The Modern Athens 20

The Modern Athens 20

In the peculiar politics of the Athens, it struck me, that though there

are only two parties,--the men in office, with their connexions and

dependants, and the men who are not in office,--yet that there are

several distinct grounds of opposition, some of which neither party are

very willing to avow, and therefore they lump them all together in the

convenient cant terms of Tory and Whig. Both parties are radically and

substantially loyal; and both parties, though in different degrees, and

sought for by different measures, may have a regard for the prosperity

of their country generally, and for the glory and aggrandizement of the

Athens, in a particular and pre-eminent degree; but still, their wars

of the tongue, and the unpleasant inroads which these wars make upon

domestic prosperity and happiness, are just as unpleasant as though the

one party were about to draw the sword for absolute despotism, and the

other for blind and indiscriminate democracy.

 

The Athenian Tories are perhaps the most place-devoted race in the

British dominions. Office is their god; and, as is sometimes the

case with other devotees, their devotion is fervent in proportion

to the feeling they have of their own unworthiness. In defence of

that which they worship, they have no more variety of voice than the

winged warders of the Roman capitol. Hence, as I said of the burghal

magistracies, they cling to each other, and by that very means separate

themselves more from the people than the necessity of the case

requires. Their strength consists, mainly, in those imperfections of

the elective franchise, and powers of the law officers of the Crown,

to which I have alluded; and as those cannot well be defended in

argument, eloquence is of little use to them, and they seem to have no

great partiality for those who possess it. When they make an attack as

a body, in any other way than through the instrumentality of the law,

(which they can employ only when the waters of society are a little

troubled,) they do it snugly and covertly,--by letting people feel that

they have the dispensing of rewards; by standing between a candidate

and an office for which he is qualified, or by something of a similar

kind. I was told that, at one period, and that not a very remote one,

they would hit a man whose politics they did not like, through the

medium of his banker; but latterly, the will or the power, or at any

rate the practice of this, has been lessened, if not abolished.

 

At some periods, indeed, they have shown direct hostilities: they

have spoken and written with considerable loudness, and considerable

license; but the system, at least the local system, of which they

have undertaken the championship, has not furnished them with sound

principles or satisfactory arguments; and their mode of conducting

themselves has shown that they were deficient both in skill and in

tact. They have been exposed, certainly, and ashamed of themselves,

very possibly.

 

The Athenian Whigs are a mixed multitude, and though they all agree

in their opposition to the other party, they are by no means agreed

among themselves,--that is, as far as I could discover, they are not

all influenced by the same principles, or seeking the same object.

The party who are in office, have always among their opponents,

and frequently foremost amongst them, a party whose principles and

disposition differ not much from their own--namely, the party who wish

to get in. As, however, those longers for office cannot, like the

enjoyers of office, support themselves by their politics, they have

no principle of union, and therefore do not, like the others, unfurl

the ensigns, and raise the war-cry, as a party. Were they to do this,

it would not only defeat their own object, but cause them to be more

disliked by the independent part of the people, than the persons who

are in possession. Feeding, whether with pudding or with place, has a

tendency to smooth the turbulent passions; while hungering, whether

for food or for office, has an effect exactly the opposite. Hence,

even the Athenian placeman, whose appetite is most ravenous, and who

is prone to snarl at those whom he suspects of a desire to take his

portion from him, is the more civil from being in office, unless when

he thinks that his honours or emoluments are in danger. Upon this

principle, he is kind to those whom he thinks indifferent, and polite,

and occasionally generous, to all whom he imagines can strengthen his

influence, without turning round in the end, and attempting to share it

with him. Hence, also, the place-hunter, I mean him who hunts for it in

opposition to the present holder, is always irritable and jealous, and

keeps his wishes and his plans as much to himself as ever he can. Thus,

such of the Athenian Whigs as would be placemen to the very core, if

they had “good opportunities for the ’ork,” are careful to blend, and

lose if possible, their peculiar propensities, in the general mass of

those who, without any specific or immediate view to their own personal

interest, seek for a reform of what they conceive to be the political

abuses of their country.

 

In this way, all that is selfish among the Athenian Whigs can be kept

in the back-ground; and as the principles which they abet are much more

rational in themselves, much more agreeable to the general feelings

of mankind, and much better adapted for declamation, than those which

their opponents profess--when they venture to profess any thing, the

Whigs always have had, and always will continue to have, the best of

the argument, and the finest of the eloquence upon their side. But

though they be by far the most numerous, and the most specious, their

chances of success bear no proportion either to their numbers or

the apparent superiority of their cause. The opposite party have the

command of the public purse, and when the two parties strive, they are

thus enabled to throw the expense of both sides upon their antagonists.

Such are a few of the principles and practices of Athenian politics,--a

war of words, of which it would be no easy matter to define the object,

or calculate the end.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER VI.

 

LAW OF THE ATHENS.

 

----“Lawyers have more sober sense

Than t’ argue at their own expense,

But make their best advantages

Of others’ quarrels, like the Swiss;

And out of foreign controversies,

By aiding both sides, fill their purses.”--BUTLER.

 

 

WHATEVER airs the Athens may give herself in other matters, however she

may boast of her taste and her elegance, talk of her science and her

literature, or cherish the mouldering skeleton of her medical school,

no one can be a day within her precincts without discovering that the

law is her Alpha and her Omega,--the food which she eats, the raiment

she puts on, the dwelling-house which she inhabits, the conversation in

which she engages, the soul which animates her whole frame, the mind

which is discovered in every feature of her countenance, and every

attitude of her body. Once destroy that, or remove it to another place,

and the pride of the Athens would be at an end: you might lodge owls

in all her palaces, and graze cattle in all her streets.

 

From the way in which the Scottish courts of law are regulated,

there is hardly a suit from the Solway Firth to the Pentland, or

from Peterhead to the remotest of the Hebudæ, which does not look

toward the Athens, the moment that the litigiousness of a client, or

the machinations of an attorney, call it into existence. I hinted

already, that there is no one thing in which the Athens can now retain

a superiority except the practice of Scotch law; and, as Scotland

increases in wealth, that law is so constructed, that the portion which

the scribes and spouters of the Athens shall be enabled to levy upon

their countrymen must always increase in a greater ratio. Scotchmen are

apt to be proud of the Athens,--to regard her with a portion at least

of that admiration which subjects pay to the pomp of their kings. There

is propriety in this; for there is scarcely a stone in the walls of the

Athenian palaces, or a decent coat in her streets, which has not been

squeezed out of some litigious or unfortunate man of the provinces,

in the shape of a lawyer’s fee. I noticed the power which the crown

lawyers of Scotland have over the liberties and lives of the people;

and the power which lawyers of another class have over the fortunes of

the Scotch lairds, is every jot as ruinous and humiliating. There are

complaints in England, that when once property gets into chancery, the

“infant” becomes grey before he can enjoy it; but the Scottish chancery

is incalculably worse; for the moment that a Scotch proprietor allows

his lands to pass into the keeping of an Edinburgh agent, from that

moment he must lay his account either with losing them altogether, or

purchasing them anew; and to enumerate the heirs of Scottish families,

who are at any time pining away in heart-broken obscurity, or toiling

under the burning suns of the East or the West, in the hope of winning

back a poor fragment of the ample heritage to which they were born,

would require no trifling succession of pages.

 

It cannot indeed be otherwise. According to the definition of the

political economists, law is not only unproductive labour in itself,

but wherever it clutches its talons, it tears away the funds by which

more valuable labour should be supported, and distracts and lacerates

the spirit by which those funds should be applied. When a Scotchman

from the country visits the Athens, and sees a long line of costly

buildings mounting up in the air, he may rest assured, that for

every shilling that those buildings cost, and every shilling that

shall be spent in them, he and his compatriots must pay. The Athens

herself,--the overtopping and overwhelming part of the Athens,--that

part which rises by the power, and extends itself by the weight, of the

law, produces nothing whatever. It is as sterile as the Castle rock;

and, were it not for the folly of other people, its ascendency would

not be so great as it makes the Athens feel. This, however, is a matter

for the Scotch themselves; and it sometimes happens, with nations as

well as with individuals, that a deformity or a vice is praised and

cherished, while beauties and virtues are treated with neglect.

 

It is matter of trite remark, that very few of the seed of Jacob have

ever taken up their abode in the Athens, and that the few who have

done so, have in a short time been starved to death or to removal;

and it has sometimes been wondered why a people, who have been so

successful in pillaging the other nations of Europe, should have failed

so completely in this instance. A very slight acquaintance with the

Athenian “men of business,” as they are called, will explain the fact,

and resolve the difficulty. The man of business has all the natural

rapacity and cunning of the Jew, and he is at the same time so well conversant with every quirk and turn of the law, that there is no possibility of calling him to account for his depredations.