Volume III Part 7 (1/2)
It is also curious to observe, amidst all the fume and bustle about Proclamations and Addresses, kept up by a few noisy and interested men, how little the ma.s.s of the nation seem to care about either. They appear to me, by the indifference they shew, not to believe a word the Proclamation contains; and as to the Addresses, they travel to London with the silence of a funeral, and having announced their arrival in the Gazette, are deposited with the ashes of their predecessors, and Mr.
Dundas writes their _hic facet_.
One of the best effects which the Proclamation, and its echo the Addresses have had, has been that of exciting and spreading curiosity; and it requires only a single reflection to discover, that the object of all curiosity is knowledge. When the ma.s.s of the nation saw that Placemen, Pensioners, and Borough-mongers, were the persons that stood forward to promote Addresses, it could not fail to create suspicions that the public good was not their object; that the character of the books, or writings, to which such persons obscurely alluded, not daring to mention them, was directly contrary to what they described them to be, and that it was necessary that every man, for his own satisfaction, should exercise his proper right, and read and judge for himself.
But how will the persons who have been induced to read the _Rights of Man_, by the clamour that has been raised against it, be surprized to find, that, instead of a wicked, inflammatory work, instead of a licencious and profligate performance, it abounds with principles of government that are uncontrovertible--with arguments which every reader will feel, are unanswerable--with plans for the increase of commerce and manufactures--for the extinction of war--for the education of the children of the poor--for the comfortable support of the aged and decayed persons of both s.e.xes--for the relief of the army and navy, and, in short, for the promotion of every thing that can benefit the moral, civil, and political condition of Man.
Why, then, some calm observer will ask, why is the work prosecuted, if these be the goodly matters it contains? I will tell thee, friend; it contains also a plan for the reduction of Taxes, for lessening the immense expences of Government, for abolis.h.i.+ng sinecure Places and Pensions; and it proposes applying the redundant taxes, that shall be saved by these reforms, to the purposes mentioned in the former paragraph, instead of applying them to the support of idle and profligate Placemen and Pensioners.
Is it, then, any wonder that Placemen and Pensioners, and the whole train of Court expectants, should become the promoters of Addresses, Proclamations, and Prosecutions? or, is it any wonder that Corporations and rotten Boroughs, which are attacked and exposed, both in the First and Second Parts of _Rights of Man_, as unjust monopolies and public nuisances, should join in the cavalcade? Yet these are the sources from which Addresses have sprung. Had not such persons come forward to oppose the _Rights of Man_, I should have doubted the efficacy of my own writings: but those opposers have now proved to me that the blow was well directed, and they have done it justice by confessing the smart.
The princ.i.p.al deception in this business of Addresses has been, that the promoters of them have not come forward in their proper characters. They have a.s.sumed to pa.s.s themselves upon the public as a part of the Public, bearing a share of the burthen of Taxes, and acting for the public good; whereas, they are in general that part of it that adds to the public burthen, by living on the produce of the public taxes. They are to the public what the locusts are to the tree: the burthen would be less, and the prosperity would be greater, if they were shaken off.
”I do not come here,” said Onslow, at the Surry County meeting, ”as the Lord Lieutenant and Custos Rotulorum of the county, but I come here as a plain country gentleman.” The fact is, that he came there as what he was, and as no other, and consequently he came as one of the beings I have been describing. If it be the character of a gentleman to be fed by the public, as a pauper is by the parish, Onslow has a fair claim to the t.i.tle; and the same description will suit the Duke of Richmond, who led the Address at the Suss.e.x meeting. He also may set up for a gentleman.
As to the meeting in the next adjoining county (Kent), it was a scene of disgrace. About two hundred persons met, when a small part of them drew privately away from the rest, and voted an Address: the consequence of which was that they got together by the ears, and produced a riot in the very act of producing an Address to prevent Riots.
That the Proclamation and the Addresses have failed of their intended effect, may be collected from the silence which the Government party itself observes. The number of addresses has been weekly retailed in the Gazette; but the number of Addressers has been concealed. Several of the Addresses have been voted by not more than ten or twelve persons; and a considerable number of them by not more than thirty. The whole number of Addresses presented at the time of writing this letter is three hundred and twenty, (rotten Boroughs and Corporations included) and even admitting, on an average, one hundred Addressers to each address, the whole number of addressers would be but thirty-two thousand, and nearly three months have been taken up in procuring this number. That the success of the Proclamation has been less than the success of the work it was intended to discourage, is a matter within my own knowledge; for a greater number of the cheap edition of the First and Second Parts of the Rights OF Man has been sold in the s.p.a.ce only of one month, than the whole number of Addressers (admitting them to be thirty-two thousand) have amounted to in three months.
It is a dangerous attempt in any government to say to a Nation, ”_thou shalt not read_.” This is now done in Spain, and was formerly done under the old Government of France; but it served to procure the downfall of the latter, and is subverting that of the former; and it will have the same tendency in all countries; because _thought_ by some means or other, is got abroad in the world, and cannot be restrained, though reading may.
If _Rights of Man_ were a book that deserved the vile description which the promoters of the Address have given of it, why did not these men prove their charge, and satisfy the people, by producing it, and reading it publicly? This most certainly ought to have been done, and would also have been done, had they believed it would have answered their purpose.
But the fact is, that the book contains truths which those time-servers dreaded to hear, and dreaded that the people should know; and it is now following up the,
ADDRESS TO ADDRESSERS.
Addresses in every part of the nation, and convicting them of falsehoods.
Among the unwarrantable proceedings to which the Proclamation has given rise, the meetings of the Justices in several of the towns and counties ought to be noticed.. Those men have a.s.sumed to re-act the farce of General Warrants, and to suppress, by their own authority, whatever publications they please. This is an attempt at power equalled only by the conduct of the minor despots of the most despotic governments in Europe, and yet those Justices affect to call England a Free Country.
But even this, perhaps, like the scheme for garrisoning the country by building military barracks, is necessary to awaken the country to a sense of its Rights, and, as such, it will have a good effect.
Another part of the conduct of such Justices has been, that of threatening to take away the licences from taverns and public-houses, where the inhabitants of the neighbourhood a.s.sociated to read and discuss the principles of Government, and to inform each other thereon.
This, again, is similar to what is doing in Spain and Russia; and the reflection which it cannot fail to suggest is, that the principles and conduct of any Government must be bad, when that Government dreads and startles at discussion, and seeks security by a prevention of knowledge.
If the Government, or the Const.i.tution, or by whatever name it be called, be that miracle of perfection which the Proclamation and the Addresses have trumpeted it forth to be, it ought to have defied discussion and investigation, instead of dreading it. Whereas, every attempt it makes, either by Proclamation, Prosecution, or Address, to suppress investigation, is a confession that it feels itself unable to bear it. It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from enquiry. All the numerous pamphlets, and all the newspaper falsehood and abuse, that have been published against the Rights of Man, have fallen before it like pointless arrows; and, in like manner, would any work have fallen before the Const.i.tution, had the Const.i.tution, as it is called, been founded on as good political principles as those on which the Rights OF Man is written.
It is a good Const.i.tution for courtiers, placemen, pensioners, borough-holders, and the leaders of Parties, and these are the men that have been the active leaders of Addresses; but it is a bad Const.i.tution for at least ninety-nine parts of the nation out of an hundred, and this truth is every day making its way.
It is bad, first, because it entails upon the nation the unnecessary expence of supporting three forms and systems of Government at once, namely, the monarchical, the aristocratical, and the democratical.
Secondly, because it is impossible to unite such a discordant composition by any other means than perpetual corruption; and therefore the corruption so loudly and so universally complained of, is no other than the natural consequence of such an unnatural compound of Governments; and in this consists that excellence which the numerous herd of placemen and pensioners so loudly extol, and which at the same time, occasions that enormous load of taxes under which the rest of the nation groans.
Among the ma.s.s of national delusions calculated to amuse and impose upon the mult.i.tude, the standing one has been that of flattering them into taxes, by calling the Government (or as they please to express it, the English Const.i.tution) ”_the envy and the admiration of the world_”
Scarcely an Address has been voted in which some of the speakers have not uttered this hackneyed nonsensical falsehood.
Two Revolutions have taken place, those of America and France; and both of them have rejected the unnatural compounded system of the English government. America has declared against all hereditary Government, and established the representative system of Government only. France has entirely rejected the aristocratical part, and is now discovering the absurdity of the monarchical, and is approaching fast to the representative system. On what ground then, do these men continue a declaration, respecting what they call the _envy and admiration of other nations_, which the voluntary practice of such nations, as have had the opportunity of establis.h.i.+ng Government, contradicts and falsifies. Will such men never confine themselves to truth? Will they be for ever the deceivers of the people?
But I will go further, and shew, that were Government now to begin in England, the people could not be brought to establish the same system they now submit to.