandiose dream of a society in which
each individual, left to follow his unrestrained will, was to be trusted to
contribute to the happiness of all without that security from wrong
which, often rude in its operation, had been the fundamental basis of
social order for ages! The ideal was no doubt pure and noble, but
unfortunately it only raised once more the old unsolved problem of the
forum whether that which is theoretically right can ever be practically
wrong. The French Revolution did not, as a matter of fact, rest with a
mere revulsion of moral forces, but as the infection descended from
moral heights into the grosser elements of the national life, men soon
{3} began to fight for the new life with the old weapons, until France
found, and others looking on saw, the beautiful dream of liberty
tightening down into that hideous nightmare, and saddest of all
tyrannies, the tyranny of the multitude! Into the great bank of cloud
which had gathered across the horizon of Europe, towards the close of
the 18th century, some of the boldest spirits of France madly rushed
with the energy of despair, seeking