Month: May 2025

France and England Compared

/ Geoffrey Gibson / Leave a comment

The Lectures on Foreign History, 1494 – 1789, by J M Thompson (see below) may be the most read history book on my shelves.  It fills in a lot of holes, but I want to set out some observations of the author in the final lecture on the events leading to what is known as the French Revolution.  They illuminate major issues in the history of England that, in my view, still set us apart today from the U S.

French writers, unlike the English originals, had no practical experience of politics, and had not experienced a revolution.  ‘They tested their politics not by the experiment of self-government, but by the uncertain analogies of Greek and Roman history’.  Here is the age-old divide between the love of theory over the channel and the commitment to hard experience by the Anglo-Saxons.  It is fundamental and too little noticed.

Dr Johnson was cryptic about class and hierarchy.  ‘The great in France live very magnificently, but the rest very miserably.  There is no happy middle state as there is in England.’  This too is fundamental.  He might have added that the English aristocracy paid its way, in more ways than one, while the effete French refused point blank and got blotted out for their trouble.  While the English nobles in the 17th century joined with what the French called the bourgeoisie to bring the Crown to heal, the French nobles indulged in the Fronde, which delivered the Sun King and an absolute monarchy that a Tsar might have marveled at.  There is a chasm of difference between the two nations.

When the French Revolution came, its first practical reforms followed the English model, but its abstract Declaration of Rights was borrowed from America.  There lay just the difference between the two.’

A ‘mixture of arbitrariness and impotence was the tragedy of Louis XVI’s government.’  That is spot on – in every page of Carlyle.

The French were nothing like a unified nation with a uniform law – that England had been building at least since Magna Carta in 1215.  (Before they achieved Home Rule for religion in 1534.)  Voltaire remarked that ‘you changed your laws, your horses, at every stage of the road’.  (He also accused his countrymen of being ‘so full of vehemence, so free of depth.’)

‘Unjust taxation, because the privileged classes were largely exempt, and the wealthy could afford to compound with the tax-collector, whilst the poor and underprivileged were fleeced in proportion to their apparent means – one must either be very rich, or pretend to be very poor.’  This is another fundamental difference between the two hierarchies, and the world’s richest man now, in a rare lucid moment, might glimpse the truth of the real world.

‘Social disunity, then, and social unrest were the most fundamental causes of the Revolution.  The order of social privilege should correspond to the order of social service; in eighteenth century France the one exactly inverted the other.’  (My emphasis.)  I have always been leery of the phrase ‘ruling class’, but the above seems to be a fair description of the U S ruling class now, especially the revolting robber barons intent on obliterating – with a chain saw Texas and Deliverance style – as much of the order of social service as they can lay their polluted mits on.

This leads to the grand finale.  Speaking of England, Dr Thompson said that the ‘political spirit of the eighteenth century was based not on the equality, but on the harmony of classes.  Poor and rich together took a patriotic pride in ‘our free constitution which they continually contrasted with the slavery of continental countries’.  …. What prevented revolution in England was the social duties of the rich and of the political rights of the poor: it was the absence of this recognition which made the French Revolution inevitable.  Liberty does not depend on the institutions of a country, but upon the spirit in which they are administered.  Democracy is not a constitution, but a state of mind.’

‘It is as difficult for a nation to change its character as it is for an individual’.

These are piercing insights.  As

 it happens, the three passages I have emphasized represent just about all I have learned in seventy years of looking at the past.  The French term is noblesse oblige, and what counts is a state of mind.  If the descendants of slave driving Puritans ever had it – which I doubt – they have certainly now spat it out.  And they have done so with their eyes wide open and their minds utterly closed.

The following note is from A Curated Library.

*

LECTURES ON FOREIGN HISTORY 1494 – 1789

J M Thompson

Blackwell, 2nd Ed, 1944, rebound in half claret leather with cream label.

The author wrote extensively on the French Revolution.  I have read and enjoyed everything he wrote on that period.  A tutor at Cambridge understood my respect.  He said that the author wrote at a time when style mattered.

James Matthew Thompson lived between 1878 and 1956.  His father was an Anglican priest.  He studied theology and philosophy at Oxford and was ordained in 1903.  In 1906 he became Dean of Divinity at Magdalen College, Oxford.  He challenged orthodoxy, and resigned as Dean in 1915.  After the war, he returned to teach history.  The lectures in the present book were delivered to first year students during the winter terms of 1921 to 1924.  The book of those lectures was first published in 1925.  It may lack the complete style of the later works on French history, but it is wonderfully assembled and crisp, and it fills in many holes in the historical knowledge of those who go straight from the Renaissance and Reformation to the French Revolution.

In the Preface, Thompson says that ‘the essence of history is not the learning of facts, but the judging of evidence.’  In the first chapter, he puts that another way.

You don’t study history to learn historical facts, but to acquire historical judgment.  It is not learning that makes a historian, but discernment.

That is rolled gold.  Two pages later, we get: ‘Politically speaking, England in 1494 is already 400 years ahead of the rest of Europe’.  That proposition is not just English hubris.

Since the eleventh century it has been virtually one country under one king – a condition that France and Spain are only just reaching, and which Italy and Germany will not reach for another 400 years.  It has the only effective parliament in Europe, and the only limited monarchy which remains limited during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  Its kings have suppressed the arbitrary power of the nobles without transferring it to the crown.  By losing their continental possessions, they have learnt the uselessness of foreign conquest.  England in 1494 is peaceful and orderly, and the richest country in northern Europe.

And that’s without mentioning Magna Carta, the common law, habeas corpus, the Inns of Court and the judiciary, or the fact that England would shortly repatriate its church – which would further distinguish itself from Europe, even the Protestant parts.

The cannons of the King of France were inscribed Ratio ultima Regum – ‘the final argument of kings.’

Anyone could learn to fire a gun, and one gunman was almost as good as another.  Armies grew bigger.  Disciplined masses took the place of erratic heroes.  The business of raising and arming troops passed from the feudal lord to the professional soldier, and from the professional soldier to the State. 

An Anglican divine may have something to say about the Reformation.

It is always a difficult question, how far it is proper to receive wages for religious work, or to exact payment in return for spiritual privileges.  But all conscientious men feel (and they felt the same in the sixteenth century) that it is wrong to make a profit out of religion.

What would the Mormons now say?

It was not merely the demand for books, or the interest in theology, which secured Luther his circulation; but also his style.  Michelet compared it to a mixture of Moses and Rabelais [!].    The upshot of Luther’s teaching was to dethrone the Pope and enthrone the Bible.  Authority was not destroyed; it was only transferred.  Orthodoxy was not impaired; it was refounded on the Scriptures.

You now see why style matters.

You might then wonder on the benefits of a marriage between Germany and Luther.

The lecture on the Netherlands Revolt from Spain is riveting.

Politically, the Revolt leaves all Europe in debt.  The success of the northern states gave ‘the right of citizenship to revolutionary principles.’  For the first time since the organisation of the New Monarchies, a whole people had claimed and won its independence…. the Netherlands Revolt was a striking instance of the political results of the Reformation.  It showed that Protestantism could give not only the desire for political freedom, but also the resolution to achieve it

As to the Sun King, Louis XIV, French historians believe that in a single generation, six millions of people died of want.  The author quotes Acton:

It would be easy to find tyrants more violent, more malignant, more odious than Louis XIV; but there was not one who ever used his power to inflict greater suffering or greater wrong.

Louis XV?  ‘…. he was one of the most evil men who ever occupied a throne.’

What is the upshot?

…. we cannot fail to be impressed by the strength of nationalism, and its claim to be the ruling principle of political science.  This is the first lesson of modern European history; and none is more necessary nowadays; for it explains the disaster of 1914 – the nemesis of nationalism…

Those remarks were indeed prophetic in 1924.  The worst of nationalism was yet to come.  It is crude nationalism that now undermines the United States and is undoing the European experiment. 

There are times when I think that my fondness for this book, and books like it, is about on a par with my fondness for footy.  This book is a must for those who want to try to understand where we have come from and where we may be going. 

And it’s worth getting for the Michelet quote on its own.  Moses and Rabelais!  From a sometime divine.

All’s Well That Ends Well Revisited

/ Geoffrey Gibson / Leave a comment

This is one of my very favourite plays.  The other night I played for the first time the 2011 Globe production in a set of the comedies put out by Opus Arte.  It was a serendipitous choice.

I really enjoyed the show.   I see from the extracts below of my note in Windows on Shakespeare that I thought the Countess was a great role for a leading lady getting on.  Janie Dee at the Globe was perfect – fresh as a daisy – and she knows it.  She oozes West End sexiness – at altitude.

And the relief and redemption of Parolles – a victim of caste – is a very moving and under-rated part of this playwright’s output.

The final resolution is not quite as good at the Globe as in the BBC version – they dropped a critical line – and the performance of Michael Hordern does stay with me.  Otherwise, James Garnon was right up to Parolles.  He and the Countess are for me the two leads.  That view may be said to be idiosyncratic.

In the end, Lafew tells Parolles – ‘Good Tom Drum’ – he will ‘make sport’ with him at home.  It is just like Claude Rains saying ‘This could be the start of a beautiful friendship.’  It’s as if Lafew can not only smell onions, but see that all the world is but a stage.

And it is a reminder that plays are meant to be seen and heard.

Perhaps not enough attention has been paid to Helena’s introduction of Parolles in the first scene:

And yet I know him a notorious liar,
 Think him a great way fool, solely a coward.
 Yet these fixed evils sit so fit in him
 That they take place when virtue’s steely bones
 Looks bleak i’ th’ cold wind. Withal, full oft we see

 Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly.

If we parse the difficult ending, we may get something like: ‘In the cold light of day, it is often hard to do the right thing, but we often see that those at the bottom of the ladderdo better than those above them.’  Chivalry had been a target – why not mere gentility?  Good grief – it would all sound downright Bolshie at 36 Collins St.

This production is an English gift to the world.  I have been fortunate to see six of the plays at the Globe, but All’s Well is I think the only play of the thirty-eight that I have not seen on the stage (allowing that the three parts of Henry VI were condensed.)   This production may close that loop.

I could not think of a better introduction to William Shakespeare for children than this Globe production – not least because the cast take their bows in dance form to a cheering audience who had been with them all the way.  

And each of the BBC and Globe performances can be bought singly on Amazon.  I recommend both warmly.

And anyone who can trace the Shaw quote below will get a box of Jaffas (not to roll down the aisle at the flicks).

ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL – A TALE OF TWO CADS
It is always the Conservatives who stop behaving like gentlemen first.
(G B Shaw)

When an officer and sometime gentleman dumped on the late Princess of Wales, The Times newspaper published a column that concluded by saying that the system had flushed out ‘an absolute shit’. That is a more earthy and more general way of saying that he was a ‘cad’ or ‘bounder’ or ‘rotter’. We have a perpetual interest in this type of figure because it involves a failure in one of the better people, and that gives a degree of comfort to a lot of the rest of us. …. All’s Well that Ends Well has two different types of cad, Bertram, the Count of Rousillon, and his follower, Parolles (a variant of paroles, French for ‘words’). The play involves three themes well known in legends and fairy tales: the healing of a sick king; the completing of the hero of impossible tasks to achieve vindication; and the ‘bed trick’ – someone being duped into sleeping with someone other than the person they thought they were going to bed with. At least some might be precluded from denouncing the bed trick as an impossible fairy tale, because we first see it in Genesis between Jacob and Leah and Rachel……

We have, therefore, two cads. Let us look at the difference between them. Bertram is a spoiled brat……He has the magnificent incapacity of the egocentric to see that another person may be involved. He can think only of himself. He has little or no imagination. The snobbery is not the problem. It is not a question of class, but of caste….

No, the problem is that Bertram is all give and no take. He accepts the benefits, not the burden noblesse, yes; oblige, no. Bertram is the herald of the collapse of the aristocracy……

……..Parolles would have been the final nightmare for Mistress Quickly– he is the definitive ‘swaggerer’…….He is relatively harmless. There is not much malice in him. There is not much of anything there. He just comes and goes like an autumn leaf, but he can only address his betters – nearly everyone– in terms of fantasy. He is a permanent prisoner of fantasy land because he was not born able to cope with the world as the rest of us see it. …. Cads who come from a privileged background have so much more to answer for than cads who have never had a chance.

……. But Parolles knows he is skating on thin ice. ‘They begin to smoke me, and disgraces of late knocked too often at my door. I find my tongue is too foolhardy.’ (4.1.28-30) When the balloon goes up he is ‘thankful’.

… Captain I will be no more
But I will eat and drink and sleep as soft
As Captain shall. Simply the thing I am
Shall make me live. Who knows himself a braggart,
Let him fear this; for it will come to pass
That every braggart shall be found an ass. (4.3.346-351)

The second difference is caste. Bertram is a noble; Parolles is a nobody…. For a lot lesser failing, Parolles is utterly cast out, and returns to Court unrecognised as a beggar. One cad is humiliated and crushed; the other cad is forgiven and pampered – and told to come back for more. Bertram likes to see himself as a victim; Parolles doubtless is one.

This is where this play gets its real edge – in the benefits and burdens of caste – and this has not been sufficiently noticed. The kindly old Lord Lafew (wonderfully played by Michael Horden for the BBC) regularly reminded Parolles of his lack of substance. He does not recognise him on his return. There is a most affecting scene……

This is very high theatre. This broken wreck of a nobody is taken up by the informed charity of an older man who is a member of the real nobility in a way that would have been unthinkable to Count Rousillon or his mates. ‘Give me your hand. How does your drum?’ The simplest words are usually the best, not least with this author.

…. While Coleridge thought Helena was ‘Shakespeare’s loveliest character’, Shaw thought that the Countess was ‘the most beautiful old woman’s part ever written’. The Countess is a great role for great actresses in the autumn of their careers. You can listen to Edith Evans or Celia Johnson in the BBC production. They supply a marvellous blanket of humanity on the rough and nervous edges of the men. The 2009 National Theatre production was a little too twee for some; you feared that Puss in Boots might jump Little Red Riding Hood.

……. Here, then, is a comment on the class structure – if you like, the aristocracy– that looks forward to the protest in The Marriage of Figaro; and the sterner protest in the French Revolution. Just as directors and audiences have altered their perspective on Malvolio and Rigoletto, now it may be time to do so with Parolles……. Perhaps it is just a matter of time until some impious clown suggests that this ratbag Parolles may be a more substantial character than that ratbag Falstaff.  Such a promotion of Parolles would not be without precedent – of the highest order. Royalty. Falstaff may have been the favourite of Queen Elizabeth, but Charles I substituted Parolles for All’s Well as the play’s title in his copy of the Second Folio.

This is a very entertaining night at the theatre. We go to the theatre to be entertained, and also to sit and look down upon ourselves, and come out later with hopefully just a little more light inside than when we went in. From any other playwright All’s Well would be saluted as a great play– and it is a great play, because it affords us a lyrical insight into the way we are.

And let us hear no more of ‘problem’ plays, the subject of a Cambridge weekender.   Troilus and Cressida is too long, and its main characters or ideas are either boring or out of fashion.  But All’s Well and Measure for Measure are not ‘comedies’ as we know that term.  They are plays written with an edge that is just right for modern audiences and written by a great playwright when writing at the height of his powers.  We do not need to have them spoon-fed to us as fairy tales.  That is about all that they were before this genius got his hands on them.

This is not a card game (Volodymyr Zelensky)

/ Geoffrey Gibson / Leave a comment

Politics and politicians are on the nose in countries that like to  call themselves democracies.  This is especially so in countries like ours that have adopted a version of the English two party system.  Failings in that system have led to what are called ‘populist’ movements in the U S and U K.  By and large, we have escaped that curse here. 

The main reason may be that we just can’t be bothered, but our failings are different to those in the U S or U K. 

For the non-partisan observer, it is hard to tell what is the difference between the platforms of the Liberal Party and the Labor Party.  Any differences are matters of degree only, and not of kind.  That is unhealthy, because it creates the impression that neither stands for any distinct difference in principle. 

Very few sane people want to pay more tax or get less benefits from government in return.  The trick is to balance the two.  People whose jobs are on the line at each election may not be the best at handling that trick.  What is entirely clear is that the leaders of both parties have been well and truly frightened off taking a stand as a matter of principle. 

But the reaction here has not been the rise of populism.  That embarrassing flash in the pan has been largely contained here, notwithstanding some dropping of the guard by some vote-chasing Liberals.  (It is called ‘dog whistling’.)

We have reacted by electing principled independents.  Who happen to be women.  Who then raise the question – are they just better at this than men?  (In my view, they are.)

In the election just held, I could not bring myself to vote for either major party, because in my view each has been guilty of a moral failing in not responding to the vice of advertising gaming on sport.  Since I am in a safe seat with no independent, and I could not care about the Senate, my time in the booth was as useless as it was short.

Every now and then, the two-party system produces a leader who is prepared to take a position, and fight for it, on an issue of principle.  Margaret Thatcher and Paul Keating come to mind, but not many others – and you need to take care where you drop either name.

It is axiomatic that the two-party system is only as good as the two parties.  A weak opposition will lead to bad government.  We are acutely aware of this in Victoria, and must now look for it federally.

The election just held was a disaster for one party – and therefore the rest of us.  The Liberal Party is now so weak, and seen to be both weak and unprincipled, that it may not be able to discharge its function in opposition of keeping government on the rails.  As Philip Coorey remarked, you cannot engage in soul searching if you have no soul.  We here in Victoria may be just as badly off in federal government as we are in state government.

In my view, the Liberal Party finds itself looking into the void because it has no defined world view, and it has failed to discharge its obligations as the party of His Majesty’s Opposition. 

That fine English historian Dr J M Thompson stated the role of opposition parties as follows:

… an Englishman …. has been trained to exercise his party spirit in the game called the Party System; and among the rules of that game – not always observed [1929] as they should be – are the obligation to sink personal differences in party loyalties, not to criticise your opponent’s policy unless you have a better one that you are prepared to carry out yourself, and in case of national crisis, to help rather than hinder whatever government may be in power.  But party politics in the French Assembly meant a very different thing….so majority legislation might be merely partisan, and minority criticism merely destructive and irresponsible.

You don’t criticize the government until you have a better policy, and you do not get in the way in a time of national crisis.  That is not statesmanship, a word that now dies on our lips.  It is common sense and common courtesy.

We are in a time of national crisis of a kind that some call ‘existential’ with the climate.  The then Leader of the Opposition said he could not comment because he was not a scientist.  That was downright silly, but it did entail that the issue is one to be resolved by scientists, not politicians.  It should never have been a party-political issue – on which the Liberal Party delivered raw tripe, and looked to be in thrall of a very rich lady who has bought a think tank just for herself.

Nor should the treatment of the First Nations have been allowed to degenerate into a demeaning party-political squabble.  It was far too important for that.  The referendum was called as part of government policy carried at election, and the opposition knew that history showed it would fail if they opposed it.  So, they did, and with fear and deception.  The result was in my view disgraceful, and the worst failing of governance in Australia since the Dismissal in 1975.  Those calling it a win remind me of Douglas Jardine on Bodyline.  As the poet said, ‘out went the candle and we were left darkling.’  Round up the usual suspects; as it happens, the same Born to Rule crowd that sends us to war on false premises.

Now they have paid the price.

But it is obvious that we are all worse off.  The Murdoch crowd have form for being bad losers (as of course does their American idol).  They pout and they sulk, and one lady looks like her soul has left her body.  Then she and the booster in chief last night joined hands to proclaim that they had not fought enough culture wars, and that the referendum was one culture war they had won. 

What was really sad is that they did not see this as a confession.  And they forget that the Anglo-Saxon peoples distrust intellectuals and ideology.  (Name one nation that has benefited from either.)

The two-party system of democracy is like our adversarial system of litigation.  It involves a contest, but it is not a game.  And these people do not just fail by treating it as a game, but they play the wrong kind of game – they play poker, when what is needed is the demurer contest of bridge. 

In truth, they have been sucked into what might be called the ‘McConnell Model’ of opposition.  Just oppose everything the government proposes.  Put a spoke in the wheels of government.  And then let the government feel the wrath of the people.  Then it will be our turn again to hand out the goodies, and the folks at home will get what they deserve.  

What could be simpler?  It goes down a treat in Africa.

The independents are alive and well.  The minor parties – the Greens and One Nation – in my view deserve each other and their decline. 

As it seems to me, we are beginning to transition away from the two-party model to the European.  It is hard to see how we could be worse off.

So, what is the answer?  Simple, Mate.  Turn the footy back on, and then go back to sleep.

Passing Bull 406 The Madness or Badness of Truth

/ Geoffrey Gibson / Leave a comment

Karoline Leavitt may be the most frightening performer in the Washington freak show.  She was riding shotgun in a press conference for Mr Bessent, who looked and sounded like a totem pole.  He was asked about Amazon’s listing the price of tariffs on delivered goods.  She intervened to say that this action of Amazon was ‘hostile and political.’

So, that’s what you get for telling the truth.  But why would the President not want the truth of his gospel to be spread like wild fire?  He says tariffs are money for jam – they may make income tax unnecessary.

As usual, the answer was nonsense.  Why did not Amazon give Biden the same treatment?  This assumes the treatment is harmful, and it also trashes the nation. 

If the CEO of BHP said the company had been trashed over four years by its worst CEO ever, he would be sacked and sued.

But not in the bastion of capitalism.