They have a right to the
acquisitions
of their parents, to the nourishment and
improvement of their offspring, to instruction in life
and to consolation in death.
improvement of their offspring, to instruction in life
and to consolation in death.
Edmund Burke
I am sure it contains a great deal of sense and truth.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 297
able men. You do not imagine that I wish to confine,
power, authority, and distinction to blood and namesl
and titles. No, Sir. There is no qualification for
government but virtue and wisdom, actual or presumptive. Wherever they are actually found, they have, in whatever state, condition, profession, or trade,
the passport of Heaven to human place and honor.
Woe to the country which would madly and impiously reject the service of the talents and virtues,
civil, military, or religious, that are given to grace
and to serve it; and would condemn to obscurity
everything formed to diffuse lustre and glory around
a state! Woe to that country, too, that, passing into
the opposite extreme, considers a low education, a
mean, contracted view of things, a sordid, mercenary
occupation, as a preferable title to command! Everything ought to be open, -- but not indifferently to every man. No rotation, no appointment by lot, no
mode of election operating in the spirit of sortition or
rotation, can be generally good in a government conversant in extensive objects; because they have no tendency, direct or indirect, to select the man with a
view to the duty, or to accommodate the one to the
other. I do not hesitate to say that the road to eminence and power, from obscure condition, ought not. to be made too easy, nor a thing too much of course.
If rare merit be the rarest of all rare things, it ought
to pass through some sort of probation. The temple
of honor ought to be seated on an eminence. If it
be opened through virtue, let it be remembered, too,
that virtue is never tried but by some difficulty and
some struggle.
Nothing is a due and adequate representation of a
state, that does -not represent its ability, as well as its
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property. But as ability is a vigorous and active
principle, and as property is sluggish, inert, and timid, it never can be safe from the invasions of ability,
unless it be, out of all proportion, predominant in the
representation. It must be represented, too, in great
masses of accumulation, or it is not rightly protected.
The characteristic essence of property, formed out of
the combined principles of its acquisition and conservation, is to be unequal. Tlle great masses, therefore,
which excite envy, and tempt rapacity, must be put
out of the possibility of danger. Then they form a
natural rampart about the lesser properties in all
their gradations. The same quantity of property
which is by the natural course of things divided
among many has not the same operation. Its defensive power is weakened as it is diffused. In this
diffusion each man's portion is less than what, in
the eagerness of his desires, he may flatter himself
to obtain by dissipating the accumulations of others.
The plunder of the few would, indeed, give but a share
inconceivably small in the distribution to the many.
But the many are not capable of making this calculation; and those who lead them to rapine never intend this distribution. The power of perpetuating our property in our
families is one of the most valuable and interesting
circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends
the most to the perpetuation of society itself. It
makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it
grafts benevolence even upon avarice. The possessors of family wealth, and of the distinction which
attends hereditary possession, (as most concerned
in it,) are the natural securities for this transmisision. With us the House of Peers is formed upon
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 299
this principle. It is wholly composed of hereditary
property and hereditary distinction, and made, therefore, the third of the legislature, and, in the last event,
the sole judge of all property in all its subdivisions.
The House of Commons, too, though not necessarily,
yet in fact, is always so composed, in the far greater
part. Let those large proprietors be what they will,
(and they have their chance of being amongst the
best,) they are, at the very worst, the ballast in the
vessel of the commonwealth. For though hereditary
wealth, and the rank which goes with it, are too much
idolized by creeping sycophants, and the blind, abject'
admirers of power, they are too rashly slighted in
shallow speculations of the petulant, assuming, shortsighted coxcombs of philosophy. Some decent, regulated preieminence, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural,
nor unjust, nor impolitic.
It is said that twenty-four millions ought to prevail over two hundred thousand. True; if the constitution of a kingdom be a problem of arithmetic.
This sort of discourse does well enough with the
lamp-post for its second: to men who may reason
calmly it is ridiculous. The will of the many, and
their interest, must very often differ; and great will
be the difference when they make an evil choice. A
government of five hundred country attorneys and
obscure curates is not good for twenty-four millions
of men, though it were chosen by eight-and-forty millions; nor is it the better for being guided by a
dozen of persons of quality who have betrayed their
trust in order to obtain that power. At present, you
seem in everything to have strayed out of the high
road of Nature. The property of France does not
? ? ? ? 300 REFLECTIONS ON THE
govern it. Of course property is destroyed, and
rational liberty has no existence. All you have got
for the present is a paper circulation, and a stock-jobbing constitution: and as to the future, do you seriously think that the territory of France, upon the republican system of eighty-three independent municipalities, (to say nothing of the parts that compose
them,) can ever be governed as one body, or can ever
be set in motion by the impulse of one mind? When
the National Assembly has completed its work, it will
have accomplished its ruin. These commonwealths
will not long bear a state of subjection to the republic of Paris. They will. not bear that this one body
should monopolize the captivity of the king, and the
dominion over the assembly calling itself national.
Each will keep its own portion of the spoil of the
Chirch to itself; and it will not suffer either that
spoil, or the more just fruits of their industry, or the
natural produce of their soil, to be sent to swell the
insolence or pamper the luxury of the mechanics of
Paris. In this they will see none of the equality,
under the pretence of which they have been tempted
to throw off their allegiance to their sovereign, as well
as the ancient constitution of their country. There
can be no capital city in such a constitution as they
have lately made. They have forgot, that, when they
framed democratic governments, they had virtually
dismembered their country. The person whom they
persevere in calling king has not power left to him
by the hundredth part sufficient to hold together this
collection of republics. The republic of Paris will
endeavor, indeed, to complete the debauchery of the
army, and illegally to perpetuate the Assembly, without resort to its constituents, as the means of contin
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 301
ulng its despotism. It will make efforts, by becoming the heart of a boundless paper circulation, to
draw everything to itself: but in vain. All this policy in the end will appear as feeble as it is now violent.
If this be your actual situation, compared to the
situation to which you were called, as it were by
the voice of God and man, I cannot find it in my
heart to congratulate you on the choice you have
made, or the success which has attended your endeavors. I can as little recommend to any other
nation a conduct grounded on such principles and
productive of such effects. That I must leave to
those who can see further into your affairs than I
am able to do, and who best know how far your actions are favorable to their designs. The gentlemen
of the Revolution Society, who were so early in their
congratulations, appear to be strongly of opinion that
there is some scheme of politics relative to this country, in which your proceedings may in some way be
useful. For your Dr. Price, who seems to have speculated himself into no small degree of fervor upon
this subject, addresses his auditors in the following
very remarkable words:- -" I cannot conclude without recalling particularly to your recollection a consideration which I have more than once alluded to, and which probably your thoughts have been all along anticipating; a consideration with which my mind is
impressed more than I can express: I mean the consideration of the favorableness of the present times to
all exertions in the cause of liberty. "
It is plain, that the mind of this political preacher
was at the time big with some extraordinary design;
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and it is very probable that the thoughts of his audience, who understood him better than I do, did all along run before him in his reflection, and in the
whole train of consequences to which it led.
Before I read that sermon, I really thought I had
lived in a free country; and it was an error I cherished, because it gave me a greater liking to the
country I lived in. I was, indeed, aware that a
jealous, ever-waking vigilance, to guard the treasure
of our liberty, not only from invasion, but from decay
and corruption, was our best wisdom and our first
duty. However, I considered that treasure rather as
a possession to be secured than as a prize to be contended for. I did not discern how the present time came to be so very favorable to all exertions in the
cause of freedom. The present time differs from any
other only by the circumstance of what is doing in
France. If the example of that nation is to have an
influence on this, I can easily conceive why some of
their proceedings which have an unpleasant aspect,
and are not quite reconcilable to humanity, generosity, good faith, and justice, are palliated with so much milky good-nature towards the actors, and borne with
so much heroic fortitude towards the sufferers. It is
certainly not prudent to discredit the authority of an
example we mean to follow. But allowing this, we
are led to a very natural question:- -What is that
cause of liberty, and what are those exertions in its
favor, to which the example of France is so singularly
auspicious? Is our monarchy to be annihilated, with
all the laws, all the tribunals, and all the ancient corporations of the kingdom? Is every landmark of
the country to be done away in favor of a geometrical and arithmetical constitution? Is the House of
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 303
Lords to be voted useless? Is Episcopacy to be abolished? Are the Church lands to be sold to Jews and
jobbers, or given to bribe new-invented municipal
republics into a participation in sacrilege? Are all
the taxes to be voted grievances, and the revenue reduced to a patriotic contribution or patriotic presents?
Are silver shoe-buckles to be substituted in the place
of the land-tax and the malt-tax, for the support of
the naval strength of this kingdom? Are all orders,
ranks, and distinctions to be confounded, that out
of universal anarchy, joined to national bankruptcy,
three or four thousand democracies should be formed
into eighty-three, and that they may all, by some sort
of unknown attractive power, be organized into one?
For this great end is the army to be seduced from its
discipline and its fidelity, first by every kind of debauchery, and then by the terrible precedent of a donative in the increase of pay? Are the curates to be seduced from their bishops by holding out to them
tlie delusive hope of a dole out of the spoils of their
own order? Are the citizens of London to be drawn
from their allegiance by feeding them at the expense
of their fellow-subjects? Is a compulsory paper currency to be substituted in the place of the legal coin
of this kingdom? Is what remains of the plundered
stock of public revenue to be employed in the wild
project of maintaining two armies to watch over and
to fight with each other? If these are the ends and
means of the Revolution Society, I admit they are
well assorted; and France may furnish them for both
with precedents in point.
I see that your example is held out to shame us.
I know that we are supposed a dull, sluggish race,
rendered passive by finding our situation tolerable,
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and prevented by a mediocrity of freedom from ever
attaining to its full perfection. Your leaders in
France began by affecting to admire, almost to adore,
the British Constitution; but as they advanced, they
came to look upon it with a sovereign contempt.
The friends of your National Assembly amongst us
have full as mean an opinion of what was formerly
thought the glory of their country. The Revolution
Society has discovered that the English nation is not
free. They are convinced that the inequality in our
representation is a " defect in our Constitution so
gross and palpable as to make it excellent chiefly
in form and theory";* - that a representation in the
legislature of a kingdom is not only the basis of all
constitutional liberty in it, but of " all legitimate government; that without it a government is nothing but
an usurpation";- that,'" when the representation is
partial, the kingdom possesses liberty only partially;
and if extremely partial, it gives only a semblance;
and if not only extremely partial, but corruptly chosen, it becomes a nuisance. " Dr. Price considers this
inadequacy of representation as our Jfndamental
grievance; and though, as to the corruption of this
semblance of representation, he hopes it is not yet
arrived to its full perfection of depravity, he fears
that "nothing will be done towards gaining for us
this essential blessing, until some great abuse of power
again provokes our resentment, or some great calamity again alarms our fears, or perhaps till the acquisition of a pure and equal representation by other countries, whilst we are mocked with the shadow, kindles our shame. " To this he subjoins a note in these
words: -- " A representation chosen chiefly by the
* Discourse on the Love of our Country, 3rd edit. p. 39.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 305
Treasury, and a few thousands of the dregs of the people, who are generally paid for their votes. "
You will smile here at the consistency of those
democratists who, when they are not on their guard,
treat the humbler part of the community with the
greatest contempt, whilst, at the same time, they pretend to make them the depositories of all power. It
would require a long discourse to point out to you
the many fallacies that lurk in the generality and
equivocal nature of the terms "inadequate representation. " I shall only say here, in justice to that oldfashioned Constitution under which we have long prospered, that our representation has been found
perfectly adequate to all the purposes for which a.
representation of the people can be desired or devised. I defy the enemies of our Constitution to
show the conitrary. To detail the particulars in
which it is found so well to promote its ends would
demand a treatise on our practical Constitution. I
state here the doctrine of the revolutionists, only that
you and others may see what an opinion these gentlemen entertain of the Constitution of their country,
and why they seem to think that some great abuse of
power, or some great calamity, as giving a chance for
the blessing of a Constitution according to their ideas,
would be much palliated to their feelings; you see
why they are so much enamored of your fair and
equal representation, which being once obtained, the
same effects might follow. You see they consider
our House of Commons as only "a semblance," " a
form," " a theory," "a shadow," "a mockery,"
perhaps "a nuisance. "
These gentlemen value themselves on being systematic, and not without reason. They must therefore
VOL. 111. 20
? ? ? ? 306 REFLECTIONS ON THE
look on this gross and palpable defect of representation, this fundamental grievance, (so they call it,) as
a thing not only vicious in itself, but as rendering
our whole government absolutely illegitimate, and not
at all better than a downright usurpation. Another
revolution, to get rid of this illegitimate and usurped
government, would of course be perfectly justifiable,
if not absolutely necessary. Indeed, their principle,
if you observe it with any attention, goes much further than to an alteration in the election of the House
of Commons; for, if popular representation, or choice,
is necessary to the legitimacy of all government, the
IHouse of Lords is, at one stroke, bastardized and corrupted in blood. That House is no representative of
the people at all, even in " semblance" or " in form. "
The case of the crown is altogether as bad. In vain
the crown may endeavor to screen itself against these
gentlemen by the authority of the establishment made
on the Revolution. The Revolution, which is resorted to for a title, on their system, wants a title itself.
The Revolution is built, according to their theory, upon a basis not more solid than our present formalities,
as it was made by a House of Lords not representing any one but themselves, and by a House of Commons exactly such as the present, that is, as they term it, by a mere " shadow and mockery" of representation.
Something they must destroy, or they seem to themselves to exist for no purpose. One set is for destroying the civil power through the ecclesiastical; another for demolishing the ecclesiastic through the civil.
They are aware that the worst consequences might
happen to the public in accomplishing this double ruin of Church and State; but they are so heated with
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 307
their theories, that they give more than hints that
this ruin, with all the mischiefs that must lead to it
and attend it, and which to themselves appear quite
certain, would not be unacceptable to them, or very
remote from their wishes. A man amongst them of
great authority, and certainly of great talents, speaking of a supposed alliance between Church and State,
says, "Perhaps we must wait for the fall of the civil
powers, before this most unnatural alliance be broken.
Calamitous, no doubt, will that time be. But what
convulsion in the political world ought to be a subject of lamentation, if it be attended with so desirable an effect? " You see with what a steady eye these gentlemen are prepared to view the greatest
calamities which can befall their country!
It is no wonder, therefore, that, with these ideas
of everything in their Constitution and government
at home, either in Church or State, as illegitimate
and usurped, or at best as a vain mockery, they
look abroad with an eager and passionate enthusiasm. Whilst they are possessed by these notions, it
is vain to talk to them of the practice of their ancestors, the fundamental laws of their country, the fixed
form of a Constitution whose merits are confirmed
by the solid test of long experience and an increasing public strength and national prosperity. They
despise experience as the wisdom of unlettered men;
and as for the rest, they have wrought under ground
a mine that will blow up, at one grand explosion,
all examples of antiquity, all precedents, charters,
and acts of Parliament. They have "the rights
of men. " Against these there can be no prescription; against these no argument is binding: these
admit no temperament and no compromise: any
? ? ? ? 308 REFLECTIONS ON THE
thing withheld from their full demand is so much
of fraud and injustice. Against these their rights
of men let no government look for security in the
length of its continuance, or in the justice and lenity of its administration. The objections of these
speculatists, if its forms do not quadrate with their
theories, are as valid against such an old and beneficent government as against the most violent tyranny or the greenest usurpation. They are always at issue with governments, not on a question of
abuse, but a question of competency and a question
of title. I have nothing to say to the clumsy subtilty
of their political metaphysics. Let them be their
amusement in the schools.
Illa se jactet in aula
]Eolus, et clauso ventorum carcere regnet.
But let them not break prison to burst like a Levanter, to sweep the earth with their hurricane, and
to break up the fountains of the great deep to overwhelm us!
Far am I from denying in theory, full as far is my
heart from withholding in practice, (if I were of power to give or to withhold,) the real rights of men. In
denying their false claims of right, I do not mean to
injure those which are real, and are such as their pretended rights would totally destroy. If civil society
be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages
for which it is made become his right. It is an institution of beneficence; and law itself is only beneficence
acting by a rule. Men have a right to live by that
rule; they have a right to justice, as between their
fellows, whether their fellows are in politic function
or in ordinary occupation. They have a right to the
fruits of their industry, and to the means of making
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 309
their industry fruitful.
They have a right to the acquisitions of their parents, to the nourishment and
improvement of their offspring, to instruction in life
and to consolation in death. Whatever each man
can separately do, without trespassing upon others,
he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right
to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favor. In
this partnership all men have equal rights; but not
to equal things. He that has but five shillings in
the partnership has as good a right to it as he that
has five hundred pounds has to his larger proportion; but he has not a right to an equal dividend in
the product of the joint stock. And as to the share of
power, authority, and direction which each individual
ought to have in the management of the state, that
I must deny to be amongst the direct original rights
of man in civil society; for I have in my contemplation the civil social man, and no other. It is a thing
to be settled by convention.
If civil society be the offspring of convention, that
convention must be its law. That convention must
limit and modify all the descriptions of constitution
which are formed under it. Every sort of legislative, judicial, or executory power are its creatures.
They can have no being in any other state of things;
and how can any man claim, under the conventions
of civil society, rights which do not so much as suppose its existence, - rights which are absolutely repugnant to it? society, and which becomes one of its fundamental
rules, is, that no man should be judge in his own cause.
By this each person has at once divested himself of
the first fundamental right of uncovenanted man,
One of the first motives to civil
? ? ? ? 310 REFLECTIONS ON THE
that is, to judge for himself, and to assert his own
cause. He abdicates all right to be his own governor. He inclusively, in a great measure, abandons
the right of self-defence, the first law of Nature.
Men cannot enjoy the rights of an uncivil and of a
civil state together. That he may obtain justice, he
gives up his right of determining what it is in points
the most essential to him. That he may secure some
liberty, he makes a surrender in trust of the whole
of it.
Government is not made in virtue of natural rights,
which may and do exist in total independence of it,
-- and exist in much greater clearness, and in a
much greater degree of abstract perfection: but their
abstract perfection is their practical defect. By having a right to everything they want everything. Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants
should be provided for by this wisdom. Among these
wants is to be reckoned the want, out of civil society,
of a sufficient restraint upon their passions. Society
requires not only that the passions of individuals
should be subjected, but that even in the mass and
body, as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of
men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection.
This can only be done by a power out of themselves,
and not, in the exercise of its function, subject to that
will and to those passions which it is its office to bridle and subdue. In this sense the restraints on men,
as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among
their rights. But as the liberties and the restrictions
vary with times and circumstances, and admit of infinite modifications, they cannot be settled upon any
? ? ? ? REVOLUTTON IN FRANCE. 311
abstract rule; and nothing is so foolish as to discuss
them upon that principle.
The moment you abate anything from the full
rights of men each to govern himself, and suffer any
artificial, positive limitation upon those rights, from
that moment the whole organization of government
becomes a consideration of convenience. This it is
which makes the constitution of a state, and the
due distribution of its powers, a matter of the most
delicate and complicated skill. It requires a deep
knowledge of human nature and human necessities,
and of the things which facilitate or obstruct the various ends which are to be pursued by the mechanism of civil institutions. The state is to have recruits to its strength and remedies to its distempers. What
is the use of discussing a man's abstract right to food
or medicine? The question is upon the method of
procuring and administering them. In that deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid of the
farmer and the physician, rather than the professor
of metaphysics.
The science of constructing a commonwealth, or
renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other
experimental science, not to be taught a priori. Nor
is it a short experience that can instruct us in that
practical science; because the real effects of moral
causes are not always immediate, but that which in
the first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in
its remoter operation, and its excellence may arise
even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. The reverse also happens; and very plausible schemes, with very pleasing commencements,
have often shameful and lamentable conclusions. In
states there are often some obscure and almost la
? ? ? ? 312 REFLECTIONS ON THE
tent causes, things which appear at first view. of little
moment, on which a very great part of its prosperity
or adversity may most essentially depend. The science of government being, therefore, so practical in
itself, and intended for such practical purposes, a
matter which requires experience, and even more experience than any person can gain in his whole life,
however sagacious and observing he may be, it is
with infinite caution that any man ought to venture
upon pulling down an edifice which has answered in
any tolerable degree for ages the common purposes
of society, or on building it up again without having
models and patterns of approved utility before his
eyes.
These metaphysic rights entering into common life,
like rays of light which pierce into a dense medium,
are, by the laws of Nature, refracted from their
straight line. Indeed, in the gross and complicated
mass of human passions and concerns, the primitive
rights of men undergo such a variety of refractions
and reflections that it becomes absurd to talk of
them as if they continued in the simplicity of their
original direction. The nature of man is intricate;
the objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity: and therefore no simple disposition or direction of power can be suitable either to man's nature or to the quality of his affairs. When I hear the
simplicity of contrivance aimed at and boasted of in
any new political constitutions, I am at no loss to decide that the artificers are grossly ignorant of their
trade or totally negligent of their duty. The simple governments are fundamentally defective, to say
no worse of them. If you were to contemplate society in but one point of view, all these simple modes
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 313
of polity are infinitely captivating. In effect each
would answer its single end much more perfectly
than the more complex is able to attain all its complex purposes. But it is better that the whole should
be imperfectly and anomalously answered than that
while some parts are provided for with great exactness, others might be totally neglected, or perhaps
materially injured, by the over-care of a favorite
member.
The pretended rights of these theorists are all extremes; and in proportion as they are metaphysically true, they are morally and politically false. The rights of men are in a sort of middle, incapable of
definition, but not impossible to be discerned. The
rights of men in governments are their advantages;
and these are often in balances between differences of
good, -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.
By these theorists the right of the people is almost
always sophistically confounded with their power.
The body of the community, whenever it can come to
act, can meet with no effectual resistance; but till
power and right are the same, the whole body of them
has no right inconsistent with virtue, and the first of
all virtues, prudence. Men have no right to what is
not reasonable, and to what is not for their benefit;
for though a pleasant writer said, " Liceat perire poetis," when one of them, in cold blood, is said to have
leaped into the flames of a volcanic revolution, " ardentem frigidus lEtnam insiluit," I consider such a
frolic rather as an unjustifiable poetic license than
? ? ? ? 314 REFLECTIONS ON THE
as one of the franchises of Parnassus; and whether
he were poet, or divine, or politician, that chose to
exercise this kind of right, I think that more wise,
because more charitable, thoughts would urge me
rather to save the man than to preserve his brazen
slippers as the monuments of his folly.
The kind of anniversary sermons to which a great
part of what I write refers, if men are not shamed
out of their present course, in commemorating the
fact, will cheat many out of the principles and deprive them of the benefits of the Revolution they commemorate. I confess to you, Sir, I never liked
this continual talk of resistance and revolution, or
the practice of making the extreme medicine of the
Constitution its daily bread. It renders the habit of
society dangerously valetudinary; it is taking periodical doses of mercury sublimate, and' swallowing down repeated provocatives of cantharides to our
love of liberty.
This distemper of remedy, grown habitual, relaxes
and wears out, by a vulgar and prostituted use, the
spring of that spirit which is to be exerted on great
occasions. It was in the most patient period of Roman servitude that themes of tyrannicide made the ordinary exercise of boys at school,- cum perimit
scrvos classis numerosa tyrannos. In the ordinary
state of things, it produces in a country like ours the
worst effects, even on the cause of that liberty which
it abuses with the dissoluteness of an extravagant
speculation. Almost all the high-bred republicans
of my time have, after a short space, become the
most decided, thorough-paced courtiers; they sooln
left the business of a tedious, moderate, but practical
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 315
resistance, to those of us whom, in the pride and intoxication of their theories, they have slighted as not much better than Tories. Hypocrisy, of course, de
lights in the most sublime speculations; for, never
intending to go beyond speculation, it costs nothing
to have it magnificent. But even in cases where
rather levity than fraud was to be suspected in these
ranting speculations, the issue has been much the
same. These professors, finding their extreme principles not applicable to cases which call only for a qualified, or, as I may say, civil and legal resistance,
ill such cases employ no resistance at all. It is with
them a war or a revolution, or it is nothing. Finding
their schemes of politics not adapted to the state
of the world in which they live, they often come to
think lightly of all public principle, and are ready,
on their part, to abandon for a very trivial interest
what they find of very trivial value. Some, indeed,
are of more steady and persevering natures; but
these are eager politicians out of Parliament, who
have little to tempt them to abandon their favorite
projects. They have some change in the Church or
State, or both, constantly in their view. When that
is the case, they are always bad citizens, and perfectly unsure connections. For, considering their speculative designs as of infinite value, and the actual arrangement of the state as of no estimation, they are, at best, indifferent about it. They see no merit
in the good, and no fault in the vicious management
of public affairs; they rather rejoice in the latter, as
more propitious to revolution. They see no merit or
demerit in any man, or any action, or any political
principle, any further than as they may forward or retard their design of change; they therefore take up.
? ? ? ? 316 REFLECTIONS ON THE
one day, the most violent and stretched prerogative,
and another time the wildest democratic ideas of freedoin, and pass from the one to the other without any sort of regard to cause, to person, or to party.
In France you are now in the crisis of a revolution, and in the transit from one form of government
to another: you cannot see that character of men
exactly in the same situation in which we see it in
this country. With us it is militant, with you it
is triumphant; and you know how it call act, when
its power is commensurate to its will. I would not
be supposed to confine those observations to any description of men, or to comprehend all men of any description within them, - no, far from it! I am as
incapable of that injustice as I am of keeping terms
with those who profess principles of extremes, and
who, under the name of religion, teach little else than
wild and dangerous politics. The worst of these politics of revolution is this: they temper and harden the breast, in order to prepare it for the desperate strokes
which are sometimes used in extreme occasions. But
as these occasions may never arrive, the mind receives
a gratuitous taint; and the moral sentiments suffer
not a little, when no political purpose is served by
the depravation. This sort of people are so taken up
with their theories about the rights of man, that they
have totally forgot his nature. Without opening one
new avenue to the understanding, they have succeeded in stopping up those that lead to the heart.
They have perverted in themselves, and in those that
attend to them, all the well-placed sympathies of the
human breast.
This famous sermon of the Old Jewry breathes
nothing but this spirit through all the political part.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 317
Plots, massacres, assassinations, seem to some people
a trivial price for obtaining a revolution. A cheap,
bloodless reformation, a guiltless liberty, appear flat
and vapid to their taste. There must be a great
change of scene; there must be a magnificent stage
effect; there must be a grand spectacle to rouse the
imagination, grown torpid with the lazy elljoyment
of sixty years' security, and the still unanimating repose of public prosperity. The preacher found them
all in the French Revolution. This inspires a juvenile warmth through his whole frame. His enthusiasm kindles as he advances; and when he arrives at his peroration, it is in a full blaze. Then viewing,
from the Pisgah of his pulpit, thle free, moral, happy,
flourishing, and glorious state of France, as in a birdeye landscape of a promised land, he breaks out into
the following rapture: --
" What an eventful period is this! I am thankful
that I have lived to it; I could almost say, Lord, now
lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes
have seen thy salvation. -I have lived to see a diffusion
of knowledge which has undermined superstition and
error. - I have lived to see the rights of men better
understood than ever, and nations panting for liberty
which seemed to have lost the idea of it. - I have
lived to see thirty millions of people, indignant and
resolute, spurning at slavery, and demanding liberty
with an irresistible voice; their king led in triumph,
and an arbitrary monarch surrendering himself to his
subjects. " *
* Another of these reverend gentlemen, who was witness to some
of the spectacles which Paris has lately exhibited, expresses himself
thus: --' A king dragged in submissive triumph by his conquering subjects
is one of those appearances of grandeur which seldom rise in the
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Before I proceed further, I have to remai'k that
Dr. Price seems rather to overvalue the great acquisitions of light which he has obtained and diffused in this age. The last century appears to me to have
been quite as much enlightened. It had, though in
a different place, a triumph as memorable as that of
Dr. Price; and some of the great preachers of that
period partook of it as eagerly as he has done in the
triumph of France. On the trial of the Reverend
Hugh Peters for high treason, it was deposed, that,
when King Charles was brought to London for his
trial, the Apostle of Liberty in that day conducted the
triumph. "I saw," says the witness, "his Majesty
ill the coach with six horses, and Peters riding before
the king triumphing. " Dr. Price, when he talks as
if he had made a discovery, only follows a precedent;
for, after the commencement of the king's trial, this
precursor, the same Dr. Peters, concluding a long
prayer at the royal chapel at Whitehall, (he had very
triumphantly chosen his place,) said, " I have prayed
and preached these twenty years; and now I may say
with old Simeon, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant
depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation. " * Peters had not the fruits of his prayer; for
he neither departed so soon as he wished, nor in
peace. He became (what I heartily hope none of
his followers may be in this country) himself a sacrifice to the triumph which he led as pontiff. They dealt at the Restoration, perhaps, too hardly with this
poor good man. But we owe it to his memory and
prospect of human affairs, and which, during the remainder of my
life, I shall think of with wonder and gratification. " These gentle.
men agree marvellously in their feelings.
* State Trials, Vol. II. p. 360, 363.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 319
his sufferings, that he had as much illumination and
as much zeal, and had as effectually undermined all
the superstition and error which might impede the
great business he was engaged in, as any who follow
and repeat after him in this age, which would assume
to itself an exclusive title to the knowledge of the
rights of men, and all the glorious consequences of
that knowledge.
After this sally of the preacher of the Old Jewry,
which differs only in place and time, but agrees perfectly with the spirit and letter of the rapture of 1648, the Revolution Society, the fabricators of gov
ernments, the heroic band of cashierers of monarchs,
electors of sovereigns, and leaders of kings in triumph, strutting with a proud consciousness of the diffusion of knowledge, of which every member had
obtained so large a share in the donative, were in
haste to make a generous diffusion of the knowledge
they had thus gratuitously received. To make this
bountiful communication, they adjourned from the
church in the Old Jewry to the London Tavern,
where the same Dr. Price, in whom the fumes of his
oracular tripod were not entirely evaporated, moved
and carried the resolution, or address of congratulation, transmitted by Lord Stanhope to the National Assembly of France.
I find a preacher of the Gospel profaning the beautiful and prophetic ejaculation, commonly called
" Nunc dimittis," made on the first presentation of
our Saviour in the temple, and applying it, with an
inhuman and unnatural rapture, to the most horrid,
atrocious, and afflicting spectacle that perhaps ever
was exhibited to the pity and indignation of mankind. This " leading in triumph," a thing in its best
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form unmanly and irreligious, which fills our preacher with such unhallowed transports, must shock, I believe, the moral taste of every well-born mind.
Several English were the stupefied and indignant
spectators of that triumph. It was (unless we have
been strangely deceived) a spectacle more resembling
a procession of American savages entering into Onondaga after some of their murders called victories, and leading into hovels hung round with scalps their
captives overpowered with the scoffs and buffets of
women as ferocious as themselves, much more than it
resembled the triumphal pomp of a civilized martial
nation; -- if a civilized nation, or any men who had
a sense of generosity, were capable of a personal triumph over the fallen and afflicted.
This, my dear Sir, was not the triumph of France.
I must believe, that, as a nation, it overwhelmed you
with shame and horror. I must believe that the
National Assembly find themselves in a state of the
greatest humiliation in not being able to punish the
authors of this triumph or the actors in it, and that
they are in a situation in which any inquiry they
may make upon the subject must be destitute even
of the appearance of liberty or impartiality. The
apology of that assembly is found in their situation;
but when we approve what they must bear, it is in
us the degenerate choice of a vitiated mind.
With a compelled appearance of deliberation, they
vote under the dominion of a stern necessity. They
sit in the heart, as it were, of a foreign republic:
they have their residence in a city whose constitution
has emanated neither from the charter of their king
nor from their legislative power. There they are
surrounded by an army not raised either by the au
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 321
thority of their crown or by their command, and
which, if they should order to dissolve itself, would
instantly dissolve them. There they sit, after a gang
of assassins had driven away some hundreds of the
members; whilst those who held the same moderate
principles, with more patience or better hope, continued every day exposed to outrageous insults and
murderous threats. There a majority, sometimes
real, sometimes pretended, captive itself, compels a
captive king to issue as royal edicts, at third hand,
the polluted nonsense of their most licentious and
giddy coffee-houses. It is notorious that all their
measures are decided before they are debated. It is.
beyond doubt, that, under the terror of the bayonet,,
and the lamp-post, and the torch to their houses,,
they are obliged to adopt all the crude and desperate
measures suggested by clubs composed of a monstrous medley of all conditions, tongues, and nations.
Among these are found persons in comparison of
whom Catiline would be thought scrupulous, and
Cethegus a man of sobriety and moderation. Nor is
it in these clubs alone that the public measures are
deformed into monsters. They undergo a previous
distortion in academies, intended as so many seminaries for these clubs, which are set up in all the
places of public resort. In these meetings of all
sorts, every counsel, in proportion as it is daring
and violent and perfidious, is taken for then mark of
superior genius. Humanity and compassion are ridiculed as the fruits of superstition and ignorance.
Tenderness to individuals is considered as treason to
the public. Liberty is always to be estimated perfect as property is rendered insecure. Amidst assassination, massacre, and confiscation, perpetrated or' VOL. III. 21
? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 297
able men. You do not imagine that I wish to confine,
power, authority, and distinction to blood and namesl
and titles. No, Sir. There is no qualification for
government but virtue and wisdom, actual or presumptive. Wherever they are actually found, they have, in whatever state, condition, profession, or trade,
the passport of Heaven to human place and honor.
Woe to the country which would madly and impiously reject the service of the talents and virtues,
civil, military, or religious, that are given to grace
and to serve it; and would condemn to obscurity
everything formed to diffuse lustre and glory around
a state! Woe to that country, too, that, passing into
the opposite extreme, considers a low education, a
mean, contracted view of things, a sordid, mercenary
occupation, as a preferable title to command! Everything ought to be open, -- but not indifferently to every man. No rotation, no appointment by lot, no
mode of election operating in the spirit of sortition or
rotation, can be generally good in a government conversant in extensive objects; because they have no tendency, direct or indirect, to select the man with a
view to the duty, or to accommodate the one to the
other. I do not hesitate to say that the road to eminence and power, from obscure condition, ought not. to be made too easy, nor a thing too much of course.
If rare merit be the rarest of all rare things, it ought
to pass through some sort of probation. The temple
of honor ought to be seated on an eminence. If it
be opened through virtue, let it be remembered, too,
that virtue is never tried but by some difficulty and
some struggle.
Nothing is a due and adequate representation of a
state, that does -not represent its ability, as well as its
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property. But as ability is a vigorous and active
principle, and as property is sluggish, inert, and timid, it never can be safe from the invasions of ability,
unless it be, out of all proportion, predominant in the
representation. It must be represented, too, in great
masses of accumulation, or it is not rightly protected.
The characteristic essence of property, formed out of
the combined principles of its acquisition and conservation, is to be unequal. Tlle great masses, therefore,
which excite envy, and tempt rapacity, must be put
out of the possibility of danger. Then they form a
natural rampart about the lesser properties in all
their gradations. The same quantity of property
which is by the natural course of things divided
among many has not the same operation. Its defensive power is weakened as it is diffused. In this
diffusion each man's portion is less than what, in
the eagerness of his desires, he may flatter himself
to obtain by dissipating the accumulations of others.
The plunder of the few would, indeed, give but a share
inconceivably small in the distribution to the many.
But the many are not capable of making this calculation; and those who lead them to rapine never intend this distribution. The power of perpetuating our property in our
families is one of the most valuable and interesting
circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends
the most to the perpetuation of society itself. It
makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it
grafts benevolence even upon avarice. The possessors of family wealth, and of the distinction which
attends hereditary possession, (as most concerned
in it,) are the natural securities for this transmisision. With us the House of Peers is formed upon
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 299
this principle. It is wholly composed of hereditary
property and hereditary distinction, and made, therefore, the third of the legislature, and, in the last event,
the sole judge of all property in all its subdivisions.
The House of Commons, too, though not necessarily,
yet in fact, is always so composed, in the far greater
part. Let those large proprietors be what they will,
(and they have their chance of being amongst the
best,) they are, at the very worst, the ballast in the
vessel of the commonwealth. For though hereditary
wealth, and the rank which goes with it, are too much
idolized by creeping sycophants, and the blind, abject'
admirers of power, they are too rashly slighted in
shallow speculations of the petulant, assuming, shortsighted coxcombs of philosophy. Some decent, regulated preieminence, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural,
nor unjust, nor impolitic.
It is said that twenty-four millions ought to prevail over two hundred thousand. True; if the constitution of a kingdom be a problem of arithmetic.
This sort of discourse does well enough with the
lamp-post for its second: to men who may reason
calmly it is ridiculous. The will of the many, and
their interest, must very often differ; and great will
be the difference when they make an evil choice. A
government of five hundred country attorneys and
obscure curates is not good for twenty-four millions
of men, though it were chosen by eight-and-forty millions; nor is it the better for being guided by a
dozen of persons of quality who have betrayed their
trust in order to obtain that power. At present, you
seem in everything to have strayed out of the high
road of Nature. The property of France does not
? ? ? ? 300 REFLECTIONS ON THE
govern it. Of course property is destroyed, and
rational liberty has no existence. All you have got
for the present is a paper circulation, and a stock-jobbing constitution: and as to the future, do you seriously think that the territory of France, upon the republican system of eighty-three independent municipalities, (to say nothing of the parts that compose
them,) can ever be governed as one body, or can ever
be set in motion by the impulse of one mind? When
the National Assembly has completed its work, it will
have accomplished its ruin. These commonwealths
will not long bear a state of subjection to the republic of Paris. They will. not bear that this one body
should monopolize the captivity of the king, and the
dominion over the assembly calling itself national.
Each will keep its own portion of the spoil of the
Chirch to itself; and it will not suffer either that
spoil, or the more just fruits of their industry, or the
natural produce of their soil, to be sent to swell the
insolence or pamper the luxury of the mechanics of
Paris. In this they will see none of the equality,
under the pretence of which they have been tempted
to throw off their allegiance to their sovereign, as well
as the ancient constitution of their country. There
can be no capital city in such a constitution as they
have lately made. They have forgot, that, when they
framed democratic governments, they had virtually
dismembered their country. The person whom they
persevere in calling king has not power left to him
by the hundredth part sufficient to hold together this
collection of republics. The republic of Paris will
endeavor, indeed, to complete the debauchery of the
army, and illegally to perpetuate the Assembly, without resort to its constituents, as the means of contin
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 301
ulng its despotism. It will make efforts, by becoming the heart of a boundless paper circulation, to
draw everything to itself: but in vain. All this policy in the end will appear as feeble as it is now violent.
If this be your actual situation, compared to the
situation to which you were called, as it were by
the voice of God and man, I cannot find it in my
heart to congratulate you on the choice you have
made, or the success which has attended your endeavors. I can as little recommend to any other
nation a conduct grounded on such principles and
productive of such effects. That I must leave to
those who can see further into your affairs than I
am able to do, and who best know how far your actions are favorable to their designs. The gentlemen
of the Revolution Society, who were so early in their
congratulations, appear to be strongly of opinion that
there is some scheme of politics relative to this country, in which your proceedings may in some way be
useful. For your Dr. Price, who seems to have speculated himself into no small degree of fervor upon
this subject, addresses his auditors in the following
very remarkable words:- -" I cannot conclude without recalling particularly to your recollection a consideration which I have more than once alluded to, and which probably your thoughts have been all along anticipating; a consideration with which my mind is
impressed more than I can express: I mean the consideration of the favorableness of the present times to
all exertions in the cause of liberty. "
It is plain, that the mind of this political preacher
was at the time big with some extraordinary design;
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and it is very probable that the thoughts of his audience, who understood him better than I do, did all along run before him in his reflection, and in the
whole train of consequences to which it led.
Before I read that sermon, I really thought I had
lived in a free country; and it was an error I cherished, because it gave me a greater liking to the
country I lived in. I was, indeed, aware that a
jealous, ever-waking vigilance, to guard the treasure
of our liberty, not only from invasion, but from decay
and corruption, was our best wisdom and our first
duty. However, I considered that treasure rather as
a possession to be secured than as a prize to be contended for. I did not discern how the present time came to be so very favorable to all exertions in the
cause of freedom. The present time differs from any
other only by the circumstance of what is doing in
France. If the example of that nation is to have an
influence on this, I can easily conceive why some of
their proceedings which have an unpleasant aspect,
and are not quite reconcilable to humanity, generosity, good faith, and justice, are palliated with so much milky good-nature towards the actors, and borne with
so much heroic fortitude towards the sufferers. It is
certainly not prudent to discredit the authority of an
example we mean to follow. But allowing this, we
are led to a very natural question:- -What is that
cause of liberty, and what are those exertions in its
favor, to which the example of France is so singularly
auspicious? Is our monarchy to be annihilated, with
all the laws, all the tribunals, and all the ancient corporations of the kingdom? Is every landmark of
the country to be done away in favor of a geometrical and arithmetical constitution? Is the House of
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 303
Lords to be voted useless? Is Episcopacy to be abolished? Are the Church lands to be sold to Jews and
jobbers, or given to bribe new-invented municipal
republics into a participation in sacrilege? Are all
the taxes to be voted grievances, and the revenue reduced to a patriotic contribution or patriotic presents?
Are silver shoe-buckles to be substituted in the place
of the land-tax and the malt-tax, for the support of
the naval strength of this kingdom? Are all orders,
ranks, and distinctions to be confounded, that out
of universal anarchy, joined to national bankruptcy,
three or four thousand democracies should be formed
into eighty-three, and that they may all, by some sort
of unknown attractive power, be organized into one?
For this great end is the army to be seduced from its
discipline and its fidelity, first by every kind of debauchery, and then by the terrible precedent of a donative in the increase of pay? Are the curates to be seduced from their bishops by holding out to them
tlie delusive hope of a dole out of the spoils of their
own order? Are the citizens of London to be drawn
from their allegiance by feeding them at the expense
of their fellow-subjects? Is a compulsory paper currency to be substituted in the place of the legal coin
of this kingdom? Is what remains of the plundered
stock of public revenue to be employed in the wild
project of maintaining two armies to watch over and
to fight with each other? If these are the ends and
means of the Revolution Society, I admit they are
well assorted; and France may furnish them for both
with precedents in point.
I see that your example is held out to shame us.
I know that we are supposed a dull, sluggish race,
rendered passive by finding our situation tolerable,
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and prevented by a mediocrity of freedom from ever
attaining to its full perfection. Your leaders in
France began by affecting to admire, almost to adore,
the British Constitution; but as they advanced, they
came to look upon it with a sovereign contempt.
The friends of your National Assembly amongst us
have full as mean an opinion of what was formerly
thought the glory of their country. The Revolution
Society has discovered that the English nation is not
free. They are convinced that the inequality in our
representation is a " defect in our Constitution so
gross and palpable as to make it excellent chiefly
in form and theory";* - that a representation in the
legislature of a kingdom is not only the basis of all
constitutional liberty in it, but of " all legitimate government; that without it a government is nothing but
an usurpation";- that,'" when the representation is
partial, the kingdom possesses liberty only partially;
and if extremely partial, it gives only a semblance;
and if not only extremely partial, but corruptly chosen, it becomes a nuisance. " Dr. Price considers this
inadequacy of representation as our Jfndamental
grievance; and though, as to the corruption of this
semblance of representation, he hopes it is not yet
arrived to its full perfection of depravity, he fears
that "nothing will be done towards gaining for us
this essential blessing, until some great abuse of power
again provokes our resentment, or some great calamity again alarms our fears, or perhaps till the acquisition of a pure and equal representation by other countries, whilst we are mocked with the shadow, kindles our shame. " To this he subjoins a note in these
words: -- " A representation chosen chiefly by the
* Discourse on the Love of our Country, 3rd edit. p. 39.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 305
Treasury, and a few thousands of the dregs of the people, who are generally paid for their votes. "
You will smile here at the consistency of those
democratists who, when they are not on their guard,
treat the humbler part of the community with the
greatest contempt, whilst, at the same time, they pretend to make them the depositories of all power. It
would require a long discourse to point out to you
the many fallacies that lurk in the generality and
equivocal nature of the terms "inadequate representation. " I shall only say here, in justice to that oldfashioned Constitution under which we have long prospered, that our representation has been found
perfectly adequate to all the purposes for which a.
representation of the people can be desired or devised. I defy the enemies of our Constitution to
show the conitrary. To detail the particulars in
which it is found so well to promote its ends would
demand a treatise on our practical Constitution. I
state here the doctrine of the revolutionists, only that
you and others may see what an opinion these gentlemen entertain of the Constitution of their country,
and why they seem to think that some great abuse of
power, or some great calamity, as giving a chance for
the blessing of a Constitution according to their ideas,
would be much palliated to their feelings; you see
why they are so much enamored of your fair and
equal representation, which being once obtained, the
same effects might follow. You see they consider
our House of Commons as only "a semblance," " a
form," " a theory," "a shadow," "a mockery,"
perhaps "a nuisance. "
These gentlemen value themselves on being systematic, and not without reason. They must therefore
VOL. 111. 20
? ? ? ? 306 REFLECTIONS ON THE
look on this gross and palpable defect of representation, this fundamental grievance, (so they call it,) as
a thing not only vicious in itself, but as rendering
our whole government absolutely illegitimate, and not
at all better than a downright usurpation. Another
revolution, to get rid of this illegitimate and usurped
government, would of course be perfectly justifiable,
if not absolutely necessary. Indeed, their principle,
if you observe it with any attention, goes much further than to an alteration in the election of the House
of Commons; for, if popular representation, or choice,
is necessary to the legitimacy of all government, the
IHouse of Lords is, at one stroke, bastardized and corrupted in blood. That House is no representative of
the people at all, even in " semblance" or " in form. "
The case of the crown is altogether as bad. In vain
the crown may endeavor to screen itself against these
gentlemen by the authority of the establishment made
on the Revolution. The Revolution, which is resorted to for a title, on their system, wants a title itself.
The Revolution is built, according to their theory, upon a basis not more solid than our present formalities,
as it was made by a House of Lords not representing any one but themselves, and by a House of Commons exactly such as the present, that is, as they term it, by a mere " shadow and mockery" of representation.
Something they must destroy, or they seem to themselves to exist for no purpose. One set is for destroying the civil power through the ecclesiastical; another for demolishing the ecclesiastic through the civil.
They are aware that the worst consequences might
happen to the public in accomplishing this double ruin of Church and State; but they are so heated with
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 307
their theories, that they give more than hints that
this ruin, with all the mischiefs that must lead to it
and attend it, and which to themselves appear quite
certain, would not be unacceptable to them, or very
remote from their wishes. A man amongst them of
great authority, and certainly of great talents, speaking of a supposed alliance between Church and State,
says, "Perhaps we must wait for the fall of the civil
powers, before this most unnatural alliance be broken.
Calamitous, no doubt, will that time be. But what
convulsion in the political world ought to be a subject of lamentation, if it be attended with so desirable an effect? " You see with what a steady eye these gentlemen are prepared to view the greatest
calamities which can befall their country!
It is no wonder, therefore, that, with these ideas
of everything in their Constitution and government
at home, either in Church or State, as illegitimate
and usurped, or at best as a vain mockery, they
look abroad with an eager and passionate enthusiasm. Whilst they are possessed by these notions, it
is vain to talk to them of the practice of their ancestors, the fundamental laws of their country, the fixed
form of a Constitution whose merits are confirmed
by the solid test of long experience and an increasing public strength and national prosperity. They
despise experience as the wisdom of unlettered men;
and as for the rest, they have wrought under ground
a mine that will blow up, at one grand explosion,
all examples of antiquity, all precedents, charters,
and acts of Parliament. They have "the rights
of men. " Against these there can be no prescription; against these no argument is binding: these
admit no temperament and no compromise: any
? ? ? ? 308 REFLECTIONS ON THE
thing withheld from their full demand is so much
of fraud and injustice. Against these their rights
of men let no government look for security in the
length of its continuance, or in the justice and lenity of its administration. The objections of these
speculatists, if its forms do not quadrate with their
theories, are as valid against such an old and beneficent government as against the most violent tyranny or the greenest usurpation. They are always at issue with governments, not on a question of
abuse, but a question of competency and a question
of title. I have nothing to say to the clumsy subtilty
of their political metaphysics. Let them be their
amusement in the schools.
Illa se jactet in aula
]Eolus, et clauso ventorum carcere regnet.
But let them not break prison to burst like a Levanter, to sweep the earth with their hurricane, and
to break up the fountains of the great deep to overwhelm us!
Far am I from denying in theory, full as far is my
heart from withholding in practice, (if I were of power to give or to withhold,) the real rights of men. In
denying their false claims of right, I do not mean to
injure those which are real, and are such as their pretended rights would totally destroy. If civil society
be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages
for which it is made become his right. It is an institution of beneficence; and law itself is only beneficence
acting by a rule. Men have a right to live by that
rule; they have a right to justice, as between their
fellows, whether their fellows are in politic function
or in ordinary occupation. They have a right to the
fruits of their industry, and to the means of making
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 309
their industry fruitful.
They have a right to the acquisitions of their parents, to the nourishment and
improvement of their offspring, to instruction in life
and to consolation in death. Whatever each man
can separately do, without trespassing upon others,
he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right
to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favor. In
this partnership all men have equal rights; but not
to equal things. He that has but five shillings in
the partnership has as good a right to it as he that
has five hundred pounds has to his larger proportion; but he has not a right to an equal dividend in
the product of the joint stock. And as to the share of
power, authority, and direction which each individual
ought to have in the management of the state, that
I must deny to be amongst the direct original rights
of man in civil society; for I have in my contemplation the civil social man, and no other. It is a thing
to be settled by convention.
If civil society be the offspring of convention, that
convention must be its law. That convention must
limit and modify all the descriptions of constitution
which are formed under it. Every sort of legislative, judicial, or executory power are its creatures.
They can have no being in any other state of things;
and how can any man claim, under the conventions
of civil society, rights which do not so much as suppose its existence, - rights which are absolutely repugnant to it? society, and which becomes one of its fundamental
rules, is, that no man should be judge in his own cause.
By this each person has at once divested himself of
the first fundamental right of uncovenanted man,
One of the first motives to civil
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that is, to judge for himself, and to assert his own
cause. He abdicates all right to be his own governor. He inclusively, in a great measure, abandons
the right of self-defence, the first law of Nature.
Men cannot enjoy the rights of an uncivil and of a
civil state together. That he may obtain justice, he
gives up his right of determining what it is in points
the most essential to him. That he may secure some
liberty, he makes a surrender in trust of the whole
of it.
Government is not made in virtue of natural rights,
which may and do exist in total independence of it,
-- and exist in much greater clearness, and in a
much greater degree of abstract perfection: but their
abstract perfection is their practical defect. By having a right to everything they want everything. Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants
should be provided for by this wisdom. Among these
wants is to be reckoned the want, out of civil society,
of a sufficient restraint upon their passions. Society
requires not only that the passions of individuals
should be subjected, but that even in the mass and
body, as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of
men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection.
This can only be done by a power out of themselves,
and not, in the exercise of its function, subject to that
will and to those passions which it is its office to bridle and subdue. In this sense the restraints on men,
as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among
their rights. But as the liberties and the restrictions
vary with times and circumstances, and admit of infinite modifications, they cannot be settled upon any
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abstract rule; and nothing is so foolish as to discuss
them upon that principle.
The moment you abate anything from the full
rights of men each to govern himself, and suffer any
artificial, positive limitation upon those rights, from
that moment the whole organization of government
becomes a consideration of convenience. This it is
which makes the constitution of a state, and the
due distribution of its powers, a matter of the most
delicate and complicated skill. It requires a deep
knowledge of human nature and human necessities,
and of the things which facilitate or obstruct the various ends which are to be pursued by the mechanism of civil institutions. The state is to have recruits to its strength and remedies to its distempers. What
is the use of discussing a man's abstract right to food
or medicine? The question is upon the method of
procuring and administering them. In that deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid of the
farmer and the physician, rather than the professor
of metaphysics.
The science of constructing a commonwealth, or
renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other
experimental science, not to be taught a priori. Nor
is it a short experience that can instruct us in that
practical science; because the real effects of moral
causes are not always immediate, but that which in
the first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in
its remoter operation, and its excellence may arise
even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. The reverse also happens; and very plausible schemes, with very pleasing commencements,
have often shameful and lamentable conclusions. In
states there are often some obscure and almost la
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tent causes, things which appear at first view. of little
moment, on which a very great part of its prosperity
or adversity may most essentially depend. The science of government being, therefore, so practical in
itself, and intended for such practical purposes, a
matter which requires experience, and even more experience than any person can gain in his whole life,
however sagacious and observing he may be, it is
with infinite caution that any man ought to venture
upon pulling down an edifice which has answered in
any tolerable degree for ages the common purposes
of society, or on building it up again without having
models and patterns of approved utility before his
eyes.
These metaphysic rights entering into common life,
like rays of light which pierce into a dense medium,
are, by the laws of Nature, refracted from their
straight line. Indeed, in the gross and complicated
mass of human passions and concerns, the primitive
rights of men undergo such a variety of refractions
and reflections that it becomes absurd to talk of
them as if they continued in the simplicity of their
original direction. The nature of man is intricate;
the objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity: and therefore no simple disposition or direction of power can be suitable either to man's nature or to the quality of his affairs. When I hear the
simplicity of contrivance aimed at and boasted of in
any new political constitutions, I am at no loss to decide that the artificers are grossly ignorant of their
trade or totally negligent of their duty. The simple governments are fundamentally defective, to say
no worse of them. If you were to contemplate society in but one point of view, all these simple modes
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of polity are infinitely captivating. In effect each
would answer its single end much more perfectly
than the more complex is able to attain all its complex purposes. But it is better that the whole should
be imperfectly and anomalously answered than that
while some parts are provided for with great exactness, others might be totally neglected, or perhaps
materially injured, by the over-care of a favorite
member.
The pretended rights of these theorists are all extremes; and in proportion as they are metaphysically true, they are morally and politically false. The rights of men are in a sort of middle, incapable of
definition, but not impossible to be discerned. The
rights of men in governments are their advantages;
and these are often in balances between differences of
good, -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.
By these theorists the right of the people is almost
always sophistically confounded with their power.
The body of the community, whenever it can come to
act, can meet with no effectual resistance; but till
power and right are the same, the whole body of them
has no right inconsistent with virtue, and the first of
all virtues, prudence. Men have no right to what is
not reasonable, and to what is not for their benefit;
for though a pleasant writer said, " Liceat perire poetis," when one of them, in cold blood, is said to have
leaped into the flames of a volcanic revolution, " ardentem frigidus lEtnam insiluit," I consider such a
frolic rather as an unjustifiable poetic license than
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as one of the franchises of Parnassus; and whether
he were poet, or divine, or politician, that chose to
exercise this kind of right, I think that more wise,
because more charitable, thoughts would urge me
rather to save the man than to preserve his brazen
slippers as the monuments of his folly.
The kind of anniversary sermons to which a great
part of what I write refers, if men are not shamed
out of their present course, in commemorating the
fact, will cheat many out of the principles and deprive them of the benefits of the Revolution they commemorate. I confess to you, Sir, I never liked
this continual talk of resistance and revolution, or
the practice of making the extreme medicine of the
Constitution its daily bread. It renders the habit of
society dangerously valetudinary; it is taking periodical doses of mercury sublimate, and' swallowing down repeated provocatives of cantharides to our
love of liberty.
This distemper of remedy, grown habitual, relaxes
and wears out, by a vulgar and prostituted use, the
spring of that spirit which is to be exerted on great
occasions. It was in the most patient period of Roman servitude that themes of tyrannicide made the ordinary exercise of boys at school,- cum perimit
scrvos classis numerosa tyrannos. In the ordinary
state of things, it produces in a country like ours the
worst effects, even on the cause of that liberty which
it abuses with the dissoluteness of an extravagant
speculation. Almost all the high-bred republicans
of my time have, after a short space, become the
most decided, thorough-paced courtiers; they sooln
left the business of a tedious, moderate, but practical
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resistance, to those of us whom, in the pride and intoxication of their theories, they have slighted as not much better than Tories. Hypocrisy, of course, de
lights in the most sublime speculations; for, never
intending to go beyond speculation, it costs nothing
to have it magnificent. But even in cases where
rather levity than fraud was to be suspected in these
ranting speculations, the issue has been much the
same. These professors, finding their extreme principles not applicable to cases which call only for a qualified, or, as I may say, civil and legal resistance,
ill such cases employ no resistance at all. It is with
them a war or a revolution, or it is nothing. Finding
their schemes of politics not adapted to the state
of the world in which they live, they often come to
think lightly of all public principle, and are ready,
on their part, to abandon for a very trivial interest
what they find of very trivial value. Some, indeed,
are of more steady and persevering natures; but
these are eager politicians out of Parliament, who
have little to tempt them to abandon their favorite
projects. They have some change in the Church or
State, or both, constantly in their view. When that
is the case, they are always bad citizens, and perfectly unsure connections. For, considering their speculative designs as of infinite value, and the actual arrangement of the state as of no estimation, they are, at best, indifferent about it. They see no merit
in the good, and no fault in the vicious management
of public affairs; they rather rejoice in the latter, as
more propitious to revolution. They see no merit or
demerit in any man, or any action, or any political
principle, any further than as they may forward or retard their design of change; they therefore take up.
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one day, the most violent and stretched prerogative,
and another time the wildest democratic ideas of freedoin, and pass from the one to the other without any sort of regard to cause, to person, or to party.
In France you are now in the crisis of a revolution, and in the transit from one form of government
to another: you cannot see that character of men
exactly in the same situation in which we see it in
this country. With us it is militant, with you it
is triumphant; and you know how it call act, when
its power is commensurate to its will. I would not
be supposed to confine those observations to any description of men, or to comprehend all men of any description within them, - no, far from it! I am as
incapable of that injustice as I am of keeping terms
with those who profess principles of extremes, and
who, under the name of religion, teach little else than
wild and dangerous politics. The worst of these politics of revolution is this: they temper and harden the breast, in order to prepare it for the desperate strokes
which are sometimes used in extreme occasions. But
as these occasions may never arrive, the mind receives
a gratuitous taint; and the moral sentiments suffer
not a little, when no political purpose is served by
the depravation. This sort of people are so taken up
with their theories about the rights of man, that they
have totally forgot his nature. Without opening one
new avenue to the understanding, they have succeeded in stopping up those that lead to the heart.
They have perverted in themselves, and in those that
attend to them, all the well-placed sympathies of the
human breast.
This famous sermon of the Old Jewry breathes
nothing but this spirit through all the political part.
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Plots, massacres, assassinations, seem to some people
a trivial price for obtaining a revolution. A cheap,
bloodless reformation, a guiltless liberty, appear flat
and vapid to their taste. There must be a great
change of scene; there must be a magnificent stage
effect; there must be a grand spectacle to rouse the
imagination, grown torpid with the lazy elljoyment
of sixty years' security, and the still unanimating repose of public prosperity. The preacher found them
all in the French Revolution. This inspires a juvenile warmth through his whole frame. His enthusiasm kindles as he advances; and when he arrives at his peroration, it is in a full blaze. Then viewing,
from the Pisgah of his pulpit, thle free, moral, happy,
flourishing, and glorious state of France, as in a birdeye landscape of a promised land, he breaks out into
the following rapture: --
" What an eventful period is this! I am thankful
that I have lived to it; I could almost say, Lord, now
lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes
have seen thy salvation. -I have lived to see a diffusion
of knowledge which has undermined superstition and
error. - I have lived to see the rights of men better
understood than ever, and nations panting for liberty
which seemed to have lost the idea of it. - I have
lived to see thirty millions of people, indignant and
resolute, spurning at slavery, and demanding liberty
with an irresistible voice; their king led in triumph,
and an arbitrary monarch surrendering himself to his
subjects. " *
* Another of these reverend gentlemen, who was witness to some
of the spectacles which Paris has lately exhibited, expresses himself
thus: --' A king dragged in submissive triumph by his conquering subjects
is one of those appearances of grandeur which seldom rise in the
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Before I proceed further, I have to remai'k that
Dr. Price seems rather to overvalue the great acquisitions of light which he has obtained and diffused in this age. The last century appears to me to have
been quite as much enlightened. It had, though in
a different place, a triumph as memorable as that of
Dr. Price; and some of the great preachers of that
period partook of it as eagerly as he has done in the
triumph of France. On the trial of the Reverend
Hugh Peters for high treason, it was deposed, that,
when King Charles was brought to London for his
trial, the Apostle of Liberty in that day conducted the
triumph. "I saw," says the witness, "his Majesty
ill the coach with six horses, and Peters riding before
the king triumphing. " Dr. Price, when he talks as
if he had made a discovery, only follows a precedent;
for, after the commencement of the king's trial, this
precursor, the same Dr. Peters, concluding a long
prayer at the royal chapel at Whitehall, (he had very
triumphantly chosen his place,) said, " I have prayed
and preached these twenty years; and now I may say
with old Simeon, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant
depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation. " * Peters had not the fruits of his prayer; for
he neither departed so soon as he wished, nor in
peace. He became (what I heartily hope none of
his followers may be in this country) himself a sacrifice to the triumph which he led as pontiff. They dealt at the Restoration, perhaps, too hardly with this
poor good man. But we owe it to his memory and
prospect of human affairs, and which, during the remainder of my
life, I shall think of with wonder and gratification. " These gentle.
men agree marvellously in their feelings.
* State Trials, Vol. II. p. 360, 363.
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his sufferings, that he had as much illumination and
as much zeal, and had as effectually undermined all
the superstition and error which might impede the
great business he was engaged in, as any who follow
and repeat after him in this age, which would assume
to itself an exclusive title to the knowledge of the
rights of men, and all the glorious consequences of
that knowledge.
After this sally of the preacher of the Old Jewry,
which differs only in place and time, but agrees perfectly with the spirit and letter of the rapture of 1648, the Revolution Society, the fabricators of gov
ernments, the heroic band of cashierers of monarchs,
electors of sovereigns, and leaders of kings in triumph, strutting with a proud consciousness of the diffusion of knowledge, of which every member had
obtained so large a share in the donative, were in
haste to make a generous diffusion of the knowledge
they had thus gratuitously received. To make this
bountiful communication, they adjourned from the
church in the Old Jewry to the London Tavern,
where the same Dr. Price, in whom the fumes of his
oracular tripod were not entirely evaporated, moved
and carried the resolution, or address of congratulation, transmitted by Lord Stanhope to the National Assembly of France.
I find a preacher of the Gospel profaning the beautiful and prophetic ejaculation, commonly called
" Nunc dimittis," made on the first presentation of
our Saviour in the temple, and applying it, with an
inhuman and unnatural rapture, to the most horrid,
atrocious, and afflicting spectacle that perhaps ever
was exhibited to the pity and indignation of mankind. This " leading in triumph," a thing in its best
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form unmanly and irreligious, which fills our preacher with such unhallowed transports, must shock, I believe, the moral taste of every well-born mind.
Several English were the stupefied and indignant
spectators of that triumph. It was (unless we have
been strangely deceived) a spectacle more resembling
a procession of American savages entering into Onondaga after some of their murders called victories, and leading into hovels hung round with scalps their
captives overpowered with the scoffs and buffets of
women as ferocious as themselves, much more than it
resembled the triumphal pomp of a civilized martial
nation; -- if a civilized nation, or any men who had
a sense of generosity, were capable of a personal triumph over the fallen and afflicted.
This, my dear Sir, was not the triumph of France.
I must believe, that, as a nation, it overwhelmed you
with shame and horror. I must believe that the
National Assembly find themselves in a state of the
greatest humiliation in not being able to punish the
authors of this triumph or the actors in it, and that
they are in a situation in which any inquiry they
may make upon the subject must be destitute even
of the appearance of liberty or impartiality. The
apology of that assembly is found in their situation;
but when we approve what they must bear, it is in
us the degenerate choice of a vitiated mind.
With a compelled appearance of deliberation, they
vote under the dominion of a stern necessity. They
sit in the heart, as it were, of a foreign republic:
they have their residence in a city whose constitution
has emanated neither from the charter of their king
nor from their legislative power. There they are
surrounded by an army not raised either by the au
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 321
thority of their crown or by their command, and
which, if they should order to dissolve itself, would
instantly dissolve them. There they sit, after a gang
of assassins had driven away some hundreds of the
members; whilst those who held the same moderate
principles, with more patience or better hope, continued every day exposed to outrageous insults and
murderous threats. There a majority, sometimes
real, sometimes pretended, captive itself, compels a
captive king to issue as royal edicts, at third hand,
the polluted nonsense of their most licentious and
giddy coffee-houses. It is notorious that all their
measures are decided before they are debated. It is.
beyond doubt, that, under the terror of the bayonet,,
and the lamp-post, and the torch to their houses,,
they are obliged to adopt all the crude and desperate
measures suggested by clubs composed of a monstrous medley of all conditions, tongues, and nations.
Among these are found persons in comparison of
whom Catiline would be thought scrupulous, and
Cethegus a man of sobriety and moderation. Nor is
it in these clubs alone that the public measures are
deformed into monsters. They undergo a previous
distortion in academies, intended as so many seminaries for these clubs, which are set up in all the
places of public resort. In these meetings of all
sorts, every counsel, in proportion as it is daring
and violent and perfidious, is taken for then mark of
superior genius. Humanity and compassion are ridiculed as the fruits of superstition and ignorance.
Tenderness to individuals is considered as treason to
the public. Liberty is always to be estimated perfect as property is rendered insecure. Amidst assassination, massacre, and confiscation, perpetrated or' VOL. III. 21
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