Curiosities of Literature Volume Iii Part 19

_Point-devise_.

[118] Lyson's "Environs," v. 58

[119] Burnet says, "Others called it _Holland House_, because he was believed to be no friend to the war: so it was given out that he had money from the Dutch."

[120] At the gateway of the Three Kings Inn, near Dover-street, in Piccadilly, are two pilasters with Corinthian capitals, which belonged to Clarendon House, and are perhaps the only remains of that edifice.

[121] An old term for _contractors_. Evelyn tells us they were "certain rich bankers and mechanics, who gave for it, and the ground about it, 35,000_l_." They built streets and houses on the site to their great profit, the ground comprising twenty-four acres of land.

"TAXATION NO TYRANNY!"

Such was the t.i.tle of a famous political tract, which was issued at a moment when a people, in a state of insurrection, put forth a declaration that taxation was tyranny! It was not against an insignificant tax they protested, but against taxation itself! and in the temper of the moment this abstract proposition appeared an insolent paradox. It was instantly run down by that everlasting party which, so far back as in the laws of our Henry the First, are designated by the odd descriptive term of _acephali, a people without heads!_[122] the strange equality of levellers!

These political monsters in all times have had an a.s.sociation of ideas of _taxation_ and _tyranny_, and with them one name instantly suggests the other! This happened to one Gigli of Sienna, who published the first part of a dictionary of the Tuscan language,[123] of which only 312 leaves amused the Florentines; these having had the honour of being consigned to the flames by the hands of the hangman for certain popular errors; such as, for instance, under the word _Gran Duca_ we find _Vedi Gabelli!_ (see Taxes!) and the word _Gabella_ was explained by a reference to _Gran Duca_! _Grand-duke_ and _taxes_ were synonymes, according to this mordacious lexicographer! Such grievances, and the modes of expressing them, are equally ancient. A Roman consul, by levying a tax on _salt_ during the Punic war, was nicknamed _Salinator_, and condemned by "the majesty" of the people! He had formerly done his duty to the country, but the _salter_ was now his reward! He retired from Rome, let his beard grow, and by his sordid dress and melancholy air evinced his acute sensibility. The Romans at length wanted the _salter_ to command the army--as an injured man, he refused--but he was told that he should bear the caprice of the Roman people with the tenderness of a son for the humours of a parent! He had lost his reputation by a productive tax on salt, though this tax had provided an army and obtained a victory!

Certain it is that Gigli and his numerous adherents are wrong: for were they freed from all restraints as much as if they slept in forests and not in houses; were they inhabitants of wilds and not of cities, so that every man should be his own lawgiver, with a perpetual immunity from all taxation, we could not necessarily infer their political happiness.

There are nations where taxation is hardly known, for the people exist in such utter wretchedness, that they are too poor to be taxed; of which the Chinese, among others, exhibit remarkable instances. When Nero would have abolished all taxes, in his excessive pa.s.sion for popularity, the senate thanked him for his good will to the people, but a.s.sured him that this was a certain means not of repairing, but of ruining the commonwealth. Bodin, in his curious work "The Republic," has noticed a cla.s.s of politicians who are in too great favour with the people. "Many seditious citizens, and desirous of innovations, did of late years promise immunity of taxes and subsidies to our people; but neither could they do it, or if they could have done it, they would not; or if it were done, should we have any commonweal, being the ground and foundation of one."[124]

The undisguised and naked term of "taxation" is, however, so odious to the people, that it may be curious to observe the arts practised by governments, and even by the people themselves, to veil it under some mitigating term. In the first breaking out of the American troubles, they probably would have yielded to the mother-country _the right of_ _taxation_, modified by the term _regulation_ (of their trade); this I infer from a letter of Dr. Robertson, who observes, that "the distinction between _taxation_ and _regulation_ is mere folly!" Even despotic governments have condescended to disguise the contributions forcibly levied, by some appellative which should partly conceal its real nature. Terms have often influenced circ.u.mstances, as names do things; and conquest or oppression, which we may allow to be synonymes, apes benevolence whenever it claims as a gift what it exacts as a tribute.

A sort of philosophical history of taxation appears in the narrative of Wood, in his "Inquiry on Homer." He tells us that "the presents (a term of extensive signification in the East) which are distributed annually by the bashaw of Damascus to the several Arab princes through whose territory he conducts the caravan of pilgrims to Mecca, are, at Constantinople, called a free gift, and considered as an act of the sultan's generosity towards his indigent subjects; while, on the other hand, the Arab Sheikhs deny even a right of pa.s.sage through the districts of their command, and exact those sums as a tax due for the permission of going through their country. In the frequent b.l.o.o.d.y contests which the adjustment of these fees produces, the Turks complain of robbery, and the Arabs of invasion."[125]

Here we trace _taxation_ through all its s.h.i.+fting forms, accommodating itself to the feelings of the different people; the same principle regulated the alternate terms proposed by the buccaneers, when they _asked_ what the weaker party was sure to _give_, or when they _levied_ what the others paid only as a common _toll_.

When Louis the Eleventh of France beheld his country exhausted by the predatory wars of England, he bought a peace of our Edward the Fourth by an annual sum of fifty thousand crowns, to be paid at London, and likewise granted _pensions_ to the English ministers. Holinshed and all our historians call this a yearly _tribute_; but Comines, the French memoir-writer, with a national spirit, denies that these _gifts_ were either _pensions_ or _tributes_. "Yet," says Bodin, a Frenchman also, but affecting a more philosophical indifference, "it must be either the one or the other; though I confess, that those who receive a pension to obtain peace, commonly boast of it _as if it were a tribute_!"[126]

Such are the shades of our feelings in this history of taxation and tribute. But there is another artifice of applying soft names to hard things, by veiling a tyrannical act by a term which presents no disagreeable idea to the imagination. When it was formerly thought desirable, in the relaxation of morals which prevailed in Venice, to inst.i.tute the office of _censor_, three magistrates were elected bearing this t.i.tle; but it seemed so harsh and austere in that dissipated city, that these reformers of manners were compelled to change their t.i.tle; when they were no longer called _censors_, but _I signori sopra il bon vivere della citta_, all agreed on the propriety of the office under the softened term. Father Joseph, the secret agent of Cardinal Richelieu, was the inventor of _lettres de cachet_, disguising that instrument of despotism by the amusing term of _a sealed letter_. Expatriation would have been merciful compared with the result of that _billet-doux_, a sealed letter from his majesty!

Burke reflects with profound truth--"Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found. Liberty inheres in some sensible object; and every nation has formed to itself some favourite point, which, by way of eminence, becomes the criterion of their happiness. It happened that the great contests for freedom in this country were from the earliest times chiefly upon the question of _taxing_. Most of the contests in the ancient commonwealths turned primarily on the right of election of magistrates, or on the balance among the several orders of the state. The question of _money_ was not with them so immediate. But in England it was otherwise. On this point of taxes the ablest pens and most eloquent tongues have been exercised; the greatest spirits have acted and suffered."[127]

One party clamorously a.s.serts that taxation is their grievance, while another demonstrates that the annihilation of taxes would be their ruin!

The interests of a great nation, among themselves, are often contrary to each other, and each seems alternately to predominate and to decline.

"The sting of taxation," observes Mr. Hallam, "is wastefulness; but it is difficult to name a limit beyond which taxes will not be borne without impatience when _faithfully applied_." In plainer words, this only signifies, we presume, that Mr. Hallam's party would tax us without "wastefulness!" Ministerial or opposition, whatever be the administration, it follows that "taxation is no tyranny;" Dr. Johnson then was terribly abused in his day for a _vox et praeterea nihil_!

Still shall the innocent word be hateful, and the people will turn even on their best friend, who in administration inflicts a new impost; as we have shown by the fate of the Roman _Salinator_! Among ourselves, our government, in its const.i.tution, if not always in its practice, long had a consideration towards the feelings of the people, and often contrived to hide the nature of its exactions by a name of blandishment. An enormous grievance was long the office of purveyance. A purveyor was an officer who was to furnish every sort of provision for the royal house, and sometimes for great lords, during their progresses or journeys. His oppressive office, by arbitrarily fixing the market prices, and compelling the countrymen to bring their articles to market, would enter into the history of the arts of grinding the labouring cla.s.s of society; a remnant of feudal tyranny! The very t.i.tle of this officer became odious; and by a statute of Edward III. the hateful name of _purveyor_ was ordered to be changed into _acheteur_ or buyer![128] A change of name, it was imagined, would conceal its nature! The term often devised, strangely contrasted with the thing itself. Levies of money were long raised under the pathetic appeal of _benevolences_. When Edward IV. was pa.s.sing over to France, he obtained, under this gentle demand, money towards "the great journey," and afterwards having "rode about the more part of the lands, and used the people in such fair manner, that they were liberal in their gifts;" old Fabian adds, "the which way of the levying of this money was after-named a benevolence." Edward IV. was courteous in this newly-invented style, and was besides the handsomest tax-gatherer in his kingdom! His royal presence was very dangerous to the purses of his loyal subjects, particularly to those of the females.

In his progress, having kissed a widow for having contributed a larger sum than was expected from her estate, she was so overjoyed at the singular honour and delight, that she doubled her _benevolence_, and a second kiss had ruined her! In the succeeding reign of Richard III. the term had already lost the freshness of its innocence. In the speech which the Duke of Buckingham delivered from the hustings in Guildhall, he explained the term to the satisfaction of his auditors, who even then were as cross-humoured as the livery of this day, in their notions of what now we gently call "supplies." "Under the plausible name of _benevolence_, as it was held in the time of Edward IV., your goods were taken from you much against your will, as if by that name was understood that every man should pay, not what he pleased, but what the king would have him;" or, as a marginal note in Buck's Life of Richard III. more pointedly has it, that "the name of _benevolence_ signified that every man should pay, not what he of his own good will list, but what the king of his good will list to take."[129] Richard III., whose business, like that of all usurpers, was to be popular, in a statute even condemns this "benevolence" as "a new imposition," and enacts that "none shall be charged with it in future; many families having been ruined under these pretended gifts." His successor, however, found means to levy "a benevolence;" but when Henry VIII. demanded one, the citizens of London appealed to the act of Richard III. Cardinal Wolsey insisted that the law of a murderous usurper should not be enforced. One of the common council courageously replied, that "King Richard, conjointly with parliament, had enacted many good statutes." Even then the citizen seems to have comprehended the spirit of our const.i.tution--that taxes should not be raised without the consent of parliament!

Charles the First, amidst his urgent wants, at first had hoped, by the pathetic appeal to _benevolences_, that he should have touched the hearts of his unfriendly commoners; but the term of _benevolence_ proved unlucky. The resisters of _taxation_ took full advantage of a significant meaning, which had long been lost in the custom: a.s.serting by this very term that all levies of money were not compulsory, but the voluntary gifts of the people. In that political crisis, when in the fulness of time all the national grievances which had hitherto been kept down started up with one voice, the courteous term strangely contrasted with the rough demand. Lord Digby said "the granting of _subsidies_, under so preposterous a name as of a _benevolence_, was a _malevolence_." And Mr. Grimstone observed, that "they have granted a benevolence, but the nature of the _thing_ agrees not with the _name_."

The nature indeed had so entirely changed from the name, that when James I. had tried to warm the hearts of his "benevolent" people, he got "little money, and lost a great deal of love." "Subsidies," that is grants made by parliament, observes Arthur Wilson, a dispa.s.sionate historian, "get more of the people's money, but exactions enslave the mind."

When _benevolences_ had become a grievance, to diminish the odium they invented more inviting phrases. The subject was cautiously informed that the sums demanded were only _loans_; or he was honoured by a letter under the _Privy Seal_; a bond which the king engaged to repay at a definite period; but privy seals at length got to be hawked about to persons coming out of church. "Privy Seals," says a ma.n.u.script letter, "are flying thick and threefold in sight of all the world, which might surely have been better performed in delivering them to every man privately at home." The _general loan_, which in fact was a forced loan, was one of the most crying grievances under Charles I. Ingenious in the destruction of his own popularity, the king contrived a new mode of "_secret instructions to commissioners_."[130] They were to find out persons who could bear the largest rates. How the commissioners were to acquire this secret and inquisitorial knowledge appears in the bungling contrivance. It is one of their orders that after a number of inquiries have been put to a person, concerning others who had spoken against loan-money, and what arguments they had used, this person was to be charged in his majesty's name, and upon his allegiance, not to disclose to any other the answer he had given. A striking instance of that fatuity of the human mind, when a weak government is trying to do what it knows not how to perform: it was seeking to obtain a secret purpose by the most open and general means: a self-destroying principle!

Our ancestors were children in finance; their simplicity has been too often described as tyranny! but from my soul do I believe, on this obscure subject of taxation, that old Burleigh's advice to Elizabeth includes more than all the squabbling pamphlets of our political economists,--"WIN HEARTS, AND YOU HAVE THEIR HANDS AND PURSES!"

FOOTNOTES:

[122] Cowel's "Interpreter," art. _Acephali_. This by-name we unexpectedly find in a grave antiquarian law-dictionary! probably derived from Pliny's description of a people whom some travellers had reported to have found in this predicament, in their fright and haste in attempting to land on a hostile sh.o.r.e among savages. To account for this fabulous people, it has been conjectured they wore such high coverings, that their heads did not appear above their shoulders, while their eyes seemed to be placed in their b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

How this name came to be introduced into the laws of Henry the First remains to be told by some profound antiquary; but the allusion was common in the middle ages. Cowel says, "Those are called _acephali_ who were the _levellers_ of that age, and acknowledged _no head_ or superior."

[123] _Vocabulario di Santa Caterina e della Lingua Sanese_, 1717.

This pungent lexicon was prohibited at Rome by desire of the court of Florence. The history of this suppressed work may be found in _Il Giornale de' Letterati d' Italia_, tomo xxix. 1410. In the last edition of Haym's "Biblioteca Italiana," 1803, it is said to be reprinted at _Manilla, nell' Isole Fillippine_!--For the book-licensers it is a great way to go for it.

[124] Bodin's "Six Books of a Commonwealth," translated by Richard Knolles, 1606. A work replete with the _practical_ knowledge of politics, and of which Mr. Dugald Stewart has delivered a high opinion. Yet this great politician wrote a volume to anathematise those who doubted the existence of sorcerers and witches, &c., whom he condemns to the flames! See his "Demonomanie des Sorciers," 1593.

[125] Wood's "Inquiry on Homer," p. 153.

[126] Bodin's "Commonweal," translated by R. Knolles, p. 148. 1606.

[127] Burke's Works, vol. i. 288.

[128] The modern word _cheater_ is traced by some authors to this term, which soon became odious to the populace.

[129] Daines Barrington, in "Observations on the Statutes," gives the marginal _note_ of Buck as the _words_ of the duke; they certainly served his purpose to amuse, better than the veracious ones; but we expect from a grave antiquary inviolable authenticity.

The duke is made by Barrington a sort of wit, but the pithy quaintness is Buck's.

[130] These "Private Instructions to the Commissioners for the General Loan" may be found in Rushworth, i. 418.

THE BOOK OF DEATH.

Montaigne was fond of reading minute accounts of the deaths of remarkable persons; and, in the simplicity of his heart, old Montaigne wished to be learned enough to form a collection of these deaths, to observe "their words, their actions, and what sort of countenance they put upon it." He seems to have been a little over curious about deaths, in reference, no doubt, to his own, in which he was certainly deceived; for we are told that he did not die as he had promised himself,--expiring in the adoration of the ma.s.s; or, as his preceptor Buchanan would have called it, in "the act of rank idolatry."

I have been told of a privately printed volume, under the singular t.i.tle of "The Book of Death," where an _amateur_ has compiled the pious memorials of many of our eminent men in their last moments: and it may form a companion-piece to the little volume on "Les grands hommes qui sont morts en plaisantant." This work, I fear, must be monotonous; the deaths of the righteous must resemble each other; the learned and the eloquent can only receive in silence that hope which awaits "the covenant of the grave." But this volume will not establish any decisive principle, since the just and the religious have not always encountered death with indifference, nor even in a fit composure of mind.

The functions of the mind are connected with those of the body. On a death-bed a fortnight's disease may reduce the firmest to a most wretched state; while, on the contrary, the soul struggles, as it were in torture, in a robust frame. Nani, the Venetian historian, has curiously described the death of Innocent the Tenth, who was a character unblemished by vices, and who died at an advanced age, with too robust a const.i.tution. _Dopo lunga e terribile agonia, con dolore e con pena, seperandosi l'anima da quel corpo robusto, egli spiro ai sette di Genuaro, nel ottantesimo primo de suoi anno._ "After a long and terrible agony, with great bodily pain and difficulty, his soul separated itself from that robust frame, and expired in his eighty-first year."

Some have composed sermons on death, while they pa.s.sed many years of anxiety, approaching to madness, in contemplating their own. The certainty of an immediate separation from all our human sympathies may, even on a death-bed suddenly disorder the imagination. The great physician of our times told me of a general, who had often faced the cannon's mouth, dropping down in terror, when informed by him that his disease was rapid and fatal. Some have died of the strong imagination of death. There is a print of a knight brought on the scaffold to suffer; he viewed the headsman; he was blinded, and knelt down to receive the stroke. Having pa.s.sed through the whole ceremony of a criminal execution, accompanied by all its disgrace, it was ordered that his life should be spared. Instead of the stroke from the sword, they poured cold water over his neck. After this operation the knight remained motionless; they discovered that he had expired in the very imagination of death! Such are among the many causes which may affect the mind in the hour of its last trial. The habitual a.s.sociations of the natural character are most likely to prevail, though not always. The intrepid Marshal Biron disgraced his exit by womanish tears and raging imbecility; the virtuous Erasmus, with miserable groans, was heard crying out, _Domine! Domine! fac finem! fac finem!_ Bayle having prepared his proof for the printer, pointed to where it lay, when dying.

The last words which Lord Chesterfield was heard to speak were, when the valet, opening the curtains of the bed, announced Mr. Dayroles, "Give Dayroles a chair!" "This good breeding," observed the late Dr. Warren, his physician, "only quits him with his life." The last words of Nelson were, "Tell Collingwood to bring the fleet to an anchor." The tranquil grandeur which cast a new majesty over Charles the First on the scaffold, appeared when he declared, "I fear not death! Death is not terrible to me!" And the characteristic pleasantry of Sir Thomas More exhilarated his last moments, when, observing the weakness of the scaffold, he said, in mounting it, "I pray you, see me up safe, and for my coming down, let me s.h.i.+ft for myself!" Sir Walter Rawleigh pa.s.sed a similar jest when going to the scaffold.[131]

My ingenious friend Dr. Sherwen has furnished me with the following anecdotes of death:--In one of the b.l.o.o.d.y battles fought by the Duke d'Enghien, two French n.o.blemen were left wounded among the dead on the field of battle. One complained loudly of his pains; the other, after long silence, thus offered him consolation: "My friend, whoever you are, remember that our G.o.d died on the cross, our king on the scaffold; and if you have strength to look at him who now speaks to you, you will see that both his legs are shot away."

At the murder of the Duke d'Enghien, the royal victim looking at the soldiers, who had pointed their fusees, said, "Grenadiers! lower your arms, otherwise you will miss, or only wound me!" To two of them who proposed to tie a handkerchief over his eyes, he said, "A loyal soldier who has been so often exposed to fire and sword can see the approach of death with naked eyes and without fear."

After a similar caution on the part of Sir George Lisle, or Sir Charles Lucas, when murdered in nearly the same manner at Colchester, by the soldiers of Fairfax, the loyal hero, in answer to their a.s.sertions and a.s.surances that they would take care not to miss him, n.o.bly replied, "You have often missed me when I have been nearer to you in the field of battle."

When the governor of Cadiz, the Marquis de Solano, was murdered by the enraged and mistaken citizens, to one of his murderers, who had run a pike through his back, he calmly turned round and said, "Coward, to strike there! Come round--if you dare face--and destroy me!"

Abernethy, in his Physiological Lectures, has ingeniously observed that "Shakspeare has represented Mercutio continuing to jest, though conscious that he was mortally wounded; the expiring Hotspur thinking of nothing but honour; and the dying Falstaff still cracking his jests upon Bardolph's nose. If such facts were duly attended to, they would prompt us to make a more liberal allowance for each other's conduct, under certain circ.u.mstances, than we are accustomed to do." The truth seems to be, that whenever the functions of the mind are not disturbed by "the nervous functions of the digestive organs," the personal character predominates even in death, and its habitual a.s.sociations exist to its last moments. Many religious persons may have died without showing in their last moments any of those exterior acts, or employing those fervent expressions, which the collector of "The Book of Death" would only deign to chronicle; their hope is not gathered in their last hour.

Yet many have delighted to taste of death long before they have died, and have placed before their eyes all the furniture of mortality. The horrors of a charnel-house is the scene of their pleasure. The "Midnight Meditations" of Quarles preceded Young's "Night Thoughts" by a century, and both these poets loved preternatural terror.

If I must die, I'll s.n.a.t.c.h at everything That may but mind me of my latest breath; DEATH'S-HEADS, GRAVES, KNELLS, BLACKS,[132] TOMBS, all these shall bring Into my soul such _useful thoughts of death_, That this sable king of fears Shall not catch me unawares.--QUARLES.