Adam Ferguson

“ In his ethical system Ferguson treats man throughout as a social being, and illustrates his doctrines by political examples. As a believer in the progression of the human race, he placed the principle of moral approbation in the attainment of perfection. ”

“ Ferguson lived for some time at Neidpath Castle, from whence he removed to Hallyards, in Manor parish. He was a most devoted and enthusiastic snuff-taker. An amusing anecdote is preserved of the good old man’s simplicity of character and love of snuff. One day, on his son’s arrival from Edinburgh, he begged a pinch from young Adam’s box, which, on receiving, he declared to be exceedingly good, and, of course, he inquired where that delightful mixture was to be procured. ”

“ It would do one good to see, how that fine tall fellow will stop and turn, and do what he is bid.”
“A plague take the woman,” says John, “with her Rousterdivel; do you think that I am a coward, a scoundrel, a beast, a blockhead, a milk-sop, that I must always run for protection to other people? I tell you again, that I am [Pg 70] able to defend myself, and that I have people enow about my house to stand by me.”
“And how do you propose that they should stand by you?” says the nurse: “When Lewis sends over his game-keepers, with their guns and their sabres, who will stand by you then?” ”

“ I was advised to take Sir Thomas into the management of my affairs, because Squire Geoffrey endeavoured to get a game-keeper of his own, and do what he pleased about my house. And now you tell me, that Sir Thomas and [Pg 76] the game-keeper are the only people to be trusted. Those gentlemen, it seems, will trust nobody else, and who the devil will trust them? I never knew any of those suspicious people, that was much to be trusted himself. Ill doers are ill dreaders, as my sister Peg says. ”

“ If you could keep your own, it was well; if not, it did not signify complaining; two or three stout fellows at your back, a brace of pistols, or a blunderbuss, was a better title to an estate than the best conveyance in the world. Whilst you thought yourself sure of your lands, two or three fellows in the neighbourhood would be disputing who should have it; and of Lord Strutt, Lewis Baboon, Squire South, Nicholas Frog, John Bull himself, and all the gang of them, there was not one to mend another, they did not mind blowing out one another’s brains one farthing ”

“ In all this hurry-scurry, the nurse and Hubble bubble were laughing in their sleeves; they saw their own game played to better purpose, than ever they durst venture to play it. Sir Thomas and [Pg 96] they got the fingering of more money than ever they had seen before in their lives, and they might lay it out where they pleased, so they let Jowler have the honour of the treat: whilst in the mean time they saw no necessity of taking the arms out of the cellar, and they hoped, that John would soon forget all that he ever said upon the subject. ”

“ That is the true defence,” says Jack, “and let us have it. A game-keeper may be out of the way, but the child of the house is always by his father’s side.” In short, as he was no trifler, so he was seldom idle, when there was any thing of consequence to be done, and never minded whether his opinion was asked or no. He spoke loudly on this occasion, and as he kept a regular correspondence with Sir Thomas, never failed to tell him his mind. Peg herself, who, as we have said, was rather gentle and inoffensive in her ordinary deportment, gave some signs of discontent and vexation ”

“ All men were held to be equally sinful and equally deserving of eternal damnation. ‘Adam as the federal representative of the human race had determined its fate once and for all by violating that unfortunate covenant which he and the Deity had contracted with regard to the forbidden fruit. ”

“ She trusted too, that they would remember themselves, and if John or the attorney pretended to cheat them, she talked no less than of beating out both their brains. John was really at bottom a good-natured fellow, and knowing himself to be an overmatch for Peg, did not mind her peevish humours a rush; but he would not have liked her attorney for all that, [Pg 6] if he had not expected to manage him, by keeping him in his own house, and by putting clerks about him, who never had any connexion with Margaret, or her hungry loons, from whom, the truth is, he expected no good. ”

“ I don’t understand your scruples now says the nurse; would any woman desire you to second a forged application? Besides nobody ever heard of Small-Trash; and we cannot be answerable for trusting his evidence. Stay, stay, my dear major-domo, and give us your own proper evidence in this important point of forgery.
I pray, says Bumbo, that your ladyship would consider my straits; I dare not say a word about Geoffrites; every [Pg 135] body will roar, and say, they knew what was a coming; nor dare I speak my mind about Peg ”

“ But are the evils of despotism confined to the cruel and sanguinary methods, by which a recent dominion over a refractory and a turbulent people is established or maintained? And is death the greatest calamity which can afflict mankind under an establishment by which they are divested of all their rights? They are, indeed, frequently suffered to live; but distrust and jealousy, the sense of personal meanness, and the anxieties which arise from the care of a wretched interest, are made to possess the soul; every citizen is reduced to a slave ”

“ SECTION IV. OF POPULATION AND WEALTH. When we imagine what the Romans must have felt when the tidings came that the flower of their city had perished at Cannæ; when we think of what the orator had in his mind when he said, "That the youth among the people was like the spring among the seasons;" when we hear of the joy with which the huntsman and the warrior is adopted, in America, to sustain the honours of the family and the nation; we are made to feel the most powerful motives to regard the increase and preservation of our fellow citizens. ”

“ While men are engrossed by their passions, heated and roused by the struggles and dangers of their country; while the trumpet sounds or the alarm of social engagement is rung, and the heart beats high, it were a mark of dulness, or of an abject spirit, to find leisure for the study of ease, or the pursuit of improvements, which have mere convenience or ease for their object. ”

“ When he had read Peg’s letter: “Ah!” says he, “poor sister here is mightily afraid indeed. Here is a spot of work now, Jowler. She is not so much afraid either, but she wants that her young men should be armed as well as mine.” [Pg 118] “Signify to her,” says Jowler, “that the greatness and importance of the affairs, in which you are now engaged, must throw all domestic details into a season of more leisure.” “Ay, ay,” says John, “tell her we are drinking Lewis Baboon’s dirge here, the fellow’s joints are stiff by this time ”

“ The members of our little society would feed and sleep, would herd together and play, would have a language of their own, would quarrel and divide, would be to one another the most important objects of the scene, and, in the ardour of their friendships and competitions, would overlook their personal danger, and suspend the care of their self-preservation. Has not the human race been planted like the colony in question? ”

“ And may a polished community be compared to a man who, having executed his plan, built his house, and made his settlement; who having, in short, exhausted the charms of every subject, and wasted all his ardour, sinks into languor and listless indifference? ”

“ The flower and choice of our young men, croud into the profession of which I speak: for what station is more desireable to a man of spirit, than one in which he can exert the native vigor of his mind, and stand in the light of a protection and defence to his father’s house? ”

“ Bumbo, says the nurse; we do not care a rush for your Geoffrites or your Thomists either. They do well enough in their time, but when one is about serious business, I [Pg 138] hate trifling. If John Bull and his sister take the defence of their houses upon themselves, we may all go packing. What influence can any body have in a family, where he has little or nothing to give away? I have been all my life contriving things for Sir Thomas and myself, to take to ourselves, or to give away, and now you would have us part with one of the best things we have. ”

“ The lion and the tyger sport with the paw; the horse delights to commit his mane to the wind, and forgets his pasture to try his speed in the field; the bull even before his brow is armed, and the lamb while yet an emblem of innocence, have a disposition to strike with the forehead, and anticipate, in play, the conflicts they are doomed to sustain. ”

“ Can they converse without a precise and written ceremonial? What hopes of peace, if, the streets are not barricaded at an hour? What wild disorder, if men are permitted in any thing to do what they please? ”

“ War, which furnishes mankind with a principal occupation of their restless spirit, serves, by the variety of its events, to diversify their fortunes. While it opens to one tribe or society, the way to eminence, and leads to dominion, it brings another to subjection, and closes the scene of their national efforts. The celebrated rivalship of Carthage and Rome was, in both parties, the natural exercise of an ambitious spirit, impatient of opposition, or even of equality. ”

“ Even the master of the seraglio, for whom all the treasures of empire are extorted from the hoards of its frighted inhabitants, for whom alone the choicest emerald and the diamond are drawn from the mine, for whom every breeze is enriched with perfumes, for whom beauty is assembled from every quarter, and, animated by passions that ripen under the vertical sun, is confined to the grate for his use, is still, perhaps, more wretched than the very herd of the people, whose labours and properties are devoted to relieve him of trouble, and to procure him enjoyment. ”

“ The small republics of Greece, indeed, by their subdivisions, and the balance of their power, found almost in every village the object of nations. Every little district was a nursery of excellent men, and what is now the wretched corner of a great empire, was the field on which mankind have reaped their principal honours. But in modern Europe, republics of a similar extent are like shrubs, under the shade of a taller wood, choaked by the neighbourhood of more powerful states. ”

“ Does experience itself cool the ardour of the mind? May the society be again compared to the individual? And may it be suspected, although the vigour of a nation, like that of a natural body, does not waste by a physical decay, that yet it may sicken for want of exercise, and die in the close of its own exertions? May societies, in the completion of all their designs, like men in years, who disregard the amusements, and are insensible to the passions of youth, become cold and indifferent to objects that used to animate in a ruder age? ”

“ What was enjoyment, in the sense of that youth, who, according to Tacitus, loved danger itself, not the rewards of courage? What is the prospect of pleasure, when the sound of the horn or the trumpet, the cry of the dogs, or the shout of war, awaken the ardour of the sportsman and the soldier? The most animating occasions of human life, are calls to danger and hardship, not invitations to safety and ease: and man himself, in his excellence, is not an animal of pleasure, nor destined merely to enjoy what the elements bring to his use ”

“ Where there are no longer any profits to corrupt, or fears to deter, the charm of dominion is broken, and the naked slave, as awake from a dream, is astonished to find he is free. When the fence is destroyed, the wilds are open, and the herd breaks loose. The pasture of the cultivated field is no longer preferred to that of the desert. ”

“ Lewis Baboon was grown from a spruce forward gallant, a mere priest-ridden, whore-ridden, flimsey periwig-making old fool. Lord Strutt could never be got out of his bed before eleven o’clock in the morning; and Nicholas Frog would rather have taken ready money for a farthing-candle, than see his best friend return from the grave. One stout man could have chaced a hundred of them into the sea, and yet these damned fellows contrived [Pg 29] to be very troublesome for all that, by means of a device of which the devil himself was certainly the author. ”

“ The case, however, is not desperate, till we have formed our system of politics, as well as manners; till we have sold our freedom for titles, equipage, and distinctions; till we see no merit but prosperity and power, no disgrace but poverty and neglect. What charm of instruction can cure the mind that is stained with this disorder? What syren voice can awaken a desire of freedom, that is held to be meanness and a want of ambition? Or what persuasion can turn the grimace of politeness into real sentiments of humanity and candour? ”

“ What this propensity was in the first moment of its operation, we know not; but with men accustomed to company, its enjoyments and disappointments are reckoned among the principal pleasures or pains of human life. Sadness and melancholy are connected with solitude; gladness and pleasure with the concourse of men. The track of a Laplander on the snowy shore, gives joy to the lonely mariner; and the mute signs of cordiality and kindness which are made to him, awaken the memory of pleasures which he felt in society. ”