The Biglow Papers | Page 4

them as its instruments. Thus, the "pious Editor" proclaims, as his
creed,--
I du believe in Freedom's cause Ez fur away ez Paris is; I love to see
her stick her claws In them infarnal Pharisees;
It's wal enough agin a king To dror resolves and triggers, But libbaty's
a kind o' thing Thet don't agree with niggers.
No doubt they go further than this. I am quite aware that Mr. Lowell
will be claimed as a champion by the peace party in this country; and
certainly no keener things have been said against war in general than
are to be found in this book.
With our own peace-at-any-price party, no one has less sympathy than I;
and this leads me to urge on all English readers to bear in mind, that the
"Biglow Papers" were written for a New England audience, by a New
Englander, and must be judged from a New England point of view. The
citizen of a huge young mammoth country, divided by a whole ocean
from the nearest enemy that it could fear, assailable only on the vivid
sense of the absurdity of the whole. "And Gallio cared for none of these
things," is another touch of quiet humour, which at once brings out the
ludicrous aspect of the punishment of the Jewish agitators by means of
the very tumults which they raised.
I take it, therefore, that the exhibition of humour, in the pursuit, and as
an aid for the attainment of a noble Christian purpose, is a means of
action not only sanctioned by the very constitution of our natures (in
which God has implanted so deeply the sense of the ludicrous, surely
not that we might root it out) but, by the very example of Holy Writ.
The humour exhibited may be different in degree and in quality; the

skies of Syria are not those of Germany, or of Spain, of England,
whether old or new. But the gift in itself is a pure and precious one, if
lawfully and rightfully used.
Military braggadocio, political and literary humbug, and slave-holding,
are the three great butts at which Hosea Biglow and Parson Wilbur
shoot, at point-blank range, and with shafts drawn well to the ear. The
fringe of its seaboard (itself consisting chiefly of unapproachable
swamp or barren sand wastes), surrounded by weak neighbours or thin
wandering hordes, only too easy to bully, to subdue, to eat up; from
which bands of pirates, under the name of liberators, swarm forth year
after year, almost unchecked, to neighbouring lands, and to which if
defeated they only return to be caressed and applauded by their
congeners; where the getting up of war-fevers forms part of the stock in
trade of too many of the leading politicians; where in particular the
grasping at new territories for slave labour, by means however foul, has
become the special and avowed policy of the slavery party; the citizen
of such a country has a right to tell his countrymen that--
'T'aint your eppyletts an' feathers Make the thing a grain more right;
'T'aint afollerin' your bell-wethers Will excuse ye in His sight;
'Ef you take a sword an' dror it, An' go stick a feller thru, 'Guv'ment
aint to answer for it, God 'll send the bill to you.
And the bravest officer in Her Majesty's service will laugh as heartily
as you will, I take it, my dear reader, if you have never heard it before,
over a picture and a contrast such as the following:--
Parson Wilbur sez, he never heerd in his life Thet th' Apostles rigged
out in their swaller-tail coats, An' marched round in front of a drum and
a fife To git, some on 'em office, an some on em votes, But John P
Robinson he Sez they didnt know everythin' down in Juddee.
But England is a small and wealthy country, whose best defence
against a neighbour, always likely to become a foe, consists in a mere
ocean canal; where the question, I will not say of war, but of readiness
for war, is one of life or death--in which the temptation, always so

strong, to subordinate national honour to what is supposed to be policy,
is in our day for most statesmen almost irresistible, because political
influence is so evenly balanced, that a peace party of perhaps twenty
votes has often the destinies of a ministry in its hands. Had Mr. Lowell
been an Englishman, no one who knows his writings can believe for a
moment that he would have swelled the cry or strengthened the hands
of the vain and mischievous clique, who amongst us have of late years
raised the cry of peace when there is no peace.
The same caution will apply to our marked peculiarity of style in the