effort. As citizens they are not less mischievous in creating and spreading panics. These unfortunate men see in every public misfortune a crime, and commit in their excitement those acts of injustice or cruelty on suspicion of bribery or treason, of which history relates so many melancholy instances. No man ought to allow himself to be frightened out of his wits by disasters, and to wreak them on the head of the unfortunate, as the Athenians visited the loss of victory on their generals. The repetition of the same thing gives it to the senses of every one the appearance of probability, yet many of the most exciting rumors are founded upon nothing more than that every one repeats it to every one. It does not become either truer or less true by this process; all depends upon the first source. It cannot be too early inculcated as a rule for all periods of life, for man or woman: Ask invariably, but most especially in cases of universal rumor, for the first source. Who said it? Who saw it? Who brought the news? Whence does he know it? And this alone will be found to be an antidote against many rumors, which lead from surmise to suspicion, from suspicion to charge and accusation, and may end with a sentence against an absent citizen, as in the case of Alcibiades when he had sailed for Sicily, and was suspected, upon increasing rumor, to have defaced the statues of Hermes shortly before he had set sail. Rumors may destroy credit, involve hundreds in ruin, seriously injure their reputation, and, as has but too frequently happened in several countries in our own as in past times, may end in murder. Few pages of history furnish so striking an illustration of the evil and often awful effects which alarmists may produce, and which are engendered by suspicion, alarm and irritation at misfortune, of cruelty in consequence of want of manful calmness, and a total misunderstanding of one another, than those relating to the first French revolution. The first emigrants were alarmists; afterwards suspicion rose to such a height, that the various parties, the Jacobins and Girondists for instance, charged each other, with being sold to the foreign monarchs, after the head of Louis XVI. had fallen, and in some cases at least it seems that those who made the charge believed in it. (3) Therefore, be calm, and learn early to be so, by training your mind to analyse and dissect rumor, suspicion, imputation and clamor, and you will save yourself many bitter reproaches, which otherwise you must heap upon yourself for acts of injustice, unfounded alarm and folly, and will contribute to spare your community those excesses, which have been most truly and pertinently called by one, who knew them by experience, Rabies civica and Furor civilis (4)-excesses, the most injurious effects of which are not even the direct injury or cruelty which they may produce, but the lowering and degradation of the community at large and the promotion of unfitness for civil liberty-the destruction of its sole basis, of justice. Since masses or large numbers are peculiarly subject to panics, on account of repetition assuming the appearance of confirmation of truth, and the want of necessary means in most men to ascertain the precise truth, even if they are not inclined to yield to sudden rumor, it is a rule, though simple yet of the greatest practical importance, that, so soon as there exists a general rumor, seriously affecting the community, or so soon as a panic has seized it, committees ought to be appointed, and if general meetings cannot be held, that men of public spirit should appoint themselves as a committee, to investigate the causes and correctness of the rumor, and report to their fellow citizens on the result of their inquiries. Those nations, who are not well versed in the practical part of civil liberty have frequently felt the serious evils which ensue from a neglect of this simple rule, nor do those communities which have been longest accustomed to the practical operations and machinery of civil liberty, always resort to it, when it is most needed. Yet a committee is to masses what calm reflection is to every individual if he receives important news. We may mention another reason, which requires calmness. He who does not tutor his mind, will fret under misfortune, and as individuals so are at times whole communities, irritated, and consequently unfitted to act correctly, when a general misfortune befalls them. It is manful and gives self-respect, to submit with resignation, to evils which cannot be avoided, while calmness alone puts us in that frame of mind in which we may hope soonest to discover a remedy, should it offer itself in the course of events. The same principles which determine many great national actions, impel the mind on a smaller scale in limited spheres; and education, be it that by others or self-education, must early be directed to the cultivation of calmness. I once found a stage-coachman whipping his horses far more than seemed to be warranted by a fair desire of getting on rapidly. When I expressed my opinion against this cruelty, the coachman answered: "Ah, sir, if you knew how my teeth ache!" The same principle of action, and the glaring injustice of making some one smart, no matter whom or why, because we smart, may be found on many pages of history, in actions of vast extent, and of calamitous consequences. Every true citizen ought to do his utmost, in times of danger, suffering or political crime, justly calling for public indignation, to calm all around him. In this consists true patriotism, not in pouring fresh oil into the already fearful conflagration. (1) Iliad, 15, 563. (2) It is in peculiar situations that men show their character in native simplicity. I have met with no instance which exhibits the eager and the desponding characters so strikingly as in Captain Ross's Polar Voyage in 1829-33; yet they are no more strongly distinguished than we should find in every society, could we but penetrate it. When he and his crew were frozen up, yet hoped still for some breeze which might liberate them, the navigator says: "Every hand was held up to feel, if a wind was coming, every cloud or fogbank watched, and all prophesied according to their hopes or fears, till they were fairly driven off the deck by the necessity of turning in to sleep. Had we been less anxious ourselves, we might have been more amused by observing how the characters of the men influenced their conduct on this occasion. Those of an eager disposition were continually watching the eastern sky to discover, in the changes of the clouds or whatever else might occur, the first promise of a fair wind; while the desponding characters occupied the bow looking in gloomy silence at the dark sea and the sky before them and marking even without a word their despair of our ultimate success, and their fears that our voyage was about to come to an end, at even this early day." (3) We find these charges not only in the heat of debate, but in works written after the period of the greatest excitement had passed. In the Mémoires de Louvet de Couvray, Paris, 1823, 1 vol., Louvet, a zealous Girondist charges Marat with having been in the pay of the allies, and Robespierre having surrendered Toulon to the English, because he worked for the allies. All his violence was the consequence of a plan to make matters as soon as possible so bad that the extreme must lead again to royalty, a charge which we might understand if brought by one who could not find in the human soul another key to his enormities, but here is a Girondist who, it would seem in good faith proffers this absurd charge. (4) Rabies civica, in Hor. Carm. iii, 24, 26 : O quisquis volet impias Cædes et rabiem tollere civicam. Furor civilis, in Carm. iv, 15, 17: Custode rerum Cæsare, non furor XVI. In speaking thus of the low-spirited or desponding, it was not my intention to convey the idea that the light-hearted are the most courageous or the firmest, when the hour of trial arrives, and the grave and more sombre natures those which soonest despair. On the contrary, those who have but little hope and are generally not sanguine in their expectations, yet withal are not of a desponding nature, will be found the bravest in times of peril and calamity, while those who form the most sanguine and extravagant expectations at the beginning, are also those who soonest relax and perhaps despond. Aristotle goes so far as to maintain, that great men are almost always of a nature originally melancholy. It is not necessary here to inquire what precise meaning we should give to the word melancholy, in order fully to agree with the first of philosophers: all we have to observe is, that in politics, as in any other relation in which man may be placed, calmness of mind is all-important; without it we cannot be just, wise, manly, or effect great good; we cannot expect support from, or be the support of others, and we make success a matter of chance rather than the reward of wisdom and rectitude. |