the modern athens 18

the modern athens 18

Whence, it may be asked, does this self-adoration arise? To which

I would answer, in the true Athenian manner, by asking where the

affections of a widowed and childless woman, who has no hope and no

chance of being courted by another, are centred. The Athens is a

widowed metropolis: she stands registered in the pages of history as

having been the seat of kings,--she has her walls of a palace, her name

of a royal household, and her gewgaws of a crown and sceptre; but the

satisfying, the fattening, the satiating,--or perhaps, as some would

call it, the stultifying presence and influence of the monarch is not

there; neither is there any vice-roy, or other kingly vice-gerent set

high enough in its stead, to attract the attention, and invite or

command the worship of the people. Thus, she is in herself not only the

capital of Scotland, but all that Scotland has localized as an apology

for a king; and therefore, besides assuming the consequence due to a

royal seat, she puts on the airs of royalty itself, and worships her

own shadow in the mirror of the passing time. She is the only city

in the British islands which is so situated; and this alone would be

sufficient to give her a peculiarity of character, and to make that

peculiarity an inordinate pride.

 

Thus the Athens, taking her nominal and her real situation into the

account, is both metropolitan and provincial: with regard to Scotland,

she has the name, and assumes the pride, of being metropolitan in

every thing; and in as far as concerns the administration of the laws

as peculiar to Scotland, and in some degree, also, as concerning the

internal discipline of the Scottish Kirk, she is really metropolitan;

but in respect of Britain generally, she is nothing more than a

provincial city, and the matters in which she is provincial have, to

the full, as powerful an influence upon her rival character, as those

in which she is, or flatters herself to be, metropolitan, have upon

the character which she is anxious to assume. It is not, for instance,

in the nature of things, that she can ever take the lead in matters of

taste and fashion. Wherever the executive and legislative powers of

the state are allocated, it is there that the gay and the rich will

throng; and notwithstanding all the boasted elegance and taste of the

Athens, no Scottish nobleman, or even squire, spends his winter there,

if he can afford to spend it in London. Hence, the Athens is not only

destitute of the source whence fashion flows, but she is also left

without the means by which it could be supported: she is second-rate in

her very nature, and also in those who form her leading society.

 

But it follows of necessary consequence, that a place which is

second-rate in fashion and in wealth, must be second-rate also in

every thing which fashion can encourage and wealth reward. A solitary

student who prosecutes a science, or a solitary artist who practises

an art, for its own sake, and with an inferior degree of regard to

present honour and emolument, might perchance succeed better in the

Athens than in the British metropolis. But, as British society is at

present constituted, there are few who have the means, and apparently

not many who have the desire, of proceeding in this way; and therefore,

the place which attracts the fashion and the wealth, will also attract

the superior talent, in consequence of the superior means of rewarding

which it possesses; and upon this principle, it would be just as vain

for the Athens to hope to rival London in any of the liberal arts, or

elegant amusements, as it would be for the Scotch lords of Session,

to rival the upper House of the British Parliament, the George Street

Assembly Rooms to rival Almack’s, or the speeches of the Scotch

advocates to be read with as much attention as those of the leading

orators in the House of Commons.

 

Of those classes of persons whose professions fix them in Scotland,

the Athens, if she manages her patronage honestly and judiciously, may

always command the best. The judges and pleaders in her supreme court

ought to be superior to the sheriffs and attornies in the Scottish

counties; her clergymen, if those who have the appointment of them were

to be guided solely by merit, ought to be the most learned and most

eloquent that Scotland can produce; the professors in her university

ought (under the same proviso) to be superior to those of Aberdeen

and St. Andrews, and perhaps also to those of Glasgow; and, even in

other cases, she may produce one or two lights more brilliant than

the average in the metropolis;--but, in all cases, where there is no

necessary tie, real or imaginary, to bind a man northward of the Tweed,

the Athens must be satisfied with making her selection after London

has been supplied. Or if she deny the conclusion, she must also deny a

principle upon which her people know as well how to act as the people

of any place,--that whoever can afford to pay the best, will get the

best and the readiest service.

 

For adopting this theory, the Athens must not accuse me, either of

ignorance of her erudition, or of a wish to detract from her real

merits. I know her more intimately than she may perhaps be aware; and

if I were to judge her by the strict letter of my own experience, I

should place her sundry degrees lower still; and tell the world of some

of the bitterness which she foolishly squeezes into her own dish,

and some of the ludicrous positions into which she works herself, by

attempting a grace and a dignity, which her nature and her education

alike deny to her; but I have no desire to state any more than is

sufficient to establish the truth; and if she can point out a theory

either of this leading feature of her general character, or of any of

the more detailed and particular ones, which will explain the phenomena

better than mine, I shall be very willing to adopt it. Meanwhile,

however, it is fitting that a city, which not only looks down in scorn

upon the country to which she owes her daily bread, but which affects

to sneer at those whom she must notwithstanding copy, and whom it is

utterly impossible that she can ever equal, should be rebuked for her

arrogance, and resisted when she would claim that to which she neither

has nor can have the smallest title.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER V.

 

POLITICS OF THE ATHENS.

 

“As when the sea breaks o’er its bounds,

And overflows the level grounds,

Those banks and dams, that, like a screen,

Did keep it out, now keep it in;

So, when tyrannic usurpation

Invades the freedom of a nation,

The laws o’ th’ land, that were intended

To keep it out, are made defend it.”--BUTLER.

 

 

ALTHOUGH the Athens be the point at which the whole politics of

Scotland have their origin and their termination; and, although the

parties there be more uniform and incessant in their hostility than in

the remote parts of the country; yet, it is impossible to understand

the composition, spirit, and conduct of those parties, without

premising a few words on the general question.

 

Now, though England growls, and Ireland brawls and fights, neither

of them is perhaps so degraded in its political system as Scotland.

The great body of the Scottish people may indeed be said to have no

political rights at all; and the members that are sent to the House

of Commons as the representatives of Scotland, may just as properly

be considered the representatives of Bengal or Barbadoes, with which

they have often fully as much connexion, and in the welfare of which

they are fully as much interested. In the Scottish counties, the real

proprietors of the soil are not necessarily the voters for members of

parliament; and, in the royal burghs of Scotland, the great body of

the freemen and burgesses, instead of possessing the parliamentary

franchise, are almost necessarily in opposition to those who do possess

it. Freeholds, in the Scottish counties, are held either by charters

directly from the King, or by charter from subjects as their vassals.

No part of the lands in Scotland being now in the hands of the crown,

the extent of holdings by crown charter cannot be increased; and, as

the rents of the crown vassals were valued a considerable time ago,

an increase of rent, either from the improvement of the estate, or

from any other cause, does not increase its political value. None

but those who hold of the crown, and whose valued rents are of the

stipulated amount, can vote for members of parliament; though, if

the valued rental amount to any number of times the sum necessary

for a qualification, the holder of the crown charter for that rental

possesses as many votes as the amount will bear. In theory, therefore,

there is a difference between the value of Scotch property in land, and

the representation of that property in parliament. The value of the

land varies with the prosperity of the country, while the extent of the

representation remains the same. This is an injustice; but it is by no

means the only or the greatest one of which the Scottish landholder has

to complain. The property in the crown charter, or superiority, as it

is called, is different from the property in the land: the lands may

be sold, and the votes retained by the seller; the votes may be sold,

without selling the land; or the land may be sold to one purchaser, and

the votes to another.

 

This system is productive of so many evils, that, in many instances,

a Scotch county representation is substantially no representation at

all. The local interests and improvements of the counties are apt to

be neglected, the county interest is easily thrown into the scale of

any party or faction,--more especially if that party or faction be

subservient to the administration,--and, as the county member, when

ministerial, has great influence over all the government offices and

patronage connected with the county, the chances are, that these will

be bestowed upon persons who are either ignorant of their duties,

from a want of local knowledge, or disliked by the independent

proprietors upon party grounds. The old and decaying families, whose

fallen fortunes force them to sell their lands, and whose pride as

well as whose interest induces them to retain their superiorities, for

the purpose of turning them to political account, are thus ranged in

opposition to the more active and intelligent, who, by the exercise

of their own talents, have acquired the means of purchasing land; and

thus, independently of the old and theoretic distinctions of tories

and whigs, there is perhaps more to create and render conspicuous

the distinction between the liberal and the servile, in the Scotch

counties, than in those either of England or of Ireland.

 

In the royal burghs of Scotland, the separation between those who

really possess the property and are interested in the welfare of the

burgh, and those who are in possession of the elective franchise, is

still more glaring in its absurdity, and pernicious in its effects.

During the minority of James III. of Scotland, in 1469, when that

prince was only seventeen years old, and when the turbulent nobles

were setting the laws at defiance, and, by bands of armed ruffians

in the streets, compelling the freemen of the royal burghs to choose

their creatures as magistrates,--a statute was enacted, which was

deemed salutary at the time, but which has since reduced the political

influence of the whole burgesses of Scotland to a mere nonentity, and

made the Scotch burgh representation one of the most convenient and

efficient engines of corruption that ever was devised. That statute

gave to the official men, seldom exceeding twenty in any burgh, and

generally the mere creatures of some chief or leader, who frequently

has no connexion with the burgh at all--the power of electing their

successors in office,--that is, of placing the whole parliamentary

franchise, the whole revenues of the burgh, every species of patronage

that it can exercise, and every alteration and improvement that it

would require, solely and irretrievably at the control and disposal of

about twenty persons, and giving it to them and their assignees as a perpetual inheritance.