The Anti-Jacobin

“ Jacobins or Anti-Jacobins—outrageous advocates for anarchy and licentiousness, or flaming apostles of political persecution—always violent and vulgar in their opinions, they oscillate, with a giddy and sickening motion, from one absurdity to another, and expiate the follies of youth by the heartless vices of advancing age. None so ready as they to carry every paradox to its most revolting and ridiculous excess—none so sure to caricature, in their own persons, every feature of the prevailing philosophy! ”

“ Jacobina! Jacobina! you be the only thing in the world that cares a button for me. I have neither kith nor kin. You are daughter—friend—wife to me: if any thing happened to you, I should not have the heart to love any thing else. Any body o' me, but you be as kind as any mistress, and much more tractable than any wife; but the world gives you a bad name, Jacobina. Why? Is it that you do worse than the world do? You has no morality in you, Jacobina; well, but has the world?—no! But it has humbug—you have no humbug, Jacobina. ”

“ How meanly and humbly he speaks of himself, disclaiming all thought of his own merit, "I am not worthy of the least of all thy mercies, much less am I worthy of so great a favour as this I am now suing for." Jacob was a considerable man, and, upon many accounts, very deserving, and, in treating with Laban, had justly insisted on his merits, but not before God. I am less than all thy mercies; so the word is. Note, The best and greatest of men are utterly unworthy of the least favour from God, and must be ready to own it upon all occasions. ”

“ Thou sayest true, Jacopo: the truth is never in greater danger, than when whole communities lend themselves to the vicious deception of seemliness, and without truth there is no virtue. This it is to substitute profession for practice—to use the altar for a worldly purpose—and to bestow power without any other responsibility than that which is exacted by the selfishness of caste! Jacopo—poor Jacopo! thou shalt be my servitor—I am lord of my own seignories, and once rid of this specious Republic, I charge myself with the care of thy safety and fortunes. ”

“ Foolish man! to call those his gods, that could be stolen! Could he expect protection from them that could neither resist, nor discover, their invaders? Happy are they who have the Lord for their God, for they have a God that they cannot be robbed of. Enemies may steal our goods, but not our God. Here Laban lays to Jacob's charge things that he knew not, the common distress of oppressed innocency. ”

“ As the day begins to break, the stranger puts forth his superhuman power: at his touch the strong man seems paralyzed, and he falls, a helpless, weeping suppliant, upon the neck of his mysterious antagonist. Jacob knows now that it is the Angel of the Covenant with whom he has been in conflict. Though disabled, and suffering the keenest pain, he does not relinquish his purpose. Long has he endured perplexity, remorse, and trouble for his sin; now he must have the assurance that it is pardoned. ”

“ His father, who observed Jacob closely, remonstrated with him occasionally as the boy advanced towards manhood; but Jacob put on an independent air, and replied that he went on the principle of being right with himself. "You can't," he would say, "keep free from misjudgment, do what you will. Men are always more inclined to think evil of each other than good. I do nothing that I'm ashamed of." ”

“ Yet, Jaffeir, for all this, I am a Villain!
⁠Jaff. A Villain⸻
⁠Pierr. Yes a most notorious Villain:
To see the suffring's of my fellow Creatures,
And own my self a Man: To see our Senators
Cheat the deluded people with a shew
Of Liberty, which yet they ne'r must taste of;
They say, by them our hands are free from Fetters,
Yet whom they please they lay in basest bonds;
Bring whom they please to Infamy and Sorrow;
Drive us like Wracks down the rough Tide of Power,
Whilst no hold's left to save us from Destruction ”

“ Great anxiety was felt for Jacob by all his friends, and they watched him daily to see whether he would show the same meek and quiet spirit, and as highly honour religion in the world, as he had done in his prison. He must necessarily meet the temptations of life, which might be found too strong for his, as yet untried, moral principles, and in an evil hour he might fall from his steadfastness. Of this he seemed to be well aware, and to have fortified his mind by reliance upon the grace of God. No, one was apparently more alive to his own weakness and dangers. ”

“ Jacob was fully sensible of the ignorance in which he had grown up, and the manner in which he had been led astray and tempted to the commission of sin, yet none of the circumstances attending his crimes ever induced him to plead the least justification. His clear perceptions of sin and deep agony of heart, arose from the conviction that he had offended not against man alone, but against God. ”

“ His apparent strength of character was in reality weakness, an incapacity to master himself or control his criminal impulses. But the Jacobin mind of his followers did not consider realities. They only cherished dreams, illusions, assertions. The mob never reasons. It only believes. Reason is submerged in passion.
John Brown was a typical Jacobin leader. He was first and last a Puritan mystic. The God he worshipped was a fiend, but he worshipped Him with all the more passionate devotion for that reason. When he committed murder on the Pottawattomie he stalked his prey as a panther. ”

“ You are a fool! You are timid! You have neither the genius, the steadiness, nor the daring to manage and to multiply a great fortune. Were you like myself, Jacob, you or your children might have a hand in controlling the destinies of England, and thus of the world. You have behaved like a pettifogger and a coward, Jacob. I do not ask you to be honest. No man is honest when he is sure that dishonesty will enrich him. But, whatever you are, I ask you to be that thing with all your soul. Be great, or be nothing! Only fools and cowards patter about morality! ”

“ It was the coalition of the adepts of impiety, of the adepts of rebellion, and the adepts of anarchy, which formed the CLUB of the JACOBINS.... Such was the origin, such the progress of that sect, since become so dreadfully famous under the name JACOBIN. In the present Memoirs each of these three conspiracies shall be treated separately; their authors unmasked, the object, means, coalition and progress of the adepts shall be laid open. [550]
The sole proposition which Barruel proposed to maintain is thus made clear enough. ”

“ Jacobites were originally followers of Jacob who went about in various parts of the country for preaching purposes.
(2) Jacobite was the name given to the followers of Jackade. Jackade was a person who pretended to be Duke of York. he marched through London at the head of 6000 men: he went to Ireland and tried to deceive them his followers were called Jacobites and Jacobin was the name given to his government.
(The two next may need a note: they refer to the Rebecca Riots in Wales, blended with Jacob, son of Rebekah. I think Rebekah had no daughter.) ”

“ The vote was passed, and the letter was read, to the consternation of the Jacobites and the delight of the Whigs. Of all the foolish acts committed by James the despatch of this letter was, in the circumstances, the most foolish. Not a word did it contain of any intention to respect the religion or the liberty of men whom it still professed to address as subjects. Pardon was promised to all who should return to their allegiance within a fortnight: to all others punishment was threatened in this world, and damnation in the next. ”

“ Jacobina knows her friends and her foes as well as her master! Jacobina never injures her friends, never forgives foes. Look to yourself! look to yourself! insult my cat, insult me! Swear at Jacobina, indeed!"
"If she steals my cream!" cried Peter"Did she ever steal your cream?" ”

“ Because there is some right in you—because you are on the whole on the right road—the Lord will visit you with disappointment and affliction, and make your own sins your punishment.
If you deceive other people, other people shall deceive you, as they did Jacob. If you lay traps, you shall fall into them yourselves, as Jacob did. If you fancy that because you trust in God, God will overlook any sin in you, as Jacob did, you shall see, as Jacob did, that your sin shall surely find you out. The Lord will be more sharp and severe with you than with Esau. ”

“ Jacob deceived his father with the skin of a kid, and his sons deceived him with the blood of a kid. Jacob lied to his father, and his sons lied to him. The lie came home. Every lie is bound to come back to you. You cannot dig a grave so deep but that it will have a resurrection. Tramp, tramp, your sins will all come back.
“Be sure your sin will find you out.” You may think you are very shrewd and far-sighted, and can plan and cover up, but it is the decree of high heaven that no sin shall be covered; God will uncover it. You cannot deceive the Almighty. Jacob found that out. ”

“ Some men look back and say, with Jacob in one of his moods, 'Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life!' Yes! and the same man, when he was in a better spirit, said, and a great deal more truly, 'The God that fed me all my life long, the Angel which redeemed me from all evil.' Do not paint like Rembrandt, even if you do not paint like Turner. Do not dip your brush only in the blackness, even if you cannot always dip it in molten sunshine. ”

“ If men seek to do evil unto you, pray for them, and you will be delivered from all evil by the Lord. On account of my forbearing patience I received the daughter of my master to wife, and her dowry was a hundred talents of gold, and God gave me also beauty like the beauty of a flower, more than all the children of Jacob, and He preserved me unto mine old age in vigor and beauty, for in all things did I resemble Jacob. ”

“ It was to condemn one's self to incessant contradictions of conscience and of conduct. How can one be at the same time a patriot, and submit to a foreign yoke? to be a Catholic, and prostrate one's self before a foreign authority which persecuted Catholicism? Weary of conflict, the conservative finishes by thinking only of saving his fortune and his social position, and pays no attention to the rest.
Jacob, in wandering over the city from house to house, with the familiarity which always prevails in times of revolution, entered a circle of ultramontanes. ”

“ All parties, Whig, Tory, or Radical, became Jacobite at heart, and admirers of absolute power. The Whigs talked about the liberty of the subject, and the Radicals about the rights of man still, but neither party cared a straw for what it talked about, and mentally swore that, as soon as by means of such stuff they could get places, and fill their pockets, they would be as Jacobite as the Jacobs themselves. ”

“ What you do not know, what you should know, one of the things I am here to speak of, is the persecution he must bear in private. Your back is not turned before one whom I dare not name to you falls upon him with the most unfeeling taunts; twits him - pardon me, my lord - twits him with your partiality, calls him Jacob, calls him clown, pursues him with ungenerous raillery, not to be borne by man. ”

“ It was more easy for a Whig official to whip a white rose out of the button hole of a ‘gentle’ Jacobite’s coat, and draw a little Jacobite blood in the process, than it was to suppress the seditious sayings and doings of the common people. ”

“ A Jacobite, Sir, believes in the Divine Right of kings. He who believes in the Divine Right of kings believes in a Divinity. A Jacobite believes in the Divine Right of bishops. He that believes in the Divine Right of bishops believes in the Divine Authority of the Christian Religion. Therefore, Sir, a Jacobite is neither an Atheist nor a Deist. That cannot be said of a Whig, for Whiggism is a negation of all principle.’
DEATH OF THE DUKE OF CUMBERLAND.
Be this as it may, Jacobitism was as surely dying out as he was who had crushed the hopes of Jacobites at Culloden. ”

“ With the lonely night, in a wheeling mist,
Went round by river and hill.
And Jacob strove as the dying strive,
In the woe of that awful place.
Yea, he fought with the desperate soul of one
Who fights in evil case:
And he called aloud in the pauses dread,
“O give me sight of thy face.
“Yea, speak thy name, what art thou, spirit,
Or man, or devil, or God?
[Pg 25] Yea, speak thy name!” But no voice came,
From heaven or deep or sod:
And the spirit of Jacob clave to his flesh
As the dews in a dried-up clod. ”

“ If he could not crush the Jacobites he wanted at least the glory of sparing them; and he had neither the satisfaction of one nor the other; his wrath rose against the King, he did not comprehend his motives. ”

“ Marvellous are the innocent. To believe that the girl herself transcends all lies (for Jacob was not such a fool as to believe implicitly) , to wonder enviously at the unanchored life—his own seeming petted and even cloistered in comparison—to have at hand as sovereign specifics for all disorders of the soul Adonais and the plays of Shakespeare; to figure out a comradeship all spirited on her side, protective on his, yet equal on both, for women, thought Jacob, are just the same as men—innocence such as this is marvellous enough, and perhaps not so foolish after all. ”

“ The weaker party must have its revenge, sure; and the revenge of the Jacobites was to make the finest songs ever sung, some of them full of wild longings for their country, and trolled forth with moist eyes, and choking of the throats of men ”

“ The hatred of heretics having been always, as we have seen, in respect of the Reformation, an irreducible characteristic of great beliefs, we can readily comprehend the intolerance of the Jacobin religion. ”