But to return from this short digression, - which,
however, is not wholly foreign to the question of the
effect of the will of the majority upon the form or the
existence of their society.
however, is not wholly foreign to the question of the
effect of the will of the majority upon the form or the
existence of their society.
Edmund Burke
?
?
?
TO THE OLD WHIGS.
153
of every kind, and are taught and educated so to do;
- that the idea of an hereditary legislator is as absurd as an hereditary mathematician; -that a body
holding themselves unaccountable to anybody ought
to be trusted by nobody; - that it is continuing the
uncivilized principles of governments founded in conquest, and the base idea of man having a property in
man, and governing him by a personal right;- that
aristocracy has a tendency to degenerate the human
species," &c. , &c.
As to our law of primoge niture, which with few
and inconsiderable exceptions is the standing law of
all our landed inheritalne, and which without question has a tendency, and I think a most happy tendency, to preserve a character of consequence, weight, and prevalent influence over others in the whole body
of the landed interest, they call loudly for its destruction. They do this for political reasons that are
very manifest. They have the confidence to say,
"that it is a law against every law of Nature, and
Nature herself calls for its destruction. Establish
family justice, and aristocracy falls. By the aristocratical law of primogenitureship, in a family of six
children, five are exposed. Aristocracy has never
but one child. The rest are begotten to be devoured.
They are thrown to the cannibal for prey, and the
natural parent prepares the unnatural repast. "
As to the House of Commons, they treat it far
worse than the House of Lords or the crown have
been ever treated. Perhaps they thought they had
a greater right to take this amicable freedom with
those of their own family. For many years it has
been the perpetual theme of their invectives. " Mockery, insult, usurpation," are amongst the best names
? ? ? ? 154 APPEAL FROM THE NEW
they bestow upon it. They damn it in the mass,
by declaring "that it does not arise out of the
inherent rights of the people, as the National Assembly does in France, and whose name designates its original. " Of the charters and corporations, to whose rights
a few years ago these gentlemen were so tremblingly
alive, they say, " that, when the people of Englanld
come to reflect upon them, they will, like France,
annihilate those badges of oppression, those traces
of a conquered nation. "
As to our monarchy, they had formerly been more
tender of that branch of the Constitution, and for
a good reason. The laws had guarded against all
seditious attacks upon it with a greater degree of
strictness and severity. The tone of these gentlemen
is totally altered since the French Revolution. They
now declaim as vehemently against the monarchy as
on former occasions they treacherously flattered and
soothed it. ," When we survey the wretched condition of man
under the monarchical and hereditary systems of government, dragged from his home by one power, or
driven by another, and impoverished by taxes more
than by enemies, it becomes evident that those systems are bad, and that a general revolution in the
principle and construction of governments is necessary. ," What is government more than the management
of the affairs of a nation? It is not, and from its nature cannot be, the property of any particular man or
family, but of the whole community, at whose expense
it is supported; and though by force or contrivance
it has been usurped into an inheritance, the usurpa
? ? ? ? TO THE OLD WHIGS. 155
tion cannot alter the right of things. Sovereignty,
as a matter of right, appertains to the nation only,
and not to any individual; and a nation has at all
times an inherent indefeasible right to abolish any
form of government it finds inconvenient, and establish such as accords with its interest, disposition, and happiness. The romantic and barbarous distinction
of men into kings and subjects, though it may suit
the condition of courtiers, cannot that of citizens,
and is exploded by the principle upon which governments are now founded. Every citizen is a member
of the sovereignty, and, as such, can acknowledge no
personal subjection, and his obedience can be only to
the laws. "
Warmly recommending to us the example of
France, where they have destroyed monarchy, they. say, -
" Monarchical sovereignty, the enemy of mankind,
and the source of misery, is abolished; and sovereign
ty itself is restored to its natural and original place,
the nation. Were this the case throughout Europe,
the cause of wars would be taken away. "
"But, after all, what is this metaphor called a
crown? or rather, what is monarchy? Is it a thing,
or is it a name, or is it a fraud? ~ Is it' a contrivance
of human wisdom,' or of human craft, to obtain money from a nation under specious pretences? Is it
a thing necessary to a nation? If it is, in what
does that necessity consist, what services does it perform, what is its business, and what are its merits? Doth the virtue consist in the metaphor or in the
man? Doth the goldsmith that makes the crown make
the virtue also? Doth it operate like Fortunatus's
wiohing-cap or Harlequin's wooden sword? Doth
? ? ? ? 156 APPEAL FROM THE NEW
it make a man a conjurer? In fine, what is it? It
appears to be a something going much out of fashion,
falling into ridicule, and rejected in some countries
both as unnecessary and expensive. In America it
is considered as an absurdity; and in France it has
so far declined, that the goodness of the man and the
respect for his personal character are the only things
that preserve the appearance of its existence. "
"Mr. Burke talks about what he calls an hereditary crown, as if it were some production of Nature,or as if, like time, it had a power to operate, not only independently, but in spite of man, - or as if it were
a thing or a subject universally consented to. Alas!
it has none of those properties, but is the reverse of
them all. It is a thing in imagination, the propriety
of which is more than doubted, and the legality of
which in a few years, will be denied. "
" If I ask the farmer, the manufacturer, the inerchant, the tradesman, and down through all the occupations of life to the common laborer, what service monarchy is to him, he can give me no answer. If
I ask him what monarchy is, he believes it is something like a sinecure. "
" The French Constitution says, that the right of
war and peace is in the nation. Where else should it
reside, but in those who are to pay the expense?
" In England, this right is said to reside in a metaphor, shown at the Tower for sixpence or a shilling
apiece: so are the lions; and it would be a step nearer to reason to say it resided in them, for any illanimate metaphor is no more than a hat or a cap. We can all see the absurdity of worshipping Aaron's
molten calf, or Nebuchadnezzar's golden image; but
why do men continue to practise themselves the absurdities they despise ill others? "
? ? ? ? TO THE OLD WHIGS. 157
The Revolution and Hanover succession had been
objects of the highest veneration to the old Whigs.
They thought them not only proofs of the sober and
steady spirit of liberty which guided their ancestors,
but of their wisdom and provident care of posterity.
The modern Whigs have quite other notions of these
events and actions. They do not deny that Mr. Burke
has given truly the words of the acts of Parliament
which secured the succession, and the just sense of
them. They attack not him, but the law.
" Mr Burke" (say they) " has done some service,
not to his cause, but to his country, by bringing those
clauses into public view. They serve to demonstrate
how necessary it is at all times to watch against the
attempted encroachment of power, and to prevent its
running to excess. It is somewhat extraordinary,
that the offence for which James the Second was expelled, that of setting up power by assumption, should be re-acted, under another shape and form, by the
Parliament that expelled him. It shows that the
rights of man were but imperfectly understood at
the Revolution; for certain it is, that the right which
that Parliament set up by assumption (for by delegation it had it not, and could not have it, because
none could give it) over the persons and freedom
of posterity forever, was of the same tyrannical unfounded kind which James attempted to set up over
the Parliament and the nation, and for which he was
expelled. The only difference is, (for in principle
they differ not,) that the one was an usurper over the
living, and the other over the unborn; and as the
one has no better authority to stand upon than the
other, both of them must be equally null and void,
and of no effect. "
? ? ? ? 158 APPEAL FROM THE NEW
"As the estimation of all things is by comparison,
the Revolution of 1688, however from circumstances
it may have been exalted beyond its value, will find
its level. It is already on the wane, eclipsed by the
enlarging orb of reason and the luminous Revolutions of America and France. In less than another century, it will go, as well as Mr. Burke's labors,'to
the family vault of all the Capulets. ' Mankind will
then scarcely believe that a country calling itself free
would send to Holland for a man and clothe him with
power on purpose to put themselves in fear of him, and
give him almost a million sterling a year for leave to
submit themselves and their posterity like bondmen ana
bondwomen forever. "
Mr. Burke having said that "the king holds his
crown in contempt of the choice of the Revolution
Society, who individually or collectively have not"
(as most certainly they have not) " a vote for a king
amongst them," they take occasion from thence to
infer that the king who does not hold his crown by
election despises the people.
"' The king of England,' says he,'holds his crown'
(for it does not belong to the nation, according to Mr.
Burke)'in contempt of the choice of the Revolution
Society,'" &c.
"As to who is king in England or elsewhere, or
whether there is any king at all, or whether the people choose a Cherokee chief or a Hessian hussar for a king, it is not a matter that I trouble myself about,
- be that to themselves; but with respect to the doctrine, so far as it relates to the rights of men and nations, it is as abominable as anything ever uttered
in the most enslaved country under heaven. Whether it sounds worse to my ear, by not being accus
? ? ? ? TO THE OLD WHIGS. 159
tomed to hear such despotism, than what it does to
the ear of another person, I am not so well a judge
of; but of its abominable principle I am at no loss to
judge. "
These societies of modern Whigs push their insolence as far as it can go. In order to prepare the
minds of the people for treason and rebellion, they
represent the king as tainted with principles of despotism, from the circumstance of his having dominions in Germany. In direct defiance of the most notorious truth, they describe his government there
to be a despotism; whereas it is a free Constitution,
in which the states of the Electorate have their part
in the government: and this privilege has never been
infringed by the king, or, that I have heard of, by
any of his predecessors. The Constitution of the
Electoral dominions has, indeed, a double control,
both from the laws of the Empire and from the
privileges of. the country. Whatever rights the king
enjoys as Elector have been always parentally exercised, and the calumnies of these scandalous societies
have not been authorized by a single complaint of
oppression.
"' When Mr. Burke says that' his Majesty's heirs
and successors, each in their time and order, will
come to the crown with. the same contempt of their
choice with which his Majesty has succeeded to that
he wears,' it is saying too much even to the humblest
individual in the country, part of whose daily labor
goes towards making up the million sterling a year
which the country gives the person it styles a king.
Government with insolence is despotism; but when
contempt is added, it becomes worse; and to pay, or
contempt is the excess of slavery. This species of
? ? ? ? 160 APPEAL FROM THE NEW
government comes from Germany, and reminds me
of what one of the Brunswick soldiers told me, who
was taken prisoner by the Americans in the late war. 'Ah! ' said he,' America is a fine free country: it is
worth the people's fighting for. I know the difference by knowing my own: in my country, if the prince
says, "Eat straw," we eat straw. ' God help that country, thought I, be it England, or elsewhere, whose
liberties are to be protected by German principles of
government and princes of Brunswick! "
"~ It is somewhat curious to observe, that, although
the people of England have been in the habit of talking about kings, it is always a foreign house of
kings, -hating foreigners, yet governed by them.
It is now the House of Brunswick, one of the petty
tribes of Germany. "
"; If government be what Mr. Burke describes it,'a contrivance of human wisdom,' I might ask him
if wisdom was at such a low ebb in England that it
was become necessary to import it from Holland and
from Hanover? But I will do the country the justice to say, that was not the case; and even if it was,
it mistook the cargo. The wisdom of every country,
when properly exerted, is sufficient for all its purposes; and there could exist no more real occasion in England to have sent for a Dutch Stadtholder or a German Elector than there was in America to have done a
similar thing. If a country does not understand its
own affairs, how is a foreigner to understand them,
who knows neither its laws, its manners, nor its language? If there existed a man so transcendently
wise above all others that his wisdom was necessary
tu. struct a nation, some reason might be offered for
-monarchy; but when we cast our eyes about a coun
? ? ? ? TO THE OLD WHIGS. 161
try, and observe how every part understands its own
affairs, and when we look around the world, and see.
that, of all men in it, the race of kings are the most
insignificant in capacity, our reason cannot fail to ask
us, What are those men kept for? " *
These are the notions which, under the idea of
Whig principles, several persons, and among them
persons of no mean mark, have associated themselves
to propagate. I will not attempt in the smallest
degree to refute them. This will probably be done
(if such writings shall be thought to deserve any
other than the refutation of criminal justice) by others, who may think with Mr. Burke. He has performed his part. I do not wish to enter very much at large into
the discussions which diverge and ramify in all ways
from this productive subject. But there is one topic upon which I hope I shall be excused in going a
little beyond my design. The factions now so busy
amongst us, in order to djyov men of all love for
their country, and to remove from their minds all
duty with regard to the state, endeavor to propagate
an opinion, that the people, in forming their commonwealth, have by no means parted with their power
over it. This is an impregnable citadel, to which
these gentlemen retreat, whenever they are pushed by
the battery of laws and usages and positive conventions. Indeed, it is such, and of so great force, that
all they have done in defending their outworks is so
much time and labor thrown away. Discuss any of
their schemes, their answer is, It is the act of te'd
* Vindication of the Rights of Man, recommended by the sevcral
societies.
VOL. IV. 11
? ? ? ? 162 APPEAL FROMI THE NEW
people, and that is sufficient. Are we to deny to a
majority of the people the right of altering even the
whole frame of their society, if such should be their
pleasure? They may change it, say they, from a
monarchy to a republic to-day, and to-morrow back
again from a republic to a monarchy; and so backward and forward as often as they like. They are
masters of the commonwealth, because in substance
they are themselves the commonwealth. The French
Revolution, say they, was the act of the majority of
the people; and if the majority of any other people,
the people of England, for instance, wish to make the
same change, they have the same right.
Just the same, undoubtedly. That is, none at all.
Neither the few nor the many have a right to act
merely by their will, in any matter connected with
duty, trust, engagement, or obligation. The Constitution of a country being once settled upon some
compact, tacit or expressed, there is no power existing of force to alter it, without the breach of the covenant, or the consent of all the parties. Such is the nature of a contract. And the votes of a majority
of the people, whatever their infamous flatterers may
teach in order to corrupt their minds, cannot alter
the moral any more than they can alter the physical
essence of things. The people are not to be taught
to think lightly of their engagements to their governors; else they teach governors to think lightly
of their engagements' towards them. In that kind
of game, in the end, the people are sure to be losers.
To flatter them into a contempt of faith, truth, and
justice is to ruin them; for in these virtues consists
their whole safety. To flatter any man, or any part
of mankind, in any description, by asserting that in
? ? ? ? TO THE OLD WHIGS. 163
engagements he or they are free, whilst any other human creature is bound, is ultimately to vest the rule
of morality in the pleasure of those who ought to be
rigidly submitted to it, -- to subject the sovereign
reason of the world to the caprices of weak and giddy
men.
But, as no one of us men can dispense with public
or private faith, or with any other tie of moral obligation, so neither can any number of us. The number
engaged in crimes, instead of turning them into laudable acts, only augments the quantity and intensity
of the guilt. I am well aware that men love to hear
of their power, but have an extreme disrelish to be
told of their duty. This is of course; because every
duty is a limitation of some power. Indeed, arbitrary power is so much to the depraved taste of the vulgar, of the vulgar of every description, that almost all the dissensions which lacerate the commonwealth are
not concerning the manner in which it is to be exercised, but concerning the hands in which it is to be
placed. Somewhere they are resolved to have it.
Whether they desire it to be vested in the many or
the few depends with most men upon the chance
which they imagine they themselves may have of partaking in the exercise of that arbitrary sway, in the
one mode or in the other.
It is not necessary to teach men to thirst after
power. But it is very expedient that by moral instruction they should be taught, and by their civil
constitutions they should be compelled, to put many
restrictions upon the immoderate exercise of it, and
the inordinate desire. The best method of obtaining
these two great points forms the important, but at
the same time the difficult problem to the true states
? ? ? ? 164 APPEAL FROM THE NEW.
man. He thinks of the place in which political power is to be lodged with no other attention than as it
may render the more or the less practicable its salutary restraint and its prudent direction. For this
reason, no legislator, at any period of the world, has
willingly placed the seat of active power in the hands
of the multitude; because there it admits of no control, no regulation, no steady direction whatsoever.
The people are the natural control on authority; but
to exercise and to control together is contradictory
and impossible.
As the exorbitant exercise of power cannot, under popular sway, be effectually restrained, the other
great object of political arrangement, the means of
abating an excessive desire of it, is in such a state
still worse provided for. The democratic commonwealth is the foodful nurse of ambition. Under the
other forms it meets with many restraints. Whenever, in states which have had a democratic basis, the
legislators have endeavored to put restraints upon
ambition, their methods were as violent as in the
end they were ineffectual, -- as violent, indeed, as any
the most jealous despotism could invent. The ostracism could not very long save itself, and much less
the state which it was meant to guard, from the attempts of ambition, - one of the natural, inbred, incurable distempers of a powerful democracy.
But to return from this short digression, - which,
however, is not wholly foreign to the question of the
effect of the will of the majority upon the form or the
existence of their society. I cannot too often recommend ii to the serious consideration of all men who
think civil society to be within the province of moral
jurisdiction, that, if we owe to it any duty, it is not
? ? ? ? TO THE OLD WHIGS. 165
subject to our will. Duties are not voluntary. Duty
and will are even contradictory terms. Now, though
civil society might be at first a voluntary act, (wrhich
in many cases it undoubtedly was,) its continuance
is under a permanent standing covenant, coexisting
with the society; and it attaches upon every individual of that society, without any formal act of his own.
This is warranted by the general practice, arising
out of the general sense of mankind. Men without
their choice derive benefits from that association;
without their choice they are subjected to duties
in consequence of these benefits; and without their
choice they enter into a virtual obligation as bindinlg
as any'that is actual. Look through the whole of life
and the whole system of duties. Much the strongest
moral obligations are such as were never the results
of our option. I allow, that, if no Supreme Ruler
exists, wise to form, and potent to enforce, the moral
law, there is no sanctionl to any contract, virtual or
even actual, against the will of prevalent power. On
that hypothesis, let any set of men be strong enough
to set their duties at defiance, and they cease to
be duties any longer. We have but this one appeal against irresistible power,Si genus humanum et mortalia temnitis arma, At sperate Deos memores fandi atque nefandi.
Taking it for granted that I do not write to the disciples of the Parisian philosophy, I may assume that
the awful Author of our being is the Author of our
place ill the order of existence, - and that, having
disposed and marshalled us by a divine tactic, not
according to our will, but according to His, He has
in and by that disposition virtually subjected us
to act the part which belongs to the place assigned
? ? ? ? 166 APPEAL FROM THE NEW
us. We have obligations to mankind at large, which
are not in consequence of any special voluntary pact.
They arise from the relation of man to man, and the
relation of man to God, which relations are not matters of choice. On the contrary, the force of all the
pacts which we enter into with any particular person or number of persons amongst mankind depends upon those prior obligations. In some cases the subordinate relations are voluntary, in others they are necessary, --but the duties are all compulsive. When
we marry, the choice is voluntary, but the duties are
not matter of choice: they are dictated by the nature of the situation. Dark and inscrutable are the
ways by which we come into the world. The instincts which give rise to this mysterious process of
Nature are not of our making. But out of physical
causes, unknown to us, perhaps unknowable, arise
moral duties, which, as we are able perfectly to comprehend, we are bound indispensably to perform. Parents may not be consenting to their moral relation; but, consenting or not, they are bound to a
long train of burdensome duties towards those with
whom they have never made a convention of any
sort. Children are not consenting to their relation;
but their relation, without their actual consent, binds
them to its duties, -or rather it implies their consent,
because the presumed consent of every rational creature is in unison with the predisposed order of things. Men come in that manner into a community with the
social state of their parents, endowed with all the
benefits, loaded with all the duties of their situation.
If the social ties and ligaments, spun out of those
physical relations which are the elements of the commonwealth, in most cases begin, and always continue,
? ? ? ? TO THE OLD WHIGS. 167
Independently of our will, so, without any stipulation
on our own part, are we bound by that relation called
our country, which comprehends (as it has been well
said) " all the charities of all. " * Nor are we left
without powerful instincts to make this duty as dear
and grateful to us as it is awful and coercive. Our
country is not a thing of mere physical locality. It
consists, in a great measure, in the ancient order
into which we are born. We may have the same
geographical situation, but another country; as we
may have the same country in another soil. The
place that determines our duty to our country is a
social, civil relation.
These are the opinions of the author whose cause I
defend. I lay them down, not to enforce them upon
others by disputation, but as an account of his proceedings. On them he acts; and from them he is
convinced that neither he, nor any man, or number
of men, have a right (except what necessity, which
is out of and above all rule, rather imposes than bestows) to free themselves from that primary engagement into which every mall born into a community as much contracts by his being born into it as he
contracts an obligation to certain parents by his having been derived from their bodies. The place of
every man determines his duty. If you ask, Quem
te Deus esse jussit? you will be answered when
you resolve this other question, Humana qua parte
locatus es in re? *
I admit, indeed, that in morals, as in all things
else, difficulties will sometimes occur. Duties will
sometimes cross one another. Then questions will
* Omnes omnium charitates patria una complectitur. " - CIc.
t A few lines in Persius contain a good summary of all the objects
? ? ? ? 168 APPEAL FROM THE NEW
arise, which of them is to be placed in subordination?
which of them may be entirely superseded? These
doubts give rise to that part of moral science called
csastry, which though necessary to be well studied
by those who would become expert in that learning,
who aim at becoming what I think Cicero somewhere calls artifices officiorum, it requires a very
solid and discriminating judgment, great modesty
and caution, and much sobriety of mind in the
handling; else there is a danger that it may totally
subvert those offices which it is its object only to
methodize and reconcile. Duties, at their extreme
bounds, are drawn very fine, so as to become almost
evanescent. In that state some shade of doubt will
always rest on these questions, when they are pursued with great subtilty. But the very habit of stating these extreme cases is not very laudable or safe; because, in general, it is not right to turn our duties
into doubts. They are imposed to govern our conduct, not to exercise our ingenuity; and therefore
our opinions about them ought not to be in a state
of fluctuation, but steady, sure, and resolved.
Amongst these nice, and therefore dangerous points
of casuistry, may be reckoned the question so much
agitated in the present hour, --Whether, after the
people have discharged themselves of their original
power by an habitual delegation, no occasion call
of moral investigation, and hint the result of our inquiry: There human will has no place.
Quid sumus? et quidnam victuri gignimur? ordo
Quis datus? et metwe quis mollis flexus, et unde?
Quis modus argento? Quidfas optarte? Quid asper
Utile nummus habet? Patrice charisquepropinquis
Quantum elargiri debet? Quem te Deus esse
Jussit? et humana qua parte locatus es in re?
? ? ? ? TO THE OLD WHIGS. 169
possibly occur which may justify the resumption of
it? This question, in this latitude, is very hard to
affirm or deny: but I am satisfied that no occasion
can justify such a resumption, which would not
equally authorize a dispensation with any other moral duty, perhaps with all of them together. However, if in general it be not easy to determine concerning the lawfulness of such devious proceedings, which must be ever on the edge of crimes, it is far
from difficult to foresee the perilous consequences of
the resuscitation of such a power in the people. The
practical consequences of any political tenet go a
great way in deciding upon its value. Political problems do not primarily concern truth or falsehood.
They relate to good or evil. What in the result is
likely to produce evil is politically false; that which
is productive of good, politically true.
Believing it, therefore, a question at least arduous
in the theory, and in the practice very critical, it
would become us to ascertain as well as we can
what form it is that our incantations are about to
call up from darkness and the sleep of ages. WhenI
the supreme authority of the people is in question,
before we attempt to extend or to confine it, we
ought to fix in our minds, with some degree of distinctness, an idea of what it is we mean, when we
say, the PEOPLE.
In a state of rude Nature there is no such thing as
a people. A number of men in themselves have no
collective capacity. The idea of a people is the idea
of a corporation. It is wholly artificial, and made,
like all other legal fictions, by common agreement.
What the particular nature of that agreement was
is collected from the form into which the particular
? ? ? ? 170 APPEAL FROM THE NEW
society has been cast. Any other is not their covenant. When men, therefore, break up the original compact or agreement which gives its corporate form
and capacity to a state, they are no longer a people, -
they have no longer a corporate existence - they have
no longer a legal coactive force to bind within, nor
a claim to be recognized abroad. They are a number of vague, loose individuals, and nothing more.
With them all is to begin again. Alas! they little
know how many a weary step is to be taken before
they can form themselves into a mass which has a
true politic personality.
We hear much, from men who have not acquired
their hardiness of assertion from the profundity of
their thinking, about the omnipotence of a majority,
in such a dissolution of an ancient society as hath taken place in France. But amongst men so disbanded there can be no such thing as majority or minority,
or power in any one person to bind another. The
power of acting by a majority, which the gentlemen
theorists seem to assume so readily, after they have
violated the contract out of which it has arisen, (if at
all it existed,) must be grounded on two assumptions: first, that of an incorporation produced by unanimity; and secondly, an unanimous agreement
that the act of a mere majority (say of one) shall pass
with them and with others as the act of the whole.
We are so little affected by things which are habitual, that we consider this idea of the decision of a majority as if it were a law of our original nature.
But such constructive whole, residing in a part only,
is one of the most violent fictions of positive law that
ever has been or can be made on the principles of
artificial incorporation. Out of civil society Nature
? ? ? ? TO THE OLD WHIGS. 171
knows nothing of it; nor are. men, even when arranged according to civil order, otherwise than by
very long training, brought at all to submit to it.
The mind is brought far more easily to acquiesce in
the proceedings of one man, or a few, who act under
a general procuration for the state, than in the vote
of a victorious majority in councils in which every
man has his share in the deliberation. For there the
beaten party are exasperated and soured by the previous contention, and mortified by the conclusive defeat. This mode of decision, where wills may be so nearly equal, where, according to circumstances, the
smaller number may be the stronger force, and where
apparent reason may be all upon one side, and on the
other little else than impetuous appetite, - all this
must be the result of a very particular and special
convention, confirmed afterwards by long habits of
obedience, by a sort of discipline in society, and by a
strong hand, vested with stationary, permanent power to enforce this sort of constructive general will.
What organ it is that shall declare the corporate
mind is so much a matter of positive arrangement,
that several states, for the validity of several of their
acts, have required a proportion of voices much
greater than that of a mere majority. These proportions are so entirely governed by convention that
in some cases the minority decides. The laws in
many countries to condemn require more than a mere
majority; less than an equal number to acquit. In
our judicial trials we require unanimity either to condemn or to absolve. In some incorporations one man
speaks for the whole; in others, a few. Until the
other day, in the Constitution of Poland unanimity
was required to give validity to any act of their great
? ? ? ? 172 APPEAL FROM THE NEW
national council or diet. This approaches much more
nearly to rude Nature than the institutions of any
other country. Such, indeed, every commonwealth
must be, without a positive law to recognize in a certain number the will of the entire body.
If men dissolve their ancient incorporation in order to regenerate their community, in that state of things each man has a right, if he pleases, to remain
all individual. Any number of individuals, who can
agree upon it, have an undoubted right to form themselves into a state apart and wholly independent. If any of these is forced into the fellowship of another,
this is conquest and not compact. On every principle which supposes society to be in virtue of a free covenant, this compulsive incorporation must be null
and void.
As a people can have no right to a corporate capacity without universal consent, so neither have they a right to hold' exclusively any lands in the name and
title of a corporation. On the scheme of the present
rulers in our neighboring country, regenerated as
they are, they have no more right to the territory
called France than I have. I have a right to pitch
my tent in any unoccupied place I can find for it;
and I may apply to my own maintenance any part
of their unoccupied soil. I may purchase the house
or vineyard of any individual proprietor who refuses
his consent (and most proprietors have, as far as they
dared, refused it) to the new incorporation. I stand
in his independent place. Who are these insolent
men, calling themselves the French nation, that would
monopolize this fair domain of Nature? Is it because
they speak a certain jargon? Is it Trei mode of chattelilg, to me unintelligible, that forms their title to
? ? ? ? TO THE OLD WHIGS. 1]73
my land? Who are they who claim by prescription
and descent from certain gangs of banditti called
Franks, and Burgundians, and Visigoths, of whom I
may have never heard, and ninety-nine out of an hundred of themselves certainly never have heard, whilst
at the very time they tell me that prescription and
long possession form no title to property? Who are
they that presume to assert that the land which I
purchased of the individual, a natural person, and not
a fiction of state, belongs to them, who in the very
capacity in which they make their claim can exist
only as an imaginary being, and in virtue of the very
prescription which they reject and disown? This
mode of arguing might be pushed into all the detail,
so as to leave no sort of doubt, that, on their principles, and on the sort of footing on which they have
thought proper to place themselves, the crowd of
men, on the other side of the Channel, who have the
impudence to call themselves a people, can never be
the lawful, exclusive possessors of the soil. By what
they call reasoning without prejudice, they leave not
one stone upon another in the fabric of human society. They subvert all the authority which they hold,
as well as all that which they have destroyed.
As in the abstract it is perfectly clear, that, out
of a state of civil society, majority and minority are
relations which can have no existence, and that, in
civil society, its own specific conventions in each corporation determine what it is that constitutes the people, so as to make their act the signification of the general will, - to come to particulars, it is equally
clear that neither in France nor in England has the
original or any subsequent compact of the state, expressed or implied, constituted a majority of men, told
? ? ? ? 174 APPEAL FROM THE NEW
by the head, to be the acting people of their several
communities. And I see as little of policy or utility
as there is of right, in laying down a principle that
a majority of men told by the head are to be considered as the people, and that as such their will is
to be law. What policy can there be found in arrangements made in defiance of every political principle? To enable men to act with the weight and character of a people, and to answer the ends for
which they are incorporated into that capacity, we
must suppose them (by means immediate or consequential) to be in that state of habitual social discipline in which the wiser, the more expert, and the more opulent conduct, and by conducting enlighten
and protect, the weaker, the less knowing, and the
less provided with the goods of fortune. When the
multitude are not under this discipline, they can
scarcely be said to be in civil society. Give once
a certain constitution of things which produces a
variety of conditions and circumstances in a state,
and there is in Nature and reason a principle which,
for their own benefit, postpones, not the interest, but
the judgment, of those who are numero plures, to those
who are virtute et honore majores. Numbers in a state
(supposing, which is not the case in France, that a
state does exist) are always of consideration, - but
they are not the whole consideration. It is in things
more serious than a play, that it may be truly said,
Satis est equitem mihi plaudere.
A true natural aristocracy is not a separate interest in the state, or separable from it. It is an essential
integrant part of any large body rightly constituted.
It is forlmed out of a class of legitimate presumptions,
whicll, taken as generalities, must be admitted for
? ? ? ? TO THE OLD WHIGS. 175
actual truths. To be bred in a place of estimation;
to see nothing low and sordid from one's infancy; to
be taught to respect one's self; to be habituated to
the censorial inspection of the public eye; to look
early to public opinion; to stand upon such elevated
ground as to be enabled to take a large view of the
wide-spread and infinitely diversified combinations of
men and affairs in a large society; to have leisure to
read, to reflect, to converse; to be enabled to draw
the court and attention of the wise and learned, wherever they are to be found; to be habituated in armies to command and to obey; to be taught to despise danger in the pursuit of honor and duty; to be formed to the greatest degree of vigilance, foresight,
and circumspection, in a state of things in which no
fault is committed with impunity and the slightest
mistakes draw on the most ruinous consequences;
to be led to a guarded and regulated conduct, from
a sense that you are considered as an instructor of
your fellow-citizens in their highest concerns, and
that you act as a reconciler between God and man;
to be employed as an administrator of law and justice, and to be thereby amongst the first benefactors
to mankind; to be a professor of high science, or
of liberal and ingenuous art; to be amongst rich
traders, who from their success are presumed to have
sharp and vigorous understandings, and to possess the
virtues of diligence, order, constancy, and regularity,
and to have cultivated an habitual regard to commutative justice: these are the circumstances of men
that form what I should call a natural aristocracy,
without which there is no nation.
The state of civil society which necessarily generates this aristocracy is a state of Nature, --and much
? ? ? ? 176 APPEAL FROM THE NEW
more truly so than a savage and incoherent mode of
life. For man is by nature reasonable; and he is
never perfectly in his natural state, but when he is
placed where reason may be best cultivated and most
predominates. Art is man's nature. We are as much,
at least, in a state of Nature in formed manhood as
in immature and helpless infancy. Men, qualified ill
the manner I have just described, form in Nature, as
she operates in the common modification of society,
the leading, guiding, and governing part. It is the
soul to the body, without which the man does not
exist. To give, therefore, no more importance, in
the social order, to such descriptions of men than
that of so many units is a horrible usurpation.
When great multitudes act together, under that
discipline of Nature, I recognize the PEOPLE. I
acknowledge something that perhaps equals, and
ought always to guide, the sovereignty of convention. In all things the voice of this grand chorus
of national harmony ought to have a mighty and
decisive influence. But when you disturb this harmony,-when you break up this beautiful order, this
array of truth and Nature, as well as of habit and prejudice, - when you separate the common sort of men from their proper chieftains, so as to form them into
an adverse army, -- I no longer know that venerable object called the people in such a disbanded race
of deserters and vagabonds. For a while they may
be terrible, indeed, -but in such a manner as wild
beasts are terrible. The mind owes to them no sort
of submission. They are, as they have always been
reputed, rebels. They may lawfully be fought with,
and brought under, whenever an advantage offers.
Those who attempt by outrage and violence to de
? ? ? ? TO THE OLD WHIGS. 177
prive men of any advantage which they hold under
the laws, and to destroy the natural order of life, proclaim war against them.
We have read in history of that furious insurrection of the common people in France called the Jacquerie: for this is not the first time that the people
have been enlightened into treason, murder, and rapine.
of every kind, and are taught and educated so to do;
- that the idea of an hereditary legislator is as absurd as an hereditary mathematician; -that a body
holding themselves unaccountable to anybody ought
to be trusted by nobody; - that it is continuing the
uncivilized principles of governments founded in conquest, and the base idea of man having a property in
man, and governing him by a personal right;- that
aristocracy has a tendency to degenerate the human
species," &c. , &c.
As to our law of primoge niture, which with few
and inconsiderable exceptions is the standing law of
all our landed inheritalne, and which without question has a tendency, and I think a most happy tendency, to preserve a character of consequence, weight, and prevalent influence over others in the whole body
of the landed interest, they call loudly for its destruction. They do this for political reasons that are
very manifest. They have the confidence to say,
"that it is a law against every law of Nature, and
Nature herself calls for its destruction. Establish
family justice, and aristocracy falls. By the aristocratical law of primogenitureship, in a family of six
children, five are exposed. Aristocracy has never
but one child. The rest are begotten to be devoured.
They are thrown to the cannibal for prey, and the
natural parent prepares the unnatural repast. "
As to the House of Commons, they treat it far
worse than the House of Lords or the crown have
been ever treated. Perhaps they thought they had
a greater right to take this amicable freedom with
those of their own family. For many years it has
been the perpetual theme of their invectives. " Mockery, insult, usurpation," are amongst the best names
? ? ? ? 154 APPEAL FROM THE NEW
they bestow upon it. They damn it in the mass,
by declaring "that it does not arise out of the
inherent rights of the people, as the National Assembly does in France, and whose name designates its original. " Of the charters and corporations, to whose rights
a few years ago these gentlemen were so tremblingly
alive, they say, " that, when the people of Englanld
come to reflect upon them, they will, like France,
annihilate those badges of oppression, those traces
of a conquered nation. "
As to our monarchy, they had formerly been more
tender of that branch of the Constitution, and for
a good reason. The laws had guarded against all
seditious attacks upon it with a greater degree of
strictness and severity. The tone of these gentlemen
is totally altered since the French Revolution. They
now declaim as vehemently against the monarchy as
on former occasions they treacherously flattered and
soothed it. ," When we survey the wretched condition of man
under the monarchical and hereditary systems of government, dragged from his home by one power, or
driven by another, and impoverished by taxes more
than by enemies, it becomes evident that those systems are bad, and that a general revolution in the
principle and construction of governments is necessary. ," What is government more than the management
of the affairs of a nation? It is not, and from its nature cannot be, the property of any particular man or
family, but of the whole community, at whose expense
it is supported; and though by force or contrivance
it has been usurped into an inheritance, the usurpa
? ? ? ? TO THE OLD WHIGS. 155
tion cannot alter the right of things. Sovereignty,
as a matter of right, appertains to the nation only,
and not to any individual; and a nation has at all
times an inherent indefeasible right to abolish any
form of government it finds inconvenient, and establish such as accords with its interest, disposition, and happiness. The romantic and barbarous distinction
of men into kings and subjects, though it may suit
the condition of courtiers, cannot that of citizens,
and is exploded by the principle upon which governments are now founded. Every citizen is a member
of the sovereignty, and, as such, can acknowledge no
personal subjection, and his obedience can be only to
the laws. "
Warmly recommending to us the example of
France, where they have destroyed monarchy, they. say, -
" Monarchical sovereignty, the enemy of mankind,
and the source of misery, is abolished; and sovereign
ty itself is restored to its natural and original place,
the nation. Were this the case throughout Europe,
the cause of wars would be taken away. "
"But, after all, what is this metaphor called a
crown? or rather, what is monarchy? Is it a thing,
or is it a name, or is it a fraud? ~ Is it' a contrivance
of human wisdom,' or of human craft, to obtain money from a nation under specious pretences? Is it
a thing necessary to a nation? If it is, in what
does that necessity consist, what services does it perform, what is its business, and what are its merits? Doth the virtue consist in the metaphor or in the
man? Doth the goldsmith that makes the crown make
the virtue also? Doth it operate like Fortunatus's
wiohing-cap or Harlequin's wooden sword? Doth
? ? ? ? 156 APPEAL FROM THE NEW
it make a man a conjurer? In fine, what is it? It
appears to be a something going much out of fashion,
falling into ridicule, and rejected in some countries
both as unnecessary and expensive. In America it
is considered as an absurdity; and in France it has
so far declined, that the goodness of the man and the
respect for his personal character are the only things
that preserve the appearance of its existence. "
"Mr. Burke talks about what he calls an hereditary crown, as if it were some production of Nature,or as if, like time, it had a power to operate, not only independently, but in spite of man, - or as if it were
a thing or a subject universally consented to. Alas!
it has none of those properties, but is the reverse of
them all. It is a thing in imagination, the propriety
of which is more than doubted, and the legality of
which in a few years, will be denied. "
" If I ask the farmer, the manufacturer, the inerchant, the tradesman, and down through all the occupations of life to the common laborer, what service monarchy is to him, he can give me no answer. If
I ask him what monarchy is, he believes it is something like a sinecure. "
" The French Constitution says, that the right of
war and peace is in the nation. Where else should it
reside, but in those who are to pay the expense?
" In England, this right is said to reside in a metaphor, shown at the Tower for sixpence or a shilling
apiece: so are the lions; and it would be a step nearer to reason to say it resided in them, for any illanimate metaphor is no more than a hat or a cap. We can all see the absurdity of worshipping Aaron's
molten calf, or Nebuchadnezzar's golden image; but
why do men continue to practise themselves the absurdities they despise ill others? "
? ? ? ? TO THE OLD WHIGS. 157
The Revolution and Hanover succession had been
objects of the highest veneration to the old Whigs.
They thought them not only proofs of the sober and
steady spirit of liberty which guided their ancestors,
but of their wisdom and provident care of posterity.
The modern Whigs have quite other notions of these
events and actions. They do not deny that Mr. Burke
has given truly the words of the acts of Parliament
which secured the succession, and the just sense of
them. They attack not him, but the law.
" Mr Burke" (say they) " has done some service,
not to his cause, but to his country, by bringing those
clauses into public view. They serve to demonstrate
how necessary it is at all times to watch against the
attempted encroachment of power, and to prevent its
running to excess. It is somewhat extraordinary,
that the offence for which James the Second was expelled, that of setting up power by assumption, should be re-acted, under another shape and form, by the
Parliament that expelled him. It shows that the
rights of man were but imperfectly understood at
the Revolution; for certain it is, that the right which
that Parliament set up by assumption (for by delegation it had it not, and could not have it, because
none could give it) over the persons and freedom
of posterity forever, was of the same tyrannical unfounded kind which James attempted to set up over
the Parliament and the nation, and for which he was
expelled. The only difference is, (for in principle
they differ not,) that the one was an usurper over the
living, and the other over the unborn; and as the
one has no better authority to stand upon than the
other, both of them must be equally null and void,
and of no effect. "
? ? ? ? 158 APPEAL FROM THE NEW
"As the estimation of all things is by comparison,
the Revolution of 1688, however from circumstances
it may have been exalted beyond its value, will find
its level. It is already on the wane, eclipsed by the
enlarging orb of reason and the luminous Revolutions of America and France. In less than another century, it will go, as well as Mr. Burke's labors,'to
the family vault of all the Capulets. ' Mankind will
then scarcely believe that a country calling itself free
would send to Holland for a man and clothe him with
power on purpose to put themselves in fear of him, and
give him almost a million sterling a year for leave to
submit themselves and their posterity like bondmen ana
bondwomen forever. "
Mr. Burke having said that "the king holds his
crown in contempt of the choice of the Revolution
Society, who individually or collectively have not"
(as most certainly they have not) " a vote for a king
amongst them," they take occasion from thence to
infer that the king who does not hold his crown by
election despises the people.
"' The king of England,' says he,'holds his crown'
(for it does not belong to the nation, according to Mr.
Burke)'in contempt of the choice of the Revolution
Society,'" &c.
"As to who is king in England or elsewhere, or
whether there is any king at all, or whether the people choose a Cherokee chief or a Hessian hussar for a king, it is not a matter that I trouble myself about,
- be that to themselves; but with respect to the doctrine, so far as it relates to the rights of men and nations, it is as abominable as anything ever uttered
in the most enslaved country under heaven. Whether it sounds worse to my ear, by not being accus
? ? ? ? TO THE OLD WHIGS. 159
tomed to hear such despotism, than what it does to
the ear of another person, I am not so well a judge
of; but of its abominable principle I am at no loss to
judge. "
These societies of modern Whigs push their insolence as far as it can go. In order to prepare the
minds of the people for treason and rebellion, they
represent the king as tainted with principles of despotism, from the circumstance of his having dominions in Germany. In direct defiance of the most notorious truth, they describe his government there
to be a despotism; whereas it is a free Constitution,
in which the states of the Electorate have their part
in the government: and this privilege has never been
infringed by the king, or, that I have heard of, by
any of his predecessors. The Constitution of the
Electoral dominions has, indeed, a double control,
both from the laws of the Empire and from the
privileges of. the country. Whatever rights the king
enjoys as Elector have been always parentally exercised, and the calumnies of these scandalous societies
have not been authorized by a single complaint of
oppression.
"' When Mr. Burke says that' his Majesty's heirs
and successors, each in their time and order, will
come to the crown with. the same contempt of their
choice with which his Majesty has succeeded to that
he wears,' it is saying too much even to the humblest
individual in the country, part of whose daily labor
goes towards making up the million sterling a year
which the country gives the person it styles a king.
Government with insolence is despotism; but when
contempt is added, it becomes worse; and to pay, or
contempt is the excess of slavery. This species of
? ? ? ? 160 APPEAL FROM THE NEW
government comes from Germany, and reminds me
of what one of the Brunswick soldiers told me, who
was taken prisoner by the Americans in the late war. 'Ah! ' said he,' America is a fine free country: it is
worth the people's fighting for. I know the difference by knowing my own: in my country, if the prince
says, "Eat straw," we eat straw. ' God help that country, thought I, be it England, or elsewhere, whose
liberties are to be protected by German principles of
government and princes of Brunswick! "
"~ It is somewhat curious to observe, that, although
the people of England have been in the habit of talking about kings, it is always a foreign house of
kings, -hating foreigners, yet governed by them.
It is now the House of Brunswick, one of the petty
tribes of Germany. "
"; If government be what Mr. Burke describes it,'a contrivance of human wisdom,' I might ask him
if wisdom was at such a low ebb in England that it
was become necessary to import it from Holland and
from Hanover? But I will do the country the justice to say, that was not the case; and even if it was,
it mistook the cargo. The wisdom of every country,
when properly exerted, is sufficient for all its purposes; and there could exist no more real occasion in England to have sent for a Dutch Stadtholder or a German Elector than there was in America to have done a
similar thing. If a country does not understand its
own affairs, how is a foreigner to understand them,
who knows neither its laws, its manners, nor its language? If there existed a man so transcendently
wise above all others that his wisdom was necessary
tu. struct a nation, some reason might be offered for
-monarchy; but when we cast our eyes about a coun
? ? ? ? TO THE OLD WHIGS. 161
try, and observe how every part understands its own
affairs, and when we look around the world, and see.
that, of all men in it, the race of kings are the most
insignificant in capacity, our reason cannot fail to ask
us, What are those men kept for? " *
These are the notions which, under the idea of
Whig principles, several persons, and among them
persons of no mean mark, have associated themselves
to propagate. I will not attempt in the smallest
degree to refute them. This will probably be done
(if such writings shall be thought to deserve any
other than the refutation of criminal justice) by others, who may think with Mr. Burke. He has performed his part. I do not wish to enter very much at large into
the discussions which diverge and ramify in all ways
from this productive subject. But there is one topic upon which I hope I shall be excused in going a
little beyond my design. The factions now so busy
amongst us, in order to djyov men of all love for
their country, and to remove from their minds all
duty with regard to the state, endeavor to propagate
an opinion, that the people, in forming their commonwealth, have by no means parted with their power
over it. This is an impregnable citadel, to which
these gentlemen retreat, whenever they are pushed by
the battery of laws and usages and positive conventions. Indeed, it is such, and of so great force, that
all they have done in defending their outworks is so
much time and labor thrown away. Discuss any of
their schemes, their answer is, It is the act of te'd
* Vindication of the Rights of Man, recommended by the sevcral
societies.
VOL. IV. 11
? ? ? ? 162 APPEAL FROMI THE NEW
people, and that is sufficient. Are we to deny to a
majority of the people the right of altering even the
whole frame of their society, if such should be their
pleasure? They may change it, say they, from a
monarchy to a republic to-day, and to-morrow back
again from a republic to a monarchy; and so backward and forward as often as they like. They are
masters of the commonwealth, because in substance
they are themselves the commonwealth. The French
Revolution, say they, was the act of the majority of
the people; and if the majority of any other people,
the people of England, for instance, wish to make the
same change, they have the same right.
Just the same, undoubtedly. That is, none at all.
Neither the few nor the many have a right to act
merely by their will, in any matter connected with
duty, trust, engagement, or obligation. The Constitution of a country being once settled upon some
compact, tacit or expressed, there is no power existing of force to alter it, without the breach of the covenant, or the consent of all the parties. Such is the nature of a contract. And the votes of a majority
of the people, whatever their infamous flatterers may
teach in order to corrupt their minds, cannot alter
the moral any more than they can alter the physical
essence of things. The people are not to be taught
to think lightly of their engagements to their governors; else they teach governors to think lightly
of their engagements' towards them. In that kind
of game, in the end, the people are sure to be losers.
To flatter them into a contempt of faith, truth, and
justice is to ruin them; for in these virtues consists
their whole safety. To flatter any man, or any part
of mankind, in any description, by asserting that in
? ? ? ? TO THE OLD WHIGS. 163
engagements he or they are free, whilst any other human creature is bound, is ultimately to vest the rule
of morality in the pleasure of those who ought to be
rigidly submitted to it, -- to subject the sovereign
reason of the world to the caprices of weak and giddy
men.
But, as no one of us men can dispense with public
or private faith, or with any other tie of moral obligation, so neither can any number of us. The number
engaged in crimes, instead of turning them into laudable acts, only augments the quantity and intensity
of the guilt. I am well aware that men love to hear
of their power, but have an extreme disrelish to be
told of their duty. This is of course; because every
duty is a limitation of some power. Indeed, arbitrary power is so much to the depraved taste of the vulgar, of the vulgar of every description, that almost all the dissensions which lacerate the commonwealth are
not concerning the manner in which it is to be exercised, but concerning the hands in which it is to be
placed. Somewhere they are resolved to have it.
Whether they desire it to be vested in the many or
the few depends with most men upon the chance
which they imagine they themselves may have of partaking in the exercise of that arbitrary sway, in the
one mode or in the other.
It is not necessary to teach men to thirst after
power. But it is very expedient that by moral instruction they should be taught, and by their civil
constitutions they should be compelled, to put many
restrictions upon the immoderate exercise of it, and
the inordinate desire. The best method of obtaining
these two great points forms the important, but at
the same time the difficult problem to the true states
? ? ? ? 164 APPEAL FROM THE NEW.
man. He thinks of the place in which political power is to be lodged with no other attention than as it
may render the more or the less practicable its salutary restraint and its prudent direction. For this
reason, no legislator, at any period of the world, has
willingly placed the seat of active power in the hands
of the multitude; because there it admits of no control, no regulation, no steady direction whatsoever.
The people are the natural control on authority; but
to exercise and to control together is contradictory
and impossible.
As the exorbitant exercise of power cannot, under popular sway, be effectually restrained, the other
great object of political arrangement, the means of
abating an excessive desire of it, is in such a state
still worse provided for. The democratic commonwealth is the foodful nurse of ambition. Under the
other forms it meets with many restraints. Whenever, in states which have had a democratic basis, the
legislators have endeavored to put restraints upon
ambition, their methods were as violent as in the
end they were ineffectual, -- as violent, indeed, as any
the most jealous despotism could invent. The ostracism could not very long save itself, and much less
the state which it was meant to guard, from the attempts of ambition, - one of the natural, inbred, incurable distempers of a powerful democracy.
But to return from this short digression, - which,
however, is not wholly foreign to the question of the
effect of the will of the majority upon the form or the
existence of their society. I cannot too often recommend ii to the serious consideration of all men who
think civil society to be within the province of moral
jurisdiction, that, if we owe to it any duty, it is not
? ? ? ? TO THE OLD WHIGS. 165
subject to our will. Duties are not voluntary. Duty
and will are even contradictory terms. Now, though
civil society might be at first a voluntary act, (wrhich
in many cases it undoubtedly was,) its continuance
is under a permanent standing covenant, coexisting
with the society; and it attaches upon every individual of that society, without any formal act of his own.
This is warranted by the general practice, arising
out of the general sense of mankind. Men without
their choice derive benefits from that association;
without their choice they are subjected to duties
in consequence of these benefits; and without their
choice they enter into a virtual obligation as bindinlg
as any'that is actual. Look through the whole of life
and the whole system of duties. Much the strongest
moral obligations are such as were never the results
of our option. I allow, that, if no Supreme Ruler
exists, wise to form, and potent to enforce, the moral
law, there is no sanctionl to any contract, virtual or
even actual, against the will of prevalent power. On
that hypothesis, let any set of men be strong enough
to set their duties at defiance, and they cease to
be duties any longer. We have but this one appeal against irresistible power,Si genus humanum et mortalia temnitis arma, At sperate Deos memores fandi atque nefandi.
Taking it for granted that I do not write to the disciples of the Parisian philosophy, I may assume that
the awful Author of our being is the Author of our
place ill the order of existence, - and that, having
disposed and marshalled us by a divine tactic, not
according to our will, but according to His, He has
in and by that disposition virtually subjected us
to act the part which belongs to the place assigned
? ? ? ? 166 APPEAL FROM THE NEW
us. We have obligations to mankind at large, which
are not in consequence of any special voluntary pact.
They arise from the relation of man to man, and the
relation of man to God, which relations are not matters of choice. On the contrary, the force of all the
pacts which we enter into with any particular person or number of persons amongst mankind depends upon those prior obligations. In some cases the subordinate relations are voluntary, in others they are necessary, --but the duties are all compulsive. When
we marry, the choice is voluntary, but the duties are
not matter of choice: they are dictated by the nature of the situation. Dark and inscrutable are the
ways by which we come into the world. The instincts which give rise to this mysterious process of
Nature are not of our making. But out of physical
causes, unknown to us, perhaps unknowable, arise
moral duties, which, as we are able perfectly to comprehend, we are bound indispensably to perform. Parents may not be consenting to their moral relation; but, consenting or not, they are bound to a
long train of burdensome duties towards those with
whom they have never made a convention of any
sort. Children are not consenting to their relation;
but their relation, without their actual consent, binds
them to its duties, -or rather it implies their consent,
because the presumed consent of every rational creature is in unison with the predisposed order of things. Men come in that manner into a community with the
social state of their parents, endowed with all the
benefits, loaded with all the duties of their situation.
If the social ties and ligaments, spun out of those
physical relations which are the elements of the commonwealth, in most cases begin, and always continue,
? ? ? ? TO THE OLD WHIGS. 167
Independently of our will, so, without any stipulation
on our own part, are we bound by that relation called
our country, which comprehends (as it has been well
said) " all the charities of all. " * Nor are we left
without powerful instincts to make this duty as dear
and grateful to us as it is awful and coercive. Our
country is not a thing of mere physical locality. It
consists, in a great measure, in the ancient order
into which we are born. We may have the same
geographical situation, but another country; as we
may have the same country in another soil. The
place that determines our duty to our country is a
social, civil relation.
These are the opinions of the author whose cause I
defend. I lay them down, not to enforce them upon
others by disputation, but as an account of his proceedings. On them he acts; and from them he is
convinced that neither he, nor any man, or number
of men, have a right (except what necessity, which
is out of and above all rule, rather imposes than bestows) to free themselves from that primary engagement into which every mall born into a community as much contracts by his being born into it as he
contracts an obligation to certain parents by his having been derived from their bodies. The place of
every man determines his duty. If you ask, Quem
te Deus esse jussit? you will be answered when
you resolve this other question, Humana qua parte
locatus es in re? *
I admit, indeed, that in morals, as in all things
else, difficulties will sometimes occur. Duties will
sometimes cross one another. Then questions will
* Omnes omnium charitates patria una complectitur. " - CIc.
t A few lines in Persius contain a good summary of all the objects
? ? ? ? 168 APPEAL FROM THE NEW
arise, which of them is to be placed in subordination?
which of them may be entirely superseded? These
doubts give rise to that part of moral science called
csastry, which though necessary to be well studied
by those who would become expert in that learning,
who aim at becoming what I think Cicero somewhere calls artifices officiorum, it requires a very
solid and discriminating judgment, great modesty
and caution, and much sobriety of mind in the
handling; else there is a danger that it may totally
subvert those offices which it is its object only to
methodize and reconcile. Duties, at their extreme
bounds, are drawn very fine, so as to become almost
evanescent. In that state some shade of doubt will
always rest on these questions, when they are pursued with great subtilty. But the very habit of stating these extreme cases is not very laudable or safe; because, in general, it is not right to turn our duties
into doubts. They are imposed to govern our conduct, not to exercise our ingenuity; and therefore
our opinions about them ought not to be in a state
of fluctuation, but steady, sure, and resolved.
Amongst these nice, and therefore dangerous points
of casuistry, may be reckoned the question so much
agitated in the present hour, --Whether, after the
people have discharged themselves of their original
power by an habitual delegation, no occasion call
of moral investigation, and hint the result of our inquiry: There human will has no place.
Quid sumus? et quidnam victuri gignimur? ordo
Quis datus? et metwe quis mollis flexus, et unde?
Quis modus argento? Quidfas optarte? Quid asper
Utile nummus habet? Patrice charisquepropinquis
Quantum elargiri debet? Quem te Deus esse
Jussit? et humana qua parte locatus es in re?
? ? ? ? TO THE OLD WHIGS. 169
possibly occur which may justify the resumption of
it? This question, in this latitude, is very hard to
affirm or deny: but I am satisfied that no occasion
can justify such a resumption, which would not
equally authorize a dispensation with any other moral duty, perhaps with all of them together. However, if in general it be not easy to determine concerning the lawfulness of such devious proceedings, which must be ever on the edge of crimes, it is far
from difficult to foresee the perilous consequences of
the resuscitation of such a power in the people. The
practical consequences of any political tenet go a
great way in deciding upon its value. Political problems do not primarily concern truth or falsehood.
They relate to good or evil. What in the result is
likely to produce evil is politically false; that which
is productive of good, politically true.
Believing it, therefore, a question at least arduous
in the theory, and in the practice very critical, it
would become us to ascertain as well as we can
what form it is that our incantations are about to
call up from darkness and the sleep of ages. WhenI
the supreme authority of the people is in question,
before we attempt to extend or to confine it, we
ought to fix in our minds, with some degree of distinctness, an idea of what it is we mean, when we
say, the PEOPLE.
In a state of rude Nature there is no such thing as
a people. A number of men in themselves have no
collective capacity. The idea of a people is the idea
of a corporation. It is wholly artificial, and made,
like all other legal fictions, by common agreement.
What the particular nature of that agreement was
is collected from the form into which the particular
? ? ? ? 170 APPEAL FROM THE NEW
society has been cast. Any other is not their covenant. When men, therefore, break up the original compact or agreement which gives its corporate form
and capacity to a state, they are no longer a people, -
they have no longer a corporate existence - they have
no longer a legal coactive force to bind within, nor
a claim to be recognized abroad. They are a number of vague, loose individuals, and nothing more.
With them all is to begin again. Alas! they little
know how many a weary step is to be taken before
they can form themselves into a mass which has a
true politic personality.
We hear much, from men who have not acquired
their hardiness of assertion from the profundity of
their thinking, about the omnipotence of a majority,
in such a dissolution of an ancient society as hath taken place in France. But amongst men so disbanded there can be no such thing as majority or minority,
or power in any one person to bind another. The
power of acting by a majority, which the gentlemen
theorists seem to assume so readily, after they have
violated the contract out of which it has arisen, (if at
all it existed,) must be grounded on two assumptions: first, that of an incorporation produced by unanimity; and secondly, an unanimous agreement
that the act of a mere majority (say of one) shall pass
with them and with others as the act of the whole.
We are so little affected by things which are habitual, that we consider this idea of the decision of a majority as if it were a law of our original nature.
But such constructive whole, residing in a part only,
is one of the most violent fictions of positive law that
ever has been or can be made on the principles of
artificial incorporation. Out of civil society Nature
? ? ? ? TO THE OLD WHIGS. 171
knows nothing of it; nor are. men, even when arranged according to civil order, otherwise than by
very long training, brought at all to submit to it.
The mind is brought far more easily to acquiesce in
the proceedings of one man, or a few, who act under
a general procuration for the state, than in the vote
of a victorious majority in councils in which every
man has his share in the deliberation. For there the
beaten party are exasperated and soured by the previous contention, and mortified by the conclusive defeat. This mode of decision, where wills may be so nearly equal, where, according to circumstances, the
smaller number may be the stronger force, and where
apparent reason may be all upon one side, and on the
other little else than impetuous appetite, - all this
must be the result of a very particular and special
convention, confirmed afterwards by long habits of
obedience, by a sort of discipline in society, and by a
strong hand, vested with stationary, permanent power to enforce this sort of constructive general will.
What organ it is that shall declare the corporate
mind is so much a matter of positive arrangement,
that several states, for the validity of several of their
acts, have required a proportion of voices much
greater than that of a mere majority. These proportions are so entirely governed by convention that
in some cases the minority decides. The laws in
many countries to condemn require more than a mere
majority; less than an equal number to acquit. In
our judicial trials we require unanimity either to condemn or to absolve. In some incorporations one man
speaks for the whole; in others, a few. Until the
other day, in the Constitution of Poland unanimity
was required to give validity to any act of their great
? ? ? ? 172 APPEAL FROM THE NEW
national council or diet. This approaches much more
nearly to rude Nature than the institutions of any
other country. Such, indeed, every commonwealth
must be, without a positive law to recognize in a certain number the will of the entire body.
If men dissolve their ancient incorporation in order to regenerate their community, in that state of things each man has a right, if he pleases, to remain
all individual. Any number of individuals, who can
agree upon it, have an undoubted right to form themselves into a state apart and wholly independent. If any of these is forced into the fellowship of another,
this is conquest and not compact. On every principle which supposes society to be in virtue of a free covenant, this compulsive incorporation must be null
and void.
As a people can have no right to a corporate capacity without universal consent, so neither have they a right to hold' exclusively any lands in the name and
title of a corporation. On the scheme of the present
rulers in our neighboring country, regenerated as
they are, they have no more right to the territory
called France than I have. I have a right to pitch
my tent in any unoccupied place I can find for it;
and I may apply to my own maintenance any part
of their unoccupied soil. I may purchase the house
or vineyard of any individual proprietor who refuses
his consent (and most proprietors have, as far as they
dared, refused it) to the new incorporation. I stand
in his independent place. Who are these insolent
men, calling themselves the French nation, that would
monopolize this fair domain of Nature? Is it because
they speak a certain jargon? Is it Trei mode of chattelilg, to me unintelligible, that forms their title to
? ? ? ? TO THE OLD WHIGS. 1]73
my land? Who are they who claim by prescription
and descent from certain gangs of banditti called
Franks, and Burgundians, and Visigoths, of whom I
may have never heard, and ninety-nine out of an hundred of themselves certainly never have heard, whilst
at the very time they tell me that prescription and
long possession form no title to property? Who are
they that presume to assert that the land which I
purchased of the individual, a natural person, and not
a fiction of state, belongs to them, who in the very
capacity in which they make their claim can exist
only as an imaginary being, and in virtue of the very
prescription which they reject and disown? This
mode of arguing might be pushed into all the detail,
so as to leave no sort of doubt, that, on their principles, and on the sort of footing on which they have
thought proper to place themselves, the crowd of
men, on the other side of the Channel, who have the
impudence to call themselves a people, can never be
the lawful, exclusive possessors of the soil. By what
they call reasoning without prejudice, they leave not
one stone upon another in the fabric of human society. They subvert all the authority which they hold,
as well as all that which they have destroyed.
As in the abstract it is perfectly clear, that, out
of a state of civil society, majority and minority are
relations which can have no existence, and that, in
civil society, its own specific conventions in each corporation determine what it is that constitutes the people, so as to make their act the signification of the general will, - to come to particulars, it is equally
clear that neither in France nor in England has the
original or any subsequent compact of the state, expressed or implied, constituted a majority of men, told
? ? ? ? 174 APPEAL FROM THE NEW
by the head, to be the acting people of their several
communities. And I see as little of policy or utility
as there is of right, in laying down a principle that
a majority of men told by the head are to be considered as the people, and that as such their will is
to be law. What policy can there be found in arrangements made in defiance of every political principle? To enable men to act with the weight and character of a people, and to answer the ends for
which they are incorporated into that capacity, we
must suppose them (by means immediate or consequential) to be in that state of habitual social discipline in which the wiser, the more expert, and the more opulent conduct, and by conducting enlighten
and protect, the weaker, the less knowing, and the
less provided with the goods of fortune. When the
multitude are not under this discipline, they can
scarcely be said to be in civil society. Give once
a certain constitution of things which produces a
variety of conditions and circumstances in a state,
and there is in Nature and reason a principle which,
for their own benefit, postpones, not the interest, but
the judgment, of those who are numero plures, to those
who are virtute et honore majores. Numbers in a state
(supposing, which is not the case in France, that a
state does exist) are always of consideration, - but
they are not the whole consideration. It is in things
more serious than a play, that it may be truly said,
Satis est equitem mihi plaudere.
A true natural aristocracy is not a separate interest in the state, or separable from it. It is an essential
integrant part of any large body rightly constituted.
It is forlmed out of a class of legitimate presumptions,
whicll, taken as generalities, must be admitted for
? ? ? ? TO THE OLD WHIGS. 175
actual truths. To be bred in a place of estimation;
to see nothing low and sordid from one's infancy; to
be taught to respect one's self; to be habituated to
the censorial inspection of the public eye; to look
early to public opinion; to stand upon such elevated
ground as to be enabled to take a large view of the
wide-spread and infinitely diversified combinations of
men and affairs in a large society; to have leisure to
read, to reflect, to converse; to be enabled to draw
the court and attention of the wise and learned, wherever they are to be found; to be habituated in armies to command and to obey; to be taught to despise danger in the pursuit of honor and duty; to be formed to the greatest degree of vigilance, foresight,
and circumspection, in a state of things in which no
fault is committed with impunity and the slightest
mistakes draw on the most ruinous consequences;
to be led to a guarded and regulated conduct, from
a sense that you are considered as an instructor of
your fellow-citizens in their highest concerns, and
that you act as a reconciler between God and man;
to be employed as an administrator of law and justice, and to be thereby amongst the first benefactors
to mankind; to be a professor of high science, or
of liberal and ingenuous art; to be amongst rich
traders, who from their success are presumed to have
sharp and vigorous understandings, and to possess the
virtues of diligence, order, constancy, and regularity,
and to have cultivated an habitual regard to commutative justice: these are the circumstances of men
that form what I should call a natural aristocracy,
without which there is no nation.
The state of civil society which necessarily generates this aristocracy is a state of Nature, --and much
? ? ? ? 176 APPEAL FROM THE NEW
more truly so than a savage and incoherent mode of
life. For man is by nature reasonable; and he is
never perfectly in his natural state, but when he is
placed where reason may be best cultivated and most
predominates. Art is man's nature. We are as much,
at least, in a state of Nature in formed manhood as
in immature and helpless infancy. Men, qualified ill
the manner I have just described, form in Nature, as
she operates in the common modification of society,
the leading, guiding, and governing part. It is the
soul to the body, without which the man does not
exist. To give, therefore, no more importance, in
the social order, to such descriptions of men than
that of so many units is a horrible usurpation.
When great multitudes act together, under that
discipline of Nature, I recognize the PEOPLE. I
acknowledge something that perhaps equals, and
ought always to guide, the sovereignty of convention. In all things the voice of this grand chorus
of national harmony ought to have a mighty and
decisive influence. But when you disturb this harmony,-when you break up this beautiful order, this
array of truth and Nature, as well as of habit and prejudice, - when you separate the common sort of men from their proper chieftains, so as to form them into
an adverse army, -- I no longer know that venerable object called the people in such a disbanded race
of deserters and vagabonds. For a while they may
be terrible, indeed, -but in such a manner as wild
beasts are terrible. The mind owes to them no sort
of submission. They are, as they have always been
reputed, rebels. They may lawfully be fought with,
and brought under, whenever an advantage offers.
Those who attempt by outrage and violence to de
? ? ? ? TO THE OLD WHIGS. 177
prive men of any advantage which they hold under
the laws, and to destroy the natural order of life, proclaim war against them.
We have read in history of that furious insurrection of the common people in France called the Jacquerie: for this is not the first time that the people
have been enlightened into treason, murder, and rapine.
