“Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.”
This kind of innocence
in proprietors may be argued into inutility; and inutility into an
unfitness for their estates. Many parts of Europe are in open disorder.
In many others there is a hollow murmuring under ground; a confused
movement is felt, that threatens a general earthquake in the political
world. Already confederacies and correspondences of the most
extraordinary nature are forming in several countries.[119] In such a
state of things we ought to hold ourselves upon our guard. In all
mutations (if mutations must be) the circumstance which will serve most
to blunt the edge of their mischief, and to promote what good may be in
them, is, that they should find us with our minds tenacious of justice
and tender of property.
But it will be argued, that this confiscation in France ought not to
alarm other nations. They say it is not made from wanton rapacity; that
it is a great measure of national policy, adopted to remove an
extensive, inveterate, superstitious mischief.--It is with the greatest
difficulty that I am able to separate policy from justice. Justice is
itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent
departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of
being no policy at all.
When men are encouraged to go into a certain mode of life by the
existing laws, and protected in that mode as in a lawful
occupation,--when they have accommodated all their ideas and all their
habits to it,--when the law had long made their adherence to its rules a
ground of reputation, and their departure from them a ground of disgrace
and even of penalty,--I am sure it is unjust in legislature, by an
arbitrary act, to offer a sudden violence to their minds and their
feelings, forcibly to degrade them from their state and condition, and
to stigmatize with shame and infamy that character and those customs
which before had been made the measure of their happiness and honor. If
to this be added an expulsion from their habitations and a confiscation
of all their goods, I am not sagacious enough to discover how this
despotic sport made of the feelings, consciences, prejudices, and
properties of men can be discriminated from the rankest tyranny.
If the injustice of the course pursued in France be clear, the policy of
the measure, that is, the public benefit to be expected from it, ought
to be at least as evident, and at least as important.
“Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.”
Hastings's government is such a one, I believe, as
the British nation in particular will disown; for I will venture to say,
that, if there is any one thing which distinguishes this nation
eminently above another, it is, that in its offices at home, both
judicial and in the state, there is less suspicion of pecuniary
corruption attaching to them than to any similar offices in any part of
the globe, or that have existed at any time: so that he who would set up
a system of corruption, and attempt to justify it upon the principle of
utility, that man is staining not only the nature and character of
office, but that which is the peculiar glory of the official and
judicial character of this country; and therefore, in this House, which
is eminently the guardian of the purity of all the offices of this
kingdom, he ought to be called eminently and peculiarly to account.
There are many things, undoubtedly, in crimes, which make them frightful
and odious; but bribery, filthy hands, a chief governor of a great
empire receiving bribes from poor, miserable, indigent people, this is
what makes government itself base, contemptible, and odious in the eyes
of mankind.
My Lords, it is certain that even tyranny itself may find some specious
color, and appear as a more severe and rigid execution of justice.
Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken
and over-zealous piety. Conquest may cover its baldness with its own
laurels, and the ambition of the conqueror may be hid in the secrets of
his own heart under a veil of benevolence, and make him imagine he is
bringing temporary desolation upon a country only to promote its
ultimate advantage and his own glory. But in the principles of that
governor who makes nothing but money his object there can be nothing of
this. There are here none of those specious delusions that look like
virtues, to veil either the governed or the governor. If you look at Mr.
Hastings's merits, as he calls them, what are they? Did he improve the
internal state of the government by great reforms? No such thing. Or by
a wise and incorrupt administration of justice? No. Has he enlarged the
boundary of our government? No: there are but too strong proofs of his
lessening it. But his pretensions to merit are, that he squeezed more
money out of the inhabitants of the country than other persons could
have done,--money got by oppression, violence, extortion from the poor,
or the heavy hand of power upon the rich and great.
“He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist in our helper.”
They find an advantage too; for
it is a general popular error to imagine the loudest complainers for
the public to be the most anxious for its welfare. If such persons can
answer the ends of relief and profit to themselves, they are apt to be
careless enough about either the means or the consequences.
DIFFICULTY AN INSTRUCTOR.
Their purpose everywhere seems to have been to evade and slip aside from
DIFFICULTY. This it has been the glory of the great masters in all the
arts to confront, and to overcome; and when they had overcome the first
difficulty, to turn it into an instrument for new conquests over new
difficulties; thus to enable them to extend the empire of their science;
and even to push forward, beyond the reach of their original thoughts,
the landmarks of the human understanding itself. Difficulty is a severe
instructor, set over us by the supreme ordinance of a parental Guardian
and Legislator, who knows us better than we know ourselves, as he loves
us better too. Pater ipse colendi haud facilem esse viam voluit. He that
wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our
antagonist is our helper. This amicable conflict with difficulty obliges
us to an intimate acquaintance with our object, and compels us
to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be
superficial. It is the want of nerves of understanding for such a
task, it is the degenerate fondness for tricking short-cuts, and little
fallacious facilities, that has in so many parts of the world created
governments with arbitrary powers. They have created the late arbitrary
monarchy of France; they have created the arbitrary republic of Paris.
With them defects in wisdom are to be supplied by the plenitude of
force. They get nothing by it. Commencing their labours on a
principle of sloth, they have the common fortune of slothful men. The
difficulties, which they rather had eluded than escaped, meet them again
in their course; they multiply and thicken on them; they are involved,
through a labyrinth of confused detail, in an industry without limit,
and without direction; and, in conclusion, the whole of their work
becomes feeble, vicious, and insecure.
“The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity”
Nobody, I believe, has attended the course of a discussion
which turned upon matters within the sphere of mere naked reason, but
must have observed the extreme readiness with which the whole process of
the argument is carried on, the grounds discovered, the objections
raised and answered, and the conclusions drawn from premises, with a
quickness altogether as great as the taste can be supposed to work with;
and yet where nothing but plain reason either is or can be suspected to
operate. To multiply principles for every different appearance is
useless, and unphilosophical too in a high degree.
This matter might be pursued much farther; but it is not the extent of
the subject which must prescribe our bounds, for what subject does not
branch out to infinity? It is the nature of our particular scheme, and
the single point of view in which we consider it, which ought to put a
stop to our researches.
A
PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY
INTO THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS OF
THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL
PART I.
SECTION I.
NOVELTY.
The first and the simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind
is curiosity. By curiosity I mean whatever desire we have for, or
whatever pleasure we take in, novelty. We see children perpetually
running from place to place, to hunt out something new: they catch with
great eagerness, and with very little choice, at whatever comes before
them; their attention is engaged by everything, because everything has,
in that stage of life, the charm of novelty to recommend it. But as
those things, which engage us merely by their novelty, cannot attach us
for any length of time, curiosity is the most superficial of all the
affections; it changes its object perpetually; it has an appetite which
is very sharp, but very easily satisfied; and it has always an
appearance of giddiness, restlessness, and anxiety. Curiosity, from its
nature, is a very active principle; it quickly runs over the greatest
part of its objects, and soon exhausts the variety which is commonly to
be met with in nature; the same things make frequent returns, and they
return with less and less of any agreeable effect.
“There is a boundary to mens passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.”
Before they listen even to moderate alterations in the government
of their country, they ought to take care that principles are not
propagated for that purpose, which are too big for their object.
Doctrines limited in their present application, and wide in their
general principles, are never meant to be confined to what they at first
pretend. If I were to form a prognostic of the effect of the present
machinations on the people, from their sense of any grievance they
suffer under this constitution, my mind would be at ease. But there is
a wide difference between the multitude, when they act against their
government from a sense of grievance, or from zeal for some opinions.
When men are thoroughly possessed with that zeal, it is difficult to
calculate its force. It is certain that its power is by no means
in exact proportion to its reasonableness. It must always have been
discoverable by persons of reflection, but it is now obvious to the
world, that a theory concerning government may become as much a cause of
fanaticism as a dogma in religion. There is a boundary to men's passions
when they act from feeling; none when they are under the influence of
imagination. Remove a grievance, and, when men act from feeling, you go
a great way towards quieting a commotion. But the good or bad conduct
of a government, the protection men have enjoyed, or the oppression
they have suffered, under it, are of no sort of moment when a faction,
proceeding upon speculative grounds, is thoroughly heated against
its form. When a man is, from system, furious against monarchy or
episcopacy, the good conduct of the monarch or the bishop has no other
effect than further to irritate the adversary. He is provoked at it, as
furnishing a plea for preserving the thing which he wishes to destroy.
His mind will be heated as much by the sight of a sceptre, a mace, or a
verge, as if he had been daily bruised and wounded by these symbols of
authority. Mere spectacles, mere names, will become sufficient causes to
stimulate the people to war and tumult.
PERPLEXITY AND POLICY.
Let us not deceive ourselves: we are at the beginning of great troubles.
I readily acknowledge that the state of public affairs is infinitely
more unpromising than at the period I have just now alluded to; and the
position of all the powers of Europe, in relation to us, and in relation
to each other, is more intricate and critical beyond all comparison.
“It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.”
I do not examine whether the giving away a
man's money be a power excepted and reserved out of the general trust
of government; and how far all mankind, in all forms of polity, are
entitled to an exercise of that right by the charter of nature. Or
whether, on the contrary, a right of taxation is necessarily involved in
the general principle of legislation, and inseparable from the ordinary
supreme power. These are deep questions, where great names militate
against each other; where reason is perplexed; and an appeal to
authorities only thickens the confusion. For high and reverend
authorities lift up their heads on both sides; and there is no sure
footing in the middle. This point is the GREAT SERBONIAN BOG, BETWIXT
DAMIATA AND MOUNT CASIUS OLD, WHERE ARMIES WHOLE HAVE SUNK. I do
not intend to be overwhelmed in that bog, though in such respectable
company. The question with me is, not whether you have a right to render
your people miserable; but whether it is not your interest to make them
happy. It is not what a lawyer tells me I MAY do; but what humanity,
reason, and justice tell me I ought to do. Is a politic act the worse
for being a generous one? Is no concession proper, but that which is
made from your want of right to keep what you grant? Or does it lessen
the grace or dignity of relaxing in the exercise of an odious claim,
because you have your evidence-room full of titles, and your magazines
stuffed with arms to enforce them? What signify all those titles, and
all those arms? Of what avail are they, when the reason of the thing
tells me, that the assertion of my title is the loss of my suit; and
that I could do nothing but wound myself by the use of my own weapons?
CONTRACTED VIEWS.
It is exceedingly common for men to contract their love to their country
into an attachment to its petty subdivisions; and they sometimes even
cling to their provincial abuses, as if they were franchises and local
privileges. Accordingly, in places where there is much of this kind of
estate, persons will be always found who would rather trust to their
talents in recommending themselves to power for the renewal of their
interests, than to incumber their purses, though never so lightly,
in order to transmit independence to their posterity.
“The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him; he indulges it, he loves it; but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.”
I should never have presumed the least alteration in our words, if the
nature of the language, framed for the purposes of business rather than
those of philosophy, and the nature of my subject, that leads me out of
the common track of discourse, did not in a manner necessitate me to it.
I shall make use of this liberty with all possible caution. As I make
use of the word _delight_ to express the sensation which accompanies the
removal of pain or danger, so, when I speak of positive pleasure, I
shall for the most part call it simply _pleasure_.
SECTION V.
JOY AND GRIEF.
It must be observed, that the cessation of pleasure affects the mind
three ways. If it simply ceases after having continued a proper time,
the effect is _indifference_; if it be abruptly broken off, there ensues
an uneasy sense called _disappointment_; if the object be so totally
lost that there is no chance of enjoying it again, a passion arises in
the mind which is called _grief_. Now there is none of these, not even
grief, which is the most violent, that I think has any resemblance to
positive pain. The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon
him; he indulges it, he loves it: but this never happens in the case of
actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable
time. That grief should be willingly endured, though far from a simply
pleasing sensation, is not so difficult to be understood. It is the
nature of grief to keep its object perpetually in its eye, to present it
in its most pleasurable views, to repeat all the circumstances that
attend it, even to the last minuteness; to go back to every particular
enjoyment, to dwell upon each, and to find a thousand new perfections in
all, that were not sufficiently understood before; in grief, the
_pleasure_ is still uppermost; and the affliction we suffer has no
resemblance to absolute pain, which is always odious, and which we
endeavor to shake off as soon as possible. The Odyssey of Homer, which
abounds with so many natural and affecting images, has none more
striking than those which Menelaus raises of the calamitous fate of his
friends, and his own manner of feeling it. He owns, indeed, that he
often gives himself some intermission from such melancholy reflections;
but he observes, too, that, melancholy as they are, they give him
pleasure.
“Patience will achieve more than force.”
If circumspection and caution are a part of wisdom, when
we work only upon inanimate matter, surely they become a part of duty
too, when the subject of our demolition and construction is not brick
and timber, but sentient beings, by the sudden alteration of whose
state, condition, and habits, multitudes may be rendered miserable. But
it seems as if it were the prevalent opinion in Paris, that an unfeeling
heart and an undoubting confidence are the sole qualifications for a
perfect legislator. Far different are my ideas of that high office. The
true lawgiver ought to have a heart full of sensibility. He ought to
love and respect his kind, and to fear himself. It may be allowed to his
temperament to catch his ultimate object with an intuitive glance; but
his movements towards it ought to be deliberate. Political arrangement,
as it is a work for social ends, is to be only wrought by social means.
There mind must conspire with mind. Time is required to produce that
union of minds which alone can produce all the good we aim at. Our
patience will achieve more than our force. If I might venture to appeal
to what is so much out of fashion in Paris,--I mean to experience,--I
should tell you, that in my course I have known, and, according to my
measure, have coöperated with great men; and I have never yet seen any
plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were
much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the
business. By a slow, but well-sustained progress, the effect of each
step is watched; the good or ill success of the first gives light to us
in the second; and so, from light to light, we are conducted with safety
through the whole series. We see that the parts of the system do not
clash. The evils latent in the most promising contrivances are provided
for as they arise. One advantage is as little as possible sacrificed to
another. We compensate, we reconcile, we balance. We are enabled to
unite into a consistent whole the various anomalies and contending
principles that are found in the minds and affairs of men.
“Manners are of more importance than laws... Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in.”
When, in
the place of that religion of social benevolence, and of individual
self-denial, in mockery of all religion, they institute impious,
blasphemous, indecent theatric rites, in honour of their vitiated,
perverted reason, and erect altars to the personification of their own
corrupted and bloody republic;--when schools and seminaries are founded
at the public expense to poison mankind, from generation to generation,
with the horrible maxims of this impiety;--when wearied out with
incessant martyrdom, and the cries of a people hungering and thirsting
for religion, they permit it only as a tolerated evil--I call this
ATHEISM BY ESTABLISHMENT.
CORRESPONDENT SYSTEM OF MANNERS AND MORALS.
When to these establishments of regicide, of jacobinism, and of atheism,
you add the CORRESPONDENT SYSTEM OF MANNERS, no doubt can be left on
the mind of a thinking man concerning their determined hostility to the
human race. Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon them, in a
great measure, the laws depend. The law touches us but here and there,
and now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify,
exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform,
insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. They give
their whole form and colour to our lives. According to their quality,
they aid morals, they supply them, or they totally destroy them. Of this
the new French legislators were aware; therefore, with the same method,
and under the same authority, they settled a system of manners, the most
licentious, prostitute, and abandoned that ever has been known, and at
the same time the most coarse, rude, savage, and ferocious. Nothing in
the Revolution, no, not to a phrase or gesture, not to the fashion of a
hat or a shoe, was left to accident. All has been the result of design;
all has been matter of institution. No mechanical means could be devised
in favour of this incredible system of wickedness and vice, that has
not been employed. The noblest passions, the love of glory, the love
of country, have been debauched into means of its preservation and its
propagation. All sorts of shows and exhibitions, calculated to inflame
and vitiate the imagination, and pervert the moral sense, have been
contrived.
“Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations -- wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.”
Undoubtedly there may be a dangerous abuse in the excess of spirits; and
at one time I am ready to believe the abuse was great. When spirits are
cheap, the business of drunkenness is achieved with little time or
labor; but that evil I consider to be wholly done away. Observation for
the last forty years, and very particularly for the last thirty, has
furnished me with ten instances of drunkenness from other causes for one
from this. Ardent spirit is a great medicine, often to remove
distempers, much more frequently to prevent them, or to chase them away
in their beginnings. It is not nutritive in _any great_ degree. But if
not food, it greatly alleviates the want of it. It invigorates the
stomach for the digestion of poor, meagre diet, not easily alliable to
the human constitution. Wine the poor cannot touch. Beer, as applied to
many occasions, (as among seamen and fishermen, for instance,) will by
no means do the business. Let me add, what wits inspired with champagne
and claret will turn into ridicule,--it is a medicine for the mind.
Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men
have at all times and in all countries called in some physical aid to
their moral consolations,--wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.
I consider, therefore, the stopping of the distillery, economically,
financially, commercially, medicinally, and in some degree morally too,
as a measure rather well meant than well considered. It is too precious
a sacrifice to prejudice.
Gentlemen well know whether there be a scarcity of partridges, and
whether that be an effect of hoarding and combination. All the tame race
of birds live and die as the wild do.
As to the lesser articles, they are like the greater. They have followed
the fortune of the season. Why are fowls dear? Was not this the farmer's
or jobber's fault? I sold from my yard to a jobber six young and lean
fowls for four-and-twenty shillings,--fowls for which two years ago the
same man would not have given a shilling apiece. He sold them afterwards
at Uxbridge, and they were taken to London to receive the last hand.
As to the operation of the war in causing the scarcity of provisions, I
understand that Mr. Pitt has given a particular answer to it; but I do
not think it worth powder and shot.
“All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.”
But whether
the unrepresented counties were _de jure_ or _de facto_ bound the
preambles do not accurately distinguish; nor, indeed, was it necessary:
for, whether _de jure_ or _de facto_, the legislature thought the
exercise of the power of taxing, as of right, or as of fact without
right, equally a grievance, and equally oppressive.
I do not know that the colonies have, in any general way, or in any cool
hour, gone much beyond the demand of immunity in relation to taxes. It
is not fair to judge of the temper or dispositions of any man or any set
of men, when they are composed and at rest, from their conduct or their
expressions in a state of disturbance and irritation. It is, besides, a
very great mistake to imagine that mankind follow up practically any
speculative principle, either of government or of freedom, as far as it
will go in argument and logical illation. We Englishmen stop very short
of the principles upon which we support any given part of our
Constitution, or even the whole of it together. I could easily, if I had
not already tired you, give you very striking and convincing instances
of it. This is nothing but what is natural and proper. All government,
indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent
act, is founded on compromise and barter. We balance inconveniences; we
give and take; we remit some rights, that we may enjoy others; and we
choose rather to be happy citizens than subtle disputants. As we must
give away some natural liberty, to enjoy civil advantages, so we must
sacrifice some civil liberties, for the advantages to be derived from
the communion and fellowship of a great empire. But, in all fair
dealings, the thing bought must bear some proportion to the purchase
paid. None will barter away the immediate jewel of his soul. Though a
great house is apt to make slaves haughty, yet it is purchasing a part
of the artificial importance of a great empire too dear, to pay for it
all essential rights, and all the intrinsic dignity of human nature.
None of us who would not risk his life rather than fall under a
government purely arbitrary. But although there are some amongst us who
think our Constitution wants many improvements to make it a complete
system of liberty, perhaps none who are of that opinion would think it
right to aim at such improvement by disturbing his country and risking
everything that is dear to him.
“I know that many have been taught to think that moderation, in a case like this, is a sort of treason”
I think I know America,--if I do not, my ignorance is incurable, for I
have spared no pains to understand it,--and I do most solemnly assure
those of my constituents who put any sort of confidence in my industry
and integrity, that everything that has been done there has arisen from
a total misconception of the object: that our means of originally
holding America, that our means of reconciling with it after quarrel, of
recovering it after separation, of keeping it after victory, did depend,
and must depend, in their several stages and periods, upon a total
renunciation of that unconditional submission which has taken such
possession of the minds of violent men. The whole of those maxims upon
which we have made and continued this war must be abandoned. Nothing,
indeed, (for I would not deceive you,) can place us in our former
situation. That hope must be laid aside. But there is a difference
between bad and the worst of all. Terms relative to the cause of the war
ought to be offered by the authority of Parliament. An arrangement at
home promising some security for them ought to be made. By doing this,
without the least impairing of our strength, we add to the credit of our
moderation, which, in itself, is always strength more or less.
I know many have been taught to think that moderation in a case like
this is a sort of treason,--and that all arguments for it are
sufficiently answered by railing at rebels and rebellion, and by
charging all the present or future miseries which we may suffer on the
resistance of our brethren. But I would wish them, in this grave matter,
and if peace is not wholly removed from their hearts, to consider
seriously, first, that to criminate and recriminate never yet was the
road to reconciliation, in any difference amongst men. In the next
place, it would be right to reflect that the American English (whom they
may abuse, if they think it honorable to revile the absent) can, as
things now stand, neither be provoked at our railing or bettered by our
instruction. All communication is cut off between us. But this we know
with certainty, that, though we cannot reclaim them, we may reform
ourselves. If measures of peace are necessary, they must begin
somewhere; and a conciliatory temper must precede and prepare every plan
of reconciliation. Nor do I conceive that we suffer anything by thus
regulating our own minds.
“Men are qualified for civil liberties in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their appetites: in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity”
It grew out of the habitual conditions, relations, and
reciprocal claims of men. It grew out of the circumstances of the
country, and out of the state of property. The wretched scheme of your
present masters is not to fit the Constitution to the people, but wholly
to destroy conditions, to dissolve relations, to change the state of the
nation, and to subvert property, in order to fit their country to their
theory of a Constitution.
Until you make out practically that great work, a combination of
opposing forces, "a work of labor long, and endless praise," the utmost
caution ought to have been used in the reduction of the royal power,
which alone was capable of holding together the comparatively
heterogeneous mass of your States. But at this day all these
considerations are unseasonable. To what end should we discuss the
limitations of royal power? Your king is in prison. Why speculate on the
measure and standard of liberty? I doubt much, very much indeed, whether
France is at all ripe for liberty on any standard. Men are qualified for
civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral
chains upon their own appetites,--in proportion as their love to justice
is above their rapacity,--in proportion as their soundness and sobriety
of understanding is above their vanity and presumption,--in proportion
as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and
good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist,
unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere;
and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It
is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of
intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
This sentence the prevalent part of your countrymen execute on
themselves. They possessed not long since what was next to freedom, a
mild, paternal monarchy. They despised it for its weakness. They were
offered a well-poised, free Constitution. It did not suit their taste or
their temper. They carved for themselves: they flew out, murdered,
robbed, and rebelled. They have succeeded, and put over their country an
insolent tyranny made up of cruel and inexorable masters, and that, too,
of a description hitherto not known in the world.
“Society is indeed a contract. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”
That administrative bodies in a state of the utmost confusion, and
of but a momentary duration, and composed of men with not one imposing
part of character, should be able to govern the country and its armies
with an authority which the most settled senates, and the most respected
monarchs, scarcely ever had in the same degree? This, for one, I confess
I did not foresee, though all the rest was present to me very early, and
not out of my apprehension even for several years.
SOCIAL CONTRACT.
Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere
occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure--but the state ought
not to be considered nothing better than a partnership agreement in a
trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low
concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be
dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other
reverence; because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to
the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is
a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in
every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership
cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not
only between those who are living, but between those who are living,
those who are dead, and those who are to be born. Each contract of
each particular state is but a clause in the great primeval contract of
eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting
the visible and invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned
by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures
each in their appointed place. This law is not subject to the will of
those, who by an obligation above them, and infinitely superior, are
bound to submit their will to that law. The municipal corporations of
that universal kingdom are not morally at liberty at their pleasure, and
on their speculations of a contingent improvement, wholly to separate
and tear asunder the bands of their subordinate community, and to
dissolve it into an unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos of elementary
principles. It is the first and supreme necessity only, a necessity that
is not chosen, but chooses, a necessity paramount to deliberation, that
admits no discussion, and demands no evidence, which alone can justify
a resort to anarchy.
But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty is, cannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of their having high-sounding words in their mouths.
Too many of the financiers by profession are apt to see nothing in
revenue but banks, and circulations, and annuities on lives, and
tontines, and perpetual rents, and all the small wares of the shop. In a
settled order of the state, these things are not to be slighted, nor is
the skill in them to be held of trivial estimation. They are good, but
then only good when they assume the effects of that settled order, and
are built upon it. But when men think that these beggarly contrivances
may supply a resource for the evils which result from breaking up the
foundations of public order, and from causing or suffering the
principles of property to be subverted, they will, in the ruin of their
country, leave a melancholy and lasting monument of the effect of
preposterous politics, and presumptuous, short-sighted, narrow-minded
wisdom.
The effects of the incapacity shown by the popular leaders in all the
great members of the commonwealth are to be covered with the
"all-atoning name" of Liberty. In some people I see great liberty,
indeed; in many, if not in the most, an oppressive, degrading servitude.
But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the
greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness,
without tuition or restraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty is
cannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of their
having high-sounding words in their mouths. Grand, swelling sentiments
of liberty I am sure I do not despise. They warm the heart; they enlarge
and liberalize our minds; they animate our courage in a time of
conflict. Old as I am, I read the fine raptures of Lucan and Corneille
with pleasure. Neither do I wholly condemn the little arts and devices
of popularity. They facilitate the carrying of many points of moment;
they keep the people together; they refresh the mind in its exertions;
and they diffuse occasional gayety over the severe brow of moral
freedom. Every politician ought to sacrifice to the Graces, and to join
compliance with reason. But in such an undertaking as that in France all
these subsidiary sentiments and artifices are of little avail. To make a
government requires no great prudence. Settle the seat of power, teach
obedience, and the work is done. To give freedom is still more easy. It
is not necessary to guide; it only requires to let go the rein. But to
form a _free government_, that is, to temper together these opposite
elements of liberty and restraint in one consistent work, requires much
thought, deep reflection, a sagacious, powerful, and combining mind.
Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.
This kind of innocence
in proprietors may be argued into inutility; and inutility into an
unfitness for their estates. Many parts of Europe are in open disorder.
In many others there is a hollow murmuring under ground; a confused
movement is felt, that threatens a general earthquake in the political
world. Already confederacies and correspondences of the most
extraordinary nature are forming in several countries.[119] In such a
state of things we ought to hold ourselves upon our guard. In all
mutations (if mutations must be) the circumstance which will serve most
to blunt the edge of their mischief, and to promote what good may be in
them, is, that they should find us with our minds tenacious of justice
and tender of property.
But it will be argued, that this confiscation in France ought not to
alarm other nations. They say it is not made from wanton rapacity; that
it is a great measure of national policy, adopted to remove an
extensive, inveterate, superstitious mischief.--It is with the greatest
difficulty that I am able to separate policy from justice. Justice is
itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent
departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of
being no policy at all.
When men are encouraged to go into a certain mode of life by the
existing laws, and protected in that mode as in a lawful
occupation,--when they have accommodated all their ideas and all their
habits to it,--when the law had long made their adherence to its rules a
ground of reputation, and their departure from them a ground of disgrace
and even of penalty,--I am sure it is unjust in legislature, by an
arbitrary act, to offer a sudden violence to their minds and their
feelings, forcibly to degrade them from their state and condition, and
to stigmatize with shame and infamy that character and those customs
which before had been made the measure of their happiness and honor. If
to this be added an expulsion from their habitations and a confiscation
of all their goods, I am not sagacious enough to discover how this
despotic sport made of the feelings, consciences, prejudices, and
properties of men can be discriminated from the rankest tyranny.
If the injustice of the course pursued in France be clear, the policy of
the measure, that is, the public benefit to be expected from it, ought
to be at least as evident, and at least as important.
“Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing”
“All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice”
“Facts are to the mind what food is to the body”
“The most important of all revolutions, a revolution in sentiments, manners and moral opinions.”
