The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 13
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Title: The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 13
Editor: Rossiter Johnson
Charles F. Horne
LL. D. John Rudd
Release date: October 6, 2009 [eBook #30186]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS, VOLUME 13 ***
THE GREAT EVENTS
BY
FAMOUS HISTORIANS
A COMPREHENSIVE AND READABLE ACCOUNT OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY, EMPHASIZING
THE MORE IMPORTANT EVENTS, AND PRESENTING THESE AS COMPLETE NARRATIVES
IN THE MASTER-WORDS OF THE MOST EMINENT HISTORIANS
NON-SECTARIAN NON-PARTISAN NON-SECTIONAL
ON THE PLAN EVOLVED FROM A CONSENSUS OF OPINIONS GATHERED FROM THE MOST
DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARS OF AMERICA AND EUROPE, INCLUDING BRIEF
INTRODUCTIONS BY SPECIALISTS TO CONNECT AND EXPLAIN THE CELEBRATED
NARRATIVES, ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY, WITH THOROUGH INDICES,
BIBLIOGRAPHIES, CHRONOLOGIES, AND COURSES OF READING
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
ROSSITER JOHNSON, LL.D.
ASSOCIATE EDITORS
CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D. JOHN RUDD, LL.D.
_With a staff of specialists_
_VOLUME XIII_
The National Alumni
Copyright, 1905, BY THE NATIONAL ALUMNI
[Illustration: The charge of the British at Quebec.
Painting by R. Caxton Woodville.]
CONTENTS
VOLUME XIII
PAGE
_An Outline Narrative of the Great Events_, xiii
CHARLES F. HORNE
_John Law Promotes the Mississippi Scheme (A.D. 1716)_, 1
LOUIS ADOLPHE THIERS
_Prince Eugene Vanquishes the Turks_
_Siege and Battle of Belgrad (A.D. 1717)_, 16
PRINCE EUGENE OF SAVOY
_Bursting of the South Sea Bubble (A.D. 1720)_, 22
LOUIS ADOLPHE THIERS
_Bach Lays the Foundation of Modern Music (A.D. 1723)_, 31
HENRY TIPPER
_Settlement of Georgia (A.D. 1732)_, 44
WILLIAM B. STEVENS
_Rise of Methodism (A.D. 1738)_
_Preaching of the Wesleys and of Whitefield_, 57
WILLIAM E.H. LECKY
_Conquests of Nadir Shah_
_Capture of Delhi (A.D. 1739)_, 72
SIR JOHN MALCOLM
_First Modern Novel (A.D. 1740)_, 100
EDMUND GOSSE
_Frederick the Great Seizes Silesia (A.D. 1740)_
_Maria Theresa Appeals to the Hungarians_, 108
WILLIAM SMYTH
_Defeat of the Young Pretender at Culloden (A.D. 1746)_
_Last of the Stuarts_, 117
JUSTIN McCARTHY
_Benjamin Franklin Experiments with Electricity (A.D. 1747)_, 130
JOHN BIGELOW AND BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
_Voltaire Directs European Thought from Geneva (A.D. 1755)_, 144
JOHN MORLEY
GEORGE W. KITCHIN
_Braddock's Defeat (A.D. 1755)_, 163
WINTHROP SARGENT
GEORGE WASHINGTON
CAPTAIN DE CONTRECOEUR
_Exile of the Acadian Neutrals (A.D. 1755)_, 181
WILLIAM H. WITHROW
_Clive Establishes British Supremacy in India_
_Black Hole of Calcutta: Battle of Plassey (A.D. 1756)_, 185
SIR ALEXANDER J. ARBUTHNOT
_Seven Years' War (A.D. 1756-1763)_
_Battle of Torgau_, 204
WOLFGANG MENZEL
FREDERICK THE GREAT
_Conquest of Canada_
_Victory of Wolfe at Quebec (A.D. 1759)_, 229
A.G. BRADLEY
_Usurpation of Catharine II in Russia (A.D. 1762)_, 250
W. KNOX JOHNSON
_Conspiracy of Pontiac (A.D. 1763)_, 267
E.O. RANDALL
_American Colonies Oppose the Stamp Act (A.D. 1765)_
_Patrick Henry's Speech_, 299
JAMES GRAHAME
GEORGE BANCROFT
_Watt Improves the Steam-engine (A.D. 1769)_, 302
FRANÇOIS ARAGO
_First Partition of Poland (A.D. 1772)_, 313
JAMES FLETCHER
_The Boston Tea Party (A.D. 1773)_, 333
GEORGE BANCROFT
_Cotton Manufacture Developed (A.D. 1774)_, 341
THOMAS F. HENDERSON
_Intellectual Revolt of Germany_
_Goethe's_ Werther _Arouses Romanticism (A.D. 1775)_, 347
KARL HILLEBRAND
_Pestalozzi's Method of Education (A.D. 1775)_, 364
GEORGE RIPLEY
_Universal Chronology (A.D. 1716-1775)_, 379
JOHN RUDD
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUME XIII
PAGE
_The charge of the British at Quebec (page 248)_,
Painting by R. Caton Woodville. Frontispiece
_The British officer reads the decree of exile of the Acadian
Neutrals, in the village church_, 184
Painting by Frank Dicksee.
AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE
TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF
THE GREAT EVENTS
(FROM VOLTAIRE TO WASHINGTON)
CHARLES F. HORNE
During the eighteenth century a remarkable change swept over Europe. The
dominant spirit of the time ceased to be artistic as in the Renaissance,
or religious as in the Reformation, or military as during the savage
civil wars that had followed. The central figure of the world was no
longer a king, nor a priest, nor a general. Instead, the man on whom all
eyes were fixed, who towered above his fellows, was a mere author,
possessed of no claim to notice but his pen. This was the age of the
arisen intellect.
The rule of Louis XIV, both in its splendor and its wastefulness, its
strength and its oppression, its genius and its pride, had well prepared
the way for what should follow. Not only had French culture extended
over Europe, but the French language had grown everywhere to be the
tongue of polite society, of the educated classes. It had supplanted
Latin as the means of communication between foreign courts. Moreover,
the most all-pervading and obtrusive of French monarchs was succeeded by
the most retiring, the one most ready of all to let the world take what
course it would. Louis XV chanced to reign during this entire period,
from 1715 to 1774, and that is equivalent to saying that France, which
had become the chief state of Europe, was ungoverned, was only robbed
and bullied for the support of a profligate court. So long as citizens
paid taxes, they might think--and say--wellnigh what they pleased.
The elder Louis had realized something of the error of his own career
and had left as his last advice to his successor, to abstain from war.
We are told that the obedient legatee accepted the caution as his motto,
and had it hung upon his bedroom wall, where it served him as an
excellent excuse for doing nothing at all. His government was
notoriously in the hands of his mistresses, Pompadour and the others,
and their misrule was to the full as costly to France as the wars of the
preceding age. They drained the country quite as deeply of its resources
and renown; they angered and insulted it far more.
Meanwhile the misery of all Europe, caused by the continued warfare,
cried out for reform, demanded it imperatively if the human race were
not to disappear. The population of France had diminished by over ten
per cent. during the times of the "Grand Monarch"; the cost of the
Thirty Years' War to Germany we have already seen. Hence we find
ourselves in a rather thoughtful and anxious age. Even kings begin to
make some question of the future. Governments become, or like to call
themselves, "benevolent despotisms," and instead of starving their
subjects look carefully, if somewhat dictatorially, to their material
prosperity.
England, to be sure, but England alone, stands out as an exception to
the prevalence of despotic rule. There the commons had already won their
battle. King George I, the German prince whom they had declared their
sovereign after the death of Anne (1714), did not even know his
subjects' language, communicated with his ministers in barbaric Latin,
and left the governing wholly in their hands. The "cabinet" system thus
sprang up; the ministers were held responsible to Parliament and obeyed
its will. The exiled Stuart kings made one or two feeble attempts to win
back their throne, but the tide of progress was against them and their
last hope vanished in the slaughter of Culloden.[1]
By that defeat Great Britain was finally and firmly established as a
parliamentary government; and the most marked of all the physical
changes of the century was the rapid expansion of her power under this
new form of rule. She grew to be really "mistress of the seas," extended
her sceptre over distant lands, ceased to be an island, and became a
world-wide empire. Her trade increased enormously; her manufactures
developed. By his invention of the "spinning-jenny," Arkwright placed
England's cotton manufacture among the most giant industries of the
world.[2] The land grew vastly rich. It was her reward for political
progress, for having been able so to "get the start of the majestic
world."
SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
At the opening of this period the talk of the town, both in Paris and in
London, ran on colonies and the tremendous wealth to be gained from them
as the Spaniards and the Dutch had done. During the minority of Louis
XV, even the Prince Regent of France dabbled in colonial investments.
The stock market became suddenly a prominent feature of politics. John
Law planned his dazzling "Mississippi Scheme," by which all Frenchmen
were to become millionaires. Only, unfortunately, the bubble burst, and
the industrious were ruined instead.[3] England had its "South Sea
Bubble," with the same madness of speculation, vanishing fortunes, and
blasted reputations.[4] The nobility having been driven by gunpowder
from their ancient occupation as warrior chiefs, having lost to kings
and people their rights as governors, became traders instead. We
approach a period in which they cease to be the leading order of
society, we approach the "reign of the middle classes."
From England, according to the English view, sprang also the great
intellectual movement of the age. Voltaire visited the England of
Addison and Pope; Montesquieu studied the English Constitution of 1689;
and these two men were the writers who overthrew absolutism in Europe,
who paved the way for the epoch of Revolution that was to follow.
Montesquieu's _Persian Letters_, satirizing French society, appeared as
early as 1721. Voltaire's sarcasms and witty sneers got him into trouble
with the French Government as early as 1715. He was imprisoned in the
Bastille, but released and at last driven from his country, a firebrand
cast loose upon Europe to spread the doctrine of man's equality, to cry
out everywhere for justice against oppression, and to mock with almost
satanic ingenuity against the religion in whose name Europe had plunged
into so many wars. By 1740 Voltaire was the most prominent figure of his
world, if we except perhaps the quarrelling sovereigns, Maria Theresa
and Frederick the Great. He dwelt for a time with Frederick in Berlin;
but the two disagreed as great potentates will, and Voltaire withdrew to
Geneva (1755), the little independent city republic which had served as
a refuge to so many fugitives on France's border.[5]
From Geneva, Voltaire corresponded with most of the crowned heads of
Europe. His advice was eagerly sought by "benevolent despotism." The aid
of his mighty pen was claimed by every victim of oppression. In Paris,
Diderot and his companions brought out the famous _Cyclopædia_, a mighty
monument of human learning indeed, but even more a mighty sermon against
tyranny, a scornful protest against Christianity, a teacher spreading
over all the earth the preachings of Voltaire.
If there was evil in this movement there was also good. Thought was
aroused, was stimulated, and everywhere the products of awakened genius
began to appear. The marvellous development of modern music had its
origin in this period with the creations of Bach.[6] The modern novel
began its tremendously important career with Richardson and Fielding.[7]
Inventive genius achieved the first great triumph of modern mechanicism
in Watt's steam-engine.[8] Even across the ocean spread the intellectual
impulse, and the New World had its Franklin to astonish and delight the
old with his experiments in electricity--childish experiments at first,
as man reached out slowly, shudderingly, toward control of this last and
most marvellous of his servants.[9]
Philanthropy awoke also. Serious folk began to have vague
self-questionings as to the righteousness of human slavery. The prison
system was investigated; in England there were vague attempts at its
reform. The noble Oglethorpe did what he could to arouse public
sentiment against imprisonment for debt, and in his own person led to
America a colony of the unfortunate victims of the system. They founded
Georgia, the latest of the colonies; and the chain of settlements along
the Atlantic coastline was complete.[10]
Who would find waste land to live on after that, must journey farther
west, must seek the interior of the new continent--a simple fact, but
one that was soon destined to produce tempestuous results.
In this age also, as if in answer to the spiritual apathy of which
Voltaire was only the expression, not the cause, there arose Methodism,
which in externals at least showed itself the most passionate and the
most expressive form of devotion to Christianity. Wesley and Whitefield,
the celebrated preachers, spread their doctrines over England in the
face of insult and persecution. They penetrated the American colonies;
their doctrines reached even beyond their language and affected the
entire European Continent. The revival of devotion may have been
hysterical, yet a vast revival it assuredly was; it has been called by
some critics the most important religious movement since the
Reformation.[11]
WARS OF EUROPE AND ASIA
In face of such events as these, we learn to attach less importance to
the schemes of kings, and their selfish territorial wars, horrible as
these may be in their exhibitions of human heartlessness and
blood-guilt, destructive as they have ever been in their consequences of
suffering and degeneration.
The Turks were now finally beaten back from their conquests in Hungary.
The war which they had begun with the siege of Vienna was continued by
the celebrated Austrian general, Prince Eugene, the companion of
Marlborough against Louis XIV. Eugene won victory after victory, and
finally by the capture of Belgrad (1717) drove the Mahometans forever
from Hungarian territory, reduced them from a universal menace to
become an ever-fading "Eastern question."[12]
Russia also, at first under Peter the Great and later under Catherine
II, began to reach out for Turkish territory. The Turks had risen by the
sword, and now, as other nations progressed and they stood still, the
power of the sword was failing them. Russia expanded toward the Black
Sea, as before she had expanded toward the Baltic, feeling out from her
boundaries everywhere, moving along the line of least resistance,
already looking toward Poland as her next tempting mouthful.
In Asia too the Turks had troubles to encounter. Asia, the vastly
productive, multitudinous through unprogressive, could still raise up
conquerors of the Turkish type to stand against them. The last of those
sudden waves of temporary, meaningless, barbarian conquest swept over
the Asian plains. Nadir Shah, a Persian bandit, freed his country from
the yoke of its Afghan tyrants, assumed its throne, and by repeated
battles enlarged his domains at Turkish expense. He subdued Afghanistan,
and then extending his attention to India made a sudden invasion of that
huge land, overthrew the forces of the Great Mogul, and, having captured
both him and his capital, permitted him to continue to reign as a sort
of subject prince. Returning from this distant expedition, Nadir Shah
was beginning to push his conquests over Northeastern Asia when he was
slain by a conspiracy among his Persian followers, driven to desperation
by his savage tyranny. His dominions fell to pieces with his death.[13]
Europe meanwhile was going through a series of wars which seem small
improvement over those of Nadir, except that they have had more polished
historians. The selfish principles of Louis XIV had not lost their
influence, the passion for territorial aggrandizement had not
disappeared. In all history it would be hard to find a war more brazen
in the avowed selfishness of its beginning, more utterly callous in its
persistence, than that into which all Europe plunged in 1740.
This astonishing turmoil is known as the War of the Austrian Succession.
We have seen how the extinction of the line of the Spanish Hapsburgs
had given rise to kingly jealousies and strife in 1700. Next the
Austrian Hapsburgs, or at least the male line of them, became extinct in
1740. Their surviving representative was a daughter, a young and
energetic woman, Maria Theresa, the "Empress Queen." Her father, the
Emperor Charles VI, foreseeing the difficulties she must encounter, had
during his lifetime made treaties with every important court of Europe,
by which he yielded them valuable concessions in return for their
guarantee that on his death his daughter should succeed to his throne
and his possessions undisturbed. Her husband was to be made emperor.
The moment Charles was gone, every treaty was thrown to the winds, and
every hand seemed extended by a common impulse to clutch what it could
from a woman's weakness.[14] The first to move was Frederick II, King of
Prussia, he whom his admirers have called the Great. He was a young man,
he had just succeeded to the Prussian kingdom which his father had left
peaceful and prosperous, guarded by a powerful and well-trained army,
made secure by a well-filled treasury. Young Frederick was undoubtedly
great in intellect and in cynical frankness. He saw his opportunity, he
made no pretence of keeping his promises; marching his army forward he
seized the nearest Austrian province, the rich and extensive land of
Silesia. The other kingdoms rushed to get their share of the spoils;
France, Bavaria, Saxony, Sardinia, and Spain formed an alliance with
Prussia. Only England, in her antagonism to France, made protest--purely
diplomatic. Austria was assailed from every side. Her overthrow seemed
certain. A French army was within three days' march of Vienna; it
captured the Bohemian capital, Prague.
It was then that Maria Theresa made her famous appeal to the Hungarians,
and the impressionable Magyars swore to die in her defence. She gathered
armies, Austrian and Hungarian. She made a desperate alliance with
Frederick, consenting to give him Silesia so as to save her other
domains. The members of the coalition quarrelled among themselves. The
French were driven to a disastrous retreat from Prague. Louis XV
remembered his disapproval of war, as soon as it became disastrous; and
the whole assault on the Empress Queen faded away as selfishly as it had
risen.
The only result was that Frederick had Silesia, and Maria Theresa
intended to have it back; and so they plotted and plotted, fought and
fought. War followed war, and battle, battle. Silesia became a desert at
last and of little value to either party. As to the Silesians who had
once existed there, a few of them escaped starvation and massacre, not
many, some hundred thousands, a mere matter of figures this in the
kingly game and not accurately kept count of.
THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR
The final upshot of this Silesian argument was the Seven Years' War.
Maria Theresa made friends with the mistress of Louis XV, and so secured
a French alliance. Frederick offended the Empress of Russia by his witty
tongue, and she also joined in the "ladies' war" against him. Saxony,
the nearest state to Prussia, was ever on the side of the strongest. So
here was the European coalition hurled against Frederick in his turn. He
proved the ablest general of his age, one of the master minds of
military skill. For seven years he withstood all his enemies, Austria
and Russia mainly, for Saxony he soon conquered, and France showed no
great military powers--disgraced herself if further disgrace were
possible to her condition.
Over the military details of the contest we need not pause.[15] Prussia
had always been regarded as one of the lesser European states, Austria
and France as the chief powers. Russia now proved herself of equal
weight with the greatest, so that even the genius of Frederick began to
fail against the enormous odds which crushed him down. His land was laid
waste, his capital seized by a sudden attack and held for ransom. He was
saved by the death of the Russian Empress; her son and successor, an
admirer of Frederick, promptly changed sides in the war. By degrees
everyone abandoned it but Maria Theresa; and she, finding her single
strength insufficient against Prussia, was compelled to yield at last.
Frederick kept his dear-bought desert of Silesia.
This Seven Years' War caused what that of the Austrian Succession had
attempted, a complete redistribution of the balance of European power,
England, Russia, and Prussia rising to at least equality with Austria
and France. Even before the opening of the formal war France and England
had been engaged in a colonial strife, which had caused England to
declare herself Frederick's ally; and, while in Europe the grapple
between England and France did not assume serious proportions, it was of
enormous consequence to their colonies in India and America.
In India both countries had trading-stations, but the French were
popular with the natives and the English were not. The weakness of the
native support was not realized by either party. The conquests of Nadir
Shah were scarcely known to them; the name of the Great Mogul at Delhi
was one of vagueness and mysterious power; it seemed to the French that
with Indian aid they could easily drive the English into the sea; and
the attempt was made. It must have been successful but for Clive. That
remarkable young warrior rose from his subordinate desk, laid aside his
clerkly pen, and gathering a little band of fighters round him, defeated
both French and natives in the remarkable siege of Arcot. Then came the
hideous tale of the "black hole of Calcutta," and Clive achieved revenge
and completed his work of conquest at Plassey (1757).[16]
Centuries had elapsed since Europeans had encountered, in serious
battle, any Asiatics except the Turks--and these had proved quite equal
to the strife. Hence the vast superiority which the more progressive
civilization had attained was little realized. The American aborigines
had indeed fallen an easy prey to Europe, but the conquest of Asia and
Africa had not yet been begun. Thus the victories of Clive seemed to his
contemporaries even more marvellous than they were. They won for England
not only an empire in India, but a high prestige in Europe also.
WAR IN AMERICA
In America the British success was equally decisive though more dearly
bought. Here the war had originated in the Ohio valley. Finding no more
room upon the coast, the English colonists were pressing westward and
there met the French. The vast wilderness which had lain unoccupied for
centuries, even though men knew of its existence, now became suddenly of
importance. Frenchmen needed it for their fur trade; Britons for
colonization. They fought for it.
Here as in India the natives had been won by the diplomatic French, but
their aid proved of no avail. The British Parliament sent over General
Braddock in 1757, and he perished with a large portion of his army in
the celebrated ambuscade from which Washington escaped.[17] For a time
French energy made the war seem not unequal; but the number of French in
America was small; the home Government of Louis XV seemed wholly lost in
sloth and indifferent to the result. The English Government was doggedly
resolute. Its unwilling subjects, the French colonists of Acadia, were
driven from their homes.[18] Troops were poured into America, and in
1759 Wolfe won his famous victory at Quebec.[19] The next year Montreal
also fell into the hands of the British, and the conquest of Canada was
complete.
The treaty of 1763, which ended the Seven Years' War for Prussia,
brought peace also between England and France. The latter surrendered
her colonial pretensions, partly in India, wholly in America, without
having really exerted herself to retain them. Perhaps her experience in
the Mississippi Scheme of Law had convinced her they were of but little
worth.
SUPREMACY OF FREDERICK THE GREAT
The latter half of the reign of Frederick the Great was very different
from its beginning. He had encountered war sufficient to satiate even
his reckless appetite, and he clung to peace. Prussia became for a while
the centre of European government and intrigue; and Frederick, by far
the ablest sovereign of his time, remained until his death (1786) the
leader in that system of paternal government, of kindly tyranny, which
typifies the age. He husbanded the resources of his country with jealous
care; he compelled his people to work, and be provident, and prosper,
whether they would or no. Maria Theresa treated her subjects with much
the same benevolence; and her son and successor Joseph II became the
most ardent of the admirers of Frederick. Russia also came under a ruler
of similar ideas, Catharine II,[20] a German princess by birth, who
wedded a czar, deposed him, and, ruling in his stead, became the most
Russian of the Russians. She ruled her land wisely and well, with a
little more than Frederick's tyranny, a little less than his
benevolence. She was cynical, as was the fashion, and her moral life
shocked even that easy-going age. Also she was a philosopher, and
invited Diderot, chief of the French Cyclopædists, to dwell at her
court, much as Voltaire had dwelt at Frederick's. French literature was
still the literature of Europe, and both Frederick and Catharine openly
despised the tongue of their own lands.
It was among these three congenial rulers, of Russia, Prussia, and young
Joseph of Austria, that the scheme arose of dividing Poland among
themselves.[21] This has been termed "the crime of the century," but it
was in strict accordance with what the rest of Europe had attempted to
do to Austria and then to Prussia. Only, the first two victims had
proved unexpectedly capable of resistance, the third was more shrewdly
selected. Kindly benevolent despotism had also a voice in the matter,
for Poland was wretchedly misgoverned, a source of constant danger to
herself and to her neighbors. It was really a kindness, as those
neighbors explained, to relieve her of half her territories. So well
were their successors of the next generation pleased with the results,
that they took each another slice, and then, fully convinced of the
ancestral wisdom and good-will, divided what was left.
SHADOW OF COMING CHANGES
The new cynicism and philosophy which was thus spreading even among
monarchs, was soon destined to have most explosive results. It found
expression first in a further revolt against the dominion of the Roman
Church. Most of the sovereigns joined in a determined attack against the
Jesuits, the enthusiastic and devoted priests who had become the
mainstay of the papal power. After a long resistance, the Jesuits
succumbed; their order was abolished by Pope Clement XIV in 1773.
The next startling symptom of the changing times was the rapid literary
development of Germany. Its young men had been left free to think and
talk. Frederick half contemptuously declared that his people might
believe what nonsense they pleased so long as they remained orderly. The
poet Lessing by his books roused the ancient spirit of liberty, long
dormant in the German mind. Goethe and Schiller became the foremost of a
crowd of younger men whose revolt at first took the form of an
extravagant devotion to romance as opposed to the dull workaday world
about them.[22] Pestalozzi, a Swiss, conceived the idea of reforming the
world through its children, encouraging the little ones by constant,
loving example to develop all the strength and goodness that was in
them.[23]
Yet the first open defiance given to despotism by the fast-growing
spirit of freedom came not from Europe but from America; was a revolt
not against the lazy tyranny in France or the kindly tyranny of Eastern
Europe, but against the constitutional government of England. When the
French minister signed the treaty surrendering to England all his
country's possessions in America he justified himself with a well-turned
phrase, "I give her all, on purpose to destroy her."
The words seemed prophetic, England's loss came through her gain. The
Indians, devoted to the French, refused to submit peacefully to the
change of rule. Pontiac, often regarded as the ablest statesman of his
fading race, gathered them into a widespread confederacy, and for years
held the English at bay in the region of the Great Lakes.[24] The
expenses involved both upon England and upon her American colonists by
this strife and by the French war itself were a constant source of
friction. England insisted that she had spent her substance in defence
of the colonists, and should be repaid by them. They on the other hand
asserted that she had fought for her own glory, and had been well repaid
by her vast increases of territory both in India and America; that they
had become impoverished, while she had now the richest trade in the
world, and stood upon the top-most pinnacle of national grandeur with
wealth pouring in to her from every quarter of the globe.
Neither side being able to convince the other by abstract argument,
England exerted her authority and passed the "Stamp Act," laying new
taxes on the colonists.[25] They responded with protests, argumentative,
eloquent, fiery, and defiant. They refused to trade with Great Britain,
and became self-supporting. Thus the obnoxious laws, instead of bringing
money to the mother country, caused her heavy losses. English merchants
joined the Americans in petitioning for the repeal of the offensive acts
of Parliament; and soon every tax was withdrawn except a tiny one on
tea, so small that the money involved was trifling. But it was not the
money, it was the principle involved, which had aroused the Americans;
and their resistance continued as vigorous as against the previous
really burdensome taxation. The tea which King George commanded should
be sent forcibly to the colonists, they refused to receive. In Boston it
was dumped into the harbor.[26]
The English Parliament drew back in amazement; its members found
themselves dealing, as one of them put it, with a nation of lawyers.
They were wrong; they had encountered a force far more potent, a nation
of freemen who had been permitted for a century and a half to rule
themselves, who had reached the fullest measure of self-reliance and
self-assertion. America had become earliest ripe for the Age of
Revolution toward which the European middle classes, more lately left to
themselves, were more slowly, but not less surely, developing.
[FOR THE NEXT SECTION OF THIS GENERAL SURVEY SEE VOLUME XIV]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See _Defeat of the Young Pretender at Culloden_, page 117.
[2] See _Cotton Manufacture Developed_, page 341.
[3] See _John Law Promotes the Mississippi Scheme_, page 1.
[4] See _Bursting of the South Sea Bubble_, page 22.
[5] See _Voltaire Directs European Thought from Geneva_, page 144.
[6] See _Bach Lays the Foundation of Modern Music_, page 31.
[7] See _First Modern Novel_, page 100.
[8] See _Watt Improves the Steam-engine_, page 302.
[9] See _Benjamin Franklin Experiments with Electricity_, page 130.
[10] See _Settlement of Georgia_, page 44.
[11] See _Rise of Methodism: Preaching of the Wesleys and of
Whitefield_, page 57.
[12] See _Prince Eugene Vanquishes the Turks: Siege and Battle of
Belgrad_, page 16.
[13] See _Conquests of Nadir Shah: Capture of Delhi_, page 72.
[14] _See Frederick the Great Seizes Silesia: Maria Theresa Appeals to
the Hungarians_, page 108.
[15] See _Seven Years' War: Battle of Torgau_, page 204.
[16] _See Clive Establishes British Supremacy in India: The Black Hole
of Calcutta: Battle of Plassey_, page 185.
[17] See _Braddock's Defeat_, page 163.
[18] See _Exile of the Acadian Neutrals_, page 181.
[19] See _Conquest of Canada: Victory of Wolfe at Quebec_, page 229.
[20] See _Usurpation of Catharine II in Russia_, page 250.
[21] See _First Partition of Poland_, page 313.
[22] See _Intellectual Revolt of Germany_, page 347.
[23] See _Pestalozzi's Method of Education_, page 364.
[24] See _Conspiracy of Pontiac_, page 267.
[25] See _American Colonies Oppose the Stamp Act_, page 289.
[26] See _Boston Tea Party_, page 333.
JOHN LAW PROMOTES THE MISSISSIPPI SCHEME
A.D. 1716
LOUIS ADOLPHE THIERS
Known under the various titles of the "Mississippi Scheme," the
"Mississippi Bubble," and the "System," the financial enterprise
originated by John Law, under authority of the French government,
proved to be the most disastrous experiment of the kind ever made by
a civilized state.
Louis XIV ended his long reign in 1715, leaving his throne to his
great-grandson, a child of five years, Louis XV. The impoverished
country was in the hands of a regent, Philippe, Duke of Orléans,
whose financial undertakings were all unfortunate. John Law, the son
of a Scotch banker, was an adventurer and a gambler who yet became
celebrated as a financier and commercial promoter. After killing an
antagonist in a duel in London, he escaped the gallows by fleeing to
the Continent, where he followed gaming and at the same time devised
financial schemes which he proposed to various governments for their
adoption. His favorite notion was that large issues of paper money
could be safely circulated with small security.
Law offered to relieve Orléans from his financial troubles, and the
Regent listened with favor to his proposals. In 1716 Law, with
others, organized what he called the General Bank. It was ably
managed, became popular, and by means of it Law successfully carried
out his paper-currency ideas. His notes were held at a premium over
those of the government, whose confidence was therefore won. Two
years later Law's institution was adopted by the state and became
the Royal Bank of France. The further undertakings of this
extraordinary "new light of finance," the blowing and bursting of
the great "bubble," are recorded by Thiers, the French statesman and
historian, himself eminent as his country's chief financier during
her wonderful recovery after the Franco-German War.
Law was always scheming to concentrate into one establishment his bank,
the administration of the public revenues, and the commercial
monopolies. He resolved, in order to attain this end, to organize,
separately, a commercial company, to which he would add, one after
another, different privileges in proportion to its success, and which
he would then incorporate with the General Bank. Constructing thus
separately each of the pieces of his vast machine, he proposed
ultimately to unite them and form the grand whole, the object of his
dreams and his ardent ambition.
An immense territory, discovered by a Frenchman, in the New World,
presented itself for the speculations of Law. The Chevalier de la Salle,
the famous traveller of the time, having penetrated into America by
Upper Canada, descended the river Illinois, arrived suddenly at a great
river half a league wide, and, abandoning himself to the current, was
borne into the Gulf of Mexico. This river was the Mississippi. The
Chevalier de la Salle took possession of the country he had passed
through for the King of France, and gave it the beautiful name of
Louisiana.
There was much said of the magnificence and fertility of this new
country, of the abundance of its products, of the richness of its mines,
which were reported to be much more extensive than those of Mexico or
Peru. Law, taking advantage of this current of opinion, projected a
company which should unite the commerce of Louisiana with the fur trade
of Canada. The Regent granted all he asked, by an edict given in August,
1717, fifteen months after the first establishment of the bank.
The new company received the title of the "West Indian Company." It was
to have the sovereignty of all Louisiana on the condition only of liege
homage to the King of France, and of a crown of gold of thirty marks at
the commencement of every new reign. It was to exercise all the rights
of sovereignty, such as levying troops, equipping vessels-of-war,
constructing forts, establishing courts, working mines, etc. The King
relinquished to it the vessels, forts, and munitions of war which
belonged to the Crozat Company,[27] and conceded, furthermore, the
exclusive right of the fur trade of Canada. The arms of this sovereign
company represented the effigy of an old river-god leaning upon a horn
of plenty.
Law revolved in his mind many other projects relating to his Western
company. He spoke, at first mysteriously, of the benefits which he was
preparing for it. Associating with a large number of noblemen, whom his
wit, his fortune, and the hope of considerable gains attracted around
him, he urged them strongly to obtain for themselves some shares, which
would soon rise rapidly in the market. He was himself soon obliged to
buy some above par. The par value being five hundred francs, two hundred
of them represented at par a sum of one hundred thousand francs. The
price for the day being three hundred francs, sixty thousand francs were
sufficient to buy two hundred shares. He contracted to pay one hundred
thousand francs for two hundred shares at a fixed future time; this was
to anticipate that they would gain at least two hundred francs each, and
that a profit of forty thousand francs could be realized on the whole.
He agreed, in order to make this sort of wager more certain, to pay the
difference of forty thousand francs in advance, and to lose the
difference if he did not realize a profit from the proposed transfer.
This was the first instance of a sale at an anticipated advance. This
kind of trade consisted in giving "earnest-money" called a premium,
which the purchaser lost if he failed to take the property. He who made
the bargain had the liberty of rescinding it if he would lose more by
adhering to it than by abandoning it. No advantage would accrue to Law
for the possible sacrifice of forty thousand francs, unless at the
designated time the shares had not been worth as much as sixty thousand
francs, or three hundred francs each; for having engaged to pay one
hundred thousand francs for what was worth only fifty thousand, for
instance, he would suffer less to lose his forty thousand francs than to
keep his engagement. But, evidently, if Law did wish by this method to
limit the possible loss, he hoped nevertheless not to make any loss at
all; and, on the contrary, he believed firmly that the two hundred
shares would be worth at least the hundred thousand francs, or five
hundred francs each, at the time fixed for the expiration of the
contract. This large premium attracted general attention, and people
were eager to purchase the Western shares. They rose sensibly during the
month of April, 1719, and went nearly to par. Law disclosed his
projects; the Regent kept his promise, and authorized him to unite the
great commercial companies of the East and West Indies.
The two companies of the East Indies and of China, chartered in 1664 and
1713, had conducted their affairs very badly: they had ceased to carry
on any commerce, and had underlet their privileges at a charge which was
very burdensome to the trade. The merchants who had bought it of them
did not dare to make use of their privileges, for fear that their
vessels would be seized by the creditors of the company. Navigation to
the East was entirely abandoned, and the necessity of reviving it had
become urgent. By a decree of May, 1719, Law caused to be accorded to
the West India Company the exclusive right of trading in all seas beyond
the Cape of Good Hope. From this time it had the sole right of traffic
with the islands of Madagascar, Bourbon, and France, the coast of Sofola
in Africa, the Red Sea, Persia, Mongolia, Siam, China, and Japan. The
commerce of Senegal, an acquisition of the company which still carried
it on, was added to the others, so that the company had the right of
French trade in America, Africa, and Asia. Its title, like its
functions, was enlarged; it was no longer called the "West India
Company," but the "_Indian_ Company." Its regulations remained the same
as before. It was authorized to issue another lot of shares, in order to
raise the necessary funds either to pay the debts of the companies which
it succeeded or for organizing the proper establishments. Fifty thousand
of these shares were issued at a par of five hundred francs, which made
a nominal capital of twenty-five millions. But the company demanded five
hundred fifty francs in cash for them, or a total of twenty-seven
millions two hundred fifty thousand francs, inasmuch as it esteemed its
privileges as very great and its popularity certain. It required fifty
francs to be paid in advance, and the remaining five hundred in twenty
equal monthly payments. In case the payments should not be fully made,
the fifty francs paid in advance were forfeited by the subscriber. It
was nothing but a bargain made at a premium with the public.
The prompt realization of the promises of Law, the importance and extent
of the last privileges granted to the company, the facilities accorded
to the subscribers, everything, induced a subscription to the new
shares. The movement became animated. One could, by the favorable terms
offered, by paying out five hundred fifty francs, obtain eleven shares
instead of one, and thus, with a little money, speculate to a
considerable amount. To this method of attracting speculators Law added
another; he procured a decision that no one should subscribe for the new
shares without exhibiting four times as many old ones. It was necessary,
therefore, to hasten to obtain them in order to fulfil the requisite
condition. In a short time they were carried up to par, and far above
that. From three hundred francs, at which they were at the start, they
rose to five hundred, five hundred fifty, six hundred, and seven hundred
fifty francs; that is, they gained 150 per cent. These second shares
were called the "daughters," to distinguish them from the first.
Law contemplated at last the completion of his project by uniting the
collection of the revenues to the other privileges of the Indian
Company, and redeeming the national debt. This was the greatest and most
difficult part of his plan.
The national debt was fifteen to sixteen hundred millions, partly in
contracts for perpetual annuities, partly in State notes which would
soon be due. The interest on the debt was eighty millions, or one-half
the revenue of the government. Some combination was necessary to meet
the state notes at their maturity, and to reduce the annual charges
which the public treasury could no longer sustain.
Law conceived the idea of substituting the company for the government,
and converting the whole national debt into shares in the Indian
Company. To accomplish this he wished the company to lend the treasury
the fifteen to sixteen hundred millions which would redeem the debt; and
that, to obtain this enormous sum, it should issue shares to that
amount. In this manner the fifteen or sixteen hundred millions furnished
to the government by the company, and paid out by the government to its
creditors, must return to the company by the sale of its shares. Let us
see the means which Law had devised to insure the success of his scheme.
The government would pay 3 per cent. interest for the sum loaned to it,
which would make forty-five or forty-eight millions a year. The treasury
would thus effect an annual saving of thirty-two or thirty-five millions
in the interest on the debt. In return, the collection of the revenue
must be transferred to the company, notwithstanding that it had been
actually granted to the brothers Paris. The collection would pay the
collectors a net profit of fifteen or sixteen millions. The company,
receiving 3 per cent. interest on the capital invested, and reaping from
another source a profit of fifteen or sixteen millions, would be in a
position to pay 4 per cent. on the sixteen hundred millions of the debt
converted into shares.
The profits from commerce and its future success might soon enable it to
increase this dividend. According to the prevailing rates of interest,
which had fallen to 3 per cent. since the establishment of the bank,
this was a sufficient remuneration on the shares. They had, besides, the
hope of increasing their capital. The shares having, in fact, doubled in
value during the opposition of the "Antisystem," they ought to increase
still more rapidly since they were relieved from this opposition. The
expectation that the fifteen or sixteen hundred millions of the debt
would be invested in the shares was well founded. There was even a
certainty of it; for this immense capital, forcibly expelled from its
investment in state securities, could find no other place for investment
than in the company.
This plan of Law's was vast and bold. Its success would liquidate the
state debt and diminish the annual charges on the treasury, reducing the
interest from eighty millions to forty-five or forty-eight millions. The
annual charges from which the treasury was to be relieved were to be
paid from the profits on the collection of the revenue and the
contingent profits of commerce. The whole operation was to pay the
creditors of the state 3 per cent. per annum, and the profits and
monopolies heretofore granted to farmers of the revenue and commercial
companies. This 3 per cent. interest, these profits, and these
monopolies, as we shall soon see, might easily amount to the sum of
eighty millions annually, which the creditors were formerly paid. Thus
far they were not defrauded by this forced conversion of securities; a
credit entirely new was substituted for one which was worn out; an
establishment had been created, which, combining the functions of a
commercial bank and the administration of the finances, must become the
most colossal financial power ever known.
The first subscription having been taken up in a few days, Law opened a
new one on September 28th, for the same amount and on exactly the same
conditions as the preceding.
The eagerness of subscribers was the same. The creditors passed whole
days at the offices of the treasury to obtain their receipts, and there
were some even who had their meals brought to them there, so that they
might not lose their turn in the ranks. The state notes were, of course,
much in demand, and had rapidly risen to par. They had even given rise
to a most reprehensible speculation. A confidential clerk of Law, the
Prussian Versinobre, having known in advance of the decree regarding the
payment, abused his knowledge of the secret, and caused to be bought by
brokers with whom he was associated a large amount of state notes at 50
or 60 per cent. below their nominal value, and employed them for the
subscriptions when they were received at par. When it is considered that
the subscriptions, already, were sold at a large advance, and that by
means of the state notes they were bought at about half price, it will
be understood what a profit this company of brokers must have realized.
Those who intended to subscribe had accomplished comparatively little by
obtaining receipts or state notes; it was still necessary to go to the
Hôtel de Nevers, where the subscriptions were received. The entrances
there were crowded to suffocation. The hall servants made considerable
sums by subscribing for those who could not get through the crowd to the
offices. Some adventurers, assuming the livery of Law, performed this
service, charging and obtaining a very large fee. The most humble
employees of the company became patrons who were very much courted. As
to the higher officers and Law himself, they received as much adulation
as if they were the actual dispensers of the favors of Fortune. The
approaches to Law's residence were encumbered with carriages. All that
was most brilliant among the nobility of France came to beg humbly for
the subscriptions, which were already much above the nominal price of
shares, and which were sure to rise much higher. By a clause creating
the company, the ownership of the shares entailed nothing derogatory to
rank. The nobility, therefore, could indulge in this speculation without
endangering its titles. It was as much in debt as the King, thanks to
its prodigality and the long wars of that century, and it sought to win,
at least, the amount of its debt by fortunate speculations. It
surrounded, it fawned upon Law, who, very anxious to gain partisans,
reserved very few shares for himself, but distributed them among his
friends of the court.
This new subscription was also taken up in a few days. If we reflect
that fifty millions in cash was sufficient to secure five hundred
millions of each issue, we shall understand how the state notes which
remained in market and the receipts already delivered would suffice to
monopolize the shares offered to the public. The creditors who had not
liquidated their claims--and the greater number had not--could not avail
themselves of the right to subscribe for shares, and were obliged to buy
them in the market at an exorbitant price. The shares subscribed for at
the Hôtel de Nevers for five thousand francs were re-sold in the Rue
Quincampoix for six, seven, and eight thousand francs. To the need of
having some of this investment was joined the hope of seeing the shares
rise in the market to an indefinite extent, and it is not surprising
that the eagerness to obtain them soon increased to frenzy. In order to
satisfy this demand a third subscription was opened on October 2d, three
days after the second. Similar in every respect to the first two, it
ought to bring in a capital of five hundred millions and complete the
fifteen hundred millions which the company needed to redeem the public
debt.
The concourse of people was as great as ever at the treasury, where the
receipts were given and at the Hôtel de Nevers, where the applications
for shares were received. The occasion of this eagerness is evident,
since that which was obtained at the Hôtel de Nevers for five thousand
francs was worth seven and eight thousand in the Rue Quincampoix. This
new issue at five thousand francs caused the rates in the Rue
Quincampoix to diminish: in an instant they were below five thousand
francs--even as low as four thousand--so blind were these movements,
and, so to speak, convulsive, during this period of feverish excitement.
There was no possible reason for selling in one place for four thousand
francs that for which they paid five thousand at another. But this
phenomenon lasted only a few hours; the rates rose again rapidly, and,
the subscription being taken up, the shares sold again for seven and
eight thousand francs. The crafty brokers had already had two
opportunities of making some profitable operations.
Having obtained the state notes at a very small price, they procured
shares at the most moderate rates, between five hundred and a thousand
francs; then they sold them for from seven to eight thousand francs; and
October 2d, the day of the decline, they repurchased them for four
thousand, to sell them again the next day for seven or eight thousand.
It will be seen how they must have made money with these opportunities.
It was no longer a few scattered groups which were seen in the Rue
Quincampoix, but a compact crowd engaged in speculating from morning
till night. The subscriptions had been divided into coupons,
transferable, like notes, to the bearer by an indorsement simply formal.
During the course of October the shares had already risen above ten
thousand francs, and it was impossible to know where they would stop.
The end of the month of December, 1719, was the term of this delusion of
three months. A certain number of stock-jobbers, better advised than
others, or more impatient to enter upon the enjoyment of their riches,
combined to dispose of their shares. They took advantage of the rage
which led so many to sell their estates--they purchased them, and thus
obtained the real for the imaginary. They established themselves in
splendid mansions, upon magnificent domains, and made a display of their
fortunes of thirty or forty millions. They possessed themselves of
precious stones and jewels, which were still eagerly offered, and
secured solid value in exchange for the semblance of it, which had
become so prized by the crowd of dupes. The first effect of this desire
to realize was a general increase in the price of everything. An
enormous mass of paper being put in the balance with the existing
quantity of merchandise and other property, the more paper there was
offered against purchasable objects the more rapid the increase became.
Cloth which heretofore brought fifteen to eighteen francs a yard rose to
one hundred twenty-five francs a yard. In a cook-shop a "Mississippian,"
bidding against a nobleman for a fowl, ran the price up to two hundred
francs.
From this instant the shares suffered their first decline, and a heavy
uneasiness began to spread abroad. The extent of the fall was not
measured by those whom it menaced; but people wondered, doubted, and
began to be alarmed. The shares declined to fifteen thousand francs.
However, the bank-notes were not yet distrusted. The bank was, in fact,
entirely distinct from the company, and their fate, up to this time,
appeared in no way dependent the one on the other. The notes had not
undergone any fictitious and extraordinary advance. Large amounts had
been issued, certainly, but for gold and silver, and upon the deposit of
shares. The portion which had been issued upon the deposit of shares
partook of the danger of the shares themselves; but no one thought of
that, and the bank-notes still possessed the entire confidence of the
public; only they no longer had the same advantage over specie since the
latter had been so much sought by the "realizers." The notes already
began to be presented at the bank for coin, and the vast reserve which
it had possessed began to diminish perceptibly.
Law did then what governments do so often, and always with ill-success:
he resorted to forced measures. He declared, in the first place, by
decree, that the bank-notes should always be worth 5 per cent. more than
coin.
In consideration of this superiority in value the prohibition which
forbade the deposits of gold and silver for bills, at Paris, was taken
off, so that notes could be procured at the bank for coin. This
permission was simply ridiculous, for no one now wished to exchange
specie for paper, even at par. But this was not all; the decree declared
that thereafter silver should not be used in payments of over one
hundred francs nor gold in those over three hundred francs. This was
forcing the circulation of notes in large payments, and that of specie
in small, and was designed to accomplish by violence what could only be
expected from the natural success of the bank.
These measures did not bring any more gold and silver to the bank. The
necessity of using bank-notes in payment of over three hundred francs
gave them a certain forced employment, but did not procure them
confidence. Notes were used for large payments, but coin was amassed
secretly as a value more real and more assured. The creditors of the
state ceased to carry their receipts to the Rue Quincampoix, because
they already distrusted the shares; they could not decide to buy real
estate, because the price had been quadrupled; they suffered the most
painful anxiety, and in their turn embarrassed the holders of shares
who needed the receipts to pay their instalments of one-tenth. The
catastrophe approached, and nothing could avert it, unless some magic
wand could give the company an income of four or five hundred millions a
year, which was now only seventy or eighty millions.
Law, adding measures to measures, at last prohibited the circulation of
gold, because this metal was, by its convenience, a rival of bank-notes
infinitely more dangerous than silver. He then announced an approaching
reduction in the value of coin, which he had raised by a decree in
February, only to reduce it again in a short time. The mark, in silver,
raised from sixty to eighty francs, was reduced to seventy on April 1st,
and sixty-five on May 1st. But this measure was utterly insufficient to
bring it to the bank.
The situation grew worse every day; the issue of notes to pay for the
shares presented at the bank had risen to two billions six hundred
ninety-six millions; their depreciation increased; and creditors of
every description, being paid in paper which was at a discount of 60 per
cent., complained bitterly of the theft authorized by law.
In this juncture there remained but one step to be taken. As the
necessary sacrifice had not been made in the first place, and the shares
abandoned to their fate in order to protect the notes, both must now be
sacrificed, shares and notes together, in order to finish this wicked
fiction. The falsehood of this nominal value, which obliged men to
receive at par what was depreciated 30 or 40 per cent., could not be
prolonged. The immediate reduction of the nominal value of the shares
and bank-notes was the only resource. Sacrifices cannot be too hastily
made when they are inevitable.
M. d'Argenson, although dismissed from the treasury, still remained
keeper of the seals; he had risen in the esteem of the Regent as Law had
declined, and he advised the reduction of the nominal value of the
shares and notes as an urgent necessity. Law, who saw in this reduction
an avowal of the fiction in the legal values, and a blow which must
hasten the fall of the "System," opposed it with his whole strength.
Nevertheless, M. d'Argenson prevailed. On May 21, 1720, a decree, which
remains famous in the history of the "System," advertised the
progressive reduction in the value of shares and notes. This reduction
was to begin on the very day of the publication of the decree, and to
continue from month to month until December 1st. At this last term the
shares were to be estimated at five thousand francs, and a bank-note of
ten thousand francs at five thousand; one of a thousand at five hundred,
etc. The notes were thus reduced 50 per cent., and the shares only
four-ninths per cent. Law, although opposed to the decree, consented to
promulgate it.
Scarcely was it published when a fearful clamor was raised on all sides.
The reduction was called a bankruptcy; the government was reproached
with being the first to throw discredit upon the values which it had
created, with having robbed its own creditors, a number of whom had just
been paid in bank-notes, even as late as the preceding day--in a word,
with assailing the fortunes of all the citizens. The crowd wished to
sack Law's hotel and to tear him in pieces. Nothing that could have
happened would have produced a greater clamor; but in times like those
it was not only necessary not to fear these clamors: it was even a duty
to defy them.
The reply to the complaints would have soon been evident to the
intelligence of everybody. Without doubt the creditors of the state, and
some private individuals, who had been paid in bank-notes, were half
ruined by the reduction, but this was not the fault of the decree of May
21st--the real reduction was long before this; the decree only stated a
loss already experienced, and the notes were worth still less than the
decree declared. Because a number of creditors had been ruined by the
falsity of nominal values, was it a reason to continue the fiction that
it might extend the ruin? On the contrary, it was necessary to put an
end to it, to save others from becoming victims. The official
declaration of the fact, although it was known before, must produce a
shock and hasten the discredit, but it was of little importance that it
was hastened, since it was inevitable.
The public thought Law the author of this measure, advised exclusively
by M. d'Argenson, and he became the sole object of hatred. The
Parliament, making common cause with the public, thought it a good
opportunity to take up arms. It did not perceive, in its blind hatred of
the "System," that it was going to render a service to its author, and
that to declare itself against the reduction of the bank-notes was to
maintain that the values created by Law had a solid foundation. It
assembled on May 27th to demand a revocation of the decree of the 21st.
At the very moment when it was deliberating, the Regent sent one of his
officers to prohibit all discussion, announcing the revocation of the
decree.
The Regent had the weakness to yield to the public clamor. Had the
decree been bad, its revocation would have been worse. To declare that
the shares and notes were still worth what they purported to be availed
nothing, for no one believed it, and their credit was not restored by
it. A legal falsehood was reaffirmed, and, without rendering any service
to those who were already ruined, the ruin of those who were obliged to
receive the notes at their nominal value was insured. The decree of May
21st, wise if it had been sustained, became disastrous as soon as it was
revoked. Its only effect was to hasten the general discredit, without
the essential advantage of reëstablishing a real, legal value.
We have just said that the bank was not obliged to pay notes of over one
hundred francs. It paid them slowly, and employed all imaginable
artifices to avoid the payment of them. Nevertheless, its coffers were
almost exhausted, and it was necessary to authorize it to confine its
disbursements to the payment of notes of ten francs only. The people
rushed to the bank in crowds to realize their notes of ten francs,
fearing that these would soon share the fate of those of one hundred.
The pressure was so great that three persons were suffocated. The
indignant mob, ready for any excess, already menaced the house of Law.
He fled to the Palais Royal to seek an asylum near the Regent. The mob
followed him, carrying the bodies of the three who had been suffocated.
The carriage which had just conveyed him was broken to pieces, and it
was feared that even the residence of the Regent would not be respected.
The gates of the court of the Palais Royal had been closed; the Duke of
Orléans, with great presence of mind, ordered them to be opened. The
crowd rushed into the court and suddenly stopped upon the steps of the
palace. Leblanc, the chief of police, advanced to those who bore the
corpses, and said, "My friends, go place these bodies in the Morgue,
and then return to demand your payment." These words calmed the tumult;
the bodies were carried away and the sedition was quelled.
Severities against the rich "Mississippians" were commenced in this same
month of October. For a long time it had been suspected that the
government, following an ancient usage, would deprive them, by means of
_visas_ and _chambres-ardentes_, of what they had acquired by
stock-jobbing. A list was made of those known to have speculated in
shares. A special commission arbitrarily placed on this list the names
of those whom public opinion designated as having enriched themselves by
speculation in paper. They were ordered to deposit a certain number of
shares at the offices of the company, and to purchase the required
number if they had sold their own. The "realizers" were thus brought
back by force to the company which they had deserted. Eight days were
given to speculators of good faith to make, voluntarily, the prescribed
deposit. To prevent flight from the country, it was prohibited, under
pain of death, to travel without a passport.
These measures increased still more the decline of the shares. All those
whose names were not upon the list of rich speculators, and who could
not tell what became of the shares not yet deposited, hastened to
dispose of all they retained.
The "System" wholly disappeared in November, 1720, one year after its
greatest credit. All the notes were converted into annuities or
preferred shares, and all the shares were deposited with the company.
Then a general visa was ordered, consisting of an examination of the
whole mass of shares, with the purpose of annulling the greater portion
of those which belonged to the enriched stock-jobbers.
Law, foreseeing the renewed rage which the visa would excite, determined
to leave France. The hatred against him had been so violent since the
scene of July 17th that he had not dared to quit the Palais Royal. The
following fact will give an idea of the fury excited against him: A
hackman, having a quarrel with the coachman of a private carriage, cried
out, "There is Law's carriage!" The crowd rushed upon the carriage, and
nearly tore in pieces the coachman and his master before it could be
undeceived.
Law demanded passports of the Duke of Orléans, who granted them
immediately. The Duke of Bourbon, made rich by the "System," felt under
obligations to Law, and offered money and the carriage of Madame de
Prie, his mistress. Law refused the money and accepted the carriage. He
repaired to Brussels, taking with him only eight hundred louis. Scarcely
was he gone when his property, consisting of lands and shares, was
sequestrated.
FOOTNOTES:
[27] A company headed by Anthony Crozat. It was chartered in 1712, and
formed a commercial monopoly in Louisiana.--ED.
PRINCE EUGENE VANQUISHES THE TURKS
SIEGE AND BATTLE OF BELGRAD
A.D. 1717
PRINCE EUGENE OF SAVOY
This struggle marked the disastrous end of a determined effort of
the Ottoman empire to recover lost possessions. It also resulted in
giving all Hungary, with Belgrad and a part of Servia, permanently
to Austria. After their last great invasion of Austrian territory
and their crushing defeat by Sobieski and the Imperialists (1683),
the Turks suffered many losses of territory at the hands of various
European powers. In 1696 Peter the Great took from them Azov, an
important entrance to the Black Sea. By the treaty of the Pruth
(1711) this, with other Russian possessions, was again ceded to the
Turks.
The temporary success led them to seek further recoveries. Their aim
was chiefly directed against Austria and Venice, which had
aggrandized themselves at the expense of the Moslem power. Turkish
victories caused the Venetians to call in the aid of Austria. The
Austrian intervention not only saved Venice, but once more checked
the Turkish arms.
The Emperor Charles VI appointed as leader of the Austrian forces
Prince Eugene of Savoy, already distinguished through a long series
of wars as one of the greatest soldiers of his time, the companion
of Marlborough. In 1716 Eugene defeated the grand vizier at
Temesvar, and in the following year took Belgrad and destroyed the
Turkish army, as told in his own racy and cavalier style.
From all sides men flocked to serve under me. There were enough to form
a squadron of princes and volunteers. Among the former a Prince of
Hesse, two of Bavaria, a Bevern, a Culenbach, one of Wuertemberg, two of
Ligne, one of Lichtenstein, of Anhalt-Dessau, the Count of Charolai, the
Princes of Dombes, of Marsillac, of Pons, etc.
The Emperor made me a present of a magnificent diamond crucifix, and
strongly assured me that all my victories came, and would come, from
God; this was getting rid of gratitude toward me; and I set off for
Futack, where I assembled my army toward the end of May, 1717.
It was necessary to possess myself of Belgrad, which for three centuries
had been so many times taken and retaken. Luckily, I did not find there
the cordelier, John de Capistran, who, with the crucifix in his hand,
and in the hottest part of the fire during the whole day, defended the
place so well: and Hunyady, who commanded there, against Mahomet II in
1456. Hunyady died of his wounds. The Emperor lost Belgrad; Mahomet lost
an eye, and the cordelier was canonized.
Unfortunately the Grand Seignior had but too well replaced the
wrong-headed grand vizier, who had been killed. It was the Pacha of
Belgrad, who supplied the vacancy, called Hastchi Ali, who made the most
judicious arrangements for the preservation of the place, and caused me
a great deal of embarrassment. On June 10th I passed the Danube: my
volunteer princes threw themselves into boats to arrive among the first,
and to charge the spahis with some squadrons of Mercy, which had already
passed below Panczova, to protect the disembarkation of some, and the
bridge constructed for the others, with eighty-four boats. On the 19th I
went, with a large escort, to reconnoitre the place where I wished to
pitch my camp. Twelve hundred spahis rushed upon us with unequalled
fury, and shouted "_Allah! Allah!_" I know not why one of their officers
broke through a squadron which was in front, to find me at the head of
the second, where I placed myself from prudential motives, having many
orders to give. He missed me, and I was going to obtain satisfaction
with my pistol when a dragoon at my side knocked him under his horse. On
the same day we had a naval combat, which lasted two hours; and our
saics having the advantage I remained master of the operations on the
Danube. On the 20th I continued working on the lines of contravallation,
under a dreadful fire from the place. Toward the end of June I advanced
my camp so near Belgrad that the bullets were constantly flying over my
head. A storm destroyed all my bridges: and, but for the courage of a
Hessian officer, in a redoubt, I do not know how I should have been able
to reëstablish the one upon the Save.
Wishing to take the place on the side next the water, I caused a fort at
the mouth of the Donawitz to be attacked by Mercy, who fell from his
horse, in an apoplectic fit. They carried him away, thinking him dead.
He was afterward successfully cured; but, being informed of his
accident I went to replace him, and the fort was taken. The Prince of
Dombes narrowly escaped being killed at my side by a bullet which made
my horse rear. Marcilly was killed in bravely defending a post which I
had charged him to intrench. He demanded succor from Rudolph Heister,
who refused him, and who was deservedly killed as a punishment for his
cowardice, by a cannon-ball which reached him behind his
chevaux-de-frise. I arrived, accidentally at first, with a large escort;
I sent for a large detachment; I halted, and completely beat the
janizaries, leaving, indeed, five hundred men killed upon the field,
Taxis, Visconti, Suger, etc. The Pacha of Roumelia, the best officer of
the Mussulmans, lost his life also.
On July 22d my batteries were finished. I bombarded, burned, and
destroyed the place so much that they would have capitulated if they had
not heard that the grand vizier had arrived at Missa, on the 30th, with
two hundred fifty thousand men.
On August 1st we saw them on the heights which overlooked my camp,
extending in a semicircle from Krotzka as far as Dedina. The Mussulmans
formed the most beautiful amphitheatre imaginable, very agreeable to
look at, excellent for a painter, but hateful to a general. Enclosed
between this army and a fortress which had thirty thousand men in
garrison, the Danube on the right, and the Save on the left, my
resolution was formed. I intended to quit my lines and attack them,
notwithstanding their advantage of ground: but the fever, which had
already raged in my army, did not spare me. Behold me seriously ill, and
in my bed, instead of being at the head of my troops, whom I wished to
lead the road to honor.
I can easily conceive that this caused a little uneasiness at the court,
in the city, and even in my army. It required boldness and good-fortune
to extricate one's self from it. The general who might have succeeded me
would, and indeed, almost must, have thought that he should be lost if
he retreated, and be beaten if he did not retreat. Every day made our
situation worse. The numerous artillery of the Turks had arrived on the
heights of which I have spoken. We were so bombarded with it, as well as
with that from the garrison, that I knew not where to put my tent, for,
in going in and out, many of my domestics had been killed. In the small
skirmishes which we often had with the spahis, my young volunteers did
not fail to be among them, discharging their pistols, though
cannon-balls intermingled also. And one day, D'Esrade, the governor of
the Prince of Dombes, had his leg shot off by his side, and one of his
pages was killed. All our princes, whom I have enumerated above,
distinguished themselves, and loved me like their father.
I had caused the country in the rear of the grand vizier's army to be
ravaged: but these people, as well as their horses and especially their
camels, will live almost upon nothing. Scarcely an hour passed in which
I did not lose a score of men by the dysentery, or by the cannon from
the lines, which the infidels advanced more and more every night toward
my intrenchments. I was less the besieger than the besieged. My affairs
toward the city went on better. A bomb which fell into a magazine of
powder completed its destruction and occasioned the loss of three
thousand men.
At length I recovered from my illness; and, on August 15th,
notwithstanding the ill-advice of persons who were not fond of battles,
the matter was fixed. I calculated that listlessness and despair would
produce success.
I did not sleep, as Alexander did before the battle of Arbela; but the
Turks did, who were no Alexanders: opium and predestination will make
philosophers of us. I gave brief and explicit instructions touching
whatever might happen. I quitted my intrenchments one hour after
midnight: the darkness first and then a fog rendered my first
undertakings mere chance. Some of my battalions, on the right wing,
fell, unintentionally, while marching, into a part of the Turkish
intrenchments. A terrible confusion among them, who never have either
advanced posts or spies; and, among us, a similar confusion, which it
would be impossible to describe: they fired from the left to the centre,
on both sides, without knowing where. The janizaries fled from their
intrenchments: I had time to throw into them fascines and gabions, to
make a passage for my cavalry who pursued them, I know not how: the fog
dispersed and the Turks perceived a dreadful breach. But for my second
line, which I ordered to march there immediately, to stop this breach,
I should have been lost. I then wished to march in order: impossible! I
was better served than I expected. La Colonie, at the head of his
Bavarians, rushed forward and took a battery of eighteen pieces of
cannon. I was obliged to do better than I wished. I sustained the
Bavarians; and the Turks, after having fled to the heights, lost all the
advantages of their ground. A large troop of their cavalry wished to
charge mine, which were too much advanced; a whole regiment was cut in
pieces; but two others, who arrived opportunely to their aid, decided
the victory. It was then that I received a cut from a sabre; it was, I
believe, my thirteenth wound, and probably my last. Everything was over
at eleven o'clock in the morning. Viard, during the battle, retained the
garrison of Belgrad, which capitulated the same day. I forgot that there
was no Boufflers there: I played the generous man: I granted the honors
of war to the garrison, who, not knowing what they meant, did not avail
themselves of them. Men, women, and children, chariots and camels,
issued forth all at once, pell-mell, by land and by water.
At Vienna the devotees cried out, "A miracle!" those who envied me cried
out, "Good-fortune!" Charles VI was, I believe, among the former: and
Guido Stahrenberg among the latter. I was well received, as might have
been expected.
Here is my opinion respecting this victory, in which I have more cause
for justification than for glory; my partisans have spoken too favorably
of it, and my enemies too severely. They would have had much more reason
to propose cutting off my head on this occasion than on that of Zenta,
for there I risked nothing. I was certain of conquering: but here, not
only I might have been beaten, but totally ruined and lost in a storm,
for the enemy's artillery to the left, on the shores of the Danube, had
destroyed my bridges. I was, indeed, superior in saics and in workmen
and artillerymen to protect or repair them: I had a corps also at
Semlin.
Could I anticipate the tardiness or disinclination of the authorities
who engaged in this war, where there were so many vices of the interior
in administration, and so much ignorance in the chiefs of the civil and
commissariat departments? Hence it was that I was in want of everything
necessary to commence the siege, and to take Belgrad before the arrival
of the grand vizier, and which hindered me afterward from checking him
on the heights. This, however, I should have done--but for my cursed
fever--before his artillery arrived. And then that unlucky dysentery,
which put my army into the hospital, or rather into the burying-ground,
for each regiment had one behind its camp--could I anticipate that also?
These were the two motives which induced me to attack, and to risk all
or nothing, for I was as certainly lost one way as another. I threw up
intrenchments against intrenchments: I knew a little more upon that
subject than my comrade the grand vizier; and I had plenty of troops in
health to guard them. I obliged him for want of provisions--for, as I
have already said, I caused all the country in his rear to be
ravaged--to decamp, and, consequently, Belgrad to surrender. Thus, if
this manuscript should be read, give me neither praise, my dear reader,
nor blame. After all, I extricated myself, perhaps, as Charles VI said,
his confessor, and the pious souls who trust in God, and who wished me
at the Devil, by the protection of the Virgin Mary, for the battle was
fought on Assumption Day.
Europe was getting embroiled elsewhere. Some charitable souls advised
the Emperor to send me to negotiate at London, reckoning that they might
procure for another the easy glory of terminating the war.
I was not such a fool as to fall into this snare, and I set off for
Hungary at the commencement of June, with a fine sword worth eighty
thousand florins which the Emperor had presented to me.
BURSTING OF THE SOUTH SEA BUBBLE
A.D. 1720
LOUIS ADOLPHE THIERS
Never, perhaps, was there a time when rash monetary speculation
seized with a firmer grip upon people and governments than during
the early part of the eighteenth century. Concurrently with the
delusive "Mississippi Scheme" of John Law (1717), which resulted in
financial panic in France, a similarly disastrous enterprise was
carried on in England. This was the attempt to turn the South Sea
Company into a concern for enriching quickly both its private and
its governmental investors. The collapse of this scheme, in the same
year as that of Law's, caused even more serious and widespread ruin.
Thiers' relation of the origin and development of the South Sea
Company, of the forming and collapse of the "bubble," and of the
spread of the speculative mania which manifested itself in so many
other extravagant projects, makes a fitting counterpart to this
historian's narrative of the rise and fall of the contemporary
scheme in his own country.
The South Sea Company was originated by the celebrated Harley, Earl of
Oxford, in the year 1711, with the view of restoring public credit,
which had suffered by the dismissal of the Whig ministry, and of
providing for the discharge of the army and navy debentures and other
parts of the floating debt, amounting to nearly ten millions sterling. A
company of merchants, at that time without a name, took his debt upon
themselves, and the government agreed to secure them for a certain
period the interest of 6 per cent. To provide for this interest,
amounting to six hundred thousand pounds per annum, the duties upon
wines, vinegar, India goods, wrought silks, tobacco, whale-fins, and
some other articles were rendered permanent. The monopoly of the trade
to the South Seas was granted, and the company, being incorporated by
act of Parliament, assumed the title by which it has ever since been
known. The minister took great credit to himself for his share in this
transaction, and the scheme was always called by his flatterers "the
Earl of Oxford's masterpiece."
Even at this early period of its history the most visionary ideas were
formed by the company and the public of the immense riches of the
eastern coast of South America. Everybody had heard of the gold and
silver mines of Peru and Mexico; everyone believed them to be
inexhaustible, and that it was only necessary to send the manufactures
of England to the coast to be repaid a hundred-fold in gold and silver
ingots by the natives. A report industriously spread, that Spain was
willing to concede four ports on the coasts of Chile and Peru for the
purposes of traffic, increased the general confidence, and for many
years the South Sea Company's stock was in high favor.
Philip V of Spain, however, never had any intention of admitting the
English to a free trade in the ports of Spanish America. Negotiations
were set on foot, but their only result was the _assiento_ contract, or
the privilege of supplying the colonies with negroes for thirty years,
and of sending once a year a vessel, limited both as to tonnage and
value of cargo, to trade with Mexico, Peru, or Chile. The latter
permission was only granted upon the hard condition that the King of
Spain should enjoy one-fourth of the profits, and a tax of 5 per cent.
on the remainder. This was a great disappointment to the Earl of Oxford
and his party, who were reminded, much oftener than they found
agreeable, of the
"_Parturiunt montes, nascitur ridiculus mus._"
But the public confidence in the South Sea Company was not shaken. The
Earl of Oxford declared that Spain would permit two ships, in addition
to the annual ship, to carry out merchandise during the first year; and
a list was published in which all the ports and harbors of these coasts
were pompously set forth as open to the trade of Great Britain. The
first voyage of the annual ship was not made till the year 1717, and in
the following year the trade was suppressed by the rupture with Spain.
The name of the South Sea Company was thus continually before the
public. Though their trade with the South American states produced
little or no augmentation of their revenues, they continued to flourish
as a monetary corporation. Their stock was in high request, and the
directors, buoyed up with success, began to think of new means for
extending their influence. The Mississippi scheme of John Law, which so
dazzled and captivated the French people, inspired them with an idea
that they could carry on the same game in England. The anticipated
failure of his plans did not divert them from their intention. Wise in
their own conceit, they imagined they could avoid his faults, carry on
their schemes forever, and stretch the cord of credit to its extremest
tension without causing it to snap asunder.
It was while Law's plan was at its greatest height of popularity, while
people were crowding in thousands to the Rue Quincampoix, and ruining
themselves with frantic eagerness, that the South Sea directors laid
before Parliament their famous plan for paying off the national debt.
Visions of boundless wealth floated before the fascinated eyes of the
people in the two most celebrated countries of Europe. The English
commenced their career of extravagance somewhat later than the French;
but as soon as the delirium seized them they were determined not to be
outdone.
Upon January 22, 1720, the House of Commons resolved itself into a
committee of the whole house to take into consideration that part of the
King's speech at the opening of the session which related to the public
debts, and the proposal of the South Sea Company toward the redemption
and sinking of the same. The proposal set forth at great length, and
under several heads, the debts of the state, amounting to thirty million
nine hundred eighty-one thousand seven hundred twelve pounds, which the
company was anxious to take upon itself, upon consideration of 5 per
cent. per annum, secured to it until midsummer, 1727; after which time
the whole was to become redeemable at the pleasure of the legislature,
and the interest to be reduced to 4 per cent. It was resolved, on
February 2d, that the proposals were most advantageous to the country.
They were accordingly received, and leave was given to bring in a bill
to that effect.
Exchange Alley was in a fever of excitement. The company's stock, which
had been at 130 the previous day, gradually rose to 300, and continued
to rise with the most astonishing rapidity during the whole time that
the bill in its several stages was under discussion. Sir Robert Walpole
was almost the only statesman in the House who spoke out boldly against
it. He warned them, in eloquent and solemn language, of the evils that
would ensue. It countenanced, he said, "the dangerous practice of
stock-jobbing, and would divert the genius of the nation from trade and
industry. It would hold out a dangerous lure to decoy the unwary to
their ruin, by making them part with the earnings of their labor for a
prospect of imaginary wealth. The great principle of the project was an
evil of first-rate magnitude; it was to raise artificially the value of
the stock by exciting and keeping up a general infatuation, and by
promising dividends out of funds which could never be adequate to the
purpose."
The bill was two months in its progress through the House of Commons.
During this time every exertion was made by the directors and their
friends, and more especially by the chairman, the noted Sir John Blunt,
to raise the price of the stock. The most extravagant rumors were in
circulation. Treaties between England and Spain were spoken of whereby
the latter was to grant a free trade to all her colonies; and the rich
produce of the mines of Potosi-la-Paz was to be brought to England until
silver should become almost as plentiful as iron. For cotton and woollen
goods, which could be supplied to them in abundance, the dwellers in
Mexico were to empty their golden mines. The company of merchants
trading to the South Seas would be the richest the world ever saw, and
every hundred pounds invested in it would produce hundreds per annum to
the stockholder. At last the stock was raised by these means to near
400, but, after fluctuating a good deal, settled at 330, at which price
it remained when the bill passed the Commons by a majority of 172
against 55.
Contrary to all expectation South Sea stock fell when the bill received
the royal assent. On April 7th the shares were quoted at 310, and on the
following day at 290. Already the directors had tasted the profits of
their scheme, and it was not likely that they should quietly allow the
stock to find its natural level without an effort to raise it.
Immediately their busy emissaries were set to work. Every person
interested in the success of the project endeavored to draw a knot of
listeners round him, to whom he expatiated on the treasures of the South
American seas. Exchange Alley was crowded with attentive groups. One
rumor alone, asserted with the utmost confidence, had an immediate
effect upon the stock. It was said that Earl Stanhope had received
overtures in France from the Spanish government to exchange Gibraltar
and Port Mahon for some places on the coast of Peru, for the security
and enlargement of the trade in the South Seas. Instead of one annual
ship trading to those ports, and allowing the King of Spain 25 per cent.
out of the profits, the company might build and charter as many ships as
it pleased, and pay no percentage whatever to any foreign potentate.
"Visions of ingots danced before their eyes," and stock rose rapidly. On
April 12th, five days after the bill had become law, the directors
opened their books for a subscription of a million, at the rate of three
hundred pounds for every one hundred pounds capital. Such was the
concourse of persons of all ranks that this first subscription was found
to amount to above two millions of original stock. It was to be paid in
five payments, of sixty pounds each for every one hundred pounds. In a
few days the stock advanced to 340, and the subscriptions were sold for
double the price of the first payment. To raise the stock still higher
it was declared in a general court of directors, on April 21st, that the
midsummer dividend should be 10 per cent., and that all subscriptions
should be entitled to the same. These resolutions answering the end
designed, the directors, to improve the infatuation of the moneyed men,
opened their books for a second subscription of a million, at 4 per
cent. Such was the frantic eagerness of people of every class to
speculate in these funds that in the course of a few hours no less than
a million and a half was subscribed at that rate.
In the mean time innumerable joint-stock companies started up
everywhere. They soon received the name of "bubbles," the most
appropriate that imagination could devise. The populace are often most
happy in the nicknames they employ. None could be more apt than that of
"bubbles." Some of them lasted for a week or a fortnight, and were no
more heard of, while others could not even live out that short span of
existence. Every evening produced new schemes and every morning new
projects. The highest of the aristocracy were as eager in this hot
pursuit of gain as the most plodding jobber in Cornhill. The Prince of
Wales became governor of one company, and is said to have cleared forty
thousand pounds by his speculations. The Duke of Bridgewater started a
scheme for the improvement of London and Westminster, and the Duke of
Chandos another. There were nearly a hundred different projects, each
more extravagant and deceptive than the other. To use the words of the
_Political State_, they were "set on foot and promoted by crafty knaves,
then pursued by multitudes of covetous fools, and at last appeared to
be, in effect, what their vulgar appellation denoted them to be--bubbles
and mere cheats." It was computed that near one million and a half
sterling was won and lost by these unwarrantable practices, to the
impoverishment of many a fool and the enriching of many a rogue.
Some of these schemes were plausible enough, and, had they been
undertaken at a time when the public mind was unexcited, might have been
pursued with advantage to all concerned. But they were established
merely with a view of raising the shares in the market. The projectors
took the first opportunity of a rise to sell out, and next morning the
scheme was at an end. Maitland, in his _History of London_, gravely
informs us that one of the projects which received great encouragement
was for the establishment of a company "to make deal boards out of
sawdust." This is, no doubt, intended as a joke; but there is abundance
of evidence to show that dozens of schemes, hardly a whit more
reasonable, lived their little day, ruining hundreds ere they fell. One
of them was for a wheel for perpetual motion--capital one million;
another was "for encouraging the breed of horses in England, and
improving of glebe and church lands, and repairing and rebuilding
parsonage and vicarage houses." Why the clergy, who were so mainly
interested in the latter clause, should have taken so much interest in
the first, is only to be explained on the supposition that the scheme
was projected by a knot of the fox-hunting parsons, once so common in
England. The shares of this company were rapidly subscribed for.
But the most absurd and preposterous of all, and which showed, more
completely than any other, the utter madness of the people, was one
started by an unknown adventurer, entitled "_A Company for carrying on
an Undertaking of Great Advantage, but Nobody to know What It Is_." Were
not the facts stated by scores of credible witnesses, it would be
impossible to believe that any person could have been duped by such a
project. The man of genius who essayed this bold and successful inroad
upon public credulity merely stated in his prospectus that the required
capital was half a million, in five thousand shares of one hundred
pounds each, deposit two pounds per share. Each subscriber paying his
deposit would be entitled to one hundred pounds per annum per share. How
this immense profit was to be obtained he did not condescend to inform
them at that time, but promised that in a month full particulars should
be duly announced, and a call made for the remaining ninety-eight pounds
of the subscription. Next morning, at nine o'clock, this great man
opened an office in Cornhill. Crowds of people beset his door, and when
he shut up, at three o'clock, he found that no less than one thousand
shares had been subscribed for and the deposits paid. He was thus, in
five hours, the winner of two thousand pounds. He was philosopher enough
to be contented with his venture, and set off the same evening for the
Continent. He was never heard of again.
It is time, however, to return to the great South Sea gulf, that
swallowed the fortunes of so many thousands of the avaricious and the
credulous. On May 29th the stock had risen as high as 500, and about
two-thirds of the government annuitants had exchanged the securities of
the state for those of the South Sea Company. During the whole of the
month of May the stock continued to rise, and on the 28th it was quoted
at 550. In four days after this it took a prodigious leap, rising
suddenly from 550 to 890. It was now the general opinion that the stock
could rise no higher, and many persons took that opportunity of selling
out, with a view of realizing their profits. Many noblemen and persons
in the train of the King, and about to accompany him to Hanover, were
also anxious to sell out. So many sellers and so few buyers appeared in
the alley on June 3d that the stock fell at once from 890 to 640. The
directors were alarmed and gave their agents orders to buy. Their
efforts succeeded. Toward evening confidence was restored, and the stock
advanced to 750. It continued at this price with some slight
fluctuation, until the company closed its books on June 22d.
It would be needless and uninteresting to detail the various arts
employed by the directors to keep up the price of stock. It will be
sufficient to state that it finally rose to 1000 per cent. It was quoted
at this price in the commencement of August. The bubble was then
full-blown and began to quiver and shake preparatory to its bursting.
Many of the government annuitants expressed dissatisfaction against the
directors. They accused them of partiality in making out the lists for
shares in each subscription. Further uneasiness was occasioned by its
being generally known that Sir John Blunt, the chairman, and some others
had sold out. During the whole of the month of August the stock fell,
and on September 2d it was quoted at 700 only.
Day after day it continued to fall, until it was as low as 400. In a
letter dated September 13th, from Mr. Broderick, M.P., to Lord
Chancellor Middleton, and published in Coxe's _Walpole_, the former
says: "Various are the conjectures why the South Sea directors have
suffered the cloud to break so early. I made no doubt but they would do
so when they found it to their advantage. They have stretched credit so
far beyond what it would bear that specie proves insufficient to support
it. Their most considerable men have drawn out, securing themselves by
the losses of the deluded, thoughtless numbers, whose understandings
have been overruled by avarice and the hope of making mountains out of
mole-hills. Thousands of families will be reduced to beggary. The
consternation is inexpressible--the rage beyond description, and the
case altogether so desperate that I do not see any plan or scheme so
much as thought of for averting the blow; so that I cannot pretend to
guess what is next to be done." Ten days afterward, the stock still
falling, he writes: "The company have yet come to no determination, for
they are in such a wood that they know not which way to turn. By several
gentlemen lately come to town, I perceive the very name of a South Sea
man grown abominable in every country. A great many goldsmiths are
already run off, and more will; daily I question whether one-third, nay,
one-fourth, of them can stand it."
At a general court of the Bank of England, held soon afterward, the
governor informed them of the several meetings that had been held on the
affairs of the South Sea Company, adding that the directors had not yet
thought fit to come to any decision upon the matter. A resolution was
then proposed, and carried without a dissentient voice, empowering the
directors to agree with those of the South Sea to circulate their bonds
to what sum and upon what terms and for what time they might think
proper. Thus both parties were at liberty to act as they might judge
best for the public interest.
Books were opened at the bank for subscription of three millions for the
support of public credit, on the usual terms of 15 pounds per cent.
deposit, 3 pounds per cent. premium, and 5 pounds per cent. interest. So
great was the concourse of people in the early part of the morning, all
eagerly bringing their money, that it was thought the subscription would
be filled that day; but before noon the tide turned. In spite of all
that could be done to prevent it, the South Sea Company's stock fell
rapidly. Its bonds were in such discredit that a run commenced upon the
most eminent goldsmiths and bankers, some of whom, having lent out great
sums upon South Sea stock, were obliged to shut up their shops and
abscond. The Sword-blade Company, which had hitherto been the chief
casher of the South Sea Company, stopped payment. This, being looked
upon as but the beginning of evil, occasioned a great run upon the bank,
which was now obliged to pay out money much faster than it had received
it upon the subscription in the morning. The day succeeding was a
holiday (September 29th), and the bank had a little breathing-time. It
bore up against the storm; but its former rival, the South Sea Company,
was wrecked upon it. Its stock fell to 150, and gradually, after various
fluctuations, to 135.
The bank, finding it was not able to restore public confidence and stem
the tide of ruin, without running the risk of being swept away, with
those it intended to save, declined to carry out the agreement into
which it had partially entered. "And thus," to use the words of the
_Parliamentary History_, "were seen, in the space of eight months, the
rise, progress, and fall of that mighty fabric, which, being wound up by
mysterious springs to a wonderful height, had fixed the eyes and
expectations of all Europe, but whose foundations, being fraud,
illusion, credulity, and infatuation, fell to the ground as soon as the
artful management of its directors was discovered."
BACH LAYS THE FOUNDATION OF MODERN MUSIC
A.D. 1723
HENRY TIPPER
Our first recognized triumph in the marvellous modern development of
music, the first great masterpiece which taught the world the beauty
of which the art is capable, was Bach's _Das Wohltemperirte
Clavier_. The production marks, therefore, "the first great climax
of musical art."
Like the other arts and sciences, the story of music is that of a
slow building up. Music "divinest of arts, exactest of
sciences"--for music is both an art and a science--has developed
from the crude two-or three-note scale melody, without semitones, to
the elaborate, ornate lucubrations of the modern oratorio, opera, or
symphony. From the beginning the "half-sister of Poetry" has been
the handmaid of Religion. The ancients ascribed miraculous
properties to music. Of the actual system of the Egyptians our
information is very scant; but we learn from the monuments depicting
the number and variety of their instruments that they had advanced
from childish practice to orchestration and harmony. According to
Plato, "In their possession are songs having the power to exalt and
ennoble mankind." The harp is undoubtedly of Egyptian origin.
In Israel plastic art was discouraged; the natural emotion of the
people was, therefore, expressed in poetry and music. Miriam, the
daughter of Jephthah, Deborah, and later the Virgin, whose grand
chant, the _Magnificat_, is ever being upraised from Christendom's
heart, portray the deep emotional temperament of this great
religious race.
The artistic standard of the music of the Greeks was far behind that
of their observation and intelligence in other matters. Their
theories on the combinations, of which they never made use, and
analysis of their scales show much ingenuity, but their accounts are
so vague that one cannot get any clear idea of what these were
really like. When art is mature, people do not tell of city walls
being overthrown, of savage animals being tamed--as run the stories
of Orpheus and Amphion. One Greek there was, Pythagoras, who
discerned the association between the distant music of the spheres
with the seven notes of the scale. "He discovered the numerical
relation of one tone to another."[28] It was about the time of
Pythagoras that a scheme of tetrachords which did not overlap was
adopted.
In Persia and Arabia was obtained a perfect system of intonation.
The Chinese system is minutely exact in theory, bombastic in fancy.
The Hindus sedulously avoided applying mathematics to their scales.
The development of the scale is shown in the construction of the
ancient Greek scale, the modern Japanese, and the aboriginal
Australian scale, and the phonographed tunes of some of the Red
Indians of North America. Here a reference must be made to the scale
of the Scotch bagpipe, a highly artificial product, without
historical materials available to assist in unravelling its
development. It comprises a whole diatonic series of notes, and
modes may be selected therefrom.
But it is to Rome that we owe the seed of our modern methods of
treatment. The Netherland school had been highly developed there by
a long line of distinguished masters, who paved the way for the
gifted Palestrina, who exalted polyphony to a secure eminence equal
to that attained by the arts of painting and architecture. He
brought forth a perception of the needs which music suffered, adding
an earnestness and science to a profound quality of simpleness and
grace. It was between 1561 and 1571 that his genius mellowed and his
style took on those characteristics upon which was based the future
music of the Catholic Church. It was while he was Maestro at the
Vatican that he submitted to the Church the famed _Missa Papæ
Marcelli_, which determined the future of church music.
The culmination of art in music is strikingly shown in the subjoined
article from the pen of that great authority, Mr. H. Tipper.
The first tonal prophet and poet of the modern era, the era in which
reason made tremendous protest against mere dogma, and the best
religious instincts of human nature called imperatively for emancipation
and for nearer individual contact with God, is Johann Sebastian Bach. We
look dazzled at the brilliant victories of the Italian Renaissance, and
amid tumultuous beauty run riot with imagination we hear the voice of
Savonarola at the close of the period uttering his lamentations. The
great Italian reformer saw and felt that in his own day and in his own
country the glory and beauty of the movement had vanished in sensuality;
that hardness of heart and indifference to primary human needs had
diverted the waters of the Renaissance from their main fertilizing
channel.
The deep need of the epoch was social, not mental, sociality in its
widest sense: the right of the individual; his inherent majesty, which
the accident of birth should not be able to impair--this and this only
was the natural outcome of the new birth which came to humanity; this
and this only was the sequel which German profundity and integrity, not
Italian brilliancy and carelessness, placed before the mind of Europe.
The Reformation, then, this Protestantism, is distinctive of the new
era. It was a protest, not only religious, as the word is usually
applied, but scientific. It is the basis in the modern Western world of
those laws of criticism which have submitted, or will submit, everything
to searching analytical investigation, and as in the case of the natural
world, so in the moral and ethical, men, by the light of revealed truth,
or by those higher instincts of nobility which emanate from the Eternal
Love, seek to apply to the reformation of society those principles of
love, justice, and recompense which each would wish applied individually
to self.
As an inspirer of thought and man of action, the world has seen few such
men as Luther. His genius, as it were, discovered and laid bare the
inexhaustible treasures of the German language; his sympathy and genial
humanity sent a thrill of song, poetical and tonal, throughout the
fatherland. He was the great awakener of German emotion. To Luther, a
man who cared not for song was without the pale of humanity. But his
enthusiasm was practical. In the church, as we have seen, he gathered
from all sources whatever was of the best, and gave it to the people. In
the schools he advocated the cause of song. In the streets the people
needed not advocacy. Wherever two or three gathered together, song was
in the midst of them, and it is not too much to say that the Lutheran
hymn was the saviour of German poetry and a font of German song. In the
seventeenth century there was in Germany little poetry worthy of the
name save that inspired by the devotional character of Luther's genius.
His heir and successor in the realm of tone was Sebastian Bach.
True, two centuries had elapsed between the death of the great reformer
in morals and the birth of the great reformer in tone; but the work of
the latter could not have been without the former. The chorale was
introduced by Luther; it was perfected by Bach. To what other influence
than the Lutheran can we attribute the growth of Bach? Are there any
other resources of German art and thought which can account for the
advent of the great musician? In art Duerer stood by the side of
Luther. In him again we find a man. Thought, thought! help me to
express my native thought. Teach me to express in my art the reality of
Nature, its wonderful beauty, thrice beautiful to me an artist; the
pathos of life, its realism, far apparently from the ideal, yet most
precious to me as a man. This was the aim of Duerer, and he seems a man
after the Lutheran mould.
The aim of Duerer may be found in some respects in Bach's work, because
both men were men of integrity, great and patient in soul. This, of
course, is not to say that Bach was affected by Duerer, but is merely an
endeavor to find what was noblest in Germany preceding Bach. One more
allusion. In Bach's art we trace the mystic; not shadowy outpourings of
hysterical emotion, but beauties of eternal verities disclosed in
vision--faint, it is true--to none save the noblest of mortals.
One such kindred spirit preceding Bach was Boehme, the father of German
mysticism, the poor cobbler, whose soul lay far away in the regions of
celestial love, and whose utterance is of the realities thereof. These
three men, Luther, Duerer, Boehme, are those to whom the great musician
Bach is akin, but he is truly the child of the former, and the father of
the highest aspirations in instrumental music.
For confirmatory evidence we have only to trace the growth of the Bach
family. The progenitor, Veit Bach, was born at Wechmar, near Gotha, in
1550, and, following his trade as a baker, settled, after considerable
wanderings, near the Hungarian frontier. Veit Bach was a stanch
Lutheran. Whether the Lutheran services had given him a love of music,
or whether they had only quickened a constitutional sympathy, it is
impossible to say. Certain it is that he was passionately fond of music,
and, cast for a period among a population whose emotions found constant
and ready utterance in tone, he brought back to Wechmar, whither he had
returned on account of religious persecution, his beloved cythringa and
the art of playing it. There is evidence that this knowledge afforded
him consolation and enjoyment in the quiet monotony of his life. While
the mill was working, Veit Bach was often playing; and doubtless the
peculiar charm and rhythm of old Hungarian melodies, songs of the
people, which he had learned from the wandering gypsies, recurred to
him, as well as those grand devotional hymns on which he had been
nourished from childhood. We have said that Veit Bach was a stanch
Lutheran. From father to son through generations, the Lutheran doctrine,
pure and undefiled, had been handed down, accompanied by the musical
gift, until both, uniting in Sebastian Bach, born at Eisenach in 1685,
served to glorify the Lutheran chorale and the art which perfected it.
Again, the traditions of the great reformer must have been imbibed by
Sebastian Bach from infancy. Surrounding his native town lay a circle of
wooded heights, from one of which arose the Wartburg, that illustrious
shrine of the German nation whither in mediæval and modern times her
sons have repaired to exhibit and replenish their lamp of genius. There
the minnesingers had gathered in contest a song; thither as a modern
Elijah came the great monk, weary of soul, yet whose immortal genius
unfolded the page of Sacred Writ; and down the wood-clad slope came
issuing the melody of the Hebrew psalmist, translated into German speech
and entering into German hearts, mingled with the narrative of the
Redeemer's passion lit by awful and solemn glory of Eternal Love. Who
shall say that young Bach knew not of these things? Who will contend
that, when his genius matured and ripened, the immortal tones in which
the eternal passion was portrayed owed nothing to this sympathy of
association, this spiritual life with the great reformer born two
centuries before?
Yet once more. The Bach family was full of affection and sympathy one
toward the other. Each year witnessed a reunion of the various members
of the family scattered throughout Thuringia, and each came bearing the
gift of music. As a child among the elders we can imagine how the young
Sebastian revered his uncles, Johann Christopher and Michael Sebastian,
in whom were conserved and developed the Lutheran tonal principles and
traditions; how he somewhat feared the austere character of his elder
brother, Johann Christopher, to whose charge he was intrusted upon the
death of his father.
But we need not imagine how the soul of the young boy was filled with
inexpressible yearning for the art of music. We know that it was so. His
brother, who instructed him, gauged not the nature of the lad. Often and
often did the boy's wistful eyes and loving heart covet the possession
of a manuscript book kept by his brother in strict reserve, containing a
priceless collection of compositions by the great German masters and
mediators. The boy extracted them from their resting-place, and we see
the young tone-prophet striving to master the art-forms of Reinken,
Buxtehude, Frescobaldi, Kerl, Froberger, and Pachelbel, endeavoring to
wrest from them their style and inmost meaning by the light of the
moon's pale rays, which led, alas! in after-years to blindness.
What revelations came to the soul of the young musician we know not. But
his genius thus directed knew no pause until it had won forever the
freedom of the tonal art, until the last fetter of conventionality had
been removed, until in all dignity and beauty music came forth,
henceforth to comfort and solace the human heart. But of this anon. We
trace the young boy to school; we see him a chorister in the choir of
St. Michael's, Lueneburg. Here he entered the gymnasium, studying Greek
and Latin, organ-and violin-playing. Here, too, he exhausted the
treasures of the musical library. But at Hamburg the great Reinken was
giving a series of organ recitals. Thither young Bach repaired. At Celle
he became acquainted with several suites and other compositions of
celebrated French masters. In 1703 he became violinist in the
Saxe-Weimar orchestra, and in the same year, aged eighteen, he was
appointed organist at the new church at Arnstadt, where other members of
his family had held similar positions. Thus already we have ample
evidence both of intense activity and catholicity of taste, and now, a
mere youth, he enters upon his life-work: the perfecting of church
music, especially the chorale form, and the emancipation of the art from
any influence whatsoever other than derives from contact with nature and
emotion. If we ask what equipment he had for his task, we answer:
enthusiasm, so deep, so tempered in all its qualities, that, though in a
few years he became the ablest performer of his time upon the
harpsichord and organ, yet never once is the term "virtuoso" associated
in our thought with the purity of aspiration which characterized him.
His enthusiasm was religious, deep-seated, his vision far and wide, and
no temporary triumph, no sunlit cloud of fame, could satisfy the
imperative needs of his inmost nature. And this nature was calm, with
the calmness of strength and with that tender purity and homely virtue
which characterized the surroundings of his boyhood.
This enthusiasm, this religious instinct, for what was noblest and best,
led him early, as we have seen, to seek inspiration from the works of
men who combined in their compositions all that the great previously
existing schools had taught. Bach was never weary of learning if
perchance he could attain a more lucid or more beautiful expression of
his thought. We have, then, this enthusiasm, this capacity for at once
discerning what was best. Add to it one more quality--the religious, in
its best sense, which young Bach possessed to the uttermost, the feeling
that his art was but the medium of expression for the deep things of
God--and we have the equipment with which the young musician started on
his quest.
Young Bach had received no great instruction in the schools of
composition. That which he had he gathered with a catholicity of taste
from all the renowned masters. Not one of his immediate ancestors had
stirred beyond the confines of their simple home. Well for him was it
so. No late meretricious Neapolitan tinsel could exist in the quiet,
calm beauty of his Thuringian dwelling-place. Nature lay before him.
"Come," she said, "seek to understand me. I have treasures that ye know
not of, treasures that can only be gathered by the pure in heart and
patient in spirit. Here around you, in your quiet German home, are the
elements of all your strength. Here there is no distraction. Riches
shall not allure you. Honorable poverty shall minister to your purity";
and young Bach knew that the voice was true, and, heeding it, there came
to him likewise an inner voice, relating spiritual things, even as the
voice of Nature related natural things.
Comprehending, then, his character, we pass on. His work at this period
was formal. He felt, but could not express. But at Lubeck the
noble-hearted Buxtehude was endeavoring to bring home to the hearts of
the people the mission of music. Bach went thither. Fascinated by the
grand organ-playing of the Lubeck master, and listening with heart-felt
love to those memorable concerts of which we have previously spoken,
Bach forgot both time and engagements. When he returned to Arnstadt,
the spirit of Buxtehude was upon him. Henceforth the quiet people of
Arnstadt knew no rest. Variations, subtle, beautiful, a refined and
fuller contrapuntal treatment, mingled with the chorale. The
conservatism of Arnstadt received a severe shock--a dreadful experience,
doubtless, to the quiet German town. Such genius could come to no good
end, and so the consistory and Bach agreed to part.
Bach had married in October, 1707. In 1708, while at Muehlhausen, his
first considerable work, composed for the municipal elector, appeared.
His election at Saxe-Weimar was undoubtedly owing to his playing before
the Duke Wilhelm Ernst, and we can imagine with what pleasure the young
musician, conscious of great power, looked forward to the intellectual
and cultured life for which Weimar was renowned. In the course of a few
years Bach was appointed orchestral and concert director to the Duke.
The liberal atmosphere of Weimar, the appreciation of men whose opinion
was of worth, could but stimulate the mental faculties and widen the
range of thought, and there is a breadth of conception and majesty in
Bach at this period unknown before. With the assiduity of genius he
labored for the realization of his ideal. Palestrina, Lotti, and Caldara
were laid under contribution. The master transcribed the works of these
composers with his own hands, and arranged the violin concertos of
Vivaldi for the harpsichord and organ. It is ever with the greatest
artists. They assimulate all the forms of kindred art, yet never
sacrifice their individuality. The means enabling them to express their
inmost soul must be found, but their soul will alone dictate the form
which its expression will assume.
But Bach is approaching the close of the first period of his career. An
invitation has been given him (1717) to become conductor of the
orchestra at the court of Leopold of Anhalt-Koethen, a prince remarkable
for his benevolence and cultured attainments. Here his duties were
comparatively slight and his leisure abundant. Hitherto he had been
engaged, as it were, in the temple service. At Weimar he had developed
into a great tone-poet of sacred song. With refined strength and
exquisite perception he had gathered up the related parts of song,
weaving them into a unity of impassioned and majestic utterance.
But the great poet must have a wider experience. He must enter, as it
were, into the great deeps of sacred emotion in things natural; he must
perceive in the universe a deeper, a more majestic beauty even than in
the temple. Then he will become a great prophet among his fellows, and
illumine for all time the pathway of life, giving strength to the weak,
consolation to the weary, and song to the blithe and pure of heart. This
is what Bach became in tone. His attention at Koethen was directed
mainly to instrumental music.
We have previously remarked upon the endeavors which certain German
masters made to bring home to their countrymen an appreciation of
instrumental music. How long the seed lay germinating in Bach's mind we
know not. A new idea had taken possession of him, or, rather, he
contemplated the application of the principle of his former labors in
polyphony to instrumental music pure and simple.
At Koethen he supplemented his labors at Weimar. At Leipsic, whither we
shall presently follow him, he brought them to completion.
But we are anticipating. We have seen how patiently, how toilsomely,
Music has broken one by one the fetters of conventionality; how she has
grown in strength and beauty, anticipating the moment of her final
deliverance. It has come at last. With the patience and impatience of
genius Bach strikes in twain the last fetter of conventionality. He has
realized his quest. The boy who, far away in future thought, studied the
art-forms of his great predecessors and contemporaries in the lowly
chamber or by the light of the silent moon, has found his beloved, the
Tonal Muse. She stands free before him to serve his will--his will
purified by conception and incessant effort--and he will lead her in her
new-found freedom and place her in the path of progress.
Bach's compositions at this time include the early part of one of the
greatest of his works, the _Wohltemperirte Clavier_. In this work--the
second part of which was composed at Leipsic--Bach attained the full
mastery of form. The strivings and efforts of the great Netherland
masters found completion in this work of Bach. In it are compressed the
labors of centuries. The works of the masters, Okeghem, Dufay, Josquin
des Pres, and others, are but prophecies in tone, announcing a
realization of their ideal in the centuries yet to come, that ideal
which they felt so particularly, yet could not express. The
_Wohltemperirte Clavier_ then marks the first great climax of musical
art.
The evolution was certain, and it consummated in a kindred mind. The
deepest expression of human feeling, the agony of the dire distress and
conflict of life, the calm majesty of faith which enables the soul to
overcome every obstacle, its pathetic appeal to God for rest and
comfort, the strength of victory, are possible in music, are expressed
in music as no other art can express them, because of Bach.
True to his trust, he extracted all that was best in the works of his
predecessors and, vivifying it by his genius, created forms of
expression which the greatest that have followed him have utilized and
extolled.
But, as we have said, the great poet must perceive in things natural, in
the beauty of the universe around him, in the sacred feelings of human
emotion, a sacredness as worthy and as earnest, though less concentrated
in character, as that which exists in the more direct function of
religious worship. To the great poet, however he works, all things are
sacred. He it is who reveals the heaven that lies around us. He opens
the portals of Nature, and we enter in to find strength and consolation.
Bach does all this in the masterly work we are considering. Not to the
Italian, but to the German, did Nature at length disclose her choicest
method of expression, and this because the German had ever lived in
close contact with her. In all Bach's works at this period the work of
emancipation goes forward. Take, for instance, the Brandenburg concertos
leading to the combination of the present orchestra.
But a new sphere of action here again opens to Bach. His master and
friend, the Prince of Koethen, was distracted from the pursuit of music
by his wife's want of interest therein, and so Bach sorrowfully looks
around him for a more congenial appointment. This he found at Leipsic,
in 1723, as cantor to the school of St. Thomas. Leipsic, like Weimar,
was celebrated for its intellectual life; but the various vexations
which the great musician encountered from the action of the authorities
reflects but little credit upon them. Bach's labors here were simply
Titanic. There were four churches at Leipsic, the principal being St.
Nicholas and St. Thomas. Bach seems to have been responsible for the
musical service at each. How innate and healthy was his genius may be
inferred from the fact that for these musical services alone three
hundred eighty cantatas seem to have been composed. Bach entered upon
his labors at Leipsic at the age of thirty-eight, and continued therein
until his death, in 1750. Let us examine briefly the nature of these
labors, and endeavor to glean from them their characteristic principles.
When Bach came to Leipsic he came full of experience and power. As a
youth he had devoted himself to the perfecting of church music.
Untiringly, unceasingly, with steadfast love, he had brought the laws of
counterpoint and fugue to mingle with the grace of melody and the genius
of a noble imagination. At Koethen his poetic and artistic temperament
roamed through the realms of nature, and brought us near to the
understanding of their varied utterance. At Leipsic he finished the
education of his life and his career as a tone-poet. He seeks again the
shelter of the temple, but his genius has matured and ripened. He has
examined the mysteries of life. His enthusiasm for the pure and good is
stronger than ever, but life is still a mystery. Evil, pain, love deep
as hell and high as heaven, the Titanic conflict of opposing principles,
Nature and her decrees, sorrow, remorse, sweet, unaffected joy, and
tranquil resignation--what mean they all? The answer, the solution, is
on Calvary. There is no other solution. Intellect, deny it how it will,
is baffled by the complex problem. The solution is of love through
trouble and anguish. The Passion music of Bach rises to the sublime
understanding of this grand mystery, and again the evolution of the old
mystery and Passion-play consummates in a kindred mind. Again the
triumph of faith is with the German. Luther frees the understanding from
tyranny. Bach raises it to the region of genius and sympathy, and closes
the labors of a thousand years of Christian tonal effort by his Passion
music of the Redeemer. But while this is so, he initiated the modern
period of tonal art, leaving, however, this Passion music as his noblest
legacy, as if to warn men that no other solution of life exists.
But though Bach's genius was thus supreme, it was not because he was
undisturbed by the vexations of daily life. Rarely, if ever, has an
artist equally great produced in such boundless profusion the highest
works of genius, when engaged with men most frequently unable to
understand his thought, and immersed in the arduous duties of teacher in
an art noteworthy of producing fatigue and exhaustion of spirit. But his
enthusiasm and strength were equal to the task. With grand integrity,
and desire for the welfare of the congregations of the churches alluded
to, he obtained from their respective ministers the texts of their
discourses for the ensuing Sundays, and produced, apparently without
effort, hundreds of cantatas to convey to the hearers the inner meaning
of the words which fell from the preacher's lips. These cantatas
frequently opened with orchestral introduction followed by a chorus,
usually very impressive, and imbued with the meaning of the text. The
recitatives and solo airs would still further convey this meaning, while
a chorale or hymn in four parts, with elaborate instrumental
accompaniment, served to express the feelings of the whole congregation.
To each instrument was assigned a separate part, and the whole
accompaniment was separate from the singing.
But if Bach in the consummation of the chorale perfected Luther's work
in the realm of music, he in his Passion music finds worthy expression
of a nation's devotion. His genius, as it were, felt the spirit-life of
the past. His soul vibrated to the yearnings of the unknown millions of
his race who had passed away in the centuries preceding him, and whose
consolation in their humble toil, in the various hardships of their
lives, was the narrative of this Passion music of the Saviour Christ.
The rough, dramatic presentation accorded to this narrative gathered, as
time went on, elements of beauty and traditional treatment around it. It
was powerfully to affect the drama proper and oratorio, but in its
direct and proper functions it was to inspire the first, and in some
respects the greatest, of the great musicians of Germany to his utmost
effort, to his most lofty flight of genius, as his winged spirit soared
through the ages of the past toward the future ages yet to come.
This Passion music of St. Matthew is the noblest presentment of the
characteristics of the German mind, and is unsurpassed in the realm of
religious art. It is an unfolding of the German spirit, and evidences
qualities the possession of which makes for national greatness.
As we have said, Bach is the great lyric poet of his nation, the first
great German genius after the devastating horrors of war. Looming on the
sight, or as contemporaries, are Handel, Leibnitz, Wolf, Klopstock,
Lessing, and Winckelmann. The modern era, with its philosophy and
revolution, has arrived. The domain of thought is enwidened, and the
Middle Ages blend and fade in the historic vista of the past. But the
modern era commences with these great affirmations in art and poetry.
Bach takes the narrative of the Passion, and erects the Cross anew with
sympathetic genius of art and love. Handel, as if he had caught Isaiah's
prophetic fire, gave to Europe its most beautiful and noble epic, the
_Messiah_; and Klopstock, the first of the great line of Germany's
modern poets, devoted his genius and labor to the same subject. But with
Bach and Handel no miserable conflicting elements of theology sully the
conception of the Saviour Christ. These great artists rise to the
universal and the true. The highest art is absolute and knows no appeal.
It is in harmony with universal law, both spiritual and physical.
FOOTNOTES:
[28] Naumann.
SETTLEMENT OF GEORGIA
A.D. 1732
WILLIAM B. STEVENS
It was not only the beginning of a new commonwealth, destined to
become an important State of the American Union, but also the spirit
and purpose which led to it, that made the English colonization of
Georgia a great and unique event in the history of this country.
Seldom have military and philanthropic achievements been combined in
the career of one man. James Oglethorpe was already a distinguished
soldier and a member of the English Parliament when in 1732 he
sailed with one hundred twenty men and founded Savannah. His express
object was the settlement of Georgia, not only as a home for
insolvent debtors, who suffered in English jails, but also for
persecuted Protestants of the Continent. It was not the least of his
services that on his second visit to the future "Empire State of the
South" he took with him John and Charles Wesley, whose influence has
been so marked among the American people.
Prior to the undertaking of Sir Robert Montgomery in 1717, with
which Stevens' narrative begins, few white men had visited the
Georgia country, which was the home of various Indian tribes. De
Soto traversed it on his great westward expedition (1539-1542), but
little was known of it when in 1629 it was included in King Charles
I's Carolina grant to Sir Robert Heath, or even at the time of the
next Carolina grant (1663), when it passed to Monk, Clarendon, and
others. Under the later proprietors it became known to Englishmen
through such glowing descriptions as naturally aroused an interest
in its settlement.
It was not until 1717 that any effort was made to improve the lands
between the Savannah and the Altamaha. In that year Sir Robert
Montgomery, Bart., whose father was joined with Lord Cardross in his
measures for establishing a Scots colony in Port Royal, published _A
Discourse Concerning the Designed Establishment of a new Colony to the
South of Carolina_, in what he termed "the most delightful country in
the universe." This pamphlet was accompanied by a beautiful but fanciful
plan representing the form of settling the districts or county divisions
in his province, which he styled "the Margraviate of Azilia." In his
description of the country he writes "that Nature has not blessed the
world with any tract which can be preferable to it; that Paradise, with
all her virgin beauties, may be modestly supposed, at most, but equal to
its native excellencies."
Having obtained, from the Lords Proprietors of Carolina a grant of the
lands between Savannah and the Altamaha, he issued his proposals for
settling this "future Eden"; but, though garnished with the most glowing
descriptions, and set forth under the most captivating attractions, they
were issued in vain; and the three years having expired within which he
was to make the settlement or forfeit the land, the territory reverted
to Carolina, and his scheme of colonization came to an end. The
Margraviate of Azilia was magnificent upon the map, but was
impracticable in reality.
The Lords Proprietors of Carolina having failed in their scheme of
government, and their authority being crushed by the provincial
revolution of 1719, they sold their titles and interest in that province
to Parliament in 1729; reserving to Lord John Carteret, one of their
number, the remaining eight shares of the country, as he refused to join
the others in disposing of the colony. After the purchase of the
territory of Carolina, which then extended from the St. John's to
Albemarle Sound, it was deemed too large for one government, and was
therefore divided into two provinces, under the respective titles of
North and South Carolina. The territorial boundary of South Carolina,
however, on the south, was the Savannah River; the remaining portion
being then held in reserve by the British Crown.
The same year that the House of Commons resolved on an address to the
King to purchase the rights of the Lords Proprietors to this territory,
a committee was appointed by Parliament "to inquire into the state of
the gaols of the kingdom, and to report the same and their opinion
thereupon to the House." This committee, raised on the motion of James
Oglethorpe, Esq., in consequence of the barbarities which had fallen
under his own observation while visiting some debtors in the Fleet and
Marshalsea prisons, consisted of ninety-six persons, and Oglethorpe was
made its chairman. A more honorable or effective committee could
scarcely have been appointed. It embraced some of the first men in
England; among them thirty-eight noblemen, the chancellor of the
exchequer, the master of rolls, Admiral Vernon and Field Marshal Wade.
They entered upon their labors with zeal and diligence, and not only
made inquiries, through the Fleet prison, but also into the Marshalsea,
the prison of the king's bench, and the jail for the county of Surrey.
The philanthropy of Oglethorpe, whose feelings were easily enlisted in
the cause of misery, rested not with the discharge of his Parliamentary
duty, nor yet in the further benefit of relaxing the rigorous laws which
thrust the honest debtor into prisons which seemed to garner up disease
in its most loathsome forms--crime in its most fiend-like
works--humanity in its most shameless and degraded aspect; but it
prompted still further efforts--efforts to combine present relief with
permanent benefits, by which honest but unfortunate industry could be
protected, and the laboring poor be enabled to reap some gladdening
fruit from toils which now wrung out their lives with bitter and
unrequited labors. To devise and carry out such efforts himself Lord
Percival and a few other noblemen and gentlemen addressed a memorial to
the privy council, stating "that the cities of London, Westminster, and
parts adjacent do abound with great numbers of indigent persons who are
reduced to such necessity as to become burthensome to the public, and
who would be willing to seek a livelihood in any of his majesty's
plantations in America if they were provided with a passage and means of
settling there."
The memorialists promised to take upon themselves the entire charge of
this affair, to erect a province into a proprietary government, provided
the crown would grant them a portion of the land bought in 1729 by
Parliament from the Lords Proprietors of South Carolina, lying south of
the Savannah River; together with such powers as shall enable them to
receive the charitable contributions and benefactions of all such
persons as are willing to encourage so good a design.
This petition, referred at first to a committee of the privy council,
was by them submitted to the consideration of the board of trade, who,
after a second commitment, made their report, that the attorney and
solicitor-general should be directed to prepare a draft of the charter.
This report, being laid before his majesty, was by him approved and he
directed the proper officer to make out the charter. The charter thus
prepared was approved by the King, but in consequence of the formalities
of office did not pass under the great seal until June 9, 1732.
This instrument constituted twenty noblemen and gentlemen a body
corporate, by the name and style of "The Trustees for establishing a
Colony of Georgia, in America"; giving to the projected colony the name
of the monarch who had granted to them such a liberal territory for the
development of their benevolence.
The charter revealed two purposes as the object of this colonization:
the settling of poor but unfortunate people on lands now waste and
desolate, and the interposing of this colony as a barrier between the
northern colonies and the French, Spanish, and Indians on the south and
west. These designs the trustees amplified and illustrated in their
printed papers and official correspondence.
Oglethorpe, in his _New and Accurrate Account_, declares: "These
trustees not only give land to the unhappy who go thither, but are also
empowered to receive the voluntary contributions of charitable persons
to enable them to furnish the poor adventurers with all necessaries for
the expense of the voyage, occupying the land, and supporting them till
they find themselves comfortably settled. So that now the unfortunate
will not be obliged to bind themselves to a long servitude, to pay for
their passage, for they may be carried gratis into a land of liberty and
plenty, where they immediately find themselves in possession of a
competent estate in a happier climate than they knew before; and they
are unfortunate, indeed, if here they cannot forget their sorrows."
This was the main purpose of the settlement; and such noble views were
"worthy to be the source of an American republic." Other colonies had
been planted by individuals and companies for wealth and dominion; but
the trustees of this, at their own desire, were restrained by the
charter "from receiving any grant of lands in the province, or any
salary, fee, perquisite, or profit whatsoever, by or from this
undertaking." The proprietors of other colonies were looking to their
own interests; the motto of the trustees of this was "_Non sibi, sed
aliis_." The proprietors of other colonies were anxious to build up
cities and erect states that should bear their names to a distant
posterity; the trustees of this only busied themselves in erecting an
asylum, whither they invited the indigent of their own and the exiled
Protestants of other lands. It was the first colony ever founded by
charity. New England had been settled by Puritans, who fled thither for
conscience' sake; New York by a company of merchants and adventurers in
search of gain; Maryland, by papists retiring from Protestant
intolerance; Virginia, by ambitious cavaliers; Carolina by the scheming
and visionary Shaftesbury, and others, for private aims and individual
aggrandizement; but Georgia was planted by the hand of benevolence, and
reared into being by the nurturings of a disinterested charity.
But the colony was not to be confined to the poor and unfortunate. The
trustees granted portions of five hundred acres to such as went over at
their own expense, on condition that they carried over one servant to
every fifty acres, and did military service in time of war or alarm.
Thus the materials of the new colony consisted of three classes: the
upper, or large landed proprietors and officers; the middle, or
freeholders, sent over by the trustees; and the servants indented to
that corporation or to private individuals.
Subsidiary to the great design of philanthropy was the further purpose
of making Georgia a silk, wine, oil, and drug-growing colony. "Lying,"
as the trustees remark, "about the same latitude with part of China,
Persia, Palestine, and the Madeiras, it is highly probable that when
hereafter it shall be well peopled and rightly cultivated England may be
supplied from thence with raw silk, wine, oil, dyes, drugs, and many
other materials for manufactures which she is obliged to purchase from
southern countries."
Such were the principal purposes of the trustees in settling Georgia.
Extravagance was their common characteristic; for in the excited visions
of its enthusiastic friends, Georgia was not only to rival Virginia and
South Carolina, but to take the first rank in the list of provinces
depending on the British Crown. Neither the El Dorado of Raleigh nor the
Utopia of More could compare with the garden of Georgia; and the poet,
the statesman, and the divine lauded its beauties and prophesied its
future greatness. Oglethorpe, in particular, was quite enthusiastic in
his description of the climate, soil, productions, and beauties of this
American Canaan. "Such an air and soil," he writes, "can only be fitly
described by a poetical pen, because there is but little danger of
exceeding the truth."
With such blazoned exaggerations, strengthened by the interested efforts
of a noble and learned body of trustees, and by the personal supervision
of its distinguished originator, it is no matter of wonder that all
Europe was aroused to attention; and that Swiss and German, Scotch and
English, alike pressed forward to this promised land. Appeals were made
by the trustees to the liberal, the philanthropic, the public-spirited,
the humane, the patriotic, the Christian, to aid in this design of
mercy, closing their arguments with the noble thought: "To consult the
welfare of mankind, regardless of any private views, is the perfection
of virtue, as the accomplishing and consciousness of it are the
perfection of happiness."
These preliminaries settled, we are brought to the period when the plan,
the charity, the labors of the trustees, were to be put into efficient
operation. Fortunate was it for the corporation that they had among
their number one whose benevolence, whose fortune, and whose patriotism,
as well as his military distinction conspired to make him the fittest
leader and pioneer of so noble an undertaking. That one was James
Oglethorpe, the originator, the chief promotor, the most zealous
advocate of the colony; an honor conceded by his associates, and
acknowledged by all.
We are brought now to the dock-yard at Deptford, to behold the first
embarkation of the Georgia pilgrims.
The trustees, having selected from the throng of emigrants thirty-five
families, numbering in all about one hundred twenty-five "sober,
industrious, and moral persons," chartered the Ann, a galley of two
hundred tons, Captain John Thomas, and stationed her at Deptford, four
miles below London, to receive her cargo and passengers. In the mean
time the men were drilled to arms by sergeants of the guards; and all
needed stores were gathered to make them comfortable on the voyage and
to establish them on land.
It was not until the early part of November that the embarkation was
ready for sailing.
On the 16th they were visited by the trustees, "to see nothing was
wanting, and to take leave" of Oglethorpe; and having called the
families separately before them in the great cabin they inquired if they
liked their usage and voyage; or if they had rather return, giving them
even then the alternative of remaining in England if they preferred it;
and having found but one man who declined--on account of his wife, left
sick in Southwark--they bid Oglethorpe and the emigrants an affectionate
farewell. The ship sailed the next day, November 17, 1732, from
Gravesend, skirted slowly along the southern coast of England, and,
taking its departure from Sicily light, spread out its white sails to
the breezes of the Atlantic.
Day after day and week after week the voyagers seem the centre of the
same watery circle canopied by the same bending sky. No mile-stones tell
of their progress. The way-marks of the mariner are the sun by day and
the moon and stars by night; no kindred ship answers back its red-cross
signal; but there they float, the germ of a future nation, upon the
desert waters. Sailing a circuitous route, they did not reach the coast
of America until January 13, 1733, when they cast anchor in Rebellion
Roads, and furled their sails at last in the harbor of Charleston.
Oglethorpe immediately landed, and was received by the Governor and
Council of South Carolina with every mark of civility and attention. The
King's pilot was directed by them to carry the ship into Port Royal, and
small vessels were furnished to take the emigrants to the river
Savannah. Thus assisted, in about ten hours they resumed their voyage
and shortly dropped anchor within Port Royal bar.
The colony landed at Beaufort on January 20th, and had quarters given
them in the new barracks. Here they received every attention from the
officers of His Majesty's Independent Company and the gentlemen of the
neighborhood, and refreshed themselves after the fatigues and
discomforts of their long voyage and cramped accommodations.
Leaving his people here, Oglethorpe, accompanied by Colonel William
Bull, of South Carolina, went forward to the Savannah River to select a
site for the projected settlement. Winding among the inlets, which break
into numerous islands the low flat seaboard, their canoe at last shot
into the broad stream of the Savannah; and bending their course upward
they soon reached a bold, pine-crowned bluff, at the foot of which they
landed to inspect its localities.
Reaching its top, a beautiful prospect met their eyes. At their feet,
some fourteen yards below, flowed the quiet waters of the Savannah,
visible for some distance above and traceable through its green
landscape till it emptied itself into the ocean. Before them lay a
beautiful island of richest pasturage, beyond which was seen the north
branch of the Savannah bordered by the slopes of Carolina, with a dark
girdle of trees resting against the horizon. Behind them was the
unbroken forest of tall green pines, with an occasional oak draperied
with festoons of gray moss or the druidical mistletoe. A wide expanse of
varied beauty was before them; an ample and lofty plain around them;
and, though spring had not yet garnished the scene with her vernal
glories, sprinkling the woods with gay wild-flowers and charming
creepers, and making the atmosphere balmy with the bay, the jessamine,
and the magnolia, yet, even in winter, were there sufficient charms in
the spot to fix on it the heart of Oglethorpe, and cause him to select
it as the home of his waiting colony. "The landscape," he writes, "is
very agreeable, the stream being wide and bordered with high woods on
both sides," On the northern end of this bluff they found a
trading-house and an Indian village called Yamacraw. The chief of this
little tribe was Tomochichi; and the trader's name was Musgrove, married
to a half-breed, named Mary. By an ancient treaty of the Creeks with the
Governor of South Carolina, no white settlement was allowed to be made
south of the Savannah River without their consent.
Satisfied with the eligibility of this situation, Oglethorpe applied to
Mary Musgrove, who could speak both Indian and English, to obtain from
the tribe their agreement to his settlement. They at first appeared
uneasy and threatened to take up arms, but were pacified by her
representations of the benefits which would accrue to them; and she
gained from them a provisional treaty, until the consent of the whole
nation could be obtained. The Indians, once made sensible of the
advantages they would derive from the erection of a town within their
limits, hailed their coming with joy and busied themselves in many
offices of service and regard. The land selected, the consent of the
tribe obtained, and the services of Mary secured as an interpreter in
their subsequent intercourse with the red men, Oglethorpe returned to
Beaufort on January 24th; and the Sunday after was made a day of praise
and thanksgiving for their safe arrival in America, and the happy
auspices which clustered round the opening prospects of Georgia. During
the stay of the colonists in South Carolina they were treated with
genuine hospitality, and when they departed they were laden with most
substantial and valuable tokens of interest and benevolence.
Leaving the ship at Port Royal, Oglethorpe engaged a sloop of seventy
tons, and five plantation-boats, and embarked the colonists on Tuesday,
the 30th, but, detained by a storm, they did not reach their destination
until the afternoon of Thursday, February 12 (new style), 1733. The
people immediately pitched four large tents, being one for each tithing,
into which municipal divisions they had already been divided; and,
landing their bedding and other necessaries, spent their first night in
Georgia.
As soon as the tents had been pitched, the Indians came forward with
their formal salutations. In front advanced, with antic dancings, the
"medicine man," bearing in each hand a spread fan of white feathers
fastened to a rod hung from top to bottom with little bells; marching
behind this jingling symbol of peace and friendship, came the King and
Queen, followed by about twenty others, making the air ring with their
uncouth shouts. Approaching Oglethorpe, who walked out a few steps from
his tent to meet them, the medicine man came forward with his fans,
declaiming the while the deeds of their ancestors, and stroked him on
every side with the emblems of amity. This over, the King and Queen bade
him welcome and, after an interchange of compliments, they were
conducted to Oglethorpe's tent and partook of a pleasant entertainment
hastily prepared for the occasion.
And now all was bustle upon the bluff. The unlading of goods, the
felling of trees, the hewing of timber, the clearing of land, the
erection of palisades--all supervised by the watchful eye and directed
by the energetic mind of their leader--gave a brisk and industrious air
to the novel scene.
On the 9th Oglethorpe and Colonel Bull marked out the square, the
streets, and forty lots for houses; and the first clapboard-house of the
colony of Georgia was begun that day. On March 12th Oglethorpe writes:
"Our people still lie in tents; there being only two clapboard houses
built, and three sawed houses framed. Our crane, our battery of cannon,
and magazine are finished. This is all we have been able to do by reason
of the smallness of our numbers, of which many have been sick, and
others unused to labor, though I thank God they are now pretty well, and
we have not lost one since our arrival."
The most generous assistance was given them by South Carolina. The
Assembly, which met in Charleston three days after the arrival of the
emigrants, immediately resolved to furnish the colony with large
supplies of cattle and rice; to provide boats for the transportation of
the people from Port Royal to Savannah; and placed under Oglethorpe's
command the scout-boats and a troop of fifteen rangers for his
protection. They further appointed Colonel William Bull one of the
Governor's council, and a gentleman esteemed "most capable of assisting
Oglethorpe in settling the colony by reason of his experience in
colonial affairs, the nature of lands and the intercourse with Indians,"
to attend him and offer him his advice and assistance. Such was the
readiness of all to assist him that the Governor wrote, "Had not our
Assembly been sitting I would have gone myself."
Nor was private benevolence in any way behind public munificence. It is
pleasant, in looking over the list of individual benefactions, to read
such records as these:
_February._--"Colonel Bull came to Savannah with four laborers, and
assisted the colony for a month; he himself measuring the scantling, and
setting out the work for the sawyers, and giving the proportion of the
houses. Mr. Whitaker and his friends sent the colony one hundred head of
cattle. Mr. St. Julian came to Savannah and stayed a month, directing
the people in building their houses and other work. Mr. Hume gave a
silver boat and spoon for the first child born in Georgia, which being
born of Mrs. Close, were given accordingly. Mr. Joseph Bryan himself,
with four of his sawyers, gave two months' work in the colony. The
inhabitants of Edisto sent sixteen sheep. Mr. Hammerton gave a drum.
Mrs. Ann Drayton sent two pair of sawyers to work in the colony. Colonel
Bull and Mr. Bryan came to Savannah with twenty servants, whose labor
they gave to the colony. His excellency Robert Johnson gave seven
horses, valued at twenty-five pounds, Carolina currency."
These, with many other like records, evince their spirit in promoting
the settlement of Georgia. And well they might; for the planting of this
colony to the south of the Savannah increased their security from
invasion by the Spaniards, and from the incursions and massacres of the
Indian tribes, and still further operated as a preventive to the
enticing lures held out to the negroes, by which desertion was rendered
common and insurrection always dreaded. They were prepared, therefore,
to hail the new colony as a bulwark against their Floridian and savage
enemies, as opening further opportunities of trade, and as enhancing the
value of their frontier possessions, which, according to the best
authorities, were raised to five times their former value about Port
Royal and the Savannah River.
The fostering care of South Carolina was to be repaid by the protecting
service of Georgia. The labors of the colonists were great, but they had
much to cheer them; and the assiduity and attention of Oglethorpe won
upon their hearts so that they styled him "Father," and he exercised his
paternal care by unremitting efforts to advance their welfare. He spared
not himself in any personal efforts, but took his turn regularly in
doing night-guard duty, as an example to the rest, and at times worked
at the hardest labor to encourage their industry.
Having put Savannah in a posture of defence, supplied it with
provisions, and taken hostages of the Indians, Oglethorpe set out for
Charleston, attended by Tomochichi and his two nephews, being desirous
of cultivating the acquaintance and securing the good offices of the
Governor, council, and Assembly of South Carolina. At Charleston he was
met at the water-side by his excellency the Governor and council, who
conducted him to Governor Johnson's house, where the speaker and House
of Assembly came to present their official congratulations on his
arrival. His solicitations for assistance were promptly answered. The
Assembly voted two thousand pounds currency for the assistance of
Georgia the first year, and soon after the committee of supply brought
in a bill for granting eight thousand pounds currency for the use of the
new colony the ensuing year. The citizens also subscribed one thousand
pounds currency, five hundred pounds of which were immediately paid
down.
Grateful for this munificence Oglethorpe returned to Georgia to meet the
great council of the towns of the Lower Creeks, whom he had desired to
meet him in Savannah to strengthen the provisional treaty already made
with Tomochichi, and secure their abiding amity for the future. In
answer to this desire, eighteen chief men and their attendants, making
in all about fifty, came together from the nine tribes of the nation,
and met him in solemn council on the afternoon of May 18th. Speeches,
not lacking in interest, but full of Indian hyperbole and the inflations
of interpreters, were made by the chiefs, and answered by Oglethorpe
through the medium of Messrs. Wiggin and Musgrove; and on May 21st the
treaty was concluded.
The principal stipulations of it were that the trustees' people should
trade in the Indian towns; their goods being sold according to fixed
rates mutually agreed upon: thus, a white blanket was set down at five
buckskins, a gun at ten; a hatchet at three doeskins, a knife at one,
and so on. Restitution and reparation were to be made for injuries
committed and losses sustained by either party; the criminals to be
tried by English law. Trade to be stopped with any town violating any
article of the treaty. All lands not used by the Indians were to be
possessed by the English, but, upon the settling of any new town,
certain lands agreed on between the chiefs and the magistrates were to
be reserved for the former. All runaway negroes were to be restored to
Carolina, the Indians receiving for each one thus recovered four
blankets and two guns, or the value thereof in other goods. And lastly,
they agreed, with "straight hearts" and "true love," to allow no other
white people to settle on their lands, but ever to protect the English.
The Indians, having received suitable presents, were dismissed in amity
and peace; while Oglethorpe left the same day for Charleston, satisfied
at having obtained, by such honorable means, the cession of such a fine
country to the crown of England. This treaty was ratified by the
trustees the following October.
The judicious and honorable conduct of Oglethorpe toward the Indians was
of more security to the colony than its military defences. For a long
time he had regarded the Indians with kindly feelings. At his
suggestion Bishop Wilson, one of the bright and shining lights of the
English Church, wrote _An Essay Toward an Instruction for the Indians_,
which he dedicated to Oglethorpe; and, now that he met them on their
native soil, he evinced the same care for their interests, and through
life manifested in all his acts his regard for their welfare. He was the
red man's friend; showing in his intercourse with him the honorableness
of William Penn, without his private interests to subserve; the
generosity of Lord Baltimore, without a patent of immense tracts to
secure to his descendants; the compassion of Roger Williams, without his
mercantile views, to incite him to foster among the Indians kindness and
regard.
Oglethorpe stands superior to all, because he had no private end to
gratify, no lands to secure, no property to invest, no wealth to
accumulate from or among the tribes whose amity he cultivated.
The art of the painter has commemorated the treaty of Penn with the Leni
Lenapes, under the elm-tree of Shakamaxon; but neither this scene on the
north edge of Philadelphia, nor the treaty of Roger Williams with "the
old Prince Caconicas" at Seconke, nor the alliance of Leonard Calvert
with the Susquehannas at Yoacomoco, excels, in any element of
philanthropy or in any trait of nobleness, the treaty of Oglethorpe with
the tribes of the Muscogees, under the "four pine-trees" on the bluff of
Yamacraw.
RISE OF METHODISM
PREACHING OF THE WESLEYS AND OF WHITEFIELD
A.D. 1738
WILLIAM E.H. LECKY
Next to the founders of the world's great religions, the principal
figures in religious history are the leaders of its new movements,
the founders of sects or denominations. In this subordinate class
few names outrank that of John Wesley, while those of his brother,
Charles, and George Whitefield, their eloquent colleague, are
inseparably associated with that of the great founder of Methodism,
one of the most striking of the epochal religious movements of
modern times.
Although not intending to break with the Anglican Church, Wesley and
his followers were carried out upon independent lines which led to
the upbuilding of a distinct type of religious faith and
organization, whose power has been especially marked in Great
Britain and America, and has been increasingly spread throughout the
world.
Between Whitefield and John Wesley, in 1741, a separation occurred
on points of doctrine, Whitefield adhering to a rigid Calvinism,
while Wesley inclined to Arminianism, and thenceforth they followed
their several paths. Although Whitefield founded no sect, he exerted
a widespread influence by his presence and voice. Before their
separation both preachers had been in America, and the personality
and eloquence of Whitefield not only wrought a spell upon the
multitude, but even exercised a degree of fascination over such a
philosophical spirit as Franklin. Wesley's work in America was
deeper and more enduring, and is still a growing feature of the
country's religious development.
Nothing could be happier for the present purpose than the treatment
of this great religious movement, in its beginnings, as it is here
dealt with by the dispassionate historian of England during the
century in which the movement arose.
The Methodist movement was a purely religious one. All explanations
which ascribe it to the ambition of its leaders, or to merely
intellectual causes, are at variance with the facts of the case. The
term Methodist was a college nickname bestowed upon a small society of
students at Oxford who met together, between 1729 and 1735, for the
purpose of mutual improvement. They were accustomed to communicate every
week, to fast regularly on Wednesdays and Fridays and on most days
during Lent; to read and discuss the Bible in common, to abstain from
most forms of amusement and luxury, and to visit sick persons, and
prisoners in the jail.
John Wesley, the master spirit of this society, and the future leader of
the religious revival of the eighteenth century, was born in 1703, and
was the second surviving son of Samuel Wesley, the rector of Epworth, in
Lincolnshire. His father, who had early abandoned Nonconformity, and
acquired some reputation by many works both in prose and verse, had
obtained his living from the government of William, and had led for many
years a useful and studious life, maintaining a far higher standard of
clerical duty than was common in his time. His mother was the daughter
of an eminent Nonconformist minister, who had been ejected in 1662, and
was a woman of rare mental endowments, of intense piety, and of a
strong, original, and somewhat stern character.
Their home was not a happy one. Discordant dispositions and many
troubles darkened it. The family was very large. Many children died
early. The father sank slowly into debt. His parishioners were fierce,
profligate, and recalcitrant. When John Wesley was only six years old
the rectory was burned to the ground, and the child was forgotten among
the flames, and only saved at the last moment by what he afterward
deemed an extraordinary providence.
All these circumstances doubtless deepened the natural and inherited
piety for which he was so remarkable; and some strange and unexplained
noises which during a long period were heard in the rectory, and which
its inmates concluded to be supernatural, contributed to that vein of
credulity which ran through his character. He was sent to the
Charterhouse, and from thence to Oxford, where at the age of
twenty-three he was elected fellow of Lincoln. He had some years before
acquired from his brother a certain knowledge of Hebrew, and he was
speedily distinguished by his extraordinary logical powers, by the
untiring industry with which he threw himself into the studies of the
place, and above all by the force and energy of his character.
His religious impressions, which had been for a time somewhat obscured,
revived in their full intensity while he was preparing for ordination in
1725. He was troubled with difficulties, which his father and mother
gradually removed, about the damnatory clauses in the Athanasian Creed,
and about the compatibility of the articles with his decidedly Arminian
views concerning election; and he was deeply influenced by the
_Imitation_ of St. Thomas à Kempis, by the _Holy Living and Dying_ of
Jeremy Taylor, and by Law's _Serious Call_. His life at Oxford became
very strict. He rose every morning at four, a practice which he
continued till extreme old age. He made pilgrimages on foot to William
Law to ask for spiritual advice. He abstained from the usual fashion of
having his hair dressed, in order that he might give the money so saved
to the poor. He refused to return the visits of those who called on him,
that he might avoid all idle conversation. His fasts were so severe that
they seriously impaired his health, and extreme abstinence and gloomy
views about religion are said to have contributed largely to hurry one
of the closest of his college companions to an early and a clouded
death.
The society hardly numbered more than fifteen members, and was the
object of much ridicule at the university; but it included some men who
afterward played considerable parts in the world. Among them was
Charles, the younger brother of John Wesley, whose hymns became the
favorite poetry of the sect, and whose gentler, more submissive, and
more amiable character, though less fitted than that of his brother for
the great conflicts of public life, was very useful in moderating the
movement and in drawing converts to it by personal influence. Charles
Wesley appears to have been the first to originate the society at
Oxford; he brought Whitefield into its pale, and, besides being the most
popular poet, he was one of the most persuasive preachers of the
movement.
There, too, was James Hervey, who became one of the earliest links
connecting Methodism with general literature. During most of his short
life he was a confirmed invalid. His affected language, his feeble,
tremulous, and lymphatic nature formed a curious contrast to the robust
energy of Wesley and Whitefield; but he was a great master of a kind of
tumid and over-ornamented rhetoric which has an extraordinary
attraction to half-educated minds. His _Meditations_ was one of the most
popular books of the eighteenth century. His _Theron and Aspasio_, which
was hardly less successful, was an elaborate defence of evangelical
opinions; and though at this time the pupil and one of the warmest
admirers of Wesley, he afterward became conspicuous in the Calvinistic
section of the party, and wrote with much acerbity against his old
master.
There, too, above all, was George Whitefield, in after-years the
greatest pulpit orator of England. He was born in 1714, in Gloucester,
in the Bell Inn, of which his mother was proprietor, and where upon the
decline of her fortunes he was for some time employed in servile
functions. He had been a wild, impulsive boy, alternately remarkable for
many mischievous pranks and for strange outbursts of religious zeal. He
stole money from his mother, and he gave part of it to the poor. He
early declared his intention one day to preach the Gospel, but he was
the terror of the Dissenting minister of his neighborhood, whose
religious services he was accustomed to ridicule and interrupt. He
bought devotional books, read the Bible assiduously, and on one
occasion, when exasperated by some teasing, he relieved his feelings, as
he tells us, by pouring out in his solitude the menaces of Psalm cxviii;
but he was also passionately fond of card-playing, novel-reading, and
the theatre; he was two or three times intoxicated, and he confesses
with much penitence to "a sensual passion" for fruits and cakes. His
strongest natural bias was toward the stage. He indulged it on every
possible occasion, and at school he wrote plays and acted in a female
part.
Owing to the great poverty of his mother, he could only go to Oxford as
a servitor, and his career there was a very painful one. St. Thomas à
Kempis, Drelincourt's _Defence against Death_, and Law's devotional
works had all their part in kindling his piety into a flame. He was
haunted with gloomy and superstitious fancies, and his religion assumed
the darkest and most ascetic character. He always chose the worst food,
fasted twice a week, wore woollen gloves, a patched gown, and dirty
shoes, and was subject to paroxysms of a morbid devotion. He remained
for hours prostrate on the ground in Christ Church Walk in the midst of
the night, and continued his devotions till his hands grew black with
cold. One Lent he carried his fasting to such a point that when Passion
Week arrived he had hardly sufficient strength to creep upstairs, and
his memory was seriously impaired. In 1733 he came in contact with
Charles Wesley, who brought him into the society. To a work called _The
Life of God in the Soul of Man_, which Charles Wesley put into his
hands, he ascribed his first conviction of that doctrine of free
salvation which he afterward made it the great object of his life to
teach.
With the exception of a short period in which he was assisting his
father at Epworth, John Wesley continued at Oxford till the death of his
father, in 1735, when the society was dispersed, and the two Wesleys
soon after accepted the invitation of General Oglethorpe to accompany
him to the new colony of Georgia. It was on his voyage to that colony
that the founder of Methodism first came in contact with the Moravians,
who so deeply influenced his future life. He was surprised and somewhat
humiliated at finding that they treated him as a mere novice in
religion; their perfect composure during a dangerous storm made a
profound impression on his mind, and he employed himself while on board
ship in learning German, in order that he might converse with them. On
his arrival in the colony he abandoned, after a very slight attempt, his
first project of converting the Indians, and devoted himself wholly to
the colonists at Savannah. They were of many different nationalities,
and it is a remarkable proof of the energy and accomplishments of Wesley
that, in addition to his English services, he officiated regularly in
German, French, and Italian, and was at the same time engaged in
learning Spanish, in order to converse with some Jewish parishioners.
His character and opinions at this time may be briefly described. He was
a man who had made religion the single aim and object of his life, who
was prepared to encounter for it every form of danger, discomfort, and
obloquy; who devoted exclusively to it an energy of will and power of
intellect that in worldly professions might have raised him to the
highest positions of honor and wealth. Of his sincerity, of his
self-renunciation, of his deep and fervent piety, of his almost
boundless activity, there can be no question. Yet with all these
qualities he was not an amiable man. He was hard, punctilious,
domineering, and in a certain sense even selfish. A short time before
he left England, his father, who was then an old and dying man, and who
dreaded above all things that the religious fervor which he had spent
the greater part of his life in kindling in his parish should dwindle
after his death, entreated his son in the most pathetic terms to remove
to Epworth, in which case he would probably succeed to the living, and
be able to maintain his mother in her old home.
Wesley peremptorily refused to leave Oxford, and the reason he assigned
was very characteristic. "The question," he said, "is not whether I
could do more good to others there than here; but whether I could do
more good to myself, seeing wherever I can be most holy myself there I
can most promote holiness in others." "My chief motive," he wrote when
starting for Georgia, "is the hope of saving my own soul. I hope to
learn the true sense of the Gospel of Christ by preaching it to the
heathen." He was at this time a High-Churchman of a very narrow type,
full of exaggerated notions about church discipline, extremely anxious
to revive obsolete rubrics, and determined to force the strictest
ritualistic observances upon rude colonists, for whom of all men they
were least adapted. He insisted upon adopting baptism by immersion, and
refused to baptize a child whose parents objected to that form. He would
not permit any non-communicant to be a sponsor, repelled one of the
holiest men in the colony from the communion-table because he was a
Dissenter; refused for the same reason to read the burial-service over
another; made it a special object of his teaching to prevent ladies of
his congregation from wearing any gold ornament or any rich dress, and
succeeded in inducing Oglethorpe to issue an order forbidding any
colonist from throwing a line or firing a gun on Sunday. His sermons, it
was complained, were all satires on particular persons. He insisted upon
weekly communions, desired to rebaptize Dissenters who abandoned their
Nonconformity, and exercised his pastoral duties in such a manner that
he was accused of meddling in every quarrel and prying into every
family.
A more unpropitious commencement for a great career could hardly be
conceived. Wesley returned to England in bad health and low spirits. He
redoubled his austerities and his zeal in teaching, and he was tortured
by doubts about the reality of his faith. It was at this time and in
this state of mind that he came in contact with Peter Boehler, a
Moravian teacher, whose calm and concentrated enthusiasm, united with
unusual mental powers, gained a complete ascendency over his mind. From
him Wesley for the first time learned that form of the doctrine of
justification by faith which he afterward regarded as the fundamental
tenet of Christianity. He had long held that in order to be a real
Christian it was necessary to live a life wholly differing from that of
the world around him, and that such a renewal of life could only be
effected by the operation of the divine Spirit; and he does not appear
to have had serious difficulties about the doctrine of imputed
righteousness, although the ordinary evangelical doctrine on this matter
was emphatically repudiated and denounced by Law.
From Boehler he first learned to believe that every man, no matter how
moral, how pious, or how orthodox he may be, is in a state of damnation,
until, by a supernatural and instantaneous process wholly unlike that of
human reasoning, the conviction flashes upon his mind that the sacrifice
of Christ has been applied to and has expiated his sins; that this
supernatural and personal conviction or illumination is what is meant by
saving faith, and that it is inseparably accompanied by an absolute
assurance of salvation and by a complete dominion over sin. It cannot
exist where there is not a sense of the pardon of all past and of
freedom from all present sins. It is impossible that he who has
experienced it should be in serious and lasting doubt as to the fact;
for its fruits are constant peace--not one uneasy thought; "freedom from
sin--not one unholy desire." Repentance and fruits meet for repentance,
such as the forgiveness of those who have offended us, ceasing from evil
and doing good, may precede this faith, but good works in the
theological sense of the term spring from, and therefore can only
follow, faith.
Such, as clearly as I can state it, was the fundamental doctrine which
Wesley adopted from the Moravians. His mind was now thrown, through
causes very susceptible of a natural explanation, into an exceedingly
excited and abnormal condition, and he has himself chronicled with great
minuteness in his journal the incidents that follow. On Sunday, March
5, 1738, he tells us that Boehler first fully convinced him of the want
of that supernatural faith which alone could save. The shock was very
great, and the first impulse of Wesley was to abstain from preaching,
but his new master dissuaded him, saying: "Preach faith till you have
it; and then because you have faith you will preach faith." He followed
the advice, and several weeks passed in a state of extreme religious
excitement, broken, however, by strange fits of "indifference, dulness,
and coldness." While still believing himself to be in a state of
damnation, he preached the new doctrine with such passionate fervor that
he was excluded from pulpit after pulpit. He preached to the criminals
in the jails. He visited, under the superintendence of Boehler, some
persons who professed to have undergone the instantaneous and
supernatural illumination. He addressed the passengers whom he met on
the roads or at the public tables in the inns. On one occasion, at
Birmingham, he abstained from doing so, and he relates, with his usual
imperturbable confidence, that a heavy hailstorm which he afterward
encountered was a divine judgment sent to punish him for his neglect.
This condition could not last long. At length, on May 24th, a day which
he ever after looked back upon as the most momentous in his life--the
cloud was dispelled. Early in the morning, according to his usual
custom, he opened the Bible at random, seeking for a divine guidance,
and his eye lighted on the words, "There are given unto us exceeding
great and precious promises, even that we would be partakers of the
divine nature." Before he left the house he again consulted the oracle,
and the first words he read were, "Thou art not far from the kingdom of
God." In the afternoon he attended service in St. Paul's Cathedral, and
the anthem, to his highly wrought imagination, seemed a repetition of
the same hope. The sequel may be told in his own words: "In the evening
I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was
reading Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter
before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the
heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed; I felt
I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was
given me that he had taken away _my_ sins, even mine, and saved me from
the law of sin and death. I began to pray with all my might for those
who had in a more especial manner despitefully used me and persecuted
me. I then testified openly to all what I now first felt in my heart."
Pictures of this kind are not uncommon in the lives of religious
enthusiasts, but they usually have a very limited interest and
importance. It is, however, scarcely an exaggeration to say that the
scene which took place at that humble meeting in Aldersgate Street forms
an epoch in English history. The conviction which then flashed upon one
of the most powerful and most active intellects in England is the true
source of English Methodism. Shortly before this, Charles Wesley, who
had also fallen completely under the influence of Boehler, had passed
through a similar change; and Whitefield, without ever adopting the
dangerous doctrine of perfection which was so prominent in the Methodist
teaching, was at a still earlier period an ardent preacher of
justification by faith of the new birth. It was characteristic of John
Wesley that ten days before his conversion he wrote a long, petulant,
and dictatorial letter to his old master, William Law, reproaching him
with having kept back from him the fundamental doctrine of Christianity,
and intimating in strong and discourteous language his own conviction,
and that of Boehler, that the spiritual condition of Law was a very
dangerous one.
It was no less characteristic of the indefatigable energy which formed
another and a better side of his nature, that immediately after this
change he started on a pilgrimage to Herrnhut, the head-quarters of
Moravianism, in order that he might study to the best advantage what he
now regarded as the purest type of a Christian church. He returned
objecting to many things, but more than ever convinced of his new
doctrine, and more than ever resolved to spend his life in diffusing it.
In the course of 1738 the chief elements of the movement were already
formed. Whitefield had returned from Georgia. Charles Wesley had begun
to preach the doctrine with extraordinary effect to the criminals in
Newgate and from every pulpit into which he was admitted. Methodist
societies had already sprung up under Moravian influence. The design of
each was to be a church within a church, a seed-plot of a more fervent
piety, the centre of a stricter discipline and a more energetic
propagandism, than existed in religious communities at large.
In these societies the old Christian custom of love-feasts was revived.
The members sometimes passed almost the whole night in the most
passionate devotions, and voluntarily submitted to a spiritual tyranny
that could hardly be surpassed in a Catholic monastery. They were to
meet every week, to make an open and particular confession of every
frailty, to submit to be cross-examined on all their thoughts, words,
and deeds. The following, among others, were the questions asked at
every meeting: "What known sin have you committed since our last
meeting? What temptations have you met with? How were you delivered?
What have you thought, said, or done of which you doubt whether it be
sin or not? Have you nothing you desire to keep secret?"
Such rules could only have been accepted under the influence of an
overpowering religious enthusiasm, and there was much truth in the
judgment which the elder brother of John Wesley passed upon them in
1739. "Their societies," he wrote to their mother, "are sufficient to
dissolve all other societies but their own. Will any man of common-sense
or spirit suffer any domestic to be in a band engaged to relate to five
or ten people anything without reserve that concerns the person's
conscience, how much soever it may concern the family? Ought any married
person to be there unless husband and wife be there together?"
From this time the leaders of the movement became the most active of
missionaries. Without any fixed parishes they wandered from place to
place, proclaiming their new doctrine in every pulpit to which they were
admitted, and they speedily awoke a passionate enthusiasm and a bitter
hostility in the Church. Nothing, indeed, could appear more irregular to
the ordinary parochial clergyman than those itinerant ministers who
broke away violently from the settled habits of their profession, who
belonged to and worshipped in small religious societies that bore a
suspicious resemblance to conventicles, and whose whole tone and manner
of preaching were utterly unlike anything to which he was accustomed.
They taught in language of the most vehement emphasis, as the cardinal
tenet of Christianity, the doctrine of a new birth in a form which was
altogether novel to their hearers. They were never weary of urging that
all men are in a condition of damnation who have not experienced a
sudden, violent, and supernatural change, or of inveighing against the
clergy for their ignorance of the very essence of Christianity.
"Tillotson," in the words of Whitefield, "knew no more about true
Christianity than Mahomet." _The Whole Duty of Man_, which was the most
approved devotional manual of the time, was pronounced by the same
preacher, on account of the stress it laid upon good works, to have
"sent thousands to hell."
The Methodist preacher came to an Anglican parish in the spirit and with
the language of a missionary going to the most ignorant heathens; and he
asked the clergyman of the parish to lend him his pulpit, in order that
he might instruct the parishioners--perhaps for the first time--in the
true Gospel of Christ. It is not surprising that the clergy should have
resented such a movement; and the manner of the missionary was as
startling as his matter. The sermons of the time were almost always
written, and the prevailing taste was cold, polished, and fastidious.
The new preachers preached extempore, with the most intense fervor of
language and gesture, and usually with a complete disregard of the
conventionalities of their profession. Wesley frequently mounted the
pulpit without even knowing from what text he would preach, believing
that when he opened his Bible at random the divine Spirit would guide
him infallibly in his choice. The oratory of Whitefield was so
impassioned that the preacher was sometimes scarcely able to proceed for
his tears, while half the audience were convulsed with sobs. The love of
order, routine, and decorum, which was the strongest feeling in the
clerical mind, was violently shocked. The regular congregation was
displaced by an agitated throng who had never before been seen within
the precincts of the church. The usual quiet worship was disturbed by
violent enthusiasm or violent opposition, by hysterical paroxysms of
devotion or remorse, and when the preacher had left the parish he seldom
failed to leave behind him the elements of agitation and division.
We may blame, but we can hardly, I think, wonder at the hostility all
this aroused among the clergy. It is, indeed, certain that Wesley and
Whitefield were at this time doing more than any other contemporary
clergymen to kindle a living piety among the people. It is equally
certain that they held the doctrines of the Articles and the Homilies
with an earnestness very rare among their brother-clergymen, that none
of their peculiar doctrines were in conflict with those doctrines, and
that Wesley at least was attached with an even superstitious reverence
to ecclesiastical forms. Yet before the end of 1738 the Methodist
leaders were excluded from most of the pulpits of the Church, and were
thus compelled, unless they consented to relinquish what they considered
a divine mission, to take steps in the direction of separation.
Two important measures of this nature were taken in 1739. One of them
was the creation of Methodist chapels, which were intended, not to
oppose or replace, but to be supplemental and ancillary to, the
churches, and to secure that the doctrine of the new birth should be
faithfully taught to the people. The other, and still more important
event, was the institution by Whitefield of field-preaching. The idea
had occurred to him in London, where he found congregations too numerous
for the church in which he preached, but the first actual step was taken
in the neighborhood of Bristol. At a time when he was thus deprived of
the chief normal means of exercising his talents his attention was
called to the condition of the colliers of Kingswood. He was filled with
horror and compassion at finding in the heart of a Christian country,
and in the immediate neighborhood of a great city, a population of many
thousands sunk in the most brutal ignorance and vice, and entirely
excluded from the ordinances of religion. Moved by such feelings, he
resolved to address the colliers in their own haunts. The resolution was
a bold one, for field-preaching was then utterly unknown in England, and
it needed no common courage to brave all the obloquy and derision it
must provoke, and to commence the experiment in the centre of a
half-savage population.
Whitefield, however, had a just confidence in his cause and in his
powers. Standing himself upon a hillside, he took for his text the first
words of the Sermon which was spoken from the Mount, and he addressed
with his accustomed fire an astonished audience of some two hundred men.
The fame of his eloquence spread far and wide. On successive occasions
five, ten, fifteen, even twenty thousand were present. It was February,
but the winter sun shone clear and bright. The lanes were filled with
the carriages of the more wealthy citizens, whom curiosity had drawn
from Bristol. The trees and hedges were crowded with humbler listeners,
and the fields were darkened by a compact mass. The face of the preacher
paled with a thrilling power to the very outskirts of that mighty
throng. The picturesque novelty of the occasion and of the scene, the
contagious emotion of so great a multitude, a deep sense of the
condition of his hearers and of the momentous importance of the step he
was taking, gave an additional solemnity. His rude auditors were
electrified. They stood for a time in rapt and motionless attention.
Soon tears might be seen forming white gutters down cheeks blackened
from the coal-mine. Then sobs and groans told how hard hearts were
melting at his words. A fire was kindled among the outcasts of
Kingswood, which burned long and fiercely, and was destined in a few
years to overspread the land.
It was only with great difficulty that Whitefield could persuade the
Wesleys to join him in this new phase of missionary labor. John Wesley
has left on record, in his journal, his first repugnance to it,
"having," as he says, "been all my life (till very lately) so tenacious
of every point relating to decency and order, that I should have thought
the saving of souls almost a sin if it had not been done in a church."
Charles Wesley, on this as on most other occasions, was even more
strongly conservative. The two brothers adopted their usual
superstitious practice of opening their Bibles at random, under the
belief that the texts on which their eyes first fell would guide them in
their decision. The texts were ambiguous and somewhat ominous, relating
for the most part to violent deaths; but on drawing lots the lot
determined them to go. It was on this slender ground that they resolved
to give the weight of their example to this most important development
of the movement. They went to Bristol, from which Whitefield was
speedily called, and continued the work among the Kingswood colliers and
among the people of the city; while Whitefield, after a preaching tour
of some weeks in the country, reproduced on a still larger scale the
triumphs of Kingswood by preaching with marvellous effect to immense
throngs of the London rabble at Moorfields and on Kennington Common.
From this time field-preaching became one of the most conspicuous
features of the revival.
The character and genius of the preacher to whom this most important
development of Methodism was due demand a more extended notice than I
have yet given them. Unlike Wesley, whose strongest enthusiasm was
always curbed by a powerful will, and who manifested at all times and on
all subjects an even exaggerated passion for reasoning, Whitefield was
chiefly a creature of impulse and emotion. He had very little logical
skill, no depth or range of knowledge, not much self-restraint, nothing
of the commanding and organizing talent, and, it must be added, nothing
of the arrogant and imperious spirit so conspicuous in his colleague. At
the same time a more zealous, a more single-minded, a more truly
amiable, a more purely unselfish man it would be difficult to conceive.
He lived perpetually in the sight of eternity, and a desire to save
souls was the single passion of his life. Of his labors it is sufficient
to say that it has been estimated that in the thirty-four years of his
active career he preached eighteen thousand times, or on an average ten
times a week; that these sermons were delivered with the utmost
vehemence of voice and gesture, often in the open air, and to
congregations of many thousands; and that he continued his exertions to
the last, when his constitution was hopelessly shattered by disease.
During long periods he preached forty hours, and sometimes as much as
sixty hours, a week. In the prosecution of his missionary labors he
visited almost every important district in England and Wales. At least
twelve times he traversed Scotland, three times he preached in Ireland,
thirteen times he crossed the Atlantic.
Very few men placed by circumstances at the head of a great religious
movement have been so absolutely free from the spirit of sect. Very few
men have passed through so much obloquy with a heart so entirely
unsoured, and have retained amid so much adulation so large a measure of
deep and genuine humility. There was indeed not a trace of jealousy,
ambition, or rancor in his nature. There is something singularly
touching in the zeal with which he endeavored to compose the differences
between himself and Wesley, when so many of the followers of each leader
were endeavoring to envenom them; in the profound respect he continually
expressed for his colleague at the time of their separation; in the
exuberant gratitude he always showed for the smallest act of kindness to
himself; in the tenderness with which he guarded the interests of the
inmates of that orphanage at Georgia around which his strongest earthly
affections were entwined; in the almost childish simplicity with which
he was always ready to make a public confession of his faults.
CONQUESTS OF NADIR SHAH
CAPTURE OF DELHI
A.D. 1739
SIR JOHN MALCOLM
It was the fortune of Persia to be delivered from the Afghan yoke at
a time when, under a feeble and corrupt ruler, the national life had
been almost crushed out by foreign tyranny. This deliverance was
wrought by a man who raised himself from the lowest condition to the
head of the kingdom which he restored. Besides this achievement for
Persia, Nadir Shah performed deeds of conquest which placed his name
among those who have won lasting celebrity by the subjugation of
empires.
The Afghans had in 1722 captured Ispahan, the Persian capital, then
an important metropolis with six hundred thousand inhabitants. They
sacked the city and killed all of the royal family except Hasan, the
weak ruler, his son Tamasp, and two grandchildren. From this blow
the once magnificent capital of Persia has never recovered. Tamasp
became shah in 1727.
How the brief rule of the conquering Afghans was terminated by Nadir
Shah, and how he pursued his own bloody path of conquest, Sir John
Malcolm, the historian of Persia, relates in a most graphic and
comprehensive manner.
Nadir Shah was born in the province of Khorasan. Persian historians pass
over the early occurrences of his life, and the first event that these
notice is the birth of his eldest son, Reza Kuli, which occurred when he
was thirty-one years of age. He had before that experienced great
vicissitudes of fortune, and had given proofs both of valor and talent.
When only seventeen he was taken prisoner by the Usbegs, who made annual
incursions into Khorasan; but he effected his escape after a captivity
of four years. His occupation from that period till he entered into the
service of Shah Tamasp can only merit notice as it is calculated to show
that the character of this extraordinary man was always the same. He was
at one time in the service of a petty chief of his native province, whom
he murdered, and whose daughter he carried off and married. After this,
he obtained a precarious subsistence by heading a band of robbers; from
which occupation he passed, by an easy transition in such troubled
times, into the employment of the Afghan Governor of Khorasan, by whom
he was at first raised to rank and command, as a reward for his valor in
actions with the Usbegs, and afterward degraded and punished with the
bastinado on account of his insolent and turbulent conduct.
Irritated at the disgrace he had suffered, Nadir left the city of
Mushed, and went to the fort of Khelat in the same province, which was
in the possession of his uncle, who appears at this period to have been
at the head of a small branch of the Affshars. He resided there but a
short time, before his relation, alarmed at his violence and ambition,
compelled him to retire. He appears next to have resumed his occupation
of a robber; but his depredations were now on a more extended scale. The
Afghans had become masters of Ispahan; and the rule of the Suffavean
monarchs over the distant provinces of the kingdom was subverted,
without that of their conquerors being firmly established. At such a
moment a plunderer of known valor and experience could not want
followers; and in the course of a short time we find Nadir, a chief of
reputation, at the head of a body of three thousand men, levying large
contributions on the inhabitants of Khorasan.
His uncle, alarmed at his increasing power, sought his friendship. He
addressed a kind letter to him, and proposed that he should enter the
service of Shah Tamasp, and aid that Prince in expelling the Afghans
from Persia. Nadir pretended to listen to this overture, and earnestly
desired that the King should grant him a pardon for his past offences.
This was easily obtained; and he went to Khelat to receive it. He
appears to have always deemed the Governor of that place as the chief
obstacle to his rise; and at this moment he laid a plan to destroy him
and to seize his fortress. He completely succeeded in both; and, after
having slain his uncle with his own hand, he proceeded to employ the
means he had acquired by this crime in overthrowing the Afghan ruler of
Khorasan. This popular attack upon the enemies of his country enabled
him to obtain a second pardon from Shah Tamasp, whose service he
entered, and to whose cause he brought a great accession of strength and
reputation.
Shah Tamasp early entertained the greatest jealousy of Nadir: and upon
his disobeying a mandate he had sent him to return from an expedition on
which he was engaged, the weak monarch ventured to proclaim him a rebel
and a traitor. The indignant chief, the moment he heard of these
proceedings, marched against the court, which he soon compelled to
submit on the terms he chose to dictate. From the occurrence of this
open rupture we may date the annihilation of the little power Tamasp had
ever enjoyed. Nadir continued to treat him with respect till he deemed
the time mature for his usurpation of the throne; but we discover that,
as early as his first expedition into Khorasan, he began to prepare the
minds of his countrymen for his future elevation.
Like Ardisheer, the founder of the Sassanian race of Persian kings, he
had his visions of future grandeur. He saw, we are told, in one of
these, a water-fowl and a white fish with four horns; he dreamt that he
shot the bird; and, after all his attendants had failed in their
attempts to seize the extraordinary fish, he stretched out his hand and
caught it with the greatest ease. The simple fact of his dreaming of a
bird and a fish, he was informed by flattering astrologers, was a
certain presage of his attaining imperial power; and his historian has
had a less difficult task in discovering, from subsequent events, that
the four horns of the fish were types of the kingdoms of Persia,
Khaurizm, India, and Tartary, which were all destined to be conquered by
this hero. Such trifles are not unworthy of notice; they show the art or
superstition of him who uses or believes in them, and portray better
than the most elaborate descriptions the character of those minds upon
which they make an impression.
The expulsion of the Afghans from Persia seemed the sole effort of the
genius of Nadir; and no reward, therefore, appeared too great for the
man who was liberating his country from its cruel oppressors. The grant
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