The History of John Bull Part 2

"Verily," says John, "there are a prodigious number of learned words in this law; what a pretty science it is!" "Ay but, husband, you have paid for every syllable and letter of these fine words. Bless me, what immense sums are at the bottom of the account!" John spent several weeks in looking over his bills, and, by comparing and stating his accounts, he discovered that, besides the extravagance of every article, he had been egregiously cheated; that he had paid for counsel that were never fee'd, for writs that were never drawn, for dinners that were never dressed, and journeys that were never made; in short, that the tradesmen, lawyers, and Frog had agreed to throw the burden of the lawsuit upon his shoulders.

CHAPTER XII. How John grew angry, and resolved to accept a Composition; and what Methods were practised by the Lawyers for keeping him from it.*

Well might the learned Daniel Burgess say, "That a lawsuit is a suit for life. He that sows his grain upon marble will have many a hungry belly before harvest." This John felt by woeful experience. John's cause was a good milch cow, and many a man subsisted his family out of it. However, John began to think it high time to look about him. He had a cousin in the country, one Sir Roger Bold, whose predecessors had been bred up to the law, and knew as much of it as anybody; but having left off the profession for some time, they took great pleasure in compounding lawsuits among their neighbours, for which they were the aversion of the gentlemen of the long robe, and at perpetual war with all the country attorneys. John put his cause in Sir Roger's hands, desiring him to make the best of it. The news had no sooner reached the ears of the lawyers, but they were all in an uproar. They brought all the rest of the tradesmen upon John.** Squire South swore he was betrayed, that he would starve before he compounded; Frog said he was highly wronged; even lying Ned the chimney-sweeper and Tom the dustman complained that their interest was sacrificed; the lawyers, solicitors, Hocus and his clerks, were all up in arms at the news of the composition: they abused him and his wife most shamefully. "You silly, awkward, ill-bred country sow,"

quoth one, "have you no more manners than to rail at Hocus that has saved that clod-pated numskulled ninny-hammer of yours from ruin, and all his family? It is well known how he has rose early and sat up late to make him easy, when he was sotting at every alehouse in town. I knew his last wife: she was a woman of breeding, good humour, and complaisance--knew how to live in the world. As for you, you look like a puppet moved by clockwork; your clothes hang upon you as they were upon tenter-hooks; and you come into a room as you were going to steal away a pint pot. Get you gone in the country, to look after your mother's poultry, to milk the cows, churn the b.u.t.ter, and dress up nosegays for a holiday, and not meddle with matters which you know no more of than the sign-post before your door. It is well known that Hocus has an established reputation; he never swore an oath, nor told a lie, in all his life; he is grateful to his benefactors, faithful to his friends, liberal to his dependents, and dutiful to his superiors; he values not your money more than the dust under his feet, but he hates to be abused.

Once for all, Mrs. Minx, leave off talking of Hocus, or I will pull out these saucer-eyes of yours, and make that redstreak country face look as raw as an ox-cheek upon a butcher's-stall; remember, I say, that there are pillories and ducking-stools."*** With this away they flung, leaving Mrs. Bull no time to reply. No stone was left unturned to frighten John from his composition. Sometimes they spread reports at coffee-houses that John and his wife were run mad; that they intended to give up house, and make over all their estate to Lewis Baboon; that John had been often heard talking to himself, and seen in the streets without shoes or stockings; that he did nothing from morning till night but beat his servants, after having been the best master alive. As for his wife, she was a mere natural. Sometimes John's house was beset with a whole regiment of attornies' clerks, bailiffs, and bailiffs' followers, and other small retainers of the law, who threw stones at his windows, and dirt at himself as he went along the street. When John complained of want of ready-money to carry on his suit, they advised him to p.a.w.n his plate and jewels, and that Mrs. Bull should sell her linen and wearing clothes.

* Talk of peace, and the struggle of the party against it.

** The endeavours made use of to stop the Treaty of Peace.

*** Reflections upon the House of Commons as ignorant, who know nothing of business.

CHAPTER XIII. Mrs. Bull's vindication of the indispensable duty inc.u.mbent upon Wives in case of the Tyranny, Infidelity, or Insufficiency of Husbands; being a full Answer to the Doctor's Sermon against Adultery.*

* The Tories' representation of the speeches at Sacheverel's trial.

John found daily fresh proofs of the infidelity and bad designs of his deceased wife; amongst other things, one day looking over his cabinet, he found the following paper:--

"It is evident that matrimony is founded upon an original contract, whereby the wife makes over the right she has by the law of Nature in favour of the husband, by which he acquires the property of all her posterity. But, then, the obligation is mutual; and where the contract is broken on one side it ceases to bind on the other. Where there is a right there must be a power to maintain it and to punish the offending party. This power I affirm to be that original right, or rather that indispensable duty lodged in all wives in the cases above mentioned.

No wife is bound by any law to which herself has not consented. All economical government is lodged originally in the husband and wife, the executive part being in the husband; both have their privileges secured to them by law and reason; but will any man infer from the husband being invested with the executive power, that the wife is deprived of her share, and that she has no remedy left but preces and lacrymae, or an appeal to a supreme court of judicature? No less frivolous are the arrangements that are drawn from the general appellations and terms of husband and wife. A husband denotes several different sorts of magistracy, according to the usages and customs of different climates and countries. In some eastern nations it signifies a tyrant, with the absolute power of life and death. In Turkey it denotes an arbitrary governor, with power of perpetual imprisonment; in Italy it gives the husband the power of poison and padlocks; in the countries of England, France, and Holland, it has a quite different meaning, implying a free and equal government, securing to the wife in certain cases the liberty of change, and the property of pin-money and separate maintenance.

So that the arguments drawn from the terms of husband and wife are fallacious, and by no means fit to support a tyrannical doctrine, as that of absolute unlimited chast.i.ty and conjugal fidelity.

"The general exhortations to fidelity in wives are meant only for rules in ordinary cases, but they naturally suppose three conditions of ability, justice, and fidelity in the husband; such an unlimited, unconditioned fidelity in the wife could never be supposed by reasonable men. It seems a reflection upon the Church to charge her with doctrines that countenance oppression.

"This doctrine of the original right of change is congruous to the law of Nature, which is superior to all human laws, and for that I dare appeal to all wives: It is much to the honour of our English wives that they have never given up that fundamental point, and that though in former ages they were m.u.f.fled up in darkness and superst.i.tion, yet that notion seemed engraven on their minds, and the impression so strong that nothing could impair it.

"To a.s.sert the illegality of change, upon any pretence whatsoever, were to cast odious colours upon the married state, to blacken the necessary means of perpetuating families--such laws can never be supposed to have been designed to defeat the very end of matrimony. I call them necessary means, for in many cases what other means are left? Such a doctrine wounds the honour of families, unsettles the t.i.tles to kingdoms, honours, and estates; for if the actions from which such settlements spring were illegal, all that is built upon them must be so too; but the last is absurd, therefore the first must be so likewise. What is the cause that Europe groans at present under the heavy load of a cruel and expensive war, but the tyrannical custom of a certain nation, and the scrupulous nicety of a silly queen in not exercising this indispensable duty, whereby the kingdom might have had an heir, and a controverted succession might have been avoided. These are the effects of the narrow maxims of your clergy, 'That one must not do evil that good may come of it.'

"The a.s.sertors of this indefeasible right, and jus divinum of matrimony, do all in their hearts favour the pretenders to married women; for if the true legal foundation of the married state be once sapped, and instead thereof tyrannical maxims introduced, what must follow but elopements instead of secret and peaceable change?

"From all that has been said, one may clearly perceive the absurdity of the doctrine of this seditious, discontented, hot-headed, ungifted, unedifying preacher, a.s.serting 'that the grand security of the matrimonial state, and the pillar upon which it stands, is founded upon the wife's belief of an absolute unconditional fidelity to the husband;'

by which bold a.s.sertion he strikes at the root, digs the foundation, and removes the basis upon which the happiness of a married state is built.

As for his personal reflections, I would gladly know who are those 'wanton wives' he speaks of? who are those ladies of high stations that he so boldly traduces in his sermon? It is pretty plain who these aspersions are aimed at, for which he deserves the pillory, or something worse.

"In confirmation of this doctrine of the indispensable duty of change, I could bring the example of the wisest wives in all ages, who by these means have preserved their husband's families from ruin and oblivion by want of posterity; but what has been said is a sufficient ground for punishing this pragmatical parson."

CHAPTER XIV. The two great Parties of Wives, the Devotos and the Hitts.*

*Those who were for and against the doctrine of nonresistance.

The doctrine of unlimited fidelity in wives was universally espoused by all husbands, who went about the country and made the wives sign papers signifying their utter detestation and abhorrence of Mrs. Bull's wicked doctrine of the indispensable duty of change. Some yielded, others refused to part with their native liberty, which gave rise to two great parties amongst the wives, the Devotos and the Hitts. Though, it must be owned, the distinction was more nominal than real; for the Devotos would abuse freedoms sometimes, and those who were distinguished by the name of Hitts were often very honest. At the same time there was an ingenious treatise came out with the t.i.tle of "Good Advice to Husbands," in which they are counselled not to trust too much to their wives owning the doctrine of unlimited conjugal fidelity, and so to neglect a due watchfulness over the manners of their wives; that the greatest security to husbands was a good usage of their wives and keeping them from temptation, many husbands having been sufferers by their trusting too much to general professions, as was exemplified in the case of a foolish and negligent husband, who, trusting to the efficacy of this principle, was undone by his wife's elopement from him.

CHAPTER XV. An Account of the Conference between Mrs. Bull and Don Diego.*

* A Tory n.o.bleman who, by his influence upon the House of Commons, endeavoured to stop the Treaty.

The lawyers, as their last effort to put off the composition, sent Don Diego to John. Don Diego was a very worthy gentleman, a friend to John, his mother, and present wife, and, therefore, supposed to have some influence over her. He had been ill used himself by John's lawyers, but because of some animosity to Sir Roger was against the composition. The conference between him and Mrs. Bull was word for word as follows:--

DON DIEGO.--Is it possible, cousin Bull, that you can forget the honourable maxims of the family you are come of, and break your word with three of the honestest, best-meaning persons in the world--Esquires South, Frog, and Hocus--that have sacrificed their interests to yours?

It is base to take advantage of their simplicity and credulity, and leave them in the lurch at last.

MRS. BULL--I am sure they have left my family in a bad condition, we have hardly money to go to market; and n.o.body will take our words for sixpence. A very fine spark this Esquire South! My husband took him in, a dirty boy. It was the business of half the servants to attend him.*

The rogue did bawl and make such a noise: sometimes he fell in the fire and burnt his face, sometimes broke his shins clambering over the benches, and always came in so dirty, as if he had been dragged through the kennel at a boarding-school. He lost his money at chuck-farthing, shuffle-cap, and all-fours; sold his books, p.a.w.ned his linen, which we were always forced to redeem. Then the whole generation of him are so in love with bagpipes and puppet-shows! I wish you knew what my husband has paid at the pastry-cook's and confectioner's for Naples biscuits, tarts, custards, and sweetmeats. All this while my husband considered him as a gentleman of a good family that had fallen into decay, gave him good education, and has settled him in a good creditable way of living--having procured him, by his interest, one of the best places of the country. And what return, think you, does this fine gentleman make us? he will hardly give me or my husband a good word, or a civil expression. Instead of Sir and Madam (which, though I say it, is our due), he calls us "goody" and "gaffer" such-a-one; says he did us a great deal of honour to board with us; huffs and dings at such a rate, because we will not spend the little we have left to get him the t.i.tle and estate of Lord Strutt; and then forsooth, we shall have the honour to be his woollen-drapers.** Besides, Esquire South will be Esquire South still; fickle, proud, and ungrateful. If he behaves himself so when he depends on us for his daily bread, can any man say what he will do when he is got above the world?

* Something relating to the manners of a great prince, superst.i.tion, love of operas, shows, etc.

** Something relating to forms and t.i.tles.

D. DIEGO.--And would you lose the honour of so n.o.ble and generous an undertaking? Would you rather accept this scandalous composition, and trust that old rogue, Lewis Baboon?

MRS. BULL.--Look you, Friend Diego, if we law it on till Lewis turns honest, I am afraid our credit will run low at Blackwell Hall. I wish every man had his own; but I still say, that Lord Strutt's money shines as bright and c.h.i.n.ks as well as Esquire South's. I don't know any other hold that we tradesmen have of these great folks but their interest: buy dear and sell cheap, and I warrant ye you will keep your customer. The worst is, that Lord Strutt's servants have got such a haunt about that old rogue's shop, that it will cost us many a firkin of strong beer to bring them back again; and the longer they are in a bad road, the harder it will be to get them out of it.

D. DIEGO.--But poor Frog, what has he done! On my conscience, if there be an honest, sincere man in the world, it is that Frog.

MRS. BULL.--I think I need not tell you how much Frog has been obliged to our family from his childhood; he carries his head high now, but he had never been the man he is without our help.* Ever since the commencement of this lawsuit, it has been the business of Hocus, in sharing out expenses, to plead for Frog. "Poor Frog," says he, "is in hard circ.u.mstances, he has a numerous family, and lives from hand to mouth; his children don't eat a bit of good victuals from one year's end to the other, but live upon salt herring, sour curd, and borecole. He does his utmost, poor fellow, to keep things even in the world, and has exerted himself beyond his ability in this lawsuit; but he really has not wherewithal to go on. What signifies this hundred pounds? place it upon your side of the account; it is a great deal to poor Frog, and a trifle to you." This has been Hocus's constant language, and I am sure he has had obligations enough to us to have acted another part.

* Complaints of the House of Commons of the unequal burden of the war.

D. DIEGO.--No doubt Hocus meant all this for the best, but he is a tender-hearted, charitable man; Frog is indeed in hard circ.u.mstances.

MRS. BULL--Hard circ.u.mstances! I swear this is provoking to the last degree. All the time of the lawsuit, as fast as I have mortgaged, Frog has purchased: from a plain tradesman, with a shop, warehouse, and a country hut with a dirty fish-pond at the end of it, he is now grown a very rich country gentleman, with a n.o.ble landed estate, n.o.ble palaces, manors, parks, gardens, and farms, finer than any we were ever master of.* Is it not strange, when my husband disbursed great sums every term, Frog should be purchasing some new farm or manor? so that if this lawsuit lasts, he will be far the richest man in his country. What is worse than all this, he steals away my customers every day; twelve of the richest and the best have left my shop by his persuasion, and whom, to my certain knowledge, he has under bonds never to return again: judge you if this be neighbourly dealing.

* The Dutch acquisitions in Flanders.

D. DIEGO--Frog is indeed pretty close in his dealings, but very honest: you are so touchy, and take things so hotly, I am sure there must be some mistake in this.

MRS. BULL--A plaguy one indeed! You know, and have often told me of it, how Hocus and those rogues kept my husband, John Bull, drunk for five years together with punch and strong waters: I am sure he never went one night sober to bed, till they got him to sign the strangest deed that ever you saw in your life. The methods they took to manage him I'll tell you another time; at present I'll read only the writing.

Articles of Agreement betwixt JOHN BULL, Clothier, and NICHOLAS FROG, Linen-draper.*

* The sentiments of the House of Commons, and their representation of the Barrier Treaty.

I. That for maintaining the ancient good correspondence and friendship between the said parties, I, Nicholas Frog, do solemnly engage and promise to keep peace in John Bull's family; that neither his wife, children, nor servants, give him any trouble, disturbance, or molestation whatsoever, but to oblige them all to do their duty quietly in their respective stations. And whereas the said John Bull, from the a.s.sured confidence that he has in my friendship, has appointed me executor of his last will and testament, and guardian to his children, I do undertake for me, my heirs and a.s.signs, to see the same duly executed and performed, and that it shall be unalterable in all its parts by John Bull, or anybody else: for that purpose it shall be lawful and allowable for me to enter his house at any hour of the day or night, to break open bars, bolts, and doors, chests of drawers, and strong boxes, in order to secure the peace of my friend John Bull's family, and to see his will duly executed.

II. In consideration of which kind neighbourly office of Nicholas Frog, in that he has been pleased to accept of the aforesaid trust, I, John Bull, having duly considered that my friend, Nicholas Frog, at this time lives in a marshy soil and unwholesome air, infested with fogs and damps, destructive of the health of himself, wife, and children, do bind and oblige me, my heirs and a.s.signs, to purchase for the said Nicholas Frog, with the best and readiest of my cash, bonds, mortgages, goods and chattels, a landed estate, with parks, gardens, palaces, rivers, fields, and outlets, consisting of as large extent as the said Nicholas Frog shall think fit. And whereas the said Nicholas Frog is at present hemmed in too close by the grounds of Lewis Baboon, master of the science of defence, I, the said John Bull, do oblige myself with the readiest of my cash, to purchase and enclose the said grounds, for as many fields and acres as the said Nicholas shall think fit; to the intent that the said Nicholas may have free egress and regress, without let or molestation, suitable to the demands of himself and family.

III. Furthermore, the said John Bull obliges himself to make the country neighbours of Nicholas Frog allot a certain part of yearly rents, to pay for the repairs of the said landed estate, to the intent that his good friend, Nicholas Frog, may be eased of all charges.

IV. And whereas the said Nicholas Frog did contract with the deceased Lord Strutt about certain liberties, privileges, and immunities, formerly in the possession of the said John Bull, I, the said John Bull, do freely by these presents, renounce, quit, and make over to the said Nicholas, the liberties, privileges, and immunities contracted for, in as full a manner, as if they never had belonged to me.