Reference from 1630

Remains of the Early Popular Poetry of England
By William Carew Hazlitt, 1866

Whippit or whippet is used by Taylor, the Water Poet in his Dogge of Warre (Works 1630 ii 232) in the sense of some little breed of dog. Mr. Halliwell (Archaic Dictionary [1847], art. whippit) says:--"A kind of dog in breed between a greyhound and a spaniel." In Udall's Ralph Roister-Doister [1553] some of the characters sing in concert the following song:--

Pipe, mery Annot, &c.
Trilla, trilla, trillarie.
Now Tibbet, now Annot, now Margerie,
Now whippet apace for the maystrie.
But it will not be, our mouth is so drie

Hazlitt combines several sources here. Taylor's reference is from 1630. I can't find a date on Halliwell's listing other than finding that his dictionary was published in 1847. So I don't have a date or further source supporting his comment. Udall may not necessarily been referring to a type of dog.

I've noticed that the quote "A kind of dog in breed between a greyhound and a spaniel" is misquoted in many other later accounts stating "definitively" as a breeding or cross breeding between the two. My interpretation is that the reference by Halliwell did not necessarily indicate a breeding between a greyhound and spaniel, but rather he was providing a size reference or possibly speed in the field. Yes, it's a matter of opinion in a reading of that quote. I know other people who have similar interpretations.

Staffordshire Pottery

This is by far not my starting point in looking back. I wish I had Peabody's Way Back Machine to find out the real stories about whippets and where they originated.

Sale Catalogues By American Art Association Anderson Galleries, Inc. 1886
http://www.google.com/books?id=jmYaAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover#PPA2,M1

But on to Staffordshire Pottery. The pottery has long had a line identified with a figure referred to as a whippet. I imagine that since they identified the pieces, they should know what the figure represented. I hadn't thought previously to look at their whippets as a source of research until recently. What prompted this was the discovery of an auction catalog dated to 1886 which contains a Staffordshire Whippet Inkwell for sale.

Although far from verified sources, I did a search for "Staffordshire Pottery Whippet Inkwell" and found many for sale at a variety of antique dealers on the date of this post. Several whippet inkwells came up placed circa 1850s. As their popularity did not grow until later, it does show that there was enough of a following even this early. While not an inkwell, here is an example from one dealer that mentions approximate dating for the pieces.

Here is a piece dated 1845 as either a greyhound or whippet. It has many similarities to their later whippets moreso than the look of later greyhounds. But the size of the hare, may point to it being a greyhound.

http://www.antiquepottery.co.uk/Details-Page.php?StockID=1366

Welcome!

Such an original title for my first post to initiate this blog. But as I mentioned in a rather too lengthy description, I've started this blog to track historical references and articles about the history of the whippet. I invite you to post materials in the comments sections with references that you have discovered. David Howton will also be posting some of the materials on the Whippet View website at http://whippetview.com which is a wonderful resource about whippets.

A TRAGIC LOVE STORY

The son of a successful merchant and a shop assistant, Jacques Joseph Tissot was born in 1836 in Nantes, France. After an early interest in architecture, he decided to become a painter and moved to Paris in 1856 or 1857, quickly achieving official recognition for his work.
Although he enrolled at the academy schools, Tissot received much of his education informally, amongst a circle of avant-garde artists and writers in Paris.
Influential acquaintances included the painters Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas, and perhaps most important, James McNeill Whistler (shortly after meeting Whistler Tissot anglicized his first name to "James"). Stimulated by the work of poet and critic Charles Baudelaire, these new artists began to spurn scenes of history, religion, or mythology in favor of mundane vignettes from everyday life, emphasizing ephemeral elements such as fashion and contemporary social practices.
(Hall Groat II at passion4art.com)

The Last Evening
Oil on canvas, 1873
Guildhall Art Gallery, London
This image is courtesy of the Art Renewal Center

Brush with gouache and watercolor
over graphite on brown wove laid paper
1873
© J. Paul Getty Trust

Jacques Joseph Tissot made this drawing as an elaborate study for a well-known painting, The Last Evening, now in the collection of the Guildhall Art Gallery in London.
The young woman is contemplating the departure of her love, a sailor who is preparing to go out to sea. Tissot, who often drew and painted people in introspective states of mind, captured her sitting pensively in a rocking chair. She seems lost in thought, staring forward. The fingertips of her right hand barely rest against her pale cheek while her legs extend to reach the chair's footrest. He portrays the woman's clothes realistically, carefully depicting her black-and-white plaid tunic, and juxtaposing it with the brown-red tartan of her skirt. A hat wrapped in gauzy fabric surrounds her shock of strawberry-blonde hair. Tissot used heightening to create vivid and shiny highlights along the chair's frame, while gentle shadows fall beneath the chair, adding depth. His use of gouache simulates the look of oil painting.
Tissot's friend, Margaret Freebody, served as the model for the study and painting. Freebody's husband and brother appear in the painting as well, which depicts the figures gathered on the deck of a ship.
(© J. Paul Getty Trust)
Tissot (1836-1902) was born in France but spent the years between 1871 and 1882 in London, and that period is the focus of the exhibition. It shows his movement from storytelling, which brought him popular acclaim, to a more ambiguous subject matter. His later paintings were a showcase for his mistress and frequent model, Kathleen Newton.

Portait of M.N. (Portrait of Mrs. Newton)
Original drypoint in black ink, 1876
Signed in pencil with the artist's red monogram stamp
Source artrenewal.org
Author James Jacques Tissot
From williamweston.co.uk

This is probably Tissot's greatest and most beautiful portrait of Kathleen Newton, his great and ultimately tragic love. It is a work of extreme delicacy yet great richness, of poetic quiet yet great emotion. Unlike the great majority of Tissot's prints it is worked in pure drypoint, without the strength of underlying pure etching. The use of pure drypoint allowed him to combine extremely fine touches of line, in the drawing of her face for example, with tremendously rich textures in the burr and wiped ink tone in the fur collar or the hat.
Kathleen Newton was the inspiration for some of Tissot's very finest works. Their affair was profound and passionate. She had married a surgeon Isaac Newton in India in 1871, but having confessed to a continuing liaison with a Captain Palliser they were divorced the same year. In late 1871, back in England, Kathleen had a daughter Violet by Palliser but did not continue the relationship. In 1876 she had a son, George, and it was in the same year that she started to live with Tissot. Whether Tissot was George's father is not known. However from 1876 she and Tissot shared a passionate and deeply loving life together.
Because her past was seen as disreputable by Victorian standards their life together had to be hidden from the public eye. In Tissot's large house and garden in north London they created a private world together. This private world is the atmospheric background to many of Tissot's compositions of this period (for example 'Le Croquet' - see no 7 in this catalogue). Kathleen, dressed in wonderful sumptuous garments, was also used by Tissot as the model for some of his most brilliant narrative compositions.
Kathleen had very poor health, and in 1882 she died of consumption. The title 'La Frileuse'x - a woman shivering - refers to the fact that she felt constantly cold.

"Le Portique de la Galerie Nationale a Londres"
1878, etching and drypoint
From annalies.com

James Jacques Tissot began etching in 1860 with the art form's popular revival, but then stopped after 1861 and did not etch again until 1875. Mrs. Kathleen Newton (1854-1882) was Tissot's primary model during the period of his most intense printmaking activities, appearing in two dozen of his prints. Until her untimely death of tuberculosis at the age of 28 in the autumn of 1882, Kathleen Newton was the center of Tissot's art and life. The beautiful divorcee was Tissot's muse and his art a celebration of her beauty. After Kathleen's death, Tissot returned to Paris and abandoned graphic work almost entirely, working nearly exclusively on illustrating the Old and New Testaments.
Kathleen Kelly Newton is seen here in the portico of the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square in London with the Church of Saint-Martin's-in-the-Fields seen through the portico. Kathleen appears as an art student, carrying a portfolio and wearing the hat and coat seen in other works that feature her. By placing her as an art student at the center of London's art world, Tissot was declaring her signficance to him as his muse. Neither the National Gallery nor the Church of St-Martin's was given clear representation, which is consistent with Tissot's other depictions of significant architectual masterworks (taken in part from Misfeldt).

James Tissot
Date 1890 environ
Author James Tissot
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

James Tissot
Date 1890 environ
Author James Tissot
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Some of Tissot's best stories are set at sea, or at least on the docks. ''The Captain's Daughter'' lays out the dynamics clearly. At a table a young man is in earnest conversation with an older one. A telescope on the table points toward a young woman who stands at some distance from them, looking through binoculars at the ocean. The symbolism of the telescope is resonant, and viewers can hardly help writing an end to the story. They have that kind of pleasure throughout the show.

The Captain's Daughter
Oil on canvas, 1873
Southampton City Art Gallery, Southampton
This image is courtesy of the Art Renewal Center

Another ripe locus for Tissot is the garden, with the complex ''Holyday'' being the consummate painting in a bucolic setting. But the story is several rather chaotic and sexually charged encounters between men and women. Superficially, the painting seems indebted to Manet's ''Dejeuner sur l'Herbe,'' but Tissot multiplies the complications, and he was fond of painting trees with thick pendulous leaves, a sort of commentary on the lascivious atmosphere of the painting.

Holyday
Oil on canvas, c.1876
Private collection
This image is courtesy of the Art Renewal Center

Also set in a garden is ''The Hammock,'' perhaps Tissot's best evocation of Kathleen Newton. Newton, who sits rather awkwardly in a rope hammock, holds a large rice paper umbrella at the same time that she reads a newspaper. Michael Warner, the curator of the show, remarks in a brochure, that the dog lying near Newton represents both fidelity and sexual desire.

Le hamac [The Hammock]
Etching and drypoint, 1880
Public collection
This image is courtesy of the Art Renewal Center

''The Hammock'' is in very refined Whistler territory, but the British public, used to lavish and panoramic depictions of social life from Tissot, didn't take to these more circumscribed, less pointed compositions. Back in France, Tissot changed again.
(Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company)

THE SAVAGE

From jalopnik.com

We always knew how much a man's past modified a man's future; that we all knew how much, a man is apt to be like his ancestors; that the existence of national character is the greatest commonplace in the world. Even while the cerebral hemispheres are entire, and in full possession of their powers, the brain gives rise to actions which are as completely reflex as those of the spinal cord. When the eyelids wink at a flash of light, or a threatened blow, a reflex action takes place, in which the afferent nerves are the optic, the efferent, the facial. When a bad smell causes a grimace, there is a reflex action through the same motor nerve, while the olfactory nerves constitute the afferent channels. In these cases, therefore, reflex action must be effected through the brain, all the nerves involved being cerebral. When the whole body starts at a loud noise, the afferent auditory nerve gives rise to an impulse which passes to the medulla oblongata, and thence affects the great majority of the motor nerves of the body. It may be said that these are mere mechanical actions, and have nothing to do with the acts which we associate with intelligence. The reflex actions proper to the spinal cord itself are NATURAL, and are involved in the structure of the cord and the properties of its constituents. By the help of the brain we may acquire an affinity of ARTIFICIAL reflex actions. That is to say, an action may require all our attention and all our volition for its first, or second, or third performance, but by frequent repetition it becomes, in a manner, part our organisation, and is performed without volition, or even consciousness. As everyone knows, it takes a soldier a very long time to learn his drill--to put himself, for instance, into the attitude of 'attention' at the instant the word of command is heard. But, after a time, the sound of the word gives rise to the act, whether the soldier be thinking of it or not. There is a story, which is credible enough, though it may not be true, of a practical joker, who, seeing a discharged veteran carrying home his dinner, suddenly called out 'Attention!' whereupon the man instantly brought his hands down, and lost his mutton and potatoes in the gutter. The drill had been gone through, and its effects had become embodied in the man's nervous structure.
The body of the accomplished man has thus become by training different from what it once was, and different from that of the rude man; it is charged with stored virtue and acquired faculty which come away from it unconsciously.
'Man's life truly represents a progressive development of the nervous system, none the less so because it takes place out of the womb instead of in it. The regular transmutation of motions which are at first voluntary into secondary automatic motions, as Hartley calls them, is due to a gradually effected organisation.
Still less are these principles to be confounded with Mr. Buckle's idea that material forces have been the main-springs of progress, and moral causes secondary, and, in comparison, not to be thought of. On the contrary, moral causes are the first here. It is the action of the will that causes the unconscious habit; it is the continual effort of the beginning that creates the hoarded energy of the end; it is the silent toil of the first generation that becomes the transmitted aptitude of the next. Here physical causes do not create the moral, but moral create the physical.
An inherited drill, science says, makes modern nations what they are; their born structure bears the trace of the laws of their fathers; but the ancient nations came into no such inheritance; they were the descendants of people who did what was right in their own eyes; they were born to no tutored habits, no preservative bonds, and therefore they were at the mercy of every impulse and blown by every passion.
LAW--rigid, definite, concise law--is the primary want of early mankind; that which they need above anything else, that which is requisite before they can gain anything else. But it is their greatest difficulty, as well as their first requisite; the thing most out of their reach, as well as that most beneficial to them if they reach it. In later ages many races have gained much of this discipline quickly, though painfully; a loose set of scattered clans has been often and often forced to substantial settlement by a rigid conqueror; the Romans did half the work for above half Europe. But where could the first ages find Romans or a conqueror? Men conquer by the power of government, and it was exactly government which then was not. The first ascent of civilisation was at a steep gradient, though when now we look down upon it, it seems almost nothing.
In early times the quantity of government is much more important than its quality. What you want is a comprehensive rule binding men together, making them do much the same things, telling them what to expect of each other--fashioning them alike, and keeping them so. What this rule is does not matter so much. A good rule is better than a bad one, but any rule is better than none; while, for reasons which a jurist will appreciate, none can be very good. But to gain that rule, what may be called the impressive elements of a polity are incomparably more important than its useful elements. How to get the obedience of men is the hard problem; what you do with that obedience is less critical.
The object of such organisations is to create what may be called a cake of custom. All the actions of life are to be submitted to a single rule for a single object; that gradually created the 'hereditary drill' which science teaches to be essential, and which the early instinct of men saw to be essential too. That this regime forbids free thought is not an evil; or rather, though an evil, it is the necessary basis for the greatest good; it is necessary for making the mould of civilisation, and hardening the soft fibre of early man.
In every particular state of the world, those nations which are strongest tend to prevail over the others; and in certain marked peuliarities the strongest tend to be the best. Secondly. Within
every particular nation the type or types of character then and there most attractive tend to prevail; and, the most attractive, though with exceptions, is what we call the best character. Thirdly. Neither of these competitions is in most historic conditions intensified by extrinsic forces, but in some conditions, such as those now prevailing in the most influential part of the world, both are so intensified.
Man, being the strongest of all animals, differs from the rest; he was obliged to be his own domesticator; he had to tame himself. And the way in which it happened was, that the most obedient, the tamest tribes are, at the first stage in the real struggle of life, the strongest and the conquerors. All are very wild then; the animal vigour, the savage virtue of the race has died out in none, and all have enough of it. But what makes one tribe--one incipient tribe, one bit of a tribe--to differ from another is their relative faculty of coherence. The slightest symptom of legal development, the least indication of a military bond, is then enough to turn the scale. The compact tribes win, and the compact tribes are the tamest. Civilisation begins, because the beginning of civilisation is a military advantage. Probably if we had historic records of the ante-
historic ages--if some superhuman power had set down the thoughts and actions of men ages before they could set them down for themselves--we should know that this first step in civilisation was the hardest step. But when we come to history as it is, we are more struck with the difficulty of the next step. All the absolutely incoherent men--all the 'Cyclopes'--have been cleared away long before there was an authentic account of them. And the least coherent only remain in the 'protected' parts of the world, as we may call them. Ordinary civilisation begins near the Mediterranean Sea; the best, doubtless, of the ante-historic civilisations were not far off. From this centre the conquering SWARM--for such it is-- has grown and grown; has widened its subject territories steadily, though not equably, age by age. But geography long defied it. An Atlantic Ocean, a Pacific Ocean, an Australian Ocean, an unapproachable interior Africa, an inaccessible and undesirable hill India, were beyond its range. In such remote places there was no real competition, and on them inferior, half-combined men continued to exist. But in the regions of rivalry--the regions where the better man pressed upon the worse man--such half-made associations could not last. They died out and history did not begin till after they were gone. The great difficulty which history records is not that of the first step, but that of the second step. What is most evident is not the difficulty of getting a fixed law, but getting out of a fixed law; not of cementing a cake of custom, but of breaking the cake of custom; not of making the first preservative habit, but of breaking through it, and reaching something better.
Macaulay justly said that many an army has prospered under a bad commander, but no army has ever prospered under a 'debating society;' that many-headed monster is then fatal. Despotism grows in the first societies, just as democracy grows in more modern societies; it is the government answering the primary need, and congenial to the whole spirit of the time. But despotism is unfavourable to the principle of variability, as all history shows. It tends to keep men in the customary stage of civilisation; its very fitness for that age unfits it for the next. It prevents men from passing into the first age of progress--the VERY slow and VERY gradually improving age. Some 'standing system' of semi-free discussion is as necessary to break the thick crust of custom and begin progress as it is in later ages to carry on progress when begun; probably it is even more necessary. And in the most progressive races we find it.
What are nations? What are these groups which are so familiar to us, and yet, if we stop to think, so strange; which are as old as history; which Herodotus found in almost as great numbers and with quite as marked distinctions as we see them now? What breaks the human race up into fragments so unlike one another, and yet each in its interior so monotonous? The question is most puzzling, though the fact is so familiar. Perhaps these same considerations throw some light, too, on the further and still more interesting question why some few nations progress, and why the greater part do not.
Of course at first all such distinctions of nation and nation were explained by original diversity of race. They ARE dissimilar, it was said, because they were created dissimilar. But in most cases this easy supposition will not do its work. You cannot (consistently with plain facts) imagine enough original races to make it tenable. Some half-dozen or more great families of men may or may not have been descended from separate first stocks, but sub-varieties have certainly not so descended. You may argue, rightly or wrongly, that all Aryan nations are of a single or peculiar origin, just as it was long believed that all Greek-speaking nations were of one such stock. But you will not be listened to if you say that there were one Adam and Eve for Sparta, and another Adam and Eve for Athens. All Greeks are evidently of one origin, but within the limits of the Greek family, as of all other families, there is some contrast-making force which causes city to be unlike city, and tribe unlike tribe.
The truth is that the propensity of man to imitate what is before him is one of the strongest parts of his nature. And one sign of it is the great pain which we feel when our imitation has been unsuccessful. There is a cynical doctrine that most men would rather be accused of wickedness than of gaucherie. And this is but another way of saying that the bad copying of predominant manners is felt to be more of a disgrace than common consideration would account for its being, since gaucherie in all but extravagant cases is not an offence against religion or morals, but is simply bad imitation. We must not think that this imitation is voluntary, or even conscious. On the contrary, it has its seat mainly in very obscure parts of the mind, whose notions, so far from having been consciously produced, are hardly felt to exist; so far from being conceived beforehand, are not even felt at the time. The main seat of the imitative part of our nature is our belief, and the causes predisposing us to believe this, or disinclining us to believe that, are among the obscurest parts of our nature.
The grave part of mankind are quite as liable to these imitated beliefs as the frivolous part. The belief of the money-market, which is mainly composed of grave people, is as imitative as any belief. You will find one day everyone enterprising, enthusiastic, vigorous, eager to buy, and eager to order: in a week or so you will find almost the whole society depressed, anxious, and wanting to sell. If you examine the reasons for the activity, or for the inactivity, or for the change, you will hardly be able to trace them at all, and as far as you can trace them, they are of little force. In fact, these opinions were not formed by reason, but by mimicry. Something happened that looked a little good, on which eager sanguine men talked loudly, and common people caught their tone. A little while afterwards, and when people were tired of talking this, something also happened looking a little bad, on which the dismal, anxious people began, and all the rest followed their words. And in both cases an avowed dissentient is set down as 'crotchety.' 'If you want,' said Swift, 'to gain the reputation of a sensible man, you should be of the opinion of the person with whom for the time being you are conversing.' There is much quiet intellectual persecution among 'reasonable' men; a cautious person hesitates before he tells them anything new, for if he gets a name for such things he will be called 'flighty,' and in times of decision he will not be attended to.
In this way the infection of imitation catches men in their mostinward and intellectual part--their creed. But it also invades men--by the most bodily part of the mind--so to speak--the link betweensoul and body--the manner. No one needs to have this explained; we all know how a kind of subtle influence makes us imitate or try to imitate the manner of those around us.
The process of nation-making is one of which we have obvious examples in the most recent times, and which is going on now. The most simple example is the foundation of the first State of America,say New England, which has such a marked and such a deep national character. A great number of persons agreeing in fundamental disposition, agreeing in religion, agreeing in politics, form a separate settlement; they exaggerate their own disposition, teach their own creed, set up their favourite government; they discourage all other dispositions, persecute other beliefs, forbid other forms or habits of government. Of course a nation so made will have a separate stamp and mark. The original settlers began of one type; they sedulously imitated it; and (though other causes haveintervened and disturbed it) the necessary operation of the principles of inheritance has transmitted many original traits still unaltered, and has left an entire New England character--in no respect unaffected by its first character.
In early states of civilisation there is agreat mortality of infant life, and this is a kind of selection initself--the child most fit to be a good Spartan is most likely to survive a Spartan childhood. The habits of the tribe are enforced on the child; if he is able to catch and copy them he lives; if he cannot he dies. The imitation which assimilates early nation scontinues through life, but it begins with suitable forms and acts on picked specimens. There is a kind of parental selection operating in the same way and probably tending to keep alive the same individuals. Those children which gratified their fathers and mothers most would be most tenderly treated by them, and have the best chance to live, and as a rough rule their favourites would be the children of most 'promise,' that is to say,those who seemed most likely to be a credit to the tribe according to the leading tribal manners and the existing tribal tastes. The most gratifying child would be the best looked after, and the most gratifying would be the best specimen of the standard then and there raised up.
The modern pre-historic men--those of whom we have collected so many remains, and to whom are due the ancient, strange customs of historical nations (the fossil customs, we might call them, for very often they are stuck by themselves in real civilisation, and have no more part in it than the fossils in the surrounding strata)--pre-historic men in this sense were 'savages without the fixed habits of savages;' that is, that, like savages, they had strong passions and weak reason; that, like savages, they preferred short spasms of greedy pleasure to mild and equable enjoyment; that, like savages, they could not postpone the present to the future; that, like savages, their ingrained sense of morality was, to say the best of it, rudimentary and defective. But that,unlike present savages, they had not complex customs and singular customs, odd and seemingly inexplicable rules guiding all human life.
The man some few thousand years before history began, and not at all, at least not necessarily, the primitive man--was identical with a modern savage, in another respect there is equal or greater reason to suppose that he was most unlike a modern savage. A modern savage is anything but the simple being which philosophers of the eighteenth century imagined him to be; on the contrary, his life is twisted into a thousand curious habits; his reason is darkened by a thousand strange prejudices; his feeling sare frightened by a thousand cruel superstitions. The whole mind of a modern savage is, so to say, tattooed over with monstrous images; there is not a smooth place anywhere about it. But there is no reason to suppose the minds of pre-historic men to be so cut and marked; on the contrary, the creation of these habits, these superstitions, these prejudices, must have taken ages. In his nature, it may be said, pre-historic man was the same as a modern savage; it is only in his acquisition that he was different.
It is plain that the first pre-historicmen had the flint tools which the lowest savages use, and we can trace a regular improvement in the finish and in the efficiency oftheir simple instruments corresponding to that which we see at this day in the upward transition from the lowest savages to the highest.Now it is not conceivable that a race of beings with valuable instincts supporting their existence and supplying their wants would need these simple tools. They are exactly those needed by very poor people who have no instincts, and those were used by such, for savages are the poorest of the poor. It would be very strange if these same utensils, no more no less, were used by beings whose discerning instincts made them in comparison altogether rich. Such a being would know how to manage without such things, or if it wanted any, would know how to make better
Pre-historic man was substantially a savage like present savages, in morals, intellectual attainments, and in religion; but that he differed in this from our present savages, that he had not had time to ingrain his nature so deeply with bad habits, and to impress bad beliefs so unalterably on his mind as they have. They have had ages to fix the stain on them selves, but primitive man was younger and had no such time.
In general, too, the conquerors would be better than the conquered (most merits in early society are more or less military merits), but they would not be very much better, for the lowest steps in the ladder of civilisation are very steep, and the effort to mount them is slow and tedious. And this is probably the better if they are to produce a good and quick effect in civilising those they have conquered. The experience of the English in India shows--if it shows anything--that a highly civilised race may fail in producing a rapidly excellent effect on a less civilised race, because it is too good and too different. The two are not en rapport together; the merits of the one are not the merits prized by the other; the manner-language of the one is not the manner-language of the other.The higher being is not and cannot be a model for the lower; he could not mould himself on it if he would, and would not if he could. Consequently, the two races have long lived together, 'near and yet far off,' daily seeing one another and daily interchanging superficial thoughts, but in the depths of their mind separated by a whole era of civilisation, and so affecting one another only a little in comparison with what might have been hoped. But in early societies there were no such great differences, and the rather superior conqueror must have easily improved the rather inferior conquered. It is in the interior of these customary groups that national characters are formed. By proscribing non conformist members for generations, and cherishing and rewarding conformist members, non conformists become fewer and fewer, and conformists more and more. Most men mostly imitate what they see, and catch the tone of what they hear, and so a settled type--a persistent character--is formed. Nor is the process wholly mental. No 'unconscious selection' has been at work at the breed of man. If neither that nor conscious selection has been at work, how did there come to be these breeds,and such there are in the greatest numbers, though we call them nations? In societies tyrannically customary, uncongenial minds become first cowed, then melancholy, then out of health, and at last die.

From spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk

Excerpts from PHYSICS AND POLITICS OR THOUGHTS ON THE APPLICATION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF 'NATURAL SELECTION' AND 'INHERITANCE' TO POLITICAL SOCIETY BY WALTER BAGEHOT, NEW AND CHEAPER EDITION (also published in the International
Scientific Series, crown 8vo. 5s.)
© 2003-2008 Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

THE RIGHT AND THE GOOD

The difference of our views may be due to either of two causes. Both parties may be using 'right' in the same sense, the sense of 'morally obligatory', and differing as to the further character an act must have in order to have this quality. Or the first party may be using 'right' in this sense, and the second in the sense of 'morally good'. It is not clear which of these two things is usually happening when this difference of view arises. But it seems probable that both things really happen -- that some people fail to notice the distinction between 'right' and 'morally good', and that others, while distinguishing the meaning of these terms, think that only what is morally good is right. A discussion of the first of these positions only is strictly in point here, where we are discussing the meaning of 'right'. It seems clear that 'right' does not mean the same as 'morally good,'; and we can test this by trying to substitute one for the other. If they meant the same thing we should be able to substitute, for instance, 'he is a right man' for 'he is a morally good man'; nor is our inability to do this merely a matter of English idiom, for if we turn to the sort of moral judgement in which we do use the word 'right', such as 'this is the right act', it is clear that by this we mean 'this act is the act that ought to be done', 'this act is morally obligatory'; and to substitute either of these phrases for 'morally good' in 'he is a morally good man' would obviously be not merely unidiomatic, but absurd. It should be obvious, then, that 'right' and 'morally good' mean different things. 'right act' cannot mean the same as 'act that ought to be done' and also the same as 'morally good act'.
There is nothing arbitrary about prima facie duties. Each rests on a definite circumstance which cannot seriously be held to be without moral significance. Of prima facie duties, we suggest, without claiming completeness or finality for it, the following division:
1. Some duties rest on previous acts of my own. These duties seem to include two kinds,
those resting on a promise or what may fairly be called an implicit promise, such as the implicit undertaking not to tell lies which seems to be implied in the act of entering into conversation (at any rate by civilized men), or of writing books that purport to be history and not fiction. These may be called the duties of fidelity.
Those resting on a previous wrongful act. These may be called the duties of reparation.
2. Some rest on previous acts of other men, i.e. services done by them to me. These may be loosely described as the duties of gratitude.5
3. Some rest on the fact or possibility of a distribution of pleasure or happiness (or of the means thereto) which is not in accordance with the merit of the persons concerned; in such cases there arises a duty to upset or prevent such a distribution. These are the duties of justice.
4. Some rest on the mere fact that there are beings in the world whose condition we can make better in respect of virtue, or of intelligence, or of pleasure. These are the duties of beneficence.
5. Some rest on the fact that we can improve our own condition in respect of virtue or of intelligence. These are the duties of self-improvement.
6' I think that we should distinguish from (4) the duties that may be summed up under the title of 'not injuring others'. No doubt to injure others is incidentally to fail to do them good; but it seems to me clear that non-maleficence is apprehended as a duty distinct from that of beneficence, and as a duty of a more stringent character.
It might be said that it is really the duty to prevent ourselves from acting either from an inclination to harm others or from an inclination to seek our own pleasure, in doing which we should incidentally harm them. But on reflection it seems clear that the primary duty here is the duty not to harm others, this being a duty whether or not we have an inclination that if followed would lead to our harming them; and that when we have such an inclination the primary duty not to harm others gives rise to a consequential duty to resist the inclination. The recognition of this duty of non-maleficence is the first step on the way to the recognition of the duty of beneficence; and that accounts for the prominence of the commands:
'thou shalt not kill',
'thou shalt not commit adultery',
'thou shalt not steal',
'thou shalt not bear false witness',
The case of pleasure is difficult; for while we clearly recognize a duty to produce pleasure for others, it is by no means so clear that we recognize a duty to produce pleasure for ourselves. This appears to arise from the following facts. The thought of an act as our duty is one that presupposes a certain amount of reflection about the act; and for that reason does not normally arise in connexion with acts towards which we are already impelled by another strong impulse. So far, the cause of our not thinking of the promotion of our own pleasure as a duty is analogous to the cause which usually prevents a highly sympathetic person from thinking of the promotion of the pleasure of others as a duty. He is impelled so strongly by direct interest in the well-being of others towards promoting their pleasure that he does not stop to ask whether it is his duty to promote it; and we are all impelled so strongly towards the promotion of our own pleasure that we do not stop to ask whether it is a duty or not.
The performance of most of our duties involves the giving up of some pleasure that we desire, the doing of duty and the getting of pleasure for ourselves come by a natural association of ideas to be thought of as incompatible things. This association of ideas is in the main salutary in its operation, since it puts a check on what but for it would be much too strong, the tendency to pursue one's own pleasure without thought of other considerations. Yet if pleasure is good, it seems in the long run clear that it is right to get it for ourselves as well as to produce it for others, when this does not involve the failure to discharge some more stringent prima facie duty.
If we feel a special responsibility for improving our own character rather than that of others, it is not because a special principle is involved, but because we are aware that the one is more under our control than the other. It must be admitted that one man cannot compel another to be virtuous; compulsory virtue would just not be virtue. Immanuel Kant has written that one man cannot do anything to promote virtue in another, to bring such influences to bear upon him that his own response to them is more likely to be virtuous than his response to other influences would have been. And our duty to do this is not different in kind from our duty to improve our own characters.
The duty of obeying the laws of one's country arises partly (as Socrates contends in the Crito) from the duty of gratitude for the benefits one has received from it; partly from the implicit promise to obey which seems to be involved in permanent residence in a country whose laws we know we are expected to obey, and still more clearly involved when we ourselves invoke the protection of its laws (this is the truth underlying the doctrine of the social contract); and partly (if we are fortunate in our country) from the fact that its laws are potent instruments for the general good. Or again, the sense of a general obligation to bring about (so far as we can) a just apportionment of happiness to merit is often greatly reinforced by the fact that many of the existing injustices are due to a social and economic system which we have, not indeed created, but taken part in and assented to; the duty of justice is then reinforced by the duty of reparation.
There is therefore much truth in the description of the right act as a fortunate act. If we cannot be certain that it is right, it is our good fortune if the act we do is the right act. This consideration does not, however, make the doing of our duty a mere matter of chance. There is a parallel here between the doing of duty and the doing of what will be to our personal advantage. We never know what act will in the long run be to our advantage. Yet it is certain that we are more likely in general to secure our advantage if we estimate to the best of our ability the probable tendencies of our actions in this respect, than if we act on caprice. And similarly we are more likely to do our duty if we reflect to the best of our ability on the prima facie rightness or wrongness of various possible acts in virtue of the characteristics we perceive them to have, than if we act without reflection. With this greater likelihood we must be content.
In what has preceded, a good deal of use has been made of 'what we really think' about moral questions; a certain theory has been rejected because it does not agree with what we really think. It might be said that this is in principle wrong; that we should not be content to expound what our present moral consciousness tells us but should aim at a criticism of our existing moral consciousness in the light of theory. Now I do not doubt that the moral consciousness of men has in detail undergone a good deal of modification as regards the things we think right, at the hands of moral theory.
It is worth while to try to state more definitely the nature of the acts that are right. We may try to state first what (if anything) is the universal nature of all acts that are right. It is obvious that any of the acts that we do has countless effects, directly or indirectly, on countless people, and the probability is that any act, however right it be, will have adverse effects (though these may be very trivial) on some innocent people. Similarly, any wrong act will probably have beneficial effects on some deserving people.
(From "The Right and the Good" by W. D. Ross, M.A., LL.D., Provost of Oriel College, Oxford, Honorary Fellow of Merton College', Fellow of the British Academy, 1930)

Legal Rights - Divorce

.
From the
Boston Evening-Post, published as Boston Evening Post; February 9, 1756.

"Eleanor Stickney, the Wife of James Stickney of Hampstead in the Province aforesaid, having complained to the General Assenbly of said Province, that her said Husband had long neglected her and his Family, that he had cohabited with another Woman in a criminal Manner, and fearing a Prosecution, had travelled from said Hampstead, as the Complainant had been informed, to the Town of Srpingfield, in the Province of Massachusetts- Bay; and carried with him the said Woman, with whom he lived as with a Wife, and had entirely absented himself from this Complainant;


Wherefore the said Eleanor pray'd the Interposition of the General Assembly, that the Marriage Covenant between the said James and said Eleanor might be dissolved, &c. Upon which Petition 'twas ordered, that the said Petitioner be heard on the third Day of the sitting of the General Assembly next after the first Day of March next ensuing, and that the Petitioner cause the Order, with the Substance of said Petition, to be advertized in a publick Print three Weeks, thereby notifying the said James Stickney to appear and shew Cause why the Prayer of the said Petition should not be granted. Attest. Theaodore Atkinson."

The following short bibliograpy explores the history of divorce in America.

Basch, Norma. Framing American Divorce: From the Revolutionary Generation to the Victorians. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

Chused, Richard H. Private Acts in Public Places: A Social History of Divorce in the Formative Years of American Family Law. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994.

Cott, Nancy. Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000.

Degler, Carl N. At Odds: Women and the Family in America from the Revolution to the Present. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.

Hartog, Henrick. Man and Wife in America: A History. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000.

Jones, Mary Somerville. “An Historical Geography of the Changing Divorce Law in the United States,” PhD Dissertation, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1987.

Riley, Glenda. Divorce: an American Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
.