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The House of Commons was not responsible to anybody; and its members showed very little consideration for their constituents. Persons who were not acceptable to the ruling party were often fined and imprisoned without due process of law. It is little wonder then that Godwin, Shelley, and others declaimed against all forms of government. They were acquainted only with the Parliament of the Georges and the oligarchy of the Stuarts, and the one was as bad as the other.

The national debt was trebled in the space of twenty years, thus imposing heavy sacrifices on all. There was an income-tax of two shillings on a pound sterling; but the taxes which caused the most suffering to the poor were the indirect taxes on wheat, shoes, salt, etc. In 1815 a law was passed prohibiting the importation of wheat for less than eighty shillings the quarter. No doubt the wealth of the country became very great through the development of new resources, but it was distributed among the few and gave no relief to the common people.

The poor laws were working astounding evils. With wheat at a given price, the minimum on which a man with wife and one child could subsist was settled; and whenever the family earnings fell below the estimated minimum, the deficiency was to be made up from the rates. In this way the path to pauperism was made so easy and agreeable that a large portion of the laboring classes drifted along it. This system set a premium on improvidence if not on vice. The inevitable effect was that wages fell as doles increased, that paupers so pensioned were preferred by the farmers to independent laborers, because their labor was cheaper, and that independent laborers, failing to get work except at wages forced down to a minimum, were constantly falling into the ranks of pauperism. It was not until 1834 that "a new poor law" was enacted which eliminated these evils.

From one end of the kingdom to the other the prisons were a standing disgrace to civilization. Imprisonment from whatever cause it might be imposed meant consignment to a living tomb. Jails were pesthouses, in which a disease, akin to our modern typhus, flourished often in epidemic form. They were mostly private institutions leased out to ruthless, rapacious keepers who used every menace and extortion to wring money out of the wretched beings committed to their care. Prisons were dark because their managers objected to pay the window tax. Pauper prisoners were nearly starved, for there was no regular allowance of food. Howard's crusade against prison mismanagement produced tangible results, but after his death the cause of prison reform soon dropped, the old evils revived, and at the beginning of the nineteenth century were everywhere visible.

Caleb Williams shortly after the death of his father, became secretary of Ferdinand Falkland, a country squire living in a remote county of England. Mr. Falkland's mode of living was very recluse and solitary. He avoided men and did not seem to have any friends in whom he confided. He scarcely ever smiled, and his manners plainly showed that he was troubled and unhappy. He was considerate to others, but he never showed a disposition to lay aside the stateliness and reserve which he assumed. Sometimes he was hasty, peevish, and tyrannical, and would even lose entirely his self-possession.

Mr. Collins, Falkland's steward, tells Williams that their master was not always thus, that he was once the gayest of the gay. In response to Caleb's entreaties, Collins unfolds as much as he knows of their master's history. He tells him that Mr. Falkland spent several years abroad and distinguished himself wherever he went by deeds of gallantry and virtue. At length he returned to England with the intention of spending the rest of his days on his estate. His nearest neighbor, Barnabas Tyrrel, was insupportably arrogant, tyrannical to his inferiors and insolent to his equals. On account of his wealth, strength, and copiousness of speech he was regarded with admiration by some, but with awe by all. The arrival of Mr. Falkland threatened to deprive Tyrrel of his authority and commanding position in the community. Tyrrel contemplated the progress of his rival with hatred and aversion. The dignity, affability, and kindness of Mr. Falkland were the subject of everybody's praise, and all this was an insupportable torment to Tyrrel.

Emily Melville, Tyrrel's cousin, who lived with him, falls in love with Falkland and consequently incurs her patron's displeasure. He resolved to impose an uncouth, boorish youth on her as a husband. She is imprisoned in her room for refusing, and is saved from a diabolical plot to ruin her through the timely assistance of Falkland. While still delirious and suffering from the ill-treatment of her persecutor. Emily was arrested and cast into prison by Tyrrel for a debt contracted for board and lodging during the last fourteen years. Death liberated her soon afterwards from the persecutions of her cousin.

One of Tyrrel's tenants, Mr. Hawkins, incurred his master's displeasure, and he and his family were turned out of house and home. The laws and customs of the country are used to oppress the victims. Tenants must be kept in their places. The presumption is that they are in the wrong, and so the unscrupulous Tyrrel had no difficulty in imprisoning the son. Shelley says: "That in questions of property there is a vague but most effective favoritism in courts of law, and, among lawyers, against the poor to the advantage of the rich--against the tenant in favour of the landlord--against the creditor in favour of the debtor." Falkland remonstrated with Tyrrel for this piece of injustice, but this served only to increase Tyrrel's hatred of him. At length the crisis came. Tyrrel is driven out of a rural assembly by Falkland. He returned soon afterwards, struck Falkland, felled him to the earth, and kicked him in the presence of all. Falkland was disgraced, and to him disgrace was worse than death. "He was too deeply pervaded with the idle and groundless romances of chivalry ever to forget the situation, humiliating and dishonourable according to his idea, in which he had been placed upon this occasion. To be knocked down, cuffed, kicked, dragged along the floor! Sacred heaven, the memory of such a treatment was not to be endured." Next morning Mr. Tyrrel was found dead in the street, having been murdered at a short distance from the assembly-house. That day marked the beginning of that melancholy which pursued Falkland in after years. The public disgrace and chastisement that had been imposed upon him were not the whole of the mischief that happened to the unfortunate Falkland. It was rumored that he was the murderer of his antagonist. He was examined by the neighboring magistrates and acquitted. It was absurd to imagine that a man of such integrity should commit such an atrocious crime. Suspicion then fell on the Hawkinses. They were tried, condemned, and afterwards executed. From thenceforward the habits of Falkland became totally different. He now became a rigid recluse. Everybody respected him because of his benevolence, but his stately coldness and reserve made it impossible for those about him to regard him with the familiarity of affection.

Caleb Williams turned all these particulars over and over in his mind and began to suspect that Falkland was the real murderer of Tyrrel. His curiosity became an overpowering passion which was ultimately the cause of all his misfortunes. Falkland realizes that his secretary is convinced of his guilt, so he determines to silence him forever. He calls Williams into his room and confesses his guilt to him. Falkland said that he allowed the innocent Hawkinses to die because he could not sacrifice his fame. He would leave behind him a spotless and illustrious name even should it be at the expense of the death and misery of others. He then told Caleb that if ever an unguarded word escaped from his lips he would pay for it by his death or worse. This secret was a constant source of torment to Williams. Every trifling incident made Falkland suspicious and consequently increased the misery of his secretary. At length Caleb flees, but is taken back, falsely accused of theft, and cast into prison. In all this Falkland contrives to manage things so as to increase his reputation for benevolence. Williams is made to appear an ungrateful wretch. The impotence of the law to secure justice to the weak is only equalled by the wretchedness of the prisons to which they are condemned. "Thank God," exclaims the Englishman, "we have no Bastile! Thank God with us no man can be punished without a crime!" "Unthinking wretch!" writes Godwin, "Is that a country of liberty, where thousands languish in dungeons and fetters? Go, go, ignorant fool! and visit the scenes of our prisons. Witness their unwholesomeness, their filth, the tyranny of their governors, the misery of their inmates! After that show me the man shameless enough to triumph, and say 'England has no Bastile!' Is there any charge so frivolous, upon which men are not consigned to those detested abodes? Is there any villainy that is not practiced by justices and prosecutors, etc.?"

Williams tries to escape from prison and is caught in the attempt. He was then treated more cruelly than ever. He made another attempt to escape and was successful. The rest of the novel is taken up with an account of all that Williams suffered in his endeavors to keep out of the reach of the law. He falls in with a band of outlaws whose rude natural virtues are contrasted with the meanness and corruption of the officers of the law. He is at last caught, but Falkland, to make himself appear magnanimous, does not press the charge against Williams. Instead he persecutes Caleb by poisoning people's minds against him. Everywhere Caleb goes he is followed by an emissary of Falkland who contrives to convince people that Williams is an ungrateful scoundrel. He can stand the persecution no longer and so determines to accuse Falkland of the murder of Tyrrel. Williams does this in a way to carry conviction to his hearers. Falkland finally breaks down, throws himself into Williams' arms, saying, "All my prospects are concluded. All that I most ardently desired is forever frustrated. I have spent a life of the basest cruelty to cover one act of momentary vice, and to protect myself against the prejudice of my species.... And now do with me as you please. If, however, you wish to punish me, you must be speedy in your justice; for, as reputation was the blood that warmed my heart, so I feel that death and infamy must seize me together." He survived this event but three days. "A nobler spirit than Falkland's," Godwin writes, "lived not among the sons of men. Thy intellectual powers were truly sublime, and thy bosom burned with a godlike ambition. But of what use are talents and sentiments in the corrupt wilderness of human society? It is a rank and rotten soil, from which every finer shrub draws poison as it grows. Falkland! thou enteredst upon thy career with the purest and most laudable intentions. But thou imbibest the poison of chivalry with thy earliest youth; and the base and low-minded envy that met thee on thy return to thy native seats, operated with this poison to hurry thee into madness...." All these evils flow from Falkland's standard of morals--and his is the aristocratic, traditional one. He is the victim of the false ideal of chivalry. The errors of Falkland, Shelley writes, "sprang from a high though perverted conception of human nature, from a powerful sympathy with his species and from a temper, which led him to believe that the very reputation of excellence should walk among mankind unquestioned and unassailed."

Protests against this condition of affairs were not wanting, it is true, but they did not influence men to any great extent. Cowper, for example, criticizes most severely the luxury and vices of his age.

Rank abundance breeds In gross and pampered cities, sloth and lust And wantonness and gluttonous excess.

A cassock'd huntsman and a fiddling priest. Himself a wanderer from the narrow way, His silly sheep, what wonder if they stray.

Ianthe thanks the fairy for this vision of the past and says that from it she will glean a warning for the future

So that man May profit by his errors and derive Experience from his folly.

From vice, black loathsome vice: From rapine, madness, treachery, and wrong.

But now contempt is mocking thy gray hairs; Thou art descending to the darksome grave Unhonored and unpitied, but by those Whose pride is passing by like thine. And sheds like thine a glare that fades before the sun Of Truth, and shines but in the dreadful night That long has lowered above the ruined world.

Commerce has set the mark of selfishness The signet of its all-enslaving power Upon a shining ore, and called it gold.

Godwin expresses his opinion of merchants as follows: "There is no being on the face of the earth with a heart more thoroughly purged from every remnant of the weakness of benevolence and sympathy."

And Shelley writes:

Commerce! beneath whose poison-breathing shade No solitary virtue dares to spring.

Shelley says that soldiers--

... are the hired bravos who defend The tyrant's throne--the bullies of his fear: These are the sinks and channels of worst vice, The refuse of society, the dregs Of all that is most vile, etc.

Then grave and hoary-headed hypocrites Without a hope, a passion, or a love Who, through a life of luxury and lies Have crept by flattery to the seats of power Support the system whence their honors flow

Godwin's verdict is not so severe. "Clergymen," he says, "are timid in enquiry, prejudiced in opinion, cold, formal, the slave of what other men may think of them, rude, dictatorial, impatient of contradiction, harsh in their censures, and illiberal in their judgments."

VIEWS ON MARRIAGE AND LOVE

In September, 1813, Shelley wrote a sonnet, already quoted, to Ianthe, his first child, in which he says that the babe was dear to him not only for its own sweet sake, but for the mother's, and that the mother had grown dearer to him for the babe's. Hogg informs us, however, that about this time the ardor of Shelley's affection for his wife was beginning to cool. It is scarcely correct to speak of the ardor of his affection, for it may be doubted that he ever loved Harriet very ardently. If he had been seriously in love with his wife, he would not have written Miss Hitchener two months after his marriage that he loved her "more than any relation," and that she was the sister of his soul. However this may be, it is certain that in 1814 Shelley and his wife did not get along well together. Harriet was beautiful and amiable, and adopted in a somewhat parrot-like manner the views of her husband. As she grew older she no doubt developed tastes more in keeping with the conventions of that society which Shelley detested. Professor Dowden suggests that motherhood produced in her character a change that did not harmonize with her husband's idealism. She was no longer an ardent schoolgirl, but a woman who has found out that one must grapple with the realities of life in some way more practical than the one hitherto followed. Her sister urged her to look for the style and elegance suitable to the wife of a prospective baronet. This was repugnant to Shelley's republican simplicity. "I have often thought," Peacock writes, "that, if Harriet had nursed her own child, and if the sister had not lived with them, the link of their married life would not have been so readily broken." Harriet sympathized less and less with her husband's aspirations, and as a consequence Shelley turned to other women for the encouragement and inspiration which he once got from his wife. He spent too much of his time in the company of the Newtons, Boinvilles, and Turners to render possible the retention of his wife's affections. On March 16, 1814, Shelley wrote a letter to Hogg, which plainly shows that he found no happiness in his home. "I have been staying with Mrs. Boinville for the last month; I have escaped, in the society of all that friendship and philosophy combine, from the dismaying solitude of myself.... I have sunk into a premature old age of exhaustion.... Eliza is still with us--not here!--but ... I certainly hate her with all my heart and soul." Shelley's second marriage in St. George's Church, on March 22, does not throw any light on the relations that existed between himself and his wife. They celebrated this second ceremony simply to dispel all doubts concerning the validity of the first one in Edinburgh. On April 18, Mrs. Boinville wrote to Hogg that Shelley was at her house, that Harriet had gone to town , and that Eliza was living at Southampton. J. C. Jeafferson says that it was Shelley who deserted Harriet and not Harriet, Shelley. According to this biographer, Shelley left her at Binfield on May 18, 1814. Shelley still hoped to regain his wife's love, and in some verses inscribed, "To Harriet, 1814," he appeals pathetically for her affection. Harriet had become cold and proud, and refused to meet his advances toward a reconciliation. Her pride, Shelley believed, was incompatible with virtue. When he found that he had "clasped a shadow," his anguish, owing to his great sensitiveness, was extreme. Other men put up with their wives' imperfections, and why could not Shelley have done the same? It must be remembered, though, that these men have other interests to occupy their thoughts, and other friends to give them the sympathy and love denied them at home. This was not the case with Shelley. He had few friends and many enemies. It should not surprise us then to find him snatching at the first vision "which promised him the longed-for boon of human love." This vision appeared to him in the person of Mary Godwin.

A letter from Harriet to Hookham, dated July 7, shows that she was anxious to be with her husband again. But the time for reconciliation had passed. Whenever Shelley hated or loved anybody, he did so intensely. Everybody was either an angel or a devil; and Harriet had ceased to be an angel. "Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds." Dowden says Shelley persuaded himself that Harriet was false to him and had given her heart to a Mr. Ryan. There is no ground for the charge of unfaithfulness, as Peacock, Thornton Hunt, and Trelawny bear testimony concerning her innocence.

Shelley's views on marriage agree with those of Godwin. They both looked on marriage as a human institution, and consequently thought it might be modified or abolished entirely. They considered happiness man's highest good, and unhappiness man's only evil. Vows and promises are immoral because the thing promised may prove at any time detrimental to one's happiness. For this reason husband and wife should not bind themselves to live always together. This doctrine appealed to Shelley because it agreed with his views on freedom and his passion for opposing the traditions of society.

Heretofore it has been found convenient to lay the blame for all the radical views of Shelley at the door of Godwin. In the case of those on marriage a good deal of the blame must be borne by Sir James Lawrence.

Shelley lived at a time when the marriage ideal was not held in high repute. Lawrence describes many kinds of abominable travesties of marriage. In Persia, to silence the scruples of the lustful, "they have contrived contracts of enjoyment for very short periods of time; these are formally signed and countersigned, and many priests gain their livelihood by giving their benediction to this orthodox prostitution." Marriage was a mere formality for a great many. In France, Montesquieu writes, "a husband, who would wish to keep his wife to himself, would be considered a disturber of the public happiness, and as a madman who would monopolise the light of the sun. He who loves his own wife, is one who is not agreeable enough to gain the affections of any other man's wife, who takes advantage of a law to make amends for his own want of amiability; and who contributes, as far as lies in his power, to overturn a tacit convention, that is conducive to the happiness of both sexes." In England conditions were no better. A husband might consort with as many women as he chose and his wife could get no redress. In Italy and Spain, the inhabitants, "too fond of liberty to respect the duties of marriage and too attached to their names to suffer their extinction, require only representatives, and not sons as their heirs. It is a pity that the Naire system is not known to them; but cicesbeism is a palliative to marriage and an ingenious compromise between family pride and natural independence, and it is better to be inconsistent and happy than unhappy and rational."

In no country of Europe is the marriage vow kept. Why not then, argued Shelley, abolish this institution which makes hypocrites of men? "Marriage is the tomb of love.... Two lovers only meet when in good humor, or when resolved to be so; a married couple think themselves entitled to torment each other with their ill-humors. When a lover presents a trifle to his beloved, she receives it with smiles; when a husband makes a present to his wife, which indeed happens seldom enough, he runs the risk of being told that he has no taste, or that she could have bought it cheaper."

Lawrence attributes the social evil to the existing code of morality. If a girl falls, she is driven from her home, and the only road then open to her is that which leads to the brothel. "Prostitution," says Shelley, "is the legitimate offspring of marriage and its accompanying errors. Women for no other crime than having followed the dictates of a natural appetite are driven with fury from the comforts and sympathies of society. Society avenges herself on the criminals of her own creation."

Rosalind loves a young man whom she is about to marry. On the day fixed for the wedding, her father returns from a distant land to die, and informs them that Rosalind and her lover are brother and sister.

Hold, hold! He cried! I tell thee 'tis her brother! Thy mother, boy, beneath the sod Of yon churchyard rests in her shroud so cold; I am now weak and pale, and old: We were once dear to one another, I and that corpse! Thou art our child!

Her betrothed falls dead on the receipt of this news. Rosalind marries another who uses her very cruelly, perhaps because she gives birth to an illegitimate child. Her husband dies, and his will, because she was adulterous,

Imported, that if e'er again I sought my children to behold

Or in my birthplace did remain Beyond three days, whose hours were told, They should inherit naught:

Rosalind and Margaret are separated from their life-long friends who know--

What to the evil world is due And therefore sternly did refuse

to link themselves with the infamy of ones so lost as their sinning sisters. In both cases common misery reunites them and their friends again.

In May or June, 1814, Shelley became acquainted with Mary Godwin. Her father described her as being "singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active in mind; her desire of knowledge is great, and her perseverance in everything she undertakes almost invincible." She was brought up in an atmosphere of free thought, having spent most of her girlhood with Mr. Baxter, a faithful disciple of Godwin. Shelley and Mary had many sympathies in common, and it is not surprising to find them soon falling in love with each other.

Peacock tells us that Shelley at this time was in agony. On the one hand he was tormented by his desire to treat Harriet rightly, and on the other by his passion for Mary. Passion won the day, and on July 28 Shelley eloped with Mary to the Continent. He tried to ease his conscience by offering Harriet his friendship and protection. He wrote her from the Continent and urged her to join himself and Mary in Switzerland. He assured her that she would find in him a firm, constant friend to whom her interests would be always dear.

While passing judgment on Shelley one should not forget that he simply put into practice those doctrines which he believed to be true. Neither Shelley nor Mary thought they were inflicting any wrong on Harriet as long as they offered her their friendship and protection.

In September, 1814, Shelley, Mary and Jane Clairmont, Mary's half-sister, settled in London. About this time he was troubled a great deal with money embarrassments and was in continual hiding from the bailiffs. Toward the end of the year he read "the tale of Godwin's American disciple in romance, Charles Brockden Brown." "Brown's four novels," says Peacock, "Schiller's Robbers, and Goethe's Faust, were of all the works with which he was familiar those which took the deepest root in Shelley's mind and had the strongest influence in the formation of his character."

Ye princes of the earth, ye sit aghast Amid the ruin which yourselves have made. Yes, Desolation heard your trumpet's blast, And sprang from sleep.

Brown's views on love are almost as radical as those of Godwin. Wieland's sister is in love with Pleyel, and is anxious to act in such a way as to give him hope and at the same time not to appear too forward. "Time was," she says, "when these emotions would be hidden with immeasurable solicitude from every human eye. Alas! these airy and fleeting impulses of shame are gone. My scruples were preposterous and criminal. They are bred in all hearts, by a perverse and vicious education, and they would have maintained their place in my heart had not my portion been set in misery. My errors have taught me thus much wisdom; that those sentiments which we ought not to disclose it is criminal to harbor." Shelley's ideal woman would hold the same views. He writes:

And women too, frank, beautiful and kind ... ... From custom's evil taint exempt and pure Speaking the wisdom once they could not think, Looking emotions once they feared to feel. And changed to all which once they dared not be Yet, being now, made earth like heaven.

In May, 1816, Shelley, accompanied by Mary and Jane Clairmont, started for Italy. It is probable that the undesirable state of Shelley's health, together with the constant begging of Godwin, determined them to leave England. J. C. Jeafferson maintains that Miss Clairmont persuaded Shelley to accompany her to Geneva, where she was to meet Lord Byron. It is quite certain though that Mary and Shelley were ignorant of Byron's intrigue with Miss Clairmont. The most that can be said is that Jane's solicitations may have hastened their departure.

In September, 1816, the Shelleys returned to London. About a month afterwards news reached them that Fanny Imlay had committed suicide. It is said that love for Shelley drove her to despair. In December Shelley was seeking for Harriet, of whom he had lost trace some time previously. On December 10, her body was found in the Serpentine. Very little is known of the life she led after her separation from Shelley. Rumor had it that she drank heavily and became the mistress of a soldier, who deserted her.

It may be that "in all Shelley did, he, at the time of doing it, believed himself justified to his own conscience," but surely that conscience is warped which finds no cause for remorse in Shelley's treatment of his first wife. No one can view his self-complacency and assumption of righteousness at this time without feelings of detestation. On the day he heard the news of his wife's suicide he wrote to Mary: "Everything tends to prove, however, that beyond the shock of so hideous a catastrophe having fallen on a human being once so nearly connected with me, there would in any case, have been little to regret." "Little to regret" save the shock to his nerves. What about the suffering of the poor woman that forced her to commit such a terrible deed?

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