Volume IV Part 9 (2/2)

Aberrations like these, whether ancient or modern, unsuccessful or prosperous, are things of pa.s.sage. They furnish no argument for supposing _a mult.i.tude told by the head to be the people_. Such a mult.i.tude can have no sort of t.i.tle to alter the seat of power in the society, in which it ever ought to be the obedient, and not the ruling or presiding part. What power may belong to the whole ma.s.s, in which ma.s.s the natural _aristocracy_, or what by convention is appointed to represent and strengthen it, acts in its proper place, with its proper weight, and without being subjected to violence, is a deeper question.

But in that case, and with that concurrence, I should have much doubt whether any rash or desperate changes in the state, such as we have seen in France, could ever be effected.

I have said that in all political questions the consequences of any a.s.sumed rights are of great moment in deciding upon their validity. In this point of view let us a little scrutinize the effects of a right in the mere majority of the inhabitants of any country of superseding and altering their government _at pleasure_.

The sum total of every people is composed of its units. Every individual must have a right to originate what afterwards is to become the act of the majority. Whatever he may lawfully originate he may lawfully endeavor to accomplish. He has a right, therefore, in his own particular, to break the ties and engagements which bind him to the country in which he lives; and he has a right to make as many converts to his opinions, and to obtain as many a.s.sociates in his designs, as he can procure: for how can you know the dispositions of the majority to destroy their government, but by tampering with some part of the body?

You must begin by a secret conspiracy, that you may end with a national confederation. The mere pleasure of the beginner must be the sole guide; since the mere pleasure of others must be the sole ultimate sanction, as well as the sole actuating principle in every part of the progress.

Thus, arbitrary will (the last corruption of ruling power) step by step poisons the heart of every citizen. If the undertaker fails, he has the misfortune of a rebel, but not the guilt. By such doctrines, all love to our country, all pious veneration and attachment to its laws and customs, are obliterated from our minds; and nothing can result from this opinion, when grown into a principle, and animated by discontent, ambition, or enthusiasm, but a series of conspiracies and seditions, sometimes ruinous to their authors, always noxious to the state. No sense of duty can prevent any man from being a leader or a follower in such enterprises. Nothing restrains the tempter; nothing guards the tempted. Nor is the new state, fabricated by such arts, safer than the old. What can prevent the mere will of any person, who hopes to unite the wills of others to his own, from an attempt wholly to overturn it?

It wants nothing but a disposition to trouble the established order, to give a t.i.tle to the enterprise.

When you combine this principle of the right to change a fixed and tolerable const.i.tution of things at pleasure with the theory and practice of the French a.s.sembly, the political, civil, and moral irregularity are, if possible, aggravated. The a.s.sembly have found another road, and a far more commodious, to the destruction of an old government, and the legitimate formation of a new one, than through the previous will of the majority of what they call the people. Get, say they, the possession of power by any means you can into your hands; and then, a subsequent consent (what they call an _address of adhesion_) makes your authority as much the act of the people as if they had conferred upon you originally that kind and degree of power which without their permission you had seized upon. This is to give a direct sanction to fraud, hypocrisy, perjury, and the breach of the most sacred trusts that can exist between man and man. What can sound with such horrid discordance in the moral ear as this position,--that a delegate with limited powers may break his sworn engagements to his const.i.tuent, a.s.sume an authority, never committed to him, to alter all things at his pleasure, and then, if he can persuade a large number of men to flatter him in the power he has usurped, that he is absolved in his own conscience, and ought to stand acquitted in the eyes of mankind? On this scheme, the maker of the experiment must begin with a determined perjury. That point is certain. He must take his chance for the expiatory addresses. This is to make the success of villany the standard of innocence.

Without drawing on, therefore, very shocking consequences, neither by previous consent, nor by subsequent ratification of a _mere reckoned majority_, can any set of men attempt to dissolve the state at their pleasure. To apply this to our present subject. When the several orders, in their several bailliages, had met in the year 1789, (such of them, I mean, as had met peaceably and const.i.tutionally,) to choose and to instruct their representatives, so organized and so acting, (because they were organized and were acting according to the conventions which made them a people,) they were the _people_ of France. They had a legal and a natural capacity to be considered as that people. But observe, whilst they were in this state, that is, whilst they were a people, in no one of their instructions did they charge or even hint at any of those things which have drawn upon the usurping a.s.sembly and their adherents the detestation of the rational and thinking part of mankind.

I will venture to affirm, without the least apprehension of being contradicted by any person who knows the then state of France, that, if any one of the changes were proposed, which form the fundamental parts of their Revolution, and compose its most distinguis.h.i.+ng acts, it would not have had one vote in twenty thousand in any order. Their instructions purported the direct contrary to all those famous proceedings which are defended as the acts of the people. Had such proceedings been expected, the great probability is, that the people would then have risen, as to a man, to prevent them. The whole organization of the a.s.sembly was altered, the whole frame of the kingdom was changed, before these things could be done. It is long to tell, by what evil arts of the conspirators, and by what extreme weakness and want of steadiness in the lawful government, this equal usurpation on the rights of the prince and people, having first cheated, and then offered violence to both, has been able to triumph, and to employ with success the forged signature of an imprisoned sovereign, and the spurious voice of dictated addresses, to a subsequent ratification of things that had never received any previous sanction, general or particular, expressed or implied, from the nation, (in whatever sense that word is taken,) or from any part of it.

After the weighty and respectable part of the people had been murdered, or driven by the menaces of murder from their houses, or were dispersed in exile into every country in Europe,--after the soldiery had been debauched from their officers,--after property had lost its weight and consideration, along with its security,--after voluntary clubs and a.s.sociations of factious and unprincipled men were subst.i.tuted in the place of all the legal corporations of the kingdom arbitrarily dissolved,--after freedom had been banished from those popular meetings[25] whose sole recommendation is freedom,--after it had come to that pa.s.s that no dissent dared to appear in any of them, but at the certain price of life,--after even dissent had been antic.i.p.ated, and a.s.sa.s.sination became as quick as suspicion,--such pretended ratification by addresses could be no act of what any lover of the people would choose to call by their name. It is that voice which every successful usurpation, as well as this before us, may easily procure, even without making (as these tyrants have made) donatives from the spoil of one part of the citizens to corrupt the other.

The pretended _rights of man_, which have made this havoc, cannot be the rights of the people. For to be a people, and to have these rights, are things incompatible. The one supposes the presence, the other the absence, of a state of civil society. The very foundation of the French commonwealth is false and self-destructive; nor can its principles be adopted in any country, without the certainty of bringing it to the very same condition in which France is found. Attempts are made to introduce them into every nation in Europe. This nation, as possessing the greatest influence, they wish most to corrupt, as by that means they are a.s.sured the contagion must become general. I hope, therefore, I shall be excused, if I endeavor to show, as shortly as the matter will admit, the danger of giving to them, either avowedly or tacitly, the smallest countenance.

There are times and circ.u.mstances in which not to speak out is at least to connive. Many think it enough for them, that the principles propagated by these clubs and societies, enemies to their country and its Const.i.tution, are not owned by the _modern Whigs in Parliament_, who are so warm in condemnation of Mr. Burke and his book, and of course of all the principles of the ancient, const.i.tutional Whigs of this kingdom.

Certainly they are not owned. But are they condemned with the same zeal as Mr. Burke and his book are condemned? Are they condemned at all? Are they rejected or discountenanced in any way whatsoever? Is any man who would fairly examine into the demeanor and principles of those societies, and that too very moderately, and in the way rather of admonition than of punishment, is such a man even decently treated? Is he not reproached as if in condemning such principles he had belied the conduct of his whole life, suggesting that his life had been governed by principles similar to those which he now reprobates? The French system is in the mean time, by many active agents out of doors, rapturously praised; the British Const.i.tution is coldly tolerated. But these Const.i.tutions are different both in the foundation and in the whole superstructure; and it is plain that you cannot build up the one but on the ruins of the other. After all, if the French be a superior system of liberty, why should we not adopt it? To what end are our praises? Is excellence held out to us only that we should not copy after it? And what is there in the manners of the people, or in the climate of France, which renders that species of republic fitted for them, and unsuitable to us? A strong and marked difference between the two nations ought to be shown, before we can admit a constant, affected panegyric, a standing, annual commemoration, to be without any tendency to an example.

But the leaders of party will not go the length of the doctrines taught by the seditious clubs. I am sure they do not mean to do so. G.o.d forbid!

Perhaps even those who are directly carrying on the work of this pernicious foreign faction do not all of them intend to produce all the mischiefs which must inevitably follow from their having any success in their proceedings. As to leaders in parties, nothing is more common than to see them blindly led. The world is governed by go-betweens. These go-betweens influence the persons with whom they carry on the intercourse, by stating their own sense to each of them as the sense of the other; and thus they reciprocally master both sides. It is first buzzed about the ears of leaders, ”that their friends without doors are very eager for some measure, or very warm about some opinion,--that you must not be too rigid with them. They are useful persons, and zealous in the cause. They may be a little wrong, but the spirit of liberty must not be damped; and by the influence you obtain from some degree of concurrence with them at present, you may be enabled to set them right hereafter.”

Thus the leaders are at first drawn to a connivance with sentiments and proceedings often totally different from their serious and deliberate notions. But their acquiescence answers every purpose.

With no better than such powers, the go-betweens a.s.sume a new representative character. What at best was but an acquiescence is magnified into an authority, and thence into a desire on the part of the leaders; and it is carried down as such to the subordinate members of parties. By this artifice they in their turn are led into measures which at first, perhaps, few of them wished at all, or at least did not desire vehemently or systematically.

There is in all parties, between the princ.i.p.al leaders in Parliament and the lowest followers out of doors, a middle sort of men, a sort of equestrian order, who, by the spirit of that middle situation, are the fittest for preventing things from running to excess. But indecision, though a vice of a totally different character, is the natural accomplice of violence. The irresolution and timidity of those who compose this middle order often prevents the effect of their controlling situation. The fear of differing with the authority of leaders on the one hand, and of contradicting the desires of the mult.i.tude on the other, induces them to give a careless and pa.s.sive a.s.sent to measures in which they never were consulted; and thus things proceed, by a sort of activity of inertness, until whole bodies, leaders, middle-men, and followers, are all hurried, with every appearance and with many of the effects of unanimity, into schemes of politics, in the substance of which no two of them were ever fully agreed, and the origin and authors of which, in this circular mode of communication, none of them find it possible to trace. In my experience, I have seen much of this in affairs which, though trifling in comparison to the present, were yet of some importance to parties; and I have known them suffer by it. The sober part give their sanction, at first through inattention and levity; at last they give it through necessity. A violent spirit is raised, which the presiding minds after a time find it impracticable to stop at their pleasure, to control, to regulate, or even to direct.

This shows, in my opinion, how very quick and awakened all men ought to be, who are looked up to by the public, and who deserve that confidence, to prevent a surprise on their opinions, when dogmas are spread and projects pursued by which the foundations of society may be affected.

Before they listen even to moderate alterations in the government of their country, they ought to take care that principles are not propagated for that purpose which are too big for their object.

Doctrines limited in their present application, and wide in their general principles, are never meant to be confined to what they at first pretend. If I were to form a prognostic of the effect of the present machinations on the people from their sense of any grievance they suffer under this Const.i.tution, my mind would be at ease. But there is a wide difference between the mult.i.tude, when they act against their government from a sense of grievance or from zeal for some opinions.

When men are thoroughly possessed with that zeal, it is difficult to calculate its force. It is certain that its power is by no means in exact proportion to its reasonableness. It must always have been discoverable by persons of reflection, but it is now obvious to the world, that a theory concerning government may become as much a cause of fanaticism as a dogma in religion. There is a boundary to men's pa.s.sions, when they act from feeling; none when they are under the influence of imagination. Remove a grievance, and, when men act from feeling, you go a great way towards quieting a commotion. But the good or bad conduct of a government, the protection men have enjoyed or the oppression they have suffered under it, are of no sort of moment, when a faction, proceeding upon speculative grounds, is thoroughly heated against its form. When a man is from system furious against monarchy or episcopacy, the good conduct of the monarch or the bishop has no other effect than further to irritate the adversary. He is provoked at it as furnis.h.i.+ng a plea for preserving the thing which he wishes to destroy.

His mind will be heated as much by the sight of a sceptre, a mace, or a verge, as if he had been daily bruised and wounded by these symbols of authority. Mere spectacles, mere names, will become sufficient causes to stimulate the people to war and tumult.

Some gentlemen are not terrified by the facility with which government has been overturned in France. ”The people of France,” they say, ”had nothing to lose in the destruction of a bad Const.i.tution; but, though not the best possible, we have still a good stake in ours, which will hinder us from desperate risks.” Is this any security at all against those who seem to persuade themselves, and who labor to persuade others, that our Const.i.tution is an usurpation in its origin, unwise in its contrivance, mischievous in its effects, contrary to the rights of man, and in all its parts a perfect nuisance? What motive has any rational man, who thinks in that manner, to spill his blood, or even to risk a s.h.i.+lling of his fortune, or to waste a moment of his leisure, to preserve it? If he has any duty relative to it, his duty is to destroy it. A Const.i.tution on sufferance is a Const.i.tution condemned. Sentence is already pa.s.sed upon it. The execution is only delayed. On the principles of these gentlemen, it neither has nor ought to have any security. So far as regards them, it is left naked, without friends, partisans, a.s.sertors, or protectors.

Let us examine into the value of this security upon the principles of those who are more sober,--of those who think, indeed, the French Const.i.tution better, or at least as good as the British, without going to all the lengths of the warmer politicians in reprobating their own.

Their security amounts in reality to nothing more than this,--that the difference between their republican system and the British limited monarchy is not worth a civil war. This opinion, I admit, will prevent people not very enterprising in their nature from an active undertaking against the British Const.i.tution. But it is the poorest defensive principle that ever was infused into the mind of man against the attempts of those who will enterprise. It will tend totally to remove from their minds that very terror of a civil war which is held out as our sole security. They who think so well of the French Const.i.tution certainly will not be the persons to carry on a war to prevent their obtaining a great benefit, or at worst a fair exchange. They will not go to battle in favor of a cause in which their defeat might be more advantageous to the public than their victory. They must at least tacitly abet those who endeavor to make converts to a sound opinion; they must discountenance those who would oppose its propagation. In proportion as by these means the enterprising party is strengthened, the dread of a struggle is lessened. See what an encouragement this is to the enemies of the Const.i.tution! A few a.s.sa.s.sinations and a very great destruction of property we know they consider as no real obstacles in the way of a grand political change. And they will hope, that here, if antimonarchical opinions gain ground as they have done in France, they may, as in France, accomplish a revolution without a war.

They who think so well of the French Const.i.tution cannot be seriously alarmed by any progress made by its partisans. Provisions for security are not to be received from those who think that there is no danger. No!

there is no plan of security to be listened to but from those who entertain the same fears with ourselves,--from those who think that the thing to be secured is a great blessing, and the thing against which we would secure it a great mischief. Every person of a different opinion must be careless about security.

I believe the author of the Reflections, whether he fears the designs of that set of people with reason or not, cannot prevail on himself to despise them. He cannot despise them for their numbers, which, though small, compared with the sound part of the community, are not inconsiderable: he cannot look with contempt on their influence, their activity, or the kind of talents and tempers which they possess, exactly calculated for the work they have in hand and the minds they chiefly apply to. Do we not see their most considerable and accredited ministers, and several of their party of weight and importance, active in spreading mischievous opinions, in giving sanction to seditious writings, in promoting seditious anniversaries? and what part of their description has disowned them or their proceedings? When men, circ.u.mstanced as these are, publicly declare such admiration of a foreign Const.i.tution, and such contempt of our own, it would be, in the author of the Reflections, thinking as he does of the French Const.i.tution, infamously to cheat the rest of the nation to their ruin to say there is no danger.

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