Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/517

 . 1, 1862.] institutes for the working-classes, and schools for children. But, amidst all the spread of education, and all the multiplying of schools and colleges, how much is done towards curing the unreason which is the great evil of human life and character to all but the very few who are gifted with a judgment which seems scarcely to need cultivating, but only employment on varied material? The children of educated parents are brought up in and with their parents’ opinions; if they quit those opinions, it is usually to betake themselves to views precisely opposite, and under the influence of prejudices as strong as those of their education. The children of uneducated parents, who are sent to school by the State, under one form or another, are actually excluded, by the very conditions of education, from any effective use or cultivation of their reason. It is the one thing never proposed, never conceived of by anybody but a very small sprinkling of parents, who, reasonable themselves, endeavour to put their children in the way of being so. The events of this autumn may show us some of the consequences. Far and wide, abroad and at home, this year seems to be the jubilee of unreason: and if Mr. Hallam had been living, he would have said:

“We will not infer too much from a single juncture; but what do you think now of your progress of society?”

At the present moment,—now that the Elector of Hesse Cassel has slipped out of view,—the King of Prussia seems to be the very Prince of Unreason. There may be,—and considering the history of his eccentric family,—there probably are grounds of excuse for him; but he is incited, supported, made a tool of, by a clique of old Tories and religious sentimentalists: and he has no more use of his reason than the most boorish child in his dominions has of his analytical faculty. Professing fidelity to the Constitution while throwing it overboard; making professions towards his people while snatching from them their rights, and insulting them whenever he opens his lips to them; a student of history, and therefore aware of the career of the Stuarts and the Bourbons, he is following in the footsteps of both, confident of an opposite result to himself, his son, and his people. For insensibility to reality, for coarse irreverence towards the noblest human faculties, and a selfish preference for the lower,—for neglect of reason and fact, and indulgence in sentimentalism and imagination, no age can have produced a more flagrant instance than the present King of Prussia.

If we glance over the thrones of Europe, we may see Unreason seated in all of them which are not guarded by a well-grounded and well-fenced constitutional reason. The sovereign who is supposed to know what he is about better than most rulers is a world’s wonder, for his unreason, at this hour. His Mexican scrape on the one hand, and his Roman difficulty on the other, speak for themselves. His vulgar policy of repression at home, leading directly and inevitably to political convulsion, long ago settled the case in regard to the strength and rectitude of the Emperor Napoleon’s reason. The rashness of his foreign policy of this year simply reminds all readers of history of the old maxim, that the gods spoil the reason of those whom they mean to destroy.

In Italy we may perhaps find the extremes of reason and unreason in the closest contrast. The political aptitude of the Italian people, naturally great, has evidently been trained to efficiency by the kind and degree of adversity which the nation has endured. In modern times,—perhaps in all time,—no people has ever evinced such a political capacity and morale as the Italians since 1858; and nowhere in modern times has such a spectacle of imbecility in high places been seen as at Rome. This seems to be altogether undisputed, except by a handful of bigots and hirelings, whose opinions are not worth a comment. The singular incident of the case and time is the flagrant unreason of an eminent man who leads on the reasonable side, and the peril thus caused to the peace of Europe. And this at once compels us, the people of England, to look at home.

During the whole of Mazzini’s course, there has been more or less sympathy,—of late smouldering very feebly,—with his professed patriotism; this sympathy being just sufficient to show that our supposed materialistic, mechanical, and selfish tendencies had not altogether destroyed our faculty of sentiment and our power of sympathy. Every year, however, the world has grown more weary of Mazzini’s unreason,—his incessant manœuvres, followed by failures, his pretentious addresses, his vagueness of thought, and his sameness of sentiment; and when it appeared that he could not accept freedom and nationality for Italy under the form of constitutional monarchy, it was no wonder that England fell away from him, except in regard to the one hold of compassion, and the principle and habit of hospitality. When the genuine liberator arose, the whole heart of England went out to him and adored him. Garibaldi was known to us by deeds, and by successful deeds, and reason warranted our homage. I own that I, for one, have enjoyed the overthrow of the supposition that our prosperity had quenched our moral enthusiasm; and that our material achievements had deadened our sympathy with political efforts. I, like the multitude of our own people, have felt it a privilege to be living at that memorable moment when Garibaldi met Victor Emmanuel, and hailed him “King of Italy!” All this was well: but if a change was to come over the scene, it is of inexpressible importance that we should be able to discern it, and not to sink into unreason, because a true hero does so. This is the great interest of the hour.

There have been evidences of Garibaldi’s defect of reason from month to month since he enabled the kingdom of Italy to be. Of his moral quality there is no doubt whatever among men capable of an opinion. Of his utter unsusceptibility of reason there is also no doubt. The homage of human hearts may naturally seem to him to invest him with authority over human minds; or at least it may prevent his suspecting his own weakness of judgment in affairs which interest him supremely through his highest virtues. Untrained as we are in reason, moral and political, because the one involves theological and the other historical