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Title: The
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[Redactor’s
Note:]
[Redactor’s
Note: Reprinted from the “The Writings of Thomas Paine Volume I” (1894 -
1896). The author’s notes are preceded by a “*”. A Table of Contents has
been added for each part for the convenience of the reader which is not
included in the printed edition. Notes are at the end of Part II. ]
·
Editor’s
Introduction
·
Dedication to
George Washington
·
Preface to the
English Edition
·
Preface to the
French Edition
·
Rights of Man
·
Miscellaneous
Chapter
·
Conclusion
XIV
The Rights of Man
·
French Translator’s
Preface
·
Dedication to M.
de la Fayette
·
Preface
·
Introduction
·
Chapter I
Of Society and Civilisation
·
Chapter II
Of the Origin of the Present Old Governments
·
Chapter III Of the
Old and New Systems of Government
·
Chapter IV
Of Constitutions
·
Chapter V
Ways and Means of Improving the Condition of Europe, Interspersed with
Miscellaneous Observations
·
Appendix
·
Notes
VOLUME
II.
1779
- 1792
RIGHTS
OF MAN.
EDITOR’S
INTRODUCTION.
WHEN
Thomas Paine sailed from America for France, in April, 1787, he was perhaps as
happy a man as any in the world. His most intimate friend, Jefferson, was
Minister at Paris, and his friend Lafayette was the idol of France. His fame
had preceded him, and he at once became, in Paris, the centre of the same
circle of savants and philosophers that had surrounded Franklin. His main
reason for proceeding at once to Paris was that he might submit to the Academy
of Sciences his invention of an iron bridge, and with its favorable verdict he
came to England, in September. He at once went to his aged mother at Thetford,
leaving with a publisher (Ridgway), his “ Prospects on the Rubicon.” He
next made arrangements to patent his bridge, and to construct at Rotherham the
large model of it exhibited on Paddington Green, London. He was welcomed in
England by leading statesmen, such as Lansdowne and Fox, and above all by
Edmund Burke, who for some time had him as a guest at Beaconsfield, and drove
him about in various parts of the country. He had not the slightest
revolutionary purpose, either as regarded England or France. Towards Louis
XVI. he felt only gratitude for the services he had rendered America, and
towards George III. he felt no animosity whatever. His four months’ sojourn
in Paris had convinced him that there was approaching a reform of that country
after the American model, except that the Crown would be preserved, a
compromise he approved, provided the throne should not be hereditary. Events
in France travelled more swiftly than he had anticipated, and Paine was
summoned by Lafayette, Condorcet, and others, as an adviser in the formation
of a new constitution.
Such
was the situation immediately preceding the political and literary duel
between Paine and Burke, which in the event turned out a tremendous war
between Royalism and Republicanism in Europe. Paine was, both in France and in
England, the inspirer of moderate counsels. Samuel Rogers relates that in
early life he dined at a friend’s house in London with Thomas Paine, when
one of the toasts given was the “ memory of Joshua,”-in allusion to the
Hebrew leader’s conquest of the kings of Canaan, and execution of them.
Paine observed that he would not treat kings like Joshua. “ I ‘m of the
Scotch parson’s opinion,” he said, “when he prayed against Louis XIV.-‘Lord,
shake him over the mouth of hell, but don’t let him drop!
‘ “ Paine then gave as his toast, “ The Republic of the World,”-which
Samuel Rogers, aged twenty-nine, noted as a sublime idea. This was Paine’s
faith and hope, and with it he confronted the revolutionary storms which
presently burst over France and England.
Until
Burke’s arraignment of France in his parliamentary speech (February 9,
1790), Paine had no doubt whatever that he would sympathize with the movement
in France, and wrote to him from that country as if conveying glad tidings.
Burke’s “ Reflections on the Revolution in France “ appeared November 1,
1790, and Paine at once set himself to answer it. He was then staying at the
Angel Inn, Islington. The inn has been twice rebuilt since that time, and from
its contents there is preserved only a small image, which perhaps was meant to
represent “ Liberty,”-possibly brought from Paris by Paine as an ornament
for his study. From the Angel he removed to a house in Harding Street, Fetter
Lane. Rickman says Part First of “ Rights of Man “ was finished at
Versailles, but probably this has reference to the preface only, as I cannot
find Paine in France that year until April 8. The book had been printed by
Johnson, in time for the opening of Parliament, in February ; but this
publisher became frightened after a few copies were out (there is one in the
British Museum), and the work was transferred to J. S. Jordan, 166 Fleet
Street, with a preface sent from Paris (not contained in Johnson’s edition,
nor in the American editions). The pamphlet, though sold at the same price as
Burke’s, three shillings, had a vast circulation, and Paine gave the
proceeds to the Constitutional Societies which sprang up under his teachings
in various parts of the country.
Soon
after appeared Burke’s “ Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs.” In this
Burke quoted a good deal from “ Rights of Man,” but replied to it only
with exclamation points, saying that the only answer such ideas merited was
“criminal justice.” Paine’s Part Second followed, published February 17,
1792. In Part First Paine had mentioned a rumor that Burke was a masked
pensioner (a charge that will be noticed in connection with its detailed
statement in a further publication); and as Burke had been formerly arraigned
in Parliament, while Paymaster, for a very questionable proceeding, this
charge no doubt hurt a good deal. Although the government did not follow Burke’s
suggestion of a prosecution at that time, there is little doubt that it was he
who induced the prosecution of Part Second.
Before the trial came on, December 18, 1792, Paine was occupying his
seat in the French Convention, and could only be outlawed.
Burke
humorously remarked to a friend of Paine and himself, “ We hunt in pairs.”
The severally representative character and influence of these two men in the
revolutionary era, in France and England, deserve more adequate study than
they have received. While Paine maintained freedom of discussion, Burke first
proposed criminal prosecution for sentiments by no means libellous (such as
Paine’s Part First). While Paine was endeavoring to make the movement in
France peaceful, Burke fomented the league of monarchs against France which
maddened its people, and brought on the Reign of Terror. While Paine was
endeavoring to preserve the French throne (“phantom” though he believed
it), to prevent bloodshed, Burke was secretly writing to the Queen of France,
entreating her not to compromise, and to “ trust to the support of foreign
armies “ (“ Histoire de France depuis 1789.” Henri Martin, i., 151).
While Burke thus helped to bring the King and Queen to the guillotine, Paine
pleaded for their lives to the last moment. While Paine maintained the right
of mankind to improve their condition, Burke held that “ the awful Author of
our being is the author of our place in the order of existence; and that,
having disposed and marshalled us by a divine tactick, not according to our
will, but according to his, he has, in and by that disposition, virtually
subjected us to act the part which belongs to the place assigned us.” Paine
was a religious believer in eternal principles; Burke held that “ political
problems do not primarily concern truth or falsehood. They relate to good or
evil. What in the result is likely to produce evil is politically false, that
which is productive of good politically is true.” Assuming thus the
visionary’s right to decide before the result what was “ likely to produce
evil,” Burke vigorously sought to kindle war against the French Republic
which might have developed itself peacefully, while Paine was striving for an
international Congress in Europe in the interest of peace. Paine had faith in
the people, and believed that, if allowed to choose representatives, they
would select their best and wisest men; and that while reforming government
the people would remain orderly, as they had generally remained in America
during the transition from British rule to selfgovernment. Burke maintained
that if the existing political order were broken up there would be no longer a
people, but “ a number of vague, loose individuals, and nothing more.” “
Alas! “ he exclaims, “ they little know how many a weary step is to be
taken before they can form themselves into a mass, which has a true
personality.” For the sake of peace Paine wished the revolution to be
peaceful as the advance of summer; he used every endeavor to reconcile English
radicals to some modus vivendi with the existing order, as he was willing to
retain Louis XVI. as head of the executive in France: Burke resisted every
tendency of English statesmanship to reform at home, or to negotiate with the
French Republic, and was mainly responsible for the King’s death and the war
that followed between England and France in February, 1793. Burke became a
royal favorite, Paine was outlawed by a prosecution originally proposed by
Burke. While Paine was demanding religious liberty, Burke was opposing the
removal of penal statutes from Unitarians, on the ground that but for those
statutes Paine might some day set up a church in England. When Burke was
retiring on a large royal pension, Paine was in prison, through the devices of
Burke’s confederate, the American Minister in Paris. So the two men, as
Burke said, “ hunted in pairs.”
So
far as Burke attempts to affirm any principle he is fairly quoted in Paine’s
work, and nowhere misrepresented. As for Paine’s own ideas, the reader
should remember that “Rights of Man” was the earliest complete statement
of republican principles. They were pronounced to be the fundamental
principles of the American Republic by Jefferson, Madison, and Jackson,-the
three Presidents who above all others represented the republican idea which
Paine first allied with American Independence. Those who suppose that Paine
did but reproduce the principles of Rousseau and Locke will find by careful
study of his well-weighed language that such is not the case. Paine’s
political principles were evolved out of his early Quakerism. He was potential
in George Fox. The belief that every human soul was the child of God, and
capable of direct inspiration from the Father of all, without mediator or
priestly intervention, or sacramental instrumentality, was fatal to all
privilege and rank. The universal Fatherhood implied universal Brotherhood, or
human equality. But the fate of the Quakers proved the necessity of protecting
the individual spirit from oppression by the majority as well as by privileged
classes. For this purpose Paine insisted on surrounding the individual right
with the security of the Declaration of Rights, not to be invaded by any
government; and would reduce government to an association limited in its
operations to the defence of those rights which the individual is unable,
alone, to maintain.
From
the preceding chapter it will be seen that Part Second of “ Rights of Man
“ was begun by Paine in the spring of 1791. At the close of that year, or
early in 1792, he took up his abode with his friend Thomas” Clio “
Rickman, at No. 7 Upper Marylebone Street.
Rickman was a radical publisher; the house remains still a book-binding
establishment, and seems little changed since Paine therein revised the proofs
of Part Second on a table which Rickman marked with a plate, and which is now
in possession of Mr. Edward Truelove. As the plate states, Paine wrote on the
same table other works which appeared in England in 1792.
In
1795 D. I. Eaton published an edition of “ Rights of Man,” with a preface
purporting to have been written by Paine while in Luxembourg prison. It is
manifestly spurious. The genuine English and French prefaces are given.
AUTHOR
OF THE WORKS ENTITLED “COMMON SENSE’ AND ‘A LETTER TO ABBÉ
RAYNAL”
George
Washington
President
Of The United States Of America
Sir,
I
present you a small treatise in defence of those principles of freedom which
your exemplary virtue hath so eminently contributed to establish. That the
Rights of Man may become as universal as your benevolence can wish, and that
you may enjoy the happiness of seeing the New World regenerate the Old, is the
prayer of Sir,
Your
much obliged, and
Obedient
humble Servant,
Thomas
Paine
PAINE’S
PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION
From
the part Mr. Burke took in the American Revolution, it was natural that I
should consider him a friend to mankind; and as our acquaintance commenced on
that ground, it would have been more agreeable to me to have had cause to
continue in that opinion than to change it.
At
the time Mr. Burke made his violent speech last winter in the English
Parliament against the French Revolution and the National Assembly, I was in
Paris, and had written to him but a short time before to inform him how
prosperously matters were going on. Soon after this I saw his advertisement of
the Pamphlet he intended to publish: As the attack was to be made in a
language but little studied, and less understood in France, and as everything
suffers by translation, I promised some of the friends of the Revolution in
that country that whenever Mr. Burke’s Pamphlet came forth, I would answer
it. This appeared to me the more necessary to be done, when I saw the flagrant
misrepresentations which Mr. Burke’s Pamphlet contains; and that while it is
an outrageous abuse on the French Revolution, and the principles of Liberty,
it is an imposition on the rest of the world.
I
am the more astonished and disappointed at this conduct in Mr.
Burke, as (from the circumstances I am going to mention) I had formed
other expectations.
I
had seen enough of the miseries of war, to wish it might never more have
existence in the world, and that some other mode might be found out to settle
the differences that should occasionally arise in the neighbourhood of
nations. This certainly might be done if Courts were disposed to set honesty
about it, or if countries were enlightened enough not to be made the dupes of
Courts. The people of America had been bred up in the same prejudices against
France, which at that time characterised the people of England; but experience
and an acquaintance with the French Nation have most effectually shown to the
Americans the falsehood of those prejudices; and I do not believe that a more
cordial and confidential intercourse exists between any two countries than
between America and France.
When
I came to France, in the spring of 1787, the Archbishop of Thoulouse was then
Minister, and at that time highly esteemed. I became much acquainted with the
private Secretary of that Minister, a man of an enlarged benevolent heart; and
found that his sentiments and my own perfectly agreed with respect to the
madness of war, and the wretched impolicy of two nations, like England and
France, continually worrying each other, to no other end than that of a mutual
increase of burdens and taxes. That I might be assured I had not misunderstood
him, nor he me, I put the substance of our opinions into writing and sent it
to him; subjoining a request, that if I should see among the people of
England, any disposition to cultivate a better understanding between the two
nations than had hitherto prevailed, how far I might be authorised to say that
the same disposition prevailed on the part of France? He answered me by letter
in the most unreserved manner, and that not for himself only, but for the
Minister, with whose knowledge the letter was declared to be written.
I
put this letter into the, hands of Mr. Burke almost three years ago, and left
it with him, where it still remains; hoping, and at the same time naturally
expecting, from the opinion I had conceived of him, that he would find some
opportunity of making good use of it, for the purpose of removing those errors
and prejudices which two neighbouring nations, from the want of knowing each
other, had entertained, to the injury of both.
When
the French Revolution broke out, it certainly afforded to Mr.
Burke an opportunity of doing some good, had he been disposed to it;
instead of which, no sooner did he see the old prejudices wearing away, than
he immediately began sowing the seeds of a new inveteracy, as if he were
afraid that England and France would cease to be enemies. That there are men
in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels
of Nations, is as shocking as it is true; but when those who are concerned in
the government of a country, make it their study to sow discord and cultivate
prejudices between Nations, it becomes the more unpardonable.
With
respect to a paragraph in this work alluding to Mr. Burke’s having a
pension, the report has been some time in circulation, at least two months;
and as a person is often the last to hear what concerns him the most to know,
I have mentioned it, that Mr. Burke may have an opportunity of contradicting
the rumour, if he thinks proper.
Thomas
Paine
PAINE’S
PREFACE TO THE FRENCH EDITION
The
astonishment which the French Revolution has caused throughout Europe should
be considered from two different points of view: first as it affects foreign
peoples, secondly as it affects their governments.
The
cause of the French people is that of all Europe, or rather of the whole
world; but the governments of all those countries are by no means favorable to
it. It is important that we should never lose sight of this distinction. We
must not confuse the peoples with their governments; especially not the
English people with its government.
The
government of England is no friend of the revolution of France.
Of this we have sufficient proofs in the thanks given by that weak and
witless person, the Elector of Hanover, sometimes called the King of England,
to Mr. Burke for the insults heaped on it in his book, and in the malevolent
comments of the English Minister, Pitt, in his speeches in Parliament.
In
spite of the professions of sincerest friendship found in the official
correspondence of the English government with that of France, its conduct
gives the lie to all its declarations, and shows us clearly that it is not a
court to be trusted, but an insane court, plunging in all the quarrels and
intrigues of Europe, in quest of a war to satisfy its folly and countenance
its extravagance.
The
English nation, on the contrary, is very favorably disposed towards the French
Revolution, and to the progress of liberty in the whole world; and this
feeling will become more general in England as the intrigues and artifices of
its government are better known, and the principles of the revolution better
understood. The French should know that most English newspapers are directly
in the pay of government, or, if indirectly connected with it, always under
its orders; and that those papers constantly distort and attack the revolution
in France in order to deceive the nation. But, as it is impossible long to
prevent the prevalence of truth, the daily falsehoods of those papers no
longer have the desired effect.
To
be convinced that the voice of truth has been stifled in England, the world
needs only to be told that the government regards and prosecutes as a libel
that which it should protect.*[1] This outrage on morality is called law, and
judges are found wicked enough to inflict penalties on truth.
The
English government presents, just now, a curious phenomenon.
Seeing that the French and English nations are getting rid of the
prejudices and false notions formerly entertained against each other, and
which have cost them so much money, that government seems to be placarding its
need of a foe; for unless it finds one somewhere, no pretext exists for the
enormous revenue and taxation now deemed necessary.
Therefore
it seeks in Russia the enemy it has lost in France, and appears to say to the
universe, or to say to itself. “If nobody will be so kind as to become my
foe, I shall need no more fleets nor armies, and shall be forced to reduce my
taxes. The American war enabled me to double the taxes; the Dutch business to
add more; the Nootka humbug gave me a pretext for raising three millions
sterling more; but unless I can make an enemy of Russia the harvest from wars
will end. I was the first to incite Turk against Russian, and now I hope to
reap a fresh crop of taxes.”
If
the miseries of war, and the flood of evils it spreads over a country, did not
check all inclination to mirth, and turn laughter into grief, the frantic
conduct of the government of England would only excite ridicule. But it is
impossible to banish from one’s mind the images of suffering which the
contemplation of such vicious policy presents. To reason with governments, as
they have existed for ages, is to argue with brutes. It is only from the
nations themselves that reforms can be expected. There ought not now to exist
any doubt that the peoples of France, England, and America, enlightened and
enlightening each other, shall henceforth be able, not merely to give the
world an example of good government, but by their united influence enforce its
practice.
(Translated
from the French)
RIGHTS
OF MAN
Among
the incivilities by which nations or individuals provoke and irritate each
other, Mr. Burke’s pamphlet on the French Revolution is an extraordinary
instance. Neither the People of France, nor the National Assembly, were
troubling themselves about the affairs of England, or the English Parliament;
and that Mr. Burke should commence an unprovoked attack upon them, both in
Parliament and in public, is a conduct that cannot be pardoned on the score of
manners, nor justified on that of policy.
There
is scarcely an epithet of abuse to be found in the English language, with
which Mr. Burke has not loaded the French Nation and the National Assembly.
Everything which rancour, prejudice, ignorance or knowledge could suggest, is
poured forth in the copious fury of near four hundred pages. In the strain and
on the plan Mr. Burke was writing, he might have written on to as many
thousands. When the tongue or the pen is let loose in a frenzy of passion, it
is the man, and not the subject, that becomes exhausted.
Hitherto
Mr. Burke has been mistaken and disappointed in the opinions he had formed of
the affairs of France; but such is the ingenuity of his hope, or the
malignancy of his despair, that it furnishes him with new pretences to go on.
There was a time when it was impossible to make Mr. Burke believe there would
be any Revolution in France. His
opinion then was, that the French had neither spirit to undertake it nor
fortitude to support it; and now that there is one, he seeks an escape by
condemning it.
Not
sufficiently content with abusing the National Assembly, a great part of his
work is taken up with abusing Dr. Price (one of the best-hearted men that
lives) and the two societies in England known by the name of the Revolution
Society and the Society for Constitutional Information.
Dr.
Price had preached a sermon on the 4th of November, 1789, being the
anniversary of what is called in England the Revolution, which took place
1688. Mr. Burke, speaking of this sermon, says: “The political Divine
proceeds dogmatically to assert, that by the principles of the Revolution, the
people of England have acquired three fundamental rights:
1.
To choose our own governors.
2.
To cashier them for misconduct.
3.
To frame a government for ourselves.”
Dr.
Price does not say that the right to do these things exists in this or in that
person, or in this or in that description of persons, but that it exists in
the whole; that it is a right resident in the nation. Mr. Burke, on the
contrary, denies that such a right exists in the nation, either in whole or in
part, or that it exists anywhere; and, what is still more strange and
marvellous, he says:
“that
the people of England utterly disclaim such a right, and that they will resist
the practical assertion of it with their lives and fortunes.” That men
should take up arms and spend their lives and fortunes, not to maintain their
rights, but to maintain they have not rights, is an entirely new species of
discovery, and suited to the paradoxical genius of Mr. Burke.
The
method which Mr. Burke takes to prove that the people of England have no such
rights, and that such rights do not now exist in the nation, either in whole
or in part, or anywhere at all, is of the same marvellous and monstrous kind
with what he has already said; for his arguments are that the persons, or the
generation of persons, in whom they did exist, are dead, and with them the
right is dead also. To prove
this, he quotes a declaration made by Parliament about a hundred years ago, to
William and Mary, in these words: “The Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and
Commons, do, in the name of the people aforesaid” (meaning the people of
England then living) “most humbly and faithfully submit themselves, their
heirs and posterities, for Ever.” He quotes a clause of another Act of
Parliament made in the same reign, the terms of which he says, “bind us”
(meaning the people of their day), “our heirs and our posterity, to them,
their heirs and posterity, to the end of time.”
Mr.
Burke conceives his point sufficiently established by producing those clauses,
which he enforces by saying that they exclude the right of the nation for
ever. And not yet content with making such declarations, repeated over and
over again, he farther says, “that if the people of England possessed such a
right before the Revolution” (which he acknowledges to have been the case,
not only in England, but throughout Europe, at an early period), “yet that
the English Nation did, at the time of the Revolution, most solemnly renounce
and abdicate it, for themselves, and for all their posterity, for ever.”
As
Mr. Burke occasionally applies the poison drawn from his horrid principles,
not only to the English nation, but to the French Revolution and the National
Assembly, and charges that august, illuminated and illuminating body of men
with the epithet of usurpers, I shall, sans ceremonie, place another system of
principles in opposition to his.
The
English Parliament of 1688 did a certain thing, which, for themselves and
their constituents, they had a right to do, and which it appeared right should
be done. But, in addition to this right, which they possessed by delegation,
they set up another right by assumption, that of binding and controlling
posterity to the end of time. The case, therefore, divides itself into two
parts; the right which they possessed by delegation, and the right which they
set up by assumption. The first is admitted; but with respect to the second, I
reply: There never did, there never will, and there never can, exist a
Parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in any
country, possessed of the right or the power of binding and controlling
posterity to the “end of time,” or of commanding for ever how the world
shall be governed, or who shall govern it; and therefore all such clauses,
acts or declarations by which the makers of them attempt to do what they have
neither the right nor the power to do, nor the power to execute, are in
themselves null and void. Every
age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the age
and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing
beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies. Man has
no property in man; neither has any generation a property in the generations
which are to follow. The Parliament or the people of 1688, or of any other
period, had no more right to dispose of the people of the present day, or to
bind or to control them in any shape whatever, than the parliament or the
people of the present day have to dispose of, bind or control those who are to
live a hundred or a thousand years hence. Every generation is, and must be,
competent to all the purposes which its occasions require.
It is the living, and not the dead, that are to be accommodated. When
man ceases to be, his power and his wants cease with him; and having no longer
any participation in the concerns of this world, he has no longer any
authority in directing who shall be its governors, or how its government shall
be organised, or how administered.
I
am not contending for nor against any form of government, nor for nor against
any party, here or elsewhere. That which a whole nation chooses to do it has a
right to do. Mr. Burke says, No. Where, then, does the right exist? I am
contending for the rights of the living, and against their being willed away
and controlled and contracted for by the manuscript assumed authority of the
dead, and Mr. Burke is contending for the authority of the dead over the
rights and freedom of the living. There was a time when kings disposed of
their crowns by will upon their death-beds, and consigned the people, like
beasts of the field, to whatever successor they appointed. This is now so
exploded as scarcely to be remembered, and so monstrous as hardly to be
believed. But the Parliamentary clauses upon which Mr. Burke builds his
political church are of the same nature.
The
laws of every country must be analogous to some common principle.
In England no parent or master, nor all the authority of Parliament,
omnipotent as it has called itself, can bind or control the personal freedom
even of an individual beyond the age of twenty-one years. On what ground of
right, then, could the Parliament of 1688, or any other Parliament, bind all
posterity for ever?
Those
who have quitted the world, and those who have not yet arrived at it, are as
remote from each other as the utmost stretch of mortal imagination can
conceive. What possible obligation, then, can exist between them- what rule or
principle can be laid down that of two nonentities, the one out of existence
and the other not in, and who never can meet in this world, the one should
control the other to the end of time?
In
England it is said that money cannot be taken out of the pockets of the people
without their consent. But who authorised, or who could authorise, the
Parliament of 1688 to control and take away the freedom of posterity (who were
not in existence to give or to withhold their consent) and limit and confine
their right of acting in certain cases for ever?
A
greater absurdity cannot present itself to the understanding of man than what
Mr. Burke offers to his readers. He tells them, and he tells the world to
come, that a certain body of men who existed a hundred years ago made a law,
and that there does not exist in the nation, nor ever will, nor ever can, a
power to alter it. Under how many subtilties or absurdities has the divine
right to govern been imposed on the credulity of mankind? Mr. Burke has
discovered a new one, and he has shortened his journey to Rome by appealing to
the power of this infallible Parliament of former days, and he produces what
it has done as of divine authority, for that power must certainly be more than
human which no human power to the end of time can alter.
But
Mr. Burke 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
II.
was expelled, that of setting up power by assumption, 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
assumption (for by the delegation it had not, and could not have it, because
none could give it) over the persons and freedom of posterity for ever 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 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.
From
what, or from whence, does Mr. Burke prove the right of any human power to
bind posterity for ever? He has produced his clauses, but he must produce also
his proofs that such a right existed, and show how it existed. If it ever
existed it must now exist, for whatever appertains to the nature of man cannot
be annihilated by man. It is the nature of man to die, and he will continue to
die as long as he continues to be born. But Mr. Burke has set up a sort of
political Adam, in whom all posterity are bound for ever. He must, therefore,
prove that his Adam possessed such a power, or such a right.
The
weaker any cord is, the less will it bear to be stretched, and the worse is
the policy to stretch it, unless it is intended to break it. Had anyone
proposed the overthrow of Mr. Burke’s positions, he would have proceeded as
Mr. Burke has done. He would have magnified the authorities, on purpose to
have called the right of them into question; and the instant the question of
right was started, the authorities must have been given up.
It
requires but a very small glance of thought to perceive that although laws
made in one generation often continue in force through succeeding generations,
yet they continue to derive their force from the consent of the living. A law
not repealed continues in force, not because it cannot be repealed, but
because it is not repealed; and the non-repealing passes for consent.
But
Mr. Burke’s clauses have not even this qualification in their favour. They
become null, by attempting to become immortal. The nature of them precludes
consent. They destroy the right which they might have, by grounding it on a
right which they cannot have. Immortal
power is not a human right, and therefore cannot be a right of Parliament. The
Parliament of 1688 might as well have passed an act to have authorised
themselves to live for ever, as to make their authority live for ever. All,
therefore, that can be said of those clauses is that they are a formality of
words, of as much import as if those who used them had addressed a
congratulation to themselves, and in the oriental style of antiquity had said:
O Parliament, live for ever!
The
circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the opinions of men
change also; and as government is for the living, and not for the dead, it is
the living only that has any right in it.
That which may be thought right and found convenient in one age may be
thought wrong and found inconvenient in another. In such cases, who is to
decide, the living or the dead?
As
almost one hundred pages of Mr. Burke’s book are employed upon these
clauses, it will consequently follow that if the clauses themselves, so far as
they set up an assumed usurped dominion over posterity for ever, are
unauthoritative, and in their nature null and void; that all his voluminous
inferences, and declamation drawn therefrom, or founded thereon, are null and
void also; and on this ground I rest the matter.
We
now come more particularly to the affairs of France. Mr. Burke’s book has
the appearance of being written as instruction to the French nation; but if I
may permit myself the use of an extravagant metaphor, suited to the
extravagance of the case, it is darkness attempting to illuminate light.
While
I am writing this there are accidentally before me some proposals for a
declaration of rights by the Marquis de la Fayette (I ask his pardon for using
his former address, and do it only for distinction’s sake) to the National
Assembly, on the 11th of July, 1789, three days before the taking
of the Bastille, and I cannot but remark with astonishment how opposite the
sources are from which that gentleman and Mr. Burke draw their principles.
Instead of referring to musty records and mouldy parchments to prove that the
rights of the living are lost, “renounced and abdicated for ever,” by
those who are now no more, as Mr. Burke has done, M. de la Fayette applies to
the living world, and emphatically says: “Call to mind the sentiments which
nature has engraved on the heart of every citizen, and which take a new force
when they are solemnly recognised by all:- For a nation to love liberty, it is
sufficient that she knows it; and to be free, it is sufficient that she wills
it.” How dry, barren, and obscure is the source from which Mr. Burke labors!
and how ineffectual, though gay with flowers, are all his declamation and his
arguments compared with these clear, concise, and soul-animating sentiments!
Few and short as they are, they lead on to a vast field of generous and manly
thinking, and do not finish, like Mr. Burke’s periods, with music in the
ear, and nothing in the heart.
As
I have introduced M. de la Fayette, I will take the liberty of adding an
anecdote respecting his farewell address to the Congress of America in 1783,
and which occurred fresh to my mind, when I saw Mr.
Burke’s thundering attack on the French Revolution. M. de la Fayette
went to America at the early period of the war, and continued a volunteer in
her service to the end. His conduct through the whole of that enterprise is
one of the most extraordinary that is to be found in the history of a young
man, scarcely twenty years of age. Situated in a country that was like the lap
of sensual pleasure, and with the means of enjoying it, how few are there to
be found who would exchange such a scene for the woods and wildernesses of
America, and pass the flowery years of youth in unprofitable danger and
hardship! but such is the fact.
When the war ended, and he was on the point of taking his final departure, he
presented himself to Congress, and contemplating in his affectionate farewell
the Revolution he had seen, expressed himself in these words: “May this
great monument raised to liberty serve as a lesson to the oppressor, and an
example to the oppressed!” When this address came to the hands of Dr.
Franklin, who was then in France, he applied to Count Vergennes to have
it inserted in the French Gazette, but never could obtain his consent. The
fact was that Count Vergennes was an aristocratical despot at home, and
dreaded the example of the American Revolution in France, as certain other
persons now dread the example of the French Revolution in England, and Mr.
Burke’s tribute of fear (for in this light his book must be considered) runs
parallel with Count Vergennes’ refusal. But to return more particularly to
his work.
“We
have seen,” says Mr. Burke, “the French rebel against a mild and lawful
monarch, with more fury, outrage, and insult, than any people has been known
to rise against the most illegal usurper, or the most sanguinary tyrant.”
This is one among a thousand other instances, in which Mr. Burke shows that he
is ignorant of the springs and principles of the French Revolution.
It
was not against Louis XVI. but against the despotic principles of the
Government, that the nation revolted. These principles had not their origin in
him, but in the original establishment, many centuries back: and they were
become too deeply rooted to be removed, and the Augean stables of parasites
and plunderers too abominably filthy to be cleansed by anything short of a
complete and universal Revolution. When it becomes necessary to do anything,
the whole heart and soul should go into the measure, or not attempt it. That
crisis was then arrived, and there remained no choice but to act with
determined vigor, or not to act at all. The king was known to be the friend of
the nation, and this circumstance was favorable to the enterprise. Perhaps no
man bred up in the style of an absolute king, ever possessed a heart so little
disposed to the exercise of that species of power as the present King of
France. But the principles of the Government itself still remained the same.
The Monarch and the Monarchy were distinct and separate things; and it was
against the established despotism of the latter, and not against the person or
principles of the former, that the revolt commenced, and the Revolution has
been carried.
Mr.
Burke does not attend to the distinction between men and principles, and,
therefore, he does not see that a revolt may take place against the despotism
of the latter, while there lies no charge of despotism against the former.
The
natural moderation of Louis XVI. contributed nothing to alter the hereditary
despotism of the monarchy. All the tyrannies of former reigns, acted under
that hereditary despotism, were still liable to be revived in the hands of a
successor. It was not the respite of a reign that would satisfy France,
enlightened as she was then become. A
casual discontinuance of the practice of despotism, is not a discontinuance of
its principles: the former depends on the virtue of the individual who is in
immediate possession of the power; the latter, on the virtue and fortitude of
the nation. In the case of Charles I. and James II. of England, the revolt was
against the personal despotism of the men; whereas in France, it was against
the hereditary despotism of the established Government. But men who can
consign over the rights of posterity for ever on the authority of a mouldy
parchment, like Mr. Burke, are not qualified to judge of this Revolution. It
takes in a field too vast for their views to explore, and proceeds with a
mightiness of reason they cannot keep pace with.
But
there are many points of view in which this Revolution may be considered. When
despotism has established itself for ages in a country, as in France, it is
not in the person of the king only that it resides. It has the appearance of
being so in show, and in nominal authority; but it is not so in practice and
in fact. It has its standard everywhere. Every office and department has its
despotism, founded upon custom and usage. Every place has its Bastille, and
every Bastille its despot. The original hereditary despotism resident in the
person of the king, divides and sub-divides itself into a thousand shapes and
forms, till at last the whole of it is acted by deputation. This was the case
in France; and against this species of despotism, proceeding on through an
endless labyrinth of office till the source of it is scarcely perceptible,
there is no mode of redress. It strengthens itself by assuming the appearance
of duty, and tyrannies under the pretence of obeying.
When
a man reflects on the condition which France was in from the nature of her
government, he will see other causes for revolt than those which immediately
connect themselves with the person or character of Louis XVI. There were, if I
may so express it, a thousand despotisms to be reformed in France, which had
grown up under the hereditary despotism of the monarchy, and became so rooted
as to be in a great measure independent of it. Between the Monarchy, the
Parliament, and the Church there was a rivalship of despotism; besides the
feudal despotism operating locally, and the ministerial despotism operating
everywhere. But Mr. Burke, by considering the king as the only possible object
of a revolt, speaks as if France was a village, in which everything that
passed must be known to its commanding officer, and no oppression could be
acted but what he could immediately control. Mr. Burke might have been in the
Bastille his whole life, as well under Louis XVI. as Louis XIV., and neither
the one nor the other have known that such a man as Burke existed. The despotic principles of the government were the same in
both reigns, though the dispositions of the men were as remote as tyranny and
benevolence.
What
Mr. Burke considers as a reproach to the French Revolution (that of bringing
it forward under a reign more mild than the preceding ones) is one of its
highest honors. The Revolutions that have taken place in other European
countries, have been excited by personal hatred. The rage was against the man,
and he became the victim. But, in the instance of France we see a Revolution
generated in the rational contemplation of the Rights of Man, and
distinguishing from the beginning between persons and principles.
But
Mr. Burke appears to have no idea of principles when he is contemplating
Governments. “Ten years ago,” says he, “I could have felicitated France
on her having a Government, without inquiring what the nature of that
Government was, or how it was administered.” Is this the language of a
rational man? Is it the language of a heart feeling as it ought to feel for
the rights and happiness of the human race? On this ground, Mr. Burke must
compliment all the Governments in the world, while the victims who suffer
under them, whether sold into slavery, or tortured out of existence, are
wholly forgotten. It is power, and not principles, that Mr. Burke venerates;
and under this abominable depravity he is disqualified to judge between them.
Thus much for his opinion as to the occasions of the French Revolution.
I now proceed to other considerations.
I
know a place in America called Point-no-Point, because as you proceed along
the shore, gay and flowery as Mr. Burke’s language, it continually recedes
and presents itself at a distance before you; but when you have got as far as
you can go, there is no point at all. Just
thus it is with Mr. Burke’s three hundred and sixty-six pages.
It is therefore difficult to reply to him. But as the points he wishes
to establish may be inferred from what he abuses, it is in his paradoxes that
we must look for his arguments.
As
to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own imagination,
and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very well calculated for
theatrical representation, where facts are manufactured for the sake of show,
and accommodated to produce, through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping
effect. But Mr. Burke should recollect that he is writing history, and not
plays, and that his readers will expect truth, and not the spouting rant of
high-toned exclamation.
When
we see a man dramatically lamenting in a publication intended to be believed
that “The age of chivalry is gone! that The glory of Europe is extinguished
for ever! that The unbought grace of life (if anyone knows what it is), the
cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise
is gone!” and all this because the Quixot age of chivalry nonsense is gone,
what opinion can we form of his judgment, or what regard can we pay to his
facts? In the rhapsody of his imagination he has discovered a world of wind
mills, and his sorrows are that there are no Quixots to attack them. But if
the age of aristocracy, like that of chivalry, should fall (and they had
originally some connection) Mr. Burke, the trumpeter of the Order, may
continue his parody to the end, and finish with exclaiming: “Othello’s
occupation’s gone!”
Notwithstanding
Mr. Burke’s horrid paintings, when the French Revolution is compared with
the Revolutions of other countries, the astonishment will be that it is marked
with so few sacrifices; but this astonishment will cease when we reflect that
principles, and not persons, were the meditated objects of destruction. The
mind of the nation was acted upon by a higher stimulus than what the
consideration of persons could inspire, and sought a higher conquest than
could be produced by the downfall of an enemy. Among the few who fell there do
not appear to be any that were intentionally singled out. They all of them had
their fate in the circumstances of the moment, and were not pursued with that
long, cold-blooded unabated revenge which pursued the unfortunate Scotch in
the affair of 1745.
Through
the whole of Mr. Burke’s book I do not observe that the Bastille is
mentioned more than once, and that with a kind of implication as if he were
sorry it was pulled down, and wished it were built up again. “We have
rebuilt Newgate,” says he, “and tenanted the mansion; and we have prisons
almost as strong as the Bastille for those who dare to libel the queens of
France.”*[2] As to what a madman like the person called Lord George Gordon
might say, and to whom Newgate is rather a bedlam than a prison, it is
unworthy a rational consideration. It was a madman that libelled, and that is
sufficient apology; and it afforded an opportunity for confining him, which
was the thing that was wished for. But certain it is that Mr.
Burke, who does not call himself a madman (whatever other people may
do), has libelled in the most unprovoked manner, and in the grossest style of
the most vulgar abuse, the whole representative authority of France, and yet
Mr. Burke takes his seat in the British House of Commons! From his violence
and his grief, his silence on some points and his excess on others, it is
difficult not to believe that Mr. Burke
is sorry, extremely sorry, that arbitrary power, the power of the Pope and the
Bastille, are pulled down.
Not
one glance of compassion, not one commiserating reflection that I can find
throughout his book, has he bestowed on those who lingered out the most
wretched of lives, a life without hope in the most miserable of prisons. It is
painful to behold a man employing his talents to corrupt himself. Nature has
been kinder to Mr. Burke than he is to her. He is not affected by the reality
of distress touching his heart, but by the showy resemblance of it striking
his imagination. He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird.
Accustomed to kiss the aristocratical hand that hath purloined him from
himself, he degenerates into a composition of art, and the genuine soul of
nature forsakes him. His hero or his heroine must be a tragedy-victim expiring
in show, and not the real prisoner of misery, sliding into death in the
silence of a dungeon.
As
Mr. Burke has passed over the whole transaction of the Bastille (and his
silence is nothing in his favour), and has entertained his readers with
refections on supposed facts distorted into real falsehoods, I will give,
since he has not, some account of the circumstances which preceded that
transaction. They will serve to show that less mischief could scarcely have
accompanied such an event when considered with the treacherous and hostile
aggravations of the enemies of the Revolution.
The
mind can hardly picture to itself a more tremendous scene than what the city
of Paris exhibited at the time of taking the Bastille, and for two days before
and after, nor perceive the possibility of its quieting so soon. At a distance
this transaction has appeared only as an act of heroism standing on itself,
and the close political connection it had with the Revolution is lost in the
brilliancy of the achievement. But we are to consider it as the strength of
the parties brought man to man, and contending for the issue. The Bastille was
to be either the prize or the prison of the assailants.
The downfall of it included the idea of the downfall of despotism, and
this compounded image was become as figuratively united as Bunyan’s Doubting
Castle and Giant Despair.
The
National Assembly, before and at the time of taking the Bastille, was sitting
at Versailles, twelve miles distant from Paris. About a week before the rising
of the Partisans, and their taking the Bastille, it was discovered that a plot
was forming, at the head of which was the Count D’Artois, the king’s
youngest brother, for demolishing the National Assembly, seizing its members,
and thereby crushing, by a coup de main, all hopes and prospects of forming a
free government. For the sake of humanity, as well as freedom, it is well this
plan did not succeed. Examples are not wanting to show how dreadfully
vindictive and cruel are all old governments, when they are successful against
what they call a revolt.
This
plan must have been some time in contemplation; because, in order to carry it
into execution, it was necessary to collect a large military force round
Paris, and cut off the communication between that city and the National
Assembly at Versailles. The troops destined for this service were chiefly the
foreign troops in the pay of France, and who, for this particular purpose,
were drawn from the distant provinces where they were then stationed. When
they were collected to the amount of between twenty-five and thirty thousand,
it was judged time to put the plan into execution. The ministry who were then
in office, and who were friendly to the Revolution, were instantly dismissed
and a new ministry formed of those who had concerted the project, among whom
was Count de Broglio, and to his share was given the command of those troops.
The character of this man as described to me in a letter which I communicated
to Mr. Burke before he began to write his book, and from an authority which
Mr. Burke well knows was good, was that of “a high-flying
aristocrat, cool, and capable of every mischief.”
While
these matters were agitating, the National Assembly stood in the most perilous
and critical situation that a body of men can be supposed to act in. They were
the devoted victims, and they knew it. They
had the hearts and wishes of their country on their side, but military
authority they had none. The guards of Broglio surrounded the hall where the
Assembly sat, ready, at the word of command, to seize their persons, as had
been done the year before to the Parliament of Paris. Had the National
Assembly deserted their trust, or had they exhibited signs of weakness or
fear, their enemies had been encouraged and their country depressed. When the
situation they stood in, the cause they were engaged in, and the crisis then
ready to burst, which should determine their personal and political fate and
that of their country, and probably of Europe, are taken into one view, none
but a heart callous with prejudice or corrupted by dependence can avoid
interesting itself in their success.
The
Archbishop of Vienne was at this time President of the National Assembly- a
person too old to undergo the scene that a few days or a few hours might bring
forth. A man of more activity and bolder fortitude was necessary, and the
National Assembly chose (under the form of a Vice-President, for the
Presidency still resided in the Archbishop) M. de la Fayette; and this is the
only instance of a Vice-President being chosen. It was at the moment that this
storm was pending (July 11th) that a declaration of rights was
brought forward by M. de la Fayette, and is the same which is alluded to
earlier. It was hastily drawn up, and makes only a part of the more extensive
declaration of rights agreed upon and adopted afterwards by the National
Assembly. The particular reason for bringing it forward at this moment (M. de
la Fayette has since informed me) was that, if the National Assembly should
fall in the threatened destruction that then surrounded it, some trace of its
principles might have the chance of surviving the wreck.
Everything
now was drawing to a crisis. The event was freedom or slavery. On one side, an
army of nearly thirty thousand men; on the other, an unarmed body of citizens-
for the citizens of Paris, on whom the National Assembly must then immediately
depend, were as unarmed and as undisciplined as the citizens of London are
now. The French guards had given strong symptoms of their being attached to
the national cause; but their numbers were small, not a tenth part of the
force that Broglio commanded, and their officers were in the interest of
Broglio.
Matters
being now ripe for execution, the new ministry made their appearance in
office. The reader will carry in his mind that the Bastille was taken the 14th
July; the point of time I am now speaking of is the 12th.
Immediately on the news of the change of ministry reaching Paris, in the
afternoon, all the playhouses and places of entertainment, shops and houses,
were shut up. The change of ministry was considered as the prelude of
hostilities, and the opinion was rightly founded.
The
foreign troops began to advance towards the city. The Prince de Lambesc, who
commanded a body of German cavalry, approached by the Place of Louis Xv.,
which connects itself with some of the streets.
In his march, he insulted and struck an old man with a sword. The
French are remarkable for their respect to old age; and the insolence with
which it appeared to be done, uniting with the general fermentation they were
in, produced a powerful effect, and a cry of “To arms! to arms!” spread
itself in a moment over the city.
Arms
they had none, nor scarcely anyone who knew the use of them; but desperate
resolution, when every hope is at stake, supplies, for a while, the want of
arms. Near where the Prince de Lambesc was drawn up, were large piles of
stones collected for building the new bridge, and with these the people
attacked the cavalry. A party of French guards upon hearing the firing, rushed
from their quarters and joined the people; and night coming on, the cavalry
retreated.
The
streets of Paris, being narrow, are favourable for defence, and the loftiness
of the houses, consisting of many stories, from which great annoyance might be
given, secured them against nocturnal enterprises; and the night was spent in
providing themselves with every sort of weapon they could make or procure:
guns, swords, blacksmiths’ hammers, carpenters’ axes, iron crows, pikes,
halberts, pitchforks, spits, clubs, etc., etc. The incredible numbers in which
they assembled the next morning, and the still more incredible resolution they
exhibited, embarrassed and astonished their enemies. Little did the new ministry expect such a salute. Accustomed
to slavery themselves, they had no idea that liberty was capable of such
inspiration, or that a body of unarmed citizens would dare to face the
military force of thirty thousand men. Every moment of this day was employed
in collecting arms, concerting plans, and arranging themselves into the best
order which such an instantaneous movement could afford. Broglio continued
lying round the city, but made no further advances this day, and the
succeeding night passed with as much tranquility as such a scene could
possibly produce.
But
defence only was not the object of the citizens. They had a cause at stake, on
which depended their freedom or their slavery. They every moment expected an
attack, or to hear of one made on the National Assembly; and in such a
situation, the most prompt measures are sometimes the best. The object that
now presented itself was the Bastille; and the eclat of carrying such a
fortress in the face of such an army, could not fail to strike terror into the
new ministry, who had scarcely yet had time to meet. By some intercepted
correspondence this morning, it was discovered that the Mayor of Paris, M.
Defflesselles, who appeared to be in the interest of the citizens, was
betraying them; and from this discovery, there remained no doubt that Broglio
would reinforce the Bastille the ensuing evening. It was therefore necessary
to attack it that day; but before this could be done, it was first necessary
to procure a better supply of arms than they were then possessed of.
There
was, adjoining to the city a large magazine of arms deposited at the Hospital
of the Invalids, which the citizens summoned to surrender; and as the place
was neither defensible, nor attempted much defence, they soon succeeded. Thus
supplied, they marched to attack the Bastille; a vast mixed multitude of all
ages, and of all degrees, armed with all sorts of weapons. Imagination would
fail in describing to itself the appearance of such a procession, and of the
anxiety of the events which a few hours or a few minutes might produce. What
plans the ministry were forming, were as unknown to the people within the
city, as what the citizens were doing was unknown to the ministry; and what
movements Broglio might make for the support or relief of the place, were to
the citizens equally as unknown. All was mystery and hazard.
That
the Bastille was attacked with an enthusiasm of heroism, such only as the
highest animation of liberty could inspire, and carried in the space of a few
hours, is an event which the world is fully possessed of. I am not undertaking
the detail of the attack, but bringing into view the conspiracy against the
nation which provoked it, and which fell with the Bastille. The prison to
which the new ministry were dooming the National Assembly, in addition to its
being the high altar and castle of despotism, became the proper object to
begin with. This enterprise broke up the new ministry, who began now to fly
from the ruin they had prepared for others. The troops of Broglio dispersed,
and himself fled also.
Mr.
Burke has spoken a great deal about plots, but he has never once spoken of
this plot against the National Assembly, and the liberties of the nation; and
that he might not, he has passed over all the circumstances that might throw
it in his way. The exiles who have fled from France, whose case he so much
interests himself in, and from whom he has had his lesson, fled in consequence
of the miscarriage of this plot. No plot was formed against them; they were
plotting against others; and those who fell, met, not unjustly, the punishment
they were preparing to execute. But will Mr. Burke say that if this plot,
contrived with the subtilty of an ambuscade, had succeeded, the successful
party would have restrained their wrath so soon? Let the history of all
governments answer the question.
Whom
has the National Assembly brought to the scaffold? None. They were themselves
the devoted victims of this plot, and they have not retaliated; why, then, are
they charged with revenge they have not acted? In the tremendous breaking
forth of a whole people, in which all degrees, tempers and characters are
confounded, delivering themselves, by a miracle of exertion, from the
destruction meditated against them, is it to be expected that nothing will
happen? When men are sore with the sense of oppressions, and menaced with the
prospects of new ones, is the calmness of philosophy or the palsy of
insensibility to be looked for? Mr. Burke exclaims against outrage; yet the
greatest is that which himself has committed. His book is a volume of outrage,
not apologised for by the impulse of a moment, but cherished through a space
of ten months; yet Mr. Burke had no provocation- no life, no interest, at
stake.
More
of the citizens fell in this struggle than of their opponents:
but
four or five persons were seized by the populace, and instantly put to death;
the Governor of the Bastille, and the Mayor of Paris, who was detected in the
act of betraying them; and afterwards Foulon, one of the new ministry, and
Berthier, his son-in-law, who had accepted the office of intendant of Paris.
Their heads were stuck upon spikes, and carried about the city; and it is upon
this mode of punishment that Mr. Burke builds a great part of his tragic
scene. Let us therefore examine
how men came by the idea of punishing in this manner.
They
learn it from the governments they live under; and retaliate the punishments
they have been accustomed to behold. The heads stuck upon spikes, which
remained for years upon Temple Bar, differed nothing in the horror of the
scene from those carried about upon spikes at Paris; yet this was done by the
English Government. It may perhaps be said that it signifies nothing to a man
what is done to him after he is dead; but it signifies much to the living; it
either tortures their feelings or hardens their hearts, and in either case it
instructs them how to punish when power falls into their hands.
Lay
then the axe to the root, and teach governments humanity. It is their
sanguinary punishments which corrupt mankind. In England the punishment in
certain cases is by hanging, drawing and quartering; the heart of the sufferer
is cut out and held up to the view of the populace. In France, under the
former Government, the punishments were not less barbarous. Who does not
remember the execution of Damien, torn to pieces by horses? The effect of
those cruel spectacles exhibited to the populace is to destroy tenderness or
excite revenge; and by the base and false idea of governing men by terror,
instead of reason, they become precedents. It is over the lowest class of
mankind that government by terror is intended to operate, and it is on them
that it operates to the worst effect. They have sense enough to feel they are
the objects aimed at; and they inflict in their turn the examples of terror
they have been instructed to practise.
There
is in all European countries a large class of people of that description,
which in England is called the “mob.” Of this class were those who
committed the burnings and devastations in London in 1780, and of this class
were those who carried the heads on iron spikes in Paris. Foulon and Berthier
were taken up in the country, and sent to Paris, to undergo their examination
at the Hotel de Ville; for the National Assembly, immediately on the new
ministry coming into office, passed a decree, which they communicated to the
King and Cabinet, that they (the National Assembly) would hold the ministry,
of which Foulon was one, responsible for the measures they were advising and
pursuing; but the mob, incensed at the appearance of Foulon and Berthier, tore
them from their conductors before they were carried to the Hotel de Ville, and
executed them on the spot. Why then does Mr. Burke charge outrages of this
kind on a whole people? As well
may he charge the riots and outrages of 1780 on all the people of London, or
those in Ireland on all his countrymen.
But
everything we see or hear offensive to our feelings and derogatory to the
human character should lead to other reflections than those of reproach. Even
the beings who commit them have some claim to our consideration. How then is
it that such vast classes of mankind as are distinguished by the appellation
of the vulgar, or the ignorant mob, are so numerous in all old countries? The
instant we ask ourselves this question, reflection feels an answer. They rise,
as an unavoidable consequence, out of the ill construction of all old
governments in Europe, England included with the rest. It is by distortedly
exalting some men, that others are distortedly debased, till the whole is out
of nature. A vast mass of mankind are degradedly thrown into the back-ground
of the human picture, to bring forward, with greater glare, the puppet-show of
state and aristocracy. In the commencement of a revolution, those men are
rather the followers of the camp than of the standard of liberty, and have yet
to be instructed how to reverence it.
I
give to Mr. Burke all his theatrical exaggerations for facts, and I then ask
him if they do not establish the certainty of what I here lay down? Admitting
them to be true, they show the necessity of the French Revolution, as much as
any one thing he could have asserted. These
outrages were not the effect of the principles of the Revolution, but of the
degraded mind that existed before the Revolution, and which the Revolution is
calculated to reform. Place them then to their proper cause, and take the
reproach of them to your own side.
It
is the honour of the National Assembly and the city of Paris that, during such
a tremendous scene of arms and confusion, beyond the control of all authority,
they have been able, by the influence of example and exhortation, to restrain
so much. Never were more pains taken to instruct and enlighten mankind, and to
make them see that their interest consisted in their virtue, and not in their
revenge, than have been displayed in the Revolution of France. I now proceed
to make some remarks on Mr. Burke’s account of the expedition to Versailles,
October the 5th and 6th.
I
can consider Mr. Burke’s book in scarcely any other light than a dramatic
performance; and he must, I think, have considered it in the same light
himself, by the poetical liberties he has taken of omitting some facts,
distorting others, and making the whole machinery bend to produce a stage
effect. Of this kind is his account of the expedition to Versailles. He begins
this account by omitting the only facts which as causes are known to be true;
everything beyond these is conjecture, even in Paris; and he then works up a
tale accommodated to his own passions and prejudices.
It
is to be observed throughout Mr. Burke’s book that he never speaks of plots
against the Revolution; and it is from those plots that all the mischiefs have
arisen. It suits his purpose to exhibit the consequences without their causes.
It is one of the arts of the drama to do so. If the crimes of men were
exhibited with their sufferings, stage effect would sometimes be lost, and the
audience would be inclined to approve where it was intended they should
commiserate.
After
all the investigations that have been made into this intricate affair (the
expedition to Versailles), it still remains enveloped in all that kind of
mystery which ever accompanies events produced more from a concurrence of
awkward circumstances than from fixed design.
While the characters of men are forming, as is always the case in
revolutions, there is a reciprocal suspicion, and a disposition to
misinterpret each other; and even parties directly opposite in principle will
sometimes concur in pushing forward the same movement with very different
views, and with the hopes of its producing very different consequences. A
great deal of this may be discovered in this embarrassed affair, and yet the
issue of the whole was what nobody had in view.
The
only things certainly known are that considerable uneasiness was at this time
excited at Paris by the delay of the King in not sanctioning and forwarding
the decrees of the National Assembly, particularly that of the Declaration of
the Rights of Man, and the decrees of the fourth of August, which contained
the foundation principles on which the constitution was to be erected. The
kindest, and perhaps the fairest conjecture upon this matter is, that some of
the ministers intended to make remarks and observations upon certain parts of
them before they were finally sanctioned and sent to the provinces; but be
this as it may, the enemies of the Revolution derived hope from the delay, and
the friends of the Revolution uneasiness.
During
this state of suspense, the Garde du Corps, which was composed as such
regiments generally are, of persons much connected with the Court, gave an
entertainment at Versailles (October 1) to some foreign regiments then
arrived; and when the entertainment was at the height, on a signal given, the
Garde du Corps tore the national cockade from their hats, trampled it under
foot, and replaced it with a counter-cockade prepared for the purpose. An
indignity of this kind amounted to defiance. It was like declaring war; and if
men will give challenges they must expect consequences. But all this Mr. Burke
has carefully kept out of sight. He begins his account by saying:
“History
will record that on the morning of the 6th October, 1789, the King
and Queen of France, after a day of confusion, alarm, dismay, and slaughter,
lay down under the pledged security of public faith to indulge nature in a few
hours of respite, and troubled melancholy repose.” This is neither the sober
style of history, nor the intention of it. It leaves everything to be guessed
at and mistaken. One would at least think there had been a battle; and a
battle there probably would have been had it not been for the moderating
prudence of those whom Mr. Burke involves in his censures.
By his keeping the Garde du Corps out of sight Mr. Burke has afforded
himself the dramatic licence of putting the King and Queen in their places, as
if the object of the expedition was against them. But to return to my account
this conduct of the Garde du Corps, as might well be expected, alarmed and
enraged the Partisans. The colors of the cause, and the cause itself, were
become too united to mistake the intention of the insult, and the Partisans
were determined to call the Garde du Corps to an account. There was certainly
nothing of the cowardice of assassination in marching in the face of the day
to demand satisfaction, if such a phrase may be used, of a body of armed men
who had voluntarily given defiance. But the circumstance which serves to throw
this affair into embarrassment is, that the enemies of the Revolution appear
to have encouraged it as well as its friends. The one hoped to prevent a civil
war by checking it in time, and the other to make one. The hopes of those
opposed to the Revolution rested in making the King of their party, and
getting him from Versailles to Metz, where they expected to collect a force
and set up a standard. We have, therefore, two different objects presenting
themselves at the same time, and to be accomplished by the same means: the one
to chastise the Garde du Corps, which was the object of the Partisans; the
other to render the confusion of such a scene an inducement to the King to set
off for Metz.
On
the 5th of October a very numerous body of women, and men in the
disguise of women, collected around the Hotel de Ville or town-hall at Paris,
and set off for Versailles. Their professed object was the Garde du Corps; but
prudent men readily recollect that mischief is more easily begun than ended;
and this impressed itself with the more force from the suspicions already
stated, and the irregularity of such a cavalcade. As soon, therefore, as a
sufficient force could be collected, M. de la Fayette, by orders from the
civil authority of Paris, set off after them at the head of twenty thousand of
the Paris militia. The Revolution could derive no benefit from confusion, and
its opposers might. By an amiable and spirited manner of address he had
hitherto been fortunate in calming disquietudes, and in this he was
extraordinarily successful; to frustrate, therefore, the hopes of those who
might seek to improve this scene into a sort of justifiable necessity for the
King’s quitting Versailles and withdrawing to Metz, and to prevent at the
same time the consequences that might ensue between the Garde du Corps and
this phalanx of men and women, he forwarded expresses to the King, that he was
on his march to Versailles, by the orders of the civil authority of Paris, for
the purpose of peace and protection, expressing at the same time the necessity
of restraining the Garde du Corps from firing upon the people.*[3]
He
arrived at Versailles between ten and eleven at night. The Garde du Corps was
drawn up, and the people had arrived some time before, but everything had
remained suspended. Wisdom and policy now consisted in changing a scene of
danger into a happy event. M. de la Fayette became the mediator between the
enraged parties; and the King, to remove the uneasiness which had arisen from
the delay already stated, sent for the President of the National Assembly, and
signed the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and such other parts of the
constitution as were in readiness.
It
was now about one in the morning. Everything appeared to be composed, and a
general congratulation took place. By the beat of a drum a proclamation was
made that the citizens of Versailles would give the hospitality of their
houses to their fellow-citizens of Paris. Those who could not be accommodated
in this manner remained in the streets, or took up their quarters in the
churches; and at two o’clock the King and Queen retired.
In
this state matters passed till the break of day, when a fresh disturbance
arose from the censurable conduct of some of both parties, for such characters
there will be in all such scenes. One of the Garde du Corps appeared at one of
the windows of the palace, and the people who had remained during the night in
the streets accosted him with reviling and provocative language. Instead of
retiring, as in such a case prudence would have dictated, he presented his
musket, fired, and killed one of the Paris militia. The peace being thus
broken, the people rushed into the palace in quest of the offender.
They attacked the quarters of the Garde du Corps within the palace, and
pursued them throughout the avenues of it, and to the apartments of the King.
On this tumult, not the Queen only, as Mr. Burke has represented it, but every
person in the palace, was awakened and alarmed; and M. de la Fayette had a
second time to interpose between the parties, the event of which was that the
Garde du Corps put on the national cockade, and the matter ended as by
oblivion, after the loss of two or three lives.
During
the latter part of the time in which this confusion was acting, the King and
Queen were in public at the balcony, and neither of them concealed for safety’s
sake, as Mr. Burke insinuates. Matters being thus appeased, and tranquility
restored, a general acclamation broke forth of Le Roi a Paris- Le Roi a Paris-
The King to Paris. It was the shout of peace, and immediately accepted on the
part of the King. By this measure all future projects of trapanning the King
to Metz, and setting up the standard of opposition to the constitution, were
prevented, and the suspicions extinguished. The King and his family reached
Paris in the evening, and were congratulated on their arrival by M. Bailly,
the Mayor of Paris, in the name of the citizens. Mr. Burke, who throughout his
book confounds things, persons, and principles, as in his remarks on M. Bailly’s
address, confounded time also. He censures M. Bailly for calling it “un bon
jour,” a good day. Mr. Burke should have informed himself that this scene
took up the space of two days, the day on which it began with every appearance
of danger and mischief, and the day on which it terminated without the
mischiefs that threatened; and that it is to this peaceful termination that M.
Bailly alludes, and to the arrival of the King at Paris. Not less than three
hundred thousand persons arranged themselves in the procession from Versailles
to Paris, and not an act of molestation was committed during the whole march.
Mr.
Burke on the authority of M. Lally Tollendal, a deserter from the National
Assembly, says that on entering Paris, the people shouted “Tous les eveques
a la lanterne.” All Bishops to be hanged at the lanthorn or lamp-posts. It
is surprising that nobody could hear this but Lally Tollendal, and that nobody
should believe it but Mr. Burke. It
has not the least connection with any part of the transaction, and is totally
foreign to every circumstance of it. The Bishops had never been introduced
before into any scene of Mr. Burke’s drama: why then are they, all at once,
and altogether, tout a coup, et tous ensemble, introduced now? Mr. Burke
brings forward his Bishops and his lanthorn-like figures in a magic lanthorn,
and raises his scenes by contrast instead of connection. But it serves to
show, with the rest of his book what little credit ought to be given where
even probability is set at defiance, for the purpose of defaming; and with
this reflection, instead of a soliloquy in praise of chivalry, as Mr. Burke has done, I close the account of the expedition to
Versailles.*[4]
I
have now to follow Mr. Burke through a pathless wilderness of rhapsodies, and
a sort of descant upon governments, in which he asserts whatever he pleases,
on the presumption of its being believed, without offering either evidence or
reasons for so doing.
Before
anything can be reasoned upon to a conclusion, certain facts, principles, or
data, to reason from, must be established, admitted, or denied. Mr. Burke with
his usual outrage, abused the Declaration of the Rights of Man, published by
the National Assembly of France, as the basis on which the constitution of
France is built. This he calls “paltry and blurred sheets of paper about the
rights of man.” Does Mr. Burke mean to deny that man has any rights? If he
does, then he must mean that there are no such things as rights anywhere, and
that he has none himself; for who is there in the world but man? But if Mr.
Burke means to admit that man has rights, the question then will be: What are
those rights, and how man came by them originally?
The
error of those who reason by precedents drawn from antiquity, respecting the
rights of man, is that they do not go far enough into antiquity. They do not
go the whole way. They stop in some of the intermediate stages of an hundred
or a thousand years, and produce what was then done, as a rule for the present
day. This is no authority at all. If we travel still farther into antiquity,
we shall find a direct contrary opinion and practice prevailing; and if
antiquity is to be authority, a thousand such authorities may be produced,
successively contradicting each other; but if we proceed on, we shall at last
come out right; we shall come to the time when man came from the hand of his
Maker. What was he then? Man. Man was his high and only title, and a higher
cannot be given him. But of titles I shall speak hereafter.
We
are now got at the origin of man, and at the origin of his rights.
As to the manner in which the world has been governed from that day to
this, it is no farther any concern of ours than to make a proper use of the
errors or the improvements which the history of it presents. Those who lived
an hundred or a thousand years ago, were then moderns, as we are now. They had
their ancients, and those ancients had others, and we also shall be ancients
in our turn. If the mere name of antiquity is to govern in the affairs of
life, the people who are to live an hundred or a thousand years hence, may as
well take us for a precedent, as we make a precedent of those who lived an
hundred or a thousand years ago. The fact is, that portions of antiquity, by
proving everything, establish nothing. It is authority against authority all
the way, till we come to the divine origin of the rights of man at the
creation. Here our enquiries find a resting-place, and our reason finds a
home. If a dispute about the rights of man had arisen at the distance of an
hundred years from the creation, it is to this source of authority they must
have referred, and it is to this same source of authority that we must now
refer.
Though
I mean not to touch upon any sectarian principle of religion, yet it may be
worth observing, that the genealogy of Christ is traced to Adam. Why then not
trace the rights of man to the creation of man?
I will answer the question. Because there have been upstart
governments, thrusting themselves between, and presumptuously working to
un-make man.
If
any generation of men ever possessed the right of dictating the mode by which
the world should be governed for ever, it was the first generation that
existed; and if that generation did it not, no succeeding generation can show
any authority for doing it, nor can set any up. The illuminating and divine
principle of the equal rights of man (for it has its origin from the Maker of
man) relates, not only to the living individuals, but to generations of men
succeeding each other. Every generation is equal in rights to generations
which preceded it, by the same rule that every individual is born equal in
rights with his contemporary.
Every
history of the creation, and every traditionary account, whether from the
lettered or unlettered world, however they may vary in their opinion or belief
of certain particulars, all agree in establishing one point, the unity of man;
by which I mean that men are all of one degree, and consequently that all men
are born equal, and with equal natural right, in the same manner as if
posterity had been continued by creation instead of generation, the latter
being the only mode by which the former is carried forward; and consequently
every child born into the world must be considered as deriving its existence
from God. The world is as new to him as it was to the first man that existed,
and his natural right in it is of the same kind.
The
Mosaic account of the creation, whether taken as divine authority or merely
historical, is full to this point, the unity or equality of man. The
expression admits of no controversy. “And God said, Let us make man in our
own image. In the image of God created he him; male and female created he
them.” The distinction of sexes is pointed out, but no other distinction is
even implied. If this be not divine authority, it is at least historical
authority, and shows that the equality of man, so far from being a modern
doctrine, is the oldest upon record.
It
is also to be observed that all the religions known in the world are founded,
so far as they relate to man, on the unity of man, as being all of one degree.
Whether in heaven or in hell, or in whatever state man may be supposed to
exist hereafter, the good and the bad are the only distinctions. Nay, even the
laws of governments are obliged to slide into this principle, by making
degrees to consist in crimes and not in persons.
It
is one of the greatest of all truths, and of the highest advantage to
cultivate. By considering man in this light, and by instructing him to
consider himself in this light, it places him in a close connection with all
his duties, whether to his Creator or to the creation, of which he is a part;
and it is only when he forgets his origin, or, to use a more fashionable
phrase, his birth and family, that he becomes dissolute. It is not among the
least of the evils of the present existing governments in all parts of Europe
that man, considered as man, is thrown back to a vast distance from his Maker,
and the artificial chasm filled up with a succession of barriers, or sort of
turnpike gates, through which he has to pass. I will quote Mr. Burke’s
catalogue of barriers that he has set up between man and his Maker. Putting
himself in the character of a herald, he says: “We fear God- we look with
awe to kings- with affection to Parliaments with duty to magistrates- with
reverence to priests, and with respect to nobility.” Mr. Burke has forgotten
to put in “’chivalry.” He has also forgotten to put in Peter.
The
duty of man is not a wilderness of turnpike gates, through which he is to pass
by tickets from one to the other. It is plain and simple, and consists but of
two points. His duty to God, which every man must feel; and with respect to
his neighbor, to do as he would be done by. If those to whom power is
delegated do well, they will be respected: if not, they will be despised; and
with regard to those to whom no power is delegated, but who assume it, the
rational world can know nothing of them.
Hitherto
we have spoken only (and that but in part) of the natural rights of man. We
have now to consider the civil rights of man, and to show how the one
originates from the other. Man did not enter into society to become worse than
he was before, nor to have fewer rights than he had before, but to have those
rights better secured. His natural rights are the foundation of all his civil
rights. But in order to pursue this distinction with more precision, it will
be necessary to mark the different qualities of natural and civil rights.
A
few words will explain this. Natural rights are those which appertain to man
in right of his existence. Of this kind are all the intellectual rights, or
rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an individual for
his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the natural rights
of others. Civil rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being
a member of society. Every civil right has for its foundation some natural
right pre-existing in the individual, but to the enjoyment of which his
individual power is not, in all cases, sufficiently competent. Of this kind
are all those which relate to security and protection.
From
this short review it will be easy to distinguish between that class of natural
rights which man retains after entering into society and those which he throws
into the common stock as a member of society.
The
natural rights which he retains are all those in which the Power to execute is
as perfect in the individual as the right itself. Among this class, as is
before mentioned, are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind;
consequently religion is one of those rights.
The natural rights which are not retained, are all those in which,
though the right is perfect in the individual, the power to execute them is
defective. They answer not his purpose. A man, by natural right, has a right
to judge in his own cause; and so far as the right of the mind is concerned,
he never surrenders it. But what availeth it him to judge, if he has not power
to redress? He therefore deposits this right in the common stock of society,
and takes the ann of society, of which he is a part, in preference and in
addition to his own. Society grants him nothing. Every man is a proprietor in
society, and draws on the capital as a matter of right.
From
these premisses two or three certain conclusions will follow:
First,
That every civil right grows out of a natural right; or, in other words, is a
natural right exchanged.
Secondly,
That civil power properly considered as such is made up of the aggregate of
that class of the natural rights of man, which becomes defective in the
individual in point of power, and answers not his purpose, but when collected
to a focus becomes competent to the Purpose of every one.
Thirdly,
That the power produced from the aggregate of natural rights, imperfect in
power in the individual, cannot be applied to invade the natural rights which
are retained in the individual, and in which the power to execute is as
perfect as the right itself.
We
have now, in a few words, traced man from a natural individual to a member of
society, and shown, or endeavoured to show, the quality of the natural rights
retained, and of those which are exchanged for civil rights. Let us now apply
these principles to governments.
In
casting our eyes over the world, it is extremely easy to distinguish the
governments which have arisen out of society, or out of the social compact,
from those which have not; but to place this in a clearer light than what a
single glance may afford, it will be proper to take a review of the several
sources from which governments have arisen and on which they have been
founded.
They
may be all comprehended under three heads.
First,
Superstition.
Secondly,
Power.
Thirdly,
The common interest of society and the common rights of man.
The
first was a government of priestcraft, the second of conquerors, and the third
of reason.
When
a set of artful men pretended, through the medium of oracles, to hold
intercourse with the Deity, as familiarly as they now march up the back-stairs
in European courts, the world was completely under the government of
superstition. The oracles were consulted, and whatever they were made to say
became the law; and this sort of government lasted as long as this sort of
superstition lasted.
After
these a race of conquerors arose, whose government, like that of William the
Conqueror, was founded in power, and the sword assumed the name of a sceptre.
Governments thus established last as long as the power to support them lasts;
but that they might avail themselves of every engine in their favor, they
united fraud to force, and set up an idol which they called Divine Right, and
which, in imitation of the Pope, who affects to be spiritual and temporal, and
in contradiction to the Founder of the Christian religion, twisted itself
afterwards into an idol of another shape, called Church and State. The key of
St. Peter and the key of the Treasury became quartered on one another, and the
wondering cheated multitude worshipped the invention.
When
I contemplate the natural dignity of man, when I feel (for Nature has not been
kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for the honour and happiness of its
character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and
fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at
those who are thus imposed upon.
We
have now to review the governments which arise out of society, in
contradistinction to those which arose out of superstition and conquest.
It
has been thought a considerable advance towards establishing the principles of
Freedom to say that Government is a compact between those who govern and those
who are governed; but this cannot be true, because it is putting the effect
before the cause; for as man must have existed before governments existed,
there necessarily was a time when governments did not exist, and consequently
there could originally exist no governors to form such a compact with.
The
fact therefore must be that the individuals themselves, each in his own
personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to
produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a
right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.
To
possess ourselves of a clear idea of what government is, or ought to be, we
must trace it to its origin. In doing this we shall easily discover that
governments must have arisen either out of the people or over the people. Mr.
Burke has made no distinction. He investigates nothing to its source, and
therefore he confounds everything; but he has signified his intention of
undertaking, at some future opportunity, a comparison between the constitution
of England and France. As he thus renders it a subject of controversy by
throwing the gauntlet, I take him upon his own ground. It is in high
challenges that high truths have the right of appearing; and I accept it with
the more readiness because it affords me, at the same time, an opportunity of
pursuing the subject with respect to governments arising out of society.
But
it will be first necessary to define what is meant by a Constitution. It is
not sufficient that we adopt the word; we must fix also a standard
signification to it.
A
constitution is not a thing in name only, but in fact. It has not an ideal,
but a real existence; and wherever it cannot be produced in a visible form,
there is none. A constitution is a thing antecedent to a government, and a
government is only the creature of a constitution. The constitution of a
country is not the act of its government, but of the people constituting its
government. It is the body of elements, to which you can refer, and quote
article by article; and which contains the principles on which the government
shall be established, the manner in which it shall be organised, the powers it
shall have, the mode of elections, the duration of Parliaments, or by what
other name such bodies may be called; the powers which the executive part of
the government shall have; and in fine, everything that relates to the
complete organisation of a civil government, and the principles on which it
shall act, and by which it shall be bound. A constitution, therefore, is to a
government what the laws made afterwards by that government are to a court of
judicature. The court of judicature does not make the laws, neither can it
alter them; it only acts in conformity to the laws made: and the government is
in like manner governed by the constitution.
Can,
then, Mr. Burke produce the English Constitution? If he cannot, we may fairly
conclude that though it has been so much talked about, no such thing as a
constitution exists, or ever did exist, and consequently that the people have
yet a constitution to form.
Mr.
Burke will not, I presume, deny the position I have already advanced- namely,
that governments arise either out of the people or over the people. The
English Government is one of those which arose out of a conquest, and not out
of society, and consequently it arose over the people; and though it has been
much modified from the opportunity of circumstances since the time of William
the Conqueror, the country has never yet regenerated itself, and is therefore
without a constitution.
I
readily perceive the reason why Mr. Burke declined going into the comparison
between the English and French constitutions, because he could not but
perceive, when he sat down to the task, that no such a thing as a constitution
existed on his side the question. His book is certainly bulky enough to have
contained all he could say on this subject, and it would have been the best
manner in which people could have judged of their separate merits. Why then
has he declined the only thing that was worth while to write upon? It was the
strongest ground he could take, if the advantages were on his side, but the
weakest if they were not; and his declining to take it is either a sign that
he could not possess it or could not maintain it.
Mr.
Burke said, in a speech last winter in Parliament, “that when the National
Assembly first met in three Orders (the Tiers Etat, the Clergy, and the
Noblesse), France had then a good constitution.” This shows, among numerous
other instances, that Mr. Burke does not understand what a constitution is.
The persons so met were not a constitution, but a convention, to make a
constitution.
The
present National Assembly of France is, strictly speaking, the personal social
compact. The members of it are the delegates of the nation in its original
character; future assemblies will be the delegates of the nation in its
organised character. The authority of the present Assembly is different from
what the authority of future Assemblies will be. The authority of the present
one is to form a constitution; the authority of future assemblies will be to
legislate according to the principles and forms prescribed in that
constitution; and if experience should hereafter show that alterations,
amendments, or additions are necessary, the constitution will point out the
mode by which such things shall be done, and not leave it to the discretionary
power of the future government.
A
government on the principles on which constitutional governments arising out
of society are established, cannot have the right of altering itself. If it
had, it would be arbitrary. It might make itself what it pleased; and wherever
such a right is set up, it shows there is no constitution. The act by which
the English Parliament empowered itself to sit seven years, shows there is no
constitution in England. It might, by the same self-authority, have sat any
great number of years, or for life. The bill which the present Mr. Pitt
brought into Parliament some years ago, to reform Parliament, was on the same
erroneous principle. The right of reform is in the nation in its original
character, and the constitutional method would be by a general convention
elected for the purpose. There is, moreover, a paradox in the idea of vitiated
bodies reforming themselves.
From
these preliminaries I proceed to draw some comparisons. I have already spoken
of the declaration of rights; and as I mean to be as concise as possible, I
shall proceed to other parts of the French Constitution.
The
constitution of France says that every man who pays a tax of sixty sous per
annum (2s. 6d. English) is an elector. What article will Mr. Burke place
against this? Can anything be more limited, and at the same time more
capricious, than the qualification of electors is in England? Limited- because
not one man in an hundred (I speak much within compass) is admitted to vote.
Capricious- because the lowest character that can be supposed to exist, and
who has not so much as the visible means of an honest livelihood, is an
elector in some places: while in other places, the man who pays very large
taxes, and has a known fair character, and the farmer who rents to the amount
of three or four hundred pounds a year, with a property on that farm to three
or four times that amount, is not admitted to be an elector. Everything is out
of nature, as Mr. Burke says on another occasion, in this strange chaos, and
all sorts of follies are blended with all sorts of crimes. William the
Conqueror and his descendants parcelled out the country in this manner, and
bribed some parts of it by what they call charters to hold the other parts of
it the better subjected to their will. This is the reason why so many of those
charters abound in Cornwall; the people were averse to the Government
established at the Conquest, and the towns were garrisoned and bribed to
enslave the country. All the old charters are the badges of this conquest, and
it is from this source that the capriciousness of election arises.
The
French Constitution says that the number of representatives for any place
shall be in a ratio to the number of taxable inhabitants or electors. What
article will Mr. Burke place against this? The county of York, which contains
nearly a million of souls, sends two county members; and so does the county of
Rutland, which contains not an hundredth part of that number. The old town of
Sarum, which contains not three houses, sends two members; and the town of
Manchester, which contains upward of sixty thousand souls, is not admitted to
send any. Is there any principle in these things? It is admitted that all this
is altered, but there is much to be done yet, before we have a fair
representation of the people. Is there anything by which you can trace the
marks of freedom, or discover those of wisdom? No wonder then Mr. Burke has
declined the comparison, and endeavored to lead his readers from the point by
a wild, unsystematical display of paradoxical rhapsodies.
The
French Constitution says that the National Assembly shall be elected every two
years. What article will Mr. Burke place against this? Why, that the nation
has no right at all in the case; that the government is perfectly arbitrary
with respect to this point; and he can quote for his authority the precedent
of a former Parliament.
The
French Constitution says there shall be no game laws, that the farmer on whose
lands wild game shall be found (for it is by the produce of his lands they are
fed) shall have a right to what he can take; that there shall be no monopolies
of any kind- that all trades shall be free and every man free to follow any
occupation by which he can procure an honest livelihood, and in any place,
town, or city throughout the nation. What will Mr. Burke say to this? In
England, game is made the property of those at whose expense it is not fed;
and with respect to monopolies, the country is cut up into monopolies. Every
chartered town is an aristocratical monopoly in itself, and the qualification
of electors proceeds out of those chartered monopolies. Is this freedom? Is
this what Mr. Burke means by a constitution?
In
these chartered monopolies, a man coming from another part of the country is
hunted from them as if he were a foreign enemy. An Englishman is not free of
his own country; every one of those places presents a barrier in his way, and
tells him he is not a freeman-that he has no rights. Within these monopolies
are other monopolies. In a city,
such for instance as Bath, which contains between twenty and thirty thousand
inhabitants, the right of electing representatives to Parliament is
monopolised by about thirty-one persons. And within these monopolies are still
others. A man even of the same town, whose parents were not in circumstances
to give him an occupation, is debarred, in many cases, from the natural right
of acquiring one, be his genius or industry what it may.
Are
these things examples to hold out to a country regenerating itself from
slavery, like France? Certainly they are not, and certain am I, that when the
people of England come to reflect upon them they will, like France, annihilate
those badges of ancient oppression, those traces of a conquered nation. Had
Mr. Burke possessed talents similar to the author of “On the Wealth of
Nations.” he would have comprehended all the parts which enter into, and, by
assemblage, form a constitution. He would have reasoned from minutiae to
magnitude. It is not from his prejudices only, but from the disorderly cast of
his genius, that he is unfitted for the subject he writes upon. Even his
genius is without a constitution. It is a genius at random, and not a genius
constituted. But he must say something. He has therefore mounted in the air
like a balloon, to draw the eyes of the multitude from the ground they stand
upon.
Much
is to be learned from the French Constitution. Conquest and tyranny
transplanted themselves with William the Conqueror from Normandy into England,
and the country is yet disfigured with the marks. May, then, the example of
all France contribute to regenerate the freedom which a province of it
destroyed!
The
French Constitution says that to preserve the national representation from
being corrupt, no member of the National Assembly shall be an officer of the
government, a placeman or a pensioner.
What
will Mr. Burke place against this? I will whisper his answer:
Loaves
and Fishes. Ah! this government of loaves and fishes has more mischief in it
than people have yet reflected on. The National Assembly has made the
discovery, and it holds out the example to the world. Had governments agreed
to quarrel on purpose to fleece their countries by taxes, they could not have
succeeded better than they have done.
Everything
in the English government appears to me the reverse of what it ought to be,
and of what it is said to be. The Parliament, imperfectly and capriciously
elected as it is, is nevertheless supposed to hold the national purse in trust
for the nation; but in the manner in which an English Parliament is
constructed it is like a man being both mortgagor and mortgagee, and in the
case of misapplication of trust it is the criminal sitting in judgment upon
himself. If those who vote the supplies are the same persons who receive the
supplies when voted, and are to account for the expenditure of those supplies
to those who voted them, it is themselves accountable to themselves, and the
Comedy of Errors concludes with the pantomime of Hush. Neither the Ministerial
party nor the Opposition will touch upon this case. The national purse is the
common hack which each mounts upon. It is like what the country people call
“Ride and tie- you ride a little way, and then I.”*[5] They order these
things better in France.
The
French Constitution 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 shilling a piece: 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 worshipping Aaron’s
molten calf, or Nebuchadnezzar’s golden image; but why do men continue to
practise themselves the absurdities they despise in others?
It
may with reason be said that in the manner the English nation is represented
it signifies not where the right resides, whether in the Crown or in the
Parliament. War is the common harvest of all those who participate in the
division and expenditure of public money, in all countries. It is the art of
conquering at home; the object of it is an increase of revenue; and as revenue
cannot be increased without taxes, a pretence must be made for expenditure. In
reviewing the history of the English Government, its wars and its taxes, a
bystander, not blinded by prejudice nor warped by interest, would declare that
taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on
taxes.
Mr.
Burke, as a member of the House of Commons, is a part of the English
Government; and though he professes himself an enemy to war, he abuses the
French Constitution, which seeks to explode it. He holds up the English
Government as a model, in all its parts, to France; but he should first know
the remarks which the French make upon it. They contend in favor of their own,
that the portion of liberty enjoyed in England is just enough to enslave a
country more productively than by despotism, and that as the real object of
all despotism is revenue, a government so formed obtains more than it could do
either by direct despotism, or in a full state of freedom, and is, therefore
on the ground of interest, opposed to both. They account also for the
readiness which always appears in such governments for engaging in wars by
remarking on the different motives which produced them. In despotic
governments wars are the effect of pride; but in those governments in which
they become the means of taxation, they acquire thereby a more permanent
promptitude.
The
French Constitution, therefore, to provide against both these evils, has taken
away the power of declaring war from kings and ministers, and placed the right
where the expense must fall.
When
the question of the right of war and peace was agitating in the National
Assembly, the people of England appeared to be much interested in the event,
and highly to applaud the decision. As a principle it applies as much to one
country as another. William the Conqueror, as a conqueror, held this power of
war and peace in himself, and his descendants have ever since claimed it under
him as a right.
Although
Mr. Burke has asserted the right of the Parliament at the Revolution to bind
and control the nation and posterity for ever, he denies at the same time that
the Parliament or the nation had any right to alter what he calls the
succession of the crown in anything but in part, or by a sort of modification.
By his taking this ground he throws the case back to the Norman Conquest, and
by thus running a line of succession springing from William the Conqueror to
the present day, he makes it necessary to enquire who and what William the
Conqueror was, and where he came from, and into the origin, history and nature
of what are called prerogatives. Everything must have had a beginning, and the
fog of time and antiquity should be penetrated to discover it. Let, then, Mr.
Burke bring forward his William of Normandy, for it is to this origin that his
argument goes. It also
unfortunately happens, in running this line of succession, that another line
parallel thereto presents itself, which is that if the succession runs in the
line of the conquest, the nation runs in the line of being conquered, and it
ought to rescue itself from this reproach.
But
it will perhaps be said that though the power of declaring war descends in the
heritage of the conquest, it is held in check by the right of Parliament to
withhold the supplies. It will always happen when a thing is originally wrong
that amendments do not make it right, and it often happens that they do as
much mischief one way as good the other, and such is the case here, for if the
one rashly declares war as a matter of right, and the other peremptorily
withholds the supplies as a matter of right, the remedy becomes as bad, or
worse, than the disease. The one forces the nation to a combat, and the other
ties its hands; but the more probable issue is that the contest will end in a
collusion between the parties, and be made a screen to both.
On
this question of war, three things are to be considered. First, the right of
declaring it: secondly, the expense of supporting it: thirdly, the mode of
conducting it after it is declared. The French Constitution places the right
where the expense must fall, and this union can only be in the nation. The
mode of conducting it after it is declared, it consigns to the executive
department. Were this the case in all countries, we should hear but little
more of wars.
Before
I proceed to consider other parts of the French Constitution, and by way of
relieving the fatigue of argument, I will introduce an anecdote which I had
from Dr. Franklin.
While
the Doctor resided in France as Minister from America, during the war, he had
numerous proposals made to him by projectors of every country and of every
kind, who wished to go to the land that floweth with milk and honey, America;
and among the rest, there was one who offered himself to be king. He
introduced his proposal to the Doctor by letter, which is now in the hands of
M. Beaumarchais, of Paris-stating, first, that as the Americans had dismissed
or sent away*[6] their King, that they would want another. Secondly, that
himself was a Norman. Thirdly, that he was of a more ancient family than the
Dukes of Normandy, and of a more honorable descent, his line having never been
bastardised. Fourthly, that there was already a precedent in England of kings
coming out of Normandy, and on these grounds he rested his offer, enjoining
that the Doctor would forward it to America. But as the Doctor neither did
this, nor yet sent him an answer, the projector wrote a second letter, in
which he did not, it is true, threaten to go over and conquer America, but
only with great dignity proposed that if his offer was not accepted, an
acknowledgment of about L30,000 might be made to him for his generosity! Now,
as all arguments respecting succession must necessarily connect that
succession with some beginning, Mr. Burke’s arguments on this subject go to
show that there is no English origin of kings, and that they are descendants
of the Norman line in right of the Conquest. It may, therefore, be of service
to his doctrine to make this story known, and to inform him, that in case of
that natural extinction to which all mortality is subject, Kings may again be
had from Normandy, on more reasonable terms than William the Conqueror; and
consequently, that the good people of England, at the revolution of 1688,
might have done much better, had such a generous Norman as this known their
wants, and they had known his. The chivalric character which Mr. Burke so much
admires, is certainly much easier to make a bargain with than a hard dealing
Dutchman. But to return to the matters of the constitution: The French
Constitution says, There shall be no titles; and, of consequence, all that
class of equivocal generation which in some countries is called “aristocracy”
and in others “nobility,” is done away, and the peer is exalted into the
Man.
Titles
are but nicknames, and every nickname is a title. The thing is perfectly
harmless in itself, but it marks a sort of foppery in the human character,
which degrades it. It reduces man into the diminutive of man in things which
are great, and the counterfeit of women in things which are little. It talks
about its fine blue ribbon like a girl, and shows its new garter like a child.
A certain writer, of some antiquity, says: “When I was a child, I thought as
a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
It
is, properly, from the elevated mind of France that the folly of titles has
fallen. It has outgrown the baby clothes of Count and Duke, and breeched
itself in manhood. France has not levelled, it has exalted. It has put down
the dwarf, to set up the man. The punyism of a senseless word like Duke, Count
or Earl has ceased to please. Even those who possessed them have disowned the
gibberish, and as they outgrew the rickets, have despised the rattle. The
genuine mind of man, thirsting for its native home, society, contemns the
gewgaws that separate him from it. Titles are like circles drawn by the
magician’s wand, to contract the sphere of man’s felicity. He lives
immured within the Bastille of a word, and surveys at a distance the envied
life of man.
Is
it, then, any wonder that titles should fall in France? Is it not a greater
wonder that they should be kept up anywhere? What are they? What is their worth, and “what is their amount?” When we
think or speak of a Judge or a General, we associate with it the ideas of
office and character; we think of gravity in one and bravery in the other; but
when we use the word merely as a title, no ideas associate with it. Through
all the vocabulary of Adam there is not such an animal as a Duke or a Count;
neither can we connect any certain ideas with the words. Whether they mean
strength or weakness, wisdom or folly, a child or a man, or the rider or the
horse, is all equivocal. What
respect then can be paid to that which describes nothing, and which means
nothing? Imagination has given figure and character to centaurs, satyrs, and
down to all the fairy tribe; but titles baffle even the powers of fancy, and
are a chimerical nondescript.
But
this is not all. If a whole country is disposed to hold them in contempt, all
their value is gone, and none will own them. It is common opinion only that
makes them anything, or nothing, or worse than nothing. There is no occasion
to take titles away, for they take themselves away when society concurs to
ridicule them. This species of imaginary consequence has visibly declined in
every part of Europe, and it hastens to its exit as the world of reason
continues to rise. There was a time when the lowest class of what are called
nobility was more thought of than the highest is now, and when a man in armour
riding throughout Christendom in quest of adventures was more stared at than a
modern Duke. The world has seen this folly fall, and it has fallen by being
laughed at, and the farce of titles will follow its fate. The patriots of
France have discovered in good time that rank and dignity in society must take
a new ground. The old one has fallen through. It must now take the substantial
ground of character, instead of the chimerical ground of titles; and they have
brought their titles to the altar, and made of them a burnt-offering to
Reason.
If
no mischief had annexed itself to the folly of titles they would not have been
worth a serious and formal destruction, such as the National Assembly have
decreed them; and this makes it necessary to enquire farther into the nature
and character of aristocracy.
That,
then, which is called aristocracy in some countries and nobility in others
arose out of the governments founded upon conquest. It was originally a
military order for the purpose of supporting military government (for such
were all governments founded in conquest); and to keep up a succession of this
order for the purpose for which it was established, all the younger branches
of those families were disinherited and the law of primogenitureship set up.
The
nature and character of aristocracy shows itself to us in this law. It is the
law against every other law of nature, and Nature herself calls for its
destruction. Establish family justice, and aristocracy falls. By the
aristocratical law of primogenitureship, in a family of six children five are
exposed. Aristocracy has never more than one child. The rest are begotten to
be devoured. They are thrown to the cannibal for prey, and the natural parent
prepares the unnatural repast.
As
everything which is out of nature in man affects, more or less, the interest
of society, so does this. All the children which the aristocracy disowns
(which are all except the eldest) are, in general, cast like orphans on a
parish, to be provided for by the public, but at a greater charge. Unnecessary
offices and places in governments and courts are created at the expense of the
public to maintain them.
With
what kind of parental reflections can the father or mother contemplate their
younger offspring? By nature they are children, and by marriage they are
heirs; but by aristocracy they are bastards and orphans. They are the flesh
and blood of their parents in the one line, and nothing akin to them in the
other. To restore, therefore, parents to their children, and children to their
parents relations to each other, and man to society- and to exterminate the
monster aristocracy, root and branch- the French Constitution has destroyed
the law of Primogenitureship. Here then lies the monster; and Mr.
Burke, if he pleases, may write its epitaph.
Hitherto
we have considered aristocracy chiefly in one point of view.
We have now to consider it in another. But whether we view it before or
behind, or sideways, or any way else, domestically or publicly, it is still a
monster.
In
France aristocracy had one feature less in its countenance than what it has in
some other countries. It did not compose a body of hereditary legislators. It
was not “’a corporation of aristocracy, for such I have heard M. de la
Fayette describe an English House of Peers. Let us then examine the grounds
upon which the French Constitution has resolved against having such a House in
France.
Because,
in the first place, as is already mentioned, aristocracy is kept up by family
tyranny and injustice.
Secondly.
Because there is an unnatural unfitness in an aristocracy to be legislators
for a nation. Their ideas of distributive justice are corrupted at the very
source. They begin life by trampling on all their younger brothers and
sisters, and relations of every kind, and are taught and educated so to do.
With what ideas of justice or honour can that man enter a house of
legislation, who absorbs in his own person the inheritance of a whole family
of children or doles out to them some pitiful portion with the insolence of a
gift?
Thirdly.
Because the idea of hereditary legislators is as inconsistent as that of
hereditary judges, or hereditary juries; and as absurd as an hereditary
mathematician, or an hereditary wise man; and as ridiculous as an hereditary
poet laureate.
Fourthly.
Because a body of men, holding themselves accountable to nobody, ought not to
be trusted by anybody.
Fifthly.
Because it is continuing the uncivilised principle of governments founded in
conquest, and the base idea of man having property in man, and governing him
by personal right.
Sixthly.
Because aristocracy has a tendency to deteriorate the human species. By the
universal economy of nature it is known, and by the instance of the Jews it is
proved, that the human species has a tendency to degenerate, in any small
number of persons, when separated from the general stock of society, and
inter-marrying constantly with each other. It defeats even its pretended end,
and becomes in time the opposite of what is noble in man. Mr. Burke talks of
nobility; let him show what it is. The greatest characters the world have
known have arisen on the democratic floor. Aristocracy has not been able to
keep a proportionate pace with democracy. The artificial Noble shrinks into a
dwarf before the Noble of Nature; and in the few instances of those (for there
are some in all countries) in whom nature, as by a miracle, has survived in
aristocracy, Those Men Despise It.- But it is time to proceed to a new
subject.
The
French Constitution has reformed the condition of the clergy. It has raised
the income of the lower and middle classes, and taken from the higher. None
are now less than twelve hundred livres (fifty pounds sterling), nor any
higher than two or three thousand pounds.
What will Mr. Burke place against this? Hear what he says.
He
says: “That the people of England can see without pain or grudging, an
archbishop precede a duke; they can see a Bishop of Durham, or a Bishop of
Winchester in possession of L10,000 a-year; and cannot see why it is in worse
hands than estates to a like amount, in the hands of this earl or that squire.”
And Mr. Burke offers this as an example to France.
As
to the first part, whether the archbishop precedes the duke, or the duke the
bishop, it is, I believe, to the people in general, somewhat like Sternhold
and Hopkins, or Hopkins and Sternhold; you may put which you please first; and
as I confess that I do not understand the merits of this case, I will not
contest it with Mr. Burke.
But
with respect to the latter, I have something to say. Mr. Burke has not put the
case right. The comparison is out of order, by being put between the bishop
and the earl or the squire. It ought to be put between the bishop and the
curate, and then it will stand thus:- “The people of England can see without
pain or grudging, a Bishop of Durham, or a Bishop of Winchester, in possession
of ten thousand pounds a-year, and a curate on thirty or forty pounds a-year,
or less.” No, sir, they certainly do not see those things without great pain
or grudging. It is a case that applies itself to every man’s sense of
justice, and is one among many that calls aloud for a constitution.
In
France the cry of “the church! the church!” was repeated as often as in
Mr. Burke’s book, and as loudly as when the Dissenters’ Bill was before
the English Parliament; but the generality of the French clergy were not to be
deceived by this cry any longer. They knew that whatever the pretence might
be, it was they who were one of the principal objects of it. It was the cry of
the high beneficed clergy, to prevent any regulation of income taking place
between those of ten thousand pounds a-year and the parish priest. They
therefore joined their case to those of every other oppressed class of men,
and by this union obtained redress.
The
French Constitution has abolished tythes, that source of perpetual discontent
between the tythe-holder and the parishioner.
When land is held on tythe, it is in the condition of an estate held
between two parties; the one receiving one-tenth, and the other nine-tenths of
the produce: and consequently, on principles of equity, if the estate can be
improved, and made to produce by that improvement double or treble what it did
before, or in any other ratio, the expense of such improvement ought to be
borne in like proportion between the parties who are to share the produce. But
this is not the case in tythes: the farmer bears the whole expense, and the
tythe-holder takes a tenth of the improvement, in addition to the original
tenth, and by this means gets the value of two-tenths instead of one. This is
another case that calls for a constitution.
The
French Constitution hath abolished or renounced Toleration and Intolerance
also, and hath established Universal Right Of Conscience.
Toleration
is not the opposite of Intolerance, but is the counterfeit of it. Both are
despotisms. The one assumes to itself the right of withholding Liberty of
Conscience, and the other of granting it. The one is the Pope armed with fire
and faggot, and the other is the Pope selling or granting indulgences. The
former is church and state, and the latter is church and traffic.
But
Toleration may be viewed in a much stronger light. Man worships not himself,
but his Maker; and the liberty of conscience which he claims is not for the
service of himself, but of his God. In this case, therefore, we must
necessarily have the associated idea of two things; the mortal who renders the
worship, and the Immortal Being who is worshipped. Toleration, therefore,
places itself, not between man and man, nor between church and church, nor
between one denomination of religion and another, but between God and man;
between the being who worships, and the Being who is worshipped; and by the
same act of assumed authority which it tolerates man to pay his worship, it
presumptuously and blasphemously sets itself up to tolerate the Almighty to
receive it.
Were
a bill brought into any Parliament, entitled, “An Act to tolerate or grant
liberty to the Almighty to receive the worship of a Jew or Turk,” or “to
prohibit the Almighty from receiving it,” all men would startle and call it
blasphemy. There would be an uproar. The
presumption of toleration in religious matters would then present itself
unmasked; but the presumption is not the less because the name of “Man”
only appears to those laws, for the associated idea of the worshipper and the
worshipped cannot be separated. Who then art thou, vain dust and ashes! by
whatever name thou art called, whether a King, a Bishop, a Church, or a State,
a Parliament, or anything else, that obtrudest thine insignificance between
the soul of man and its Maker? Mind thine own concerns. If he believes not as
thou believest, it is a proof that thou believest not as he believes, and
there is no earthly power can determine between you.
With
respect to what are called denominations of religion, if every one is left to
judge of its own religion, there is no such thing as a religion that is wrong;
but if they are to judge of each other’s religion, there is no such thing as
a religion that is right; and therefore all the world is right, or all the
world is wrong. But with respect to religion itself, without regard to names,
and as directing itself from the universal family of mankind to the Divine
object of all adoration, it is man bringing to his Maker the fruits of his
heart; and though those fruits may differ from each other like the fruits of
the earth, the grateful tribute of every one is accepted.
A
Bishop of Durham, or a Bishop of Winchester, or the archbishop who heads the
dukes, will not refuse a tythe-sheaf of wheat because it is not a cock of hay,
nor a cock of hay because it is not a sheaf of wheat; nor a pig, because it is
neither one nor the other; but these same persons, under the figure of an
established church, will not permit their Maker to receive the varied tythes
of man’s devotion.
One
of the continual choruses of Mr. Burke’s book is “Church and State.” He
does not mean some one particular church, or some one particular state, but
any church and state; and he uses the term as a general figure to hold forth
the political doctrine of always uniting the church with the state in every
country, and he censures the National Assembly for not having done this in
France. Let us bestow a few thoughts on this subject.
All
religions are in their nature kind and benign, and united with principles of
morality. They could not have made proselytes at first by professing anything
that was vicious, cruel, persecuting, or immoral. Like everything else, they
had their beginning; and they proceeded by persuasion, exhortation, and
example. How then is it that they lose their native mildness, and become
morose and intolerant?
It
proceeds from the connection which Mr. Burke recommends. By engendering the
church with the state, a sort of mule-animal, capable only of destroying, and
not of breeding up, is produced, called the Church established by Law. It is a
stranger, even from its birth, to any parent mother, on whom it is begotten,
and whom in time it kicks out and destroys.
The
inquisition in Spain does not proceed from the religion originally professed,
but from this mule-animal, engendered between the church and the state. The
burnings in Smithfield proceeded from the same heterogeneous production; and
it was the regeneration of this strange animal in England afterwards, that
renewed rancour and irreligion among the inhabitants, and that drove the
people called Quakers and Dissenters to America. Persecution is not an
original feature in any religion; but it is alway the strongly-marked feature
of all law-religions, or religions established by law. Take away the
law-establishment, and every religion re-assumes its original benignity. In
America, a catholic priest is a good citizen, a good character, and a good
neighbour; an episcopalian minister is of the same description: and this
proceeds independently of the men, from there being no law-establishment in
America.
If
also we view this matter in a temporal sense, we shall see the ill effects it
has had on the prosperity of nations. The union of church and state has
impoverished Spain. The revoking the edict of Nantes drove the silk
manufacture from that country into England; and church and state are now
driving the cotton manufacture from England to America and France. Let then
Mr. Burke continue to preach his antipolitical doctrine of Church and State.
It will do some good. The National Assembly will not follow his advice, but
will benefit by his folly. It was by observing the ill effects of it in
England, that America has been warned against it; and it is by experiencing
them in France, that the National Assembly have abolished it, and, like
America, have established Universal Right Of Conscience, And Universal Right
Of Citizenship.*[7]
I
will here cease the comparison with respect to the principles of the French
Constitution, and conclude this part of the subject with a few observations on
the organisation of the formal parts of the French and English governments.
The
executive power in each country is in the hands of a person styled the King;
but the French Constitution distinguishes between the King and the Sovereign:
It considers the station of King as official, and places Sovereignty in the
nation.
The
representatives of the nation, who compose the National Assembly, and who are
the legislative power, originate in and from the people by election, as an
inherent right in the people.- In England it is otherwise; and this arises
from the original establishment of what is called its monarchy; for, as by the
conquest all the rights of the people or the nation were absorbed into the
hands of the Conqueror, and who added the title of King to that of Conqueror,
those same matters which in France are now held as rights in the people, or in
the nation, are held in England as grants from what is called the crown. The
Parliament in England, in both its branches, was erected by patents from the
descendants of the Conqueror. The House of Commons did not originate as a
matter of right in the people to delegate or elect, but as a grant or boon.
By
the French Constitution the nation is always named before the king. The third
article of the declaration of rights says: “The nation is essentially the
source (or fountain) of all sovereignty.” Mr. Burke argues that in England a
king is the fountain- that he is the fountain of all honour. But as this idea
is evidently descended from the conquest I shall make no other remark upon it,
than that it is the nature of conquest to turn everything upside down; and as
Mr. Burke will not be refused the
privilege of speaking twice, and as there are but two parts in the figure, the
fountain and the spout, he will be right the second time.
The
French Constitution puts the legislative before the executive, the law before
the king; la loi, le roi. This also is in the natural order of things, because
laws must have existence before they can have execution.
A
king in France does not, in addressing himself to the National Assembly, say,
“My Assembly,” similar to the phrase used in England of my “Parliament”;
neither can he use it consistently with the constitution, nor could it be
admitted. There may be propriety in the use of it in England, because as is
before mentioned, both Houses of Parliament originated from what is called the
crown by patent or boon- and not from the inherent rights of the people, as
the National Assembly does in France, and whose name designates its origin.
The
President of the National Assembly does not ask the King to grant to the
Assembly liberty of speech, as is the case with the English House of Commons.
The constitutional dignity of the National Assembly cannot debase itself.
Speech is, in the first place, one of the natural rights of man always
retained; and with respect to the National Assembly the use of it is their
duty, and the nation is their authority. They were elected by the greatest
body of men exercising the right of election the European world ever saw. They
sprung not from the filth of rotten boroughs, nor are they the vassal
representatives of aristocratical ones. Feeling the proper dignity of their
character they support it. Their Parliamentary language, whether for or
against a question, is free, bold and manly, and extends to all the parts and
circumstances of the case. If any matter or subject respecting the executive
department or the person who presides in it (the king) comes before them it is
debated on with the spirit of men, and in the language of gentlemen; and their
answer or their address is returned in the same style. They stand not aloof
with the gaping vacuity of vulgar ignorance, nor bend with the cringe of
sycophantic insignificance. The graceful pride of truth knows no extremes, and
preserves, in every latitude of life, the right-angled character of man.
Let
us now look to the other side of the question. In the addresses of the English
Parliaments to their kings we see neither the intrepid spirit of the old
Parliaments of France, nor the serene dignity of the present National
Assembly; neither do we see in them anything of the style of English manners,
which border somewhat on bluntness. Since
then they are neither of foreign extraction, nor naturally of English
production, their origin must be sought for elsewhere, and that origin is the
Norman Conquest. They are evidently of the vassalage class of manners, and
emphatically mark the prostrate distance that exists in no other condition of
men than between the conqueror and the conquered. That this vassalage idea and
style of speaking was not got rid of even at the Revolution of 1688, is
evident from the declaration of Parliament to William and Mary in these words:
“We do most humbly and faithfully submit ourselves, our heirs and
posterities, for ever.” Submission is wholly a vassalage term, repugnant to
the dignity of freedom, and an echo of the language used at the Conquest.
As
the estimation of all things is given by comparison, the Revolution of 1688,
however from circumstances 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 labours, “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, for ever.
But
there is a truth that ought to be made known; I have had the opportunity of
seeing it; which is, that notwithstanding appearances, there is not any
description of men that despise monarchy so much as courtiers. But they well
know, that if it were seen by others, as it is seen by them, the juggle could
not be kept up; they are in the condition of men who get their living by a
show, and to whom the folly of that show is so familiar that they ridicule it;
but were the audience to be made as wise in this respect as themselves, there
would be an end to the show and the profits with it. The difference between a
republican and a courtier with respect to monarchy, is that the one opposes
monarchy, believing it to be something; and the other laughs at it, knowing it
to be nothing.
As
I used sometimes to correspond with Mr. Burke believing him then to be a man
of sounder principles than his book shows him to be, I wrote to him last
winter from Paris, and gave him an account how prosperously matters were going
on. Among other subjects in that letter, I referred to the happy situation the
National Assembly were placed in; that they had taken ground on which their
moral duty and their political interest were united. They have not to hold out
a language which they do not themselves believe, for the fraudulent purpose of
making others believe it. Their station requires no artifice to support it,
and can only be maintained by enlightening mankind. It is not their interest
to cherish ignorance, but to dispel it. They are not in the case of a
ministerial or an opposition party in England, who, though they are opposed,
are still united to keep up the common mystery. The National Assembly must
throw open a magazine of light. It must show man the proper character of man;
and the nearer it can bring him to that standard, the stronger the National
Assembly becomes.
In
contemplating the French Constitution, we see in it a rational order of
things. The principles harmonise with the forms, and both with their origin.
It may perhaps be said as an excuse for bad forms, that they are nothing more
than forms; but this is a mistake. Forms grow out of principles, and operate
to continue the principles they grow from. It is impossible to practise a bad
form on anything but a bad principle. It cannot be ingrafted on a good one;
and wherever the forms in any government are bad, it is a certain indication
that the principles are bad also.
I
will here finally close this subject. I began it by remarking that Mr. Burke
had voluntarily declined going into a comparison of the English and French
Constitutions. He apologises (in page 241) for not doing it, by saying that he
had not time. Mr. Burke’s book was upwards of eight months in hand, and is
extended to a volume of three hundred and sixty-six pages. As his omission
does injury to his cause, his apology makes it worse; and men on the English
side of the water will begin to consider, whether there is not some radical
defect in what is called the English constitution, that made it necessary for
Mr. Burke to suppress the comparison, to avoid bringing it into view.
As
Mr. Burke has not written on constitutions so neither has he written on the
French Revolution. He gives no account of its commencement or its progress. He
only expresses his wonder. “It looks,” says he, “to me, as if I were in
a great crisis, not of the affairs of France alone, but of all Europe, perhaps
of more than Europe. All circumstances taken together, the French Revolution
is the most astonishing that has hitherto happened in the world.”
As
wise men are astonished at foolish things, and other people at wise ones, I
know not on which ground to account for Mr. Burke’s astonishment; but
certain it is, that he does not understand the French Revolution. It has
apparently burst forth like a creation from a chaos, but it is no more than
the consequence of a mental revolution priorily existing in France. The mind
of the nation had changed beforehand, and the new order of things has
naturally followed the new order of thoughts. I will here, as concisely as I
can, trace out the growth of the French Revolution, and mark the circumstances
that have contributed to produce it.
The
despotism of Louis XIV., united with the gaiety of his Court, and the gaudy
ostentation of his character, had so humbled, and at the same time so
fascinated the mind of France, that the people appeared to have lost all sense
of their own dignity, in contemplating that of their Grand Monarch; and the
whole reign of Louis XV., remarkable only for weakness and effeminacy, made no
other alteration than that of spreading a sort of lethargy over the nation,
from which it showed no disposition to rise.
The
only signs which appeared to the spirit of Liberty during those periods, are
to be found in the writings of the French philosophers. Montesquieu, President of the Parliament of Bordeaux, went as
far as a writer under a despotic government could well proceed; and being
obliged to divide himself between principle and prudence, his mind often
appears under a veil, and we ought to give him credit for more than he has
expressed.
Voltaire,
who was both the flatterer and the satirist of despotism, took another line.
His forte lay in exposing and ridiculing the superstitions which priest-craft,
united with state-craft, had interwoven with governments. It was not from the
purity of his principles, or his love of mankind (for satire and philanthropy
are not naturally concordant), but from his strong capacity of seeing folly in
its true shape, and his irresistible propensity to expose it, that he made
those attacks. They were, however, as formidable as if the motive had been
virtuous; and he merits the thanks rather than the esteem of mankind.
On
the contrary, we find in the writings of Rousseau, and the Abbe Raynal, a
loveliness of sentiment in favour of liberty, that excites respect, and
elevates the human faculties; but having raised this animation, they do not
direct its operation, and leave the mind in love with an object, without
describing the means of possessing it.
The
writings of Quesnay, Turgot, and the friends of those authors, are of the
serious kind; but they laboured under the same disadvantage with Montesquieu;
their writings abound with moral maxims of government, but are rather directed
to economise and reform the administration of the government, than the
government itself.
But
all those writings and many others had their weight; and by the different
manner in which they treated the subject of government, Montesquieu by his
judgment and knowledge of laws, Voltaire by his wit, Rousseau and Raynal by
their animation, and Quesnay and Turgot by their moral maxims and systems of
economy, readers of every class met with something to their taste, and a
spirit of political inquiry began to diffuse itself through the nation at the
time the dispute between England and the then colonies of America broke out.
In
the war which France afterwards engaged in, it is very well known that the
nation appeared to be before-hand with the French ministry. Each of them had its view; but those views were directed to
different objects; the one sought liberty, and the other retaliation on
England. The French officers and soldiers who after this went to America, were
eventually placed in the school of Freedom, and learned the practice as well
as the principles of it by heart.
As
it was impossible to separate the military events which took place in America
from the principles of the American Revolution, the publication of those
events in France necessarily connected themselves with the principles which
produced them. Many of the facts were in themselves principles; such as the
declaration of American Independence, and the treaty of alliance between
France and America, which recognised the natural rights of man, and justified
resistance to oppression.
The
then Minister of France, Count Vergennes, was not the friend of America; and
it is both justice and gratitude to say, that it was the Queen of France who
gave the cause of America a fashion at the French Court. Count Vergennes was
the personal and social friend of Dr. Franklin;
and the Doctor had obtained, by his sensible gracefulness, a sort of influence
over him; but with respect to principles Count Vergennes was a despot.
The
situation of Dr. Franklin, as Minister from America to France, should be taken
into the chain of circumstances. The diplomatic character is of itself the
narrowest sphere of society that man can act in. It forbids intercourse by the
reciprocity of suspicion; and a diplomatic is a sort of unconnected atom,
continually repelling and repelled. But this was not the case with Dr.
Franklin. He was not the diplomatic of a Court, but of Man. His character as a
philosopher had been long established, and his circle of society in France was
universal.
Count
Vergennes resisted for a considerable time the publication in France of
American constitutions, translated into the French language: but even in this
he was obliged to give way to public opinion, and a sort of propriety in
admitting to appear what he had undertaken to defend. The American
constitutions were to liberty what a grammar is to language: they define its
parts of speech, and practically construct them into syntax.
The
peculiar situation of the then Marquis de la Fayette is another link in the
great chain. He served in America as an American officer under a commission of
Congress, and by the universality of his acquaintance was in close friendship
with the civil government of America, as well as with the military line. He
spoke the language of the country, entered into the discussions on the
principles of government, and was always a welcome friend at any election.
When
the war closed, a vast reinforcement to the cause of Liberty spread itself
over France, by the return of the French officers and soldiers. A knowledge of
the practice was then joined to the theory; and all that was wanting to give
it real existence was opportunity. Man
cannot, properly speaking, make circumstances for his purpose, but he always
has it in his power to improve them when they occur, and this was the case in
France.
M.
Neckar was displaced in May, 1781; and by the ill-management of the finances
afterwards, and particularly during the extravagant administration of M.
Calonne, the revenue of France, which was nearly twenty-four millions sterling
per year, was become unequal to the expenditure, not because the revenue had
decreased, but because the expenses had increased; and this was a circumstance
which the nation laid hold of to bring forward a Revolution. The English
Minister, Mr. Pitt, has
frequently alluded to the state of the French finances in his budgets, without
understanding the subject. Had the French Parliaments been as ready to
register edicts for new taxes as an English Parliament is to grant them, there
had been no derangement in the finances, nor yet any Revolution; but this will
better explain itself as I proceed.
It
will be necessary here to show how taxes were formerly raised in France. The
King, or rather the Court or Ministry acting under the use of that name,
framed the edicts for taxes at their own discretion, and sent them to the
Parliaments to be registered; for until they were registered by the
Parliaments they were not operative. Disputes had long existed between the
Court and the Parliaments with respect to the extent of the Parliament’s
authority on this head. The Court insisted that the authority of Parliaments
went no farther than to remonstrate or show reasons against the tax, reserving
to itself the right of determining whether the reasons were well or
ill-founded; and in consequence thereof, either to withdraw the edict as a
matter of choice, or to order it to be unregistered as a matter of authority.
The Parliaments on their part insisted that they had not only a right to
remonstrate, but to reject; and on this ground they were always supported by
the nation.
But
to return to the order of my narrative. M. Calonne wanted money:
and
as he knew the sturdy disposition of the Parliaments with respect to new
taxes, he ingeniously sought either to approach them by a more gentle means
than that of direct authority, or to get over their heads by a manoeuvre; and
for this purpose he revived the project of assembling a body of men from the
several provinces, under the style of an “Assembly of the Notables,” or
men of note, who met in 1787, and who were either to recommend taxes to the
Parliaments, or to act as a Parliament themselves. An Assembly under this name
had been called in 1617.
As
we are to view this as the first practical step towards the Revolution, it
will be proper to enter into some particulars respecting it. The Assembly of
the Notables has in some places been mistaken for the States-General, but was
wholly a different body, the States-General being always by election. The
persons who composed the Assembly of the Notables were all nominated by the
king, and consisted of one hundred and forty members. But as M. Calonne could
not depend upon a majority of this Assembly in his favour, he very ingeniously
arranged them in such a manner as to make forty-four a majority of one hundred
and forty; to effect this he disposed of them into seven separate committees,
of twenty members each. Every general question was to be decided, not by a
majority of persons, but by a majority of committee, and as eleven votes would
make a majority in a committee, and four committees a majority of seven, M.
Calonne had good reason to conclude that as forty-four would determine any
general question he could not be outvoted. But all his plans deceived him, and
in the event became his overthrow.
The
then Marquis de la Fayette was placed in the second committee, of which the
Count D’Artois was president, and as money matters were the object, it
naturally brought into view every circumstance connected with it. M. de la
Fayette made a verbal charge against Calonne for selling crown lands to the
amount of two millions of livres, in a manner that appeared to be unknown to
the king. The Count D’Artois (as if to intimidate, for the Bastille was then
in being) asked the Marquis if he would render the charge in writing? He
replied that he would. The Count D’Artois did not demand it, but brought a
message from the king to that purport. M. de la Fayette then delivered in his
charge in writing, to be given to the king, undertaking to support it. No
farther proceedings were had upon this affair, but M. Calonne was soon after
dismissed by the king and set off to England.
As
M. de la Fayette, from the experience of what he had seen in America, was
better acquainted with the science of civil government than the generality of
the members who composed the Assembly of the Notables could then be, the brunt
of the business fell considerably to his share. The plan of those who had a
constitution in view was to contend with the Court on the ground of taxes, and
some of them openly professed their object. Disputes frequently arose between
Count D’Artois and M. de la Fayette upon various subjects. With respect to
the arrears already incurred the latter proposed to remedy them by
accommodating the expenses to the revenue instead of the revenue to the
expenses; and as objects of reform he proposed to abolish the Bastille and all
the State prisons throughout the nation (the keeping of which was attended
with great expense), and to suppress Lettres de Cachet; but those matters were
not then much attended to, and with respect to Lettres de Cachet, a majority
of the Nobles appeared to be in favour of them.
On
the subject of supplying the Treasury by new taxes the Assembly declined
taking the matter on themselves, concurring in the opinion that they had not
authority. In a debate on this subject M. de la Fayette said that raising
money by taxes could only be done by a National Assembly, freely elected by
the people, and acting as their representatives. Do you mean, said the Count D’Artois,
the States-General? M. de la Fayette replied that he did. Will you, said the
Count D’Artois, sign what you say to be given to the king? The other replied
that he would not only do this but that he would go farther, and say that the
effectual mode would be for the king to agree to the establishment of a
constitution.
As
one of the plans had thus failed, that of getting the Assembly to act as a
Parliament, the other came into view, that of recommending.
On this subject the Assembly agreed to recommend two new taxes to be
unregistered by the Parliament: the one a stamp-tax and the other a
territorial tax, or sort of land-tax. The two have been estimated at about
five millions sterling per annum. We have now to turn our attention to the
Parliaments, on whom the business was again devolving.
The
Archbishop of Thoulouse (since Archbishop of Sens, and now a Cardinal), was
appointed to the administration of the finances soon after the dismission of
Calonne. He was also made Prime Minister, an office that did not always exist
in France. When this office did not exist, the chief of each of the principal
departments transacted business immediately with the King, but when a Prime
Minister was appointed they did business only with him. The Archbishop arrived
to more state authority than any minister since the Duke de Choiseul, and the
nation was strongly disposed in his favour; but by a line of conduct scarcely
to be accounted for he perverted every opportunity, turned out a despot, and
sunk into disgrace, and a Cardinal.
The
Assembly of the Notables having broken up, the minister sent the edicts for
the two new taxes recommended by the Assembly to the Parliaments to be
unregistered. They of course came first before the Parliament of Paris, who
returned for answer: “that with such a revenue as the nation then supported
the name of taxes ought not to be mentioned but for the purpose of reducing
them”; and threw both the edicts out.*[8] On this refusal the Parliament was
ordered to Versailles, where, in the usual form, the King held what under the
old government was called a Bed of justice; and the two edicts were
unregistered in presence of the Parliament by an order of State, in the manner
mentioned, earlier. On this the Parliament immediately returned to Paris,
renewed their session in form, and ordered the enregistering to be struck out,
declaring that everything done at Versailles was illegal. All the members of
the Parliament were then served with Lettres de Cachet, and exiled to Troyes;
but as they continued as inflexible in exile as before, and as vengeance did
not supply the place of taxes, they were after a short time recalled to Paris.
The
edicts were again tendered to them, and the Count D’Artois undertook to act
as representative of the King. For this purpose he came from Versailles to
Paris, in a train of procession; and the Parliament were assembled to receive
him. But show and parade had lost their influence in France; and whatever
ideas of importance he might set off with, he had to return with those of
mortification and disappointment. On alighting from his carriage to ascend the
steps of the Parliament House, the crowd (which was numerously collected)
threw out trite expressions, saying: “This is Monsieur D’Artois, who wants
more of our money to spend.” The marked disapprobation which he saw
impressed him with apprehensions, and the word Aux armes! (To arms!) was given
out by the officer of the guard who attended him. It was so loudly
vociferated, that it echoed through the avenues of the house, and produced a
temporary confusion. I was then standing in one of the apartments through
which he had to pass, and could not avoid reflecting how wretched was the
condition of a disrespected man.
He
endeavoured to impress the Parliament by great words, and opened his authority
by saying, “The King, our Lord and Master.” The Parliament received him
very coolly, and with their usual determination not to register the taxes: and
in this manner the interview ended.
After
this a new subject took place: In the various debates and contests which arose
between the Court and the Parliaments on the subject of taxes, the Parliament
of Paris at last declared that although it had been customary for Parliaments
to enregister edicts for taxes as a matter of convenience, the right belonged
only to the States-General; and that, therefore, the Parliament could no
longer with propriety continue to debate on what it had not authority to act.
The King after this came to Paris and held a meeting with the Parliament, in
which he continued from ten in the morning till about six in the evening, and,
in a manner that appeared to proceed from him as if unconsulted upon with the
Cabinet or Ministry, gave his word to the Parliament that the States-General
should be convened.
But
after this another scene arose, on a ground different from all the former. The
Minister and the Cabinet were averse to calling the States-General. They well
knew that if the States-General were assembled, themselves must fall; and as
the King had not mentioned any time, they hit on a project calculated to
elude, without appearing to oppose.
For
this purpose, the Court set about making a sort of constitution itself. It was
principally the work of M. Lamoignon, the Keeper of the Seals, who afterwards
shot himself. This new arrangement consisted in establishing a body under the
name of a Cour Pleniere, or Full Court, in which were invested all the powers
that the Government might have occasion to make use of. The persons composing
this Court were to be nominated by the King; the contended right of taxation
was given up on the part of the King, and a new criminal code of laws and law
proceedings was substituted in the room of the former. The thing, in many
points, contained better principles than those upon which the Government had
hitherto been administered; but with respect to the Cour Pleniere, it was no
other than a medium through which despotism was to pass, without appearing to
act directly from itself.
The
Cabinet had high expectations from their new contrivance. The people who were
to compose the Cour Pleniere were already nominated; and as it was necessary
to carry a fair appearance, many of the best characters in the nation were
appointed among the number. It was to commence on May 8, 1788; but an
opposition arose to it on two grounds the one as to principle, the other as to
form.
On
the ground of Principle it was contended that Government had not a right to
alter itself, and that if the practice was once admitted it would grow into a
principle and be made a precedent for any future alterations the Government
might wish to establish: that the right of altering the Government was a
national right, and not a right of Government. And on the ground of form it
was contended that the Cour Pleniere was nothing more than a larger Cabinet.
The
then Duke de la Rochefoucault, Luxembourg, De Noailles, and many others,
refused to accept the nomination, and strenuously opposed the whole plan. When
the edict for establishing this new court was sent to the Parliaments to be
unregistered and put into execution, they resisted also. The Parliament of
Paris not only refused, but denied the authority; and the contest renewed
itself between the Parliament and the Cabinet more strongly than ever. While
the Parliament were sitting in debate on this subject, the Ministry ordered a
regiment of soldiers to surround the House and form a blockade. The members
sent out for beds and provisions, and lived as in a besieged citadel: and as
this had no effect, the commanding officer was ordered to enter the Parliament
House and seize them, which he did, and some of the principal members were
shut up in different prisons. About the same time a deputation of persons
arrived from the province of Brittany to remonstrate against the establishment
of the Cour Pleniere, and those the archbishop sent to the Bastille. But the
spirit of the nation was not to be overcome, and it was so fully sensible of
the strong ground it had taken- that of withholding taxes- that it contented
itself with keeping up a sort of quiet resistance, which effectually overthrew
all the plans at that time formed against it. The project of the Cour Pleniere
was at last obliged to be given up, and the Prime Minister not long afterwards
followed its fate, and M. Neckar was recalled into office.
The
attempt to establish the Cour Pleniere had an effect upon the nation which
itself did not perceive. It was a sort of new form of government that
insensibly served to put the old one out of sight and to unhinge it from the
superstitious authority of antiquity. It was Government dethroning Government;
and the old one, by attempting to make a new one, made a chasm.
The
failure of this scheme renewed the subject of convening the State-General; and
this gave rise to a new series of politics. There was no settled form for
convening the States-General: all that it positively meant was a deputation
from what was then called the Clergy, the Noblesse, and the Commons; but their
numbers or their proportions had not been always the same. They had been
convened only on extraordinary occasions, the last of which was in 1614; their
numbers were then in equal proportions, and they voted by orders.
It
could not well escape the sagacity of M. Neckar, that the mode of 1614 would
answer neither the purpose of the then government nor of the nation. As
matters were at that time circumstanced it would have been too contentious to
agree upon anything. The debates would have been endless upon privileges and
exemptions, in which neither the wants of the Government nor the wishes of the
nation for a Constitution would have been attended to. But as he did not
choose to take the decision upon himself, he summoned again the Assembly of
the Notables and referred it to them. This body was in general interested in
the decision, being chiefly of aristocracy and high-paid clergy, and they
decided in favor of the mode of 1614. This decision was against the sense of
the Nation, and also against the wishes of the Court; for the aristocracy
opposed itself to both and contended for privileges independent of either. The
subject was then taken up by the Parliament, who recommended that the number
of the Commons should be equal to the other two: and they should all sit in
one house and vote in one body. The number finally determined on was 1,200;
600 to be chosen by the Commons (and this was less than their proportion ought
to have been when their worth and consequence is considered on a national
scale), 300 by the Clergy, and 300 by the Aristocracy; but with respect to the
mode of assembling themselves, whether together or apart, or the manner in
which they should vote, those matters were referred.*[9]
The
election that followed was not a contested election, but an animated one. The
candidates were not men, but principles. Societies were formed in Paris, and
committees of correspondence and communication established throughout the
nation, for the purpose of enlightening the people, and explaining to them the
principles of civil government; and so orderly was the election conducted,
that it did not give rise even to the rumour of tumult.
The
States-General were to meet at Versailles in April 1789, but did not assemble
till May. They situated themselves in three separate chambers, or rather the
Clergy and Aristocracy withdrew each into a separate chamber. The majority of
the Aristocracy claimed what they called the privilege of voting as a separate
body, and of giving their consent or their negative in that manner; and many
of the bishops and the high-beneficed clergy claimed the same privilege on the
part of their Order.
The
Tiers Etat (as they were then called) disowned any knowledge of artificial
orders and artificial privileges; and they were not only resolute on this
point, but somewhat disdainful. They began to consider the Aristocracy as a
kind of fungus growing out of the corruption of society, that could not be
admitted even as a branch of it; and from the disposition the Aristocracy had
shown by upholding Lettres de Cachet, and in sundry other instances, it was
manifest that no constitution could be formed by admitting men in any other
character than as National Men.
After
various altercations on this head, the Tiers Etat or Commons (as they were
then called) declared themselves (on a motion made for that purpose by the
Abbe Sieyes) “The Representative Of The Nation; and that the two Orders
could be considered but as deputies of corporations, and could only have a
deliberate voice when they assembled in a national character with the national
representatives.” This proceeding extinguished the style of Etats Generaux,
or States-General, and erected it into the style it now bears, that of L’Assemblee
Nationale, or National Assembly.
This
motion was not made in a precipitate manner. It was the result of cool
deliberation, and concerned between the national representatives and the
patriotic members of the two chambers, who saw into the folly, mischief, and
injustice of artificial privileged distinctions. It was become evident, that
no constitution, worthy of being called by that name, could be established on
anything less than a national ground. The Aristocracy had hitherto opposed the
despotism of the Court, and affected the language of patriotism; but it
opposed it as its rival (as the English Barons opposed King John) and it now
opposed the nation from the same motives.
On
carrying this motion, the national representatives, as had been concerted,
sent an invitation to the two chambers, to unite with them in a national
character, and proceed to business. A majority of the clergy, chiefly of the
parish priests, withdrew from the clerical chamber, and joined the nation; and
forty-five from the other chamber joined in like manner. There is a sort of
secret history belonging to this last circumstance, which is necessary to its
explanation; it was not judged prudent that all the patriotic members of the
chamber styling itself the Nobles, should quit it at once; and in consequence
of this arrangement, they drew off by degrees, always leaving some, as well to
reason the case, as to watch the suspected. In a little time the numbers
increased from forty-five to eighty, and soon after to a greater number;
which, with the majority of the clergy, and the whole of the national
representatives, put the malcontents in a very diminutive condition.
The
King, who, very different from the general class called by that name, is a man
of a good heart, showed himself disposed to recommend a union of the three
chambers, on the ground the National Assembly had taken; but the malcontents
exerted themselves to prevent it, and began now to have another project in
view. Their numbers consisted of a majority of the aristocratical chamber, and
the minority of the clerical chamber, chiefly of bishops and high-beneficed
clergy; and these men were determined to put everything to issue, as well by
strength as by stratagem. They had no objection to a constitution; but it must
be such a one as themselves should dictate, and suited to their own views and
particular situations. On the other hand, the Nation disowned knowing anything
of them but as citizens, and was determined to shut out all such up-start
pretensions. The more aristocracy appeared, the more it was despised; there
was a visible imbecility and want of intellects in the majority, a sort of je
ne sais quoi, that while it affected to be more than citizen, was less than
man. It lost ground from contempt more than from hatred; and was rather jeered
at as an ass, than dreaded as a lion. This is the general character of
aristocracy, or what are called Nobles or Nobility, or rather No-ability, in
all countries.
The
plan of the malcontents consisted now of two things; either to deliberate and
vote by chambers (or orders), more especially on all questions respecting a
Constitution (by which the aristocratical chamber would have had a negative on
any article of the Constitution); or, in case they could not accomplish this
object, to overthrow the National Assembly entirely.
To
effect one or other of these objects they began to cultivate a friendship with
the despotism they had hitherto attempted to rival, and the Count D’Artois
became their chief. The king (who has since declared himself deceived into
their measures) held, according to the old form, a Bed of Justice, in which he
accorded to the deliberation and vote par tete (by head) upon several
subjects; but reserved the deliberation and vote upon all questions respecting
a constitution to the three chambers separately. This declaration of the king
was made against the advice of M. Neckar, who now began to perceive that he
was growing out of fashion at Court, and that another minister was in
contemplation.
As
the form of sitting in separate chambers was yet apparently kept up, though
essentially destroyed, the national representatives immediately after this
declaration of the King resorted to their own chambers to consult on a protest
against it; and the minority of the chamber (calling itself the Nobles), who
had joined the national cause, retired to a private house to consult in like
manner. The malcontents had by this time concerted their measures with the
court, which the Count D’Artois undertook to conduct; and as they saw from
the discontent which the declaration excited, and the opposition making
against it, that they could not obtain a control over the intended
constitution by a separate vote, they prepared themselves for their final
object- that of conspiring against the National Assembly, and overthrowing it.
The
next morning the door of the chamber of the National Assembly was shut against
them, and guarded by troops; and the members were refused admittance. On this
they withdrew to a tennis-ground in the neighbourhood of Versailles, as the
most convenient place they could find, and, after renewing their session, took
an oath never to separate from each other, under any circumstance whatever,
death excepted, until they had established a constitution. As the experiment
of shutting up the house had no other effect than that of producing a closer
connection in the members, it was opened again the next day, and the public
business recommenced in the usual place.
We
are now to have in view the forming of the new ministry, which was to
accomplish the overthrow of the National Assembly. But as force would be
necessary, orders were issued to assemble thirty thousand troops, the command
of which was given to Broglio, one of the intended new ministry, who was
recalled from the country for this purpose. But as some management was
necessary to keep this plan concealed till the moment it should be ready for
execution, it is to this policy that a declaration made by Count D’Artois
must be attributed, and which is here proper to be introduced.
It
could not but occur while the malcontents continued to resort to their
chambers separate from the National Assembly, more jealousy would be excited
than if they were mixed with it, and that the plot might be suspected. But as
they had taken their ground, and now wanted a pretence for quitting it, it was
necessary that one should be devised. This was effectually accomplished by a
declaration made by the Count D’Artois: “That if they took not a Part in
the National Assembly, the life of the king would be endangered”: on which
they quitted their chambers, and mixed with the Assembly, in one body.
At
the time this declaration was made, it was generally treated as a piece of
absurdity in Count D’Artois calculated merely to relieve the outstanding
members of the two chambers from the diminutive situation they were put in;
and if nothing more had followed, this conclusion would have been good. But as
things best explain themselves by their events, this apparent union was only a
cover to the machinations which were secretly going on; and the declaration
accommodated itself to answer that purpose. In a little time the National
Assembly found itself surrounded by troops, and thousands more were daily
arriving. On this a very strong
declaration was made by the National Assembly to the King, remonstrating on
the impropriety of the measure, and demanding the reason. The King, who was
not in the secret of this business, as himself afterwards declared, gave
substantially for answer, that he had no other object in view than to preserve
the public tranquility, which appeared to be much disturbed.
But
in a few days from this time the plot unravelled itself M. Neckar and the
ministry were displaced, and a new one formed of the enemies of the
Revolution; and Broglio, with between twenty-five and thirty thousand foreign
troops, was arrived to support them. The mask was now thrown off, and matters
were come to a crisis. The event was that in a space of three days the new
ministry and their abettors found it prudent to fly the nation; the Bastille
was taken, and Broglio and his foreign troops dispersed, as is already related
in the former part of this work.
There
are some curious circumstances in the history of this short-lived ministry,
and this short-lived attempt at a counter-revolution. The Palace of
Versailles, where the Court was sitting, was not more than four hundred yards
distant from the hall where the National Assembly was sitting. The two places
were at this moment like the separate headquarters of two combatant armies;
yet the Court was as perfectly ignorant of the information which had arrived
from Paris to the National Assembly, as if it had resided at an hundred miles
distance. The then Marquis de la Fayette, who (as has been already mentioned)
was chosen to preside in the National Assembly on this particular occasion,
named by order of the Assembly three successive deputations to the king, on
the day and up to the evening on which the Bastille was taken, to inform and
confer with him on the state of affairs; but the ministry, who knew not so
much as that it was attacked, precluded all communication, and were solacing
themselves how dextrously they had succeeded; but in a few hours the accounts
arrived so thick and fast that they had to start from their desks and run.
Some set off in one disguise, and some in another, and none in their own
character. Their anxiety now was to outride the news, lest they should be
stopt, which, though it flew fast, flew not so fast as themselves.
It
is worth remarking that the National Assembly neither pursued those fugitive
conspirators, nor took any notice of them, nor sought to retaliate in any
shape whatever. Occupied with establishing a constitution founded on the
Rights of Man and the Authority of the People, the only authority on which
Government has a right to exist in any country, the National Assembly felt
none of those mean passions which mark the character of impertinent
governments, founding themselves on their own authority, or on the absurdity
of hereditary succession. It is the faculty of the human mind to become what
it contemplates, and to act in unison with its object.
The
conspiracy being thus dispersed, one of the first works of the National
Assembly, instead of vindictive proclamations, as has been the case with other
governments, was to publish a declaration of the Rights of Man, as the basis
on which the new constitution was to be built, and which is here subjoined:
Declaration
Of
The
Rights
Of Man And Of Citizens
By
The National Assembly Of France
The
representatives of the people of France, formed into a National Assembly,
considering that ignorance, neglect, or contempt of human rights, are the sole
causes of public misfortunes and corruptions of Government, have resolved to
set forth in a solemn declaration, these natural, imprescriptible, and
inalienable rights: that this declaration being constantly present to the
minds of the members of the body social, they may be forever kept attentive to
their rights and their duties; that the acts of the legislative and executive
powers of Government, being capable of being every moment compared with the
end of political institutions, may be more respected; and also, that the
future claims of the citizens, being directed by simple and incontestable
principles, may always tend to the maintenance of the Constitution, and the
general happiness.
For
these reasons the National Assembly doth recognize and declare, in the
presence of the Supreme Being, and with the hope of his blessing and favour,
the following sacred rights of men and of citizens:
One:
Men are born, and always continue, free and equal in respect of their Rights.
Civil distinctions, therefore, can be founded only on Public Utility.
Two:
The end of all Political associations is the Preservation of the Natural and
Imprescriptible Rights of Man; and these rights are Liberty, Property,
Security, and Resistance of Oppression.
Three:
The Nation is essentially the source of all Sovereignty; nor can any
individual, or any body of Men, be entitled to any authority which is not
expressly derived from it.
Four:
Political Liberty consists in the power of doing whatever does not Injure
another. The exercise of the Natural Rights of every Man, has no other limits
than those which are necessary to secure to every other Man the Free exercise
of the same Rights; and these limits are determinable only by the Law.
Five:
The Law ought to Prohibit only actions hurtful to Society. What is not
Prohibited by the Law should not be hindered; nor should anyone be compelled
to that which the Law does not Require.
Six:
the Law is an expression of the Will of the Community. All Citizens have a
right to concur, either personally or by their Representatives, in its
formation. It Should be the same to all, whether it protects or punishes; and
all being equal in its sight, are equally eligible to all Honours, Places, and
employments, according to their different abilities, without any other
distinction than that created by their Virtues and talents.
Seven:
No Man should be accused, arrested, or held in confinement, except in cases
determined by the Law, and according to the forms which it has prescribed. All
who promote, solicit, execute, or cause to be executed, arbitrary orders,
ought to be punished, and every Citizen called upon, or apprehended by virtue
of the Law, ought immediately to obey, and renders himself culpable by
resistance.
Eight:
The Law ought to impose no other penalties but such as are absolutely and
evidently necessary; and no one ought to be punished, but in virtue of a Law
promulgated before the offence, and Legally applied.
Nine:
Every Man being presumed innocent till he has been convicted, whenever his
detention becomes indispensable, all rigour to him, more than is necessary to
secure his person, ought to be provided against by the Law.
Ten:
No Man ought to be molested on account of his opinions, not even on account of
his Religious opinions, provided his avowal of them does not disturb the
Public Order established by the Law.
Eleven:
The unrestrained communication of thoughts and opinions being one of the Most
Precious Rights of Man, every Citizen may speak, write, and publish freely,
provided he is responsible for the abuse of this Liberty, in cases determined
by the Law.
Twelve:
A Public force being necessary to give security to the Rights of Men and of
Citizens, that force is instituted for the benefit of the Community and not
for the particular benefit of the persons to whom it is intrusted.
Thirteen:
A common contribution being necessary for the support of the Public force, and
for defraying the other expenses of Government, it ought to be divided equally
among the Members of the Community, according to their abilities.
Fourteen:
every Citizen has a Right, either by himself or his Representative, to a free
voice in determining the necessity of Public Contributions, the appropriation
of them, and their amount, mode of assessment, and duration.
Fifteen:
every Community has a Right to demand of all its agents an account of their
conduct.
Sixteen:
every Community in which a Separation of Powers and a Security of Rights is
not Provided for, wants a Constitution.
Seventeen:
The Right to Property being inviolable and sacred, no one ought to be deprived
of it, except in cases of evident Public necessity, legally ascertained, and
on condition of a previous just Indemnity.
OBSERVATIONS
ON
THE
DECLARATION
OF RIGHTS
The
first three articles comprehend in general terms the whole of a Declaration of
Rights, all the succeeding articles either originate from them or follow as
elucidations. The 4th, 5th, and 6th define
more particularly what is only generally expressed in the 1st, 2nd,
and 3rd.
The
7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th
articles are declaratory of principles upon which laws shall be constructed,
conformable to rights already declared. But it is questioned by some very good
people in France, as well as in other countries, whether the 10th
article sufficiently guarantees the right it is intended to accord with;
besides which it takes off from the divine dignity of religion, and weakens
its operative force upon the mind, to make it a subject of human laws. It then
presents itself to man like light intercepted by a cloudy medium, in which the
source of it is obscured from his sight, and he sees nothing to reverence in
the dusky ray.*[10]
The
remaining articles, beginning with the twelfth, are substantially contained in
the principles of the preceding articles; but in the particular situation in
which France then was, having to undo what was wrong, as well as to set up
what was right, it was proper to be more particular than what in another
condition of things would be necessary.
While
the Declaration of Rights was before the National Assembly some of its members
remarked that if a declaration of rights were published it should be
accompanied by a Declaration of Duties. The observation discovered a mind that
reflected, and it only erred by not reflecting far enough. A Declaration of
Rights is, by reciprocity, a Declaration of Duties also. Whatever is my right
as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as
well as to possess.
The
three first articles are the base of Liberty, as well individual as national;
nor can any country be called free whose government does not take its
beginning from the principles they contain, and continue to preserve them
pure; and the whole of the Declaration of Rights is of more value to the
world, and will do more good, than all the laws and statutes that have yet
been promulgated.
In
the declaratory exordium which prefaces the Declaration of Rights we see the
solemn and majestic spectacle of a nation opening its commission, under the
auspices of its Creator, to establish a Government, a scene so new, and so
transcendantly unequalled by anything in the European world, that the name of
a Revolution is diminutive of its character, and it rises into a Regeneration
of man. What are the present
Governments of Europe but a scene of iniquity and oppression? What is that of
England? Do not its own inhabitants say it is a market where every man has his
price, and where corruption is common traffic at the expense of a deluded
people? No wonder, then, that the French Revolution is traduced. Had it
confined itself merely to the destruction of flagrant despotism perhaps Mr. Burke and some others had been silent. Their cry now is, “It
has gone too far”- that is, it has gone too far for them. It stares
corruption in the face, and the venal tribe are all alarmed. Their fear
discovers itself in their outrage, and they are but publishing the groans of a
wounded vice. But from such opposition the French Revolution, instead of
suffering, receives an homage. The more it is struck the more sparks it will
emit; and the fear is it will not be struck enough. It has nothing to dread
from attacks; truth has given it an establishment, and time will record it
with a name as lasting as his own.
Having
now traced the progress of the French Revolution through most of its principal
stages, from its commencement to the taking of the Bastille, and its
establishment by the Declaration of Rights, I will close the subject with the
energetic apostrophe of M. de la Fayette”May this great monument, raised to
Liberty, serve as a lesson to the oppressor, and an example to the oppressed!”*[11]
MISCELLANEOUS
CHAPTER
To
prevent interrupting the argument in the preceding part of this work, or the
narrative that follows it, I reserved some observations to be thrown together
in a Miscellaneous Chapter; by which variety might not be censured for
confusion. Mr. Burke’s book is all Miscellany. His intention was to make an
attack on the French Revolution; but instead of proceeding with an orderly
arrangement, he has stormed it with a mob of ideas tumbling over and
destroying one another.
But
this confusion and contradiction in Mr. Burke’s Book is easily accounted
for.- When a man in a wrong cause attempts to steer his course by anything
else than some polar truth or principle, he is sure to be lost. It is beyond
the compass of his capacity to keep all the parts of an argument together, and
make them unite in one issue, by any other means than having this guide always
in view. Neither memory nor invention will supply the want of it. The former
fails him, and the latter betrays him.
Notwithstanding
the nonsense, for it deserves no better name, that Mr. Burke has asserted
about hereditary rights, and hereditary succession, and that a Nation has not
a right to form a Government of itself; it happened to fall in his way to give
some account of what Government is. “Government,” says he, “is a
contrivance of human wisdom.”
Admitting
that government is a contrivance of human wisdom, it must necessarily follow,
that hereditary succession, and hereditary rights (as they are called), can
make no part of it, because it is impossible to make wisdom hereditary; and on
the other hand, that cannot be a wise contrivance, which in its operation may
commit the government of a nation to the wisdom of an idiot. The ground which
Mr. Burke now takes is fatal to every part of his cause. The argument changes
from hereditary rights to hereditary wisdom; and the question is, Who is the
wisest man? He must now show that every one in the line of hereditary
succession was a Solomon, or his title is not good to be a king. What a stroke
has Mr. Burke now made! To use a sailor’s phrase, he has swabbed the deck,
and scarcely left a name legible in the list of Kings; and he has mowed down
and thinned the House of Peers, with a scythe as formidable as Death and Time.
But
Mr. Burke appears to have been aware of this retort; and he has taken care to
guard against it, by making government to be not only a contrivance of human
wisdom, but a monopoly of wisdom. He puts the nation as fools on one side, and
places his government of wisdom, all wise men of Gotham, on the other side;
and he then proclaims, and says that “Men have a Right that their Wants
should be provided for by this wisdom.” Having thus made proclamation, he
next proceeds to explain to them what their wants are, and also what their
rights are. In this he has
succeeded dextrously, for he makes their wants to be a want of wisdom; but as
this is cold comfort, he then informs them, that they have a right (not to any
of the wisdom) but to be governed by it; and in order to impress them with a
solemn reverence for this monopoly-government of wisdom, and of its vast
capacity for all purposes, possible or impossible, right or wrong, he proceeds
with astrological mysterious importance, to tell to them its powers in these
words: “The rights of men in government are their advantages; and these are
often in balance between differences of good; and in compromises sometimes
between good and evil, and sometimes between evil and evil. Political reason
is a computing principle; adding-subtracting- multiplying- and dividing,
morally and not metaphysically or mathematically, true moral denominations.”
As
the wondering audience, whom Mr. Burke supposes himself talking to, may not
understand all this learned jargon, I will undertake to be its interpreter.
The meaning, then, good people, of all this, is:
That
government is governed by no principle whatever; that it can make evil good,
or good evil, just as it pleases. In short, that government is arbitrary
power.
But
there are some things which Mr. Burke has forgotten. First, he has not shown
where the wisdom originally came from: and secondly, he has not shown by what
authority it first began to act. In the manner he introduces the matter, it is
either government stealing wisdom, or wisdom stealing government. It is
without an origin, and its powers without authority. In short, it is
usurpation.
Whether
it be from a sense of shame, or from a consciousness of some radical defect in
a government necessary to be kept out of sight, or from both, or from any
other cause, I undertake not to determine, but so it is, that a monarchical
reasoner never traces government to its source, or from its source. It is one
of the shibboleths by which he may be known. A thousand years hence, those who
shall live in America or France, will look back with contemplative pride on
the origin of their government, and say, This was the work of our glorious
ancestors! But what can a monarchical talker say? What has he to exult in?
Alas he has nothing. A certain something forbids him to look back to a
beginning, lest some robber, or some Robin Hood, should rise from the long
obscurity of time and say, I am the origin.
Hard as Mr. Burke laboured at the Regency Bill and Hereditary
Succession two years ago, and much as he dived for precedents, he still had
not boldness enough to bring up William of Normandy, and say, There is the
head of the list! there is the fountain of honour!
the son of a prostitute, and the plunderer of the English nation.
The
opinions of men with respect to government are changing fast in all countries.
The Revolutions of America and France have thrown a beam of light over the
world, which reaches into man. The enormous expense of governments has
provoked people to think, by making them feel; and when once the veil begins
to rend, it admits not of repair. Ignorance
is of a peculiar nature: once dispelled, it is impossible to re-establish it.
It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of knowledge;
and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made ignorant. The mind, in
discovering truth, acts in the same manner as it acts through the eye in
discovering objects; when once any object has been seen, it is impossible to
put the mind back to the same condition it was in before it saw it. Those who
talk of a counter-revolution in France, show how little they understand of
man. There does not exist in the compass of language an arrangement of words
to express so much as the means of effecting a counter-revolution. The means
must be an obliteration of knowledge; and it has never yet been discovered how
to make man unknow his knowledge, or unthink his thoughts.
Mr.
Burke is labouring in vain to stop the progress of knowledge; and it comes
with the worse grace from him, as there is a certain transaction known in the
city which renders him suspected of being a pensioner in a fictitious name.
This may account for some strange doctrine he has advanced in his book, which
though he points it at the Revolution Society, is effectually directed against
the whole nation.
“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, who have not a single vote for a king among them either individually
or collectively; and his Majesty’s heirs 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 which he now wears.”
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 another person, I am
not so well a judge of; but of its abominable principle I am at no loss to
judge.
It
is not the Revolution Society that Mr. Burke means; it is the Nation, as well
in its original as in its representative character; and he has taken care to
make himself understood, by saying that they have not a vote either
collectively or individually. The Revolution Society is composed of citizens
of all denominations, and of members of both the Houses of Parliament; and
consequently, if there is not a right to a vote in any of the characters,
there can be no right to any either in the nation or in its Parliament. This
ought to be a caution to every country how to import foreign families to be
kings. It is somewhat curious to
observe, that although the people of England had 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.
It
has hitherto been the practice of the English Parliaments to regulate what was
called the succession (taking it for granted that the Nation then continued to
accord to the form of annexing a monarchical branch of its government; for
without this the Parliament could not have had authority to have sent either
to Holland or to Hanover, or to impose a king upon the nation against its
will). And this must be the utmost limit to which Parliament can go upon this
case; but the right of the Nation goes to the whole case, because it has the
right of changing its whole form of government. The right of a Parliament is
only a right in trust, a right by delegation, and that but from a very small
part of the Nation; and one of its Houses has not even this. But the right of
the Nation is an original right, as universal as taxation. The nation is the
paymaster of everything, and everything must conform to its general will.
I
remember taking notice of a speech in what is called the English House of
Peers, by the then Earl of Shelburne, and I think it was at the time he was
Minister, which is applicable to this case. I do not directly charge my memory
with every particular; but the words and the purport, as nearly as I remember,
were these: “That the form of a Government was a matter wholly at the will
of the Nation at all times, that if it chose a monarchical form, it had a
right to have it so; and if it afterwards chose to be a Republic, it had a
right to be a Republic, and to say to a King, “We have no longer any
occasion for you.”
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 content of their choice
with which His Majesty had succeeded to that he wears,” it is saying too
much even to the humblest individual in the country; part of whose daily
labour 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.” God 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!
As
Mr. Burke sometimes speaks of England, sometimes of France, and sometimes of
the world, and of government in general, it is difficult to answer his book
without apparently meeting him on the same ground.
Although principles of Government are general subjects, it is next to
impossible, in many cases, to separate them from the idea of place and
circumstance, and the more so when circumstances are put for arguments, which
is frequently the case with Mr. Burke.
In
the former part of his book, addressing himself to the people of France, he
says: “No experience has taught us (meaning the English), that in any other
course or method than that of a hereditary crown, can our liberties be
regularly perpetuated and preserved sacred as our hereditary right.” I ask
Mr. Burke, who is to take them away? M. de
la Fayette, in speaking to France, says: “For a Nation to be free, it is
sufficient that she wills it.” But Mr. Burke represents England as wanting
capacity to take care of itself, and that its liberties must be taken care of
by a King holding it in “contempt.” If England is sunk to this, it is
preparing itself to eat straw, as in Hanover, or in Brunswick. But besides the
folly of the declaration, it happens that the facts are all against Mr. Burke.
It was by the government being hereditary, that the liberties of the people
were endangered. Charles I. and
James Ii. are instances of this truth; yet neither of them went so far as to
hold the Nation in contempt.
As
it is sometimes of advantage to the people of one country to hear what those
of other countries have to say respecting it, it is possible that the people
of France may learn something from Mr. Burke’s
book, and that the people of England may also learn something from the answers
it will occasion. When Nations fall out about freedom, a wide field of debate
is opened. The argument commences with the rights of war, without its evils,
and as knowledge is the object contended for, the party that sustains the
defeat obtains the prize.
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.
But,
to arrange this matter in a clearer view than what general expression can
heads under which (what is called) an hereditary crown, or more properly
speaking, an hereditary succession to the Government of a Nation, can be
considered; which are:
First,
The right of a particular Family to establish itself.
Secondly,
The right of a Nation to establish a particular Family.
With
respect to the first of these heads, that of a Family establishing itself with
hereditary powers on its own authority, and independent of the consent of a
Nation, all men will concur in calling it despotism; and it would be
trespassing on their understanding to attempt to prove it.
But
the second head, that of a Nation establishing a particular Family with
hereditary powers, does not present itself as despotism on the first
reflection; but if men will permit it a second reflection to take place, and
carry that reflection forward but one remove out of their own persons to that
of their offspring, they will then see that hereditary succession becomes in
its consequences the same despotism to others, which they reprobated for
themselves. It operates to preclude the consent of the succeeding generations;
and the preclusion of consent is despotism. When the person who at any time
shall be in possession of a Government, or those who stand in succession to
him, shall say to a Nation, I hold this power in “contempt” of you, it
signifies not on what authority he pretends to say it. It is no relief, but an
aggravation to a person in slavery, to reflect that he was sold by his parent;
and as that which heightens the criminality of an act cannot be produced to
prove the legality of it, hereditary succession cannot be established as a
legal thing.
In
order to arrive at a more perfect decision on this head, it will be proper to
consider the generation which undertakes to establish a Family with hereditary
powers, apart and separate from the generations which are to follow; and also
to consider the character in which the first generation acts with respect to
succeeding generations.
The
generation which first selects a person, and puts him at the head of its
Government, either with the title of King, or any other distinction, acts on
its own choice, be it wise or foolish, as a free agent for itself The person
so set up is not hereditary, but selected and appointed; and the generation
who sets him up, does not live under a hereditary government, but under a
government of its own choice and establishment. Were the generation who sets
him up, and the person so set up, to live for ever, it never could become
hereditary succession; and of consequence hereditary succession can only
follow on the death of the first parties.
As,
therefore, hereditary succession is out of the question with respect to the
first generation, we have now to consider the character in which that
generation acts with respect to the commencing generation, and to all
succeeding ones.
It
assumes a character, to which it has neither right nor title. It changes
itself from a Legislator to a Testator, and effects to make its Will, which is
to have operation after the demise of the makers, to bequeath the Government;
and it not only attempts to bequeath, but to establish on the succeeding
generation, a new and different form of Government under which itself lived.
Itself, as already observed, lived not under a hereditary Government but under
a Government of its own choice and establishment; and it now attempts, by
virtue of a will and testament (and which it has not authority to make), to
take from the commencing generation, and all future ones, the rights and free
agency by which itself acted.
But,
exclusive of the right which any generation has to act collectively as a
testator, the objects to which it applies itself in this case, are not within
the compass of any law, or of any will or testament.
The
rights of men in society, are neither devisable or transferable, nor
annihilable, but are descendable only, and it is not in the power of any
generation to intercept finally, and cut off the descent. If the present
generation, or any other, are disposed to be slaves, it does not lessen the
right of the succeeding generation to be free.
Wrongs cannot have a legal descent. When Mr. Burke attempts to maintain
that the English nation did at the Revolution of 1688, most solemnly renounce
and abdicate their rights for themselves, and for all their posterity for
ever, he speaks a language that merits not reply, and which can only excite
contempt for his prostitute principles, or pity for his ignorance.
In
whatever light hereditary succession, as growing out of the will and testament
of some former generation, presents itself, it is an absurdity. A cannot make
a will to take from B the property of B, and give it to C; yet this is the
manner in which (what is called) hereditary succession by law operates. A
certain former generation made a will, to take away the rights of the
commencing generation, and all future ones, and convey those rights to a third
person, who afterwards comes forward, and tells them, in Mr. Burke’s
language, that they have no rights, that their rights are already bequeathed
to him and that he will govern in contempt of them. From such principles, and
such ignorance, good Lord deliver the world!
But,
after all, what is this metaphor called a crown, or rather what is monarchy?
Is it a thing, or is it a name, or is it a fraud? Is it a “contrivance of
human wisdom,” or of human craft to obtain money from a nation under
specious pretences? Is it a thing necessary to a nation? If it is, in what
does that necessity consist, what service does it perform, what is its
business, and what are its merits? Does the virtue consist in the metaphor, or
in the man? Doth the goldsmith that makes the crown, make the virtue also?
Doth it operate like Fortunatus’s wishing-cap, or Harlequin’s wooden
sword? Doth it make a man a conjurer? In fine, what is it? It appears to be
something going much out of fashion, falling into ridicule, and rejected in
some countries, both as unnecessary and expensive. In America it is considered
as an absurdity; and in France it has so far declined, that the goodness of
the man, and the respect for his personal character, are the only things that
preserve the appearance of its existence.
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?
If
there is anything in monarchy which we people of America do not understand, I
wish Mr. Burke would be so kind as to inform us. I see in America, a
government extending over a country ten times as large as England, and
conducted with regularity, for a fortieth part of the expense which Government
costs in England. If I ask a man in America if he wants a King, he retorts,
and asks me if I take him for an idiot? How is it that this difference
happens? are we more or less wise than others? I see in America the generality
of people living in a style of plenty unknown in monarchical countries; and I
see that the principle of its government, which is that of the equal Rights of
Man, is making a rapid progress in the world.
If
monarchy is a useless thing, why is it kept up anywhere? and if a necessary
thing, how can it be dispensed with? That civil government is necessary, all
civilized nations will agree; but civil government is republican government.
All that part of the government of England which begins with the office of
constable, and proceeds through the department of magistrate,
quarter-sessions, and general assize, including trial by jury, is republican
government. Nothing of monarchy appears in any part of it, except in the name
which William the Conqueror imposed upon the English, that of obliging them to
call him “Their Sovereign Lord the King.”
It
is easy to conceive that a band of interested men, such as Placemen,
Pensioners, Lords of the bed-chamber, Lords of the kitchen, Lords of the
necessary-house, and the Lord knows what besides, can find as many reasons for
monarchy as their salaries, paid at the expense of the country, amount to; but
if I ask the farmer, the manufacturer, the merchant, the tradesman, and down
through all the occupations of life to the common labourer, 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.
Notwithstanding
the taxes of England amount to almost seventeen millions a year, said to be
for the expenses of Government, it is still evident that the sense of the
Nation is left to govern itself, and does govern itself, by magistrates and
juries, almost at its own charge, on republican principles, exclusive of the
expense of taxes. The salaries of
the judges are almost the only charge that is paid out of the revenue.
Considering that all the internal government is executed by the people, the
taxes of England ought to be the lightest of any nation in Europe; instead of
which, they are the contrary. As this cannot be accounted for on the score of
civil government, the subject necessarily extends itself to the monarchical
part.
When
the people of England sent for George the First (and it would puzzle a wiser
man than Mr. Burke to discover for what he could be wanted, or what service he
could render), they ought at least to have conditioned for the abandonment of
Hanover. Besides the endless German intrigues that must follow from a German
Elector being King of England, there is a natural impossibility of uniting in
the same person the principles of Freedom and the principles of Despotism, or
as it is usually called in England Arbitrary Power. A German Elector is in his
electorate a despot; how then could it be expected that he should be attached
to principles of liberty in one country, while his interest in another was to
be supported by despotism? The union cannot exist; and it might easily have
been foreseen that German Electors would make German Kings, or in Mr. Burke’s
words, would assume government with “contempt.” The English have been in
the habit of considering a King of England only in the character in which he
appears to them; whereas the same person, while the connection lasts, has a
home-seat in another country, the interest of which is different to their own,
and the principles of the governments in opposition to each other. To such a
person England will appear as a town-residence, and the Electorate as the
estate. The English may wish, as I believe they do, success to the principles
of liberty in France, or in Germany; but a German Elector trembles for the
fate of despotism in his electorate; and the Duchy of Mecklenburgh, where the
present Queen’s family governs, is under the same wretched state of
arbitrary power, and the people in slavish vassalage.
There
never was a time when it became the English to watch continental intrigues
more circumspectly than at the present moment, and to distinguish the politics
of the Electorate from the politics of the Nation. The Revolution of France
has entirely changed the ground with respect to England and France, as
nations; but the German despots, with Prussia at their head, are combining
against liberty; and the fondness of Mr. Pitt for office, and the interest
which all his family connections have obtained, do not give sufficient
security against this intrigue.
As
everything which passes in the world becomes matter for history, I will now
quit this subject, and take a concise review of the state of parties and
politics in England, as Mr. Burke has done in France.
Whether
the present reign commenced with contempt, I leave to Mr.
Burke:
certain, however, it is, that it had strongly that appearance.
The animosity of the English nation, it is very well remembered, ran
high; and, had the true principles of Liberty been as well understood then as
they now promise to be, it is probable the Nation would not have patiently
submitted to so much. George the First and Second were sensible of a rival in
the remains of the Stuarts; and as they could not but consider themselves as
standing on their good behaviour, they had prudence to keep their German
principles of government to themselves; but as the Stuart family wore away,
the prudence became less necessary.
The
contest between rights, and what were called prerogatives, continued to heat
the nation till some time after the conclusion of the American War, when all
at once it fell a calm- Execration exchanged itself for applause, and Court
popularity sprung up like a mushroom in a night.
To
account for this sudden transition, it is proper to observe that there are two
distinct species of popularity; the one excited by merit, and the other by
resentment. As the Nation had formed itself into two parties, and each was
extolling the merits of its parliamentary champions for and against
prerogative, nothing could operate to give a more general shock than an
immediate coalition of the champions themselves. The partisans of each being
thus suddenly left in the lurch, and mutually heated with disgust at the
measure, felt no other relief than uniting in a common execration against
both. A higher stimulus or resentment being thus excited than what the contest
on prerogatives occasioned, the nation quitted all former objects of rights
and wrongs, and sought only that of gratification.
The indignation at the Coalition so effectually superseded the
indignation against the Court as to extinguish it; and without any change of
principles on the part of the Court, the same people who had reprobated its
despotism united with it to revenge themselves on the Coalition Parliament.
The case was not, which they liked best, but which they hated most; and the
least hated passed for love. The dissolution of the Coalition Parliament, as
it afforded the means of gratifying the resentment of the Nation, could not
fail to be popular; and from hence arose the popularity of the Court.
Transitions
of this kind exhibit a Nation under the government of temper, instead of a
fixed and steady principle; and having once committed itself, however rashly,
it feels itself urged along to justify by continuance its first proceeding.
Measures which at other times it would censure it now approves, and acts
persuasion upon itself to suffocate its judgment.
On
the return of a new Parliament, the new Minister, Mr. Pitt, found himself in a
secure majority; and the Nation gave him credit, not out of regard to himself,
but because it had resolved to do it out of resentment to another. He
introduced himself to public notice by a proposed Reform of Parliament, which
in its operation would have amounted to a public justification of corruption.
The Nation was to be at the expense of buying up the rotten boroughs, whereas
it ought to punish the persons who deal in the traffic.
Passing
over the two bubbles of the Dutch business and the million a-year to sink the
national debt, the matter which most presents itself, is the affair of the
Regency. Never, in the course of my observation, was delusion more
successfully acted, nor a nation more completely deceived. But, to make this
appear, it will be necessary to go over the circumstances.
Mr.
Fox had stated in the House of Commons, that the Prince of Wales, as heir in
succession, had a right in himself to assume the Government. This was opposed
by Mr. Pitt; and, so far as the opposition was confined to the doctrine, it
was just. But the principles which Mr. Pitt maintained on the contrary side
were as bad, or worse in their extent, than those of Mr. Fox; because they
went to establish an aristocracy over the nation, and over the small
representation it has in the House of Commons.
Whether
the English form of Government be good or bad, is not in this case the
question; but, taking it as it stands, without regard to its merits or
demerits, Mr. Pitt was farther from the point than Mr. Fox.
It
is supposed to consist of three parts:- while therefore the Nation is disposed
to continue this form, the parts have a national standing, independent of each
other, and are not the creatures of each other. Had Mr. Fox passed through
Parliament, and said that the person alluded to claimed on the, ground of the
Nation, Mr. Pitt must then have contended what he called the right of the
Parliament against the right of the Nation.
By
the appearance which the contest made, Mr. Fox took the hereditary ground, and
Mr. Pitt the Parliamentary ground; but the fact is, they both took hereditary
ground, and Mr. Pitt took the worst of the two.
What
is called the Parliament is made up of two Houses, one of which is more
hereditary, and more beyond the control of the Nation than what the Crown (as
it is called) is supposed to be. It is an hereditary aristocracy, assuming and
asserting indefeasible, irrevocable rights and authority, wholly independent
of the Nation. Where, then, was
the merited popularity of exalting this hereditary power over another
hereditary power less independent of the Nation than what itself assumed to
be, and of absorbing the rights of the Nation into a House over which it has
neither election nor control?
The
general impulse of the Nation was right; but it acted without reflection. It
approved the opposition made to the right set up by Mr. Fox, without
perceiving that Mr. Pitt was supporting another indefeasible right more remote
from the Nation, in opposition to it.
With
respect to the House of Commons, it is elected but by a small part of the
Nation; but were the election as universal as taxation, which it ought to be,
it would still be only the organ of the Nation, and cannot possess inherent
rights.- When the National Assembly of France resolves a matter, the resolve
is made in right of the Nation; but Mr. Pitt, on all national questions, so
far as they refer to the House of Commons, absorbs the rights of the Nation
into the organ, and makes the organ into a Nation, and the Nation itself into
a cypher.
In
a few words, the question on the Regency was a question of a million a-year,
which is appropriated to the executive department: and Mr. Pitt could not
possess himself of any management of this sum, without setting up the
supremacy of Parliament; and when this was accomplished, it was indifferent
who should be Regent, as he must be Regent at his own cost. Among the
curiosities which this contentious debate afforded, was that of making the
Great Seal into a King, the affixing of which to an act was to be royal
authority. If, therefore, Royal Authority is a Great Seal, it consequently is
in itself nothing; and a good Constitution would be of infinitely more value
to the Nation than what the three Nominal Powers, as they now stand, are
worth.
The
continual use of the word Constitution in the English Parliament shows there
is none; and that the whole is merely a form of government without a
Constitution, and constituting itself with what powers it pleases. If there
were a Constitution, it certainly could be referred to; and the debate on any
constitutional point would terminate by producing the Constitution. One member
says this is Constitution, and another says that is Constitution- To-day it is
one thing; and to-morrow something else- while the maintaining of the debate
proves there is none. Constitution is now the cant word of Parliament, tuning
itself to the ear of the Nation. Formerly it was the universal supremacy of
Parliament- the omnipotence of Parliament:
But
since the progress of Liberty in France, those phrases have a despotic
harshness in their note; and the English Parliament have catched the fashion
from the National Assembly, but without the substance, of speaking of
Constitution.
As
the present generation of the people in England did not make the Government,
they are not accountable for any of its defects; but, that sooner or later, it
must come into their hands to undergo a constitutional reformation, is as
certain as that the same thing has happened in France. If France, with a
revenue of nearly twenty-four millions sterling, with an extent of rich and
fertile country above four times larger than England, with a population of
twenty-four millions of inhabitants to support taxation, with upwards of
ninety millions sterling of gold and silver circulating in the nation, and
with a debt less than the present debt of England- still found it necessary,
from whatever cause, to come to a settlement of its affairs, it solves the
problem of funding for both countries.
It
is out of the question to say how long what is called the English constitution
has lasted, and to argue from thence how long it is to last; the question is,
how long can the funding system last? It is a thing but of modern invention,
and has not yet continued beyond the life of a man; yet in that short space it
has so far accumulated, that, together with the current expenses, it requires
an amount of taxes at least equal to the whole landed rental of the nation in
acres to defray the annual expenditure. That a government could not have
always gone on by the same system which has been followed for the last seventy
years, must be evident to every man; and for the same reason it cannot always
go on.
The
funding system is not money; neither is it, properly speaking, credit. It, in
effect, creates upon paper the sum which it appears to borrow, and lays on a
tax to keep the imaginary capital alive by the payment of interest and sends
the annuity to market, to be sold for paper already in circulation. If any
credit is given, it is to the disposition of the people to pay the tax, and
not to the government, which lays it on. When this disposition expires, what
is supposed to be the credit of Government expires with it. The instance of
France under the former Government shows that it is impossible to compel the
payment of taxes by force, when a whole nation is determined to take its stand
upon that ground.
Mr.
Burke, in his review of the finances of France, states the quantity of gold
and silver in France, at about eighty-eight millions sterling. In doing this,
he has, I presume, divided by the difference of exchange, instead of the
standard of twenty-four livres to a pound sterling; for M. Neckar’s
statement, from which Mr. Burke’s is taken, is two thousand two hundred
millions of livres, which is upwards of ninety-one millions and a half
sterling.
M.
Neckar in France, and Mr. George Chalmers at the Office of Trade and
Plantation in England, of which Lord Hawkesbury is president, published nearly
about the same time (1786) an account of the quantity of money in each nation,
from the returns of the Mint of each nation. Mr. Chalmers, from the returns of
the English Mint at the Tower of London, states the quantity of money in
England, including Scotland and Ireland, to be twenty millions sterling.*[12]
M.
Neckar*[13] says that the amount of money in France, recoined from the old
coin which was called in, was two thousand five hundred millions of livres
(upwards of one hundred and four millions sterling); and, after deducting for
waste, and what may be in the West Indies and other possible circumstances,
states the circulation quantity at home to be ninety-one millions and a half
sterling; but, taking it as Mr. Burke has put it, it is sixty-eight millions
more than the national quantity in England.
That
the quantity of money in France cannot be under this sum, may at once be seen
from the state of the French Revenue, without referring to the records of the
French Mint for proofs. The revenue of France, prior to the Revolution, was
nearly twenty-four millions sterling; and as paper had then no existence in
France the whole revenue was collected upon gold and silver; and it would have
been impossible to have collected such a quantity of revenue upon a less
national quantity than M. Neckar has stated. Before the establishment of paper
in England, the revenue was about a fourth part of the national amount of gold
and silver, as may be known by referring to the revenue prior to King William,
and the quantity of money stated to be in the nation at that time, which was
nearly as much as it is now.
It
can be of no real service to a nation, to impose upon itself, or to permit
itself to be imposed upon; but the prejudices of some, and the imposition of
others, have always represented France as a nation possessing but little
money- whereas the quantity is not only more than four times what the quantity
is in England, but is considerably greater on a proportion of numbers. To
account for this deficiency on the part of England, some reference should be
had to the English system of funding. It operates to multiply paper, and to
substitute it in the room of money, in various shapes; and the more paper is
multiplied, the more opportunities are offered to export the specie; and it
admits of a possibility (by extending it to small notes) of increasing paper
till there is no money left.
I
know this is not a pleasant subject to English readers; but the matters I am
going to mention, are so important in themselves, as to require the attention
of men interested in money transactions of a public nature. There is a
circumstance stated by M. Neckar, in his treatise on the administration of the
finances, which has never been attended to in England, but which forms the
only basis whereon to estimate the quantity of money (gold and silver) which
ought to be in every nation in Europe, to preserve a relative proportion with
other nations.
Lisbon
and Cadiz are the two ports into which (money) gold and silver from South
America are imported, and which afterwards divide and spread themselves over
Europe by means of commerce, and increase the quantity of money in all parts
of Europe. If, therefore, the amount of the annual importation into Europe can
be known, and the relative proportion of the foreign commerce of the several
nations by which it can be distributed can be ascertained, they give a rule
sufficiently true, to ascertain the quantity of money which ought to be found
in any nation, at any given time.
M.
Neckar shows from the registers of Lisbon and Cadiz, that the importation of
gold and silver into Europe, is five millions sterling annually. He has not
taken it on a single year, but on an average of fifteen succeeding years, from
1763 to 1777, both inclusive; in which time, the amount was one thousand eight
hundred million livres, which is seventy-five millions sterling.*[14]
From
the commencement of the Hanover succession in 1714 to the time Mr. Chalmers
published, is seventy-two years; and the quantity imported into Europe, in
that time, would be three hundred and sixty millions sterling.
If
the foreign commerce of Great Britain be stated at a sixth part of what the
whole foreign commerce of Europe amounts to (which is probably an inferior
estimation to what the gentlemen at the Exchange would allow) the proportion
which Britain should draw by commerce of this sum, to keep herself on a
proportion with the rest of Europe, would be also a sixth part which is sixty
millions sterling; and if the same allowance for waste and accident be made
for England which M. Neckar makes for France, the quantity remaining after
these deductions would be fifty-two millions; and this sum ought to have been
in the nation (at the time Mr. Chalmers published), in addition to the sum
which was in the nation at the commencement of the Hanover succession, and to
have made in the whole at least sixty-six millions sterling; instead of which
there were but twenty millions, which is forty-six millions below its
proportionate quantity.
As
the quantity of gold and silver imported into Lisbon and Cadiz is more exactly
ascertained than that of any commodity imported into England, and as the
quantity of money coined at the Tower of London is still more positively
known, the leading facts do not admit of controversy. Either, therefore, the
commerce of England is unproductive of profit, or the gold and silver which it
brings in leak continually away by unseen means at the average rate of about
three-quarters of a million a year, which, in the course of seventy-two years,
accounts for the deficiency; and its absence is supplied by paper.*[15]
The
Revolution of France is attended with many novel circumstances, not only in
the political sphere, but in the circle of money transactions. Among others,
it shows that a government may be in a state of insolvency and a nation rich.
So far as the fact is confined to the late Government of France, it was
insolvent; because the nation would no longer support its extravagance, and
therefore it could no longer support itself- but with respect to the nation
all the means existed. A government may be said to be insolvent every time it
applies to the nation to discharge its arrears. The insolvency of the late
Government of France and the present of England differed in no other respect
than as the dispositions of the people differ. The people of France refused
their aid to the old Government; and the people of England submit to taxation
without inquiry. What is called the Crown in England has been insolvent
several times; the last of which, publicly known, was in May, 1777, when it
applied to the nation to discharge upwards of L600,000 private debts, which
otherwise it could not pay.
It
was the error of Mr. Pitt, Mr. Burke, and all those who were unacquainted with
the affairs of France to confound the French nation with the French
Government. The French nation, in effect, endeavoured to render the late
Government insolvent for the purpose of taking government into its own hands:
and it reserved its means for the support of the new Government. In a country
of such vast extent and population as France the natural means cannot be
wanting, and the political means appear the instant the nation is disposed to
permit them. When Mr. Burke, in a speech last winter in the British
Parliament, “cast his eyes over the map of Europe, and saw a chasm that once
was France,” he talked like a dreamer of dreams. The same natural France
existed as before, and all the natural means existed with it. The only chasm
was that the extinction of despotism had left, and which was to be filled up
with the Constitution more formidable in resources than the power which had
expired.
Although
the French Nation rendered the late Government insolvent, it did not permit
the insolvency to act towards the creditors; and the creditors, considering
the Nation as the real pay-master, and the Government only as the agent,
rested themselves on the nation, in preference to the Government. This appears
greatly to disturb Mr. Burke, as
the precedent is fatal to the policy by which governments have supposed
themselves secure. They have contracted debts, with a view of attaching what
is called the monied interest of a Nation to their support; but the example in
France shows that the permanent security of the creditor is in the Nation, and
not in the Government; and that in all possible revolutions that may happen in
Governments, the means are always with the Nation, and the Nation always in
existence. Mr. Burke argues that the creditors ought to have abided the fate
of the Government which they trusted; but the National Assembly considered
them as the creditors of the Nation, and not of the Government- of the master,
and not of the steward.
Notwithstanding
the late government could not discharge the current expenses, the present
government has paid off a great part of the capital. This has been
accomplished by two means; the one by lessening the expenses of government,
and the other by the sale of the monastic and ecclesiastical landed estates.
The devotees and penitent debauchees, extortioners and misers of former days,
to ensure themselves a better world than that they were about to leave, had
bequeathed immense property in trust to the priesthood for pious uses; and the
priesthood kept it for themselves. The National Assembly has ordered it to be
sold for the good of the whole nation, and the priesthood to be decently
provided for.
In
consequence of the revolution, the annual interest of the debt of France will
be reduced at least six millions sterling, by paying off upwards of one
hundred millions of the capital; which, with lessening the former expenses of
government at least three millions, will place France in a situation worthy
the imitation of Europe.
Upon
a whole review of the subject, how vast is the contrast! While Mr. Burke has
been talking of a general bankruptcy in France, the National Assembly has been
paying off the capital of its debt; and while taxes have increased near a
million a year in England, they have lowered several millions a year in
France. Not a word has either Mr. Burke or Mr. Pitt said about the French
affairs, or the state of the French finances, in the present Session of
Parliament. The subject begins to be too well understood, and imposition
serves no longer.
There
is a general enigma running through the whole of Mr. Burke’s book. He writes
in a rage against the National Assembly; but what is he enraged about? If his
assertions were as true as they are groundless, and that France by her
Revolution, had annihilated her power, and become what he calls a chasm, it
might excite the grief of a Frenchman (considering himself as a national man),
and provoke his rage against the National Assembly; but why should it excite
the rage of Mr. Burke? Alas! it is not the nation of France that Mr. Burke
means, but the Court; and every Court in Europe, dreading the same fate, is in
mourning. He writes neither in the character of a Frenchman nor an Englishman,
but in the fawning character of that creature known in all countries, and a
friend to none- a courtier. Whether
it be the Court of Versailles, or the Court of St. James, or Carlton-House, or
the Court in expectation, signifies not; for the caterpillar principle of all
Courts and Courtiers are alike. They form a common policy throughout Europe,
detached and separate from the interest of Nations: and while they appear to
quarrel, they agree to plunder. Nothing can be more terrible to a Court or
Courtier than the Revolution of France. That which is a blessing to Nations is
bitterness to them: and as their existence depends on the duplicity of a
country, they tremble at the approach of principles, and dread the precedent
that threatens their overthrow.
CONCLUSION
Reason
and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the great bulk of
mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently extensive in a
country, the machinery of Government goes easily on. Reason obeys itself; and
Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.
The
two modes of the Government which prevail in the world, are:
First,
Government by election and representation.
Secondly,
Government by hereditary succession.
The
former is generally known by the name of republic; the latter by that of
monarchy and aristocracy.
Those
two distinct and opposite forms erect themselves on the two distinct and
opposite bases of Reason and Ignorance.- As the exercise of Government
requires talents and abilities, and as talents and abilities cannot have
hereditary descent, it is evident that hereditary succession requires a belief
from man to which his reason cannot subscribe, and which can only be
established upon his ignorance; and the more ignorant any country is, the
better it is fitted for this species of Government.
On
the contrary, Government, in a well-constituted republic, requires no belief
from man beyond what his reason can give. He sees the rationale of the whole
system, its origin and its operation; and as it is best supported when best
understood, the human faculties act with boldness, and acquire, under this
form of government, a gigantic manliness.
As,
therefore, each of those forms acts on a different base, the one moving freely
by the aid of reason, the other by ignorance; we have next to consider, what
it is that gives motion to that species of Government which is called mixed
Government, or, as it is sometimes ludicrously styled, a Government of this,
that and t’ other.
The
moving power in this species of Government is, of necessity, Corruption.
However imperfect election and representation may be in mixed Governments,
they still give exercise to a greater portion of reason than is convenient to
the hereditary Part; and therefore it becomes necessary to buy the reason up.
A mixed Government is an imperfect everything, cementing and soldering the
discordant parts together by corruption, to act as a whole. Mr. Burke appears
highly disgusted that France, since she had resolved on a revolution, did not
adopt what he calls “A British Constitution”; and the regretful manner in
which he expresses himself on this occasion implies a suspicion that the
British Constitution needed something to keep its defects in countenance.
In
mixed Governments there is no responsibility: the parts cover each other till
responsibility is lost; and the corruption which moves the machine, contrives
at the same time its own escape. When it is laid down as a maxim, that a King
can do no wrong, it places him in a state of similar security with that of
idiots and persons insane, and responsibility is out of the question with
respect to himself. It then descends upon the Minister, who shelters himself
under a majority in Parliament, which, by places, pensions, and corruption, he
can always command; and that majority justifies itself by the same authority
with which it protects the Minister. In this rotatory motion, responsibility
is thrown off from the parts, and from the whole.
When
there is a Part in a Government which can do no wrong, it implies that it does
nothing; and is only the machine of another power, by whose advice and
direction it acts. What is supposed to be the King in the mixed Governments,
is the Cabinet; and as the Cabinet is always a part of the Parliament, and the
members justifying in one character what they advise and act in another, a
mixed Government becomes a continual enigma; entailing upon a country by the
quantity of corruption necessary to solder the parts, the expense of
supporting all the forms of government at once, and finally resolving itself
into a Government by Committee; in which the advisers, the actors, the
approvers, the justifiers, the persons responsible, and the persons not
responsible, are the same persons.
By
this pantomimical contrivance, and change of scene and character, the parts
help each other out in matters which neither of them singly would assume to
act. When money is to be obtained, the mass of variety apparently dissolves,
and a profusion of parliamentary praises passes between the parts. Each
admires with astonishment, the wisdom, the liberality, the disinterestedness
of the other: and all of them breathe a pitying sigh at the burthens of the
Nation.
But
in a well-constituted republic, nothing of this soldering, praising, and
pitying, can take place; the representation being equal throughout the
country, and complete in itself, however it may be arranged into legislative
and executive, they have all one and the same natural source. The parts are
not foreigners to each other, like democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy. As
there are no discordant distinctions, there is nothing to corrupt by
compromise, nor confound by contrivance. Public measures appeal of themselves
to the understanding of the Nation, and, resting on their own merits, disown
any flattering applications to vanity. The continual whine of lamenting the
burden of taxes, however successfully it may be practised in mixed
Governments, is inconsistent with the sense and spirit of a republic. If taxes
are necessary, they are of course advantageous; but if they require an
apology, the apology itself implies an impeachment. Why, then, is man thus
imposed upon, or why does he impose upon himself?
When
men are spoken of as kings and subjects, or when Government is mentioned under
the distinct and combined heads of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, what
is it that reasoning man is to understand by the terms? If there really
existed in the world two or more distinct and separate elements of human
power, we should then see the several origins to which those terms would
descriptively apply; but as there is but one species of man, there can be but
one element of human power; and that element is man himself. Monarchy,
aristocracy, and democracy, are but creatures of imagination; and a thousand
such may be contrived as well as three.
From
the Revolutions of America and France, and the symptoms that have appeared in
other countries, it is evident that the opinion of the world is changing with
respect to systems of Government, and that revolutions are not within the
compass of political calculations. The progress of time and circumstances,
which men assign to the accomplishment of great changes, is too mechanical to
measure the force of the mind, and the rapidity of reflection, by which
revolutions are generated: All the old governments have received a shock from
those that already appear, and which were once more improbable, and are a
greater subject of wonder, than a general revolution in Europe would be now.
When
we survey the wretched condition of man, under the monarchical and hereditary
systems of Government, dragged from his home by one power, or driven by
another, and impoverished by taxes more than by enemies, it becomes evident
that those systems are bad, and that a general revolution in the principle and
construction of Governments is necessary.
What
is government more than the management of the affairs of a Nation? It is not,
and from its nature cannot be, the property of any particular man or family,
but of the whole community, at whose expense it is supported; and though by
force and contrivance it has been usurped into an inheritance, the usurpation
cannot alter the right of things. Sovereignty, as a matter of right,
appertains to the Nation only, and not to any individual; and a Nation has at
all times an inherent indefeasible right to abolish any form of Government it
finds inconvenient, and to establish such as accords with its interest,
disposition and happiness. The romantic and barbarous distinction of men into
Kings and subjects, though it may suit the condition of courtiers, cannot that
of citizens; and is exploded by the principle upon which Governments are now
founded. Every citizen is a member of the Sovereignty, and, as such, can
acknowledge no personal subjection; and his obedience can be only to the laws.
When
men think of what Government is, they must necessarily suppose it to possess a
knowledge of all the objects and matters upon which its authority is to be
exercised. In this view of Government, the republican system, as established
by America and France, operates to embrace the whole of a Nation; and the
knowledge necessary to the interest of all the parts, is to be found in the
center, which the parts by representation form: But the old Governments are on
a construction that excludes knowledge as well as happiness; government by
Monks, who knew nothing of the world beyond the walls of a Convent, is as
consistent as government by Kings.
What
were formerly called Revolutions, were little more than a change of persons,
or an alteration of local circumstances. They rose and fell like things of
course, and had nothing in their existence or their fate that could influence
beyond the spot that produced them. But
what we now see in the world, from the Revolutions of America and France, are
a renovation of the natural order of things, a system of principles as
universal as truth and the existence of man, and combining moral with
political happiness and national prosperity.
“I.
Men are born, and always continue, free and equal in respect of their rights.
Civil distinctions, therefore, can be founded only on public utility.
“II.
The end of all political associations is the preservation of the natural and
imprescriptible rights of man; and these rights are liberty, property,
security, and resistance of oppression.
“III.
The nation is essentially the source of all sovereignty; nor can any
Individual, or Any Body Of Men, be entitled to any authority which is not
expressly derived from it.”
In
these principles, there is nothing to throw a Nation into confusion by
inflaming ambition. They are calculated to call forth wisdom and abilities,
and to exercise them for the public good, and not for the emolument or
aggrandisement of particular descriptions of men or families. Monarchical
sovereignty, the enemy of mankind, and the source of misery, is abolished; and
the sovereignty itself is restored to its natural and original place, the
Nation. Were this the case throughout Europe, the cause of wars would be taken
away.
It
is attributed to Henry the Fourth of France, a man of enlarged and benevolent
heart, that he proposed, about the year 1610, a plan for abolishing war in
Europe. The plan consisted in constituting an European Congress, or as the
French authors style it, a Pacific Republic; by appointing delegates from the
several Nations who were to act as a Court of arbitration in any disputes that
might arise between nation and nation.
Had
such a plan been adopted at the time it was proposed, the taxes of England and
France, as two of the parties, would have been at least ten millions sterling
annually to each Nation less than they were at the commencement of the French
Revolution.
To
conceive a cause why such a plan has not been adopted (and that instead of a
Congress for the purpose of preventing war, it has been called only to
terminate a war, after a fruitless expense of several years) it will be
necessary to consider the interest of Governments as a distinct interest to
that of Nations.
Whatever
is the cause of taxes to a Nation, becomes also the means of revenue to
Government. Every war terminates with an addition of taxes, and consequently
with an addition of revenue; and in any event of war, in the manner they are
now commenced and concluded, the power and interest of Governments are
increased. War, therefore, from its productiveness, as it easily furnishes the
pretence of necessity for taxes and appointments to places and offices,
becomes a principal part of the system of old Governments; and to establish
any mode to abolish war, however advantageous it might be to Nations, would be
to take from such Government the most lucrative of its branches. The frivolous
matters upon which war is made, show the disposition and avidity of
Governments to uphold the system of war, and betray the motives upon which
they act.
Why
are not Republics plunged into war, but because the nature of their Government
does not admit of an interest distinct from that of the Nation? Even Holland,
though an ill-constructed Republic, and with a commerce extending over the
world, existed nearly a century without war: and the instant the form of
Government was changed in France, the republican principles of peace and
domestic prosperity and economy arose with the new Government; and the same
consequences would follow the cause in other Nations.
As
war is the system of Government on the old construction, the animosity which
Nations reciprocally entertain, is nothing more than what the policy of their
Governments excites to keep up the spirit of the system. Each Government
accuses the other of perfidy, intrigue, and ambition, as a means of heating
the imagination of their respective Nations, and incensing them to
hostilities. Man is not the enemy of man, but through the medium of a false
system of Government. Instead,
therefore, of exclaiming against the ambition of Kings, the exclamation should
be directed against the principle of such Governments; and instead of seeking
to reform the individual, the wisdom of a Nation should apply itself to reform
the system.
Whether
the forms and maxims of Governments which are still in practice, were adapted
to the condition of the world at the period they were established, is not in
this case the question. The older they are, the less correspondence can they
have with the present state of things. Time, and change of circumstances and
opinions, have the same progressive effect in rendering modes of Government
obsolete as they have upon customs and manners.- Agriculture, commerce,
manufactures, and the tranquil arts, by which the prosperity of Nations is
best promoted, require a different system of Government, and a different
species of knowledge to direct its operations, than what might have been
required in the former condition of the world.
As
it is not difficult to perceive, from the enlightened state of mankind, that
hereditary Governments are verging to their decline, and that Revolutions on
the broad basis of national sovereignty and Government by representation, are
making their way in Europe, it would be an act of wisdom to anticipate their
approach, and produce Revolutions by reason and accommodation, rather than
commit them to the issue of convulsions.
From
what we now see, nothing of reform in the political world ought to be held
improbable. It is an age of Revolutions, in which everything may be looked
for. The intrigue of Courts, by which the system of war is kept up, may
provoke a confederation of Nations to abolish it: and an European Congress to
patronise the progress of free Government, and promote the civilisation of
Nations with each other, is an event nearer in probability, than once were the
revolutions and alliance of France and America.
END
OF PART I.
RIGHTS
OF MAN.
PART
SECOND, COMBINING PRINCIPLE AND PRACTICE.
BY
THOMAS PAINE.
FRENCH
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.
(1792)
THE
work of which we offer a translation to the public has created the greatest
sensation in England. Paine, that man of freedom, who seems born to preach “
Common Sense “ to the whole world with the same success as in America,
explains in it to the people of England the theory of the practice of the
Rights of Man.
Owing
to the prejudices that still govern that nation, the author has been obliged
to condescend to answer Mr. Burke. He has done so more especially in an
extended preface which is nothing but a piece of very tedious controversy, in
which he shows himself very sensitive to criticisms that do not really affect
him. To translate it seemed an insult to the free French people, and similar
reasons have led the editors to suppress also a dedicatory epistle addressed
by Paine to Lafayette.
The
French can no longer endure dedicatory epistles. A man should write privately
to those he esteems: when he publishes a book his thoughts should be offered
to the public alone. Paine, that uncorrupted friend of freedom, believed too
in the sincerity of Lafayette. So easy is it to deceive men of single-minded
purpose! Bred at a distance from
courts, that austere American does not seem any more on his guard against the
artful ways and speech of courtiers than some Frenchmen who resemble him.
TO
M.
DE LA FAYETTE
After
an acquaintance of nearly fifteen years in difficult situations in America,
and various consultations in Europe, I feel a pleasure in presenting to you
this small treatise, in gratitude for your services to my beloved America, and
as a testimony of my esteem for the virtues, public and private, which I know
you to possess.
The
only point upon which I could ever discover that we differed was not as to
principles of government, but as to time. For my own part I think it equally
as injurious to good principles to permit them to linger, as to push them on
too fast. That which you suppose accomplishable in fourteen or fifteen years,
I may believe practicable in a much shorter period. Mankind, as it appears to
me, are always ripe enough to understand their true interest, provided it be
presented clearly to their understanding, and that in a manner not to create
suspicion by anything like self-design, nor offend by assuming too much. Where
we would wish to reform we must not reproach.
When
the American revolution was established I felt a disposition to sit serenely
down and enjoy the calm. It did not appear to me that any object could
afterwards arise great enough to make me quit tranquility and feel as I had
felt before. But when principle, and not place, is the energetic cause of
action, a man, I find, is everywhere the same.
I
am now once more in the public world; and as I have not a right to contemplate
on so many years of remaining life as you have, I have resolved to labour as
fast as I can; and as I am anxious for your aid and your company, I wish you
to hasten your principles and overtake me.
If
you make a campaign the ensuing spring, which it is most probable there will
be no occasion for, I will come and join you. Should the campaign commence, I
hope it will terminate in the extinction of German despotism, and in
establishing the freedom of all Germany.
When France shall be surrounded with revolutions she will be in peace
and safety, and her taxes, as well as those of Germany, will consequently
become less.
Your
sincere,
Affectionate
Friend,
Thomas
Paine
London,
Feb. 9, 1792
PREFACE
When
I began the chapter entitled the “Conclusion” in the former part of the
RIGHTS OF MAN, published last year, it was my intention to have extended it to
a greater length; but in casting the whole matter in my mind, which I wish to
add, I found that it must either make the work too bulky, or contract my plan
too much. I therefore brought it to a close as soon as the subject would
admit, and reserved what I had further to say to another opportunity.
Several
other reasons contributed to produce this determination. I wished to know the
manner in which a work, written in a style of thinking and expression
different to what had been customary in England, would be received before I
proceeded farther. A great field was opening to the view of mankind by means
of the French Revolution. Mr.
Burke’s outrageous opposition thereto brought the controversy into England.
He attacked principles which he knew (from information) I would contest with
him, because they are principles I believe to be good, and which I have
contributed to establish, and conceive myself bound to defend. Had he not
urged the controversy, I had most probably been a silent man.
Another
reason for deferring the remainder of the work was, that Mr.
Burke promised in his first publication to renew the subject at another
opportunity, and to make a comparison of what he called the English and French
Constitutions. I therefore held myself in reserve for him. He has published
two works since, without doing this: which he certainly would not have
omitted, had the comparison been in his favour.
In
his last work, his “Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs,” he has quoted
about ten pages from the RIGHTS OF MAN, and having given himself the trouble
of doing this, says he “shall not attempt in the smallest degree to refute
them,” meaning the principles therein contained. I am enough acquainted with
Mr. Burke to know that he would if he could. But instead of contesting them,
he immediately after consoles himself with saying that “he has done his
part.”- He has not done his part. He has not performed his promise of a
comparison of constitutions. He started the controversy, he gave the
challenge, and has fled from it; and he is now a case in point with his own
opinion that “the age of chivalry is gone!”
The
title, as well as the substance of his last work, his “Appeal,” is his
condemnation. Principles must stand on their own merits, and if they are good
they certainly will. To put them under the shelter of other men’s authority,
as Mr. Burke has done, serves to bring them into suspicion. Mr. Burke is not
very fond of dividing his honours, but in this case he is artfully dividing
the disgrace.
But
who are those to whom Mr. Burke has made his appeal? A set of childish
thinkers, and half-way politicians born in the last century, men who went no
farther with any principle than as it suited their purposes as a party; the
nation was always left out of the question; and this has been the character of
every party from that day to this. The
nation sees nothing of such works, or such politics, worthy its attention. A
little matter will move a party, but it must be something great that moves a
nation.
Though
I see nothing in Mr. Burke’s “Appeal” worth taking much notice of, there
is, however, one expression upon which I shall offer a few remarks. After
quoting largely from the RIGHTS OF MAN, and declining to contest the
principles contained in that work, he says: “This will most probably be done
(if such writings shall be thought to deserve any other refutation than that
of criminal justice) by others, who may think with Mr. Burke and with the same
zeal.”
In
the first place, it has not yet been done by anybody. Not less, I believe,
than eight or ten pamphlets intended as answers to the former part of the
RIGHTS OF MAN have been published by different persons, and not one of them to
my knowledge, has extended to a second edition, nor are even the titles of
them so much as generally remembered. As I am averse to unnecessary
multiplying publications, I have answered none of them. And as I believe that
a man may write himself out of reputation when nobody else can do it, I am
careful to avoid that rock.
But
as I would decline unnecessary publications on the one hand, so would I avoid
everything that might appear like sullen pride on the other. If Mr. Burke, or
any person on his side the question, will produce an answer to the RIGHTS OF
MAN that shall extend to a half, or even to a fourth part of the number of
copies to which the Rights Of Man extended, I will reply to his work. But
until this be done, I shall so far take the sense of the public for my guide
(and the world knows I am not a flatterer) that what they do not think worth
while to read, is not worth mine to answer. I suppose the number of copies to
which the first part of the RIGHTS OF MAN extended, taking England, Scotland,
and Ireland, is not less than between forty and fifty thousand.
I
now come to remark on the remaining part of the quotation I have made from Mr.
Burke.
“If,”
says he, “such writings shall be thought to deserve any other refutation
than that of criminal justice.”
Pardoning
the pun, it must be criminal justice indeed that should condemn a work as a
substitute for not being able to refute it. The greatest condemnation that
could be passed upon it would be a refutation. But in proceeding by the method
Mr. Burke alludes to, the condemnation would, in the final event, pass upon
the criminality of the process and not upon the work, and in this case, I had
rather be the author, than be either the judge or the jury that should condemn
it.
But
to come at once to the point. I have differed from some professional gentlemen
on the subject of prosecutions, and I since find they are falling into my
opinion, which I will here state as fully, but as concisely as I can.
I
will first put a case with respect to any law, and then compare it with a
government, or with what in England is, or has been, called a constitution.
It
would be an act of despotism, or what in England is called arbitrary power, to
make a law to prohibit investigating the principles, good or bad, on which
such a law, or any other is founded.
If
a law be bad it is one thing to oppose the practice of it, but it is quite a
different thing to expose its errors, to reason on its defects, and to show
cause why it should be repealed, or why another ought to be substituted in its
place. I have always held it an opinion (making it also my practice) that it
is better to obey a bad law, making use at the same time of every argument to
show its errors and procure its repeal, than forcibly to violate it; because
the precedent of breaking a bad law might weaken the force, and lead to a
discretionary violation, of those which are good.
The
case is the same with respect to principles and forms of government, or to
what are called constitutions and the parts of which they are, composed.
It
is for the good of nations and not for the emolument or aggrandisement of
particular individuals, that government ought to be established, and that
mankind are at the expense of supporting it.
The defects of every government and constitution both as to principle
and form, must, on a parity of reasoning, be as open to discussion as the
defects of a law, and it is a duty which every man owes to society to point
them out. When those defects, and the means of remedying them, are generally
seen by a nation, that nation will reform its government or its constitution
in the one case, as the government repealed or reformed the law in the other.
The operation of government is restricted to the making and the administering
of laws; but it is to a nation that the right of forming or reforming,
generating or regenerating constitutions and governments belong; and
consequently those subjects, as subjects of investigation, are always before a
country as a matter of right, and cannot, without invading the general rights
of that country, be made subjects for prosecution.
On this ground I will meet Mr. Burke whenever he please. It is better
that the whole argument should come out than to seek to stifle it. It was
himself that opened the controversy, and he ought not to desert it.
I
do not believe that monarchy and aristocracy will continue seven years longer
in any of the enlightened countries in Europe. If better reasons can be shown
for them than against them, they will stand; if the contrary, they will not.
Mankind are not now to be told they shall not think, or they shall not read;
and publications that go no farther than to investigate principles of
government, to invite men to reason and to reflect, and to show the errors and
excellences of different systems, have a right to appear. If they do not
excite attention, they are not worth the trouble of a prosecution; and if they
do, the prosecution will amount to nothing, since it cannot amount to a
prohibition of reading. This would be a sentence on the public, instead of the
author, and would also be the most effectual mode of making or hastening
revolution.
On
all cases that apply universally to a nation, with respect to systems of
government, a jury of twelve men is not competent to decide. Where there are
no witnesses to be examined, no facts to be proved, and where the whole matter
is before the whole public, and the merits or demerits of it resting on their
opinion; and where there is nothing to be known in a court, but what every
body knows out of it, every twelve men is equally as good a jury as the other,
and would most probably reverse each other’s verdict; or, from the variety
of their opinions, not be able to form one. It is one case, whether a nation
approve a work, or a plan; but it is quite another case, whether it will
commit to any such jury the power of determining whether that nation have a
right to, or shall reform its government or not. I mention those cases that
Mr. Burke may see I have not written on Government without reflecting on what
is Law, as well as on what are Rights.- The only effectual jury in such cases
would be a convention of the whole nation fairly elected; for in all such
cases the whole nation is the vicinage. If Mr. Burke will propose such a jury,
I will waive all privileges of being the citizen of another country, and,
defending its principles, abide the issue, provided he will do the same; for
my opinion is, that his work and his principles would be condemned instead of
mine.
As
to the prejudices which men have from education and habit, in favour of any
particular form or system of government, those prejudices have yet to stand
the test of reason and reflection. In fact, such prejudices are nothing. No
man is prejudiced in favour of a thing, knowing it to be wrong. He is attached
to it on the belief of its being right; and when he sees it is not so, the
prejudice will be gone. We have but a defective idea of what prejudice is. It
might be said, that until men think for themselves the whole is prejudice, and
not opinion; for that only is opinion which is the result of reason and
reflection. I offer this remark, that Mr. Burke may not confide too much in
what have been the customary prejudices of the country.
I
do not believe that the people of England have ever been fairly and candidly
dealt by. They have been imposed upon by parties, and by men assuming the
character of leaders. It is time that the nation should rise above those
trifles. It is time to dismiss that inattention which has so long been the
encouraging cause of stretching taxation to excess. It is time to dismiss all
those songs and toasts which are calculated to enslave, and operate to
suffocate reflection. On all such subjects men have but to think, and they
will neither act wrong nor be misled. To say that any people are not fit for
freedom, is to make poverty their choice, and to say they had rather be loaded
with taxes than not. If such a case could be proved, it would equally prove
that those who govern are not fit to govern them, for they are a part of the
same national mass.
But
admitting governments to be changed all over Europe; it certainly may be done
without convulsion or revenge. It is not worth making changes or revolutions,
unless it be for some great national benefit: and when this shall appear to a
nation, the danger will be, as in America and France, to those who oppose; and
with this reflection I close my Preface.
THOMAS
PAINE
London,
Feb. 9, 1792
RIGHTS
OF MAN
PART
II.
INTRODUCTION.
What
Archimedes said of the mechanical powers, may be applied to Reason and
Liberty. “Had we,” said he, “a place to stand upon, we might raise the
world.”
The
revolution of America presented in politics what was only theory in mechanics.
So deeply rooted were all the governments of the old world, and so effectually
had the tyranny and the antiquity of habit established itself over the mind,
that no beginning could be made in Asia, Africa, or Europe, to reform the
political condition of man. Freedom
had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the
slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.
But
such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks,- and all it
wants,- is the liberty of appearing. The sun needs no inscription to
distinguish him from darkness; and no sooner did the American governments
display themselves to the world, than despotism felt a shock and man began to
contemplate redress.
The
independence of America, considered merely as a separation from England, would
have been a matter but of little importance, had it not been accompanied by a
revolution in the principles and practice of governments. She made a stand,
not for herself only, but for the world, and looked beyond the advantages
herself could receive. Even the Hessian, though hired to fight against her,
may live to bless his defeat; and England, condemning the viciousness of its
government, rejoice in its miscarriage.
As
America was the only spot in the political world where the principle of
universal reformation could begin, so also was it the best in the natural
world. An assemblage of circumstances conspired, not only to give birth, but
to add gigantic maturity to its principles. The scene which that country
presents to the eye of a spectator, has something in it which generates and
encourages great ideas. Nature appears to him in magnitude. The mighty objects
he beholds, act upon his mind by enlarging it, and he partakes of the
greatness he contemplates.- Its first settlers were emigrants from different
European nations, and of diversified professions of religion, retiring from
the governmental persecutions of the old world, and meeting in the new, not as
enemies, but as brothers. The wants which necessarily accompany the
cultivation of a wilderness produced among them a state of society, which
countries long harassed by the quarrels and intrigues of governments, had
neglected to cherish. In such a situation man becomes what he ought. He sees
his species, not with the inhuman idea of a natural enemy, but as kindred; and
the example shows to the artificial world, that man must go back to Nature for
information.
From
the rapid progress which America makes in every species of improvement, it is
rational to conclude that, if the governments of Asia, Africa, and Europe had
begun on a principle similar to that of America, or had not been very early
corrupted therefrom, those countries must by this time have been in a far
superior condition to what they are. Age after age has passed away, for no
other purpose than to behold their wretchedness. Could we suppose a spectator
who knew nothing of the world, and who was put into it merely to make his
observations, he would take a great part of the old world to be new, just
struggling with the difficulties and hardships of an infant settlement. He
could not suppose that the hordes of miserable poor with which old countries
abound could be any other than those who had not yet had time to provide for
themselves. Little would he think they were the consequence of what in such
countries they call government.
If,
from the more wretched parts of the old world, we look at those which are in
an advanced stage of improvement we still find the greedy hand of government
thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping the
spoil of the multitude. Invention
is continually exercised to furnish new pretences for revenue and taxation. It
watches prosperity as its prey, and permits none to escape without a tribute.
As
revolutions have begun (and as the probability is always greater against a
thing beginning, than of proceeding after it has begun), it is natural to
expect that other revolutions will follow. The amazing and still increasing
expenses with which old governments are conducted, the numerous wars they
engage in or provoke, the embarrassments they throw in the way of universal
civilisation and commerce, and the oppression and usurpation acted at home,
have wearied out the patience, and exhausted the property of the world. In
such a situation, and with such examples already existing, revolutions are to
be looked for. They are become subjects of universal conversation, and may be
considered as the Order of the day.
If
systems of government can be introduced less expensive and more productive of
general happiness than those which have existed, all attempts to oppose their
progress will in the end be fruitless. Reason,
like time, will make its own way, and prejudice will fall in a combat with
interest. If universal peace, civilisation, and commerce are ever to be the
happy lot of man, it cannot be accomplished but by a revolution in the system
of governments. All the monarchical governments are military. War is their
trade, plunder and revenue their objects. While such governments continue,
peace has not the absolute security of a day. What is the history of all
monarchical governments but a disgustful picture of human wretchedness, and
the accidental respite of a few years’ repose?
Wearied with war, and tired with human butchery, they sat down to rest,
and called it peace. This certainly is not the condition that heaven intended
for man; and if this be monarchy, well might monarchy be reckoned among the
sins of the Jews.
The
revolutions which formerly took place in the world had nothing in them that
interested the bulk of mankind. They extended only to a change of persons and
measures, but not of principles, and rose or fell among the common
transactions of the moment. What we now behold may not improperly be called a
“counter-revolution.” Conquest and tyranny, at some earlier period,
dispossessed man of his rights, and he is now recovering them. And as the tide
of all human affairs has its ebb and flow in directions contrary to each
other, so also is it in this. Government founded on a moral theory, on a
system of universal peace, on the indefeasible hereditary Rights of Man, is
now revolving from west to east by a stronger impulse than the government of
the sword revolved from east to west. It interests not particular individuals,
but nations in its progress, and promises a new era to the human race.
The
danger to which the success of revolutions is most exposed is that of
attempting them before the principles on which they proceed, and the
advantages to result from them, are sufficiently seen and understood. Almost
everything appertaining to the circumstances of a nation, has been absorbed
and confounded under the general and mysterious word government. Though it
avoids taking to its account the errors it commits, and the mischiefs it
occasions, it fails not to arrogate to itself whatever has the appearance of
prosperity. It robs industry of its honours, by pedantically making itself the
cause of its effects; and purloins from the general character of man, the
merits that appertain to him as a social being.
It
may therefore be of use in this day of revolutions to discriminate between
those things which are the effect of government, and those which are not. This
will best be done by taking a review of society and civilisation, and the
consequences resulting therefrom, as things distinct from what are called
governments. By beginning with this investigation, we shall be able to assign
effects to their proper causes and analyse the mass of common errors.
CHAPTER
I
OF
SOCIETY AND CIVILISATION
Great
part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government.
It has its origin in the principles of society and the natural constitution of
man. It existed prior to government, and would exist if the formality of
government was abolished. The mutual dependence and reciprocal interest which
man has upon man, and all the parts of civilised community upon each other,
create that great chain of connection which holds it together. The landholder,
the farmer, the manufacturer, the merchant, the tradesman, and every
occupation, prospers by the aid which each receives from the other, and from
the whole. Common interest regulates their concerns, and forms their law; and
the laws which common usage ordains, have a greater influence than the laws of
government. In fine, society performs for itself almost everything which is
ascribed to government.
To
understand the nature and quantity of government proper for man, it is
necessary to attend to his character. As Nature created him for social life,
she fitted him for the station she intended. In all cases she made his natural
wants greater than his individual powers.
No one man is capable, without the aid of society, of supplying his own
wants, and those wants, acting upon every individual, impel the whole of them
into society, as naturally as gravitation acts to a centre.
But
she has gone further. She has not only forced man into society by a diversity
of wants which the reciprocal aid of each other can supply, but she has
implanted in him a system of social affections, which, though not necessary to
his existence, are essential to his happiness. There is no period in life when
this love for society ceases to act. It begins and ends with our being.
If
we examine with attention into the composition and constitution of man, the
diversity of his wants, and the diversity of talents in different men for
reciprocally accommodating the wants of each other, his propensity to society,
and consequently to preserve the advantages resulting from it, we shall easily
discover, that a great part of what is called government is mere imposition.
Government
is no farther necessary than to supply the few cases to which society and
civilisation are not conveniently competent; and instances are not wanting to
show, that everything which government can usefully add thereto, has been
performed by the common consent of society, without government.
For
upwards of two years from the commencement of the American War, and to a
longer period in several of the American States, there were no established
forms of government. The old governments had been abolished, and the country
was too much occupied in defence to employ its attention in establishing new
governments; yet during this interval order and harmony were preserved as
inviolate as in any country in Europe. There is a natural aptness in man, and
more so in society, because it embraces a greater variety of abilities and
resource, to accommodate itself to whatever situation it is in. The instant
formal government is abolished, society begins to act: a general association
takes place, and common interest produces common security.
So
far is it from being true, as has been pretended, that the abolition of any
formal government is the dissolution of society, that it acts by a contrary
impulse, and brings the latter the closer together. All that part of its
organisation which it had committed to its government, devolves again upon
itself, and acts through its medium. When men, as well from natural instinct
as from reciprocal benefits, have habituated themselves to social and
civilised life, there is always enough of its principles in practice to carry
them through any changes they may find necessary or convenient to make in
their government. In short, man is so naturally a creature of society that it
is almost impossible to put him out of it.
Formal
government makes but a small part of civilised life; and when even the best
that human wisdom can devise is established, it is a thing more in name and
idea than in fact. It is to the great and fundamental principles of society
and civilisation- to the common usage universally consented to, and mutually
and reciprocally maintained- to the unceasing circulation of interest, which,
passing through its million channels, invigorates the whole mass of civilised
man- it is to these things, infinitely more than to anything which even the
best instituted government can perform, that the safety and prosperity of the
individual and of the whole depends.
The
more perfect civilisation is, the less occasion has it for government, because
the more does it regulate its own affairs, and govern itself; but so contrary
is the practice of old governments to the reason of the case, that the
expenses of them increase in the proportion they ought to diminish. It is but
few general laws that civilised life requires, and those of such common
usefulness, that whether they are enforced by the forms of government or not,
the effect will be nearly the same. If we consider what the principles are
that first condense men into society, and what are the motives that regulate
their mutual intercourse afterwards, we shall find, by the time we arrive at
what is called government, that nearly the whole of the business is performed
by the natural operation of the parts upon each other.
Man,
with respect to all those matters, is more a creature of consistency than he
is aware, or than governments would wish him to believe. All the great laws of
society are laws of nature. Those of trade and commerce, whether with respect
to the intercourse of individuals or of nations, are laws of mutual and
reciprocal interest. They are followed and obeyed, because it is the interest
of the parties so to do, and not on account of any formal laws their
governments may impose or interpose.
But
how often is the natural propensity to society disturbed or destroyed by the
operations of government! When the latter, instead of being ingrafted on the
principles of the former, assumes to exist for itself, and acts by
partialities of favour and oppression, it becomes the cause of the mischiefs
it ought to prevent.
If
we look back to the riots and tumults which at various times have happened in
England, we shall find that they did not proceed from the want of a
government, but that government was itself the generating cause; instead of
consolidating society it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion,
and engendered discontents and disorders which otherwise would not have
existed. In those associations which men promiscuously form for the purpose of
trade, or of any concern in which government is totally out of the question,
and in which they act merely on the principles of society, we see how
naturally the various parties unite; and this shows, by comparison, that
governments, so far from being always the cause or means of order, are often
the destruction of it. The riots of 1780 had no other source than the remains
of those prejudices which the government itself had encouraged. But with
respect to England there are also other causes.
Excess
and inequality of taxation, however disguised in the means, never fail to
appear in their effects. As a great mass of the community are thrown thereby
into poverty and discontent, they are constantly on the brink of commotion;
and deprived, as they unfortunately are, of the means of information, are
easily heated to outrage. Whatever the apparent cause of any riots may be, the
real one is always want of happiness. It shows that something is wrong in the
system of government that injures the felicity by which society is to be
preserved.
But
as a fact is superior to reasoning, the instance of America presents itself to
confirm these observations. If there is a country in the world where concord,
according to common calculation, would be least expected, it is America. Made
up as it is of people from different nations,*[16] accustomed to different
forms and habits of government, speaking different languages, and more
different in their modes of worship, it would appear that the union of such a
people was impracticable; but by the simple operation of constructing
government on the principles of society and the rights of man, every
difficulty retires, and all the parts are brought into cordial unison. There
the poor are not oppressed, the rich are not privileged. Industry is not
mortified by the splendid extravagance of a court rioting at its expense.
Their taxes are few, because their government is just: and as there is nothing
to render them wretched, there is nothing to engender riots and tumults.
A
metaphysical man, like Mr. Burke, would have tortured his invention to
discover how such a people could be governed. He would have supposed that some
must be managed by fraud, others by force, and all by some contrivance; that
genius must be hired to impose upon ignorance, and show and parade to
fascinate the vulgar. Lost in the abundance of his researches, he would have
resolved and re-resolved, and finally overlooked the plain and easy road that
lay directly before him.
One
of the great advantages of the American Revolution has been, that it led to a
discovery of the principles, and laid open the imposition, of governments. All
the revolutions till then had been worked within the atmosphere of a court,
and never on the grand floor of a nation. The parties were always of the class
of courtiers; and whatever was their rage for reformation, they carefully
preserved the fraud of the profession.
In
all cases they took care to represent government as a thing made up of
mysteries, which only themselves understood; and they hid from the
understanding of the nation the only thing that was beneficial to know,
namely, That government is nothing more than a national association adding on
the principles of society.
Having
thus endeavoured to show that the social and civilised state of man is capable
of performing within itself almost everything necessary to its protection and
government, it will be proper, on the other hand, to take a review of the
present old governments, and examine whether their principles and practice are
correspondent thereto.
CHAPTER
II
OF
THE ORIGIN OF THE PRESENT OLD GOVERNMENTS
It
is impossible that such governments as have hitherto existed in the world,
could have commenced by any other means than a total violation of every
principle sacred and moral. The obscurity in which the origin of all the
present old governments is buried, implies the iniquity and disgrace with
which they began. The origin of the present government of America and France
will ever be remembered, because it is honourable to record it; but with
respect to the rest, even Flattery has consigned them to the tomb of time,
without an inscription.
It
could have been no difficult thing in the early and solitary ages of the
world, while the chief employment of men was that of attending flocks and
herds, for a banditti of ruffians to overrun a country, and lay it under
contributions. Their power being thus established, the chief of the band
contrived to lose the name of Robber in that of Monarch; and hence the origin
of Monarchy and Kings.
The
origin of the Government of England, so far as relates to what is called its
line of monarchy, being one of the latest, is perhaps the best recorded. The
hatred which the Norman invasion and tyranny begat, must have been deeply
rooted in the nation, to have outlived the contrivance to obliterate it.
Though not a courtier will talk of the curfew-bell, not a village in England
has forgotten it.
Those
bands of robbers having parcelled out the world, and divided it into
dominions, began, as is naturally the case, to quarrel with each other. What
at first was obtained by violence was considered by others as lawful to be
taken, and a second plunderer succeeded the first. They alternately invaded
the dominions which each had assigned to himself, and the brutality with which
they treated each other explains the original character of monarchy. It was
ruffian torturing ruffian. The conqueror considered the conquered, not as his
prisoner, but his property. He led him in triumph rattling in chains, and
doomed him, at pleasure, to slavery or death. As time obliterated the history
of their beginning, their successors assumed new appearances, to cut off the
entail of their disgrace, but their principles and objects remained the same.
What at first was plunder, assumed the softer name of revenue; and the power
originally usurped, they affected to inherit.
From
such beginning of governments, what could be expected but a continued system
of war and extortion? It has established itself into a trade. The vice is not
peculiar to one more than to another, but is the common principle of all.
There does not exist within such governments sufficient stamina whereon to
engraft reformation; and the shortest and most effectual remedy is to begin
anew on the ground of the nation.
What
scenes of horror, what perfection of iniquity, present themselves in
contemplating the character and reviewing the history of such governments! If
we would delineate human nature with a baseness of heart and hypocrisy of
countenance that reflection would shudder at and humanity disown, it is kings,
courts and cabinets that must sit for the portrait. Man, naturally as he is,
with all his faults about him, is not up to the character.
Can
we possibly suppose that if governments had originated in a right principle,
and had not an interest in pursuing a wrong one, the world could have been in
the wretched and quarrelsome condition we have seen it? What inducement has
the farmer, while following the plough, to lay aside his peaceful pursuit, and
go to war with the farmer of another country? or what inducement has the
manufacturer? What is dominion to them, or to any class of men in a nation?
Does it add an acre to any man’s estate, or raise its value? Are not
conquest and defeat each of the same price, and taxes the never-failing
consequence?- Though this reasoning may be good to a nation, it is not so to a
government. War is the Pharo-table of governments, and nations the dupes of
the game.
If
there is anything to wonder at in this miserable scene of governments more
than might be expected, it is the progress which the peaceful arts of
agriculture, manufacture and commerce have made beneath such a long
accumulating load of discouragement and oppression. It serves to show that
instinct in animals does not act with stronger impulse than the principles of
society and civilisation operate in man. Under all discouragements, he pursues
his object, and yields to nothing but impossibilities.
CHAPTER
III
OF
THE OLD AND NEW SYSTEMS OF GOVERNMENT
Nothing
can appear more contradictory than the principles on which the old governments
began, and the condition to which society, civilisation and commerce are
capable of carrying mankind. Government,
on the old system, is an assumption of power, for the aggrandisement of
itself; on the new, a delegation of power for the common benefit of society.
The former supports itself by keeping up a system of war; the latter promotes
a system of peace, as the true means of enriching a nation. The one encourages
national prejudices; the other promotes universal society, as the means of
universal commerce. The one measures its prosperity, by the quantity of
revenue it extorts; the other proves its excellence, by the small quantity of
taxes it requires.
Mr.
Burke has talked of old and new whigs. If he can amuse himself with childish
names and distinctions, I shall not interrupt his pleasure. It is not to him,
but to the Abbe Sieyes, that I address this chapter. I am already engaged to
the latter gentleman to discuss the subject of monarchical government; and as
it naturally occurs in comparing the old and new systems, I make this the
opportunity of presenting to him my observations. I shall occasionally take
Mr. Burke in my way.
Though
it might be proved that the system of government now called the New, is the
most ancient in principle of all that have existed, being founded on the
original, inherent Rights of Man: yet, as tyranny and the sword have suspended
the exercise of those rights for many centuries past, it serves better the
purpose of distinction to call it the new, than to claim the right of calling
it the old.
The
first general distinction between those two systems, is, that the one now
called the old is hereditary, either in whole or in part; and the new is
entirely representative. It rejects all hereditary government:
First,
As being an imposition on mankind.
Secondly,
As inadequate to the purposes for which government is necessary.
With
respect to the first of these heads- It cannot be proved by what right
hereditary government could begin; neither does there exist within the compass
of mortal power a right to establish it. Man has no authority over posterity
in matters of personal right; and, therefore, no man, or body of men, had, or
can have, a right to set up hereditary government. Were even ourselves to come
again into existence, instead of being succeeded by posterity, we have not now
the right of taking from ourselves the rights which would then be ours. On
what ground, then, do we pretend to take them from others?
All
hereditary government is in its nature tyranny. An heritable crown, or an
heritable throne, or by what other fanciful name such things may be called,
have no other significant explanation than that mankind are heritable
property. To inherit a government, is to inherit the people, as if they were
flocks and herds.
With
respect to the second head, that of being inadequate to the purposes for which
government is necessary, we have only to consider what government essentially
is, and compare it with the circumstances to which hereditary succession is
subject.
Government
ought to be a thing always in full maturity. It ought to be so constructed as
to be superior to all the accidents to which individual man is subject; and,
therefore, hereditary succession, by being subject to them all, is the most
irregular and imperfect of all the systems of government.
We
have heard the Rights of Man called a levelling system; but the only system to
which the word levelling is truly applicable, is the hereditary monarchical
system. It is a system of mental levelling. It indiscriminately admits every
species of character to the same authority. Vice and virtue, ignorance and
wisdom, in short, every quality good or bad, is put on the same level. Kings
succeed each other, not as rationals, but as animals. It signifies not what
their mental or moral characters are. Can we then be surprised at the abject
state of the human mind in monarchical countries, when the government itself
is formed on such an abject levelling system?- It has no fixed character.
To-day it is one thing; to-morrow it is something else. It changes with the
temper of every succeeding individual, and is subject to all the varieties of
each. It is government through the medium of passions and accidents. It
appears under all the various characters of childhood, decrepitude, dotage, a
thing at nurse, in leading-strings, or in crutches. It reverses the wholesome
order of nature. It occasionally puts children over men, and the conceits of
nonage over wisdom and experience. In short, we cannot conceive a more
ridiculous figure of government, than hereditary succession, in all its cases,
presents.
Could
it be made a decree in nature, or an edict registered in heaven, and man could
know it, that virtue and wisdom should invariably appertain to hereditary
succession, the objection to it would be removed; but when we see that nature
acts as if she disowned and sported with the hereditary system; that the
mental character of successors, in all countries, is below the average of
human understanding; that one is a tyrant, another an idiot, a third insane,
and some all three together, it is impossible to attach confidence to it, when
reason in man has power to act.
It
is not to the Abbe Sieyes that I need apply this reasoning; he has already
saved me that trouble by giving his own opinion upon the case. “If it be
asked,” says he, “what is my opinion with respect to hereditary right, I
answer without hesitation, That in good theory, an hereditary transmission of
any power of office, can never accord with the laws of a true representation.
Hereditaryship is, in this sense, as much an attaint upon principle, as an
outrage upon society. But let us,”
continues he, “refer to the history of all elective monarchies and
principalities: is there one in which the elective mode is not worse than the
hereditary succession?”
As
to debating on which is the worst of the two, it is admitting both to be bad;
and herein we are agreed. The preference which the Abbe has given, is a
condemnation of the thing that he prefers. Such a mode of reasoning on such a
subject is inadmissible, because it finally amounts to an accusation upon
Providence, as if she had left to man no other choice with respect to
government than between two evils, the best of which he admits to be “an
attaint upon principle, and an outrage upon society.”
Passing
over, for the present, all the evils and mischiefs which monarchy has
occasioned in the world, nothing can more effectually prove its uselessness in
a state of civil government, than making it hereditary. Would we make any
office hereditary that required wisdom and abilities to fill it? And where
wisdom and abilities are not necessary, such an office, whatever it may be, is
superfluous or insignificant.
Hereditary
succession is a burlesque upon monarchy. It puts it in the most ridiculous
light, by presenting it as an office which any child or idiot may fill. It
requires some talents to be a common mechanic; but to be a king requires only
the animal figure of man- a sort of breathing automaton. This sort of
superstition may last a few years more, but it cannot long resist the awakened
reason and interest of man.
As
to Mr. Burke, he is a stickler for monarchy, not altogether as a pensioner, if
he is one, which I believe, but as a political man. He has taken up a
contemptible opinion of mankind, who, in their turn, are taking up the same of
him. He considers them as a herd of beings that must be governed by fraud,
effigy, and show; and an idol would be as good a figure of monarchy with him,
as a man. I will, however, do him the justice to say that, with respect to
America, he has been very complimentary. He always contended, at least in my
hearing, that the people of America were more enlightened than those of
England, or of any country in Europe; and that therefore the imposition of
show was not necessary in their governments.
Though
the comparison between hereditary and elective monarchy, which the Abbe has
made, is unnecessary to the case, because the representative system rejects
both: yet, were I to make the comparison, I should decide contrary to what he
has done.
The
civil wars which have originated from contested hereditary claims, are more
numerous, and have been more dreadful, and of longer continuance, than those
which have been occasioned by election. All the civil wars in France arose
from the hereditary system; they were either produced by hereditary claims, or
by the imperfection of the hereditary form, which admits of regencies or
monarchy at nurse. With respect to England, its history is full of the same
misfortunes. The contests for succession between the houses of York and
Lancaster lasted a whole century; and others of a similar nature have renewed
themselves since that period. Those of 1715 and 1745 were of the same kind.
The succession war for the crown of Spain embroiled almost half Europe. The
disturbances of Holland are generated from the hereditaryship of the
Stadtholder. A government calling itself free, with an hereditary office, is
like a thorn in the flesh, that produces a fermentation which endeavours to
discharge it.
But
I might go further, and place also foreign wars, of whatever kind, to the same
cause. It is by adding the evil of hereditary succession to that of monarchy,
that a permanent family interest is created, whose constant objects are
dominion and revenue. Poland, though an elective monarchy, has had fewer wars
than those which are hereditary; and it is the only government that has made a
voluntary essay, though but a small one, to reform the condition of the
country.
Having
thus glanced at a few of the defects of the old, or hereditary systems of
government, let us compare it with the new, or representative system.
The
representative system takes society and civilisation for its basis; nature,
reason, and experience, for its guide.
Experience,
in all ages, and in all countries, has demonstrated that it is impossible to
control Nature in her distribution of mental powers. She gives them as she
pleases. Whatever is the rule by which she, apparently to us, scatters them
among mankind, that rule remains a secret to man. It would be as ridiculous to
attempt to fix the hereditaryship of human beauty, as of wisdom. Whatever
wisdom constituently is, it is like a seedless plant; it may be reared when it
appears, but it cannot be voluntarily produced. There is always a sufficiency
somewhere in the general mass of society for all purposes; but with respect to
the parts of society, it is continually changing its place. It rises in one
to-day, in another to-morrow, and has most probably visited in rotation every
family of the earth, and again withdrawn.
As
this is in the order of nature, the order of government must necessarily
follow it, or government will, as we see it does, degenerate into ignorance.
The hereditary system, therefore, is as repugnant to human wisdom as to human
rights; and is as absurd as it is unjust.
As
the republic of letters brings forward the best literary productions, by
giving to genius a fair and universal chance; so the representative system of
government is calculated to produce the wisest laws, by collecting wisdom from
where it can be found. I smile to myself when I contemplate the ridiculous
insignificance into which literature and all the sciences would sink, were
they made hereditary; and I carry the same idea into governments. An
hereditary governor is as inconsistent as an hereditary author. I know not
whether Homer or Euclid had sons; but I will venture an opinion that if they
had, and had left their works unfinished, those sons could not have completed
them.
Do
we need a stronger evidence of the absurdity of hereditary government than is
seen in the descendants of those men, in any line of life, who once were
famous? Is there scarcely an instance in which there is not a total reverse of
the character? It appears as if the tide of mental faculties flowed as far as
it could in certain channels, and then forsook its course, and arose in
others. How irrational then is the hereditary system, which establishes
channels of power, in company with which wisdom refuses to flow! By continuing
this absurdity, man is perpetually in contradiction with himself; he accepts,
for a king, or a chief magistrate, or a legislator, a person whom he would not
elect for a constable.
It
appears to general observation, that revolutions create genius and talents;
but those events do no more than bring them forward. There is existing in man,
a mass of sense lying in a dormant state, and which, unless something excites
it to action, will descend with him, in that condition, to the grave. As it is
to the advantage of society that the whole of its faculties should be
employed, the construction of government ought to be such as to bring forward,
by a quiet and regular operation, all that extent of capacity which never
fails to appear in revolutions.
This
cannot take place in the insipid state of hereditary government, not only
because it prevents, but because it operates to benumb. When the mind of a
nation is bowed down by any political superstition in its government, such as
hereditary succession is, it loses a considerable portion of its powers on all
other subjects and objects. Hereditary
succession requires the same obedience to ignorance, as to wisdom; and when
once the mind can bring itself to pay this indiscriminate reverence, it
descends below the stature of mental manhood. It is fit to be great only in
little things. It acts a treachery upon itself, and suffocates the sensations
that urge the detection.
Though
the ancient governments present to us a miserable picture of the condition of
man, there is one which above all others exempts itself from the general
description. I mean the democracy of the Athenians. We see more to admire, and
less to condemn, in that great, extraordinary people, than in anything which
history affords.
Mr.
Burke is so little acquainted with constituent principles of government, that
he confounds democracy and representation together. Representation was a thing unknown in the ancient
democracies. In those the mass of the people met and enacted laws
(grammatically speaking) in the first person. Simple democracy was no other
than the common hall of the ancients. It signifies the form, as well as the
public principle of the government. As those democracies increased in
population, and the territory extended, the simple democratical form became
unwieldy and impracticable; and as the system of representation was not known,
the consequence was, they either degenerated convulsively into monarchies, or
became absorbed into such as then existed. Had the system of representation
been then understood, as it now is, there is no reason to believe that those
forms of government, now called monarchical or aristocratical, would ever have
taken place. It was the want of some method to consolidate the parts of
society, after it became too populous, and too extensive for the simple
democratical form, and also the lax and solitary condition of shepherds and
herdsmen in other parts of the world, that afforded opportunities to those
unnatural modes of government to begin.
As
it is necessary to clear away the rubbish of errors, into which the subject of
government has been thrown, I will proceed to remark on some others.
It
has always been the political craft of courtiers and court-governments, to
abuse something which they called republicanism; but what republicanism was,
or is, they never attempt to explain. let us examine a little into this case.
The
only forms of government are the democratical, the aristocratical, the
monarchical, and what is now called the representative.
What
is called a republic is not any particular form of government.
It is wholly characteristical of the purport, matter or object for
which government ought to be instituted, and on which it is to be employed,
Res-Publica, the public affairs, or the public good; or, literally translated,
the public thing. It is a word of a good original, referring to what ought to
be the character and business of government; and in this sense it is naturally
opposed to the word monarchy, which has a base original signification. It
means arbitrary power in an individual person; in the exercise of which,
himself, and not the res-publica, is the object.
Every
government that does not act on the principle of a Republic, or in other
words, that does not make the res-publica its whole and sole object, is not a
good government. Republican government is no other than government established
and conducted for the interest of the public, as well individually as
collectively. It is not necessarily connected with any particular form, but it
most naturally associates with the representative form, as being best
calculated to secure the end for which a nation is at the expense of
supporting it.
Various
forms of government have affected to style themselves a republic. Poland calls
itself a republic, which is an hereditary aristocracy, with what is called an
elective monarchy. Holland calls itself a republic, which is chiefly
aristocratical, with an hereditary stadtholdership. But the government of
America, which is wholly on the system of representation, is the only real
Republic, in character and in practice, that now exists. Its government has no
other object than the public business of the nation, and therefore it is
properly a republic; and the Americans have taken care that This, and no
other, shall always be the object of their government, by their rejecting
everything hereditary, and establishing governments on the system of
representation only. Those who have said that a republic is not a form of
government calculated for countries of great extent, mistook, in the first
place, the business of a government, for a form of government; for the
res-publica equally appertains to every extent of territory and population.
And, in the second place, if they meant anything with respect to form, it was
the simple democratical form, such as was the mode of government in the
ancient democracies, in which there was no representation. The case,
therefore, is not, that a republic cannot be extensive, but that it cannot be
extensive on the simple democratical form; and the question naturally presents
itself, What is the best form of government for conducting the Res-Publica, or
the Public Business of a nation, after it becomes too extensive and populous
for the simple democratical form? It cannot be monarchy, because monarchy is
subject to an objection of the same amount to which the simple democratical
form was subject.
It
is possible that an individual may lay down a system of principles, on which
government shall be constitutionally established to any extent of territory.
This is no more than an operation of the mind, acting by its own powers. But
the practice upon those principles, as applying to the various and numerous
circumstances of a nation, its agriculture, manufacture, trade, commerce,
etc., etc., a knowledge of a different kind, and which can be had only from
the various parts of society. It is an assemblage of practical knowledge,
which no individual can possess; and therefore the monarchical form is as much
limited, in useful practice, from the incompetency of knowledge, as was the
democratical form, from the multiplicity of population. The one degenerates,
by extension, into confusion; the other, into ignorance and incapacity, of
which all the great monarchies are an evidence. The monarchical form,
therefore, could not be a substitute for the democratical, because it has
equal inconveniences.
Much
less could it when made hereditary. This is the most effectual of all forms to
preclude knowledge. Neither could the high democratical mind have voluntarily
yielded itself to be governed by children and idiots, and all the motley
insignificance of character, which attends such a mere animal system, the
disgrace and the reproach of reason and of man.
As
to the aristocratical form, it has the same vices and defects with the
monarchical, except that the chance of abilities is better from the proportion
of numbers, but there is still no security for the right use and application
of them.*[17]
Referring
them to the original simple democracy, it affords the true data from which
government on a large scale can begin. It is incapable of extension, not from
its principle, but from the inconvenience of its form; and monarchy and
aristocracy, from their incapacity. Retaining, then, democracy as the ground,
and rejecting the corrupt systems of monarchy and aristocracy, the
representative system naturally presents itself; remedying at once the defects
of the simple democracy as to form, and the incapacity of the other two with
respect to knowledge.
Simple
democracy was society governing itself without the aid of secondary means. By
ingrafting representation upon democracy, we arrive at a system of government
capable of embracing and confederating all the various interests and every
extent of territory and population; and that also with advantages as much
superior to hereditary government, as the republic of letters is to hereditary
literature.
It
is on this system that the American government is founded. It is
representation ingrafted upon democracy. It has fixed the form by a scale
parallel in all cases to the extent of the principle. What Athens was in
miniature America will be in magnitude. The one was the wonder of the ancient
world; the other is becoming the admiration of the present. It is the easiest
of all the forms of government to be understood and the most eligible in
practice; and excludes at once the ignorance and insecurity of the hereditary
mode, and the inconvenience of the simple democracy.
It
is impossible to conceive a system of government capable of acting over such
an extent of territory, and such a circle of interests, as is immediately
produced by the operation of representation. France, great and populous as it
is, is but a spot in the capaciousness of the system. It is preferable to
simple democracy even in small territories. Athens, by representation, would
have outrivalled her own democracy.
That
which is called government, or rather that which we ought to conceive
government to be, is no more than some common center in which all the parts of
society unite. This cannot be accomplished by any method so conducive to the
various interests of the community, as by the representative system. It
concentrates the knowledge necessary to the interest of the parts, and of the
whole. It places government in a state of constant maturity. It is, as has
already been observed, never young, never old. It is subject neither to
nonage, nor dotage. It is never
in the cradle, nor on crutches. It admits not of a separation between
knowledge and power, and is superior, as government always ought to be, to all
the accidents of individual man, and is therefore superior to what is called
monarchy.
A
nation is not a body, the figure of which is to be represented by the human
body; but is like a body contained within a circle, having a common center, in
which every radius meets; and that center is formed by representation. To
connect representation with what is called monarchy, is eccentric government.
Representation is of itself the delegated monarchy of a nation, and cannot
debase itself by dividing it with another.
Mr.
Burke has two or three times, in his parliamentary speeches, and in his
publications, made use of a jingle of words that convey no ideas. Speaking of
government, he says, “It is better to have monarchy for its basis, and
republicanism for its corrective, than republicanism for its basis, and
monarchy for its corrective.”- If he means that it is better to correct
folly with wisdom, than wisdom with folly, I will no otherwise contend with
him, than that it would be much better to reject the folly entirely.
But
what is this thing which Mr. Burke calls monarchy? Will he explain it? All men
can understand what representation is; and that it must necessarily include a
variety of knowledge and talents. But what security is there for the same
qualities on the part of monarchy? or, when the monarchy is a child, where
then is the wisdom? What does it
know about government? Who then is the monarch, or where is the monarchy? If
it is to be performed by regency, it proves to be a farce. A regency is a mock
species of republic, and the whole of monarchy deserves no better description.
It is a thing as various as imagination can paint. It has none of the stable
character that government ought to possess. Every succession is a revolution,
and every regency a counter-revolution. The whole of it is a scene of
perpetual court cabal and intrigue, of which Mr. Burke is himself an instance.
To render monarchy consistent with government, the next in succession should
not be born a child, but a man at once, and that man a Solomon. It is
ridiculous that nations are to wait and government be interrupted till boys
grow to be men.
Whether
I have too little sense to see, or too much to be imposed upon; whether I have
too much or too little pride, or of anything else, I leave out of the
question; but certain it is, that what is called monarchy, always appears to
me a silly, contemptible thing. I compare it to something kept behind a
curtain, about which there is a great deal of bustle and fuss, and a wonderful
air of seeming solemnity; but when, by any accident, the curtain happens to be
open-and the company see what it is, they burst into laughter.
In
the representative system of government, nothing of this can happen. Like the
nation itself, it possesses a perpetual stamina, as well of body as of mind,
and presents itself on the open theatre of the world in a fair and manly
manner. Whatever are its excellences or defects, they are visible to all. It
exists not by fraud and mystery; it deals not in cant and sophistry; but
inspires a language that, passing from heart to heart, is felt and understood.
We
must shut our eyes against reason, we must basely degrade our understanding,
not to see the folly of what is called monarchy.
Nature is orderly in all her works; but this is a mode of government
that counteracts nature. It turns the progress of the human faculties upside
down. It subjects age to be governed by children, and wisdom by folly.
On
the contrary, the representative system is always parallel with the order and
immutable laws of nature, and meets the reason of man in every part. For
example:
In
the American Federal Government, more power is delegated to the President of
the United States than to any other individual member of Congress. He cannot,
therefore, be elected to this office under the age of thirty-five years. By
this time the judgment of man becomes more matured, and he has lived long
enough to be acquainted with men and things, and the country with him.- But on
the monarchial plan (exclusive of the numerous chances there are against every
man born into the world, of drawing a prize in the lottery of human
faculties), the next in succession, whatever he may be, is put at the head of
a nation, and of a government, at the age of eighteen years.
Does this appear like an action of wisdom? Is it consistent with the
proper dignity and the manly character of a nation? Where is the propriety of
calling such a lad the father of the people?- In all other cases, a person is
a minor until the age of twenty-one years.
Before this period, he is not trusted with the management of an acre of
land, or with the heritable property of a flock of sheep, or an herd of swine;
but, wonderful to tell! he may, at the age of eighteen years, be trusted with
a nation.
That
monarchy is all a bubble, a mere court artifice to procure money, is evident
(at least to me) in every character in which it can be viewed. It would be
impossible, on the rational system of representative government, to make out a
bill of expenses to such an enormous amount as this deception admits.
Government is not of itself a very chargeable institution. The whole expense
of the federal government of America, founded, as I have already said, on the
system of representation, and extending over a country nearly ten times as
large as England, is but six hundred thousand dollars, or one hundred and
thirty-five thousand pounds sterling.
I
presume that no man in his sober senses will compare the character of any of
the kings of Europe with that of General Washington. Yet, in France, and also
in England, the expense of the civil list only, for the support of one man, is
eight times greater than the whole expense of the federal government in
America. To assign a reason for this, appears almost impossible. The
generality of people in America, especially the poor, are more able to pay
taxes, than the generality of people either in France or England.
But
the case is, that the representative system diffuses such a body of knowledge
throughout a nation, on the subject of government, as to explode ignorance and
preclude imposition. The craft of courts cannot be acted on that ground. There
is no place for mystery; nowhere for it to begin. Those who are not in the
representation, know as much of the nature of business as those who are. An
affectation of mysterious importance would there be scouted. Nations can have
no secrets; and the secrets of courts, like those of individuals, are always
their defects.
In
the representative system, the reason for everything must publicly appear.
Every man is a proprietor in government, and considers it a necessary part of
his business to understand. It concerns his interest, because it affects his
property. He examines the cost, and compares it with the advantages; and above
all, he does not adopt the slavish custom of following what in other
governments are called Leaders.
It
can only be by blinding the understanding of man, and making him believe that
government is some wonderful mysterious thing, that excessive revenues are
obtained. Monarchy is well calculated to ensure this end. It is the popery of
government; a thing kept up to amuse the ignorant, and quiet them into taxes.
The
government of a free country, properly speaking, is not in the persons, but in
the laws. The enacting of those requires no great expense; and when they are
administered, the whole of civil government is performed- the rest is all
court contrivance.
CHAPTER
IV
OF
CONSTITUTIONS
That
men mean distinct and separate things when they speak of constitutions and of
governments, is evident; or why are those terms distinctly and separately
used? A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people
constituting a government; and government without a constitution, is power
without a right.
All
power exercised over a nation, must have some beginning. It must either be
delegated or assumed. There are no other sources. All delegated power is
trust, and all assumed power is usurpation. Time does not alter the nature and
quality of either.
In
viewing this subject, the case and circumstances of America present themselves
as in the beginning of a world; and our enquiry into the origin of government
is shortened, by referring to the facts that have arisen in our own day. We
have no occasion to roam for information into the obscure field of antiquity,
nor hazard ourselves upon conjecture. We are brought at once to the point of
seeing government begin, as if we had lived in the beginning of time. The real
volume, not of history, but of facts, is directly before us, unmutilated by
contrivance, or the errors of tradition.
I
will here concisely state the commencement of the American constitutions; by
which the difference between constitutions and governments will sufficiently
appear.
It
may not appear improper to remind the reader that the United States of America
consist of thirteen separate states, each of which established a government
for itself, after the declaration of independence, done the 4th of
July, 1776. Each state acted independently of the rest, in forming its
governments; but the same general principle pervades the whole. When the
several state governments were formed, they proceeded to form the federal
government, that acts over the whole in all matters which concern the interest
of the whole, or which relate to the intercourse of the several states with
each other, or with foreign nations. I will begin with giving an instance from
one of the state governments (that of Pennsylvania) and then proceed to the
federal government.
The
state of Pennsylvania, though nearly of the same extent of territory as
England, was then divided into only twelve counties. Each of those counties had elected a committee at the
commencement of the dispute with the English government; and as the city of
Philadelphia, which also had its committee, was the most central for
intelligence, it became the center of communication to the several country
committees. When it became necessary to proceed to the formation of a
government, the committee of Philadelphia proposed a conference of all the
committees, to be held in that city, and which met the latter end of July,
1776.
Though
these committees had been duly elected by the people, they were not elected
expressly for the purpose, nor invested with the authority of forming a
constitution; and as they could not, consistently with the American idea of
rights, assume such a power, they could only confer upon the matter, and put
it into a train of operation. The conferees, therefore, did no more than state
the case, and recommend to the several counties to elect six representatives
for each county, to meet in convention at Philadelphia, with powers to form a
constitution, and propose it for public consideration.
This
convention, of which Benjamin Franklin was president, having met and
deliberated, and agreed upon a constitution, they next ordered it to be
published, not as a thing established, but for the consideration of the whole
people, their approbation or rejection, and then adjourned to a stated time.
When the time of adjournment was expired, the convention re-assembled; and as
the general opinion of the people in approbation of it was then known, the
constitution was signed, sealed, and proclaimed on the authority of the people
and the original instrument deposited as a public record. The convention then
appointed a day for the general election of the representatives who were to
compose the government, and the time it should commence; and having done this
they dissolved, and returned to their several homes and occupations.
In
this constitution were laid down, first, a declaration of rights; then
followed the form which the government should have, and the powers it should
possess- the authority of the courts of judicature, and of juries- the manner
in which elections should be conducted, and the proportion of representatives
to the number of electors- the time which each succeeding assembly should
continue, which was one year-the mode of levying, and of accounting for the
expenditure, of public money- of appointing public officers, etc., etc., etc.
No
article of this constitution could be altered or infringed at the discretion
of the government that was to ensue. It was to that government a law. But as
it would have been unwise to preclude the benefit of experience, and in order
also to prevent the accumulation of errors, if any should be found, and to
preserve an unison of government with the circumstances of the state at all
times, the constitution provided that, at the expiration of every seven years,
a convention should be elected, for the express purpose of revising the
constitution, and making alterations, additions, or abolitions therein, if any
such should be found necessary.
Here
we see a regular process- a government issuing out of a constitution, formed
by the people in their original character; and that constitution serving, not
only as an authority, but as a law of control to the government. It was the
political bible of the state. Scarcely
a family was without it. Every member of the government had a copy; and
nothing was more common, when any debate arose on the principle of a bill, or
on the extent of any species of authority, than for the members to take the
printed constitution out of their pocket, and read the chapter with which such
matter in debate was connected.
Having
thus given an instance from one of the states, I will show the proceedings by
which the federal constitution of the United States arose and was formed.
Congress,
at its two first meetings, in September 1774, and May 1775, was nothing more
than a deputation from the legislatures of the several provinces, afterwards
states; and had no other authority than what arose from common consent, and
the necessity of its acting as a public body. In everything which related to
the internal affairs of America, congress went no further than to issue
recommendations to the several provincial assemblies, who at discretion
adopted them or not. Nothing on the part of congress was compulsive; yet, in
this situation, it was more faithfully and affectionately obeyed than was any
government in Europe. This instance, like that of the national assembly in
France, sufficiently shows, that the strength of government does not consist
in any thing itself, but in the attachment of a nation, and the interest which
a people feel in supporting it. When this is lost, government is but a child
in power; and though, like the old government in France, it may harass
individuals for a while, it but facilitates its own fall.
After
the declaration of independence, it became consistent with the principle on
which representative government is founded, that the authority of congress
should be defined and established. Whether that authority should be more or
less than congress then discretionarily exercised was not the question. It was
merely the rectitude of the measure.
For
this purpose, the act, called the act of confederation (which was a sort of
imperfect federal constitution), was proposed, and, after long deliberation,
was concluded in the year 1781. It was not the act of congress, because it is
repugnant to the principles of representative government that a body should
give power to itself. Congress
first informed the several states, of the powers which it conceived were
necessary to be invested in the union, to enable it to perform the duties and
services required from it; and the states severally agreed with each other,
and concentrated in congress those powers.
It
may not be improper to observe that in both those instances (the one of
Pennsylvania, and the other of the United States), there is no such thing as
the idea of a compact between the people on one side, and the government on
the other. The compact was that of the people with each other, to produce and
constitute a government. To suppose that any government can be a party in a
compact with the whole people, is to suppose it to have existence before it
can have a right to exist. The only instance in which a compact can take place
between the people and those who exercise the government, is, that the people
shall pay them, while they choose to employ them.
Government
is not a trade which any man, or any body of men, has a right to set up and
exercise for his own emolument, but is altogether a trust, in right of those
by whom that trust is delegated, and by whom it is always resumeable. It has
of itself no rights; they are altogether duties.
Having
thus given two instances of the original formation of a constitution, I will
show the manner in which both have been changed since their first
establishment.
The
powers vested in the governments of the several states, by the state
constitutions, were found, upon experience, to be too great; and those vested
in the federal government, by the act of confederation, too little. The defect
was not in the principle, but in the distribution of power.
Numerous
publications, in pamphlets and in the newspapers, appeared, on the propriety
and necessity of new modelling the federal government. After some time of
public discussion, carried on through the channel of the press, and in
conversations, the state of Virginia, experiencing some inconvenience with
respect to commerce, proposed holding a continental conference; in consequence
of which, a deputation from five or six state assemblies met at Annapolis, in
Maryland, in 1786. This meeting, not conceiving itself sufficiently authorised
to go into the business of a reform, did no more than state their general
opinions of the propriety of the measure, and recommend that a convention of
all the states should be held the year following.
The
convention met at Philadelphia in May, 1787, of which General Washington was
elected president. He was not at that time connected with any of the state
governments, or with congress. He delivered up his commission when the war
ended, and since then had lived a private citizen.
The
convention went deeply into all the subjects; and having, after a variety of
debate and investigation, agreed among themselves upon the several parts of a
federal constitution, the next question was, the manner of giving it authority
and practice.
For
this purpose they did not, like a cabal of courtiers, send for a Dutch
Stadtholder, or a German Elector; but they referred the whole matter to the
sense and interest of the country.
They
first directed that the proposed constitution should be published. Secondly,
that each state should elect a convention, expressly for the purpose of taking
it into consideration, and of ratifying or rejecting it; and that as soon as
the approbation and ratification of any nine states should be given, that
those states shall proceed to the election of their proportion of members to
the new federal government; and that the operation of it should then begin,
and the former federal government cease.
The
several states proceeded accordingly to elect their conventions.
Some of those conventions ratified the constitution by very large
majorities, and two or three unanimously. In others there were much debate and
division of opinion. In the Massachusetts convention, which met at Boston, the
majority was not above nineteen or twenty, in about three hundred members; but
such is the nature of representative government, that it quietly decides all
matters by majority. After the debate in the Massachusetts convention was
closed, and the vote taken, the objecting members rose and declared, “That
though they had argued and voted against it, because certain parts appeared to
them in a different light to what they appeared to other members; yet, as the
vote had decided in favour of the constitution as proposed, they should give
it the same practical support as if they had for it.”
As
soon as nine states had concurred (and the rest followed in the order their
conventions were elected), the old fabric of the federal government was taken
down, and the new one erected, of which General Washington is president.- In
this place I cannot help remarking, that the character and services of this
gentleman are sufficient to put all those men called kings to shame. While
they are receiving from the sweat and labours of mankind, a prodigality of
pay, to which neither their abilities nor their services can entitle them, he
is rendering every service in his power, and refusing every pecuniary reward.
He accepted no pay as commander-in-chief; he accepts none as president of the
United States.
After
the new federal constitution was established, the state of Pennsylvania,
conceiving that some parts of its own constitution required to be altered,
elected a convention for that purpose. The proposed alterations were
published, and the people concurring therein, they were established.
In
forming those constitutions, or in altering them, little or no inconvenience
took place. The ordinary course of things was not interrupted, and the
advantages have been much. It is always the interest of a far greater number
of people in a nation to have things right, than to let them remain wrong; and
when public matters are open to debate, and the public judgment free, it will
not decide wrong, unless it decides too hastily.
In
the two instances of changing the constitutions, the governments then in being
were not actors either way. Government has no right to make itself a party in
any debate respecting the principles or modes of forming, or of changing,
constitutions. It is not for the benefit of those who exercise the powers of
government that constitutions, and the governments issuing from them, are
established. In all those matters the right of judging and acting are in those
who pay, and not in those who receive.
A
constitution is the property of a nation, and not of those who exercise the
government. All the constitutions of America are declared to be established on
the authority of the people. In France, the word nation is used instead of the
people; but in both cases, a constitution is a thing antecedent to the
government, and always distinct there from.
In
England it is not difficult to perceive that everything has a constitution,
except the nation. Every society and association that is established, first
agreed upon a number of original articles, digested into form, which are its
constitution. It then appointed its officers, whose powers and authorities are
described in that constitution, and the government of that society then
commenced. Those officers, by
whatever name they are called, have no authority to add to, alter, or abridge
the original articles. It is only to the constituting power that this right
belongs.
From
the want of understanding the difference between a constitution and a
government, Dr. Johnson, and all writers of his description, have always
bewildered themselves. They could not but perceive, that there must
necessarily be a controlling power existing somewhere, and they placed this
power in the discretion of the persons exercising the government, instead of
placing it in a constitution formed by the nation. When it is in a
constitution, it has the nation for its support, and the natural and the
political controlling powers are together. The laws which are enacted by
governments, control men only as individuals, but the nation, through its
constitution, controls the whole government, and has a natural ability to do
so. The final controlling power, therefore, and the original constituting
power, are one and the same power.
Dr.
Johnson could not have advanced such a position in any country where there was
a constitution; and he is himself an evidence that no such thing as a
constitution exists in England. But it may be put as a question, not improper
to be investigated, that if a constitution does not exist, how came the idea
of its existence so generally established?
In
order to decide this question, it is necessary to consider a constitution in
both its cases:- First, as creating a government and giving it powers.
Secondly, as regulating and restraining the powers so given.
If
we begin with William of Normandy, we find that the government of England was
originally a tyranny, founded on an invasion and conquest of the country. This
being admitted, it will then appear, that the exertion of the nation, at
different periods, to abate that tyranny, and render it less intolerable, has
been credited for a constitution.
Magna
Charta, as it was called (it is now like an almanack of the same date), was no
more than compelling the government to renounce a part of its assumptions. It
did not create and give powers to government in a manner a constitution does;
but was, as far as it went, of the nature of a re-conquest, and not a
constitution; for could the nation have totally expelled the usurpation, as
France has done its despotism, it would then have had a constitution to form.
The
history of the Edwards and the Henries, and up to the commencement of the
Stuarts, exhibits as many instances of tyranny as could be acted within the
limits to which the nation had restricted it. The Stuarts endeavoured to pass
those limits, and their fate is well known. In all those instances we see
nothing of a constitution, but only of restrictions on assumed power.
After
this, another William, descended from the same stock, and claiming from the
same origin, gained possession; and of the two evils, James and William, the
nation preferred what it thought the least; since, from circumstances, it must
take one. The act, called the Bill of Rights, comes here into view. What is
it, but a bargain, which the parts of the government made with each other to
divide powers, profits, and privileges? You shall have so much, and I will
have the rest; and with respect to the nation, it said, for your share, You
shall have the right of petitioning. This being the case, the bill of rights
is more properly a bill of wrongs, and of insult.
As to what is called the convention parliament, it was a thing that
made itself, and then made the authority by which it acted. A few persons got
together, and called themselves by that name. Several of them had never been
elected, and none of them for the purpose.
From
the time of William a species of government arose, issuing out of this
coalition bill of rights; and more so, since the corruption introduced at the
Hanover succession by the agency of Walpole; that can be described by no other
name than a despotic legislation. Though the parts may embarrass each other,
the whole has no bounds; and the only right it acknowledges out of itself, is
the right of petitioning. Where then is the constitution either that gives or
restrains power?
It
is not because a part of the government is elective, that makes it less a
despotism, if the persons so elected possess afterwards, as a parliament,
unlimited powers. Election, in this case, becomes separated from
representation, and the candidates are candidates for despotism.
I
cannot believe that any nation, reasoning on its own rights, would have
thought of calling these things a constitution, if the cry of constitution had
not been set up by the government. It has got into circulation like the words
bore and quoz [quiz], by being chalked up in the speeches of parliament, as
those words were on window shutters and doorposts; but whatever the
constitution may be in other respects, it has undoubtedly been the most
productive machine of taxation that was ever invented. The taxes in France,
under the new constitution, are not quite thirteen shillings per head,*[18]
and the taxes in England, under what is called its present constitution, are
forty-eight shillings and sixpence per head- men, women, and children-
amounting to nearly seventeen millions sterling, besides the expense of
collecting, which is upwards of a million more.
In
a country like England, where the whole of the civil Government is executed by
the people of every town and county, by means of parish officers, magistrates,
quarterly sessions, juries, and assize; without any trouble to what is called
the government or any other expense to the revenue than the salary of the
judges, it is astonishing how such a mass of taxes can be employed. Not even
the internal defence of the country is paid out of the revenue. On all
occasions, whether real or contrived, recourse is continually had to new loans
and new taxes. No wonder, then, that a machine of government so advantageous
to the advocates of a court, should be so triumphantly extolled! No wonder,
that St. James’s or St. Stephen’s should echo with the continual cry of
constitution; no wonder, that the French revolution should be reprobated, and
the res-publica treated with reproach! The red book of England, like the red
book of France, will explain the reason.*[19]
I
will now, by way of relaxation, turn a thought or two to Mr. Burke.
I
ask his pardon for neglecting him so long.
“America,”
says he (in his speech on the Canada Constitution bill), “never dreamed of
such absurd doctrine as the Rights of Man.”
Mr.
Burke is such a bold presumer, and advances his assertions and
his
premises with such a deficiency of judgment, that, without
troubling
ourselves about principles of philosophy or politics, the
mere
logical conclusions they produce, are ridiculous. For instance,
If
governments, as Mr. Burke asserts, are not founded on the Rights of Man, and
are founded on any rights at all, they consequently must be founded on the
right of something that is not man. What then is that something?
Generally
speaking, we know of no other creatures that inhabit the earth than man and
beast; and in all cases, where only two things offer themselves, and one must
be admitted, a negation proved on any one, amounts to an affirmative on the
other; and therefore, Mr. Burke,
by proving against the Rights of Man, proves in behalf of the beast; and
consequently, proves that government is a beast; and as difficult things
sometimes explain each other, we now see the origin of keeping wild beasts in
the Tower; for they certainly can be of no other use than to show the origin
of the government. They are in the place of a constitution. O John Bull, what
honours thou hast lost by not being a wild beast. Thou mightest, on Mr. Burke’s
system, have been in the Tower for life.
If
Mr. Burke’s arguments have not weight enough to keep one serious, the fault
is less mine than his; and as I am willing to make an apology to the reader
for the liberty I have taken, I hope Mr. Burke will also make his for giving
the cause.
Having
thus paid Mr. Burke the compliment of remembering him, I return to the
subject.
From
the want of a constitution in England to restrain and regulate the wild
impulse of power, many of the laws are irrational and tyrannical, and the
administration of them vague and problematical.
The
attention of the government of England (for I rather choose to call it by this
name than the English government) appears, since its political connection with
Germany, to have been so completely engrossed and absorbed by foreign affairs,
and the means of raising taxes, that it seems to exist for no other purposes.
Domestic concerns are neglected; and with respect to regular law, there is
scarcely such a thing.
Almost
every case must now be determined by some precedent, be that precedent good or
bad, or whether it properly applies or not; and the practice is become so
general as to suggest a suspicion, that it proceeds from a deeper policy than
at first sight appears.
Since
the revolution of America, and more so since that of France, this preaching up
the doctrines of precedents, drawn from times and circumstances antecedent to
those events, has been the studied practice of the English government. The
generality of those precedents are founded on principles and opinions, the
reverse of what they ought; and the greater distance of time they are drawn
from, the more they are to be suspected. But by associating those precedents
with a superstitious reverence for ancient things, as monks show relics and
call them holy, the generality of mankind are deceived into the design.
Governments now act as if they were afraid to awaken a single reflection in
man. They are softly leading him to the sepulchre of precedents, to deaden his
faculties and call attention from the scene of revolutions. They feel that he
is arriving at knowledge faster than they wish, and their policy of precedents
is the barometer of their fears. This political popery, like the
ecclesiastical popery of old, has had its day, and is hastening to its exit.
The ragged relic and the antiquated precedent, the monk and the monarch, will
moulder together.
Government
by precedent, without any regard to the principle of the precedent, is one of
the vilest systems that can be set up. In numerous instances, the precedent
ought to operate as a warning, and not as an example, and requires to be
shunned instead of imitated; but instead of this, precedents are taken in the
lump, and put at once for constitution and for law.
Either
the doctrine of precedents is policy to keep a man in a state of ignorance, or
it is a practical confession that wisdom degenerates in governments as
governments increase in age, and can only hobble along by the stilts and
crutches of precedents. How is it that the same persons who would proudly be
thought wiser than their predecessors, appear at the same time only as the
ghosts of departed wisdom? How strangely is antiquity treated! To some
purposes it is spoken of as the times of darkness and ignorance, and to answer
others, it is put for the light of the world.
If
the doctrine of precedents is to be followed, the expenses of government need
not continue the same. Why pay men extravagantly, who have but little to do?
If everything that can happen is already in precedent, legislation is at an
end, and precedent, like a dictionary, determines every case. Either,
therefore, government has arrived at its dotage, and requires to be renovated,
or all the occasions for exercising its wisdom have occurred.
We
now see all over Europe, and particularly in England, the curious phenomenon
of a nation looking one way, and the government the other-the one forward and
the other backward. If governments are to go on by precedent, while nations go
on by improvement, they must at last come to a final separation; and the
sooner, and the more civilly they determine this point, the better.*[20]
Having
thus spoken of constitutions generally, as things distinct from actual
governments, let us proceed to consider the parts of which a constitution is
composed.
Opinions
differ more on this subject than with respect to the whole.
That a nation ought to have a constitution, as a rule for the conduct
of its government, is a simple question in which all men, not directly
courtiers, will agree. It is only on the component parts that questions and
opinions multiply.
But
this difficulty, like every other, will diminish when put into a train of
being rightly understood.
The
first thing is, that a nation has a right to establish a constitution.
Whether
it exercises this right in the most judicious manner at first is quite another
case. It exercises it agreeably to the judgment it possesses; and by
continuing to do so, all errors will at last be exploded.
When
this right is established in a nation, there is no fear that it will be
employed to its own injury. A nation can have no interest in being wrong.
Though
all the constitutions of America are on one general principle, yet no two of
them are exactly alike in their component parts, or in the distribution of the
powers which they give to the actual governments. Some are more, and others
less complex.
In
forming a constitution, it is first necessary to consider what are the ends
for which government is necessary? Secondly, what are the best means, and the
least expensive, for accomplishing those ends?
Government
is nothing more than a national association; and the object of this
association is the good of all, as well individually as collectively. Every
man wishes to pursue his occupation, and to enjoy the fruits of his labours
and the produce of his property in peace and safety, and with the least
possible expense. When these things are accomplished, all the objects for
which government ought to be established are answered.
It
has been customary to consider government under three distinct general heads.
The legislative, the executive, and the judicial.
But
if we permit our judgment to act unincumbered by the habit of multiplied
terms, we can perceive no more than two divisions of power, of which civil
government is composed, namely, that of legislating or enacting laws, and that
of executing or administering them. Everything, therefore, appertaining to
civil government, classes itself under one or other of these two divisions.
So
far as regards the execution of the laws, that which is called the judicial
power, is strictly and properly the executive power of every country. It is
that power to which every individual has appeal, and which causes the laws to
be executed; neither have we any other clear idea with respect to the official
execution of the laws. In England, and also in America and France, this power
begins with the magistrate, and proceeds up through all the courts of
judicature.
I
leave to courtiers to explain what is meant by calling monarchy the executive
power. It is merely a name in which acts of government are done; and any
other, or none at all, would answer the same purpose.
Laws have neither more nor less authority on this account. It must be
from the justness of their principles, and the interest which a nation feels
therein, that they derive support; if they require any other than this, it is
a sign that something in the system of government is imperfect. Laws difficult
to be executed cannot be generally good.
With
respect to the organization of the legislative power, different modes have
been adopted in different countries. In America it is generally composed of
two houses. In France it consists but of one, but in both countries, it is
wholly by representation.
The
case is, that mankind (from the long tyranny of assumed power) have had so few
opportunities of making the necessary trials on modes and principles of
government, in order to discover the best, that government is but now
beginning to be known, and experience is yet wanting to determine many
particulars.
The
objections against two houses are, first, that there is an inconsistency in
any part of a whole legislature, coming to a final determination by vote on
any matter, whilst that matter, with respect to that whole, is yet only in a
train of deliberation, and consequently open to new illustrations.
Secondly,
That by taking the vote on each, as a separate body, it always admits of the
possibility, and is often the case in practice, that the minority governs the
majority, and that, in some instances, to a degree of great inconsistency.
Thirdly,
That two houses arbitrarily checking or controlling each other is
inconsistent; because it cannot be proved on the principles of just
representation, that either should be wiser or better than the other. They may
check in the wrong as well as in the right therefore to give the power where
we cannot give the wisdom to use it, nor be assured of its being rightly used,
renders the hazard at least equal to the precaution.*[21]
The
objection against a single house is, that it is always in a
condition
of committing itself too soon.- But it should at the same
time
be remembered, that when there is a constitution which defines
the
power, and establishes the principles within which a legislature
shall
act, there is already a more effectual check provided, and more
powerfully
operating, than any other check can be. For example,
Were
a Bill to be brought into any of the American legislatures similar to that
which was passed into an act by the English parliament, at the commencement of
George the First, to extend the duration of the assemblies to a longer period
than they now sit, the check is in the constitution, which in effect says,
Thus far shalt thou go and no further.
But
in order to remove the objection against a single house (that of acting with
too quick an impulse), and at the same time to avoid the inconsistencies, in
some cases absurdities, arising from two houses, the following method has been
proposed as an improvement upon both.
First,
To have but one representation.
Secondly,
To divide that representation, by lot, into two or three parts.
Thirdly,
That every proposed bill shall be first debated in those parts by succession,
that they may become the hearers of each other, but without taking any vote.
After which the whole representation to assemble for a general debate and
determination by vote.
To
this proposed improvement has been added another, for the purpose of keeping
the representation in the state of constant renovation; which is, that
one-third of the representation of each county, shall go out at the expiration
of one year, and the number be replaced by new elections. Another third at the
expiration of the second year replaced in like manner, and every third year to
be a general election.*[22]
But
in whatever manner the separate parts of a constitution may be arranged, there
is one general principle that distinguishes freedom from slavery, which is,
that all hereditary government over a people is to them a species of slavery,
and representative government is freedom.
Considering
government in the only light in which it should be considered, that of a
National Association, it ought to be so constructed as not to be disordered by
any accident happening among the parts; and, therefore, no extraordinary
power, capable of producing such an effect, should be lodged in the hands of
any individual. The death, sickness, absence or defection, of any one
individual in a government, ought to be a matter of no more consequence, with
respect to the nation, than if the same circumstance had taken place in a
member of the English Parliament, or the French National Assembly.
Scarcely
anything presents a more degrading character of national greatness, than its
being thrown into confusion, by anything happening to or acted by any
individual; and the ridiculousness of the scene is often increased by the
natural insignificance of the person by whom it is occasioned. Were a
government so constructed, that it could not go on unless a goose or a gander
were present in the senate, the difficulties would be just as great and as
real, on the flight or sickness of the goose, or the gander, as if it were
called a King. We laugh at individuals for the silly difficulties they make to
themselves, without perceiving that the greatest of all ridiculous things are
acted in governments.*[23]
All
the constitutions of America are on a plan that excludes the childish
embarrassments which occur in monarchical countries. No suspension of
government can there take place for a moment, from any circumstances whatever.
The system of representation provides for everything, and is the only system
in which nations and governments can always appear in their proper character.
As
extraordinary power ought not to be lodged in the hands of any individual, so
ought there to be no appropriations of public money to any person, beyond what
his services in a state may be worth. It signifies not whether a man be called
a president, a king, an emperor, a senator, or by any other name which
propriety or folly may devise or arrogance assume; it is only a certain
service he can perform in the state; and the service of any such individual in
the routine of office, whether such office be called monarchical,
presidential, senatorial, or by any other name or title, can never exceed the
value of ten thousand pounds a year. All the great services that are done in
the world are performed by volunteer characters, who accept nothing for them;
but the routine of office is always regulated to such a general standard of
abilities as to be within the compass of numbers in every country to perform,
and therefore cannot merit very extraordinary recompense. Government, says
Swift, is a Plain thing, and fitted to the capacity of many heads.
It
is inhuman to talk of a million sterling a year, paid out of the public taxes
of any country, for the support of any individual, whilst thousands who are
forced to contribute thereto, are pining with want, and struggling with
misery. Government does not consist in a contrast between prisons and palaces,
between poverty and pomp; it is not instituted to rob the needy of his mite,
and increase the wretchedness of the wretched.- But on this part of the
subject I shall speak hereafter, and confine myself at present to political
observations.
When
extraordinary power and extraordinary pay are allotted to any individual in a
government, he becomes the center, round which every kind of corruption
generates and forms. Give to any man a million a year, and add thereto the
power of creating and disposing of places, at the expense of a country, and
the liberties of that country are no longer secure. What is called the
splendour of a throne is no other than the corruption of the state. It is made
up of a band of parasites, living in luxurious indolence, out of the public
taxes.
When
once such a vicious system is established it becomes the guard and protection
of all inferior abuses. The man who is in the receipt of a million a year is
the last person to promote a spirit of reform, lest, in the event, it should
reach to himself. It is always his interest to defend inferior abuses, as so
many outworks to protect the citadel; and on this species of political
fortification, all the parts have such a common dependence that it is never to
be expected they will attack each other.*[24]
Monarchy
would not have continued so many ages in the world, had it not been for the
abuses it protects. It is the master-fraud, which shelters all others. By
admitting a participation of the spoil, it makes itself friends; and when it
ceases to do this it will cease to be the idol of courtiers.
As
the principle on which constitutions are now formed rejects all hereditary
pretensions to government, it also rejects all that catalogue of assumptions
known by the name of prerogatives.
If
there is any government where prerogatives might with apparent safety be
entrusted to any individual, it is in the federal government of America. The
president of the United States of America is elected only for four years. He
is not only responsible in the general sense of the word, but a particular
mode is laid down in the constitution for trying him. He cannot be elected
under thirty-five years of age; and he must be a native of the country.
In
a comparison of these cases with the Government of England, the difference
when applied to the latter amounts to an absurdity. In England the person who
exercises prerogative is often a foreigner; always half a foreigner, and
always married to a foreigner. He is never in full natural or political
connection with the country, is not responsible for anything, and becomes of
age at eighteen years; yet such a person is permitted to form foreign
alliances, without even the knowledge of the nation, and to make war and peace
without its consent.
But
this is not all. Though such a person cannot dispose of the government in the
manner of a testator, he dictates the marriage connections, which, in effect,
accomplish a great part of the same end. He cannot directly bequeath half the
government to Prussia, but he can form a marriage partnership that will
produce almost the same thing. Under such circumstances, it is happy for
England that she is not situated on the Continent, or she might, like Holland,
fall under the dictatorship of Prussia. Holland, by marriage, is as
effectually governed by Prussia, as if the old tyranny of bequeathing the
government had been the means.
The
presidency in America (or, as it is sometimes called, the executive) is the
only office from which a foreigner is excluded, and in England it is the only
one to which he is admitted. A foreigner cannot be a member of Parliament, but
he may be what is called a king. If there is any reason for excluding
foreigners, it ought to be from those offices where mischief can most be
acted, and where, by uniting every bias of interest and attachment, the trust
is best secured. But as nations proceed in the great business of forming
constitutions, they will examine with more precision into the nature and
business of that department which is called the executive. What the
legislative and judicial departments are every one can see; but with respect
to what, in Europe, is called the executive, as distinct from those two, it is
either a political superfluity or a chaos of unknown things.
Some
kind of official department, to which reports shall be made from the different
parts of a nation, or from abroad, to be laid before the national
representatives, is all that is necessary; but there is no consistency in
calling this the executive; neither can it be considered in any other light
than as inferior to the legislative. The
sovereign authority in any country is the power of making laws, and everything
else is an official department.
Next
to the arrangement of the principles and the organization of the several parts
of a constitution, is the provision to be made for the support of the persons
to whom the nation shall confide the administration of the constitutional
powers.
A
nation can have no right to the time and services of any person at his own
expense, whom it may choose to employ or entrust in any department whatever;
neither can any reason be given for making provision for the support of any
one part of a government and not for the other.
But
admitting that the honour of being entrusted with any part of a government is
to be considered a sufficient reward, it ought to be so to every person alike.
If the members of the legislature of any country are to serve at their own
expense that which is called the executive, whether monarchical or by any
other name, ought to serve in like manner. It is inconsistent to pay the one,
and accept the service of the other gratis.
In
America, every department in the government is decently provided for; but no
one is extravagantly paid. Every member of Congress, and of the Assemblies, is
allowed a sufficiency for his expenses. Whereas in England, a most prodigal
provision is made for the support of one part of the Government, and none for
the other, the consequence of which is that the one is furnished with the
means of corruption and the other is put into the condition of being
corrupted. Less than a fourth part of such expense, applied as it is in
America, would remedy a great part of the corruption.
Another
reform in the American constitution is the exploding all oaths of personality.
The oath of allegiance in America is to the nation only. The putting any
individual as a figure for a nation is improper. The happiness of a nation is
the superior object, and therefore the intention of an oath of allegiance
ought not to be obscured by being figuratively taken, to, or in the name of,
any person. The oath, called the civic oath, in France, viz., “the nation,
the law, and the king,” is improper. If taken at all, it ought to be as in
America, to the nation only. The law may or may not be good; but, in this
place, it can have no other meaning, than as being conducive to the happiness
of a nation, and therefore is included in it. The remainder of the oath is
improper, on the ground, that all personal oaths ought to be abolished. They
are the remains of tyranny on one part and slavery on the other; and the name
of the Creator ought not to be introduced to witness the degradation of his
creation; or if taken, as is already mentioned, as figurative of the nation,
it is in this place redundant. But whatever apology may be made for oaths at
the first establishment of a government, they ought not to be permitted
afterwards. If a government requires the support of oaths, it is a sign that
it is not worth supporting, and ought not to be supported. Make government
what it ought to be, and it will support itself.
To
conclude this part of the subject:- One of the greatest improvements that have
been made for the perpetual security and progress of constitutional liberty,
is the provision which the new constitutions make for occasionally revising,
altering, and amending them.
The
principle upon which Mr. Burke formed his political creed, that of “binding
and controlling posterity to the end of time, and of renouncing and abdicating
the rights of all posterity, for ever,” is now become too detestable to be
made a subject of debate; and therefore, I pass it over with no other notice
than exposing it.
Government is