Ver.,'i.i. " They shall not be sought for in public counsel, nor sit high in the congregation: they shall not sit on the judges' seat, nor understand the sentence of judgment: they cannot declare justice and judgment, and they shall not be found where parables are spoken."
Ver. 34. " But they will maintain the state of the world."
I do not determine whether this book be canonical, as the Gallican church (till lately) lias considered it, or apocryphal, as here it is taken. I am sure it contains a great deal of sense and truth.
(if) ui'.l lie TIONS ON THE and exceptions which reason will presume to be included in all the general propositions which come from reasonable men. Vou do not imagine that I wish to confine power, authority, and distinction, to blood, and names, and titles. No, Sir. There is no qualification for government but virtue and wisdom, actual or presumptive. Wherever they are actually found, they have, in whatever state, condition, profession, o"r trade, the passport of heaven to human place and honour. Woe to the country which would madly and impiously reject the service of the talents and virtues, civil, military, or religious, that are given to grace and to serve it; and would condemn to obscurity every thing formed to diffuse lustre and glory around a state. Woe to that country too, that, passing into the opposite extreme, considers a low education, a mean contracted view of things, a sordid, mercenary occupation, as a preferable title to command. Every thing ought to be open; but not indifferently to every man. No rotation, no appointment by lot, no mode of election operating in the spirit of sortition or rotation, can he generally good in a government conversant in extensive objects: because they have no tendency, direct or indirect, to select the man with a view to the duty, or to.accommodate the one to the other. I do not hesitate to say, that the road to eminence and power from obscure condition, ought not to be made too easy, nor a thing too much of course. If rare merit be the rarest of all rare tilings, it ought to pass through some sort of probation. The temple of honour ought to lie seated on an eminence. If it he opened through virtue, let it he remembered too, that virtue is never tried but by some difficulty and some struggle.
Nothing is a due and adequate representation of a state, that does not represent its ability as well as its property. But as ability is a vigorous and active principle, and as property is sluggish, inert, and timid, it never can be safe from the invasions of ability, unless it be, out of all proportion, predominant in the representation. It must be represented too in great masses of accumulation, or it is not rightly protected. The characteristic essence of property, formed out of the combined principles of its acquisition and conservation, is to be unequal. The great masses therefore which excite envy, and tempt rapacity, must be put out of the possibility of danger. Then they form a natural rampart about the lesser properties in all their gradations. The same quantity of property which is, by the natural course, of things, divided among many, has not the same operation. Its defensive power is weakened as it is diffused. In this diffusion each man's portion is less than what, in the eagerness of his desires, he may flatter himself to obtain by dissipating the accumulations of others.' The plunder of the few would indeed give but a share inconceivably small in the distribution to the many. But the many are not capable of making tins calculation; and those who lead them to rapine, never intend this distribution.
The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself. The possessors of family wealth, and of the dis- 68 REFLECTIONS 01 tmction which attends hereditary possession most concerned in it) are the natural securities for this transmission. With us. the house of peers is formed upon this principle. It is wholly composed of hereditary property and hereditary distinction, and made therefore the third of the legislature; and in the last event, the sole judge of all property in all its subdivisions. The house of commons too, though n<lt necessarily, yet, in fact, is always so composed in the far greater part. Let those large proprietors be what they will, (and they have their chance of being amongst the best,) tiny are at the very worst the ballast in the vessel of the commonwealth. Tor though hereditary wealth, and the rank which goes with it, are too much idolized by creeping sycophants, and the blind abject admirers of power, they are too rashly slighted in shallow speculations of the petulant, assuming, short-sighted coxcombs of philosophy. Some decent regulated preeminence, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor unjust, nor impolitic.
It is said, that twenty-four millions ought to prevail over two hundred thousand. True, if the constitution of a kingdom be a problem of arithmetic. This sort of discourse does well enough with the lamp-post for it- second: to men who may reason calmly, it is ridiculous. The will of the many, and their interest, must very often differ; and great will be the difference when they make an evil choice. A government of live hundred country attornies and obscure curates is not good for twenty-four millions of men, though it were chosen!<v eighl and forty millions; nor is it the better for being guided by a dozen of persons of quality, who have betrayed their trust in order to obtain that power. At present, you seem in every thing to have strayed out of the high road of nature. The property of France does not govern it. Of course property is destroyed, and rational liberty has no existence. All you have got for the present is a paper circulation, and a stockjobbing constitution: and as to the future, do you seriously think that the territory of France, upon the republican system of eighty-three independent municipalities, (to say nothing of the parts that compose them,) can ever be governed as one body, or can ever be set in motion by the impulse of one mind? When the National Assembly has completed its work, it will have accomplished its ruin. These commonwealths will not long bear a state of subjection to the republic of Paris. They will not bear that this one body should monopolize the captivity of the king, and the dominion over the Assembly calling itself National. Each will keep its own portion of the spod of the church to itself; and it will not suffer either that spod, or the more just fruits of their industry, or the natural produce of their soil, to be sent to swell the insolence, or pamper the luxury, of the mechanics of Paris. In this they will see none of the equality, under the pretence of which they have been tempted to throw off their allegiance to their sovereign, as well as the ancient constitution of their country. There can be no capital city in such a constitution as they have lately made. They have forgot, that when they framed democratic governments, they had virtually 70 REFLECTIONS on 1111.
'(•ir cquntry. The person whom they persevere in calling king, has not power left to him by the hundredth part sufficient to hold together this collection of republics. The republic of Paris will endeavour indeed to complete the debaucherj of the army, ami illegally to perpetuate the Assembly, without resort to ii- constituents, as the means of continuing its despotism, it will make efforts, by bi coming the heart of a boundless paper circulation, to draw every thing to itself; but in vain. All this policy in the end will appear as feeble as it is now violent.
If this be your actual situation, compared to the situation to which you were called, as it were by the voice of God and man, I cannot find it in my heart to congratulate you on the choice you have made, or the -access which lias attended your endeavours. I can as little recommend to any other nation a conduct grounded on such principles, and productive of such effects. That I must leave to those who can see further into your affairs than 1 am able to do, and who best know how far your actions are favourable to their designs. The gentlemen of the Revolution Society, who were so early in their congratulations, appear to be strongly of opinion that there is some scheme of politics relative to this country, in which your proceedings may, in some way, be useful. For your Dr. Price, who seems to have -peculated himself into no small degree of fervour upon this subject, addresses his auditory in the following very remarkable words: " I cannot conclude without recalling particularly to your recollei msideration which 1 have more than REVOLUTION IN FEANCE. 71 dnce alluded to, and which prohahly your thoughts have been all along anticipating — a consideration with which my mind is impressed more than I can express; — I mean the consideration of the favourableness of the present times to all exertions in the cause of liberty."
It is plain that the mind of this political preacher was at the time big with some extraordinary design; and it is very probable that the thoughts of his audience, who understood him better than I do, did all along run before him in his reflection, and in the whole train of consequences to which it led.
Before I read that sermon, I really thought I had lived in a free country; and it was an error I cherished, because it gave me a greater liking to the country I lived in. I was indeed aware, that a jealous, ever-waking vigilance to guard the treasure of our liberty, not only from invasion, but from decay and corruption, was our best wisdom and our first duty. However, I considered that treasure rather as a possession to be secured, than as a prize to be contended for. I did not discern how the present time came to be so very favourable to all exertionsm the cause of freedom. The present time differs from any other only by the circumstance of what is doing in France. If the example of that nation is to have an influence on this, I can easily conceive why some of their proceedings which have an unpleasant aspect, and are not quite reconcileable to humanity, generosity, good faith, and justice, are palliated with so much milky good-nature towards the actors, and borne with so much heroic fortitude towards the sufferers. It is certainly not prudent to discredit the authority of an example we mean to follow. But allowing this, we are led to a very natural question, — What is that cause of liberty, and what are those exertions in its favour, to which the example of France is so singularly auspicious?
Is our monarchy to be annihilated, with all the laws, all the tribunals, and all the ancient corporations of the kingdom? Is every land-mark of the country to be done away in favour of a geometrical and arithmetical constitution? Is the house of lords to lie voted useless? Is episcopacy to be abolished? Are the church lands to lie sold to Jews and jobber given to bribe new-invented municipal republics into a participation in sacrilege? Are all the taxe> to be voted grievances, and the revenue reduced to a patriotic contribution, or patriotic presents? Are silver shoe-buckles to be substituted in the place of the land tax and the malt tax, for the support of the naval strength of this kingdom? Are all 01 ranks, and distinctions, to be confounded, that out of universal anarchy, joined to national bankruptcy, three or four thousand democracies should be formed into eighty-three, and that they may all, by some sort of unknown attractive power, lie organized into one? For this great end. is the army to be seduced from its discipline and its fidelity, first by every kind of debauchery, and then by the terrible precedent of a donative in the increase of pay? Are ■ urates to be seduced from their bishop-, bj holding out to them the delusive hope of a dole out of the spoils of their own order? Are the Citisens of London to be drawn from their allegiance, by feeding them at the expense of their fellow-subjects? Is a eumpulsory paper currency to be substituted in the place of the legal coin of this kingdom? Is what remains of the plundered stock of public revenue to be employed in the wild project of maintaining two armies to watch over and to fight with each other? If these are the ends and means of the Revolution Society, I admit they are well assorted; and France may furnish them, for both with precedents hi point.
I see that your example is held out to shame us. I know that we are supposed a dull, sluggish race, rendered passive by finding our situation tolerable, ahd prevented by a mediocrity of freedom from ever attaining to its full perfection. Your leaders in Fiance began by affecting to admire, almost to adore, the British constitution; but, as they advanced, came to look upon it with a sovereign contempt. The friends of your National Assembly amongst us have full as mean an opinion of what was formerly thought the glory of their country. The Revolution Society has discovered that the English nation is not free. They are convinced that the inequality in our representation is a " defect in our constitution so rp-oss and palpable, as to make it excellent chiefly in form and theory."* That a representation in the legislature of a kingdom is not only the basis of all constitutional liberty in it, but of "all legitimate novernment; that without it a government is nothing but an usurpation;" — that "when the representation is partial, the kingdom possesses liberty only partially; and if extremely partial it trives only a semblance; ■ Discourse on the Love of our Country, Sd, edit p H and it not only extremely partial, but corruptly chosen, it becomes a nuisance." Dr. Price considers this inadequacy of representation as our /v«-damental grievance; and though, as to the corruption of this semblance of representation, he hopes it is not yet arrived to its full perfection <>t' depravity, he fears that "nothing will he done towards gaining for us this essential blessing, until some great dims, of power again provokes our resentment, or some great calamity again alarms our fears, or perhaps till the acquisition of a pure on,/ <</>tnl representation />// other countries, whilst we are mocked with the s/iadoir, kindles our shame." To this he subjoins a note in these words: " A representation chosen chiefly by the treasury, and a few thousands of the dregs of the people, who are generally paid for their votes."
You will smile here at the consistency of those democratists, who. when they are not on their guard, treat the humbler part of the community with the greatest contempt, whilst at the same time they pretend to make them the depositories of all power. It would require a long discourse to point out to you the many fallacies that lurk in the generality and equivocal nature of the terms " inadequate representation." I shall only say here, in justice to th.ar old-fashioned constitution under which we have long prospered, that our representation has found perfectly adequate to all the purposes for which a representation of the people can be desired or devised. I defy the enemies of our constitution to shew the contrary. To detail the particulars in which it is found II to I its ends, would REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. /O demand a treatise on our practical constitution. I state here the doctrine of the Revolutionists, only that you and others may see what an opinion these gentlemen entertain of the constitution of their country, and why they seem to think that some great abuse of power, or some great calamity, as giving a chance for the blessing of a constitution according to their ideas, would be much palliated to their feelings; you see why they are so much enamoured of your fair and equal representation, which being once obtained, the same effects might follow. You see they consider our house of commons as only " a semblance," "a form," "a theory," " a shadow," '• a mockery," perhaps "a nuisance."
These gentlemen value themselves on being systematic; and not without reason. They must therefore look on this gross and palpable defect of representation, this fundamental grievance (so they call it) as a thing not only vicious in itself, but as rendering our whole government absolutely illegitimate, and not at all better than a downright usurpation. Another revolution, to get rid of this illegitimate and usurped government, would of course be perfectly justifiable, if not absolutely necessary. Indeed their principle, if you observe it with any attention, goes much further than to an alteration in the election of the house of commons; for, if popular representation, or choice, is necessary to the legitimacy of all government, the house of lords is, at one stroke, bastardized and corrupted in blood. That house is no representative of the people at all, even in "semblance or in form." The case of the crown is altogether as bad. In vain the crown may J6 endeavour to screen itself against these gentlemen by the authority of the establishment made on the Revolution. The Revolution which is resorted to for a title, on their system, wants a title itself. The Revolution is built, according to their theory, upon a basis not more solid than our present formalities, as it was made by i house of lords not representing any one but themselves; and by a house of commons exactly such as the present, that is, as they term it, by a mere "shadow and mockery" of representation.
Some of them are so heated with their particular religious theories, that they give more than hints that the fall of the civil powers, with all the dreadful consequences of that fall, provided they might be of service to their theories, would not be unacceptable to them, or very remote from their wishes. A man amongst them of great authority, and certainly of great talents, speaking of a supposed alliance between church and state, says, " perhaps wt must wait for the fall of the civil powers before this most unnatural alliance be broken. Calamitous no doubt will that time be. But what convulsion in the political world ought to be a subject of lamentation, if it be attended with so desirable an effect?" You see with what a steady eye these gentlemen are prepared to view the greatest calamities which can befal their country.
It is no wonder, therefore, that with these ideas of everything in their constitution and government at home, either in church or state, as illegitimate and usurped, or at best as a vain mockery, they look abroad with an eager and passionate enthusiasm.
Whilst they are possessed by these notions, it is vain to talk to them of the practice of their ancestors, the fundamental laws of their country, the fixed form of a constitution, whose merits are confirmed by the solid test of long experience, and an increasing public strength and national prosperity. They despise experience as the wisdom of unlettered men; and as for the rest, they have wrought under-ground a mine that will blow up, at one grand explosion, all examples of antiquity, all precedents, charters, and acts of parliament. They have " the rights of men." Against these there can be no prescription; against these no agreement is binding: these admit no temperament, and no compromise: any thing withheld from their full demand is so much of fraud and injustice. Against these their rights of men let no government look for security in the length of its continuance, or in the justice and lenity of its administration. The objections of these speculatists, if its forms do not quadrate with their theories, are as valid against such an old and beneficent government, as against the most violent tyranny, or the greenest usurpation. They are always at issue with governments, not on a question of abuse, but a question of competency, and a question of title I have nothing to say to the clumsy subtilty of their political metaphysics. Let them be their amusement in the schools " Ilia sejactat in aula — Mollis, et clauso venlorum carcere regnet." — But let them not break prison to burst like a Levanter, to sweep the earth with their hurricane, and t<> break up the fountains of the great deep to overwhelm US.
Far am I from denying in theory — full as far i< my heart from withholding in practice, (if I were of power to give or to withhold) the real rights of men. In denying their false claims of right, I do not mean to injure those which are real, and are such as their pretended rights would totally destroy. If civil society be made for the advantage of man. all the advantages for which it i^ made become his right. It is an institution of beneficence; and law itself is only beneficence acting by a rule. Men have a right to live by that rule; they have a right to do justice: as between their fellows, whether their fellows are in politic function or in ordinary occupation. They have a right to the fruits of their industry, and to the means of making their industry fruitful. They have a right to the acquisitions of their parents: to the nourishment and improvement of their offspring: to instruction in life, and to consolation in death. Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favour. But as to the share of power, authority, and direction which each individual ought to have in the management of the state, that I must deny to be amongst the direct original rights of man in civil society; for I have in my contemplation the civil social man, ami no other. It is a thing to be settled by convention.
If civil society he the offspring of convention, that convention must he its law. That convention must limit ami modify ill the descriptions of constitution which are formed under it. Every sort of legislative, judicial, or executory power, are its creatures. They can have no being in any other state of things; and how can any man claim, under the conventions of civil society, rights which do not so much as suppose its existence — rights which are absolutely repugnant to it? One of the first motives to civil society, and which becomes one of its fundamental rules, is, that no man should be judge in his oicn cause. By this each person has at once divested himself of the first fundamental right of uncovenanted man, that is, to judge for himself, and to assert his own cause. He abdicates all right to be his own governor. He inclusively, in a great measure, abandons the right of self-defence, the first law of nature. Men cannot enjoy the rights of an uncivil and of a civil state together. That he may obtain justice, he gives up his right of determining what it is in points the most essential, to him. That he may secure some liberty, he makes a surrender in trust of the whole of it.
Government is not made in virtue of natural rights, which may and do exist in total independence of it; and exist in much greater clearness, and in a much greater degree of abstract perfection: but their abstract perfection is their practical defect. By having a right to every thing, they want every thing. Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human ivants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom. Among these wants is to be reckoned the want, out of civil society, of a sufficient restraint upon their passions. Society requires not only that the passions of individuals should be subjected, but that even in the mass and body, as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection. This can only be done by u power out of themselves; and not, in the exercise of its function, subject to that will and to those passions which it is its office to bridle and subdue. In this sense the restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among their rights. But as the liberties and the restrictions vary with times and circumstances, and admit of infinite mollifications, they cannot lie settled upon any abstract rule; and nothing is so foolish as to discuss them upon that principle.
The moment you abate any thing from the full rights of men, each to govern himself, and suffer any artificial positive limitation upon those rights, from that moment the whole organization of government becomes a consideration of convenience. This it is which makes the constitution of a state, and the due distribution of its powers, a matter of the most delicate and complicated skill. It requires a deep knowledge of human nature and human necessities, and of the things which facilitate or obstruct the various ends which are to be -pursued by the mechanism of civil institutions. The state is to have recruits to its strength, and remedies to its distempers. What is the use of discussing a man's abstract right to food or medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them. In that deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid of the farmer and thi. rather than the professor of metaphysics. The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori. Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us in that practical science; because the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate; but that which in the first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter operation; and its excellence may arise even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. The reverse also happens; and very plausible schemes, with very pleasing commencements, have often shameful and lamentable conclusions. In states there are often some obscure and almost latent causes, things which appear at first view of little moment, on which a very great part of its prosperity or adversity may most essentially depend. The science of government being therefore so practical in itself, and intended for such practical purposes, a matter which requires experience, and even more experience than any person can gain in his whole life, however sagacious and observing he may be, it is with infinite caution that any man ought to venture upon pulling down an edifice, which has answered in any tolerable degree for ages the common purposes of society, or on building it up again, without having models and patterns of approved utility before his eyes.
These metaphysic rights entering into common life, like rays of light which pierce into a dense medium, are, by the laws of nature, refracted from their straight line. Indeed, in the gross and complicated mass of human passions and concerns, the primitive rights of men undergo such a variety of refractions and reflections, that it becomes absurd to talk of them as if they continued in the simplicity of their original direction. The nature of man is intricate; the objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity; and therefore no simple disposition or direction of power can be suitable either to man's nature, or to the quality of bis affairs. When 1 hear the simplicity of contrivance aimed at and boasted of in any new political constitutions, I am at no loss to deride that the artificers are grossly ignorant of their trade, or totally negligent of their duty. The simple governments are fundamentally defective, to say no worse of them. If you were to contemplate society in but one point of view, all these simple modes of polity are infinitely captivating. In effect each would answer its single end much more perfectly than the more complex is able to attain all its complex pur] But it is better that the whole should be imperfectly and anomalously answered, than that, while some parts are provided for with great exactness, others might he totally neglected, or perhaps materially injured, by the over-care of a favourite member.
The pretended rights of these theorists are all extremes: and in proportion as they are metaphysically true, they are morally and politically The rights of men are in a sort of middle, incapable of definition, but not impossible to be discerned. The rights of men in governments their advantages; and these are often in balances between differences of good; in compromises sometimes between good and evil, and sometimes between evil and evil. Political reason is a com- REVOLUTION IN PRANCE. 83 puting principle; adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, morally and not metaphysically or mathematically, true moral denominations.