56 MATRIMONIAL CONTRACTS CH. XIV. and throughout the last century, as a general rule, the power of a father, in the disposal of a daughter, was absolute; and it was commonly exercised in the same arbitrary manner by the fondest, as well as the most selfish, or indifferent head of a family.* According to the universal domestic law, the selection of a husband for an unmarried daughter was entirely the province of her natural guardian; and it would have been considered highly indelicate as well as undutiful, if the young lady expressed a wish to have a voice in the matter. Marriages so contracted, if there was no great disparity of age or condition, were, for the most part, in the ordinary acceptation, productive of happiness. A young woman, with the education and manners of a chambermaid, was not likely to be disgusted with the illiterate and ill-bred heir of a country gentleman. His oaths, his foul conversation, his low associates, were probably no more than she had been accustomed to in the home of her birth; and if her husband did not abuse her when he was in ill-humour, or when he came home drunk from the ale-house, the poor woman was content with her lot. It was among the more civilised classes that the evil effects of treating matrimony merely as a matter of bargain were more apparent. If a romp was paired off with a beau, or a town-bred miss with a rural gentleman, it was a rare chance, indeed, if either happiness or respectability resulted from such an incongruous union. When a man of fashion went into the City for a wife, the commercial character of the transaction was still more flagrant, and the contrast still more irreconcileable. But it * Fielding is, as usual, correct in his delineation of manners, when he represents Western untouched by the smallest compunction at forcing the child he fondly loves into the arms of a man she abhors. But there were many fathers, of more education and refinement than Western, who would have regarded the fine argument of Allworthy in the third chapter of the seventeenth book, as mere rodomontade. CH. XIV. AMONG THE HIGHER CLASSES. 57 was, perhaps, among the higher classes that this rigid system of close marriages was most oppressive. A young woman of rank was inevitably destined for some man of birth and fortune. Surrounded, probably, by the most agreeable and accomplished persons of the other sex, the high-born girl had learned that matrimony was not instituted for the gratification of the tastes and emotions which such society was calculated to inspire. These unnatural restraints upon regular marriages, combined with the facilities afforded to clandestine unions before the Act of 1753, were, undoubtedly, to be reckoned among the most active incentives to the immorality of the age; and when to these are added license of manners, voluptuous and exciting amusements, together with the opportunities they afforded, it is easy to believe how low the standard of morality had fallen. Religion and morality of the middle classes. Whatever ground there may be for the claim to superior religion and morality, preferred on behalf of the middle classes of the present day, no such pretensions could be urged with any plausibility a hundred years ago. There can be no question, that, besides observing the precepts of religion and good morals common to all, there is a public duty incumbent on those who are placed in a more conspicuous position in life, to show an outward respect for those laws of God and man, which are the bonds of Christian and civilised society. That duty, the obligation of which is in these days enforced by the discipline of public opinion, was shamefully neglected in a former age; and so far as an evil example operated, the higher orders were responsible for the depravity which pervaded all ranks. When the highest persons in the realm, from the King and his Court downwards, lived in open adultery; when religion and its ministers were treated with neglect and ridicule; when drinking, gaming, and brutal sports, were the principal occupations of 58 MANNERS AMONG THE MIDDLE CLASSES. CH. XIV. gentlemen; when great ladies patronised places of amusement which the law declared loose and disorderly;* when they sanctioned by their presence dramatic performances, the argument of which was generally incontinence or the breach of the marriage vow; and took part in such vocal entertainments† as are now performed at the lowest haunts of debauched apprentices and street-walkers, the evil effect of this example could not fail to operate through the whole order of society. Distinction be and rural classes. The middle classes properly include the wide range of society, from the untitled gentry and tween the urban the liberal professions, to mechanics and day labourers; and it is in this order, elevated above the sordid ignorance of the lowest ranks, and unsophisticated by the artificial manner of the aristocracy, that the humours of the English character have been, and are still, most strikingly displayed. There has always been a marked distinction, however, between the urban and the rural character. The Tory farmer who comes into the country town on market-day, is a very different person from the dissenting shopkeeper. The one is still full of stupid and obsolete prejudices; he thinks that good sense consists in despising everything that is new; and even in his own business, and where his immediate interests are concerned, distrusts the evidence of his * A bill of indictment, preferred against Mrs. Cornelys, before the Grand Jury of Middlesex, in 1771, charged her with 'keeping and maintaining a common disorderly house, and suffering divers loose, idle, and disorderly persons, as well men as women, to be and remain during the whole night, rioting and otherwise misbehaving themselves.'MRS. CORNELYS's Entertainments. When the amusements of the evening ended in a supper, as they generally did, the company sang catches and glees. I have seen a collection of these songs in four handsome volumes, which formerly adorned the library of a nobleman's country house. The books had long since been banished to a lumber-room, where I found them. A copy may, perhaps, be obtained in Holywell Street; but no decent tradesman would venture to sell them. CH. XIV. SLOW PROGRESS OF AGRICULTURAL CLASSES. 59 senses, when it points to an improvement involving a departure from traditional practice. The tradesman, on the other hand, is a ready disputant, a reader of newspapers and controversial publications, a member of mechancs' institutes and improvement societies, a reformer and a friend of Progress. the farmers. The ordinary tenant farmer of the last century, differed little from his ploughman and Manners of carter who lived in his house, and were domesticated with his family. It rarely happened that he could read or write; and a scanty capital sufficed for the rude cultivation of the few fields which he held at an easy rent. This primitive husbandman has long since merged into the labouring peasantry. Another description of cultivator, long the pride and boast of old England, the yeoman or small proprietor, has likewise almost disappeared. Some of the most respectable country gentlemen derive their origin from this class; but the greater number of the small freeholds have been gradually absorbed in the great estates. A few remains are still to be found in some of the remote counties. In Cumberland and the North Riding of Yorkshire, the independent yeoman yet lives on his paternal acres, and maintains, with just pride, the ancient and worthy order to which he belongs. classes. Though it cannot be denied that civilisation has, to a certain extent, penetrated the market- Slow progress of room, it is certain that the natural phlegm the agricultural and obtuseness of the English character are more visible in the agricultural than in any other class. The farmer of 1860 is not so far removed from the farmer of 1760, as the shopkeeper of the one period differs from the shopkeeper of the other. A tradesman who fails to keep pace with every improvement in the articles in which he deals, or even to watch the changes of fashion, soon finds himself in the Gazette; but a farmer may go on ploughing 60 Prevalence of GENERAL INTEMPERANCE AND CH. XIV. with four horses, while his neighbour ploughs with two, and may be content to raise four crops while his neighbour gathers five, and yet obtain a livelihood. His life is passed in a monotonous round, and his ideas are seldom varied by contact with strangers, or persons engaged in pursuits different from his own. The pipe and the ale in which he indulges after the labours of the day, are much the same as they were aforetime. The taxes, the tithe, the poor-rate, still trouble him. Strange political rumours sometimes perplex him; but unless Popery or the price of corn are concerned, he troubles himself little about public affairs, and is content to follow his landlord, in voting for the maintenance of our venerable institutions, and the correction of proved abuses,' as his father before him voted for Church and King. But the rude and ignorant yeomanry were on the whole a better class than the inhabitants intemperate of towns. Drunkenness was the common vice of the middle and the lower orders. In domestic habits, indeed, little or no distinction was observed between the two classes. The master tradesman lived with his servants in the kitchen; and it was only on Sundays or holidays that the parlour was occupied. After the business of the day was over, the public-house was resorted to, and the guests seldom returned home in a state of sobriety. No loss of character was incurred by babitual excess; and it would have been considered a very frivolous objection to a citizen who aspired to the dignity of Alderman or Mayor, that he was an habitual drunkard.* This confusion of ranks, together with the neglect of domestic discipline, resulted frequently in the contamination of the female members of the family. The occurrence of such an accident as the misconduct of a wife or a daughter gave very little on Education, 1835; Place's Eridence. habits. *Boswell's Johnson. Report of House of Commons' Committee |