Volume IV Part 8 (2/2)
”Mr. Burke talks about what he calls an hereditary crown, as if it were some production of Nature,--or as if, like time, it had a power to operate, not only independently, but in spite of man,--or as if it were a thing or a subject universally consented to. Alas! it has none of those properties, but is the reverse of them all. It is a thing in imagination, the propriety of which is more than doubted, and the legality of which in a few years will be denied.”
”If I ask the farmer, the manufacturer, the merchant, the tradesman, and down through all the occupations of life to the common laborer, what service monarchy is to him, he can give me no answer. If I ask him what monarchy is, he believes it is something like a sinecure.”
”The French Const.i.tution says, that the right of war and peace is in the nation. Where else should it reside, but in those who are to pay the expense?
”In England, this right is said to reside in a _metaphor_, shown at the Tower for sixpence or a s.h.i.+lling apiece: so are the lions; and it would be a step nearer to reason to say it resided in them, for any inanimate metaphor is no more than a hat or a cap. We can all see the absurdity of wors.h.i.+pping Aaron's molten calf, or Nebuchadnezzar's golden image; but why do men continue to practise themselves the absurdities they despise in others?”
The Revolution and Hanover succession had been objects of the highest veneration to the old Whigs. They thought them not only proofs of the sober and steady spirit of liberty which guided their ancestors, but of their wisdom and provident care of posterity. The modern Whigs have quite other notions of these events and actions. They do not deny that Mr. Burke has given truly the words of the acts of Parliament which secured the succession, and the just sense of them. They attack not him, but the law.
”Mr Burke” (say they) ”has done some service, not to his cause, but to his country, by bringing those clauses into public view. They serve to demonstrate how necessary it is at all times to watch against the attempted encroachment of power, and to prevent its running to excess.
It is somewhat extraordinary, that the offence for which James the Second was expelled, that of setting up power by _a.s.sumption_, should be re-acted, under another shape and form, by the Parliament that expelled him. It shows that the rights of man were but imperfectly understood at the Revolution; for certain it is, that the right which that Parliament set up by _a.s.sumption_ (for by delegation it had it not, and could not have it, because none could give it) over the persons and freedom of posterity forever, was of the same tyrannical unfounded kind which James attempted to set up over the Parliament and the nation, and for which he was expelled. The only difference is, (for in principle they differ not,) that the one was an usurper over the living, and the other over the unborn; and as the one has no better authority to stand upon than the other, both of them must be equally null and void, and of no effect.”
”As the estimation of all things is by comparison, the Revolution of 1688, however from circ.u.mstances it may have been exalted beyond its value, will find its level. It is already on the wane, eclipsed by the enlarging orb of reason and the luminous Revolutions of America and France. In less than another century, it will go, as well as Mr. Burke's labors, 'to the family vault of all the Capulets.' _Mankind will then scarcely believe that a country calling itself free would send to Holland for a man and clothe him with power on purpose to put themselves in fear of him, and give him almost a million sterling a year for leave to submit themselves and their posterity like bondmen and bondwomen forever_.”
Mr. Burke having said that ”the king holds his crown in contempt of the choice of the Revolution Society, who individually or collectively have not” (as most certainly they have not) ”a vote for a king amongst them,”
they take occasion from thence to infer that the king who does not hold his crown by election despises the people.
”'The king of England,' says he, 'holds _his_ crown' (for it does not belong to the nation, according to Mr. Burke) 'in _contempt_ of the choice of the Revolution Society,'” &c.
”As to who is king in England or elsewhere, or whether there is any king at all, or whether the people choose a Cherokee chief or a Hessian hussar for a king, it is not a matter that I trouble myself about,--be that to themselves; but with respect to the doctrine, so far as it relates to the rights of men and nations, it is as abominable as anything ever uttered in the most enslaved country under heaven. Whether it sounds worse to my ear, by not being accustomed to hear such despotism, than what it does to the ear of another person, I am not so well a judge of; but of its abominable principle I am at no loss to judge.”
These societies of modern Whigs push their insolence as far as it can go. In order to prepare the minds of the people for treason and rebellion, they represent the king as tainted with principles of despotism, from the circ.u.mstance of his having dominions in Germany. In direct defiance of the most notorious truth, they describe his government there to be a despotism; whereas it is a free Const.i.tution, in which the states of the Electorate have their part in the government: and this privilege has never been infringed by the king, or, that I have heard of, by any of his predecessors. The Const.i.tution of the Electoral dominions has, indeed, a double control, both from the laws of the Empire and from the privileges of the country. Whatever rights the king enjoys as Elector have been always parentally exercised, and the calumnies of these scandalous societies have not been authorized by a single complaint of oppression.
”When Mr. Burke says that 'his Majesty's heirs and successors, each in their time and order, will come to the crown with the _same contempt_ of their choice with which his Majesty has succeeded to that he wears,' it is saying too much even to the humblest individual in the country, part of whose daily labor goes towards making up the million sterling a year which the country gives the person it styles a king. Government with insolence is despotism; but when contempt is added, it becomes worse; and to pay for contempt is the excess of slavery. This species of government comes from Germany, and reminds me of what one of the Brunswick soldiers told me, who was taken prisoner by the Americans in the late war. 'Ah!' said he, 'America is a fine free country: it is worth the people's fighting for. I know the difference by knowing my own: in my country, _if the prince says, ”Eat straw” we eat straw_.' G.o.d help that country, thought I, be it England, or elsewhere, whose liberties are to be protected by _German principles of government and princes of Brunswick_!”
”It is somewhat curious to observe, that, although the people of England have been in the habit of talking about kings, it is always a foreign house of kings,--hating foreigners, yet governed by them. It is now the House of Brunswick, one of the petty tribes of Germany.”
”If government be what Mr. Burke describes it, 'a contrivance of human wisdom,' I might ask him if wisdom was at such a low ebb in England that it was become necessary to import it from Holland and from Hanover? But I will do the country the justice to say, that was not the case; and even if it was, it mistook the cargo. The wisdom of every country, when properly exerted, is sufficient for all its purposes; _and there could exist no more real occasion in England to have sent for a Dutch Stadtholder or a German Elector_ than there was in America to have done a similar thing. If a country does not understand its own affairs, how is a foreigner to understand them, who knows neither its laws, its manners, nor its language? If there existed a man so transcendently wise above all others that his wisdom was necessary to instruct a nation, some reason might be offered for monarchy; but when we cast our eyes about a country, and observe how every part understands its own affairs, and when we look around the world, and see, that, of all men in it, the race of kings are the most insignificant in capacity, our reason cannot fail to ask us, What are those men kept for?”[20]
These are the notions which, under the idea of Whig principles, several persons, and among them persons of no mean mark, have a.s.sociated themselves to propagate. I will not attempt in the smallest degree to refute them. This will probably be done (if such writings shall be thought to deserve any other than the refutation of criminal justice) by others, who may think with Mr. Burke. He has performed his part.
I do not wish to enter very much at large into the discussions which diverge and ramify in all ways from this productive subject. But there is one topic upon which I hope I shall be excused in going a little beyond my design. The factions now so busy amongst us, in order to divest men of all love for their country, and to remove from their minds all duty with regard to the state, endeavor to propagate an opinion, that the _people_, in forming their commonwealth, have by no means parted with their power over it. This is an impregnable citadel, to which these gentlemen retreat, whenever they are pushed by the battery of laws and usages and positive conventions. Indeed, it is such, and of so great force, that all they have done in defending their outworks is so much time and labor thrown away. Discuss any of their schemes, their answer is, It is the act of the _people_, and that is sufficient. Are we to deny to a _majority_ of the people the right of altering even the whole frame of their society, if such should be their pleasure? They may change it, say they, from a monarchy to a republic to-day, and to-morrow back again from a republic to a monarchy; and so backward and forward as often as they like. They are masters of the commonwealth, because in substance they are themselves the commonwealth. The French Revolution, say they, was the act of the majority of the people; and if the majority of any other people, the people of England, for instance, wish to make the same change, they have the same right.
Just the same, undoubtedly. That is, none at all. Neither the few nor the many have a right to act merely by their will, in any matter connected with duty, trust, engagement, or obligation. The Const.i.tution of a country being once settled upon some compact, tacit or expressed, there is no power existing of force to alter it, without the breach of the covenant, or the consent of all the parties. Such is the nature of a contract. And the votes of a majority of the people, whatever their infamous flatterers may teach in order to corrupt their minds, cannot alter the moral any more than they can alter the physical essence of things. The people are not to be taught to think lightly of their engagements to their governors; else they teach governors to think lightly of their engagements towards them. In that kind of game, in the end, the people are sure to be losers. To flatter them into a contempt of faith, truth, and justice is to ruin them; for in these virtues consists their whole safety. To flatter any man, or any part of mankind, in any description, by a.s.serting that in engagements he or they are free, whilst any other human creature is bound, is ultimately to vest the rule of morality in the pleasure of those who ought to be rigidly submitted to it,--to subject the sovereign reason of the world to the caprices of weak and giddy men.
But, as no one of us men can dispense with public or private faith, or with any other tie of moral obligation, so neither can any number of us.
The number engaged in crimes, instead of turning them into laudable acts, only augments the quant.i.ty and intensity of the guilt. I am well aware that men love to hear of their power, but have an extreme disrelish to be told of their duty. This is of course; because every duty is a limitation of some power. Indeed, arbitrary power is so much to the depraved taste of the vulgar, of the vulgar of every description, that almost all the dissensions which lacerate the commonwealth are not concerning the manner in which it is to be exercised, but concerning the hands in which it is to be placed. Somewhere they are resolved to have it. Whether they desire it to be vested in the many or the few depends with most men upon the chance which they imagine they themselves may have of partaking in the exercise of that arbitrary sway, in the one mode or in the other.
It is not necessary to teach men to thirst after power. But it is very expedient that by moral instruction they should be taught, and by their civil const.i.tutions they should be compelled, to put many restrictions upon the immoderate exercise of it, and the inordinate desire. The best method of obtaining these two great points forms the important, but at the same time the difficult problem to the true statesman. He thinks of the place in which political power is to be lodged with no other attention than as it may render the more or the less practicable its salutary restraint and its prudent direction. For this reason, no legislator, at any period of the world, has willingly placed the seat of active power in the hands of the mult.i.tude; because there it admits of no control, no regulation, no steady direction whatsoever. The people are the natural control on authority; but to exercise and to control together is contradictory and impossible.
As the exorbitant exercise of power cannot, under popular sway, be effectually restrained, the other great object of political arrangement, the means of abating an excessive desire of it, is in such a state still worse provided for. The democratic commonwealth is the foodful nurse of ambition. Under the other forms it meets with many restraints. Whenever, in states which have had a democratic basis, the legislators have endeavored to put restraints upon ambition, their methods were as violent as in the end they were ineffectual,--as violent, indeed, as any the most jealous despotism could invent. The ostracism could not very long save itself, and much less the state which it was meant to guard, from the attempts of ambition,--one of the natural, inbred, incurable distempers of a powerful democracy.
But to return from this short digression,--which, however, is not wholly foreign to the question of the effect of the will of the majority upon the form or the existence of their society. I cannot too often recommend it to the serious consideration of all men who think civil society to be within the province of moral jurisdiction, that, if we owe to it any duty, it is not subject to our will. Duties are not voluntary. Duty and will are even contradictory terms. Now, though civil society might be at first a voluntary act, (which in many cases it undoubtedly was,) its continuance is under a permanent standing covenant, coexisting with the society; and it attaches upon every individual of that society, without any formal act of his own. This is warranted by the general practice, arising out of the general sense of mankind. Men without their choice derive benefits from that a.s.sociation; without their choice they are subjected to duties in consequence of these benefits; and without their choice they enter into a virtual obligation as binding as any that is actual. Look through the whole of life and the whole system of duties.
Much the strongest moral obligations are such as were never the results of our option. I allow, that, if no Supreme Ruler exists, wise to form, and potent to enforce, the moral law, there is no sanction to any contract, virtual or even actual, against the will of prevalent power.
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