Sybil, Or, The Two Nations

by Earl of Beaconsfield Benjamin Disraeli

  "Terrible news from Birmingham," said Mr Egerton at Brookes'. "They havemassacred the police, beat off the military, and sacked the town. Newsjust arrived."

  "I have known it these two hours," said a grey-headed gentleman,speaking without taking his eyes off the newspaper. "There is a cabinetsitting now."

  "Well I always said so," said Mr Egerton, "our fellows ought to have putdown that Convention."

  "It is deuced lucky," said Mr Berners, "that the Bedchamber businessis over, and we are all right. This affair in the midst of the Jamaicahitch would have been fatal to us."

  "These chartists evidently act upon a system," said Mr Egerton. "You seethey were perfectly quiet till the National Petition was presented anddebated; and now, almost simultaneously with our refusing to considertheir petition, we have news of this outbreak."

  "I hope they will not spread," said the grey-headed gentleman. "Thereare not troops enough in the country if there be anything like a generalmovement. I hear they have sent the guards down by a special train, anda hundred more of the police. London is not over-garrisoned."

  "They are always ready for a riot at Birmingham," said a Warwickshirepeer. "Trade is very bad there and they suffer a good deal. But I shouldthink it would not go farther."

  "I am told," said the grey-headed gentleman, "that business is gettingslack in all the districts."

  "It might be better," said Mr Egerton, "but they have got work." Hereseveral gentlemen entered, enquiring whether the evening papers were inand what was the news from Birmingham.

  "I am told," said one of them, "that the police were regularly smashed."

  "Is it true that the military were really beat off?"

  "Quite untrue: the fact is there were no proper preparations; the townwas taken by surprise, the magistrates lost their heads; the people weremasters of the place; and when the police did act, they were met by atriumphant populace, who two hours before would have fled before them.They say they have burnt down above forty houses."

  "It is a bad thing--this beating the police," said the grey-headedgentleman.

  "But what is the present state of affairs?" enquired Mr Berners. "Arethe rioters put down?"

  "Not in the least," said Mr Egerton, "as I hear. They are encamped inthe Bull Ring amid smoking ruins, and breathe nothing but havoc."

  "Well, I voted for taking the National Petition into consideration,"said Mr Berners. "It could do us no harm, and would have kept thingsquiet."

  "So did every fellow on our side," said Mr Egerton, "who was not inoffice or about to be. Well, Heaven knows what may come next. TheCharter may some day be as popular in this club as the Reform Act."

  "The oddest thing in that debate," said Mr Berners, "was Egremont'smove."

  "I saw Marney last night at Lady St Julians," said Mr Egerton, "andcongratulated him on his brother's speech. He looked daggers, andgrinned like a ghoul."

  "It was a very remarkable speech--that of Egremont," said thegrey-headed gentleman. "I wonder what he wants."

  "I think he must be going to turn radical," said the Warwickshire peer.

  "Why the whole speech was against radicalism," said Mr Egerton.

  "Ah, then he is going to turn whig, I suppose."

  "He is ultra anti-whig," said Egerton.

  "Then what the deuce is he?" said Mr Berners.

  "Not a conservative certainly, for Lady St Julians does nothing butabuse him."

  "I suppose he is crotchetty," suggested the Warwickshire noble.

  "That speech of Egremont was the most really democratic speech that Iever read," said the grey-headed gentleman. "How was it listened to?"

  "Oh capitally," said Mr Egerton. "He has very seldom spoken before andalways slightly though well. He was listened to with mute attentionnever was a better house. I should say made a great impression, thoughno one knew exactly what he was after."

  "What does he mean by obtaining the results of the charter withoutthe intervention of its machinery?" enquired Lord Loraine, a mild,middle-aged, lounging, languid man, who passed his life in crossingfrom Brookes' to Boodle's and from Boodle's to Brookes', and testing thecomparative intelligence of these two celebrated bodies; himself giftedwith no ordinary abilities cultivated with no ordinary care, but thevictim of sauntering, his sultana queen, as it was, according to LordHalifax, of the second Charles Stuart.

  "He spoke throughout in an exoteric vein," said the grey-headedgentleman, "and I apprehend was not very sure of his audience; but Itook him to mean, indeed it was the gist of the speech, that if youwished for a time to retain your political power, you could only effectyour purpose by securing for the people greater social felicity."

  "Well, that is sheer radicalism," said the Warwickshire peer,"pretending that the People can be better off than they are, isradicalism and nothing else."

  "I fear, if that be radicalism," said Lord Loraine, "we must all take aleaf out of the same book. Sloane was saying at Boodle's just now thathe looked forward to the winter in his country with horror."

  "And they have no manufactures there," said Mr Egerton.

  "Sloane was always a croaker," said the Warwickshire peer. "He alwayssaid the New Poor Law would not act, and there is no part of the countrywhere it works so well as his own."

  "They say at Boodle's there is to be an increase to the army," said LordLoraine, "ten thousand men immediately; decided on by the cabinet thisafternoon."

  "It could hardly have leaked out by this time," said the grey-headedgentleman. "The cabinet were sitting less than an hour ago."

  "They have been up a good hour," said Lord Loraine, "quite long enoughfor their decisions to be known in St James's Street. In the good oldtimes, George Farnley used always to walk from Downing Street to thisplace the moment the council was up and tell us everything."

  "Ah! those were the good old gentleman-like times," said Mr Berners,"when members of Parliament had nobody to please and ministers of Statenothing to do."

  The riots of Birmingham occurred two months after the events that closedour last volume. That period, as far as the obvious movements of thechartists were concerned, had been passed in preparations for thepresentation and discussion of the National Petition, which theparliamentary embroilments of the spring of that year had hithertoprocrastinated and prevented. The petition was ultimately carried downto Westminster on a triumphal car accompanied by all the delegates ofthe Convention in solemn procession. It was necessary to construct amachine in order to introduce the huge bulk of parchment signed bya million and a half of persons, into the House of Commons, and thussupported, its vast form remained on the floor of the House during thediscussion. The House after a debate which was not deemed by the peoplecommensurate with the importance of the occasion, decided on rejectingthe prayer of the Petition, and from that moment the party in theConvention who advocated a recourse to physical force in order to obtaintheir purpose, was in the ascendant. The National Petition and thebelief that although its objects would not at present be obtained, stillthat a solemn and prolonged debate on its prayer would at least hold outto the working classes the hope that their rights might from that daterank among the acknowledged subjects of parliamentary discussion andultimately by the force of discussion be recognized, as other rights ofother portions of the people once equally disputed, had been the meansby which the party in the Convention who upheld on all occasionsthe supremacy of moral power had been able to curb the energetic andreckless minority, who derided from the first all other methods butterror and violence as effective of their end. The hopes of all,the vanity of many, were frustrated and shocked by finding that theexertions and expenditure of long months were not only fruitless,but had not even attracted as numerous an assembly or excited asmuch interest, as an ordinary party struggle on some petty point offactitious interest forgotten as soon as fought. The attention of theworking classes was especially called by their leaders to the contrastbetween the interest occasioned by the endangered constitution ofJamaica, a petty and exhausted colony, and the
claims for the sameconstitutional rights by the working millions of England. In the firstinstance, not a member was absent from his place; men were broughtindeed from distant capitals to participate in the struggle and todecide it; the debate lasted for days, almost for weeks; not a publicman of light and leading in the country withheld the expression ofhis opinion the fate of governments was involved in it; cabinets wereoverthrown and reconstructed in the throes and tumult of the strife, andfor the first time for a long period the Sovereign personally interposedin public transactions with a significance of character, which made theworking classes almost believe that the privileged had at last founda master, and the unfranchished regained their natural chief. The meanposition which the Saxon multitude occupied as distinguished from theJamaica planters sunk deep into their hearts. From that moment allhope of relief from the demonstration of a high moral conduct in themillions, and the exhibition of that well-regulated order of public lifewhich would intimate their fitness for the possession and fulfilment ofpublic rights, vanished. The party of violence, a small minority asis usually the case, but consisting of men of determined character,triumphed; and the outbreak at Birmingham was the first consequence ofthose reckless councils that were destined in the course of theensuing years to inflict on the working classes of this country so muchsuffering and disaster.

  It was about this time, a balmy morning of July, that Sybil, tempted bythe soft sunshine, and a longing for the sight of flowers and turf andthe spread of winding waters, went forth from her gloomy domicile tothose beautiful gardens that bloom in that once melancholy region ofmarsh, celebrated in old days only for its Dutch canal and its Chinesebridge, and now not unworthy of the royal park that incloses them..Except here and there a pretty nursery-maid with her interesting charge;some beautiful child with nodding plume, immense bow, and gorgeous sash;the gardens were vacant. Indeed it was only at this early hour, thatSybil found from experience, that it was agreeable in London for a womanunaccompanied to venture abroad. There is no European city where ourfair sisters are so little independent as in our metropolis; to ourshame.

  Something of the renovating influence of a beautiful nature wasneeded by the daughter of Gerard. She was at this moment anxiousand dispirited. The outbreak at Birmingham, the conviction that suchproceedings must ultimately prove fatal to the cause to which shewas devoted, the dark apprehension that her father was in some mannerimplicated in this movement, that had commenced with so much publicdisaster, and which menaced consequences still more awful, all theseevents, and fears, and sad forebodings, acted with immense influenceon a temperament which, though gifted with even a sublime courage,was singularly sensitive. The quick and teeming imagination of Sybilconjured up a thousand fears which were in some degree unfounded, in agreat degree exaggerated, but this is the inevitable lot of the creativemind practising on the inexperienced.

  The shock too had been sudden. The two months that had elapsed since shehad parted, as she supposed for ever, from Egremont, while they had notless abounded than the preceding time in that pleasing public excitementwhich her father's career, in her estimation alike useful, honourable,and distinguished, occasioned her, had been fruitful in some sources ofsatisfaction of a softer and more domestic character. The acquaintanceof Hatton, of whom they saw a great deal, had very much contributed tothe increased amenity of her life. He was a most agreeable, instructive,and obliging companion who seemed peculiarly to possess the art ofmaking life pleasant by the adroit management of unobtrusive resources.He lent Sybil books; and all that he recommended to her notice, were ofa kind that harmonized with her sentiment and taste. He furnished herfrom his library with splendid works of art, illustrative of thoseperiods of our history and those choice and costly edifices which wereassociated with her fondest thought and fancy. He placed in her room thebest periodical literature of the day, which for her was a new world;he furnished her with newspapers whose columns of discussion taught her,that the opinions she had embraced were not unquestioned: as she hadnever seen a journal in her life before, except a stray number of the"Mowbray Phalanx," or the metropolitan publication which was devotedto the cause of the National Convention, and reported her father'sspeeches, the effect of this reading on her intelligence was, to say theleast, suggestive.

  Many a morning too when Gerard was disengaged, Hatton would propose thatthey should show Sybil something of the splendour or the rarities of themetropolis; its public buildings, museums, and galleries of art. Sybil,though uninstructed in painting, had that native taste which requiresonly observation to arrive at true results. She was much interested withall she saw and all that occurred, and her gratification was heightenedby the society of an individual who not only sympathised with allshe felt, but who, if she made an inquiry, was ever ready with aninstructive reply. Hatton poured forth the taste and treasures of awell-stored and refined intelligence. And then too, always easy, bland,and considerate; and though with luxuries and conveniences at hiscommand, to participate in which, under any other circumstances, mighthave been embarrassing to his companions, with so much tact, thateither by an allusion to early days, happy days when he owed so muchto Gerard's father, or some other mode equally felicitous, he contrivedcompletely to maintain among them the spirit of social equality. Inthe evening, Hatton generally looked in when Gerard was at home, andon Sundays they were always together. Their common faith was a bondof union which led them to the same altar, and on that day Hattonhad obtained their promise always to dine with him. He was careful toascertain each holy day at what chapel the music was most exquisite,that the most passionate taste of Sybil might be gratified. Indeed,during this residence in London, the opportunity it afforded of makingher acquainted with some of the great masters of the human voice wasperhaps to Sybil a source of pleasure not the least important. Forthough it was not deemed consistent with the future discipline whichshe contemplated to enter a theatre, there were yet occasions whichpermitted her, under every advantage, to listen to the performance ofthe master-pieces of sacred melody. Alone, with Hatton and her father,she often poured forth those tones of celestial sweetness and etherialpower that had melted the soul of Egremont amid the ruins of MarneyAbbey.

  More intimately acquainted with Sybil Gerard, Hatton had shrunk fromthe project that he had at first so crudely formed. There was somethingabout her that awed, while it fascinated him. He did not relinquishhis purpose, for it was a rule of his life never to do that; but hepostponed the plans of its fulfilment. Hatton was not, what is commonlyunderstood by the phrase, in love with Sybil: certainly not passionatelyin love with her. With all his daring and talents and fine taste, therewas in Hatton such a vein of thorough good sense, that it was impossiblefor him to act or even to think anything that was ridiculous. He wishedstill to marry Sybil for the great object that we have stated; he had amind quite equal to appreciate her admirable qualities, but sense enoughto wish that she were a less dazzling creature, because then he wouldhave a better chance of accomplishing his end. He perceived when he hadhad a due opportunity to study her character, that the cloister was thenatural catastrophe impending over a woman who, with an exalted mind,great abilities, a fine and profound education and almost supernaturalcharms, found herself born and rooted in the ranks of a degradedpopulation. All this Hatton understood; it was a conclusion he hadgradually arrived at by a gradual process of induction and by a vigilantobservation that in its study of character had rarely been deceived;and when one evening with an art that could not be suspected, he soundedGerard on the future of his daughter, he found that the clear intellectand straight-forward sagacity of the father had arrived at the sameresult. "She wishes," said Gerard, "to take the veil, and I only opposeit for a time, that she may have some knowledge of life and a clearconception of what she is about to do. I wish not that she shouldhereafter reproach her father. But, to my mind, Sybil is right. Shecannot look to marriage: no man that she could marry would be worthy ofher."

  During these two months, and especially during the last, Morley wasrarely in Lon
don, though ever much with Gerard, and often with hisdaughter during his visits. The necessary impulse had been given to theaffairs of the Convention, the delegates had visited the members, thepreparations for the presentation of the National Petition had beencompleted; the overthrow of the whig government, the abortive effortof Sir Robert Peel, the return of the whig administration, and theconsequent measures, had occasioned a delay of two months in thepresentation of the great document: it was well for Gerard to remain,who was a leader in debate, and whose absence for a week would haveendangered his position as the head of a party, but these considerationsdid not influence Morley, who had already found great inconvenience inmanaging his journal at a distance; so, about the middle of May, he hadreturned to Mowbray, coming up occasionally by the train if anythingimportant were stirring, or his vote could be of service to his friendand colleague. The affair of Birmingham however had alarmed Morley andhe had written up to Gerard that he should instantly repair to town.Indeed he was expected the very morning that Sybil, her father havinggone to the Convention where there were at this very moment very fierydebates, went forth to take the morning air of summer in the gardens ofSt James' Park.

  It was a real summer day; large, round, glossy, fleecy clouds, as whiteand shining as glaciers, studded with their immense and immoveable formsthe deep blue sky. There was not even a summer breeze, though the airwas mellow, balmy, and exhilarating. There was a bloom upon the trees,the waters glittered, the prismatic wild-fowl dived, breathed again, andagain disappeared. Beautiful children, fresh and sweet as the new-bornrose, glanced about with the gestures and sometimes the voices ofParadise. And in the distance rose the sacred towers of the greatWestern Minster.

  How fair is a garden amid the toils and passions of existence! A curseupon those who vulgarize and desecrate these holy haunts; breaking thehearts of nursery maids, and smoking tobacco in the palace of the rose!

  The mental clouds dispelled as Sybil felt the freshness and fragranceof nature. The colour came to her cheek; the deep brightness returned toher eye; her step that at first had been languid and if not melancholy,at least contemplative, became active and animated. She forgot the caresof life and was touched by all the sense of its enjoyment. To move, tobreathe, to feel the sunbeam, were sensible and surpassing pleasures.Cheerful by nature, notwithstanding her stately thoughts and solemnlife, a brilliant smile played on her seraphic face, as she marked thewild passage of the daring birds, or watched the thoughtless grace ofinfancy.

  She rested herself on a bench beneath a branching elm, and her eye, thatfor some time had followed the various objects that had attracted it,was now fixed in abstraction on the sunny waters. The visions of pastlife rose before her. It was one of those reveries when the incidentsof our existence are mapped before us, when each is considered withrelation to the rest, and assumes in our knowledge its distinct andabsolute position when, as it were, we take stock of our experience,and ascertain how rich sorrow and pleasure, feeling and thought,intercourse with our fellow creatures and the fortuitous mysteries oflife,--have made us in wisdom.

  The quick intelligence and the ardent imagination of Sybil had madeher comprehend with fervor the two ideas that had been impressed onher young mind; the oppression of her church and the degradation ofher people. Educated in solitude and exchanging thoughts only withindividuals of the same sympathies, these impression had resolvedthemselves into one profound and gloomy conviction, that the world wasdivided only between the oppressors and the oppressed. With her, tobe one of the people, was to be miserable and innocent; one of theprivileged, a luxurious tyrant. In the cloister, in her garden, amid thescenes of suffering which she often visited and always solaced, she hadraised up two phantoms which with her represented human nature.

  But the experience of the last few months had operated a great change inthese impressions. She had seen enough to suspect that the world was amore complicated system than she had preconceived. There was not thatstrong and rude simplicity in its organization she had supposed. Thecharacters were more various, the motives more mixed, the classes moreblended, the elements of each more subtle and diversified, than she hadimagined. The People she found was not that pure embodiment of unityof feeling, of interest, and of purpose, which she had pictured inher abstractions. The people had enemies among the people: their ownpassions; which made them often sympathize, often combine, with theprivileged. Her father, with all his virtues, all his abilities,singleness of purpose and simplicity of aim, encountered rivals in theirown Convention, and was beset by open or, still worse, secret foes.

  Sybil, whose mind had been nurtured with great thoughts, and withwhom success or failure alike partook of the heroic, who had hoped fortriumph, but who was prepared for sacrifice, found to her surprise thatgreat thoughts have very little to do with the business of the world;that human affairs, even in an age of revolution, are the subjectof compromise; and that the essence of compromise is littleness. Shethought that the People, calm and collected, conscious at last of theirstrength and confident in their holy cause, had but to express theirpure and noble convictions by the delegates of their choice, and thatan antique and decrepid authority must bow before the irresistibleinfluence of their moral power. These delegates of their choice turnedout to be a plebeian senate of wild ambitions and sinister and selfishends, while the decrepid authority that she had been taught existed onlyby the sufferance of the millions was compact and organized, withevery element of physical power at its command, and supported by theinterests, the sympathies, the honest convictions, and the strongprejudices of classes influential not merely from their wealth but evenby their numbers.

  Nor could she resist the belief that the feeling of the rich towardsthe poor was not that sentiment of unmingled hate and scorn which sheassociated with Norman conquerors and feudal laws. She would ascriberather the want of sympathy that unquestionably exists between Wealthand Work in England, to mutual ignorance between the classes whichpossess these two great elements of national prosperity; and though thesource of that ignorance was to be sought in antecedent circumstancesof violence and oppression, the consequences perhaps had outlived thecauses, as customs survive opinions.

  Sybil looked towards Westminster, to those proud and passionate hallswhere assembles the Parliament of England; that rapacious, violent, andhaughty body, that had brought kings and prelates to the block; spoiledchurches and then seized the sacred manors for their personal prey;invested their own possessions with infinite privileges, andthen mortgaged for their state and empire the labour of countlessgenerations. Could the voice of solace sound from such a quarter?

  Sybil unfolded a journal which she had brought; not now to be readfor the first time; but now for the first time to be read alone,undisturbed, in a scene of softness and serenity. It contained areport of the debate in the House of Commons on the presentation of theNational Petition that important document which had been the means ofdrawing forth Sybil from her solitude, and of teaching her somethingof that world of which she had often pondered, and yet which she had soinaccurately preconceived.

  Yes! there was one voice that had sounded in that proud Parliament, thatfree from the slang of faction, had dared to express immortal truths:the voice of a noble, who without being a demagogue, had upheld thepopular cause; had pronounced his conviction that the rights of labourwere as sacred as those of property; that if a difference were to beestablished, the interests of the living wealth ought to be preferred;who had declared that the social happiness of the millions should be thefirst object of a statesman, and that if that were not achieved, thronesand dominions, the pomp and power of courts and empires, were alikeworthless.

  With a heart not without emotion with a kindling cheek, and eyessuffused with tears, Sybil read the speech of Egremont. She ceased;still holding the paper with one hand, she laid on it the other withtenderness, and looked up to breathe as it were for relief. Before herstood the orator himself.

  Book 5 Chapter 2