Indeed, it seldom happens that means of bettering their condition have suddenly flowed in upon the noisiest asserters of contented mediocrity, without the eagerness of their snatching at them convicting the canters of having merely cried sour grapes. It has been shrewdly said that the true meaning of the word "enough," is a little more; and the phrase aurea mediocritas, proverbially used to cry up contentment, fully illustrates the real and intrinsic value of the affection. Further, we have to observe, that what passes for contentment, and produces many of its effects in real life, is for the most part, something very different. Such is the so-called contentment of the poor hidalgo, who submits to the last extremes of penury, rather than do the slightest labour that derogates. Very often it is a mere defect of ambitious or of envious energy: the man who has only appetites, may easily be contented if these be gratified. Sometimes an improvident and careless disposition to live au jour la journée, and let to-morrow take care of itself, produces a semblance of contentment; and, accordingly, when years and poverty come together, the pseudo-contented ne'er-do-weels commonly turn out the merest grumblers; railing against fortune, because their conduct has produced its natural and inevitable effects; and thinking themselves ill-treated gentlemen, because having lived the life of the grasshopper, they have not shared the destiny of the ant. Lastly, content is often little better than a handsome name imposed upon sheer laziness-akin to the omnia vanitas and contemptus mundi of the monks, who embraced voluntary poverty from the desire to escape the toils and dangers of a citizen's life, and this, long before the imbecility of the laity had rendered the pretence of poverty, a certain means of a daily gratuitous bellyfull. Admitting, however, that the true metal may sometimes exist unmixed with any of these base alloys, we still cannot allow that contentment is the intrinsically excellent virtue, that it is foolishly accounted for its warmest defenders eo nomine, are the most prone to abuse it under other appellations, when it exists in circumstances, which they regard as unfitting. "A single man," says the author of the "Fable of the Bees,""that works hard at a laborious trade has a hundred a year left him by a relation this change of fortune makes him soon weary of working, and he resolves to do nothing at all and live upon his income. But (he adds) though he should be the idlest fellow in the world, lie a-bed fifteen hours out of the four-and-twenty, and do nothing but saunter up and down the rest of his time, nobody would discommend him; and his inactive spirit is honoured with the name of content." "But if the same man marries and gets three or four children," without changing his way of life, our author justly contends, that friends and relations, fearing that the family will become burdensome to them, change their note (and the parish officers would join in the same cry), " abusing their contented man, as a bad husband, and the laziest dog in the world." But not to insist (as in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred we might), that the world judged the affair rightly; and supposing that the man's contentment was truly the result of a high philosophy, a real and genuine satisfaction, proceeding from a firm belief that happiness is equally divided among all stations and conditions, still it is obvious that although every man has a right to be contented for his own account, on his own terms, he has none whatever to impose his contentment on others; and the moment he has saddled himself with a wife and family, he has utterly forfeited the privilege of lying down under the plum-tree, and opening his mouth to receive the windfalls, which Providence and the law of gravity may direct towards it. The man who is contented to see his wife in rags, and his children go barefoot, is a downright blackguard; and no one will give his contentment a good name. The truth is, that every man has a standard of his own, below which he will not admit contentment to be a virtue; and from the pious saunterer and philosophical do-nothing, to the close merchant, "nil actum reputans, dum quid superesset habendum (quæstui,") we may trace the unlucky quality, scorned and abused, under an alias, till it totally disappears from the category of excellence. But if morality thus looks askance on contentment, what does political economy?-political economy that has done more to unmask false pretences, than all the ethical coxcombs who have written treatises upon moonshine, since the beginning of the world (Confucius and Dodsley inclusive). Who, it will ask, makes two blades of grass luxuriate where one had previously been stunted? not the contented man most certainly; and for this truth we need go no further than the essayist of the Morning Chronicle, "who has whistled at the plough"(though assuredly not for want of thought). This close observer and close shaver, refers much of our high prices to the contentedness of the farmers to let ill alone, and to follow established precedent, however bad, though it lead them into the sheriff's custody; and strange enough it is, that the proverbially most discontented of men,-they who are never satisfied with the very best weather in nature's storehouse, should, in this one instance, be so turned from the bent of their humour. Who again is it that navigates ships and brings in merchandize to multiply the enjoyments of his fellow citizens? Not the contented man! Was Triptolemus contented to scratch the earth? Was Noah a contented member of the temperance association, when he planted a vine? Were the Argonauts contented? Why if Deucalion had been contented, and had left every stone unturned, as he found it, it would have been "all Dicky" with poor humanity. But to come nearer to home, England, of all nations, is the least beholden to contentment. Surely it is to the discontented barons we owe Magna Charta, and to certain discontented papists we owe the Reformation. To discontented Whigs and Dissenters we are indebted for our glorious Revolution, and to discontented Radicals-but this is coming too close upon our own times; for whatever men may owe so very recently, they are seldom much disposed to acknowledge the obligation, much less to discharge it. We shall say nothing, then, of those to whom we owe the contracting of so large a part of the national debt; further than that if they are contented, it has very newly come to them. Even they who are contented to let well alone, act most unjustifiably (as Father Mathew will tell them, if they will listen to him). What if men had been contented with ten miles an hour on macadamized railroads, and easy postchaises,-where then would have been our railroads? Or if Fulton had been contented with sailing in a trim vessel within two points of the wind, would not America, with all her April.-VOL. LXVII. NO. CCLXVIII. 2 I magnificent rivers, have, for the most part, remained a desert, divided between savages and rattlesnakes? Then, how should we have got up the Chinese rivers, to bully the emperor, and have a pluck at his Sycee bag? But, worse still, where would be our steamings to Richmond, and to Woolwich, and Margate; our whitebait and our stewed eels?— all would still have been reserved with the rest of the fat of the land, for those with much money in their purse. Again, had our cotton lords been contented with wheel-spinning and hand-looming, who would have paid for putting Boney on a peace establishment? or belted the world with calicoes? Nay, for the matter of that, if the inventors of the hand-loom had been contented without it, we might be painting our bodies at the present moment, and the whole world have gone naked in a most Pictish and barbarous bareness. So if men, shut up in measureless content, had gone on mulitiplying manuscripts and illuminating capitals, you, kindest and best of readers, would have been deprived of the infinite delectation, or, as the lawyers say, of the lawful easement of reading that best of books, the New Monthly; and if the descendants of Caxon and the pressmen-less pressed by necessity-had rested contented with drawing impressions à tour de bras, newspapers would not be measured by the acre, and parliamentary speeches reported faster than they are spoken. This part of our subject is boundless; for there is not an improvement, from the blowing up of Dover Cliff to the machine for sweeping chimneys, from the Thames Tunnel to a large-eyed needle, that is not the avowed product of downright discontent. Well, therefore, does the fable say, Content, the bane of industry, Makes them admire their homely score, Discontent, so far from being a vice, seems given to man expressly for the purpose of raising his powers, developing his faculties, originating all manner of sciences and letters, and even for preparing a reception for the gospel lights which are to lead him through this world to a better. The discontented man alone, audax omnia perpeti, would encounter the dangers of a distant navigation to bring home the materials for lighting our houses; so that beauty, if not absolutely compelled to "go dark to bed," might have shown off her finery to the murky illumination of a tallow-candle, had content presided over human actions. Who but a discontented man would pass his life in a coal-mine, that we may warm our fingers and cook our leg of mutton; and surely he was not a contented man, who, dissatisfied with whale oil and a parishlamp, made that wonderful apparatus which supplies us with gas. Nay, the missionary who wanders among savages to disseminate his own religion, must be discontented with that of his listeners. Then, for national defence, what would the contented man say? Horace has placed that fact on record: ibit eo qui zonam perdidit. Your contented man has no appetite for "such grinning honour as Sir Walter hath." To sum up all in one word, Providence having given the world to man's use, on the hard condition, that the many shall eat in the sweat of their brow, and having decreed that the "naturæ interpres" shall know, and do, and enjoy, only as he, or somebody for him, thinks, studies, and labours, to fit things to his purposes, it follows, that if the mass of mankind were habitually contented, civilization would long ago have come to a stand still, or haply the whole race actually perished, from carelessness and neglect of the future. How, then, does it happen that governments, who are ex-officio the most enlightened portion of mankind, should profess, as we have said, to delight in national content, and to combine all their operations with a distinct view to promote that very equivocal status? We might, if disposed to be captious, answer this question by asking another. We might inquire whether they do more than profess all this? whether they make the slightest real effort to bring about a millennium of domestic satisfaction in the land? We might plead, too, in excuse for such a scepticism, that if the rulers of the earth are in earnest, they are the most unlucky of all projectors; seeing how rarely they succeed even to a very low degree, in attaining their end. The free and enlightened citizens of the United States, themselves, who (if ever men did such a thing) govern themselves, are about the most discontented folks going; and are perpetually seeking supplementary improvements in statecraft, in lynch laws, repudiations, and threatened separations from the federative union. The truth, however, is, that governments in general are in earnest; but it is with a distinguo which changes utterly the character of the transaction. They do desire general content, and they labour to preserve it; but how? by the maintenance of a military force, by a learned and scientific combination of laws, of judges, of policemen, and, in some states, by the maintenance of whole armies of spies. Now the plain and obvious object of such an arrangement, is to preserve the governed in a permanent state of content-with their own discontent; to provide full scope for their dissatisfaction, as far as the nature of things in general is concerned; that is to say, to permit, or rather to develop and encourage, that portion of uneasiness which will impel men to produce, and keep them with their noses to the grindstone; but to prevent and restrain any outbursts against their betters, or expressions of dislike at existing arrangements of state. Discontent that works and goes to the saving banks, is manifestly a better thing than content that goes to the workhouse; but discontent that vents itself in strikes, or, still more terrible, comes to blows, is the very devil, or, in Irish parlance, "worse than get out." Thus we penetrate at once to the dignus vindice nodus, in the business of government, a knot which the Alexanders of the earth have never succeeded in undoing by the mere sword. The problem they are called on to solve, is to ascertain, to a mathematical nicety, the quantity of what Bentham would have called the matter of discontent, which a people at any moment will bear, so as to extort from them a maximum of productive energy, without exciting that species of discontent which is attended by unpleasant consequences. This is a point on which it will not do to try conclusions with the unwashed, or to pile Pelion upon Ossa, though it be but a stone at a time, till the last grain breaks the camel's back; and yet so many are the elements which enter into this calculation, that the happiest guess is but an à peu près; and rebellion often comes like a thief in the night, no one knows how, why, or whence. Hence the prudence of a close connexion between church and state: for in all ages state churches (no matter what religion) have been found to act like fly-wheels in machinery, which regulate the movement, though they add nothing to its momentum. What, then, it will be asked, is content? If not a virtue, is it a vice? The questionist must have read us with very little attention. No, sir, contentment is an animal condition, good or evil, as it is accommodated to external circumstances; and like all other animal impulses, a blessing, only in as far as it exists in a happy medium of development, so as to be influenced and balanced by other impulses, and subjected to that discipline which is called the world's education. It is well for society, and well for the individual, that he should be content to endure, without noisy complaint, inevitable evils, and content to make the most of his condition, whatever it may be; but that content will never answer, which removes all desire to contend with difficulties, and sits down 'in indolence, enduring what might, by a little effort, be readily mended. The content that submits to oppression when it ought to resent, never made a small state great, nor converted a slave into a free citizen; and the parish officers do all they can to avert that content, which prefers poorhouse fare in idleness, to the better bread of industry. Content, then, to be a virtue, must be reasonable content; and this possibly will explain how it happens, that, while in the House of Commons the vote is given by "Ay" and "No," in the Upper House it is manifested by "Content" and "Not content." For the lords, spiritual and temporal, having every reason to be satisfied with their lot in life, may very naturally be prone to have the word perpetually in their mouths, and to give it utterance on all lawful occasions; and further, as most of the business in their chamber has already received the ministers' sanction, its approval implies that the parties are content with their share of the good things going, whether in possession or prospect; whereas the opposition lords are inevitably much less satisfied with their political position, and may well express their discontent with all measures which are not more or less likely to change it. This essay would be any thing but perfect, should it overlook the content which proceeds from within. Man is so placed in nature that, to be happy, not only must externals conspire to make him so, but he must himself be so organized and disciplined, as to receive good impressions in a good spirit. This is the reason why sickness neutralizes, if it does not destroy, all other goods. But there is no sickness so fatal as that general mal aise, that rusty movement of the whole capillary system, which keeps the patient in a state of perpetual superirritation, and makes him fret at every trifle, "like a gummed velvet." This condition, if it were not a great misfortune, would be a great fault; and not the least of its désagrémens is, that so few will believe in the malady, setting the whole down to ill-temper and perversity. There is, however, a disagreement between the man and his circumstances, which meets with even less compassion; and that is marked by discontent, where all things conspire to make a man happy. This is the discontent produced by satiety and ennui. By some, it is considered as the income-tax, paid by the prosperous, or rather as a sacrifice due to Nemesis, to propitiate the unfortunate. It is curious that ennui is a condition to which those who are considered as otherwise of the most contented disposition, are the most liable. Avarice and ambition |